Ken Deffeyes' prediction we'll be back in the stone age by 2025 was dramatic enough to get lots of attention, including at Slashdot, which no doubt changed the status of any of the remaining nerds who weren't PO aware.

WorldChanging has an interesting post on "The Wave Hub", which looks at an offshore facility for the testing wave energy generation devices in South West England, which gives "manufacturers a "plug-and-play" system to demonstrate how well their hydrokinetic energy generators work".

WorldChanging also has a post on a selection of plans to mitigate global warming (and avoid dangerous changes to the climate) from the Pew Center, the UK government and Dr Peter Flynn of the University of Alberta (Whose suggestions they note "starts to look awfully close to [their own] Terraforming the Earth").



Deltoid has a good set of links on the "Greenhouse Mafia" story - which is still reverberating in the press a little.

The Energy Blog has an interesting post on "Titania Nanotubes for Solar Cells" which looks at a non-silicon based solar technology that can make hydrogen while also generating electricity.

The BBC has a post called " Why oil will hit $100 a barrel" (part of their Fuelling the Future special), with Cairn Energy's Chairman (a friend of both Tony Blair and George W Bush - shades of Richard Rainwater) predicting we will likely see US$100 a barrel oil in the near future.

Oil is certainly heading in the other direction at the moment (along with many other commodities) as any suffering energy investor will tell you. I've heard a number of reasons for this - one explanation (heard at the pub a week ago) was that the Chinese have announced they will deliberatley slow their economy, another (TV news one morning) is that the Saudi's have announced they will double production over the next five years (which I laughed out loud at - though there are quite a few reports saying that they are going to increase production to 12.5 million barrels per day - a 35% increase - which is something to watch closely). Most reports also blame higher than expected US inventories and hedge funds bailing out of their positions (now the trend is downwards).

The Daily Reckoning doesn't reckon the downtrend will be in place for long though.

STC WA reports there will be a gas-to-liquids and coal-to-liquids conference in Perth in late March. They also have an interesting piece on the problems caused to farmers in the US by high natural gas prices.

Financial Sense has a piece that suggests that natural gas prices in the US are being manipulated by the government and that the supply picture has been obfuscated. I'm never quite sure if some of their stuff is simply conspiracy theories about economics but in the absence of access to the underlying data it sounds sort of credible.

The Guardian has an interesting piece for those interested in the mechanics of our propaganda system (in this case, the British one), taking a look at "British Satellite News".

Past Peak points to an article in the Washington Post that says the US list of terrorist suspects now has 325,000 people on it - pointing out that this can't be a good thing - "Either the list is bogus, including a lot of people who shouldn't be on it, in which case US counterterrorism efforts are unfocused, flailing, and clueless, or the list isn't bogus, in which case the pool of prospective adversaries has achieved critical mass and then some. Or maybe it's all of the above: they've got a garbage list that manages to mostly miss what is by now a very large pool of adversaries".

The whole Big Brother thing has really got a lot of momentum up lately - some US firms are trialling RFID implants in their employees (which should have some people ticking off "number of the beast" in the rapture index), the US government is practicing shutting down bloggers and other non-offical information sources and Britain has just passed a law to make a national identity card including biometric information compulsory (Australia has floated plans to create a national id card and to use smart cards for Medicare, though neither proposal has been acted upon yet). Australian police are also getting new wire-tapping powers, which has civil libertarians outraged. I feel sorry for the poor buggers who have to listen to all this stuff - one friend commented recently that his friends in the AFP regard listening to bugged phone calls as the most boring task they can get lumbered with...

One last piece of black humour on this subject - The Herald reports that "Australia has banned a new video game about a tyrannical government suppressing freedom of expression".

For people who enjoy comparisons to 1984, this piece "The Fear Factor" ("America’s war on terror in an Orwellian perspective") might be of interest too - it looks at the neoconservative "politics of fear". On a related topic, this article from OpenDemocracy (an interview with Shadia Drury on "Noble lies and perpetual war") is quite old, but is interesting if you are interested in understanding the philosophy of Leo Strauss and the neoconservative movement (if thats the right word for it - maybe cult is better ?).

I came across a book called "Conspiracies" in the bookshop today that looked at about 50 different conspiracy theories and came up with a rough estimate of how likely each one was to be true - which is a bit of a shame as I was thinking of doing something similar myself. On the whole they were skeptical about most of them (some I'd never even heard of - like the sinking of the Titanic being an insurance dodge) but a few passed the credibility test.

Talking of conspiracy theories, RI has come back from its prolonged journey into high weirdness to a more normal plane - some of the comments on this post about Robert Heinlein and Philip K Dick are interesting (if you were an SF buff when you were younger anyway), with one of the more prolific commenters noting that some of Heinlein's more authoritarian stuff (such as Starship Troopers) echoed the Straussian view of the world to a certain extent (but didn't quite sink to their level).

Syriana has finally opened here today, and is getting good reviews. I also saw an ad on TV this morning for the new Wachowski (The Matrix) brothers movie called "V for Vendetta" which looks pretty weird but I guess is a sign of the times. The movie is based on Alan Moore's typically paranoid graphic novel from 1988 - he was worried about Britain becoming a totalitarian state then - I wonder what he makes of the current state of affairs...

Bruce Sterling notes of his latest Viridan Note - "A hemorrhage of time-consuming links that have piled up in the Viridian hopper. Could take all day. Maybe you're snowed in. Enjoy!"

I'm feeling much the same way - so many links, so little time (of course, those of you who find my long quoted sections a bit annoying may be gratified not to have all the extraneous text).

I'll start with Renewable Energy Access, who report on:

* solar-powered mine water desalination (which would come in handy for some NSW power stations I suspect)

* construction beginning on Nevada Solar One, a 64 MW solar trough-style concentrated solar power project (noting that "the project is not the largest of its kind in the world. Nor is it the first. There are, in fact, nine similar projects in the Mojave Desert in California -- two of them 80 MW in size")

* the world's first commercial cellulosic ethanol plant is opening this year in northern Spain

* Japan loaning Egypt the money needed to build a 150 MW solar combined cycle power plant

Over at The Oil Drum, Heading Out recommends a DVD called "The Power of the Sun" on recent developments in solar energy (he describes it as "the one with the camel carrying a solar panel that powers the refrigeration for vaccines being carried across the African desert"). The post also includes a link to a BBC story about a family in outback Australia who get nearly all their power from solar and wind, which includes the quote "You could supply all of the world's energy needs by covering 4% of the world's desert area with photo-voltaic panels" from one solar energy researcher.

A South African company has managed to commericalise a thin film solar technology which has been adopted by German company IFE solar systems, who plan to manufacture 500,000 panels using the technology this year (older reports on this topic can be found here).

On a less green note, there is a report in the SF Chronicle that plans have been made to build 14 new nuclear power plants in the US over next 20 years, thanks to a whole lot of handouts from the federal government.

The BBC reports that a new version of Climateprediction.net has been released - if you want to participate go and download it. WorldChanging also has a post on the subject.

UPI has a report on the fast growing wind power industry in the US, with rising natural gas prices causing a surge in interest.

Skyrocketing oil prices and the need to end foreign energy dependence have some states, communities, and even homeowners turning to wind power as an alternative. "We have definitely noticed an upswing since the price of natural gas started spiking sometime in the fall," said Tom Gray, deputy executive director of the American Wind Energy Association. "We are currently importing a lot of oil but we are also importing natural gas ... so using a domestic source helps to save natural gas."

Wind energy is the world's fastest-growing energy technology, the Department of Energy says. Wind power also benefits the environment, Gray said. "It doesn't use any water in generation, emits no air pollution, no water pollution, no global warming, no drilling, no waste," he said. "The reason it hasn't caught on is because the utility industry is low risk, low return, so there is a tendency to do what you've always been doing," he said. "It's quite different from the power sources -- it's a big venture into the unknown."

Wired has an article on an interesting use of nanotechnology to reduce energy usage in manufacturing cars (along with other side benefits).

Sally Ramsey, co-founder and chief chemist of Ecology Coatings, began exploring the costs and potential environmental benefits of nano coatings in 2003. She used nano-sized particles of mineral oxides to create waterproof coatings for paper at half the cost of synthetic paper.

A similar nano coating, licensed from Ecology Coatings by chemical giant DuPont, could revolutionize the auto parts industry when it is commercialized, possibly as early as this year. DuPont hopes to produce nano paint that seals and protects automotive components, greatly reducing the environmental impact of producing cars by slashing the amount of energy and materials needed.

The nano particles are small enough to be applied using conventional spraying equipment, Ramsey said, and the nanotech coating can be cured simply by exposing the surface of the auto parts to ultraviolet light for 10 seconds or less. "After the UV (light) hits it, it becomes a thin sheet of plastic," she said. UV curing, which is completed at room temperature, would replace the standard curing process, which requires placing parts in ovens at temperatures of up to 400 degrees Fahrenheit for as long as 40 minutes.

Ken Deffeyes says the peak was passed in December 2005 (if correct, his prediction of thanksgiving was 3 weeks out) - given that there are plenty of financial analysts who are still assuming production will pick up in 2007 I think its worth waiting a little while to see if he is right or not - in the end depletion rates for existing fields (and various geopolitical interruptions) will be the key. He is predicting a re-entry into the stone age in 2025 so lets hope Jean Laherrere's 2015 peak prediction is closer to the mark. MonkeyGrinder thinks some drinks are in order to mark the occasion.

There are some interesting additional bits in the end-of-year statistics. Compared to 2004, world oil production was up 0.8 percent in 2005, nowhere near enough to compensate for a demand rise of roughly 3 percent. The high prices did not bring much additional oil out of the ground. Most oil-producing countries are in decline. The rise in production was largely from Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Angola. The Saudi production for 2005 was 9.155 million barrels per day. On March 6, 2003 Saudi Aramco and the government of Saudi Arabia announced by way of the Dow Jones newswire that they were maxed out at 9.2 barrels per day. In retrospect, that statement seems to be accurate. Further details are in Matthew Simmons' book Twilight in the Desert.

Could some new discovery come along and reverse the global oil decline? The world oil industry is a huge system: Annual production worth 1.7 trillion dollars. I don't see anything on the horizon large enough to turn it around.

So what are the policy implications? Numerous critics are claiming that the present world economic situation is a house of cards: built on trade deficits, housing price bubbles, and barely-adequate natural gas supplies. Pulling any one card out from the bottom of the pile might collapse the whole structure.

1. There are calls for embargoing Iranian oil because of the nuclear weapons situation. Pulling four million barrels per day out from under the world energy supply might trigger a severe worldwide recession. In the post-peak era, we're playing a new ball game and we don't yet know the rules.
2. Ghawar, the supergiant Saudi oilfield, is producing increasing amounts of water along with the oil. When Simmons sent Twilight in the Desert to the printer, the water cut at Ghawar was around 30 percent. There are later reports on the Internet (home.entouch.net/dmd/ghawar.htm) of water cuts as high as 55 percent. Ghawar has been producing 4 million barrels per day; when the Ghawar field waters out, you can kiss your lifestyle goodbye.

Since we have passed the peak without initiating major corrective measures, we now have to rely primarily on methods that we have already engineered. Long-term research and development projects, no matter how noble their objectives, have to take a back seat while we deal with the short-term problems. Long-term examples in the proposed 2007 US budget (Feb. 9, 2006 New York Times page A-18) include a 65 percent increase in the programs to produce ethanol from corn, a 25.8 percent increase for developing hydrogen fuel cell cars, and a 78.5 percent increase in spending on solar energy research. The Times reports that solar energy today supplies one percent of US electricity; the hope is to double that to 2 percent by the year 2025.

By 2025, we're going to be back in the Stone Age.

The Age has an opinion piece on the need to change the way we think about urban planning and public transport in a post peak and warmed globe era.

The history of the city could be described as one punctuated by technological innovation. The invention of gunpowder in the 14th century impacted our urban form through increased city-edge fortifications, with the building of moats and outposts establishing a more distinct separation between city and country. But the emergence of an oil economy and the invention of the internal combustion engine blurred this distinction, creating a vast suburbia well beyond the reach of effective public transport infrastructure.

Perhaps less tangible than the threat of cannonballs or invaders at the city walls are the converging crises of peak oil prices and global warming. These events now comprise the greatest threat to our current concept of the city. Their confluence will, one way or another, bring about decisive action by governments on the urban transport problem.

Broader approaches to transport policy and planning are needed. The critical question is: what will be the new paradigm within which planners will create transport and urban design visions for our cities, and will it be one that consists of car tunnels, minimum car-parking standards and new, public transport-less suburbs? Or will it be one which acknowledges the reality of our environmental future ?

ABC Radio National has an interview (mp3) with Jeremy Leggett and Alan Dupont (of the Lowy Institute) on the "Decline of Oil".

In his recent State of the Union address, President George Bush acknowledged that the US had an unhealthy dependence on cheap oil. Dr Jeremy Legget has been saying this for years – he is a geologist, who was for many years a consultant with the major oil companies, before he jumped ship in the 1990s to join Greenpeace UK as its chief scientist. Today he’s the CEO of Solarcentury, a solar electric company in the UK. He thinks that the growth in demand from India and China, and the lack of big new oilfields to be found, means that we will never see cheap oil again.

Alan Dupont agrees, and says that tension around access to oil fields will come to be an important factor in international politics.

The Greens have called for an "independent investigation into the connections between the fossil fuel industry, the Howard government and Australia's position on climate change".

Coal industry lobbyists are regularly at the side of government representatives at international climate change meetings, Australian Greens senator Christine Milne says. At the same time, she said, renewable energy and non-government organisation representatives are being shut out.

Senator Milne said her experience at these international meetings meant she was not surprised at allegations on ABC TV's Four Corners program that the government had been infiltrated by coal industry lobbyists.

Four Corners aired claims coal industry lobbyists had infiltrated the inner workings of the federal government and had written several cabinet briefing papers over the years. Three former senior CSIRO scientists also told the program they had been silenced on climate change issues that conflicted with government policy.

Turkey is apparently (this piece hasn't had the best translation) looking at turning to nuclear power due to difficulties in obtaining natural gas, with the French appearing to be front runners for contructing the plants.

Turkey is planning to set up 3 nuclear power plants, each with 5000 megawatt capacity. According to Turkey Atomic Energy Agency seismic investigation results, the most appropriate place for the construction of a nuclear station is Akkuyu. Sinop and Kizilirmak deltas are other candidate sites for nuclear power stations.

Turkey's energy market wet France's appetite amid Turkey's natural gas bottleneck. When the visit of French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy to Ankara coincided with Turkey's new plan to restart its nuclear activities, the aim of Douste-Blazy's visit appeared from behind the scenes.

Turkey has just decided to kick-start its nuclear energy activities thinking that it will run into a major energy crisis beginning from 2020 in the case of a cut in additional investments. In accordance with this decision, the government is expected to announce its new nuclear energy strategy within a few months.

Dick Cheney's little hunting expedition is getting plenty of attention - I was hoping he'd get impeached for some form of corruption one day but who knows - maybe a murder charge would be better ?

Some people are speculating that this is a way of distracting people from stories like "Cheney 'Authorized' Libby to Leak Classified Information" and hearings into the illegal wiretapping operation that has been going on - this does seem a little extreme but who knows...

Tonight should be fun, as Jon Stewart and the late night comics get to tee off on Cheney for his Elmer Fudd moment. (If you can't wait that long, DallasDem at Kos has the Top Ten Cheney Excuses For Shooting that Guy. My favorite: "Pheasants? I thought we were hunting peasants.")

That aside, the whole episode's pretty fishy, the way they kept a lid on the story for a day. It could be that secrecy's just a reflex with these people. It could be, as John Robb points out, that these kinds of hunting accidents usually involve drinking. Maybe they needed time to sober Cheney up. Or, it could be that they were trying to decide whether to claim somebody else pulled the trigger.

None of which is terribly important on its own, but it is telling that their first instinct, as always, was to cover up, hide, lie.

Michael Klare asks the question "Just how addicted to oil are we ?" and predicts we are about to enter a permanent energy crisis (via GristMill).

The Bush administration largely rejects the very idea of climate change -- only the Pentagon and NASA seem to take it seriously -- and the main form of alternative energy that really interests them right now, nuclear energy, is essentially another form of addiction. Elsewhere in the world, there are people putting some thought into the onrushing crisis we face, but not us. The Chinese, worried about their energy future, have not only been stomping the planet from Sudan and Iran to Venezuela looking to nail down their long-term fossil-fuel fixes, but have been putting some time, energy, and thought into renewables. Sweden has, remarkably enough, just launched a fifteen-year plan to make itself the first advanced industrial country to go permanently off oil. (Already, 26% of the energy consumed there comes from renewables.) But not us.

...

President Bush's State of the Union comment that the United States is "addicted to oil" can be read as pure political opportunism. With ever more Americans expressing anxiety about high oil prices, freakish weather patterns, and abiding American ties to unsavory foreign oil potentates, it is hardly surprising that Bush sought to portray himself as an advocate of the development of alternative energy systems. But there is another, more ominous way to read his comments: that top officials have come to realize that the United States and the rest of the world face a new and growing danger – a permanent energy crisis that imperils the health and well-being of every society on earth.

To be sure, the United States has experienced severe energy crises before: the 1973-74 "oil shock" with its mile-long gas lines; the 1979-80 crisis following the fall of the Shah of Iran; the 2000-01 electricity blackouts in California, among others. But the crisis taking shape in 2006 has a new look to it. First of all, it is likely to last for decades, not just months or a handful of years; second, it will engulf the entire planet, not just a few countries; and finally, it will do more than just cripple the global economy -- its political, military, and environmental effects will be equally severe.

...

Although we cannot hope to foresee all the ways such forces will affect the global human community, the primary vectors of the permanent energy crisis can be identified and charted. Three such vectors, in particular, demand attention: a slowing in the growth of energy supplies at a time of accelerating worldwide demand; rising political instability provoked by geopolitical competition for those supplies; and mounting environmental woes produced by our continuing addiction to oil, natural gas, and coal. Each of these would be cause enough for worry, but it is their intersection that we need to fear above all.

Sweden's plan to be free of oil dependency in 15 years has been reported widely - Grist has a good collection of links.

It's official: Sweden is the coolest ... country ... evar. Already widely admired for meatballs, Ikea, and, um, other Swedish stuff, the country has now announced its aim to have an oil-free economy by 2020. The Swedes cut the percentage of their energy coming from oil from 77 percent in 1970 to 32 percent in 2003, and they're favoring biofuels over nuclear power to get them down to zero. Only 8 percent of Swedish homes are heated by oil today, and thanks to tax breaks, Swedes can fill their Saabs with ethanol-based fuel for a third less than they'd spend on ordinary gasoline.

Upon hearing that President Bush had declared America addicted to oil, Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson expressed relief that "at last there's one more who understands the problem." Guess he didn't get Bush's "didn't mean it" follow-up memo. Awkward!

SBS's "Dateline" program on Wednesday takes a look at the movie Syriana and makers Participant Productions.

Grist has a review of the documentary "Who Killed The Electric Car ?" which screened at the Sundance Film Festival.

The first film I saw, Who Killed the Electric Car?, tracks the demise of a short-lived, much-loved piece of advanced technology. Though writer-director Chris Paine structured his film like a whodunit, it comes across as more of a love story.

Throughout the first half of the film, a passionate band of devotees gushes about the cars. It's the kind of crew you'd expect in a movie like this -- environmental activists, progressive politicians, and "Americans Like You." But they're also joined by some unlikely allies, including engineers, GM salespeople, and Mel Gibson and Tom Hanks, recruited by the automakers to lend star power to their marketing.

Then the film shifts, becoming like a game of Clue. We witness the slow but inevitable death of the electric car, enabled by the rollback of the California mandate. Then we meet the lineup of suspects -- automakers, oil companies, the Air Resources Board, even the American consumer -- each of whom had their reasons for committing, or abetting, the murder. Although it's obvious from the outset where Paine's sympathies lie, he gives time to both sides, letting the evidence speak for itself. And it is damning: most of the suspects are guilty.

In the end, Electric Car seemed most successful at allowing viewers to fall in love with its cute, yet doomed, main character. By the time the last models were on their way to be demolished, some people around me were quietly wiping away tears. As the film ended, the audience responded with an emotional and enthusiastic standing ovation.

Also at Sundance was Al Gore's global warming movie "An Inconvenient Truth".

The day before I saw it, I overheard two facts about the film: 1) it was so good, all the screenings had sold out; 2) it featured Gore giving a lecture with PowerPoint slides and charts.

Incongruous, yes, but sure enough, there's more to this film than you might imagine. First of all, forget what you know about Gore. No longer the defeated candidate, he appears confident, witty, incisive, and fired up. Second, while the film makes no secret that it's about a lecture -- even showing Gore on stage in front of a massive screen -- the presentation is sophisticated, entertaining, and visually appealing.

The compelling central speech highlights facts, photos, and anecdotes about our rapidly shifting global climate. It all points to a powerful conclusion: namely, that we're almost out of time to address the problem. Within about 10 years, argues Gore, it will be too late to do anything about the most important challenge in human history.

When you see this film -- which Guggenheim and his producers hope to have in wide release by April -- you'll either be freaked out about the future or pissed off at how political and corporate leaders disregard evidence and silence their critics. Probably both.

The transcript (and full interview transcripts) for Four Corners' "Greenhouse Mafia" show are now online. The content wasn't surprising - industry representatives write government greenhouse policy and climate scientists are prevented from talking publically about the ramifications of global warming - sound like any other country you know ?

There are plenty of reports in the mainstream press today about Pentagon planning for an attack on Iran, which presumably is a signal to all concerned that action is being planned.

Pentagon strategists are drawing up plans for bombing raids backed by submarine-launched ballistic missile attacks on Iran's nuclear sites as a "last resort" to block Tehran's suspected efforts to develop an atomic bomb.

US Central Command and Strategic Command planners are identifying targets, assessing weapon loads and working on logistics for an operation.

They are reporting to the office of the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, as the US updates plans for action if the diplomatic offensive fails to thwart Iran's nuclear ambitions. Tehran says it is developing only a civilian energy program.

"This is more than just the standard military contingency assessment," a senior Pentagon adviser said. "This has taken on much greater urgency in recent months."

The prospect of military action could put Washington at odds with Britain, which fears an attack would spark more violence in the Middle East and reprisals in the West and might not cripple Tehran's nuclear program.

There are also reports that Russia has sold Iran more missiles, though according to the Russians these are air defence missiles rather than ones with a more offensive nature.

Amid the escalating crisis around Iran's nuclear programme, Russia said on Thursday that it will still arm Tehran with missiles that can secure nuclear facilities from attacks. "We concluded a contract for the supply of air-defence systems to Iran and there is no reason not to fulfil it," Mikhail Dmitriyev, the head of Russia's military-technical cooperation agency, said.

Worth an estimated $700 million, the deal for up to 30 Tor M-1 surface-to-air missiles is the largest since Russia in 2000 withdrew from an agreement with the US restricting the supply of military hardware to Iran.

Dmitriyev rejected media reports that talks were underway for the additional supply of heavier S-300 air-defence missiles. Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov has stressed that the Tor is a defensive system and that the sale does not violate Russia's international obligations.

Jeremy Leggett is the latest peak oil writer to ride a wave of publicity (taking over James Kunstler's mantle from last year) - Macleans celebrates the arrival of a new literary genre.

"One week -- one apocalyptic week -- a germ of panic will take root and then spread like wildfire through the markets. The price of oil, on which modern human society has allowed the stability of its economic system to rest, will begin to climb toward the ceiling," Jeremy Leggett writes in The Empty Tank: Oil, Gas, Hot Air, and the Coming Financial Catastrophe (Random House, 2005). "The crisis will play out in television images around the world. Frantic oil traders will scream at each other on trading floors, eyes wild and hair akimbo."

Leggett, an Oxford-trained geologist and professor at the Royal School of Mines, underwent a road-to-Damascus-style conversion in 1989, resigning his job to become Greenpeace's chief scientist. After falling out with the environmental group in the mid-1990s, he again transformed himself, into a green entrepreneur, launching his own solar power company. Time Europe has declared him one of "the key players in putting climate change on the world agenda." What he shares with other proponents of the End of Oil theory is a conviction that we are dangerously near the "topping point," where half the world's petroleum reserves are gone.

Big Oil and its government partners are covering up the depletion, says Leggett, while holding back alternative technologies. And when the truth can no longer be obscured, the price will spike, the economy nosedive, and the underpinnings of our civilization will start tumbling like dominos. The U.S. -- Consumer No. 1 in the lingo of Leggett's book -- will be the most vulnerable, having allowed its citizens to pile up mountains of debt. "The price of houses will collapse. Stock markets will crash. Within a short period, human wealth -- little more than a pile of paper at the best of times, even with the confidence about the future high among traders -- will shrivel." There will be emergency summits, diplomatic initiatives, urgent exploration efforts, but the turmoil will not subside. Thousands of companies will go bankrupt, and millions will be unemployed. "Once affluent cities with street cafés will have queues at soup kitchens and armies of beggars. The crime rate will soar. The earth has always been a dangerous place, but now it will become a tinderbox."

By 2010, predicts Leggett, democracy will be on the run. As with the Great Depression, economic hardship will bring out the worst in people. Fascists will rise, feeding on the anger of the newly poor and whipping up support. These new rulers will find the tools of repression -- emergency laws, prison camps, a relaxed attitude toward torture -- already in place, courtesy of the war on terror. And if that scenario isn't nightmarish enough, Leggett predicts that "Big Oversight Number One" -- climate change -- will be simultaneously making its presence felt "with a vengeance." On the heels of their rapid financial ruin, people "will now watch aghast as their food and water supplies dwindle in the face of a climate seemingly going awry." Prolonged droughts will spread, decimating harvests. As oceans warm, fish catches "will fall off a cliff," and protein will become a luxury.

Such visions of a coming oil-related apocalypse are now common enough to qualify as their own literary genre.

...

Big Oil, long a choice villain, has now graduated to the status of evil incarnate. Forget lesser infractions like land grabs or slick-coated sea otters -- in the public imagination, at least, the oil companies' quest for profit knows no legal or moral bounds. In George Clooney's film Syriana, the not-so-subtly-named Connex-Killen manipulates governments, bribes and murders, dispatching the CIA around the globe to secure access to a dwindling resource. "Corruption is our protection. Corruption keeps us safe and warm. Corruption is why we win," proclaims one executive.

As the last superpower, America's greatest anxiety, and perhaps only weakness, is its dependency on oil, the majority of it foreign. (The U.S. alone consumes a quarter of world production.) Any drastic disruption in the flow of petroleum would clearly hurt the wasteful First World the most. The drop in our standard of living would be precipitous. But in the poorer regions it might not prove quite the same catastrophe. During Bolivia's December general election, for example, the polls closed in the late afternoon because most of the country still doesn't have electric power.

In our culture, apocalyptic visions also strike a resonant chord. They have been a constant source of wonder, fear, comfort and entertainment since the Book of Daniel -- the model for the later Book of Revelation -- appeared in 164 BCE. U.S. historian Paul S. Boyer says such predictions, whether religious or secular, fill a deep human need.

Thomas Friedman's latest column takes a look at Dick Cheney's determination to keep the US dependent on foreign oil and decides that Dick is, well, a dick.

I’ve always thought Dick Cheney took national security seriously. I don’t anymore. It seems that Mr. Cheney is so convinced that we have no choice but to be dependent on crude oil, so convinced that conservation is just some silly liberal hobby, that he will never seriously summon the country to kick its oil habit, never summon it to do anything great.

Indeed, he seems determined to be a drag on any serious effort to make America energy-independent. He presents all this as a tough-guy “realist” view of the world. But it’s actually an ignorant and naïve view — one that underestimates what Americans can do, and totally misses how the energy question has overtaken Iraq as the most important issue in U.S. foreign policy. If he persists, Mr. Cheney is going to ensure that the Bush team squanders its last three years — and a lot more years for the country.

TreeHugger considers the "Empty Pinata Scenario" - what effect will declining Mexican oil production have, particularly on US imports.

According to Wall Street Journal article of February 9, 2006 (subscription only) “Mexico's huge state-owned oil company [Pemex] may be facing a steep decline in output that would further tighten global oil supply and add to global woes over high oil prices”. An internal report, which served as basis for the Journal’s story, covered several possible scenarios of declining production from one of Mexico’s larger oil “pools”. The worst scenario looked at would lead to a reduction of about 63% of Mexico’s daily crude exports to the U.S within two years, according to the Journal. Because Mexico is the US’ second most important supplier, even a ‘moderate case’ scenario could be serious for both countries.

Fortune notes "The hard truth about oil" - the easiest way to "find" more oil is to reduce your consumption.

No matter what the president says, conservation is America's only route to energy independence.

Presidents going back to Richard Nixon have been talking about energy independence. It's one of those vote-getting platforms that no one could possibly be against -- like world peace, mom and apple pie. It gives us the illusion of control over our energy destiny, which we don't have, at least in a fossil-fuel based economy.

But it's a lost cause.

The only way we're ever going to be able to boost oil supplies here at home is through conservation, and that's something the government is going to have push aggressively, at least until technological advances like cellulosic ethanol, hydrogen and other alternative energy forms become available.

Don't take my word for it. Just listen to what Big Oil has to say...

Monday's "Four Corners" on the ABC features a whistleblower talking about how Australia's policies on global warming have been hijacked by the "greenhouse mafia" .

Four Corners returns for 2006 with a whistleblower … and revelations of a powerful insiders’ club. "Having found out what I’ve found out, I find it impossible to continue with a clear conscience without speaking out" - whistleblower interviewed by Four Corners.

Are Australians getting the whole truth on global warming ? Not according to evidence given to Four Corners, which returns with disturbing allegations about the power wielded by industry lobbyists, the self-proclaimed greenhouse "mafia".

A whistleblower steps forward with claims that industry representatives have burrowed deep inside the federal bureaucracy in a successful bid to hijack greenhouse policy. "Their influence over greenhouse policy in Australia is extraordinary", he observes.

Four Corners also examines separate claims that the public is being denied full information about strategies to combat global warming.

Australians do know that last year was the hottest on record. They also know that carbon emissions are forecast to bring more heatwaves, storms, droughts, bushfires and diseases. This revealing report will help Australians understand what they are not being told.

Taking a wild guess I'd assume these "industry representatives" are representing the coal industry. Crikey has an article on the coal industry's influence on the Liberal Party (and some state Labor governments) called "Totally addicted to coal".

After seeing the broad business support for a carbon tax at the Australian Future Directions Forum, it raises the question of exactly who is still holding out against what appears a global inevitability. As one senior business figure told an environmentalist, "I have no problem with taxing poison."

Given that the coal industry is currently throwing off operating profits of almost $10 billion a year, the case in favour of ongoing subsidies and the argument that they couldn't afford a carbon tax is very hard to sustain.

Coal and Canberra have been close for decades, although the Big Four coal kings – Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton, Xstrata and AngloAmerican – don't appear directly in the 2004-05 political donations figures. But the connections are still there if you know where to look.

The Cormack Foundation, the Liberal Party's key fundraising front, gave $1.9 million in 2004-05, and is co-chaired by Hugh Morgan, the former WMC CEO and immediate past President of the Business Council. Morgan is one of Australia's highest profile climate sceptics, holding the renewables industry back through the elite and media work by the IPA and the green-sceptic Lavoisier Group.

The other well-known Liberal fundraiser, Bennelong, is co-chaired by Ray Evans, a WMC and IPA veteran who has been Hugh Morgan's hard right Svengali for years. Bennelong at one point made its pro-coal/uranium link public when it shared a post office box with the Lavoisier Group.

Wesfarmers, with a strong presence in the coal industry, handed over $120,000 to the Liberals in 2004-05, plus $20,000 to the Nats and $20,000 to the ALP. The BCA is split on issues like a carbon tax but the fossil fuels faction is happy to have a former Wesfarmers CEO as the new President.

The Howard Government has certainly favoured coal over renewables research to the value of hundreds of millions of dollars in direct benefit to the Big Four. Indeed, when you factor in secretive and subsidised electricity contracts, especially to aluminium smelters, the annual subsidy from state and federal taxpayers to the fossil fuels industry easily runs to several billion of dollars.

As I've moaned before, its rather unfortunate that coal provides so much sorely needed export income for Australia . One day the world will wake up to the fact that the stuff isn't even needed to generate our electricity - Amory Lovins has a column titled "Who needs more coal ?" that looks at how the US could remove the need for coal fired power (one other problem for the Australian coal industry, noted in Saturday's Herlad, is that Japanese customers are unhappy about high prices and are negotiating to buy an equity stake in Russia's Eriga coal field, which apparently contains as much coal - 2.1 billion tonnes - as the whole of Queensland).

Coal-fired power plants generate half of U.S. electricity. Yet mountaintop removal, smokestack pollution, and global warming aren't inevitable; they're artifacts of using electricity in ways that waste money. Most of the electricity used today, whether in the U.S. or in even more coal-intensive countries like China, can be saved by using it far more efficiently.

Fifteen years ago, the utility industry's Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) and a team of researchers at Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), the resource efficiency center I cofounded, came to essentially the same conclusion. In a joint Scientific American article, EPRI found that it would be cheaper to save 39 to 59 percent of all the electricity used in the United States than pay to run coal-fired (or nuclear) power plants and deliver that same power to customers; RMI concluded the number was at least 75 percent. Either way (the differences are largely methodological), running coal-fired power plants, let alone building more, is uneconomic when compared to other widely available, but officially disfavored, ways to do the same tasks. Recent drops of 2 percent per year in the electricity that's used to make a dollar of U.S. gross domestic product barely scratch the surface of what's possible—and electricity-saving techniques are getting better and cheaper faster than we're using resources up.

These dramatic savings come not from privation or discomfort, but from smarter technologies that wring more work from each kilowatt-hour. They deliver the same comfort, light, hot showers, cold beer, and other services with the same or better quality and reliability but use less energy and less money. For example, my refrigerator keeps a power plant from burning enough coal to fill the refrigerator every year, because it uses 92 percent less electricity than most—and newer technologies could raise that to at least 97 percent.

Orion magazine has an article on modern day coal mining techniques in the Appalachian mountain range.

Central Appalachia provides much of the country's coal, second only to Wyoming's Powder River Basin. In the United States, one hundred tons of coal are extracted every two seconds. Around 70 percent of that coal comes from strip mines, and over the last twenty years, an increasing amount comes from mountaintop removal sites. In the name of corporate expedience, coal companies have turned from excavation to simply blasting away the tops of the mountains. To achieve this, they use the same mixture of ammonium nitrate and diesel fuel that Timothy McVeigh employed to level the Murrow Building in Oklahoma City—except each detonation is ten times as powerful, and thousands of blasts go off each day across central Appalachia.

Hundreds of feet of forest, topsoil, and sandstone—the coal industry calls all of this "overburden"—are unearthed so bulldozers and front-end loaders can more easily extract the thin seams of rich, bituminous coal that stretch in horizontal layers throughout these mountains. Almost everything that isn't coal is pushed down into the valleys below. As a result, 6,700 "valley fills" were approved in central Appalachia between 1985 and 2001. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that over 700 miles of healthy streams have been completely buried by mountaintop removal and thousands more have been damaged. Where there once flowed a highly braided system of headwater streams, now a vast circuitry of haul roads winds through the rubble. From the air, it looks like someone had tried to plot a highway system on the moon.

There has been a small amount of movement in the right direction on global warming in the US recently, with reports that the "shamed climate spin doctor has quit NASA" (Dave Roberts has a more down to earth description of the saga - and also notes for fans of black humour that the American Association of Petroleum Geologists bizarrely presented their annual journalism award to Michael Crichton).

A young Bush appointee who tried to shut down NASA's chief climate change scientist because he was warning of the dangers of greenhouse gas emissions has resigned after it was revealed his résumé was false.

George Deutsch, 24, was underqualified even when he was appointed to NASA's public affairs office in Washington after working on the Bush re-election campaign in 2004. He claimed to be a journalism graduate from Texas A&M University, but resigned after a blogger revealed he had not graduated.

At the space agency, he had insisted that any mention of the "big bang" had to have the word "theory" attached to it, saying it was "more than a science issue, it is a religious issue". He said: "It is not NASA's place, nor should it be, to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator."

He also tried to restrict the access of NASA's chief climate scientist, James Hansen, to the media after he warned about the need to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Mr Hansen said he was threatened with "dire consequences" by White House appointees at NASA headquarters if he continued to call for prompt action to limit emissions of heat-trapping gases linked to global warming. He said the problem went much further than just one political appointee.

The Bush Administration, after first doubting the science of climate change and denying that greenhouse gases were causing rising world temperatures, has now admitted this is a problem. However, like Australia, it has refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol, which commits industrialised nations to reducing emissions.

There has also ben something of an "Evangelical Mutiny" on the subject of global warming in the US (obviously some Christians don't agree that King George is doing what god tells him to).

Despite opposition from some of their colleagues, 86 evangelical Christian leaders have decided to back a major initiative to fight global warming, saying "millions of people could die in this century because of climate change, most of them our poorest global neighbors."

Among signers of the statement, which will be released in Washington on Wednesday, are the presidents of 39 evangelical colleges, leaders of aid groups and churches, like the Salvation Army, and pastors of megachurches, including Rick Warren, author of the best seller "The Purpose-Driven Life."

"For most of us, until recently this has not been treated as a pressing issue or major priority," the statement said. "Indeed, many of us have required considerable convincing before becoming persuaded that climate change is a real problem and that it ought to matter to us as Christians. But now we have seen and heard enough."

The BBC has a report that the climate is the warmest it has been in the last millennium - Grists asks if they have checked with our modern day conservative think tank clergy (given that some of the regular churches are now a bit unreliable) if they are allowed to utter such blasphemous words ?

Global warming, neither a far-off abstraction nor the myth some (still!) claim it to be, is already causing mayhem worldwide, according to the latest rash of studies on the topic. In the late 20th century, the Northern Hemisphere experienced its most sustained warm stretch in 1,200 years, report a team of U.K. scientists in the journal Science. In the medical journal The Lancet, Australian scientists warn that climate change will trigger or exacerbate health problems galore, including overheating, allergies, cholera, infectious disease, and starvation. A study by the Swiss Academy of Sciences found that 84 of 91 Swiss glaciers being monitored shrunk in 2005. And the U.N. University is predicting that in less than five years, climate change and other environmental problems may create as many as 50 million environmental refugees. So ... um ... basically there's nothing funny to say about any of this.

The BBC also notes that global warming related costs could make "oil profits vanish" but that government revenues from oil and gas make regulatory action an unlikely proposition.

The huge profits reported by oil and gas companies would turn into losses if the social costs of their greenhouse gas emissions were taken into account. That is the conclusion of research by the New Economics Foundation (Nef).

Nef found that the £10bn-plus profits just reported by Shell and BP are dwarfed by costs of emissions associated with their products. Nef also suggests UK Treasury revenues from oil and gas may be a disincentive to curbing greenhouse gas emissions.

Reporting previously undisclosed figures, Nef's policy director Andrew Simms writes: "Our new calculations from research in progress with WWF, based on Treasury statistics, show that UK government income from the fossil fuel sector - conservatively estimated at £34.9bn ($61bn) - is greater than revenue from council tax, stamp duty, capital gains and inheritance tax combined. "Policies aimed at reducing carbon emissions could therefore have a major impact on the government coffers; a serious disincentive to action."

WorldChanging has a look at a new model for understanding the climate called constructal theory.

Duke University's Adrian Bejan, along with colleagues from the University of Evora in Portugal, has discovered something potentially quite important: a recently-developed theory of optimizing flow configurations over time called Constructal theory can be used to model key parts of the global climate, and do so using only a small number of well-known inputs. Moreover, this theory could be used to build models of changes to weather patterns resulting from greenhouse gas accumulation. What makes this notable -- and possibly worldchanging -- is that Constructal theory is shaping up to be a universal physics principle applicable to everything from traffic flows to the evolution of the circulatory system. This is kind of abstract, but bear with me -- this could be a major discovery.

...

The most directly relevant application of this finding is that we could see how changes to the greenhouse factor trigger larger changes in the global climate. It may not give us precise predictions as to the effects on a particular location, but if this observation is borne out, it could give us a much stronger sense of how close we are to a climate "tipping point." Climate scientists worry that we could be getting close to a level of greenhouse gas accumulation in the atmosphere that would lead to a major shift in the overall global climate to a new (and likely unpleasant) stable configuration.

If the Constructal model of the global climate shows a phase shift resulting from increased greenhouse gases, we'll have a better lead on how much more CO2 we can add to the atmosphere before things fall apart. In turn, this will tell us whether a slow/steady mitigation plan will work, or whether we need to do a major try-anything campaign to get greenhouse gas levels down.

The Eureka Report's Alan Kohler takes a jaundiced look at the gold market which is sure to annoy most gold bugs. While I think gold's value is largely based on herd psychology, even the most hard bitten gold bug should be able to concede the difference between oil and gold is that oil is depleting while our stocks of gold just keep rising - which is why I prefer energy stocks to gold (the twilight of the majors notwithstanding).

Some gold bugs believe part of the reason for gold's recent rise has been a fall in the standing of Alan Greenspan. James Grant, the publisher of the newsletter Grant's Interest Rate Observer, says "Greenspan, the figurehead of the dollar, was trading at three times book in the late 1990s; I think he may return to book value.”

Grant believes gold's virtue is that it's a monetary asset because of its scarcity and its history. I don't buy that. In fact, its history as a form of currency actually created the great market overhang, in which a quarter of the all the gold that has ever been mined currently sits in central bank vaults ready to be sold to augment taxation.

It's true that in 1999 central banks tried to calm the market by making an agreement to restrict sales, which was extended in September last year, but many would still like to sell, and eventually will. The Bank of France, for example, said recently that it wants to offload 500 tonnes over the next five years.

I think the gold market is best understood as a common, everyday, rigged commodity market, like oil. The crude oil market has the OPEC cartel controlling supply to regulate the price, and therefore demand; the gold market has the central bank cartel doing likewise. The price is rising, along with most other commodities, because of demand from China and India, which the cartel is able to exploit.

But here is where gold and oil part company. As Dr Sandra Close says in today's interview, global production of gold is currently falling 1,000 tonnes a year short of demand. Can you imagine what would happen to the price of oil if that sort of consistent shortfall occurred? Or copper or nickel?

The gold shortfall is met from stockpiles — and it's not even from the infamous central bank holdings, but private holdings. Virtually every ounce of gold that has ever been mined still exists in someone's safe: no one needs to mine any more for a decade for demand to be met.

How do you invest in an asset like that? Yes, it's true that gold is the only investment that is not someone's liability, which is another way saying it is a hedge against inflation and the corruption and incompetence of human beings.

That just means gold is the investment of choice for pessimists. The 1970s were the golden age of pessimists; the past decade has been the Age of Optimism, and it is not over yet, in my view. And the mere fact that gold is at a 25-year high does not signal that it is.

"Free Market News Network" has previously published various bits of nonsense by the likes of Jerome Corsi about abiotic oil and the like, but have changed their tune a bit recently, publishing a grab bag of stuff from "The Daily Reckoning" about peak oil.

United States Peak Oil: Iran and Iraq

Iran is not quite at its production peak, but within 20 years, even the most optimistic estimates forecast that Iran will cease to be a net oil exporter. (This may also have something to do with Iran's desire to develop a nuclear program.)

And Iraq? By 2025, Iraq may be an oil exporter, not to mention an eastern province of Iran. But considering the looming and inevitable decline in daily world oil production, who will be able to afford whatever gets exported? (Hint, do you speak Chinese?)

The point is, on the other side of Peak Oil, the United States will be fortunate to receive any oil at all from the Mideast, let alone the Bush goal of only 25% of current (or forecasted) imports. The planners, who are connecting the dots of the past, and mechanistically extrapolating out into the future with no allowance for Peak Oil, are living in a fantasyland. They are planning, if anything, for the failure of the American economy and the attendant decline of American civilization.

Still, our Mr. President raised the subject. To recall an old phrase: "What does the President know, and when did he know it?" If G.W. Bush is onboard with Peak Oil, he failed to bring up the subject with specificity in his State of the Union speech and give the concept the publicity and credibility that such a speech would merit. Then again, maybe the president saw the movie A Few Good Men. Maybe he is imitating Jack Nicholson's character, a colonel in the Marines, who said, "You want the truth? You can't handle the truth." Maybe, to Mr. Bush's way of thinking, he is just doing the best that he can.

There are people who plan for the long term. There are Japanese companies with 100-year business plans. Can anyone predict what the world will be like in 100 years? No. But these companies, reputedly, intend to be around when the next century rolls over. One way or the other. It might be the founder's great grandchildren, but they will be around. As the saying goes, "It's not the plan, it is the planning." (This is a famous quote from General Eisenhower that is painted on the wall of every staff college of the U.S. military.)

...

United States Peak Oil: Reduction of Dependence

Yes, we have been hearing this "We will have to reduce our dependence on foreign oil" B.S. for 30 years. And for 30 years, it was easier to let the daily oil markets dictate that the nation did not have to get serious. What were we going to do, put a $4.00-per-gallon tax on gasoline and kill the driving-based economy? Sorry, guys. Democracy gave you Hamas in Palestine, and Ahmadinejad in Iran, right? Well it also has given cheap gas in the United States for the past century. It was fun while it lasted. Now, Mother Nature is at the door, telling you that it's payback time. Uh-oh.

WorldChanging has a look at the new Honda FCX in a piece entitled "On the Brink of the Fuel Cell Future ?". The debate over whether or not fuel cells or batteries are the way of the transportation future remains unresolved - but I suspect both will be out there in 10 years time.

The hydrogen fuel cell vehicle concept, once the darling of the cybergreen/hypercar crowd, has diminished in luster over the past few years. Perhaps it was due to the sluggish pace of development. Perhaps it was due to the all-too-eager embrace of the technology by political and corporate figures well known to favor continued dominance of the petroleum economy. Perhaps it had just started to feel dated, like talking about freezing your head after you die -- a vaguely-embarrassing symbol of a particular era of futurism. That proponents of hydrogen cars kept talking about them being "just a decade away" even as the years progressed didn't help matters.

Honda may change all that.

Last month, Honda announced that it would begin production in Japan of its fuel cell FCX vehicle within the next three to four years. The FCX line has been Honda's fuel cell vehicle prototype for a few years now, and beyond a handful of experimental locations, the car seemed ill-suited to regular use. Tiny, somewhat underpowered, and saddled with a range about half of a typical gasoline-fueled car -- not that you could go long distances away from the one or two hydrogen fueling stations in the state anyway -- the FCX simply wasn't an attractive option. The new FCX design, however, changes all of that, and manages to induce something that previous hydrogen fuel cell vehicles couldn't: auto lust.

Richard Duncan has a new draft of his Olduvai Theory (pdf) out that continues his particularly dismal set of prognistications about the post peak future. He is predicting available energy per capita will steeply decline from 2008, with blackouts spreading across the various electrical grids in subsequent years and human population plemmeting to 2 billion within a few decades.

Various tinfoil examinations of the "clash of civilisations" demonstration put on for our collective benefit that was generated by the Danish cartoons brouhaha have begun to surface, with many of them insisting they are a deliberate neoconservative provocation to generate increased hostility between the west and the middle east - see Xymphora and Kurt Nimmo for examples (while I link pretty wildly to all sorts of stuff I might just note that I'm not endorsing either of these 2 sites - they are just representative of some of the theories flying around - and as RI is too busy examining the occult basis of fascism - other than a brief mention in this odd mix of Bushes, UFOs, Jimmy Carter and religion - I'll have to make do with lower quality conspiracy theorists)...

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.

...

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.

...

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.)

...

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.

...

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.