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This looks amazing (and fun) - make a solar oven from a reflective sunshade for cars!
An ancient mystery: 1400 year old mass grave
2005 October 27, Thursday
Viral meme of the week: Schwarzenegger Street
The history of shit - or should I say night soil?
Courtesy of Lifeaftertheoilcrash.net, Richard Heinberg (peak oil guru) is mentioned in Time Magazine!
2005 October 25, Tuesday
This is what we're up against: Majority Reject Evolution
| Most Americans do not accept the theory of evolution. Instead, 51 percent of Americans say God created humans in their present form, and another three in 10 say that while humans evolved, God guided the process. Just 15 percent say humans evolved, and that God was not involved. |
Aussie style fascism. Strewth - Oi'm gonna chundah.
| Proposed legislation in Australia would make it a crime for one parent to tell the other that their child had been detained under anti-terror laws... ...If a youth aged between 16 and 18 was detained, one parent would be informed and allowed to visit for two hours daily during the detention, which could last for two weeks without charge... But if the chosen parent was the father, for example, and he told the mother where the child was, he could be jailed for up to five years. |
Via lifeaftertheoilcrash :
Pray for a kind winter, or else: Lights could be going out all over Britain - The North Atlantic Oscillation - The Pressure Mounts
Harper's Magazine: We Now Live in a Fascist State
Time.com: It's the end of oil Arguments for and against Peak Oil. The anti-peak oil "optimist" seems to rely on outright lies and disinformation. There is nowhere near enough oil in the US to meet demand, and shale oil/tar sands are not a cheap replacement for sweet crude. He makes it sound as though the off-limits reserves in the national parks will somehow save us! Deceitful Scum.
Pessimistic: Oil companies are struggling...
| "Quite remarkably, in the first half of 2005 the top five, the top ten and the top 22 publicly quoted oil companies all produced less crude and NGLs [Natural Gas Liquids] than they did in 2004," according to a report published in the October issue of Petroleum Review. Compared with 2003, ten companies produced less in the first half of this year. Nine companies produced less than in 2002. "Clearly, it is no exaggeration to say that the world's largest oil companies are now really struggling to hold production levels," the report says. Meanwhile, a recent study by energy consultants Wood Mackenzie shows that only a quarter of the 28 leading oil companies active in international exploration have fully replaced their production through new field discoveries. The group of companies studied represents more than 30 percent of total world oil supply. "Not only is exploration more expensive now, but it has become more difficult to achieve success, as the more accessible fields have been discovered," the study author Andrew Latham said, noting that the industry has not discovered any new "world-class" fields since 2000. |
2005 October 24, Monday
I'm working on some new episodes of "The Worst Wing" - I should have them up in the next week or two...
Meanwhile, beware your cosmetics cabinet...
2005 October 21, Friday
There may be problems growing enough wheat.
This is funny: Drive 55, save gas -- get flipped off. ''Waa haa. We're suffering because of high gas prices. Just don't expect us to drive slower than 75 mph...'' The difference in fuel economy in the article is amazing - 25 miles per gallon at 70 mph, or 35 mpg at 55 miles per hour.
More fascism (yes, that's what it is): Torture to turn your stomach
And here's what they'd like to do: Steal the oil. Well, Du-UH.
Ah, but what about the fish? Time to wage war on dolphins, methinks. In order to liberate them from aquatic tyranny, of course.
2005 October 18, Tuesday
You now have permission to be scared sh*tless, courtesy of the London Times (a Murdoch paper): Waiting for the lights to go out
Haha. It's a fair and accurate election!
It's a list of funny fatwas about soccer.
The young chickenhawks...
2005 October 13, Thursday
Har Har: Pile on Bush Month
Reserve Bank of Australia warns of economic meltdown...
Companies have not been in such shape since the Depression
Hertz Corp., the world's largest car rental firm, and radio broadcaster Clear Channel Communications are among 46 companies
that probably will be categorized as noninvestment grade, according to credit-rating company Standard & Poor's. A surge in debt-financed takeovers and concern that higher oil prices will hurt profit growth is eviscerating credit quality in the $5 trillion market for corporate bonds, according to some strategists. Investors face greater risks, while companies once considered safe and now classified as so-called "fallen angels" may see borrowing costs rise. Not since the Depression of 1929 has corporate America received so many black eyes. General Motors, the world's largest automaker, Sears Holdings Corp., the biggest U.S. department store chain, and Eastman Kodak Co., the largest photography company, led 27 borrowers whose $499 billion of outstanding debt obligations suffered the ignominy of being downgraded to junk. |
| The country that has for decades stood tall in opposition to political repression, torture and other violations of human rights
has been exposed as sanctioning practices that hardly qualify as respect for human dignity. Even more reprehensible is the fact
that the shameful abuse and/or torture in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib was exposed not by an outraged administration but by the
U.S. media. In response, the administration confined itself to punishing a few low-level perpetrators; none of the top civilian
and military decision-makers in the Department of Defense and on the National Security Council who sanctioned "stress
interrogations" (a.k.a. torture) were publicly disgraced, prosecuted or forced to resign. The administration's opposition to
the International Criminal Court now seems quite self-serving. Finally, complicating this sorry foreign policy record are war-related economic trends. The budgets for the departments of Defense and Homeland Security are now larger than the total budget of any nation, and they are likely to continue escalating as budget and trade deficits transform America into the world's No. 1 debtor nation. At the same time, the direct and indirect costs of the war in Iraq are mounting, even beyond the pessimistic prognoses of its early opponents, making a mockery of the administration's initial predictions. Every dollar so committed is a dollar not spent on investment, on scientific innovation or on education, all fundamentally relevant to America's long-term economic primacy in a highly competitive world. |
| Peak Oil is a real phenomenon, based on hard science. Ignore it at your peril. At root, the Peak Oil guys are right. How can I emphasize it properly? OK, they are "right, right, right." Everybody else is "wrong, wrong, wrong." These latter folks -- who are wrong, by the way -- are the equivalent of the violin section that played at the burning of Rome. Party on, dudes, but if everybody else stays wrong long enough, then, politically and economically, we will all be done for. |
| Americans were once a brave and forward-looking people, willing to face the facts, willing to work hard, to acknowledge the
common good and contribute to it, willing to make difficult choices. We've become a nation of overfed clowns and crybabies,
afraid of the truth, indifferent to the common good, hardly even a common culture, selfish, belligerent, narcissistic whiners
seeking every means possible to live outside a reality-based community. These are the consequences of a value system that puts comfort, convenience, and leisure above all other considerations. These are not enough to hold a civilization together. We've signed off on all other values since the end of World War Two. Our great victory over manifest evil half a century ago was such a triumph that we have effectively - and incrementally - excused ourselves from all other duties, obligations and responsibilities. Which is exactly why we have come to refer to ourselves as consumers. That's what we call ourselves on TV, in the newspapers, in the legislatures. Consumers. What a degrading label for people who used to be citizens. |
Eek. US Plastic Shortages Seen From Natgas Price
Oops. the End of the Dollar Standard
2005 October 11, Tuesday
FASCISM WATCH:
| 1. Hey - it's fun to blow up Mosques! 2. Wear parody T-Shirt, get kicked off plane by ''Republicans'' 3. Make parody poster, get sent to Gitmo Wal-Mart! 4. Amurcan capitalists want your baby snoozing in a radioactive stroller! 5. Eeek. The Police State is closer than you think. 6. Doctor, I've got a runny nose. How about prescribing some MARTIAL LAW? 7. Don't expect help from our glorious media... |
2005 October 07, Friday
I've been listening to interviews on Global Public Media from over a year ago. What's interesting is to compare the prognostications with current events. Late in 2004, Heinberg was predicting the imminent bankruptcy of several major American Airlines as a result of Peak Oil. Kunstler has been doing the same. That makes this item, The Spirit of St. Louis, so interesting:
| aviation...has fallen into great disrepair. Much of the current trouble has been blamed on 9/11. Despite government aid to the industry, sales have continued to drop. Finally, airlines are facing up to the truth: they are disintegrating in the face of higher oil prices. American Airlines--the company that took us from Chicago to St. Louis--recently scrapped 15 round-trip routes, as well as all service from Chicago to Nagoya, Japan, blaming "skyrocketing" fuel prices. Dan Garton, an executive vice president at American, was quoted by the AFP as saying, "We have made incredible progress in lowering our operational costs for over two years now. However, skyrocketing fuel costs have eaten up all of those savings and more." USA Today ran a story this month, with a headline that said it all: "For airlines, bankruptcy becomes business as usual." It begins with this: "When you get on an airplane these days, the chances are better than 50-50 that it will be operated by an airline in bankruptcy. Last week, Delta and Northwest joined United and US Airways in the expanding club of struggling companies running to court for protection." |
U R FUKT: New oil projects cannot meet world needs this decade
| According to data from the latest BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 18 major oil-producing countries are now past their peak production, and their combined annual output dropped by over a million barrels a day in 2003. This group of countries now accounts for almost 29 percent of total world production. Industry consultants IHS Energy recently reported that 85 percent of all the oil ever discovered is now in production, and only half the total produced last year was replaced by new field discoveries. Annual consumption has now exceeded new discoveries every year since the early 1980s. Overall, worldwide oil discoveries have been declining steadily for the past 40 years. |
Saudi Arabian expert foresees peak in 2015. I hope he's right - it'll give me a few more years to build my stockpile.
| Given the current outlook in terms of global exploration and development, the rate of investments in the oil value chain, energy prices, and the prevailing legal and political investment climate, I believe oil production will level off at around the 90 - 95 mmbd by 2015. This plateau can be sustained beyond 2020 at continuously higher oil prices and with rapid improvements in overall energy efficiencies throughout the world. A rapid global refinery expansion program that eventually matches an increasing oil demand rate of 1.5 - 2.0% per year cannot be achieved before 2015 at the earliest and is highly improbable in any case. |
2005 October 06, Thor's day
Volkswagen sales soar... I wonder why?
Chavez has moved Venezuela's reserves to Europe. Time to buy gold bullion, or euros, or both...
''There may be trouble ahead....'' No easy fix for Rita-damaged oil works
This is hysterical - Bush's crony Karen Hughes is currently making a fool out of herself on her goodwill trip to the Middle East...
| Hughes, a former reporter for a local Texas television station and close confidante to Bush when he was governor of the state, is an improbable ambassador. She has little foreign policy experience and her pedestrian, at times vapid, responses to questions raised by people in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey showed she knew precious little about the region’s social concerns and political preoccupations. In Egypt, asked a question about the Muslim Brotherhood, she turned quizzically to an aide to help her out, since she presumably had not heard of the group, which has been active and vocal in Egyptian politics since the 1920s. Charged with burnishing the U.S. image in the Muslim world, she only succeeded in projecting a syrupy sweet demeanor, using hokey lines like “I am a mom and I love kids,” or banal observations, about what goals Palestinians should pursue, like “they should have children and families.” In Turkey, she gushed: “I love all kids, and I understand that is something I have in common with the Turkish people - that they love children.” In Cairo, when she asked a group of college students how many of them had voted in the recent presidential election, only one hand shot up. The next day, she worked into her standard speech a heartwarming story about meeting someone who had participated in the first multiparty election in Egypt’s history. She also repeatedly claimed, in an interview on Al-Jazeera, that President Bush was the first American leader to call for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, ignorant as she was of the fact that President Bill Clinton worked tirelessly to achieve that goal in the last few months of his tenure in the White House. (Come to think of it, President Carter had called for a “Palestinian homeland” while in office.) Let the record show that no one has identified the gushy Hughes as an “ugly American,” just an inane one. |
2005 October 05, Wednesday
Fascism marches on!
Bush calls for the right to declare martial law at his "Press Conference". Heh heh...it's for our own good, in case of the Flu, or, heh heh, terrists.
Former US education secretary calls for the abortion of black babies to prevent crime! A politician in Europe or Canada would need bodyguards after making a comment like that. This wipe will probably get his own TV show on Fox or MSNBC.
Some interesting info on the next few months of US energy supply:
| Of the 4,000 platforms that the MMS administers, 3,050 platforms were in the path of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The preliminary damage assessment indicates that 108 of the older "end of life" facilities not built to MMS' upgraded design standards were destroyed. They account for only 1.7% of the Gulf's oil production and 0.9% of the Gulf's gas production. Another 53 platforms suffered significant damage. As a result, only a very small percentage of production is expected to be permanently lost. Major new facilities withstood the storms better, with only one major facility destroyed and four receiving significant damage. Repairs are already underway on the damaged facilities, but a substantial portion of production is expected to require several months to resume. |
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