Dick Cheney has been motivating the troops by telling them they'll be stuck in the middle east for another three or four decades (coincidentally, around about as long as it will take to deplete the oil there), which I'm sure had most of them whooping it up as they considered what great suntans they'll have at the end of it all. No doubt recruiters in the US are fighting off all those newly eligible high school drop outs that are begging to become part of the army of freedom.

US Vice-President Dick Cheney has said that the US must be prepared to fight the war on terror for decades. Addressing US military personnel, he said that the only way terrorists would win was if the US lost its nerve and abandoned Iraq and the Middle East.

Now, you might say that Dick is just admitting they don't have a clue how this war can be won and its about time he was replaced by someone who does have a plan for getting us out of this mess (hint: ending our dependence on middle east oil could be part of it) - and I'd be hard pressed to come up with a convincing counter-argument.

Even though Dick has given up on victory, at least he isn't hearing voices like King George is - perhaps all those drinking binges are catching up with him. Is insanity grounds for impeachment ?

Obviously the average US punter is losing patience with this incompetence, as some new polls are showing. I wonder how long until the word "malaise" starts getting used again ?

The public's concerns affect their view of the state of the country. 69 percent of Americans say things in the U.S. are pretty seriously off on the wrong track — the highest number since CBS News started asking the question in 1983. Today, just 26 percent say things are going in the right direction.

Moving back from the insane asylum to the real world, bonds fund management giant Pimco is asking investors "Got Energy ?" (which I must immodestly say isn't as catchy a tagline as "War, Famine, Pestilence etc"). I always enjoy reading Bill Gross' well considered columns - but this excellent article is from Mark Kiesel.

At some point over the next several years, recognition of the coming energy crisis will reach critical mass—a "tipping point"—and when it does, the key competitive question investors will be asking countries and companies alike will be: Got energy?

That’s because energy is unlike any other commodity. Most commodities can be replaced: trees can be planted, food can be grown, consumer goods can be manufactured, and money can be printed. Those that can’t be replaced are often reusable, such as diamonds and gold. But energy is finite and irreplaceable. Once you use it, it’s gone.

So, when the tipping point comes and people fully grasp the magnitude of the impending energy crisis, those who don’t have energy will have to pay those who do. And perhaps pay dearly because, remember, there is a finite supply. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita illustrate how little room for error there is in today’s energy markets. However, the energy crisis itself is being caused by five long-term factors: (a) rising global demand, (b) changing consumer and investor preferences, (c) growing oil dependency, (d) under-investment, and (e) shrinking spare capacity.

For several years already, PIMCO has been bullish on the long-run prospects for the energy sector. Our portfolios have favored energy companies and selective emerging market countries based on our secular view that the price of energy should be supported by the factors mentioned above. Let’s examine each in turn and then consider the investment implications.

I think the graph above is worth considering - with stagnant or shrinking oil production and rising levels of wealth in China and India, how big will America's slice of the pie be in 10 years time (presuming they can't occupy all the oil producing countries and keep the oil to themselves) ? Obviously the average (err, perhaps I mean poor) American is going to be making do with a lot less oil (this applies to other large per-capita consumers like Australia and Canada too, though we have the advantage of being net energy exporters at least). So hopefully they have a government that is interested in encouraging efficiency, substitution and big changes in urban planning and public transport provision (presumably that means a change of government will be required given the lack of vision exhibited by the clowns I discussed earlier).

Some other intesting graphs from Pimco:









The column even mentions the now omnipresent Michael Klare:

Because so many countries, like the U.S. and China, rely so heavily on imported oil, geo-political uncertainty and strategic factors are also affecting energy demand. Rising geo-political risk is leading to stockpiling of oil inventories as global competition to secure long-term energy resources intensifies. (This was a major theme in the book Resource Wars by Michael Klare, a PIMCO Secular Forum speaker in May 2005). As evidence of this trend, the U.S. has built-up its strategic petroleum reserves to 700 million barrels and may add up to 300 million more barrels over the next several years.11 Similarly, China and India have been stockpiling oil. However, their strategic petroleum reserves are modest in comparison to both U.S. levels and their countries’ longer-term needs. Taken together, the cumulative effect of emerging market industrialization, changing consumer and investor preferences, and strategic stockpiling has steadily increased global oil demand.

While global oil production is still rising, we are getting closer to the point where the world’s production of oil cannot keep up with this incremental demand. At some point global oil production will peak and we will start down a production decline curve where available supply shrinks over time. Rising demand and the eventual decline in global production means the price of oil should trend up over time. In addition, the price of oil should be supported in the near-term by demand from countries such as the U.S., China and India, which are in competition to secure energy sources and are increasingly reliant on foreign imports to satisfy their demand. Given these developments, combined with the fact that oil is primarily located in areas of extreme political uncertainty, it is not surprising that spot and forward energy prices are rising.

...

Cheap energy is a thing of the past. The world’s increasing demand for energy is now colliding with the simple reality that crude oil production is nearing capacity limits at the same time that under-investment in refining and natural gas infrastructure is leading to bottlenecks in energy supplies. This dilemma is intensified by the industrialization of China and other emerging markets, global competition to secure energy assets, rising import dependency, and geo-political uncertainty. Energy is a unique resource that causes a high degree of uncertainty worldwide, given rapidly evolving secular and economic factors. It poses to individuals, companies and countries the question, "Got Energy?"

Another graph worth considering is WHT's latest effort (clearly he is in the modelling zone this week), plotting the likely oil production curve based on historical discovery data. It ain't pretty.

Because of my use of external data for discoveries, which actually constitute someone else's estimates and therefore may turn out low, take the curve at face value. I don't know the history behind the ASPO numbers, but just as a cautionary note, I can summarize with this statement : "gulp".

I'm hoping that the data used is just for "conventional" oil (given CC's traditional segmentation of hydrocarbon types) and doesn't include deepwater, polar, tar sands etc which would flatten things out on the downslope a bit.

TomDispatch has a new dispatch from Mike Davis who is obviously a talented gloom-monger as he can talk fluent global warming disaster as well as bird flu - "the monster at the door" - this one is called "Has the Age of Chaos Begun ?".

Discussions of "tipping points" have, in recent times, largely been relegated to the war in Iraq where such moments, regularly predicted by the Bush administration, never arrive. In the meantime, an actual tipping point may have been creeping up on us on another front entirely, one that is anathema to this administration -- that of climate change.

The latest news from scientists laboring in cold climes has been startling. The expanse of Arctic sea ice has been shrinking in the summer since the late 1970s, though usually rebounding to near normal levels in the winter. Until recently. For the last few years, winter ice cover has been shrinking as well. This will be the fourth consecutive year of record, or near record, shrinkage of September sea ice in the Arctic. Scientists speculate that a threshold has been crossed.

"Experts at the U.S. National Snow and Data Center in Colorado," writes David Adam, environmental correspondent for the British Guardian, "fear the [Arctic] region is locked into a destructive cycle with warmer air melting more ice, which in turn warms the air further. Satellite pictures show that the extent of Arctic sea ice this month dipped some 20% below the long term average for September -- melting an extra 500,000 square miles, or an area twice the size of Texas. If current trends continue, the summertime Arctic Ocean will be completely ice-free well before the end of this century."

Maybe this is bad -- extinction-bad -- for the polar bear, but otherwise doesn't it open new vistas for us all? For instance, the fabled "Northwest Passage" from Europe to Asia, so energetically, if fruitlessly, searched out by early European explorers, is now almost a reality. This summer only 60 miles of scattered ice floes stood in the path of a completely open passage across the Canadian northwest.

Unfortunately, as Mike Davis explains below, the vistas opening before us are anything but pleasing. This is, in fact, a tipping point none of us will want to see -- and none of us may be able to avoid. Let's at least hope, as environmental writer Mark Hertsgaard recently suggested, that some kind of threshold or tipping point is also finally being crossed in American society.

The South Australian government is talking sense, highlighting the need for greater renewable energy targets before the MRET is saturated.

New green energy targets must be set to halt the effects of climate change and ensure South Australia maintains its lead of the nation in solar and wind energy investment.

Several of the state's leading environmentalists are calling on the state and federal governments to create new legislation to ensure the green energy industry does not come to a standstill when existing Mandatory Renewable Energy Targets - set in 2000 - are met next year.

OilsNotWell at PeakOil.com also has an interesting snippet about the most glaring example of "climate change" devastation - the port of New Orleans.

It seems that George Friedman of Stratfor is right: it is hard to operate a port without a city. The Port of New Orleans is open, but hardly operating at full capacity. From the New York Times:

"More than a month after Katrina struck New Orleans, as much as 80 percent of the port's operations remain shut. And getting them back up is in many ways out of his control: Many of the hundreds of workers needed to run the port are living in other states. Several of the rail lines into the port were torn apart by the storm; road access for tractor-trailers remains limited."

Jim at The Energy Blog has been taking a look at the power of the sea, with a pair of posts on Tidal power and Wave power - one part of the solution to the energy problem.

Unlike most kinds of renewable energy, wave power can produce power continuously. Ocean waves represent a considerable renewable energy resource. All of the energy is concentrated near the water surface with little wave action below 165 ft (50 meters) depth. This makes wave power a highly concentrated energy source with much smaller hourly and day-to-day variations. The rising and falling of the waves off shore can be captured by several devices specifically designed for this purpose.

Wave power is perhaps the least intrusive of all the renewable energy technologies. Wave power is very environmentally friendly. It does not create any waste, does not have any CO2 emissions or criteria pollutants, there is no noise pollution, no visual impact and it does not threaten marine life. Although the technology is limited to coastal locations its potential impact is large because of the large concentration of population along the coasts and the suitability of most coastal locations to the implementation of wave power. Proponents claim that the energy cost for producing electricity via wave power will be competitive with conventional power within a very short time.

And finally, here's a speech by Al Gore at the "We, The Media" conference in New York. I never thought all that much of Al when he was in power but in retrospect (after seeing just how awful the alternative is) it seems the world would be a much better place if the will of the people had prevailed in 2000 rather than the Supreme Court placing the current gang of lunatics in charge (presumably forever now the machines "count the votes" as Joe Stalin would say). It's a good speech - make sure you read it - then think, what would you prefer - Al Gore's Real Democracy or Dick Cheney's Forever War.

I came here today because I believe that American democracy is in grave danger. It is no longer possible to ignore the strangeness of our public discourse. I know that I am not the only one who feels that something has gone basically and badly wrong in the way America's fabled "marketplace of ideas" now functions.

How many of you, I wonder, have heard a friend or a family member in the last few years remark that it's almost as if America has entered "an alternate universe"?

I thought maybe it was an aberration when three-quarters of Americans said they believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for attacking us on September 11, 2001. But more than four years later, between a third and a half still believe Saddam was personally responsible for planning and supporting the attack.

At first I thought the exhaustive, non-stop coverage of the O.J. trial was just an unfortunate excess that marked an unwelcome departure from the normal good sense and judgment of our television news media. But now we know that it was merely an early example of a new pattern of serial obsessions that periodically take over the airwaves for weeks at a time.

Are we still routinely torturing helpless prisoners, and if so, does it feel right that we as American citizens are not outraged by the practice? And does it feel right to have no ongoing discussion of whether or not this abhorrent, medieval behavior is being carried out in the name of the American people? If the gap between rich and poor is widening steadily and economic stress is mounting for low-income families, why do we seem increasingly apathetic and lethargic in our role as citizens?

On the eve of the nation's decision to invade Iraq, our longest serving senator, Robert Byrd of West Virginia, stood on the Senate floor asked: "Why is this chamber empty? Why are these halls silent?"

The decision that was then being considered by the Senate with virtually no meaningful debate turned out to be a fateful one. A few days ago, the former head of the National Security Agency, Retired Lt. General William Odom, said, "The invasion of Iraq, I believe, will turn out to be the greatest strategic disaster in U.S. history."

...

It is important to note that the absence of a two-way conversation in American television also means that there is no "meritocracy of ideas" on television. To the extent that there is a "marketplace" of any kind for ideas on television, it is a rigged market, an oligopoly, with imposing barriers to entry that exclude the average citizen.

The German philosopher, Jurgen Habermas, describes what has happened as "the refeudalization of the public sphere." That may sound like gobbledygook, but it's a phrase that packs a lot of meaning. The feudal system which thrived before the printing press democratized knowledge and made the idea of America thinkable, was a system in which wealth and power were intimately intertwined, and where knowledge played no mediating role whatsoever. The great mass of the people were ignorant. And their powerlessness was born of their ignorance.

It did not come as a surprise that the concentration of control over this powerful one-way medium carries with it the potential for damaging the operations of our democracy. As early as the 1920s, when the predecessor of television, radio, first debuted in the United States, there was immediate apprehension about its potential impact on democracy. One early American student of the medium wrote that if control of radio were concentrated in the hands of a few, "no nation can be free."

As a result of these fears, safeguards were enacted in the U.S. -- including the Public Interest Standard, the Equal Time Provision, and the Fairness Doctrine - though a half century later, in 1987, they were effectively repealed. And then immediately afterwards, Rush Limbaugh and other hate-mongers began to fill the airwaves.

And radio is not the only place where big changes have taken place. Television news has undergone a series of dramatic changes. The movie "Network," which won the Best Picture Oscar in 1976, was presented as a farce but was actually a prophecy. The journalism profession morphed into the news business, which became the media industry and is now completely owned by conglomerates.

The news divisions - which used to be seen as serving a public interest and were subsidized by the rest of the network - are now seen as profit centers designed to generate revenue and, more importantly, to advance the larger agenda of the corporation of which they are a small part. They have fewer reporters, fewer stories, smaller budgets, less travel, fewer bureaus, less independent judgment, more vulnerability to influence by management, and more dependence on government sources and canned public relations hand-outs. This tragedy is compounded by the ironic fact that this generation of journalists is the best trained and most highly skilled in the history of their profession. But they are usually not allowed to do the job they have been trained to do.

The present executive branch has made it a practice to try and control and intimidate news organizations: from PBS to CBS to Newsweek. They placed a former male escort in the White House press pool to pose as a reporter - and then called upon him to give the president a hand at crucial moments. They paid actors to make phony video press releases and paid cash to some reporters who were willing to take it in return for positive stories. And every day they unleash squadrons of digital brownshirts to harass and hector any journalist who is critical of the President.

For these and other reasons, The US Press was recently found in a comprehensive international study to be only the 27th freest press in the world. And that too seems strange to me.

...

In fact, one of the few things that Red state and Blue state America agree on is that they don't trust the news media anymore.

Clearly, the purpose of television news is no longer to inform the American people or serve the public interest. It is to "glue eyeballs to the screen" in order to build ratings and sell advertising. If you have any doubt, just look at what's on: The Robert Blake trial. The Laci Peterson tragedy. The Michael Jackson trial. The Runaway Bride. The search in Aruba. The latest twist in various celebrity couplings, and on and on and on.

And more importantly, notice what is not on: the global climate crisis, the nation's fiscal catastrophe, the hollowing out of America's industrial base, and a long list of other serious public questions that need to be addressed by the American people.

Michael Klare and Michael Lynch were guests on Phillip Adams' show on ABC Radio National last night (Real Audio) with Lynch doing his usual optimist / cornucopian act (which he does very well, even if the average peak oil aware person will end up gasping in disbelief as the interview goes on) and Klare taking on the peak oiler role (and doing a very good job of it). The oil part starts about 25 minutes in (thanks to the Feral Metallurgist for the tip).

I've been busy discussing my least favourite subject in the world (Sydney house prices) most of the night, so this roundup will be a brief one.

Mobjectivist has continued his excellent modelling work, so if you're interested in the deficiencies of the logistic model (as originally created by Hubbert and remaining popular ever since), go off learn how to do it properly (and get a maths refresher course while you're at it). He also has some comments on the Iraq Oil For Food "scandal".

My colleague in the rainy north east (of the pacific) has a mini roundup of his own which contains some interesting snippets (I always enjoy those Mogambo links - how could anyone resist "the angriest guy in economics" and his gold obsession).

I am, as hard as that is to believe, getting freaked out more and more. The Federal Reserve didn't increase total credit by much, but they did continue accelerating down the Road To Economic Hell (RTEH) by buying, outright, $2.4 billion of debt last week. In short, the government borrows by issuing debt, and the Federal Reserve creates the money to buy the debt! Bingo! Not only creating more money and credit, the damn thing that got us to this point, but to fund the activities of the government! Gaaahhhh!

But the bigger news in this filthy area of the economic world, for me, is that Foreign Holdings of US debt deposited at the Fed went up by a whopping $7.6 billion last week. Whew!

But the biggest, scariest thing of all was that nominal incomes dropped. And when you adjust nominal incomes by the reduction in buying power from all the inflation around here, then it is no wonder that inflation-adjusted incomes dropped so much, too. But I wail like a wounded banshee (ooOOooOOoo!) when I realize that the government's piddly little chain-weighted, hedonically-adjusted statistical adjustment to incomes for inflation is around two stupid little percent. At that, I laugh this big booming Mogambo Laugh (BBML)! Hahahaha!

I am here to tell you, with the courage found only in a guy fully clad in body armor and sporting a machinegun in one hand and a flamethrower in the other, inflation is a LOT higher than two or three percent. Horribly higher. Like somewhere in the range of six to nine percent, at least. And so when you adjust incomes for the REAL rate of interest, then the drop in real, inflation-adjusted incomes is getting to be pretty significant!

If you have the patience to read the whole thing you might conclude that if the Mogambo is to be believed (and not simply locked up in an insane asylum) then running an empire is an expensive business and one not best left to deluded and ideology obsessed lunatics like the ones that inhabit Washington (err - an aside to my latest "visitor of the week" from the Federal Reserve, you aren't included in that group, as you obviously aren't doing much at all if you have enough free time to read my rantings during your work day).

The BBC has an article up noting that the US-Australian led grouping to pretend we're taking action on global warming has postponed its inaugural "climate change" summit. The Independent notes that business should be embracing action on global warming.

As an example of what economists call "market failure", climate change is hard to beat. Normally when something damages or disadvantages us, the market moves to solve and correct the problem. But with global warming, the very reverse is occurring.

Even if the economic and environmental consequences of climate change were immediately apparent, which in the main they won't be for some years yet, the consumer would still buy on price. Paying extra to save the planet is something which collectively we seem unwilling to contemplate unless forced. So we buy our cheap Chinese goods, even though China has become one of the fastest-growing sources of CO2 emissions in the world. To buy the more expensive, greener variety seems just plain stupid when nobody else is doing it.

And finally Seeing The Forest has a note of the perils facing reporters in Iraq. And while I'm on Iraq I noticed an article on a recent Chomsky speech in my feeds tonight.

The four major crises facing the world, Chomsky said, are: nuclear war, environmental disaster, the indifference of the superpowers to the first two problems, and the failure of the superpowers to make amends for past mistakes.

But Chomsky spent most of his 90-minute speech and hour-long question-and-answer session on Iraq, Iran and the War on Terror.

The press is unable to communicate the scale of destruction in Iraq, Chomsky said, because reporters are confined to the safety zones around the capital.

The destruction of a foreign country is not a new phenomenon in U.S. foreign policy, he added. Chomsky mentioned the history of U.S. involvement in Iraq and Iran, including aiding Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein during his war with Iran from 1980 to 1988.

"Bush, Blair, Powell and Rice bitterly denounce Saddam for crimes in the 1980s," Chomsky said, referring to the President, the British Prime Minister, and the two most recent American Secretaries of State. "What is missing is [Saddam] committed those crimes with our help."

The uranium boom here has clearly reached the bubbly stage (actually the bubble seems to be bursting over the last 3 days), as this tale from Pierpont (via Shaw Stockbroking) of some classic WA mining entrepreneurs shows. Clearly blue sky mining is still as lucrative as ever.

Absolutely nothing is more fashionable than uranium these days. The Chinese and Japanese want to incinerate it as fuel, while Iran and Pakistan want it to incinerate their neighbours. So as long as the oil price stays high and atom bombs proliferate, uranium investors can get richer and happier.

The problem is to find a hot little uranium stock, because all the big ones are fully priced. Uranium is only a small part of BHP Billiton, while well-known miners such as ERA and Paladin have been bid up in the market for months. As usual, Pierpont is here to help. He has found a little uranium stock that is hotter than chilli seeds.

It's Greater Pacific Gold, but if you want to sleep at nights after buying it, Pierpont advises you not to spend much time checking its background or you may get chronic insomnia.

Greater Pacific has an issued capital of 613 million shares, which are trading around 1.9c. The share price needed an atom bomb to get it moving so they found one. Greater Pacific has issued no fewer than four excited Australian Stock Exchange announcements this month to tell investors it has uranium in the Northern Territory.

On September 6, Greater Pacific announced it had an option to acquire 25 per cent of the assets of Australian Uranium Pty Ltd. On September 8, Greater Pacific said Australian Uranium held uranium prospects covering 700 square kilometres in the Mary River area about 100 kilometres east of Darwin.

On September 14, Greater Pacific said it had obtained the right to buy 51 per cent of Australian Uranium. On September 19, Greater Pacific said the geological appraisal of the prospects was very encouraging and that the Mary River area was "adjacent to Batchelor, Rum Jungle and Jabiru".

Well there's plenty of uranium in the Northern Territory all right and it's the only place in Australia where a discovery has a sporting chance of being developed, with the partial exception of South Australia. In Greater Pacific's case, the lead time to development is going to be particularly long because it hasn't actually found any uranium. Further, the area it has bought into is near the coast on the Mary River flood plain.

Mining data service Intierra describes the area as swampy, with the prospective basement rocks concealed beneath wetlands, which will tend to mask any buried anomalies. The area may well be rich in uranium, but in Pierpont's experience, what the Mary River is undeniably rich in is saltwater crocodiles of the large, aggressive variety. Pierpont would go prospecting there only in an army duck, preferably heavily armed.

Pierpont's none too sure about the word "adjacent" either. Mary River is about 100 kilometres north-east of the old Rum Jungle and Batchelor uranium mines and 120 kilometres west of Jabiru. Maybe the Greater Pacific chaps take an expansionary view of neighbourhoods.

...

Wondering whether Australian Uranium was flush with funds, Pierpont looked it up on the Australian Securities and Investments Commission website. The search revealed a few little surprises. One was that Australian Uranium was previously called Boldray Holdings. The directors agreed on September 2 to change its name to Australian Uranium because it had applied for a tenement in the Northern Territory and intended to concentrate on the mining industry. So it had been Australian Uranium for only four days before the deal with Greater Pacific was announced.

Nor does Australian Uranium, despite its grandiose name, look like any giant of the nuclear industry. Its issued capital is just two $1 shares held by a lass named Carol Hardie.

Staring dumbly at the ASIC search document, it occurred to Pierpont that the chaps at Greater Pacific probably because they were so excited had failed to mention the linkage between Greater Pacific and Australian Uranium. Greater Pacific's head office is at 68 Aberdeen Street in the Perth suburb of Northbridge. Australian Uranium's registered office is next door at number 70. One of Greater Pacific's largest shareholders, with an interest in 14.89 per cent of the company, is Dean Scook. Dean is a former director of Boldray, having stepped down in 2000. Australian Uranium's only current director is Carol Hardie.

...

So Carol as the only shareholder in Australian Uranium sold 51 per cent of the Mary River tenements, within eight days of applying for them, to Greater Pacific, where Dean is a large shareholder. It all seems very cosy, which just shows what nuclear fuel can do for your household. But Pierpont will believe in uranium at Mary River only when the crocodiles start glowing in the dark.

While I'm on the subject of crocodiles (or in this case, alligators), here's a story of a python biting off more than it can chew.

I think I've seen this around before - it sounds completely insane, but if we're going to build solar towers maybe these aren't that much more farfetched. As an added "bonus" if you have a bad accident while its on you may get to watch a hurricane devastate nearby towns.

Boing Boing reports:

Sean Ness, my co-worker at the Institute For The Future, is geared-up about a Canadian engineer's invention that spins synthetic tornadoes and harnesses their energy. Louis Michaud's machine is called an atmospheric vortex engine. He estimates that a 200 meter diameter engine could crank out 200 megawatts of power. From The Economist:

This vortex would be produced inside a large cylindrical wall, 200 metres in diameter and 100 metres tall. Warm air at ground level enters via tangential inlets around the base of the wall. Steam is also injected to get the vortex started. Once established, the heat content of the air at ground level is enough to keep the vortex going. As the air rises, it expands and cools, and water vapour condenses, releasing even more heat. This is, in fact, what powers a hurricane, which can be thought of as a heat engine that takes in warm, humid air at its base, releases cold, watery air at the top of the troposphere, about 12 kilometres up, and liberates a vast amount of energy in the process. (Just as water requires heat to make it boil, it releases heat as it condenses back into a liquid.)

Mr Michaud's vortex would reach a similar height to that of a hurricane, but its base would remain stationary.

Sean says, "How'd you like it if your neighbor installed one in her backyard!?"

Well - at last some politicians are finally starting to make noises about peak oil, with the Sydney Morning Herald reporting that the Greens today called for a Senate inquiry to determine how the problem should be handled.

The Greens have called for a senate inquiry into what they say is an inevitable collapse in oil supply.

Greens senator Christine Milne says an inquiry would be a first step towards addressing the challenges of an oil crisis. "It's clear to me on the day that the government is talking about global security and Australian security, that they should be talking about the intelligence failure to face up to the global oil crisis," she told reporters. "What we do know is that the day of cheap, plentiful oil are over and that what we can expect is a lesser supply and a higher price into the future. Nobody knows when peak oil will occur but we do know that is going to occur in the next couple of decades and there's likely to be a steep decline. Australia must look at its security in terms of its transport options for the future."

Senator Milne said Australia needed to be future proofing itself and moving strategically to deal with the oil crisis, not just talking short-term about interim measures to reduce fuel prices. "This requires strategic thinking and that's why the Greens are moving for this issue of Australian oil production, Australian oil supplies, our transport infrastructure, to go off to a Senate committee to report next year on looking at long-term strategic options for Australia."

She suggested initial moves would be to remove the GST on public transport and major investment in public transport infrastructure. She also called for tax advantages for urban-based four-wheel drive vehicles should be removed.

Of course, if we take Mike Ruppert's address to the PetroCollapse conference in New York seriously its far too late for this (I'll assume for now his prediction of a massive economic crash "within weeks" is wrong, but who knows, maybe this latest prediction of imminent collapse will come true).

To be fair to the Liberals (and I might just note once again that I don't have any political axe to grind here - if there was a left wing government in power locally or in the US - stop giggling - I'd be just as critical of inaction on peak oil and global warming as I am with the present incumbents), one of the guys at Sydney peak oil got a reasonable response from Ian McFarlane when he wrote to him on the subject of peak oil. While I wouldn't say they are doing anywhere near enough, particularly in terms of encouraging renewable energy, at least they appear to have put some thought into the matter.

In its 2004 statement, 'Securing Australia's Energy Future', the Australian Government undertook a comprehensive review of its energy policies and approaches, and developed a long term framework to secure Australia's energy future. Key initiatives articulated in this report include those directed at diversifying and expanding Australia's energy interests. For example, energy diversity is pursued through the continued promotion of the renewable energy industry. The report details programs aimed at encouraging solar technology (e.g. $75m for the solar cities trial) and other programs that will benefit the renewable industry, such as the $500m low emissions technology fund.

On 8 June I formally launched the 'Renewable Energy Development Initiative', which will provide matching competitive grants worth between $50,000 and $5 million to Australian businesses for the development of renewable energy projects. These programs are complemented by the continuation of the Mandatroy Renewable Energy Target to 2030, which will provide over $2 billion in incentives for renewable energy investment.

The Australian Government is also focused on improving energy efficiency as a means of reducing Australia's overall energy needs. Key initiatives in this area include the delivery of improved market signals through energy market reforms, and the setting of minimum energy efficiency performance requirements for widely used appliances and for residential and commercial buildings.

'Securing Australia's Energy Future' also outlines a range of international energy initiatives. In particular, it notes that Australia is an active member of the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the Asia - Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) group, and that Australia seeks to use its membership of these organisations to improve its energy security position. For example, as a member of the IEA Australia maintains a 90 day stock of its (net) oil consumption to assist with any major oil shortages or disruptions. In the APEC context, Australia cooperates with regional partners to establish short and long-term strategies to improve energy security, such as through the provision of improved oil data.

Domestically, the Australian Government is seeking to improve the development of its own petroleum reserves through a range of measures, including acerage release and tax benefits designed to encourage additional exploration. These initiatives will assist Australia in meeting its future fossil fuel needs.

In relation to interstate transportation, the Australian Government supports the development of a competitive rail freight industry as part of an efficient and customer focused transport sector. A strong rail industry will increasingly complement road freight in coming years, especially given the expected doubling of the domestic freight task over the next two decades.

Accordingly, the Australian Government has committed in excess of $2 billion in rail projects on the AusLink National Network over the next five years. This AusLink funding will encourage the increased use of rail to move freight on the the national transport network.

Already the transport sector has moved ahead on the east-west corridor where more than 80% of freight is moved by rail. The Australian Government expects that improved rail infrastructure, especially on the key north-south route on the east coast, will increase rail competitiveness with road transport in this market.

Reports of hurricane damage in the gulf of mexico are showing around 110 platforms destroyed.

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita destroyed 109 oil platforms and five drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, but only a small portion of production will be lost for good, the US government said.

Rita accounted for most of the damage in a region that ordinarily produces nearly one-third of US crude oil imports, Interior Secretary Gale Norton said in presenting a preliminary assessment report.

Rita destroyed 63 platforms and one drilling rig when it tore through the region on September 24, she said. Katrina destroyed 46 platforms and four drilling rigs when it hit the Gulf at the end of August. Katrina also caused extensive damage to another 20 platforms and nine drilling rigs. Rita seriously damaged 30 platforms and 10 drilling rigs.

"The two hurricanes coming so close together really illustrate how much of our offshore production was affected," Norton told the CNBC network. "We had altogether, with both of the hurricanes, about 2,900 platforms that were in the path of the hurricanes," she said. "We have no official estimate of the dollar value of the damage and the amount that it will cost to repair those facilities, but it will clearly be in the billions of dollars."

Alaron is predicting the oil price will hit $75 in the coming quarter.

Yesterday's soaring ISM manufacturing number seems to suggest demand for natural gas will be high. Many manufacturers with contracts will be sent scurrying for supply and could lead to tightness in other products. This comes at a time when the US government is warning Americans that our heating bills will be 70% higher this year. Natural gas production must be brought back on line and problems with the Sabine pipeline and Henry Hub have to be resolved quickly or we might face a huge challenge to avoid shortages.

Yet despite the recent weakness in crude oil the outlook for the rest of this year is still quite bullish. The recent failure to finish a potential head and shoulders topping formation seems to suggest that oil will build a base for a potential run up to the $75.00 per barrel area. This would signal an average price for crude at $70.00 per barrel in the fourth quarter. The fundamentals also support this bullish view and not just because of oil production. Early signs are indicating that the US economy is strong enough to handle the blow from higher energy prices.

So why are prices falling ? My view is a recession (starting in the US and spreading elsewhere) is a distinct possiblity and oil prices won't hold up if demand drops fast enough. Nothing goes up forever - and that applies to oil prices as much as it does to oil production. The other explanation is releases from the SPR and north east heating oil reserves have traders taking profits for now waiting to see what happens next.

The Backslope is also pontificating on things financial in " Energy and Financial Instability".

This month's ASPO newsletter is out. Colin Campbell has adjusted the depletion model after doing some more work on deepwater production and is now forecasting a "all liquids" peak date of 2010. Which leaves the old school peak oil researchers at 2005 (Deffeyes), 2010 (Campbell) and 2015 (Laherrere).

On the subject of old school peak oil researchers, Ron Schuler has a post up on M King Hubbert.

While "Hubbert's peak" propelled Hubbert to visionary status, his earlier work in geophysics was also highly influential. In 1937, while teaching at Columbia, Hubbert employed a mathematical analysis to explain how the hardest of rocks forming the crust of the Earth could show signs of plastic flow under extreme geophysical pressures. By the 1950s, his work regarding the flow and entrapment of underground fluids caused the oil industry to rethink its basic exploration methods; and much later, Hubbert authored a compelling argument that overcrust faults, whose origins had long puzzled geologists, originated as a consequence of underground fluid pressures. Hubbert was also influential, at Stanford and at Berkeley (1973-6), in advocating that earth and environmental science programs place a greater emphasis on mathematics and physics. He passed away in 1989.

"Growth, growth, growth -- that's all we've known . . . World automobile production is doubling every 10 years; human population growth is like nothing that has happened in all of geologic history. The world will only tolerate so many doublings of anything -- whether it's power plants or grasshoppers." -- M. King Hubbert, 1975.

WorldChanging has a post on the EU's passing of legislation specifying "at least 20% of energy production must come from renewable sources by 2020, with 25% as a non-mandatory goal when coupled with efficiency improvements".

TreeHugger has a post on increases in fuel efficiency for diesel hybrid trucks.

Initial tests of diesel-hybrid utility trucks indicate that they may have a 40%-60% reduction in fuel. Apparently utility trucks get better fuel reduction than passenger cars because they have massive batteries on board. The tests were performed on prototype hybrid utility trucks being used in the WestStart’s Hybrid Truck Users Forum (HTUF) pilot program. The target requirement for the hybrids was a 50% reduction in fuel consumption.

TreeHugger also has a post on increasing use of public transport in the US.

The Energy Blog has a post on a natural gas fired power plant in New York that is converting to use renewables. Why ? Natural gas is becoming uneconomic.

WorldChanging has another post on H51N (part of a growing storm of bird flu news). Past peak has some additional comments.

So what has bird flu got to do with peak oil (other than being another meme that attracts the attention of apocaphiliacs) ? Quite a few people around the traps (even with Matt no longer blogging) still seem to be keeping a wary eye on the progress of this new flu strain, which I tend to put down to Jay Hanson's throwaway line that the ultimate solution in the "dieoff" scenario is for the "elites" to use a bioweapon to depopulate the planet (thereby making sure that "they" aren't part of this aforesaid dieoff). I haven't noticed any conspiracy theory sites out there brooding obsessively on this line of reasoning, but no doubt somewhere out in the vastnesses of the internet someone is developing just such a theory.

So - now you've been suitably warned that this is just idle apophenia rather than necessarily linked to my normal topics, I'll note that there have been reports of Bush wanting to use the military to quarantine flu affected areas in the US (which brings to mind a Monty Python skit of people walking around medieval streets yelling "bring out your dead", but this time with camouflage outfits and evil looking helmets on), and there are also reports of some mysterious illness afflicting Toronto.

To use the slogan for our brave new world "Be Afraid !"

I'm just kidding of course - don't be afraid, it does no good - unless you went out and bought the "peak oil portfolio" I put together last week of course, in which case be very afraid - its all gone pear shaped in a mere 3 trading days - I may well have picked the exact day that marked the top of the market. Think of me as a contrarian indicator...

There was a good documentary on SBS tonight from Germany (pdf) called "Africa: US Oil's New Target", which takes a look at the growing US presence in west Africa which accompanies the growing US dependence on west African oil.

The show featured Daniel Yergin, lots of Michael Klare and the guru of the "Gap" Thomas Barnett and looked at the race for oil between the US and China in the region. Interesting clips feature US soldiers performing miltary exercises in some unspecified country and a segment on Sao Tome that had locals reporting seeing more and more US soldiers there (not to mention black helicopters, judging by the video footage). Klare said west Africa is following the same trajectory that the middle east then central asia followed, with an increasing US military presence as the oil there becomes more important.

In America a horror scenario appears to be looming. At some point in the next twenty years America’s indigenous oil supply will have run out, all the oil wells having been pumped dry.

Securing an alternative energy supply is therefore an issue of urgency for America, which leads the world in per capita energy consumption. For the world’s military superpower, whose weaponry relies on access to a secure oil supply, the issue is also a matter of national security. America’s demand for oil is constantly exceeding supply and more than half the oil required by America now comes from overseas. At the same time it has to compete with an increasingly successful and aggressive major competitor in the global hunt for oil – China.

The invasion of Iraq has not relieved the situation as the price of crude oil remains high and has left the oil markets nervous and in turn, making prices unstable. The American military in Iraq is currently importing the oil it needs. America has therefore set its sights on Africa, which, according to a White House national energy policy document, is predicted to be – together with Latin America – “one of the fastest growing sources of oil and gas” for the future American market. The whole of the coastal sweep of West Africa has become an “oil Dorado”. Sao Tomé, in the Gulf of Guinea and the second smallest country in Africa, is just one example of the region’s potential. Off the coast of this tiny nation lies 24 billion barrels of black gold and some oil industry experts have even described it as a second Kuwait. Oil interests from across the world have now flocked to the nation.

More of the same can be found in Godfrey Hodgson's article "Oil and American Politics" at OpenDemocracy.

The desire to reduce dependence on Saudi Arabia also explains why the administration has tried desperately and will go on trying to find alternative sources of oil imports: in Africa, in Latin America and above all in the ex-Soviet Caspian region. This will not be easy. A high proportion of middle east oil is available for export until the region begins to allow economic development for the benefit of its own people, but most alternative sources of supply export only a small part of their production. Moreover, potential supplier-countries like Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Venezuela and Angola are hardly models of political stability; and the US faces stringent competition for oil supplies from energy-hungry China.

The Bush administration cannot be blamed for wanting to take robust and effective action to address the immense strategic vulnerability that results from the widening gap between American energy production and American energy consumption. Given the immense shortfall the United States faces, any government that did not make this a high priority would be rightly blamed.

Where the administration has been at fault is in tackling this problem – as it tackles every other one – in an arrogant, unilateral way. Here as elsewhere it seems more concerned about the profits of American corporations, especially those of the corporations in which its friends and supporters have direct interests, than about the welfare of the American people, let alone anyone else. It would have been one thing to put the United States at the head of a coordinated, international effort to reduce dependence on carbon fuels; it is quite another to send American forces around the world – from Colombia to Uzbekistan, from Angola to the Persian Gulf – to oblige the world to meet an American demand for almost half the world’s oil supplies.

Americans as well as citizens of other countries should be concerned about the United States’s militarisation of its own, and the world’s, energy crisis. As recently as the second world war, the United States could present itself as the disinterested guardian of prosperity and justice for all. Today it prefers the posture of a “lone superpower” – understood as “a country that chooses to spends more on military power than anyone else”.

When such a national leadership seeks to retain a wildly disproportionate share of a dwindling world resource by force and the threat of force, refusing to make any serious effort to restrain its consumption of that resource, it is no surprise that it and the government it leads is far less attractive to others than the great, generous democracy of 1945.

And if that wasn't enough for you on that theme, here's an undiplomatic dose from Paul Craig Roberts on Condi Rice's misunderstanding of the role of diplomacy.

No member of the White House staff wants to deliver news to Bush, because the news is bad. Bush demands sycophancy and equates bad news with disagreement and disloyalty.

Little wonder that Republican minority token Condi Rice was dispatched to Princeton last week to inform the university that democracy comes out of the barrel of a gun. US military force, said the secretary of state with a straight face, is required to force democracy down the throats of the Muslims in order to save future American generations from "insecurity and fear."

Condi obviously doesn’t want Bush to put her in the "against us" camp. She told Princeton that she agreed with Bush "that the root cause of September 11 was the violent expression of a global extremist ideology, an ideology rooted in the oppression and despair of the modern Middle East." Every American should be scared to death that a secretary of state can make such an ignorant and propagandistic statement.

Many Middle Eastern countries are ruled by puppets on the American payroll. Even the Saudis are under American protection. If there is oppression in the Middle East, it is because US puppets and protectorates are doing what the US government wants, not what the people they rule want.

The Middle East is in despair because almost a century after the First World War freed Arabs from Turkish occupation, they still cannot get free of US and British occupation.

What kind of fool believes that the way to bring democracy to a country is to invade, destroy cities and infrastructure, and kill and maim tens of thousands of civilians, while creating every possible animosity by aligning with some members of the society against the others?

Condi Rice’s speech at Princeton has branded her as the greatest fool ever to be appointed Secretary of State. The same day that she declared, Mao-like, that democracy comes out of the barrel of a gun, Lt. Gen. William Odom, Director of the National Security Agency during President Reagan’s second term, a scholar with a distinguished career in military intelligence, declared Bush’s invasion of Iraq to be the "greatest strategic disaster in United States history."

Of course, George himself isn't simply a fool - he is as slippery as a bar of soap (sorry - couldn't help myself with that one).

While Mr Roberts is castigating Condi for spouting simple minded propaganda, it should be noted that illegal government propaganda is one of the basic tools used by the current US administration - fat chance they'll ever be held to account for it though - in general, the law only applies to poor people it seems. Although there is a chance at least one small victory for justice may be on the cards, with the corrupt Tom DeLay being indicted again, this time for fraud (even this small nod to the traditions of the past has the nuttier type of freeper calling for a civil war to be unleashed on the Democrats though). Of course, as Billmon notes, rooting out entrenched corruption in the political system can have some very unpleasant side effects even if you are initially successful.

I won't bother saying anything about George's remarkable decision to nominate his family lawyer for a spot on the Supreme Court in spite of the fact she's never been a judge - some things don't really need commentary.

Moving back to more oil related topics, reports at the end of last week were still showing that the Henry Hub was still out of action. It will be interesting to see how long it takes to turn the gas supply back on.

The NYMEX U.S. natural gas delivery point at Henry Hub in Louisiana remained under force majeure on Thursday, as did all points on the Sabine Pipe Line system, a spokesman for the Hub's operator said. Sabine Pipe Line LLC, the Hub's operator, said in a Web site posting that the main station yard had been drained of standing water, but the ground continued to be saturated.

"We now have personnel with the ability to access the interior buildings and structures on the drained portion of the Henry Hub complex," Chevron spokesman Mickey Driver said. Driver added that the Hub would not reopen until a thorough damage assessment was complete. Temporary power generation was being put in place at the Hub, but power remained out in most areas of the system in the wake of Hurricane Rita.

Also this week, NYMEX extended its prior declaration of force majeure on remaining September natural gas deliveries due to the outage at the Hub and declared force majeure for the October contract.

Rigzone has an article on the link between eddies of heated water like the "loop current" in the gulf of mexico and increased hurricane strength.

Meteorologists are learning a great deal as hurricanes pass over the deep, warm waters of the Loop Current, Shay said. "We have long been aware that these currents are an important way for the ocean to distribute heat and energy, but until now, we just didn't have much data on the role they played in building hurricane intensity."

Two days before Hurricane Rita, Black and Rick Lumpkin of AOML, and Peter Niiler of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, deployed surface drifters that measure surface and subsurface thermal conditions while traveling clockwise around a Loop Current warm eddy just south of La. The eddy was lying in the path of Rita.

"This represents one of the most comprehensive ocean-data sets where two major hurricanes passed through the same region," said Frank Marks, director of NOAA's Hurricane Research Division. "This series of observations is a testament to how new ocean observations are helping us understand hurricane intensity changes."

"The last time there was a season with two Category 5 hurricanes in the same basin was in 1961 with Carla and Hattie," said Shay. "However, the same phenomenon occurred the year before in 1960 with Donna and Ethel."

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita also have much in common with Hurricane Opal, a category 4 storm that occurred a decade ago, on Oct. 4. During Opal, meteorologists first recognized the pivotal role that deep, warm eddies play in quickly building hurricane intensity. Opal encountered a warm- water eddy in the Gulf of Mexico and strengthened in intensity from Category 1 to Category 4 in just 14 hours.

The end of the road may be in sight for US carmakers, judging by the latest sales figures for SUVs vs small (largely imported) cars.

Adam Porter reports that the IEA is beginning to concede that peak oil is real and ole man Hubbert might have been onto something after all. Adam also has a report up at the BBC on the shortage of refineries (which is pushing up prices worldwide for refined products).

The International Energy Agency (IEA) report, “Resources to Reserves: Oil & Gas Technologies for the Energy Markets of the Future,” has broken step with other oil bodies by directly addressing the concerns of “peak oil” theorists.

In the introductory paragraph Claude Mandil, the IEA’s executive director, wasted no time in examining the subject. He said, “soaring oil prices have again spotlighted the old question. Are we running out of oil? The doomsayers are again conveying grim messages through the front pages of major newspapers. ‘Peak oil’ is now part of the general public’s vocabulary, along with the notion that oil production may have peaked already, heralding a period of inevitable decline.”

Yet Mandil dismissed the idea that this situation is worrisome by stating, “the IEA has long maintained that none of this is a cause for concern.”

However not too far later on in the report, the IEA admits that most countries outside of OPEC “have passed their peaks in conventional oil production, or will do so shortly.” They go on to paint a less than optimistic picture of future production in non-OPEC fields.

PeakOil.com notes that France's "Le Monde" has a 10 page article introducing peak oil to their readers. PeakOil.com also has a post on ASEAN, China, Japan, South Korea mulling the creation of an oil stockpile.

Crikey today makes some interesting points about Rupert Murdoch's influence on the Iraq invasion.

Former Fairfax and Optus CEO and current PBL director Chris Anderson made some very interesting comments during The AFR's annual panel discussion about the most powerful people in Australia, which was released in the monthly magazine inside Friday's paper. Anderson, who is a very important figure on the PBL board overseeing investments such as Seek and Foxtel, was quoted as follows about this cultural phenomenon:

"It's a huge cultural change. It's destroying the mass media, no doubt about that and it's changing the way anyone probably under 35 now gets their information. Look at what Google and Yahoo and MSN are do the media, at how important blogging really is whether we like it or not. It's wrecking empires."

Hmmm, don't expect this particular PBL director to vote in favour of a $5 billion bid for Fairfax once the great media free-for-all arrives.

Whilst Graham Morris was talking up his old bosses at News Ltd, Anderson was having none of it. "I'm a huge admirer of Murdoch and he may well be in the top 10, but if he is the second most important person to the average Australian, then I'm a Dutchman."

The average Australian might not realise it Chris, but Australia's support for the Iraq war and George Bush was very much a Murdoch-backed event. If Murdoch's media outlets around the world had taken an anti-war line similar to The Daily Mirror in the UK, Australian troops would probably not be in Iraq today. The invasion would probably not have happened at all, because Tony Blair would have been under huge pressure from The Sun not to support the war and it is unlikely Bush would have completely gone it alone.

Similarly, if Australia's foreign policy position was like New Zealand's, as Mark Latham would have liked it to be, Saturday night's second Bali bombings are less likely to have happened. Australians are the most populous tourists in Bali, although we'll probably now go through another round of political semantics about whether our involvement in Iraq increases the risks of such bombings. Of course it does. You can never know for sure, but the probability of Australians being killed rose with the support of the Iraq invasion.

For some strange reason, Chris Anderson doesn't seem to be able to comprehend all of this as he assesses Rupert Murdoch's power in Australia.

Stirling Newberry at DailyKos has a gloomy look at the future called "Inflation, then Recession, then Catastrophe" which doesn't inspire confidence - it's a bit worrying when some of the more insightful commentators start predicting disaster ahead.

Right now we are on the back side of the insanity curve, this is the point were "sensible" people are going to start taking over, and, as a result, bad is going to get worse. It's in the bag, and nothing is going to happen to stop it. Seriously.

Right now, as with the late Reagan years, America's economy is on a borrow and squander binge. You can throw in Nixon's first term as well. The first thing that happens is that the foot is eased off the gas pedal, and "sensible" people try and do "sensible" things to set everything right. The result is a recession, because sensible people try and simply force the issue. Whatever gains the Democrats make in 2006, and the House and Senate are both in play, the policy they will push is Bush-lite - big military, extraction economy and austerity budgets. This will reproduce Nixon-Ford, Bush Sr, or Hoover - depending on how badly it is messed up.

You see, in circumstances like this - corporate or government - the cost cutters and turtles take charge. The theory is that if the company simply retrenches - say pass big tax increases and service cuts on most people, and try and slam the door shut to the outside world - then everything will be fine again. The inevitable consequences of these policies is to "make the poor pay". The inside corridors of power are already betting that gasoline is going to remain around $3/gallon and up for a long time, jobs will be hard to come by, and the taps of cheap money will dry up.

One sign of this will be a big rush to burn coal as oil, build lots of big plants, attached to big nuclear plants, that will turn rocks in gas. It's already the group think. This will produce $5/gallon gas for about 20 years - a political life time to an old conservative Democrat from a coal bearing state. It's simple, extractive, top down, and requires no changes to anything else. It is a big consumption tax, and will be paid for by more big consumption taxes. Income taxes will stay low for the rich, because the rich are going to loan themselves the money to build all those big plants. Clever how that works out.

The next year will see rising inflationary pressures, as increases in raw materials and a federally financed building binge happens. Lots of happy construction workers, concrete companies, contractors and other largess giving groups. The American people will be presented with an American solution to oil dependence - namely "global warming? what's that?"

There is, as I said, nothing you can do about this.

Anyone getting into power will have to find make work for all the other unhappy exurbanites while the phony fuel economy gets ramped up. The solution will be to expand the military, and keep bases open all over the place, and borrow lots of money from the Social Security revenue stream. This will be augmented by a new VAT tax to pay for medicare/medicaid, which will run a surplus that will be raided to pay for it. We already have a flat tax in this country, what we will get is a steeply regressive tax regime.

This will rob money from people who actually make things, and give it to people who stand around on military bases, and people who make holes in the ground and pollution. It will be very popular, until, of course, it collapses in a heap as oil prices continue to spiral upwards.

At least I expect this sort of thing from Matt Savinar at LATOC, who has put a "Post Crash preparation blueprint" up for sale (written by Steve from Deconsumption).

For those who think the end really is nigh - and personally I'm hoping any crash is of the slow variety so the need to adopt Viridian solutions becomes obvious to even the most benighted extractionist - and haven't got their own solar and mciro-wind power generators in place (and I offer this advice at no charge), Boing Boing notes (indirectly) that a Lister engine plus a bit of biodiesel may help cushion your fall over the Olduvai Cliff.

For those of you with a strange mechanical penchant, or a wild-eyed post-Apocalyptic wishlist, here is the toy for you! It's a piece of early 20th-century British design, now made in India. Runs a house with 9000 watts on .3 gallons of biodiesel per hour (!!!) and can be serviced with flat rocks and grass clippings (well, almost.) They weigh quite a bit, but who cares? No MOS chips, integrated circuits, explosive fuels, or cheap metal parts that aren't meant to be serviced by the owner. Rumors are for some of these engines lasting >100,000 hours with regular maintenance. Wow. Plus, they're just neat machines to look at - dinosaurs that earn their keep.

While I'd never heard of Lister engines, simply mentioning them to a few friends (who clearly fall into the "those of you with a strange mechanical penchant" category) provoked a firestorm of childhood anecdotes and enthusiastic responses like this:

Ah the old lister raises it's head again. You can drag these out of the bottom of the sea, or a barn in my case and almost be sure that it will start and run for ever. Amazing engines. If you see one come up for grabs, even without the gennie, I would think about getting it. You never see them anymore, and they are glorious engines to live with. Love the idea of using one as a power source....

There was also an accompanying bombardment of Lister puns with the low point being a link to "Schindlers Lister" (I don't read Swedish but I presume the subject matter is unrelated) which is presumably revenge for my unfortunate tendency to make jokes about "Schindlers Lift" whenever I get into one make of lift.

I'll finish with a graph from the Pastafarians doing an imitation of Michael Crichton and noting the the inverse relationship between average global temperature and the number of pirates in the world (note - Pastafarianism, like other religions, should be practiced in moderation, as excessive devotion to religious beliefs is dangerous to society - Past Peak has some graphs to demonstrate this).

Its a holiday here today and I'm feeling lazy after spending a lot of time out in the heat and in the water, so just a brief roundup tonight (34 degrees here today, 11 above average - couldn't possibly be due to global warming of course).

Alan Kohler had some comments on ethanol in a recent spot on "Inside Business". He echoes the sentiments of most people who look closely at ethanol - its not the answer to dwindling oil supplies (and it sounds like Asutralian ethanol has an EROEI as low as anywhere in the world).

"I must be missing something with ethanol. This week, the Prime Minister, Mr Howard, put Australia's oil companies in a room and wouldn't let them out until they agreed that his target of 350 megalitres of ethanol production by 2010 was achievable. They didn't commit to it but they agreed it could be done.

"Most ethanol in Australia is made from starch, which in turn comes from wheat. In other words, this is a plan to run our cars on food when half the world is starving. Ethanol costs more to make than petrol, so it needs subsidies from the Government estimated at $118 million a year.

"The wheat is brought to Nowra from western NSW by trucks that burn diesel. It's then put through an eight-stage process that uses steam at each stage. The steam is generated by burning coal.

"The report of the government task force on biofuels is equivocal, to say the least, about the environmental and cost benefits of ethanol. It says the principal benefit of the policy is regional development - not just a benefit but the main one. That's because a new plant has to be built, providing 648 jobs. It will use grain and molasses as feed stock - more food in the fuel tank.

"Not mentioned in the report is the name Dick Honan, the main beneficiary of this policy. His company, Manildra, produces all the ethanol in Nowra and will make millions from increasing output to 350 megalitres a year. He also seems to be a prime ministerial friend and a big donor to the Liberal Party. Maybe that's what I'm missing."

The Age has a good little introductory article on peak oil called "All's not well when the oil runs dry" - its very much on the optimistic side of peak theory (saying a peak could be as far away as 2020) but at least it will raise awareness. Good to see the guys at Energy Bulletin got a mention as well. The Age also has an editorial on the need to seek alternative fuels.

With global oil reserves set to run out within decades, governments must act now to avoid an energy crisis of indescribable proportions, writes Claire Miller.

It was a party that had to end. Even the optimists predict that by 2030, the global oil supply will no longer match demand. The International Energy Agency's prediction is a sobering one. For price, quality and the security of supply, the hangover is already setting in.

So much for the optimists. According to respected pessimists such as the UK-based Oil Depletion Analysis Centre, production will peak within the next decade and then fall away. It says even the most conservative independent analysis, based on optimistic assessments of oil reserves, estimate production will peak by 2020.

The San Francisco Chronicle has an article looking at the need to redesign cities to make them more agriculture friendly in a post oil future. Its of the back-to-1900 genre which I don't find particularly appealing, but the core point that it is more fuel efficient to grow food close to where it is consumed is a good one, even if I don't think anyone in my apartment block will be making soap in the next few decades.

Acres of chard and lettuce in Golden Gate Park? The Marina Green with community gardens? Wind turbines on top of the Bank of America Building?

Welcome to the post-oil future.

Depending on which expert you believe, we have already reached or will reach in the next few years the point when worldwide oil demand starts to exceed supply -- and gas prices really go through the roof. If cities like San Francisco are to survive as viable places to live, they will have to redesign themselves in ways barely imaginable now.

It's hard to overstate the impact the looming oil squeeze is going to have. A lot of people are going to be left stranded in the suburbs, and a lot of grocery store shelves are going to go empty as supply lines collapse due to rising fuel costs. Many folks are going to lose their jobs as our oil-dependent economy withers. But there will be a greater need for farmworkers, as petroleum-fueled factory farms give way to smaller, labor-intensive operations. In general, human energy will replace machine energy, and there will be an increased demand for craftspeople with time-honored skills: shoemakers, soapmakers, glassblowers, seamstresses.

The always informative "Energy Blog" has a post looking at the prospects of recycling nuclear waste (Jim seems to prefer coal to nuclear, and is much more pessimistic about prospects for renewables to provide the majority of our energy needs than I am) along with one on a thermal solar power plant planned for southern California.

Hugo Chavez is talking about starting research into peaceful uses of nuclear energy.

TreeHugger reports that Ford has killed off its monstrous gas guzzling "land boat" Excursion model as small car sales rapidly increase, while elsewhere bicycle sales are exploding.

n the past year, more bicycles than cars have been sold in the US. That hasn't happened since the 1973 oil crisis! "Bicycle sales are near an all-time high with 19 million sold last year [worth five to six billion dollars] -- close to the 20 million sold during the oil embargo in the early 1970s," said Tim Blumenthal, executive director of Bikes Belong, an association based in Boulder, Colorado. "Some 87 million people [in the US] have climbed on a bike in the past 12 months," he adds.

In case you think things are starting to move in the right direction, TreeHugger also points out that things like this hideously energy wasteful leaf blower are still appearing.



Japan is reported to be considering being the first country to mandate fuel efficiency standards for large trucks and buses. Elsewhere at WorldChanging there is a piece on the potential for hydrokinetic power in Scotland.

Although hydrokinetic power -- energy generated from the tides, currents and waves -- has a great deal of potential as a primary source of power generation around much of the world, it doesn't have the visibility of technologies such as solar and wind power. This is due, in large part, to the relative scarcity of real-world implementations of marine energy. Many of the existing examples are test-beds, small-scale efforts to demonstrate that the concept is viable. But the demonstration efforts have been well-received, and Portugal will be opening the first commercial wave farm next year, and South Korea will be opening a tidal power project in 2009.

But Scotland is also near the forefront of adoption of this potentially transformative technology. Last year, the first wave farm connected to the grid opened off Orkney, a demonstration system generating about 750kw. Ultimately, Scotland could get 10% of its energy production from ocean power -- and intends to do so, according to Renewable Energy Access.

WorldChanging also has a post on new developments in integrated solar power.

One of the ideas underlying the Bright Green Future is the greater use of radically distributed energy generation. Although this has the most visible manifestation in the development of (for example) micro-wind turbines and gas-optional hybrids as mobile power sources, one of the more intriguing applications will be the greater integration of energy generation materials into the construction of objects and buildings. Although there will undoubtedly be a variety of intrinsic power generation technologies (such as the suspended-load power backpack), the most commonplace form will be integrated photovoltaics.

Widespread adoption of integrated solar power is still a few years off, but this last week saw a two developments bringing that day much closer.

Konarka, a pioneer in polymer photovoltaics (solar cells made of flexible plastics instead of silicon sheets and glass), has teamed up with Textronics, a company specializing in "electronic textiles" to begin the production of photovoltaic cloth. This material could be used in bags and upholstery, but is said to be soft end flexible enough to go into clothing, as well. The companies argue that this pv-embedded textile would be easily used for charging portable electronic devices, but it seems to me that another obvious application would be in making the bags or jackets themselves "smart," able to (for example) sense the air and display air quality reports, keep an electronic eye out for open WiFi networks (with a tag that glows brighter as the signal gets stronger), even intercept incoming phone calls or text messages and display relevant information about the message.

Potentially more radical is the work by researchers at the Technical University at Delft's Sustainable Energy program concerning spray-on solar. We've talked about spray-on solar before; the idea that any material object could have a photovoltaic layer is an exciting one, as it opens up the possibility of being able to reuse existing products rather than having to make entirely new objects.

Finally, Billmon has yet another post detailing our "progress" in securing Iraq's oil supplies. Its hard to tell what is going to happen with this ongoing fiasco - TomDispatch thinks the momentum for a withdrawal of the occupation forces is "unstoppable", but keeping my peak oil lenses on I simply can't see how any US administration will do this - it would seem to be tantamount to giving up on middle east oil just as we hit the peak (unless they think they can step in after a civil war and somehow keep the Iranians from doing so first). If the US (along with us and the British) had started a crash subsititution / conservation programme it might be conceivable, but given our current unpreparedness on this front I suspect an invasion of Syria is more likely than a withdrawal from Iraq (although I don't think thats particularly likely either - and all prospects of an invasion of Iran seem to have disappeared now). If I'm right, it probably means a lot more people (especially reporters) will be sacrificed on the altar of our thirst for oil.

The picture that emerges is of an occupation force that has its hands full trying to keep the roads open to its forward operating bases, while leaving the rest of the province to Iraqi police or military units, or to the insurgents -- who, of course, are often the same people:

Hendricks taught a sniper's training course to a select group of Iraqi soldiers, but stuck to marksmanship.

"I haven't taught them tactics because they're infiltrated," Hendricks said. "It's like going to a party where you don't know anybody, but somebody in the room -- you don't know who -- wants to kill you."

But the infiltrators are also probably the cream of the new Iraqi defense forces. At least they're not stoned out of their gourds:

Sgt. Hunter Sabin has spent a fair amount of time near the Iraqi troops, and said that while they were getting better, they were still far from ready.

"I was up in a guard tower outside the FOB (base) and a group of IP (Iraqi police) came up and offered us hash and whiskey," said Sabin, a 26-year-old sniper from Richmond, Va., who was in a Ranger special operations unit during the 2003 invasion. "That's who's protecting the people.

This, then, is what life is like in one of the "secure" areas of Iraq.

And to close, here's a "joke" about wasting energy from Past Peak:

In an announcement today President Bush said all federal workers should travel less to save fuel. He decided on this in Texas, right before he flew to Colorado then back to Washington to prepare for tomorrow's trip back to Texas. — Jay Leno

The Sydney Morning Herald included Peter Maass' "Running On Empty" article from the New York Times a few weeks ago in this weekend's "Magazine" section (with no fanfare, even the cover of the magazine section didn't list it and it doesn't seem to be online). Elsewhere in the Herald there is a piece on a campaign to make residents of Sydney's wealthy eastern suburbs more aware of the impact of global warming. The Sun Herald has an article explaining the implications of oil price rises for many other goods that require oil in their manufacture. Over at sister paper The Age there is a piece on ethanol producer Manildra and their CEO (or "ethanol sheikh") Dick Honan.

Labor's resources spokesman Martin Ferguson agrees with the suggestion that Labor is again keen to promote ethanol as an alternative fuel...

With Australia notching a fuel trade deficit of $6.6 billion last year, compared with $1.3 billion in 1997-98, Mr Ferguson says alternative fuels, such as ethanol, liquefied petroleum gas and biodiesel, are valuable ways to reduce the reliance on imports. He said Mr Honan might be a short-term beneficiary from the use of ethanol, but there were more players ready to enter the market.

According to the Biofuels Taskforce, Mr Honan has a yearly ethanol production capacity of about 70 million litres (with the ability to expand to 100 million litres). Based on 80 cents a litre, it is worth about $55 million. Mr Honan's success in convincing Labor to end its campaign over his relationship with Mr Howard, and to help restore confidence in ethanol-blended petrol, has guaranteed his group a rosy future as a fuel supplier.

The Financial Review has a small article "PM wants debate on energy" that continues their steady campaign to revive nuclear energy (or at least increase uranium mining) here. For some reason a WA Liberal conference is being used to push the opening up of potential WA uranium mines (Yeelirrie, Manyingee, Kintyre, Lake Way and Mulga Rock) - as they aren't in government over there this doesn't seem to be a particularly effective tactic.

The Falls Church News Press has another article in their ongoing series on peak oil - this one looks at the recent conference held by US Congressman Roscoe Bartlett.

For those familiar with the tenets of peak oil, the message was familiar: It will start soon; it is already too late to mitigate the effects; and a global economic depression will only be one of the many hardships the world will face.

On a humorous note, Deffeyes revealed that calculations that oil production would peak on Thanksgiving Day 2005 really had some wriggle room so that the appointed day could come as much as three weeks before or after Thanksgiving. On a more somber note, Deffeyes said there is bound to be some sort of oil rationing.

Simmons characterized the present situation as the culmination of 50 years of energy planning mistakes. Only a few years ago, energy planners believed demand would peak, supply would grow, and oil would be cheap. But instead, demand grew, production costs doubled, there were few new discoveries, and reserves turned out to have been overstated.

All this led to a situation where by August 2005 spare capacity had dropped to the point that the world was effectively at 100 percent of production capacity. Then came the Hurricanes taking away more production capacity than was left to offset the damage. We do not yet know the full implications of this situation.

Simmons calls for the nation to go immediately onto an "energy war" footing, where productive capacity and the ingenuity of the country is mobilized to deal with the crisis.

Heinberg now believes peak oil may look more like a bumpy plateau with much volatility in prices and production with events such a hurricanes, wars, demand destruction, and political moves alternately cutting and stimulating additional production. As do the other panelists, he foresees major problems in the global economy, transportation, food production, and resource wars. He emphasized the impact on localities, as people struggle to get to work, feed themselves and heat their homes.

The next panel discussed ways to save energy in transportation, buildings and industry. The dominant theme was that our current machinery and practices are highly wasteful and that we have the existing technology to live on only a small fraction of our current consumption, such as 100-mpg cars and buildings that get by nicely on 20 percent of current energy consumption.

The key point made during the panel discussions was that the nation's goal has got to be movement towards 100 percent renewable energy: water, solar, wind, waves, biomass etc. As the US currently gets only seven percent of its energy from these sources, the idea of nearly all energy coming from renewables is often derided as an impossible dream. The point the panel made is that within a few decades, we will have no other choice.

One interesting note came during the questioning, when a member of the audience asked Congressman Bartlett about his meeting on peak oil with President Bush. Did the President understand?

Bartlett responded "Yes, the President understands" but it is the age-old problem of the urgent vs. the important. Apparently, the President believed that as of this summer he had more pressing issues to deal with than the possibility the world's oil supply would one day start to decline.

On Monday, however, the President issued a call for Americans to conserve gas by driving less and directed all federal agencies to cut gasoline consumption. This is a major change in the administration's position for many years has emphasizing production of additional oil over conservation and alternative energy.

It is beginning to sound as if the President knows the hurricane damage to offshore production is far more serious than has been generally reported, and that it may be a while before all the Gulf refineries are back in production. If this is indeed the case, higher prices and gas lines (rationing by inconvenience) are not far ahead.

The rising cost of fuel has pushed the non-existent savings rate of American consumers into the red - on average people are spending their savings or going further into debt (mostly on their credit cards) just in order to make ends meet. Good thing (for the credit card companies) those new bankruptcy laws are in place.

Of course, with economists having been going on for years about the US economy being the "engine of world growth" and the US consumer (and his or her willingness to keep borrowing ever larger amounts of money) being the hamster in this economic treadmill, ooops, I mean engine, you do have to wonder what happens to the world economy when the hamster runs out of puff.

The American Bankers Association reported Wednesday that the percentage of credit card accounts 30 or more days past due climbed to an all-time high of 4.81 percent in the April-to-June period. It could grow in the months ahead, experts said. The previous high of 4.76 percent came during the first three months of the year, in keeping with a generally steady rise over the past several years.

"The last two quarters have not been pretty," said Jim Chessen, the association's chief economist. Chessen and other analysts mostly blamed high prices for gasoline and other energy products, but said that low savings and higher borrowing costs also played a role. "The rise in gas prices is really stretching budgets to the breaking point for some people," Chessen said. "Gas prices are taking huge chunks out of wallets, leaving some individuals with little left to meet their financial obligations."

Pump prices were high before hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit the Gulf Coast. After Katrina, prices jumped past $3 a gallon. Prices have moderated since but remain high.

The personal savings rate dipped to a record low of negative 0.6 percent in July. The negative percentage means that people did not have enough left over after paying their taxes to cover all of their spending in July. As a result, they dipped into savings to cover the shortfall. When people have less money available money to pay for energy costs or emergencies such as a big car repair, many resort to credit. That option is getting more expensive, too. The Federal Reserve has been tightening credit since June 2004.

TOD has an interesting discussion on rig damage in the Gulf of Mexico and the various issues involved in designing rigs to withstand storm conditions. My guess is insurance companies will be making the premiums for the satndard rig design that can only handle category 3 hurricanes a lot more expensive. There is a price to be paid for global warming and everyone will pay in the long run - the insurance industry will guarantee it (and that's not a jibe at the insurers).

The picture below is reported to be of the Typhoon platform (which BHP has a major share in). I think if this report is correct then you could say the damage is quite serious.



The Oil Drum has also reprinted a post on George Ure's "Urban Survival" (a site for those who believe we're about to hit the second great depression) on rig damage in the gulf which is alarming, to say the least.

Let me sum up: Hurricane Ivan destroyed 7 platforms and 100 piplines and 0 rigs.

Katrina & Rita destroyed (so far) 90 platforms and (who knows) pipelines and 100? rigs.

There are typically around 130 rigs working in the Gulf. Today, there are 23.

There will be virtually no new exploration in the Gulf for the next year or so, assuming everything stays the way it is right now. Plus, with the rigs left in operation, there are several countries bidding to have them work in their waters. Guess who wins? Highest bidder.

Now given the source of the information, this is to be expected, but I haven't yet seen a good summary anywhere else of the actual damage. Rigzone's running tally of the damage is still incomplete and doesn't give me a good feel for the real situation (although it doesn't seem quite as bad as Urban Survival's unless they are showing all 23 surviving rigs in their dispatches). They are still reporting 99% of oil production is shut in.

Canada's Globe and Mail has a good article on the situation in the gulf called "State of U.S. oil supply exposed by unforgiving Mother Nature".

Maybe the oil and gas industry is finally realizing why the Mayans never built major cities on the Gulf of Mexico's coastline. After all, the term hurricane itself is derived from the Mayan creator god Hurakan, who created dry land by blowing across the water.

Through only what is the half-way point of the hurricane season, America's oil and gas industry has already had to weather two Category 5 hurricanes that have sent millions of Americans fleeing the Gulf Coast and wreaking havoc on Gulf platforms and oil and gas industry service towns along the way. With Gulf of Mexico temperatures averaging a balmy one to three degrees above normal for this time of year, there is more than ample fuel in those waters to heat up another one or two monster storms before the season is done.

While many in the oil and gas industry will argue that both Katrina and Rita were freak events, there is increasing evidence that they are not. A study by Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Kerry Emanuel in the August issue of Nature found that the noticeable increase in storm activity in recent years is in fact part of an emerging trend over the past 25 years of not only greater frequency of storms but of an increasing destructive capacity of tropical cyclones. As water temperatures continue to rise in the Gulf, so too will the incidence and severity of hurricanes, rendering the region's oil and gas reserves increasingly problematic.

Ironically, the United States, a holdout on signing the Kyoto Protocol on CO{-2} emissions, may soon find that its densely populated and energy-rich Gulf region has become the world's early warning system on global warming.

The Oil Drum also has an interesting interview with Richard Heinberg, who is speaking at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on Tuesday.

Another report (this time in Rigzone rather than a "news forecast") that production is about to begin at Sakhalin Island.

On Saturday, three decades after vast pools of oil and gas were discovered off lonely shores of this former prison colony, a consortium led by Exxon Mobil is to start pumping as much as 250,000 barrels of oil a day, its first oil and gas from seven wells drilled deep in the Sea of Okhotsk.

That will be the start of major production from Sakhalin's offshore reserves, a rich energy province that some geologists call, with a bit of swagger, this decade's Alaska North Slope. Noting the string of ministers flying here from Moscow in September to inspect the newest riches in oil, Galina Pavlova, Sakhalin's top energy official, boasted, "They believe Sakhalin is the second Kuwait."

Mapped since the 1970s, the recoverable offshore reserves of Russia's easternmost major island now total 14 billion barrels of oil or just over 1 percent of global reserves and 96 trillion cubic feet, or 2.7 trillion cubic meters, of gas, 28 times the amount that the United States imported last year.

After decades of debate, this long, spindly island eight time zones from Moscow is getting the largest inflow of foreign investment in Russian history. Analysts hope the Sakhalin projects will help increase Russia's output and bring badly needed oil and gas supplies to world markets in the coming decades.

The recent slowdown in Russian output and the Kremlin's tighter grip on its energy sector have raised concerns over the investment climate in Russia. But with much of the Middle East shut off to foreign oil companies, Russia still offers some of the best prospects for growth in oil supplies.

Russia has bought Chelsea owner and Yeltsin era oligarch Roman Abramovich's Sibneft oil company. WHT thinks this is likely to be a scam, with Russian taxpayers (presuming there are such things) getting fleeced by a sharp operator. I have a different, yet equally cynical view - this is just part of the ongoing effort by the Russian government to renationalise their energy assets (which I suspect will become increasingly common as we pass the peak), and Abramovich prefers to take a reasonably large windfall profit and avoid joining Mikhail Khodorkovsky in jail by defying Putin.

Nigeria has announced plans to increase local refining of oil.

India and Japan (weirdly enough, 2 countries with very little energy reserves of their own) have signed a "Energy Cooperation Pact". Japan and China are now holding talks over exploration in the east china sea.

Protests in Indonesia have begun about cuts to fuel subsidies. If oil prices keep rising the third world is on the slide into chaos.

There is a Chinese report linking this weekend's bombings in Bali to anger about rising fuel prices.

JAKARTA, Oct. 1 (Xinhuanet) -- Saturday night's bomb blasts in Bali could have link with fuel oil price hikes which were felt by the people as a very heavy burden, the official news agency Antara quoted a political observer as saying.

"I think groups who are unsatisfied with the fuel oil price hike have been behind the explosions, not those who want to shift attention on fuel oil issues," Professor Budiatna, a political observer at the University of Indonesia, said here on Saturday night.

A series of near-simultanous bomb blasts ripped through popular tourist spots on the Indonesian island of Bali, killing at least 30 people including several foreign tourists.

According to Budiatna, the unsatisfied groups thought protests in the form of demonstrations were no longer effective because the government paid no attention to it. The government increased fuel oil price hike by an average of 126 percent on Saturday.

"They pressured (the government) by resorting to terrors. Their message is to lower the fuel oil price or else the terror acts will continue," the observer added.

Is this a reasonable view to take ? (obviously its not a angle that we are likely to see in Oceania's press). While I tend to regard the threat of terrorism as greatly over-exagerated I don't dismiss the existance of terrorists entirely either - but who knows what is in the minds of these people. Whichever interpretation of the underlying reasons is true I think its fair to say that its a futile strategy - bombing tourist hangouts won't lower fuel prices and nor will it alter western policy.

South American leaders are looking at creating a continental "energy ring" (not to mention a continental central bank).

South American presidents committed themselves Friday to establishing a continental free trade zone. The eight president signed a document that also encouraged plans to set up an "energy ring" that would supply natural gas from Bolivia and Peru to Brazil, Chile, Argentina and Uruguay.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez used the one-day gathering to announce plans to move his country's foreign reserves out of U.S. banks, and he proposed the creation of a South American central bank that would hold the foreign reserves of the 12-nation continent.

Britain is looking at selling off its nuclear power industry (which reminds me of the TV series "Edge of Darkness").

Operations at Sellafield and other major nuclear plants such as Sizewell and Dungeness are to be sold off to the private sector for more than £10bn under plans drawn up yesterday by the board of British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL).

American companies such as Halliburton and Fluor are seen as likely contenders in any race to take over British Nuclear Group, which is the main operating arm of the government-owned BNFL, handling nuclear generation, reprocessing and clean-up businesses. The transfer of key operations out of state hands at a time when Britain is facing an energy shortfall will generate surprise, particularly with North Sea oil and gas running down and the government edging towards a decision to proceed with a new generation of nuclear reactors. But a sell-off is likely to be approved by the government when Gordon Brown is struggling to fund his spending commitments.

Grist has a post up on the need for people to speak up to convince policy makers that real efforts to mitigate global warming are needed urgently.

"Given the urgency and magnitude of the escalating pace of climate change, the only hope lies in a rapid and unprecedented mobilization of humanity around this issue ... that some spark might ignite a massive uprising of popular will around a unifying movement for social survival and the promise it holds for a more prosperous, more equitable, and more peaceful world." -- Ross Gelbspan, Boiling Point

Last weekend, hundreds of thousands of people marched in Washington, D.C., and around the country to protest the war in Iraq. On Saturday in D.C., widespread feelings of outrage and determination were palpable. Over the following two days, activists lobbied on Capitol Hill and engaged in nonviolent civil disobedience at the White House. It was a powerful combination of events. It was also a powerful example of exactly what we need to fight global warming: a massive, multipronged social and political movement.

Such a movement is growing as you read this, and will hit the streets in December -- not a moment too soon. There is no cause, no issue, no crisis more significant and more immediate than global warming. We could well see, within our lifetimes, a vast disruption of human society -- above and beyond the widespread injustice and poverty that already exist -- via floods and storms, rising sea levels, large-scale refugee movements, droughts, deforestation, and a major decline in food production. This possibility was brought home to many people in the U.S. by the devastating effects of the recent hurricanes.

While clean energy, conservation, and efficiency provide a clear solution to our global problem, little action has been taken in the U.S. beyond the individual, local, and occasionally state levels. The hard truth of the matter is this: the battle to stabilize our climate will not be won solely on the basis of rational arguments, individual lifestyle changes, and relatively modest clean-energy efforts. Given the alarming increase in the pace of global warming and the resistance to change by big coal and big oil, we need a movement the likes of which this country and world have never seen.

Thom Hartmann hasn't done anything on peak oil for a while but he does have an interesting piece up on electoral fraud. A few other interesting things I came across - Steve at Deconsumption is continuing his chronicle of the Bush kleptocracy, the always fringey Online Journal has an alarmist post called "Facing Up to the Energy Crisis" and Energy Bulletin has a great little article viewing our peak oil world through the prism of "Lord of the Rings" from Alex Macsporan in Brisbane, who advises us to choose the way of Sam, not Saruman.

Billmon has a post up on the possibly imminent premiere of the "Film Festival Of The Damned". For some reason this article on how countries slide into fascism seems appropriate to link to at this point. Billmon also has a look at the upcoming vote on the proposed constitution in Iraq. You really have to wonder how history is going to judge us over this first installment of the peak oil wars.

Who would have guessed that two-and-a-half years into this war, U.S. troops would be playing the role of street muscle for a bunch of Iranian-backed fundamentalist parties trying to rig an election. Even Joseph Heller couldn't top that.

Of course, the US isn't alone sliding down the slope - Britain is slowly following along too, as this little episode of a German Jew getting ejected from a Labour Party conference shows (presumably they weren't picking on him because he was Jewish, simply because he showed signs of dissent), and judging by this little piece in the sports section of the weekend's newspaper we aren't going too well either (the author of the column is an ex-Wallaby forward - our national rugby team - and isn't exactly your stereotypical pinko commie - but he too, demonstrated signs of dissent, so some closet freeper just had to express his outrage that someone refuses to spend their days frothing with hate and fear).

English ray of hope

Weird, how things work. We have all heard this week how David Hicks, the Australian being held in Kafkaesque isolation at Guantanamo Bay, saw a ray of light in the otherwise impenetrable blackness this week, when his lawyer realised that instead of continuing to rot there or elsewhere as an Australian, it might be possible to secure him British citizenship, in which case he would be able to call upon the services of a government that actually gave a stuff about him.

It all came about because Hicks's US military defence lawyer - Major Michael Mori, an old-fashioned bloke who continues to cling to the absurdly old-fashioned notion that a man is innocent until proven guilty in a proper court of law - takes an interest in cricket. See, just after England won the Ashes, Mori was having a lighter chat with Hicks and asked him how he felt about Australia's defeat.

"He told me he'd never felt very partisan about the Ashes," Mori told London's Observer newspaper, "and wouldn't much mind if England took the series - because his mum had never claimed Aussie nationality and still carried a UK passport. My jaw hit the floor. I asked him, 'Do you realise that may mean you're legally a Brit?'. We both knew that the implications of that could be stunning [as] Australia is the only EU or Commonwealth government not to have protested about Guantanamo."

and a no-hoper

Let me save you the trouble …

Dear TFF,

You stinking leftie, Commie, Muslim-loving terrorist-appeasing suck-hole excuse for a pathetic "journalist". I will thank you to keep your pathetic leftie views in the item about David Hicks (above) out of our sports pages, and I have got a good mind to contact your editor.

Yours,

Outraged. Telopea.

To conclude this weekend's rant I'd like to point out one thing - everything discussed above is occurring as a result of our addiction to hydrocarbons. As individuals we are largely dependent on the flow of oil to maintain our current lifestyles, and our large corporations are as, or more, dependent than we are to maintain their current earnings.

Instead of moving to cut our dependence on this source of energy, we find ourselves ever more reliant on a dwindling resource, and ever more intent on controlling our access to the major remaining supplies of it in the middle east. The solution to peak oil is the same as the solution to global warming is the same as the solution to the problem of islamic terrorism - move away from dependence on fossil fuels in general and oil in particular.

Geology will make us do it anyway, so why not start now and save a lot of bloodshed and environmental damage in the process (and stuff the perceived economics of it - we're rich enough to afford it and the new industries we'll create will probably make us richer in any case rather than poorer as the fossil fuel lobby would like us to believe).