Grist has an article looking at the problems global warming poses for the ski industry worldwide - their conclusion : it's all downhill from here.

With the Olympics starting this week, all eyes are on the slopes of Turin. But skiing and snowboarding could disappear from our collective culture in about 50 years, if global-warming forecasts ring true. In a lot of popular ski areas, there simply won't be any snow.

It's already happening in parts of Europe: They're wrapping glaciers in Switzerland, and Scottish Highlands ski areas are being recast as mountain-biking destinations. In the U.S., resorts in the Pacific Northwest got a harbinger last season when a warm winter led to a 78 percent drop in skier visits.

Global warming, of course, will impact practically every aspect of life the world over, and recreational plights won't be our biggest worry. But right now, the ski industry is the perfect coal-mine canary for its fallout. And while no single industry can reverse climate change, enlightened self-interest is driving ski areas to adopt a wide range of innovative energy measures to prolong their survival -- and maybe ours.

The center of the green skiing movement in the U.S. is Aspen, a place not exactly known for reducing consumption of anything ... Aspen has enacted a top-to-bottom program to conserve energy and water and reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, incorporating green buildings, a mini-hydroelectric plant, biodiesel-driven groomers, and wind power purchases. This year, the company became the first resort of any kind to join the Chicago Climate Exchange, North America's first voluntary, legally binding emissions-trading market. Aspen has even set up a consulting business to help other resorts and businesses go green.

The Independent asks "Is it possible to ski without ruining the environment ?", also looks at the impact of global warming on the ski industry.

From the ski tourism-induced traffic pollution and increasing urban sprawl of hotels and holidays homes in former Alpine villages to the visually intrusive and habitat-wrecking ski lifts, the ski industry's environmental record is in all honesty more a contender for the wooden spoon than any Olympic medal.

Luckily, Europe's ski industry is waking up to its environmental responsibilities - just in the nick of time. The spectre of global warming, which has already pretty much seen off the Scottish ski industry, is now stalking the Alps. Scientists have found that rising temperatures are already leading to changes in snowfall patterns. "Alpine areas below 1,600m are now receiving 20 per cent less snow," says Birgit Ottmer from the Davos-based Swiss Federal Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research.

This is bad news for Princes Charles, Wills and Harry, who'll find that their favourite Swiss ski resort of Klosters, at just 1,300m, will soon be surrounded by muddy fields in the depth of winter.

The long-term forecast is even bleaker. "Within 50 years all ski resorts below 1,200m won't have a chance and will go out of business," says Michel Revaz of the Liechtenstein-based Alpine conservation society Cipra. This warning is setting off alarm bells right across Europe's lower-altitude ski resorts, no more so than in Austria where 75 per cent of the ski lifts are built below 1,000m.

The threat posed by global warming to the European ski industry is now being felt right across the Alps. "The French ski industry is very worried for the future as we are having less snow than we used to," admits Jean-Louis Tuaillon, who oversees the pistes at Tignes, one of the many French resorts which attract over a third of the one million British skiers and boarders who head to the Alps every winter.

To try to prevent financial meltdown resorts are increasingly having to rely on making their own snow.

Elsewhere in The Independent Tony Blair has warned that there is less than 7 years to do something to save the planet from global warming (he obviously falls into the 2012 end of the world camp).

Tony Blair has warned world leaders they have less than seven years to save the planet. The Prime Minister was accused of double standards over climate change after he urged the US, China and India to join a global offensive to tackle the problem.

Mr Blair told the liaison committee of senior MPs: "I think that if we don't get the right agreement internationally for the period after which the Kyoto protocol will have expired - that's 2012 - we are in serious trouble."

He said there was "the beginnings of an international consensus" and praised President George Bush for last week acknowledging America's "addiction to oil" but called on the US to go further.

Mr Blair dismissed calls for a levy on air travel to cut carbon emissions caused by the rise in cheap flights. A tax would need to be "hefty" to be effective, he said.

Peter Ainsworth, the shadow Environment Secretary, said: "Aviation is probably the hardest part of the climate change challenge, but we must face up to it. To walk away with a defeatist shrug is irresponsible."

Oil prices have been tumbling the past few days (causing great pain to those of us long energy stocks) which is quite surprising given the Iran standoff, Venezuelan threats to interrupt supplies to the US, troubles in Nigeria and now a shutoff of exports from Ecuador. Unexpectedly large US inventories are being blamed for the price falls.

While Iran’s oil is still flowing Ecuador, the fifth largest oil producer in Latin America has temporarily stopped production.

State owned oil company, Petroecuador, has suspended its exports after hundreds of protesters stormed a pumping station demanding the government suspend trade talks with the United States.

The pipeline moves all of Petroecuador's production.

Petroecuador declared force majeure, freeing it from its contractual obligations, until the dispute could be resolved, which according to a company spokesman could last a couple of days.

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OPEC oil output in January fell to its lowest level since February 2005 as maintenance cut production from the United Arab Emirates and militant attacks hit Nigerian exports, a Reuters’ survey showed.

Output from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries fell 190,000 barrels per day (bpd) in January from December to 29.54 million bpd, according to the survey of consultants, shippers, oil industry and OPEC sources.

Maintenance at Murban, the largest oilfield in the UAE, cut exports by 150,000 barrels per day. Exports at Murban are expected to recover in February.

Militant attacks on oil infrastructure in Nigeria cut exports by a net total of around 30,000 bpd.

The Energy Blog and In The Wake (Feb 6) have posts on a new solar power plant project in Nevada that is the world's largest. Both note that the energy is destined for military rather than residential use (with In The Wake having a less than glowing analysis of why - if you scroll down about the Feb 3 post on metal theft is quite interesting too).

For those of you who are wondering when photovoltaics would become competitive with grid power this announcement may answer your question. As noted at the end this deal is not available for residential installations.

Powered by Renewables (PBR) of Nevada, announced today it will partner with SunEdison to develop the world's largest solar photovoltaic project in Nevada. The 18 megawatt project almost doubles what is currently the world's largest PV project (10MW) located in Germany.

PBR and SunEdison will develop a total of 36 MWs of PV projects in Nevada, enough energy to power 36,000 homes. The proposed project will be privately owned and operated. The military intends to purchase electricity from the project.

SunEdison pays for, installs, owns and operates solar installations. Customers pay a fixed rate that is at or below current electricity prices for the solar electricity generated from these panels for ten years. SunEdison does not finance residential installations at this time.

While its good to see major solar projects taking off, another post at The Energy Blog puts this into context - elsewhere in Nevada a new coal fired (not IGCC) plant is being constructed to provide up to 2500 MW of power (in contrast to the 20 MW world record solar power plant).

This announcement confirms that we have not seen the end of large coal fired generation plants. Also note that they say that the complex will be expanded with two gasification units when that technology becomes commercially viable. With ten other companies having announced that they were planning on building gasification units, at least one scheduled to be completed by 2010, they seem to be taking a very conservative stance. And some have thought that we have not seen the end of increased demands for electricity--2,500 MW when complete.

Here is Sydney the proposed water desalination plant has been dumped, with the government getting wet, oops - I mean cold, feet about voter resentment over this high cost, vicious circle solution to the steady drop in dam levels. Their public reason is the miraculous discovery of hitherto unknown water sources, which hopefully is just a face saving way of saying they'll be going down the cheap, obvious and sane path of increasing water recycling.

Sydney's unpopular desalination plant will be put on ice by the State Government after a community outcry and fears that it would cost the Labor Party votes at the March 2007 election.

Cabinet met yesterday and was presented with the initial results of drilling in western Sydney, which revealed there might be up to 30 gigalitres a year of groundwater in aquifers. That would nearly match the 45 gigalitres a year that might have been produced by the Kurnell desalination plant.

The groundwater has been known about for several years, but the scale of the reserves was untested. The most recent testing provides the Government with the political figleaf to put the plant on hold for several years. The reserves are large enough to provide additional water for several years. But mining the aquifers will raise questions of the environmental effects of extracting groundwater on this scale. Cities such as Perth have used groundwater to augment supply.

Elsewhere in The Herald they report that BP has followed in Exxon's footsteps (who are saying that US dreams of independence from foreign oil are just that) in announcing a record annual profit thanks to rising oil prices. Plus Ross Gittins has a column on the environmental impact of the industrialisation of India and China (prompted by the release of this year's Worldwatch Institute report).

The greatest economic, geopolitical and environmental event of our times is the rapid economic development of China, closely followed by India. I'm sure you know that, but its full ramifications are yet to dawn on us.

The bit we haven't twigged to is what it might do to the environment.

Two hundred years ago, the countries of the West experienced an industrial revolution that eventually made them far, far richer than all other countries.

What's happening now is that China and India are going through their own industrial revolutions. But it's taking decades, rather than centuries, because they're able to pick up off the shelf the latest Western technology, as well as Western capital to finance massive investment in factories and infrastructure.

What makes this spectacular growth far more significant, however, is that China and India are the two most populous countries in the world, each with populations exceeding a billion. Between them, they account for almost 40 per cent of the world's population. By contrast, the rich countries of North America, Europe, Japan and Australasia account for less than 15 per cent.

What happens when two such huge countries sustain such rapid rates of economic growth? Well, for a start, you get a lot of growth in international trade, since both countries are pursuing export-oriented growth strategies.

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The next effect is the two countries' rapidly growing appetite for energy, food and raw materials, which perpetually threatens to outstrip supply and thus keeps upward pressure on world prices. According to a briefing paper on energy insecurity from the Lowy Institute, China is the second largest consumer of energy in the world (after the United States), while India has moved into sixth place.

We're most conscious of the effect of demand on oil prices. By 2030, China is expected to be importing three-quarters of the oil it needs, while India imports more than 90 per cent. But oil accounts for only between a quarter and a third of the two countries' total energy consumption. Most of the rest comes from … coal. (Sound of Aussie cash registers chinking.)

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Ask yourself what happens if the Chinese and Indian economies double in the next decade. Remember that China already uses 26 per cent of the world's crude steel, 32 per cent of the rice, 37 per cent of the cotton and 47 per cent of the cement.

"Global ecosystems and resources are simply not sufficient to sustain the current economies of the industrial West and at the same time bring more than 2 billion people into the global middle class through the same resource-intensive development model pioneered by North America and Europe," the institute concludes. "Limits on the ability to increase oil production, shortages of fresh water, and the economic impacts of damaged ecosystems and rapid climate change are among the factors that make it impossible to continue current patterns on such a vastly larger scale.

"Humanity is now on a collision course with the world's ecosystems and resources. In the coming decades, we will either find ways of meeting human needs based on new technologies, policies and cultural values, or the global economy will begin to collapse."

Scott Ritter is still predicting a US attack on Iran (though as he's been saying this for almost 2 years I think he's flogging a dead horse in terms of trying to get people's attention - though it does appear probable he'll finally be proved right in a couple of months time). Russian wingnut Vladimir Zhirinovsky is saying the same thing - and he claims the date is set for March 28 (Israel's election day).

Scottish Power is warning of big price rises

The energy group Scottish Power today warned households to expect another "significant" rise in fuel bills. The warning follows unconfirmed reports that British Gas is planning a big rise in gas prices over the next few weeks. Consumers have already seen energy bills rise by 40% in two years.

Scottish Power blamed rising wholesale gas prices. The company increased prices in October, saying a 70% rise in wholesale energy costs since April had forced it to increase charges.

Renewable Energy Access has an article on the case for renewables vs LNG for Californian power requirements.

Let's look at some numbers. Right now we need about 6.2 billion cubic feet of natural gas a day to heat our homes and run our power plants. The California Energy Commission - the state's official word in this area - projects that by 2016, that number will rise to 6.6 billion cubic feet. So we need to find an additional 400 million cubic feet per day in the next decade.

Before we start asking how we're going to meet that need, let's look at what we need the natural gas for. In California, about half of our power plants use natural gas to generate electricity - which can be generated by other energy sources, such as wind and solar power, and the rest is used for heating, cooking and industry. Natural gas for electricity generation is the only area expected to grow appreciably. So instead of trying to find a source for 400 million cubic feet per day of natural gas in the next ten years, let's instead look for its equivalent: about 43,000 gigawatt hours of electricity per year.

California law requires that twenty percent of our electricity come from renewable resources by 2010, about 55,000 gigawatt hours per year - more than enough to meet the 43,000 gigawatt hours we're looking for. (And the amount from renewables will probably be higher, as the state is considering advancing its goal so that thirty-three percent of all electricity would be produced by renewables by 2020.)

But that's not all. We haven't even yet asked whether we could reduce demand through conservation and more efficient technology. California's investor-owned utilities recently received $2 billion in state funding to achieve $5 billion in energy efficiency savings, equivalent to more than 10,000 gigawatt hours a year through 2008. The state also has set an achievable goal of saving 23,000 gigawatt hours per year by 2013.

Under these existing mandates, we will more than offset future energy demand just by following the path that the state and the utilities already have in place. Even if you wanted to hedge your bets, there are sixteen new LNG import terminals already approved by regulators elsewhere in the U.S. and Baja California, as well as plans for gas pipelines from Canada and Alaska - all of which could funnel more natural gas our way if needed.

While natural gas is certainly cleaner and a preferable choice over oil or coal, let us not forget this it is still a non-renewable source of energy and a potentially explosive fuel. It is our belief that opting for LNG may divert attention from renewable energy and energy efficiency - the far more preferable alternatives.

REA also takes a look at why Shell sold its PV power division to SolarWorld - they have decided to focus on newer, thin film technology.

Last week Royal Dutch Shell's prominent solar division bowed out of the crystalline solar industry, agreeing to sell all of its yearly solar crystalline production capacity to SolarWorld. The move represents SolarWorld's increasing global footprint as it seeks to expand beyond its own borders in Germany to other promising markets such as the U.S. It also, however, represents one of the first major industry reshufflings that can be attributed to the crippling shortage of raw material for the photovoltaic (PV) industry.

Call it a silicon shortage, or an insatiable demand outstripping supply, but however it's spun, it's been the bane of every segment of the solar industry. High purity solar-grade silicon is an essential component of approximately 90 percent of the solar market and without an adequate supply, cell and module manufacturers are hampered in their ability to produce the volumes of PV modules the global market demands. This prevents the industry's growth and economies of scale from translating into lower costs for consumers. And in the worst cases, it prevents solar installers from even being able to secure the modules they need to meet their customers' basic needs.

A combination of the tight silicon supply and a very strong German market fed by high value government incentives is actually driving solar costs higher and making the technology less competitive says Tim O'Leary, Manager, External Affairs Shell Renewables & Hydrogen. He said that the expectation is for this situation to remain the same for quite some time, well into 2007-2008.

"We had supply problems throughout 2005, worsening an already difficult situation," said O'Leary. "At the same time, terms and conditions to secure more silicon were aggressive and not acceptable to Shell. The silicon dependence of crystalline will remain a challenge to the industry and as such Shell has decided to focus on next-generation technologies."

That focus will instead be on CIS thin film solar, based principally on Copper, Indium and Selenium. The cells typically produce a lower total energy output than crystalline solar cells but they're also cheaper to manufacture; most of all, they don't rely on silicon. And the efficiencies are coming up. Last fall, Shell announced its CIS solar had achieved 13.5 percent efficiency, a new world record for thin-film.

In Japan, Kaneka has followed Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in announcing the construction of additional solar panel fabrication capacity.

Kaneka Corp. will invest approximately 5 billion yen [USD $42.5 million] into its subsidiary plant in Toyooka, Hyogo prefecture, western Japan so it can increase its annual solar PV production capacity from 30 MW to 55 MW by mid-2007. In 2008, the company is anticipating an additional 15 MW, bringing its total annual capacity in Japan up to 70 MW. According to the company, Kaneka's plan recognizes a growing demand for solar modules and cells to address environmental issues, especially in Europe, and plans to shorten delivery times and lower distribution costs.

Dan Gillmor notes that hearings into Bush's illegal wiretap campaign start next Monday (one more Damocles sword to add to Fitzgerald's latest grand jury in case enough people get tired of the Bush/Cheney act before 2008 and decide its time for some replacements to be moved in).

Specter is a former prosecutor, and no liberal. But you can be sure the screw-the-Constitution crowd will be all over him for locating enough spine to tell the truth.

Specter Says Surveillance Program Violated the Law. The Republican who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee said today that he believed the Bush administration had violated the law with its warrantless surveillance program and that its legal justifications for the program were "strained and unrealistic." The program "is in flat violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act," said the chairman, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, who will open committee hearings on Monday.

Digby also comments on internal Republican divisions on the issue.

The White House has been twisting arms to ensure that no Republican member votes against President Bush in the Senate Judiciary Committee’s investigation of the administration's unauthorized wiretapping.

Congressional sources said Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove has threatened to blacklist any Republican who votes against the president. The sources said the blacklist would mean a halt in any White House political or financial support of senators running for re-election in November.

"It's hardball all the way," a senior GOP congressional aide said.

The sources said the administration has been alarmed over the damage that could result from the Senate hearings, which began on Monday, Feb. 6. They said the defection of even a handful of Republican committee members could result in a determination that the president violated the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Such a determination could lead to impeachment proceedings.

Seeing The Forest also has a couple of links worth following on the abuse of executive power.

The End of the Republic

When the president believes he can order someone on US soil killed because he thinks he's a terrorist, when the Senate refuses to censure administration officials who lie under oath to it, when the argument about spying on Americans without a court order is about "you didn't come to us to get permission first" - well, the corpse may be stumbling along, but it's a zombie.

Financial Sense has a look at the impact of the Iranian oil bourse called "Island Economics".

With the Iranian Oil Bourse set to open in a month, there has been a lot of discussion about its meaning and consequences. A reasonable person might ask, “What’s the difference what oil is priced in? Can’t you just exchange currencies?” So for anyone skeptical about the existence of a Petrodollar and the “Exorbitant Privilege” it lends via inflationary extraction, join me on a little trip to a place I call: Gilligan’s Island....

The Iran nuclear saga continues trundling onwards with lots of sabre rattling being performed in a conspicuously public manner. For those who aren't paying attention, the IAEA has somewhat surprisingly referred Iran to the Security Council (but no action is to be taken until March) - the Iranians have responded by saying that they have no bomb but will hit back and have now halted snap nuclear checks.

Venezuela's Hugo Chavez (who voted against referring Iran to the security council) is also engaged in a diplomatic row with the US, which has seen tit for tat diplomatic expulsions and now threats of closing off exports of oil to refineries in the US.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez threatened to jail diplomats and close refineries belonging to the U.S. unit of the state oil company in an escalating war of words with the President George W. Bush.

U.S. diplomats continue to engage in espionage in his country, Chavez told hundreds of thousands of supporters today during a government rally commemorating the 14th anniversary of his abortive coup attempt in 1992 against former President Carlos Andres Perez. He said he would jail U.S. diplomats caught spying, while challenging the U.S. to break diplomatic ties.

``If the government of the U.S. wants to break relations with Venezuela, and they take the decision, it would cost me nothing to order the closure of the refineries we have in the U.S.,'' Chavez said. ``Then we will see where (the price of) oil will go, or a gallon of gasoline. It would cost me nothing to sell oil to other countries in the world.''

``We now sell 1.5 million barrels a day of oil to the U.S.,'' Chavez said. ``We have never missed our commitment.'' Venezuela could sell oil now going to the U.S. to India, China and Latin America, said Chavez, who said his government has proof of spying by U.S. diplomats. During his speech, he read several e-mails that he said proved U.S. staffers were engaged in espionage.

Chavez, who was dressed in a red shirt and wearing his trademark red beret, said the South American country, which is the world's fifth-largest oil exporter, will also seek to build up its defenses by purchasing arms from other countries.

So why have Russia and China agreed to send the Iran case to the Security Council ? I guess if you follow Orwell's line of reasoning about the relationship between the 3 main powers and the countries of "the gap" then you could conclude that no one wants a nuclear armed Iran dominating the oil supply from the middle east (especially as Iraq looks likely to become an Iranian satellite in future) - it would make control of this vital resource by the others problematic.

Alternatively you could reason that Russia and China are happy to delay for the time being and to veto any UN approved action later on - and in the meantime it allows the Russians to attempt to get more leverage over the Iranian nuclear fuel cycle and to sell them more weapons, while the Chinese might be looking to get a better deal on oil and gas supplies in return for some protection.

The Asia Times has an article by an ex-german intelligence officer (so they say anyway) called "Iran and the jaws of a trap" which claims that the Iranians have blindly walked into a trap set by the US.

The Iranian leadership's obvious confidence in its ability to deter the US, Britain and Israel seems to rest on mainly four assumptions. Iran is militarily much stronger than Iraq, much larger, its terrain more difficult, its society more cohesive - thus more difficult to defeat, to occupy and to pacify. In addition, President Mahmud Ahmadinejad seems to take particular comfort from the widely anticipated wave of popular outrage and anti-Western attacks in the wider Middle East if Iran should be attacked.

Moreover, the economic costs of a war against Iran in terms of the price of oil and the interruption of the Iranian supply would propel the world economy into a tailspin. And finally, Iranian leaders seem to accept at face value the US moans over its overstretched military forces and the demoralization of US forces in Iraq.

Certainly, Iranian misconceptions are helped mightily by the defeatism of the Western debate about such a war. "No good options" has become something like the consensus view: an airborne and special forces "surgical strike" (as well as a massive attack) against the Iranian nuclear industry and military targets could at best delay its nuclear program and will be followed by retaliation in Iraq, Lebanon etc; a ground attack is out of the question because most of deployable US ground forces are desperately busy in Iraq.

If such things could be planned, one might be persuaded to consider this debate as an aspect of strategic deception. In fact, the US and British forces in Iraq and in the Persian Gulf as well as the forces in Afghanistan are quite able to redeploy on short notice, for example during the days of an initial air campaign against Iran for large-scale operations against the remaining Iranian forces and can be reinforced during the war. The US military infrastructure at the borders of Iran has a very substantial capability to deal with surge requirements.

Mike Whitney (who never strikes me as a very impartial observer) has an article that outlines a variant of the theory that the US plan is to annex Khuzestan. He also has some "New World order" theorising called "the tyranny that follows economic collapse" that follows the theory (common with many doomer scenarios) that US economic collapse is inevitable and authoritarian government isn't far away. Mike recommends getting together some cardboard and finding a good freeway flyover to live under, which doesn't seem to be a particularly constructive approach...

The stars are suitably aligned and the free ride will soon be over. Gold is skyrocketing as perceptive investors see the cracks and fissures appearing in the economic foundation that binds the debtor-kingdom together. Twitchy investors are watching for news about Iran, rebel attacks in Nigeria, or a sell-off of greenbacks in China. Market analysts may feign equanimity but they are walking barefoot on the knifes-edge expecting the worse.

But, the worse is unavoidable; the country is dead broke. Last year alone Americans not only spent more than they earned for the first time since the great Depression; they also borrowed an additional $600 billion from their home equity to pay off credit card debt and consumer loans! This tells us that the all signs of growth in the economy are the result of credit spending. Home equity has become the new personal ATM card, demonstrating once again that the country is running on fumes.

This quarter’s slow growth of 1.1%, shows that the well has run dry and consumer spending (which accounts for 70% of GDP) is down for the count. Interest rates are going up, the dollar will soon be sinking, energy costs are soaring, and the unemployment line is getting longer.

Time to find a nice comfy spot beneath the freeway on-ramp…and bring your own cardboard.

The Clinton strategy would have made the transition more agreeable, but the result of globalization is roughly the same. Businesses and jobs pack up and leave driving wages through the floor, while the social safety net continues to worsen by congressional edict. The main difference with Clinton is that he strengthened the dollar by balancing the budget and showed little appetite for creating the police-state apparatus that the Bush claque relishes.

The Bush administration is set up for a quick but agonizing transition. They have painstakingly removed whatever laws stood in the way of autocratic government. The courts will brandish the rubber stamp for the supreme executive, the congress will languish as a ceremonial institution, and the compliant media will shower praise on the Dear Leader’s iron-fisted methods of keeping the peace.

Economic disintegration is the requisite catalyst for changing the fundamental institutions of American government. The globalists in the White House have played a role in numerous coups across the planet, all producing the same basic result; a military dictatorship with a strongman at the head of state. This one should be no different.

On a possibly related (to the Iran situation) note, the furore over Danish cartoons lampooning Islam's favourite prophet Mohammed seems quite astounding given that they were published over 5 months ago. Why all the fuss now ?

Obviously (as I'm very secular in outlook), I couldn't care less about cartoons mocking any religious figure and I think that any publication should have the right to publish whatever it feels like. Both sides seem to be fanning the flames as much as they can (though the Danes look like they wish the whole issue would go away, unfortunately for them the conservative movement and free speech activists both look determined to keep the issue alive). The European Tribune has one interesting explanation about what is going on - the Saudi's kicked the whole thing off as a way of distracting attention away from the usual large death toll from stampedes at this year's Hajj. This doesn't sound particularly likely to be true but its a novel explanation which at least avoids the "clash of civilisations" claptrap being proferred elsewhere.

I also liked yesterday's commentary in Crikey on the topic from Charles Richardson.

The controversy over cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad shows no sign of abating, with a violent attack last night on the Danish consulate in Beirut – although there have also been many voices in the Middle East calling for calm.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the affair has been the different responses in the English-speaking countries to that in continental Europe. None of the leading British or American (or Australian) papers have republished the cartoons; as Emma-Kate Symons puts it in this morning's Australian, "Europe was abandoned by the British and US political and media elite."

Even those Europeans who have criticised the decision to publish the cartoons, such as EU commissioner Franco Frattini have defended the right of free speech in uncompromising terms. It seems a complete reversal of the usual position of the Americans and British accusing the French and Germans of appeasement.

A clue can be found in the terms in which the issue is framed in Europe. ­France Soir, which republished the cartoons last week, headlined with "Yes, we have the right to caricature God," and explained that "no religious dogma can impose itself on a democratic and secular society."

On the continent, religion is seen as the enemy of freedom in a way that is foreign to the American tradition. It was not surprising to find the Vatican weighing in on the other side, arguing that freedom of speech does not include the freedom to attack religion.

Also noteworthy is the tepid response from Europe's large Muslim population. There have been some protests, but nothing like the violence of the Middle East. Where are the commentators who kept saying that France's Muslims are a fifth column threatening western civilisation?

Tony Parkinson last year told us that French rioters were making "a defiant declaration of their separate cultural identity," but it actually looks as if they care more about jobs and discrimination than about the dignity of their Prophet.

MIT Technology Review takes a look at "Computing's Power Problem", noting that tech companies are looking to curb their enormous appetite for electricity.

Tech companies are notoriously power hungry. In fact, since data storage has become increasingly important, energy consumption in massive computer rooms - serving companies from Google to Abercrombie & Fitch - has been rising.

So attendees at Sun Microsystems' summit in San Francisco last week addressed ways to save energy in data centers and large computer server rooms. The gathering included industry leaders such as Hewlett-Packard, Intel, and Advanced Micro Devices, as well as representatives from Pacific Gas and Electric Company and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Their goal: to find effective ways to gauge the amount of energy being used and wasted by data centers, and to share technological advances that could help to decrease electricity consumption.

WorldChanging has a post on ethanol and E85 use (and the need for a supporting infrastructure) in the US from Joel Makower that takes a look at some of the developments in ethanol usage for fuel.

The seemingly sudden elevation of ethanol in the national consciousness - capped this past week by the "addicted to oil" admission in George Bush's State of the Union address - shows the value of persistence and patience for those promoting alternative energy resources, and underscores the notion that every underdog has its day.

But it also points out that no matter what petroleum alternatives you choose, there will likely be plenty of critics out there. It took barely a single 24-hour news cycle following Bush's speech before enthusiastic headlines gave way to pessimistic reports detailing why the president will likely have a tough time pushing his vision past everyone from environmental activists to Big Oil.

Perhaps. But I'm far from ready to run this idea into a ditch.

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This is laudatory, albeit hardly a stretch goal. (Quick aside: In remarks at last week's Clean-Tech Investors Summit, former Bush-the-senior EPA administrator Bill Reilly cracked that in his recent State of the Union address, George W. managed to pronounce "cellulosic biomass ethanol" more accurately than he does "nuclear.") Many experts suggest that cellulosic ethanol - derived from plant waste and other fibrous materials - can be ramped up rather quickly. And, since it can be sold through gas pumps at any of the 19,000 or so existing U.S. fueling stations, infrastructure problems are minimal (or at least far less than for hydrogen distribution).

And cellulosic ethanol makes the most climate sense, since using waste products requires few, if any, fossil fuels to grow, and even growing special "bioenergy crops" can be done with far fewer petroleum and petrochemical inputs. According to a recent study by Dan Kammen of U.C. Berkeley's Renewable and Appropriate Energy Lab, the greenhouse gas (GHG) improvements of cellulosic over corn-based ethanol are dramatic.

Most ethanol based programs are currently corn based and seem to be almost worthless to me (its really just an exercise in pork barrelling for corn farming states as far as I can tell). The cellulosic ethanol approach does seem to be much more sustainable, but until this is a fully industrialised process (and the issues related to soil depletion are fully understood and have been dealt with) I think people should be a little wary of just how much of a panacea this will be - it will help mitigate some of the effects of oil depletion but seems unlikely to make them go away.

Bart from Energy Bulletin made the following comments:

I'm afraid that ethanol is another example of codependency -- making it easier for the addict to continue his addiction. It's as if all the problems we face are collapsed into one simple-minded question: how do Americans keep their cars running?

Some basic problems:
1. How does this solution scale to the hundreds of millions of cars to be driven by the newly affluent Indians and Chinese?
2. What does this do to the price of sugar and commodities? This may not be a problem for the affluent, but what about the majority of the world's population?
3. How is this a sustainable process? It requires inputs of petroleum, fertilizers and pesticides. It depletes the soil of carbon and other nutrients.

The post is also notable for the appearance of what seems to be WorldChanging's first troll, which I guess is a milestone of sorts. How come none of my trolls ever hang around for long ?

Grist has a short note on smart electricity meters program in California (Energy Australia and Country Energy are running similar things here on a limited scale).

Millions of California households will soon be able to see at a glance how much electricity and money is being gobbled up as they flip on their hairdryers and plasma TVs. California regulators and two of the state's biggest utilities are rolling out a $2 billion program to install "advanced" electricity meters in select homes. The devices display how much electricity a customer is using and how much it's costing in real time, encouraging folks to cut back during peak hours. The utilities will use the data provided by the meters to offer variable-rate plans that reward good power behavior -- like running dishwashers off-peak -- to help alleviate California's perpetual power crunches. In a pilot project, electricity use fell by an average of 13 percent in the 2,500 participating homes. Similar programs have cut electricity consumption in Pennsylvania, Florida, Sweden (natch), and elsewhere, says a California energy commissioner.

Reports from Scotland indicate that North Sea production is slumping faster than the UK government predicted.

A marked downturn in North Sea oil production means that the UK will become a net importer of oil at least three years earlier than the government anticipates, according to new figures from the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Even the contribution from the Buzzard field – which will add about 180,000 barrels of oil per day from 2007 – is seen as insufficient to prevent a looming dependence on the vagaries of world markets.

The Department of Trade & Industry is sticking to its prediction that the UK will not become a net importer of oil on a sustained annual basis until 2010.

However, figures from the RBS Oil & Gas Index show production from the UK continental shelf unexpectedly shrank to 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd) in October, 8% down on the previous month and a 14% fall on October 2004.

Andrew McLaughlin, group chief economist at RBS, said: “The International Energy Agency is predicting UK demand of 1.8 million bpd in 2007. But we’ll be lucky to produce an average of 1.7 million bpd in 2005 and it seems unlikely that North Sea production is going to rise above 1.8 million bpd over the next 12 months.

“There had been a hope both in the oil industry and within government that a period of sustained high oil prices would create more incentives to produce in the North Sea. But that has not come through.

“North Sea fields are maturing rapidly and as a result the UK looks set to become a net importer of crude oil earlier than the government is anticipating. Even current high prices will be insufficient to stem the long-term depletion of North Sea fields.”

UK crude production peaked at 2.9 million bpd in 1999 but has been in long-term decline ever since. Since 2004, the UK has been a net importer of gas.

News that Halliburton has been awarded a contract to build "immigration detention centers" in the US has much of the conspiracy theorist world aghast wondering who will end up in these facilities (not that I'm suggesting Boing Boing, which the link is from, is a haven for conspiracy theorists). The note that this is an extension of an existing contract makes it seem more like yet another handout to Dick Cheney's mates rather than a harbinger of the imminent arrival of the New World Order...

On Saturday, the NY Times reported that a subsidiary of Halliburton (the same company that reported that 2005 was its best year ever, and has been caught overcharging taxpayers for its no-bid contract work in Iraq) was awarded a $385 million contract to build "temporary immigration detention centers" in the US for Homeland Security Department. Call me paranoid, but seeing "Halliburton," "Homeland Security," and "detention centers" in the same article doesn't make me feel safe at all.

KBR would build the centers for the Homeland Security Department for an unexpected influx of immigrants, to house people in the event of a natural disaster or for new programs that require additional detention space, company executives said. KBR, which announced the contract last month, had a similar contract with immigration agencies from 2000 to last year.

Paul Craig Roberts has a new article out called "Who Will Save America ?" which touches on a lot of my favourite ranting topics.

A number of readers have asked me when did I undergo my epiphany, abandon right-wing Reaganism and become an apostle of truth and justice.

I appreciate the friendly sentiment, but there is a great deal of misconception in the question.

When I saw that the neoconservative response to 9/11 was to turn a war against stateless terrorism into military attacks on Muslim states, I realized that the Bush administration was committing a strategic blunder with open-ended disastrous consequences for the US that, in the end, would destroy Bush, the Republican Party, and the conservative movement.

...

Americans have forgotten what it takes to remain free. Instead, every ideology, every group is determined to use government to advance its agenda. As the government's power grows, the people are eclipsed.

We have reached a point where the Bush administration is determined to totally eclipse the people. Bewitched by neoconservatives and lustful for power, the Bush administration and the Republican Party are aligning themselves firmly against the American people. Their first victims, of course, were the true conservatives. Having
eliminated internal opposition, the Bush administration is now using blackmail obtained through illegal spying on American citizens to silence the media and the opposition party.

Before flinching at my assertion of blackmail, ask yourself why President Bush refuses to obey the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The purpose of the FISA court is to ensure that administrations do not spy for partisan political reasons. The warrant requirement is to ensure that a panel of independent federal judges hears a legitimate reason for the spying, thus protecting a president from the temptation to abuse the powers of government. The only reason for the Bush administration to evade the court is that the Bush administration had no legitimate reasons for its spying. This should be obvious even to a naif.

The United States is undergoing a coup against the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, civil liberties, and democracy itself. The "liberal press" has been co-opted. As everyone must know by now, the New York Times has totally failed its First Amendment obligations, allowing Judith Miller to make war propaganda for the Bush administration, suppressing for an entire year the news that the Bush administration
was illegally spying on American citizens, and denying coverage to Al Gore's speech that challenged the criminal deeds of the Bush administration.

The TV networks mimic Fox News' faux patriotism. Anyone who depends on print, TV, or right-wing talk radio media is totally misinformed. The Bush administration has achieved a de facto Ministry of Propaganda.

...

Consider the no-fly list. This list has no purpose whatsoever but to harass and disrupt the livelihoods of Bush's critics. If a known terrorist were to show up at check-in, he would be arrested and taken into custody, not told that he could not fly. What sense does it make to tell someone who is not subject to arrest and who has cleared screening that he or she cannot fly? How is this person any more dangerous than any other passenger?

If Senator Ted Kennedy, a famous senator with two martyred brothers, can be put on a no-fly list, as he was for several weeks, anyone can be put on the list. The list has no accountability. People on the list cannot even find out why they are on the list. There is no recourse, no procedure for correcting mistakes.

How long before members of the opposition party, should there be one, find that they cannot return to Washington for important votes, because they have been placed on the no-fly list? What oversight does Congress or a panel of federal judges exercise over the list to make sure there are valid reasons for placing people on the list?

...

Debate is dead in America for two reasons: One is that the media concentration permitted in the 1990s has put news and opinion in the hands of a few corporate executives who do not dare risk their broadcasting licenses by getting on the wrong side of government, or their advertising revenues by becoming "controversial." The media follows a safe line and purveys only politically correct information.

The other reason is that Americans today are no longer enthralled by debate. They just want to hear what they want to hear. The right-wing, left-wing, and libertarians alike preach to the faithful. Democracy cannot succeed when there is no debate.

Americans need to understand that many interests are using the "war on terror" to achieve their agendas. The Federalist Society is using the "war on terror" to achieve its agenda of concentrating power in the executive and packing the Supreme Court to this effect. The neocons are using the war to achieve their agenda of Israeli hegemony in the Middle East. Police agencies are using the war to remove constraints on their powers and to make themselves less accountable. Republicans are using the war to achieve one-party rule--theirs. The Bush administration is using the war to avoid accountability and evade constraints on executive powers. Arms industries, or what President Eisenhower called the "military-industrial complex," are using the war to fatten profits. Terrorism experts are using the war to gain visibility. Security firms are using it to gain customers. Readers can add to this list at will. The lack of debate gives carte blanche to these agendas.

One certainty prevails. Bush is committing America to a path of violence and coercion, and he is getting away with it.

I'll close with a BBC report on the last military frontier - the internet.

Bloggers beware.

As the world turns networked, the Pentagon is calculating the military opportunities that computer networks, wireless technologies and the modern media offer. From influencing public opinion through new media to designing "computer network attack" weapons, the US military is learning to fight an electronic war.

The declassified document is called "Information Operations Roadmap". It was obtained by the National Security Archive at George Washington University using the Freedom of Information Act. Officials in the Pentagon wrote it in 2003. The Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, signed it.

The "roadmap" calls for a far-reaching overhaul of the military's ability to conduct information operations and electronic warfare. And, in some detail, it makes recommendations for how the US armed forces should think about this new, virtual warfare. The document says that information is "critical to military success". Computer and telecommunications networks are of vital operational importance.

RealClimate notes that as the world warms, Punksutawney Phil may soon be on the dole queue.

Living in central Pennsylvania, it would seem remiss of me not to comment on Groundhog Day today. For those not familiar with the event, Groundhog Day, which takes place on February 2 every year, is the modern American version of an age-old tradition originating in Europe centuries ago. The modern Groundhog Day is celebrated in the United States in Punksutawney Pennsylvania (about 100 miles west of Penn State University, where I teach). According to legend, if the groundhog--who is named Punxsutawney Phil--sees his shadow, there will be six more weeks of winter weather. If he does not see his shadow, there will be an early spring. After Phil emerges from his burrow on February 2, he speaks to an event official in "Groundhogese", and his prediction is then translated for the awaiting public. The event was popularized in the 1993 movie of the same name, starring Bill Murray.

Sadly, it appears that global warming may soon add Phil to the ranks of the unemployed. With the warming of 4-8ºC (7-14ºF) predicted over North America by the end of this century if we continue to increase greenhouse gas concentrations at current rates, the answer will become simple. Spring will come early every year. While this may seem like a pleasant outcome of climate change, it could in fact lead to serious problems for plants, animals, and entire ecosystems. Living things have adapted to the timing of the seasons over many thousands of years. Here, we are changing the timing of the seasons on timescales of decades. Plants and animals just don't adapt well to changes on such short timescales.

TidePool has an article by Democratic Representative Tom Udall called "What Peak Oil Means to Every American - Declaring energy independence", which outlines the basics of peak oil.

In 1970, oil production within the United States peaked -- reached its maximum production rate -- at not much more than 10 million barrels of oil per day. That means since 1970, oil production in this country has been declining, and we now import 58 percent of the oil we use. The sheer scale of the American appetite for petroleum is difficult to grasp: Per capita, each of us consumes about 20 pounds of petroleum products each day.

With demand rising and production that we can control falling, our dependence on imported oil has become an economic, diplomatic and security nightmare. We now send $25 million an hour abroad to pay for foreign oil, and some of that money is diverted to the same jihadi terrorists we are spending additional billions to fight. For these and other reasons, Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.) and I founded the Congressional Peak Oil Caucus in October 2005.

A crisis looms if we do not begin preparing for the day when world oil production peaks. And that day is coming, most likely within four to eight years. Peak oil is a fact, not a theory, and the logic is simple. World oil production has been increasing for more than 140 years. But you have to discover oil before you can produce it. Global discoveries peaked 40 years ago, so the production peak will necessarily follow. Oil production in 33 of the 48 largest oil-producing nations in the world has already peaked.

The world now consumes 84 million barrels of oil per day, and it is true that there will be enough oil produced this year and the next to meet global demand. But thereafter, depletion is likely to gain the upper hand as global production flattens and begins to decline.

Peak oil does not mean we are running out of oil. Indeed, at peak, society will recover and refine more oil than ever before. But once oil production begins to decline, prices are likely to rise sharply, with some mainstream experts predicting a doubling or tripling by 2015. What we are running out of is cheap oil -- the $20 per barrel oil around which we have designed our automobiles, our subdivisions, the American way of life.

The Financial Review had an article last Friday about BHP looking to sell its coal seam methane assets, which seems a bit surprising, given that I'd expect coal seam methane to be increasingly important to supply east coast natural gas in the coming years (even allowing for the impact of the PNG pipeline).

I quite enjoyed MonkeyGrinder's description of George Bush's trumping of the peak oil blogistan in terms of raising awareness of our precarious energy predicament.

I try and run a relevant blog here; I must say that for as much as I feel the United States President to be an illegitimate ignoramus blunderhead, he has managed to raise the exposure of energy more in one hour than all the peak blogs did in the last year.

So, dundering kudos to POTUS and his everything but the kitchen sink energy proposals, followed by the belated admission by his Press Weasel that he is a fat old liar.

While many of the projects outlined by the Prez King are ridiculous, an atmosphere where it is OK to start thinking about alternative energy is a huge positive in the United States.

The speech is particuarly helpful in a fascist society, such as the United States. It is hard to be the dissenting ant, the layabout grass eater in a nest fire ants. Now, French fries will have their day.

MG also notes that OPEC are not happy about Bush's (since weaseled away from) statement that he wants to reduce US dependence on middle east oil. No worries about that - it will happen over time anyway, thanks to geology...

The Daily Reckoning has an article on US oil shale reserves. As always, the description of how shale is turned into oil demonstrates just how unlikely this is to result in large quantities of oil being produced.

The two trickiest aspects of oil shale development, as the geologists and engineers explained, are heating the shale to extreme temperatures, while simultaneously surrounding the heated area with a subterranean ice wall. Shell doesn't know, or isn't saying, which part of the project will be the most challenging. If you were about to change the world by making it economic to tap into as much as 2 trillion barrels of oil under the Colorado plateau, you'd be pretty careful about showing your competitors how you were going to do it.

First, anything that heats up rock around it to around 600 or 700 degrees Fahrenheit has to conduct electrically generated heat well. The most conductive metals on the Periodic Table of Elements are, in order, silver, copper, and gold. Naturally, the number of heaters you put in a place affects the amount of time it takes to turn the shale goo into API 34 crude. The more heaters, the more cost, though.

And given the fact that Shell does not know yet if the heaters will be recoverable, you can see that sticking silver, copper, or gold heaters 2000 meters underground and then leaving them there once the kerogen has been pumped has a serious effect on the economics of your operation.

At the moment, Shell is not sure what the optimal size of production zones ought to be. The big issue here is how big can a freeze-wall be to be effective and freezing the groundwater surrounding a shale deposit? The test projects, as you can see, were quite small. Shell doesn't know, or isn't saying, what the optimum size is for a each "pod" or "cell". That's what they'll have to figure out at the next stage...and the picture with the dirt is a football field sized project....where rather than creating the freeze-wall at 50 meters down...they will do it at 1,000 ft. down.... with 2,000 being the desired and necessary depth for commercial viability. I'm not sure anyone has ever created a freeze-wall at that depth....neither is shell. But we'll find out. The oil itself that comes from the process looks like...oil. No heavy refining needed.

Adam Porter has an article at Resource Investor about the CEO of Shell answering some peak oil related questions.

“It struck me that if this is how well the majors do when the market is just ‘tight’ what would happen if there was ever a real shortage of oil,” said Strahan. “So I put this to Mr. van der Veer and asked him what would happen in a real peak of global production and how much money would Shell make?”

Strahan also asked what van der Veer thought of the idea of peak oil and whether or not Shell had looked at the situation itself.

“I asked whether Shell had done any detailed modelling on this question,” said Strahan. “Mr. van der Veer replied that his argument basically was that the world will not [arrive at a peak oil situation]. He said that peak oil is correct as applied to regional areas of production like the North Sea, Texas or the Lower 48, but does not apply to the world as a whole.”

Van der Veer’s actual reply to Strahan on Shell’s webcast was “That is a great question it is much more complex than many people think. That (peak oil) is not how we will go. Because peak oil theory itself is correct, if one takes easy oil close to the markets. If you look at West Texas the oil has gone, or even the North Sea…but if you look at oil sands you don’t know where the peak will come…if you think about coal…there are huge reserves. If you assume we can develop clean coal technologies, [then] there will not be one peak.”

“So there is no one peak. There will be many peaks [for different fields, regions and fuels] and they will be in many different time frames and how that will develop, we don’t know.

WorldChanging has a post on "Coal Fires and Climate Change" that looks at the vast amount of carbon dioxide emitted by underground coal fires (we even have ome of these in New South Wales).

Here's a problem I didn't know existed. Coal fires are underground fires that burn in coal mines and seams. In China alone, they may spew as much CO2 into the atmosphere as all the cars in the US.

These fires are exceedingly difficult to put out. Indeed, some well-known ones have been burning for decades.

Finding a way to put out coal fires and prevent new ones would seem to me to be an area where some worldchanging innovation could yield profound benefits for everyone. A brief online search turned up some interesting projects -- Remote sensing GIS tools to support fire fighters, an ambitious-looking Sino-German project, some new coal fire-fighting techniques -- but I'm not at all confident that these are the best (or even good) ideas.

Past Peak has an interesting post (Write A Book, Get Banned From Flying) that alarmingly reports that the author of "Bush's Brain" is on the US "no fly" list. Seems vaguely remiscent of Soviet controls on internal movements of dissidents.

James Moore, bestselling author of Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential discovers he's now on the No Fly list:

I have been on the No Fly Watch List for a year. I will never be told the official reason. No one ever is. You cannot sue to get the information. Nothing I have done has moved me any closer to getting off the list. There were 35,000 Americans in that database last year. According to a European government that screens hundreds of thousands of American travelers every year, the list they have been given to work from has since grown to 80,000.

Nixon's enemies list was small potatoes. These people have way too much power, and they're way too eager to misuse it. It's maddening to think that if you get on the list you've got no recourse. Kafka meets Orwell.

The Guardian has an article by comedian Robert Newman on the topic "It's capitalism or a habitable planet - you can't have both" which makes the case that dealing with peak oil and global warming is impossible in a capitalist society.

Much discussion of energy, with never a word about power, leads to the fallacy of a low-impact, green capitalism somehow put at the service of environmentalism. In reality, power concentrates around wealth. Private ownership of trade and industry means that the decisive political force in the world is private power. The corporation will outflank every puny law and regulation that seeks to constrain its profitability. It therefore stands in the way of the functioning democracy needed to tackle climate change. Only by breaking up corporate power and bringing it under social control will we be able to overcome the global environmental crisis. ...

If we are all still in denial about the radical changes coming - and all of us still are - there are sound geological reasons for our denial. We have lived in an era of cheap, abundant energy. There never has and never will again be consumption like we have known. The petroleum interval, this one-off historical blip, this freakish bonanza, has led us to believe that the impossible is possible, that people in northern industrial cities can have suntans in winter and eat apples in summer. But much as the petroleum bubble has got us out of the habit of accepting the existence of zero-sum physical realities, it's wise to remember that they never went away. You can either have capitalism or a habitable planet. One or the other, not both.

I tend to think blaming capitalism (and even continuous economic growth) for the state of the environment is a little misguided and is somewhat beside the point when it comes to the mitigation of peak oil and global warming (plus I've yet to see a meaningful alternative proposed - its not like the communist model was any better at avoiding environmental destruction, other than it generally didn't grow as fast - but it compensated for that "positive" by being less able to adapt once the consequences of various rapid industrialisation programs became apparent).

There is a fairly simple solution to the problems of global warming and peak oil that doesn't involve discarding capitalism entirely - introducing carbon taxes and steadily increasing them.

It is true (and unfortunate) that fossil fuel related industries do currently dominate the political systems in the anglo saxon world, which is largely the cause of our refusal to do anything about global warming or peak oil, and that this does tend to make the process of introducing carbon taxes a bit difficult. Its worth reading Joel Bakan's "The Corporation" to get some ideas about how the system could be adjusted in order to stop this sort of thing happening.

However, these industries aren't the only ones that exist in capitalist societies and at some point all the other industries are going to realise that their profits and ability to survive are being compromised by the effects of global warming and ever increasing energy costs as a result of peak oil. So we can probably expect to see some sort of shift as these problems become obvious to everyone, with political parties that propose dealing with the problems getting more funding from those who don't have an interest in continuing the fossil fuel economy.

The Viridian idea is that you can have capitalism and a sustainable, workable world at the same time - it just requires a restructuring of the way things are done.

Part of this is basically marketing (if you make green / sustainable ideas and products "cool" then the market will shift towards providing them) and partly by adopting processes like the ones described in Bill McDonough and Michael Braungart's book "Cradle to Cradle".

I won't try to describe the whole book (click on the link and read their description) but in summary the book describes a second iteration of the industrial revolution that concentrates on "eco-effectiveness" rather than the traditional industrial system of converting natural resources into waste, or slightly greener ideas of "eco-efficiency", which slow down the process but basically just try to reduce the amount of damage rather than rethinking the process.

Eco-effectiveness involves creating prodcuts in such a way that they can be fully recycled once they are no longer required (and this means recycled into the same quality of product, not "downcycled" like paper waste is for example). The book discusses closed cycles for "biological and technical nutrients" - keeping organic materials that can be returned to the natural environment seperate from synthetic or mineral materials that can be fed back into the industrial cycle.

This involves a lot of changes to the design process in particular but results in an industrial economy which is no longer as subject to the limits to growth, as it tends to be able to reuse a lot of the materials it needs.

Of course, this doesn't apply in the case of non-recyclable resources, such as oil. There is a section that talks about energy called "Brute force" which I'll quote below:

If the first Industrial Revolution had a motto, we like to joke, it would be "If rute force doesn't work, you're not using enough of it". The attempt to impose universal design solutions on an infinite number of local conditions and customs is one manifestation of this principle and its underlying assumption, that nature should be overwhelmed; so is the application of the chemical brute force and fossil fuel energy necessary to make such solutions "fit".

All of nature's industry relies on energy from the sun, which can be viewed as a form of current, constantly renewing income. Humans, by contrast, extract and burn fossil fuels such as coal and petrochemicals that have been deposited deep below the Earth's surface, supplementing them with energy produced through waste incineration processes and nuclear reactors that create additional problems. They do this with little or no attention to harnessing local natural energy flows. The standard operating instruction seems to be "If too hot or too cold, just add more fossil fuels".

You are probably familiar with the threat of global warming brought about by the buildup of heat-trapping gases (such as carbon dioxide) in the atmosphere due to human activities. Increasing global temperatures result in global climate change and shifts of existing climates. Most models predict more severe wqeather: hotter hots, colder colds, and more intense storms, as global thermal contrasts grow more extreme. A warmer atmosphere draws more water from oceans, resulting in bigger, wetter, more frequent storms, rises in sea level, shifts in seasons, and a chain of other climatic events.

The reality of global warming has gained currency not only among environmentalists but among industry leaders. But global warming is not the sole reason to rethink our reliance on the "brute force" approach to energy. Incinerating fossil fuels contributes particulates - microscopic particles of soot - to the environment, where they are known to cause respiratory and other health problems. Regulations for airborne pollutants known to threaten health are growing more severe. As new regulations, based on mounting research about the health threats of airborne toxins resulting from incinerating fossil fuels, are implemented, industries invested solely in continuing the current system will be at a serious disadvantage.

Even beyond these important issues, brute force energy doesn't make good sense as a dominant strategy over the long term. You wouldn't want to depend on savings for all your daily expenditures, so why rely on savings to meet all of humanity's energy needs ? Clearly, over the years petrochemicals will become harder (and more expensive) to get, and drilling in pristine places for a few million more drums of oil isn't going to solve that problem.

In a sense, finite sources of energy, such as petrochemicals derived from fossil fuels, can be seen as a nest egg, something to be preserved for emergencies, then used sparingly - in certain medical situations, for example. For the majority of our simple energy needs, humans should be accruing a great deal of current solar income, of which there is plenty: thousands of times the amount of energy needed to fuel human activities hits the surface of the planet every day in the form of sunlight.

One novel aspect of the book is that is made using a special type of plastic - this is described on the book's website:

In addition to describing the hopeful, nature-inspired design principles that are making industry both prosperous and sustainable, the book itself is a physical symbol of the changes to come. It is printed on a synthetic 'paper,' made from plastic resins and inorganic fillers, designed to look and feel like top quality paper while also being waterproof and rugged. And the book can be easily recycled in localities with systems to collect polypropylene, like that in yogurt containers. This 'treeless' book points the way toward the day when synthetic books, like many other products, can be used, recycled, and used again without losing any material quality—in cradle-to-cradle cycles.

As a result of this approach, the book is a little unusual - it looks and feels great, but is heavier than it looks. The plastic pages themselves feel a little different to paper but on the whole its a high quality look and feel.

The common (or garden) paperback book has a number of natural enemies in the wild, such as the sun (which can make books discolour or curl up), water (by and large very destructive), small children (which tend to chew on the corners, bend the covers and rip out pages) and your more extreme type of conservative individual (who may want to ban or burn the book).

Once I finished reading it I decided to see how well it stood up to some of these tests of endurance. As I don't tend to hang out with book burners (and I doubt it would survive that sort of treatment), the book avoided trial by fire. However I did give it to a small child, who has a bad track record when it comes to book destruction, and the book survived completely unscathed, in spite of repeated tests.

The sun wasn't quite as easily dealt with, with the front cover curling a bit after some exposure. The book did handle water well though - I took it into the ocean for a while and made sure it got thoroughly soaked. The plastic pages really don't absorb water - though they did get a bit salty and sandy, and I eventually had to wipe each page individually to get rid off all the excess moisture and grit. Once this was done the book was as good as new again. I'm not quite sure if it can actually be recycled into another book and I think I'd prefer to keep it on my bookshelf for now in any case.

The Futures Foundation has an article on a presentation by Professor Ian Lowe called "Stealing from the future (or how to destroy the planet in seven easy steps)" at the "Global Mind, Global Soul, Global Action" conference at Tamkang University in Taiwan.

"There are many possible futures. We should be trying to establish a future that can be sustained, even if not for the four to five million years that the earth is expected to last. Not doing that is selling short our children by funding our lifestyles from the future."

Taking an unusual approach, Professor Lowe then set out to describe how one might go about destroying a planet, by destroying its future.

"How could we do it?

We could start with exponential population growth.

Then we could increase the rate of consumption per person. We could base our economy on consumption, stimulating consumption that is not necessary. In fact, we could stimulate consumption by appealing to the seven deadly sins. (Or, as Clive Hamilton puts it, we could use money we don't have to buy things we don't want to impress people we don't like.)

Then we could deplete significant mineral resources, starting with oil. We could over-use potentially renewable resources like fisheries and forests and groundwater.

And we could disrupt the global climate.

In the social dimension we could widen inequality between rich and poor, ensuring that the future is less socially stable. And we could replace traditional spirituality by promoting materialism.

A visitor from another galaxy would see these strategies as deliberate, would see that we were intelligent and would assume that for some reason we wanted to destroy life on Earth."

Professor Lowe explored some of these issues more closely, starting with the "biological bottom line" of population growth.

"There have only ever been three models of change over time in a species population in a closed system. The population can:

* increase over time until it comes into balance and remains in balance;
* exceed the sustainable level, collapse, increase again etc.; or it can
* grossly exceed the resources and collapse.

Yet in the face of this basic scientific understanding, he says, "there are not many countries on earth which have set a strategy of sustaining their population." Since 1960, the planet's human population has doubled (increasing at 80m a year); water use has doubled; food production has increased by 2.5 times; energy use has trebled; and economic output has increased by a factor of six.

What about resources? Our most crucial resource is petroleum. Production will decline, price will increase, we will have to make fundamentally different decisions about personal transport and the provision of food, which are currently predicated on the presumption of cheap transport."

Professor Lowe anticipates the peak of oil production will occur in 2009, plus or minus a few years - indeed, it may have happened already. The peak of gas production will be around 2040. After these dates, production will decline with depletion of the natural resources.

Yet for all this, Ian Lowe insists that there is no energy shortage.

"The natural flows of solar, wind, tidal, hydro, and geothermal energy are thousands of times greater than any conceivable consumer demand," he told the conference. "For example, the world's 6.5bn humans, in an entire year, for all purposes, only use about twice the energy that the sun delivers to Australia alone, in one day alone.

Energy flows are huge, but there is a shortage of the energy generator that is most convenient for transport because of its high density.

Availability of fresh water is another key factor in creating a sustainable future for the planet."

The ABC has a good radio interview with Professor Albert Bartlett about exponential growth and symptoms such as peak oil (Real Audio).

Robyn Williams: Talking about politicians: have you been to Congress or places like it to talk about some of these ideas, including general ideas about sustainability?

Albert Bartlett: Only to give my regular talk. I gave it that once that I mentioned in the Capital Building, in the lunchroom in the basement. I’ve given it I think three times in hearing rooms of the United States , but in all of those there were just staff people there, there weren’t any members of Congress there.

Robyn Williams: How well were you received?

Albert Bartlett: They are always polite.

Robyn Williams: You mean with their teeth gritted.

Albert Bartlett: Well, you know, the staff people don’t make policy, they are influential but they can’t make policy and so I can’t cite any big things that have happened. Although there’s been one Congressman from Maryland, whose name is Roscoe Bartlett, and we’re not related, he’s very much taken up the concern about the Hubbert Curve for world oil production and I attended a meeting in Denver about a month ago, Peak Oil, an American group on Peak Oil, it’s sort of following in the lines of the European Peak Oil Group.

Robyn Williams: That’s suggesting we’ve actually reached a peak and from now on it goes down, the supplies will diminish?

Albert Bartlett: That’s right, supplies will diminish, demand is going up and population is going up, so the conflict is imminent.

Robyn Williams: Within what sort of time frame do you think, 3 years, 10 years or what?

Albert Bartlett: I think certainly less than 10 years and this recent escalation in world oil prices I think is just sort of the first hint of what’s going to be happening.

Robyn Williams: What will happen next? The gist of something we did on television about two weeks ago was that within a short time, certainly the lifetime of most people, there will be a crunch coming that will make you have to live in a different way because there’s far less oil than there was. So how will we notice immediately?

Albert Bartlett: Well, the prices at the gasoline pump will be sort of a very obvious thing that everyone notices because our life is so centred around gasoline and the farmers will notice it, it’ll be reflected in the food prices. In the States they say the average distance travelled by an item of food as it goes from the farm where it was produced to your dinner plate is like, 1500 miles, and that’s all done with petroleum. We have fresh fruit flown up from Chile in South America.

Robyn Williams: We have your cherries in the middle of winter.

Albert Bartlett: And we have New Zealand apples: enormous petroleum consumption to bring those in.

Robyn Williams: You’re suggesting we won’t be able to afford that much longer?

Albert Bartlett: That’s what it looks like to me and all the talk about alternative energies is talk and not a lot of progress is being made. There are two aspects: the first aspect is, you have to get the technology worked out and the second aspect is that you have to get this infrastructure made and in place nationwide. So if you’re going to talk about hydrogen for vehicles you’ve got to have hydrogen filling stations in every village and city in the country, you’ve got to have big distribution facilities. The cost of this is just staggering, it can’t happen very fast.

Robyn Williams: And of course, what you were saying about the planes flying, there is no substitute really for the petrol which they use in planes is there?

Albert Bartlett: No, you don’t fly planes on nuclear reactors and of course hydrogen doesn’t make sense unless you get hydrogen from solar power. If you build coal fired electric plants to make hydrogen from water that takes enormous of energy, there’s big waste. You know in a coal fired plant two thirds of the energy is wasted and one third appears as electricity on the bus bar, and if you use hydrogen from solar energy then at least you have chance to get ahead. Now in the States if you buy a cylinder hydrogen at a chemical supply house, chances are that hydrogen is made by breaking down natural gas. You’d be better off burning the natural gas than going to all the problem of breaking it down into hydrogen. But somehow the policy makers in Washington DC don’t seem to recognise these obvious things and they say, well, we’ve got to get started and so on and natural gas supplies worldwide are not nearly as large as I think some people imagine. And this for instance, I was reading recently that Australia is a major exporter of liquefied natural gas from up in north/west Australia. You know, I think somebody, some minister, somebody ought to look at this and say we’ve got to save some of that for future generations in Australia.

Australasian Investment Review has a long, rambling, occasionally inaccurate and inconclusive article on peak oil.

The longer term rally in the oil price to date has been driven from the demand side and not the supply side. The supply side has played its part in that capacity has been caught short, hence as demand outstripped supply the only way for the price to go was up. Economists are less concerned about demand-side rallies in the shorter term than they are about supply-side rallies, as demand will always find a level at which the price is simply too high.

This was actually happening. Post Katrina, the demand for oil, particularly in the US , began to subside. Basic economics was at work. To assist in reducing the price of oil the US released crude oil reserves while refineries went into overtime to make up for lost production. Regular maintenance was postponed. It was also very fortuitous that the US experienced a balmy fall which, to date, has given way to a balmy winter.

But now the real spectre looms. Comparisons are often made in oil price terms to the oil shocks of the seventies. Those shocks were supply-side shocks, brought about by OPEC oil embargoes instigated to hurt the evil West. Increased demand in the new millennium has meant that we’ve had to get used to generally higher oil prices. But as suggested, demand will always begin to drop off when the price is just too high.

If supply is affected, however, real panic can set in. Supply disruptions mean actual shortages that have immediate effect on everything from workers getting to work to factories being able to operate. Naturally, the price responds, but whereas increased demand forces a general consideration of alternative fuels or lifestyle choices, loss of supply causes fear.

So this is now where we find ourselves – back in the seventies.

...

It would seem the world has taken higher oil prices in its stride. Merrills expects world GDP growth to be 3.9% in 2006 and 3.5% in 2007, suggesting the global economy has simply weathered the higher oil price environment. At the household level, indications are that the retail sector has taken the hit, such that the demand for petrol has not noticeably fallen. It has been signifi cant that infl ation has not become a problem, and thus interest rates have remained low. The irony is that China – held largely responsible for the demand surge – has also provided cheap exports that have counteracted higher oil prices in the inflation balance.

There are, however, little signs that suggest higher oil prices are indeed on the back of everyone’s minds – globally. Take Iceland for example. Iceland is fast-tracking plans to harness thermal energy and switch to hydrogen-powered transport, eventually banishing the need for any oil. Okay – if Iceland stopped importing oil no one would notice, but the thought’s there.

Brazil – now this might make people take notice – is leading the world in ethanol production as a fuel additive/alternative. It helps if you’ve got lots of sugar, but Brazil wants to sell ethanol to the world. Even the greatest gas-guzzler of them all – the US – has just been given a wake-up call as well, as Ford has begun laying off staff, and GM is teetering on the brink. The response? “We need to satisfy the demand for smaller cars and hybrid vehicles”. Who would have thought?

Oh, and the sale of bicycles in Australia has jumped considerably.

Then of course there’s the renewed world interest in nuclear power (including from Iran ). But that takes us down another path. Suffice to say, indications are that there must be a longer term ceiling on the oil price. It cannot just keep going up forever. And that’s without even considering the genuine desire from most of the world’s little people – the Joe Averages – to reduce greenhouse gases.

One of the jarring notes in the article was the paragraph below - have any of you US readers heard of this supposedly enormous untapped field ?

One of the world’s biggest oil fi elds currently lies untapped underneath the Colorado River Valley. Lying, as it does, within a major national park this reserve has been largely left alone. The Bush Administration has, however, renewed feasibility studies on the area. The problem, of course, is that a major oil drilling program would likely be environmentally devastating.

The Iraq oil for food scandal is still trundling along, with Senator Norm "dumb as a post" Coleman continuing to posture in Washington, while down here the Rodent is trying wriggle out of any association with the bribe paying by the AWB - he even went on national TV one morning to suggest the whole thing is largely a conspiracy orchestrated by the US wheat industry (which probably contains a grain of truth, if you'll forgive the pun).

If we hadn't tagged along on the whole Iraq misadventure perhaps we'd see AWB executives using the Galloway defence instead.

While the release of East Timor's truth and reconciliation commission report has got rather less press then the travails of AWB and the government, it is probably worse from a moral point of view than simply handing out bribes to Saddam Hussein, with the report being particularly scathing of Lord Downer of Baghdad.

Australia wanted East Timor to remain an Indonesian province and the Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, lobbied Jakarta to delay a vote for independence, a report to the United Nations has found.

East Timor's truth and reconciliation commission has been collecting evidence from thousands of witnesses for the past three years about Indonesia's takeover of the former Portuguese colony in 1975.

Its final report, which says about 183,000 East Timorese died as a result of the occupation, was handed to the UN two weeks ago. The 2500-page study was published this week on the website of the US-based International Centre for Transitional Justice.

The report says Australia "contributed significantly to denying the people of Timor-Leste their right to self-determination before and during the Indonesian occupation".

In order to maintain a good relationship with Indonesia, Australia violated its obligations under international law and backed the bigger neighbour's push to take over East Timor in 1975. It also was influenced by a desire to get the most it could out of maritime boundary negotiations affecting oil and gas reserves.

Australia also gave Indonesia economic and military assistance throughout the 24-year occupation and advocated on its behalf in the international community, the commission said.

It also makes special mention of the more recent role of Mr Downer before the vote for independence in 1999. It says he lobbied Indonesia to delay the poll because it was in Australia's interests for East Timor to remain part of the archipelago.

Labor Party leader Kim Beazley is due to announce the ALP's fuel policy later this month at a function in Fremantle. He has been reported previously talking about his vision of Australian transport being fueled by LPG from our offshore fields - presumably the new policy will continue this line of thought.

ALP Federal Leader Kim Beazley will launch the party's new fuel policy in WA at a seminar in Fremantle on Saturday February 18th. The WA Sustainable Transport Coalition Convenor will also speak on peak oil.

I am writing to invite you to a forum I am hosting on Labor's plan for the Australian fuel industry - Blueprint Number Three - Developing the Australian Fuel Industry. The blueprint outlines Labor's commitment to a new goal: to end Australia's reliance on foreign oil, and diversify the Australian fuels industry.

A copy of the plan may be accessed at: http://www.alp.org.au/policy/index.php

Sales of Australian made cars fell by 20% last month. I wonder when local manufacturers will start to think about making hybrids (preferably flex fuel hybrids) ?

"Sales of Australian-made cars have slumped as the shift towards smaller vehicles continued in January. After Mitsubishi's move to cut 250 jobs in Adelaide in a response to disappointing demand, official auto industry sales figures on Friday showed demand for Australian built vehicles fell 20 per cent last month. The slide came in a total market which rose 0.4 per cent as the shift towards smaller, more fuel efficient cars continued.

"The Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI) said on Friday 13,285 locally made vehicles were retailed last month compared to 16,648 in January last. At the same time demand for imports jumped from 53,065 to 56,718."

Griffith University's Urban Research Program has released a paper called "Oil Vulnerability in the Australian City" (pdf - via Rex - Energy Bulletin also picked it up more recently, commenting that "A rare example of an academic urban policy study incorporating a Peak Oil analysis.

The paper focuses on public transport availability to conclude that life will be especially harder post-peak in the middle to outer suburbs of the studied cities, especially in those areas of lower economic status.")

The paper assesses the resilience or vulnerability of urban communities to increased fuel prices and how the socio-economic impacts will be spread across different localities.

In particular, the paper seeks to assess how different socio-economic groups will be affected by rising fuel costs, at the neighbourhood level. We base our analysis on ABS Census variables that are combined to indicate potential household vulnerability to fuel price rises, based on existing levels of social disadvantage, household motor vehicle ownership and current dependence on motor vehicles for work trips. This information is used to generate a ‘vulnerability index for petroleum energy rises’ (VIPER).

Maps generated with the VIPER demonstrate that high levels of oil vulnerability are present in Australian cities but that this vulnerability is unevenly distributed. Localities situated on middle and outer suburbs are most vulnerable to the socio-economic impact of oil price rises. New policies emphasising public transport services are needed to avoid, remedy or mitigate the impacts of oil price rises.

Red = most vulnerable.

Tom Whipple's latest article explores some of the linkages.

A number of stories appeared in the press last week suggesting a discussion of the relationship between peak oil and global warming is in order. Most scientists believe that burning fossil fuels is the culprit behind global warming and if we don't get carbon emissions down soon, a lot more places will be under water by the end of the century.

Some believe peak oil and the resulting drop in liquid fuel consumption will be good for global warming. Others fear in the panic that will ensue from ever-higher oil prices, every environmental regulation on the books will be junked and a massive increase in the uncontrolled burning of coal will occur. Many are talking about the world going over a "tipping point" which would lead to the earth becoming barely habitable for thousands of years.

However, another way of looking at the relationship between global warming and peak oil is to ask what effect increasing temperatures might have on how soon peak oil comes and what happens after depletion sets in.

Last week NASA confirmed 2005 was indeed the warmest year ever recorded. One meteorologist pointed out it might have been the warmest year in the past 1 million years— impressive if true. Moreover, Accuweather reported that January 2006 is going to be the warmest January ever recorded in the US .

That warmest January ever, by the way, is the reason we aren't paying somewhere above $3 per gallon for our gasoline right now. It has been so warm since Christmas, that stockpiles of heating fuel in the US are building to well above normal. This in turn has kept the price of oil products down despite the fact that around the world nearly one million barrels a day of oil production has been shutdown for one reason or another.

WorldChanging has some commentary on various posts on understanding carbon dioxide buildup in the atmosphere, including Stuart's latest effort at The Oil Drum.

New articles on RealClimate and The Oil Drum provide useful insights into the state of our current understanding of the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere -- and what we need to do in order to forestall disaster.

Peak oil community website The Oil Drum is playing host to an absolutely terrific series of posts from Stuart Staniford, examining the prospects for reducing carbon emissions and avoiding dangerous climate disruption, all from a perspective informed by the current peak oil debates. Stuart is a physicist and computer scientist by training, and brings that quantitative analytic eye to his work on understanding the climate; although his posts are written for a general audience, they are fairly math-heavy -- but even if formulae make your eyes glaze over, I encourage you to make the effort to follow his argument. He's not a climate scientist trying to explain his findings to the lay person, he's an educated non-specialist trying to understand what's going on.

Dave Roberts at GristMill has been blogging at a great rate about our glorious emperor's speech yesterday and his little segment on the perils of dependence on foreign oil and the need to look at alternatives (while studiously ignoring the perils of global warming and side effects like hurricane Katrina). I thought this little segment borrowed from ThinkProgress shows that people may be reading more into this than might be justified - there has been boilerplate along these lines in his speeches for quite some time - though so far he has just concentrated on invading some oil producers and trying to intimidate others. Great strategy.

Apparently he talked about cutting oil imports from the middle east by 75% by 2025, but after some later clarifications it appears these were "just numbers".

According to speech excerpts released by the White House, tonight President Bush will take the bold stand that America needs to be less dependent on foreign oil:

America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world. The best way to break this addiction is through technology.

Sound familiar?

2002: "This Congress must act to encourage conservation, promote technology, build infrastructure, and it must act to increase energy production at home so America is less dependent on foreign oil."

2003: "Our third goal is to promote energy independence for our country, while dramatically improving the environment. … [We should be] much less dependent on foreign sources of energy."

2004: "I urge you to pass legislation to modernize our electricity system, promote conservation, and make America less dependent on foreign sources of energy."

2005: "I urge Congress to pass legislation that makes America more secure and less dependent on foreign energy."

Meanwhile, our dependence on foreign oil has increased from 58 percent in 2000 to 66 percent today. If America is addicted to oil, George W. Bush is our dealer.

Or as the Village Voice put it, "a failed oilman talks about failed oil".

The Permian Basin POTUS, beating Punxsutawney Phil to the punch by a little more than 24 hours, stuck his head out in public last night, saw the threatening shadow of GOP defeat this fall, and proclaimed something that we already know: We're "addicted to oil."

The dreaded "peak oil" theory, ignored by most of the GOP until now, finally rated a peek by the Pennsylvania Avenue groundhog.

But this one's a bad movie: When we woke up this morning, George W. Bush was still president. Talk about an endless loop: Bush, the failed "oilman" who is the son of a rich guy who himself dabbled in oil, wouldn't be the U.S. president if we weren't addicted to oil, and his family's pals in the oil bidness hadn't propped him up with their outrageous profits. And all he was doing in his State of the Union address was mouthing what one of his mentors, billionaire Richard Rainwater, has been saying recently.

Bush's handlers are just trying to distract us, but the doomsaying is real. First, though, here's the part of Bush's speech I really liked, his rap about how "America has become a more hopeful nation." What a laugh. It was a fearmongering speech, but with the subject changed from Iraq and terrorists to oil. With typical push and pull, Bush's handlers sought to soothe us and scare us.