Random Notes  

Chris Vernon at Vital Trivia notes that the latest report from OPEC indicates that production of light, sweet crude oil has now peaked.

To recap:

* Individual countries have peaked (America, Norway, Venezuela, UK, Indonesia etc.)
* Individual companies have peaked (Chevron, Exxon, Shell, Total)
* Individual grades of oil have peaked (Light sweet crude)

The only thing left to peak is total all oil extraction rates for which the experts predict 2007/8.

The NYT Peak Oil article has been published and has provoked a cornucopian freak out from the "Freakonomics" guy, who insists peak oil isn't a problem and the market will seamlessly migrate us onto an alternate energy source. Obviously we just have to have faith - after all, it works for ostriches - right ? (Mobjectivist has also sunk his boots into Mr Levitt's exposed behind).

The story in Ecuador is still developing, with some reports saying that the oil is starting to flow again. There are also reports that Ecuador has asked Venezuela to help cover its export commitments.

TomDispatch has an article out looking at the situation in Sudan, and declares that Darfur is another example of an oil driven resource war.

A war of the future is being waged right now in the sprawling desert region of northeastern Africa known as Sudan. The weapons themselves are not futuristic. None of the ray-guns, force-fields, or robotic storm troopers that are the stuff of science fiction; nor, for that matter, the satellite-guided Predator drones or other high-tech weapon systems at the cutting edge of today's arsenal.

No, this war is being fought with Kalashnikovs, clubs and knives. In the western region of Sudan known as Darfur, the preferred tactics are burning and pillaging, castration and rape -- carried out by Arab militias riding on camels and horses. The most sophisticated technologies deployed are, on the one hand, the helicopters used by the Sudanese government to support the militias when they attack black African villages, and on the other hand, quite a different weapon: the seismographs used by foreign oil companies to map oil deposits hundreds of feet below the surface.

This is what makes it a war of the future: not the slick PowerPoint presentations you can imagine in boardrooms in Dallas and Beijing showing proven reserves in one color, estimated reserves in another, vast subterranean puddles that stretch west into Chad, and south to Nigeria and Uganda; not the technology; just the simple fact of the oil.

This is a resource war, fought by surrogates, involving great powers whose economies are predicated on growth, contending for a finite pool of resources. It is a war straight out of the pages of Michael Klare's book, Blood and Oil; and it would be a glaring example of the consequences of our addiction to oil, if it were not also an invisible war.

In the UK, there is speculation in The Observer that they may be facing a repeat of the "winter of discontent" if natural gas prices continue to rise.

With a decline in North Sea supplies and experts predicting the worst weather in years, the cost of gas can only go one way - up, warns Neasa MacErlean

Gas prices could be about to go through the roof - clobbering businesses at a time when $60 crude is already inflating costs and depressing profits. The price of gas now stands at about 31p a therm - but it could top an unprecedented £1 this winter if the weather turns very cold, according to analysts. Chemicals manufacturers and other big users of gas, none of whom want to be identified, have indicated that they may temporarily shut down plants to save money if the winter is particularly harsh and prices increase dramatically.

Government officials and independent energy market regulators privately admit that their top priority is ensuring there are no major disruptions during the coming winter, when they expect the margin between demand and supply to be extremely tight. The decline in North Sea gas volumes and a 'bottleneck' in the development of new pipeline capacity to bring greater volumes to Britain from elsewhere are combining to make the winter of 2005/06 a critical period to negotiate.

The other key factor is the weather. Scare stories about energy prices and cold winters are not uncommon, but their stark predictions haven't come true. That's partly because over the past 15 years, most winters have been comparatively mild. But that could be about to change: the Met Office has just published its first forecast covering the 2005/06 winter (the North Atlantic Oscillation Report) and it 'places the winter of 2005/06 among the coldest third of winters over the last 50 years of the 20th century'.

The Herald notes that rising energy prices are beginning to have an impact on both discretionary spending and inflation in the US, although the analysts they quote seem to think that neither of these are going to be lasting trends. In other Australian nes, stories are beginning to appear about people trading in their 4WD's (SUVs) due to rising fuel costs and increasing numbers of people doing a runner from the petrol station without paying.

WorldChanging wonders if global warming is going to result in another round of hominid brain expansion, given that there is an argument is being made that an earlier round of climate change meant that humans evolved to become more intelligent so that they could adapt to a rapidly changing environment.

We now face another round of climate disruptions, and this time it's happening far faster than the natural processes of past eras. Other environmental hazards abound, as well, threatening to make a bad situation worse. Will all of this lead, once again, to a new phase in human intelligence?

The BBC reports of recent findings confirming that the region in Africa home to important steps in the evolution of humans went through dramatic shifts in climate from 3 million years ago to 1 million years ago. Massive lakes formed and dried up at least three times in the period, indicating large shifts in moisture and temperature happening in a geologically short period (although far, far more gradually than the climate disruption underway today).

Dr. William Calvin, neurophysiologist at the University of Washington, has long argued that there's a connection between the evolution of intelligence and climate shifts. Calvin's 2002 book, A Brain For All Seasons, spelled out his argument in great - and, to many, quite convincing - detail.

Calvin's argument is interesting, in that the primary connection he draws between climate changes and brain evolution is that the environmental pressures led to a great need for cooperation between hominid individuals, and that increased cooperation required better communication abilities. Tools, fire, skinning animals for furs or to make skins to hold water - all very useful, but what really let us survive was our ability to tell each other where to find food resources, how to make the tools and skins, plans for cooperatively bringing down larger prey or fending off attacks from predators, even ideas about what tomorrow might bring.

Would similar environmental pressures have the same result today?

It's certain that the potential disasters such as global warming-triggered climate disruption, oil depletion, and pandemics such as human-transmissible H5N1 are making us rely more and more on effective tools of knowledge acquisition and communication. Sites like the Avian Flu wiki, the Oil Drum, and yes, even WorldChanging and myriad others we talk about here on a daily basis are important parts of a structure for understanding and learning how to deal with disruptive changes. Sensors, computers and networks allow us better ways to recognize, analyze and tell others about changes to the world around us. Simulations and modeling can aid in seeing future opportunities and risks, and databases help to make sure that we don't forget them. Moreover, all of these tools are developing and advancing at a rate far exceeding biological evolution.

In short, we are improving our ability to communicate and cooperate, we're just not doing it biologically.

Elsewhere in the Viridian world, TreeHugger has a snippet from Renewable Energy Access about creating anti-freeze using a byproduct of the biodiesel production process (updated after a correction from E-P).

Not only can you fill your tank with biodiesel, a new advance could let you fill your vehicle's cooling system with a biomass-derived antifreeze. A new process has been developed at the University of Missouri-Columbia for converting glycerin, a byproduct of the biodiesel production process, into propylene glycol, which can be used as nontoxic antifreeze for automobiles. Researchers say the new propylene glycol product will meet every performance standard, is made from domestic soybeans and is nontoxic. This technology can reduce the cost of biodiesel production by as much as $0.40 per gallon of biodiesel.

Finally, given that I've been ranting a bit about creationists lately, here's a good piece from Dan Gillmor on the topic of why business leaders should be speaking out about this:

I asked Benhamou, one of Silicon Valley's more distinguished people, whether it was the duty of executives to speak out when the president of the United States suggests that science classes be required to teach "intelligent design" -- basically creationism in new clothing -- as an equally valid alternative to evolution.

They absolutely should speak out, he said. It's a fact, he observed, that today's knowledge-based companies need people "whose minds are trained on knowledge and scientific fact, and not mixed up with this creationism bullshit."

I then asked if he could name anyone in a prominent corporate position who'd actually spoken out in this way. He could not, he said with what sounded like regret: "It's hard to be caught on TV saying these things, but it's particularly important now. I feel quite worried that we're passive about it."

Corporate America's leaders are willing to speak out on purely selfish matters. They'll call for lower taxes, for curbs on shareholder lawsuits, for all kinds of things that might be good for business interests in a specific way.

They'll even call for better education in a general sense. And some of them push for higher standards in schools.

But when it comes to even discussing the willingness of George Bush, his administration and his fundamentalist followers to turn public education into religious indoctrination -- and to mock the foundations of scholarship by promoting faith as a legitimate scientific alternative to the scientific method -- they fall silent.

Silence in the face of this challenge to basic education is damaging America. It gives yet another advantage, at least in the long term, to nations that teach children to think logically.

There is nothing wrong with faith. This is not an attack on religion, which is responsible for many good things in our world, notably when religious leaders stand up for the powerless and stand up to abusers of power.

But religion is not science. It does not belong in science class. Benhamou said what needed saying. Some will attack him for his honesty. The rest of us should praise him for it.

UPDATE: As several commenters here have noted, the New York Times reports that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has given a great deal of money to the infamous Discovery Institute, the organization behind much of the "intelligent design" promotion in America. Gates' people say the money is for other projects, but it's helping to pay the overhead of this organization -- and thereby helping to undermine science in America.

No wonder Gates complains he can't find enough people to hire: He's helping those who are harming American education: corporate and executive irresponsibility at its height.

Given that last paragraph, I have a question for my occasional visitor from Microsoft (though any other tech people are welcome to answer) - is hiring talented people a significant problem up there ?

Most of my recruiting episodes down here lately have been very painful - I find I do around 10 interviews (even after applying a fairly strict filter on the CVs I get) to find one suitable person for any given tech job - but I hadn't realised the hangover from the dotcom period had been completely swept away up there.