The Contagion Of Fear  

The Oil Drum has a comprehensive projection of world oil exports up that makes for interesting reading.

TOD's work seems not to the taste of the legion of angry systems administrators that dwell at Slashdot, who by and large seem to live in a dreamworld where tar sands extraction can be grown without limits (their fantasy land is also one where global warming isn't a problem it seems - though their is a dark lining to their silver cloud, in the form of conspiracy theories about the windfall profits being reaped by the ASPO from the high oil price - presumably Colin Campbell will soon be retiring to his own island in the Caribbean). As these grumpy nerds don't have any say on energy (or environment) policy, you may think it doesn't really matter that are so ignorant - but as these are people who are usually interested in new ideas of a technical nature, its not a very encouraging sign. Maybe someone should whip up a sexy new Linux distro with a animated oil depletion screen saver to get them with the program...

A couple of their criticisms seem valid though - a little more editing wouldn't have hurt given the large audience it garnered (no offence ment of course PG - and I can hardly criticise typos and bad grammar elsewhere given my own track record) and using Colin Campbell as the data source is a little unfortunate given the fairly widespread perception that he has been shifting the peak data forward for over a decade (which doesn't seem to be unjustified, even if the gist of his theory is correct - he has a tendency to be overly pessimistic about total world reserves and thus likely peak date). Plus the suggestion that there are a million Chinese in Luanda seems pretty unlikely to me - has anyone got a link that supports this factoid ?

Although the debate is growing around the point in time when global oil production starts to decline permanently, for countries or regions where oil production is null or very low, the amount of oil available for trade in the market is a much more relevant issue. Such is the case of the European Union; with oil consumption topping 14.5 Mb/d, only two of its member states figure in the exporting countries list, and both with marginal numbers. More than worrying with a Peak Oil date, importing countries should worry on the future availability of tradable oil.

It is therefore of the highest importance for importing countries to know in advance the amount of oil available to the market, and from which countries/regions it may come, in order to prepare correctly for the future.

This assessment uses as data sources the Statistical Review of World Energy, published yearly by BP, and the monthly newsletter published by ASPO, where assessments for future oil production are available for more than 40 individual countries. Future oil consumption and production is projected using static change rates for the period starting in 2006 and finishing in 2020. These rates are determined by current trends and by reserves/future discovery assessments made by Colin Campbell and published in the ASPO's newsletters.

In this text the word "oil" is used for simplicity as synonym of liquid hydrocarbons, for the past data on consumption and production used includes Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG).

Oil Exporters

Oil exporting countries are defined as having in 2005 an oil production greater than oil consumption, thus resulting in a surplus. Using the data published by BP on its Statistical Review of World Energy of 2006, the following countries are identified: Saudi Arabia,

Former Soviet Union (where individual data is available for Russia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan), Norway, Venezuela, Iran, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, México, Algeria, Qatar, Canada, Malaysia, Ecuador, Argentina, Colombia, Denmark, Egypt and United Kingdom.

Due to lack of data for consumption, Angola, Nigeria and Iraq are left out of this first assessment. This issue will be revisited in the concluding stages of this article.

Figure 1 shows how these exporting countries rank in the world oil market.



Figure 1 - Oil producing countries identified for 2005. The "Others" slot contains all countries producing less than 400 Kb/d.

The statistical review contains historical data from 1965 to present, which is worth observing:



Figure 2 - Past oil exports from countries where data on consumption is also available.

The well know energy crisis of the past appear in an interesting fashion: the major declines in exports come after the events that generated it. Such might be a sign of a market ruled more from the Demand side than from the Supply side. That situation is likely to reverse as the peak in world oil production is approached.

...

The declines rates resulting from the projections made are never higher than those observed during the early 1980s, still in 15 years total oil exports decline almost 40% from 36.2 Mb/d to 22.6 Mb/d. This period ahead might not have much in common with the crisis lived in the 1970s and 1980s, but if economic recession takes over in importing countries, periods of heavy decline might happen, followed by periods of recovery. It's worth looking closely to this period in figure 25.



Figure 25 - Decline rates in total oil exports for the assessed countries during the projected period, 2006 to 2020.

Four different periods can be identified:

. 2006 - 2010 : slow decline below 2%/year;

. 2011 - 2013 : first acceleration to a decline rate close to 4%/year;

. 2014 - 2016 : steady decline at 4%/year;

. 2017 - 2020 : new acceleration up 5%/year.

The first acceleration is probably the most critical period and follows the peak in world oil production. The final years of the 2010s decade will present great challenges for oil importing nations.

Finally is worth mentioning that these four periods seem to fit on Samsam Bakhtiari's Four Transitions of which the first started last year.

Important countries left out

There are three main countries for which consumption data is not available, hence not included in the calculations: Angola, Iraq [ed] and Nigeria. For the last two even if the data existed projection would be difficult. Both countries are experiencing serious social disturbances, Iraq is unfortunately undergoing what is technically a war, and in Nigeria social inequity is leading to rebellion from people to whom oil has only brought disadvantages. Some sort of social transformation is to expect in the following years in these countries, hopefully towards more stable environments.

As for Angola the times of social unrest seem to be gone, although elections are yet to take place, the liberal opposition is now unarmed. In 2003 the 5 million Angolans consumed little over 40 Kb/d. Today that number is unknown but is surely much higher, perhaps several orders of magnitude, due to an explosion in the housing market, an to a sharp increase in population (there are reports of 1 million Chinese living in Luanda alone). The latest assessment made by Colin Campbell pushed the peak in Angola's production back to 2011 (from circa 2018), more inline with other specialists (e.g. Cramez). The adding of future oil exports from Angola would not change much the overall picture, probably softening the decline rates before 2011 and augmenting them thereafter. Still this is an oil exporting country worth assessing if consumption data can be found in the future.

Technology Review has an article on safer, higher capacity batteries. These are silver based unfortunately, so if some of the peak metal doomers on the Slashdot thread are correct (and we're about to hit the silver production peak) then this isn't going to be a promising avenue to the smart grid future.

An alternative to lithium-ion batteries--silver-zinc batteries--could add several hours to the time that laptops can run between charges, while at the same time avoiding the safety issues that have resulted in the recent massive recalls of laptop batteries made by Sony, according to Zinc Matrix Power in Camarillo, CA.

The company, which received an innovation award from Intel last month for its new battery, has now demonstrated the silver-zinc technology in a laptop. Zinc Matrix plans to begin distributing test batteries to manufacturers early next year, focusing on applications in laptops and cell phones.

In part, the gains in laptop runtimes would come because the silver-zinc batteries can store about 25 percent more energy in the same space, a result of both the chemistry and a more space-efficient flat shape, compared with cylindrical lithium-ion cells inside laptop battery packs, says Ross Dueber, president and CEO of Zinc Matrix Power. What's more, because silver-zinc batteries use a safer chemistry than most lithium-ion batteries, manufacturers could use larger batteries packs in laptops.

Newsweek has a post on why the frogs are dying. Interesting the international newsweek covers all feature the global warming story, but the US cover shows the politically endangered Chimp instead of a Frog. I've seen some of these frogs in Costa Rica and they are fantastic - it will be a tragedy if they die off.

Draped like a verdant shawl over Costa Rica's Tilarán Mountains, the Monteverde cloud forest has long been a nature lover's idyll. Hidden birds flirt to the whisper of rushing streams and epiphytes tumble from the mist, while delicate flowers bloom impossibly from the jungle's maw. With luck you might even catch the iridescent flash of the resplendent quetzal, the elegant symbol of the Central American rain forest.

There's one member of this pageant that won't be turning up, however: the Monteverde harlequin frog. Named after its palette of yellow, red and black, this miniature amphibian—a member of the genus Atelopus—had thrived in these Costa Rican mountains for perhaps a million years. Yet the last time J. Alan Pounds, an ecologist who has studied the cloud forest's wildlife for 25 years, spotted one in Monteverde was in 1988. Its cousin, the golden toad, went missing about the same time. Indeed, the more scientists search, the grimmer the situation looks. A study by 75 scientists published earlier this year in the journal Nature estimated that two thirds of the 110 known species of harlequins throughout Central and South America have vanished. And that may be just the beginning.

The loss of a species is sad enough, not least a jewel like the harlequin, which one researcher described as a tropical Easter egg. What has puzzled scientists is why. For millennia, this denizen of tropical America survived by adapting to whatever changes nature threw its way. Suckers lining the underbelly of tadpoles allow them to cling to rocks without being flushed downstream. The adult's carnival-like costume warns potential predators to stand clear or risk a deadly dose of tetrodotoxin. But apparently there's one peril the harlequin couldn't trump: climate change.

Gizmodo has a low key look at a solar innovation that has been fairly widely reported recently. It seems they are big Tesla Motors fans too.

Scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory say they've developed a new manufacturing process that allows them to build a material that could goose up the power output of solar cells, reaching efficiencies of 45% compared to the 25% to 39% currently possible. It's done using a tricky process of injecting additional oxygen into the semiconductor material, creating an extra layer that can capture more light. It's said to be a promising development:

If they overcome some of the hurdles still presented by the laws of physics, at least one colleague at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory believes material scientists Wladek Walukiewicz and Kin Man Yu's research represents a "breakthrough" in solar energy generation technology.

But wait. If we're going to overcome the laws of physics, who needs solar energy? Why not just create a perpetual motion machine? But still, we like solar; after all, it's going to power our new car.

The Herald has an interview with the country's largest property developer, Harry Triguboff, who demonstrates that he is batshit crazy and should be put away in a home.

IT'S simple, says Harry Triguboff. Sydney has too much green and not enough grey, and if you want to look at trees - well, go climb a mountain.

The views of the Meriton boss, Australia's biggest property developer, are likely to outrage conservationists - particularly his declaration that Sydney has "too many forests and parks".

"You go north and we have all these reserves and you go south and you have all the reserves, and they are the best part of the coast. That is crazy. We should be building on this area," he said. "If they want to see trees, they can go to Katoomba, there are plenty of trees there."

In an interview with the Herald, Mr Triguboff said there was too much focus by the Prime Minister, John Howard, and others on land releases on Sydney's outskirts, and that too much land was locked up in national parks and reserves.

He also called for a big increase in immigration, saying the population of Sydney should be 20 million by 2050, with the population of Australia 150 million.

Crikey's Michael Pascoe has something of a bee in his bonnet about oil now (I suspect the peak oil disease has struck, though he's not bagging apocaphiliacs today) - today he notes that the Saudis keep pumping Texas tea in spite of noises within OPEC to cut back production. House of Bush, House of Saud...

So much for OPEC cutting production – while Saudi Arabia’s state oil company has been talking about cuts to the major oil companies, it has told its key customers there will be no reduction in supply this month or next. And if the Saudis aren’t really cutting, what the rest of OPEC might do doesn’t matter.

That realisation took west Texas crude back under US$59 a barrel last night with forecasts for further falls on expectations of a mild winter and ample inventories. Bloomberg has details, indicating the ratbag Nigerian government and the anti-American Venezuelan are looking lonely with their claimed cutbacks.

Falling oil prices might be about the only good news on offer for Republicans seeking re-election – which should give political conspiracy theorists plenty to work on with the relationship between the House of Saud and the Bush White House. Sure, Bush has been a disaster for the Middle East but the Saudis have more to fear from radical anarchy in an Iraq wrecked by civil war once the Coalition of the Willing and Easily Led withdraws. The Democrats on a roll could bring that day closer.

...

"History shows that OPEC deals only work when the Saudis are on board,'' Bloomberg quotes Bill O'Grady, an analyst with AG Edwards & Sons. "Allocating the cuts is always the problem. The poor countries want the rich ones to take the hit and the rich ones will only do that if a cut is in their best interest.''

"There are a lot of reasons for the Saudis to keep on pumping at the present rate. The Saudis will do what is in their best interest both economically and geopolitically. Lower prices will hurt rivals in OPEC such as Iran and Venezuela.''

And help George Bush and John Howard.

Crikey also notes that some terrorists are more equal than others.

Britain is in uproar today after the discovery of what is alleged to be the largest ever suburban home-made explosives factory in a suburban Lancashire house, and the charging of a member of an extremist group with a variety of offences.

Whoops, sorry, no it’s not. Because the extremist group in question was not Islamic, it was the British National Party, and the former member, Robert Cottage, is a white Anglo-Saxon.

Nothing could better indicate the degree to which the "war on terror" is about anything else other than actual risk to life and limb than the treatment of this story. If the police are right, then Cottage was further along the way towards creating actual mayhem than the various Muslims who have been arrested or detained without trial for preaching violence and hate.

Indeed, the arrest would seem to indicate the racist nature of "branded" crimes such as anti-terror laws, since Cottage has merely been charged with offences under the Explosives Act.

Right-wing nutter terrorists tend to be angry loners: they’re sort of celebrity bloggers with access to fertiliser. Thus there is usually no terrorist conspiracy, because they have no-one to conspire with.

Yet the last London mad-bomber – neo-Nazi David Copeland, who nail-bombed the Admiral Duncan and two other pubs in 1999 – caused far more genuine fear than all these alleged Islamist plots in the alleged "pre-planning" (ie coffee-shop bullsh-t) stage.

James Howard Kunstler is no doubt an example of the peak oil doomers who have come to vex Mr Pascoe so greatly - his latest post - "Swan Dive" (a fairly staple example of his personal genre) - is interesting in that he appears to have gained the attention of some paid trolls - presumably hired for some pre-election propaganda work.

Two special and transient circumstances are now propping up the financial markets. One is that for practical purposes the world is virtually at peak, meaning this is an extra-special time of strange behavior (like the point in the apogee of a steep sub orbital flight in which passengers become momentarily weightless). Supply and demand for oil are only beginning to go out of whack (that is, demand just barely exceeding supply). Even at this early stage, the oil markets themselves are showing stress, as hoarding behavior sets in and induces wider swings of price volatility. But these swings in oil prices -- such as the one we're in right now, where prices have crashed 20 percent since the panic buying (hoarding) of June and July -- send false signals to the financial playas. The main false signal is that all is well on the global oil scene...there's no real supply problem...and hence no threat to the continuing expansion of industrial production and its associated wealth-generating activities. This signal just tells the playas to buy more paper markers. Thus, the stock market goes up.

The Australian reports that new biofuels producer Axciom has signed up another prospective customer - Visy industries.

VISY, one of the world's largest private packaging and recycling companies, has announced it will trial biodiesel fuel in its Australian fleet. The move, which follows a decision by trucking giant Linfox to test biodiesel in a small number of trucks, has been heralded as a major step for the alternative fuels industry.

Visy Industrial Packaging chairman Raphael Geminder said the company would trial biodiesel in partnership with supplier Axiom Energy.

Visy will use biodiesel in up to five of its trucks during the trial, due to start next week. The diesel substitute is usually made from oil seed crops or animal fats and is said to cut reduced particulate or "black smoke" emissions by half.

Renewable Fuels Australia executive director Bob Gordon said biodiesel trials by high-profile companies such as Visy and Linfox signalled a "breakthrough" for the industry.

The Australian also has an interview with Richard Linklater, in town promoting his latest films - "Fast Food Nation" and "A Scanner Darkly".

Linklater says he can vividly remember everything in his past and by the time he is making a film, it is "completely autobiographical, with all the characters having been me at some time".

Fast Food Nation is an example. A dramatic version of Eric Schlosser's non-fiction book, it is a study of modern-day America that shows how the production of every low-cost hamburger has costs: the exploitation of workers, environmental destruction, and cruelty to animals. The abattoir scenes are disturbing.

One of the characters, Amber, is a smart teenager who is studying hard and working at a local hamburger joint. Drawing on memories of his own uncle and of himself at an impressionable age, Linklater has Amber's uncle promise her $1000 if she does not miss a menstrual cycle before she turns 21. The uncle, Pete, played by Linklater's long-time friend Ethan Hawke, fears Amber will go on living in her small home town instead of achieving her ambitions. Three of the film's key characters are illegal Mexican immigrants and, while Linklater has not been in a work situation as bad as theirs, he knows what it is like to feel powerless.

Linklater has a lively personality and becomes even more animated when he talks about turning working people and the underclass into heroes that audiences care about. Such people are generally invisible in the media landscape, he says.

His most recent film, A Scanner Darkly, is based on a novel by science-fiction writer Philip K. Dick, whose work has been adapted often: Blade Runner, Total Recall, Screamers and Minority Report. A Scanner Darkly is a treatise on a society under surveillance: think the war on terror. There is also a lot of drug use in the film. Asked if it reflects his life, Linklater says he knows the milieu well but as an observer and dabbler. He wanted to capture the humour and paranoia in Dick's work.

While I've always found the expression of Philip K Dick's paranoia highly entertaining, the paranoia of another Dick (Cheney) never ceases to annoy me. Keith Olbermann came up with one of the better description of the big Dick - "a contagion of fear" - it seems a stunted and dwarf like version of the liberal media lives again...

I tonight quote, not Jefferson nor Voltaire — but "Cigar Aficionado Magazine."

On September 11th, 2003, the editor of that publication interviewed General Tommy Franks — at that point, just retired from his post as Commander-In-Chief of U.S. Central Command — of Cent-Com.

And amid his quaint defenses of the-then nagging absence of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, or the continuing freedom of Osama Bin Laden, General Franks said some of the most profound words of this generation.

He spoke of "the worst thing that can happen" to this country:

First, quoting, a "massive casualty-producing event somewhere in the Western World — it may be in the United States of America."

Then, the general continued, "the western world, the free world, loses what it cherishes most, and that is freedom and liberty we've seen for a couple of hundred years, in this grand experiment that we call democracy."

It was this super-patriotic warrior's fear that we would lose that most cherished liberty, because of another attack, one — again quoting General Franks — "that causes our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass-casualty-producing event. Which, in fact, then begins to potentially unravel the fabric of our Constitution."

And here we are, the fabric of our Constitution being unraveled anyway.

Habeus Corpus neutered; the rights of self-defense now as malleable and impermanent as clay; a President stifling all critics by every means available and when he runs out of those, by simply lying about what they said or felt.

And all this, even without the dreaded attack.

General Franks, like all of us, loves this country, and believes not just in its values, but in its continuity. He has been trained to look for threats to that continuity from without.

He has, perhaps been as naive as the rest of us, in failing to keep close enough vigil on the threats to that continuity, from within:

Secretary of State Rice first cannot remember urgent cautionary meetings with counter-terrorism officials before 9/11.

Then within hours of this lie, her spokesman confirms the meetings in question.

Then she dismisses those meetings as nothing new — yet insists she wanted the same cautions expressed to Secretaries Ashcroft and Rumsfeld.

Mr. Rumsfeld, meantime, has been unable to accept the most logical and simple influence, of the most noble and neutral of advisers. He and his employer insist they rely on the 'generals in the field.'

But dozens of those generals have now come forward to say how their words, their experiences, have been ignored.

And, of course, inherent in the Pentagon's war-making functions, is the regulation of Presidential war-lust. Enacting that regulation should include everything up to, symbolically wrestling the Chief Executive to the floor.

Yet — and it is Pentagon transcripts that now tell us this — evidently Mr. Rumsfeld's strongest check on Mr. Bush's ambitions, was to get somebody to excise the phrase "Mission Accomplished" out of the infamous Air Force Carrier speech of May 1st, 2003 - even while the same empty words hung on a banner over the President's shoulder.

And the Vice President is a chilling figure, still unable, it seems, to accept the conclusions of his own party's leaders in the Senate, that the foundations of his public position, are made out of sand.

There were no Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq.

But he still says so.

There was no link between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda.

But he still says so.

And thus, gripping firmly these figments of his own imagination, Mr. Cheney lives on, in defiance and spreads — around him and before him — darkness… like some contagion of fear.

Jeff Vail has an interesting post on the North Korean nuclear test (or simulation of one, at the very least) - rightly pointing out that North Korea and Iran may be violating the non-proliferation treaty (or at least trying to) - but so are all the existing nuclear powers - and they have been for decades.

Regardless of its relative success or failure, the recent nuclear test by North Korea resulted in calls from all sides for that country to cease its nuclear armament program. The foundation for all of these calls is the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The NPT, which is binding in international law on all nations, not just its signatories (see 1996 ICJ advisory opinion), requires that non-nuclear states not pursue the development of nuclear weapons. So, clearly, North Korea had no right to develop a bomb, let alone test one. It says so clearly in the NPT, which is binding, and must be respected...

Of course, what we aren't hearing are the cries that the NPT also says that the nuclear powers must disarm. That isn't very convenient, especially with the US Department of Energy working on developing a new generation of smaller and "more useable" nuclear weapons. Yes, the second pillar (article VI) of the NPT, right after non-proliferation, is disarmament. And the 1996 Internatinal Court of Justice advisory opinion also made it clear that this obligation to disarm--to conclude and enact agreements resulting in actual disarmament, not just to enter negotiations--is equally binding on all nations under international law.

Quite the sticky wicket. The US is equally in violation of international law by not disarming as North Korea is by creating a bomb and testing it. Funny, then, that we're only talking about enacting sanctions on North Korea. International law is normative, not rule-based. That means that it only has effect by the standards created for nations by the cumulative actions of others. So the UN or the US can say all they want that the North is in violation of international law. This is only true to the extent that such normative law exists, and because all other nuclear powers are flaunting their obligations under the NPT, it's words do not rise to become normative. Therefore there is no norm--and hence no law--for North Korea to violate. All talk to the contrary is just that. Likewise with Iran. I'm sure we will hear people discussing how Iran is violating international law as well. As soon as those same people point out how the US and France and China are similarly violating that law, then we're getting somewhere. Until then, talk talk talk.

What to do? That one is easy in my book. Disarm. Unilaterally.

In line with my recent habits, today's tinfoil decoration is once again from Cryptogon. As a fan of "The Men Who Stare At Goats" I enjoy spotting MK ULTRA references - I vaguely remember one tinfoil merchant declaring very shortly after John Mark Karr "confessed" that he looked like a parody of an MK mind control experiment (and to give him his due, he accurately predicted Karr would go free once the media circus had run its course)...

Another day, another MKULTRA zombie enters a school with a gun... Cui bono?

Each morning, the 16,000 students in the Spring Independent School District in suburban Houston swipe their ID tags as they climb onto the school bus. A radio frequency tag tracks them, as it does when they arrive at school and as they leave the building.

Nearly 1,000 cameras watch them all day. Every visitor — parents, volunteers, the guy who fills the Coke machine — must surrender his or her driver's license to a secretary who checks it against a national database of sex offenders. This fall, nearly one in three schools literally trap visitors inside a "secure vestibule," a bulletproof glass room, until they're checked out.

Welcome to the brave new world of school security. In an era when deadly school shootings seem to happen like clockwork, schools are hardening up, trying unconventional means to deter violence and keep track of students and adults.