Global Warming Could Wipe Out 1/4 of All Species
Los Angeles Endures Longest Dry Spell in 130 Years
US Answer to Climate Change: Smoke and Giant Space Mirrors
Castro Warns Poor Will Starve for Greener Fuel
Local Food Movement Grows More Mainstream
Cheney/Al Qaeda Link An expansion, via Thomas Englehardt, on Seymour Hersch's recent piece in the New Yorker.
Venezuela Moving Towards Compression Rather than Liquification of Gas This method of transporting gas, while taking up more space, is also less dangerous and far less expensive. J.O.
Untapped: The Scramble for Africa's Oil
Thirstier World to See More Civil Conflict While this would seem to fall squarely into the "No shit" file, it's interesting that the conflicts generally arise a year after the drought. The researchers don't speculate on the reasons for the time lapse. Perhaps it takes a year for victims to recover enough to take up arms. Or perhaps it takes a year for the drought to manifest its full impact in crop shortages. Jenna Orkin
President of Ford Saves Bush from Self-Immolation Ah well. It would have been such a fitting end. J.O.
China's Naval Upgrades Readers of this blog don't need to be reminded that this is in anticipation of conflict not only with Taiwan but also with Japan over the Diaoyu (Chinese name)/Senkaku (Japanese name) Islands. J.O.
With the arrival of Peak Oil, the curtain has closed on Act 1 of the drama Petroleum Man. What will happen in Act 2? Chekhov said, "If there's a gun on the wall at the beginning of the play, by the end it must go off." In the world's nuclear arsenal are many guns on the wall. If life copies art, will there be an Act 3 in which the players, having learned their lesson the hard way, live sustainably? To explore these and other questions... FTW's Act 2 Blog. Read, comment, take heart! Orkin
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The critically acclaimed new film featuring Michael Ruppert.
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29 comments:
My article is in Japanese... guess I didn't mention that. I don't think it will be available online, but I'll ask about that.
The Myanmar article can also be found here:
http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=12545
Although Myanmar's situation also has a lot to do with government policy, it's instructive to see how people cope.
US will combat climate change with smoke and mirrors -- which is what it's been using up until now!
Price of uranium tops $100
http://www.stratfor.com/products/premium/read_article.php?id=287184
The Oil Crisis Leads to Gold and Silver
http://www.321energy.com/editorials/phillips/phillips041107.html
Russia to Delay Construction of Pacific Pipeline Due to Oil Shortages
http://www.mosnews.com/money/2007/04/11/pipelinedelay.shtml
Regarding peak oil I found this site which claims that perhaps peak oil is more complex?
http://www.prisonplanet.com/archives/peak_oil/index.htm
Do you have any comments on the material in this site that suggests that some oilfields are able to replenish?
they can replenish but don't hold your breath. (think how long it took to make the oil we have now.)
An interesting article by Dale Allan Pfeiffer on reserves of various fuel sources:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=PFE20070413&articleId=5380
And another article, entitled:
"Former Bush Speechwriter Hints at 9-11 Inside Job":
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=WAT20070413&articleId=5381
Dear Jenna, Mike and Team
With the passing of Vonnegut, I would like to offer this peak oil piece which attempts to copy some aspects of his style:
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/
view.asp?article=5590
(I snapped the link, but you can paste it back together)
I read many of his books during my misspent youth. Some of it seems to have stuck.
Peace and love to all
Chris XX
Speaking of smoke and mirrors (rice farmer's first comment) see what the Californicator (Schwarzenegger) had to say the other day. Another "we can have our cake and eat it" ploy.
Well, his degree is in "Physiques" right? so he must know what he's talking about.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/04/12/MNG6FP74D61.DTL
China's naval upgrades: Note also Wen Jiabao's recent conciliatory trip to Japan. The Chinese are hedging their bets. So what do they want? For one thing, Japanese investment, I suppose. But maybe we should be asking what the Japanese want.
Wen spoke of a "strategic relationship of mutual benefit." But the Chinese didn't make this up. It was actually the Japanese government under PM Abe that proposed it to China last fall. This surprised a lot of people because Abe is a right-winger and was expected to continue the Koizumi program of strengthening the alliance with the US and irritating China.
Back in the 1990s China proposed a similar "strategic partnership relationship" to Japan, which refused. But now Japan is hot to trot. How times change.
New fault lines are emerging. US military forces in Japan are being "realigned," which actually means their presence is being downgraded, as in South Korea. With the US presence in East Asia diminishing, Japan has to make new security arrangements, and one thing it has to do is get along better with China. As the US Empire goes down the tubes, Japan is presented with new circumstances, and even right-wingers like Abe find they can no longer afford to keep antagonizing China.
Re the drought et al weather wise..
Has anyone else heard of a coming water "shortage"? It's being said that water will become a greater commodity (when privatized) than oil ever was. A quote from FORTUNE magazine ... 'privatization of water by large corporations' is "one of the world's great business opportunities. It promises to be to the 21st century what oil was to the 20th." ...
The "shortage" will be false, ofcourse, but fear tactics will drive belief as usual. There is apparently a push via WalMart (who owns Home Depot, who bought National Water Works) to have RFID chipped meters installed in homes for monitoring purposes. The bushco's bought 90,000 acres in Paraguay which sits on the largest fresh water aquifer known to exist.
Could the hoopla and fear-smear regarding global warming (which 8 years ago TPTB called 'bad science' but is now their diversion de jur) be the vehicle they use to convince the masses of the coming "shortage"?
Input anyone?
Anne
rich:
The site you are referencing is a guy named Alex Jones. Alex maintains several web sites as well as a radio show and produced several documentaries.
I personally am not a fan of Alex because his information seems to have lots of hype and less facts than I found in From the Wilderness. That being said, I would recommend you do the research yourself. Alex states on his site that "Peak Oil is a Corrupt Globalist Scam". That article is an example of the hype with very little facts, but he does have some better ones.
A good place to start to look for articles that counter the abiotic oil theory is to go to the From the Wilderness Archives and do a search for the term "abiotic oil" An example of the quality of work published there is this article
No Free Lunch, Part 1:
The search engine in From the Wilderness is here
anne:
If I remember right the American Indians had trouble understanding private property and said something like next you will be charging for water and air.
Seriously, I recently had some big questions about the man-made part of global warming after watching a video. A pretty good discussion occurs in this forum. My nickname there is copperhead.
I find it interesting that a big part of the mortgage meltdown is in the Midwest states of Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. All of which border on the great lakes, the largest source of fresh water in the USA.
I am not sure that all the "money men" feed us misinformation, but I do think they are agile enough to figure out ways to make money on the latest fad.
Hi all
I have a question that I hope someone reading here can answer. Whenever I read articles on preparing for collapse, one of the first things said is pay off your debts. Now if you're trying to keep your cash liquid or in precious metals so that you can navigate hyperinflation etc, doesn't paying off debts reduce your usable capital? Also in a period of inflation isn't the debt inflated away by the increase in numbers of dollars. Wasn't this part of Reaganomics in the 80's when they were talking about inflating their way out of debt. In the case of a dollar devaluation, let's say the dollar is now worth .50 cents, wouldn't your debt, being denominated in dollars also reduced in value? I'm sure I'm missing something obvious, but I haven't figured it out what it is yet. Thanks in advance.
Are cellphones a cause of colony collapse disorder?
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/wildlife/article2449968.ece
Wow, Rice Farmer, thanks for the article on cell phones and CCD! That is so interesting.
David -- Even if people's debts are reduced in value, it's important to realize that most people will have no jobs and no money. Right now, millions of Americans are teetering on the brink, loaded with debt and without savings, wondering when they'll join the swelling ranks of the jobless and homeless. To people without a cent, even if the value of their mortgage is reduced to $100, nothing has changed since they won't have the $100. This outcome is assured by the massive transfer of wealth in progress right now.
Smoke and mirrors, redux -- The idea of pumping the atmosphere full of particulates to block sunlight is really stupid, as any farmer will tell you. I myself have experienced the deleterious effects of reduced insolation on crops. Without enough direct sunlight to warm the soil, some seeds won't even germinate.
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=reutersEdge&storyID=2007-01-22T213905Z_01_N22478825_RTRUKOC_0_US-USA-PENNIES-SHORTAGE.xml
Pennies to be worth 5x thier values??
Bumblebees too are disappearing.
http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=12590
Pennies and nickels: It looks as though we are seeing not only peak oil and peak coal, but also peak metals. And once prices reach certain levels, it's a whole new ball game. Copper for electrical conductors? Too expensive. Nickel for hybrid car batteries? Too expensive.
And if base metals are jumping in value, imagine what will happen to precious metals.
Fat To Fuel: ConocoPhillips And Tyson Foods Join Forces To Develop Bio-Diesel
http://manufacturing.net/article.aspx?id=139749
Here's thermal depolymerization again. I haven't seen any studies on the energy balance of this technology (please someone post any you know of), but some of the promotional literature sounds too good to be true. But let's look at this from a common-sense point of view. Inputs are animal waste, old tires, and stuff like that. But domestic animals in the US are produced with huge energy and water inputs. And we're at the point where energy and water are both worth starting wars over. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with turning turkey guts into a usable form of energy, but on a large scale this simply cannot last, even if the energy balance is positive. So again, we are left to pin our hopes on perpetual motion and alien technology.
FALSE FLAG WARNING!
I think it's safe to assume that we should be watching the events below in case they are part of a false flag operation, similar to training excercises that coincided with the attacks on 9/11 and with the London Underground bombings on 7/7.
http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070417/LOCAL18/704170364
Nuclear bomb exercise will test region's response
More than 3,000 troops, police officers will participate in simulation this month
By Will Higgins
will.higgins@indystar.com
Indiana's homeland security readiness will be tested later this month with the simulated detonation of a nuclear bomb somewhere in the Hoosier state, the U.S. Northern Command said.
The event will trigger the deployment of 1,000 Indiana National Guard troops, more than 2,000 active-duty military personnel, local and state police officers, and other officials.
The action will take place at the Muscatatuck Urban Training Center in Jennings County and Camp Atterbury in Johnson County.
The nuclear scenario will be played out from April 30 to May 18. It is one of three such tests that will be held simultaneously. The others are a hurricane in Rhode Island and a terrorist attack in Alaska. Such tests are held twice a year by the Defense Department, the Department of Homeland Security and the Canadian Department of National Defence.
"They're designed to test what are our weak spots so we can start fixing holes," said Lt. Cmdr. Sean Kelly, a spokesman for the U.S. Northern Command, which was established after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to coordinate the armed services' response to internal attacks and disasters.
Kelly declined to provide details of the exercises, because it would give the responders an unrealistic advantage.
A U.S. Government Accountability Office report issued in January projected that if terrorists were to detonate a 10-kiloton nuclear device in a large city, the surrounding 3,000 square miles would be contaminated, 450,000 people would need to be evacuated, and there would be "hundreds of billions of dollars in economic impact."
Call Star reporter Will Higgins at (317) 444-6043.
Uranium prices skyrocket; weapons plant workers go on strike
http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/node/4447
Financial Times London: "Iraq could hold almost twice as much oil in its reserves as had been thought, according to the most comprehensive independent study of its resources since the US-led invasion in 2003."
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/23bedd7e-edd8-11db-8584-000b5df10621.html
Won't solve peak of course, best case scenario is increase Iraq production by 2 mb/d to 4 mb/d in five years. But it sure emphasizes what the real "mission" is there and why the US is not leaving any time soon.
People's Daily: "China will not follow US energy consumption model"
At an MIT Energy Forum in Shanghai on April 3, Xu Dingming, vice director of the Office of the National Energy Leading Group, also said there isn't enough oil in the world to do that.
http://english.people.com.cn/200704/04/eng20070404_363528.html
pandabonium, please note that in 2004 ihs, the company that is alleging the sudden unexpected cornucopia in iraq, bought cera which is not reknowned for its acknowledgment of peak oil. http://energy.ihs.com/News/Press-Releases/2004/pr_090104-cera.htm
9:01 PM
Thanks, Admin.
Rice Farmer:
Thanks for your comments regarding debt. I see your point. I wonder, obviously if one has enough income to pay one's mortgage, one ought to do so to avoid foreclosure. With credit card debt, why shouldn't we all just default on those payments? It's not like we'll be needing our good credit scores once the days of easy credit are over.
Thanks again
Rice farmer, I love your contributions and blog. Thanks.
In partial return, here's some recent follow-up regarding the much hyped thermal depolymerization process:
http://i-r-squared.blogspot.com/search/label/Thermal%20Depolymerization
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