Mission Accomplished !  

The "massive energy resources of the moon" (in the form of an isotope of helium) story appeared in the news again today, with the Russians accusing the US of attempting to monopolise this supposed windfall. With no sign of practical fusion reactors visible to me, nor any sign of a viable way of extracting, compressing and transporting the stuff back to earth on the horizon, this does seem to be a lot of hot air at the moment. But who knows - maybe we're about to see a multi-polar space race erupt as everyone competes to grab the helium. Will we see an "Obama Doctrine" being promulgated in the coming years, declaring US readiness to exert military force to control lunar energy sources ? Or will Tsar Vladimir and Gazprom get there first and rule the world via an energy stranglehold ? There is even a peak oil angle at the end of the story.

MANKIND'S second race for the moon has taken on a distinctly Cold War feel, with the Russian space agency accusing its old rival NASA of rejecting a proposal for joint lunar exploration. The charge comes amid suspicion in Moscow that the US is seeking to deny Russia access to an isotope in abundance under the moon's surface that many believe could replace fossil fuels and even end the threat of global warming.

A new era of international co-operation in space supposedly dawned after the US, Russia and other powers declared their intention to send humans to the moon for the first time since 1972. But while NASA has lobbied for support from Britain and the European Space Agency, Russia says its offers have been rebuffed.

"We are ready to co-operate but for some reason the United States has announced that it will carry out the program itself," Anatoly Perminov, the head of Russia's federal space agency, Roscosmos, said on Monday. "Strange as it is, the United States is short of experts to implement the program."

NASA announced in December that it was planning to build an international base camp on one of the moon's poles, permanently staffing it by 2024. The Russian space rocket manufacturer Energia revealed an even more ambitious program last August, saying it would build a permanent moon base by 2015.

While the Americans have been either coy or dismissive on the subject, Russia openly says the main purpose of its lunar program is the industrial extraction of helium-3. While critics dismiss it a 21st-century equivalent of the medieval alchemist's fruitless quest to turn lead into gold, some scientists say helium-3 could be the answer to the world's energy woes. As helium-3 is non-polluting and effective in tiny quantities, many countries are taking it very seriously. Germany, India and China, which will launch a lunar probe to research extraction techniques in September, are all studying ways to mine the isotope.

"Whoever conquers the moon first will be the first to benefit," said Ouyang Ziyuan, the chief scientist of China's lunar program.

Energia says it will start "industrial scale delivery" of helium-3, transported by cargo space ships no later than 2020. Gazprom, the state-owned energy giant , is said to be strongly supportive of the project. The US has appeared much more cautious, not least because scientists are yet to discover the secrets of large scale nuclear fusion. Commercial fusion reactors look unlikely to come on line before 2050.

But many in Moscow's space program believe Washington's agenda is driven by a desire to monopolise helium-3 mining. They allege that the US President, George Bush, has moved experts on helium-3 into key positions on NASA's advisory council. The plot, says Erik Galimov, of the Russian Academy of Sciences, would "enable the US to establish its control of the energy market 20 years from now and put the rest of the world on its knees as hydrocarbons run out".

After Gutenberg reports that the ice of the Arctic is disappearing far quicker than anyone expected.

Mr. Bush has refused to commit the United States to limiting carbon emissions, saying that will hurt the U.S. economy. Still, German Chancellor Angela Merkel praised Mr. Bush for taking a major rhetorical step forward in recognizing that a problem exists.

“One, we recognize that we have a problem with greenhouse gases. Two, we recognize we have a problem with a dependence on oil. Three, we recognize that we can use technologies to help solve this problem. And, four, we recognize we have an obligation to work together to promote the technologies necessary to solve the problem and encourage the developing world to use those technologies.”

The business as usual and above all else position of the Oily Administration is other than newsworthy. It is the current context of such persistent denial that bears noting.

Prior to the EU-US summit in Washington, an IPCC reported demonstrated that a consensus of 1000 climate scientists believe that anthropogenic carbon emissions are contributing to climate change. Now a group of (unmuzzled) scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the University of Colorado’s National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) have announced a disparity between computer models and actual satellite observations.

The shrinking of summertime ice is about 30 years ahead of the climate model projections. As a result, the Arctic could be seasonally free of sea ice earlier than the IPCC-projected timeframe of any time from 2050 to well beyond 2100.

Polar ice caps reflect sunlight back into space. When sunlight is reflected then less thermal energy is absorbed. The cooling effect is lost if the reflective ice disappears. Which is what is happening more rapidly than expected.

Many scientists are very concerned about the acceleration. “In contrast, darker areas of open water, which are expanding, absorb sunlight and increase temperatures. This feedback loop,” observed Mike Millikin, writing for Green Car Congress, “has played a role in the increasingly rapid loss of ice in recent years, which accelerated to 9.1% per decade from 1979 to 2006.”

Paul Hawken has an article in Orion Magazine on the emerging global democratic movement.

I have given nearly one thousand talks about the environment in the past fifteen years, and after every speech a smaller crowd gathered to talk, ask questions, and exchange business cards. The people offering their cards were working on the most salient issues of our day: climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation, human rights, and more. They were from the nonprofit and nongovernmental world, also known as civil society. They looked after rivers and bays, educated consumers about sustainable agriculture, retrofitted houses with solar panels, lobbied state legislatures about pollution, fought against corporate-weighted trade policies, worked to green inner cities, or taught children about the environment. Quite simply, they were trying to safeguard nature and ensure justice.

After being on the road for a week or two, I would return with a couple hundred cards stuffed into various pockets. I would lay them out on the table in my kitchen, read the names, look at the logos, envisage the missions, and marvel at what groups do on behalf of others. Later, I would put them into drawers or paper bags, keepsakes of the journey. I couldn't throw them away.

Over the years the cards mounted into the thousands, and whenever I glanced at the bags in my closet, I kept coming back to one question: did anyone know how many groups there were? At first, this was a matter of curiosity, but it slowly grew into a hunch that something larger was afoot, a significant social movement that was eluding the radar of mainstream culture.

I began to count. I looked at government records for different countries and, using various methods to approximate the number of environmental and social justice groups from tax census data, I initially estimated that there were thirty thousand environmental organizations strung around the globe; when I added social justice and indigenous organizations, the number exceeded one hundred thousand. I then researched past social movements to see if there were any equal in scale and scope, but I couldn't find anything.

The more I probed, the more I unearthed, and the numbers continued to climb. In trying to pick up a stone, I found the exposed tip of a geological formation. I discovered lists, indexes, and small databases specific to certain sectors or geographic areas, but no set of data came close to describing the movement's breadth. Extrapolating from the records being accessed, I realized that the initial estimate of a hundred thousand organizations was off by at least a factor of ten. I now believe there are over one million organizations working toward ecological sustainability and social justice. Maybe two.

By conventional definition, this is not a movement. Movements have leaders and ideologies. You join movements, study tracts, and identify yourself with a group. You read the biography of the founder(s) or listen to them perorate on tape or in person. Movements have followers, but this movement doesn't work that way. It is dispersed, inchoate, and fiercely independent. There is no manifesto or doctrine, no authority to check with.

I sought a name for it, but there isn't one.

Historically, social movements have arisen primarily because of injustice, inequalities, and corruption. Those woes remain legion, but a new condition exists that has no precedent: the planet has a life-threatening disease that is marked by massive ecological degradation and rapid climate change. It crossed my mind that perhaps I was seeing something organic, if not biologic. Rather than a movement in the conventional sense, is it a collective response to threat? Is it splintered for reasons that are innate to its purpose? Or is it simply disorganized? More questions followed. How does it function? How fast is it growing? How is it connected? Why is it largely ignored? ...

The SMH has an article by Elizabeth Farrelly on the brown and dirty aspects of being green and the myopic tendency of obsolete politicians to view being green as a purely left wing concept.

When are we going to get over this saurian idea that eco-mindedness is left-wing? John Howard, green clad but still myopic, says he'll address climate change only when he's close enough to read the price tag.

Malcolm Turnbull, the Environment Minister, derides the Climate Institute as a "left-wing think tank". Morris Iemma talks green but rather than simply fitting every house with a rain tank, relentlessly pursues a desal plant that will chug electricity and wreck Botany Bay. And Clover Moore, who rightly wants dedicated cycleways and water reservoirs in the great man-made caverns under Sydney, will find herself choker-deep in bureaucratic merde when she tries to make it happen.

Meanwhile, the rest of Sydney's councils are still busy making it hard for people to recycle stormwater, purify on-site sewage or secede from the grid.

For most of us the problems of going green, as opposed to talking about it, are many-sided: aesthetic, economic, political. Aesthetically, the obstacles are mainly about the sheer, icky brownness of green: the lawn gone brown with drought, the bog paper that's brown when you buy it, the bath that stays brown after cleaning. Brown is the child's first heartbreak, having mixed all the colours in hope of yet greater glory.

It's the colour of the swamp, of earth's reclaiming us as territory, of entropy. The colour of war, of dark ages and of old, nicotiney, communist Europe. Brown is what makes the hairshirt irredeemable fashion death. That's problem No. 1.

Problem two is economic: the sheer cost of water tanks, plumbing, photovoltaics, microturbines, smart cars and phosphate-free detergents. This, against the abject cheapness of energy and water, means that any technology you install will be obsolete well before it pays for itself, especially if you count interest. Lesli Berger, the developer of the new no-name green office building in Double Bay, says sustainability cost him half a million, in a $5 million building. And that's not counting the $1.2 million Woollahra Council is still trying to slug him for eschewing car parking, or the several thousand Sydney Water wanted for not connecting to the mains.

Problem three is the usual political googly, in reverse. It's not that sustainable buildings are unpopular, but that politicians think they are, or might be. This, it seems, deprives all pollies with power to change anything of the courage to do it.

As anyone with half an ear to the ground knows, Australia is well behind the world in developing renewable energy and distributed grids. As the Australian Business Council for Sustainable Energy says, "Australia's global position has slipped over the last five years" because of our refusal to use either tax or pricing incentives to encourage renewables. And, in Australia, virtually everyone is ahead of the Government. ...

"Foreign Policy" magazine has a series on "21 solutions to save the world" - unfortunately some of the content is hidden behind a paywall, though you can by an online day pass. From Thomas Homer Dixon's "A Chorus of Solutions".

Humankind now confronts two new, intimately entangled, and unprecedented challenges: supplying enough energy as the world’s reserves of cheap petroleum contract, and preventing catastrophic climate change. Without aggressive action, we’ll face repeated and increasingly serious energy and climate shocks that will cause enormous disruption to agriculture, industry, and people’s general wellbeing. In time, they will severely erode the prosperity and political stability of societies around the world. Unfortunately, there is no single answer to this energyclimate conundrum. And, though our energy dilemma is the most vexing problem we face, we must stop looking for—and promoting—single ideas to solve it.

New research into the behavior of highly adaptive systems such as forest ecologies, immune systems, and markets has proven that, as a system’s problems become more complex, its solutions must become more complex as well. The world’s most adaptive systems achieve this complexity by engaging in a huge amount of diverse local experimentation. Lots of things are tried at once to find out which things—and which combinations of things—work.

To meet the challenge of the Earth’s dwindling energy resources and rising temperature, we’ll have to deploy a number of technologies and economic policies simultaneously, some of which haven’t even been conceived of yet. We’ll put solar panels and windmills on the roofs of our buildings at the same time that we pull heat energy out of the ground underneath them. We’ll experiment with electrolyzing water and shipping hydrogen by pipeline at the same time that we gasify coal and pump millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the Earth. We’ll try carbon taxes, capandtrade markets, and carbonoffset standards. Some of these things will work, and each one...

And from Bill McKibben's "450 Ways to Stop Global Warming" (the "pulling down the factory" graphic might be better augmented with some "erecting wind turbines and solar panels" motifs if you ask me).

The most important number on Earth is almost certainly 450. And just as certainly, it’s not a number that means much to most policymakers. Not yet, anyway.

Everyone without a severe ideological kink knows by now that global warming is a looming problem. Even in the United States, two decades of energy industry disinformation is finally wearing off: Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Gore have finally blown most doubt away. But many fewer people realize either the real magnitude of the problem or the speed with which it may be bearing down on us.

Here’s the short course. Before the Industrial Revolution, the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide was roughly 280 parts per million. CO2, by virtue of its molecular structure, regulates how much of the sun’s energy stays trapped in our narrow envelope of atmosphere—Mars, which has very little, is cold; Venus, with a lot, is hellish. We were in a sweet spot, where human civilization developed and thrived. But as we burned coal, gas, and oil, the extra carbon dioxide that combustion produced began to accumulate in the atmosphere. By the late 1950s, when people first started to measure it, atmospheric concentrations were already above 315 parts per million. Now, that number has reached 380 parts per million, and its rise has accelerated: In recent years, we’ve been adding about 2 parts per million annually to the atmosphere. And, predictably, the temperature has begun to rise.

Twenty years ago, when global warming first came to public consciousness, no one knew precisely how much carbon dioxide was too much. The early computer climate models made a number of predictions about what would happen if we doubled the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere to 550 parts per million. But, in recent years, as the science has gotten more robust, scientists have tended to put the red line right around 450 parts per million. That’s where NASA’s James Hansen, America’s foremost climatologist, has said we need to stop if we want to avoid a temperature rise greater than two degrees Celsius. Why would two degrees be a magic number? Because as best we can tell, it’s where the melting of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets would become rapid and irrevocable. The ice above Greenland alone contains about 23 feet of sea-level rise, which is more than enough to alter the Earth almost beyond recognition.

So far, the diplomatic effort to do something powerful about climate change has been blocked by a couple of factors. One is the complete intransigence of the United States, where 5 percent of us produce a quarter of the world’s carbon dioxide. But assuming that the next president finally gets us on some kind of new course, the international negotiations that could then resume in earnest will still be hampered by the lack of a real and understandable goal. The Kyoto treaty was as much about process as outcome—it began to build the plumbing for an international system of carbon controls. But the time was not yet ripe to set a real, urgent, ultimate target for that work.

That time has now come. ...

The ABC has an upcoming documentary on peak oil called "Crude" (RAM trailer).

Crude – the incredible journey of oil. Where does it come from? When will it run out? Where is it driving us? This extraordinary documentary travels through time: from the birth of oil deep in the dinosaur-inhabited past, to its ascendancy as the indispensable ingredient of modern life.

Now, as we crest the peak of production, Crude reveals a disturbing irony: the latest scientific evidence suggests that our headlong rush to exploit the remaining reserves will lead us down a dangerous road to the future. A road the planet has travelled before...

News stories about the Pentagon abandoning oil as an energy source seemed widespread today (originally emanating from the Boston Globe - the firm that produced the report isn't mentioned).

A study ordered by the Pentagon warns that the rising cost and dwindling supply of oil - the lifeblood of fighter jets, warships, and tanks - will make the US military's ability to respond to crises around the world "unsustainable in the long term". The study, produced by a consulting firm, concludes that all four branches of the military must "fundamentally transform" their assumptions about energy, including taking immediate steps towards fielding weapons systems and aircraft that run on alternative and renewable fuels.

The Pentagon must "apply new energy technologies that address alternative supply sources and efficient consumption across all aspects of military operations", the report says. However, weaning the US military from fossil fuels quickly would be a herculean task - especially because the bulk of the US arsenal depends on fossil fuels, and many military systems have been designed to remain in service for at least several decades.

However, Pentagon advisers believe the growing consumption of fossil fuels leaves military leaders with little choice but to break with the past as soon as possible. The report says the military is using 16 times more fuel per soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan than in World War II.

The Pentagon commissioned LMI, a government-consulting firm, to produce the report. Transforming the Way DoD Looks at Energy is intended as a potential blueprint for a new military energy strategy and includes a detailed survey of potential alternatives to oil - including synthetic fuels, renewable biofuels, ethanol and biodiesel fuel as well as solar and wind power, among many others.

Chris Nelder has a look at "receding horizons" for North American oil production at "Energy and Capital".

Last week, we discussed the “Law of Receding Horizons ,” which explains why marginal oil and gas projects can still be uneconomical even with high oil prices, contrary to projections. And back in March, in The Cavalry Stays Home, we reviewed how this phenomenon has caused the delay or cancellation of some highly anticipated new oil and gas projects. Now let’s review the next rogues’ gallery of cavalrymen who have decided to stay home. Bear in mind that all of this has happened since April 1.

California: The state Lands Commission voted not to approve an environmental impact statement that would have been necessary to proceed with a proposed liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility 14 miles off the Ventura-Los Angeles County coast. They also denied a permit for the pipelines to cross state lands, so the project is effectively dead. This bodes ill for the three other similar LNG projects that are still in the approval process, and for another Long Beach project which is currently being fought in court.

Louisiana: Shell has put the kibosh on a new LNG import terminal 36 miles off the coast of southwest Louisiana due to protests over the environmental impact of the facility, which would have used millions of gallons of Gulf water to warm the product from liquid back into a gas.

Canada: In the Northwest Territories, the Deh Cho tribe, the last aboriginal holdout against a natural gas pipeline across the Mackenzie Valley, is making their approval of the project conditional upon the federal government’s agreeing to set aside 60% of the tribe’s lands as protected wilderness. The 1,220-kilometer pipeline is needed to access large gas reserves in the Arctic, but its cost has more than doubled to $16.2 billion.

Natural gas drilling in Canada has also been dampened by the Canadian government’s dubious decision to kill the golden goose of investment money flowing into its energy projects, by phasing out the sweet tax benefits the Canadian investment trusts that funded the projects used to enjoy. Accordingly, exploration and production companies are scaling back on drilling. The number of drilling rigs that are now operating in Canada is less than half those that were operating there at the end of 2005. “A lot of marginal drilling activity taking place last year is probably gone for good,” said Bill Herbert, co-head of research for Simmons & Company International. He called the spate of rig withdrawals a “bloodbath,” and projected that the second quarter of this year will see the rig count fall by 40 percent from last year’s level.

For those of you keeping score, this is not good news. North America is well past the peak of its natural gas production and is on the decline. We need to increase imports just to stay even with current consumption. But, as we are seeing in southern California, new facilities for importing natural gas aren’t exactly being welcomed with open arms.

Since natural gas is the primary feedstock for West Coast electricity plants, this surely will translate into higher grid prices there. And since natural gas is a key feedstock for the production of oil from the Canadian tar sands, it could dampen those projects too. That’s scary, because those one million barrels a day of oil made from the tar sands is equivalent to more than 10% of U.S. oil imports. Canada is, after all, our number one supplier of crude. We’re counting on them to make up for the loss from our number three supplier, Mexico, due to the catastrophic decline of its main oil field, Cantarell.

So we’d like to see Canada increasing its production as fast as possible--indeed, we lobbied them hard last quarter to do so, asking them to suspend their environmental reviews in order to fast-track oil sands projects. But they demurred. Now the Canadian Association of Oilwell Drilling Contractors anticipates that the number of oil wells drilled will drop from 22,575 last year to 19,023 this year. With oil prices going up.

What does that tell you?

It tells me that the investment money is pulling back. Very likely it’s because of the law of diminishing returns: The best prospects for drilling have already been tested, and now they’re drilling more dry holes and getting less payout from the wet ones, even as the cost of drilling rises dramatically. ...

The Daily Reckoning today has a look at China and Russia and their moves to turn depreciating US dollars into resource assets.

That's why traditional methods of valuation focus on the present value of future cash flow and what price to pay for it today. The faster a company, say a small company, is growing its cash flow (and hopefully its net income) the more you might be willing to pay now for future cash flow.

--Nothing happening in China or Australia changes that today. It's all about future cash flow. We do emphasise the word "future." And here is one more aspect to the discussion. Actual possession of valuable and scarce natural resources is not a replacement for current cash flow. But it is pretty damn desirable, and only a few steps removed from "monetising" resources into sales and income. And that's why the resource land grab in Australia continues, with active participation from the Chinese and the Russians.

--"It looks as if Mount Gibson will become the subject of a battle between Russian and Chinese iron ore powerhouses," explains Marsha Jacobs in today's Financial Review. "Share prices of iron or juniors have already benefited from moves by Chinese and Russian interests to back local iron ore projects...During Mt. Gibson's acrimonious takeover battle for Aztec, large Chinese and Russian-backed companies moved on to their registers in an attempt to take lead roles in consolidating West Australian iron ore minnows."

--Do you think China and Russia view publicly listed stocks on foreign markets as so many Trojan Horses? They can transparently acquire ownership (or at least a claim on cash flow) of many resource companies in resource-rich places like Australia. We suspect it's the resource base they are after, however, and not current or future cash flows.

--It reminds you a little bit of the robber baron capitalism that characterised turn-of-the-century America. We recalled the story of how Cornelius Vanderbilt attempted to corner the exploding railroad market in America by buying out, by hook or by crook, all the players in the booming industry. Most of it was perfectly legit and all of it was perfectly sensible.

--In April of 2001, then-Bank of America CEO Hugh McColl, Jr. speaking to a room full of bankers, previewed what we're seeing today. "In the 19th century, Jay Gould stopped Commodore Vanderbilt from cornering the railroad market by moving his printing press across the river and circulating new stock certificates for the Erie railroad that no one could tell from the genuine article.

--"Vanderbilt replied, 'I won't sue you, I'll crush you,' or something to that effect. And who can blame him? To be honest, I can't promise what I wouldn't do to beat my competitors if I didn't have to worry about regulators or lawsuits. I can promise you it wouldn't be pretty."

--"For a contemporary example of what happens when the judicial system breaks down over a prolonged period, take a look at 21st century Russia. There is a country in which there is close to a complete absence of credible regulation of business that would provide a fair, consistent and just framework for commerce. The result is that Russia continues to be an economic wreck."

--That was six years ago, of course. Russia is no longer a wreck. If you go back a few years before that to 1998, when the oil price was US$14, it was looking even worse for Russia. The government defaulted on its debt, which was 96% of GDP at the time.

--Now, some $52 dollar later in oil price terms, Russia is an a position to invest abroad too. In 2002, Putin set up the country's Stablisation Fund, a repository from huge export profits of Russia's oil and natural gas. As of March, the fund-which amounts to a political war chest for investment projects in Russia or abroad-was flush with about US$108 billion. And that's just money squirreled away in the Fund.

--Officially, Russia has $361 billion in foreign currency reserves, third only to Japan and China. Russia's reserves have benefited from added exposure to the euro and gold. Japan and China, as you know, own an awful lot of greenbacks ($1.2 trillion for China and $900 billion for Japan.)

--Diversification of currency reserves is no easy thing. But trading U.S. dollars for ownership of resource assets (anywhere you can find them) is quite clearly part of Russian and Chinese national policy. And it some ways, it means that the end of the dollar standard really started in 2003, when commodities and resource shares began outperforming everything else.

--The main point is, if you're looking for an official frantic rush out of the dollar and into another paper currency, you're looking for the wrong thing. The exodus out of the dollar began nearly four years ago, by foreign investors who saw that it was better to own real tangible assets than the unbacked liability of a bankrupt government.

--And another note on cash flow from Jonathan Barrett in today's Australian, who warns on the hype in uranium stocks. "As it is only the large Australian miners that are generating cash-flow from their uranium operations, buying small uranium stocks is basically a speculative action based on the beliefs that the miners will uncover, mine, and turn a profit from their intended operations," writes Barrett.

--Yup. But there is a lot of speculation about the future today, from uranium to China. Round and round the money goes. Where the bubble pops...nobody knows.

The SMH has an article noting uranium miners are the hottest of all resources stocks.

DESPITE huge share price gains in the past year, uranium stocks have been deemed the "single hottest pick in the entire resources sector" by an analyst from the investment bank which first predicted the commodity's price would hit $US100 a pound. "Any investors who don't have uranium exposure are betting against the market and, in my view, that's a bad bet," RBC Capital Markets analyst Chris Lancaster told his company's uranium conference in Sydney. He predicted the uranium price would rise beyond its current record level of $US113 a pound.

RBC held its conference to coincide with the Labor Party's decision at the weekend to end its longstanding policy banning new uranium mines. Although the move was expected - and the states of Western Australia and Queensland have maintained their opposition to uranium mining - it has led to even more enthusiasm for uranium stocks. But picking the right investment can prove tricky. As Toro Energy business development manager Simon Mitchell pointed out, "not all pounds in the ground are created equal": extraction costs and political risks vary.

Oxiana subsidiary Nova Energy has one of the more advanced projects in Australia. Experienced uranium executive John Borshoff, the managing director of Paladin Resources, told the Herald Nova's Lake Way project would probably be the first developed in WA after a ban on uranium mining was lifted. But Nova managing director Tim Sugden said that even under the most favourable circumstances, the company was unlikely to open a mine until 2010 or 2011.

From hot stocks to hot air, there is some unseemly wrangling over whether or not Australia will meet the generous Kyoto target the Rodent has refused to sign up to.

THE Minister for the Environment, Malcolm Turnbull, will today deny claims that Australia is a global polluter by citing new figures showing the nation is on track to meet its Kyoto emissions targets. The Australian Greenhouse Office will release figures showing that for 2004-05 Australia emitted an estimated 559 million tonnes of greenhouse gases. This is the equivalent of 102 per cent of the nation's 1990 emissions.

Under the Kyoto Protocol, which Australia signed but never ratified, the nation has committed to keep emissions to 108 per cent of 1990 levels by 2012. "We're on course to do that," a Government spokesman said. The 2004-05 emissions are at the same level as for the previous 12 months. Mr Turnbull will stress that Australia is capping its emissions and will point out that since 1990 the economy has grown by 61 per cent, while emissions have grown by 2 per cent during the same period.

Last week figures produced for the Climate Institute, a think tank, showed Australia's emissions and energy consumption had surged over the past year, putting Australia on track to surpass the 108 per cent target. The Climate Institute figures are more recent than the Government data Mr Turnbull will cite today. They forecast emissions to reach 603 million tonnes by 2010. The Climate Institute says emissions are now at 588 million tonnes, only 8 million tonnes short of the 2012 Kyoto target.

This week the Labor Leader, Kevin Rudd, and the eight Labor Premiers and Chief Ministers commissioned the economist and former diplomat Ross Garnaut to conduct a review for Australia, similar to that done by Sir Nicholas Stern in Britain, to forecast the economic effects of global warming. Professor Garnaut is to report by September next year, but Mr Rudd has already committed a Labor government to reducing greenhouse emissions by 60 per cent of 2000 levels by 2050.

"Ask TreeHugger" considers the question "Is Mercury from a Broken CFL Dangerous?".

There has recently been some concern over the possibility that broken CFLs can be an important source of exposures to mercury, a toxic metal and a key component of compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs). Although mercury is a toxic pollutant, mercury exposures from broken CFLs are not likely to harm you and your family. This is due to several factors, including the amount and duration of your exposures and the specific type of mercury that you are exposed to.

Mercury in CFLs are present as elemental (or metallic) mercury. Once spilled, you can be exposed to elemental mercury by touching it, after which it can be eaten and/or absorbed through your skin. More importantly for health, you can also be exposed to mercury through the air, as elemental mercury vaporizes readily (essentially becomes a gas) and can thus be inhaled into your lungs. Breathing elemental mercury into your lungs is generally more dangerous than if you ate the mercury or absorbed it through your skin. Once inhaled, the mercury vapor can damage the central nervous system, kidneys, and liver.

These toxic effects are why any mercury spill should be handled carefully, including one that results from a CFL breaking. Having said this, careful handling does not mean that expensive or complicated clean-up of the spill is needed or that you should be worried about you or your family's health, if a CFL were to break in your home.

This is because CFLs contain relatively small amounts of mercury -- EPA estimates this amount to be 4-5 milligrams (mg) in a typical CFL. A spill of this amount of mercury is not likely to present any excess risk to you or your family. A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation shows why. For example, we could imagine the following scenario:

A CFL containing 5 mg of mercury breaks in your child’s bedroom that has a volume of about 25 m3 (which corresponds to a medium sized bedroom). The entire 5 mg of mercury vaporizes immediately (an unlikely occurrence), resulting in an airborne mercury concentration in this room of 0.2 mg/m3. This concentration will decrease with time, as air in the room leaves and is replaced by air from outside or from a different room. As a result, concentrations of mercury in the room will likely approach zero after about an hour or so.

Under these relatively conservative assumptions, this level and duration of mercury exposure is not likely to be dangerous, as it is lower than the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standard of 0.05 mg/m3 of metallic mercury vapor averaged over eight hours.

Even though mercury from the broken CFL is not likely to be dangerous, it would be wise to take extra precautions to minimize mercury exposures. The US EPA publishes guidelines about the specific steps that you should take to clean up mercury in the event that a CFL breaks in your home. Briefly, EPA recommends that (1) you immediately open windows to reduce mercury concentrations inside your home; (2) you do not touch the spilled mercury; (3) you clean up the broken CFL glass carefully and immediately (but not with your hands or a vacuum cleaner), and (4) you wipe the affected area with a paper towel to remove all glass fragments and mercury. EPA further recommends that you place the paper towel and glass fragments in a sealed plastic bag and bring the sealed bag to your local Household Hazardous Waste (HHW)
Collection Site.

I listened to this TED Talk from Phil Borges today which is worth watching or listening to - some interesting snippets about disappearing cultures and oil companies in the Ecuadorian Amazon.



While this is more gossip mongering than energy related news, BP CEO John Browne (who was relatively green, for the head of an oil major) has resigned over a sex scandal.

John Browne, the architect of BP's renaissance as a giant of the global oil industry, stepped down early on Tuesday after details of a homosexual affair were exposed to the full glare of publicity.

Following a four-month legal battle conducted in private, in which the BP chief executive had sought court orders to prevent newspapers printing details of his private life, the UK courts lifted an injunction on publication. ...

But his legacy for transforming a troubled BP in the early 1990s into one of the most respected companies in the industry is set to endure. Browne joined BP in 1966 and was appointed chief executive in 1995, after previously running the exploration and production division, the company's main business unit. He led a round of industry consolidation with the takeovers of US oil companies Amoco and ARCO in the late 1990s, turning BP into what is now the world's third-largest western oil company by market capitalisation.

He reacted to low oil prices in the 1990s by slashing costs. Rival industry executives said he was toughest cutter in business. Until recently, Browne was seen as a visionary for his takeovers and his environmental record. BP was among the first oil companies to acknowledge global warming and invested huge sums in renewable energy.

But problems in the United States, including a fatal accident at a Texas refinery and sloppy maintenance of a key oil pipeline in Alaska, tarnished that image. US politicians also blamed cost-cutting for those mishaps.

Outside traditional market arenas, Browne pioneered BP's move into Russia. Its 50 percent stake in TNK-BP has been the biggest investment, as well as the most profitable, by a Western oil company in Russia. Browne showed himself adept at dealing with the Kremlin as it became more assertive, by being prepared to cooperate where necessary, such as by buying a small stake in Rosneft to ensure its successful flotation.

He was, however, an untypical oilman: as well as being unmarried and a lover of opera, he did not drive.

Another oilman has the dubious distinction of being the worst ever US President for the environment (just a subset of his larger claim to fame of being the worst US President ever overall). The Fort Smith Arkansas "Times Record" reports:

Environmental attorney and activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Thursday criticized President Bush, big business, coal-burning plants and what he calls the right-wing media in his talk about the eroding environment. Kennedy spoke for about an hour and a half to more than 500 people, including students and Clarksville residents, who filled seats in the Walton Fine Arts Center on the campus of the University of the Ozarks, a private, liberal arts-based university affiliated with the Presbyterian Church.

In his speech following Earth Day weekend, Kennedy pointed to a connection between the environment and Democracy and urged the public to examine what is going on around them instead of depending on the news media to inform them through talk radio and Fox news and other media outlets that are now run by five major corporations. Although he criticized two Republican presidents, Bush and the late Ronald Reagan, Kennedy assured the crowd that he was not speaking against them because of their political party. He said if the two were Democrats he still would be speaking against them.

Kennedy added that the breakdown of the environment is not a Democrat or Republican problem, but that it is a nonpartisan problem. “I think the worst thing that could happen to the environment is it becomes a product of a single political party,” Kennedy said. “I think partisanship is bad for our country. During the past six years, there have been “400 major environmental rollbacks that have been promoted or implemented by the White House as part of a deliberate concerted effort to eviscerate 30 years of environmental law,” Kennedy said.

“You can’t talk about the environment in any context today without speaking critically of this White House and this president,” Kennedy said. “This is the worst environmental president that we’ve had in American history.”

Speaking of the glorious leader of the free world, it is the 4th anniversary of his declaration of victory in the Iraq war. No doubt Iraqis are now all grateful for the subsequent years of peace and prosperity they have enjoyed, with oil revenues funding a swift reconstruction of the country and the massive increase in oil production driving down the price of oil on world markets and delighting neoconservatives who wished to smash the power of OPEC.

At an event held in front of the White House grounds today, Americans United for Change and Americans Against Escalation in Iraq unfurled a version of the infamous "Mission Accomplished" banner, with one notable difference: Theirs ended with a question mark.

The "Mission Accomplished?" protest comes in advance of tomorrow's fourth anniversary of the speech President George Bush made on May 1, 2003 on the USS Abraham Lincoln to declare major combat operations in Iraq complete.

"In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed," Bush proclaimed during that 2003 speech, below a banner that read "Mission Accomplished."

The nitpickers at TomDispatch have a litany of moans and groans about a few minor setbacks encountered during this otherwise glorious episode of the war against terror (or whatever its called this week).

It had taken much thought and planning that wartime May Day four years ago when George W. Bush co-piloted an S-3B Viking sub reconnaissance Naval jet onto the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln. Scott Sforza, a former ABC producer, had "embedded" himself on that aircraft carrier days before the President landed. Along with Bob DeServi, a former NBC cameraman and lighting specialist, and Greg Jenkins, a former Fox News television producer, he had planned out every detail of the President's arrival -- as Elisabeth Bumiller of the New York Times put it then -- "even down to the members of the Lincoln crew arrayed in coordinated shirt colors over Mr. Bush's right shoulder and the ‘Mission Accomplished' banner placed to perfectly capture the president and the celebratory two words in a single shot. The speech was specifically timed for what image makers call ‘magic hour light,' which cast a golden glow on Mr. Bush."

Before the President could descend jauntily from that plane into the perfect light of a late spring afternoon, and onto what was essentially a movie set, the Abraham Lincoln, which had only recently hit Iraq with 1.6 million pounds of ordnance, had to be stopped just miles short of its home base in San Diego. No one wanted George W. Bush simply to clamber aboard.

Who could forget his Tom-Cruise-style "Top Gun swagger" across that deck -- so much commented on in the media in the following days -- to the carefully positioned podium where he gave his speech? It was to be the exclamation point on his invasion of choice and provide the first fabulous photos for his presidential campaign to come. Only two things about that moment, that speech, are remembered today -- that White House-produced "Mission Accomplished" banner behind him and his announcement, with a flourish, that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended."

If his landing and speech are today remembered as a woeful moment, an embarrassment, if those fabulous photos never made it into campaign 2004, that was, in part, because of another event -- a minor headline -- that very same May day: Halfway around the world, soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division, occupying an elementary school in Fallujah, fired on a crowd of angry Iraqi demonstrators. Perhaps 15 Iraqis died and more were wounded. Two days later, in a second clash, two more Iraqis would die.

On CNN's website the day after the President's landing, the main headline read: "Bush calls end to ‘major combat.'" But there was that smaller, secondary headline as well: "U.S. Central Command: Seven hurt in Fallujah grenade attack." Two grenades had been tossed into a U.S. military compound, leaving seven American soldiers slightly injured.

In the months to follow, those two headlines would jostle for dominance, a struggle now long over. Before May 1, 2004 ever rolled around, "mission accomplished" would be a scarlet phrase of shame, useful only to critics of the administration. By that one-year anniversary, Fallujah had morphed into a resistant city that had withstood an assault by the Marines. In November 2004, it would be largely destroyed by American firepower without ever being subdued. Now, the already failed American method of turning largely destroyed Fallujah into a giant "gated" prison camp for its residents is being applied to the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, where huge walls are slated to rise around 10 or more recalcitrant neighborhoods as part of the President's Baghdad Security Plan, or "surge."

Four years later, casualty figures are so terrible in Iraq that the government, locked inside the Green Zone in the capital, has, for the first time, refused to reveal the monthly figures to the United Nations, though figures do show a continuing epidemic of assassinations of Iraqi academics and of torture of prisoners, a steep rise in deaths among policemen, and a rise in "honor killings" of women by their own families. Four years later, those few "slightly injured" men of the 82nd Airborne Division have morphed into last week's 9 dead and 20 wounded from a double-truck-bomb suicide attack on one of that division's outposts in Diyala Province; over 100 Americans were killed in the month of April alone; 3,350 Americans in all (not including hundreds of "private security contractors").

Four years later, the American military has claimed dramatic success in reducing a wave of sectarian killings in the capital -- but only by leaving out of its count the dead from Sunni car/truck/motorcycle-bomb and other suicide-bomb attacks; with over 100 car bombings last month, and similar figures for this one, Sunni militants are outsurging the U.S. surge in Baghdad, making "a mockery of the US and Iraqi security plan," according to BBC reporter Andrew North.

Four years later, not only has the Bush administration's "reconstruction" of the country been a record of endless uncompleted or ill-completed projects and massive overpayments, not to speak of financial thievery, but even the projects once proclaimed "successes" turn out, according to inspectors from the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, to be disasters "no longer operating as planned"; the biggest business boom in a country in which unemployment is sky-high may be "a run on concrete barriers" for security, which are so in demand that sometimes they "are not fully dry when military engineering units pick them up"; electricity availability and potable water supplies are worse than ever; childhood malnutrition is on the rise; no one even mentions Iraqi oil production which remains well below the worst days of Saddam Hussein and billions of dollars of which are being siphoned off onto the black market.

Four years later, U.S. prisons, one of the few reconstruction success stories in Iraq, are chock-a-block full, holding 18,000 or more Iraqis in what are essentially terrorist-producing factories; Iraq has the worst refugee problem (internal and external) on the planet with perhaps 4 million people in a population of 25 million already displaced from their homes (202 of whom were admitted to the United States in 2006); the Iraqi government inside the Green Zone does not fully control a single province of the country, while its legislators are planning to take a two-month summer "vacation"; a State Department report on terrorism just released shows a rise of 25% in terrorist attacks globally, and 45% of these attacks were in Iraq; 80% of Iraqis oppose the U.S. presence in their country; 64% of Americans now want a timetable for a 2008 withdrawal; and the President's approval rating fell to its lowest point, 28%, in the most recent Harris poll, which had the Vice President at a similarly record-setting 25%.

During this grueling, destructive downward spiral through the very gates of hell, whose end is not faintly in sight, the administration's war words and imagery have, unsurprisingly, undergone continual change as well. In the course of these last years, the "turning points," "tipping points," "milestones," and "landmarks" on the road to Iraqi democracy and freedom have turned into modest marks on surveyor's yardsticks ("benchmarks"), not one of which can be met by the woeful Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The "magic hour light" of May 2003 has disappeared, along with those glorious photos from the deck of the carrier. The sort of descriptions you see today, as in a recent David Ignatius column in the Washington Post, sound more like this: "Republicans voice the bitterness and frustration of people chained to the hull of a sinking ship." (The USS George W. Bush, undoubtedly.) Oh, and the President and what's left of his tattered administration have stopped filming on a Top Gun-style movie set and seem now to be intent on remaking The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

This White House has plunged Iraq and the world into the geopolitical equivalent of a blood-and-gore exploitation film that simply won't end. Call that "Mission Accomplished"! ...

The BBC reports that the troop "surge" in Iraq is not going so well. "Chronoso" has a look at the "then and now" numbers in Iraq - comparing "mission Accomplished" day to today.

Trying to get into the centre of Baghdad earlier this week offered one view of how far away the Americans and Iraqi authorities are from gaining control here. We were at the airport. Just before we were due to leave, the entrance car park was hit by a car bomb. US troops and private security forces who guard the perimeter locked the whole area down for the next four hours. No traffic was allowed in or out.

While we waited with scores of other vehicles, mortars were fired at the airport. Fortunately for us they landed on the other side of the runway, plumes of smoke shooting into the air. You won't have heard about any of this because at the same time a series of other far more serious attacks was taking place.

One was at the Sadriya market in the city centre, where a massive car bomb killed more than 140 people. It was placed at the entrance to a set of barriers put up around another part of the market where a previous single bomb, in February, claimed more than 130 lives. The market blast "did not penetrate the emplaced barriers" a later US military press release helpfully pointed out, ignoring the fact that the bombers had yet again adapted their tactics with vicious perfection - setting off their device at the point where crowds congregated outside and at the very moment when they were busiest.

As we drove into the city, we counted six blast holes left by recent roadside bombs along just one 100-metre stretch of road. A large patch of damaged, blackened Tarmac on a bridge spoke of another attempt to destroy a key crossing. The Sunni extremists held to be responsible for these attacks seem to be making a mockery of the US and Iraqi security plan, which is now into its third month.

So far, their surge seems to be having more effect than the American one.

Last month alone there were more than 100 car bombings, and the number of attacks has continued at a similar rate so far this month. This indicates a high level of organisation. This despite the fact that there are many extra US and Iraqi troops in the city now. There are more raids and patrols. On our drive into the city, we encountered several Iraqi army checkpoints. But almost every vehicle - including ours - was being waved through. Many new checkpoints have been set up across Baghdad.

But what is their purpose, many Iraqis ask, when they seem to stop so few people? It is not always encouraging when they do - a couple of times we have been pulled over by Iraqi soldiers who ask us if we have any bullets to give them.

AntiWar.com thinks that America is implementing a "Blueprint for dictatorship".

America is headed for a military dictatorship – and recent legislation makes this all but inevitable. Last September, Congress passed the Defense Authorization Act, which empowered the president to declare martial law with very little provocation, namely in the aftermath of a "terrorist attack or incident." Having determined that "the execution of the laws" is hampered by the "incident," the president can unilaterally impose martial law – without the consent of Congress, which need only be informed of the event "as soon as practicable." The only condition attached instructs the president to report to Congress after 14 days, and every 14 days thereafter.

This use of the military to enforce domestic order is a new development in American history, one that augurs a turning point not only in terms of law, but also in our evolving political culture. Such a measure would once have provoked an outcry – on both sides of the aisle. When the measure passed, there was hardly a ripple of protest: the Senate approved it unanimously, and there were only thirty-something dissenting votes in the House. Added to the Military Commissions Act [.pdf], this new brick in the wall of domestic repression creates the structure of a new imperial system on the ruins of the old constitutional order. George W. Bush and his hard-core neoconservative henchmen may have lost the war in Iraq, but they have won a virtually uncontested victory at home: the conquest of the old republic by an emerging imperial order. This recalls the opening of Garet Garrett's 1952 philippic, Rise of Empire, wherein he diagnosed the essential indeterminacy of the transition:

"We have crossed the boundary that lies between Republic and Empire. If you ask when, the answer is that you cannot make a single stroke between day and night; the precise moment does not matter. There is no painted sign to say: 'You are now entering Imperium.'"

The usually prescient Garrett got it somewhat wrong here: The single stroke between day and night can be fixed precisely in time, at 8:45 a.m. EDT on Sept. 11, 2001, and the Military Commissions Act and the disturbing changes in the U.S. Code outlined above are the closest to painted signs we are likely to get. Waiting in the wings, an infamous cabal took advantage of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, moving with preternatural speed to consolidate a dictatorship of fear. With the passage of more recent legislation, they are now moving to consolidate their gains. Sinisterly, the new legislation also alters the language of Title 10, Chapter 15, Section 333 of the U.S. Code (the so-called Insurrection Act) in an ominous manner:

"Whenever the president considers it necessary to use the militia or the armed forces under this chapter, he shall, by proclamation, immediately order the insurgents or those obstructing the enforcement of the laws to disperse and retire peaceably to their abodes within a limited time."

Why insert the bolded phrase – unless your objective is to widen the category of miscreants to include those exercising their First Amendment rights? No one expects an insurgency to be launched in this day and age in America, yet peaceably assembling to protest government policies can easily be interpreted to include "obstructionists" who might be "dispersed." As José Padilla discovered, any American can be kidnapped and held without trial – or even formal charges – on the orders of the president, and the granting of unprecedented power to rule by decree builds on this neo-royalist theory. The Bushian doctrine of the "unitary executive," which gives the occupant of the White House monarchical power in wartime, has now been approved by the Democrats, who can't wait to wield it themselves. Of course, they would exercise such unholy power only in a good way – say, if a state refused to cooperate in enforcing or implementing federal legislation instituting a draft, or, more likely, federalizing a state National Guard unit to be shipped to the Middle East.

Oh, you mean that's not so good? Just wait until the Democrats get their hands on all that power: then you'll see the real collapse of the movement to preserve civil liberties in America. Remember, it was Hillary Clinton who said of the Internet: "We are all going to have to rethink how we deal with this, because there are always competing values. There's no free decision that I'm aware of anywhere in life, and certainly with technology that's the case." Yes, the technology is very "exciting," she averred, yet "there are a number of serious issues without any kind of editing function or gatekeeping function. What does it mean to have the right to defend your reputation, or to respond to what someone says?"

The First Amendment is not big with Hillary and never has been. She's power-mad, and every once in a while the frigid mask gives way to the face of a real authoritarian, albeit a different one than that of the red-state fascists, as Lew Rockwell describes the anti-libertarian Right. Blue-state fascists trample on our civil liberties "for the children," but the effect is the same: bipartisan support for the abolition of our old republic and the inauguration of a new era in American history: the Age of Empire.

With the neoconized "conservative" movement transformed into a force fully committed to outright authoritarianism, and the "liberals" defending the depredations of the Democrats in power, who will be left to defend what's left of the Constitution? Just Ron Paul and Alexander Cockburn. The rest will go with the herd instinct of sheep threatening to stampede at the apparent intrusion of a wolf in their pasture.

Under the terms of this legislation, who defines a terrorist "incident"? The president. Who defines an "unlawful combination"? The president. Who determines that a "conspiracy" is in progress, one that threatens national security and domestic order? The president of these United States – which are to be united, in our darkest future, by a superpresident who can outlaw the opposition with the stroke of a pen and is more a military leader than the chief executive of an ostensible republic.

Stop, for a moment, and consider where we are in the spring of 2007.

On the home front, the representatives of the people have conceded the last of their waning powers to the executive branch and paved the way for the restoration of royalism in America. Overseas, American troops are fighting a war of conquest – there is no other way to describe it – in an effort to prop up a rapidly failing puppet government in the Middle East. Meanwhile, U.S. forces are gathering in the Persian Gulf for what looks to be a strike against Iran.

The unpopularity of our foreign policy is increasingly a cause for concern in the Imperial City, where both parties have colluded – with surprisingly little dissent – in ensuring a permanent U.S. military presence in the Middle East. It is merely a question of the size of our footprint that divides the two major parties on this all-important question. The Democrats want to "redeploy" – to Qatar and other neighboring countries. The Republicans won't give up an inch of conquered Iraqi territory and instead want to extend the battle into Iran, which is already the target of a not-so-covert campaign aiming at "regime change." (The Iran Freedom Support Act, authorizing millions in aid to "democratic" groups, was supported by the leadership of both parties in Congress.) ...

I'll close with a clip of Eisenhower's "Military Industrial Complex" speech, which made it high up on the rankings in Reddit today.