Energy expert Robert Hirsch says the world would need 20 years to prepare for peak oil. But declining global oil production could just be a few years away.
It is an axiom of history that no government put in place by foreign troops, or needing to be maintained in place by them against internal opposition, can be considered a legitimate government.
Speaking of serendipities - NPR carried a program this morning discussing the demise of the Poor People's Movement, and the demise of the Black church in America. Saying it without saying it, because I suspect that most folks have not deconstructed the motivational basis of the phenomenon, the historic Black church in America was not only the hub of Black free speech and autonomy, it was also concurrently THE place to see and be seen within the segregated but socio-economically heterogeneous Black community. Once the barriers of racial segregation legally fell, and there was economic flight out of the historic Black community reducing these communities to socio-economic ghettos, there ceased to be as much of a magnetic pull by the church as the hub of the place to see and be seen. No longer capable of harnessing this powerful drive, the churches were greatly diminished and they have not recovered since. In addition, powerful secondary and tertiary forces and factors have set in the still further reduce the magnetism of the historical Black church.Poverty and FaithAs always within American culture, as goes Black culture, so goes America. As the result of historical assignation within the American political economy, we are always merely the canary in the encompassing American coalmine. This story about the Poor People's Campaign and the demise of the Black church is fundamentally a story about America.
OTOH - the past fifteen years has seen the rise of megachurches, and of particular note are the prosperity preaching megachurches. These temples of Mammon have overtly and explicitly harnessed and trumpeted their unrepentant commitment to the status drive - and in the process - become overwhelmingly popular and dominant;
Although not much has changed for many poor Americans, the role of religion in the black community has changed greatly since the days when King and others wielded such power.
Today, the civil rights movement and life in the black community converge at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., where the Rev. Arthur Price Jr. is now pastor. Four girls were killed at the church in 1963 when a bomb exploded during Sunday service. Price worries that all these years later, too few parents are bringing their children to church.
"I believe if we can get people engaged on the front end and teach them a good foundation, that some of the social ills that we have in our society will be less and less," he says. "We don't live in a box. We are in the culture. We are around the culture, and sometimes we have to preach against the culture."
Price teaches men how to become better fathers and helps first-time drug offenders turn their lives around. But he says the church's role in the black community has changed. Back in the 1960s, pastors dominated their neighborhoods — churches were the place where African-Americans shared their entire lives.
"If I can sum it up … I think we don't have a faith like we used to as a people. We've just, we've become so fragmented," says the Rev. Anthony Johnson, grandson of Alabama civil rights leader N.H. Smith Jr.
A Charge from the PulpitOver the past few years, megachurches have become more popular in black communities, just as they have in white communities. These megachurches have amassed influence and wealth partly because of their sheer number of parishioners. Some have created satellite churches and broadcast their gospel on television.
Many who were part of the civil rights movement and their heirs lament the trend.
"There still needs to be a voice crying out in the wilderness," Price says. "There still needs to be a charge from the pulpit to ignite people, to prick the consciousness of our brothers and sisters and to keep the mirror up in America's face, to let them know that they do have a responsibility to the least of these."
The Decline of the State and U.S. Strategy; Security and stability in the 21st century have little to do with traditional power politics, military conflict between states, and issues of grand strategy. Instead they revolve around the disruptive consequences of globalization, declining governance, inequality, urbanization, and nonstate violent actors. The author explores the implications of these issues for the United States. He proposes a rejection of "stateocentric" assumptions and an embrace of the notion of the New Middle Ages characterized, among other things, by competing structures, fragmented authority, and the rise of "no-go" zones. He also suggests that the world could tip into a New Dark Age. He identifies three major options for the United States in responding to such a development. The author argues that for interventions to have any chance of success the United States will have to move to a trans-agency approach. But even this might not be sufficient to stanch the chaos and prevent the continuing decline of the Westphalian state.
The Royal Bank of Scotland has advised clients to brace for a full-fledged crash in global stock and credit markets over the next three months as inflation paralyses the major central banks.
I have a backlog of work to attend to, so I plan on being scarce today. However, I wanted to bring this link up from the comments and submit it for your consideration because it nicely illuminates the scholastic and propositional nature of the national political spectacle unfolding all around us.Technological illustrations of the inconvenience of any inconvenient truth relating to global governanceI believe this line of inquire also has direct applicability to the religiously themed exchange sparked by the questions I posed on Monday
The simplicity, comprehensibility and communicability of an inconvenient truth is well-illustrated by:
* automobiles: which few are capable of making or repairing, although many (but not all) claim an ability to drive, and an aspiration to do so -- despite their dependence on non-renewable resources and their impact on the environment
* electronic consumer products: despite extremely widespread use of radio, music players, TVs, and computers, who is capable of understanding their operating principles to a degree enabling their design, development or repair, in contrast with the number whose familiarity with their use in practice obscures their inability in those respects? The classic example of "inability to program a VCR" is now matched by "inability to use a computer", let alone to program one.
* space rockets: whilst "reaching for the stars" has been promoted as a comprehensible ideal justifying allocation of resources as a priority to that end, who is capable of comprehending the complex control systems that renders them viable, and of developing the technology in practice? How was this allocation of resources rendered credible to those without that understanding?
In the light of such various degrees of engagement with technology:
* who is likely to to be able to envisage the requisite new "technologies" of governance appropriate to the challenges of the times?
* who might understand how to design and develop them in practice?
* who might comprehend their significance sufficiently to allocate resources to that end?
* who might have the skills to use them?
Again, the convenience of the explanation of any technology depends on it being significantly shorter than that required for its operationalization in practice -- implying that any remedial technique is necessarily both a challenge to implement and to justify funding for its development.
What inconvenient truth does this imply about the democratic global governance desirable for the future?
Oil makes hypocrites of us all. Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general who last year took office declaring that his main goal was to fight "man-made climate change", has spent most of his weekend in Jeddah attempting to persuade King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to ramp up the kingdom's oil production.
Saudi Arabia appears ready to cave in to demands from Western governments for the kingdom to make special efforts to increase its production of oil. Analysts forecast that the world's largest producer will shortly raise its output by half a million barrels a day. The United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, confirmed this impression at the weekend after emerging from talks with the Saudi monarch, King Abdullah.
The instinctive drive for status is remarkably efficient. It requires only that there be at least two people involved. Whatever the circumstances, small nuances will be enough to establish a status difference. This assures a constant motivation for action of some sort and with a small amount of discipline the action can be directed towards a productive result. Naturally, in a meritocratic context, those having superior abilities would tend to rise in rank. In hunter-gatherer times when meritocratic performance meant the difference between life and death, feast or famine, this drive served as an admirable adaptive attribute.
Can any system that uses less energy have greater status than one that uses more?
If offered the choice between retaining status through aggressive violence or peaceful downsizing with loss of status, would enough Americans choose to downsize so as to make cooperative scaling possible?
"I put for the general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceases only in death." -- Thomas Hobbes
All high status individuals within your social paradigm deliberately lie (many subconsciously though none the less obviously) to further their drive to increased status. Moreover, no high status individual is willing to lose social status by admitting lies, errors, or omissions in the decisions that they've taken pursuant to their status-seeking aims. So, not only do all of the organizations within your society work in concert to promote this paradigm, but, all the current high-status individuals leading these social organizations are genetically-biased against telling the truth because it threatens to cost them their hard-won social status.
Big Don brings it this morning; Silicon Valley is experimenting with bacteria that have been genetically altered to provide 'renewable petroleum'. “Ten years ago I could never have imagined I’d be doing this,” says Greg Pal, 33, a former software executive, as he squints into the late afternoon Californian sun. “I mean, this is essentially agriculture, right? But the people I talk to – especially the ones coming out of business school – this is the one hot area everyone wants to get into.”This is where it's at. Via these and related cutting edge agricultural methods, the humans either solve the equation and elude the Great Filter, or else...,
He means bugs. To be more precise: the genetic alteration of bugs – very, very small ones – so that when they feed on agricultural waste such as woodchips or wheat straw, they do something extraordinary. They excrete crude oil.
Unbelievably, this is not science fiction. Mr Pal holds up a small beaker of bug excretion that could, theoretically, be poured into the tank of the giant Lexus SUV next to us. Not that Mr Pal is willing to risk it just yet. He gives it a month before the first vehicle is filled up on what he calls “renewable petroleum”. After that, he grins, “it’s a brave new world”.
The biggest greenhouse in Britain unveiled; This week, workers are putting the finishing touches to Britain's largest hydroponic greenhouse an astonishing construction in white steel and glass. By the time the site is complete in 2010, another six massive greenhouses will have been constructed, providing a home to more than 1.3million tomato, pepper and cucumber plants - grown hydroponically, without soil. Kent is often called the Garden of England. When this village of glass is complete, it will be more like England's factory. The site will contain seven greenhouses, each the size of 10 football pitches. At a time when people are increasingly concerned about industrial-scale farming, this latest, monumental step in the steady, insidious creep of factory farming is a controversial one.
Again from Asia Times; With the price of oil rocketing to the unprecedented level of US$130 a barrel and more, there is a talk of another oil shock. Unlike past instances, this one is unlikely to subside and may indeed keep intensifying. The only way out is for Western nations, the gluttonous users of petroleum, to cut their consumption and emulate Japan in its consistent drive for energy efficiency and alternate sources.[...] Since supply is unlikely to rise appreciably in the near future, the stress must be laid on curtailing demand. That can only happen in the Western nations. As it is, in the face of soaring prices at gasoline stations, US demand fell by 3% during the first three months of this year.
BOSTON (Reuters) - As oil prices spike, many Americans are rediscovering the railroad.
From the Asia Times; Pentagon officials firmly opposed a proposal by Vice President Dick Cheney last summer for airstrikes against the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) bases by insisting that the administration would have to make clear decisions about how far the United States would go in escalating the conflict with Iran, according to a former George W Bush administration official.
Olivia Judson is nearly always three days late and three dollars short. This article is no exception. 
Do you think plants and dinasaurs decomposed and were compressed and then came the hydrocarbons on this Saturn moon?her modest little contribution is right on time.
Hey back on earth, I was hoping for clarification on the evolution process. The plants and dinasaurs and all this life decomposed and then through heat and compression came hydrocarbons, I got that, is it then hydrocarbon eating animals began to evolve? Here is where this article had me wondering...
Then there are the “intraterrestrials” — the organisms that live in rocks deep in the earth, the creatures of the “deep subsurface biosphere.” Bacteria have been found in rock samples taken several hundred meters below the sea floor, even when the sea floor itself is 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) below sea level.kaaaay.....?
We don’t know how many organisms are living in this (to us) alien environment. But based on what’s been found in rock samples so far, the numbers are likely to be gigantic. One recent study found between 1 million and 1 billion bacteria per gram of rock (a gram is 1/28 of an ounce). It may be that a large proportion — perhaps as many as a third — of all bacteria on Earth live in rocks below the floor of the sea. That would be a lot of bacteria.
Until recently, it was assumed that the chemical alteration and decomposition of rocks in the ocean crust was due purely to elemental forces — the circulation of seawater, the grinding of rocks against one another. But increasingly, intraterrestrial bacteria are suspected of making a contribution, too. Shards of volcanic glass from basaltic rocks hundreds of meters beneath the seabed show grooves and etchings that appear to have been made by bacteria.
In today's Agenceglobal; A striking example of the Bush administration’s divorce from reality may be seen in Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s 9,000 word article in the current issue of the U.S. journal Foreign Affairs.It is hard to know whether to laugh or cry when one reads this manifesto. The Iraqis don’t want to be ‘democratized’ by American military power; the Afghans don’t want a Western model of society forced upon them; the impact of Iraq’s ‘transformation’ -- that is to say its destruction -- has been highly destabilizing for the whole region; some Gulf rulers may misguidedly feel the need for U.S. military protection, but most of their subjects emphatically do not. Arab prosperity, such as it is, owes nothing to the American military presence and everything to oil and to Arab trading skills.[...]
“The democratization of Iraq and the democratization of the Middle East [are] linked,” she writes. “As Iraq emerges from its difficulties, the impact of this transformation is being felt in the rest of the region… Our long-term partnership with Afghanistan and Iraq, to which we must remain deeply committed, our new relationships in Central Asia, and our long-standing partnerships in the Persian Gulf provide a solid geostrategic foundation for the generational work ahead in helping to bring about a better, more democratic, and more prosperous Middle East.”
Iran’s President Ahmadinejad’s regime is a threat to all of us. His words contain a chilling echo of some of the world’s most tragic history.Everywhere one turns these days, we find a politician screaming about Iran and the dire threat it supposedly represents to America. President Bush has been spinning dark tales about this for years, his claims dutifully echoed by most of the presidential candidates (with the musical score provided by Senator McCain). Even Barack Obama, ostensibly the "antiwar" Democratic nominee, has taken to rattling sabers at the behest of his new neocon handlers.Steven LaTulippe at LewRockwell.com - is a physician currently practicing in Ohio. He was an officer in the United States Air Force for 13 years.
But if we brush away the rhetorical fog, does a tangible threat really exist? Is Iran actually a danger to our way of life? And if so, what does this threat look like?
Let us suppose for a moment that Iranian President Ahmadinejad decided that the time had come to launch a glorious mission to conquer the United States of America. Suppose, furthermore, that he proceeded to order the massive Iranian Army (actually, Ahmadinejad is not the commander of the Iranian military...but let’s put that aside for a moment) to board transport ships of the mighty Iranian Navy (although Iran doesn’t really have a navy, but let’s put that aside for a moment too) and set sail.
In concrete terms, how would this scenario unfold?
If the neocon warnings are accurate, this armada would have to sail out of the Persian Gulf, up the Red Sea, and through the Suez Canal (though why the Egyptians – Sunni rivals of Shiite Iran – would allow a massive Iranian military force to pass through the canal is another mystery).
Picking up speed, the armada would then sail across the Mediterranean Sea and through the Straits of Gibraltar. Once in the open Atlantic (though still without air cover or any logistical supply-chain whatsoever), the Iranian armada would then race across the ocean, presumably making landfall somewhere in New Jersey (where they could no doubt link up with their many secret agents posing as convenience store cashiers up and down the Garden State Parkway).
Once reassembled on the ground – but still without air cover or re-supply – this force would, according to our warmongering politicos, fight its way across the continental United States, thus completing Ahmadinejad’s mad plan of global domination.
This is, without embellishment, the actual threat that Iran poses to the United States.
People with higher IQs are less likely to believe in God, according to racist "psychologist" Richard Lynn. Professor Richard Lynn, emeritus professor of psychology at Ulster University, said many more members of the "intellectual elite" considered themselves atheists than the national average.Whatever this sea cucumber's sphincter thinks can only be considered in the light of his own unfalsifiable belief in biological "races".
A decline in religious observance over the last century was directly linked to a rise in average intelligence, he claimed.
But the conclusions - in a paper for the academic journal Intelligence - have been branded "simplistic" by critics.
Comes Submariner in the comments;This is intriguing and I'll definitely bookmark the link. Of the top, what I know is that McCain's dad and granddad were both admirals. His father in particular was CINCPAC during the Vietnam War and was an advocate for more aggressive maneuvers that would have confronted China directly.
That said, the lesson of Korea, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, about the futility of containing a rising Asian power short of nuclear weapons is being painfully relearned. Resorting to wholesale purges of CENTCOM, Air Force Secretary and Chief of Staff in a compressed period tells me that Bush is having serious trouble holding the reins on his war horses.
Followed by Rembom;"In the end, there is no simple solution. It is probably dangerous, for the republic and the armed forces that defend her, for this situation to exist. But it is also the logical result of 232 years of evolution between the military and the civilian authorities that control them. The question that remains is this: When nobody is willing to sit in judgment of the combat performance of the generals, including the generals, then who is really in control of our armed forces?"who throws an article containing perspective and corroborating data on the subject not commonly aired or known in the public domain. Seems to me we have all the makings of an extremely interesting political discussion. It gets even more interesting if we ponder what's just around that signpost up ahead. The invasion of Iraq was an all or nothing gambit. There is no simple national retreat available to the U.S. from the operationalized objective of acquiring control of Iraq's oil. That the law of unintended consequences took effect almost immediately after the campaign began in earnest, and that American consensus reality has not accommodated itself to the facts of Peak Oil - means that a very rude awakening is in store. In the words of Nick Nolte before he throws William Petersen over the cliff, "this isn't America, this is L.A.....,"
The US Senate yesterday introduced a biosafety bill that takes small steps towards resolving some controversial aspects of the system regulating research with agents that could be used for bioterrorism.
In today's UK Independent, from the CEO of Gazprom that the rapid rise in oil prices has only just begun. As a side note, I've been listening to NPR's coverage of the fuel-price strikes taking place now in Europe - what is striking to me is that the EU nations effected by rising prices have achieved levels of energy efficiency that the U.S. can only aspire to. What this portends for our leaky bucket is truly draconian;While Europeans are used to paying a lot for unleaded gasoline, the sudden rise in the more popular and usually cheaper diesel fuel has come as a shock. In Spain this week, truckers blocked roads and stopped making deliveries to protest the soaring fuel costs. Spanish fishermen are also striking, and the French Navy has canceled three summer missions.The chief executive of the world's largest energy company has issued the most dire warning yet about the soaring the price of oil, predicting that it will hit $250 per barrel "in the foreseeable future".
So it's been a minute since I saw the documentary on perverse Iraq war profiteering, and that documentary was two years old at the time of the posting. Thankfully, it looks like investigations into what it recounted are underway.A BBC investigation estimates that around $23bn (£11.75bn) may have been lost, stolen or just not properly accounted for in Iraq.
For the first time, the extent to which some private contractors have profited from the conflict and rebuilding has been researched by the BBC's Panorama using US and Iraqi government sources.
A US gagging order is preventing discussion of the allegations.
The order applies to 70 court cases against some of the top US companies.
In the July/August Atlantic Monthly, Nicholas Carr asks; Is Google Making Us Stupid?
Good profile of Petraeus' Iranian counterpart, Brig. General Qassem Soleimani in Sunday's WaPo; Let's try for a moment to put ourselves in the mind of Brig. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force of Iran's Revolutionary Guard. For it is the soft-spoken Soleimani, not Iran's bombastic president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who plays a decisive role in his nation's confrontation with the United States.Bill O'Reilly's been making apocalyptic noises on his radio program for the past two days. One wonders what's in store between now and the November elections.
Soleimani represents the sharp point of the Iranian spear. He is responsible for Iran's covert activities in Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan and other battlegrounds. He oversees the regime's relations with its militant proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas. His elite, secretive wing of the Revolutionary Guard is identified as a terrorist organization by the Bush administration, but he is also Iran's leading strategist on foreign policy. He reports personally to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and his budget (mostly in cash) comes directly from the supreme leader's office.
It's been a minute since we last visited the topic of connectomics. The diagram is the fruit of an emerging field called "connectomics," which attempts to physically map the tangle of neural circuits that collect, process, and archive information in the nervous system. Such maps could ultimately shed light on the early development of the human brain and on diseases that may be linked to faulty wiring, such as autism and schizophrenia. "The brain is essentially a computer that wires itself up during development and can rewire itself," says Sebastian Seung, a computational neuroscientist at MIT, who is working with Lichtman. "If we have a wiring diagram of the brain, that could help us understand how it works."
But my man Nana has gotten us back on track with an update on one of the core data sets we like to monitor - that which illuminates the structural and functional underpinnings of cognition and everything we consequently hold dear - this one concerning measurable interspecies differences in synaptic density and complexity;The computing capabilities of the human brain may lie not so much in its neuronal network as in the complex calculations that its synapses perform, Dr. Grant said. Vertebrate synapses have about 1,000 different proteins, assembled into 13 molecular machines, one of which is built from 183 different proteins.Lets see how long it takes for Big Don and his confederates to begin foraging around for additional data along this cytoarchitechtonic variable to shore up the preconceived notions they hold so dear. Interestingly, if I had to wager as to a group of homo sapiens with exceptional phenotypical characteristics in this area, I'd wager that Australian aboriginals have the rest of you humans beaten hands down along this measure. Just a hunch on my part....,
These synapses are not standard throughout the brain, Dr. Grant’s group has found; each region uses different combinations of the 1,000 proteins to fashion its own custom-made synapses.
Each synapse can presumably make sophisticated calculations based on messages reaching it from other neurons. The human brain has about 100 billion neurons, interconnected at 100 trillion synapses.
Whoever wins the White House this fall WILL spend more time tackling energy challenges than any other president in history.
As we simplistically blather about the candidates' race and age – it's hip vs hip operation, folks – we seem to be ignoring the best guide we have to John McCain and Barack Obama's hearts.
Gas prices are high throughout the country, but how hard they hit individual families depends on income levels, which vary widely. Click on the image to go to NYTimes Interactive article - then go check out the companion article Rural U.S. Takes Worst Hit as Gas Tops $4 Average.
comedy gold.....,
From the current issue of BusinessWeek;
Dan Hurley in the NYTimes; “The left hemisphere does language in the narrow sense, understanding of individual words and sentences,” Dr. Chatterjee said. “But it’s now thought that the appreciation of humor and language that is not literal, puns and jokes, requires the right hemisphere.”
Here's the real reason I'm not sanguine about imminent collapse. The Commodity Futures and Trading Commission (CFTC) is investigating trading in oil futures to determine whether the surge in prices to record levels is the result of manipulation or fraud. They might want to take a look at wheat, rice and corn futures while they're at it. The whole thing is a hoax cooked up by the investment banks and hedge funds who are trying to dig their way out of the trillion dollar mortgage-backed securities (MBS) mess that they created by turning garbage loans into securities. That scam blew up in their face last August and left them scrounging for handouts from the Federal Reserve. Now the billions of dollars they're getting from the Fed is being diverted into commodities which is destabilizing the world economy; driving gas prices to the moon and triggering food riots across the planet.When the regulators are invoked to cool the out of control chain reaction in the reactor core, not only here in the colonies, but simultaneously in the imperial homeland, it doesn't mean that the cavalry is coming to save the day for you and I, oh no. Rather, it means that the quest to extract remaining collateral value from the middle and the bottom has become excessively frenzied to the detriment of too vast a swath of the top. Governance stability is at risk. Things could still very well spiral out of control, however, efforts are being made to bring them back under control which means you may still have enough time to get your own act together and prepare you and yours for the clampdown. It's coming. I just don't think it's coming next week or that TPTB want it to come anytime between now and the election.
For months we've been told that the soaring price of oil has been the result of Peak Oil, fighting in Iraq, attacks on oil facilities in Nigeria, labor problems in Norway, and (the all-time favorite)growth in China. It's all baloney. Just like Goldman Sachs prediction of $200 per barrel oil is baloney. If oil is about to skyrocket then why has G-Sax kept a neutral rating on some of its oil holdings like Exxon Mobile? Could it be that they know that oil is just another mega-inflated equity bubble---like housing, corporate bonds and dot.com stocks-that is about to crash to earth as soon as the big players grab a parachute?
There are three things that are driving up the price of oil: the falling dollar, speculation and buying on margin.
