Peak Fish ?  

Canada's "Globe and Mail" has a report on the impact of overfishing that notes that the total world catch of fish is in decline (along with a number of other points that sound all too familiar - no action, more research required - where have i heard that line before ?).

Less research, more political action.

That's the simple formula for saving the world's fish that is being advanced by Daniel Pauly, a leading researcher who has been tracking the steady and alarming decline of global fish stocks.

"We don't need more science," Dr. Pauly said in a statement released yesterday as he prepared to make a presentation to the American Association for the Advancement of Science at a conference in St. Louis, Mo.

"Of course, we need to learn more about fish. But research is often publicly funded on the grounds that this is an alternative to other political action. We know enough [now] to prevent the continued decimation of global fisheries."

Dr. Pauly, director of the Fisheries Centre at the University of British Columbia, said there is a global crisis in fisheries management that governments need to address immediately.

He said that the world has passed a peak in the total weight of fish caught in the world's oceans.

BHP has won the right to start digging up even more coal - from the Gunnedah region.

After a competitive tender process which included offers from rivals Xstrata Coal, White Mining and Mitsubishi, on Friday BHP won the right to explore a 350 square kilometre area of land near Gunnedah that contains an estimated 500 million tonnes of coal resources.

The Gunnedah Basin has long been viewed as NSW's next major coal province. "The Gunnedah Basin does have huge coal resources and it's the natural area for replacement of the Hunter Valley reserves as they run out," said Keith Ross, managing director of Whitehaven Coal Mining, a private company that operates the only mine in the region.

George Bush is calling for more nuclear power plants to be built and asking for budget allocations for research into nuclear fuel reprocessing.

There are reports from Nigeria that Shell has suspended exports from the 380,000 barrel-a-day Forcados terminal after militants bombed the tanker loading platform along with 2 pipelines.

Hugo Chavez is again threatening to cut off shipments of oil to the US if they interfere too much (exactly how much wasn't specified) in internal Venezuelan politics.

NASA's Jim Hansen has an article on global warming (and censorship) in The Independent.

A satellite study of the Greenland ice cap shows that it is melting far faster than scientists had feared - twice as much ice is going into the sea as it was five years ago. The implications for rising sea levels - and climate change - could be dramatic.

Yet, a few weeks ago, when I - a NASA climate scientist - tried to talk to the media about these issues following a lecture I had given calling for prompt reductions in the emission of greenhouse gases, the NASA public affairs team - staffed by political appointees from the Bush administration - tried to stop me doing so. I was not happy with that, and I ignored the restrictions. The first line of NASA 's mission is to understand and protect the planet.

This new satellite data is a remarkable advance. We are seeing for the first time the detailed behavior of the ice streams that are draining the Greenland ice sheet. They show that Greenland seems to be losing at least 200 cubic kilometers of ice a year. It is different from even two years ago, when people still said the ice sheet was in balance.

Hundreds of cubic kilometers sounds like a lot of ice. But this is just the beginning. Once a sheet starts to disintegrate, it can reach a tipping point beyond which break-up is explosively rapid. The issue is how close we are getting to that tipping point. The summer of 2005 broke all records for melting in Greenland. So we may be on the edge.

TriplePundit has a post on a BBC interview of a Chevron spokesman.

The BBC's Mike Williams interviews Chevron vice-chairman Peter Robertson on peak oil and the future of the oil industry. The vice chairman gets put on the spot in a major way by the British interviewer who mercilessly drills him on climate change, greenwashing, the inevitability of the end of oil as well as what the public "really wants".

Robertson defends the company by standing by claims that oil is nowhere near running out and that Chevron will basically continue doing exactly what it has been doing all along - extracting oil and selling it to consumers who demand it, and nothing else. If, in fact, consumers were demanding alternative energy, Robertson says that Chevron would happily provide it.

Williams pushes his buttons pretty hard saying that the popularity of Chevron's own "Will You Join Us" website proves that consumers are demanding alternatives and that the relatively small amount of investment that Chevron is making in renewables proves they are just pulling a PR stunt.

Sydney Peak Oil reports that Richard Heinberg and David Holmgren will be doing a joint speaking tour of Australia on peak oil in August.

Texas Republican Ron Paul is a rather odd example of that species - while I suspect I'd diasgree with him on some topics he does have a knack for plain talking and facing reality head on (unlike some of his more prominent fellow Texans). This latest speech to the US Congress almost sounds like something that Noam Chomsky, Michael Klare or some other reality based leftist might have written (its quite long and slightly repetitive and I don't share his enthusiasm for gold, but its worth reading the whole thing anyway). I'd love to see what his fellow Reps made of it - but I suspect it was made to an empty house...

Most Americans forget how our policies have systematically and needlessly antagonized the Iranians over the years. In 1953 the CIA helped overthrow a democratically elected president, Mohammed Mossadeqh, and install the authoritarian Shah, who was friendly to the U.S. The Iranians were still fuming over this when the hostages were seized in 1979. Our alliance with Saddam Hussein in his invasion of Iran in the early 1980s did not help matters, and obviously did not do much for our relationship with Saddam Hussein.

The administration announcement in 2001 that Iran was part of the axis of evil didn't do much to improve the diplomatic relationship between our two countries. Recent threats over nuclear power, while ignoring the fact that they are surrounded by countries with nuclear weapons, doesn't seem to register with those who continue to provoke Iran. With what most Muslims perceive as our war against Islam, and this recent history, there's little wonder why Iran might choose to harm America by undermining the dollar. Iran, like Iraq, has zero capability to attack us. But that didn't stop us from turning Saddam Hussein into a modern-day Hitler ready to take over the world. Now Iran, especially since she's made plans for pricing oil in Euros, has been on the receiving end of a propaganda war not unlike that waged against Iraq before our invasion.

It's not likely that maintaining dollar supremacy was the only motivating factor for the war against Iraq, nor for agitating against Iran. Though the real reasons for going to war are complex, we now know the reasons given before the war started, like the presence of weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein's connection to 9/11, were false. The dollar's importance is obvious, but this does not diminish the influence of the distinct plans laid out years ago by the neo-conservatives to remake the Middle East.

Israel's influence, as well as that of the Christian Zionists, likewise played a role in prosecuting this war. Protecting "our" oil supplies has influenced our Middle East policy for decades. But the truth is that paying the bills for this aggressive
intervention is impossible the old fashioned way, with more taxes, more savings, and more production by the American people. Much of the expense of the Persian Gulf War in 1991 was shouldered by many of our willing allies. That's not so today. Now, more than ever, the dollar hegemony -- it's dominance as the world reserve currency -
- is required to finance our huge war expenditures. This $2 trillion never-ending war must be paid for, one way or another. Dollar hegemony provides the vehicle to do just that.

For the most part the true victims aren't aware of how they pay the bills. The license to create money out of thin air allows the bills to be paid through price inflation. American citizens, as well as average citizens of Japan, China, and other countries suffer from price inflation, which represents the "tax" that pays the bills for our military adventures. That is until the fraud is discovered, and the foreign producers decide not to take dollars nor hold them very long in payment for their goods. Everything possible is done to prevent the fraud of the monetary system from being exposed to the masses who suffer from it. If oil markets replace dollars with
Euros, it would in time curtail our ability to continue to print, without restraint, the world's reserve currency.

It is an unbelievable benefit to us to import valuable goods and export depreciating dollars. The exporting countries have become addicted to our purchases for their economic growth. This dependency makes them allies in continuing the fraud, and their participation keeps the dollar's value artificially high. If this system were workable long term, American citizens would never have to work again. We too could enjoy "bread and circuses" just as the Romans did, but their gold finally ran out and the inability of Rome to continue to plunder conquered nations brought an end to her empire.

The same thing will happen to us if we don't change our ways. Though we don't occupy foreign countries to directly plunder, we nevertheless have spread our troops across 130 nations of the world. Our intense effort to spread our power in the oil-rich Middle East is not a coincidence. But unlike the old days, we don't declare direct ownership of the natural resources -- we just insist that we can buy what we want and pay for it with our paper money.

Any country that challenges our authority does so at great risk. Once again Congress has bought into the war propaganda against Iran, just as it did against Iraq. Arguments are now made for attacking Iran economically, and militarily if necessary. These arguments are all based on the same false reasons given for the ill-fated and costly occupation of Iraq.

Our whole economic system depends on continuing the current monetary arrangement, which means recycling the dollar is crucial.

Currently, we borrow over $700 billion every year from our gracious benefactors, who work hard and take our paper for their goods. Then we borrow all the money we need to secure the empire (DOD budget $450 billion) plus more. The military might we enjoy becomes the "backing" of our currency. There are no other countries that can challenge our military superiority, and therefore they have little choice but to accept the dollars we declare are today's "gold." This is why countries that challenge the system -- like Iraq, Iran and Venezuela -- become targets of our plans for regime change.

The economic law that honest exchange demands only things of real value as currency cannot be repealed. The chaos that one day will ensue from our 35-year experiment with worldwide fiat money will require a return to money of real value. We will know that day is approaching when oil-producing countries demand gold, or its equivalent, for their oil rather than dollars or Euros. The sooner the better.

The Nation has a report on "The End Of The Internet". Not surprising really - running a decent propaganda system is made unnecessarily complex if everyone has free access to information from whomever cares to publish it.

Of course,if this came to pass, it would stimulate a lot of development in the wireless mesh network space, which would be interesting - information wants to be free after all...

Verizon, Comcast, Bell South and other communications giants are developing strategies that would track and store information on our every move in cyberspace in a vast data-collection and marketing system, the scope of which could rival the National Security Agency. According to white papers now being circulated in the cable, telephone and telecommunications industries, those with the deepest pockets--corporations, special-interest groups and major advertisers--would get preferred treatment. Content from these providers would have first priority on our computer and television screens, while information seen as undesirable, such as peer-to-peer communications, could be relegated to a slow lane or simply shut out.

Under the plans they are considering, all of us--from content providers to individual users--would pay more to surf online, stream videos or even send e-mail. Industry planners are mulling new subscription plans that would further limit the online experience, establishing "platinum," "gold" and "silver" levels of Internet access that would set limits on the number of downloads, media streams or even e-mail messages that could be sent or received.