What it is

In the smoke and ashes of the last month, I managed to get another earth heart produced in early October.

It is entitled the Right Time.





And speaking of time, this blog is now in its 13th year.  Here is a post from the first year that captures the spirit of the energy of the time.  Most of it holds up pretty well.

What it is About 

 

Last night, at my Father's Day dinner,

a really smart friend of my 30 year old son asked me,

What is your blog about ?

I responded that I have a very clear idea of what it is about.

And that, as best as I can tell,

no one else has the slightest idea whatsoever

what in the Sam Blazes earthfamilyalpha is all about.

Some have called this an environmental blog,

and it is true,

I speak of climate change and of the odd notion we have

that it is civilized to throw your trash into the air.

I marvel how we allow ourselves and our corporations to dump

chemicals

into our most precious resource,

our air

without even a tipping fee or other charge for the disposal rights.

I question why the free marketers don't attack this kind of leak in the

pricing mechanism.

They apparently want the market to work.

Their way.

Some have said that this is a solar or renewable energy blog.

And it is true, I speak of the solar hydrogen economy

and power paints and heliohydrogen.

I speak of moving away from carbon,

which is a smart thing to do,

mostly because our carbon fuels are moving away from us.

Peak Oil is definitely coming in your lifetime.

Probably by Tuesday.

Some have said that this is an anti war site.

It is a pro peace site.

The cultural myth that if you just war enough,

you will finally win peace,

is a perilous road that

leads to perdition.

Others, have wondered if this is a political blog,

which criticizes the present government for its monstrous shortcomings

because I want some other business light party to rule instead.

That may be true,

the Perfect should never become the enemy of the clearly better.

But this is no political blog.

Earthfamilyalpha simply proposes that

With the advent of advanced global communication,

new forms of social contract can be created

which transcend the geographic state.

These new cybercoops or cyberstates will bring humankind

to higher levels of cooperation and understanding.

I told my dinner guests,

that as a visionary,

you can't get too excited when no one knows

what you are talking about.

It pretty much comes with the territory.

But Still,

Try to go through your day without your country.

See yourself as a citizen of the world instead.

Try to imagine all the news you hear and read without nations.

See that we have painted ourselves into a corner here.

Try to imagine a new super ego.

Try to grasp a new psychological condition.

Try as if your life is at stake.

Because it probably is.

Begin to think about how people of conscience

can come together and form a new union,

a new invention of social contract.

a new dimension in cooperation.

An earthfamily.

That is what it is all about.

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Cheap Oil is Expensive

In January, while I was enjoying a sustained retreat from all things business, a rather large international event occurred.

THE PRICE OF OIL WENT BELOW 30 DOLLARS A BARREL

Yes, the price of oil which has been as high as 140.00 dollars a barrel eight years ago, had gone from 90 to 100 dollars a barrel 18 months ago, to the mid forties in late December.  It rallied back into the sixty dollar range last spring, but headed back to the forties within a few months.

Then this January, it went to $27.00.

Now, for those of you who don't care the least about the price of crude oil except for how it affects your pocket book at the gas station, this post is not really for you.  No, this post is for those of you out there who care about the cost of energy because you know that cheap oil makes electric cars less desirable.  Cheap oil tricks car and truck buyers into buying big trucks and inefficient cars.  And if oil is cheap because there is more supply than demand, then the odds that there is also going to be more natural gas is likely.  And that has happened too.

And so, in a few months after oil prices collapsed  natural gas prices in the US went from $4.50 to $2.00/ MCF and even below.  Cheap natural gas is good for electric rates here in Texas, but it makes new solar and wind additions a little less appealing, especially if you think these super low decade record breaking prices will continue well beyond the near future.

ITS ALMOST AS IF SOMEONE IS ATTACKING ELECTRIC CARS AND RENEWABLES

Well, of course that's not what is happening.  If you read the trades and the other financial rags, you are told that the Saudi's are in a market share war with the American frackers.  And that might well be true.  American oil production has gone from 5 million barrels a day in 2010 to 9.6 million BPD in 2015, a truly impressive increase in domestic production.  And of course, most of this comes from horizontal drilling in the various shale plays.

In just five years, the Americans had caught up with Saudi oil production.  Americans imports of oil began to go down.  (but not by 4.5 million)

And so what did the Saudi's do?

They increased their production by 1 million barrels a day.  They traded protecting the price of oil for protecting their market share.

 Here is the story from Oil Price.com:

Conventional Wisdom
"Conventional wisdom has it that the Saudis are focused primarily on crushing the U.S. shale industry. In this view, the Saudis blame the U.S. for the supply-demand imbalance that began to make itself felt in 2014. U.S. production data seems to support this. Between 2009 and 2014, U.S. crude and NGLs output increased nearly 4 million barrels per day, while Saudi Arabia’s increased only 1.64 million barrels per day, Canada’s 1.06 million, Iraq’s 0.9 million, and Russia’s 0.7 million (Saudi data doesn’t include NGLs).





In addition, the Saudis, among many others, believed that U.S. shale would be the most vulnerable to Saudi strategy, given relatively high production costs compared to Saudi production costs and shale’s rapid decline rates and the need therefore repeatedly to reinvest in new wells to maintain output."

But in the last 18 months, despite idled rigs by the hundreds and layed off employees by the hundred thousands, American production has continued to grow.

Until about six months ago.

Starting last September, production leveled off.  And now American crude oil production has fallen about 500,000 barrels a day back down to 9.1  million barrels  a day.

Now understand,  the total global market for oil is not quite 100 million barrels a day.  (96)  And it's generally understood that the oil market is over supplied by about 2 million barrels a day.  Now, even a fifth grader with an above C average in math knows that 9 million times 100 dollars is more that 10 million at 30.00 dollars.

It's almost $600 million more...a day.

This chart below shows American imports.

 

And it shows that Saudi imports with the US have remained about the same at 1 to 1.4 million barrels a day.  And it shows that even though American production has grown by 4.6 million barrels a day, our imports have only gone down by less than 2 million.

There are lots of other things that make this oil price collapse even more interesting.

One is the strength of the dollar.  Since oil is only traded in dollars,  a stronger dollar means that a big part of the drop in oil prices is actually a strong dollar.

Another is the huge deal made by Congress in December which traded continued renewable energy tax credits for the end on the ban on US crude oil exports.  This will effectively reduce the difference in price between West Texas crude and the higher international bench mark Brent oil. 

Another big consideration is the Russians.  Putin is hurting from the Saudi's actions.  And the Ruple is in the toilet. Are they sending a signal to him? And to their Allies?

Do they want a a cease fire in Syria?  And an agreement in Yemen?

And WHO are THEY?

Cheap Oil is Expensive

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Peak Shale

About seven years ago, a film maker friend of mine started visiting with me after our workouts.  He had been working on a film, a puff piece actually for a guy named Aubrey McClendon.  Aubrey, as you may recall, was the guy who pretty much started the whole shale gas play excitement with his company Chesapeake.

My film maker friend, knowing that I am a big renewable energy guy, was telling me that there is this new process which will provide us with all the natural gas we will ever need for at least the next one hundred years.  I was skeptical but interested, so I asked him if he could send me the rough cut of his film.  The film, to his credit, was more than a puff piece for Mr. McClendon, it was a compelling story of how the first big shale play, was being mined right out from underneath Ft. Worth, Texas.

It was perhaps the first big urban oil field.

Now, some seven years later, who can't turn on the news without seeing that nice looking thin lady tell you about shale gas and how cheap and plentiful it is... and how everything is good again.  There is no end to our finite resources, and no problem with burning it, because climate change is not really happening and if it is, we really can't  fix it, and so forth and so on.

For various reasons, I track natural gas prices.  It's part of being an energy guy.  And for the last couple of years I've been telling folks that the so called shale gas miracle might actually be just a oil and gas flash in the pan, a slight of hand, a good story, one that we all want to believe.

Like this story from a Chevron page:

Natural gas is an efficient energy source and the cleanest-burning fossil fuel. Natural gas extracted from dense shale rock formations has become the fastest-growing source of gas in the United States and could become a significant new global energy source. Although the energy industry has long known about huge gas resources trapped in shale rock formations in the United States, it is over the past decade that energy companies have combined two established technologies—hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling—to successfully unlock this resource.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates the United States possesses more than 2,500 trillion cubic feet of technically recoverable natural gas resources, of which 33 percent is held in shale rock formations. Natural gas from shale has grown to 25 percent of U.S. gas production in just a decade and will be 50 percent by 2035, according to the EIA. 

I've had oil and gas cowboys from Midland as well as so called serious energy thinkers try to rib me about how all my work in renewables is going to collapse and fall into the sea of sorrow as the shale gas revolution changes everything we know about energy. They have lectured me about  their vision of the foreseeable future, a future bathed in an oily ointment of lies.

Sure, there are little problems with water use and aquifer destruction, but the future is clear, shale gas and oil is once again king.

So, as the above graph shows, there has been tremendous growth in shale gas production.  But in the last four months or so, it has slowed down, and as of last month,

It has peaked.

And you can see a new story beginning to emerge.  This from the Financial Times:

The price of US natural gas reached an 18-month high on Friday as stocks continued to fall, and hopes intensified that the effect of the shale revolution on the commodity may be waning.

“Imagine a scenario in two to three years’ time where the US gas price has ticked back up because the decline rate in US shale [production] is so high, which means you’ll need a higher price to spur investment for incremental production,” said Mark Lewis, European head of energy research at Deutsche Bank."

Or take this story from CS Monitor:

 As U.S. natural gas prices flirt with the $4 mark, some skeptics of the so-called shale gas revolution think prices are headed much higher. Such a move would, not surprisingly, seriously undermine the official story that the United States has a century of cheap natural gas waiting for the drillbit.

Several years ago when natural gas began flowing in great quantities from deep shale deposits beneath American soil, it seemed to be the beginning of the end of America’s troubled journey into dependence on energy imports—a journey marked by frequent worry, occasional war and enormous expense.

And that's the problem. The Shale Gas play is based on selling six or seven dollar gas for half that price.  And like the old joke about the farmer selling a truck of watermelons for half what it cost him to grow it, the answer is not more trucks.

And even the always willing to be an O and G hooker UT Bureau of Economic Geology sees the Barnett Shale, the shale that started it all,  declining from now on.

A new study, believed to be the most thorough assessment yet of the natural gas production potential of the Barnett Shale, foresees slowly declining production through the year 2030 and beyond and total recovery at greater than three times cumulative production to date. This forecast has broad implications for the future of U.S energy production and policy.

Yes, I would say it does.

Sure, higher prices will bring more production, but it also means that wind generated electricity at four cents/Kwh will be  competitive with six cent/Kwh gas electricity. (six dollar gas)

And large scale solar will be right there in that same range...without poisoning the water or changing the climate.

And unlike all of these flash in the pan finite resources,

Our abundant renewable resources only peak

with our imaginations.


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One Way or Another

Perhaps the biggest story of the last week is the story that you probably missed.  It's a climate change story.  I think I heard something about it on NPR, but a lot of news oxygen was used up by the RNC and the Hurricane.

Arctic Sea Ice Extent Breaks 2007 Record Low

National Snow and Ice Data Center

August 27, 2012

Arctic sea ice appears to have broken the 2007 record daily extent and is now the lowest in the satellite era. With two to three more weeks left in the melt season, sea ice continues to track below 2007 daily extents.

Arctic sea ice extent fell to 4.10 million square kilometers (1.58 million square miles) on August 26, 2012. This was 70,000 square kilometers (27,000 square miles) below the September 18, 2007 daily extent of 4.17 million square kilometers (1.61 million square miles).  Including this year, the six lowest ice extents in the satellite record have occurred in the last six years (2007 to 2012).

According to Brad Plummer of the Washington Post, "Over the past three decades, the summer Arctic sea ice extent has declined roughly 40 percent, and the ice has lost significant volume, according to data from the Polar Science Center. Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, told the Guardian last year: “The extent is going down, but it is also thinning… There will be ups and downs, but we are on track to see an ice-free summer by 2030.”

It’s clear that Arctic sea ice is now shriveling more quickly each year. And scientists say the melt has been driven by both global warming and other pollutants that humans have put into the atmosphere. So why does the disappearing sea ice actually matter? Partly it’s a sign of how quickly we’re heating the planet. Yet the vanishing sea ice can also have its own side effects, from warming up the Arctic further to unlocking once-frozen areas of the north for oil and gas exploration."

And yet, within days of the announcement of this science fact, the new leader of the GOP says derisively that "President Obama has promised to slow the rise of the oceans and to heal the planet".

And you won't?

"My promise is to help you and your family.”

By the time my grandson is 50, life in the southwest will most likely be a completely different world than it is today if we continue to act as if climate change is a joke or a hoax. Much of Texas will be withering on the proverbial vine, and my grandson's new home on Lake Travis will be fondly remembered for the way it was, as the water disappears and a much reduced river returns. It will be our very own Aral Sea

That kind of disconnect from reality is not the kind of help my family needs.

It's said that  people who believe in infinite growth in a finite world are either insane or economists. Yet, we all embrace that meme...and a very dangerous meme it is.

If we, as sailors on our earthship wish to continue our DNA in this universe, we will need to throw out almost everything we believe.  We must purge our operating systems of the belief systems we hold in our biocomputers.  Memes of separation will not do.

Soon, we will reach a tipping point in consciousness. We will take the trillion dollars we spend defending ourselves from our little enemies, and we will apply it to the big enemies the world currently faces. And its not terrorism, or some nation, or some idea about who god is.

It is the greed of the corporate world as embodied in our fossil fuel giants, our banking giants, and all those other disciples of capital who have stolen our democracy in the name of freedom and with the tool of fear.

We will have to not just stop burning carbon to save ourselves,  we will have to change our view of ourselves, and our mission in the universe.  Within the next decade, we will have to mine our atmosphere of the carbon we put into our most precious resource, our biosphere.

The future will change us.

One way or another.



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The Seed Cleaner

We went to see Food Inc the other night. It's really quite good.

Here's the trailer. And here's the opening of a decent review from the Boston Globe:

"As you might gather from the title, Rob Kenner’s documentary “Food, Inc.’’ is, in part, concerned with the extent to which industrial food production has replaced farming in America. It’s part activism, part school-assembly lecture.

If you’re told where most fast-food chains’ ground beef comes from, how much E. coli is in it, how much ammonia has been added to kill the E. coli, and how many illegal immigrants the meatpacking companies recruit, underpay, and leave prey to police raids, will you still want to eat that double cheeseburger?

The filmmakers are guessing no." more

But the part that got me was the part about seed and Monsanto. Monsanto has developed seeds that are "Round Up" ready and they want you to pay to plant them every year. They own it and you can only use their seed once.

And, if you don't plant or use their seed, and your neighbors do, and you end up with some of their seed in your fields, you as the farmer have to prove that you didn't use their seed. It's not exactly the kind of thing that farmers are real good at.

Ultimately, even though you are planting the same seed strain you've been planting for years, you may be pulled into court by Monsanto. Monsanto is not very happy about the way the movie portrays them. They are so unhappy, they have dedicated a lot of their web site to setting the truth straight.

Monsanto says:

In agriculture, plants and seeds with enhanced traits or genetics may be patent protected. This is true in the U.S. for plant varieties as well as biotech innovations. Monsanto is one of many seed companies that patent their innovations. Growers who purchase our patented seeds sign a Monsanto Technology/Stewardship Agreement — an agreement that specifically addresses the obligations of both the grower and Monsanto and governs the use of the harvested crop. The agreement specifically states that the grower will not save or sell the seeds from their harvest for further planting, breeding or cultivation.

In Food Inc, there is an older man call Maurice Pharr, and he has a machine that cleans seeds for replanting. Monsanto doesn't have much use for that.

Food, Inc. Fiction: Maurice Parr, a seed cleaner against whom Monsanto took legal action, claimed he settled with Monsanto because he could not afford the legal costs of going up against the company.

Monsanto Truth: Maurice Parr operates a seed cleaning business in Indiana. Mr. Parr had received many clear communications about the patent law around Monsanto’s patented Roundup Ready® soybeans, and he knowingly disregarded this information. Mr. Parr confused farmers about the law regarding patents, which led to some of his customers breaking their contracts by saving seed as well. Mr. Parr did not “settle with Monsanto.”

Rather, Mr. Parr took his case to court, and the U.S. District Court in Lafayette, Indiana issued a permanent injunction against Mr. Parr prohibiting him from cleaning Roundup Ready soybeans."

However in the next paragraph, Monsanto discloses their settlement:

"Monsanto has agreed not to collect the damages awarded against Mr. Parr as long as Mr. Parr honors the terms of the court order."

And or course, Mr. Parr did not take Monsanto to court as their language implies, Monsanto WAS the plaintiff.

Mr. Parr was leaning on his HISTORICAL understanding that farmers have rights to their seeds. But in Monsanto's world, that right should just as well be gone. So they must destroy the seed cleaners.

There is something beyond evil with Monsanto's behavior.

Like the railroad tycoons of 120 years ago, or the oil tycoons of 80 years ago, they have gained a monopoly in the fields of our farmers.

And when the Seed Cleaners are gone,

Farming will be in their hands.

There is a saying about never eating your seed corn.

These folks are making it the law.

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rape seed field art courtesy of adam dabrowski art

The IEA Awakes

It's been a busy week already with the Renewable Energy Conference in town. On the first night, I hosted the "2020 Vision Dinner" and I gave my annual vision speech. And tonight, I'm speaking to a Peak Oil group. It should be an interesting evening. It's easy to get everyone excited about Peak Oil when a barrel of oil is approaching $150.00 and a gallon of gas is pushing five dollars.

But with gas stations sporting signs that say $2.00 dollars, and a barrel of oil trading in the fifties all day, you've got to wonder if anyone will be at the meeting. I mean think about it, Brent crude closed at $51.00 today. That's $94.00 dollars under this summers high.

Well, while trying to come up with something to say to this group, I noticed that the International Energy Agency has come out with their Energy Outlook report today. And it's not the "everything is hunkey dorey" outlook that we're used to seeing from this group. There seems to be a bit of panic in their words. (not that it's not about time)

Here's the opening of the Executive summary:

The world’s energy system is at a crossroads. Current global trends in energy supply and consumption are patently unsustainable — environmentally, economically, socially. But that can — and must — be altered; there’s still time to change the road we’re on.

It is not an exaggeration to claim that the future of human prosperity depends on how successfully we tackle the two central energy challenges facing us today: securing the supply of reliable and affordable energy; and effecting a rapid transformation to a low-carbon, efficient and environmentally benign system of energy supply. (clip)

Preventing catastrophic and irreversible damage to the global climate ultimately requires a major decarbonisation of the world energy sources. On current trends,energy-related emissions of carbon-dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases will rise inexorably, pushing up average global temperature by as much as 6°C in the long term.

Strong, urgent action is needed to curb these trends. The 15th Conference of the Parties, to be held in Copenhagen in November 2009, provides a vital opportunity to negotiate a new global climate-change policy regime for beyond 2012 (the final year of coverage of the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol).

The conference will need to put in place a framework for long-term co-operative action to bring the world onto a well-defined policy path towards a clear, quantified global goal for the stabilisation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. It will also need to ensure broad participation and put in place robust policy mechanisms to achieve the agreed objective.

What is needed is nothing short of an energy revolution.

This World Energy Outlook demonstrates how that might be achieved through decisive policy action and at what cost. It also describes the consequences of failure."

As the Oil Drum states, "This report is a step in the right direction for conveying our rapidly deteriorating energy situation to world policymakers - the IEA should be commended for making the turn and finally acknowledging: costs, investment limitations, new capacity requirements, steep decline rates of existing wells, and externalities (in this case GHGs).

In effect, this report shatters the global illusion that oil resources magically turn into cheap flow rates. "

Yes, the IEA has awakened.

And has now called for an Energy Revolution.

With a new American President,

And the new policies that he will bring,

Who knows?

.

We might just all awake.


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Plain Old Scary

Not quite a year ago, during our Friday night dinner, a real estate broker friend and I were talking about energy and peak oil. He said that oil was way over priced and that a big bust was coming. At the time, oil was not even close to 100 a barrel. Knowing that the world has likely hit the peak of oil production, I disagreed strongly. Given that he is a real estate broker, and I'm an energy know it all, we bet on it.

His number was so low, I don't even remember it. (I think it was in the 30s)

As the price of oil almost hit $150.00 during the summer, I remembered our dinner bet thinking I might claim my free dinner in the next year or so, after oil had gone through the $200.00 dollar mark.

But I also remembered my caveat in the bet, and that was of course, "anything can happen", especially if we have a depression that completely disinflates all kinds of commodities, and at the same time destroys demand.

Well, oil is under 70.00 dollars this week and the "anything can happen" caveat is looking breaktakingly possible. Of course, this is the short term trend, and it was just early 2007 when oil was trading at 50.00 a barrel. Except for the bumps from the oil embargo in the early 80s, the long term oil trend has been pretty flat with a strong upward movement since 2000.

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If world demand seriously weakens, then we can expect to see even lower prices. However, world demand is still at or near peaks. Still, the oil market is a huge, finely tuned market, and "a glut" is defined in small percents, as is a shortage. And each condition is greatly exacerbated by investors and speculators.

And that brings me to this piece from John Michael Greer who writes about the Tyranny of the Immediate. Here's a small part of it, but it's worth a full read.

"Most people who didn’t live through the opening years of the last Great Depression leave school with the notion that when the stock market crashed in the fall of 1929, the economy reached a full stop by the time investors stopped plummeting from Wall Street windows.

In reality, it took more than three years for the economy to finish contracting, and scenery en route included a dramatic stock market rally in 1930 and some of the best days of rising prices, in percentage terms, that Wall Street has ever seen. At every point along the course of contraction, furthermore, financial pundits drew false conclusions from short-term changes. The resulting headlines have more than a little similarity to the ones that clutter the financial press today.

This habit of reading too much into short-term conditions has shown itself more than once in the recent economic convulsions, and guesses about the future price of oil – a subject of interest to many peak oil researchers – have been particularly affected.

Earlier this year, as the price of oil soared to $143 a barrel, a great many people argued that it would keep on climbing to $200 or $250 a barrel in the near future. Now that the price of oil has slumped below $70 a barrel, the tide of opinion has turned, and some pundits are now predicting a continued slump to $50 or even $35 a barrel.

These predictions seem quite plausible at the moment they’re uttered, but then so did the idea that shares in dot-com startups would keep on climbing in value all through 2000.

The problem with linear projections of oil prices is that several factors unrelated to ordinary issues of supply and demand dominate the price of petroleum just now.

One of the most important comes out of the crucial but rarely remembered fact that, while oil is priced in US dollars, most of the oil in the world these days is produced and used in countries where the US dollar is not the local currency.

Since the value of the US dollar has been anything but stable of late, the price of these transactions in dollars has changed dramatically, while the price in any other terms has remained much more stable. (clip)

Even more dramatic though, has been the effect of commodity speculation on the price of oil.

Those economists who still insist that a completely free market will manage production and price with perfect rationality have apparently done their best to ignore the multiple monkey wrenches speculation throws into the market’s machinery.

The crucial point to realize is that the results of speculation, unlike most other economic phenomena, are radically asymmetric over time." more

I'm probably going to have to buy my friend dinner pretty soon... maybe not because we hit the price he said we would hit just a year ago, but because the general condition of falling prices in the oil market is clearly upon us.

And yes, the world probably did reach the all time peak in oil production last summer.

And yes, the price of oil may go below $50.00 a barrel by Halloween.

And that is just plain old scary.

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Nothing Less Will Do

Here is a response to the challenge to change the way we make electricity that is as good as you can hope for. It's from CSM:

"T Boone Pickens and Al Gore have proposed bold plans to radically reduce America's addiction to fossil fuels. These two gadflies just might provide enough bite to provoke the next president to swifter action.

Mr. Pickens argues that using wind power for electricity and powering vehicles with domestic natural gas can replace more than one-third of our foreign oil imports within 10 years. If nothing is done, the conservative Texas oilman says, the US will send $10 trillion out of the country in the next decade, "the greatest transfer of wealth in the history of mankind," he says.

Building wind-powered generators in the heartland of America and new transmission lines would cost $1.2 trillion but it would make America the "Saudi Arabia" of wind power, he says.

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Mr. Gore wants the US to commit to producing 100 percent of its electricity from renewable energy and other clean sources – also in 10 years. His plan would cost $1.5 trillion to $3 trillion in public and private investment.

But the Democrat and former vice president argues that the money will be well spent in reducing the unknown future costs of oil.

His plan relies on a vast expansion of solar, wind, and geothermal power. Nuclear generation stays at present levels. "Clean coal" would be included if the industry brings carbon-capture technology on line.

Gore would tax fuels that emit carbon dioxide, which is much more likely to reduce carbon emissions than the much talked-about "cap and trade" system. He would pair it with a deep tax cut to offset the effects on consumers. "We should tax what we burn, not what we earn," Gore says, calling this "the single most important policy change we can make."

Both Pickens and Gore recognize that partisan politics must give way in the face of this pressing need, and both hope to enlist a wide array of Americans to help them hoist the issue to the top of the fall political campaign.

Gore's plan quickly attracted fire from skeptics, who argue it is too aggressive and not possible in such a short time frame. Yet the presidential candidates are not disputing Gore's goal.

Republican hopeful John McCain has pledged to wean the US off foreign oil within 17 years. And Democratic candidate Barack Obama would reduce US oil consumption by 35 percent by 2030.

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So the debate now is not whether there is a need to drastically reduce the burning of fossil fuels, which is given.

It's about the speed and means of change,

The questions are "Which way?" and "How fast?"

Those who hammer the Gore plan ought to recall Moore's Law, in which computing power on a chip has doubled every two years. Progress in solving a problem can move ahead exponentially. Or what about Wikipedia, an invaluable destination for knowledge, with more than 2 million articles in its English version?

It didn't exist just seven years ago.

Pickens and Gore express America's can-do spirit. Granted, they don't have to pass legislation and face entrenched special interests that benefit from the status quo. That extra burden must be recognized and carried by the next president.

Nothing less will do.

Leaders think beyond what looks possible now. Poking holes in these plans can provide a vital vetting and a reality check. But the foot-draggers must step to the rear. "

My back of the napkin figure for the Gore plan is just north of 3.2 Trillion.

And if we convert our transportation fleet to plug in hybrids, electric scooters, and whatever new personal transportation device that comes up, as well as invest in extensive mass transit, we truly might be able to stop the flow of money to other lands.

But in the fullness of the issue, we must stop dividing ourselves.

Sure, it fans our nationalistic spirit to talk of energy independence, but the problems we face are global. And if we are to avoid a global world war which will cost us tens of trillions of dollars, we must devise and implement a global solution.

Good job Al, and good for you T-Boone.

But this isn't a USA moon shot.

This must become a Global Marshall Plan

to rebuild our world.

Nothing less will do.

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Intelligent Conversation

Magritte

It's hard for folks to grasp the future that we face, and the need to focus on the solution. Most of us don't really understand energy and we tend to depend on experts who help us sort things out. Unfortunately, most experts these days are pretty unreliable. Thanks to the Oil Drum, here's part of Chris Nelder's Peak Oil Guide that speaks to the issue:

"Recent media coverage of peak oil, and the energy options for the future, has been fraught with misinformation. In such an environment, the average person has little chance of knowing whether oil from ANWR or the Arctic can save the day, or whether there are 1.2 or 12 trillion barrels of recoverable oil out there.

But confusion breeds apathy, and that's not something we can afford anymore. I believe that the impending energy crisis is too urgent to allow misinformation about peak oil to go unanswered. We need to bring the public up to speed on the realities of energy before we can have any sort of intelligent conversation about reforming energy policy."

Debating whether or not to open up the offshore fields is not an intelligent conversation. It is a diversion. Wondering if the high price of oil can be blamed on speculators is not an intelligent conversation, it's a witch hunt. Debating whether or not the Tar Sands will solve the problem is not intelligent conversation, it is lazy minded lunacy.

In a conversation with a former banker last week, I endeavored to get him to understand that the problems before us require us to grasp the following realization:

We have already discovered enough carbon fuel to completely do ourselves in.

You don't need to know if the tank in your car is full when you decide to commit suicide, you only need to know that there is enough to totally fill the garage with enough carbon monoxide to get the job done. And let me assure you. We have more than enough fuel to get the job done.

So the MSM will lead today with the POTUS lifting the ban on offshore drilling, and the debate will go there as environmentalists and industry supporters square off. This is not an intelligent conversation. It is classic misdirection.

We must realize as a global community that we can no longer run our world on the buried sunlight of the Permian age. We must understand deeply that we must now power the earth on the energy that surrounds us.

And we must discuss how we make this transition with the declining finite resources we presently depend on.

We must begin to unify the transportation sector with the stationary generation sector.

We must plan how to make our streets and cities safe for pedestrians and cyclists.

We must contemplate how we make our urban car matrix into a quilt of villages.

We must focus on how we build photon to electron devices in our windows, our walls, and in the deserts.

We must build a global photonic energy web.

We must rethink the capitalist ethic which postulates that the more you consume, the richer you become.

We must let go of the notion that markets can solve all problems.

We must once again value a good that is good, over a good that goes out of style or is designed to fail and lose its utility.

We must redefine our sense of national self and replace it with a new global self.

We must reward good design, good art, beautiful poetry, and thoughtful theatre.

We must transform the business of health into the art of healing.

We must convert agribusiness into a pastoral art.

We must rebirth democracy.

And we must respect ourselves, each other, and our universe.

This is intelligent conversation.

All else is party piddle paddle.



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Head over Heels

Just a few hours ago, I was finishing off a report that required me to know what the price of oil is going to be next year, in five years, and for the term of the 20 year project. In the old days, if you wanted to appear very serious, you would quote from EIA or the IEA.

But these days if you want to be close to right, you need to look at a much broader set of data, and you need to look at the opinions of folks who actually know the truth about the world's oil and gas fields.

But now, even the IEA is beginning to tell a different story than it told just a year ago. Here's the story from the Financial Times:

IEA warns of tightening oil supplies
By Carola Hoyos in Madrid and Javier Blas in London
Published: July 1 2008

The oil market will remain tight during the next five years as production from non-Opec countries stalls and demand growth remains relatively strong, the western countries’ energy watchdog warned on Tuesday.

The International Energy Agency’s warning is the starkest sign yet that even record oil prices above $140 a barrel have not yet not done enough to balance demand growth from countries such as China with sluggish supply increases.

The IEA said that annual non-Opec growth would slow to 0.5 per cent between 2008 and 2013, against demand growth of 1.6 per cent per year. The mismatch means the world economy would be more reliant on Opec, the oil cartel, and oil prices are likely to remain at record levels, analysts said.

“Structural demand growth in developing countries and ongoing supply constraints continue to paint a tight market picture over the medium-term,” the IEA said in its Medium-Term Oil Market Report, released on Tuesday in Madrid.

“Poor supply-side performance since 2004, in the face of strong demand pressures from developing countries, has forced oil prices up sharply to curb demand,” the watchdog added.
Crude oil prices surged on Wednesday more than $2.50 to $142.73 a barrel, but still below Monday’s record high of $143.67 a barrel.

The report also said that current oil prices were “justified by fundamentals.” (more)

And what about those evil speculators that so many politicians are falling head over heels to blame for the high cost of filling up your Navigator?

The IEA addressed that specifically:

"the IEA warned governments not to blame speculators. It said: “Like alchemists looking for a way to turn basic elements into gold, everyone wants a simplistic explanation for high prices,” bluntly adding: “Often it is a case of political expediency to find a scapegoat for higher prices rather than undertake serious analysis or perhaps confront difficult decisions.”

Serious analysis?

Confront difficult decisions?

Sorry Pal.

We've got an election going on here.

We don't have time for that kind of sillyness.

Truth is.

We don't have much time, period.

Either we begin to walk boldly towards a new energy age now,

Or we will fall into it.

Head over Heels.

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Human Collapse courtesy Nesrin Elmarakbi

No Blood for Oil?

A friend and reader sent this piece from Tom Dispatch yesterday. It pretty much says it.

No Blood for... er... um...The Oil
Majors Take a Little Sip of the Ol' Patrimony
By Tom Engelhardt

More than five years after the invasion of Iraq -- just in case you were still waiting -- the oil giants finally hit the front page…

Last Thursday, the New York Times led with this headline: "Deals with Iraq Are Set to Bring Oil Giants Back." (Subhead: "Rare No-bid Contracts, A Foothold for Western Companies Seeking Future Rewards.")

And who were these four giants? ExxonMobil, Shell, the French company Total and BP (formerly British Petroleum).

What these firms got were mere "service contracts" -- as in servicing Iraq's oil fields -- not the sort of "production sharing agreements" that President Bush's representatives in Baghdad once dreamed of, and that would have left them in charge of those fields. Still, it was clearly a start.

The Times reporter, Andrew E. Kramer, added this little detail: "[The contracts] include a provision that could allow the companies to reap large profits at today's prices: the [Iraqi oil] ministry and companies are negotiating payment in oil rather than cash."

And here's the curious thing, exactly these four giants "lost their concessions in Iraq" back in 1972 when that country's oil was nationalized. Hmmm.

You'd think the Times might have slapped some kind of "we wuz wrong" label on the piece. I mean, remember when the mainstream media, the Times included, seconded the idea that Bush's invasion, whatever it was about -- weapons of mass destruction or terrorism or liberation or democracy or bad dictators or… well, no matter -- you could be sure of one thing: it wasn't about oil.

"Oil" wasn't a word worth including in serious reporting on the invasion and its aftermath, not even after it turned out that American troops entering Baghdad guarded only the Oil and Interior Ministries, while the rest of the city was looted.

Even then -- and ever after -- the idea that the Bush administration might have the slightest urge to control Iraqi oil (or the flow of Middle Eastern oil via a well-garrisoned Iraq) wasn't worth spending a few paragraphs of valuable newsprint on.

I always thought that, if Iraq's main product had been video games, sometime in the last five years the Times (and other major papers) would have had really tough, thoughtful pieces, asking really tough, thoughtful questions, about the effects of the invasion and ensuing chaos on our children's lives and the like. But oil, well... After all, with global demand for energy on the rise, why would anybody want to invade, conquer, occupy, and garrison a country that, as Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz once observed, "floats on a sea of oil"? (clip)

After all, the only people who thought that oil might have something to do with the invasion of Iraq weren't on the Times staff. They weren't, in fact, in the mainstream at all. And, to put things into context, depending on your estimates, there were only somewhere between 11 million and 30 million of them marching around in the streets of cities and towns all over the planet before the invasion, carrying signs that said ludicrous, easily dismissible things like: "No Blood for Oil," "How did USA's oil get under Iraq's sand?" and "Don't trade lives for oil!"

Let's face it: Among those who counted, they -- with their simpleminded slogans on hand-lettered placards -- just didn't count at all. Not when everyone who was anyone knew that the world was a much, much, much subtler and much, much more complicated place.

No blood for oil?

Sure, it was short and snappy and easy enough to get on a sign, but also about as absurdly reductionist, as unsubtle, as uncomplicated as possible. (clip)

Waving those silly signs, they actually expected bad things to happen.

It didn't seem to matter to them that the President, Vice President, National Security Advisor, and Secretary of Defense assured them no such thing was possible; assured them, in fact, that not to invade would lead to mushroom clouds over American cities and Iraqi unmanned aerial vehicles spraying bio- or chemical weaponry along the east coast of the United States.

Now, with a barrel of crude selling at more than quadruple its prewar price, more than double its price a mere year ago, the oil majors are finally moving in for the… well, let's not say "kill," let's just say that tasty little sip of the ol' patrimony". (more)

Oil closed at over 140.00 a barrel today.

But, it's not the oil.

And it's not about providing media cover for the crimes of the government.

And it's not about a mainstream media that is every bit as guilty of the crime of invading a country for its resources as Cheney and his minions.

And its not about greed.

And its not about power.

But it is about National Security.

Anytime you see those words.

You know what it's about.

It's about fear,

It's about Blood.

.

But not theirs.

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