Thursday, June 11, 2009

Prediction of $250 Oil

Oil Price Leaps to Year's High
Thanks to V(incent) for bringing this to our attention.
CERA Official Acknowledges Peak Oil is Here
Swine Flu "Pandemic" Announcement Imminent

"What's happening right now is not about public health surveillance and science," [Michael Osterholm] said. "It's about politics and risk communication."

Comment: And in case you had any doubts about how independent science is of the PR department:

"In May, several countries urged WHO not to declare a pandemic, fearing it would spark mass panic. The agency appeared to cave into the requests, saying it would rewrite its definition of a global outbreak so that it wouldn't have to declare one right away for swine flu."

Comment: Which is not to say that the declaration of a pandemic is not itself a caving to political interests, just different ones.

18 comments:

Rice Farmer said...

Now that CERA has finally acknowledged peak oil, I guess it's official (as if we needed CERA to tell us).

And this is why, my friends, everything is starting to fall apart. As MCR lucidly details in his book, energy gets the work done, not money, so to be throwing wads of money at the problem, as governments are now doing, is like drinking a tonic for a quick lift and fooling yourself into thinking that is building a healthy body.

Andrew_The_Fox said...

I like the quote under the picture "Oil will last for decades, according to BP, but advocates of 'peak oil' believe reserves are dwindling."

It should more properly be worded advocates of peak oil KNOW reserves are dwindling.

We really are in for it.

GW said...

I was hoping someone could tell me more about wheat straw as a fuel. The articles I've found in the news lack objectivity.

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/06/11/biofuel-shell-wheat-straw.html

Sebastian Ernst Ronin said...

Kenneth Deffeyes' "rear view mirror" comming up! Consensus is pretty firm (inside the loop, anyway) that 2008 was peak year. Peak year for material goodies and comfort was 2006.

From ASPO's fairly conservative 4-5 percent to the IEA's hypothetical 8-9 percent, it would seem to me that most folks just can't wrap their heads around the annual depletion rate. And, historically, it's happening in the blink of an eye.

Everybody, on both sides of the fence, is jokeying for position. My personal motto is reinforced: "Win first, fight later."

Unknown said...

Really big news story today that is going overlooked in a lot of media outlets... If this is real it has some pretty crazy implications.

http://www.businessinsider.com/italy-seizes-a-ridiculous-135-billion-worth-of-smuggled-us-bonds-2009-6

A good friend of mine also pointed out the odd coincidence below...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123828522318566241.html

martypantsROK said...

Just today the US Energy Information Agency released its International Energy Outlook and pronounced that the days of cheap oil are forever gone and that a new era of international competition for energy will emerge.

It's not like we here didn't already know that, but it's getting harder and harder for those who don't understand this to not get the news.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175082/michael_klare_goodbye_to_cheap_oil

businessman said...

How are the sales of Mike's new book going?

Gaby de Wilde said...

There are lots of answers to the oil question. It really shows there is no intention to fix the problem.

To name a few,

-Cold fusion
-Ethanol from not corn but hemp which grows in the desert without fertiliser
-Hydrogen fuel enhancement, upgrade existing fuels (alcohol, diesel kerosene) using geothermal, hydro dams, wind, solar, biogas, woodgas etc
-convert existing cars to hybrid electric using on-demand hydrogen technology replacing dynamos with motors

The short story: Everything has been confiscated by the military.

A tiny, insignificant lump of radioactive material or even just a few microwave frequencies is enough to build a perpetual vehicle. Search "radiolysis"

Electrogravitics is not just a buzz word. Obama made official effort to declassify some of it.

I can give you some links if you like.

Peter J. Nickitas said...

Jenna:

Here are a couple more streets for the road map:

http://www.taipanpublishinggroup.com/taipan-daily-061209.html

Peter J. of Minneapolis

Unknown said...

Michael Osterholm was very nearly the Food Safety officer in Vilsack's USDA. In the end, Margaret Hamburg got the job, mostly due to intense protest by food-conscious consumer groups. Seems he's a big food irradiation man. Search "Osterholm USDA" to see the flap it created.

Now he's trying to push the Pandemic button.

I say, consider the source.

LeoBro said...

Thoughtful interview (audio) with Colin J. Campbell. He discusses how ordinary people get the concept of limits, but politicians are afraid to discuss it. He speaks favorably of Transition Towns, and (for Sebastian), even makes a brief mention of secession in the U.S.
http://www.lifeinfo.de/inh1./texte/colin_j._campbell_intervie.html

A peon said...

Ugh.

US: Stalled clean coal plant moving ahead in Ill.

1_Crazy_Canuck said...

It's 5 O'clock. Do you know where your gold is?

http://ca.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idCATRE55861B20090609

http://www.thestar.com/article/647671

Sebastian Ernst Ronin said...

LeoBro, thanks for bringing this to our attention. I am listening to the audio as I am writing, so cannot comment directly on Campbell's plug on NAmerican secession.

From the paper, Post-Peak Oil and NAmerican Regional Secession, presented at last year's Third North American Secession Convention:

It is proposed that the meta-condition upon which all other conditions are dependent is the historical crisis of the end of industrial civilization, as is so concretely made evident by the onset of Peak Oil and the co-related implosion of the large industrial nation state. As such, the Peak Oil crisis constitutes a political window of opportunity for NAmerican secessionists. This crisis is the primary condition above all others. It translates into the opportunity to hinge the secessionist movement onto the advent of Peak Oil in the public consciousness and discourse, to evolve politically in tandem with energy decline, and to firmly position the secessionist movement in the public imagination to the degree that when one thinks “Peak Oil” one automatically also thinks “secessionist movement.”

I would imagine that this "marketing" initiative is 2-3 years removed. However, with Campbell's acknowledgement, there is hope that one is pointed in the right direction. Crawling precedes baby steps.

brell said...

How ARE book sales coming along?

I need to buy more, but must wait until i pay off some more debts...

tim said...

Gabby de Wilde;
You've just scratched the surface...and are correct about the military.

Sally K said...

Just a note on the CERA Peak Oil article - the wording is a bit misleading - if you read the article carefully, the CERA gent quoted was actually making a reference to "peak gasoline demand". I think he was making a vain attempt at humorous sarcasm, which actually was ver misleading.

tomazg said...

One of my correspondents recently had this to say, "As Michael Ruppert says in his latest book "There can be no tangible improvements in our chances for survival until the monetary paradigm is broken"".

I fully agree with that and have been working for 30 years to usher in a new monetary paradigm based on voluntary association and free market initiatives. I refer to it as "reclaiming the credit commons."

This is fully described in my latest book, The End of Money and the Future of Civilization, as well as my various websites and blogs.

We are experiencing simultaneous economic depression and monetary inflation because of the central banking system and legal tender laws that enable government to spend far beyond its revenues while the private productive sector is starved for credit. A hyper-inflation on the order of the German inflation of 1921-23 seems to be on the horizon.

Thomas H. Greco, Jr.
http://reinventingmoney.com