How Iraq and Global Warming Threw The Right Into Disarray  

The FT reports on what was obvious (to me at least) 3 years ago - the right was headed in completely the wrong direction on the 2 key issues - oil policy (resource wars) and global warming. Hopefully at some point soon they'll get back in touch with reality so that rational people have a choice to make again between the 2 groupings. Jerome a Paris has some further comments.

Ronald Reagan is dead and Margaret Thatcher is in her dotage. The ideological world that those two leaders created is now slipping away with them.

From 1979 to 2004, the right won the battle of ideas in the western world. Conservatives triumphed because they got the two big issues of the era right: they were in favour of free markets and against communism. But now the right is in disarray because it has found itself on the wrong side of the two dominating issues in contemporary western politics: global warming and the Iraq war.

Most people's first reactions to new political issues are instinctive. In 2003, the kind of people going on anti-war marches - or warning of impending climate doom - looked to many right-wingers like the same people who had been wrong about everything else for the past 25 years. They were the people warning the world was running out of oil in the 1970s...

...The thought that these people could be right about anything was frankly intolerable. But, in fact, they were right about two things: global warming and Iraq.

Global warming poses a fundamental challenge to the- right's faith in markets. It is, as Gordon Brown, chancellor, puts it "the world's biggest market failure".

Worse, most of the proposed remedies for global warming involve things the right traditionally abhors. There is global governance in the form of monster international accords such as the Kyoto treaty. There are restrictions on individual liberty as the clamour grows to tax people out of their cars and off their cheap flights. There is a new emphasis on localism as opposed to globalisation. There is also a backlash against the idea that faster economic growth is always desirable or sustainable.

...All this makes it sound as if the only role left for the Anglo-American right is to roll over and capitulate. But that is far too gloomy. In this new ideological era, conservatives have two obvious tasks - one defensive and one offensive.

The defensive role is to guard against over-reaction to the emerging consensus on global warming and Iraq. The right was not wrong to spot its old anti-capitalist, anti-western foes in the coalitions that first latched on to these issues. There are radical voices that will try to use global warming to create a world in which nobody takes a cheap flight again - and in which globalisation is put into reverse. It will be up to the right to show that growth and greenery can be reconciled.

Best global warming quote of the week (re: the forthcoming IPCC report) - "This isn't a smoking gun; climate is a batallion of intergalactic smoking missiles".

Human-caused global warming is here -- visible in the air, water and melting ice -- and is destined to get much worse in the future, an authoritative global scientific report will warn next week.

"The smoking gun is definitely lying on the table as we speak," said top U.S. climate scientist Jerry Mahlman, who reviewed all 1,600 pages of the first segment of a giant four-part report. "The evidence ... is compelling." Andrew Weaver, a Canadian climate scientist and study co-author, went even further: "This isn't a smoking gun; climate is a batallion of intergalactic smoking missiles."

The first phase of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is being released in Paris next week. This segment, written by more than 600 scientists and reviewed by another 600 experts and edited by bureaucrats from 154 countries, includes "a significantly expanded discussion of observation on the climate," said co-chair Susan Solomon a senior scientist for the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

She and other scientists held a telephone briefing on the report Monday. That report will feature an "explosion of new data" on observations of current global warming, Solomon said. Solomon and others wouldn't go into specifics about what the report says.

They said that the 12-page summary for policymakers will be edited in secret word-by-word by governments officials for several days next week and released to the public on February 2. The rest of that first report from scientists will come out months later. The full report will be issued in four phases over the year, as was the case with the last IPCC report, issued in 2001.

Global warming is "happening now, it's very obvious," said Mahlman, a former director of NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Lab. "When you look at the temperature of the Earth, it's pretty much a no-brainer." Look for an "iconic statement" -- a simple but strong and unequivocal summary -- on how global warming is now occurring, said one of the authors, Kevin Trenberth, director of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, also in Boulder.

The Age has a report on the massive mudflow in Java caused by gas drilling. If you get a chance to see some video of this its quite awe inspiring watching the mud swallow the landscape.

Indonesia's disastrous mud volcano, linked to Australian company Santos, was probably caused by gas-drilling activities, a new scientific study says.

The study, published in the US Geological Society of America (GSA) journal, GSA Today, says the East Java mudflow was likely caused by a nearby gas-drilling operation, and could continue for "many months and possibly years to come". It also warned of a "dramatic collapse" around the main mudflow opening in the coming months.

The seemingly unstoppable mud volcano erupted 200 metres from Santos' part-owned Banjar Panji exploration well during deep drilling in May last year, spewing out up to 150,000 cubic metres of sludge a day. Despite efforts to stop it, the thick mud has flooded eight villages in heavily populated east Java, covering houses, businesses, paddy fields, mosques and schools to their rooftops and forcing the permanent relocation of more than 12,000 local residents.

The Age also has a report on a UN forecast that notes there are no more rivers to tap.

THE world is running out of water and needs a radical plan to tackle shortages that threaten humanity's ability to feed itself, a UN expert says.

Jeffrey Sachs, director of the UN's Millennium Project, told an environment conference in Delhi that the world had "no more rivers to take water from".

India and China were facing severe water shortages and neither could use the same strategies for raising food output that have fed millions in recent times, said the professor, an American economist credited with prompting pop star Bono's crusade for African development.

"India and China have been able to feed their populations because they use water in an unsustainable way. That is no longer possible," he said.

Since Asia's agricultural revolution, the amount of land under irrigation had tripled, but many parts of the continent had reached the limits of water supplies. "The Ganges (in India) and the Yellow River (in China) no longer flow. There is so much silting up and water extraction upstream, they are pretty stagnant."

Professor Sachs said the mechanisms of shrinking water resources were not well understood. "We need to do for water what we did for climate change. How do we recharge aquifers? … There's no policy anywhere in place at the moment."

File 22 has an article on the rapid desertification of Nigeria.

The fine sand is swallowing up houses and roads every year. Almost all the villagers in this dusty arid region say they have lost homes and farms to the Sahara Desert which is expanding southwards.

“What we do is that when the sand moves and buries our homes and farms and even our wells, we simply keep retreating southwards“, says Aminu Mahmud, villager who says he has already lost two different houses to the sand. He says the situation deteriorates every April when strong pre-rainy season sandstorms sweep sand into their settlements.

“The desert’s unrelenting onslaught is pushing us further away from our original homes and it seems there’s absolutely nothing we can do about it“, Mr Mahmud says. ”The desert has swallowed up our houses, our farms, our roads, our lives. It has changed our livelihoods“. A middle-aged Muslim woman who did not want her photograph taken says women in Bulamadu now spend most of the day travelling long distances in search of potable water. “Water has become more precious than gold now“, the woman who introduced herself as Mairo said, as she sat frying bean cakes known as kosai. “You wake up one morning and the water well that was there yesterday has been buried under the sand. As a result, most of us women have to trek long distances to get water“.

The villagers do not seem to see any link between their large appetite for firewood and the advancing sand dunes. They keep cutting down trees in the vicinity and using sun-dried branches as wood fuel or even as an income earner. “The impact the advancing desert is having on communities in that area is quite serious“, says Jacob Nyanganji of Nigeria’s University of Maiduguri which runs a specialist centre for arid zone studies. “It is true that homes and farms have been lost to desertification in the area and it is also true that people’s livelihoods have either been lost or changed completely as a result“. ...

After Gutenberg has a post on light rail in Argentina.

I am unsure whether light rail (or tram, tramcar, trolley, streetcar, or street railway) is making a comeback in the United States, but in Buenos Aires “after 50 years of absence, the city welcomed back one of its street trains last Saturday, which will run next to Alicia Moreau de Justo Av., between Independencia Av. and Cordoba Av. For those who aren’t familiar with the city, that’s Puerto Madero area, a beautiful neighborhood by the river.”

It would seem that Siemens AG, which has a long term maintenance contract with Buenos Aires Metro, is again at the forefront of electric rail once again. Hopefully, they are in negotiations with Amar Bose. Since rail cars require suspension, it would seem sensible to use regenerative suspension, if cost effective, along with regenerative braking to improve energy efficiency and increase riding comfort. It particularly would be sensible since such modern urban transport extensively employs sensors that increasingly are integrated into an on board, controller area network; modular, by-wire subsystems tend to be easier than traditional mechanical and / or hydraulic systems to produce, assemble, and install / replace. Simpler assembly and installation means lower cost to the manufacturer.

Streetcar lines are a lot cheaper than subways, carry more people than buses, and use less fuel per passenger mile. Depending on the source of electricity, they can be carbon free.

A problem may be that Siemens established the field of traction motors in the 19th Century, whereas the Bose suspension uses linear electromagnetic motors. On the other hand, Siemens is wanting to maintain a competitive position in mechatronics.

TreeHugger notes that Combating Climate Change Cheaper Than Originally Thought.

Last week, Lars Josefsson, chief executive of Vattenfall the Swedish power company, presented research that shows that the cost of combating climate change could be 40 per cent lower than the figure given in the Stern Report. The Stern Report claimed that global warming could shrink the global economy by 20 per cent but that taking action would cost roughly 1 per cent of the United Kingdom’s GDP. Josefsson explains, “[t]he cost of limiting the concentration of greenhouse gases is equivalent to 0.6 per cent of the gross world product – if all the identified potential is exploited.” According to the Vattenfall report, much of the cost savings come from implementing simple solutions that “pay for themselves” such as insulation improvements or fuel efficient cars. The report also assumes increased use of nuclear power and employing carbon capture technology.

Keen on getting businesses to play a larger role in actively combating climate change, Mr. Josefsson plans to present this research later this month at the World Economic Forum in Davos. He is also actively promoting the recently announced 3C initiative, in which 15 of the world’s largest companies agreed to create “commercial solutions and market based investments” to curb global warming. Mr. Josefsson is also a special advisor on the environment to Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor. Since January 1st, 2007 when Germany took on the presidency of the European Union., Ms. Merkel has made combating climate change a key issue.

To educate yourself about how to curb climate change check out the user friendly site that Vattenfall has created here. Find the full report in English here.

Grist is wondering if January 2007 will prove to be a tipping point for U.S. climate-change policy.

First there was a rapid-fire succession of four major climate-change bills proposed in the Senate, all of which call for mandatory caps on greenhouse-gas emissions. Then, like a clashing of cymbals after a drumroll, 10 major corporations representing the energy and chemical industries, among others, joined with a handful of major environmental groups in a call for federal emission caps that rivals the most ambitious Senate proposals.

The new coalition, dubbed the United States Climate Action Partnership, brings together many of the usual suspects -- companies that have been publicly advocating federal action on climate change for some time, like GE, DuPont, Duke Energy, Alcoa, and Pacific Gas and Electric. But never have these corporate heavies articulated such clear and aggressive policy recommendations.

"[Climate regulations] must be mandatory, so there is no doubt about our actions," said Jim Rogers, CEO and chair of Duke Energy, at a press conference officially launching USCAP on Monday. "The science of global warming is clear. We know enough to act now. We must act now."

Executives of the companies involved in the partnership sent a letter to Bush on Monday, one day ahead of the State of the Union speech in which he's expected to address the climate issue. "[W]e can and must take prompt action to establish a coordinated, economy-wide market-driven approach to climate protection," the leaders wrote.

The group has already briefed key members of the Senate and House about its recommendations, and will have representatives haunting the halls of Congress to keep the pressure on lawmakers, said Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, a member of USCAP.

Jason at Anthropik has a post on "Power and Energy" - graphically noting the correlation between economic power and the amount of energy available to be harnessed.

There is an assumption made here that we have never fully defended, but simply taken for granted, and I have noted it n some of the criticism we've recently recieved, so it's high time to address the topic in a straight-forward fashion. The assumption is: Political power is a type of complexity, and thus it is a function of energy.

Ran Prieur recently pointed to a graphic illustration of this, provided above:

Someone made a global map of GDP per square kilometer, and pointed out that it's almost identical to that "Earth at night" satellite image! I've never seen such a good illustration of the connection between the modern economy and energy consumption. And I'm wondering what kinds of economic activity are happening in the "dark" areas and not being calculated into GDP, and what kind of economy we would have, or could have, without so much cheap energy.

This brings us back to notions like White's Law. Benjamin Shender approached this directly, and with a full mathematical model, in "Energy in Society. Jeff Vail powerfully pointed to the connection between energy and power in "Energy, Society & Hierarchy," where he puts it quite succinctly:

Control over economic activity translates directly into political power (politics being generally defined as the decision process of how to distribute finite resources within a context of infinite desires). Similarly, control of certain energy resources needed to engage in economic activity translates directly into control over economic activity, which translates into political power.

An individual or group has social or political power when they are able to extract obedience from others. How is this made possible? While a respected elder or skilled rhetorician might be able to exert substantial influence, obedience is always the result of a monopoly on some essential of existence. Such essentials—food, shelter, water, etc.—all come down, in the end, to a question of energy. Ultimately, the root of all social or political power is the control of energy.

Why, then, should we be in the least bit surprised that a map of GDP density—the closest proxy of political power we have—aligns so perfectly with the electric lights that illuminate the earth at night?

My latest email from the future has arrived - various interesting snippets from the missive follow - as usual the whole thing is worth a look.

How to Leak a Secret and Not Get Caught -- (New Scientist -- January 12, 2007)
http://www.newscientisttech.com/article.ns?id=mg19325865.500
Leaking a sensitive government document can mean risking a jail sentence - but not for much longer if an online service called WikiLeaks goes ahead. WikiLeaks is designed to allow anyone to post documents on the web without fear of being traced. The creators of the site are thought to include political activists and open-source software engineers, though they are keeping their identities secret. Their goal is to ensure that whistle-blowers and journalists are not thrown into jail for emailing sensitive documents.

Bloggers Who Criticize Government May Face Prison -- (Infowars -- January 18, 2007)
http://infowars.net/articles/january2007/180107Bloggers_Prison.htm
A proposal currently before congress would force bloggers and online grassroots activists to register and regularly report their activities to Congress. Section 220 of S. 1, the lobbying reform bill currently before the Senate, would require grassroots causes, even bloggers, who communicate to 500 or more members of the public on policy matters, to register and report quarterly to Congress. Section 220 would amend existing lobbying reporting law by creating the most expansive intrusion on First Amendment rights ever. Critics of Congress will need to register and report with Congress itself.

Memories are Made of This Molecule -- (New Scientist -- January 15, 2007)
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg19325864.500
How are memories formed? The question has perplexed scientists for years, but now it seems we're a step closer to solving it. The leading candidate is a process called long-term potentiation (LTP), in which the connections between individual brain cells get stronger the more often they are used, such as during learning.

Direct Brain Control of Robots -- (Science Agogo-- December 18, 2006)
http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20061117211014data_trunc_sys.shtml
A metal skullcap with electrodes sticking out has turned a sci-fi cliché into reality, with the wearer being able to control a robot's movements with thought power alone. Researchers have demonstrated that an individual can "order" the robot to move to specific locations and pick up specific objects merely by generating the proper brain wave instructions.

New Vaccines Against the Flu -- (MIT Technology Review -- January 10, 2007)
http://www.technologyreview.com/Biotech/18048/
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently began a clinical trial of a novel kind of bird-flu vaccine that can be designed and manufactured three times faster than traditional vaccines. These new DNA vaccines, which have shown promise in animals, could help researchers respond rapidly to an emerging flu pandemic.

1918 Flu Pandemic Virus Overwhelmed Lungs -- (Live Science -- January 17, 2007)
http://www.livescience.com/healthday/601069.html
An international team of scientists say they've uncovered an important clue as to why the 1918 Spanish flu virus was so lethal, killing over 50 million people worldwide. Reporting in Nature magazine, scientists say the virus caused an immune response that destroyed the lungs within a few days. It appeared to disrupt the body's typical reaction to viral infection, causing the immune system to attack the respiratory system. As a result, victims' lungs filled with fluid, and they essentially drowned.

Novel Chip Architecture Could Extend Moore's Law -- (MIT Tech Review -- January 16, 2007)
http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/18063/
In the chip-making industry, the best way to increase the speed of electronics and make them cheaper has always been to shrink a chip's transistors to create room for more. But now researchers have announced a radically different approach: a design that creates room for eight times more transistors on a chip, while avoiding the need to make the transistors smaller.

March in January! Or Is It Mayday? -- (Washington Post -- January 7, 2007)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/06/AR2007010601215.html
Never has good weather felt so bad. Never have flowers inspired so much fear. Never has the warm caress of a sunbeam seemed so ominous. The weather is sublime, it's glorious - it's quite possibly the end of the world as we know it.

If We Fail to Act... -- (Independent -- January 1, 2007)
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article2116874.ece
One of the world's leading experts on climate change has warned that the Earth is being turned into a "different planet" because of the continuing increase in man-made emissions of greenhouse gases. One of the first scientists to warn of climate change in scientific testimony to the US Congress in 1988, now claims that we have less than 10 years to begin to curb carbon dioxide emissions before global warming runs out of control and changes the landscape forever.

Plastics Poisoning World's Seas -- (BBC -- December 7, 2006)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6218698.stm
Microscopic particles of plastic could be poisoning the oceans. Researchers report that small plastic pellets called "mermaids' tears", which are the result of industry and domestic waste, have spread across the world's seas. The scientists had previously found the debris on UK beaches and in European waters; now they have replicated the finding on four continents.

World Faces Hottest Year Ever -- (Independent -- January 22, 2007)
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article2116873.ece
A combination of global warming and the El Niño weather system is set to make 2007 the warmest year on record with far-reaching consequences for the planet, according to leading climate researchers. As the new year was ushered in with stormy conditions across the UK, the forecast for the next 12 months is of extreme global weather patterns which could bring drought to Indonesia and leave California under a deluge.

Cutbacks Impede Climate Studies -- (Washington Post -- January 16, 2007)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/15/AR2007011501049.html
The government's ability to understand and predict hurricanes, drought and climate changes of all kinds is in danger because of deep cuts facing many Earth satellite programs and major delays in launching some of its most important new instruments. A two-year study by the National Academy of Sciences determined that NASA's earth science budget has declined by 30% since 2000. It stands to fall further as funding shifts to plans for a manned mission to the moon and Mars

30% of Yellow River Fish Species Extinct-- (Guardian -- January 18, 2007)
http://environment.guardian.co.uk/waste/story/0,,1993621,00.html
Dams, pollution and over-fishing have wiped out a third of the fish species in the Yellow river - China's second longest waterway. The extinction toll strengthens fears that China's major rivers are losing their ability to support life as the country's rapid - and poorly regulated - economic growth takes an increasingly heavy toll on the environment.

America's New Global Strike Weapon -- (Popular Mechanics-- January, 2007)
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military_law/4203874.html
If Pentagon strategists get their way, there will be no place on the planet to hide from such a US assault. The plan is part of a program — in slow development since the 1990s, and now quickly coalescing in military circles — called Prompt Global Strike. The goal, according to the U.S. Strategic Command's deputy commander Lt. Gen. C. Robert Kehler, is "to strike virtually anywhere on the face of the Earth within 60 minutes."

NSA Spy Program to be Reformed -- (Cnet -- January 17, 2007)
http://news.com.com/Attorney%20general%20NSA%20spy%20
program%20to%20be%20reformed/2100-1028_3-6150902.html?tag=nefd.top
The Bush administration will substantially alter its controversial domestic surveillance program by seeking approval for wiretaps from a secret court. The surprise announcement said President Bush has agreed that "any electronic surveillance that was occurring" under the program will be conducted subject to the approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in Washington, D.C. The program is conducted by the National Security Agency.

Rare Black Diamonds May have Come from Space -- (New Scientist -- January 15, 2007)
http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn10953
Black diamonds found in only a few places on Earth may have crashed down from space in a kilometer-sized rock, according to new research. The diamonds, also called carbonado, are only found in Brazil and the Central African Republic. Unlike other diamonds, they are made of millions of diamond crystals that are stuck together.

Another Worry for Those Who Believe the Glass is Half-Empty -- (International Herald Tribune -- January 9, 2007)
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/09/healthscience/snpess.php
Now, it seems, pessimists may really have something to worry about: their health. A study has found that people who are temperamentally pessimistic are more likely to die of heart disease and other causes than those who are by nature optimistic.

Restlessness and discontent are the first necessities of progress. -Thomas Edison

I'm occasionally amazed (given the nature of the organisation) by some of the sources they use - I'm not used to seeing tinfoil merchants like Alex Jones (who even I view with mild alarm) getting quoted by Beltway think tanks - FutureEdition is like reading a straight version of Cryptogon at times.

Maybe their roaming bot that searches for items of interest (nicknamed Diane) has some unusual algorithims for picking relevant news sources - given my tendency to give in to my inner big brother at times, it would be interesting to see the insides of this thing (much like the Buzzmetrics platfom I mentioned recently).

Collection - DIANE has the capacity to monitor thousands of selected web sites on a 24/7 basis, looking for new items that are closely related to the subject areas that we track for ourselves and our clients. One of our tools will look for new and novel relationships that we had not previously anticipated.

Although DIANE will have the intrinsic capability to collect information from all sources (television, radio, photography, newswires, Internet, et al.) in a number of different languages, our initial focus is on English Internet sources.

Storage - Our collected information is stored in a variety of "buckets" which allows the content of every record to be directly related to every other record. Specialized sub-databases can also be constructed from the overall collection of information.

Extraction - Sophisticated capabilities that are part of a number of applications allow us to extract information from the databases in a range of novel ways. This allows us to examine any given information set from many different perspectives.

Analysis - DIANE includes a number of analytical tools that can automatically cluster records in three dimensional space around common ideas, identify subtle relationships among two or more sets of records, and develop ontologies and taxonomies for large databases so that logical relationships can be seen. Furthermore, we have the capability to quickly organize the operating structure of a given area of knowledge - such as "national security" - develop various scenarios based upon the intrinsic function of the major components of the system, and then explore the effectiveness of a number of strategies, over various time periods, for accomplishing given scenarios.

Display - A number of these tools offer unusually rich information displays that provide analysts in a decision-support mode with transparency and perception that was previously impossible. We believe that DIANE can provide breakthrough capabilities for identifying and monitoring early indicators of significant change and enhance the ability of analysts to develop prescient and deep understandings of major potential and emerging events.

Speaking of Cryptogon, I guess I'll break my tinfoil fast briefly to point to this latest post on EEStor.
The New York Times has an article on "Springtime for ethanol".

In his State of the Union address, President Bush is expected to call for a huge increase in the amount of ethanol that refiners mix with gasoline, probably double the current goal of 7.5 billion gallons by 2012.

While the details of the proposal are not known, 15 billion gallons of ethanol would work out to more than 10 percent of the country’s current gasoline consumption, and is far beyond the current capacity of about 5.4 billion gallons. At least half of the new ethanol would come from corn, signaling the administration’s support to the Midwest farm states that have benefited the most from the recent ethanol boom.

For an industry once dominated by the will of a single powerful producer, Archer Daniels Midland, ethanol has come a long way, joining the oil industry and producers of major agricultural commodities as an entrenched political force in Washington. And it now enjoys a powerful role in presidential politics because of Iowa’s status as one of the first states to select delegates to the parties’ nominating conventions.

But with dozens of new ethanol plants coming online this year, the ethanol lobby is facing a critical point. The political reality is that corn’s days as the chief crop for making the fuel may be numbered.

Corn-based ethanol can only marginally reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil. But it does little, if anything, to improve energy efficiency, and the mounting concern of some politicians is that relying on corn is leading to collateral damage in other parts of the agricultural economy and threatening the nation’s status as the leading corn exporter. The big increase in the works may mean consumers would end up paying more at the supermarket.

So the ethanol lobby and its political supporters now face the challenge of trying to maintain the momentum of ethanol’s feel-good story before the potential negative consequences of the rapid ramp-up become all too apparent.

Clutching the reins these last five years is Mr. Dinneen, a longtime Washington lobbyist who joined the association in 1988. He recalled his early years there as a pitched war with the oil industry. “I would wake up in the morning and try to think of a way to vilify the oil guys,” he said.

Today, to keep the ethanol train moving, ethanol makers are cozying up to the oil industry, forming political alliances and enlisting executives from companies like Chevron as they race to make a quicker transition to cellulosic ethanol made from nonfood crops, like switchgrass.

Otherwise, public support could turn against the fuel, which yields a third less energy than petroleum-based gasoline and still relies on a federal subsidy of 51 cents a gallon to remain competitive. ...

That pathway, at the moment, relies on commercializing cellulosic ethanol made from crops like switchgrass or wood chips, which today is twice as expensive to produce as ethanol made from corn.

Some analysts, though, believe that politics has already trumped economics. “Once we have a corn-based technology up and running the political system will protect it,” said Lawrence J. Goldstein, a board member at the Energy Policy Research Foundation. “We cannot afford to have 15 billion gallons of corn-based ethanol in 2015, and that’s exactly where we are headed.”

Mr. Goldstein said that rather than speed up the process of producing more ethanol, Congress should “step back and reflect on the damage we have already done.”

Dan at "The Daily Reckoning" reckons The Forecast Looks Good for Energy & Alternative Energy Investments.

Is the demand for these investments simply investment demand, cash-rich financial firms who need to put lazy money to work? Or is the source of the demand a deep, rich, and enduring economic well-spring? We favour the aquifers over the cloud bursts, although singing and dancing in the rain has its own pleasures.

Those ‘better prospects’ are still, at least in our modest view, found in the energy and alternative energy markets. In the traditional energy markets, oil futures moved up again in U.S. trading. The driver, so we are told, is the intention of the American government to buy 100,000 barrels of oil per day to ad the 11 million in America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Of course it could just be getting colder in the Northern Hemisphere. Or maybe traders realize oil’s sell off was long term goofy, even though it must’ve meant some short term profits. Either way, USO, the exchange traded fund which tracks the price of crude oil, rallied four percent in Tuesday trading to crest the $45 mark. That mark is of interest from a technical perspective because it’s forty percent below oil’s high of $78 last year.

In other words, the 40% correction in oil’s multi-year run appears to have run its course. And that means not only renewed interest in bargain oil and energy exploration and production companies, it means rekindled investor interest in substitutes for the energy we get from oil, like uranium.

“China has begun tentative talks with Australian uranium producers including BHP Billiton on receiving yellowcake supplies as early as next year,” reports Mandie Zonneveldt at news.com.au. China’s first domestic supplier could be the Honeymoon mine in South Australia, which is set to come on line in the first quarter of 2008.

Honeymoon is owned and operated by SRX Uranium One. Only forty percent of its slated production is currently under contract, which means should Chinese buyers surface, SXR is a likely supplier. Accordingly, the stock was up one Canadian dollar yesterday, which amounts to a seven percent gain, a good solid days work in the yellowcake business.

This is the kind of gain that attracts our interest, and the interest of thousands of other investors. The problem is that it attracts the interest of spruikers looking to cash in on the buzz. “Claims that a tiny Pacific island could host more uranium than Olympic Dam have left well-known Melbourne mining figures Bryan Frost and Richard Revelins fighting for their business reputations after the Australian Securities and Investments Commission launched court action to ban them from running companies.

We don’t know much about the validity of the complaint against the men, or the validity of the claim by Mining Projects Group Ltd. (then Yamarna Goldfields), that a New Zealand-based project had enough uranium to rival the fabled Olympic Dam. We do know that the rise in uranium prices, seemingly on their way to US$100 and beyond, means there are a lot of companies claiming to have real uranium deposits just waiting to be mined, should state bans in Queensland, South Australia, and West Australia be lifted, Our own research in to the matter-which we admit was a lot more difficult than we originally expected-is nearly done. Watch this space for results.

Bloomberg reports the Chinese are still talking about using their foreign exchange reserves to buy strategic resources.

China, the world’s biggest consumer of coal and metals, will use its foreign exchange reserves to buy “strategic” resources, Vice Premier Zeng Peiyan said. The government will increase the nation’s purchases of resources for strategic stockpiling when there are “plentiful” reserves, Zeng said in a speech carried on the Ministry of Land and Resources Web site today.

China is seeking to boost returns on its $1 trillion of reserves by buying higher yielding assets and diversifying its investment. Premier Wen Jiabao said last week that regulators will consider more ways of using the cash pile. The nation is building an emergency supply of crude oil and plans to expand that to metals to shield the world’s fastest-growing major economy from supply disruptions.

The Chinese aren't the only ones filling a strategic oil reserve, the US is to double the size of their SPR.

Crude oil surged the most since hurricanes devastated the Gulf of Mexico coast in September 2005 after the U.S. said it will double the size of the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

The reserve will increase from its current capacity of 727 million barrels of oil to 1.5 billion barrels over the next two decades, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said today. Bodman said the U.S. will start buying 100,000 barrels of oil a day this spring to expand the stockpile. Prices rose earlier because cooler U.S. weather will increase fuel use.

“Doubling the size of the SPR would add significant upward pressure on oil prices,'’ said Jason Schenker, an economist at Wachovia Corp. in Charlotte, North Carolina. “It would remove a significant amount of supply from the market. Refiners will have to spend more to get the available barrels.'’

Crude oil for March delivery rose $2.46, or 4.7 percent, to $55.04 a barrel, on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the highest close since Jan. 9. It was the biggest one-day gain since Sept. 19, 2005. Prices are 19 percent lower than a year ago.

The U.S. reserve and similar stockpiles in Europe and Asia are held to make up for disruptions of global oil supplies. The U.S. tapped reserves in 1991 after Iraq invaded Kuwait and in 2005 after hurricanes disrupted pipelines, refineries and Gulf of Mexico production.

“We will have to fill the reserve at the rate of 100,000 barrels a day for the next 20 years,'’ said Robert Ebel, chairman of the energy program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Greg Palast has a report on George Bush's speech today - "Big Oil, Big Brother Win Big in the State of the Union". Nothing new here I guess...

There was that tongue again. When the President lies he’s got this weird nervous tick: He sticks the tip of his tongue out between his lips. Like a little boy who knows he’s fibbing. Like a snake licking a rat.

In his State of the Union tonight the President did his tongue thing 124 times — my kids kept count.

But it wasn’t all rat-licking lies.

Most pundits concentrated on Iraq and wacky health insurance stuff. But that’s just bubbles and blather. The real agenda is in the small stuff. The little razors in the policy apple, the nasty little pieces of policy shrapnel that whiz by between the appearances of the Presidential tongue.

First, there was the announcement the regime will, “give employers the tools to verify the legal status of their workers.” In case you missed that one, the President is talking about creating a federal citizen profile database.

There’s a problem with that idea. It’s against the law. The law in question is the United States Constitution. The Founding Fathers thought the government had no right to keep track on a citizen unless there is evidence they have committed, or planned to commit, a crime.

But the Founding Fathers didn’t imagine there were millions and billions of dollars to be made by private contractors ready to perform this KGB operation for the Department of Homeland Security, tracking each and every one of us to keep tabs on our “status.”

These work databases will tie into “voter verification” databases required by the Help America Vote Act. And these will tie to the databases on citizenship and so on.

Will Big Brother abuse these snoop lists? The biggest purveyor of such hit lists is Choice Point, Inc. – those characters who, before the 2000 election, helped Jeb Bush purge innocent voters as “felons” from Florida voter rolls. Will they abuse the new super-lists? Does Dick Cheney shoot in the woods?

There were several other little IEDs (improvised execrable policy devices) planted in the State of the Union. Did you catch the one about doubling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve? If you’re unfamiliar with the SPR, it is supposed to be the stash of oil we keep in case the price of crude gets too high.

Well, the price of oil has been horribly high but Dick Cheney, the official who sits on the Reserve’s spigots, has refused to release the oil into the market.

Instead of unleashing the Reserve and busting Big Oil’s price gouging Bush will double the Reserve, which will require buying three-quarters of a billion barrels of oil. This is a nice $40 billion pay-out to Big Oil from the US Treasury.

Jim at The Energy Blog also comments (in a much more measured way) on the state of the union on energy.

In his State of the Union Address, President Bush called for an energy agenda having these main points:

1) Greater use of coal, solar, wind and nuclear
2) Battery research for plug-in and hybrid vehicles
3) Expand the use of clean diesel vehicles
4) Greater emphasis on cellulosic ethanol
5) Reduce gasoline usage by 20 percent in the next ten years by
5a) Setting a mandatory Fuels Standard of 35 billion
gallons of renewable and alternative fuels in 2017
5b) Adopting fuel economy standards for cars to conserve
eight and a half billion gallons of gasoline by 2017

I don't really have any objection to these points, except to say that I think we could reduce gasoline consumption by more than 20% by having even higher economy standards for cars and a really good push on batteries and plug-ins, electric cars ought to be included, we ought to include butanol and geothermal in our stable of renewable fuels, we need an a greater effort on more efficient power transmission technologies if we are going to take full advantage of renewable energy sources and we should place a high priority on energy storage technologies.

The best way to encourage better batteries would be to require the post office to replace its fleet with electric vans and require the other government agencies to use efficient hybrids. By the time laws were enacted and RFP's written a couple of years would pass by and the technology would be even better.

The only money we need to spend on coal technology is to encourage IGCC plants and carbon capture technologies, this program is pretty well in place, if more money would speed it up all the better. Getting the money that has been authorized into the budget and released is probable all that is needed.

I know that increased use of coal and nuclear will be controversial among many of my readers, but I don't see any way other technologies can take their place in the next 25 to 50 years. I am sure there are those of you that think that government spending for energy technologies is not necessary, that market forces would provide all the incentives that are needed. This is too much of a risk. The cost of our liquid fuels are increasing at too high a rate, despite the recent lull, and if we are not to have drastic economic effects we must push on with alternative energy sources before this happens. All the money we need for these programs could come from reducing the subsidies on hydrogen, fuel cells and the oil industry.

All these reports had, along with a falling US dollar and rumours of a US attack on Iran by April (in Forbes, not just on the fringes) had oil prices rising.

The US dollar was higher against the yen and here on profit taking following a large sell-off in the US currency overnight, dealers said. They said upbeat economic reports in the euro zone including stronger-than expected industrial orders for November, along with hawkish comments from European Central Bank officials overnight initiated a rally in the euro on expectations of interest rate hikes ahead.

A sharp jump in crude oil prices added to the US dollar selling. Dealers said the rally in the euro, coupled with a news report that a US military strike on Iran is seen by April, lifted sterling to a 14-year high of 1.9917 usd overnight.

Russia has finished shipping Tor missile systems to Iran.

Russia has completed the delivery of Tor-M1 missile systems to Iran, Itar-Tass news agency reported on Tuesday, citing the head of the state-run arms exporter Rosoboronexport. Russia has fulfilled its contract and "fully completed deliveries of Tor-M1 air defense systems to Iran at the end of December 2006," Rosoboronexport chief Sergei Chemezov was quoted as saying.

Moscow cut a 1-billion-U.S.-dollar deal with Tehran in November 2005 to supply it with the short-range Tor-M1 missiles. Russian officials described the missiles as air defense systems that are used only to bring down aircraft and guided missiles at low altitudes but cannot strike ground targets. Tor-M1 is capable of simultaneously tracing up to 48 targets and firing at two targets 20 to 6,000 meters high.

Dollar transactions by Iran now seem to have been stopped by both sides of the transactions - somewhat oddly (if you believe in petrodollar collapse theories) prompted by the US.

Iran’s major banks are halting the transfer of dollars outside the country, bank officials announced on Tuesday.

The move is a result of American pressure and fears that the money would be seized by United States authorities. Bank officials received directives on Monday asking them to refrain from making any dollar transfers abroad, AFP reported. Bank clients can still open dollar accounts and receive the currency.

In December Iran announced it would replace the dollar with the euro in foreign transactions and state-held foreign assets. Iran has replaced the dollar with the euro in most of its crude oil exchanges over the past few months.

The United States has blacklisted at least two Iranian banks amid an ongoing impasse with Iran over its nuclear program, which the international community fears is being used to covertly manufacture nuclear weapons.

I'll close with some satire (I think) from The Onion - "CIA Director Quietly Buys Nuclear-Attack Insurance".

BETHESDA, MD—According to sources at the Allstate Insurance Company, CIA Director Michael Hayden purchased nuclear-attack insurance Wednesday, paying a $100,000 monthly premium for his homes in suburban Washington, Pittsburgh, and near Cheyenne Mountain, CO. "It's a typical nuclear policy that protects the insured from damages caused by fallout—pretty straightforward, though at that monthly rate, I don't usually sell too many of them," said Bethesda, MD–based Allstate agent Gary Rutter, adding that Hayden paid for the first premium with a certified bank check to guarantee that the policy would take effect no later than next Monday. "After he purchased the insurance, he asked again if everything was set for Monday. I assured him it was, and then he left." Insurance agents throughout the D.C. area reported selling 35 such policies in the last week, all to high-ranking government officials.