TreeHugger has a post on the environmental costs of mining tar sands in Canada (which I've droned on about at length previously). They don't mention future possibilities like putting a nuclear plant in the region to keep the tar flowing once natural gas supplies start disappearing.

Most of you are already aware of the damage caused by the burning and the extraction of oil (like the apprehended damage caused by extraction in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, for example). But what about the famous Canadian tar sands? After only two years of digging for bitumen near Fort McMurray in Alberta, Shell has already dug up a pit that is as much as three miles wide and 200 feet deep. 400-ton trucks, said to be the largest in the world, are used to move around all that dirt, and it takes a lot of it since on average 2 tons of tar sand are required to make 1 barrel of oil.

The oil operation has been a boon for Fort McMurray and its people. But some observers are worried about the facility's impact on the environment.

After processing the sand to extract its oily component, the gigantic holes dug in the earth are refilled and planted with trees. But the refilled mine pits rarely match the original terrain, and replanting programs so far have resulted in forests that resemble Christmas tree farms.

So much for repairing the damage done.

But companies are now moving away from these huge pits; a new technique allows them to inject steam directly into the soil to melt the tar enough so that it can be pumped back to the surface.

Whatever the process used, it takes a great deal of energy to recover bitumen and turn it into oil. An enormous amount of greenhouse gases are released in the process.

In fact, making oil from tar sands produces two or three times more greenhouse gases than producing conventional oil.

How do they produce so much energy? With natural gas, of course. It is one of the main reasons why Canada has so much trouble meeting its obligations under the Kyoto treaty.

Because the cost of natural gas has quadrupled in recent times and with the coming of peak natural gas, the Canadian tar sands should become more and more expensive as time goes on (most companies there have already run way over their predicted costs), both in monetary and environmental costs.

WorldChanging has a post on Geothermal heat pumps - the cheapest (and least energy intensive) way of cooling or heating homes.

It's a little odd to think about, but you're probably standing on one of the best possible resources for home heating and cooling.

Although temperatures in the atmosphere can vary considerably over the course of a year (or even a day), the temperature underground remains fairly constant. At about six feet under, the soil measures from 45 degrees to 75 degrees fahrenheit, depending upon latitude. And this consistency, it turns out, can be a resource for keeping one's home warm in the winter and cool in the summer.

Geothermal heat pumps move heat from one place to another via the circulation of a refrigerant fluid. They have a number of advantages over traditional heating and cooling systems, including low noise and essentially no maintenance. Most importantly, they use significantly less energy than traditional gas, electric or oil-based heating & cooling systems.

Tom Wipple's latest peak oil article in the Falls Church News Press takes a look at what is happening with the Gulf stream.

A couple of months back I discussed the North Atlantic Oscillation and how the British Meteorological Office was very concerned a flattening of the Atlantic's high and low pressure areas was going to make for an exceptionally cold winter in Northern Europe. This phenomenon also allows frigid Canadian air to make its way into the northeastern US resulting in higher prices for heating oil, diesel, gasoline, natural gas and nearly everything else. Winter is now two weeks away, and the British Meteorologists are still holding to their forecast of an unusually cold winter.

Last week, however, a new and more disturbing report was published by the Southampton Oceanography Centre in the UK concerning the stability of the Gulf Stream — a major heat source keeping Northern Europe from becoming Northern Siberia . It seems that since the last time they took measurements 12 years ago, the flow of fresh water from the melting of the north polar ice cap has interfered significantly with the Gulf Stream . Some 30 percent of the Stream’s warm water is no longer making it to the vicinity of Northern Europe , but is being diverted back towards the equator.

A drop of 30 percent in the flow should have been enough to cause an as-yet-to-happen drop in the average North European temperature. Some suggest the increasing world wide average temperature— global warming— is enough to offset the loss of heat from the Gulf Stream as far as Europe is concerned.

All this may only be an interesting (or perhaps not) academic debate, as not much seems to have happened to Northern Europe , as yet. However, what happens to the 30 percent of the warm water no longer making it to the North Atlantic ? I would like to thank Stuart Staniford of the web site The Oil Drum for explaining in detail that vast quantities of warm water are now flowing southward towards those regions of the Atlantic, the Caribbean, and the Gulf of Mexico where the hurricanes spawn.

Last week, the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) held a press conference on the 2005 Hurricane season. As we all suspected, the season shattered nearly every record ever kept about hurricanes. In short, it was two hurricane seasons rolled into one.

Moreover, NOAA says there is no relief in sight. The forecasters believe we are at the beginning of a 20-30 year era of increased hurricane activity. Now, if we learned anything from listening to those meteorologists describe the approach of all those hurricanes this year, it’s that warm water makes hurricanes and that very warm water makes very strong hurricanes.

In the last 15 months, three major hurricanes have slammed into our oil production facilities in the Gulf causing extensive damage. Six weeks after the last hurricane, about one third of Gulf oil production is still out of service. This new report that massive amounts of warm water are now flowing into the southward not only suggests, but screams, there are major troubles ahead.

TomPaine notes that there are some moves in the US to start taking an active (instead of blocking) role in dealing with global warming as the follow up to the Kyoto treaty is negotiated - a sign that Exxon's "climate change" denial camp is slowly falling apart.

The editors at The Economist got religion this week. The release of a report in the journal Nature , by Harry Bryden of the National Oceanography Centre in Southhampton, Britain, provided the first compelling evidence that global warming threatens more significant near-term effects—the rapid cooling of the British Isles and Northern Europe—than previously thought credible. In short, global warming is melting Arctic ice at such a rate that it has reduced the Atlantic currents that warm Europe—by 30 percent.

And that figure reminds us of the Pentagon-sponsored study looking into just this scenario, called Abrupt Climate Change . The scenario makes it clear that if the Atlantic heat conveyor shuts down, Northern Europe goes into a deep freeze, requiring a lot more imported energy to stay warm and dramatically disrupting local food supplies. Now that climate change is getting personal, The Economist appears ready to accept the science. All climate politics is local, it seems.

The Nature report and The Economist's response could not have been better timed. In Montreal, the world is gathering to discuss, among other climate change issues, the future of the Kyoto Protocol after it expires in 2012. Significantly, the Bush administration chose to avoid the talks, having thrown its weight behind its own creation, a voluntary emission-reduction program that combines the U.S., China and Australia, among others.

We don't yet know what the Atlantic revelations will do to the debate. Politicians have a really hard time dealing with the potential collapse of a non-linear system—whether it is the housing bubble or the ecosystem. But two statements by Democratic senators made it clear this week that U.S. obstructionism will not last too much longer.

Writing in the Financial Times today, Sen. Joe Biden stood up to say that he accepts the climate science, that we have to act, and that there exists a great opportunity that doing right by climate change will do well for the American economy. Therefore, Biden said America has to lead: "Without U.S. leadership and participation, there is no way to stabilise global greenhouse gases before irreparable harm is done." Biden and his GOP colleague Richard Lugar have submitted a bill to force the White House to act.

Sen. Jeff Bingamon of New Mexico delivered a similar message to the delegates in Montreal in person. According to an account in Environment and Energy Daily , Bingamon told the world's representatives to continue to push forward with post-Kyoto negotiations. Bingamon believes that the Senate is nearing a bipartisan compromise on how to implement climate change language passed this past summer and that soon we will be back at the table. "We should step up and have a significant role in whatever agreements are being designed for the period following the Kyoto Protocol," Bingamon said.

What's really happening is the undermining of the climate deniers' position. Led by ExxonMobil , which funded millions of dollars of spurious science and congressional lobbying, climate deniers are becoming more and more marginalized, in part because the American 80 percent of the American public wants something done on global warming, and in part because other elites are recognizing the threat, like The Economist this week.

Jeff Vail has another oil related post up, this one noting that the M3 money supply indicator (which is probably the best guide to the effects of the Iranian oil bourse opening on the strength of the petro-dollar) is being discontinued (something which got quite a lot of attention in bearish parts of the economic analysis world a few months back) next March (the same time the bourse is due to open). He also notes that Ariel Sharon has ordered Israel's military to be ready to strike Iran's nuclear facilities by March as well. It will be interesting to see how much anti-Iranian noise we see getting generated in coming months. I for one won't be keeping much money in the markets (oil and gold price leveraged stuff excepted of course) once February arrives if the war drums are beating.

I might note that religious fundamentalists are right at the top of my list of things I don't like, and most press reports would tend to place Iran's new President firmly in that category, with all sorts of absolutely outrageously anti-semitic quotes being attributed to him that no one in their right mind would defend (though the Heritage Foundation might try perhaps, if that link is to be believed).

However, given my cynicism about manipulation of the media and the convenient nature of this particular leader fitting so neatly our stereotype of evil islamic fundamentalists, I found this note over at Moon of Alabama quite troubling - is it possible we're just being fed another nightmare vision which isn't entirely true ?

George Monbiot took a mirror along to the Climate March last weekend and identified the problem - us - in "The Struggle Against Ourselves".

I want to take a moment to remind you of where we have come from.

For the first three million years of human history, we lived according to circumstance. Our lives were ruled by the happenstances of ecology. We existed, as all animals do, in fear of hunger, predation, weather and disease.

For the following few thousand years, after we had grasped the rudiments of agriculture and crop storage, we enjoyed greater food security, and soon destroyed most of our non-human predators. But our lives were ruled by the sword, the axe and the spear. The primary struggle was for land. We needed it not just to grow our crops but also to provide our sources of energy – grazing for our horses and bullocks, wood for our fires.

Then we discovered fossil fuels, and everything changed. No longer were we constrained by the need to live on ambient energy; we could support ourselves by means of the sunlight stored over the preceding 350 million years. The new sources of energy permitted the economy to grow – to grow sufficiently to absorb some of the people expelled by the previous era’s land disputes. Fossil fuels allowed both industry and cities to expand, which permitted the workers to organise and to force the despots to loosen their grip on power.

Fossil fuels helped us fight wars of a horror never contemplated before, but they also reduced the need for war. For the first time in human history, indeed for the first time in biological history, there was a surplus of available energy. We could keep body and soul together without having to fight someone else for the energy we needed. Agricultural productivity rose 10 or 20 fold. Economic productivity rose 100 fold. Most of us could live as no one had ever lived before.

And everything you see around you results from that. We have been able to assemble here from all corners of the country because of fossil fuels. We have not been charged and cut down by the yeomanry – or not yet at any rate – because of fossil fuels. Our freedoms, our comforts, our prosperity are all the result of fossil fuels.

Ours are the most fortunate generations that have ever lived. Ours are the most fortunate generations that ever will. We inhabit the brief historical interlude between ecological constraint and ecological catastrophe.

I don’t have to remind you of the two forces which are converging on our lives. We are faced with an impending shortage of the source of energy which is hardest to replace – liquid fossil fuels. And we are faced with the environmental consequences of the fossil fuel burning which has permitted us to be standing here now. The structure, the complexity, the diversity of our lives, everything we know, everything that we have taken for granted, that looked solid and non-negotiable, suddenly looks contingent. All this is a great tottering pile balanced on a ball, a ball that is about to start rolling downhill.

I hear people talking about the carbon cuts they would like to see. I am not interested in what people would like to see. I am interesed in what the science says. And the science is clear. We need not a 20% cut by 2020; not a 60% cut by 2050, but a 90% cut by 2030. Only then do we stand a good chance of keeping carbon concentrations in the atmosphere below 430 parts per million, which means that only then do we stand a good chance of preventing some of the threatened positive feedbacks. If we let it get beyond that point there is nothing we can do. The biosphere takes over as the primary source of carbon. It is out of our hands.

WorldChanging had an interesting post last week called "Europe 2005: The Ecological Footprint" which noted that we are well into overshoot, depleting renewable resources 23% faster than they are being regenerated.

The European Environment Agency, working with the World Wildlife Foundation and the Global Footprint Network, has produced a 2005 Edition of the National Ecological Footprint and Biocapacity Accounts showing that, as of 2002, "humanity's demand on the biosphere, its global Ecological Footprint, was 13.7 billion global hectares, or 2.2 global hectares per person."

Thus in 2002, humanity's Ecological Footprint exceeded global biocapacity by 0.4 global hectares per person, or 23 percent. This finding indicates that the human economy is in ecological overshoot: the planet's ecological stocks are being depleted faster than nature can regenerate them. This means that we are eroding the future supply of ecological resources and operating at the risk of environmental collapse.

WorldChanging also had an interesting post on "Things That Should Exist" - in this case "Energy Banks".

One of the obstacles facing energy-saving retrofits or construction of manufacturing systems and buildings is that up-front costs are often high, even when money is saved in the long run. But if you install a solar array that has a five-year payback time, it has a 20% annual return on investment; this far higher than the return of most stocks, and it is risk-free, since electricity prices are not going to go down--it can only get better than 20%. The same is even more true for gas-saving investments, where price volatility can be high.

Clearly there are good investments to be made here. Someone create an "Energy Bank" to make good money while helping people get over their up-front cost paranoia or genuine lack of capital. It would be slightly different from a normal bank, with less risk for the borrower and more profit for the lender. An energy bank would give people the money for their energy-efficient / on-site generation systems, and in return would get paid not a flat rate but a chunk of the energy-cost savings. The exact terms could be anything--maybe the bank gets paid 80% of the customer's resulting energy cost savings for several years until the "loan" is paid off at a profitable rate, maybe the bank gets 40% of the customer's energy cost savings in perpetuity, whatever the market will bear. Energy savings would be easy to measure for retrofits (just compare to historical usage and current energy prices), and for new construction they could be compared to national averages or other benchmarks.

The customer would be at less risk because they would only pay if they got a financial benefit from the installation, and would always get more benefit than they had to pay out. The bank would make more money than a normal loan because they could have very long-term income and because many efficiency measures are known to give great returns on investment at low risk.

Finally - one more piece from TreeHugger - this one on "The Loon" - a Solar-Powered pontoon boat.

Six-day boating cruise along Ontario's scenic Trent-Severn Waterway: "Cost of fuel for the 100-mile cruise? Zero. Amount of air and water pollution? Zero. Number of stares from other boaters? Countless." Monte Gisborne is a mechanical engineer who built The Loon, a solar-powered pontoon boat. "A guy with a 45-foot powerboat said his fuel costs were $5 a mile. I can do 10 miles a day for free with the sun [and 30 to 40 miles with batteries]," Gisborne said.

The Loon is 20 feet long and is topped by a custom 738 watt solar panel. Since most recreational boating is done when the weather is nice, solar power is particularly well adapted to the task.

Grist has an excellent review of Syriana which opened in the US recently, although it hasn't made its way down here yet (Super G at the Oil Drum has also posted his thoughts on the movie, as have Mobjectivist and Digby).

The movie is neither a melodrama nor a didactic sermon about the evils of Big Oil, but an almost obsessive work of observation. It contains a wealth of detail, reflecting Gaghan's meticulous research (drawing heavily on See No Evil, the tell-all book by ex-CIA agent Robert Baer). Milieus most Westerners know only from media caricature -- the debauched underground nightclubs of Tehran, the madrassas of Pakistan, the inner warrens of Beirut, the palaces of Middle Eastern emirs -- are depicted here with an unflashy documentary realism.

More than anything, Gaghan seems eager simply to show us: here it is. All that stuff you've heard so much about, the subject of so much charged rhetoric and political grandstanding: here are those people and places. Take a look.

There isn't a false note struck along the way, but special notice must be given to George Clooney, whose jaunty charisma is utterly submerged under a scruffy beard, paunchy gut, and morose mien. Clooney's CIA agent is slowly becoming aware that he's a relic of a former age, soon to be discarded, and the actor carries the weight with quiet, understated accuracy. After Good Night, And Good Luck and Syriana, Clooney has shaken his playboy image -- or at least enriched it -- by becoming a champion of serious, socially conscious cinema.

Over a Barrel

Grist readers will no doubt be curious about the environmental lessons of the movie. They may be disappointed to hear that there aren't any, at least in the traditional sense. There is no mention, even in passing, of global warming or air pollution.

I don't know if this is deliberate, but regardless, it serves as an indirect illustration of what I took to be Syriana's central message, which might be summarized thusly:

There is only the fight for resources.

All else is ephemera: The rule of law in the U.S. Transparent democratic government. International treaties. Reform in the Middle East. Even our most cherished ideals, our most personal relationships. These are bourgeois preoccupations that crumble like dust when they come between the powerful nations of the world and the resources that fuel them. Oil is running out, and the only law left is the law of the jungle.

...

There is an odd and rather glaring omission. Gaghan follows a long, grim chain of greed, corruption, and deceit, but he doesn't trace it to its terminus: the folks using the oil. Us. The viewers of his movie. Conspicuous U.S. consumption serves as his unquestioned backdrop -- and his silence about us ultimately reveals his fatalism about the fortunes of democracy.

Is there really so little spark left in the American experiment that public acquiescence to escalating global resource struggles is a fait accompli? There's no chance we could self-organize to use less, and twist the arms of our elected representatives until they help us? Are we so apathetic, so powerless?

I'm not ready to give up that hope. Not yet.

Digby's post is worth reading as it stresses one important aspect of the movie - it may make more people aware of what Iraq is really about. He also asks a question which is one I'm fond of posing (though i don't know the answer) - what would happen if the reality of the situation was expressed clearly to everyone instead of being hidden under endless layers of nonsense ?

The powers that be in the US (and the United Kingdom of British Petroleum) believe they must control this region's valuable resource. Indeed, some of the big thinkers like Zbigniew Brzezinski (in "The Grand Chessboard") and the PNAC nuts believe that the US must control "Eurasia" or risk being shut out of the future. There is nothing new under the sun and the pursuit of precious necessary resources that belong to others has been going on forever.

Oil is certainly not the only reason we are in this mess. It is, perhaps, the fundamental reason we are in this mess. And it's the reason that this mess isn't going to be solved by either bringing the boys home or creating a "democracy" in the middle east. We may leave Iraq as an occupying force due to a lack of domestic support, or we might be chased from the region by violent events. But if we have any illusions that the United States is not going to be deeply involved in the middle east for the forseeable future, we need to wake up. Sadly, whether we know it or not, by our blind and profligate actions the American people lend credence to the insane ramblings of that miniskirted harpy, Ann Coulter:

"Why not go to war just for oil? We need oil."

Why not, indeed? I wonder what would happen if the question was posed just that starkly? At this point, the Great Game players, the oil companies and the politicians who dance to their tune are unwilling to put it that way. They work to keep citizens in the dark about what is at stake, encouraging them to guzzle cheap gasoline at a fantastic pace while droning out messianic statements about good and evil and spreading freedom.

Syriana's "confusing" plot speaks to that. It's conveys the sense of drugged vagueness we all feel when we try to unravel the motivations behind these actions. There are a thousand different reasons why we could be doing what we are doing, but nobody knows for sure what is the real one.

There is only one character in the film who holds all the disparate threads in his hands --- the James Baker (Christopher Plummer) character who walks freely among the politicians, the oil companies, the ruling sheiks, the spooks and the regional puppets. He is the Grand Master of the Great Game. He ensures that none of the players know what the others are doing, each kept in the dark, flailing about with everything from torture to idealism to pragmatic everyday power politics without ever knowing that they are being manipulated by greater forces.

I suppose that we could prosaically assume that he represents a worldly reality like The Carlyle Group (or in an earlier time, The Trilateral Commission.) But I think he simply symbolises Power and Arrogance. He is fundamentally anti-democratic, amoral and relentless in his quest for more of what he is made of. He is America's id, perfectly represented as an elderly Texan with his steely talons dug deeply into every consequential player in the New Great Game.

The only character who sees through the subterfuge is the ex-CIA agent, abandoned by his country, whose life of dirty deeds on behalf of The Company prepares him alone to understand his role and dig his way out. That is the most out-of-sync Hollywood moment in an otherwise completely cynical film. (But then, it's George Clooney who can't help but be seen as a hero.) In reality, there can be no such neat denouement. The claws would turn deadly if he were to do what he does.

I've read a number of reviews in which the writer finds this movie a simple-minded portrayal of evil corporate masters holding the puppet strings of great nations and vast empires. It's the same complaint about the slogan "No blood for oil", as if those who see our presence in the mideast in such terms are silly dupes and fools. But I would submit that it is the jaded sophisticates who are missing the point. "Syriana", for all its "confusion" really does get to the heart of the matter and forces you to deal with the one simple fact that nobody wants to accept. This planet really is running out of oil --- and we are entering an era in which our nation is going to be asserting our power to get it.

Rather than finding "Syriana's" plot confounding, by the end I thought its multiple plotlines led to a bracing clarity: Oil. I don't know that it's all that important to understand anything else and if America sees this movie and comes away with that understanding then I think it succeeds as both a film and a political statement.

George Clooney also has an interview in this weekend's Sydney Morning Herald, where he talks about Syriana and his other new movie "Good Night and Good Luck" which opens here next weekend (though I was lucky enough to score a preview ticket from Crikey so I'm off to watch it tomorrow).

The triumph of the Clooney star persona is clearest in the press discussion of his films, which are invariably described as mainstream. The first film he directed was Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, a challenging, inconclusive story of a TV game-show host who may or may not have been a spy. And there is nothing mainstream about Good Night, and Good Luck, a black-and-white film that meticulously describes a small political episode that took place more than 50 years ago.

Clooney is in it, but almost unrecognisable behind glasses and acquired jowls, as television producer Fred Friendly. Murrow is played (with uncanny verisimilitude) by David Strathairn, an art-house actor known chiefly for his work with maverick director John Sayles.

No one plays McCarthy; his presence is suggested through the clever use of historical footage. "As George has said, if you had to hire an actor today to play Joseph R. McCarthy, no one would ever believe in him, because he would be too vaudevillian, too monstrous," Strathairn says. Like Murrow, who decided the best way to deal with McCarthy's politics of hate was to get him on air so people could hear what he was really like, Clooney wanted him to be a victim of his own words. That is certainly not the sort of thing you find in a mainstream film. Hollywood would have them going head to head.

Good Night, and Good Luck - the words were Murrow's signature sign-off - has won prizes at the Venice and New York film festivals, which is not surprising, but even the chatroom crowd, mostly teenagers with a weakness for action, are transfixed by it.

The US reviews have been rapturous. "The most compelling American movie of the year so far," Newsweek said. The Village Voice saw it not only as a wake-up call to the media, but to a memory of civilised values.

It depicts, wrote Michael Atkinson, "a more sophisticated yesteryear [that may be] something of an eye-opener for culturati born since the Nixon administration, for whom an anchorman who speaks in multiple clauses, who quotes from Shakespeare and whose basic righteousness dictated his actions is as familiar as a politician with respect for his constituents".

Next up is Syriana. "Wait until you see it," Clooney says. "This film is like a little ice-cream and Syriana is the steak." Is it political? "Oh, my God!" says Clooney, grinning mischievously.

The production company, Section Eight, he formed with Steven Soderbergh is behind Syriana, the first film by Traffic screenwriter Stephen Gaghan, which is a thriller about the intrigues in the oil industry. Clooney plays a character based on CIA agent Robert Baer, who wrote the book on which the film is based.

Controversially, the script parallels its account of intrigue at the big-money end of oil with a sympathetic view of a burgeoning terrorist in Pakistan. It has been screening in the US for the past fortnight and seems to be attracting just as much enthusiasm as Good Night, and Good Luck. "It shakes us up and prompts us to question world policies," said a USA Today critic. "We need more movies like this." No wonder Clooney insists that the political tide is slowly turning in the US.

Moving away from a dramatised account of the oil wars to a real one, Jeff Vail has an interesting post on his fear of fusion (which probably isn't a particularly common malady) which includes an interesting snippet of his experiences seizing Iraqi oil infrastructure during the invasion.

I will admit that I am more than a little eager to see the peak of oil come and go. Because when it does, if nothing else, it will prevent the development of a fusion, a modern "Pharo Maker" as i've written about before in "Energy, Society & Hierarchy."

Coincidentally, take a look at the cover graphic on Amidon's JFQ article. Despite what the caption says, the cover graphic is one of the offshore Gas & Oil terminals in the al-Faw complex. It was one of the least-publicized operations of the Iraq War, but the very first land operation was a seizure of two of these platforms, as well as three other key oil infrastructure installations in al-Faw by a Seal Team 3 and the Royal Marines' 40th Commando Brigade. My role in it was relatively small: I planned the electronic warfare component, consisting of jamming support from EC-130H Compass Call and E/A-6B Prowlers to ensure that the SEAL assault on the offshore platforms would not tip off the Iraqi land forces in Al Faw of the coming invasion, even though they hit the platforms about 2o minutes before the Royal Marines hit the beach.

What did strike me as interesting about the operation was how aggressively it was marketed as an effort to prevent an environmental disaster, because by capturing the oil infrastructure before the Iraqis could sabotage it would, of course, avert a major oil spill in the Gulf. So, naturally, given the Bush administration's strong environmental credentials, it was worth the lives of the dozens of US/UK forces killed in the "unexpectedly fierce" resistance in Um Qasr (because we used up our one time shot at a surprise operation in al-Faw) in order to prevent an oil spill. Sure thing boss, whatever you say...

I'll close with a snippet from Crikey which I would just dismiss as idle speculation except that it follows on from a similar (but slightly more generalised) prediction made by the Kokoda Foundation in recent months - about the possibility of Australian involvement in a land war in China.

Hugo Kelly writes:

Today's announcement that Australian troops will stay in Iraq to protect the Japanese contingent will soak up the headlines. But some more significant defence strategy happened last week when Defence Minister Hill let it be known the government would be expanding the army by 2500 to form "armoured groups." He set a target date, for what is essentially a major re-armament, of 2012.

The significance here is that it has been unofficially known for some time that the USA expects, in the event of a war with China, that Australia will contribute an armoured division to the invasion of mainland China.

As Australia did not have anything approaching an armoured division, this was not considered an overly likely scenario.

But if Defence does achieve this build up, and scrape together everything they plan to have (and this is Defence, so we won't be holding our breath) by 2012, then it might just pass muster as at least a mechanised division.

So last week Robert Hill was effectively setting a 2012 re-armament date for a war with China. Wars tend to arrive a few years before the target re-armament dates, so our Defence source advises us to get out of the Shanghai real-estate market by around 2009.

I really hope these predictions aren't accurate - how on earth does anyone plan fighting a land war against a nuclear power ?

The obvious interpretation if you look at it with peak oil lenses on is that the US may be anticipating some Chinese resistance to having their oil flow throttled back in the event global production does start declining (in some ways that would be an echo of the start of the Pacific part of World War II, when Japan had its oil flow cut off).

No doubt most people would consider this reasoning tinfoil but I can't think of a more likely explanation off hand (suggestions are welcome), as I doubt the Chinese would deliberately provoke a war by invading Taiwan and to a certain extent I'm not sure it would be worth fighting over if they did (though the bastards should Free Tibet, as I've grumpily noted before, as it was never part of China).

On a final note, I'll randomly add that the conspiracy theory world has a special place in its heart for the year 2012, as there are all sorts of predictions that 2012 is the year the world ends. This belief seems to originate with the Mayans, whose calendar didn't extend beyond 2012 for that reason (the last day is December 21, for those of a millenialist disposition who like to fixate on exact dates).

Technology Review has an interesting little article on a hydrogen fuel cell company that set out to make that holy grail of the "smart grid" future - an affordable energy storage device that can fit into a house or a car. They failed, but they are making slowly making progress by taking a different tack.

Of course, that still leaves the "how to cheaply and sustainably create hydrogen" problem, but there are a few semi-promising methods around.

BHP Billiton did an interesting presentation on the effects of the hurricanes on their Gulf of Mexico projects - Typhoon may be abandoned and Atalantis and Mad Dog are delayed. Global warming one, BHP nill.

Anglo-Australian resources group BHP Billiton has warned that fallout from the ferocious hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico earlier this year could delay the startup of its US$1.1 billion Atlantis oil and gas development, the Australian Financial Review reported Monday.

The newspaper said Phil Aiken, head of the group's petroleum division, told sell-side analysts at a briefing Friday that hurricanes Rita and Katrina resulted in equipment and personnel delays for the project, which had been scheduled to start in the third quarter of 2006. He told investors he remains confident that startup will occur on schedule, but many in the market expect the delays will put the project's startup date back by up to six months, prompting a series of downgrades to earnings and production estimates.

The Australian Financial Review also said Aiken indicated the potential for a write-off of the Typhoon oil platform, operated by Chevron, which was severely damaged in the storms.

He also said the ramp-up of the group's Mad Dog project has been delayed by around three months due to the failure of one of the wells, which has to be redrilled, while approval for its Shenzi project has slipped to the first quarter of 2006 as the company reassesses the tension-leg platform technology that was used in the Typhoon platform.

Hurricane season should be over, though records still keep getting broken - WorldChanging has a little note on the mysterious Hurricane Epsilon.
In other BHP news, they have announced a big increase in their Bass Strait gas reserves.

Gas reserves at the Bass Strait operations of BHP Billiton and Esso Australia Resources have been boosted by 700 billion cubic feet, further extending the life of the long-running project. The new find adds to the estimated six trillion cubic feet of gas remaining at the Gippsland Basin joint venture.

The extra gas can be extracted and transferred by the joint venture's existing infrastructure in Bass Strait, which includes 21 offshore platforms. The 50/50 joint venture between the world's biggest miner and the petroleum giant has dominated Bass Strait oil and gas for 40 years. Since the pair began operations in 1966 they have extracted about five trillion cubic feet of gas.

I once read a Credit Suisse First Boston report on global warming that kicked off with the analyst wondering where he would go skiing when Europe's glaciers had disappeared (he was obviously assuming that the Gulf stream wouldn't fail, in which case lack of snow wouldn't be the problem). WorldChanging has a short post up on "A World Without Snow".

One of the many troubling aspects of global warming is the possibility of feedback effects, where changes resulting from a warming atmosphere serve to further exacerbate the warming. An example of how this could work is the interaction between warming and snow cover. According to Stephan Vavrus at the Unversity of Wisconsin-Madison's Center for Climate Research, if global warming manages to melt off the current snow cover in the far north -- a distinct possibility -- the result would be a further increase in temperature of close to another degree (which would, in turn, further accelerate other effects of temperature increases).

The snow itself does more than reflect the sun's heat; it also serves as insulation for the ground, so that snow-covered soil is warmer than it would be otherwise. As a result, regions now covered in snow would instead see an expansion of permafrost, with resulting damage to structures and roadways in places like Alaska. Of course, as temperatures continue to climb, even that permafrost won't be so permanent...

George Monbiot has never been too optimistic about biofuels and his latest column is fairly damning on the whole idea.

I've tended to flip-flop a bit on the whole biofuel issue. While I've got little enthusiasm for or faith in a traditional methods of producing biodiesel or ethanol, I still tend to think that there is some useful biofuel production that can be done - using waste biomass (as in some of the cellulosic ethanol and biodiesel production processes I've linked to in the last 6 months) or more adventurous techniques like biodiesel from algae (take 2) (take 3).

Biofuels won't replace oil but they could help to miigate the effects of depletion. The real problem raised by Monbiot is that rich car drivers may crowd out poor hungry people in the competition for biofuel inputs if the output of vast tracts of cropland is used exclusively for biofuel production - and I'm not so sure that problem can be resolved.

Over the past two years I have made an uncomfortable discovery. Like most environmentalists, I have been as blind to the constraints affecting our energy supply as my opponents have been to climate change. I now realise that I have entertained a belief in magic.

In 2003, the biologist Jeffrey Dukes calculated that the fossil fuels we burn in one year were made from organic matter “containing 44×10 to the 18 grams of carbon, which is more than 400 times the net primary productivity of the planet’s current biota.” In plain English, this means that every year we use four centuries’ worth of plants and animals.

The idea that we can simply replace this fossil legacy – and the extraordinary power densities it gives us – with ambient energy is the stuff of science fiction. There is simply no substitute for cutting back. But substitutes are being sought everywhere. They are being promoted today at the climate talks in Montreal, by states – such as ours – which seek to avoid the hard decisions climate change demands. And at least one of them is worse than the fossil fuel burning it replaces.

The last time I drew attention to the hazards of making diesel fuel from vegetable oils, I received as much abuse as I have ever been sent by the supporters of the Iraq war. The biodiesel missionaries, I discovered, are as vociferous in their denial as the executives of Exxon. I am now prepared to admit that my previous column was wrong. But they’re not going to like it. I was wrong because I underestimated the fuel’s destructive impact.

Before I go any further, I should make it clear that turning used chip fat into motor fuel is a good thing. The people slithering around all day in vats of filth are perfoming a service to society. But there is enough waste cooking oil in the UK to meet one 380th of our demand for road transport fuel. Beyond that, the trouble begins.

When I wrote about it last year, I thought that the biggest problem caused by biodiesel was that it set up a competition for land. Arable land that would otherwise have been used to grow food would instead be used to grow fuel. But now I find that something even worse is happening. The biodiesel industry has accidentally invented the world’s most carbon-intensive fuel.

In promoting biodiesel – as the European Union, the British and US governments and thousands of environmental campaigners do – you might imagine that you are creating a market for old chip fat, or rapeseed oil, or oil from algae grown in desert ponds. In reality you are creating a market for the most destructive crop on earth.

Last week, the chairman of Malaysia’s Federal Land Development Authority announced that he was about to build a new biodiesel plant. His was the ninth such decision in four months. Four new refineries are being built in Peninsula Malaysia, one in Sarawak and two in Rotterdam. Two foreign consortia – one German, one American – are setting up rival plants in Singapore. All of them will be making biodiesel from the same source: oil from palm trees.

“The demand for biodiesel,” the Malaysian Star reports, “will come from the European Community … This fresh demand … would, at the very least, take up most of Malaysia’s crude palm oil inventories”. Why? Because it’s cheaper than biodiesel made from any other crop.

Past Peak makes some pertinent comments:

This story illustrates how the free market is often the worst arbiter imaginable when it comes to decisions regarding the environment: the market often leads individuals acting in their own self-interest to undertake actions that are suicidal for humanity as a whole. It illustrates as well how reckless and destructive our collective behavior is likely to become as world oil/gas production peaks and starts to decline. Rising fuel prices will make biosphere destruction an increasingly profitable business. And it illustrates how so-called free trade agreements have handcuffed nations at just the wrong time in history. England cannot ban the importation of palm oil biodiesel because that would be an unfair restriction of trade under GATT.

The fundamental problem with letting the market make large-scale environmental decisions is that environmental costs are not reflected in the prices for anything, so decisions made on the basis of price are necessarily faulty. By insisting on an unregulated pursuit of profit, we dig our own graves.

I was surpised to see the second episode of The Power Of Nightmares on SBS tonight. For those of you who haven't seen it, the final installment is on tomorrow night (or you can go to the internet link above and watch the whole thing in lower resolution).

Should we be worried about the threat from organised terrorism or is it simply a phantom menace being used to stop society from falling apart? This three-part documentary series explores how the idea that we are threatened by a hidden and organised terrorist network is an illusion.

Tonight this series continues its assessment of whether the threat from a hidden and organised terrorist network is an illusion, examining how the radical Islamists and neo-conservatives, two groups with seemingly opposing ideologies, came together to defeat a common enemy, the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

Apparently Mike Ruppert and Jerome Corsi (both of whom figured prominently in my post yesterday about the Philosophers Stone) are headed for a peak oil vs abiotic oil showdown. I doubt it will enlighten anyone, but it may be entertaining I guess (via the comments at Jeff Vail).

Heavy Weight Division Bout

Mike Ruppert vs Jerome "Swiftboat" Corsi on radio
Wednesday at 10 am Pacific time

ON WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 7th 2005 -- MIKE RUPPERT WILL DEBATE JEROME CORSI, Ph.D.

ON THE TOPIC OF "PEAK OIL" vs "ABIOTIC OIL"

The TWO HOUR debate will be moderated by Michael Corbin, host of the KHNC Denver radio show "A CLOSER LOOK."

Denver area listeners tune to AM 1360 at 11a.m. mountain time. -- West Coast listeners click www.4acloserlook.com at 10 a.m. Pacific time.

Who is Jerome Corsi, co-author of "Swift Boat Vets" attack book?

Enviromission (would be builders of the fabled Solar Tower in Victoria) are once again on the hunt for cash to try and get this thing up and running. While I quite like the idea it really does look like a money pit for investors - and I'd rather people didn't associate green energy projects with failed white elephants.

After four years and 17 capital raisings, Enviromission is trying to grab an $80 million Federal Government handout to keep alive its dream of building a giant hot-air powered tower in the Riverina. The company boasted to the Herald three years ago that it would have its plans to build a one-kilometre high solar-heated, air-powered tower at a "bankable stage" in 2003.

Enviromission announced yesterday that securing a slice of the $500 million federal Low Emissions Technology Demonstration Fund was its "dominant strategic priority". The scheme will help subsidise projects that deliver large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

The company recently scaled back its plans for the solar tower, which will now be about 400 metres high. Yesterday it announced plans to partner with Baulderstone Hornibrook to "provide project design" and to "support the project's business case". The tower will cost an estimated $250 million to build, as opposed to the original $1 billion for the larger edifice.

Mr Thompson-Jones said he foresaw no problems building the giant tower, which will be surrounded by hundreds of heat-gathering panels.

Enginner-Poet's "Triumph of exurbia" post, which considers the idea that exurbanites may be better off than regular urbanites under a post-peak collapse scenario, got him a mention on WorldChanging. I don't think this concept makes much sense here with modern outer suburban design managing to combine huge houses with block sizes only just large enough to fit the building and the carport and driveway. If "exurbia" is defined as large lots well past the suburban sprawl then I guess it makes sense - but this doesn't cover a big portion of the population.

Saudi Arabia is saying that it won't (or can't) be the crude oil supplier of last resort any longer.

"There has been a decision on the part of Saudi Arabia to signal to the world that they will no longer be the supplier of last resort," Goldwyn said. "They now say that consuming nations need to look at alternative energies and conservation and not look at Saudi Arabia to make up for the growth in demand."

A shortage of equipment (and high prices for it) also seem to be contributing to this stance.

Oilfield suppliers and manufacturers contacted by Oil&Gas Middle East have confirmed fears about massive shortages of rigs and other equipment in the region. Former Saudi Aramco official, Sadad Al Husseini raised the issue last month, saying that a crunch in supplies could delay efforts by Saudi Arabia to raise crude output.

Husseini, former vice president of Saudi Aramco and more recently a harsh critic of Saudi oil policy, also said Saudi Arabia may fall behind its schedule to raise output capacity by 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd) by 2009 due to shortages of oil rigs and equipment.

This is not the first time that the suppliers’ crunch has thrown a spanner into the works of the Middle East oil industry. Qatar, one of the fastest growing economies in the Middle East and a chief producer of gas, announced in May that the country was not undertaking any upstream projects for a few years, owing to the overheating of the market, where in some cases the operating oil companies had to invest in the suppliers’ infrastructure to ensure timely delivery of stocks.

“Every new increment is going to be more expensive and complex and yield smaller amounts,” Husseini told Reuters. “And you will have to replace easy production and large capacity declines with much more difficult production,” he said.

He said that the shortage of supplies could leave state-oil firm Aramco two-to-three years behind its plan to lift capacity to 12.5 million from 11 million bpd now.

Woodside has announced that it has found customers for gas from its planned Pluto development (I'm sure that was a hard sales job).

Woodside Petroleum Limited announced it has agreed key commercial terms with North Asian customers for the supply of liquefied natural gas from its 100%-owned Pluto gas field in Western Australia. The terms cover combined sales of between 3.5 and 4 million tonnes of LNG a year for 15 years from the end of 2010, with an option to extend for a further five years.

There are reports that Australia is finally about to settle its dispute with East Timor over Timor Sea oil and gas (9 months after our glorious foregn minister said it had happened). This has been a plus for Woodside on the markets as punters anticipate developments in the area in question. Woodside has also sold off its Blacktip field offshore the Northern Territory and its stake in Hardman Resources (which is a partner in their Mauritanian developments).

Rigzone also has a review from the NOAA of the "Record 2005 Hurricane Season, More Overactive Seasons to Come".

The Financial Review had a report on the weekend about a new biodiesel manufacturer that is floating on the stockmarket this month called "Australian Biodeisel Group".

ABG was founded in 2001 with the objective of developing its own biodiesel production technology. This technology was initially developed and tested via a small batch scale plant capable of producing approximately one million litres of its continuous transesterification process ('CTP') technology.

Subsequent to its successful development program, ABG commenced the construction of its full-scale 40 million litre per annum continuous flow plant at Berkeley Vale on the New South Wales central coast. This facility is now complete and currently operating at 75% of nameplate capacity. It is expected that this plant will be operating at 100% capacity by July 2006. This plant is one of the largest (in terms of output) biodiesel plants now constructed in Australia.

ABG's second production facility, a 160 million litre per annum plant, will be located at Narangba, Queensland. All the required development and environmental regulatory approvals to enable construction have been granted in relation to this production facility. It is forecast that this facility will be commissioned in the second quarter of 2006.

There has been more bellicosity between China and Japan about east China sea oil and gas fields.

Ali Bakhtiari is saying we have passed the peak oil point and have now moved into a phase he calls "Transition 1".

In my humble opinion, we should now have reached 'Peak Oil'. So, it is high time to close this critical chapter in the history of international oil industry and bid the mighty 'Peak' farewell... At present, global oil output fluctuates around 82 mb/d as some institutions try vainly to push 2005 statistics towards 83 and 84 mb/d (as they always do). But they will be obliged to backtrack as 'actual' oil supplies fail to follow their 'paper' ones.

So that, in the 'Peak Oil' aftermath, we are about to enter what I call 'Transition One' [T1] --- a rather bizarre phase akin to a vague 'no-man's-land' between still adequate oil supplies and the clear realization that demand has definitely left supply behind. I see the tragic '2004 Tsunami' and the heart-breaking '2005 Katrina and Rita' as the precursors signs to 'T1'. This fresh phase might come to burst on the global stage during the coming winter 2005-2006 --- maybe taking large swaths of the public by surprise...

Iran was in the news again yesterday, with an article called "Iran plans reactor in restive oil state" appearing briefly on the AAP feed before being stuffed firmly down the memory hole. If you look in the next day or so on Yahoo you'll still see the headline, but the link itself now points to an article about Benjamin Netanyahu threatening all sorts of fire and brimstone (this seemed to happen to the copies I could find on Google News, though the ABC had a similar but shorter version here).

Anyway - the original text is below - it is moderately interesting but doesn't really seem worthy of being vanished (I didn't know Iran had native uranium reserves and the stuff about Khuzestan does seem to indicate it may be the flashpoint - as the likes of Seymour Hersh, Scott Ritter and Wayne Madsen have predicted - should push come to shove one day - possibly in March when the oil bourse is due to go live).

Iran's cabinet has decided to build a new nuclear power station in the restive southwestern oil province of Khuzestan, state television says. Washington accuses Tehran of seeking to produce nuclear fuel for use in warheads whereas Tehran insists its atomic scientists are only striving to meet booming domestic demand for electricity. "The cabinet in its meeting this afternoon agreed to construct an atomic power station in Khuzestan using local technology," a state television report said.

The report gave no indication of when Iran would start work on this reactor. Iran has almost completed its first nuclear power station at the Gulf port of Bushehr, an $800 million investment contract built with Russian help. Tehran hopes the 1,000 MW project will go online in late 2006.

The Islamic Republic has pledged to build more power stations. Some officials say Iran seeks 6,000 MW from atomic reactors by 2020, while others say the country simply wants 20 nuclear power stations. Iran insists it has the right to develop the uranium it mines in its central deserts for use in these power stations. But many countries are putting pressure on Tehran to enrich its uranium in Russia, thereby guaranteeing that it will only be enriched to the low level needed for power stations and not to the higher weapons-grade.

Khuzestan is home to the biggest oilfields of the world's fourth biggest crude producer. The province is also home to most of Iran's Arab minority who complain of discrimination from non-Arab Iranians. Iran's Arab south has simmered with ethnic unrest since April, when five people died in anti-government protests. These were sparked by rumours that the government was considering re-locating more non-Arabs to Khuzestan to water down Arab influence there.

Seven people were killed in a bombing in June and six more in a blast in October. Some minor oil facilities were bombed in September. Arabs make up about 3 per cent of Iran's population of some 68 million.

Reuters has some notes on the Iranian oil industry (via Energy Bulletin) that would support the idea that they may have a need for nuclear power (assuming they don't go heavily into renewables instead) as their oil production capacity declines. While I've got few doubts they want nuclear weapons as well as nuclear power, perhaps the EU group negotiating with them could suggest assisting a massive solar power development program as a carrot for abandoning their nuclear power (or uranium enrichment) plans.

Iran's oil industry is not just in the doldrums, it is sinking.

The world's fourth biggest crude producer has not had an oil minister since August, meaning output loss continues unabated, new production deals have no hope of getting signed and Tehran's voice in OPEC is barely a whisper. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has failed to get three of his close allies appointed to the most prestigious job in Iran's cabinet -- vetoed by parliamentarians who are angered at not being consulted about this linchpin post.

"This limbo in the oil ministry is definitely causing us a lot of trouble and the longer it goes on, the more serious it becomes," said Mohammad Mehdi Jabbarzadeh, a lawmaker on Iran's budget commission. Ahmadinejad is due to nominate a fourth candidate on Sunday.

Last week, moments after parliament rejected Ahmadinejad's third candidate, Mohsen Tasalloti, lawmaker Kazem Jalali neatly summed up the malaise. "The current situation weakens our stance in OPEC and will diminish our chances of co-operation with foreign companies because it indicates instability," he said.

In his address to lawmakers before their vote, Tasalloti addressed the fundamental problem Iran must solve: the Islamic Republic is losing more than 300,000 barrels per day (bpd) of its output capacity each year.

Strangely enough after I wrote that bit I came across this post on WorldChanging about "Renewable Energy as a Human Right", which makes a similar point.

The Renewable Energy Proliferation Protocol: Among the proposals emerging from the World Renewable Energy Assembly is an addition to the existing Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Article IV. The NPT currently calls on nuclear nations to supply technical aid to non-nuclear states for the development of nuclear energy. The proposed addition would call on signatory nations to fulfill this obligation through the provision of renewable energy technologies instead, thereby further reducing the possibility of nuclear weapon proliferation.

The NPT currently seems to be one of those international treaties considered by some nations to be "quaint;" adding a line suggesting that nations give renewable energy technologies rather than nuclear power tech strikes me as very much a window-dressing idea.

However, I was intrigued by the concept of a stand-alone Renewable Energy Proliferation Protocol (not addressed in the WREA discussion, as far as I can tell). Many international treaties fall into the "don't do this" category -- don't emit cholorfluorocarbons, don't dump waste in the oceans, don't pass out nukes to your buddies, etc.. The treaties that call on signatory nations to do something positive or pro-active are less visible, but arguably more fundamentally important -- the standardization of telecommunication protocols, the hotline agreements, the "open skies" treaty, and so forth. (For a full list of treaties the United States is signatory to, see this page at the US Department of State -- commenters, please feel free to add links to similar pages for other countries.)

Imagine a Renewable Energy Proliferation Treaty (REPT) that required the signatory nations to provide renewable energy technologies to other nations. The underlying mechanism could take a number of forms, from structured markets to out-and-out obligations. The version most likely to generate support would be one that provided rewards for proliferation; unfortunately, the most reasonable rewards are credits against CO2 emission limits, which drops us back into the Kyoto scenario.

Arguably, the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Treaty is something of a Renewable Energy Proliferation agreement. This makes me wonder: how would the CDM have worked if it applied to all other countries, not just developing nations? Transfer the renewable systems and tech to any other country, and you can choose between getting financial rewards or REPT credits. Better still, imagine if you could get credits against non-carbon costs for renewable proliferation -- how long would it take the US to pay down its foreign debt by transferring renewable energy systems?

To close, here's one of those weird tales from Russia - which may have a global warming angle, though the story is a bit murky.

Squirrels have bitten to death a stray dog which was barking at them in a Russian park, local media report.

Passers-by were too late to stop the attack by the black squirrels in a village in the far east, which reportedly lasted about a minute. They are said to have scampered off at the sight of humans, some carrying pieces of flesh.

A pine cone shortage may have led the squirrels to seek other food sources, although scientists are sceptical. The attack was reported in parkland in the centre of Lazo, a village in the Maritime Territory, and was witnessed by three local people.

Mikhail Tiyunov, a scientist in the region, said it was the first he had ever heard of such an attack. While squirrels without sources of protein might attack birds' nests, he said, the idea of them chewing a dog to death was "absurd". "If it really happened, things must be pretty bad in our forests," he added. Komosmolskaya Pravda notes that in a previous incident this autumn chipmunks terrorised cats in a part of the territory.

A Lazo man who called himself only Mikhalich said there had been "no pine cones at all" in the local forests this year. "The little beasts are agitated because they have nothing to eat," he added.

While I'm generally in favour of reducing the amount of carbon that we burn, in the hope that we don't cook ourselves in the coming decades, this typically rosy-eyed Wired report on carbon fuel cells is quite interesting - if we have to burn the stuff we should at least try and do it as efficiently and cleanly as possible.

Mad scientist Doc Brown powers his time machine by feeding coffee grounds and other biowaste into the DeLorean in Back to the Future.

While time travel is still in the realm of science fiction, carbon-based fuel cells are about to become science fact -- rendering a similar scenario all the more possible. SRI announced in November that it has developed direct carbon fuel-cell technology.

The process is 70 percent efficient, double that of traditional coal power plants, according to Larry Dubois, vice president of the physical sciences division at SRI.

SRI researchers have shown that in a single step, they can take pulverized coal -- or anything else that contains carbon, including human waste or banana peels, for example -- and directly transform the fuel's chemical energy into electricity by electrochemically oxidizing the carbon.

The byproduct is carbon dioxide -- but it is emitted in such a pure form, Dubois said, that it's easy to contain. "If you have a conventional gas-fired coal plant and capture the (carbon dioxide) -- 75 percent of the cost is separating carbon dioxide from air," he said.

The new technology could also help to reduce dependence on foreign oil, he said.

...

For now, the carbon fuel cells are producing small amounts of power on the scale of a few watts at SRI's laboratory in Menlo Park, California. But Dubois expects their capability to rise to 10 kilowatts by 2009, to 100 kilowatts by 2011 and to 500 kilowatts by 2015.

"Is this early stage?" he said. "Absolutely. Is it risky? Absolutely. But the payoff potential is tremendous."

The somewhat pointless Viridian vs Kunstler debate is in danger of starting again, with Dave Roberts at Grist making some pointed comparisons to hedgehogs regardling Mr Kunstler's prickly method of doomsaying.

A few days ago, Kevin Drum pointed to a Louis Menand review of a book called Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know? by psychologist Philip Tetlock.

I haven't read the book, but the review is fascinating, and I highly recommend you read it before (or instead of) the rambling thoughts that follow.

Tetlock's basic thesis, based on a multi-decade study, is that expert predictions are no better -- and often worse -- than random chance or the predictions of casual news consumers. Just like everyone else, experts display confirmation bias, underestimate their past mistakes, and fall for basic probability errors.

Ah, fuel for anti-elitists everywhere ...

This is not a new psychological finding -- laymen often express surprise at it, but psychologists have known for years that experts are no more reliable than anyone else. But one new insight Tetlock brings to the table relates to Isaiah Berlin's famous distinction between hedgehogs (which know a lot about one thing) and foxes (which know a little about a lot of things). From the book:

Low scorers look like hedgehogs: thinkers who "know one big thing," aggressively extend the explanatory reach of that one big thing into new domains, display bristly impatience with those who "do not get it," and express considerable confidence that they are already pretty proficient forecasters, at least in the long term. High scorers look like foxes: thinkers who know many small things (tricks of their trade), are skeptical of grand schemes, see explanation and prediction not as deductive exercises but rather as exercises in flexible "ad hocery" that require stitching together diverse sources of information, and are rather diffident about their own forecasting prowess.

Now, that description of a hedgehog ... does that bring anyone to mind?

Anyone at all?

This is what concerns me about the notion of peak oil and the almost cultish following its accrued in some quarters. Too many peak oilers view themselves as Prophets who have stumbled on the Theory of Everything and view it as their mission to educate the blind, benighted masses.

The more I observe peak oil the more it becomes clear that for most (if not all) people the peak oil meme acts as like the "Philosopher's Stone" from Harry Potter, so they envisage the post peak future as something they would like to see happen anyway.

Kunstler has a deep seating loathing of suburban sprawl and modernity in general it would seem, so he sees peak oil as resulting in a semi-collapse that returns us to a future that resembles small town america of 150 years ago (plus wasted large cities and pirates ravaging the coasts of course).

He isn't alone in seeing what he wants to see of course - the Viridian camp sees a shiny green future awaiting us in the post oil world, old school oil guys like T Boone Pickens see a exploration and drilling bonanza, energy industry investors like Matt Simmons and Henry Groppe see soaring energy prices, gold bugs see rampart inflation and soaring gold prices, ferals and hippies see a return to living closer to nature, socialists see the revivial of marxism, conspiracy theorists see government/elite conspiracies and the rise of the new world order, primitivists see the collapse of industrial civilisation and human dieoff, libertarians see an opportunity for the market to bring new energy sources and technoloies to us, fascists see an opportunity for a return to authoritarianism and some of the uglier approaches to population control used by their ilk in the past, economists see suuply and demand issues being resolved by energy prices, military-industrial complex members see the need to militarily dominate the energy rich regions of the planet, end-times Christian fundamentalists see another symptom of the impending rapture and survivalists see an opportunity to say "I told you so" and finally get to use the skills and tools they've spent their lives practicing for.

Aaron Naparstek's article "Peak freaks: a report on three PO gatherings" tends to deomnstrate a lot of this sort of thinking in action. He does seem to be a little harsh on some of the participants at these conferences - but then again, with Mike Ruppert proclaiming that the end of the United States would occur within 3 weeks at the Petrocollapse conference (several months ago now - though I haven't seen any admission that he was a little hasty in this particular foretelling of doom) an impartial observer would have to admit that there are more than a few overly hasty peak oil prophets out there.

Energy Bulletin did point out at the time that the purpose of the likes of Kunstler, Ruppert and Lundberg is to wake people up - they can be quite effective at this but one downside is that they can also freak people out or, even worse, make people just dismiss peak oil as the fevered imaginings of people with a tenuous grasp on their sanity.

Phil Relig noted something similar to this in his comments on a thread at The Oil Drum at the same time (before embarking on a rant that sounds suspiciously like "the rapture is coming") .

Ruppert and Kunstler are both highly intelligent and well-informed men. Nevertheless, they are fallible, and I think the nature of their fallibility offers lessons for us all - and may make all of us no less "nutty" than they are in the end, to the extent that this is an apt description of them. I will also include Heinberg in this group, since the remarks I am about to make apply to him as well.

When I read them all (and I do read them all with great respect and attentiveness), I distinctly detect that their prognostications for the future are intimately affected by their underlying value systems. In Kunstler's case, this can be summed up as a hatred of suburbia and an idealization of small-town rural living. In Heinberg's case, this can be summed up as a hatred of 20th century American culture with all of its attendant deceit, brutality, and hypocrisy, and an idealization of a hunter-gatherer's intimate connection to nature. In Ruppert's case (with whom I personally identify most closely in this regard), this can be summed up as a passionate, visceral, bottomless hatred of lies, hypocrisy, brutality, and injustice masquerading as virtue and goodness.

Another example of this trend of people seeing what they want to see was demonstrated by Stuart Staniford at The Oil Drum, who told the story of "The Swift-Boating of Peak Oil" by professional extreme right propagandist and abiotic oil conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi of "Swift Boat Vets For "Truth"" fame (or infamy, depending on your viewpoint). Somehow this lunatic got his rantings published by Rigzone, in which he claims peak oil isn't a problem, due to the allegedly vast amounts of offshore deepwater oil and his belief that oil is abiotic anyway. Stuart dissects him neatly and gives a good collection of Coulteresque quotes from Mr Corsi just to put him into perspective for thos unacquainted with the wingnut party line.

Part of Dr Corsi's agenda seems to be to suggest that Peak Oil is a left wing movement (a point he expanded on last night). This simply is not the case. While there certainly are left wing peak oilers such as Richard Heinberg, believers in peak oil include the conservative republican Roscoe Bartlett, good capitalist economists such as James Hamilton, republican investment banker Matt Simmons, and that's not to even start on the neofascists. Peak Oil totally crosses the political spectrum, and I don't think Dr Corsi is going to make that particular framing of the debate stick, though I think we can expect him and whoever his allies turn out to be to make a vigorous effort.

If indeed the Swiftboating of Peak Oil is beginning, it is striking that the arguments are so very weak, and the champion so lacking in credibility. Is this really the best they can do? If so, it suggests things might be about to get very ugly, as mud is thrown in all directions in a desperate attempt to disguise the paucity of their position.

I thought the postscript was the best part - at least Rigzone has the sense to realise that being a mouthpiece for extremist propaganda isn't a good commercial decision given the brand damage the publication ultimately suffers (no doubt the New York Times is coming to understand this after the Miller saga as well - and who knows, maybe even the likes of News Corp will get it one day. Corsi's usual hangout World Nut Daily is another story of course).

Rigzone has deleted Dr Corsi's article, and fired the editors responsible for posting it (hat tip Mike A.). A copy of a very similar piece can be found here for historical interest.

Corsi's article on WorldNutDaily was followed up with a short barrage on their associated organ "Free Market News Network", which did look like the start of a trend of extreme right peak oil debunking, but it petered out quite quickly.

While I'm touching on conspiracy theorists (and by now you all know I can't resist dragging in the odd conspiracy theory occasionally), I might as well have my say on Rigorous Intuition's lambasting of peak oil in general and Richard Heinberg in particular as a tool for fascists and the new world order (which attracted a bit of discussion on the more peak oil friendly environment of Peak Oil.com).

While I thought this particular piece wasn't very well reasoned (even by the far from everyday standards of posts at RI) and Richard Heinberg in particular was a pretty unworthy target to go after (though not as unworthy as Noam Chomsky, who also got dragged into it somehow), it did raise a few interesting topics.

First was his "peak oil is a scam - we will run out of oil but 'exotic alternative of anti-gravitic propulsion apparently already exists, deep in the black budget of Defense establishments' and this won't ever filter down to the masses" (which partially prompted my little aside a little while ago). Completely crazy of course but I do occasionally wonder where this particular meme got started (E-P - got any of your debunking sites to hand for that one ?).

And second is that it (and this earlier piece which also mentioned peak oil) did somewhat clarify the difference between the (for lack of better words) left wing and right wing versions of the NWO conspiracy theory. The left version seems to dread a fascist world governmnet, presumably with its roots in European aristocracy and secret societies, while the right version dreads a socialist world government (somehow intertwined with Jewish "international finance", even though the 2 - theoretical - concepts would seem to be mutually exclusive to me). Its not quite that simple though, unfortunately, as the "left" version also seems to get mixed into the "eco-fascist" meme sometimes, which usually seems to be an unjustified right wing attack on greenies whenever I see it in the wild, but does seem to have some foundation in the deliberate population reduction camp (which I'm thoroughly against) which conspiracy theories about the Club of Rome seem to focus on.

Anyway - its probably bad for your brain to read those links and the associated comments so I apologise to anyone who regrets reading them but I thought they were a bit of a change from the usual depletion updates, global warming news and green technology stuff I normally go on about (and I did quite like Jeff's term "brain mole" for Heinberg's purportedly Nazi thoughts).

While I'm ranting about fascism again, I'll close with an interview with John Le Carre (which doesn't touch on peak oil in any way), another person I'd view as an old-school conservative who is dismayed by the new party line in vogue in the Anglosphere.

"our tragedy as a nation is bigger than Blair ... I think it is becoming not just a social but a patriotic duty to attest to the shit that we are being subjected to." Nonetheless, he says of England: "It made me and ultimately I love it."

Reading The Constant Gardener, it is hard to detect a man who loves his homeland. Widely hailed as his best novel for many years, it depicts the British high commission in Nairobi as working hand in glove with the most contemptible mutations of late capitalism, the international pharmaceutical industry. Cornwell finds such government collusion with corporations nauseating. "Mussolini's definition of fascism was that when you can't distinguish corporate power from governmental power, you are on the way to a fascist state. If you throw in God power and media power, that's where we are now."

Is he saying Britain is a fascist state? "Does it strike you as democratic?"

Update: I forgot a few items when I was finishing up last night, but I figure I'll throw them in the mix along with some links from today.

First off - JD of the inaccurately named "Peak Oil Debunked" is also prone to accusing various parts of the peak oil world of fascist tendencies based on all sorts of wild reasoning. He has slagged off quite a few of the more prominent original peak oil writers in his personal jihad against the doomer camp in what he describes as the "fascist underbelly of peak oil".

Jay Hanson is one of the people he seems particularly vexed with, so on a whim one day (having noted a few times recently myself that Jay seems to have gone off the deep end with some of his pronouncements) I decided to venture into Jay's lair and ask him if he is indeed proposing fascism as his solution to a post peak dieoff (note - don't try this at home - I wouldn't suggest asking the same question to, for example, Jerome Corsi or Dick Cheney, as it could have unwanted side effects).

Now - it is probably a bit rude to go and ask someone "are you a fascist ?" so I tried to be as polite as possible, figuring that someone who spends his time contemplating the demise of a large part of the earth's population won't be overly likely to get offended by the small stuff.

His first answer wasn't entirely helpful given my tendency towards wanting to declare him innocent (the overshoot / dieoff meme is rather misanthropic but doesn't necessarily imply a fascist political movement in my view):

Gav:
... it does seem that an argument could be made that your recent proposals for a military, "common interest" government, along with some of your statements about the need to organise around corporations could be viewed as a form of national socialism or corporatism (ie. the forms of government traditionally associated with fascism).

So my question is - do you think that you are advocating fascism, and if not, how would you categorise it ?

Jay :
Am I advocating Fascism? If Fascism means business running government, then we have always had a Fascist state. America was founded as a Fascist state. If business is going to continue running America, then it should accept responsibility for it. However, ending "the market" (ending business) could hardly be called Fascist. Call it "newism". I am advocating a form of government that the world hasn't seen before: newism.

Followed a little while later by:

America was founded by brilliant philosophers during the "Age of Reason". Thinking was in fashion at the time, men with property were literate, and (apparently) enjoyed critical thinking. Unfortunately, the Age of Reason has died and we have entered the "Age of Belief" -- the age of uncritical belief in ideologies.

Nowadays, thinking and reason are out of fashion everywhere. People with property are illiterate and avoid critical thought like the plague. Bring up a serious topic at a dinner party and you might as well throw pies at people.

It would be impossible to found America today because there are no brilliant philosophers today. Today, the world is run by believers instead of thinkers -- by Machiavellian men who are interested in filling their pockets instead of philosophical thought. Naturally, the "Age of Belief" leads to the "Age of Dieoff"...

How could it be otherwise?

These responses didn't really answer the question to my satisfaction (what the hell is "newism" then anyway ?), so I tried again:

Gav:
I'm a bit lost when you say you are advocating ending "the market" but, as I understand it, not ending corporations and in fact increasing their role in society (I've only read a small amount of the posts here so I may well have missed a lot of the relevant information). How do you propose goods and services are exchanged in a "post market" world ?

Is a system of political organisation that is run by corporations absent a market different in any significant way to "Corporatism" as proposed by Mussolini for example ?

Jay:
I have said many times that the type of democracy we have today ("people democracy") doesn't work (in the sense of planning (e.g., land use planning) and problem-solving (e.g., infrastructure)) because it selects "popular" people. Moreover, these popular, unqualified people are "incoherent" (operate with diverse goals). On the other hand, a corporation IS (more-or-less) a meritocracy with "coherence" (i.e., everyone works to increase company profit).

I have suggested that local government would be MUCH IMPROVED if state and local lawmakers and administrators were simply done away with and local administration were given to a new type of corporation whose bottom line was dependent on specific measures of progress (Google for "redefining progress").

The specific goals to be addressed could be decided by local election. It's a new type of democracy that could be called "goal democracy" (instead of "people democracy"). It's a way to level the local playing field by pitting a coherent organization of professionals (instead of elected fuckups and their cronies) against well-organized, professional special interests.

On the national level, an improvement would be simply do away with the elected fuckups and their cronies altogether and let the lobbyists make the laws and run the country. Same result, but cheaper.

As far as "ending the market" ("Newism"), none of the improvements above would increase the longevity of America significantly. However, we could reduce resource consumption by at least 90% -- and add decades to America's lifespan -- by "ending the market". Recall that "the market" is fundementally a POLITICAL system -- not a production system -- that has greatly outlived its usefulness.

The market is producing "bads" much faster than it's producing "goods". The key here is to stop requiring people to work in order to receive food, water, shelter, and health care. It's just an idea that need much more thought, but the only other way to keep this country from anarchy is for us is to annihilate the competition for resources.

I'm still not getting it, so I perservere, at the risk of getting annoying:

Gav:
One more question if you don't mind - who decides the composition of the management of the local "corporation" and how is this decision made ? And how is the corporation restructured if it doesn't perform adequately ?

Jay:
(Keep in mind, that this is just an idea, but local governments today are totally dysfunctional.) This new type of "Commons Management" corporation would make a profit by producing "redefining progress" results, paid with federal taxes, and compete with each other for the business. Local voters could select the corporation but NOT screw with the personnel. These corps could be limited to, say, two terms of five years so they wouldn't become too friendly with local developers or managers of private utility companies.

It a way to get rid of the elected fuckups and cronies, and give local communities a professional management team to represent their interests and protect their commons (e.g., schools, open spaces, and other infrastructure.

While I don't think all this has been thought through and a fair chunk of it seems to reflect Jay's disgruntlement with local politics after his attempts to get involved with it in the past, I would say that it doesn't really sound like the forms of national fascism that we've seen previously and he doesn't ever show any signs of nationalist or racist beliefs, so I'm declaring him innocent of JD's charges.

Moving on, I've managed to resist the temptation to post on any of the local mutterings about fascism that have been floating around in the wake of the government's new "terror" and industrial relations laws, but as the Rodent's old advisor Gerard Henderson has done a good job of summarising some of them (then failing to understand the point), I'll provide a rare link to one of his opinion pieces.

So it has come to this, apparently. The passing by the Senate of the Federal Government's industrial relations legislation, and the likely passing this week of its national security legislation, has led to the creation of the Howard fascist police state. All courtesy of Mark Latham's disastrous performance as ALP leader in last year's election, which led to the Coalition obtaining a Senate majority.

It is quite understandable that the union movement, the Labor Party, church groups and extant members of the industrial relations club oppose the WorkChoices program. And it comes as no surprise that civil libertarian lawyers, artists and the like have taken a stand against the sedition provisions of the anti-terrorism legislation.

Let's face it. If the ACTU leaders Greg Combet and Sharan Burrow are correct about the impact of the industrial relations legislation, then the Coalition will lose the next federal election (whether led by John Howard or Peter Costello). It is all but impossible to imagine a government surviving if it had presided over significant wage reductions and widespread unfair dismissals.

A government could win an election, in the present climate, if it had brought about a situation which had led, say, to the jailing for sedition of such playwrights as Hannie Rayson and David Williamson. Yet such a government would be discredited among virtually all opinion leaders.

The problem with the cases being put by many of the Government's leading critics is that the level of their intensity has affected their judgement. Overstatement invariably creates media attention in the short term, especially when a clear majority of journalists oppose the Government, as is the case on industrial relations and national security legislation. However, if the dire prediction fails to materialise, exaggeration can be counterproductive.

Senior journalists have declared the US "has slid" into "fascism" (Alan Ramsey) and have referred to Howard's "totalitarian grip" over information (Mungo MacCallum).

The playwright Stephen Sewell has claimed that "every Australian" faces "the prospect of being disappeared to who knows where". The lawyer Cameron Murphy has said Australia is becoming a "Stalinist police state". The former diplomat Tony Kevin has criticised Kim Beazley, who broadly supports the Government on national security. Kevin says the Labor leader is taking Australia down the path of "the Cracow and Warsaw ghettos" which "was the first step towards the death camps". And so on.

The cartoon below is from a post about Henderson's comments and also refers to one of yesterday's lead news stories - that one of Saddam Hussein's bodyguards is living in Australia. Worst of all the git is moving in just around the corner from me. There goes the neighbourhood...



I'll close with some comments from the world's number one authority on security matters, Bruce Schneier, who makes some interesting points about all-knowing surveillence states in the comments of a post asking if the FBI now "has the right to approve all software ?".

"Scott McNealy famously said something along the lines of 'We all have no privacy now, get over it.' Perhaps we should be working towards a (liberal) society where all of our actions and conversations were public. Lack of privacy is normally depicted as a tool of oppression, but with the right attitudes, it could be very liberating. Societies where free thought is more common tend to have been more highly regarded."

This is pretty much the argument that David Brin makes in "The Transparent Society." I think it's a very wrong one. Basically, the problem is that there are still power imbalances in society, and privacy is one way to deal with those imbalances. (If a policeman demands to see your ID, demanding to see his first does not make the situation "fair.")

I will write something about this. But in the meantime, I recommend you read "A Taxonomy of Privacy" by Daniel Solove. He discusses the many different types of privacy in our society. It's easy to see their value. The link is here:

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/04/a_taxonomy_of_p.html