Global Warring  

The SMH is starting to look a little like Peak Energy lately, with the front page today leading with tales of resources wars and global warming, along with peak coal and then inside a new multi page Eco section featuring TreeHugger and a whole lot of sustainable living tips. If they ever start dropping in tinfoil decorations as well I might as well just retire...

First up on the front page was an article called "US Braces For Global Warring" which is a good way of getting reader attention.

THE United States fears climate change could trigger new humanitarian crises and force countries to go to war over diminishing water and energy resources. American politicians are so concerned about the threats posed by the effects of global warming, they are legislating to elevate it to an official defence issue, with the CIA and the Pentagon required to assess the national security implications of climate change.

Australia has also signalled its intention to broaden its treatment of the issue from one that is just environmental to one that draws on expertise from all arms of government, including defence and intelligence.

In Jakarta yesterday, the Environment Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, said Australia would use its spy satellites to monitor illegal logging in Indonesia as part of a push to ban or confiscate furniture and other products made from logs harvested illegally overseas. Already, Australia's leading intelligence agency, the Office of National Assessments, is conducting its own detailed study on the security implications of climate change. The research began late last year.

The US proposal, which its sponsors expect to pass through Congress with wide support, calls for the director of national intelligence to conduct the first-ever "national intelligence estimate" on global warming. The effort would include pinpointing the regions at highest risk of humanitarian suffering, and assessing the likelihood of wars erupting over diminishing water and other resources.

The measure would also order the Pentagon to undertake a series of war games to determine how global climate change could affect US security, including "direct physical threats to the US posed by extreme weather events such as hurricanes". Experts say the increasing focus on global warming as a security issue could open new avenues of support for tougher efforts to limit greenhouse gases.

Next from the SMH, a look at the drying continent.

The Murray-Darling river system will face huge drops in water levels and crops in parts of Australia will struggle, a UN climate change report shows. The Australia and New Zealand chapter of the report, released today, also found Australia's skiing industry might become unviable, tropical diseases and cyclones will become more common and some Aboriginal groups could suffer as climate change intensifies.

Jim Salinger, a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Australasian chapter, today painted a grim picture for Australia during coming decades. ... "Australia is very much the drying continent," Dr Salinger told journalists in Auckland today. "Large areas are likely to have less rainfall and soil moisture. This has dramatic implications for crop, pastoral and grazier land production over much of southern and eastern Australia. So they are looking at very serious consequences there," he said.

Dr Salinger said agriculture could see an initial increase in yields due to climate change, but this would reverse in the next 30-50 years as water stress worsened. "The cropping areas will be reduced. There is a potential for large drops. It is all the crops that are grown in the riverine areas and the Murray-Darling basin," he said.

He said there would also be a projected drop in Australia's snow coverage by 20-85 per cent by 2050. "I believe that the skiing industry may not be an economic proposition. It depends on the rate of warming entirely," he said.

I'm a bit dubious about the whole "peak coal" thing happening within my lifetime (which I'm hoping will be another 4 or 5 decades) but the story seems to have some momentum now.

NSW could run out of coal within 35 years, by which time any clean coal technology used to deal with greenhouse gases generated by the industry would only be in its infancy, say researchers. Based on current industry growth and production rates of about 3.2 per cent a year, the state's 10,600 million tonnes of coal reserves would be exhausted by 2042, according to calculations done for the Hunter Community Environment Centre in Newcastle.

Those figures, calculated by analyst Greg Hall using official resources figures, do not take into account faster production that may result from the expansion of coal-loading facilities at Newcastle. "This revelation is based on widely available industry data and we are stunned that the [State] Government has ignored it," said a spokeswoman for the environment centre, Georgina Woods. ...

Ms Woods also asked whether it made sense for the Government to invest in technology that aimed to capture and then bury the carbon dioxide generated by coal-fired power stations. It would be investing taxpayer funds in technology that might not be ready for another 20 years, that used more coal than existing coal-fired power stations and that might be redundant if the state ran out of coal within 40 years, she said.

The Government has not estimated how long it would take to exhaust the state's coal reserves, which include a potentially massive reserve under the Liverpool Plains being explored by BHP Billiton.

The SMH is also predicting fuel prices will continue to rise.

There is no relief in sight for motorists with Easter's fuel price hike likely to roll into another rise fed by Iran's announcement it has started large-scale nuclear fuel production. CommSec's Martin Arnold warned motorists could soon be paying $1.30 per litre for petrol.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced on Monday the Middle East nation was now producing enriched uranium on an industrial scale. Tensions between Iran and the West affect crude oil prices because Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz - a narrow marine channel which 20 per cent of the world's oil supply passes through. ...

Coupled with the upcoming US summer driving season, demand for crude is likely to strongly exceed supply in coming weeks.

BHP seems to have struck trouble in Malibu, with their LNG terminal plans getting blocked courtesy of spirited resistance by James Bond co-stars Pierce Brosnan and Halle Berry.

A BHP proposal for a liquefied natural gas terminal off the southern California coast has been rejected by the State Lands Commission citing environmental concerns. Some of America's top movie stars and A-List celebrities helped fight the plan to build the terminal just off famous Malibu beach.

Though California is facing a looming energy crisis as its own gas supplies run out and the facility would be located 21 kilometres off the coast, film stars Pierce Brosnan and Halle Berry have led a campaign to block the proposal, citing the potential threat in the event of an accident.

The strangest link in the new Eco section was one about English surfers being up in arms about a wave energy project off Cornwall...

A political storm is looming over one of Britain's first wave power projects, the Wave Hub, which surfers fear will drain energy from the waves they ride along the Atlantic coast. In one corner stand the authorities and power companies, who say the $49 million experimental installation is vital to developing wave power systems and helping combat global warming. In the other, the surfers of Cornwall in Britain's south-west, many of whom moved to the region specifically to catch those waves.

The European Union is hoping to slash greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent by 2020 and wave power is part of many efforts to reach that goal.

With an unusually high ratio of fanatics and a long history of campaigning against pollution, the surfing subculture knows how to make itself heard. But Wave Hub's potential effect on greenhouse gas production has not won it over.

The surfers say the installation, 16 kilometres offshore from the popular holiday destination of St Ives, will cast a shadow across their favourite beaches, draining the waves of energy and cropping their height....

Last one from the SMH - Halliburton cuts Iran link - of course, legally it shouldn't have had any links - sounds like its time to send Dick Cheney to jail to me...

Halliburton said on Monday all of the commitments of its subsidiary doing business in Iran have been completed and it is no longer working in the country. In January 2005, the company once headed by US Vice President Dick Cheney announced it would not accept new work in Iran but would complete its existing contracts there.

The US Department of Justice subpoenaed documents from Halliburton in July 2004 for an investigation into the legality of contracts its Cayman Islands-registered Halliburton Products & Services unit held for work with the state-run National Iranian Oil Co.

Following on from Ken Henry's talk last week, Stephen Mayne at Crikey has a post on the government's water "policy" - "Deceit, fiddling and featherbedding as the government goes to water".

Despite protestations from the Prime Minister down, Treasury Secretary Ken Henry has blown the lid on the Government’s reckless disregard for good sensible policy on both climate change and water.

Peter Costello’s defence yesterday was that the Budget has emerged in good shape after previous elections, so the Government should be trusted on the back of its good record. However, Australia’s public finances are not as robust as the Government claims and the media is culpable for failing to point this out. For instance, the Treasurer said the following on Insiders last Sunday:

Reducing net debt, getting rid of the Labor debt. That was the first big point. That got rid of $96 billion.

Host Barrie Cassidy should have immediately countered as follows: “But you haven’t got rid of $96 billion in debt, the Federal Government still owes $54 billion. Why do you keep saying that?”

Then you’ve got Costello’s overblown claims about Labor’s raid on the Future Fund for its broadband policy. The Treasurer even likened Labor to the late Robert Maxwell’s notorious pension theft and stressed that such a move would be against the law for a private employer.

Good point, Treasurer. So why did you overstate your first 10 Budget surpluses by a collective $29 billion when unfunded Federal super blew out from $69 billion to $98 billion?

The Federal Government still has a negative net worth of more than $10 billion and we should be putting aside tens of billions during this unprecedented resources boom.

The Singapore Government has invested more than $20 billion in Australia since 1996 and will shell out about $4 billion for its slice of the Alinta carve-up. Our governments can’t afford their own infrastructure, let alone buying up such assets in other countries.

And when it does come to infrastructure investment, we get a $10 billion water plan seemingly dreamt up on the back of an envelope without reference to Cabinet or Treasury.

The most disturbing aspect of the plan is the idea that irrigators will be given $3 billion to surrender their excess water rights. This won’t build one dollar of infrastructure and will line the pockets of the group that constitutes the heart and sole of the National Party -- irrigators.

How much of that public money will boomerang back to the National Party in the form of political donations? Moree-based cotton farmer Dick Estens is one such irrigator who stands to receive many millions just as he works towards becoming a Federal National Party MP.

Treasury would never have tolerated such a folly -- which perhaps explains why it wasn’t consulted by a government getting ever closer to its death rattle.

Jim at The Energy Blog has a fairly bold post up (given the usually very dry tone that usually prevails there) called Peak Oil Will Change You Lifestyle. I'm starting to think I'm the most laid back peak oil blogger out there with my - "its easy; smart grids, electric transport and lots of renewable energy - no worries !" attitude...

The Evansville Courier & Press has an editorial on peak oil, "Peak oil crisis will require fundamental cultural change" that deals with the "will change your lifestyle" part of The Energy Blog's motto. It does not deal with the date of peak oil or the technology, but suggests some changes in lifestyle that will help us get through this period.

A congressional report firmly recommends that we "better prepare for a peak in oil." and "clearly states that there is no U.S. policy to deal with global peak oil." The editorial goes on to state the following regarding these issues.

Oil, for all its dirty, nasty attributes, is the best thing since man discovered fire. ...

Humans have for all practical purposes found, drilled, pumped and refined half of the crude oil on the planet — the easiest half: 900 billion barrels — so far this century. What's left are declining fields with hard-to-extract heavy (sour) crude, oil shale and tar sands. These will require ever more energy to extract and will approach a negative net energy result. ...

Conservation is only a feeble start. For a society to survive intact, philosophies have to change. The car mentality has to go, and the sooner the better.

We have to stop urban sprawl and let the land around our cities be used, as it once was, for growing food for its region; use light rail for distance transportation and trolleys, bikes and pedestrian walkways for local transportation.

We must localize communities around centers of food production and local-needs manufacturing. We must learn to live with less.

All of these would use less energy and could allow a world closer to what we know today to continue for a significantly longer time than would doing nothing.

Technology will not fix this. No amount of high-tech know-how, drilling techniques or "Googling" will save us from ourselves.

In reality, we all will have to learn to live a different life under different conditions. It's not going to be easy or fun.

In reality, we all will have to learn to live a different life under different conditions. It's not going to be easy or fun.

Peak oil will be the issue of our generation. There is not going to be a heroic Hollywood ending or Hail Mary pass to save us on this one. This is an issue that should not be seen as a liberal, tree-hugging, doomsdayer's obsession. This is a global geological fact that needs to be considered in every aspect of our lives.

Google Alerts claimed, inaccurately, that this post from "War Is Boring" referred to me today - I fail to see where but won't question the nuggets the oracle throws at me - as it talks about East Timor and oil I'll throw it in anyway.

You might wonder why Australia even bothered with East Timor. It’s a wretched, seemingly harmless little country. There aren’t any terrorists here. There’s no prospect of some future Timorese army ever threatening Australia. Why invest a billion dollars and a thousand troops in an open-ended “stabilization operation,” when the stakes seem so low?

Oil, perhaps?

South of Timor, in the Timor Sea that separates the island from Australia, lie a handful of oil fields worth more than $20 billion to whichever government claims them. Technically, by U.N. standards, most of the fields lie in Timorese territorial waters. Australia doesn’t recognize the U.N. standard and has grabbed more than half for itself. Of course, Canberra puts a happy spin on this, according to a February statement from Foreign Minister Alexander Downer:

The International Unitisation Agreement (IUA) and the Certain Maritime Arrangements in the Timor Sea (CMATS) Treaty together provide stable legal and fiscal regimes for the exploration and exploitation of petroleum resources in the Timor Sea between Australia and East Timor to the benefit of both countries. CMATS puts on hold the Parties’ claims to jurisdiction and maritime boundaries in the Timor Sea for 50 years. Australia has agreed to share equally with East Timor the upstream revenues from the Greater Sunrise reservoirs, a move which will help underpin the economic independence of our neighbor.

As a consolation, Canberra is offering $40 million annually in aid on top of $400 million already appropriated. Chump change, right? But before you rush to condemn Australia for “stealing” Timor’s oil, consider that sometimes a massive injection of oil money is actually bad for developing countries. ...

Thats exactly right - we're doing it for their own good - honest !

Dave Sifry's latest update on the State of the Blogosphere (or "Live Web" as they are now calling it) is up - still growing...

Back in 2002 when Technorati started tracking the blogosphere, social mores and community practices were still forming, and its growth was primarily through the written word. It was a fledgling medium that was initially reviled, then feared, and, now, embraced as mainstream.

The blogosphere started well before Technorati was founded, and its growth was fostered by many people and organizations that brought openness and cooperation to the medium. One of those people, Dave Winer, just celebrated the tenth anniversary of his weblog. Given this auspicious anniversary, I wanted to give my thanks and support to Dave and to all of the other early pioneers in the world of blogging, RSS, and the Live Web. Without Dave's efforts, the web wouldn't look the way it does today. His creation and support for systems like weblogs.com and open formats like RSS were critical in building the early infrastructure that Technorati relies upon and helps to support.

As a result of this work and the cultural mores of openness, we also have photo sharing, podcasting, online music publishing, online video publishing, user-generated games, and, increasingly, we have structured data-sharing such as upcoming events. All of this seething, lively activity constitutes the Live Web and Technorati is its hub -- thanks in large part to the growing use and ubiquity of tags. Through the social constructs of tags, we help people find unique voices and points of view. We also help social media publishers to find the people formerly known as their audience. And they all converge, as a result, on Technorati.

We’re proud of this position, of course, but also humbled by the responsibility it imposes.

As we continue to bring more and more of the Live Web to the fore, and to organize it and present it in ways that are useful, entertaining, and informative to you all, I hope you’ll continue to tell us your opinions (as if I could stop you!) and provide us your guidance. Our credo has been and will always remain: “Be of Service.” Your voice helps us to do this, so please continue to tell us what we can do better.

In summary:

* 70 million weblogs
* About 120,000 new weblogs each day, or...
* 1.4 new blogs every second
* 3000-7000 new splogs (fake, or spam blogs) created every day
* Peak of 11,000 splogs per day last December
* 1.5 million posts per day, or...
* 17 posts per second
* Growing from 35 to 75 million blogs took 320 days
* 22 blogs among the top 100 blogs among the top 100 sources linked to in Q4 2006 - up from 12 in the prior quarter
* Japanese the #1 blogging language at 37%
* English second at 33%
* Chinese third at 8%
* Italian fourth at 3%
* Farsi a newcomer in the top 10 at 1%
* English the most even in postings around-the-clock
* Tracking 230 million posts with tags or categories
* 35% of all February 2007 posts used tags
* 2.5 million blogs posted at least one tagged post in February