Peak Energy is going into winter hibernation for a couple of weeks - see you all again in July sometime.

I'll still be throwing the odd tidbit into the link bucket.

For those visitors who have come across this blog at random and want to know what on earth its all about, the quick version is:

1. Peak oil is real and a serious problem (although probably not in itself as serious as some of the collapsist schools of thought would have us believe)

2. Global warming is real and a serious problem

3. Oil dependence (and the desire to use it to control others) is leading us to do a lot of very unpleasant things (and thus you'll see a lot of references to Iraq, terrorism, resource wars and the propaganda and surveillence industries)

4. There are lots of solutions for dealing with all 3 of these problems - however there is a lot of inertia and political resistance hindering the adoption of these (and some solutions to peak oil are anti-solutions to global warming)

See the links in the sidebar for more...

Posted by Big Gav at 8:31 PM | Permalink | Comments

BP and DuPont got quite a lot of press yesterday with their announcement that they will begin production of a biofuel called biobutanol.

Drivers may soon have a third option for fuel produced from plants: biobutanol. Butanol from petroleum has been used for decades as an industrial solvent, but two companies say they are close to commercializing a process for creating the fuel from corn, sugar beets, or even grasses. BP and Dupont today announced that they will begin selling Biobutanol in the United Kingdom next year.

The companies co-developed a fuel that can be combined with gasoline and ethanol. Biobutanol is superior to ethanol because it has a higher energy value and is less water soluble and evaporative than ethanol, so it is safe to transport via existing gasoline pipelines.

BP says Biobutanol is complementary to ethanol. Initially the fuel will be produced from sugar beets, but the companies are also developing cellulosic materials as well. Here in the U.S., company Environmental Energy claims it has patents on similar technology, but it calls the fuel butanol. EEI says it is building a prototype production plant, and that its fuel can be used as a 100 percent gasoline replacement.

There seems to be some debate about the olfactory qualities of the stuff - though I doubt unpleasant odours are at the top of DuPont's concerns (and no doubt the various lobbies touting the various biofuel alternatives will be putting on a PR battle over the coming years like the nuclear and coal industries currently are).

Like methanol (another oft-touted alt-fuel), even small amounts of butanol absorbed through the skin are toxic, although not as toxic as methanol. It also can be difficult to start in cold weather. Here is a more thorough treatment of the subject.

Gasoline is dangerously flammable but not a terribly large health hazard. Butanol or propanol would make just filling up at the station a hazard. Methanol would be a nightmare.

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Where did you find this out? A quick butanol search on Wikipedia states that it's a perfume base, which seems to imply that your information is bogus.

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If they're talking about n-butanol (AKA 1-butanol), then life will be a lot stinkier. The n-butane family is notoriously stinky, with n-butanol reeking of rancid butter. n-Butanol has an odor threshhold of 20-80 ppb, which means that any spillage at the pump will turn the gas station into the olfactory equivalent of the Land-o-Lakes warehouse during a heatwave. Eww. Not sure how sec-butanol smells but it can't be much better!

With a name like George Orwel as the author, I can't resist linking to this article about the post peak future - "Peak Oil = Urban Ruin" - even if he isn't writing thinly veiled analysis of our political system, and I'm more of the view that green cities are the future for most of humanity.

I have often been reminded of a Chinese saying that basically translates into something like this: Long is not forever. In other words, everything comes to an end; it doesn't matter how long it takes. I've been covering the oil industry for a long time and I often talk with many economists about the status of the market. They are a very optimistic lot. That's good because they deal with issues of wealth creation, except that when they let unreasonable optimism color their thinking in such a sway that their only concern is the short-term financial benefit, they run the risk of losing their credibility.

I say that because something new is happening in the modern world. For a long time, we've been used to classical economics championed by the likes of Milton Friedman. But there is a new breed of what one might call renegade economists whose focus is not based merely on competition alone, but also on community good. These economists, just like scientists, are now debating the consequences of a world with reduced petroleum supplies. They are asking, "Why can't we start preparing for the time when we probably won't have it?" Like geologists who are now calling our attention to an oil peak, these skeptics think the oil industry is taking itself for a ride by being overly optimistic that natural resources will stay abundant. Very soon, we shall see a shift in mainstream economic thinking from unbridled, red-hot free markets to something grayish.

An Eliott wave theorist has an article up at Free Market News Network on peak oil and the commodity boom (FMNN has had a fairly varied range of articles on PO over time - some attacking the idea and some fairly standard fare like this - economic analysis base don PO theory combined with some Austrian economics and goldbug fervour).

The commodity boom currently underway in all areas is due to shortages. Shortages are the result of different circumstance depending upon the commodity. Different commodities will be examined but all stem from a common thread and will only be amplified by its shortages: Energy.

The most important source of energy is oil and related products. It is the most compact form of portable energy for easy use. Currently, around 25 billion barrels of oil/year are consumed and with China oil consumption increasing 2% year over year, over 500 million more barrels are required next year. If no other countries decrease their oil consumption, then there will be real felt shortages next year. The more and more I read about oil production and shortages (best book by far is “Twilight in the Desert” by Matt Simmons), this is going to be an extreme event. Current sources of oil are declining and India and China have economies growing at 9-10% per year, so unless more oil is found, prices will rise. There will be some point in the future where oil/gasoline prices will decrease consumption, but peak oil is looming and any decline in consumption will be met with declining production. If this relationship holds for the next 15 years, then oil prices are likely to rise much higher.

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I hope this has provided some further insight into why commodities are going higher. As peak oil hits, countries will continue to nationalize assets to protect their own interests. In the mean time, there is money to be made by companies in politically secure areas of the globe. Once the debt bubble from around the world is popped, make sure bullion and money are stored away from banks.

FN Arena has an article on the unwinding of the yen carry trade as Japanese interest rates head back to positive territory - a topic which inspires bouts of financial collapsism (I don't think I've ever seen a local stockbroker carry an article quoting Lyndon LaRouche before) in some quarters - Steve at Deconsumption did a good post on the topic recently too called "The End of an Easy-Money Era".

FNA also had a series of articles on the rise of the platform company that I found interesting (though the idea that this trend is sustainable strains my powers of imagination - my guess is the trend probably ends in bankruptcy and upheaval if carried on to its logical extreme).

"The entire global financial system is on the verge of disintegration, as the result of the imminent collapse of the yen carry trade." Daily Telegraph (UK), 24th February.

"The multiplier effect of the blowout of the carry trade is going to mean that the crisis hits with a magnitude far beyond any individual nation or currency. This will bring down the whole post-Bretton Woods floating exchange rate system." Lyndon LaRouche, political economist, same day.

Blog after blog on the net, whether respected or otherwise, have gone into overdrive this year in anticipation of events that will see an unwinding of the yen carry trade. As the sample of opinions above attest to, such a development is not being taken with a pinch of salt. What, then, is the yen carry trade?

About three months ago, the Bank of Japan made an historic announcement: it was prepared to start raising interest rates shortly, maybe even as early as June. In the scheme of things, this hardly seems momentous, given just about every nation's central bank, from the US to Australia, through Europe, Asia, South America and beyond, has turned to policies of monetary tightening recently in order to ward off the effects of global inflation. In Japan's case, however, there is definitely a fundamental difference.

It has been described, in fact, as "a pivotal moment in modern financial history". The reason is that Japan is the second biggest economy in the world, and Japan's short term interest rates have been as good as 0% all of this century. It is past Japanese monetary policy that has given rise to the yen carry trade.

Effectively, the Bank of Japan (BOJ) was handing out free money.

Jeff at Sustainablog has a review of "An Inconvenient Truth" up. A couple of links from the comments - Mike Capone says Gore wasn't a stiff back in 2000, he just never showed his true self - and gave this example. Another reader recommends David Attenborough's "Climate Chaos" series for the BBC.

As I mentioned briefly in a comment this morning, Jan and I did go see An Inconvenient Truth yesterday. I want to agree with people like ianqui who said "Go see it even if you know quite a bit about global warming." First, Gore's presentation (and, yes, most of the film is him delivering his famed PowerPoint presentation) does a wonderful job of creating a visual representation of the impact of contemporary global warming: on certain graphs, you can see (as so many deniers have told us) that, yes, the Earth has gone through cycles of warming and cooling -- but what we're seeing now is nothing like those cycles. Secondly, Gore himself presents this information with deep knowledge and passion. This is not the "policy wonk" from the 2000 campaign, but rather a man on a mission who's studied the issue thoroughly, and has considered not just the science that shows global warming is a reality, but also the political, economic and cultural implications that global temperature change will likely bring about in coming years. Finally, it's a story: Gore's story of first being introduced to this concept at Vanderbilt in the sixties by one of the first scientists to identify the phenomenon, and how it shaped his view of the world and, to some degree, his political career. As at least one other reviewer has said (I can't remember who), there likely are a few too many shots of Gore looking thoughtful and pensive, but that's a really minor weakness in a powerful film that makes the science of climate change accessible to a broad audience. Gore himself has never looked better -- I got the sense that he's found his calling, and he's really good at it!

Go see this film. Take someone else with you. Offer to buy tickets for the naysayers you know.

Groovy Green has a post on the release of greenhouse gases by thawing Siberian permafrost.

This is something Dr. Evil would have planned: “Give me one MILLION dollars, or else I will unleash the worst pollution on Earth–the crap frozen in Siberia.” There’s a reason I’m not involved in writing scripts for Hollywood–but nevertheless, this is pretty disturbing. From the article, “Ancient roots and bones locked in long-frozen soil in Siberia are starting to thaw, and have the potential to unleash billions of tons of carbon and accelerate global warming, scientists said on Thursday.”

Supposedly, this vast carbon resevoir (one of the few oil companies are loathe to pursue) is loaded with 75 times more carbon than all that is released into the atmosphere each year through the burning of fossil furls. Covering nearly 400,000 square miles, Siberia has about 500 billion tons of carbon to hand out. “You have anthropogenic (human-generated) carbon that’s making things a little bit warmer, and that causes the permafrost to warm up and carbon is then released from the permafrost,” he said. “It goes into the atmosphere and makes things warmer yet again, so then more permafrost thaws.” So, for those of you that believe nature is causing global warming–hey there may be some actual truth to that. However, whereas thawing permafrost may be the bullet, you can bet sure as hell that we’re the ones pulling the trigger.

George Monbiot's latest article includes the eye opening revelation that there used to be a power plant in Denmark running on fish oil.

at first sight the government’s investigation into the idea of giving fish oil capsules to schoolchildren seems sensible. The food standards agency is conducting a review of the effects of omega-3s on childrens’ behaviour and performance in school. Alan Johnson, the secretary of state for education, is taking an interest. Given the accumulating weight of evidence, it would surprising if he does not decide to go ahead. Already, companies such as St Ivel and Marks and Spencer are selling foods laced with omega-3s.

There is only one problem: there are not enough fish. In March an article in the British Medical Journal observed that “we are faced with a paradox. Health recommendations advise increased consumption of oily fish and fish oils within limits, on the grounds that intake is generally low. However … we probably do not have a sustainable supply of long chain omega 3 fats.” Our brain food is disappearing.

If you want to know why, read Charles Clover’s beautifully-written book The End of the Line. Clover travelled all over the world, showing how the grotesque mismanagement of fish stocks has spread like an infectious disease. Governments help their fishermen to wipe out local shoals, then pay them to build bigger and more powerful boats so they can go further afield. When they have cleaned up their own continental shelves, they are paid by taxpayers to destroy other people’s stocks. The European Union, for example, has bought our pampered fishermen the right to steal protein from the malnourished people of Senegal and Angola. West African stocks are now going the same way as North Sea cod and Mediterranean tuna.

I first realised just how mad our fishing policies have become when playing a game of ultimate frisbee in my local park. Taking a long dive, I landed with my nose in the grass. It smelt of fish. To the astonishment of passers-by, I crawled across the lawns, sniffing them. The whole park had been fertilised with fishmeal. Fish are used to feed cattle, pigs, poultry and other fish – in the farms now proliferating all over the world. Those rearing salmon, cod and tuna, for example, produce about half as much fish as they consume. Until 1996, when public outrage brought the practice to halt, a power station in Denmark was running on fish oil. Now I have discovered that the US Department of Energy is subsidising the conversion of fish oil into biodiesel, through its “regional biomass energy program”. It hopes that fish will be used to provide electricity and heating to homes in Alaska. It describes them as “a sustainable energy supply”

Michael Klare has a great new article out on "The Permanent Energy Crisis".

MJ: The Bush administration calculated in 2001 that a campaign to wean the country from oil dependency wasn't a political winner.

MTK: Right. In 1975 and 1976, we faced an energy crisis, President Carter told everyone they had to tighten their belts and lower the thermostat and wear sweaters. He wore a cardigan on a national TV speech! And at the time people found this to be too depressing and distasteful, and so they voted him out of office. So there is a kind of belief that the public is not willing to undertake any measures that would require them to change.

MJ: Do you see any sign of a shift on that score?

MTK: Yes, I do. I think, beginning with Katrina and continuing to the present—gaining momentum even—the public is now moving ahead of politicians. There are many signs, polling data in particular, that the public does grasp the magnitude of the problem and is now prepared to make sacrifices and changes. And this, I think, is going to have a significant political effect in the coming elections.

MJ: One possible response to the permanent energy crisis is to diversify, meaning getting oil from a range of different areas, to reduce the dependency on oil from the Persian Gulf. But you don't buy that.

MTK: This was part of the strategy adopted by the administration in 2001. They recognized the U.S. would become more dependent on imports if we were going to continue to rely on oil as our main source of energy, but to try to reduce vulnerability to crisis in any one area they favored the strategy of diversification. The problem is that all the alternatives to the Middle East are just as dangerous. They include Africa, the Andean region of Latin America, Central Asia, North Africa—all places prone to corruption, internal warfare, and conflict. And so the logical conclusion of this strategy is what I call the globalization of the Carter doctrine, the notion that the United States has to send troops all over the world to protect oil—not only in the Middle East, but in Latin America, Africa and Central Asia. And that's the policy the administration has carried out.

MJ: And anyway, isn't it the case that no matter how much the U.S. diversifies, we'll still be largely dependent on Persian Gulf oil?

MTK: That’s absolutely right, because nowhere else has that much oil. And even if the U.S. doesn’t get it’s own oil from the Persian Gulf, we’re still dependent on Persian Gulf oil because that’s the major source of supply for Japan and Western Europe. If they weren’t able to get more oil from the Persian Gulf, then they would be coming to the places that we rely on—Nigeria, Latin America and so on, and that would hugely increase the competition and the price. So, for world oil prices to remain relatively low—they seem high today, but they could get a lot, lot higher—is for the Persian Gulf to churn out more and more and more oil every year.

MJ: It’s also hard to imagine that the US would have gotten involved in Iraq if there didn't happen to have massive oil reserves.

MTK: Absolutely. But bear in mind that the invasion of Iraq was not an unprecedented event; it really was the natural extension of a conflict with Iraq that began on August 2, 1990, when Iraq invaded Kuwait and occupied Kuwait, which was a major oil supplier to the United States, and threatened Saudi Arabia, the leading foreign supplier to the United States. So when George Bush, Sr. announced U.S. intervention in the Persian Gulf conflict in 1990 it was explicitly to protect oil, the oil of Saudi Arabia. And that lead to a massive deployment of American forces to the region, to the acquisition of more military bases, and later to the quarantine of Iraq. The invasion can’t be separated from all of that broader conflict, which is a conflict, at its root, about oil—not just about the oil of Iraq, but about dominance of the entire Persian Gulf region.

MJ: What role do you think oil and energy are playing in U.S. policy toward Iran?

MTK: You have to view Iran, like Iraq, as part of the large Persian Gulf region. Under U.S. policy—[enshrined in the Carter doctrine]—stability in the greater Persian Gulf region is essential to U.S. national security, because of its oil supplies, so anything that threatens stability in the Persian Gulf is a threat to America’s national interests. That's how Iran is seen in Washingto—as a potential threat to American dominance of the Persian Gulf. We’re really talking about a geopolitical contest in which oil is the ultimate prize.

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MJ: How do the same dynamics that apply to oil relate to natural gas?

MTK: There’s a great deal of similarity between oil and gas in the sense that it’s a finite commodity. And increasingly the United States and other users are going to have to go to the few sources that remain, and those include primarily Russia, Iran and Qatar. These countries between them have about 50 percent of the world’s natural gas supplies, which obviously makes them very important from a geopolitical standpoint. The U.S. has established very close ties with Qatar; we have military bases and troops there. The Europeans are becoming very dependent on Russia, and now India and China want to draw on Iran’s natural gas. And that enters into this great game we were talking about before, the jockeying for position.

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MJ: The trends are pointing toward greater and deeper and more problematic U.S. involvement, often military involvement, in all sorts of parts of the world. Can we expect evermore U.S. basis in these parts of the world, ever-closer military ties with these countries?

MTK: Yes to all of the above. The U.S. is already well established in the Persian Gulf. We have a very elaborate military infrastructure there. We have a growing military infrastructure in Central Asia in the Caspian. And Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld is talking about acquiring more bases in that area, possibly in Azerbaijan, Georgia or Kazakhstan. So there it’s well underway.

The place I think is the most interesting in this discussion, and that hasn't received the attention it deserves, is Africa. The world is becoming very dependent on oil from Nigeria and Angola and Equatorial Guinea, and now from Libya. And this is an area of great instability—ethnic, religious, political. It’s mixed up in places with Islamic fundamentalism. But the greatest threat comes from ethnic unrest, particularly in southern Nigeria where the local people, who are the victims of oil production, of all the oil spills and environmental damage, receive virtually none of the benefits of the oil production. All that goes to the elites in Abuja, the capital. And they’re now fighting a low-level insurgency against the central government. In the process they're seizing oil facilities, they’re sabotaging oil facilities, they're kidnapping oil workers, including Americans. The U.S. is looking at creating a capacity for intervention in Nigeria and in other parts of Africa, looking at the establishment of bases, training with Nigerian and other local forces, providing military aid, developing military ties.

MJ: In the book you propose an alternative energy strategy to the one we're operating under, one you call a strategy of "autonomy and integrity." What do you mean by that?

MTK: The phrase that is most often used in this discussion is "energy independence." And the administration talks about ‘energy independence’ from the Middle East, by which they seem to mean, exclusively drilling in Alaska and other protected environmental sites. So, I want to avoid that word, because I think it’s become a sham expression to cover up a failed policy.

So by ‘autonomy’ I mean having the freedom to say no to the Saudi Royal family when they ask for more American troops; having the power to say no to military intervention; and the ability to repudiate the Carter doctrine—the commitment to use force to protect oil—which has to be our ultimate objective. The only way to achieve this is by diminishing our reliance on petroleum altogether.

Crooked Timber has a post pointing to Ron Suskind's latest tale of Bush administration lunacy - "The kind of thing you wish were false". I sometimes wonder if I should invoke the old maxim of "Never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity" more often when I'm pondering the antics of these clowns.

One example out of many comes in Ron Suskind’s gripping narrative of what the White House has celebrated as one of the war’s major victories: the capture of Abu Zubaydah in Pakistan in March 2002. Described as al-Qaeda’s chief of operations even after U.S. and Pakistani forces kicked down his door in Faisalabad, the Saudi-born jihadist was the first al-Qaeda detainee to be shipped to a secret prison abroad. Suskind shatters the official story line here.

Abu Zubaydah, his captors discovered, turned out to be mentally ill and nothing like the pivotal figure they supposed him to be. … Abu Zubaydah also appeared to know nothing about terrorist operations; rather, he was al-Qaeda’s go-to guy for minor logistics—travel for wives and children and the like. That judgment was “echoed at the top of CIA and was, of course, briefed to the President and Vice President,” Suskind writes. And yet somehow, in a speech delivered two weeks later, President Bush portrayed Abu Zubaydah as “one of the top operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States.”…

Which brings us back to the unbalanced Abu Zubaydah. “I said he was important,” Bush reportedly told Tenet at one of their daily meetings. “You’re not going to let me lose face on this, are you?” “No sir, Mr. President,” Tenet replied. Bush “was fixated on how to get Zubaydah to tell us the truth,” Suskind writes, and he asked one briefer, “Do some of these harsh methods really work?” Interrogators did their best to find out, Suskind reports. They strapped Abu Zubaydah to a water-board, which reproduces the agony of drowning. They threatened him with certain death. They withheld medication. They bombarded him with deafening noise and harsh lights, depriving him of sleep. Under that duress, he began to speak of plots of every variety—against shopping malls, banks, supermarkets, water systems, nuclear plants, apartment buildings, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty. With each new tale, “thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each . . . target.” And so, Suskind writes, “the United States would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered.”

Billmon is also quoting Ron Suskind - and he's wondering if Osama is working for Karl Rove's team of political consultants.

They say great minds think alike, but it appears second and third-rate ones do too:

BLITZER: You're saying the CIA formally concluded that bin Laden wanted Bush re-elected.

SUSKIND: Well, look -- absolutely true. And that day at the meeting John McLaughlin says, well, you know, bin Laden certainly did Bush a big favor today. And the analysis flowed essentially along those lines. The question, the key question, is what it is it about America's war on terror that is such that bin Laden would want it to continue and Bush to continue conducting it? That's the bigger question that was not examined by the CIA, because many of these people there were soon to be pushed out.

From the Whiskey Bar, October 29, 2004:

If anyone had any doubts about which candidate al-Qaeda prefers in this election, I think you can put them to rest now . . . Osama's no slouch at information warfare. I'm sure he understands that the impact of a tape like this one on the mass mind is mainly subliminal, if not hormonal. By plastering his face over every TV in America for the next couple of days, he's given Bush a priceless gift -- a boogeyman with which to frighten that last sliver of undecided voters into rejecting change. Al Qaeda, it seems, has evolved into one hell of an effective 527 organization.

And no, I don't work for the CIA.

Considering the narrowness of Bush's margin in the electoral college -- a 60,000 vote swing in Ohio, and we're talking about President Kerry's failed Iraq War policies right now -- it doesn't seem unreasonable to argue that Osama bin Ladin did more to perpetuate Shrub's reign of error than Karl Rove and the RNC propaganda machine from hell put together.

I quite enjoyed this US soldier's prediction about the ultimate conclusion of Cheney's war for oil in Iraq - once freedom and democracy have been fully embraced by the grateful locals, everyone will get a puppy.

Now I understand why the Republicans hate the troops. Interesting little story on The War Tapes, and allied documentaries, buried in the Times business section:

Specialist Mike Moriarty is filming his squad leader, Staff Sgt. Kevin Shangraw, as they bounce along in a Humvee. He asks his leader for his take on the broader mission, and Sergeant Shangraw comes straight off the dome with a government-issue rationale.

“Well, I think it’s a fantastic opportunity for the Iraqis to establish a new history in the country and be able to be a free and democratic society, which in turn should stabilize the whole Middle East and create a freer and more stable earth as we know it.”

“Tell me how you really feel,” an unseen Specialist Moriarty prompts.

Wait for it…

Sergeant. Shangraw waits a beat as the bleak landscape flies by in the window before answering.

“Then, after that happens, maybe we can buy everybody in the world a puppy.”

Given that I started tonight's rant with some quotes about butanol and perfume, I might throw in a couple of book recommendations to close - first Tom Robbins' Jitterbug Perfume (probably his best book - and it seems I'm not alone thinking that).

Robbins calls Jitterbug Perfume "an epic". It is also a saga, and a saga must have a hero. The hero of this one is a janitor with a missing bottle. The bottle is blue, very, very old, and embossed with the image of a great-horned god. Some people actually believe that the liquid in the bottle is--the secret essence of the universe...

And Patrick Suskind's "Perfume : The Story of a Murderer" (which I haven't read - however my wife has and she enjoyed reading me some of the more gruesome passages on a long flight in the distant past).

Set in eighteenth century France, it tells the story of a man who is born with a supernatural sense of smell, so acute that he can distinguish between thousands of smells around him at any one time. But he is abused and neglected as a child, and so he grows up bitter and twisted, determined to have his revenge - on the whole of humanity. He becomes the best perfumer in the world, able to make the most beautiful scents known to man - but this is not his goal. His goal is far more horrifying - to make the ultimate scent with which to control the world - but its ingredients are terrifying...

Posted by Big Gav at 10:06 PM | Permalink | Comments

I'm short of time tonight - but the link bucket has been refilled.

Posted by Big Gav at 10:40 PM | Permalink | Comments

Groovy Green has a post on "California: The Vampire Slayer (Act of 2006)", which discusses a Californian energy efficiency initiative to reduce the amount of power wasted by devices that aren't actually doing anything.

Anyone else here dig the TV Series, “Buffy, The Vampire Slayer“? Giles and the gang always foiled evil plots to destroy the world while Joss Whedon integrated humorous banter and creative twists to the storyline. Awesome show..but I digress. Anyways, apparently California Assemblyman Lloyd Levine is a fan of the show, since his aptly titled “The Vampire Slayer Act of 2006″ has recently been approved by the California Assembly.

From the release, “AB1970 would force companies to put labels on devices that tell consumers how much energy is being used while the device is in standby mode. AB1970 supporters claim that the average household will pay an additional $200 per year due to electronics on standby.” In the other corner of the arena are the Vampire Sires, the Consumer Electronics Association, Electronic Industry Alliance, etc.

They’re all claiming that such a move will simply confuse consumers; just like the early complaints issued by the Tobacco Industry when health warning stickers were placed on cigarettes. C’mon–anything to save a few bucks is worth it and I would love to know what’s eating from my outlet well after I’ve turned off the lights.

WorldChanging has a post discussing what "Vampire Power" is and how you can identify vampires and deal with them.

No, it's not the latest summer B-movie. It's not a Red Bull knockoff for goths. It's the electricity your appliances keep sucking down even when they're turned "off". (Also called standby power.) Sometimes it's surprisingly large: a DVD player might use 75% as much power when off as when on, and the average desktop computer sucks down 35 watts when in standby. For the latest numbers on all kinds of appliances, check out the Australian government's report on standby power. Anything with a transformer, such as chargers for mobile devices or computer power supplies, keep using power whenever they are plugged in. Sometimes it's just a watt or two, but sometimes it's much higher. As GrinningPlanet points out, this still only amounts to 10% of most people's energy bills, but that still adds up, particularly in an office. Vampire power is an issue that's been known for quite a while, but industry is accelerating on things you can do to stop it.

How do you know if your innocent-looking printer is secretly a vampire? We've mentioned the Kill-A-Watt power meter before, and hardcore geeks can get things like the Watts Up meter, which has the ability to log consumption data over time and send it to your computer, so you can chart daily / yearly variations to see if your consumption patterns would match different power generation methods. (For instance, photovoltaics in your home generate most of their power during the day, when you're probably off at work and thus not using much power at home.) Building contractors can put in professional-grade meters for monitoring whole circuits in buildings. But for testing vampire power at home or in the office, a Kill-A-Watt will do you just fine. And if you can't afford that, build your own.

Once you know you have a vampire, what can you do about it?

Given my enthusiasm for sustainable urban development, I pleased to see WorldChanging also has a new post on New Scientist's "Ecopolis" issue - What Would Eco-cities Look Like ?.

We talk all the time about urbanization and the future of the world's megacities. It's a pressing issue, given that we're just passing the tipping point at which more people on the planet inhabit urban than rural areas. Cities comprise a mere 2 per cent of the Earth's land, but use up seventy-five per cent of its resources.

An article in this month's New Scientist asks what are the key components of an "eco-city" of the future? What are the most important conditions of existing cities that must be changed, and what services and plans added, in order to create a sustainable urban environment that can accommodate massive population booms within its city limits?

Returning the world's population to the countryside isn't an option...And dividing up the planet into plots of land on which we could all live self-sufficiently would create its own natural disasters, not to mention being highly unlikely to ever happen.

If we are to protect what is left of nature, and meet the demand to improve the quality of living for the world's developing nations, a new form of city living is the only option. The size of a city creates economies of scale for things such as energy generation, recycling and public transport. It should even be possible for cities to partly feed themselves. Far from being parasites on the world, cities could hold the key to sustainable living for the world's booming population - if they are built right.

The primary points the article focuses on are auto transport, food sources, degree of density and capacity for further sprawl. Minimizing the need for cars by planning cities that foster walkability should be a primary goal, but placing inhabitants in high-rise apartment complexes near transit hubs can end up cutting off city dwellers from contact with open, green space. Instead, encouraging density without building sky-high housing units promotes a balance. The article points to shantytowns and slums as organic, self-built and largely unplanned models of this kind of efficiency.

TreeHugger has a post on a professional global warming denier (obviously no longer on the payroll) admitting global warming is real - Frank Luntz Accepts Global Warming Science. Hopefully the few lonely lunatics still in the global warming denial game (and their paid trolls in New Hampshire) will give up soon.

Many high-profile global warming skeptics have recently changed their position. We've mentioned Sir David Attenborough and Michael Shermer with his "data trumps politics" epiphany, but there are many more that we haven't written about like Gregg Easterbrook and John Tierney. The most remarkable cognitive flip to date must certainly come from Frank Luntz: He is the man who wrote the infamous memo (see page 7 of the pdf file for the part about global warming) coaching the current US administration on the best ways to confuse the issue and delay action (remember, Luntz, like Philip Cooney, is not a scientific - he is actually a political pollster).

Well, Luntz has told the BBC that he now accepts the scientific consensus on global warming and has changed his position, but that he doesn't feel responsible for what the US government is doing with his advice (Australia, and recently Canada, have also been inspired by these tactics).

Full transcript:

Luntz: "It's now 2006. I think most people would conclude that there is global warming taking place and that the behavior of humans are (sic) affecting the climate."

BBC: "But the administration has continued taking your advice. They're still questioning the science."

Luntz: "That's up to the administration. I'm not the administration. What they want to do is their business. It has nothing to do with what I write. It has nothing to do with what I believe."

On a related note - The 4 Stages of Global Warming Denial.

1. Global Warming doesn't exist. It's not happening.

We've all heard people claim as fact, without citing sources (or at least not credible ones), that "actually, the Earth is cooling" and such things.

Facts: Every year since 1917 has been warmer than 1917. Here's a report by NASA with this choice cut about record-breaking 2005: "Record warmth in 2005 is notable, because global temperature has not received any boost from a tropical El Niño this year."

2. Okay, it's happening, but humans are not causing it.

Here we have all the "sun getting brighter" and "natural warming cycle" theories. They are all real possibilities, but have been discarded by scientists who looked at the evidence and concluded that they were not the causes of the current warming of the thin atmosphere of our planet.

Facts: It's not the sun ("According to PMOD at the World Radiation Center there has been no increase in solar irradiance since at least 1978 when satellite observations began. This means that for the last thirty years, while the temperature has been rising fastest, the sun has shown no trend.") and it's not a natural cycle (if it was, it would be incredibly slower than what we're seeing now and it would still need a cause).

Here is some evidence of a scientific consensus...

Tim Flannery is predicting a 'new dark age' if global warming is not addressed.

Although many lawmakers agree that climate change is a major problem that must be addressed, consensus on a solution has been elusive thus far. During today's OnPoint, Tim Flannery, author of "The Weather Makers: How Man is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth", discusses various "tipping points" that exist within the Earth's climate, and why these changes could prove to be irreversible. Flannery also explains why he believes a carbon tax is the most efficient way to approach climate change policy, and addresses some of the potential economic and cultural impacts of global warming.

Thomas Friedman may believe the earth is flat, but he is talking some sense with his "geo green" theme. The latest installment - "Seeds for a Geo-Green party".

The recent focus of the Republican-led Congress on divisive diversions, like gay marriage and flag burning, coupled with the unveiling of Unity '08, an Internet-based third party that plans to select its presidential candidate through online voting, has intensified the chatter that a third party, and maybe even a fourth, will emerge in the 2008 election.

Up to now, though, most of that talk has been about how a third party might galvanize voters, using the Web, rather than what it would actually galvanize them to do. I'd like to toss out an idea in the hopes that some enterprising politician or group of citizens — or Unity '08 — will develop it. It's the concept I call "Geo-Green."

What might a Geo-Green third party platform look like?

Its centerpiece would be a $1 a gallon gasoline tax, called "The Patriot Tax," which would be phased in over a year. People earning less than $50,000 a year, and those with unusual driving needs, would get a reduction on their payroll taxes as an offset.

The billions of dollars raised by the Patriot Tax would go first to shore up Social Security, second to subsidize clean mass transit in and between every major American city, third to reduce the deficit, and fourth to massively increase energy research by the National Science Foundation and the Energy and Defense Departments' research arms.

Most important, though, the Patriot Tax would increase the price of gasoline to a level that would ensure that many of the most promising alternatives — ethanol, biodiesel, coal gasification, solar energy, nuclear energy and wind — would all be economically competitive with oil and thereby reduce both our dependence on crude and our emissions of greenhouse gases.

In short: the Geo-Green party could claim that it has a plan for shoring up America's energy security, environmental security, economic security and Social Security with one move.

It could also claim that — however the Iraq war ends — the Geo-Green party has a strategy for advancing political and economic reform in the Arab-Muslim world, without another war. By stimulating all these alternatives to oil, we would gradually bring down the price, possibly as low as $25 to $30 a barrel. That, better than anything else, would force regimes like those in Iran, Sudan, Egypt, Angola, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia to open up. Countries don't reform when you tell them they should. They reform when they tell themselves they must — and only when the price of oil goes down will they tell themselves they must.

Moreover, by making America the leader in promoting clean power, the Geo-Greens would be offering a credible plan for recouping a lot of America's lost prestige in the world — prestige it lost when the Bush team trashed Kyoto. This would put America in a much better position to galvanize allies to combat jihadism.

Last, Geo-Greenism could be the foundation of a new American patriotism and educational renaissance. Under the banner "Green is the New Red, White and Blue," the Geo-Green party would seek to inspire young Americans to study math, science and engineering to help make America not only energy independent but also the dominant player in what will be the dominant industry of the 21st century: clean power and green technology.

Its a shame the penny hasn't dropped for Friedman that jihadism is largely caused by our thirst for oil (and the power that can be had in controlling it in an oil dependent world) - the move to clean energy solves the problem without needing to fight anyone (though I guess that might not be a desirable result for geo greens from the military industrial complex, of which there are a few). And America's lost prestige has as much to do with the Iraq invasion as it has with sabotaging coordinated action on global warming.

The Observer has an article asking UK gardeners to help fight climate change.

Britain's gardeners are being asked to open up their borders, lawns and shrubs to help tackle the world's greatest environmental threat: climate change.

More than a million species in the world are in danger from a warmer planet - including many of the UK's birds and other creatures expected to lose feeding and breeding grounds - as warmer, drier summers and wetter, stormier winters become more common.

Experts have long warned that nature reserves will not help protect threatened species because habitats will shift with the weather. Now they are appealing to gardeners, whose land covers a greater area than all the special reserves.

'Every garden is a habitat for wildlife,' said Chris Gibson, a senior conservation officer for English Nature, which will launch its campaign at the BBC Gardeners' World Live show this week at the National Exhibition Centre near Birmingham. 'Even the most unnatural garden is a habitat for some natural wildlife and gardeners can do their bit to create little bits of habitat wildlife can use.'

Global warming is already causing problems for wildlife as the plants, flowers and insects that many animals and birds feed on and nest in are shifting their habitat and changing breeding patterns.

TreeHugger reports that there are lingering suspicions that someone has killed the electric car again - this time one of the few remaining ones in existance, at The Smithsonian.

After having the chance to see major environmental issues on the big screen in An Inconvenient Truth, moviegoers will have another chance to see relevant subject matter in action with Who Killed the Electric Car?, which will open at the end of this month (see THTV sneak peek of Who Killed and our interview with Paul Scott). The documentary tells the story of the now legendary EV1, a work of engineering genius and the only mass produced electric vehicle to (yet) grace our roads. It just got harder, however, to actually see the famous car in person, even behind a velvet rope. After revoking and destroying their EV1s, General Motors gave a handful of them to museums as historical pieces. Now, the only fully intact EV1 on display has been removed from view at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., to make room for a robotic VW Touareg designed by Stanford University, what the Washington Post called a “high-tech SUV.”

This has made for suspicious news as it comes just before the opening of the documentary (which is critical of GM, among others), and doubly so because GM is one of the museum’s largest financial supporters. The hall in which the EV1 sat is, in fact, named after GM, the company that shelled out $10 million in 2001 to help pay for its construction.

As TreeHugger noted, the movie Who Killed the Electric Car ? is opening soon (having had good reviews at the Sundance festival).

I listened to a podcast of an interview with the maker yesterday (courtesy of WHT's recommendation) which was quite entertaining as well - particularly the Frank Drebbin quote !

It was among the fastest, most efficient production cars ever built. It ran on electricity, produced no emissions and catapulted American technology to the forefront of the automotive industry. The lucky few who drove it never wanted to give it up. So why did General Motors crush its fleet of EV1 electric vehicles in the Arizona desert?

WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR? chronicles the life and mysterious death of the GM EV1, examining its cultural and economic ripple effects and how they reverberated through the halls of government and big business.

The year is 1990. California is in a pollution crisis. Smog threatens public health. Desperate for a solution, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) targets the source of its problem: auto exhaust. Inspired by a recent announcement from General Motors about an electric vehicle prototype, the Zero Emissions Mandate (ZEV) is born. It required 2% of new vehicles sold in California to be emission-free by 1998, 10% by 2003. It is the most radical smog-fighting mandate since the catalytic converter.

With a jump on the competition thanks to its speed-record-breaking electric concept car, GM launches its EV1 electric vehicle in 1996. It was a revolutionary modern car, requiring no gas, no oil changes, no mufflers, and rare brake maintenance (a billion-dollar industry unto itself). A typical maintenance checkup for the EV1 consisted of replenishing the windshield washer fluid and a tire rotation.

But the fanfare surrounding the EV1’s launch disappeared and the cars followed. Was it lack of consumer demand as carmakers claimed, or were other persuasive forces at work?

Fast forward to 6 years later... The fleet is gone. EV charging stations dot the California landscape like tombstones, collecting dust and spider webs. How could this happen? Did anyone bother to examine the evidence? Yes, in fact, someone did. And it was murder.

Another form of electric car restriction in the US appears to be alterations to prius hybrids to stop them being driven in electric only mode - "Toyota's Prius in Europe gets a button we don't".

"There's a blank spot on my dashboard where the button is supposed to go," Pizer said. "I mean, the whole point of getting this kind of vehicle is supposed to be reducing our use of fossil fuels."

The fact that the feature isn't available in the U.S. may have to do with the way the Environmental Protection Agency measures fuel efficiency in the U.S., and that such a dual-power system would upset such measurements, said Coastal Electronics' Watson.

Kwong said Toyota doesn't offer the switch to electric mode because of U.S. laws mandating that it offer a minimum eight-year warranty for the car's power system. Thus, he said, by disabling the switch, the company is able to ensure a longer battery life.

Torrone said that he thinks Prius owners are likely to keep the hybrid car among the most popular vehicles for hacking for the foreseeable future.

One more post from TreeHugger - "How To Wake the Dead Sea"

Israelis and Jordanians have been tapping into the Kinneret ("Sea of Galilee") and the Yarmuk River, meaning less water makes it to the Dead Sea; lack of freshwater entering the Dead Sea combined with mineral extraction on its south shores has led to about a one meter drop in water of the Dead Sea per year.

Through the Minerva Institute for Dead Sea Research, scientists are devoting their lives to finding sustainable solutions to reviving the dead parts of the Dead Sea. Some groups are suggesting to solve the problem with a $5 billion canal that would stretch from the Red Sea. A recent Reuters article says that scientists wonder whether such a canal would really be beneficial for the environment. The Dead Sea's unique make-up would be changed forever by introducing sea water into a body that has only ever been fed by fresh water. "The cost of the damage that would be caused to the environment may be greater than any possible benefits," said local geologist Eli Raz. "The best plan for the Dead Sea is to let the Jordan river flow again, this is its natural state." But the chances of that happening are next to nothing given the reliance of the region's countries on the Jordan's water, the article points out.

Environmentalists are pushing for the Dead Sea to be declared a World Heritage Site by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, hoping this will force surrounding countries to come up with a plan. And unless we can get Daryl Hannah over here to chain herself to a salt block (to try and help at least), we may need to do it on our own. To find out more about international environmental projects, contact Minerva and Friends of the Earth.

"Red State Son" has an encouraging post on the Army Of Noam - obviously the "fascist octopus" linked to yesterday hasn't strangled all intelligent life yet.

You'd think that when someone like Noam Chomsky speaks to West Point cadets about US imperial history and the high power hypocrisy that justifies it, there'd be a lot of online commentary, across the board. Personally, I didn't know anything about this until a friend mentioned it to me the other night -- so yesterday I looked it up, and there was Noam, laying down the righteous shit in front of an audience of well-scrubbed, soon-to-be butterbars. It's an hour long, but worth the time.

Noam, as always, starts slow, building his argument piece by piece, and from the looks on some of their faces, it seems that the cadets have been forced to eat cold canned spinach. But Noam then expands on what several "thinkers" like Michael Walzer consider "just war," a topic the cadets probably have already considered if not studied in class. The real fun comes during the Q&A, and I hope these young officers were taking serious notes. If Noam could impress someone as gung-ho as Pat Tillman, then he can reach pretty much anyone in uniform. And that's a good thing.

Notice, too, how much respect the cadets show Noam. Of course, part of this is their training, prefacing each question and comment with "sir." But I get the impression that the kids kinda dug the old man, who easily and graciously handled every query thrown at him. I actually found it touching, and wonder how the Noam haters felt about him receiving such a warm reception at a place like West Point. Noam was equally polite and respectful. Clearly, he doesn't consider these young men as mere cannon fodder for imperial war, as do certain bloated state propagandists in love with endless misery and death.

Posted by Big Gav at 8:04 PM | Permalink | Comments

AP has a report on Norway's far-sighted plan to build a secure repository for the world's crop seeds. Maybe they could eventually extend this to include all seeds ?

It sounds like something from a science fiction film — a doomsday vault carved into a frozen mountainside on a secluded Arctic island ready to serve as a Noah's Ark for seeds in case of a global catastrophe.

But Norway's ambitious project is on its way to becoming reality Monday when construction begins on the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, designed to house as many as 3 million of the world's crop seeds.

Prime ministers of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland were to attend the cornerstone ceremony on Monday morning near the town of Longyearbyen in Norway's remote Svalbard Islands, roughly 620 miles from the North Pole.

Norway's Agriculture Minister Terje Riis-Johansen has called the vault a "Noah's Ark on Svalbard."

Its purpose is to ensure the survival of crop diversity in the event of plant epidemics, nuclear war, natural disasters or climate change, and to offer the world a chance to restart growth of food crops that may have been wiped out.

The seeds, packaged in foil, would be stored at such cold temperatures that they could last hundreds, even thousands, of years, according to the independent Global Crop Diversity Trust. The trust, founded in 2004, has also worked on the project and will help run the vault, which is scheduled to open and start accepting seeds from around the world in September 2007.

Oil-rich Norway first proposed the idea a year ago, drawing wide international interest, Riis-Johansen said. The Svalbard Archipelago, 300 miles north of the mainland, was selected because it is located far from many threats and has a consistently cold climate.

Those factors will help protect the seeds and safeguard their genetic makeup, Norway's Foreign Ministry said. The vault will have thick concrete walls, and even if all cooling systems fail, the temperature in the frozen mountain will never rise above freezing due to permafrost, it said.

While the facility will be fenced in and guarded, Svalbard's free-roaming polar bears, known for their ferocity, could also act as natural guardians, according to the Global Diversity Trust.

The Nordic nation is footing the bill, amounting to about $4.8 million for infrastructure costs.

"This facility will provide a practical means to re-establish crops obliterated by major disasters," Cary Fowler, the trust's executive secretary, said in a statement, adding that crop diversity is also threatened by "accidents, mismanagement and shortsighted budget cuts."

Already, some 1,400 seed banks around the world, most of them national, hold samples of their host country's crops.

Of course, its possible that the permafrost on Svalbard may not be around for all that long.

With global temperatures rising, the Arctic’s “permanently” frozen soil—permafrost—isn’t staying frozen. A type of soil contained deep within thawing permafrost—loess—may be releasing significant, and previously unaccounted for, amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, according to authors of a paper published this week in the journal Science.

Some have been warning about the danger of melting permafrost for a number of years. For example, Svein Tveitdal, managing director of GRID-Arendal in Norway, a United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) information center, warned of the potential in 2001:

Permafrost has acted as a carbon sink, locking away carbon and other greenhouse gases like methane, for thousands of year. But there is now evidence that this is no longer the case, and the permafrost in some areas is starting to give back its carbon. This could accelerate the greenhouse effect.

The just-published work by the scientists from Russia, the University of Florida, and the University of Alaska Fairbanks found that loess permafrost—extending more deeply into the permafrost layers and covering more than a million square kilometers in Siberia and Alaska—is a very large carbon reservoir with the potential to be a significant contributor of atmospheric carbon, yet one seldom incorporated into analyses of changes in global carbon reservoirs.

O'Reilly Radar has a post on GreenLeaf: A Virtual Farmer's Market. One commenter notes this idea is similar to Local Harvest.

Via Growers & Grocers, this is interesting:

The Internet-based business, Greenleaf LLC, gets under way this summer. [...] Greenleaf could be a virtual farmer's market that never closes.

Local farmers will be able to post what they have to sell, such as fresh produce and meats.

Buyers will be able to browse through the offerings and make online purchases from the farmers.

Greenleaf will charge sellers a fee, perhaps 2% of a sale. Buyers will pay an annual subscription fee, that hasn't been finalized, to use the service.

Buyers and sellers will be responsible for making their own arrangements for payments and deliveries. [Former Whole Foods employee Heather] Hilleren said she will stay out of the transactions as much as possible.

"It's strictly between the buyer and the seller," much like eBay, she said.

AP has a story on farmers trading tractors for animals.

Metal clinks against rocks in the soil as four of Jim Cherenzia's horses pull his harrow through seven acres of hay.

Cherenzia rides behind in a small cart, rolling gently over the grass as the blades of the harrow, a piece of cultivating equipment that cuts and smooths the soil. The air fills with the sounds of the creaking harrow, harness bells and occasional soft snorts as the procession moves steadily through the field.

"There's nothing more enjoyable than plowing hay with a horse," Cherenzia said.

He is among a small but dedicated group of farmers who use animals rather than machines to do work around the farm. While they embrace modern conveniences in other parts of their lives, they say shunning tractors helps the environent and saves money on gas.

Cherenzia uses Percherons _ large, sturdy war horses originally bred in France _ to plow and spread manure. Over the years, he has used them to log, bale hay and plant corn, and in warm weather, he hitches them to carriages for weddings and other events.

"Tractor's probably a whole lot more sensible," said Cherenzia, who owned one briefly in the 1970s. "But I'm trying to make some nice horses too. And it's enjoyable."

The U.S. Census Bureau stopped tracking the number of farms using animal power after 1960, when it counted 4.7 million tractors and 3 million horses and mules used for work.

Today, there's no good estimate on the number of farmers using draft animals like horses, mules, and oxen, but it's probably tens of thousands, said Leah Patton of the 4,500-member American Donkey and Mule Society.

...

John Trombley, 53, of Carney, Mich., has had horses and mules for several years and uses them to cultivate his field and pull a wagon. He also takes teams to church on Sundays, saving on gas.

"It's fun, and it never hurts to save a few dollars at the same time," he said.

Driving animals makes economic sense only if farmers have enough land _ about 40 acres _ to grow food for them, he said. Otherwise, they have to pay for commercially grown hay.

Trombley, who also teaches math and computers, said the animals give him a break from the hectic pace of modern life. He turns off his cell phone when he climbs onto the wagon and rides back to a simpler time. "If I come home from school," he said, "and it's been a stressful day, the best thing for me to do is hook up the team and go for a ride. In 15 minutes, the stress is gone."

Peak Oil Passnotes latest musings are on Oil Wave Ripples (which are probably making fellow investors a little seasick lately).

The Dow, the Nasdaq and the FTSE have all been centre stage. The rises, the dramatic falls, then the slight respite as we go to press. How the U.S. markets have seen 9% falls off of their heights. How it affects shareholders, business, investment. Everyone has been talking about it, the mass media have been all over it.

But here sits a primary problem of the way markets both act and are reported. All of which is centred around the reality of oil and energy and the way it is underreported on big networks and newspapers. Because if you watch, listen or read these news organs you might think that this problem was just something that affected the floor on Wall Street. But it is not so.

The U.S. and European markets have taken hits of anywhere from 9-12% it is true. But they did relatively well. In contrast India’s Sensex in Mumbai fell a terrifying 28%, in one month.

The basic reason is energy, and in the future the ones who will pay, are the weakest. It is the oil inflation chain, the ripples of the oil wave.

Boing Boing points to a debate between Chris Mooney and some pitiful global warming denial monkey - Science advocate destroys global warming/AIDS dismisser

Last week, Ira Flatow of NPR's Science Friday program did a segment on politics and science, bringing on Tom Bethell, author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science, and Chris Mooney, author of The Republican War on Science. The former is the author of a book that accuses the left of distorting science to fabricate the AIDS crisis, global climate change, the prohibition against stem cell research, and other well-known politically charged scientific crises. Mooney, the Washington correspondent for the excellent SEED magazine, which is the best science and policy magazine on the stands, is especially masterful in the debate.

Bethell has nothing going for him -- he's regurgitating throughly debunked pseudo-science ("the Earth actually cooled at the start of the 20th Century") and rather than let this turn into a "I'm right-No, I'm right" talk-show, Mooney just quietly, thoroughly and masterfully destroys Bethell. He is firm, concise and sharp, while Bethell is meandering, incoherent, and fuzzy.

Tom Whipple's latest peak oil article is on Recognizing the Peak (my version: price goes up, supply goes down). Tom takes a detailed look at the various bodies collating data on oil production.

It is conventional wisdom among students of peak oil that worldwide peak oil production will not be recognized, and certainly not "officially" certified by some organization or other, until some years after the event has passed. The exception to this, of course, is if some natural or man-made catastrophe shuts down a lot of oil production in a manner not likely to be restored for many years.

Without such a catastrophe, recognition of peak oil will be gradual, with month after month of volatile production statistics trending downward. At some point, even the most optimistic prognosticator will be forced to admit it is unlikely that world production will ever again climb above the highest production record previously achieved.

The world is currently producing somewhere around 84-85 million barrels a day of oil. Pessimists say the current production rate is beginning to look a lot like a peak. Maybe another million or so a day, but that’s it. Moderates on the issue will allow that another five million barrels per day looks possible and see a peak around 90 million barrels a day. Until recently, the optimists were talking 120 million barrels day, 20 or 25 years down the line, but numbers like this are appearing less frequently

The IHT has an article on "Iraq's disastrous 'black oil' swamps" (which combines an environmental crime along with sheer waste of oil - though there is plenty more where that came from).

An environmental disaster is brewing in the heartland of Iraq's northern Sunni-led insurgency, where Iraqi officials say that in a desperate move to dispose of millions of barrels of an oil refinery byproduct called "black oil," the government pumped it into open mountain valleys and leaky reservoirs next to the Tigris River and set it on fire.

The resulting huge black bogs are threatening the river and the precious groundwater in the area. The suffocating plumes of smoke are carried as far as 65 kilometers, or 40 miles, downwind to Tikrit, the provincial capital that formed Saddam Hussein's base of power.

An Iraqi environmental engineer who has visited the area described it as a kind of black swampland consisting of oil-saturated terrain and large standing pools of oil stretching across several mountain valleys. The clouds of smoke, said the engineer, Ayad Younis, "were so heavy that they obstructed breathing and visibility in the area and represent a serious environmental danger."

At Iraq's damaged and outdated refineries, as much as 40 percent of what is produced pours forth as this heavy, viscous substance, which used to be extensively exported to more efficient foreign operations for further refining. But the insurgency has stalled government- controlled exports from the area containing Iraq's major northern refinery complex at Bayji, the officials say.

So the backed-up black oil - known to the rest of the world as the lower grades of fuel oil - was sent along a short pipeline from Bayji and dumped in a mountainous area, called Makhool.

If you haven't seen it, this interview with a Republican congressman on the Colbert Report (Quicktime Windows Media) is kind of jaw dropping - I'd be willing to bet there isn't a single elected politician in Australia or Britain who is this stupid (or even close to it) - what sort of democracy are you people running up there ? Via Crooked Timber and Boing Boing.

In this video, Stephen Colbert nails Georgia Representative Lynn Westmoreland, a Congressman who's co-sponsored a bill to require the display of the Ten Commandments in the House of Reps and the Senate. After bantering with Westmoreland for a couple minutes, Colbert says, "What are the Ten Commandments?"

Stephen Colbert: What are the Ten Commandments?

Lynn Westmoreland: What are all of them?

SC: Yes.

LW: You want me to name them all?

SC: Yes.

LW: Uhhh.

LW: Ummmm. Don't murder. Don't lie. Don't steal. Ummmmm.

LW: I can't name them all.

Also at Crooked Timber, a post with a title I just can't resist: "The Fascist Octopus Pipes Up from the Gamma Quadrant or the Region Surrounding Cygnus X-1, Depending".

OK, it’s dumpster-diving, but I was quite taken with the writing style of this post on the Arrogance and Evil of Crooked Timber.

I’m reading through more and more of the comments now, and the hideous intellectual dishonesty of the leftists continues to alternatively make my blood boil in anger, and run cold in fear of the kinds of totalitarian “reforms” they would make if they ever seized control of society.

The boiling blood running ice cold and then boiling up again makes for quite an arresting metaphor. But then, don’t watery liquids simultaneously boil and freeze in the vacuum of deep outer space? (perhaps the author is trying to tell us something about where he’s dialing in from).

Posted by Big Gav at 11:39 PM | Permalink | Comments

A number of variants of peak oil doomer philosophy often aim to avoid the effects of industrial collapse by seeking to build sustainable societies of one sort or another which can continue to operate in the absence of readily available oil and gas.

This is sometimes termed "building lifeboats" (synonyms for lifeboat could include "arks", for those of a religious orientation, or "foundations" for those with a classic science fiction background). A slightly disrespectful cynic like myself may also term it "heading for the hills".

As the world grows more densely populated (at least for the next few decades), and as the proportion of the population living in large cities eclipses that of rural dwellers, this approach seems less and less viable to me - I would think it very unlikely that any small community would be susbtantially less affected by a genuine collapse than the rest of an industrialised country.

In my mind (leaving aside the question of how likely any collapse is due to peak oil, or any other head on collision with a Limit to Growth), it would seem that any attempt to build a sustainable society has to be aimed more broadly than just creating small intentional communities or eco villages.

The cover story of this week's New Scientist magazine is "Ecopolis", which makes the case that "Returning to our rural roots won't save the planet - cities have to become part of the solution to global environmental perils" (in many ways echoing Alex Steffan's essay on "The Post-Oil Megacity").

The editorial of the issue opines "Cities Are The Future" (unjustly taking a stick to a green strawman, but other than that the point is sound ):

Greens are prone to idealising the past. They instinctively look back to a pre-industrial pastoral idyll, or to the age of hunter-gatherers living in harmony with their environment. In this view, urbanisation and the rise of the megacity are the harbingers of doom. City dwellers, after all, make up only half of the world's population but consume three-quarters of its resources and generate three-quarters of its pollution. Further urbanisation can only accelerate environmental decline and threaten the long-term future of humankind.

Many of the environmental demons implicit in this analysis are real: urbanisation is responsible for some of our most destructive lifestyles and production systems. Yet, on a planet of approaching 7 billion people, cities have to become part of the solution to global environmental perils. More than that, they could be the key to finding the solution. Indeed without them there may be no solution. Urban living can, and increasingly will be, the green way.

Its a radical vision, and will need a radical change of approach. Sustainable living will require a new economic metabolism in which waste is reused, not excreted into the environment. This is not just about recycling old copies of mgazines like this one - it is about turning every waste stream into a feedstoc. Where can such a metabolism be developed, and where would it work best ? Not in the countryside, but in the city, where high population densities and economies of scale make the goal much more achievable.

Sounds like the editors have been reading "Cradle to Cradle".

The article goes on to talk about China's future green city of Dongtan, and an experimental new neighbourhood in the Spanish city of Valencia called "Sociopolis".

In a reversal of the rapacious development that has choked Spain's coastline with concrete over the past few decades, Valencia has started building a neighbourhood based around ancient market gardens and irrigation systems. Bulldozers have moved into an area of rundown farms and scrap yards that is to become Sociopolis, a "revolutionary" locality that mixes the high rise and hi-tech with traditional agriculture.

Sociopolis has taken its inspiration from the typical Valencian huerta, or market garden region, where small farms share irrigation systems to grow their fruit and vegetables. Irrigation channels dug by the Moorish inhabitants of the region more than 1,000 years ago are to be used to water Sociopolis and allow the residents to combine life in a tower block at up to 20 storeys with allotment-style gardening. The project will provide about 2,800 "affordable" homes in a country where house prices have left many young people out of the market.

Other projects mentioned in the Ecopolis article include the new Melbourne City Council building.

The building, known as Council House Two (CH2), will cost approximately A$50 million, and is due to be completed in 2005. Melbourne Lord Mayor John So has said of the project, “With CH2, we are striving to create a building that will return financial and environmental rewards for many years to come.” CH2 will break new ground in sustainable office development with features including: hanging gardens, shower towers and phase change material to cool the air, wind turbines, solar cells, and rainwater collectors on the roof. CH2 is aiming to be a zero net emissions building (climate neutral).

Energy Bulletin has a good set of links on cities for walking and cycling.

There aren't too many tools that are as ideal today as when they were invented, in just the same form as they were originally conceived. But the bicycle is one. Simple, cheap and accessible, absolutely no existing transportation solution could be better for reducing greenhouse gases, untangling snarled urban streets, and improving human health than getting more people on two wheels. But challenges are many and varied.

While accelerated use of motorized vehicles in developing world cities is quelling traditional dependence on bicycles and other non-motorized vehicles (NMVs), industrialized cities are pushing people to forego auto transport for pedal power. All over the world, bicycles are getting much-deserved reconsideration as a no-brainer solution to fundamental problems in transit, community, and the environment.

Mobjectivist notes that not everyone on a bike is necessarily good, as he takes a look at a Coward on Wheels (WHT also has some zen-like meditation on political psychology).

I occasionally reflect on G.W. Bush's one redeeming quality -- that he gets on his mountain bike and regularly takes it out for a spin. But as I continue to digest the significance of this seemingly autonomous act, I have begun to discount his motivation. First of all, you would think that Bush would, at least on occasion, take a road bike out for a ride around the block. Like me, most serious bikers keep both kinds of bikes around. But then we read about Bush's lack of motor control, leading to such incidents as crashing into a policeman on a Scottish golf link path. Which brings us to the secondary part of his motivation -- that of health and satisfying his competitive urges.

So why no road bike for Bush? Googling "George Bush" and "road bike", [stick a Kerry wig on Coulter, and keep the kids away] I get more hits for John Kerry and his road bike than for GWB having anything to do with one. In my opinion, I think his aversion has more to do with an aversion to crowds and fear for his life. In China, for example, Bush recently had a chance to take it on the open road but diplomatically declined.

While George's bike obsession has failed Mobjectivist's "good / not good" test, he has gained critical acclaim for declaring a portion of the Pacific Ocean a marine reserve.

President Bush did something for only the second time in his two-term presidency: he created a national monument. No, not with building blocks, but by invoking the 1906 National Antiquities Act and protecting over 139,000 square miles of largely uninhabitated islands, reefs, and atolls. Once under jurisdiction, the area would be protected by the strongest environmental laws available and actively monitored by state and federal agencies.

While not certain to happen, a ban on commercial fishing in the area would “create the largest no-take marine reserve in the nation, second in the world only to the Great Barrier Reef.” Currently, there are ships in the area that use the coral-damaging “bottomfishing” technique to troll for snappers and seabass. Such a ban would help alleviate stress on the reefs and wildlife.

Grist quips that there "must not be any oil there".

Well, slap our ass and call us Sally: George W. Bush, the prez formerly known as the earth's worst enemy, created the largest protected marine area in the world yesterday when he designated the 1,200-mile-long Northwestern Hawaiian Islands chain and surrounding waters as a national monument. The region is home to some 7,000 marine species, at least a quarter of which are unique to the area. At nearly the size of California, the monument will be larger than all of the country's national parks combined. Fishing in the largely uninhabited islands will be phased out over the next five years, though some groups plan to fight a complete fishing ban. Enviros joined marine scientists in gushing over the move. Bush was allegedly inspired by a PBS documentary about the ocean region. Imagine what could happen if he saw An Inconvenient Truth!

While Dubya may have done the right thing with regards to part of one ocean (though the long term impact of his sabotaging of global warming mitigation impacts will probably undo this anyway), he has come in for some criticism over his mocking of a blind reporter.

Let me first say that Bush may not have known he was talking to a legally blind reporter when he engaged in this exchange:

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, Peter. Are you going to ask that question with shades on?

Q I can take them off.

THE PRESIDENT: I'm interested in the shade look, seriously.

Q All right, I'll keep it, then.

THE PRESIDENT: For the viewers, there's no sun. (Laughter.)

Q I guess it depends on your perspective. (Laughter.)

THE PRESIDENT: Touche. (Laughter.)

As Think Progress notes, "[Peter] Wallsten is legally blind. Wallsten tells us he has a rare genetic disorder called Stargardt's Disease. The disease is a form of macular degeneration that can be slowed "by wearing UV-protective sunglasses and avoiding exposure to bright light."

The point of this post is not that Bush intentionally taunted a blind man, but that his insistence on clowning with the press is undignified and highly inappropriate.

As Digby describes this (and other episodes):

There's an interesting simple psychology involved in such things. If someone can coerce those in a group to help him attack a single member they become his accomplices. For instance, getting everybody in the press corps to laugh at a reporter's baldness makes those reporters part of the president's gang. And, of course, it intimidates them. If they stray, they too will be subject to that kind of public humiliation. It's the evil fratboy theory of social relations, very primitive stuff.

While the psychology of an ex-alcoholic from a pampered background holding a job way beyond his capabilities may be debatable, there is an interesting tie in with this post from Past Peak, on some reprehensible conduct by Genentech over a cheap drug that prevents macular degeneration.

You know all those stories where a guy invents an engine that runs on water and the oil companies bury the invention? Or somebody comes up with a dirt cheap cure for cancer and the drug companies buy her out? That kind of stuff doesn't happen in real life, though, right? Prepare to be outraged:

A major drug company is blocking access to a medicine that is cheaply and effectively saving thousands of people from going blind because it wants to launch a more expensive product on the market.

Ophthalmologists around the world, on their own initiative, are injecting tiny quantities of a colon cancer drug called Avastin into the eyes of patients with wet macular degeneration, a common condition of older age that can lead to severely impaired eyesight and blindness. They report remarkable success at very low cost because one phial can be split and used for dozens of patients.

But Genentech, the company that invented Avastin, does not want it used in this way. Instead it is applying to license a fragment of Avastin, called Lucentis, which is packaged in the tiny quantities suitable for eyes at a higher cost. Speculation in the US suggests it could cost £1,000 per dose instead of less than £10. The company says Lucentis is specifically designed for eyes, with modifications over Avastin, and has been through 10 years of testing to prove it is safe.

Unless Avastin is approved in the UK by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (Nice) it will not be universally available within the NHS. But because Genentech declines to apply for a licence for this use of Avastin, Nice cannot consider it. In spite of the growing drugs bill of the NHS, it will appraise, and probably approve, Lucentis next year. [...]

New drugs for the condition are badly needed: those we have now only slow the progression to blindness. With Avastin, many patients get their sight back with just one or two injections.

The Netvocates story has continued at Deconsumption, with Steve coming up with a great theory about the reason behind the "New Coke" episode of years gone by (along with one commenter at Blanton's and Ashton's making me blush by referring to my post on Netvocates as "a thing of beauty. I'm so impressed with the way the Left Blogosphere is handling this: straight ahead" - I'll leave the issue of whether or not I'm of the left or right alone for now). Words Not Fists also has a couple of new posts on the topic.

whatever tempest in a teapot might erupt from all this, it did occur to me that there's a fairly time-honored and straightforward way to combat this type of thing without actually dredging-up the whole discussion about what constitutes trolling vs. open debate, and without castigating every poster who happens to question aloud how "perhaps a tightly regulated internet might actually be a good thing"....

Affected and/or angry bloggers should just go after the clients of NetVocates directly. After all, complaining and bad-mouthing is practically the raison d'etre for the weblog community. So it might be a practical tactic to try to identify one or more of NetVocates' clients, and then launch an honest inquiry into some of the upsetting issues those firms might be concerned enough about to warrant such fervent desires to "control" any "unexpected" eventualities as might happen at the weblog level.

For instance, Anonymousblogger uses Site Meter to monitor his webtraffic, and was able to retrieve a direct URL to the NetVocates page which accessed his site (see comments section to Anonymousbloggers post here for details). That's how he discovered that some of the hits were targeted to a post he wrote regarding the AMA's proposition of a so-called "fat tax" on soft drink and fast-food manufacturers. And more specifically, "Coke" came up as a search term, which might indicate Coca-Cola was their client for the particular data run (perhaps that isn't the case, but I've been told that in battle we should expect a certain amount of "collateral damage"). So let me tell you a little story about Coke.

Now I love brown sugar water as much as the rest of the world, but...well actually that's a lie, I don't really like it that much. Not anymore anyway.

You see about 10 years ago or so I was in Playa del Carmen down in Southern Mexico and I went to a little tienda and bought a bottle of Coke. I'm normally a pretty strict water/beer drinker but this was back when Playa del Carmen was little more than a hidden haven for the beach bums of the world and there were no big resorts or theme restaurants like they've covered the place with now, and there was no water-treatment either. So Coke sounded good.

But even more than that it tasted good. Really good. Strangely familiarly good, like I remembered it tasting when I was a kid. I chalked it up to the magic of Mexico and didn't think too much about it until about 6 months later when this buddy of mine (that I'd gone to Playa with) mentioned a business article he'd run across that said Coca-Cola's Mexican bottlers were going to switch to high-fructose corn syrup in their formulas, instead of pure cane sugar like they had been using.

Suddenly it clicked. That's why Coke sucks anymore, because it isn't the same as it used to be. And though I've done no research I have absolutely no doubt that the change-over occurred when Coke introduced the whole "New Coke" debacle. It never made sense for Coca-Cola to change a time-proven winning formula, and then to do it with such a patent loser as New Coke was. The move flew in the very face of billion-dollar corporatic sophistry. But it actually made total sense if the whole point was to flush the taste of real Coke off the minds (and shelves) of the American public. Then when "Classic" Coke was ushered back in amidst great fanfare, hardly a soul would notice that it tasted morbidly "different" from what they had drunk before, because they'd have no reference anymore to compare it to. If Coke had changed the formula in mid-stream however, people would have been returning the tepid new drink in droves, complaining that it was "tainted" or spoiled or whatever...

Now there are all sorts of reasons why Coca-Cola was driven to degrade their timeless product with manufactured sweeteners, but the point of this whole monologue is that I really don't have much of an opinion on a "fat tax" but I do have an opinion on Coke. And that is that I don't drink it anymore unless I have no other choice. And the same goes for the rest of Coca-Cola's product line, and the rest of the unnatural soft drinks industry as well.

So to segue back to task, I can't help but think of the theory that says "the observation of a process actually changes the process being observed". And so, while the lengthy monologue above probably won't serve one iota in threatening Coca-Cola's North American profits--and it most certainly isn't going to bring back any of the dozens of Columbian union organizers that the company is alleged to have had tortured and killed by death squads--nevertheless I wrote and posted it solely because NetVocates paid what I felt was a suspicious visit to my website one day....

I noticed a few weird new visitors in my logs as a result of the Netvocates flap - and I'm thinking this particular visitor is via a slightly less suspicious new monitoring portal that they've put in place now that their old site is tainted for anyone who can be bothered doing a Google search.

http://192.168.8.177/sitebeta/default/index.cfm
http://192.168.8.177/jcs/watch.daa?sessionid=-1245164474
&pagenum=55&ddsess=91782&tsid=DE36B752-E081-308B-4466125CBF84FC1F

The IP address "192.168.8.177" gets a negative respose in a reverse DNS lookup, so either they are well cloaked or they are just spoofing the IP address. Its quite possible this is a short term fix to hide the old "arrca.netvocates.com" site while they try and understand some basics of internet anonymity (of course, such things don't work if you want to evade the gaze of big brother unless you are willing to go to fairly extreme lengths to maintain your privacy, but for a mere blog trolling operation its not all that difficult).

Moving back to the topic of corporate misdeeds, I've had some (still unfinished) debates with some readers about my defence of capitalism as the basis for a sustainable society. While the topic needs at least one entire post just to address the issue of sustainable capitalism, I've no doubt proponents of other forms of economic organisation would point to this Coke story, or the earlier example of Genentech, (or even, to use my favourite example of a thoroughly bad company, locked in a dogfight with Halliburton, Exxon) and ask how I could defend this sort of thing happening.

Obviously I have no intention of doing any such thing, but I would point out that each of these examples are forms of corruption of the system (and Netvocates is just one vile example of a company that seems to be making a living by helping to corrupt the system).

Rather than throwing the system away, I would say that the system needs to be adjusted to discourage decay - as well as the obvious need to eliminate what are known to economists as "externalities", changes need to be made to make punishment of corporate wrongdoing more effective.

The book "The Corporation" examines this topic at some length and makes the point that many conservatives make about individual crimes - punishments need to be harsh enough to be an effective deterrent. The ultimate deterrent is, of course, the death penalty - and that is what should be applied in the case of particularly eggregious corporate behaviour. It would only take a few examples for shareholders to start demanding that companies don't operate unethically...



Moving back to the topic of blog surveillence, I saw a post on Cryptogon that made me laugh - noting that their mention of the forthcoming "Valiant Shield" exercise in the Pacific had prompted a flurry of attention from the air force (I can't begin to imagine what happens to the brains of clean cut young military snoops after months of investigating posts on tinfoil sites - and if any of you have come along to see what I'm saying about , I can assure you its simply idle observation of how the world works).

I remember some posts of mine prompting a few flurries like this last year (having the logs fill up with visitors from the Pentagon and various signals divisions is a little paranoia inducing I might add) - thankfully I now seem to be off the radar again - presumably they have a "don't waste your time on this" list of sites - or they've become a little more professional and appear as those totally blank entries with no country / organisation / referrer or anything else other than an unassigned IP address visible.

As far as "Valiant Shield" goes, I do remember some tinfoil speculation last year about it being a harbinger of war with China and/or Iran - hopefully its just a form of sabre rattling to keep the Chinese alarmed though (or even an entirely innocent oiling of the military wheels).

While I'm babbling away about internet surveillence again, I noticed a comment on Bruce Schneier's blog that took me back 20 years - a guy suggesting sticking what he called ""spook" strings to attract the attention of "nosy-neighbor" programs" in each post. This took me back beause (a) he used a whole lot of strings that were more in vogue back then and (b) some crazy people actually used to do this on Usenet.

I'll resist the temptation to post some random piece of prose that contains a more modern set of spook rustling words into it - though I'm curious as to what will turn up in the logs tonight after this post anyway.

A few links to close with - one from the SMH on "Our flying footprint", another on Thawing icy plains a threat as rot sets in" and one from The Age on our dwindling oil reserves "Think tank: urgency picks up for alternatives".

Australia's dwindling crude oil reserves will run out within seven years at current production rates, if there are no new discoveries.

Likely further finds will only delay the inevitable: the nation's fleet of 13,920,105 vehicles will become increasingly reliant on oil imports, unless and until alternative fuels fill the breach.

The decline of the nation's oil reserves has been long predicted. But a combination of other international factors has highlighted the need for alternative fuel sources: climate change concerns, sky-high fuel prices, a reliance on imports, and discussion about when the world will have used more oil than is left underground.

These issues have attracted wildly diverging opinion, with most saying crude oil will remain plentiful for decades, while others believe the moment of "peak oil" has passed. (Global oil reserves totalled 1.2 trillion litres last year, according to BP. The International Energy Agency's estimated global demand of 84.9 million barrels a day.)

With Australia more reliant than most on oil-based transport, our fuel debate is spurring research, prompting a policy rethink and opening potential markets as alternatives become more viable.

Today, petrol and diesel account for two-thirds of Australian fuel demands. Both are made by distilling crude oil.

Posted by Big Gav at 12:47 AM | Permalink | Comments

The professional blog trollers at Netvocates (well - semi-professional - if they knew what they were doing they wouldn't have left such a large slime trail behind them and thereby avoided a large amount of no doubt unwanted publicity) seem to have become a topic of attention in their own right.

A random sampling of posts from the blogging world shows they have been checking up on those who mention "climate change" and "al gore" (noticed here), along with "coke" and "fat tax", and "net neutrality".

Netvocates Big Brother act is brought to you by the guy who founded townhall.com - I wonder what political outlook Chip has ?

See Trolling for Dollars, behind netvocates, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Get Out Your Tinfoil Hats, Another Inconvenient Truth - NetVocates, Strange Days Indeed: Shadowy Propoganda-for-Pay Group Targeting Web Logs, Has Netvocates visited your blog recently ?, Are You Paranoid If They're Watching You?, Paid Trolls (with one commenter pointing out "Their sub-heading "Blog Intelligence and Advocacy Service (BIAS)"...the [acronym] says it all"), netvocates: IP addresses and screenshots, Netvocates come out of the shadows and many more...

O'Reilly dubbed this proactive variant of traditional astroturfing (itself an outgrowth of the "thinktank" mechanism of propaganda dissemeination) "AstroSpamming" (see also The Abstract Factory).

There was a case a couple of years back where the biotech industry tried to destroy the reputation of a scientist called Ignacio Chapella who had discovered that GE corn was spreading rapidly through Mexico at a time when the industry was trying to assert that GE could be easily controlled. The PR company in question (The Bivings Group) posted multiple fake messages (under fake names) to a biotech message board besmirching the work of Ignacio Chapella.

The PR firm was successful in that Nature magazine took the unprecendented step of withdrawing it's support for the article after they had published it.

My point here is not to toast the success of an aggressive PR campaign but to talk about what happened afterwards: Eventually someone decided to trace the fake emails and found that they had originated from the computers of people who work for a biotech industry PR company. Since then the GE Free movement has taught the PR world the meaning of backlash by mentioning this episode at every available opportunity.

Even if he hasn’t heard this particular story our friend Chip at Netvocates has obviously learned the lesson. AND even if Chip just created these guidelines to maintain his own self-image of being a polite guy the fact remains that PR is currently the frontline of a war being waged on normal people by the elites of society. It doesn’t matter that the individual foot soldiers aren’t aware of the bigger, picture we’re still at a point now where the elites use their wealth to change what people think.

What the PR industry knows and relies on us not understanding is that they are working at the emotional level. In a debate people do not operate purely on logic. If you were to read a blog posting that was followed by a critical comment, unless you make a conscious effort to analyse the two arguments AND follow all the references to their bitter end your view of the posting will be coloured a little. Some people are more easily persuaded this way than others but it is impossible to be completely affected by it if you are human.

PR companies know that people don’t or can’t follow up the things that they say and that it is the fact of the rebuttal that counts. It gets worse though. With this understanding it is then safe to move on stating half truths and occasionally bald faced lies. It is a bit more difficult in the blogosphere however because people like Steven and Robin are so much better at cutting through the crap than your average journalist. All this means though is that the PR people have to develop a more sophisticated approach. Clearly they are in the process of doing this – as we all knew they would need to do as part of elite attempts to subvert the anarchic and democratic nature of the internet.

If you’re still unsure of how effective this approach is remember that that scientific journal backed dowon on the GE corn paper because of the pressure they felt. They certainly weren’t persuaded by the facts in this instance and if a group of supposedly rational scientists can be persuaded in this manner you can bet the rest of us will be too.

Remember too this is all being done in conjunction with the usual ongoing PR efforts including at last count 40% of mainstream news* originating from a PR office. I’m not going to use the phrase ‘mind control’ to describe all this because that would give the likes of Chip too much ammunition but at the same time I have difficulty finding another word to describe deliberate, large scale attempts to alter what people think.

I may have already given them the ammunition to do so by mentioning it even in that way but how much you wanna bet they won’t be providing a link to go with the quote?

For further info about the dirty world of PR I highly recommend the website PR Watch and also the book Secret’s and Lies by Nicky Hagar – an expose about a dirty tricks campaign against anti-logging activists in New Zealand, even my cynical expectations were exceeded by the behaviour of the PR firm and it’s client revealed in this case.

And lastly, I’m not going to even pretend to be even handed like the others have and give you a link to Chip’s blog. I refuse to buy into the need to appear to be even-handed especially when the blog in question is run buy a person who is an expert in disinformation and will be spinning who knows how many lies in a polite and convivial manner.

Slashdot shamed themselves by posting some global warming denial propaganda today, though the ensuing discussion showed that few people agreed with the article they'd grabbed from some Canadian wingnut tabloid called the Canada Free Press via Drudge (quoting the professional denier Bob Carter). AT least some outlets ran the article then removed it once they realised that it was just PR nonsense.

One slashdotter comments:

This article was pulled straight from the headlines of the Drudge Report, which should have tipped you off. He's notorious for linking to only right-wing-skewed news services, and here he's tapping an obscure Canadian newspaper. Gee, I wonder which way its politics lean? You should have done your homework...

There is only one other article by Tom Harris at CFP, but I found another at National Post , both attacking climate change. Canada Free Press and National Post are both conservative newspapers, particularly the latter. According to the byline, Tom Harris is mechanical engineer and Ottawa Director of High Park Group. And what is the High Park Group, seeing as how their web page say absolutely nothing of substance? Why it's an industry shill.

Mr. Egan is president of the High Park Group, a public policy consulting firm that focuses largely on energy issues out of its offices in Toronto and Ottawa. He is retained by the Canadian Electricity Association on a range of issues, including U.S. advocacy (monitoring the U.S. Congress and Administration on issues of interest to the Canadian electricity industry).

...

Of course, articles about "scientists" refuting global warming are a dime a dozen, and go against the plain fact that the vast majority of climate scientists are firmly convinced of its existence.

And for the record when I looked at the article before it was running an ad pushing Condaleeza Rice for president... in a Canadian newspaper no less.

And another:

From the article:
Carter is one of hundreds of highly qualified non-governmental, non-industry, non-lobby group climate experts who contest the hypothesis that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are causing significant global climate change.

What a weaselly way of putting it. Here's what 30 seconds of Googling says about Professor Robert Carter: He's a member of the Institute for Public Affairs, a corporate-funded think tank.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Bob_Carter

You see, he isn't working for the coal industry per se. He's working for a think tank that is funded by corporate donors that may or may not include the coal industry. See the difference?

In piling up "scientist" after "scientist" while failing to refute Gore's arguments, this article is reminiscent of the Nazi propaganda pamphlet "100 Scientists Against Einstein." Einstein's response still applies: "If I were wrong, one would be enough."

Some other interesting links in the commentary included an interesting video on Michael Crichton's "State of Fear" conspiracy theory book and the biased treatment of global warming science in the media, and Science magazine's survey of global warming papers.

The Washington Post has a report on the latest political stunt by the government, delivered in their usual doublespeak - a 10 hour debate on a resolution "declaring that the United States will prevail in the Global War on Terror [and] the struggle to protect freedom from the terrorist adversary". These guys make some of the more bizarre communist dictatorships of the 1970's look sensible.

... the strongest misgivings may be practical. Rep. Ray LaHood (R-Ill.) called the entire exercise "a dumb idea" that will highlight precisely the issue that is threatening Republican political fortunes.

"When the country is war-weary, when the violence is still playing out on TV, I don't know why we want to highlight all that," he said.

But Gilchrest, who won the Purple Heart and Bronze Star for his Marine service in Vietnam in the 1960s, believes political considerations have already played too large a role in the debate. In November, after Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) announced his support for a rapid withdrawal from Iraq, Republican leaders hastily pushed a resolution to the House floor calling for immediate pull-out. But the cursory two-hour debate was noteworthy less for serious policy discourse than for the suggestion by the House's newest member, Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-Ohio), that Murtha, a decorated war veteran, was a coward.

"It was ludicrous," Gilchrest said. "It had nothing to do with saving lives. It had nothing to do with the war. It was one-upsmanship against the Democrats."

That sentiment spurred Gilchrest and four other Republicans to break with their leadership this spring and sign on to a Democratic petition pushing for debate. Boehner pledged to do so weeks ago.

But GOP leaders are trying to make sure today's debate is on Republican terms. The resolution, "declaring that the United States will prevail in the Global War on Terror [and] the struggle to protect freedom from the terrorist adversary," was introduced with unabashed partisan overtones. The rules of debate will not allow the resolution to be amended, nor will alternative resolutions be allowed on the floor for a vote.

Some war opponents -- sensing a political trap -- vowed yesterday not to participate. Five House members -- three Democrats and two Republicans -- held a news conference with a yellow rope tied around their hands to denounce the terms of debate.

"This is nothing more or less than really a charade," said Rep. Walter B. Jones Jr. (R-N.C.), who made headlines in the run-up to the Iraq invasion by changing french fries to "freedom fries" in the House dining room but has since turned strongly against the war.

Moving away from the propaganda industry, Russia has decided that the next time they have a Chernobyl disaster, it would be fun to have it at sea - so a floating reactor is being constructed in the arctic.

Rosenergoatom chief Sergei Obozov said the plant was the ideal solution for providing power to remote Arctic sites. He said Russian authorities were looking at 11 other possible sites for such reactors, and that customers from abroad were already interested in the technology.

Environmentalists have been highly critical of the proposals. Charles Digges, editor of the Norwegian-based Bellona website, told the Associated Press that floating nuclear plants were "absolutely unsafe - inherently so". "There are risks of the unit itself sinking, there are risks in towing the units to where they need to be," he said.

But Sergei Kiriyenko, head of Russia's Federal Atomic Power Agency, dismissed such concerns, saying the country had more experience of building nuclear submarines than any other in the world. "There will be no floating Chernobyl," he said, according to the Russian Itar-Tass news agency, referring to the the world's worst ever nuclear accident, which took place in 1986 in Ukraine.

Russia currently generates up to 17% of its electricity from 31 reactors at 10 sites, and President Vladimir Putin has said he would like to increase the figure to a quarter.

Rigzone reports that high oil prices have failed to increase production in Asia.

Asia's expanded oil drilling, spurred by record prices, has failed to increase supplies and ease the region's growing reliance on the Middle East, Fereidun Fesharaki, chief executive officer at the oil consultancy Facts, said Monday at the Asia Oil & Gas Conference.

Fesharaki, who is presiding over the conference, said that Saudi Arabia, Iran, and other Middle East producers will provide 70 percent
of any additional oil demand over the next five years. Asia's annual oil demand may grow as much as 800,000 barrels a day, more than double Sweden's consumption, he said.

"Higher prices have kept production flat" in Asia, Fesharaki said. "If prices were any lower, there would definitely be a decline" in output.

...

Increased spending in Asia by explorers such as Shell, ExxonMobil, and Chevron reflect soaring costs as they chase oil in deeper waters offshore and prices of steel and raw materials rise.

"The spending will go up, but I don't think they're drilling more wells," David Morrison, chairman of Wood Mackenzie, an oil consultancy, said in an interview in Kuala Lumpur on Sunday. It's because of "the cost inflation in the service sector."

Costs for the Shell-led Sakhalin II oil and gas project in Russia doubled to $20 billion because of higher contractor rates and prices for raw materials.

The company, based in The Hague, said last month that it may not meet a target of replacing all the oil and gas it pumps because rising costs were forcing it to hold back on some projects.

"Costs to find, develop, and produce oil and gas has increased by an average of 50 percent over the last two years," said Hassan Marican, chief executive of Petronas, Malaysia's state- run oil company. "The increase in capital expenditure and shortage in capacity in contracting services may result in the deferment and delays of some projects."

Also at Rigzone - Global Energy Crisis Cooks to Surface, Energy Security Tops EU's Foreign Policy Agenda and Once in Nigeria, ExxonMobil Assets Now in Cameroon.

The growing scarcity of oil and natural gas has provoked worldwide political conflict and a mad rush for renewable resources.

Like a volcano before it erupts, the crisis has heated up for decades, out of sight of oil-heated homes and petrol-powered cars. But the signs of trouble are now evident, and not only at the pump, where $70-a-barrel prices eat into the pocketbook.

War in Iraq, tensions over Iran's nuclear plans, the international standoff over genocide in Sudan, kidnappings and killings in Nigeria's oil fields--all give frenzied expression to the world's rocketing, insatiable thirst for oil.

German media talk of a "new" Cold War. U.S. columnist Thomas Friedman regularly warns New York Times readers that America's appetite for fuel supports the very movements intent on its destruction.

At the upcoming G8 summit in St. Petersburg in July, energy issues are expected to dominate. With just weeks to spare beforehand, the European Union--which has haggled for years over a unified strategy --is expected to agree later this month to nail down an energy cooperation deal with Moscow and start talking to China.

...

As pressure has grown, so have opportunistic political alliances.

The U.S., where imports make up 60 percent of consumption, gave full official backing to the $3.6-billion, 1,800-kilometer Trans-Caucasus oil line from the Caspian to the Mediterranean last year--even though the project originates in Azerbaijan, targeted by the U.S. for its human rights violations. The U.S. hopes the Baku-to- Ceyhan,Turkey line, which bypasses Russia, will undermine the region's dependence on Iranian oil.

China has vigorously cultivated ties to Africa and Venezuela for energy resources, and it has drawn criticism for taking a softer line on Sudan and Iran by opposing sanctions and ultimatums at the U.N. Security Council.

India's about-face on Myanmar, where it has dropped its support for the democracy movement and now courts the military junta, has provoked outcries at home from democracy activists. Investments by the state-run ONGC Videsh, Ltd. (OVL) in Sudan, where the government has been charged with genocide in the rebellious Darfur region, have also drawn fire.

The looming specter of "peak oil production"--the point at which oil production is expected to drop because reserves are too difficult to pump out--has combined with high prices and increasing political insecurity to boost the search for renewable energy sources. Oil experts say peak oil could come as early as 2010 or as late as 2047.

TreeHugger points to Steven Colbert interviewing Tim Flannery.

Tim Flannery, author of the Weather Makers, was interviewed on the Colbert Report yesterday. Colbert was glad to see him, because being from Australia he is a member of that small club of Kyoto rejecting countries, the Coalition of the Willing to Burn Fossil Fuels. It is very funny.

And to close, as usual, Billmon.

In the aftermath of the three suicides at the notorious Guantanamo prison facility in Cuba last Saturday, reporters with the Los Angeles Times and the Miami Herald were ordered by the office of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to leave the island today . . . The Pentagon spokesman told E&P that Rumsfeld's office was overruling any of the permissions from military at the base.

Editor & Publisher
Pentagon Orders U.S. Reporters to Exit Guantanamo
June 14, 2006


I have no doubt that free and well-informed people can and will sift through the increasing volumes of information and over time develop a balanced view of our government, our Armed Forces, and our values and principles.

Donald Rumsfeld
War of the Words
July 18, 2005

That must be what he's afraid of.

Posted by Big Gav at 11:42 PM | Permalink | Comments

Now, you might think with a title like that that I might be exaggerating a little.

But you'd be wrong - reports indicate that polar bears have been forced to find new food sources as sea ice shrinks - including each other (Grist says Let's Feed Them Some Oil Execs).

Polar bears in the southern Beaufort Sea may be turning to cannibalism because longer seasons without ice keep them from getting to their natural food, a new study by American and Canadian scientists has found.

The study reviewed three examples of polar bears preying on each other from January to April 2004 north of Alaska and western Canada, including the first-ever reported killing of a female in a den shortly after it gave birth.

Environmentalists contend shrinking polar ice due to global warming may lead to the disappearance of polar bears before the end of the century.

The Center for Biological Diversity of Joshua Tree, Calif., in February 2005 petitioned the federal government to list polar bears as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act.

Cannibalism demonstrates the effect on bears, said Kassie Siegal, lead author of the petition. "It's very important new information," she said. "It shows in a really graphic way how severe the problem of global warming is for polar bears."

Deborah Williams of Alaska Conservation Solutions, a group aimed at pursuing solutions for climate change, said the study represents the "bloody fingerprints" of global warming.

African leaders are looking to raise food production by trying to kick start the "green" revolution on the continent via efforts to make fertiliser less expensive. In a near peak world this wouldn't seem to be such a great idea.

African leaders recommended on Tuesday scrapping taxes on fertilizers as one of 12 key measures to foster a "Green Revolution" in farming and reduce hunger in the poorest continent.

One third of sub-Saharan Africans face recurrent famine and under-nutrition and experts say this is due partly to a worsening problem of soil depletion, which occurs when farmland loses more nutrients than are being replaced.

"Population pressure now compels farmers to grow crop after crop thereby mining the soil of nutrients," Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo told heads of state and farming ministers from across Africa at a summit to address the crisis.

The modernization of farming techniques and increased fertilizer use spurred Green Revolutions in Asia and Latin America in the 1950s and 1960s that increased crop yields dramatically and eradicated hunger in most regions.

But in Africa, where many farmers cannot afford fertilizer, yields per person have fallen over the last 40 years and experts warn that if soil depletion continues unabated, they will decline by up to 30 percent over the next 15 years.

To avoid this, the heads of state pledged to reduce the cost of fertilizer by harmonizing taxes and tariffs across the continent by mid-2007.

...

The financing mechanism would help farmers obtain fertilizer but would also aim to foster local production. Africa has 60 percent of world reserves of phosphate, a key ingredient, but produces hardly any fertilizer. As things stand, Africans pay up to six times the average world price for their fertilizers because of transport costs.

Fertilizer use is negligible and most of it is for cash crops. Subsistence farmers are not replacing the nutrients they harvest along with each successive crop. This means the land eventually becomes barren, forcing farmers to clear new lands for cultivation.

Studies show that 70 percent of deforestation in Africa is done by farmers clearing new fields, while soil depletion also accelerates desertification, which affects half of Africa.

While an African might say that fertiliser would be much more available locally
if Africa was able to export less of their hydrocarbons, the IMF would
frown upon this sort of thinking (and further repercussions would probably eventuate should any African leader try to implement such a strategy).

While Mr de Rato did not name countries, a number of international institutions are concerned China is undermining the market by signing bilateral energy security agreements, including with Russia, Nigeria and India.

"We have to avoid the risk of energy protectionism in which some countries will try to secure their oil needs by agreeing to contracts that are not transparent without having a true … global oil market," he said.

Officials are also concerned at the nationalisation of oil companies in Bolivia, Venezuela and Ecuador, which has encouraged under-investment.

And they are concerned that governance and transparency could be deteriorating in the state-owned or influenced oil companies that proliferate in Russia, South America, Mexico and elsewhere.

While state-owned oil producers were underinvesting in new production (with the exception of Saudi Arabia), Mr de Rato said oil-consuming countries were hurting themselves.

Of course, there are other mistakes that Africans could make besides making their agricultural system dependent on petrochemicals or daring to nationalise their oil and gas - they could buy some of those GM "pest resistant" seeds and make themselves slaves of Monsanto while their insect population grows fat.

Genetically modified crops specially engineered to kill pests in fact nourish them, startling new research has revealed. The research - which has taken even the most ardent opponents of GM crops by surprise - radically undermines one of the key benefits claimed for them. And it suggests that they may be an even greater threat to organic farming than has been envisaged. It strikes at the heart of one of the main lines of current genetic engineering in agriculture: breeding crops that come equipped with their own pesticide.

Drawbacks have already emerged, with pests becoming resistant to the toxin. Environmentalists say that resistance develops all the faster because the insects are constantly exposed to it in the plants, rather than being subject to occasional spraying.

But the new research - by scientists at Imperial College London and the Universidad Simon Rodrigues in Caracas, Venezuela - adds an alarming new twist, suggesting that pests can actually use the poison as a food and that the crops, rather than automatically controlling them, can actually help them to thrive.

Steven Hawking thinks we (humanity) are a bunch of dangerous loons and we'd be well advised to shift some of the population off the planet if we want to avoid extinction.

Hawking said that if humans can avoid killing themselves in the next 100 years, they should have space settlements that can continue without support from Earth.

"It is important for the human race to spread out into space for the survival of the species," Hawking said. "Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of."

While global markets are deep in a bout of fear and loathing (partially driven by the effects of high oil prices finally kicking in), BP's John Browne is predicting cheap oil for all is just around the corner (strangely enough I remember him saying much the same thing 18 months ago).

OIL prices could drop to about $US40 a barrel in the medium term as new supplies are found, and might fall even further in the long run, according to the chief executive of BP.

But Lord Browne cautioned that "we cannot really expect that prices will drop back sharply in the short term", in an interview published on Monday in the German weekly, Der Spiegel.

He said large new oilfields were still being found and regions such as West Africa had significant oil supplies.

Lord Browne said sources such as Canada's oil sands also could be tapped profitably, adding that production costs still amounted only to a small proportion of the price. "It is very likely that, in the medium term, prices will stand at about $US40 on average," Lord Browne was quoted as saying.

"In the very long run, even $US25 to $US30 are possible."

George Monbiot says Behind the spin, the oil giants are more dangerous than ever.

For a company that claims to have moved "beyond petroleum", BP has managed to spill an awful lot of it on to the tundra in Alaska. Last week, after the news was leaked to journalists, it admitted to investors that it is facing criminal charges for allowing 270,000 gallons of crude oil to seep across one of the world's most sensitive habitats. The incident was so serious that some of its staff could be sent to prison.

Had this been Exxon, the epitome of sneering corporate brutality, the news would have surprised no one. But BP's rebranding, like Shell's, has been so effective that you could be forgiven for believing that it had become an environmental pressure group. These companies have used the vast profits from their petroleum business to create the impression that they are abandoning it.

Shell's adverts feature photos of its technologists in open-necked shirts and showing perfect teeth (which proves they can't be real greens). They tell stories of their brave experiments with wind power, hydrogen, biofuels and natural gas. The chairman of Shell UK was one of the 14 signatories to a letter sent by businesses to Tony Blair a week ago, calling for the government to exercise "bold leadership on domestic climate change policy" in order to speed "the transition to a low-carbon economy".

BP's adverts tell the same story, illustrated with its logo - a kind of green and yellow sunflower which looks rather like the Green party's. So what on earth was it doing in Alaska, messing around with crude oil? Don't its filling stations now dispense pure carrot juice?

Admittedly BP's latest campaign, "exploring new ways to live without" oil, was prefaced with adverts boasting about its new means of finding the stuff. "By developing innovative technology like BP's Advanced Seismic Imaging, we've been able to make discoveries that were unthinkable only a decade ago." But even this campaign seeks to answer an environmental concern.

For the past two or three years, environmentalists (myself included) have been publicising the idea that global oil production might soon peak and then go into decline. This possibility helps to demonstrate, we argue, that our dependence on oil is unsustainable, and we must find means of giving it up. The oil companies have seized our arguments and are using them for the opposite purpose: if oil supplies are in danger, they must be permitted to prospect in new places.

Whatever happens, they can't lose.

Past Peak notes that Ian Campbell isn't the only politician intent on sabotaging clean wind power.

It takes some energy to build, transport, install, and maintain wind turbines, yes, but after that wind power is basically energy for free. No carbon emissions, no pollution. Who could oppose it? Chicago Tribune:

The federal government has stopped work on more than a dozen wind farms planned across the Midwest, saying research is needed on whether the giant turbines could interfere with military radar.

But backers of wind power say the action has little to do with national security. The real issue, they say, is a group of wealthy vacationers who think a proposed wind farm off the coast of Cape Cod in Massachusetts would spoil the view at their summer homes.

Opponents of the Cape Wind project include several influential members of Congress. Critics say their latest attempt to thwart the planting of 130 turbines in Nantucket Sound has led to a moratorium on new wind farms hundreds of miles away in Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota.

Federal officials declined to reveal how many stop-work orders have been sent out. But developers said that at least 15 wind farm proposals in the Midwest have been shut down by the Federal Aviation Administration since the start of the year.

The list of stalled projects includes one outside Bloomington, Ill., that would be the nation's largest source of wind energy, generating enough juice to power 120,000 homes in the Chicago area. The developer had planned to begin installing turbines this summer and start up the farm next year.

Groovy Green has a look at Volvo's new flex fuel vehicle.

Think picking the color of your new car is tough? Try picking a car that will still be road-worthy 20 years from now and use the latest and greatest in alternative fuel technology. Well, Volvo–the leader in ‘inherited’ vehicles–is solving that problem with a concept car that runs on FIVE different fuels. “The Volvo Multi-Fuel is a five-cylinder, 2.0-litre prototype car (200 bhp) that runs on five different fuels; hythane (10% hydrogen and 90% methane), biomethane, natural gas (CNG), bioethanol E85 (85% bioethanol and 15% petrol) and petrol.”

This feature effectively allows you to run your car on any fuel source, anywhere in the world. “The idea is to make use of the fuels that are produced locally, says Mats Morén. This means that less fuel needs to be transported between continents, and you can fill up the car on the fuel that is available wherever you are.”

Crooked Timber has a post on the Orwellian police state we're now living in - We Could Tell You Why It’s Legal But Then We’d Have to Kill You.

One of my most-disliked cliches is the term Kafkaesque – most things that are described as being so really aren’t. But it’s hard not to think of The Trial when reading this.

A National Security Agency program that listens in on international communications involving people in the United States is both vital to national security and permitted by the Constitution, a government lawyer told a judge here today in the first major court argument on the program. But, the lawyer went on, addressing Judge Anna Diggs Taylor of the Federal District Court, “the evidence we need to demonstrate to you that it lawful cannot be disclosed without that process itself causing grave harm to United States national security.” The only solution to this impasse, the lawyer, Anthony J. Coppolino, said, was for Judge Taylor to dismiss the lawsuit before her, an American Civil Liberties Union challenge to the eavesdropping program, under the state secrets privilege.

As one commenter noted:

You left out the best part—the secret brief!

Even portions of the government’s brief that were said to demonstrate why further information about the program cannot be disclosed have not been filed in court. Instead, the government “lodged” the brief and other classified papers at the Justice Department in Washington, inviting Judge Taylor to make arrangements to see them. At today’s hearing, she shook her head no when Mr. Coppolino asked her whether she had “had a chance to review our classified submission.”

The plaintiffs can’t see the brief and its super-secret arguments (& thus must argue against an invisible adversary). Nor can the judge, unless she flies to D.C. to visit the Chamber of Secrets.

Mobjectivist has a link to a PZ Myers article thrashing a libertarian strawman.

LIB: Isn't this wonderful? I have a desire to drive, and sufficient surplus income to purchase a vehicle, and the market and technology provide me with one. Praise Jesus! Praise Adam Smith!

SCI: Uh, yeah, OK...but you know, the way you're driving is neither safe nor economical. Could you maybe slow down a little?

LIB: I decide what is economical; I can afford the gas. As for safety, I have insurance, and the little whatchamacallit meter in front of me goes all the way up to 140. I haven't exceeded the limit yet.

SCI: What you can do and what is safe and reasonable to do are two different things. If you want to experience natural selection first hand, that would be OK with me, except for the fact that we're both in the same car.
By the way, that's a lake a couple of miles ahead, and you're headed straight for it.

LIB: Lake? We haven't encountered any lakes in our travels so far. We don't have to worry about lakes. History is our guide, and it clearly says, "no lakes".

SCI: Well, yes, there's a lake right there in front of us. You can see it as well as I can, I hope. It's even marked right here on our map. I suggest you turn left just a little bit and steer clear of it.

LIB: Oh, you pessimistic doomsayers. You're always gloomily predicting our demise, and you're always wrong. We hit a mud puddle a few miles back, and see? No problems.

SCI: I'm only predicting doom if you keep driving as foolishly as you have so far. I suggest that we start on this alternate route now, so that we don't have to swerve too sharply at the last minute.

LIB: There is no lake. I like driving fast and straight. The last thing I want to do is turn left.

SCI: What do you mean, there is no lake? It's right there! And we are getting closer by the minute! Why are you accelerating?

LIB: That there is a lake is only your opinion. We need to study this, and get more input.
(LIB reaches down beneath the seat. His hand reemerges with a sock over it.)

SOCK: No lake!

LIB: Hmmm. We seem to have two opinions here. Since Mr Socky has taken economic considerations into account and you have not, I can judge which is the better and more informed. Sound science says there is no lake. Or if there is, we can accept the compromise solution that it will disappear before we reach it.

SCI: We are headed for that lake at 80 miles per hour, in a car driven by a lunatic. Slow down and turn left!

LIB: I am confident that our innovative and technologically sophisticated economy will come up with a solution before we impact any hypothetical lake. Right, Mr Socky?

SOCK: 's alright!

SCI: I have been telling you what the solution is for the last 3 miles. Slow down. Turn. Now. How is science going to save you if you insist on ignoring it?

LIB: Aha! Look! There's a pier extending out into the lake! I told you that technology would be our salvation. You scientists always underestimate the power of the free market.

SCI: Jebus. That's a rickety 40-foot wooden dock. You can't drive at 90 miles per hour onto a short pier! BRAKE! TURN!

LIB: You are getting emotional, and can be ignored. Market forces and the science and engineering sector will respond to our needs by assembling a floating bridge before we hit the end. Or perhaps they will redesign our car to fly. Or dispatch a ferry or submarine to our location. We cannot predict the specific solution, but we can trust that one will emerge.

SCI: Gobdamn, but you are such a moron.

(car tires begin rapid thumpety-thump as they go over planks)

LIB: I love you, Mr Socky.

SOCK: Ditto!

While there are plenty of free market fundamentalists in the US who seem to fit into this caricature, I should note that we aren't all like that (something Lou Grinzo frequently has to say about economists as well). In fact, I'd be willing to bet a fair proportion of the supposed libertarians who fit into this mould also support Bush's police state and endless "war on terror / war for oil", which would make them fascists in my book.

As a couple of commenters put it:

Hey, not all libertarians are nuts. ... The important thing about the libertarian philosophy is that people should be left alone to do their own thing, but not to the detriment of others. Some people conveniently ignore that last bit. It's not so simple as they'd like.

...

Libertarians (real ones) tend also to be civil libertarians. There is a deep pool of self-identified conservatives who are deeply upset by the wiretaps, by the gay marriage attacks, and similar government intrusions into the daily lives of ordinary people.

In other words, I'd take an economically conservative socially liberal libertarian anyday over the so called conservatives we have now, who want nothing more than to spy on us and control our bedrooms, in addition to raping the planet and forcing millions into poverty.

While on the topic of non-authoritarian philosophies, the recent saga of the Swedish file sharing Vikings at The Pirate Bay prompted this revivial of Hakim Bey's Temporary Autonomous Zone.

THE SEA-ROVERS AND CORSAIRS of the 18th century created an "information network" that spanned the globe: primitive and devoted primarily to grim business, the net nevertheless functioned admirably. Scattered throughout the net were islands, remote hideouts where ships could be watered and provisioned, booty traded for luxuries and necessities. Some of these islands supported "intentional communities," whole mini-societies living consciously outside the law and determined to keep it up, even if only for a short but merry life.

Some years ago I looked through a lot of secondary material on piracy hoping to find a study of these enclaves--but it appeared as if no historian has yet found them worthy of analysis. (William Burroughs has mentioned the subject, as did the late British anarchist Larry Law--but no systematic research has been carried out.) I retreated to primary sources and constructed my own theory, some aspects of which will be discussed in this essay. I called the settlements "Pirate Utopias."

Recently Bruce Sterling, one of the leading exponents of Cyberpunk science fiction, published a near-future romance based on the assumption that the decay of political systems will lead to a decentralized proliferation of experiments in living: giant worker-owned corporations, independent enclaves devoted to "data piracy," Green-Social-Democrat enclaves, Zerowork enclaves, anarchist liberated zones, etc. The information economy which supports this diversity is called the Net; the enclaves (and the book's title) are Islands in the Net.

The medieval Assassins founded a "State" which consisted of a network of remote mountain valleys and castles, separated by thousands of miles, strategically invulnerable to invasion, connected by the information flow of secret agents, at war with all governments, and devoted only to knowledge. Modern technology, culminating in the spy satellite, makes this kind of autonomy a romantic dream. No more pirate islands! In the future the same technology-- freed from all political control--could make possible an entire world of autonomous zones. But for now the concept remains precisely science fiction--pure speculation.

I'm quite looking forward to Andrew Denton's forthcoming documentary on George Bush - "God On My Side".

Denton shot the 72-minute documentary in February, travelling to Texas in the United States, and has spent the past few months in post-production.

The film was shot at America's annual National Religious Broadcasters' Convention.

"I guess it was a bit of guerilla documentary making," he said.

"We had four days in which to shoot and the aim was to go into George Bush's heartland but not in a political way, to come at it through a question of faith.

"As religion and politics are mixing in increasingly potent measures around the world, we thought it was very interesting to go and look at Christian fundamentalism."

And I'll close with my customary quote from that great fan of Mr Bush and his merry band of fundamentalists - Billmon.

We can only guess whether Shrub's secret repeat visit to Iraq was dreamed up before the Abu Zarqawi Hour went off the air, as the White House claims, or whether the trip was actually thrown together on the fly in an effort to milk a little more free publicity from the final episode. Either way, the stunt revealed as much about the depleted state of the Cheney administration's bag of propaganda tricks as it did about the gang's determination to keep pouring blood and treasure into the world's largest hole in the desert.

Sending America's titular head of state to Baghdad the first time, to celebrate Thanksgiving with the troops in 2003, was a clever stroke -- just the thing to distract the media from the rapidly deteriorating security situation, which only a few weeks before had sent generals and diplomats (including the current president of the World Bank) scurrying for cover in their underwear.

Of course, simply waving a shiny metal object in front of the White House press corps probably would have been just as effective, not to mention a whole lot cheaper for the taxpayers, but you still can't argue with the results: saturation coverage of the world's biggest Thanksgiving turkey -- serving dinner to a bunch of grinning GIs.

...

Bush invites critics to discuss war

Looking for new ideas on Iraq, President Bush sought advice from his critics Monday at an unusual two-day war council.

The headline alone probably gave Dan Bartlett an orgasm. See? Bush is not trapped in an airtight bubble of self-regard. He listens to people, even when they disagree with him. Why he probably only gave them the finger once or twice.

But here's who Hutchenson (and the White House) consider "the critics":

In addition to [Fred] Kagan, Bush heard from Eliot Cohen, a professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins University, journalist Robert Kaplan and former CIA officer Michael Vickers, who now is with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

We're talking, in other words, about the same neocon assclowns who got us into Iraq in the first place, who made a complete mess out of the initial occupation with their idiotic, Israel-centric views about what's wrong with the Arabs, and who've been consistently clueless about every single policy issue they've opened their freaking pieholes about -- and they open them so often they've got pie filling permanently dribbling down their chins. To call these guys war "critics" is like calling Typhoid Mary a "critic" of 19th century hygiene standards.

If Bush called in people like Gen. Zinni or William Lind or Ahmed Hashim or Andrew Bacevich (in other words, people who actually know what they're talking about) and listened to what they had to say, instead of spouting self-serving nonsense in their faces for 10 minutes and then shooing them out of the Oval Office, that would be taking advice from his critics. What Hutcheson is talking about is offering olive branches to the same neocon mafia that has virtually wrecked Bush's presidency. And yet somehow the White House propaganda department convinced Hutchenson to toe the party line, right down to the millimeter.

Posted by Big Gav at 11:20 PM | Permalink | Comments

WorldChanging has a post on FEASTA's paper on the debatable EROEI of nuclear power.

We've covered the argument that nuclear is not a climate-friendly energy source before, but here's new evidence -- a paper from the Irish sustainability thinktank Feasta, titled Why Nuclear Power Cannot Be a Major Energy Source:

The advantage of nuclear power in producing lower carbon emissions holds true only as long as supplies of rich uranium last. When the leaner ores are used - that is, ores consisting of less than 0.01 percent (for soft rocks such as sandstone) and 0.02 percent (for hard rocks such as granite), so much energy is required by the milling process that the total quantity of fossil fuels needed for nuclear fission is greater than would be needed if those fuels were used directly to generate electricity. In other words, when it is forced to use ore of around this quality or worse, nuclear power begins to slip into a negative energy balance: more energy goes in than comes out, and more carbon dioxide is produced by nuclear power than by the fossil-fuel alternatives.

Add to these concerns the carbon costs of building, maintaining and securing reactors, and shipping, processing and storing (for thousands of years) the waste created, and the carbon benefits of nuclear energy completely disappear, and, indeed nukes start to look not only dangerous but downright polluting.

TreeHugger has a post on the Worldwatch Institute's enthusiasm for biofuels.

Worldwatch Institute and it's partner organizations have just published the epic: “Biofuels for Transportation: Global Potential and Implications for Sustainable Agriculture and Energy in the 21st Century” TreeHugger is pleased to promote this seminal work for several reasons. The study is circumspect and forward-looking. It sets a baseline for understanding choices for public policy development and private investment. And, joint sponsorship by a consortium makes it harder to spin. Finally, it gives those of you who love to comment on this stuff (you know who you are) a chance to be as happy as kids at a party for awhile. So without further ado, click down and have a look at some cool graphs and then download the extended report summary from Worldwatch. You’ll be glad you did.

Also, at TreeHugger, more on "An Inconvenient Truth".

Yesterday afternoon, Al Gore and MoveOn.org's Executive Director, Eli Pariser, sat down for a conference call to chat about An Inconvenient Truth, climate change and how to enable a cooling globe, and TreeHugger was on the call. It was great to have the opportunity to engage the man behind the slideshow, and get in to some of the details surrounding his slideshow, the film, and what to do about it all. Among the more poignant things he said was that the necessary force to change the way the world works must come from the grassroots level, and that climate change has moved beyond just being a political issue; it is instead a moral issue that we must all be responsible for handling. He is proudly "climate-neutral" (meaning that he's bought enough "green tags" or renewable energy certificates to offset whatever carbon emissions he's responsible for) and encourages everyone, from individuals to businesses to governments, to do the same. He has advice for those of us who can't offset everything, or are too young to vote:

"Arm yourself with the knowledge. Go to the movie. Read the book. Go to the website. Find out how to be a part of the solution. Bear in mind that often in America, young people have led the way to social change...". He'll also be working in Tennessee this summer to train over 1000 people to do his slideshow (with their own personal touches), so that they can follow in his footsteps and take it on the road. Until then, be sure to get yourself to his movie.

If you're interested in algae to biodiesel techniques, Oilgae is a great resource.

Crikey has a post called "Solar on the roof, no nukes next door" - about the experiences of a couple who have built a sustainable house.

On 4 April 1996 Stuart McQuire and Wendy Orams switched their house to solar power. It was the first house in Victoria and second in Australia to have grid-connected solar power. Ten years on Stuart tells us how the solar has performed.

With increasing concern about fossil fuels leading to global warming, and with some corporate and government interests pursuing a nuclear future, we're keen to share our experience of solar electricity.

It works! Each year now for ten years in a row our house has had a surplus of solar power by generating more electricity than the household has used. We receive a credit for putting electricity back into the grid and it's put an end to us paying for electricity.

While it may be difficult to find people who want to live next door to nuclear power stations, there is no shortage of suburban rooftops suitable for solar power stations. Grid connected solar electricity systems are priced from around $5,000, while one that generates a similar amount as our average electricity consumption would cost less than $12,000 (after government rebate). This is a capital cost of about $2.30 per day, or less than the price of a cup of coffee at a cafe. For that you can have a solar power station on your roof, generating the premium green power and cutting your electricity bill.

The benefits go beyond free electricity. Solar power is the premium green power because it is renewable, abundant and non-polluting. Unlike electricity from coal, there's no smoke and no greenhouse gases. Unlike electricity from nuclear power, there's is no radioactive legacy for future generations.

Solar electricity panels pay off their energy debt (ie the amount of energy needed to make them) in 18 months to two years. A further benefit of solar electricity systems is that they generate electricity right at the time when there is peak demand – on hot days in summer. Little or no maintenance is required and the solar panels are designed to last at least two decades.

Ideally a premium rate would be paid for the buy-back of solar electricity put back into the grid. The most successful schemes overseas have used such incentives to encourage the installation of solar electricity. Japan and Germany have led the way, and in 2005 Germany installed over half of all the solar photovoltaic panels installed worldwide. The equivalent of over 400,000 systems the size of our two-kilowatt system were installed in Germany last year.

Also at Crikey - some advice for Lord Downer of Baghdad in "The last of the Neo-Cons".

Neoconservativism may never be dead while Alexander Downer lives, but will he be the last of this dying breed?

Today's Australian reports that Downer "has outlined an agenda that mirrors the US neoconservative approach that argued for the invasion of Iraq on the grounds of the national self-interest in building stability and democracy in the surrounding region".

The article goes on to report that foreign policy realist Owen Harries (a "Yes, Minister" fan surely) thinks the Downer approach shows "boldness and courage". That's one way of describing it, given events in Iraq and the rush of neoconservatives, and their conservative and liberal hawk allies, to leave that particular burning building.

The New York Times' Frances Fukuyama famously got out in February, a move that had Jacob Weisberg in Slate contemplating "the neoconservative tragedy". Buckley, Hari, Packer, Sullivan and Will are just some of the better known names to have declared Iraq a failed experiment.

On the same day that Downer is rushing back into the flames, another vigorous supporter of the neocon's Iraq misadventure, John Derbyshire in National Review Online, begs to be allowed " ... to eat crow"; former former speechwriter to Ronald Reagan, SJ Masty, writes in The Times that the West is losing the war on terror because of policies such as those that Downer advocates; and Jonathan Rauch in Reason urges a return to foreign policy "realism" of the type advocated, pre-invasion, by Harries.

Perhaps Downer knows something no-one else does? If so, it's a secret he should share. Either that, or he is painfully slow to learn.

While nuclear power is largely a collosal waste of money except for densely populated countries with few renewable alternatives, there is enough of a lemming like rush for the radioactive cliffs to make uranium mining a lucrative prospect for the time being. The Real Deal takes a look at Russia's latest option for bending the West over the energy supply barrel - uranium. If only those foolish "conservatives" would adopt the less risky renewable alternative...

Interesting article about how the Russians are thinking of withholding uranium from the weapons dismantling program and using the fuel for their market. In reality it probably has more to do with the fact the uranium price is up over 400% since they signed the deal. The thing that could spike uranium is the fact that US utilities get 50% of their uranium fuel from this Russian program.

Will we see a dramatic spike in uranium prices this summer? Some industry insiders have forecast spikes that could send uranium soaring to between $55 and $100/pound. Most were not expecting this to occur during 2006. However, there are several reasons we believe something could crack wide open in the uranium market over the next 100 days.

Lets take the Russian situation. U.S. utilities have been somewhat lackadaisical about uranium pricing because theyve been getting Russian uranium on the cheap. Russias Rosatom head Sergei Kiriyenko has reportedly told U.S. utilities there will be no HEU-2 deal. Whether this is a ploy to extract a better deal for Russia, or Russias announcement it will feed other nuclear-ambitious countries with its uranium is not known.

U.S. utilities are now lobbying the U.S. Commerce Department to end the restrictions on importing enriched Russian uranium. They like the pricing, and are now arguing that higher uranium prices are jeopardizing the nuclear renaissance in the United States.

Analysis: Based on what happened with Yuganskneftegaz I would assume, if I were a US utility executive, that Putin will stick in and break it off.

U.S. utilities are now being fed about 50 percent of their nuclear fuel from decommissioned Russian warheads. Russia is more than a tad upset because the deal they made does not reflect the current spot or long-term price of uranium. Something will likely occur at the G8 Summit in St. Petersburg, Russia on July 14-17. Russia will chair this summit for the first time.

Russias desire for a uranium/nuclear monopoly, hurricanes, tight supplies through the summer and the likelihood of yet another energy crisis before Labor Day could spell a significant boost in spot uranium pricing. It would not surprise us should spot uranium trade closer to $60/pound over the next 100 days. Any shock event could spike the spot uranium price above that level, and possibly make a run for $100/pound uranium.

Analysis: Uranium is already in a supply deficit. Now the Russians are going to throw some gas on the fire. Buy uranium stocks with NI 43-101 compliant reserves. You will make money, lots of it.

And finally, go check out Billmon on Base Motives (we all know the US doesn't want to establish permanent military bases in Iraq to control all that oil - we've been told repeatedly after all) and one for the gamers - Mortal Combat II: The Sermon on the Mount.

Q: Why does this game have to contain violence at all? Why is it necessary for a fun and successful game?

A: Violence is not required to make a fun game. However, it is required to make a game about the end of the world in the Left Behind book series.

Left Behind Games
Mainstream Media FAQ

You know, I really couldn't have put it better myself.

So what's next?

Mortal Combat II: The Sermon on the Mount

The meek shall inherit the earth -- but only if Jesus and his disciples can annihilate the Roman legions and kill the evil Pharisees before Judas unleashes his Uzi-toting demons from the pits of hell! This action-packed thriller puts you in the divine driver's seat as you lead your elite squad of battle-hardened apostles in an all-out assault on Fortress Jerusalem -- lair of the mighty Pilatebot. The optional loaves and fishes plug-in gives you unlimited firepower from a single ammo clip and the ability to turn water into a tasteless, odorless nerve toxin! Hours of fun for the whole family!

Posted by Big Gav at 10:12 PM | Permalink | Comments

Just a short post tonight - see the link bucket if you're hungry for more.



From Bruce's latest "Viridian Note" (I'll rip off the whole thing as his style sort of defies any sort of targetted quoting by me - he does seem to be absorbing some peak oil memes lately judging by some of the phrasing - along with the more obvious references).

Bruce's vision of the future - haute green (for the top of the pyramid), corporate green (for us functionaries in the outer party) and khaki green and the ninth ward (for everyone else - except those beyond the reach of any state - where its "Long Emergency and Planet of Slums"):

Key concepts:
corporations, capitalism, environmental damage, mega-catastrophes, the impossibility of making any serious money in a wrecked civilization.

Attention Conservation Notice:
What if the world becomes "green" and yet is even more ruthlessly liberal-capitalist than it is today?

Links:

Making fuel cells in fabricators. Huh. That sounds like it oughta be good for something-or-other.

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9584_22-6078124.html

Meanwhile, in Europe, they're turning "wine lakes" into fuel. Top it off with Chardonnay, please.

http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/36714/story.htm

The aesthetics of wind farms.

http://www.designobserver.com/archives/014344.html#more

World's largest and oldest known living creature. Seaweed.

http://newsnotwanted.blogspot.com/2006/05/worlds-largest-living-creature.html

GE is making rather a lot of money from its "Ecomagination" pitch, which wasn't too difficult, given that fossil energy costs have skyrocketed since they first foresightfully proposed this.

http://renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=44960
http://www.ge.com/en/citizenship/customers/markets/ecomagination.htm

You have to wonder why lefties are still anachronistically concerned with 'corporate dominance' when fundie lunatics run Washington and guys like Mike Davis are championing tomorrow's 'planet of slums' swarming with billions of starving, heavily armed terrorist lumpenproletariat. The "gods of chaos" are on their side! Thanks for the tip, Mike! Even peak-oil guys must quail at this dire prospect.

http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/interview-with-mike-davis-part-1.html

So, when the next "megacat" hits the Gulf Coast, who would you most want to see next door: Bush's entire FEMA, or one functional Wal-Mart?

http://www.slate.com/id/2126832/

Both Pentagon and Wal-Mart are way into RFID, but Wal-Mart is strangling its competition block by block, while the Pentagon is way over budget and conspicuously failing to deliver the cheap oil. I mean, uh, the freedom.

http://www.cio.com/archive/110105/tl_katrina.html

If James Lovelock is right and humanity is doomed to become a thin scattering around the planet's poles, then daily life will likely resemble these eerie pics by Mary Mattingly. Scarcely a corporate logo left in sight! Enjoy!

http://www.marymattinglyglobal.org/html/secondnature21.html

(((A "megacat" is a mega-catastrophe. They're not happening sixty years from now, when it's all somebody else's problem. They're happening today. They're happening to the Fortune 500. And to their insurers.)))

http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/36628/story.htm

US Hurricanes May Wipe Out 20-40 Insurers – AM Best

US: June 2, 2006

"NEW YORK – The US hurricane season kicked off Thursday with another gloomy prediction: major storms could cause US$100 billion worth of property loss, and wipe out 20 to 40 insurers. (...)

"'This will take a bigger bite out of the industry than the 1906 San Francisco earthquake,' Williams said. Insurance costs from last year's major catastrophes, or "megacats" – Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma – have already reached US$58 billion, with some claims still in court. In addition, federal aid to rebuild areas such as New Orleans, which was flooded by Katrina, will top US$100 billion, Best said."

Source:?

http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/36638/story.htm

"ANALYSIS – Is Corporate America Going Green?

(((In a word, no, and in a lot of words, they're going green in their own very corporate way.)))

Story by Scott Malone

US: June 5, 2006

"BOSTON – Corporate America, which once dismissed fears about global warming as unfounded, appears to be changing its mind, publicly acknowledging its influence on climate change and striving for a greener image.

(((The interesting part comes when "corporate America" starts striving, not for some "better image," but striving not to be blown away at hurricane wind speeds topping 170 miles an hour. Business can't very well ask the government to help them, because they already acquired all the regulatory bodies. Besides, neocons and fundies clearly have no idea what to do about climate change. They literally can't see it, any more than the antebellum South could see slavery as a problem.

((So the megacorps are not going green in order to suck-up to adbusters, Seattle 99ers and the LOHAS contingent. They'll have to do it in order not to see their markets and infrastructure physically destroyed.)))

"Major companies such as General Electric Co. and chemicals maker DuPont Co. are taking steps to make their plants and products more energy efficient and to reduce emissions of the greenhouse gases linked to global warming.

"To be sure, US companies have heavily promoted their change of heart in slick marketing campaigns such as Ford Motor Co.'s 'I guess it is easy being green' television advertisements for its Escape hybrid sport utility vehicle.

Link:

What's good for America is good for GM, "a crack dealer looking to keep his addicts on a tight leash."
http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/content/11492552301978062268/

"Environmental activists say the changes go beyond lip service but they urge lawmakers to prod companies along even faster through tougher environmental regulations. ((("Environmental activists" always want to hustle business through the tongs of the EPA, in order not to actually get any capitalism splattered on themselves. Why not just go explain to Wal-Mart that they, Wal-Mart, are a tender, vulnerable, overextended network that is sure to die in any serious climate chaos? Looks like Wal-Mart may have caught on to this fact already.))) Link:

http://www.joplinglobe.com/siteSearch/apstorysection/local_story_148015054

"'We've barely just begun, but what we've begun is real,' said Mindy Lubber, president of Ceres, a Boston-based coalition of institutional investors and environmental groups that manages more than US$3 trillion in assets. ((Three trillion for the time being, that is. A hundred billion loss here, a hundred billion loss there, hey, that adds up.)))

"Many scientists (((come on, Planet Ark, it's perfectly okay to say "all of them." All the scientists. If they say otherwise, they're not scientists))) say a build-up of greenhouse gas emissions caused by burning fossil fuels such as oil and coal are raising temperatures around the world and could bring catastrophic changes – from severe heatwaves to rising seas.

(((The severe heatwaves are already years old. That's not a change that CO2 "could bring." We're simmering in it. The Fortune 500 is smack in the middle of it. It's not like they get to offshore into a walled Wal-Mart bunker on another planet. Unless they've somehow got "Halliburton SurvivaBalls.")))
Link:

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=13568

"For many years, major US corporations asserted that natural swings in temperature made it impossible to tell whether greenhouse gas emissions were influencing the climate. With some notable exceptions – including oil giant Exxon Mobil Corp. – US companies have noticeably changed their tune.

(((It wasn't "companies" per se who were into Greenhouse denial. Specifically, was the oil, gas, chemical, and auto industries who logjammed Kyoto in the US Senate. They were heartily joined, by the way, by US labor unions who figured that Kyoto would export American jobs. Now the unions don't have the jobs OR the climate. The oil and gas guys are knee-deep in blood. The American auto guys can't find customers for their ludicrous SUV behemoths. Ace way to run an economy, fellas. You cats are real capitalist geniuses.)))

"Fairfield, Connecticut,-based GE – the world's second-largest company by market value – last year unveiled its 'Ecomagination' initiative to cut greenhouse gas emissions and increase sales of energy-efficient products.

"Sales of 'Ecomagination' products, ranging from washing machines to jet engines, reached US$10.1 billion last year and GE aims to double that by 2010. (((That goal oughta be pretty easy if the dollar hyperinflates and a Yankee GE washing-machine costs a dozen euros.))) It also aims to double its research spending on such products to US$1.5 billion by 2010.

"'Our customers are heavy energy users, customers that have fuel issues, that are seeking energy efficiency,' said Lorraine Bolsinger, a GE vice president who heads up the Ecomagination program. 'When we talk to our customers, they tell us, 'This is what we need.' ((("Or we, uh, die.")))

"Fears that a warmer, wetter planet would spawn devastating storms like Hurricane Katrina, which flooded much of New Orleans and killed more than 1,500 people in Louisiana alone, have also caused insurers to shift thinking on global warming.

(((Caused them to "shift thinking"? It's caused them to go broke.)))

Link:
First storm of the season already heading for Florida. Buy your own private Internet satlink for weather= shredded telecom and power systems, $5000!

http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/business/14792495.htm

"American International Group Inc., the world's top insurance company by market value, said in May – after losing US$2 billion after tax from Katrina and other disasters last year – that it would develop projects to keep greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere.

Link:
Instead of federal enviro inspectors, AIG has got "carbon disclosure projects." Same diff, only you can't buy your own Senator and get out of it.

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=76115&p=irol-govres_invest_corp

Naturally these insurance agents prefer "market- based environmental policies." Do those sound warmer and cuddlier than government regulation, somehow?

http://media.corporate-ir.net/media_files/irol/76/76115/aig_climate_change_updated.pdf

"REGULATION THE NEXT STEP? (((Why even bother?)))

"A tripling in oil prices to record highs above US$70 a barrel is also accelerating the drive for greater efficiency. (((Blowback from that effort to "regulate" Iraq.)))

"DuPont has cut its energy bill by about US$3 billion since kicking off an emissions-reduction campaign in the early 1990s, said Edwin Morgan, director of energy and environment at the Wilmington, Delaware,-based company. It has cut its greenhouse gas emissions by more than 72 percent over that time. (((Dupont has therefore beaten the Kyoto Accords by something like a factor of seven. Do you suppose that the US Senate has reduced its emissions that much? I know I haven't.)))

"Ceres, in a March study, ranked DuPont's efforts to reduce global warming second only to British petroleum firm BP Plc among major global companies. US greenhouse gas emissions have continued to rise since the White House declared in 2001 that the US would not abide by the terms of the United Nations' Kyoto Protocol to cut such emissions below 1990 levels by 2008. (((Well, if the US suffers massive storm damage, plus currency hyperinflation, a real-estate bubble and a military defeat, that trifling Kyoto problem will pretty well take care of itself.)))

Link:
Iraq War already out-spends the wildest estimates of the cost of Kyoto:

http://www.aei-brookings.org/policy/page.php?id=254

"While observers lauded the steps taken by US companies in industries ranging from chemicals to electric utilities, they said the only reliable way to reduce US greenhouse gas emissions would be regulation. (((Okay: name one "reliable" regulation that has happened in American governance in the last six years. If there were greenhouse regulations in the US, who would enforce them? Halliburton. Who else?)))

"'One company doesn't want to go alone. They want to move forward as industries,' said Brendan Bell, global warming analyst at the Sierra Club, a major US environmental group. (((This sounds like "oligopoly" and "conspiracy in restraint of trade," which is, of course, completely doable.)))

"Some investors have begun petitioning companies to fight global-warming-related regulation. The Free Enterprise Action Fund, a US$6 million mutual fund, through proxy proposals asked GE and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. this year to fight such regulation.

(((With a name like that, "Free Enterprise Action Fund" have got to be another Exxon-Mobil sock puppet. Yep. They are. Took me and Google all of 15 seconds to find that out.)))

Link:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Free_Enterprise_Action_Fund

"'Global warming activists are using these guys to get these laws passed. And once the laws are in effect, they are going to get more and more intrusive, and they're not going to be able to control them,' said Steve Milloy, a portfolio manager. (((Steve Milloy is not a "portfolio manager," he's into climate denial, among a host of other weird things.))) Link:

Steve Milloy's amazing anti-conscience investment fund:
http://www.slate.com/id/2140997/

"Bolsinger said GE would be able to compete even in a tighter regulatory environment.

"'Without some kind of legislation, we don't see that there's going to be significant progress made,' Bolsinger said. 'We're not afraid of whatever regulation will come.'

(((It doesn't make any sense to wait for political reform before tackling climate change. Even if Gore were President and the USA went whole hog for Kyoto, the day is long gone when the Washington Consensus swayed the world and there was any tacit notion that the world would do what the UN said. There's not enough talent, authority or technical capacity left in the planet's political class. The ultra-rich and the marketeers are the only people who can move fast enough to save their own skins. Where they can make it, it'll be Corporate Green and haute-green. Where they can't make it, but can't give up, it'll be Ninth Ward and Khaki Green. Where the failure is total, it'll be Long Emergency and Planet of Slums.)))

Posted by Big Gav at 8:35 PM | Permalink | Comments

There are lots of interesting articles in the local press this weekend - I really wish the Financial Review didn't paywall off their content (they have an excellent article on the new "Great Game" for example, by an ex ASIS and MI6 agent).

The Sydney Morning Herald, on the other hand, usually puts everything online - but the most interesting article in the weekend edition, "Power Play" got stuffed abruptly into the memory hole yesterday before I'd grabbed the link to it (though not before I'd noticed it in their top articles list for the day - the page had already been pulled at that point though). From the hardcopy:

At the south-east corner of jervis Bay, is is said, the sand is whiter, the water clearer and the view of the Bowen Island sanctuary for Little Penguins spectactular. This is Murrays Beach. This is also the site of what could have been Australia's first nuclear power plant.

In 1971 the federal government got as far as excavating and clearing the land before it pulled the pin on the idea.

...

The enthusaism for the atomic age shown by the federal minister for national development, David Fairburn, was typical of many when he claimed in 1967 that "it might not be very long before nuclear energy becomes fully competitive with thermal stations for the generation of power".

But behind the public statements was another agenda. When cabinet papers from the period were released a few years ago they showed John Gorton's government was intent on developing a nuclear weapons program.

I'm always interested as to why material gets stuffed down the hole - the obvious candidate in this case is the mention of an alternate explanation as for the renewed push for nuclear power here (as opposed to to government's new found acknowledgment of the perils of global warming and thus the "need" for nuclear power, and the realist's interpretation that they want to give some huge handouts to their mates in the mining industry) - as a means of acquiring nuclear weapons.

Max Walsh at The Bulletin is making the same case though, so either the blackout of discussion on the topic isn't very thorough or there was something else controversial in the original article that I missed. Personally I'm not in favour of uranium mining (though I believe expansion of the industry is inevitable), nor nuclear power (and I don't think it will happen here) - but I would view us obtaining nuclear weapons favourably - everyone else has them, so why shouldn't we - it might even enable Australian security policy to be developed independently of instructions from the centre of the empire for a change.

The elephant in the room that no one wants to mention in John Howard’s great nuclear debate is whether Australia should prepare itself to join the nuclear club.

The idea of Australia acquiring the bomb - and that’s what “joining the nuclear club” means - is no-go territory in political terms.

It’s a public debate that the leaders of the major parties don’t want to have. They know that it would cause division within their own ranks and across the community in general. It would create the mother of all scare campaigns, which could ultimately change the political landscape.

The reality is, however, that the global nuclear equation is changing in such a way that it would be negligent of Australia not to consider its implications.

...

The most important feature of the Iran situation for Australia in the short term is that we have something of the same credibility problem. Iran’s insistence that it is only concerned with peaceful applications of nuclear power is undermined by its depth of resources wealth - namely crude oil and natural gas.

The economics of energy for peaceful purposes favour the use of these hydrocarbons over uranium. Consequently, there is a justifiable suspicion that Iran has another agenda.

The same can be said about Australia, the world’s largest exporter of coal and one of its major exporters of natural gas. We have reserves of both that are sufficient for hundreds of years. If we are talking about electric power generation, as is ostensibly the case in the great debate, then uranium offers an inferior outcome in economic terms to coal or gas.

That is certainly the case if we do not take into account external diseconomies such as pollution and global warming. To bolster the government’s pro-nuclear case, Science Minister Julie Bishop has been pushing the case of uranium versus coal by comparing their carbon dioxide output.

That’s quite legitimate except that “clean coal” power generation is still an infant industry but one that is growing rapidly. Curiously, perhaps, in this era of spin over substance, one of the better primers on clean coal technologies was posted last month on the website of the Melbourne-based Uranium Information Centre.

Nuclear power generation per se will not make Australia eligible for prospective membership of the nuclear club.

For that to happen, we would have to be in the enrichment business, potentially an economically justifiable activity if we are to maximise returns from our uranium exports. However, it would also almost certainly involve the return of nuclear waste. That would normally be unacceptable in political terms unless it was seen as a price worth paying in terms of guaranteeing our nuclear potential.

While I've done enough mocking of the propaganda industry and the Zarqawi myth lately, I did notice one slightly sinister aspect (if you're a Democrat) to the recent quacking of the ducks about the mortally wounded Zarqawi stumbling out of his bombed building (watch the footage of the explosions from the air and ponder his remarkable survival ability once again) to die in the arms of the Iraqi police, who amazingly beat US troops to the scene.

The sinister aspect isn't so much the silliness of the official story (our propagandists obviously share Hitler's thoughts on the application of this stuff - don't sweat the details, as the proles don't pay much attention anyway), but the note that, amongst Zarqawi's leopard print skimpy women's clothing and terrorist propaganda (all surviving the explosions along with the evil man of steel) were pictures of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

On a semi related note I've noticed that the extreme right smear machine working the Al Gore / Nazi comparison angle pretty hard lately (its a shame they don't investigate historical Nazi links to the Bush family, for example, instead of pounding this shameful nonsense) as a way of trying to blunt the impact of "An Inconvenient Truth".

ABU MUSAB al-ZARQAWI was accompanied by women who wore skimpy night clothing, and read magazines on current affairs and militant propaganda.

An inspection of the remains of the "safe house" in which the terrorist mastermind was killed also suggested that he and his companions — which an Iraqi army officer said included two women and an eight-year-old girl — lived with few luxuries.

The US military took reporters to the site in the village of Hibhib, near the town of Baquba north of Baghdad, three days after the death of the al-Qaeda leader in Iraq, who is blamed for beheading hostages and killings hundreds of people in suicide bombings.

At the site surrounded by palm groves, two thin foam mattresses were scattered among the debris of smashed concrete and twisted metal. There were few clues on Zarqawi's extreme ideology or the militant groups he was linked to in the rubble of the building that was pulverised by two 227-kilo bombs in a US air strike on Wednesday.

One leaflet identified a radio station in Latifiya south of the capital as an apparent target. A few metres away was a magazine picture of former US President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

I've always taken the "Aussie battler" myth about the Rodent (growing up in Canterbury and working in his Dad's service station) at face value, so the Sydney Morning Herald's article - "The secret Howard plantations" - on the history of the Howard family was rather interesting.

His mother's church and his father's service station have come to stand as markers of respectability, honesty and the Howard family's deep roots in the suburban heart of the nation. To be the son of a service station proprietor allows John Howard to claim as a qualification for high office that he was and remains an ordinary Australian.

But Howard's father had another life. While this old soldier worked his humble Sydney service station, he was also - on paper - a New Guinea planter with a string of estates where 200 native labourers grew copra in his name. Lyall Howard had cashed in his status as a returned digger to "dummy" for the trading house W. R. Carpenter and Company Ltd. His own father, Walter, was doing it, too. The Howard case provoked secret, official investigations at the highest levels in Canberra, but they and their powerful backer got away with the scam.

The Treaty of Versailles spelt the end for the German planters of New Guinea. Australia took over the colony, stripped them of their land and sent them packing in the early 1920s. The prime minister, Billy Hughes, promised "New Guinea for the returned serviceman" and ex-diggers were offered very generous terms when 40,000 hectares of plantations went on the market in 1926 and 1927.

A hefty catalogue spruiked them as "The Envy of Planters, The Magnet of Copra Buyers" and quoted Shakespeare to inspire investors down south: "There is a tide in the affairs of men which taken at the flood leads on to fortune."

TreeHugger has a book review of Big Coal - The Dirty Secret Behind America's Energy Future.

While many writers may be capable of gathering mountains of facts on the role the coal industry plays in contemporary American life, and stringing them together into a coherent narrative, fewer likely have the ability to turn those facts into an engaging book that a reader literally can not put down. Jeff Goodell, a frequent contributor to Rolling Stone and the New York Times Magazine, has done just that in his new book Big Coal: The Dirty Secrets Behind America's Energy Future. Goodell proves that he's a meticulous researcher in this book, but the incredible stories he tells as he examines the role of coal in American growth over the past century and Chinese growth in the coming one make Big Coal a genuine page-turner -- no small feat in a non-fiction examination of an industry that many Americans probably consider a part of a bygone era. Goodell shares the experiences of miners, utility executives and global warming activists, and aptly demonstrates that coal still affects American lives in the most mundane, and the most dramatic, fashions.

I honed in on the phrase "the empire of denial" in Goodell's epilogue, and that's essentially how "Big Coal" is characterized through the book: in denial of not only the human and environmental costs of their product, but also about the inevitable waning of this energy source even as it's seeing a renewal of interest in the US. A few executives tied in with coal production, primarily in the big utility companies, recognize that regulation of CO2 is coming, and think it's in their best interest to get ahead of the curve by, at the very least, investing in new power plants that incorporate coal gasification and carbon sequestration technologies. By and large, though, the big utilities are building old-school dirty coal-burning plants (such as one going up just south of Nashville, Illinois) as quickly as possible to make a quick buck before regulation becomes a fact of life and requires the coal industry to internalize the costs of the big polluting plants. Yes, they're incorporating the latest scrubbers and such into these new power stations, but as Goodell notes, even these new "clean" plants will still emit tons of CO2, mercury, and combustion wastes such as fly ash, continuing Big Coal's legacy as one of the biggest contributors to global warming and public health problems...

WorldChanging has an interesting post on China, Coal and Green Leapfrogging.

More on Chinese Pollution. The Times reports that coal-burning in China is killing 400,000 Chinese a year, and contributing mightily to environmental problems around the world:

One of China's lesser-known exports is a dangerous brew of soot, toxic chemicals and climate-changing gases from the smokestacks of coal-burning power plants.

In early April, a dense cloud of pollutants over Northern China sailed to nearby Seoul, sweeping along dust and desert sand before wafting across the Pacific. An American satellite spotted the cloud as it crossed the West Coast. Filters near Lake Tahoe in the mountains of eastern California "are the darkest that we've seen" outside smoggy urban areas, said Steven S. Cliff, an atmospheric scientist at the University of California at Davis.

The coal China is burning now is of immediate concern to most of East Asia and the North American West Coast, but the coal Chinas burns over the next two decades will weigh heavily in deciding not only what kind of future we will have: it may well play a critical part in deciding what kind of lives our great-grandchildren live.

This is what makes winning the great wager in China so important. China is hell-bent on raising itself out of poverty and bringing at least its urban, industrialized communities into the ranks of the globally affluent. As the Times puts it,

One-fifth of the world's population already lives in affluent countries with lots of air-conditioning, refrigerators and other appliances. This group consumes a tremendous amount of oil, natural gas, nuclear power, coal and alternative energy sources.

Now China is trying to bring its fifth of the world's population, people like Mr. Wu and Ms. Cao, up to the same standard. One goal is to build urban communities for 300 million people over the next two decades.

This is part of what makes rapid progress on sustainable innovation so important. We need better models and systems -- better buildings, better vehicles, better urban planning; massive investment in clean energy research, energy efficiency and green chemistry; new models like product service systems, distributed power and smart metering... the list could go on and on -- we need them now, and (here's the kicker) we need to spread them across the entire planet more quickly than any other set of technological advances has ever spread.

Dave at The Oil Drum raises some interesting questions about the world's biggest Natural Gas Field.

Without much fanfare, Qatar announced a moratorium on new development of the natural gas North Field basin, a decision that had actually been taken in 2005. At the same time, in a recent presentation by Matt Simmons entitled Tight Oil Supplies, we run into this intriguing slide.

This report will go into considerable detail about the future role of the North Field/South Pars natural gas field, it's size and importance, the reasons for the moratorium and finally important questions about both the geology and proven reserves of the field. As Simmons notes in his slide, there is a "large degree of uncertainty regarding [the] true potential [of this field]". The topic is important regarding the uncommon phrase "peak natural gas" on a global scale. As we know, natural gas production has already peaked in North America.

The Washington Post has an excellent article on the 2030 challenge and how sustainable architecture can help reduce carbon dioxide emissions (the trend towards green building practices is one of the more encouraging things happening, given its importance in reducing power consumption).

Carbon dioxide is in the air like never before, but not just as measurable parts per million in the earth's atmosphere. Increasingly the subject of everyday conversation and cultural discourse, rising CO2 emissions are seen by many as no less a threat than terrorism, uncontrolled immigration, avian flu or escalating gasoline prices.

A new exhibit on green architecture at the National Building Museum contributes to the discourse. Atmospheric carbon dioxide and its planetary consequences are what former vice president Al Gore talks about in the documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth."

Carbon dioxide was also the focus of a presentation at last month's conference, "The Architecture of Sustainability," sponsored by the American Institute of Architects national committees on design and on the environment.

Addressing the conferees packed into the Corcoran Gallery of Art auditorium, New Mexico architect Edward Mazria delivered a sobering, persuasive opening presentation about carbon dioxide and global warming. He also delivered a daunting challenge to architects: Design all new buildings, whatever the type, to use half the fossil fuel energy used now by buildings of that type.

By the year 2030, the goal is for new buildings to be "carbon-neutral" and use no energy from fossil fuels that produce greenhouse gases. This means that less than 25 years from now, ideally no oil, coal or natural gas would be burned to build, heat, cool and light new buildings.

Rob at Transition Culture has a post on a visit to the Eden project in the UK which greatly impressed him (I never made it down there, though from all reports its taken a while to mature).

Last week I took my family to the Eden Project in Cornwall. I went fully expecting to be underwhelmed, and I have to say it completely blew me away. What a stunning thing. From the first sight of the place, everything was done so well and so thoughtfully, and was of such a scale, that it couldn’t fail to take away even the most cynical skeptic’s breath.

eden3As a blogger who focuses on peak oil, energy descent and the need to relocalise, you might expect me to launch into a big moan about the fact that people have to drive to the Eden Project, that they don’t grow all the food for the visitors onsite, that there is no wind tubine, blah blah. It would be very easy to walk around being critical, nitpicking about what isn’t quite right about the place. While there is of course plenty of room for improvement in a number of areas, in all honesty, I could not have pulled off something on that scale, so I don’t really feel qualified to criticise.

Reminds me of the only time I met Bill Mollison, the co-founder of permaculture, when he gave a talk in Stroud in 1992. He gave an amazing talk (still one of the most inspiring I ever attended) about permaculture and the need to live simply, and then in the break I went outside and there he was smoking a cigarette. “I wonder”, I thought, “if I should point out the contradiction here, smoking a developing world cash crop that he has just been criticising…”. Seemed to me though, as I thought about it, that here is a man who has done more in terms of promoting sustainability and permaculture than I can ever hope to do, and who on earth am I to criticise…

TreeHugger also has a post on one of those slightly questionable biofuels production process - Rice and Bamboo Power for Assam, India - which looks at using the byproducts of rice and paper mills to produce energy. While these schemes are far superior to turning food (such as corn or soy beans) into biofuel, I still tend to wonder what the long term effects of burning all the excess organic matter from crops will have on land productivity.

In some circles it’s known as ‘industrial ecology’, where the ‘waste’ process of one industrial action is successfully employed by another. In Assam, India they are planning to build a 16 megawatt power plant that will be fuelled by rice husks from food production, and bamboo dust waste from paper fibre mills. India is said to the world’s second largest producer of bamboo, after China, and these power plants are expected to be amongst of the first to utilise bamboo for fuel. The bamboo power stations are expected to be operational by year end.

The gasification of rice hulls to produce power is noted as being in use in several countries, such as the US, China, Italy, Thailand, and elsewhere within India. Aside from generating electricity, the rice husks can also power irrigation water pumping. But using such technologies the state of Assam hopes to be self sufficient for energy within 10 years. Currently much of their electricity is imported from surrounding states with hydro schemes but such reservoirs are now prone drying up.

The buzz over "An Inconvenient Truth" will no doubt start to fade soon, but here's one last review - this one from Roger Ebert (which I see TreeHugger also liked).

want to write this review so every reader will begin it and finish it. I am a liberal, but I do not intend this as a review reflecting any kind of politics. It reflects the truth as I understand it, and it represents, I believe, agreement among the world's experts.

Global warming is real.

It is caused by human activity.

Mankind and its governments must begin immediate action to halt and reverse it.

If we do nothing, in about 10 years the planet may reach a "tipping point" and begin a slide toward destruction of our civilization and most of the other species on this planet.

After that point is reached, it would be too late for any action.

These facts are stated by Al Gore in the documentary "An Inconvenient Truth." Forget he ever ran for office. Consider him a concerned man speaking out on the approaching crisis. "There is no controversy about these facts," he says in the film. "Out of 925 recent articles in peer-review scientific journals about global warming, there was no disagreement. Zero."

...

When I said I was going to a press screening of "An Inconvenient Truth," a friend said, "Al Gore talking about the environment! Bor...ing!" This is not a boring film. The director, Davis Guggenheim, uses words, images and Gore's concise litany of facts to build a film that is fascinating and relentless. In 39 years, I have never written these words in a movie review, but here they are: You owe it to yourself to see this film. If you do not, and you have grandchildren, you should explain to them why you decided not to.

Am I acting as an advocate in this review? Yes, I am. I believe that to be "impartial" and "balanced" on global warming means one must take a position like Gore's. There is no other view that can be defended. Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), chairman of the Senate Environment Committee, has said, "Global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people." I hope he takes his job seriously enough to see this film. I think he has a responsibility to do that.

What can we do? Switch to and encourage the development of alternative energy sources: Solar, wind, tidal, and, yes, nuclear. Move quickly toward hybrid and electric cars. Pour money into public transit, and subsidize the fares. Save energy in our houses. I did a funny thing when I came home after seeing "An Inconvenient Truth." I went around the house turning off the lights.

"Dispatches From Blogistan" has a number of mini interviews with some of my favourite writers - Bruce Sterling, Jamais Cascio and Cory Doctorow.

From Bruce:

on blogs as mini-internets
Blogs aren’t really literary endeavors. They are what lives on the long tails, tails stretching out to some distant vanishing point. They’re about an architecture of participation, about commons-based peer production. Blogs are, by their semantic nature, mini-Internets. Aggregators. We throw things against the wall and see what sticks. We’re basically watching as a new intellectual landscape takes shape.

on corporate and goverment blogging
In general, I’d expect governments and corporations to embrace and expand access rather than try to limit online communications. Hire some professional writer to publish an official government blog, something that would make the others look amateurish and stupid and poorly informed. Because, in fact, most blogs are amateurish and stupid and poorly informed. I can definitely see governments and corporations setting up blogging units and hiring talented propagandists. Then people will be saying, “What ever happened to the glory days of the early pamphleteers?”

But that won’t happen for awhile. They all have feel of clay.

Of course, there are both official government propaganda blogs and the unofficial kind run by the modern day brownshirt brigade that generate so much noise in extreme right blogistan. Billmon took a look at some of their antics in the successful blackballing of the appointment of prominent middle east expert and blogger Juan Cole to the faculty at Yale.

Although I’m back in the United States – and have been for more than a week – I’ve been hoping to finish my Egyptian epic before turning back to the daily atrocities of life in Dick Cheney’s America. But the atrocities, it seems, won’t wait in line. They’re right back in my face, gibbering and leering and showing me their hideous sores, like the inmates of an insane asylum for cancer patients.

I’d go on ignoring them, and write more about the ethereal beauty of ancient tomb paintings, but the news that a committee of scholarly bootlickers has blackballed Juan Cole’s candidacy for a tenured professorship at Yale absolutely refuses to leave me in peace.

This may not seem like particularly noxious news, at least when compared to the stench of putrefying corpses hanging over Haditha, or the Nazi stab-in-the-back myths now being recycled in Right Blogistan, but it’s touched an extremely raw nerve with me – because of what it says about the age of fear and intellectual intimidation that we live in, because of the unadulterated vileness of the self-appointed commissars involved, and, not least, because I consider Juan Cole my friend, and a man who won’t take the time to speak up for a friend who's being blacklisted is, as the Godfather might put it, less than a man.

...

In addition to Rubin and Mowbray, we’ve also had John Fund (the poor man’s Humbert Humbert) sliming Cole on the Wall Street Journal op-ed page, David Horowitz doing his impersonation of Andrei Vyshinsky over at Planet Conspiracy, plus the usual blog wannabes, like the Powerlie bundists and the little green fascists, bringing up the rear – the tail end (in more ways than one) of the lynch mob.

...

This is not, as some would have it, simply another petty academic quarrel. As Cole himself has noted in the past, the U.S. scholarly community is under relentless pressure from the pro-Israel lobby and its camp followers, who are determined to purge Middle Eastern Studies departments of anything and anyone who contradicts the party line. The goal, quite simply, is to choke off any possible source of independent information and analysis that might challenge the steady stream of distortions issuing from the right’s favorite think tanks and from propaganda artists like Mowbray and Rubin.

It almost brings to mind the old Brezhnev-era KGB, obsessed with tracking down every obscure dissident with a mimeograph machine and packing him or her off to the nut farm, while the Soviet versions of the Moonie Times and Fox News thundered at full volume about capitalist plots and vile slanders against the people’s vanguard party.

This is only a moderate exaggeration. The neocons may not be in command of a fully functioning police state – yet – but like enforcers of Brezhnev's Politburo, they seem to understand instinctively that their ideological monopoly is too fragile to tolerate much dissent. All three branches of the government, both political parties and virtually every major media organization are firmly in the hands of people who believe – often passionately – in America’s alliance with Israel. Politicians compete to see who can offer the most generous aid concessions, or utter the most strident denunciations of Israel’s enemies, or turn the blindest eye to the latest illegal settlement expansion. Polls show the public overwhelmingly supports these positions. And yet, somehow it’s still not enough. And so one academician/blogger who believes, and publicly states, that the Palestinians are human beings – and have rights that are being violated daily by the Israeli government and the settlers – becomes a mortal threat, to be fought with every weapon the gang can bring to bear, including Yale’s Jewish donors.

I’m sure Mowbray doesn’t have a clue about the perverse irony of what he’s done – which plays directly into every conceivable anti-Semitic stereotype about wealthy Jews pulling strings from behind the scenes. Neither Al Jazeera nor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could dream up a scenario more calculated to confirm every Middle Eastern prejudice about what (and who) drives U.S. foreign policy. How can we explain to them that it’s just the educational bureaucrats at Yale, who would probably do whatever it takes to please any well-heeled group of donors – even if it involved putting on bright red lipstick and getting down on their knees. Especially that.

Steve at Deconsumption has a post on "Trolling for Dollars" - which touches on another class of professional online advocate - the paid troll, which I guess - if you're into caste systems - could be taxonomised as the untouchables of the online world.

I received a few hits today from the following referral address: http://arrca.netvocates.com/default/index.cfm?

Had it been just one hit I would have marked it off as noise...but there were several in a short space of time, so being the curious guy I am I decided to visit said site--but don't bother doing the same, as it's password firewalled.

Now strangely the hits were targetted not to Deconsumption's web-address itself, nor directly to any specific posting I wrote, but to the following url: "http://www.netvocates.com/tools/cleanpage.pl?postid=86242&postche..." That's the truncated report on what address was used to come into my site. I don't know what that means, but I imagine it's informative.

So anyway, intrigued by the off-chance that I might have found a new admirer, I decided I'd go the extra mile and Google-up "arrca netvocates". I mean if someone is having a private conversation about me, fine, but I'd at least like to know who they are. And fortunately the blogosphere is full of egoistically curious individuals like myself, because blogger Robin Hamman at Cybersoc.com had already gotten the low-down on NetVocates for himself just a little over a week ago:

"Other bloggers who have found themselves visited by NetVocates include:

PSoTD
Make Chai, Not War
CracksInTheFacade
pandora's jar of mixed nuts

What do each of these have in common? Well, based on a very brief visit to each, I'd say they all discuss political issues at least some of the time.

...So who are they?...I spent a bit more time on the NetVocates site and found this:

"NetVocates then recruits activists and consumers who share the client’s views in order to reinforce those key messages on targeted blogs – and rebut misinformation when appropriate."

So they hire sockpuppets to go out and pretend to be "ordinary users" when they post stuff on blogs?"

I won't steal all of Robin's thunder, and you should definitely take a peek over at his weblog for a better take on what his research dug up. But the gist of it is that NetVocates appears to offer a service whereby they will target weblogs which might "impact an organization and its products and image in uncontrolled and often unexpected ways", and they then hire individuals to post comments on those weblogs which will, presumably, help to create more "controlled" and "expected" impacts.

In other words they pay people to troll.

I noticed these guys (NetVocates) a few weeks ago in my logs. At the time they were trawling for blogs that mentioned "climate change", "earth" and "al gore" - so my initial guess was that they were doing advocacy / monitoring work for the forces of reality and measuring the impact of "An Inconvenient Truth".

The CEI "carbon dioxide is good for you" ads came out shortly after which left me undecided about their purpose though.

There are lots of firms doing this sort of stuff and to be honest I couldn't care less about them trolling blogs, other than my long term curiosity about the mechanics of the PR / spin / propaganda industries.

My view is that all debate is good - if paid trolls (and there are plenty of them out there - I used to bait them for sport for a short time) want to leave comments and spark debate let them do their best - its good for honing your own understanding of the world and learning how to mitigate various dishonest talking points when you're simply being bombarded with some sort of ideologically driven propaganda (and on that particular note, I'd love to see the stats on how much money goes into pro-war blog trolling vs the traditional placing of stories into the mainstream media - I suspect the different groups who fund these activities don't come up with a consolidated view though).

I did track referrals into this blog from various blog monitoring and tuning companies for a while - the weirdest one I've seen in my logs is a cross between Douglas Adams and Harvey Keitel - the "brand cleansers" at the discreet Vroomfondel - I never did manage to work out whose brand they wished to cleanse though.

The Sydney Morning Herald has an obituary for a Soviet dissident who got exiled to Munich for satirising (amongst other things) the Soviet propaganda system. Russian dissidents are always hard for me to understand - this particular one ended up thinking old Uncle Joe Stalin was a good guy, which seems to be a fairly difficult belief to cling to (though I guess, to give the old monster some credit, he was the driving force behind the downfall of Adolf Hitler).

The satirist and philosopher Alexander Zinoviev, who has died aged 83, fitted uneasily into the communist system under which he was born, but was equally uncomfortable when forced to play the role of exiled dissident.

The former fighter pilot turned philosopher created a biting satire of the society he had helped defend, which led to his exile by Leonid Brezhnev in 1978. However, he did not settle happily into Western emigre circles, nor was he an uncritical believer in Western democracy.

Growing freedoms under Mikhail Gorbachev were not to his liking, and by the 1990s he was advocating the return of the Communist Party to power, championing Stalin as the pre-eminent political figure of the 20th century and defending the former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic.

...

Zinoviev's first novel, The Yawning Heights, is set in a fictional Soviet town in which shortages are common, mediocrity praised and inefficiency a byword. The town is ruled by The Boss (Stalin) until he is deposed by The Hog (Khrushchev), whose only motive is to seize and retain power. The title is a reference to the gap between reality and propaganda.

And to close, check out "information" (via Past Peak).

Posted by Big Gav at 12:35 AM | Permalink | Comments

Calvin at the "Climate Change Action" blog points to a recent BBC documentary on global warming politics in the US - part of the BBC's 'Climate Chaos' series on Panorama (video - Real Audio).

As part of the BBC's 'Climate Chaos' series Panorama--the UK's premier news documentary show--has investigated what has been described as the Republican War on Science and what is more accurately called the most destructive campaign of mis-information that the American people have ever been exposed to.

I`m not saying everyone in the US believed the propaganda I`m just saying that many did, and many more where caused to doubt the science.The whole debate was successfully shifted from 'what can we do' to 'should we do something' of if you watch Fox News to 'are we sure this climate change thing isn't just some plot being concocted by anti American environmentalists and liberals'.

"An Inconvenient Truth" opens here at the Sydney Film Festival on the weekend, with Al Gore getting some publicity in the local paper today.

Thanks to An Inconvenient Truth, the documentary about Gore's crusade against global warming, the former vice-president has, for the first time in years, been the centre of attention. There have been rumours of political resurrection, appearances at the Cannes Film Festival.

But before the rise, there had to be a fall, and that's what intrigued the director Davis Guggenheim: Gore small and sad, Gore as tragic figure. The epiphany came early one evening late in the filming process, after Guggenheim realised he hadn't interviewed Gore about the 2000 presidential campaign. He summoned a sound crew to a Los Angeles hotel suite, sat in a room with Gore for hours and talked around the subject as the room grew dark. Finally, in pitch black, he asked about the race, the extended fight over ballots, the concession speech.

Gore was silent for a while, Guggenheim recalls. Then he began to speak, with palpable pain. "That was a hard blow," he said. "But what do you do? You make the best of it."

"You think about what it must have been, to be in his shoes," Guggenheim says. "The amazing thing about him - which I think is true with all great characters in any movie … he's a character who makes a heroic choice. And I don't think I'm overstating it."

"He goes from city to city, rolling his bag through airports," Guggenheim says. "And if a civic club, or a Republican group, invites him, he will go and give a slide show, for free. That's what he's decided to do with his life … That's as compelling a character as I can imagine."

The SMH reports that BHP is going deep into Gulf oil

BHP Billiton has given the go-ahead for one of the largest projects in its corporate history, approving the development of the $US4.4 billion ($5.9 billion) Shenzi oil and gas field in the Gulf of Mexico.

Yesterday's nod for the project - along with the recent appointment of Houston-based president of the energy division, Mike Yeager - cemented BHP's strategy of attempting to reverse declining petroleum production by developing huge offshore US projects.

"Shenzi joins the development of the Neptune field as a BHP Billiton operated project and, together with our interests in Atlantis and Mad Dog, significantly expands our production base in the region."

As the Shenzi project operator and 44 per cent shareholder, BHP will be responsible for $US1.94 billion of the development costs, up from a $US1.8 billion estimate released with its half-year results in February. The remainder will be shared by its joint venture partners, BP and New York oil trading company, Hess Corp.

"There's been significant market movement for services since the time of the previous estimate," said BHP spokeswoman Samantha Evans, explaining the cost increase.

The Shenzi oil and gas field was first discovered in 2002 and is 193 kilometres offshore from Louisiana - and 14 kilometres from Atlantis - in about 1300 metres of water.

A stand-alone tension leg platform is expected to begin production by the middle of 2009, with maximum capacity of 100,000 barrels of oil and 50 million cubic feet of gas a day. In total, the field is believed to contain 350 million to 400 million barrels of oil equivalent, compared to 635 million BOE at Atlantis. The higher costs at Shenzi are partly attributed to the need to build an oil export pipeline.

BHP suffered a setback in its petroleum production last year when Hurricane Rita struck the Gulf and ripped its Typhoon tension leg platform from its moorings. The $US250 million platform was deemed unsalvageable by project operator Chevron, which later decided to sink the platform and make it an artificial reef.

Perhaps BHP management should spend some time at The Oil Drum, pondering Hurricanes and Sand Storms, some thoughts on the coming months and When the Hurricanes Come.







Refocus magazine has an article on the major economic opportunity presented by renewable energy for the US.

Using green power to meet 20% of U.S. electricity demand would create one-quarter of a million jobs by 2020, according to a report from a university in Dallas.

Global warming may represent a major opportunity for investment and job growth in the United States but any such potential is endangered if the general public and politicians remain mired in panic or a sense of resignation about climate change, says Lloyd Jeff Dumas in ‘Seeds of Opportunity - Climate Change: Between Complacency and Panic.’ Dumas is a professor of economics and public policy at the University of Texas at Dallas, and the report examines the potential economic opportunities associated with mitigating global warming, with a focus on five policy approaches.

“It has been said that within every problem lie the seeds of opportunity,” it explains. “Global warming is no exception to that rule.”

Global warming threatens to result in huge economic dislocations, powerful storms, diseases, catastrophic droughts, dwindling food supplies, unprecedented floods and vanishing coastal areas, but the threat also presents an opportunity for private sector companies and government to find cost-effective ways to mitigate the damage likely to be caused by climate change. “There is the potential for earning substantial profits and creating large numbers of productive jobs by focusing on climate change solutions,” it adds.

Refocus also reports that wind power integration poses no technical barriers for the electricity grid (contrary to the ridiculous claims made by some coal and nuclear lobbyists).

The U.S. power grid can accommodate more electricity from windfarms, but “understanding and quantifying the impacts of wind plants on utility systems is a critical first step in identifying and solving problems.”

“In just five years from 2000-2005, wind energy has become a significant resource on many electric utility systems, with over 50,000 MW of nameplate capacity installed worldwide at the end of 2005,” explains the Utility Wind Integration Group in its assessment, ‘Utility Wind Integration State of the Art.’ “Wind energy is now ‘utility scale’ and can affect utility system planning and operations for both generation and transmission. The utility industry in general, and transmission system operators in particular, are beginning to take note.”

A number of steps can be taken to improve the ability to integrate increasing amounts of wind capacity on power systems, including improvements in turbine and windfarm models, improvements in windfarm operating characteristics, evaluation of wind-integration operating impacts, incorporating windfarm forecasting into utility control-room operations, making better use of physically (in contrast with contractually) available transmission capacity, upgrading and expanding transmission systems, developing well-functioning hour-ahead and day-ahead markets, adopting market rules and tariff provisions that are more appropriate to weather-driven resources, and consolidating balancing areas into larger entities or accessing a larger resource base through the use of dynamic scheduling.

“This document is a summary of the best information available from around the world on what we currently know about integrating wind power plants into electric utility systems,” says Charlie Smith of UWIG. “The message is very positive; we do not see any fundamental technical barriers at the present time to wind penetrations of up to 20% of system peak demand, which is far beyond where we are today.”

Following on from my theme of yesterday - the holy grail for solving the world's problems - carbon taxes - Energy Bulletin has an excellent little round up of articles on "Gasoline tax and energy quotas". The best is this piece from Jeffrey J. Brown at GraphOilogy.

Some have argued that the suburbs are dead; the suburbanites just don't know it yet. It's probably more accurate to say that the suburban commutes are dead; the suburban commuters just don't know it yet.

We recommend that the United States abolish the payroll tax (Social Security + Medicare tax) and replace it with either a liquid transportation (petroleum) fuel tax or an overall (nonrenewable) energy tax.

The majority of American households pay more in the payroll tax than in the income tax. This would be a tax cut for most households and it would a massive tax increase on those who are profligate in their use of energy. No matter where one lives, the cost of goods would go up, but if you lived close to where you work, your effective tax rate would go down. Of course, those who persisted in long commutes would pay the price.

There would of course be very powerful forces opposed to this idea--the housing industry; auto industry; airlines; trucking--the list goes on. But the fates of these industries are sealed. It's not a question of if they will contract; it's just a question of when. The sooner it happens, and the sooner these industries start emphasizing energy efficiency, the better off we all will be.

A high gasoline tax does not necessarily equate to a lower standard of living. Norway, with the highest gasoline tax in the world, has the highest standard of living in the world, perhaps partly because their car ownership per 1,000 people is about half of what it is in the US.

There would be some other benefits. As we turned to walking, biking and mass transit, our health would improve. There is pretty much a linear correlation between obesity rates and total miles driven (here in the US, we are the world champs in both categories). In addition, since this is in effect a consumption tax, everyone who now avoids paying Social Security taxes would no longer be able to avoid paying them.

However, the primary reason for implementing the proposal is that it would cause an immediate and massive across the board push for greater energy efficiency and it would unleash enormous free market forces against profligate energy use.

GraphOilogy also has a post on What Can We Learn From The Oil Field Size Distribution? which contains one of their patented graphs which should be required reading for anyone who doesn't get the concept of peak oil (we're using up the big fields - and thus we have to exploit increasing numbers of smaller fields to make up for depletion - and this isn't a trend which can go on forever).



Lloyds of London is warning members that climate change could destroy insurers.

Lloyd's of London, the oldest insurance market in the world, yesterday urged its members to start taking global warming more seriously, by increasing prices to avoid being "swept away" in a sea of future financial claims.

Premiums will have to rise and some risks might even be classed as uninsurable due to greenhouse gases and rising sea levels, warned Lloyd's in a report entitled Climate Change, Adapt or Bust.

"Although it's almost two decades since the UN recognised that climate change was a catastrophic threat to the Earth, it's clear that the insurance industry has not taken catastrophe trends seriously enough. Climate change is today's problem not tomorrow's. If we don't take action now to understand the changing nature of our planet we will face extinction," said Lloyd's director, Rolf Tolle.

Recent natural disasters revealed the inadequacy of capital and pricing methods and there was a need for catastrophe estimates to be constantly updated in line with scientific evidence, he said. Insurers should cease to base risk premiums on historical data and do more to look ahead and factor in scenarios connected with climate change, says the report.

TOD UK has a post on peak oil and climate change.

In his opening comments Porritt described climate change and peak oil as “two riders of the apocalypse” yet also made clear that rather than crushing any vestige of optimism left over after Al Gore’s previous speech on climate change he would try and focus on the more positive things that might happen.

Spending little time on outlining climate change Porritt suggested that amongst this audience at least there can be little remaining doubt either of the urgency or severity of the climate change challenge. Tipping his hat to the recent statements from Sir David Attenborough on the subject, he noted that “The ranks of those still trying to tell us this is not serious is thinning, diminishing, all the time”.

Porritt outlined four key points on what the science is actually telling us about climate change:

* Everything is moving a great deal faster than they thought it was moving, even two years ago. When you talk to scientists in the science community they will tell you the last two years have been deeply shocking, in terms of the volume and the authority of the data that has come forward on a number of different climate phenomenon.

* We shouldn’t think about climate change as a gradually unfolding set of phenomena, all gradually increasing within our midst. The climate record tells us very clearly this is as much about sharp discontinuities in patterns of climate as gently rising changes.

* We should be thinking about systems not symptoms. We still focus on individual symptoms, we focus on the permafrost, disappearing sea-ice, melting glaciers or increased intensity of hurricanes. We keep looking at these individual phenomena, epiphenomena, and what we’re not looking at is the big systems stuff.

* This means nothing less than a radical break in the way we create and distribute wealth in the world today. I still hear people talk about climate change as something which can be managed in the dominant orthodox economic paradigm. I don’t believe them, I just don’t believe that is the case, I don’t see how we’re going to be able to manipulate those conventional aspects of growth bound consumer driven economy and cope with climate change in the way that we actually need to.

It turns out Billmon wasn't still on holidays after all - he was just resting up and writing his memoirs. Of course, the frenzy of Zarqawi pontification in the media (even tonight's ABC news was unbelievably gushing on the importance of the final chapter of the Zarqawi show) - Billmon describes the history of this media spectacle in "Entertainment News Tonight".

I always think the Pentagon's spokesman during the intial phases of Operation Iraqi Liberation, General Mark Kimmitt, summed it up best - "the Zarqawi PSYOP program is the most successful information campaign to date" - although it wasn't a performance that is likely to gather too many Academy Awards.

The Pentagon Channel today announced the cancellation of its long-running reality TV series, The Abu Zarqawi Hour, saying tonight's special-effects extravaganza, in which Keifer Sutherland and a team of secret agents trail the terrorist mastermind to his hideout and call in a massive airstrike, would be the show's last.

The show originally piloted in 2003, and found a regular place in the Pentagon Channel's prime-time lineup in February 2004, replacing the widely panned sitcom Mission Accomplished, now in syndicated reruns on Fox News.

The Abu Zarqawi Hour debuted to generally favorable reviews, with New York Times critic Dexter Filkins praising the show for its "imaginative" storytelling and "gritty" realism. However, ratings declined sharply in 2005, with many viewers complaining that the show's episodes, which frequently featured the death and/or capture of Zarqawi's closest lieutenants, had become repetitive and unimaginative.

Critics reacted particularly negatively to this year's four-hour special, in which Zarqawi had obvious difficulty staying in character, and was unable to properly reload and fire his Kalishnikov rifle.

Although some critics defended the sequence as a daring experiment in Brechtian alienation technique, most panned the performance, saying it made it extremely hard for the audience to believe that Zarqawi was actually a seasoned terrorist leader, instead of a paid actor pretending to be a terrorist.

Doubts about the show's viability deepened in April, after Washington Post TV critic Tom Ricks questioned whether the supposedly spontaneous reality show was actually being scripted by its producers.

Over the next few weeks, insiders say, Pentagon Channel executives determined that while the Zarqawi show still had a dedicated following of hardcore fans who would swallow any plot device, no matter how ludicrous, the series no longer made commercial or artistic sense. It was also believed that a spectacular and upbeat finale might lure viewers away from Haditha, the controversial docudrama now airing on the rival Reality Network.

Network sources say the Pentagon Channel is weighing a possible sequel to the Abu Zarqawi Hour, featuring an identical plot but a completely different cast. The network and Zarqawi have permanently severed their relationship, these sources added, due to "irreconcilable creative differences."

Pentagon Channel officials declined to respond to questions about a possible sequel, saying only that "all options are under consideration. Things related and not."

Mr. Zarqawi was unavailable for comment.

Over at Lew Rockwell, their media critic Chris Floyd ponders The Timely Death of al-Zarqawi - and, like many other observers, notes the bizarre coincidence in timing of Zarqawi's reitrement with all this fuss about massacres of civilians in Haditha by US Marines and the like (as a side note, Mr Floyd is a columnist for the Moscow Times, so even if one were to agree with his analysis he could still possibly be considered a non-impartial source - and how the ultra-libertarians at Lew Rockwell came to start reprinting Russian media articles is yet another mystery of the Alice in Wonderland political landscape of the noughties).

Abu Musab Saddam Osama al-Zarqawi, the extremely elusive if not entirely mythical terrorist mastermind responsible for every single insurgent action in Iraq except for the ones caused by the red-tailed devils in Iran or the stripey-tailed devils in Syria, has reportedly been killed in an airstrike in Hibhib, an area north of Baghdad, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki announced Thursday.

Zarqawi, the notorious shape-shifter who, according to grainy video evidence, was able to regenerate lost limbs, speak in completely different accents, alter the contours of his bone structure and also suffered an unfortunate binge-and-purge weight problem which caused him to change sizes with almost every appearance, was head of an organization that quite fortuitously dubbed itself "Al Qaeda in Iraq" just around the time that the Bush Administration began changing its pretext for the conquest from "eliminating Iraq's [non-existent] weapons of mass destruction" to "fighting terrorists over there so we don't have to fight them over here."

The name change of the Zarqawi gang from its cumbersome original – "The Monotheism and Holy War Group" – to the more media-sexy "Qaeda" brand was thus a PR godsend for the Bush Administration, which was then able to associate the widespread native uprising against the Coalition occupation with the cave-dwelling dastards of the bin Laden organization. This proved an invaluable tool for the Pentagon's massive "psy-op" campaign against the American people, which was successful in sufficiently obscuring reality and defusing rising public concerns about what many experts have termed "the full-blown FUBAR" in Iraq until after the 2004 elections.

However, in the last year, even the reputed presence of a big stonking al Qaeda beheader guy roaming at will across the land has not prevented a catastrophic drop in support for President Bush in general and the war in Iraq in particular. Polls show that substantial majorities – even those still psy-oped into believing the conquest has something to do with fighting terrorism – are now saying that the war "is not worth it" and call for American forces to begin withdrawing.

...

In yet another amazing coincidence, the announcement of the death of Zarqawi or somebody just like him came just as Prime Minister Maliki was finally submitting his candidates for the long-disputed posts of defense and interior ministers, which then sailed through parliament after months of deadlock. The fortuitous death also came after perhaps the worst week of bad PR the Bush Administration has endured during the entire war, with an outpouring of stories alleging a number of horrific atrocities committed by U.S. troops in recent months.

Oddly enough, Zarqawi first vaulted into the American consciousness just after the public exposure of earlier U.S. atrocities: the tortures at Abu Ghraib prison in the spring of 2004. With story after story of horrible abuse battering the Administration during an election year, Zarqawi, or someone just like him, suddenly appeared with a Grand Guignol production: the beheading of American civilian Nick Berg. This atrocity was instantly seized upon by supporters of the war to justify the "intensive interrogation" of "terrorists" – even though the Red Cross had determined that 70 to 90 percent of American captives at that time had committed no crime whatsoever, much less been involved in terrorism, as the notorious anti-war Wall Street Journal reported. Abu Ghraib largely faded from the public eye – indeed, it was not mentioned by a single speaker at the Democratic National Convention a few weeks later or raised as an issue during the presidential campaign that year.

Today's news has likewise knocked the new atrocity allegations off the front pages, to be replaced with heartening stories of how, as the New York Times reports, Zarqawi's death "appears to mark a major watershed in the war." Thus in his reputed end as in his reputed beginning, the Scarlet Pimpernel of Iraq has, by remarkable coincidence, done yeoman service for the immediate publicity needs of his deadly enemy, the Bush Administration.

It is not yet known who will now take Zarqawi's place as the new all-purpose, all-powerful bogeyman solely responsible for every bad thing in Iraq. There were recent indications that Maliki himself was being measured for the post, after he publicly denounced American atrocities and the occupiers' propensity for hair-trigger killing of civilians, but he seems to be back with the program now. Administration insiders are reportedly divided over shifting the horns to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's already much-demonized head, or planting them on extremist Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, or elevating some hitherto unknown local talent – or maybe just blaming the whole shebang on Fidel Castro, for old times' sake.

On the subject of Nick Berg (whose beheading prompted a huge flurry of theorising in the tinfoil world if I remember correctly), Past Peak has an interesting quote from his father, Michael Berg.

CNN's Soledad O'Brien today interviewed Michael Berg, father of Nick Berg, who's videoed beheading was attributed to al-Zarqawi. Berg's reaction is a model of maturity:

O'BRIEN: Mr. Berg, thank you for talking with us again. It's nice to have an opportunity to talk to you. Of course, I'm curious to know your reaction, as it is now confirmed that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the man who is widely credited and blamed for killing your son, Nicholas, is dead.

MICHAEL BERG: Well, my reaction is I'm sorry whenever any human being dies. Zarqawi is a human being. He has a family who are reacting just as my family reacted when Nick was killed, and I feel bad for that.

I feel doubly bad, though, because Zarqawi is also a political figure, and his death will re-ignite yet another wave of revenge, and revenge is something that I do not follow, that I do want ask for, that I do not wish for against anybody. And it can't end the cycle. As long as people use violence to combat violence, we will always have violence.

O'BRIEN: I have to say, sir, I'm surprised. I know how devastated you and your family were, frankly, when Nick was killed in such a horrible, and brutal and public way.

BERG: Well, you shouldn't be surprised, because I have never indicated anything but forgiveness and peace in any interview on the air.

O'BRIEN: No, no. And we have spoken before, and I'm well aware of that. But at some point, one would think, is there a moment when you say, 'I'm glad he's dead, the man who killed my son'?

BERG: No. How can a human being be glad that another human being is dead? [...]

Now, take someone who in 1991, who maybe had their family killed by an American bomb, their support system whisked away from them, someone who, instead of being 59, as I was when Nick died, was 5-years-old or 10-years-old. And then if I were that person, might I not learn how to fly a plane into a building or strap a bag of bombs to my back?

That's what is happening every time we kill an Iraqi, every time we kill anyone, we are creating a large number of people who are going to want vengeance. And, you know, when are we ever going to learn that that doesn't work? [...]

O'BRIEN: There's a theory that a struggle for democracy, you know...

BERG: Democracy? Come on, you can't really believe that that's a democracy there when the people who are running the elections are holding guns. That's not democracy.

Back to Lew Rockwell, Lew himself is decrying the possibility that a government may have formed in Somalia - "The End of the Salad Days in Somalia" - not because it is comprised of Islamic fundamentalists, and nor because it isn't made up of the CIA funded warlords who opposed them - but simply because it is a government - Somalia being viewed as an example of the goverment free utopia a real red blooded libertarian aspires to apparently (which to a rather less hard core libertarian like me simply demonstrates the problem of taking any ideology to its purest form - it probably isn't the utopia you imagine it would be).

Devotees of rhizome theory might like to study the recent history of Somalia closely and report back - maybe it doesn't deserve the savage reputation it generally has in the mainstream media - closed minded slaves of heirarchical control systems that they are :-)

Fifteen glorious years without a central government in Somalia! It was typically described as a "power vacuum," as if the absence of a taxing, regulating, coercing junta is an unnatural state of affairs, one that cannot and should not last.

Well, now this "vacuum" is being filled, with an Islamic militia claiming to be in control of the capital, Mogadishu.

But US officials may rue the day they hoped for a new government in this country. The dictator Mohammed Siad Barre fell in 1991. US troops went in with the idea that they would restore order, but thank goodness they did not. Bill Clinton's idea fell into shambles after 18 soldiers were killed by warlords. That seems like a low number in light of the Iraq disaster, but to Clinton's credit, he pulled out.

Since that time, Somalia has done quite well for itself, thank you (BBC: "Telecoms Thriving in Lawless Somalia"). But there was one major problem. The CIA couldn't come to terms with it. The US government likes to deal with other governments, whether it is paying them or bombing them or whatever. What makes no sense to central planners in DC is a country without a state.

So the US continued to talk about a "power vacuum" and secretly funneled money to its favorite warlords – a fact which the US officially denies but which has nonetheless been widely reported. Officials who have criticized the policy have been shut up and reassigned.

Aside from the downside that comes with the creation of any government, the continuous effort to fund warlords created a problem: it left open the possibility that at some point someone would cobble together the resources to claim to be a government. The mere prospect kept the Islamic militias worried and on edge. Finally, they prevailed.

As the International Herald Tribune says: "U.S. support for secular warlords, who joined under the banner of the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counterterrorism, may have helped to unnerve the Islamic militias and prompted them to launch pre-emptive strikes."

That's hardly surprising. How many times have we seen the US establishment back something to the hilt only to discover that the plot backfires by inspiring opposition?

...

The only people who are rejoicing in Somalia today are those who prefer dictatorship to puppet government. But the real victims are average people, who were doing just fine by scraping by. Adding a government to the mix will do nothing but create more trouble for everyone.

So here is a good rule. When a government falls, don't call it a "power vacuum." Call it a zone of liberty and be done with it. If some group claims to be the government, the proper answer should be: "Yeah, and I'm the Duke of Windsor. Get a life."

Also at Lew Rockwell, Paul Craig Roberts continues his ongoing litany of complaint about the behaviour of his fellow Republicans.

America is drowning in the shame of war crimes. One monstrous slaughter of civilians after another, each denied and covered up until brought to light by photos and eyewitnesses. The once proud US Marines, unable to defeat the resistance that is picking them off one by one, is now a frustrated, demoralized force that is getting even by murdering 3-month-old babies and old women.

The Council of Europe has issued its report on the Bush administration’s policy of kidnapping "suspected terrorists" and spiriting them off to tyrannical regimes to be tortured. US State Dept spokesperson, Sean McCormick, whose job it is to justify the criminal conduct of the Bush administration, said that he was "disappointed" in the report. Sean seemed genuinely puzzled that Europe’s oldest political organization would second-guess the sound judgment of the virtuous Bush administration or protest US violations of international law and human rights.

The only reason Americans can look themselves in the mirror is that they are clueless and have little idea of what is being done in their name. One-third of the US population actually believes that Iraq was behind 9/11 and that Bush found the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Apparently, a large percentage of the US population believes that Iran has nuclear weapons and that America is in danger of being attacked by Iran. No democracy can work when people take their responsibility as citizen so lightly as to be totally ignorant.

Formerly conservative, now proto-Nazi, publications such as National Review and the Wall Street Journal editorial page, keep pounding the war drums, as does right-wing talk radio and neocon propaganda organs such as the Weekly Standard and Fox "News." The few facts that emerge in the interstices of the war propaganda are quickly spun away.

Slaughter of civilians? Just a few bad apples. We will fix that with seminars for the troops on military ethics and core values.

Troop withdrawals? As soon as the undefined mission is completed.

No weapons of mass destruction? Don’t worry about it. We had to have some excuse to invade Iraq and to "build democracy" so that America would be safe.

World opinion? No opinion counts but ours.

Red ink? No sweat. We can borrow more from China. Our growing indebtedness is proof that our power makes us a preferred debtor.

Bush supporters dismiss anyone who tells them the truth as a traitor. Bush supporters are as dependent on propaganda as substance abusers are on drugs and alcohol. Try weaning Bush supporters from the obvious lies that are the basis of this administration, and they will call you every name in the book. They are proud to be Americans. Lies and war crimes are an American right.

And you had better shut up or those Haliburton-built concentration camps will be your new home.

Combining Zarqawi, violence in Iraq and decentralised organisational structures is the always interesting John Robb (even if he doesn't seem to believe in the propaganada model) - in Zarqawi is dead and the older
Iraq and Foco Insurgency.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki announced that a US air strike had killed Musab al-Zarqawi. The information that led to his death was the result of following the trail of custody on the distribution of his most recent video tape (or it could have been lucky given the number of air strikes that that have been made on reported Zarqawi positions in the past years).

This is excellent news, but it needs to be put into context (this is a brief for decision makers/analysts/thinkers and not motivation for the rank and file, so don't expect fluff -- as is often said, only the paranoid survive and every good commander I know understands this). Zarqawi is best categorized as [a] violence capitalist, very similar to bin Laden, that supported and incubated guerrilla entrepreneurs of the new open source warfare model. In this role he was [an] instigator of violence and not the leader of a vast hierarchical insurgency.

Here's how Zarqawi's role evolved:

* In the early phases of the guerrilla war in Iraq, Zarqawi was operational as the commander of a small cell. His group was able, through early large scale attacks, to set a plausible promise (an idea that many other groups could rally around) for the Iraqi insurgency. Namely, that it was possible to successfully fight the US occupation.

* During late 2004 and early 2005, his operational value diminished as the number of groups that were engaged in the war proliferated. During that time, he was focused on expanding the target set of the insurgency to include infrastructure, corporations and Iraqi military units. Later in 2005, his operational activities were focused on shifting the plausible promise of the insurgency from ousting the Americans to fighting Shiite domination (sectarian war) through attacks on Shiite civilians and symbols.

* By early 2006, Zarqawi's operational activities were all but over. He had succeeded in seeding the original insurgency and shifting the plausible promise to include sectarian warfare. During this final phase, Zarqawi moved into a role of strategic communicator, much like bin Laden's role today. In this role, he produced videos that were distributed to a global audience through the Internet and global media.

The latest "Peak Oil Passnotes" at Resource Investor notes that "Zarqawi Don't Drive" (not a bad tag line if its paraphrasing the Apocalypse Now quip "Charlie don't surf").

So Zarqawi is dead, oil drops by a buck and a half and suddenly the world seems a great place again. Not.

If ever there was a pointer to the underlying fundamentals of the oil and products market right now it was this one incident. Zarqawi had supposedly been the head of Al-Qaida in Iraq, although the whole idea of Al-Qaida even having a head seems faintly ridiculous to those who have studied the transient grouping.

When he is killed in the US bombing raid the mainstream media, and the various interested politicians, trumpet this as some kind of huge success. Sure he may well have done some very bad things, but he is not the cause of Iraq's collapse. That is something rightfully shared out between Saddam, President Bush, Prime Minister Blair, all of Saddam's previous supporters from France, Russia and China to the USA and all the conniving middle eastern governments you can think of. As well as the self-serving malcontents who make up the laughable attempt at a government now in Baghdad.

Zarqawi was a bit part player who came in at the end with a penchant for self-publicity and bloodshed. Like so many other players in the region. But his death drove down the price of crude landing thousands of miles away in Cushing.

We could not hope to spell it out any clearer than this. It is ridiculous. Geo-politics are the driver of the energy price, they will remain so. They are mixed in with the herd like reaction of the markets. They are mixed in with increased demand, maturing fields (or `peak oil` if you like the contaminated brand name) and daft investment cycles that have culminated in a terrible lack of spare capacity. But do not take it from me, take it from Alan Greenspan.

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Nor is there any respite from high energy costs because the Nigerian oil minister says they are going to add 1.5 million barrels per day of supply in the next fifteen months. Or that Mexico has found the new Cantarell. Or that Saudi Arabia say they can add gazillions of barrels to its reserve estimates, because none of it is true.

The hole Pemex drilled offshore Mexico is not only not the new Cantarell, it is not even the new hole. It seems hard to believe that almost all the mass media were captivated by such a brazen load of rubbish as that day when pre-election Vincente Fox welcomed the `discovery`. These are the games played out in front of our eyes, do not believe them.

We are in a time of high energy costs period. There is one thing and one thing alone that can bring them down and that is a recession. There will be no downward drivers of the oil price from the peace camp, no drivers of the oil price from renewed investment, more wars, superb exploration techniques or better technology. And there will certainly, never again be a man called Al-Zarqawi driving the oil price. That small act we can agree on.

Greg Palast has, as usual, an entirely different take on the Zarqawi Invitation (almost drowned out in the frenzy of self publicity srrounding the launch of his new book "The Armed Madhouse").

They got him -- the big, bad, beheading berserker in Iraq. But, something's gone unreported in all the glee over getting Zarqawi … who invited him into Iraq in the first place?

If you prefer your fairy tales unsoiled by facts, read no further. If you want the uncomfortable truth, begin with this: A phone call to Baghdad to Saddam's Palace on the night of April 21, 2003. It was Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on a secure line from Washington to General Jay Garner.

The General had arrives in Baghdad just hours before to take charge of the newly occupied nation. The message from Rumsfeld was not a heartwarming welcome. Rummy told Garner, Don't unpack, Jack -- you're fired.

What had Garner done? The many-starred general had been sent by the President himself to take charge of a deeply dangerous mission. Iraq was tense but relatively peaceful. Garner's job was to keep the peace and bring democracy.

Unfortunately for the general, he took the President at his word. But the general was wrong. "Peace" and "Democracy" were the slogans.

"My preference," Garner told me in his understated manner, "was to put the Iraqis in charge as soon as we can and do it in some form of elections."

But elections were not in The Plan.

The Plan was a 101-page document to guide the long-term future of the land we'd just conquered. There was nothing in it about democracy or elections or safety. There was, rather, a detailed schedule for selling off "all [Iraq's] state assets" -- and Iraq, that's just about everything -- "especially," said The Plan, "the oil and supporting industries." Especially the oil.

There was more than oil to sell off. The Plan included the sale of Iraq's banks, and weirdly, changing it's copyright laws and other odd items that made the plan look less like a program for Iraq to get on its feet than a program for corporate looting of the nation's assets. (And indeed, we discovered at BBC, behind many of the odder elements -- copyright and tax code changes -- was the hand of lobbyist Jack Abramoff's associate Grover Norquist.)

George Monbiot's latest look at Iraq notes an eternal truth - Occupations Brutalise.

Loach’s hero, Damien, as many Irishmen were, is radicalised by a raid by the Black and Tans, who were members of the constabulary recruited from outside Ireland. As the film shows, they were responsible for much of the police brutality. The historian Robert Kee, who is a fierce critic of the IRA, remarks that while the police were at first slow to retaliate, their vengeance – exercised against innocent people – “further consolidated national feeling in Ireland. It made the Irish people feel more and more in sympathy with fighting men of their own”. The fighter Edward MacLysaght recorded that “what probably drove a peacefully-inclined man like myself into rebellion was the British attitude towards us: the assumption that the whole lot of us were a pack of murdering corner boys”.

There is no question that the IRA also killed ruthlessly – not just police and soldiers but also people they deemed to be informers and collaborators. But Loach shows this too (I have seen the film). The press hates him because he admits that the people who committed these acts were not evil automata, but human beings capable of grief, anger, love and pity. So too, of course, were the British forces, whose humanity is always emphasised by the newspapers. Ken’s crime is to have told the other side of the story.

The other side – whether it concerns Ireland, India, Kenya or Malaya – is always inadmissable. The torture and killing of the colonised is ignored or excused, while their violent responses to occupation are never forgotten. The only aggressors permitted to exist are those who fight back.

Does it matter what people say about a conflict that took place 85 years ago? It does. For the same one-sided story is being told about the occupation of Iraq. The execution of 24 civilians in Haditha allegedly carried out by US Marines in November is being discussed as a disgraceful anomaly: the work of a few “bad apples” or “rogue elements”. Donald Rumsfeld claims “we know that 99.9% of our forces conduct themselves in an exemplary manner”, and most of the press seems to agree. But if it chose to look, it would find evidence of scores of such massacres.

In March Jody Casey, a veteran of the war in Iraq, told Newsnight that when insurgents have let off a bomb, “you just zap any farmer that is close to you … when we first got down there, you could basically kill whoever you wanted, it was that easy.” On Sunday another veteran told the Observer that cold-blooded killings by US forces “are widespread. This is the norm. These are not the exceptions.” There is powerful evidence to suggest that US soldiers tied up and executed 11 people – again including small children – in Ishaqi in March. Iraqi officers say that US troops executed two women and a mentally handicapped man in a house in Samarra last month. In 2004, US forces are alleged to have bombed a wedding party at Makr al-Deeb and then shot the survivors, killing 42 people. No one has any idea what happened in Falluja, as the destruction of the city and its remaining inhabitants was so thorough. Even the Iraqi Prime Minister, who depends on coalition troops for his protection, complained last week that their attacks on civilians are a “regular occurrence … They crush them with their vehicles and kill them just on suspicion. But like the Black and Tans the US troops have little fear of investigation or punishment.

Why should we be surprised by these events? This is what happens when one country occupies another. When troops are far from home, exercising power over people they don’t understand, knowing that the population harbours those who would kill them if they could, their anger and fear and frustration turns into a hatred of all “micks” or “gooks” or “hajjis”. Occupations brutalise both the occupiers and the occupied. It is our refusal to learn that lesson which allows new colonial adventures to take place. If we knew more about Ireland, the invasion of Iraq might never have happened.

And to close, here's a post at Boing Boing on "Amazing "Mad Max" vehicles in Iraq". And the locals aren't driving them...

There's a soldier in Iraq who's been posting some crazy pictures of American SUVs and pickup trucks that have been modified by civilian security contractors for use as gun trucks. They're insane, in a 'Mad Max at the Wal-Mart parking lot' kind of way.

Posted by Big Gav at 11:59 PM | Permalink | Comments

The Minister for blocking wind farm development, Ian Campbell, has announced that "carbon taxes are stupid". As he is a master of the dark art of stupidity, perhaps he could be considered an expert on stupid things, but I still think he's several beers short of a sixpack, as usual.

Personally I'd say a well implemented global carbon tax would solve (1) global warming (2) peak oil and (3) resource wars over oil and the terrorism that results from these - so perhaps they wouldn't be such a bad thing.

I've even come up with a plan that seems more workable than relying on international treaties like Kyoto that can be ignored by rogue states like Australia and the US - make them part of WTO rules...

Federal Environment Minister Ian Campbell has ruled out introducing carbon taxes to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, describing the idea as stupid.

Senator Campbell today discussed the Government's climate change policy at a luncheon in Perth, which was hosted by the Australian Institute of Energy.

He says taxing companies in relation to their carbon dioxide emissions would only discourage investment in Australia and push the greenhouse problem to another country.

Senator Campbell says there are better ways to reduce the energy sector's impact on the environment.

"What we want to do is put in sensible incentives to develop low-emission technologies and zero-emission technologies," he said.

"We are massively incentivising not only coal, but also solar and wind and a range of others.

The UK equivalent of Australia's "Australian Business Roundtable on Climate Change" has called for stronger government action on global warming.

Heads of some of Britain's biggest companies are meeting Tony Blair today to demand tougher targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. They will say that stronger government action would encourage industry to develop the technology needed to tackle climate change, as well as giving a lead to countries in the developing world.

The Confederation of British Industry has previously expressed concern that UK businesses might be disadvantaged by being given tougher targets than competitors overseas.

But today's meeting involves the biggest companies, including Shell, Vodafone, Tesco and Standard Chartered Bank, which are in a better position than smaller firms to adapt to the demands of emissions targets.

Last year the group said there was a "catch 22" situation where governments were refraining from new policies to cut emissions because they feared business resistance. At the same time, companies were finding it difficult to invest in low-carbon technology because there were no long-term climate policies.

Today the group said there had been advances in climate change policy, but ambitious and long-term action was still needed.

It will tell the prime minister there was potential for business and government to work together in a number of areas, from supporting low-carbon technologies, strengthening building and product regulation and stimulating consumer action.

One member of today's delegation, James Smith, chairman of Shell UK, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "I think climate change is a challenge that we all have to step up to and that requires significant measures deploying the technologies that are going to make a difference.

"We believe that the technological solutions are within our grasp, although they are at various stages of their development. What we need to do is muster the common will to put these solutions in place."

Grist has a staggering tale of Chinese madness - building the train of the thoughtless - a railroad from Beijing to Tibet tries to outmaneuver climate change.

A railroad connecting Beijing, China, to Lhasa, Tibet, has been completed, despite considerable political and environmental obstacles. The project, conceived over 40 years ago by Mao Zedong, is a symbol of Chinese domination and has faced opposition from proponents of Tibetan independence. The railroad runs through seismically active areas, climbs over a mountain pass that reaches 16,900 feet, and crosses permafrost that could move as much as 15 feet over time as it thaws and refreezes. To adapt, Chinese scientists pushed the project budget up nearly 50 percent, to roughly $4.2 billion, by designing a refrigeration system (!) to keep ground underneath some portions of the railroad frozen as the globe warms. They predicted the rate of climate change at exactly 3.6 degrees over 100 years -- if global warming accelerates faster than expected, the railroad could be defunct within a decade. If all goes "well," plans are in the works for luxury resorts and other developments along the route, bringing tourists to Tibet whether nomadic herders want them or not.

I've never quite worked out if these tales are true or not, but there is no shortage of sites claiming that Tibet is rich in uranium (some even claim it has the world's largest uranium deposit - which seems to clash with their hunger for Australian uranium exports). If some of these claims are correct, I guess they go quite a long way to explaining China's invasion and long occuptaion of the country. From the "Australia Tibet Council":

Tibet holds the world's most important known uranium reserves. These have been mined in the past without concern for nearby villages. Chinese authorities have offered Western companies facilities to dump waste in Tibet. As road and rail routes improve, nuclear waste could follow. Three nuclear missile sites have now been located on the Tibetan plateau and more are likely as China upgrades its nuclear weapons capability.

According to a report published by the Tibetan Government in Exile, the Chinese have discovered some 200 uranium deposits by 1990. (Tibetan Environment and Development Issues 1992, Dept. Of Information and International Relations, Central Tibetan Administration of His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama, Dharamsala, India.). The area around Lhasa contains possibly the world's largest deposits of uranium. (Richard Pascoe, "Uranium rich Tibet still awaits steam ;" South China Morning Post ; 24 Aug. 1982.)

The largest Chinese uranium mine appears to be the Gya Terseda mine in Tuwe (or Thebe) district, Gannan Tibetan Autonomous prefecture, Gansu Province. The Tibetan Government report says the processing of the uranium occurs near the town of Tuwe, which is 86 kilometres from the mine site. The report went on to say that 2000 Chinese are employed in the mine, but no Tibetans. Another report (Nuclear Tibet - Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Waste on the Tibetan plateau, International Campaign for Tibet - (ICT), Washington, 1993) claimed that most of the miners were ex-P.L.A. soldiers. The report also claimed that during the Cultural Revolution approximately 40 Tibetans worked at a dump site inside the mountain processing refuse. The refuse consisted of old electrical equipment, clothes and "thousands of boxes filled with dead white rats." Of the 40 Tibetans who worked in the dumping process, 5 were alive at the time the ICT report was produced.

Israel is planning to build a solar power station in the Negev desert that will supply 50% of their power consumption - if they can do it, why can't Australia, Senator Campbell (though we could probably do without handing over such a project to well connected ex-generals) ?

The Israeli government, in cooperation with private companies headed by former defense establishment officials, plans to build a solar power plant in the Negev, Ynet reported. Within two and half years, Israelis are set to enjoy energy produced at the station, which according to plans will provide 50 percent of the country's electricity consumption within 15 years.

The revolutionary project is being promoted by Vice Premier Shimon Peres, who already received PM Ehud Olmert's blessing to go ahead with the program. The station is set to be erected near the Jordanian border and supply energy to the neighboring Kingdom as well. King Abdullah himself has already expressed great interest in the initiative. Peres said that Israel must develop technologies for producing solar energy that can replace the country's total dependency on gas, coal and fuel. "Israel must become a global leader in this field. It's better for us to rely on the sunlight, which we have in abundance, than on the politically-flavored Saudi oil," he stated.

Grist has a look at modern compact flourescent lighting, which is now tolerant of dimming systems (much to my relief, as I've cursed my dimmer's ability to trash the earlier generation of CFLs repeatedly over the years).

I feel like my brain is squinting when I try to understand electrical current and wiring, but here we go: the short answer is yes, there are now compact fluorescent lamps designed for lights on dimmer switches, and they're even made by big guys like GE and Philips.

The second lesson I will share from the research I did on CFLs is: read the box, and do what it says. If your CFL box says do not use in enclosed fixtures, or use only in upward position, or don't use outside, follow the instructions. Because -- and of course I'm probably the only one who hadn't realized this -- the danger is not that the CFL won't work. The danger is fire. I just didn't think those nice, cool-to-the-touch lamps could get it together to make a fire. I'm not so smart sometimes.

You may have noticed my new jargon -- lamps -- and felt confused. Out (up?) there in the fluorescent-lighting world, what you and I would call "bulbs" have two components. The lamp is the bulby part. It is a pressure-, filament-, and gas-filled tube encased by phosphor-coated glass. When electricity hits the filament, it heats the gas atoms, they whir around and emit UV light, and the phosphor picks up the UV light and starts to glow. That's why CFLs basically look like intestine-y reformations of fluorescent tubes: the phosphored surface area is key to light production. The chunky base of CFLs contains an integral "ballast," which regulates the flow of electricity into the lamp (in commercial fluorescents, the ballast can be separated and replaced). The ballast gives the lamp electricity in little spurts, a sort of on-off cycle that prevents lamp blowout. So sometimes -- for tiny bits of seconds -- the lamp is off and the atoms are not receiving electricity, but the phosphor retains its glow, so we don't usually notice.

The warnings about using regular CFLs in dimmers (and enclosed fixtures) are related to the efficacy of the ballast.

Grist notes that long line fishing has caused a steep decline in albatross numbers (not to mention the fish population).

It's no surprise that long-line fishing is depleting our fish populations in staggering numbers. But many don't realize that the effects are felt above the ocean's surface as well. As the BBC reports, up to 100,000 albatrosses a year get caught on the baited hooks of long-lines and are pulled down to drown. Populations of three species breeding on South Georgia (country, not state!) and outlying islands have declined by about a third in the past 30 years. Dr. Sullivan of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds said simple measures such as "flying streamers behind the fishing boat or adding weights to the line so they sink more quickly would help to stop albatrosses being killed."

That's easier said than done. If fishermen were willing to take "simple measures," we wouldn't have the massive dirty fishing problem we have today.

It seems the dreaded terrorist mastermind behind the Al Qaeda in Iraq franchise, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has been killed (again), bringing delight and falling oil prices to a fearful world (though some analysts doubt his demise will make any difference to Iraqi oil exports).

I've never quite decided if ol' Abu Musab was an entirely fictional character or if his importance was just wildly exaggerated as part of the propaganda effort.

No doubt some new phantom menace will quickly be created to replace him - in some ways the propaganda industry follows the same cycles as TV soap operas - every now and then fresh blood (f you'll excuse the pun) is required to at least keep the punters interested (if not afraid) - and the Zarqawi story jumped the shark a while ago.

Sat Apr 08, 2006 at 02:12:40 PM PDT

The headline could also have been: Zarqawi retires, intends to spend more time with family.

Folks, it looks like the infamous Zarqawi has decided to retire. I know this story is a bit old, but I have to talk about it since I've been tracking this story.

It seems Bush's intelligence experts that were creating - er discovering - the Zarqawi audio tapes and creating - I mean intercepting Zarqawi's mail have decided it's time for the curtain call for Zarqawi.

Apparently, they noticed how played out and abused this Zarqawi propaganda had become. So, without claiming to have captured or to have killed him (since he was long-dead), they had to give a reason why there wouldn't be any more Zarqawi tapes. So they thought of a way to kill him off in the narrative, like writing an actor who has cancer out of the sitcom.

BBC:

Jordanian al-Qaeda militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has been forced to step down as leader of a coalition of Iraqi militants, a leading Islamist claims.

Washington Times:

Jordanian-born al Qaeda militant Abu Musab Zarqawi has been replaced as head of the terrorist organization in Iraq in a bid to put an Iraqi figure at the head of the group's struggle, said a leading Islamist.

I won't bother with the poll question again. Last time, 82% of Kossacks that read my diary thought Zarqawi was a hoax.

Hopefully its not some ex-Dallas scriptwriter working on this stuff - imagine "Zarqawi Returns" in October, with the Washington Times breathlessly reporting it was all a dream...

The military's propaganda program largely has been aimed at Iraqis, but seems to have spilled over into the U.S. media. One briefing slide about U.S. "strategic communications" in Iraq, prepared for Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top U.S. commander in Iraq, describes the "home audience" as one of six major targets of the American side of the war.

Washington Post
Military Plays Up Role of Zarqawi
April 10, 2006

Somewhere or other he was still alive and hatching his conspiracies: perhaps somewhere beyond the sea, under the protection of his foreign paymasters, perhaps even — so it was occasionally rumoured — in some hiding-place in Oceania itself.

George Orwell
1984
1948

I think we just have to accept . . . that the terrorists, Zarqawi and bin Laden and Zawahiri, those people have media committees. They are actively out there trying to manipulate the press in the United States. They are very good at it.

Donald Rumsfeld
Interview with Rush Limbaugh
April 17, 2006

Though you could not actually hear what the man was saying, you could not be in any doubt about its general nature. He might be denouncing Goldstein and demanding sterner measures against thought criminals and saboteurs, he might be fulminating against the atrocities of the Eurasian army, he might be praising Big Brother or the heroes on the Malabar front — it made no difference. Whatever it was, you could be certain that every word of it was pure orthodoxy, pure Ingsoc . . . The stuff that was coming out of him consisted of words, but it was not speech in the true sense: it was a noise uttered in unconsciousness, like the quacking of a duck.

George Orwell
1984
1948

Its a shame Billmon is still on holidays, as he would no doubt have had some interesting observations to make about the Zarqawi Phenomenon.

Zarqawi has indeed been a strange phenomenon of the ongoing war. Sometimes he seems to be everywhere at once in that country, blamed for (or, through jihadist websites, taking credit for) everything from the latest IED attacks on U.S. troops to mortar barrages against U.S. bases, suicide car-bomb assaults on Shiite civilian targets, kidnappings, beheadings, even a string of bombings stretching from Morocco to Turkey in 2003, not to speak of the resistance of whole Iraqi cities to the American occupation, If it happens and it's horrific, he seems to be the one responsible. His name has more or less replaced Saddam's and Osama Bin Laden's as the enemy of choice for the United States. He is a literal whirling dervish of an enemy. His lieutenants or aides fall constantly into American hands; he is reportedly at every hotspot all over Iraq – or not in Iraq at all. His organization seems to take credit for just about every attack, every suicide bomb, every explosion in the country. The search for Zarqawi has become an – if not the – organizing theme of the American war in Iraq. At one point recently, the blogger Billmon posted the following set of typical Zarqawi headlines:

June 16, 2005: U.S. Says It Has Captured Al Qaeda Leader for Mosul Area

June 5, 2005: Militant linked to Zarqawi arrested

May 25, 2005: Top aide to al-Zarqawi arrested north of Baghdad

May 25, 2005: US: al-Zarqawi aides arrested

May 9, 2005: Gains seen after new arrest of al-Zarqawi aide

April 19, 2005: Iraqi Security Forces Capture Two Zarqawi Associates

March 9, 2005: A Zarqawi cell "prince", six others captured in Baquba

And he suggested the following template for the basic we-almost-got-Zarqawi story in our press, a kind of Iraqi variant on America's Most Wanted:

[Iraqi/US/US and Iraqi] forces have [nabbed/captured/ arrested] [a/one/two] [senior/middle/] [figure(s)/operations chief(s)/terrorist operative(s)] of [Jordanian/al-Qaeda-linked/Iraq's most wanted] terrorist Abu Musab Zarqawi.

And yet, as far as anyone can tell, Zarqawi's actual organization or network is, at best, modest in nature and no one writing about it or him even really knows whether the man is alive or dead, in or out of Iraq. A look at basic press accounts of Zarqawi finds them filled to the brim with words like "purportedly," "allegedly," "claims," and "the CIA believes with a high degree of confidence." And the unnamed sources who tell us what is supposedly known about Zarqawi are invariably anonymous "American officials" or "intelligence officials," the same people who once assured us that he had a leg amputated in one of Saddam's Baghdad hospitals. (He is now believed to be two-legged.)

How to put together this conveniently satanic figure – capable of personalizing all the horrors of Iraq in a single monstrous body and bringing them home to the American public in a way that the Bush administration has found convenient – with what little is known about a possibly not-too-bright small-town thug is a curious challenge.

Posted by Big Gav at 10:50 PM | Permalink | Comments

No news tonight - but the link bucket has been refilled.

Posted by Big Gav at 10:46 PM | Permalink | Comments

Kerry O'Brien gave the Rodent quite a good grilling on TV tonight about his crusade to make Australia glow in the dark and his lack of support for cleaner, cheaper alternatives. Johnny is still trying to avoid picking reactor sites, though apparently the Mad Monk wouldn't mind one in Warringah - I'm not so sure his constituents would like the sight of a cooling tower on North Head though.

KERRY O'BRIEN: Not at all, Mr Howard. But the point is that you know, it is long said, it is an established principle of Government and of the judiciary and in our system of public governance, you don't just conduct an inquiry like this to be independent. It has to be seen to be independent. You've indicated that you might consider another inquiry into other energy sources like solar and wind, but what does it say about where your head's at that you've already got a nuclear power inquiry up and running at short notice before you even consider a similar inquiry for these other energy sources that have been in the front-line of the debate for the whole 10 years of your Government?

JOHN HOWARD: Kerry, we've already done an enormous amount in relation to coal and reducing greenhouse gas emissions from coal. We brought down an energy paper, white paper, two years ago and we established a joint Government industry fund to invest in technologies that would lead to cleaner coal. We're already doing an enormous amount there.

KERRY O'BRIEN: We're talking about renewables, we're talking about all these other forms of renewables.

JOHN HOWARD: If you're really serious about our energy future - and I think this is an area where the Australian community has some anxiety - you look at that. You look at coal, and you look at nuclear.

KERRY O'BRIEN: But you've looked at coal, you're looking at nuclear and you're saying you might also look at these other things.

JOHN HOWARD: I indicated today that there would be other facets of our examination of our energy security that the Government would be saying things about in the near future.

KERRY O'BRIEN: You watch China very closely so I'm sure you're familiar with their program to build nuclear power stations, but isn't China also planning to get twice as much energy from wind and solar as it is from nuclear?

JOHN HOWARD: Well, China is trying to get energy from all sources, and that's sensible and what I would say to the Australian public is that we should be open-minded enough to try and get energy from all sources. We shouldn't say, "Well it's either got to be nuclear, or coal, nuclear or fossil fuels or renewables", and there is more renewable energy now than there were 20 years ago. There was virtually none 20 years ago. Why shouldn't we be open-minded enough to look at all of the alternative sources? That's all I'm asking that this inquiry will do.

KERRY O'BRIEN: But why haven't you been open-minded enough over the past 10 years to make a much more vigorous effort to actually establish a much more viable renewable energy industry in Australia in these areas of solar and wind where we also have an enormous natural resource bank?

JOHN HOWARD: Because, Kerry, the judgment has been made by the Government over that period of time based on the information that we have, that the economics of renewables are so heavily negative that there hasn't been a case absent, huge Government subsidies to further boost the renewables industry.

KERRY O'BRIEN: Isn't that also going to be true of the nuclear power industry?

JOHN HOWARD: I don't know about that.

KERRY O'BRIEN: Well you know about it for the renewables without having an inquiry.

JOHN HOWARD: But it is possible for the economics of the two energy sources to be different, and I think what has happened with the nuclear energy source is that it could well be that the economics or the perceived economics of that have shifted far more than in relation to renewables and when you get - I know you'll criticise it because it's ANSTO - but when you get a report prepared by ANSTO that suggests that the economics of nuclear power have altered dramatically over the last few years you have to take some notice of that. And it's one of these areas -

KERRY O'BRIEN: There's also been criticism of the person who conducted the inquiry.

JOHN HOWARD: But, of course, there will be criticism of anybody who advocates nuclear power by the people who are opposed to nuclear power.

KERRY O'BRIEN: Isn't it true both ways? You seem to be -

JOHN HOWARD: There is an element of that, I accept that.

KERRY O'BRIEN: But you seem to be making an argument for saying it's OK and in fact we have no choice but to have people who are pro-nuclear power running this inquiry. But somehow or other it's not credible or it's not possible to have people who might start from a philosophical position opposed to nuclear power or a practical scientific position opposed to nuclear power. Somehow or other they're discredited before the process even starts?

All this talk about nuclear power and superior renewable alternatives has the coal industry lobby in something of a tizzy, trotting out some tame state premiers to pooh pooh nuclear - who needs it when you have good, old, dirty, planet cooking coal ?

A spokesman for state Energy Minister Theo Theophanous said Victoria was putting money into clean coal technology because nuclear power "doesn't stack up on environmental grounds, it doesn't stack up on economic grounds and doesn't have the acceptance of the community".

He said a Victorian study more than a year ago found it cost twice as much money to produce electricity through nuclear power.

Queensland Premier Peter Beattie warned yesterday that a nuclear industry would undermine Australia's coal industry, particularly in NSW and his home state, where there is a 300-year supply of coal and 16,000 workers in the industry.

Mr Beattie said buyers in some world markets were already making a choice between nuclear energy and coal, and the growth of a nuclear industry would inhibit the coal industry.

"I don't understand why people undermine the coal industry," said Mr Beattie. "We're going down the road of clean coal technology and we've got 300 years supply of coal."

Mr Beattie said the federal Government had seriously misread the electoral mood and there was little public support for nuclear reactors or a nuclear waste dump. "Coal royalties fund a large part of our police, nurses, doctors, paramedics, school teachers. And why would you give that up," Mr Beattie said.

Why would you give it up ? Global warming Pete - global warming...

Triple Pundit has a post on the hidden costs of shipping and an energy efficiency device - the skysail - which would help make what is already the most efficient way to move goods around even more so.

Joel Makower's latest post on Grist brings up some great things to be aware of regarding the environmental costs of shipping.

As with most fossil fuel dependant businesses I don't think we're going to see a great deal of change until the price of oil instigates it, but that's not stopping a lot of interesting companies from starting to think about new innovation. My personal favorite is skysails, a concept to attach giant sails to stadard vessels, thus increasing fuel economy by significant amounts. Other, simpler efforts are under way to streamline tractor-trailers on the interstates (a friend of mine is working on this problem) and some people are even trying to re-introduce hydrogen airships.

The best part of all these things is that they reduce costs for existing businesses while at the same time creating a myriad of new business opportunities for entrpreneurs of all sizes. My advice is to start thinking about fuel cost reduction technology and you'll have a winner of an idea.

Steve at Deconsumption has a look at how his predictions are panning out in Revisiting the Crisis Timeline.

...keeping in mind that 2006 is not even half through yet, I'm surprised to note that the Timeline has proven amazingly accurate so far--which at least means I haven't been viewing things from completely out in left field. Here are the thoughts that come to mind as I read it over again:

The US is moving ever closer toward economic collapse.

If I'd written this any time before a few weeks ago I might have questioned how the US Dollar could be holding up so well, but then it took a header with a vengeance...and it's now widely accepted that we've probably seen the end of the "dead-cat bounce of 2005" for the greenback (2-year chart, 10-year chart)--BTW, that phrase comes from the colorful market-addage "When you drop it off the top of a roof, even a dead cat will bounce a little bit...".

Now however the Dollar is coming under attack from seemingly every direction. Central Banks the world over are distancing themselves from it as carefully and quickly as they're able, but more significant is that Dollar-bashing has recently become a high-profile sport with the Russians. Not only have they launched verbal attacks against it, but just about a week ago Russia revealed her surprise special-attack-move when they announced they're (miraculously) completely ready to begin trading oil, oil products, and even gold in rubles next week--and presumably in Euros as well, since 2/3'rds of their oil and gas goes to Europe:

"For historic reasons, the dollar remains the world's "petrocurrency" - the only currency for the settlement of oil contracts on world markets. That makes the EU and Russia dependent on it. But with central banks switching to euros, the logical next step would be for fuel-exporting countries to start quoting oil prices in euros too."

And of course Iran’s new oil exchange plans are widely known, and Norway has even officially put the idea on the table as well. Venezuela has all but announced they're ready to take Euros as payment, so all in all it's clear the train has left the station, and there is little the White House will be able to do to stem the currency flight.

I'm strongly convinced that this mounting pressure on the Dollar is setting things up for a "triggering event" to happen over the next year or so which will precipitate a crash. This would likely then set-off a whole series of economic dominos to fall, from petroleum shortages in the US to a tumble in general housing prices (keep in mind that the well-publicized housing decline has so far really only affected second-home and speculator markets). So as Rich Dad, Poor Dad financial pop-star Robert Kiyosaki said recently, which expert do you choose to listen to? The one who tells you how to rearrange your deck-chairs, or the one who advises you to get your lifeboat off the ship altogether...?

The SMH has some news for goldbugs which looks at trends in portfolio allocation in commodities by some of the larger investors.

The world's big-money brigade is snapping up gold bullion at eight times the rate originally thought, according to UBS, the world's biggest gold trader.

The huge sums entering precious metals below the radar are likely to help to put a floor under the gold price after the dramatic fall of $US112 an ounce in late May, the sharpest correction since the bull market began five years ago.

The Swiss bank said information from its trading floor suggested that funds and investors were allocating 20 per cent of their commodity portfolios to precious metals.

This is far more than the index-tracking funds run by Goldman Sachs, Dow Jones-AIG and others that are usually taken to be a guide to overall investment flows.

UBS said these indices gave a deeply misleading impression, obscuring a silent shift of funds from oil into gold. The Goldman Sachs GSCI index, for example, has a gold and silver weighting of just 2.27 per cent, compared to 73 per cent for energy.

"If our traders' experience is representative of trends in the wider market, this has very important implications for metals investment," said the bank's gold expert, John Reade.

The UBS gold reports are watched closely by the markets. The Zurich bank manages the biggest known stash of private client wealth, surpassing $US1000 billion ($1330 billion).

The extra volume in gold buying has been channelled through the London Bullion Market Association, eclipsing the Comex futures market in New York which is usually monitored by speculators for clues.

...

The output in South Africa, the world's biggest supplier, fell to 10.9 per cent in the first quarter of 2006, despite high prices. The country's production has reached its lowest level since 1923. "It's becoming very hard to get gold out of the ground," Mr Norman said.

Oil states armed with a current account surplus of $US480 billion in 2006 are thought to be feeding the "stealth demand" for bullion, led by Russia.

President Vladimir Putin, a frequent critic of US dollar hegemony, has ordered the Russian central bank to raise the gold share of foreign reserves from 5 per cent to 10 per cent.

Russia's reserves have surged to $US237 billion, the world's fourth biggest, after rising 61 per cent in 2004 and 40 per cent in 2005. With a current account surplus of 10 per cent of GDP, it must buy a big chunk of the world's gold output just to stop its bullion share of reserves from falling.

Steve Balogh and friends' Groovy Green website is metamorphosing into something larger in scope than the original blog, with a magazine style format being the latest addition.

Welcome to Groovy Green - We've evolved into a green magazine, bringing you in-depth articles, interviews, and video posts on sustainable living, new products, community leaders, and people like you - trying to reduce your impact and increase your self sufficiency. Our blog will continue to bring you the latest in green news, links, and commentary.

Past Peak notes that support for Al Gore continues to steadily increase (thereby generating a flurry of "conservative" attacks) as "An Inconvenient Truth" continues to do very well at the box office. The book is also getting good reviews. Past Peak also notes the woeful state of journalism regarding global warming (a criticism which could be repeated in plenty of other areas).

In her recent interview of Al Gore, NPR's Terry Gross pointed out the following jaw-dropping facts:

Let me mention a study that you cite in your documentary and your book, An Inconvenient Truth. This is a study from the University of California at San Diego. A scientist there named Dr. Naomi Oreskes published in Science magazine a study of every peer-reviewed journal article on global warming from the previous 10 years, and then in her random sample of 928 articles, she found that no articles disagreed with the scientific consensus on global warming. Then another study on articles on global warming that were published in the previous 14 years in the press, specifically published in The New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times and Wall Street Journal found that more than half of those stories gave equal weight to the scientific consensus and to the view that human beings played no role in global warming.

So just to sum up: the scientific journals, the scientists agreed about global warming, but in these four, you know, major American newspapers, equal weight was given in half the articles to the opposing view that human beings are not causing global warming.

Staggering — yet, in a sad way, unsurprising. This is what it has come to. Scientists publishing in peer-reviewed journals are 100% unanimous, have been for years, but readers of the newspapers of record would have no way of knowing that. No wonder people are confused. Journalists who insist on reporting the world-is-flat "side" of the "argument" have a lot to answer for.

The Register's review also notes this media "anomaly".

As An Inconvenient Truth started, our worst nightmare seemed all too near.

The movie opens with Al Gore's nasal drone serving as the voice over. Images of a river and forest dominate the screen as Gore becomes consumed with cheesy hokum and talk about his long lost days sitting on the riverbank, chewing cud and communing with the mystic.

Our movie companion started gyrating, as she tried to hold in the laughter. Our concerns were more desperate. We'd actually waited in line for an hour to see this thing, and were now doubting that we could take more than 10 minutes of the film. Surely, it could not continue like this. Someone would make Gore stop.

Well, Gore doesn't stop, but the movie does get much, much better.

Broadly, An Inconvenient Truth is the most polished PowerPoint (Keynote, actually) presentation you're going to find. During the majority of the movie, Gore rolls out a dressed up version of the global warming spiel he has been giving across the globe for years.

The basic science of global warming is delivered via a decently funny animation. Countless images of melting ice caps and glaciers pepper the screen. Charts galore show the dramatic rise in carbon dioxide over the past forty years and the accompanying dramatic rise in temperature. More charts show how no real scientist disputes the global warming trend, while more than 50 per cent of journalists do raise objections to the "theory."

The photos prove the greatest selling point for Gore's agenda, while the statistics and projections will likely scare the hell out of you.

It's rare to see dry information presented in such an entertaining way.

Crikey today has a piece on News Ltd's recycling record - as I quoted Stephen Mayne's original trashing of Rupert on this topic I figure I should include this one too. The snippet about Norske Skog's paper mill is quite interesting - they did a large power deal with one of the NSW generators last year, so obviously their power demands haven't dropped all that much (though at the time I got the impression that they were building a new mill, so maybe increased recycling has been compensated for by increased demand - the usual problem with Jevon's paradox I guess).

Rupert's excellent Australian recycling record

By David Vincent, editor of Workplace Express

As one who's not always a fan of News Ltd's editorial standards, I'm loathe to defend Rupert Murdoch, but there's one front on which he's been unfairly criticised by Crikey's Stephen Mayne over the years. You've said repeatedly that Murdoch is one of the biggest corporate treekillers, but I can tell you that in Australia he is absolutely at the other end of the spectrum from the Gunns of the world.

In fact, News and the other publishers have been a good corporate citizens by turning around a very poor performance on recovering old newspapers in the late 1980s to a world-leading performance now. Part of that was a result of News setting up an internal Environmental Secretariat sometime around 1989-1990 that pushed along efforts to increase newspaper recycling.

But don't rely on my word on Australia's old newspaper recycling improvement – have a look at the Productivity Commission's draft report on waste management (pages 406-410), released last month. While the report contains a lot of the loopy orthodox economists' take on waste minimisation and resource recovery, it says Australia is a world leader in its recovery of old newspapers.

Because of a decision taken by the newspaper publishers around 1990, Australian Newsprint Mills (controlled by the publishers at the time) started using old newspapers in a new facility at the Albury newsprint mill (now owned by Norske Skog). This transformed the volatile market for old newspapers, which had relied on being used to make cardboard boxes, while some had been exported.

As the PC says, "the rate of newspaper recycling increased from 28% to 75% in 2004", according to the Newsprint and Publisher Group 2005, while the Publishers National Environment Bureau claimed Australia recycled more newsprint than any other country. While it would be best that the PC cited an independent source, there's no doubt Australia has made enormous strides on newspaper recycling since the early 1990s.

When I visited the Albury mill in the late 1980s, I was told by the mill's managers that it used 1% of the power in the NSW electricity grid. Most of this was due to the massive, crude grinders turning logs into fibre that is then used to make the unsophisticated "mechanical" pulp used to make newsprint. If you use old newspapers for your feedstock in the newsprint mill, you massively reduce your energy inputs for every section-laden SMH or 100-page-plus Herald Sun that punters buy, even taking into account the relatively small amounts of energy used to transport the recycled material back for its next life as a newspaper.

So it seems even Rupert and his fellow publishers recognise the environmental, economic and PR benefits of good environmental stewardship, which is consistent with his reputation as a hard-nosed business operator.

Grist has a report on the problems global warming (amongst other things) is posing for winemakers (and they have enough trouble here already thanks to a tax minimisation based wine glut).

Bad news for oenophiles: Global warming is messing with wine country. Wine grapes are highly temperature-sensitive, and if the globe gets much hotter (which smart folks say it will), famed wine-producing regions like France's Burgundy and California's Napa Valley may lose optimum climate for their grape varieties. Already, warmer temperatures in southern Spain are driving grape growers to shade vineyards, develop heat-resistant grapes, and in some cases, move to the mountains. Climate change could reduce the world's viable grape-growing regions by nearly 80 percent by the end of the century. Of course, other regions may then warm up enough to become prime wine country -- in the U.S., those could include upstate New York, coastal Michigan, the Puget Sound area in Washington state, and Virginia. Meanwhile, dozens of vineyards in California are doing their bit to address the problem by running irrigation systems on solar power.

On the other hand, Crikey reports that this year's vintage in France is expected to be a classic thanks to the warm, dry weather there. Maybe all it takes to see a positive side to global warming is to drink a lot...

The American critic Robert Parker says the 2005's show “compelling greatness” and describes his jubilation about the vintage with many Chateaux making their greatest wine ever: “I know I sound like a broken record,” he admits, “but here is another estate that may have produced its finest wine…ever.”

And the reason for all these superlatives? Well the experts put it down to two things; grapes that were picked small and ripe. The 2005 Bordeaux vintage was marked by above average temperatures and below average rainfall.

The growing season was the driest since 1949 with rainfall about half the 30 year average. The drought kept the grapes free of the fungal diseases they often suffer in humid weather and made them smaller and unusually low in juice. “It was the thickness of the skins, in which all flavour-, colour- and tannin-producing compounds reside, that were responsible for the 2005s' quite exceptional charge of these vital elements.” Ms Robinson explained to her readers.

Now you can make of that what you will. Some researchers at the Davis Campus of the University of California have conducted experiments that suggest that when drunk blind, people prefer wine made from high yielding grapes more than from low yielding ones. But there is little doubt that ripeness helps quality.

Winemakers throughout Australia, where a good vintage virtually every year produces the fruit concentration and alcohol levels of the fabled French years, have long known that. So too do the growing number of customers worldwide who have made Australian wines bigger sellers than their French competitors in many markets.

It is something of a paradox that the same wine experts praising the 2005 Bordeaux are the ones who regularly write about cool climate winemaking and how this is essential to make fine wine. Yet it is wines from the uncommonly hot European summers like 1945, 1947 and now 2005 that they really rave about.

The evidence pointing to rising world temperatures suggests that soon there will be more opportunities for Bordeaux “vintages of the century”. Conditions in the nine months of the 2005 growing season saw 70 hours more sun than the thirty-year average and temperatures above the thirty-year average from 0.6 to 2.3 degrees C depending on the month, with the one exception being February when temperatures were 1.3 degrees below average.

Posted by Big Gav at 7:35 PM | Permalink | Comments

Energy related stories are still much in the local news lately, with the collapse of the Snowy hydro privatisation and the nuclear power debate getting a lot of attention over the weekend.

Crikey seems to be less than amused that the float of Snowy hydro has been defeated by a coalition of largely grassroots opposition from all parts of the political spectrum.

The Snowy sale is off – all three governments involved announced their withdrawal this morning. Why? Well, Malcolm Fraser explained his objections to the sale on the ABC yesterday:

It's a great Australian icon and I think it represents privatisation gone mad. But more important than that, I'm against private companies having control of Australia's water resources. Water is a scarce resource for the whole continent, and to have express use determined by private companies whose interest is profit for shareholders is not going to lead to the best answer.

Indeed. It's much better for subsidised water to go to the shareholders of the great agrarian socialist paradise and have it paid for by the taxpayers, isn't it? Good to see that economics still remains such a strong point with Big Mal. And now that the Snowy sale has been abandoned can we be the first to compare John Howard to his old boss – circa 1982? Malcolm Fraser's strengths seem to be reflected in his old Treasurer.

“There is overwhelming feeling in the community that the Snowy is an icon, it's part of the great saga of post World War II development in Australia”, a stroppy and defensive Prime Minister said. “I have listened to that, and it is important that on occasions a government have both the courage and the willingness to change its mind on something.”

Really? Did public opposition stop the Telstra sale? The GST? WorkChoices? Or is because there has been no Budget bounce. Is the IR issue starting to catch up? What's in the Government's polling? Is it showing that Howard's political position is nowhere near as strong as we might have been led to believe?

Admitting that you've got a policy wrong can be a demonstration of political courage, but it can also be a sign that the wheels are falling off. If the polling is poor, why not back down on WorkChoices? The Prime Minister has been boasting all week about increases in real pay for workers, so why not go the full Malcolm and preside over a wages explosion?

Personally I think its probably an asset best eft in public hands - water issues will mean it will always be an entity controlled by political forces and the private sector is better off staying out of it, for everyone's sake.

Alan Ramsay came up with the best description of the Rodent I've seen in a while (a question for American readers - would the NY Times or Washington Post ever let a reporter call Bush a "toad" or a "lickspittle" ?), as he noted that Johnny has probably enjoyed throwing the cat amongst the Labor party premiers.

It was Ben Chifley who moved mountains. In May 1949 the Labor prime minister told Australians by radio: "The Snowy Mountains scheme, the greatest single project in our history, is a plan for the whole nation, belonging to no one state." John Howard, finally, agreed yesterday. He bowed to Chifley - and to public opinion. In doing so he shafted Morris Iemma and Kim Beazley, absolutely and utterly. It was a political doing over as thorough as you get.

Who is left looking weak and silly and powerless? Howard might be a toad and an international lickspittle, but as a politician, in every insinuating nuance of the word, the others aren't up to wiping his boots.

Howard called his press conference at 9.30am, in the Blue Room, walking across the corridor from his prime ministerial suite opposite, in Parliament's executive wing. By then his decision to "save" Snowy Hydro was a day old. He just hadn't told the rest of us. He orchestrated the timing for the weekend headlines. Now he didn't beat around the bush (no pun).

"Ladies and gentlemen," Howard began, looking very pleased himself. "I've called this news conference this morning to announce that the Commonwealth has decided to withdraw from the sale of Snowy Hydro. We will no longer have our 13 per cent share on offer in the sale by the NSW and Victorian governments of their shares."

Whack! I swear you could hear Australians everywhere letting rip their pleasure, however much the economists might gag.

This was (another) one for "the people".

Ross Gittins notes that "Howard has seen the light" - "and it's a nuclear one" - strangely enough he comes to much the same conclusion about the nuclear "debate" that I've been talking about in recent weeks.

HEAVEN be praised. John Howard, the great climate change procrastinator, has experienced a road-from-the-White-House conversion. In a blinding revelation, he now realises we must embrace our inevitable nuclear future.

Mr Howard has suddenly discovered that climate change is much worse than we thought - very worrying, in fact - and nuclear power is the obvious answer.

And this from the man who, while never actually coming out of the closet to reveal himself as a climate-change denier, refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, saw no need for serious measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and was perfectly happy with his ineffective Australian Greenhouse Office and its you've-got-to-be-joking voluntary targets.

So, starting tomorrow, we need to have a full debate about the merits of switching to nuclear power and find out if it's economically feasible.

Trouble is, in a country where coal is so readily available, we already know it isn't. Take the latest report, prepared by a British scientist for the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation.

As Peter Martin summarises its findings on the New Matilda website, the report finds that a privately owned nuclear power plant could make money only if the government contributed 14 per cent of the cost of building it and then paid 21 per cent of the electricity bills for the first 12 years.

Apparently, the knowledge that nuclear power could only be introduced with heavy public subsidies hasn't deterred Mr Howard from spruiking it. So here we have the self-proclaimed father of economic rationalism, happily flirting with the notion of picking winners in a big way.

Mr Howard's economic rationalism extends only as far as refusing to contemplate any kind of leg-up for renewable energy (always excepting ethanol, of course).

So what gives? One minute climate change is a beat-up and in no way urgent, the next we're really worried about it. One minute we're not wasting the taxpayers' hard-earned on renewable energy, the next we're happy to contemplate establishing an industry that could only survive in a government-provided iron lung.

The conventional wisdom is that Mr Howard's only interest in the nuclear debate is to use it as a diversion and a way to drive a wedge through the ranks of the Labor Party.

I'm sure those benefits wouldn't have escaped his attention. But, when you think about it, there is a logical connection between these two apparently contradictory positions: both fit the interests of the mining industry.

Who would hate to see us ratify Kyoto or introduce a carbon tax or give renewable energy an advantage over coal-fired electricity? The miners.

Who would love to see a softening of the restrictions on, and general public disapprobation of, uranium and nuclear power - so much so they'd be prepared to use climate change as their cover? The miners.

The ABC has an article which links concerns about an oil production crisis to the nuclear energy subject. Its a shame there isn't a direct quote in the report - it might be the first time the Rodent has explicitly mentioned peak oil.

Mr Howard says the review will investigate whether nuclear power can reduce greenhouse gas emissions. He says since an an oil production crisis is approaching, alternative energy sources must be investigated.

His Science Minister Julie Bishop says several experts will conduct the inquiry. "I would imagine it would take some time, could be a matter of months, could be throughout the course of this year," she said.

But the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) chairman Don Henry says it could be a waste of time and money. He says the debate must consider the broader issue of climate change.

"Well if the inquiry is just about nuclear power it will be a waste of taxpayers' money because nuclear power is too dangerous, too dirty, and too slow to tackle climate change," he said. "If the inquiry is going to be fairdinkum, it needs to look at that issue: what can we do right now to tackle climate change in Australia?"

NSW Premier Morris Iemma is having none of Johnny's glow in the dark solution to peak oil, declaring no nuclear power plant will be built in NSW (though that won't stop us all playing the "where will it be built" game to freak out sitting Liberal party politicians).

NSW Premier Morris Iemma has vowed no nuclear power stations would be built in NSW as long as he is premier. Mr Iemma today urged state opposition leader Peter Debnam to join him in opposing the construction of nuclear power plants in NSW.

"While ever I'm premier of NSW there won't be any nuclear power plants in NSW," he told reporters. "It'll be interesting to see whether the Opposition stands up to the Prime Minister and his plan for nuclear power plants in Port Stephens, the Central Coast, the South Coast, [and] Moorebank."

The head of the nation's nuclear research group says any nuclear power stations built in Australia would need to be near major cities or towns on the east coast.

Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) executive director Ian Smith today said it was too early to speculate about precise locations for nuclear reactors, but said they would need to be built in eastern Australia where they could be easily hooked up to the electricity grid.

He said that four or five nuclear plants would have to be built to make an atomic energy industry viable. "Because nuclear power produces large quantities of power, it would need to be on the major grid," Dr Smith told ABC Radio. "We're talking about, yeah, the east coast is the major grid in Australia."

An ANSTO report, released yesterday, found nuclear power would be competitive with gas- or coal-fired electricity - but only if taxpayers helped to pay for it or shouldered the risk of producing it.

BHP appears to have decided that the time has come to abandon the North Sea.

Despite the sale being widely reported in Britain, with US investment bank Jefferies to handle the sale, BHP would not comment yesterday.

The sale of the North Sea assets would follow BHP's recent deal to sell its Tintaya copper mine in Peru to Xstrata for $US634 million.

Both sales are similar in strategy to a series of earlier asset sales by Rio Tinto - the selling of less than world-class assets during a period of super strong commodity prices.

The North Sea asset sale would be the first since US oilman Mike Yeager replaced Phil Aiken as group president of BHP's energy division. Mr Yeager has completed a whirlwind tour of the group's global operations and a decision to quit the North Sea comes as no surprise.

Most of the majors have been pulling out on the basis that the "big" oilfields have all been found and are now in rapid decline. The tax regime has also been a turn-off.

Mr Yeager is expected to be more a wheeler and dealer than Mr Aiken and is expected to strengthen BHP's resolve to expand its oil and gas production interests in the US, Africa and the Middle East. Monster cash flows being generated at present by the petroleum division, plus cash freed by asset sales, will give Mr Yeager unprecedented latitude to build the business.

Apart from anything else, the oil and gas industry is one of the few in the resource sector in which BHP can grow substantially without the market and competition constraints it runs into in most other areas.

Mr Yeager was previously vice-president of ExxonMobil's development arm, with responsibility for major joint venture projects.

Reuters has a report linking China's concerns about peak oil to the rapidly expanding solar energy industry there - in this case, the low tech alternative of solar energy water heaters.

Himin will almost certainly be one of the new powerhouses. Huang says revenues will expand 80 to 100 percent this year, although he declined to give figures in yuan.

The trim 48-year-old, who is so committed to efficiency that an office rule bans workers from using the elevator to travel less than three floors, is also considering a listing on the Hong Kong stock market.

As a delegate to China's parliament, he helped draft a new renewable energy law that found favour in Beijing as official worries grow about reliance on imported oil and polluting coal.

Huang started on the other side of the energy industry, training as a petroleum engineer. But he took worries about "peak oil" -- the time when global production will peak, followed by a decline -- seriously enough to nurture a second career.

"One of my professors told me that petroleum resources would only be valid for 50 years, so I thought maybe this is a sunset field," he said with a grin.

He got a job at a petroleum institute in Dezhou, but poured all his spare time and cash into researching solar technology, even after selling a patent for oilfield equipment.

He worked as designer, engineer, porter, plumber and salesman, and to the concern of his ever-poorer wife, gave his first heaters away as gifts to family and colleagues.

The first big break came when a factory manager at a family wedding ordered heaters for all his workers, forcing Huang to build the factory he's been using ever since.

The Herald had an interesting report on Woodside's adventures in Mauritania on the weekend.

Woodside's $1 billion investment in Mauritania's oil catapulted the company into the big league. Then came a coup, claims of corruption and a $US100 million settlement.

ON FEBRUARY 21, a white four-wheel drive with darkened windows swept up to the front of the clay-coloured courthouse in the ramshackle Mauritanian capital of Nouakchott. Slipping out of the vehicle, past the armed security guards in navy blue uniforms and through the wire doors into the courtroom were representatives from Australia's largest oil company, Woodside Petroleum.

Not in court that day, but a couple of minutes drive away behind the lush green hedging and white-trimmed, thick tan walls of Woodside's secure compound, was its chief executive, Donald Rudolph Voelte.

The Mauritanian capital, a sandy, decaying and poverty-stricken city, isn't often host to someone of 53-year-old Voelte's standing. In Mauritania, bottled water counts as hard currency and business is done over a centuries-old tea-pouring ritual. What the Islamic nation in north-west Africa does have is oil - and plenty of it.

Voelte was in town that day for Mauritania's oil. Or rather to try and salvage a situation on the brink of going horribly wrong. Woodside and its partners have a $1 billion investment sitting just 80 kilometres off Mauritania's coast. It has taken five years to develop the Chinguetti oilfield, and oil has just started flowing.

But a change of government last August after a military coup left everything hanging in the balance.

The Iranians seem keen to keep their nuclear pot boiling with oil prices rising in the wake of Ayatollah Khamenei's warnings about dire consequences to energy supplies in the event of US action.

US ENERGY SUPPLIES

In order to threaten Iran, you [America] say that you can secure the energy flow in the region. You are wrong. Beware that if you make the slightest mistake over Iran, the energy flow through this region will be seriously endangered. You will never be capable of providing energy security in this region. You are not capable and you should know this.

NUCLEAR WEAPONS

We have no problem with the world. We are no threat whatsoever to the world and the world knows it...

The other suggestion is that Iran is seeking a nuclear bomb. This is an irrelevant and wrong statement, it is a sheer lie. We do not need a nuclear bomb. We do not have any objectives or aspirations for which we will need to use a nuclear bomb. We consider using nuclear weapons against Islamic rules...

We think imposing the costs of building and maintaining nuclear weapons on our nation is unnecessary. Building and maintaining such weapons is costly. In no way do we deem it correct to impose these costs on the people.

"Dissident Voice" has an article on peak oil and the danger it poses to the US, given its dependence on foreign energy supplies (and makes the now fairly common comparisons between the pre collapse Soviet Union and the present day United States).

The strategic importance of the world’s oil fields has long been a pre-eminent policy issue among military analysts around the world. The major military campaigns and imperial ambitions of the major powers engaged in the World Wars of the Twentieth Century revolved around control of world oil supplies and supply lines.

As America ascended to its current position of global hegemon during these World Wars, the American “way of life” has been synonymous with cheap energy to sustain its suburban lifestyle, its global industrial agricultural system, its worldwide war machine, and the dominance of its global corporations, which all depend upon massive utilization of cheap energy resources to support their far-flung globalized supply lines.

Since the 1970s, when the OPEC nations unveiled their “oil weapon” and the Club of Rome predicted a future of booming population growth and looming shortages of natural resources, the facts have been readily available for those who chose to seek them out.

American oil companies reached their peak of domestic oil production in the 1970s, as predicted by the geologist King Hubbert, who created what is now known as peak oil theory. Hubbert predicted that we would reach peak oil production worldwide around this time, and that the future could only bring the end of cheap oil and the culture that depends upon it.

Since the 1970s, America has relied more and more heavily on imported oil, and since that time, America’s military presence and covert wars have impacted oil-producing countries around the world.

Any threat to cheap oil has rightly been seen by a succession of American Presidents as a threat to America’s Global Empire. Prior to the ascension of George Bush the Younger, America’s proxies, allies and pawns dominated the Middle East, the primary source of cheap oil, and American oil companies had their way North and South, East and West, certain that their interests would be bolstered and protected by American military might and America’s covert warriors. Regime change was effected around the world to insure the continuation of the cheap-oil lubricated Pax Americana.

Americans now burn 20+ million barrels of oil per day, and 12 million barrels of that amount are imported from 70 foreign countries, as crude oil and various refined products, but the American economic miracle has stalled for all but the wealthiest, most privileged twenty percent of Americans.

Meanwhile, economic growth in Korea, China, India and Japan is exploding, and the Asian powers collectively seek to insure the oil supplies necessary to continue fueling their drive to lift billions of impoverished Asians into an American Twentieth Century lifestyle. Their rapidly rising energy requirements combined with America’s energy profligacy are creating global energy demand that simply cannot be met with today’s existing supplies of easy-to-refine oil, today’s oil technologies and today’s worship of the consumption society.

Over the last forty years, numerous countries have realized the increasing value of their oil reserves and have nationalized their oil infrastructure. Mexico, Middle Eastern oil producers, Ecuador, Brazil and Venezuela have all taken control of their oil resources away from multi-national oil companies during this period.

All this constitutes a threat to US hegemony, but for America, the worst by far is soon to come. America’s dependence on foreign oil will soon prove its undoing.

Readers of this newsletter know that Russia, Iran, Japan, Venezuela and China are creating new energy partnerships and new pipelines are being built to provide Middle Eastern and Caspian Sea oil and natural gas to Asian powers at the expense of American interests.

Vladimir Putin, who wrote his graduate school thesis on the creation of a Russian natural gas company, is now creating a multi-national energy conglomerate with geo-strategic influence and has armed Russia with a potent oil weapon.

...

In a striking parallel to the Soviet Union during the Brezhnev era, America’s existing social, political, and economic systems appear to be dominant, immovable and totally geared toward preserving the status quo for those in power. Just as in Brezhnev’s USSR, America’s economic system, based on an aggressive Utopian ideology out of touch with the real world, provides increasing rewards only for the privileged few.

Over the last twenty-five years in the US, a Utopian economic ideology, free-market laissez-faire capitalism, has been deified as the guiding principle for all segments of society and all forms of social interaction.

However, free markets in America are a fraud. All major economic segments, including banking and finance, health care, insurance, agriculture, military contracting, oil and energy, utilities, publishing and media, advertising, automobiles, and the rest are dominated by comfortable oligopolies. A small group of transnational corporations controls the "free market" for their own benefit. These oligopolies control the government agencies charged with regulating their behavior so they can socialize and externalize costs and privatize profits as much as possible.

Just as in the Soviet Union, America has developed a militarized society slavishly devoted to exporting its inflexible economic ideology of fundamentalist free market Utopianism to the rest of the world. Just as the Communists sought to export their Utopia at gunpoint around the world, America now promises to export American style "free market society" and “democracy” through a series of Imperial wars.

...

Evidence of American incompetence is mounting everywhere one looks, and although America appears to be the invincible world hegemon, there are disturbing parallels between America's current position and the waning days of the Soviet Empire.

Under Brezhnev, the Soviet Union waged a disastrous war in Afghanistan that undermined Soviet pretensions to military invulnerability, cast the Soviet army as a an Imperial aggressor, and set the world's billions of Muslims against Soviet rule everywhere.

Under Bush, America is waging a disastrous war in Afghanistan and Iraq that is undermining American pretensions to military invulnerability, casting the American army as an Imperial aggressor, and setting the world's billions of Muslims against American interests everywhere.

In Brezhnev’s USSR, technology in the service of ideology produced monsters of inefficient design and engineering debacles on a regular basis. America’s worship of technology divorced from social consequences is producing monsters such as the levees that broke in New Orleans, the technologies of surveillance and control that threaten human rights and the freedom of speech and the Internet, junk food, industrial agriculture, genetically modified foods, the Hummer and other SUVs that require American troops to oppress and invade oil producing countries to support obsolete engineering solutions that exacerbate the global energy, political and economic crises.

Brezhnev’s USSR relied on an oppressive political establishment, secret police, a militarized society, and a fossilized ideology dedicated to world domination to uphold communist rule. In America, the unholy ménage a trois between America’s fundamentalist Christian conservative political movement, the US military establishment and the Republican party threatens to undermine the institutions of American democracy and the foundations of American intellectual leadership -- allegations of rigged elections, attacks on basic scientific methodologies, increasingly overt police state tactics applied wholesale at home and abroad, contempt for human rights and international treaties and bloody culture civil wars escalate year by year.

The situation in East Timor doesn't seem to be improving much, with President Gusmao reportedly crying in a meeting with Lord Downer of Baghdad.

When East Timor's President, Xanana Gusmao, received Australia's Alexander Downer on Saturday in his office in the Palace of the Ashes, the humiliation of his country's collapse overcame him.

Gusmao, the charismatic warrior-poet who led East Timor's guerilla resistance movement and spent seven years in an Indonesian jail, broke down in tears and wept openly.

He had spent his life working to win independence from one foreign power after another, Portugal then Indonesia, now found his country, just four years after it became the world's newest nation, dependent for its stability on a third.

Gusmao was grateful to the man sitting before him, the representative of that power, but felt bitterly the failure of his nation.

With armed Australian troops standing just beyond the office door and local gangs still sporadically operating beyond, Downer presented the Australian plan for returning East Timor to self-governance. But he also made several firm demands of Gusmao and the other East Timorese leaders as prerequisites.

Progress in restoring order to the capital, Dili, has been good, but serious short-term uncertainties remain, including the tenure of the Prime Minister, Mari Alkatiri, and Portugal's decision to deploy paramilitary forces but to refuse any co-operation with the Australian military command.

Wayne Madsen continues to post small snippets of conspiracy theory on the subject - as usual he could do with some fact checking to get rid of some of the glaring inaccuracies (earth to Wayne - Vanuatu isn't part of Papua New Guinea - its not even close to it).

June 1, 2006 -- More details emerge on Australian-U.S. destabilization of East Timor. Informed sources from Australia report that the recent attempted coup in East Timor and resulting violence was prompted by covert Australian and American support for a combination of sacked members of the western command of the East Timor Defense Force and former pro-Indonesian Timorese militias operating from the Indonesian western half of Timor island. The Indonesian army (TNI) apparently was aware of the Australian and American interference but took no measures to stop it or report it to the United Nations or other nations. The John Howard and George Bush regimes have their eyes on East Timor's share of Timor Sea oil blocks and fomented the coup to ensure a pro-oil industry regime was installed in Dili.

June 4, 2006 -- More on neo-con machinations in East Timor. Australian sources report that the Australian-U.S.-inspired rebellion in East Timor was partly intended to force secular Muslim Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri from office. Information received by WMR indicates that rebel leader Major Alfredo Reinado, in addition to being supported by Australian and U.S. oil interests and Australian and U.S. intelligence operatives, is supported by anti-Muslim Roman Catholic elements that include members of the proto-fascist Catholic secretive organization Opus Dei. The Bush administration is using Opus Dei in destabilization efforts in Venezuela, Mexico, Peru, Ecuador, and Brazil. The Iberian roots of the organization and the adherence of many Spanish and Portuguese Catholics to the sect make it an ideal vehicle for stirring up problems in Spanish and Portuguese-speaking nations. East Timor is a former Portuguese colony. Opus Dei is very strong in the Liberal Party of Australia, one of the two conservative parties that make up John Howard's coalition.

Australian sources also report that the same Australian covert operatives who stirred up the rebellion in East Timor were also involved in fomenting deadly rebellions in the Solomon Islands. Next in the Australian plans are the islands of Papua New Guinea, including volatile Bougainville, Vanuatu, and Indonesian-occupied West Papua. There is a neo-con/neo-colonialist plan to virtually re-colonize the small island nations of the Pacific under the Australian flag.

Nick Possum's site (which has posted the occasional bizarre peak oil post like the semi-famous "Peak Oil: The turd on the table" last year) is also doing some theorising on the Timor situation.

The one thing East Timorese Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri didn’t want was for his small dirt-poor nation to be caught in the vise-like grip of the World Bank and its so-called “economic reforms”. Consequently, Alkatiri declined to accept their offers of loans. That was a fundamentally smart strategic decision, but it probably doomed his leadership.

Alkatiri was also keen to keep out of the political grip of Australia – as led by John Howard, George Bush’s self-described “deputy sherriff” in South-East Asia. He saw the importance of charting an independent course, so he oriented his fledgling economy towards the Chinese and the Europeans. In 2004, for example, he gave CNPC, the Chinese oil company, a contract to search for oil and gas in Dili’s bit of the Timor Sea.

...

On 9 April, World Bank chief Paul Wolfowitz visited Dili. In a disarming speech, full of kind words, he said East Timor had made dramatic steps forward. He was eager to encourage development of the private sector and called for “simple rules for doing business” (code words for enforcement of low wages and the ability to export all profits).

“The stark reality is that in almost all cases, oil wealth has been a curse for developing nations more than it has been a blessing. It has often been associated with corruption, entrenches social divisions, increased poverty, even violence”, Wolfowitz said.

The neo-con leader should know. He was one of the main architects of the US invasion of oil-rich Iraq, from which, cynics allege, an avalanche of corruption, social divisions, increased poverty and even violence resulted.

Another site which has been casting a jaundiced eye over Australian actions relating to East Timor is the "World Socialist Web Site" - they tend to view Australian policy as being designed to keep the Chinese out of our backyard (echoing American policy over South America in many ways).

Alkatiri and his supporters are neither “Marxists” nor “communists”. Nor are the Howard government and its mouthpieces in the media concerned about the government’s policies toward the people of East Timor. Their opposition to Alkatiri centres on the fact that his faction has sought to win support from other major powers, principally Portugal, and increasingly in the recent period, China, as a counter-weight to the pressure of Australian imperialism.

Alkatiri, in particular, raised the ire of Canberra during the protracted negotiations over the exploitation of the oil and gas reserves when he denounced the Australian government for its bullying tactics.

After four years of intransigence from Howard and Downer, the Dili government was last year forced to agree to delay the final settlement of the maritime border between the two countries for 50 to 60 years. Under international boundary law—which Australia has refused to recognise—East Timor is entitled to most of the oil and gas revenues. But Canberra finally succeeded in having Dili drop its claim of sovereignty over key resource-rich areas of the Timor Sea for two generations; by which time the main oil and gas fields will be commercially exhausted.

If Alkatiri were regarded as an Australian ally in East Timor, rather than as an obstacle, then the attitude of the Howard government, and, correspondingly, commentary in the mass media, would have been quite different.

For a start, the so-called dissident soldiers, whose rebellion sparked the crisis, would not have been portrayed as having legitimate grievances. Instead, the government’s decision to sack them after they went on strike would have been supported. Rather than Australian military commanders holding discussions with the “rebels,” they would have been denounced for organising a mutiny, taking the law into their own hands, and creating the conditions for “terrorism”. Their campaign for the ousting of the Alkatiri government, however, dovetails with Australian interests.

Those interests centre on securing Australia’s position in a region where great power conflicts are increasing. As a comment in yesterday’s Australian Financial Review noted, the emerging rivalry between Japan and China is extending into the Pacific, posing a “real challenge for a government that is always claiming to be on such good terms with Tokyo and Beijing”.

Pointing to the long-standing economic issues that have always motivated Australian foreign policy in this region, the comment continued: “It’s worth remembering that in 1920, Australian strategic planners were worried about Japan trying to get its hands on the rumoured oil resources of Portuguese Timor, but in 1975 there were fears that China would manipulate a leftish independent Timor for territorial advantage.”

Now that the existence of oil and gas resources had been clearly established, the rivalry between Japan and China for energy would pose increasing challenges for Australia, the comment noted.

One of the ways of meeting these challenges is to ensure that a “reliable” regime is in place in Dili. This is a major factor underlying the power struggle now being played out in the East Timorese capital.

Given my essentially libertarian nature, I'm somewhat sad to say that some of their analysis seems likely to be true. But as I'm more interested in accurate interpretations of events (as far as I'm able to perceive them anyway) than toeing any particular ideological line, I'll continue to quote from the traditional left (which I'm always somewhat surprised still exists) whenever I think they've got a good point to make. Plus I tend to find there is an unhealthy lack of balance in the political debate in recent years, with the old left so marginalised that it can no longer provide a counter-argument that enables more centrist political decisions to be made.

Reverting back to tinfoil mode for a moment, I haven't seen (or looked for) any conpiracy oriented analysis of the news of the Al Qaeda menace reaching Canada yet, but I've got a little suspicion the new conservative government in Ottawa may be wanting to take a more role in the Coalition of the Willing's noble War on Terror and that this foiled attack on the freedom loving citizens of Canada will be a convenient vehicle to enable this. Call me a cynic but for some reason I find it hard to believe Canada would be high on any Islamic terrorist's list of worthy targets. I wonder if there will turn out to be any Iranian link surfacing in the coming weeks ?

CANADIAN police claim to have foiled plans for a terrorist attack with the arrests of 17 people who they say had obtained three times the amount of explosives used in the Oklahoma City bombing.

The arrests represent one of the largest counter-terrorism sweeps in North America since September 2001.

Police said the home-grown terrorist cell, which had been under surveillance for about two years, was inspired by al-Qaeda and was on the verge of striking targets in southern Ontario.

Authorities refused to identify the group's planned targets, but the Toronto Star reported that they included the Parliament in Ottawa and the offices of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service in Toronto.

..

Just days before the attack, the deputy head of the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service, Jack Hooper, told a Senate committee that "home-grown terrorists now posed a more serious risk" than immigrants or visitors.

The police and many experts maintain that Canada is a target because Islamist terrorists want to strike any prosperous, Western, Christian nation.

But repeating the cliched response of Western leaders, the Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, said it was because "who we are and how we live, our society, our diversity and our values. Values such as freedom, democracy and the rule of law".

Many Canadians had started to believe that the country's limited international role - there are no Canadian troops in Iraq, for example - and less belligerent public posture might have isolated it from the terrorist attacks that had struck other Western nations.

"I really thought there was a good chance we wouldn't get hit, that nobody would care enough to come after us," said a former member of parliament, David McCombe. "But when people from within start attacking, people that went to our schools and should share our values, then I suppose no one is immune."

Back to the subject of socialists, I noticed that Bart at Energy Bulletin came up with an indirect answer to my question about what was going on with the attack on Alex Steffen's "Bright Green Revolution" in "The Monthly Review".

A satire of green capitalism from Monthly Review, the most prominent independent socialist publication. This interchange is a continuation of the socialist-environmentalist debate that started more than 50 years ago.

This episode reminded me a conversation I had with one of my leftie friends about 10 years ago. I loosely characterised my generally pragmatic politics as "green right" which brought on a small fit of apoplexy, with my friend basically echoing the "conservative" charge that greens are "watermelons" - green on the outside and red on the inside - and declaring that it was impossible to be both right wing (which to me simply means capitalist - rather than a member of the unpleasant sections of the right that make up the modern day rogue coalition) and green.

To me the whole point of Bruce's original Viridian Design sermon (which tended to crystallise a lot of what I was thinking about) was that green capitalism isn't an oxymoron - there are plenty of industries that are (or can be) environmentally friendly, and an economy based on "cradle to cradle" industrial design principles could be capitalist in nature - and this would quite probably be a more effective way of running it than trying to impose a centrally planned workers paradise on top of it (though as we've seen repeatedly, both forms of political organisation are prone to corruption over time, as one of my other favourite prophets, George Orwell, was fond of pointing out).

So - moving from socialists to tech libertarians, this article by Jaron Lanier on "DIGITAL MAOISM: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism" caught my eye recently (I was having some Mondo 2000 flashbacks last week, listening to some RU Sirius podcasts as well as reading Lanier). He mostly spends his time warning of the dangers of Wikipedia (not something I'd regard as a threat to world peace, but to each his own) but does touch on global warming and makes a number of interesting points about political feedback loops and various phenomena that occur when different groups attempt to control the framing of history (or current events) - even in the microcosm of Wikipedia.

The hive mind is for the most part stupid and boring. Why pay attention to it?

The problem is in the way the Wikipedia has come to be regarded and used; how it's been elevated to such importance so quickly. And that is part of the larger pattern of the appeal of a new online collectivism that is nothing less than a resurgence of the idea that the collective is all-wise, that it is desirable to have influence concentrated in a bottleneck that can channel the collective with the most verity and force. This is different from representative democracy, or meritocracy. This idea has had dreadful consequences when thrust upon us from the extreme Right or the extreme Left in various historical periods. The fact that it's now being re-introduced today by prominent technologists and futurists, people who in many cases I know and like, doesn't make it any less dangerous.

...

Reading a Wikipedia entry is like reading the bible closely. There are faint traces of the voices of various anonymous authors and editors, though it is impossible to be sure. In my particular case, it appears that the goblins are probably members or descendants of the rather sweet old Mondo 2000 culture linking psychedelic experimentation with computers. They seem to place great importance on relating my ideas to those of the psychedelic luminaries of old (and in ways that I happen to find sloppy and incorrect.) Edits deviating from this set of odd ideas that are important to this one particular small subculture are immediately removed. This makes sense. Who else would volunteer to pay that much attention and do all that work?

The problem I am concerned with here is not the Wikipedia in itself. It's been criticized quite a lot, especially in the last year, but the Wikipedia is just one experiment that still has room to change and grow. At the very least it's a success at revealing what the online people with the most determination and time on their hands are thinking, and that's actually interesting information.

...

A core belief of the wiki world is that whatever problems exist in the wiki will be incrementally corrected as the process unfolds. This is analogous to the claims of Hyper-Libertarians who put infinite faith in a free market, or the Hyper-Lefties who are somehow able to sit through consensus decision-making processes. In all these cases, it seems to me that empirical evidence has yielded mixed results. Sometimes loosely structured collective activities yield continuous improvements and sometimes they don't. Often we don't live long enough to find out. Later in this essay I'll point out what constraints make a collective smart. But first, it's important to not lose sight of values just because the question of whether a collective can be smart is so fascinating. Accuracy in a text is not enough. A desirable text is more than a collection of accurate references. It is also an expression of personality.

...

The collective isn't always stupid. In some special cases the collective can be brilliant. For instance, there's a demonstrative ritual often presented to incoming students at business schools. In one version of the ritual, a large jar of jellybeans is placed in the front of a classroom. Each student guesses how many beans there are. While the guesses vary widely, the average is usually accurate to an uncanny degree.

This is an example of the special kind of intelligence offered by a collective. It is that peculiar trait that has been celebrated as the "Wisdom of Crowds," though I think the word "wisdom" is misleading. It is part of what makes Adam Smith's Invisible Hand clever, and is connected to the reasons Google's page rank algorithms work. It was long ago adapted to futurism, where it was known as the Delphi technique. The phenomenon is real, and immensely useful.

But it is not infinitely useful. The collective can be stupid, too. Witness tulip crazes and stock bubbles. Hysteria over fictitious satanic cult child abductions. Y2K mania.

The reason the collective can be valuable is precisely that its peaks of intelligence and stupidity are not the same as the ones usually displayed by individuals. Both kinds of intelligence are essential.

...

Some of the regulating mechanisms for collectives that have been most successful in the pre-Internet world can be understood in part as modulating the time domain. For instance, what if a collective moves too readily and quickly, jittering instead of settling down to provide a single answer? This happens on the most active Wikipedia entries, for example, and has also been seen in some speculation frenzies in open markets.

One service performed by representative democracy is low-pass filtering. Imagine the jittery shifts that would take place if a wiki were put in charge of writing laws. It's a terrifying thing to consider. Super-energized people would be struggling to shift the wording of the tax-code on a frantic, never-ending basis. The Internet would be swamped.

Such chaos can be avoided in the same way it already is, albeit imperfectly, by the slower processes of elections and court proceedings. The calming effect of orderly democracy achieves more than just the smoothing out of peripatetic struggles for consensus. It also reduces the potential for the collective to suddenly jump into an over-excited state when too many rapid changes to answers coincide in such a way that they don't cancel each other out. (Technical readers will recognize familiar principles in signal processing.)

The Wikipedia has recently slapped a crude low pass filter on the jitteriest entries, such as "President George W. Bush." There's now a limit to how often a particular person can remove someone else's text fragments. I suspect that this will eventually have to evolve into an approximate mirror of democracy as it was before the Internet arrived.

The reverse problem can also appear. The hive mind can be on the right track, but moving too slowly. Sometimes collectives would yield brilliant results given enough time but there isn't enough time. A problem like global warming would automatically be addressed eventually if the market had enough time to respond to it, for instance. Insurance rates would climb, and so on. Alas, in this case there isn't enough time, because the market conversation is slowed down by the legacy effect of existing investments. Therefore some other process has to intervene, such as politics invoked by individuals.

...

The hive mind should be thought of as a tool. Empowering the collective does not empower individuals — just the reverse is true. There can be useful feedback loops set up between individuals and the hive mind, but the hive mind is too chaotic to be fed back into itself.

These are just a few ideas about how to train a potentially dangerous collective and not let it get out of the yard. When there's a problem, you want it to bark but not bite you.

The illusion that what we already have is close to good enough, or that it is alive and will fix itself, is the most dangerous illusion of all. By avoiding that nonsense, it ought to be possible to find a humanistic and practical way to maximize value of the collective on the Web without turning ourselves into idiots. The best guiding principle is to always cherish individuals first.

Now while I like much of Jaron's thinking I'm not so sure that I agree with the idea that the market would solve the global warming problem given enough time (which I'm glad to see he points out that we don't have).

Insurance rates don't directly impact the carbon emitting industries in a direct (or at least focussed) enough way - and though I guess it is possible the insurance industry may eventually start to outstrip fossil fuel industries in political donations and thereby sway the decision making process back in the direction of sanity, I wouldn't bet on it.

Looking at it purely from an economic rationalist's perspective, as long as coal fired power is the cheapest way of generating electricity (and for baseload that may well be true in countries like Australia for quite a while), I can't see the market ever being able to deal with global warming - the only way for this to happen is for the market to be guided by sending it the appropriate price signal - carbon dioxide is bad for everyone, so emissions must, and will, be taxed at ever increasing rates. Then the market can solve the carbon emissions problem.

Veering back to Bruce, I see the latest Viridian Note has a look at an environmental success story - the undoing of a socialist environmental disaster - returning the wreck of the Aral Sea back to life (to a certain extent anyway). Go read the whole thing (the article he quotes is from The Independent, who seem to have the best environmental coverage of the world's major newspapers). Bruce also points to the nascent "Field Guide to Surreal Botany" - while I've got no idea what this is, I'd love to see the final result !

The Aral Sea was one of the world's biggest inland bodies of water – until Soviet engineers destroyed it in the 1960s. Now, thanks to a new dam, it's coming back.

Fresh fish are on sale cheaply again in markets near the world's most desiccated sea. Cold green water is creeping back towards dozens of long-abandoned harbours, and for the first time in a generation, fishermen are launching their boats where recently there were only waves of sand.

Life is returning astonishingly quickly to the North Aral Sea in Central Asia, partially reversing one of the world's greatest environmental disasters. Just months after the completion of a dam to conserve its waters, the sea has largely recovered – confounding experts who said it was beyond rescue.

(((I'd be guessing that the Aral Sea was indeed "beyond rescue" and we're now seeing a brand-new sea that might as well be called the "Aral.")))

Since April the level of the sea has risen by more than 3m, flooding over 800 sq km of dried-out seabed, and bringing hope to a part of the world bereft of it since Soviet engineers stole the waters in the 1960s. The drying up of the Aral Sea – once the world's fourth largest inland water body, covering an area the size of Belgium and the Netherlands combined – has long been one of the biggest man-made catastrophes in history, bringing poverty, disease and death to the 3.5 million people living around it.
(((Aw c'mon, Belgium, Netherlands, who would miss those.)))

You would never know it, however, by looking at an atlas. Most still show it as it was, a squarish 66,000 sq km blue blob, east of the much larger Caspian, fed by two giant rivers, the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya, perhaps better known as the Oxus and the Jaxartes of classical times. (((How fast will people have to change atlases as the seas rise? Maybe denialists will just leave the maps in place and pretend that New Orleans is still there.)))

But the maps are harking back to long-gone days, when the sea was filled to the brim with more than 1,000 cubic kilometres of pristine water, and its beaches, busy ports and abundant fish were famed throughout the region. During the second half of the 20th century the water receded to a 10th of its natural volume, and the sea's area fell by three-quarters. The water retreated – up to 150km from the former southern port of Muynak – leaving hundreds of fishing boats apparently beached in the middle of a desert.

It happened because the two great rivers died – or rather were murdered. The Soviet Union, deciding that the Aral Sea was 'nature's error,' diverted almost their entire flow to grow cotton in the surrounding desert. By 1980, enough canals to stretch three times to the moon had been dug to run the sea's lifeblood off into the sand.

By 1990 the falling waters cut the North, or 'Small,' Aral Sea off from the bigger southern part. In 2001 the island of Vozrozdeniya – once so isolated that it was used for biological weapons research – joined the mainland, turning the southern sea into the shape of two collapsing lungs. (((That's some fine writing there, folks.)))

And two years later, the Northern Sea itself was chopped in two. The remaining water became ever saltier, killing off the sea's 24 species of freshwater fish and ruining its fishermen. Once-thriving communities died.

To close, Billmon has a new installment on his travels in Egypt.

Certainly, the fact that Egypt’s most famous stronghold of Islamic fundamentalism overlaps with the country’s densest concentration of native Christians isn’t exactly calculated to produce ecumenical harmony. And it probably doesn’t help that many local Copts occupy a familiar niche, one filled in other lands and times by Jews, Chinese, Parsees, Koreans and other ethnic and religious minorities. Copts are, at least by reputation, the shop owners, goldsmiths, crop buyers and petty lenders of the local economy, roles almost guaranteed to produce conflict – in rural Egypt as much as in L.A.’s South Central District. The worst recent outbreak of violence, in the village of el-Kosheh on the other side of the Nile in 2000, reportedly started with a dispute between a Muslim customer and a Coptic storeowner. By the time it was over, 20 Copts and one Muslim were dead.

It’s also true, however, that more recent episodes of violence have taken place elsewhere, like the stabbings at a Coptic church in Alexandria in April, which set off a small riot. I don’t know whether this reflects the heavy hand of the security forces in this part of Egypt, or is just a sign that local communal passions have temporarily burnt themselves out, but I saw no evidence of the “genocide” the Copts and their neocon and Christian fundamentalist supporters in the United States have been fulminating about. Most of the churches I saw along this part of the journey looked shiny and prosperous – certainly by comparison to the multitude of small and shabby mosques, most badly in need of a new coat of paint. Nor are the local Copts shy about advertising their faith, as I would discovered after dark when we pulled into the city of Nag Hammadi (site of the discovery of the famous “Gnostic Gospels”.) The night sky was lit up by church towers outlined in neon and topped with neon white crosses. These competed with, and more than held their own against, the neon minarets with their bright green crescents.

That conditions are hard for Egyptian Copts, and getting harder, I have no doubt. I was told as much – or at least, as much was hinted at – by Copts I spoke to later on my trip. The Mubarak regime is under enormous pressure to co-opt the fundamentalists by pandering to religious prejudice and making symbolic gestures towards Islamic piety. (Now doesn’t that sound familiar?) Discrimination is increasing. The violence, and the threat of it, are all too real.

But as usual, the story doesn’t appear to be nearly as simple, or as catastrophic, as our homegrown cultural warriors would like to believe. Contempt for, and resentment of, a successful commercial minority is not a uniquely Islamic or Arabian social tendency. Nor is communal violence – including violence on a much grander scale than anything the Copts have yet endured.

One can’t blame the Copts for seeking allies where they can find them, but pretending that Egypt is an Islamic hellhole of religious persecution, instead of a grindingly poor Third World country with lots of social problems and not many solutions, is the apex of intellectual dishonesty – which, of course, is exactly what we’ve come to expect from the neocons and their fellow travelers.

Posted by Big Gav at 12:18 AM | Permalink | Comments

BHP is looking at revising the reserves estimates for the world's largest uranium deposit - Olympic Dam in South Australia. In some ways you could consider the simmering nuclear power debate here one example of BHP's efforts to expand the uranium market worldwide.

Stand by for BHP Billiton's Olympic Dam copper/uranium orebody in South Australia's far north to get a whole lot bigger, forcing an increased focus on Australia's strategic role in fuelling the global rush into nuclear power to combat fears of global warming.

A new resource estimate for the deposit is expected to be included in BHP's 2005-06 annual report, due to be released in the week starting September 18. It is expected to show a major increase in the resource estimate, which was last updated in 2004.

Even without the expected increase, Olympic Dam already ranks as the world's fifth biggest copper resource and the number one uranium deposit. While the resource upgrade would push the deposit up the ranks of copper deposits, it is the expected hike in the uranium resources that will create most interest. That is because of the rush to secure long-term uranium supplies for nuclear power, and China and India emerging as new buyers on the block.

Olympic Dam already accounts for 40 per cent of the world's known uranium resources, with 1.524 million tonnes (300 years at present production rates) of the radioactive material. That figure is expected to sharply increase after the September resource upgrade.

Since acquiring WMC last year for $9.2 billion, BHP has carried on with the aggressive drilling program involving 18 drill rigs aimed at determining the size of Olympic Dam.

India is keen to get its hands of some of this mountain of larval radioactive waste, NSW Premier Morris Iemma says we won't be building any nuclear plants in NSW (whether out of a desire to court the green vote or a wish to keep the coal mining industry, and unions, onside is unclear) and Silex are promoting their new laser enrichment process for uranium, which is touted as a way of reducing some of the staggeringly high costs associated with nuclear energy.

The privatisation of Snowy Hydro is generating more renewable controversy, with a range of prominent people speaking out against selling off a such a strategic asset.

A letter signed by 56 prominent Australians will be presented to the federal, NSW and Victorian parliaments today calling on them to suspend the sale of the Snowy Hydro scheme.

Former prime minister Malcolm Fraser, Justice Marcus Einfeld, QC, and actor Cate Blanchett are among the signatories to the letter, which was due to be simultaneously handed over in three states at 10.30am (AEST).

"The undersigned citizens appeal to the Commonwealth to suspend the sale of Snowy Mountains Hydro Ltd," the letter reads.

"This iconic enterprise was a stepping stone on our path to nationhood, and was seen by all the world as a marker of our aspirations."

"It is part of the glue that binds us all."

At a time of climate, water and energy uncertainty, the sale of such a central pillar of the nation's power and water supply is "imprudent", the letter said.

The Washington Post has peered north over the border and discovered that "Canada Pays Environmentally for U.S. Oil Thirst" - "Huge Mines Rapidly Draining Rivers, Cutting Into Forests, Boosting Emissions" - which, if you can't guess already, is about the rapidly expanding tar sands industry. Four tonnes of earth moved per barrel of oil extracted (I wonder if that includes an adjustment for the oil used to process the stuff)...

FORT MCMURRAY, Alberta -- Huge mines here turning tarry sand into cash for Canada and oil for the United States are taking an unexpectedly high environmental toll, sucking water from rivers and natural gas from wells and producing large amounts of gases linked to global warming.

The digging -- into an area the size of Maryland and Virginia combined -- has proliferated at gold-rush speed, spurred by high oil prices, new technology and an unquenched U.S. thirst for the fuel. The expansion has presented ecological problems that experts thought they would have decades to resolve.

"The river used to be blue. Now it's brown. Nobody can fish or drink from it. The air is bad. This has all happened so fast," said Elsie Fabian, 63, an elder in a native Indian community along the Athabasca River, a wide, meandering waterway once plied by fur traders. "It's terrible. We're surrounded by the mines."

From her home on the bluff of the river, she can see billowing steam rising from a vast strip mine 10 miles away. There, almost 200 feet below what was once a forest, giant machines cleave the earth into a cratered moonscape. Immense shovels plunge into the ground, wresting out massive chunks. Trucks the size of houses prowl the pit. They deliver the black soil to clanking conveyers and vats that steam the tar from the sand.

The miners have created a marvel of human industry that takes a spongy muck once considered worthless and converts it into oil for gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. But the price of that alchemy is high: Each barrel of oil requires two to five barrels of water, carves up four tons of earth, uses enough natural gas to heat a home for one to five days, and adds to the greenhouse gases slowly cooking the planet, according to the industry's own calculations.

...

Critics also question the wisdom of using natural gas to heat and upgrade the oil sands. "We are taking a cleaner energy source and turning it into something that produces a lot of emissions when you produce it and when you burn it," said Dale Marshall, a climate change policy analyst with the David Suzuki Foundation in Ottawa.

Africa looks to be the latest region headed for (further) devastation courtesy of the "curse of oil".

Experts call it the ‘oil curse’. In Africa’s oil exporting countries, only a tiny fraction of revenues is used to fight poverty, and in many cases black gold has actually become a hurdle to development.

Oil in Africa — from the Gulf of Guinea to northwestern Sudan — lies at the heart of questions of good governance and development, as oil prices and revenues soar but fail to bring better living standards for millions of poor. Across the continent, ‘oil money evaporates into the savannah’, Jean-Marie Chevalier, a professor at Paris-Dauphine University and director of Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA), told a conference in Paris last week.

Not only does oil wealth fail to translate into economic development, but in many cases it distorts the country’s economy and holds back the development of other export industries, he said. Almost everywhere in Africa, oil has fostered corruption and bureaucracy — without benefiting the poor, according to speakers at the conference, organised by the French Agency for Development.

Africa accounts for 11.4 per cent of global oil production, holding 9.4 per cent of the world’s reserves.

The continent’s output has surged by 40 per cent since 1990 to 10 million barrels per day (bpd), fuelled by demand from importers such as the United States and China looking to diversify their supply outside the Middle East.

Established exporters such as Nigeria, Gabon, the Republic of Congo and Cameroon have been joined by newcomers Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Sudan, Sao Tome and most recently Mauritania. Yet despite the flow of oil revenues, African producers fare no better than importers in terms of development, according to Chevalier.

Nigeria — Africa’s most populous nation and its largest exporter with 2.5 million bpd — is a prime example of the ‘oil curse’, according to Philippe Sebille-Lopez, of the French Institute of Geopolitics.

TreeHugger takes a look at some clean, cheap and widespread energy options - wave and tidal power.

TreeHugger covers a lot of bases when it comes to alternative energy; solar, wind, biogas, hydrogen and the list goes on. One of our favorite up and coming forms of alternative energy is wave and tidal power. Check out our picks for diving in to the world of wave power.

1) Get started with a primer on the different version of the technology.
2) Germany has plans for a pilot plant targeted to power about 120 households.
3) Wave and tidal power could supply 20% of the UK's needs; Scotland wants to provide 10% of it's energy needs by 2010 with wave energy.
4) The power of the tide is coming to New York as well, with six tide-powered turbines planned for the East River this summer.
5) GE sees enough potential in wave power to invest some big bucks in it. No matter how you slice it, waves aren't just for surfing any more.

Crooked Timber notes that the reprehensible reptiles at the CEI are at it again - this time taking a break from their paranoid fantasies about scientific conspiracies and instead doing some smearing on behalf of Mr 29% and his friends in the oil and coal industries.

Tim Lambert finds Iain Murray engaged in a contemptible bit of smearing. Previously, the CEI falsely claimed that Al Gore was producing 4,000,000 times as much CO2 as the average person in the course of his daily activities, given his heavy use of air travel. This estimate turns out to be way, way off. In addition, it now turns out that Gore is trying to make his promotional tour carbon neutral by purchasing carbon offsets, presumably from organizations like TerraPass. Murray’s response?

Translation: I am rich enough to benefit from executive jets and Lincolns because I pay my indulgences. All you proles have to give up your cars, flights and air conditioning. The new aristocracy; there’s no other way to describe it.

Purchasing carbon offsets is of course a market-based solution to the externalities associated with individual use of cars and air travel and so on. You’d think that the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the National Review would be in favor of that sort of thing. But if Gore is doing it, then it must be the purest form of aristocratic statist elitism.

Back in the day, Murray was the sort of person you could have a reasonable disagreement with. But then he went to work for CEI and he went rapidly downhill. Because he had to follow the CEI line, he began to make stupid mistakes, bad arguments and unsupportable smears. His trajectory is a good illustration of the principle that being paid to follow a certain political line regardless of what the evidence says will turn you into a hack. Taking empty pot-shots at Al Gore is just the latest step down the ladder.

I liked one commenter's take on it - "Another reason I don’t read National Review…always with the class warfare, always bashing the rich. They should move to Russia if they don’t like it here!".

The Energy Blog points to a debate on the "merits" of IGCC vs conventional coal fired power plants. I'm not sure arguing over mediocre versus diabolically awful is a wise use of time, but I guess a move to IGCC is better than nothing (assuming some existing coal plants get replaced by them, rather just feeding the ever increasing demand for cheap, but dirty, energy).

Peabody and other companies remain skeptical that carbon-capture methods, whether for pulverized coal or combined cycle plants, will become commercially or technologically feasible until the next decade.

But it is Peabody's economic argument, not environmental opposition, that is resonating throughout the electricity industry and among energy regulators. In one key decision on the state level, the Wisconsin Public Service Commission rejected a proposal from WE Energies of Milwaukee in 2003 to build a plant with the new technology, saying it was too expensive and would result in higher electricity prices.

Proponents of IGCC plants say they would also emit much lower amounts of other pollutants that contribute to acid rain, smog and respiratory illness.

Bush's new Treasury Secretary nominee obivously isn't all bad - calling Kyoto rejection a "U.S. Economic Blunder".

Bush's prospective next Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson, who chairs the board of the Nature Conservancy, in addition to being Chairman of Goldman Sachs, endorsed a statement from the Nature Conservancy decrying the U.S.'s refusal to participate in Kyoto as a serious threat to the nation's competitive abilities in the global market.

Belgium is planning an Antarctic base powered entirely by solar and wind.

Jamais at "Open The Future" is continuing to ponder his futurist matrix, prompted by feedback from David Brin, who has produced some political matrices of his own in the past. Neither of them attempt to place the doombat in their categorisations.

David Brin wrote a provocative and thoughtful response to my futurist matrix idea, and posted it over at his blog. Unfortunately, the system he uses -- Blogger -- has once again broken its comment system. Rather than wait to reply, I've decided to post my response to his response here. (David -- this is an updated version of the email I sent.)

The futurist matrix is clearly a work in progress, and the changes have been slow and evolutionary. The main difference between the first and second versions of the matrix is in the terminology, not the concept -- I dropped the word "realist," and replaced with "pragmatist." More importantly, I tried to make the sub-headings less normative, less apt to appear biased towards one particular option along an axis.

I suspect I'll need to do something similar with "optimist" and "pessimist." The danger of using commonplace terms in a setup like this is that readers' interpretations of the words may not match my use. The present sub-headings of "inclusive success" and "exclusive success or failure" are more accurate than optimist/pessimist, and I'll likely make them the axis labels.

These more expressive terms help to illustrate a seemingly-illogical aspect of the matrix: the combination of ideologically opposed groups in the same philosophical box, such as Marxists and Dispensationalists in the lower-right quadrant. But the matrix is less concerned with a group's ideology than with its eschatology: how do the philosophies see the future unfolding? As Brin points out, neither Marxists nor Dispensationalists would see themselves as particularly pessimistic. But while they may see a happy future world, it's a world limited to the true believers. They may want everyone to become a true believer, but people outside of the circle cannot achieve a successful future.

I'll be mostly offline for a few days, so there won't be a new post until next week (the link bucket may get a deposit at some stage though).

While I'm away I won't be going kayaking...



To close, here's a Solzhenitsyn quote via Bruce Schneier. Who's pulling your threads ?

As every man goes through life he fills in a number of forms for the record, each containing a number of questions . .. There are thus hundreds of little threads radiating from every man, millions of threads in all. If these threads were suddenly to become visible, the whole sky would look like a spider's web, and if they materialized as rubber bands, buses; trams and even people would all lose the ability to move, and the wind would be unable to carry torn-up newspapers or autumn leaves along the streets of the city. They are not visible, they are not material, but every man is constantly aware of their existence.... Each man, permanently aware of his own invisible threads, naturally develops a respect for the people who manipulate the threads.

--Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Cancer Ward, 1968.

Posted by Big Gav at 8:48 PM | Permalink | Comments