Stratfor, long unable to account for the dizzying heights to which oil prices, have soared, can more easily explain its recent collapse. But finally things are making sense. It argues with some satisfaction, that the steepness of the price fall only confirms its analysis that the previously high levels were somewhat artificial.
But before we dive into the short-term (that is, up to 12 months) impact of the new price environment, we must state our position in the oil price debate. We have long been perplexed about the onward and upward movement of the oil markets from 2005 to 2008. Certainly, global demand was strong, but a variety of factors such as production figures and growing inventories of crude oil seemed to argue against ever-increasing prices. Some of our friends pointed to the complex world of derivatives and futures trading, which they said had created artificial demand. That may well have been true, but the bottom line is that, based on the fundamentals, the oil numbers did not make a great deal of sense.
That’s an interesting thesis, which disturbingly implies there was something about the recent market which caused prices to depart from the fundamentals. However that may be, oil prices are now down and there are a new set of winners and losers in the big casino. The biggest winner by far, according to Stratfor, is the United States which stands to save about $2 billion a day on lower energy costs. The biggest losers are Venezuela, Iran, Nigeria, Russia and Canada, according to the think tank. In Canada, the wrinkle is that falling prices will hollow out the conservative power base of Alberta and have unforseen political consequences. However, the Middle East will not be put out as much as it one might think. The reason? They are sitting on a pile of cash, “with the Saudis alone probably having more than US$1 trillion socked away. Tiny Kuwait officially has a wealth fund worth more than US$250 billion. ”
So much for the Sunnis. Shiite Iran, according to Spengler at the Asia Times, is going down. The low oil prices are going to pull it into the depths like a ball and chain attached to a drowning man. (The main subject of his post is really the “Muslim risk premium”, but that’s OT).
Iran’s President Mahmud Ahmadinejad controls Iran through a kleptocracy of Central African proportions, dissipating the country’s oil windfall into payoffs to an “entire class of hangers-on of the Islamic revolution”, as I wrote in June (see Worst of times for Iran, Asia Times Online, June 24, 2008), when oil still sold at US$135 a barrel. What will Ahmadinejad do now that the oil price has collapsed? According to my Iranian sources, the answer is: Exactly the same thing, but without the money. …
Iran must break down, I argued last June, or break out, through a military adventure. The sand is slipping out of the hour glass, and the regime must decide what to do within a few months. If it does nothing, the default position, as it were, is Pakistan. … The lights are going out across the Middle East; states are failing, and it is not in the power of the West to make them whole again. All the strategic calculations that busied policy analysts and diplomats are changing, and the West has a very short time to learn the rules of a new and terrible game.
Interesting world we live in.
The idea of a linkage between markets — financial markets and oil for example — makes it interesting to speculate on the relationship between carbon emissions controls and petroleum prices. Australian environmentalists, for example, are furious at Kevin Rudd for pledging to cut the country’s carbon emissions by between 5 and 15% because they felt it wasn’t enough. Andrew Bolt noted that that Australian PM Kevin Rudd actually claimed that “he is in fact imposing on each person emission cuts of 34 per cent on 1990 levels by 2020 – the biggest cuts per capita of any country in the world, Britain possibly excepted. Think what it would involve in taxes, costs and fines to get you emitting a third less in just 12 years. ” Bolt warned that Rudd’s nod to Greenies would hamstring the Australian economy. Yet to the environmentalists it wasn’t enough. They were not only unsatisified, they were outraged.
Tim Blair describes the disturbance and screeching that followed which forced guards to remove some of the persons in the audience.
“We need hope,’’ one yelled.
“We’re not going to walk away from (action on) runaway climate change,’’ called out another.
One of the more interesting things to model is the relationship between the effects of carbon emissions regulation and oil prices. On the one hand, environmental regulations will tend to dampen economic activity, as Andrew Bolt notes. Viewed in terms of the fundamentals, environmental regulation should reduce the demand for petroleum. But on the other hand, it will tend to shift future production and exploration to the less environmentally regulated parts of the world. More importantly, environmental regulations will manage demand. Recall that one of the most coveted powers of a cartel, one which OPEC wields to great effect, is the ability to fix output. Cartels do not like markets in which there are large demand fluctuations because it creates an incentive to cheat. So a market in which the West consumes less petroleum but pays more for it would not be uncongenial to a cartel.
But lest anyone think that the Australian Green’s sense of urgency is extraordinary, the Associated Press recently reported that Barack Obama has little time left to cope with Global Warming. In the middle of an economic meltdown and a global fight against chaos, what we really should be worrying about is carbon levels. “The 10 hottest years on record have occurred since Clinton’s second inauguration. Global warming is accelerating. Time is close to running out, and Obama knows it. … ” We need to act NOW!!! and I’m not talking about the economy.
“The reality is, it may take more than the first year to get it all done,” Senate Energy Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., said recently.
Complicating everything is the worldwide financial meltdown. Frank Maisano, a Washington energy specialist and spokesman who represents coal-fired utilities and refineries, sees the poor economy as “a huge factor” that could stop everything. That’s because global warming efforts are aimed at restricting coal power, which is cheap. That would likely mean higher utility bills and more damage to ailing economies that depend on coal production, he said.
Obama is stacking his Cabinet and inner circle with advocates who have pushed for deep mandatory cuts in greenhouse gas pollution and even with government officials who have achieved results at the local level.
Recently the US Senate published a report by 650 scientists calling the Global Warming theory bunk, and ordinarily that might count for something. But for many, the debate is over. Even if Global Warming isn’t even likely, if it’s possible, well, there’s the Precautionary Principle. And the evidence, apparently is everywhere, even when it undermines the carbon thesis. The Associated Press article cited above also reported that a recently observed cooling trend is even more proof that Global Warming is accelerating. Imagine that.
Ironically, 2008 is on pace to be a slightly cooler year in a steadily rising temperature trend line. Experts say it’s thanks to a La Nina weather variation. While skeptics are already using it as evidence of some kind of cooling trend, it actually illustrates how fast the world is warming.
I wonder whether we aren’t glimpsing — in these intellectual gyrations and hysterial behavior — some of the exogenous factors that make oil prices rise even though the fundamentals don’t support the increase. Before the financial meltdown and the Madoff affair, I might have dismissed the notion that the markets responded to an invisible hand other than Adam Smith‘s as a wild conspiracy theory. The fix is in? Are there forces which are for their lives which are operating behind the scenes? Don’t be silly.
“The 10 hottest years on record have occurred since Clinton’s second inauguration.”
This is wrong. Data analysis by Dr. James Hansen of NASA had a date handling error in calculating a time span across year 2000 – Yet another kind of Y2K bug.
This was pointed out to Dr. Hansen by a Canadian statistician, Steven McIntyre. Dr. Hansen has corrected that error and the data shows a flat temperature for the last ten years with a decline recently. The corrected data is on Nasa’s website but, you are going to have to dig to find it.
AP should know better than to pull this crap.
Seth Borenstein at AP is a climate hysteric and nothing he ever writes should be taken seriously.
Some more on that:
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2008/12/14/ap-global-warming-accelerating-time-close-running-out
We need to realize that there is a difference between an environmentalist who wants environmental conditions to get better and an environmentalist who desires a pretext to vent outrage. In the past century, venting outrage has become a cottage industry.
The problem we face with measuring anthropogenic climate change is that both sides of the debate have far too much economically at stake to allow any actual science to happen. Yes, there is global warming. And yes, there appears to be a strong anthropogenic factor in this global warming. In the 1990′s, the climatic numbers didn’t add up, but when the numbers from the cooling that comes from global dimming are subtracted, the numbers do appear to add up. Unfortunately, just as carbon industries have a vested interest in claiming there is no problem and acting like the copper and tobacco industries before them, environmental bureaucrats have a vested interest in shutting down debate due to their thirst for bureaucratic empire building. Competing economic interests have a way to throwing political haze onto facts.
Do I favor hybrid cars? To some extent. Do I favor electric cars? Yes. If there were some way to apply Moore’s Law to electric batteries, that would be great. However, I am more than a little bit annoyed at how apocalyptic Albert Gore & Co. have become. Acting like Chicken Little is not a particularly good way to convince people to shift away from fossil fuels.
Spite is a better motivator than hysteria.
So, Alexis, you are in favor of the hard cap and trade/carbon tax regime that is coming.
The investment firm I work for has done its own “in-house” econometric modeling that factors in the U.S. economy having such a constraint on growth imposed on it by the Obama administration and the U.N. It will shave off 1 to 2 percent of GDP growth as the economy struggles to come out of recession. We do have a rough proxy for what the carbon tax (call it cap and trade, whatever, it’s still a tax)will do. Much of Europe put itself under that regime for a few years and found that it was constraining economic growth at a time when Europe’s economy was experiencing sub par growth due to structural problems of high taxes and regulations. Granted, we are somewhat less constrained in that regard, but our economists note that you cannot will away the effects.
Normally, coming out of a recession the U.S. economy averages 3 to 5 percent GDP growth. Now this means we will have an anemic recovery of 1 to 3 percent growth, which will not be enough to overcome the enormous job losses so far since the recession began in December ’07. Sometime next year unemployment will officially be around 8%, maybe higher. By 2012, when Obama is up for re-election, it might get down to just above 6%, which is not going to cut it.
Affordable energy is the lifeblood of the modern economy. High energy costs dampen investment and cut into discretionary spending. Anyone worth their salt understands this.
I believe Anthropogenic Global Warming is junk science and a hoax. There are far better explanations for the period of warming that stopped in 1998 that are far more massive influences than CO2. And more of the scientific community is becoming braver and going against “the consensus.”
If you want to decrease energy importation from Islamic countries and Chavezia or Putinia while increasing biodiversity and aid to struggling and polluted developing areas then there is one simple solution. Deregulate the economies in the developed regions of Europe, japan and North America. Developed Capitalism pollutes less, gives more to charity and aid and offers time to resist the cancers funded by the nihilisms of Russian and Salafism.
@fred,
Interesting, given the incentives to move capital and corporate registration overseas that were previously discussed; just where is the investment supposed to come from to rebuild the US economy?
Max, I noticed long ago that the liberal media will get something wrong, correct it on page B-17 after hearing much protest — and then go back to getting it wrong again. They will just keep repeating the bogus information until it is accepted as fact. They are not in the news business, they are in the snow job business — and despite global warming (or because of it) their snow jobs are getting bigger and more elaborate all the time.
It’s interesting to note that the people who have the most unshakable belief in the market economy’s ability to deliver are the ones who think they can load it down ever more heavily with taxes, regulations, mandates, union rules, bureaucrats and red tape. They hate free markets, yet believe they can both disrupt them enjoy all of their benefits.
The rest of us, who perceive that free markets are wonderfully effective but quite easily wrecked, have lower expectations but a clearer view.
It’s funny how the ‘precautionary principle’ is rarely applied to the mechanisms that enable the vast bulk of our population to feed themselves and earn a living.
@Nomenklatura,
You are losing me. Who believes in both the market economy and in “bureaucrats and red tape?” While the partisans of the left may enjoy the materiel benefits of the market and are empowered by having access to wealth that it generates to fund their plethora of mandates, rules, programs and plain boondogles they do not have an “unshakable belief in the market economy’s ability to deliver.” Unless you mean their faith that the market delivers poverty, oppression, alienation, pollution, climate change and the bullies who humiliated them in 7th grade.
Fred:
Actually, I am not in favor of cap and trade or a carbon tax. I don’t think a carbon tax is a good idea at all. The greater the taxation used to punish carbon users, the greater the resistance people will feel toward using renewable energy and electric cars (which are separate issues). Instead, the federal government ought to use a sliding subsidy scheme for renewable energy similar to the one it once used to promote innovation in the semiconductor industry. I favor indirectly subsidizing research and development in the renewable energy sector. The key is to eventually make renewable energy more affordable than fossil fuels, with the effect that the United States could export our solar panels, windmills, geothermal plants, et cetera to foreign countries. (We should be handing out windmills to foreign peoples as if they were trophies, medals, or titles of nobility.)
Taxing carbon would merely create an artificial market in the United States for renewable energy; it would do nothing for the Third World that wouldn’t be able to afford anything other than fossil fuels.
Our strategic problem vis a vis the Middle East doesn’t come from America’s reliance on petroleum, but rather from the world economy’s reliance upon petroleum. “Energy Independence” is really the old Isolationist dream of “Fortress America” in green drag. It didn’t work then and it won’t work now. Even if the United States ever did become “energy independent”, Malawi and Madagascar and Argentina and India and China would all still be dependent upon cheap Persian Gulf crude and the terrorists would still get financed by oil exports.
Cheap renewable energy ought to be a means to cut the throats of our enemies. This can be done, but it won’t happen on the basis of hysterical demagoguery. Or cap and trade. Or a carbon tax.
My study of global warming was in the 1990′s; I have not personally looked at the data since 1998. (The data was pretty conclusive then. Do you want to see the geophysical wellbore data yourself?) I wouldn’t call anthropogenic global warming a hoax, but I do think there has been far too much armwaving and politicization of climatology.
Excellent point, nomenklatura, about the application of “the precautionary principle.” I do believe it is a principle used in European law, not in our system. But it is slowly being force fed to us and the international bodies, NGO’s, transnational elites, and our Leftists will not let us shut our mouths and say “Yuck!” It is their ambition to do away with our Constitutional body of law and replace it with theirs.
Lord, how did we ever get to this awful place???
I think the hysterical rush to “do something” is because, deep down, the AGw policy advocates know that they are loosing the battle for public opinion. They want to enact hard-to-reverse carbon penalties before the recession wakes the public up to reality. At the same time, the rising chorus of skepticism from highly respected senior scientists is getting harder to fight, even with a compliant media.
One way to do lock in reductions is to increase the interest group in favor of carbon reductions. Carbon cap and trade is a great way to do this. It creates a commodities market in a wholly fictitious commodity. The result will be an entire industrial structure – traders, hedgers, creating carbon credits through various schemes.
Enron was all for this, so it must be good for us, right?
Alexis,
AGW only shows a correlation of data running up to when the period of warming ended. Correlation is NOT causation. Does anyone these days really understand the scientific method and the rules of statistical inference anymore?
Also, the computer modeling is very shaky, at best. I’ve read plenty about that, and I’m no scientist or computer geek.
We cannot quantify how much CO2 plays a role in climate warming periods. Also, solar activity and slight alterations in our orbit around the sun explain quite a lot about the energy reaching our planet and actually causing warmer temperatures. And a scientist in Iceland, whose name I do not remember (and Icelandic names are phonetically impossible for English speakers) has done some interesting studies that suggest that the earth’s mantle, via deep ocean volcanic activity and rifts, has released gargantuan amounts of energy into the ocean. It really can affect surface temperatures, as much as a degree.
What do I think? I don’t think we will ever really know with certainty. I suspect that it’s a combination of factors: solar sunspot activity, deep ocean/earth’s mantle, variations in weather patterns that are more localized but reinforce larger circulation patterns, and, yes, perhaps human activity. My bet is that human activity plays the smallest role. BTW, I had a professor years ago when I was in college at the University of New Hampshire (he’s now at U Maine, Orono)who did the annual trek to Antarctica, by the name of Majewski. I took an intro. to geology course. Fascinating course, but a bitch to pass. A lot of material for just a semester. I was very interested and learned a lot, but it really was information overload (I’m not a great memorizer).
@John Moore,
Exactly, the idea is to convince Grandma that it is just like Social Security, in fact to make it look like part of Social Security. When Grannie is convinced that her pension, her SS checks and her Health Care all depend on money extracted from evil energy companies then Carbon will become an untouchable cash cow for Al Gore and his friends to milk as they please. Now they have to figure out how to wrap “Big Pharma” into this pig’s breakfast.
The carbon tax scheme really is just a desperate attempt by the U.N. and other bodies to rape the wealth of the U.S. and redistribute it around the world – after the elites take their cut.
I could see that scam more than a mile away. Why can’t others see it?
Stratfor’s discussion of winners and losers is banal. Their theory about the rise in oil prices is apparently based on a data set that would not stand scrutiny. They commit the elementary fallacy of believing that because the rich nations of the world had sufficient oil, then the rest of the world did. I have repeatedly noted that they are complete amateurs concering the energy field. Be careful of anything they say in that regard.
The latest outbursts of Obama and his co-religionists in AGW reminds one of the hysterias that swept the Middle Ages. Like the Russians said it all when they signed on to Kyoto, “It’s junk science, but we stand to make $36 billion from it.”
@fred,
All Icelandic men are named Snig Sniggurson or Thor and their women are named IcantrememberwiththissillygrinonmyfacewhileIstareather Gutmansdottir. I suspect that human activity does impact on the environment and biodiversity. I also suspect that their aren’t 50 elected officials in this country on all levels who should be allowed near this subject without a pinch collar leash on.
@fred,
Of course they can see it; they are squealing like piglets to get at the trough.
@James pate,
The politicians are mostly honest straight forward thieves. Personally I feel some small charity for many of the scientists. They lead lives of servitude and social isolation for decades and then find themselves sought after. Most genuinely care I think about both the science and the planet. They hope that if the cash cow starts milking they may get to use some of it in a small way they mean no harm by. Grant writing is a degrading process. The amateur fools, who get stampeded by activist groups to pressure politicians in the same way that rent a mobs were organized by Obama and Acorn to pressure banks to make bad loans, are contemptible but part of the Democracy.
Life of the Mind; Fred The term for Icelandic names is “patronyms”. (Ditto for Greenlanders.)
All male family names are the father’s given name followed by “sson”. All female family names are the father’s given name followed by
“dottir”.
As an old oilpatch brat, I am now convinced that oil prices are being manipulated downward.
Who would do this? Saudis and friends for one. They do NOT like sky-high oil prices as maintaining those kind of prices brings a lot of non-Saudi competition to the fore and undermines their position as the premier international producer.
Bush-Cheney for another. Seeing that Iran, Russia, Venezuela are counting on extortion in order to make mischief, this is a good way to monkey wrench their ambitions.
Ample precedent came in the mid 1980s when Reagan-Bush in conjunction with Saudis, etc
collapsed the price of oil and sabotaged Soviet projects no end.
Last time, my home folks were among the friendly casualties sustained in doing away with the Evil Empire. Was it worth it? Darned tooting. They going to get an Oak Leaf Cluster on their economic Purple Heart?
Looks a bit probable. So mote it be. Freedom is not free. It is invaluable.
Fred:
I remember discussions of correlation/causation quite well. It was even suggested by some researchers that higher carbon dioxide levels were caused higher temperatures. Carbon dioxide may very well be a lagging indicator of temperature. You are correct about computer models being shaky. That was also discussed.
Here’s the rub. When you take carbon out of the ground and pump it into the atmosphere, the carbon dioxide does have an effect. It may be negligible, but it is still an effect. And the more carbon dioxide you pump into the atmosphere, the greater the effect.
Notwithstanding any effect upon climate, there is reason to be concerned about quality control in agriculture given how high levels of carbon dioxide tend to increase starch production in plants. It probably won’t affect fruit flavors, but the sweet potatoes might eventually taste different.
On a separate issue, I do think carbon emissions should be curbed. However, I think that cap&trade and/or a carbon tax would do absolutely no good; they wouldn’t even reduce carbon emissions, but merely displace them to poor countries! There are other ways to curb carbon emissions that would work much better.
The effect is not linear. It saturates. Doubling the CO2 from current levels will not come close to doubling the effect.
This is hardly a reason for any sort of drastic measures to reduce CO2.
I would love to have an electric car for many reasons, but battery technology just isn’t close. Gasoline has about 40 times the energy density of the best battery. Methanol produced from coal (for about 50 CENTS/gallon) has bout 10 times that energy density.
Non-carbon economic production of electricity has been and will continue to be prevented by environmentalists and NIMBY’s – i.e. nuclear power. The other alternatives are not even close economically. Solar power has too low an areal energy density – whether harvested as wind, biomass, photovoltaic or solar-thermal. Hydropower is tapped out in the US, and the environmentalists oppose new dams anyway. Geothermal doesn’t cut it (not sure why, but it clearly isn’t economically competitive – even Hawaii, with three active volcanoes, stopped using it and OTEC). Wave power and OTEC are not economic and also suffer from areal energy density problems. ALL suffer from huge capital requirements.
Fred’s model 1-2% has been seconded by a goodly number of economists. Split difference = (.015)($14t)/300m = $700/capita. figure opportunity cost & lost roc over 18 years and there’s a quarter of a college education. For a family of four that’s an entire college education for one of the two kids.
And for what? The ambitions of stalinists and stardust statists? The anxieties of free-floating control freaks? The feeding of their legion of over-provoked fever-swamp dwellers?
I guess so, because exactly such are what mankind will actually likely ever control.
“Hello, Mr & Mrs Jones. I see you have two young children. I’m sure you won’t mind surrendering the, ah, resources to put one of them through college, in return for the benefits of a carbon tax.”
>>”But, my family really needs our earnings –that’s why we work so hard –are you sure we need a carbon tax?”
“YES!”
>>”But what about all the scientists that disagree?”
“SCREW THEM THEY”RE A BUNCH OF GODDAM IDIOTS NOW SHUT UP AND FORK OVER THE DOUGH OR I”LL PUT YER ASSES IN PRISON!”
John Moore @ #12: i believe you’re right on those reasons for the hurry-up-and-do-something –and there’s one more:
As years unfold and nothing happens to the climate, the scam artists have to have been already “doing something” all along, so that they can 1) take credit, and 2) avoid the humiliation of nothing happening to the climate when they haven’t even fixed it yet.
Yes, schoolyard primitive. As others have noted, we’re now beginning to make our 20th century look very smart, very stylish & sophisticated.
Fred said:
“The investment firm I work for has done its own “in-house” econometric modeling that factors in the U.S. economy having such a constraint on growth imposed on it by the Obama administration and the U.N. It will shave off 1 to 2 percent of GDP growth as the economy struggles to come out of recession. … By 2012, when Obama is up for re-election, it might get down to just above 6%, which is not going to cut it.”
I would call this “Political Darwinism”. Americans –always– vote their pocket books. If Americans see idiot ideology costing them their jobs and life style –then– they’ll vote out Obama and the leftists in Congress. This is a political process that not even the MSM and all of George Soros’ money could prevent.
I’m hoping that Obama seriously overplays his hand with Green Politics and as a result his popularity implodes. For both economic and national security reasons, it is vital that we get Obama out of the White House as soon as possible.
Fred also said:
“Affordable energy is the lifeblood of the modern economy. High energy costs dampen investment and cut into discretionary spending. Anyone worth their salt understands this.”
I agree with Fred. However I also believe in Peak Oil. I am very afraid of what will happen to our global economy after Peak Oil fully takes hold. This current recession/depression might(?) be a blessing in disguise because it could delay the onset of Peak Oil by a few years. However this “blessing” will have no benefit if there is no progress towards developing non-fossil fuels, e.g. nuclear power. Also if due to political reasons, all available R&D capital is diverted to non-viable “Green” alternative energy schemes then we will have put ourselves into the worst possible position when Peak Oil finally arrives.
The timing of Obama’s election was extremely unfortunate. This sort of bad luck could wreck a civilization.
Obama is already facing a long term problem: Blago and Richardson and all the other corrupt cronies who are coming to light, after the election. His support is wide and thin, just like Nixon’s.
He’s following Tricky Dick’s path, of Wage and Price Controls, with “Cap and Trade” which is likely to crush industries, create huge losers and only a few winners, and create thus his own set of permanent political enemies. Machiavelli advised to kill people rather than make them poor. Obama is doing the reverse.
Now Iran and Pakistan and the rest of the group are falling apart. OPEC is desperately seeking production cuts. Which is the worst thing they could do — it’s likely to push teetering economies down even further, including China and Japan and Western Europe along with America. They can’t eat their oil. Without a robust world market for oil, they have nothing to offer. Other than a huge amount of young men they can export for constant Jihad, eventually forcing the West to simply nuke most of them out of existence. If China or Russia or India does not do it first.
Here are the “fundamentals” that are affecting world markets and economies that Wretchard is puzzled by:
1. Technology has become a commodity. Even Pakistan and Iran have nukes, and they are failed peoples, not just failed states. This allows even hell-holes that can’t keep raw sewage off the streets to kill thousands or millions of Westerners in their own home capitol cities, with no official return address.
2. The Pill, Condom, rising social power and wealth of women, along with collapsing mores and communities (as a function of the Pill, Condom, and rising social power of women) have led to cultures and politics dominated by the concerns of women, and single women at that. Just as Women formed the core of the Prohibitionist movement and the “Noble Experiment” so too are we now seeing a great dose of Female Moralism, of the “eat your vegetables” kind of “good for you” moral posturing. Along with doing the minimal amount possible (if that) to fight Jihad and terror.
Obama’s victory margin came from single women, 70-29, voting for him over McCain. He has to keep his base happy. However, that has it’s own costs, as Modern Prohibition means impoverishment for key sectors of the economy and basically everyone, with far larger social costs than banning booze. Even if it is popular with the modern Carrie Nations.
WRT Terror and Muslims and Jihad, Obama is embarked on another feminine moralistic campaign. Noticeably absent is any posturing that is traditionally “male” in the moralizing department, ala “we are right and therefore will kill them” and so on. Instead we have the idea of a speech in a “Muslim Capitol” that will “change the world.” Talking vs. doing: the power of female voters and culture, dominated by a prolonged mating game making status according to female rules far more important than it once was (when people married earlier and stayed married).
3. The instability in the West as the new social rules of single motherhood and female social power erode the old consensus and create balanced but raw struggles. Lost in this hoopla over Obama is that his Margin of Victory was quite small, only six points, about the same spread as GWB over John Kerry.
We have not yet fully transitioned to the new model of society and family: single mothers, with men sort of drifting in and out, boyfriend of the moment, and the kind of institutionalized instability that produces in the children who grow up to be adults. But certainly the sense of community, belonging, traditions, etc. are all gone in the search for self-empowerment that characterizes the West in the last forty years, is remarkable. Permanent. And transforming.
A collapse of Pakistan/Iran and the nuking of NYC will certainly not be met by Shaman-in-Chief of Oprah Nation with anything other than “healing” which will guarantee another attack. Until out of desperation the attacks are stopped by total destruction.
I can not believe that our ancestors sitting around their campfires 12,000 years ago; caused the glaciers of the last ice age to melt. Besides, no one has presented a viable plan for limiting the amount of sun light hitting the earth.
Try sun activity and the Malankovich [sp] cycles for the cause of Global cooling/warming. Works for both trends and does not require the presence of humans.
As a Climatologist you might as well pay me $70 million now – or watch your trees choke and die on the CO2 while your ice caps melt. The choice seems simple to me.
/
“A collapse of Pakistan/Iran and the nuking of NYC will certainly not be met by Shaman-in-Chief of Oprah Nation with anything other than “healing” which will guarantee another attack. Until out of desperation the attacks are stopped by total destruction.
Well said, Whiskey.
Allow me to repeat:
Slaughter now or slaughter later.
Slaughter later = slaughter more.
I am reminded of a flurry of articles and blogs last year about a phenom called “Post Normal Science”. The jist of it all was “..even though we can’t prove what we say, nor are we likely to, our intuition and moral superiority make it right for us (self selected) to have full control of everything in order to protect us all from the fears we have created in your minds.”
Other than the obvious obsurdity, greenies also need to answer the following: “If you are wrong, how much damage (Environmental, evolutionary, economic, social etc.) will have been done in the name of prevention?
70% of the electricity used in the US comes from combustion of one form or another. ALL (99.99%) of the energy for transportation comes from combustion. Combustion results in CO2.
The only way to reduce that significantly is to stop generating electricity or stop transporting people and stuff.
Coal generating plants cost about $1Million per MW. There’s about 1000 GW of total capacity now. Which means about 700 GW of combustion capacity. That represents about 700 Billion in investment. We cannot assume that the “alternative” energy sources will be efficient out of the box, so the substitution will require some increase of theoretical capacity to cover. Say 30%.
Neglecting environmental lawsuits and construction capacity impacts and industrial capacity impacts, Got a trillion dollars youre not using?
Now lets talk about cars and trucks and trains and airplanes.
Alexis,
What do the AGW crowd and the carbon tax (really, it’s Kyoto protocols penalties slipped in the back door)think about the vast countries that are exempt from its requirements? They are soon to dwarf anything we do or will not do vis-a-vis AGW. Thereby canceling out the things the statists in the U.S. seek to “accomplish.”
We only end up impoverished while the Chinks keep on burning fuel, growing, becoming more prosperous, and militarily more formidable.
I swear we’ve now become an asylum run by quacks.
i just heard yesterday or the day before on CNN that oil had officially dropped $100 a barrell since JULY.
now, i don’t know much about oil prices, but does it stand to reason that governments can manipulate the prices, perhaps even rather easily?
what really accounts for this gigantic spike, then equally dramatic fall? doesn’t the sheer difficulty for normal analysis to account for it precisely mean that there is some kind of economic warfare going on?
perhaps our enemies raised the prices artificially, and we have figured out how to drop them.
or, perhaps, our enemies raised them, convinced everyone to go long in oil, and then dropped the bottom out in order to cause reasonably significant economic stress?
whatever the explanation, there just doesn’t seem to be a reasonable explanation for such a dramatic price flux without some sort of grand manipulation going on, for whatever reason. we really should devote more attention to answering this question. stratfor i like, but they are a little too reluctant to see human agency and a little too eager to attribute agency to “forces,” in my opinion. maybe you could help me out, buddy?
Europe’s Fitness for a Low-Carbon Future – Green Inc.
Many power companies are now offering rebates to clients for deploying solutions that reduce energy consumption:
Pacific Gas & Electric: 100% rebate.
San Diego Gas and Electric: 100% rebate
Bonneville Power Administration (BPA): 100% rebate
LINK
Faronics Power Save – Automated Energy Conservation
Sorry, screwed up that last link.
Doug, that is because CA has essentially de facto forbidden new energy exploitation and plant product for many years. This policy does not represent some sort of far seeing polcity.
The central energy crisis we face is the fact we are forbidden from using our own resources.
There is no good reason for the envo-nuts energy “policies”, none at all.
whiskey: but how can that you posit society sustain itself? Will it not just implode or be oeverrun by more manly civilizations? Is that not alwways history’s response.
society you posit** sorry.
California is an energy parasite. It pushes its energy production into adjoining states, like here in Arizona.
Someone mentioned peak oil. That is a real concern, and is probably the one reason for the extreme volatility in oil prices recently.
However, peak oil and peak hydrocarbons are different. The US and Canada have vast amounts of hydrocarbons suitable for energy use – more than the rest of the world combined. It is in the form of coal, oil, oil sands, oil shale and natural gas.
A rational program would use these cheap energy sources to deal with the peak oil problem. Of course, the enviros won’t let that happen.
For those that want a detailed refutation of the Global Warming scam.
http://www.heartland.org/custom/semod_policybot/pdf/22835.pdf
Enviros are a luxury. Who they are and what they want can only exist in times of plenty. When the times dictate, the enviros will get thrown under the bus; when the decision comes to food on the table or “health” of the planet, food will win out.
The US and Canada have vast amounts of hydrocarbons suitable for energy use – more than the rest of the world combined. It is in the form of coal,… – John Moore
US has 25% of world coal supply and much of it located in surface deposits that don’t require tunnel mining.
And keep hammering at the density issues. Most bloggers know that Den Beste refuses to discuss the subject anymore. But it doesn’t much matter because I firmly believe that we have permanently transitioned into a different world where information is carefully managed to remain consistent with political objectives. That is the only explanation I can attach to the persistence of the AGW/carbon issue. When mass behavior departs so significantly from common sense and rational science, something is wrong. Where was this hysterical media when the F/F books were being overloaded? Fitting that Obama should announce his education cabinet appointment just days after the latest hysterical news article.
Fred:
Did I ever say I support the Kyoto Accords? I don’t. They are fundamentally flawed.
The Kyoto Accords aren’t about curbing carbon emissions. They are about the European Union cornering the United States diplomatically in order to blame the entire problem on America, precisely where the blame doesn’t belong. If the European Union were truly serious about climate change, it wouldn’t be playing games with issue. I regard the Kyoto treaty to be a dirty trick aimed at forcing America into a lose/lose situation where it either looks bad or gets forced to hobble its economy.
The only viable way for the United States to effectively promote renewable energy is to find ways to make it affordable for everybody. This can be done, but it requires an “all of the above” approach that keeps America’s options open. Carbon taxes will only either stir up a hornet’s nest (in Appalachia) or they will get ignored completely (in China).
There are many de facto subsidies for the coal and petroleum industries, such as mining roads, purchases of asphalt, the Interstate Highway System, and even federal giveaways of land to railroad corporations. The federal government subsidizes nuclear energy by taking care of nuclear waste. The federal government makes capital expenditure for hydroelectric power. It makes sense to calculate de facto subsidies for various forms of energy over the past one hundred fifty years and see which forms of energy have gotten the lion’s share of government help. Let’s see if renewable energy has gotten anywhere near the subsidy for other forms of energy.
The primary environmental problem with imported fossil fuels is nuclear proliferation and nuclear war.
If Iran goes seriously nuclear, there will be a nuclear arms race in the Muslim Middle East; And they aren’t all moderates over there.
Those ICBM’s aren’t for generating electricity.
Richie said:
“Try sun activity and the Malankovich [sp] cycles for the cause of Global cooling/warming. Works for both trends and does not require the presence of humans.”
It’s spelled “Milankovitch cycles”, refer to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles
Milankovitch cycles are a major embarrassment to the people promoting Anthropogenic Global Warming. The people behind Anthropogenic Global Warming have responded to Milankovitch cycles by simply ignoring the phenomena and bleating nonsense that Milankovitch cycles are insignificant. One can see the effect of Milankovitch cyles in the Earth’s rock strata and on the planet Mars as well. Unfortunately the moonbats are in control. Arguing against Anthropogenic Global Warming is like King Canute commanding back the ocean’s tide (an exercise in futility). We will have to let this madness work its way through the system and hope there is something to salvage at the end of the process.
John Moore said:
“However, peak oil and peak hydrocarbons are different. The US and Canada have vast amounts of hydrocarbons suitable for energy use – more than the rest of the world combined. It is in the form of coal, oil, oil sands, oil shale and natural gas. A rational program would use these cheap energy sources to deal with the peak oil problem.”
What drives Peak Oil is Energy return on investment (EROI). If it costs 100 watt-hours of energy to extract 90 watt-hours of energy from shale then the shale will remain in the ground even if oil is selling for $1000/barrel.
We’re neck deep in energy sources but most of it is not economical to extract, e.g. ocean thermal gradients, most forms of bio-energy, etc. There is still more petroleum in the ground than was ever extracted. However most of that remaining petroleum has been fractionated or in such small deposits that it’s not economical to extract. The world is NOT running out of energy. Rather the world is running out of CHEAP energy. CHEAP energy was the basis for our modern technology and high standard of living. Most “green” forms of energy are not cheap and therefore not economical. When CHEAP energy goes away, the world’s economy will permanently collapse.
Nuclear, coal, petroleum, and hydroelectric industries rely upon government subsidies. For example, the petroleum industry whines whenever local governments don’t train their employees; some petroleum corporations apparently can’t be bothered with training their own staff!
When a subsidy is hidden, most people don’t notice the subsidy.
Perhaps the Obama administration is trying to create a hidden tax. If it is hidden, most people won’t notice it either. In the United States, the sales tax usually isn’t hidden so people do notice it. In the European Union, the sales tax is usually hidden so people don’t notice it. Out of sight, out of mind.
The problem with a carbon tax is that it creates an artificial environment within the tax bubble that doesn’t exist in the outside world. It doesn’t solve the problem of Saudi power in the energy market. If, however, the United States intelligently subsidizes wind, solar, geothermal, and tidal energy much as nuclear, coal, petroleum, and hydroelectric energy have already been subsidized, this would at least create balance for governmental energy subsidies. For example, if the United States sent windmills throughout the world as foreign aid, this would not only subsidize windmill production but also promote local (read: tribal) control over energy independent from a central state (read: socialist) electrical grid.
The American West is built upon subsidies, from military protection for fur trapper brigades to land subsidies for railroad corporations to the Homestead Act. It wouldn’t surprise me if liberals start calling government grants for renewable energy “electric homesteads”. And they would be right.
Fred2/49 –The primary environmental problem with imported fossil fuels is nuclear proliferation and nuclear
Amen, a thousand times amen. Suggest bolden, italics, underline for word ‘primary’. What’s funny about the future is that there’s really two of ‘em, the certain and the uncertain. It’s certain that we will need food, it’s not certain we will have any. And on and one –any possibility can become a probability, depending on what happens in the here and now. why, we can even make some things “inevitable” -whether we realize we’re doing it or not at the time is wholly immaterial to the process. And ‘intent’ also is wholly immaterial, irrelevant as irrelevant can be, to the result.
Alexis/48 –re toting up how much investment has been made per project –i’d say, sunk costs standing alone without reference to returns are best seen as tuition fees. What matters is the ‘return’. Trying to be arithmetically fair on only the one side of the ledger is pretty much meaningless for planning any business not a monopoly.
re California, mentioned several times upthread, Obama in his presser yesterday specifically, and almost in a non-sequiter as regards the focal distance of the rest of the talk, praised California’s energy operations. IIRC, he lauded “a great record of environmental success” and “creation of many jobs” and another effusion or two. No mention of costs –no other side of the ledger.
What was he doing? Was he doing “the brazen”? What is the underlying message? Is it again that in the brave new world we will newspeak only and this time no smart-ass dorothy is gonna get anywhere near the curtain?
The problem with geothermal energy is related to two characteristics of rocks – their heat capacity and their heat conductance. Drill a well into a hot rock formation, flow a heat transfer fluid through it to suck up the heat and deliver it to your power generation machinery. You will find that the energy output declines rapidly. The hot rock only has so much energy content and it acts as a pretty good insulator. Hence, it is not economic to drill the well in the first place.
Where geothermal does work is where there is already large circulation of natural liquids around the hot rock. Unfortunately, such conditions are few and far between although there is some domestic potential yet to be exploited. But that’s just a drop in the bucket and nothing compared to what we need.
I’m continually amazed at how politicians keep dragging out the “broken window fallacy” to argue for their pet projects. If someone broke every window in town, it would create lots of new jobs in window repair but would the community be wealthier because of the broken windows? Of course not – same with pushing expensive new energy supplies that cost more than existing alternatives like coal and nuclear.
no one wants to opine on the mega-rise in oil prices? bueller?
no one wants to opine on the mega-rise in oil prices? Putin?
well, ultimately price is (can be significantly) controlled by the handful of juntas that provide the oil. obviously “rise of the asian middle class” didn’t result in having to “say goodbye forever to $3 gasoline.”
i just filled up my mid-sized sedan for like $19.
so? what was that massive spike in oil? is a sudden 4% drop in global demand enough to account for the price drop?
relatedly:
i keep hearing about “fuel efficiency” and “gas prices” in ads and whatnot that they clearly have forgotten to pull off the air. who gives a f*ck about fuel efficiency if it costs me $20 to drive my car for a week. this isn’t bangladesh. i don’t have to eat malaria for lunch.
Whitehall said:
“The problem with geothermal energy is related to two characteristics of rocks – their heat capacity and their heat conductance. Drill a well into a hot rock formation, flow a heat transfer fluid through it to suck up the heat and deliver it to your power generation machinery. You will find that the energy output declines rapidly. The hot rock only has so much energy content and it acts as a pretty good insulator.”
This is slightly off-topic but a couple days ago I had a “gee-whiz” learning experience concerning the Sun. Refer to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun
In the Wikipedia article, you can find the following quote:
“About 3.4×10^38 protons (hydrogen nuclei) are converted into helium nuclei every second (out of ~8.9×10^56 total amount of free protons in the Sun), releasing energy at the matter–energy conversion rate of 4.26 million tonnes per second, 383 yottawatts (3.83×10^26 W) or 9.15×10^10 megatons of TNT per second. This actually corresponds to a surprisingly low rate of energy production in the Sun’s core—about 0.3 W/m³ (watts per cubic meter). This is less power than generated by a candle.”
Though non-intuitive this actually makes a certain amount of sense. The Sun’s power output is very uniform and has been producing energy for 4.59 billion years (obviously, this is why life was possible in our Solar System). Supposably the Sun has about 5 billion years of life left in it before it becomes a red giant and dies. This long life span coupled with a very uniform power rate would indicate a very low power density in the Solar Core. Also the proton-proton fusion reaction has a huge cross section (many orders of magnitude greater than the deuterium-tritium fusion cross section of thermonuclear weapons). Part of my gee-whiz” experience was realizing that the power produced by a thermonuclear explosion during the few nanoseconds that it lasts can be about 1% the total power of the Sun! Of course the Sun is continuously burning but never the less it amazed me that any human technology could produce a power level approaching the total power of the Sun. We human beings are really not as insignificant as I previously thought.
With respect to the rapid increase and then even faster decrease in the price of oil I would suggest that it gives the appearance of large dollar amounts of short term investment, disinvestment and reinvestment. First home mortgages, then dollars, then gold, now short term t-bills.
What I wonder is what is the Chinese ruling party doing with the trillions of dollars we have sent them over the past 10 years or so. The longer they hold them the less they’re worth. I think they may just be starting to realize that by selling us stuff real cheap it lowers the value of the dollars we use to pay them. The more they subsidize our standard of living by keeping prices artificially low the lower the value of the dollars we use to pay them.
I wonder if there is someway to track investments in oil futures to see if the dollar amount invested and deimvested was higher than normal during the relevant period.
is a sudden 4% drop in global demand enough to account for the price drop?
Yes, just as a 4% increase in demand was enough to account for the increase. The response time to changes in price is not instantaneous. And once a change starts, it doesn’t end as soon as the price responds.
I would expect that barring rational action, if we are heading to peak oil, these episodes will occur with increasing frequency. Over-inflating our currency, as we have for the last decade, does not help either. Only time will tell which was the cause in this instance.
The rational action would be to put an import fee on imported oil to assure that there was a floor for its price.
It may be the case that “non-carbon economic production of electricity has been and will continue to be prevented by environmentalists and NIMBY’s – i.e. nuclear power,” but isn’t it wrong for us to accept that as a permanently unalterable condition? The French made a serious start on nuclear power only after the 1973 oil crisis; now they generate nearly 90% of their electricity that way, amid general public approval and with few technical problems. (See the Wiki article “Nuclear Power in France” for details.) The technology having been successfully demonstrated on a national scale, why should it be too much to expect a change of opinion among those who worry about carbon emissions in the U.S.?
It would be interesting to explore how particular forms of energy generation acquire and change political coloration. Dams on big rivers (TVA, Bonneville, etc.) were for decades the trademark of New Deal liberalism, yet many on today’s Left would dismantle them if they could. Nuclear power ended up with a right-wing label, but it wasn’t always so: in their founding document, the Students for a Democratic Society envisioned widely distributed nuclear power as the economic basis for Participatory Democracy; and according to Wiki, the Communists were among the proponents of nuclear power in France.
Perhaps there should be a rewrite of the famous Shakespeare line, “the first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers” to “the first thing we do, let’s kill all the ‘ENVIRONMENTALISTS.’”
The Earth radiates 4% more energy than it takes in from sunlight, all because of the radioactive decay of uranium, thorium, and potassium-40 (and daughters). I find it useful to think of the planet as a dimly glowing bit of supernovae ash. So yes, there are energy flows to be tapped, just few spots where that flow is concentrated.
Yes, nuclear power was once the darling of the New Frontier too. JF Kennedy goosed the Northwest into the Washington State Public Power Supply System (WSPPS) which went bankrupt after trying to build 5 nuclear reactors – only one was completed and is now operational (Columbia Station in Hanford).
As to oil prices, CERA has been predicting an “ungelating plateau” for oil prices when peak oil starts to bite. Economic growth makes demand exceed supply, prices shot up, economic recession happens and demand (and prices) fall. Seems like a reasonable model to me. World production RATES for conventional oil do seemed peaked, or very close to it.
Unconventional oil will increase but it is more energy-intensive to produce and so more expensive and less yielding.
I am reproducing a comment made about this sort of topic (AGW) over at neoneocon.com weblog discussion. Here is the link. The body of the response follows.
http://neoneocon.com/2008/12/15/mind-change-on-climate-change/#comments
# kcom Says:
December 16th, 2008 at 11:21 am
Dicentra,
The sort of argument you went through above is why I became an early global warming doubter. I am not a climate scientist and wouldn’t, as you say, know how to analyze the raw data, but I do have scientific training and when I looked at how the advocates of global warming were acting and what they were claiming I found their arguments didn’t pass the smell test.
One strike for me was “the debate is over” canard. When they trotted that one out, I knew something was seriously wrong. And this was years ago, not just recently. There is no freaking way that a debate about something as complex as the climate is over.
A second strike was the inherent one-way catastrophism of their claims. In just about any situation in the world, you would expect a climate change to have positive as well as negative effects. For instance, in a given location, winters might be worse but summers better. Or there might be more precipitation in the summer but less in the winter. Or there might be milder weather in one part of the globe but more troublesome weather patterns somewhere else. Or there might be more hurricanes but less drought, or some such thing. Or even the much more obvious, people in far northern latitudes might benefit from a little warming when perhaps people at the equator might not. But if you listened to the claims of the global warming crowd there was no balance or talk of trade-offs. All you heard was “everything is going to get much worse everywhere for everyone and there will be more and bigger hurricanes, deeper and longer droughts, more rain, more this and more that”, ad nauseum. It just wasn’t credible as a description of the real world.
Strike three is that I’ve always seen this hysteria as a form of medical student disease. All this panic set in after we determined that Venus was the way it was, and vastly different than Earth, because it was caught in a runaway greenhouse effect. Suddenly, we no longer had to worry about global cooling but instead we were just this side of being fried to death by global warming and a runaway greenhouse effect. Scientists are human like everyone else, including medical school students, and are subject to psychology as much as the next person.
Strike four, is the politicization of the whole enterprise, especially since it was grabbed by the UN. Whatever the IPCC is, it is not a bastion of free scientific inquiry. Threats of criminal prosecution for global warming skeptics (not “deniers” as they would like to have you believe), denials of funding, calls to deprive skeptics of media exposure while giving actors and others totally unqualified to comment copious airtime, etc. are signs that something is not kosher.
Strike five is the behavior of Al Gore and other climate alarmists. They’re talking the talk but they aren’t walking the walk. Bringing 16,000 people to Bali by jet airliner for a conference on global warming is simply a joke. Living in a home that uses 20 times the normal amount of electricity when you’re a leading green campaigner is a joke. Recycling a few pounds of cardboard and glass a year and then jetting off on an Asian tour because you’ve earned it through your good works is a joke. And too many of them have a direct financial stake in promoting the alarmist viewpoint. They make the claim that skeptics are in a position to financially benefit (through evil big business) from their point of view but completely ignore the fact that there is plenty of “green” to be had for those on the alarmist side, including multi-million dollar government grants, etc.
Strike six, I am also highly suspicious of the timing of this whole movement. It’s no coincidence in my mind that its rise corresponded exactly with collapse of the Soviet Union. There is a certain subset of people in the world whose life mission is to control your life and those of everyone around you, i.e. world-class busybodies. When the whole socialist dream collapsed, they frantically began looking around for something else to fill that deep aching need inside them to control their fellow man, especially if it would at the same time give them a self-satisfying sense of superiority. The global warming “climate crisis” was a godsend and arrived just in time. The very same people want the very same thing they always have, total control over your life, but now they have a much more palatable fig leaf to cover their base desires with. Who could be against the environment? It’s a perfect cover for someone whose fondest desire is to tell you how to live every minute of your life, and what’s even better, it’s truly global. It covers every aspect of the life of every person everywhere on the planet. You get to have your say in all of it, especially if you’re one of the ones who worms your way to the top of this dung heap. No purely political movement ever had that kind of power.
Strike seven is the chutzpah of pretending you know what the climate is going to be like with any certainty a hundred years from now, especially when it’s based on a very incomplete smattering of data less than a hundred years in extent that’s fed into very problematic computer models, based on highly complex and unproven climate theories. I call it overdriving the headlights. If you’re going down a dark highway in your car at 75 miles and hour and your headlights only illuminate the highway x feet in front of you and your stopping distance is 2x feet at that speed then you’re in serious trouble. You could easily come upon an object in the road (say a fallen tree) that you would hit before you could safely bring the car to a stop. You just don’t know what’s in the area outside your headlights. As far as I can see, the track record for making predictions about the climate 100 years in the future is zero. There is not one documented case of an accurate prediction on that time scale. It’s not like we’re 9 for 10 in making that sort of prediction, or even 1 for 2. We’re 0 for 0. There is simply no history for that sort of prediction at all. We’re overdriving the headlights because we simply can’t see that far down the road with any known or documented level of accuracy. I think too many in the scientific community (in many different fields) lack the humility to acknowledge the limitations of our knowledge. They’re so focused on what we do know, or think we know, and the great strides we’ve made that they fail to give adequate deference to how much we really don’t know.
Well, of course this got way longer than I intended. It’s sort of a summary of thoughts and ideas that have been percolating in my brain for awhile. Nothing I’ve said disproves the case for global warming, obviously, but it does give me reason to be skeptical of the “we’re all doomed, we’ve only got 10 years, we’ve got to change everything about everything right this instant” crowd. Whatever scientific truth lies at the heart of this climate crisis hysteria (and I’m absolutely sure the debate is not over on the fundamental scientific principles involved) the issue has been hijacked by non-scientific actors to such an extent that we’ve now got way too much heat and not enough light on the topic.
Thus, the environmentalists want to stop the harvesting and use of all fossil fuels. They want to stop the use of nuclear energy also. What is there to power a modern economy? Also, in many places these people also try to stop wood burning stoves, claiming that they also pollute.
What do they leave us with?
Whitehall said:
“The Earth radiates 4% more energy than it takes in from sunlight, all because of the radioactive decay of uranium, thorium, and potassium-40 (and daughters). I find it useful to think of the planet as a dimly glowing bit of supernovae ash.”
That’s an interesting statistic concerning energy coming from the Earth. Could you cite a reference for that? I’ve previously read that Jupiter also produces more energy than it absorbs from the Sun. Supposably Jupiter’s energy comes from deuterium-deuterium reactions in its core. An interesting tidbit about supernovae ash is that all elements with atomic numbers greater than iron are the consequence of endothermic nuclear reactions and were produced from the core of a supernova (your wife’s gold wedding ring is star ash). Our Sun is a Population-I type star that was created from the remnants of a Population-II star that had previously supernovaed. Population-II stars are made up of only hydrogen and helium (no heavier metals). Consequently there is nothing diluting the fusion reactions in their stellar cores so they burn up their hydrogen fuel much more quickly. A Population-II star’s lifespan is typically on the order of a hundred million years versus the billions of years that a Population-I star like our Sun can live.
@fred
Pie in the sky costly alternative energy schemes.
Basically, environmentalists want us to use a whole lot less energy. That this will destroy the world economy is beyond many, although some are perfectly happy with sending us back to poverty. Most ignore the fact that such upheavals will send hundreds of millions into starvation, and will cause geopolitical upheavals that will undo any work environmentalists wanted to achieve (not to mention leading to the persecution of environmentalists).
“Environmentalism” will be treated with the same respect as “McCarthyism” – and for good reason.
Fred:
I like kcom’s analysis.
I’m reminded of Piltdown Man. For decades, this was regarded as a “missing link” for evolutionists. It turned out to be a fraud. Although evolution does have a strong scientific basis, it does evolutionists no favors to use fraud. Any scientist who does not acknowledge that there are confidence artists within his profession simply isn’t doing his job.
Science is not merely about “show and tell”, but about trying to poke holes in each other’s work. Severe skepticism is important for science to progress because it is necessary to ferret out the cheats and the liars. Any scientist must necessarily assume that there will be confidence artists posing as scientists.
So far as I can tell, anthropogenic global warming is not proven beyond a reasonable doubt. However, I do think limited anthropogenic global warming is more likely than not.
As you probably know already, I support the space program. However, I was more than a little bit annoyed at NASA for coming out with so-called “proof” there was supposedly life on Mars. From my perspective, the evidence from the Martian asteroid is far from conclusive; I strongly doubt it has any extraterrestrial fossil microbes at all! It is not wise to resort to side show hucksterism to promote the space program, for such an endeavor requires long-term trust to succeed.
Likewise, my hostility toward millenarian environmentalism doesn’t come from hostility to renewable energy, but precisely because I think that hysteria is not a good basis for public policy. Various people have clothed their ideologies and economic interests in fraudulent science, from Trofim Lysenko to various tobacco corporations, from Heinrich Himmler to the Anaconda Copper Mining Company. It is important for all interested parties concerned with energy policy to refrain from deception, hysteria, and fraud.
See what over 31,000 scientists have to say about AGW at:
http://www.oism.org/pproject/
1. The Greens win the argument. We pass Kyoto, ride bicycles, tax methane.
2. It all backfires, and the earth warms several degrees more than if we’d gone on polluting.
3. Siberia thaws and becomes the new Iowa. World hunger disappears, even in the media. Africans get fat.
4. The Greens show up again and take credit for the whole thing.
Eggplant: Back in the late 80′s at VAFB we launched a sensor on an Advanced TIROS NOAA bird called the Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE). I never heard what the results were but you might do a search for that.
John Moore: It is time someone explained that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and Obama all want to decrease your standard of living.
You will live in a small apartment with heat and air cond regulated by a govt-controlled thermostat, which will be powered by solar and wind energy – and if it ain’t enough to go around you will just get used to being cold and hot. You will ride to work on govt-owned union operated public transportation and work in a union job and only eat meat once a week unless you are a prison convict. You will hear what the Fairness Doctrine allows you to on TV and radio. You won’t be able to own a gun. And so on.
RWE, that sounds like eastern europe 1945-1991.
WHiskey said:
If you can’t keep raw sewage off your street, you cannot defend yourself from a bio-attack retaliation from Western vigilantes. A single Western vigilante in the near future can potentially kill millions of people in Pakistan, and that vigilante won’t care about PC or “plausible deniability”.
oldsj:
1. The Greens win the argument. We pass Kyoto, ride bicycles, tax methane and cripple the world’s economy.
2. The solar minimum predicted by many solar scientists occurs, and the earth cools several degrees even though CO2 levels continue to rise.
3. Vast expanses of American, Canadian, Ukrainian, Australian and Argentinean farmland become new Siberias. World hunger increases drastically and even some Americans face starvation. Food riots are a common occurence.
4. The Greens attempt to escape wrath of the angry mobs with pitchforks and torches. Many suffer the fate of witches in the Middle Ages.
LifeofTheMind,
Nomenklatura made perfect, if perhaps not obvious, sense.
The libs objectively count on the market being robust even as they deride it: they say the golden-egg laying goose is on its last legs, but in relying on bleeding it ever more and more, they actually count on it being robust, hard to kill.
It should be cause for some serious cognitive dissonance.
It’s an inverted cousin to the libs’ love of tobacco taxes to help pay for their various programs– the taxes’ avowed purpose is to curb smoking but they are actually counting on people *continuing* to smoke anyway so their revenue stream doesn’t dry up.
Buddy: The Worker’s Paradise!
However, modern technology will make it easier for them to impose the paradise on you. For example, the radio-controlled thermostats.
Fred: A few years ago when an unexpected spring snowstorm hit Wash, DC, I saw not oen but TWO Democratic congressmen go on TV and separately say “They can’t predict the weather from day to day but the Bush Admin thinks they can predict what the economy will do.” Aside from the badly flawed logic, these are the same people who believe the Global Warming predictions….
Tarnsman:
Step 5. Price of homes in Florida skyrocket. We finally will be able to sell all these houses those idiots built. Yippeee!
Wait a minute! Then more northerners will move here. Fergitit!
Just as an ordinary citizen observing these events, given the fact that for years now there have been pretty substantial arguments taking apart the AGW hypothesis, the fact that it has strong political life in the face of waning scientific life, tells me that there is POWER behind the carbon tax regime. Not just political power in this country, but political power internationally.
Why would powerful American politicians choose to implement something that will cause our economy to underperform, more people to be out of work, and industries gutted by regulations, taxes, and penalties? Surely an American President and prestigious members of the Senate know that they will be punished at the ballot box for doing this? These people are not stupid and they have to have read some of the things we’ve read. Surely they have? The stakes are far too high to take a leap into an empty swimming pool.
RWE, the thing the workers in paradise liked best of all was that 57 year male life expectancy. Jeez, the poor bastids if it was any higher.
Heat radiates from the earth over a range of frequencies. Carbon dioxide blocks only a small fraction of those frequencies. there is already enough carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to mostly block all of that radiation. That is why the blocking effect is non-linear. That is why more carbon dioxide will have/is having very little additional effect. Also water vapor blocks radiation in the same frequency band as carbon dioxide. There is way more water vapor than carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
I read it on the internet, so it must be true.
On topic, I have been puzzled by the unreasonable rise in oil futures and have attributed to some unknown manipulator. It seems unlikely that any investor or group would have enough resources to make it happen, nro is there any obvious motive.
Why aren’t there Western vigilantes already?
Hey, here it is:
http://asd-www.larc.nasa.gov/erbe/ASDerbe.html
The rise in oil prices was complex, but IMHO it was due to a large amount of capital looking for a home outside of either the equity or debt markets. These securities markets dwarf the size of the commodities markets. Investment advisors began pitching the idea that a 3-5% allocation to commodities brought good diversification to an investment portfolio. When behemoths like Calpers and other pension funds make the switch, it was like the equivalent of an elephant jumping into a swimming pool.
Why would powerful American politicians choose to implement something that will cause our economy to underperform, more people to be out of work, and industries gutted by regulations, taxes, and penalties?
People who are doing well economically don’t need government subsidies and don’t appreciate having significant portions of their income taken away to
provide government subsidies for others. Our political class depends upon “poverty” and the transfer of income from the “rich” to the “poor” for their own existence and power. If you make more people poor you have increased the need for your services. Its kind of like those shady doctors who give their patients “medicine” that is actually making them sick, and then stating that their condition requires that they come back to the physician more often as a consequence of their declining health.
we have a lot to discover…
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/16dec_giantbreach.htm
tcobb,
If the economy ‘aint growing then tax collections go down or stagnate. Any person with a tad of intelligence knows this. If the dole keeps growing, it means fewer people are working and producing.
And right now the nation is not exactly in the black with those tax collections. Don’t any of these clowns understand where the money comes from?
I’ve had it. I’m truly angry that my taxes are funding thief politicians who are using my money for bribes. Hell, I have no quibble with some guy who just lost his job and needs some help until he gets another. At least he does something useful. But the senators, congressmen, and presidents who use my money to bribe the mob belong in jail.
If the economy ‘aint growing then tax collections go down or stagnate. Any person with a tad of intelligence knows this. If the dole keeps growing, it means fewer people are working and producing.
But if you are the middle-man, and you get to decide how much of the cut goes to you in the transfer of “wealth,” you really don’t care. The upper classes in the third world countries manage to live quite well even though the general population, on the average, have very little. To a parasite, the idea of being concerned about the general health of its host is … not even worth thinking about.
– addendum—
On original submission, I got a message indicating that I was posting too quickly. I apologize. I shall atone by not posting here again.
If the environmental wackos were really interested in protecting the planet from environmental degradation, they would be more forcefully attacking the environmental policies of places like Russia, China , India, and much of the Third World, instead of concentrated almost all their ire at the US.
The fact that the wackos could care less about the rest of the world means they really are just a bunch of anti -American hypocrites.
Russia, China and much of the third world produce not only a ton of CO2, but a huge amount of actually harmful gases and pollutants that the US largely cleaned up years ago. China is already the leading producer of CO2 and is expected to double its production within 8 years. Allegedly, one in ten babies born in Siberia is deformed from the all crap the Russians haven’t cleaned up.
If the Carbon Dioxide were really the problem the wackos say it is , and the US stopped producing it tomorrow, there still would be a ongoing problem. But CO2 and Global Warming have clearly been proven not to be the problem the Warming Alarmist’s proclaim.
tcobb:
A wise parasite would try to make sure his present host doesn’t die before some other host becomes available.
OK, this is way down-thread and will therefore be lost to posterity, but here’s my explanation for the huge swing in oil prices. It’s a variation on steeple’s opinion in 82.
The key here is exchange rates and the impact of increased consumer spending driven by the housing bubble and foreign investment by US investors.
From 2005-2007, the driving force of global economic expansion was increasing US consumption driven by mortgage equity withdrawals.
MEW is the money cashed out by both refinancings and home equity loans. Historically, this number hovered around 1% of GDP. Starting in 1998, it started to rise due to easier underwriting standards for mortgages, which drove up home prices and created more “equity” which could then be withdrawn. By 2003, it was up to 5% of GDP, and stayed there until early 2008, when it started to plummet – recently going negative. This represents trillions of dollars of consumer demand.
Lots of this demand was met by foreign suppliers, most notably China. To buy something from China, US consumers had to sell US dollars and buy Chinese yuan. This meant that dollars got cheaper, and commodities (like oil) got more expensive. Since dollars were worth less, it simply took more of them to buy a barrel of oil.
You can also see these goods and capital flows in our current account deficit, which continued to balloon throughout this entire period. We were buying more stuff from overseas, and our trade deficit expanded.
At the same time, investors, concerned about the weakening dollar, began moving more and more capital overseas. This put further pressure on the dollar, as every time a US investor wanted to buy, say, stock in a Turkish company, they had to sell dollars and buy lira.
The bottom line is that the dollar got cheaper and cheaper, and oil got more and more expensive. You can see this in the Euro-USD exchange rate, which rose from about 1.19 in 2006 to about 1.59 in July 2008, a rise of 33%. During this same time, oil rose from the $55-75 range to about $90-110 range, which more than like 60%. So about half of the price increase was simply due to exchange rates.
The rest of this increase was due to rising demand, again driven by US consumption driving increased production in China, etc. As we cashed out home equity and bought more stuff, that stuff had to be produced, and this drove up energy demand around the world. Supply is pretty inelastic, so prices rose. This, of course, led to efforts to increase supply, but those efforts take a long time to bear fruit.
Finally, towards the end of this run-up, you had the normal financial speculative excess that one normally sees in asset bubbles. That’s probably what drive the price from $100 to $140 per barrel in the 100 days between late February and mid-June.
Then the wheels started coming off. Oil prices fell from $145.31 on 7 July 2008 to $91.45 on 17 Sept 2008. During this period, we saw the failure of Fannie and Freddie (late August), Lehman Brothers (15 Sept 2008), and AIG was taken over (17 Sept 2008). The world suddenly realized that the financial markets were in deep doo-doo.
At this point, financial investors the world over made a collective (though uncoordinated IMHO) decision that the only asset that was a safe store of value was US Treasuries. In a so-called “flight to safety,” everyone and their dog started selling whatever they could and bought T-bills, which means that the entire world started buying dollars. On 11 Sept 2008, 1-month T-Bills had a closing yield of 1.525%. On 17 Sept 2008, they had a closing yield of 0.01%. Other term securities saw similar (though less severe) drops in yield. This is a breathtaking flow of capital into US Treasuries, and therefore dollars.
At the same time, the high crude prices starting hitting the consumer in the gas tank. Gasoline peaked at $4.16 per gallon in August 2008 (it takes a while for oil inventory to get processed and distributed, which accounts for the lag between oil price peaks and gasoline price peaks). Consumers started throttling back (so to speak) their consumption of gasoline, which accounts for a huge portion of oil consumption (about 2/3rds according the DoE). Energy costs also started to hit overall economic growth, especially in distribution and transportation businesses.
Consumers, faced with higher costs and less money (falling mortgage equity withdrawals), pulled back dramatically. The result was a sharp drop in demand, and therefore prices.
All of this goes back to the mortgage debacle, in which Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a big new home. Eased underwriting standards drove up home values (money flowing into housing faster than supply expanded); rising home values created phantom equity; phantom equity was converted by consumers into cash through additional debt; consumers spent that cash on stuff made overseas, driving down the value of the dollar and increasing global energy demand; the falling dollar and rising demand drove oil prices into the stratosphere.
Then Jack fell down and broke his crown, and Jill came tumbling after. Debt markets seized up; mortgage underwriting standards dramatically tightened; home prices fell as buyers left the market, unable to borrow on the same terms; existing mortgages went “under water”; mortgage equity withdrawals fell to zero (or negative); with no cash to spend, and lots of debt to pay off, demand for goods fell; falling demand led to falling production and the threat of deflation; the threat of global recession and deflation led to a financial flight to quality; the flight to quality led to a dramatic strengthening of the dollar; the strong dollar and falling demand led to plummeting energy prices.
It might be more satisfying to believe oil prices have been manipulated by the malevolent hand of Soros, Faisal, or Putin that pulls the puppet strings.
But it seems to me that the only hand manipulating all this is the invisible hand of Adam Smith, with the assistance of Frank, Dodd, and Raines.
L3
Oh, and one more factoid:
If you analyze oil prices and exchange rates from 1 Jan 2007 through 16 Dec 2008, the correlation is 0.93. This doesn’t speak directly to causality of course (see AGW discussion above), but it strongly suggests these two variables are not independent.
L3
Oil and some other commodities have leads time of several years from decision to invest in new production to the onset of significant new production. The natural tendency for any such commodity is have price spikes over periods less that lead time. US oil production will increase next year despite the big fall in oil prices. Main reason is onset of two large offshore fields in the Gulf of Mexico. I believe each field is a begin developed by consortium of major oil companies. Work on developing them has doubtless been ongoing for a number of years.
Any attempt to smooth the price spikes will cost way more than is ever saved. For the US the best way to avoid another one if for the US consumers actively purchase nuclear, wind and natural gas as energy sources.
AZM said:
Wrong question, there already have been Western vigilantes in the near past. They merely used small arms and little bombs. I was responding to a post by Whiskey about the near future use of WMD’s by Islamic groups against the West.
Look up Belmont Club’s post on the “Fourth Conjecture” (it was before his blog became part of Pajamasmedia).
Robert, it might well be that either the enemy don’t understand just how terrible the West in its rage can be, or that they really don’t understand how powerful are the weapons we wield. They don’t really understand, for example, that the West has been breeding warriors and soldiers for four thousand years, all the way from ancient Sparta, through the Roman Empire and the Germanic tribes, through the Vikings and the paladins of Charlemagne, through the Crusaders and the Prussians and the British Commandos, through to the warriors of Armageddon that are called the SAC and the boomer crews. And I much doubt that any of the enemy leaders have ever visited Hiroshima.
This has been said before; the lesson of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has been forgotten, or never learnt – after all, most of those who were adults in 1945 are now dead. The lesson ought to be taught again. Choose an unwanted bit of desert or an island somewhere, invite everyone to watch, especially including the TV companies and all world leaders – and set off a nice big H-bomb. In fact, this ought to be a regular event, possibly at the same site once a decade or so. What’s the point? To show said world leaders just how bad things can get, if they screw up badly enough.
Good point Fletcher Christian.
Dave wrote:
“As an old oilpatch brat, I am now convinced that oil prices are being manipulated downward.”
Ditto, Dave. Me: Sumatra, Saudi (E. Prov.), W. Aus., Iran (Khargh Island).
Back when we began our invasion of Baathist Iraq, I figured that a crucial part of Bush/Cheney’s Iraq plan was to alleviate the financial toll of Operation Iraqi Freedom on our nation’s treasury and citizens by coordinating a major energy price-reduction timed to coincide with our clear progress there.
[Then came the financial crash, and the sudden need to shore-up consumer spending in the face of the pending recession this Christmas added more impetus to this price-tinkering.]
The good news is, this price reduction (coordinated or not) may last awhile, no matter what Bush and his team do. After our defeat of Iraq’s Baathists, Iraq’s oil exports are surging on target, a new respect is evident in the region for both energy-production and America’s role in protecting its global transport…and I noticed that Bush filled our strategic reserves earlier in the year (the fed’s presence in the market in January and March drove prices up, BTW).
This foresight permits his administration to buffer our market further through Winter 2008/09. And he leaves P.E. Obama in a very strong position as he takes Bush’s seat in January 2009.