Cliffhanger

The Global Warming Contradiction

2009-07-05T18:16:00.001-07:00

Is the Earth warming? The current theory is that all this CO₂ emission into the atmosphere is causing the Earth to gradually warm. This is expressed frequently as the "hockey stick", showing a gradual cooling from about 1300 to maybe about 1750, and then after that, a slow warming until about 1980, then suddenly shooting upward, producing a graph that looks like a hockey stick. An example might be this one from the UK. People concerned about global warming are saying that unless we do something about this, irreversible adverse things will happen such as the expansion of deserts and the flooding of coastal cities. Indeed, these graphs show about a 1.3 degree F increase in global temperature in the past 100 years.

We have now a new player in the game, however. The Sun has just passed the supposed minimum of its sunspot cycle and should be rapidly increasing in sunspots, especially at moderately high latitudes. However, for the past year, the Sun has shown almost no spots. What's happened to it? This is not the first time this has happened. In the 1600s, the Sun had no spots for an entire human lifetime. During this span of around 100 years, global temperatures fell about 0.9 degrees F, causing the "Little Ice Age".

Are we entering a new Maunder minimum? If so, the increase in temperatures caused by global warming will slow down or stop. The figures I have cited seem to suggest that the Earth will warm only by 0.4 degrees per century, or 0.04 degree F per year. That would then suggest that instead of preventing global warming caused by carbon emissions, we need to keep sending carbon dioxide into the atmosphere or else we could go into an Ice Age. Further, we will not be able to do this, because oil and other fossil production will eventually (and soon) decline and stop, at which point the ice age will come.

But I see a contradiction in this. The problem is that these figures suggest that the decrease caused by lack of spots is a substantial fraction of the increase caused by human-induced global warming. This should be reflected in the hockey stick graph. Since sunspots usually (and in the past century has) followed an 11-year cycle, that should cause 11-year oscillations in the graph of global temperature. But the graphs you see on warming in the past 100 years show no such oscillations. That suggests instead that temperature changes caused by sunspot changes are a minuscule fraction of the changes caused by human-induced global warming. But clearly they aren't.

Another way of looking at it is to look at the "solar constant", the amount of energy striking the Earth on the average. This is 1365 watts per square meter, and it can vary from 1363 to 1367 watts per square meter. Since the Sun has no spots, I would suppose the 1363 holds now. That translates into a decline of 0.3 degree F over the next few years. This also shows that sunspots cause a substantial part of the change in earthly temperatures, but by not as much as the 0.9 degree change cited earlier. and it does not resolve the contradiction between this type of reasoning which suggests 11-year oscillations in the global temperature and the lack of evidence of such cycles.

Until we resolve the contradiction, we don't know which way the world is going to go. Much discussion on global warming is one-sided, with people arguing unequivocally for one side or the other, both the global warming zealots and the global warming deniers. We need to stop arguing and do some analysis. Will the real global change determiners please stand up?

Michael Jackson and Peak Oil

2009-06-29T19:10:00.001-07:00

Oil prices are rising, the economy may be starting to stagger again, and many countries are fast using up their oil supplies. So what does the nation, and the world do? It goes ape over Michael Jackson at his death. This says a lot about where we are and where we are headed. See my companion blog "Beyond Opinion" for further information on Michael Jackson, and for a good description of what he means for us, look at James Howard Kunstler's weekly column "The Man in the Mirror".

What now?

2009-05-14T20:41:00.001-07:00

It's been some time since I posted here. But a lot has happened. I thought for sure that oil would continue to rise. But it rose too fast. It included the rise that should be there due to increasing scarcity of oil, but it also included the investments of many people who felt that oil stocks would continue to go up. The combination caused the price to shoot to $147 a gallon and gasoline to over $4 a gallon. People need gasoline to do their business. When they could not get it, they cut back on other things, including the mortgage payment. This caused the foreclosures, which in turn endangered the banks and threatened the entire financial system. When this happened, a severe recession occurred, causing even oil to drop drastically in price, all the way down to $35 a barrel and $1.46 a gallon for gasoline, causing me to get a gasoline bill in the single digits. The price of oil has moved back up to $57 a barrel.

So what's next? That's hard to say. The Fourth Turning says that history comes in cycles or turnings. The stages of life are 22 years long, and so are the lengths of generations, so history also comes in periods of 22 years, called turnings, which come in First, Second, Third, and Fourth varieties. The first is a High in which high hopes for society are made. This is followed by the disillusionment of the Second Turning, when the babies of the First rebel against the previous Crisis parents, as in Jimi Hendrix, campus protests, and marijuana. The Second Turning also included a mini-depression and two major oil crises. This gave way to the decadent Third Turning, or unraveling, with the focus placed on the individual, as societal pillars wear away. This leads to a Crisis, the Fourth Turning. The last Fourth Turning was the Great Depression and World War II.

I believe now the Fourth Turning has started. It started on 2007 July 27, when the Dow plummeted 400 points because of mortgage foreclosures. It really gained momentum in late summer 2008, when many institutions teetered on the brink and had to be tarped out.

HS Dent is a stock market advisor who bases his decisions essentially on the Strauss and Howe Turning theory. He predicted a big boom in the late 1990s, and booms in the Double Zero years, and now he calls for the Great Depression of the 2010s. I read his column, and he is calling for the current deflationary conditions to continue. Keep your money in money market funds and it will stay the same while deflation occurs; hence your buying power increases.

However, the major crisis on the horizon is Peak Oil. Apparently the production of oil has peaked. It dropped drastically this year, from 88 million barrels/day to 82, but that was because of lack of demand. Still it forms a peak. It may not recover from this, because the oil fields are starting to run out. A stock advisor who is aware of peak oil is Stephen Leeb. He says the low price of oil is temporary. The economy will pick up again this year, and when it does, so will the price of oil. We are already seeing this. Oil goes up and down with the market. He is calling for this to continue, with first prosperity, then a runaway inflation.

So which is it? Will we have deflation or 100% inflation? It's hard to say. It is a vicious cycle:

1. When the economy improves, the demand for oil will go up.
2. So oil prices go up.
3. So demand for oil (and other things) goes down.
4. So oil prices go down.
5. So demand for oil goes up.
(go to step 2)

When oil goes up, its demand goes down, and then oil prices go down. Hence the second derivative of oil prices is roughly proportional to the negative of oil prices. If you write this down as a differential equation and solve it, you get a sine function, a sinusoid. Both demand and oil prices go up and down over and over again. What happened in 2007-9 maybe the first such oscillation.

So now I can't predict much what will happen, so that makes it hard to invest. I don't want to invest in stock funds, only to lose my money in a stock bust like in 2008, but I don't want to hold it in money market funds, have inflation go way high and lose the purchasing power of my money and become a pauper in a multi-million-dollar house. Leeb and Dent have their ideas as to what to do, and they are as different as night and day. Dent says invest in bonds, money market funds, and Treasurys. Leeb says invest in commodities, such as BHP Billiton stock. I will be watching the market carefully to see which way to go.

A Tale of Two Tsunamis

2008-10-23T08:52:00.000-07:00

One of the most misused words in the English language right now is tsunami. You almost never heard of the word until late 2004, when the most powerful tsunami of our lifetimes struck the Indian Ocean off Sumatra, killing 220,000 people in several nations. Ever since then, people have used, overused, and misused the word repeatedly to describe any kind of a great change or event. Everything's a tsunami nowadays. If instead, a half-mile-wide asteroid had struck Sumatra killing 220,000 people, everything now would be an asteroid strike. Especially galling is the use of the term to mean the coastal wave that floods and demolishes coastlines during a hurricane (or typhoon or cyclone). That's a storm surge, not a tsunami.

So here we have two people using the word tsunami to mean something, namely Jim Kunstler and Alan Greenspan. In his Clusterf_ck Nation Chronicles for this week, Mr. Kunstler describes this whole credit crisis as a tsunami. He said that what we are seeing now is the withdrawal phase of a tsunami, namely the deflationary recession that seems to be developing as a result of so many mortgages foreclosing and the resultant credit freeze. He compares it to the hundreds of feet revealed by the withdrawing waves of the ocean, describing the flotsam and shipwrecks that are revealed. Then he says that the tidal wave part is coming, namely runaway inflation, and that will wipe all the financial stuff clean. He says that all the money that the Fed put in will come sloshing back. I am not too sure that such an inflation will result, but it seems plausible to me. In any case, he used the word tsunami properly.

Not so Alan Greenspan. Today he said, "We are in the midst of a once-in-a century credit tsunami". He then says, that whatever regulatory changes are made, "they will pale in comparison to the change already evident in today's markets." But he does not show how the credit crisis is like a tsunami. Nowhere in his words do I hear him speak of a withdrawal phase and a tidal wave, and nowhere do I see any other valid reference to a tsunami, other than it is a big change. He is one of these people that use tsunami to explain anything and would have used "asteroid strike" instead if the great destructive event of late 2004 had been an asteroid strike instead of a tsunami.

So please use tsunami sparingly and properly, and beware of upcoming inflation that could destroy the economy in the next few years.

Will Football Bring Peak Oil to the Nation's Attention?

2008-09-26T20:29:00.000-07:00

We have known for many years now that not only is oil a finite resource, but that production of it will peak sometime in the Ut-Oh (00) Decade, after which supplies will decline while demand is still rising, causing major adverse consequences. But no one ever seems to talk about it. All the politicians, including Senator Obama tonight, speak of energy independence from rogue nations, and expect too much out of other sources of energy. Everything else, including Iraq, the nuclear desires of Iran, Israel, health care, global warming, mountain removal, and the Presidential election campaign seem to be more important, at least in the eyes of the media.

The latest financial crisis is an example of this. All kinds of attention has been applied to the crisis, and people have warned that another Great Depression will result if the Great Bailout Package of 2008 is not passed quickly. That may very well be true, since I see firms, such as Bear Stearns, AIG, Washington Mutual, Lehman Brothers and so forth fail left and right. But we have been through this in the last Great Depression, and we know what the solution is, and it will be applied.

The whole thing is masking the real danger to our future: Peak Oil. What happens when the oil and gasoline run out?

We may find out this weekend. There is an event coming up which will bring attention to the media and the nation as a whole. Hurricanes Gustav and Ike have disrupted oil and gasoline production at a time when gasoline supplies were low and when there is almost no slack in the system. Major shortages have now appeared in the Southeast, including many of the cities that I have visited in recent years to go to conventions: Atlanta, Knoxville, Charlotte, and Nashville. Nashville is said to have only 15% of its gasoline stations open. Still, this is regional, and gasoline will come back.

Enter Football. This is the sport which takes even more public attention than Iraq, global warming, or the election. It seems that global warming and Iraq take priority over Peak Oil, and further, that Football takes priority over these. What happens when the Georgia Bulldogs meet the Crimson Tide of Alabama is far more important than how the financial crisis is resolved and certainly more than Peak Oil.

Well this weekend, Peak Oil may effectively trump Football. There is a gasoline shortage in Athens, Georgia, home of the Bulldogs. What happens when zillions of fans zero in on Athens to watch this Great Game of the Year? It will run the stations out of gasoline and people will not be able to go to work on Monday, that's what. And that is when the nation will find out about Peak Oil. A petroleum executive has recommended cancellation of the game; that in itself would be a significant event, but not one to bring attention to the American public. Besides, Governor Sonny "Chicken" Perdue has called the idea "ridiculous". We will see what ridiculous is when the following events happen.

Hordes of fans from Georgia, Alabama and other states descend upon tiny Athens to watch the game, guzzling gasoline at pumps along the way. The fans run the pumps out of gasoline. Many fans can't finish the trip. When the game is over, everyone tries to go home, but can't because the pumps are all dry. Thousands of cars run out of gasoline on the highways, producing scenes reminiscent of the end of Persian Gulf War I or out of Deep Impact, the movie. The authorities can't get these cars out of the way, because they don't have the gasoline to do it with. In fact, the police can't even do their normal patrols, and so unruly crowds develop and loot and pillage Athens and the surrounding area. When Monday morning comes, thousands of residents can't go to their jobs or do their business; Athens shuts down. A week later, when food trucks can't get through, food shortages develop and a possible famine may occur.

I am not saying these events will necessarily occur. But if even only some of them occur, maybe the newscasters and media harpies will pause on the financial crisis a bit and take a look at what is happening in Athens, Georgia. And maybe then the entire nation will realize what Peak Oil is and what it means about its future.

Ill-Conceived Taxpayer Revolt

2008-09-21T14:20:00.001-07:00

I now hear from CNN that taxpayers are revolting against the bailout plan. They object that why should they pay for the mistakes of all these fund managers and banks? I can see to some extent their anger. We pay the government taxes, then the government gives this money over to mismanaged companies. One person says, "The government does not have $700 billion dollars. WE have $700 billion, and it is being taken from us." Another one says, "Stop blogging, posting comments, and call your congressman."

This now reminds me of the American Revolution. That Fourth Turning was started by anger by the people over taxes, although the rowdy devil-may-care attitude among the youth of that era was a contributer. I do not think the Fourth Turning that is now occurring will be like the American Revolution.

As I said in my previous blog, it won't be like the Great Depression either. This is because people will do it a different way this time, and there are protections now that weren't there in 1929. Instead of standing aside, preaching about prosperity around the corner, and letting the free market freely take down all the stocks and all the banks along with it, we are now bailing out all these companies and holding the line on the market threat. I believe Mr. Paulson says if we don't approve of this proposed $700 billion bailout package, the result will be disaster. I believe he is correct. In fact, if we don't pass this, a repeat of the 1930s Depression will occur. These people that are complaining about the government robbing them with these deals are probably not old enough to know what this Depression was all about. 62 is a pretty old age, but if you are 62 years old, you have never experienced what this Depression was like, and neither has anyone younger. We forget because those who were around then are few and not speaking up as loudly as they were.

So now is not the time to be self-righteous about how the Government is robbing you of money. We need to support the current efforts at trying to keep things afloat. Congress needs to pass this emergency measure! If they don't, the Dow will plummet 1000 points in one day, and you can prepare to see much of your life savings disappear. Of course, those who run the companies need to be thrown out, but let's keep the companies afloat so we don't have another 1930s Depression.

Write your Congressman, and tell him you support the plan.

Is This the Fourth Turning?

2008-09-21T14:15:00.000-07:00

There is a theory of history by Neil Howe and the late William Strauss that says that since there are four periods of a person's life (childhood, young adulthood, midlife, and elderhood) and four types of generations (Prophet [Boomer], Nomad [Gen X], Hero [Greatest Generation, Millennials] and Adaptive [Silent]), there are four types of periods of history, called the First, Second, Third, and Fourth Turning. The First Turning is a societal high, wherein everything works well and people supported the community. The Second Turning is a time of social turmoil, wherein the Prophet generation challenges the precepts of those in power, causing social changes (for example, civil rights legislation). The Third Turning results from this and constitutes a period where the individual is prominent and society falls apart. The Fourth Turning is one of crisis when people restore the order and one way of life dies and another is born.

The latest First Turning was the 1950s and early 1960s, culminating in John F. Kennedy's Camelot. The latest Second Turning was the youth rebellion of the 1960s and 1970s, when youth protested the Vietnam War and how the Greatest Generation was handling things. It also was a period of financial turmoil, when two gas crises occurred and a period of lagging stock prices prevailed. The latest Third Turning was the Culture Wars of the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s, when people did their own things, building credit card debt, obtaining subprime mortgages, and driving gas-hungry SUVs. The question is when the next Fourth Turning will occur.

Such a turning starts with a catalyst that causes a crisis. The 9/11 attacks were not such a catalyst. It was instead a heralding event, similar to the Boston Massacre, the Dred Scott Decision, and the sinking of the Lusitania. Katrina was not such a catalyst. But the present financial crisis may be such a catalyst. It started on 2007 February 27, with the collapse of the mortgage market, leading to a buyout of Countrywide Financial. The crisis simmered for a while, causing a downturn which caused oil prices to slide back. It then broke out in full force in the week of September 15-19 with the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, the buyout of Merrill Lynch, and the government rescue of AIG.

This is somewhat surprising. I thought for sure that peak oil would be the catalyst, but it's possible the mortgage crisis was caused by peak oil. In any case, it appears to have come. The mortgages were the "spark" (Strauss and Howe) that turned into a Crisis. They say that it will be a long time with us, another sign that this is it.

If this is the Fourth Turning, then how will it proceed? The last one started with a Great Depression. That was caused by the laissez-faire, let the market resolve it attitude of the Republicans of that time, including Herbert Hoover. Once FD Roosevelt got into power, he used the powers of the government to turn this country around. We all have knowledge of this Depression now, although you have to be at least 75 years old to have felt the effect of it. In this day and age, if you are at the retirement age of 62, you have absolutely no experience of what things were like during the Great Depression.

However, knowledge of the Depression is affecting events, and my feeling is that this will not be a Great Depression, at least not in the way that the 1930s was. That is why all the bailouts. Every time something that will crash the economy and cause a big Depression threatens (e.g., the failure of AIG), the Government comes in and bails it out. This is one way of handling it. Will it work?

The problem is that for the past few years, with reckless Third Turning abandon, we have been living off money that does not exist; for example, high credit card debts and unpaid mortgages. This present crisis is now people and the system recognizing this fact. The problem is how to fairly distribute the non-money so that it does not cause trouble. Repeated government bailouts will spread it out among all of us by increasing the federal deficit. This will be made up by higher taxes, reduced benefits, or more likely by the Government simply printing more money. This means inflation is headed up, meaning that a serious hyperinflation may be headed our way. The "Mother of all Depressions" may resemble Germany in 1923 more than it does the US in 1932.

In the near future, this crisis will gradually get resolved, and another boom may occur next year. People will feel better about themselves and the market, and once again prosperity will occur. That's when Peak Oil will confront us. The new prosperity will undoubtedly increase oil prices, and may cause them to increase dramatically. Sooner or later we will have to deal with the problem of declining oil supplies. We will need to conserve in the years ahead, even if we get all these alternative sources to work.

The Five Biggest Problems in the World, Reconsidered

2008-07-29T12:14:00.001-07:00

Among all of my blogs, the one I posted to Cliffhanger on 2006 July 26, entitled "The Five Biggest Problems in the World Today" has received more comments than any other blog I have made. Apparently people are interested in world problems, and I think it is good, because that means that there is some hope for the world after all. The problems I listed were:

1. Peak Oil
2. Global Warming
3. Retirement of Baby Boomers
4. Prevalence of Mainline Religions
5. Discrimination

The most recent call, from AndimsoNice, accused me of watching too much CNN. I certainly did not get Peak Oil from CNN. You still get little about this major problem in the news media, even though oil prices are $4 a gallon, the airlines are having major problems, and there are food and fuel shortages throughout the globe. However, the three problems AndimsoNice mentioned are indeed serious ones, so let's consider them. Here they are:

1. Clean drinking water
2. Genocide
3. Food shortages (not foot shortages!)

1. Clean drinking water. Indeed many places in the world are experiencing fresh water shortages. Georgia, a state in the US, is one of these. Some of the lakes have almost gone dry recently from the shortage of water there. Water is a renewable resource, but only so far. After the population grows above a certain point, it consumes more water than can be made available by Nature, so then it becomes non-renewable. Also, water is non-renewable in places where it is scarce; in other words, the deserts. Cities such as Almaty, Phoenix, Timbuktu, and Urumqi are going to have serious problems in the future because hardly any water falls from the sky at these places. They have to rely on rivers or aquifers, which will dry up if population grows rapidly, as it is doing in Phoenix, and perhaps in Urumqi. Global warming caused by fossil fuel consumption is creating more desert and exacerbating the problem. I call this problem the Water Limit, rather than Peak Water, because we don't produce water; there can be no peak production. Another problem lies behind both Peak Oil and the Water Limit, and that is population growth. Ultimately, the human population will have to stop growing.

This problem is a serious one, and I really did not list it, but it does relate to Peak Oil and Global Warming.

2. Genocide. Why do certain people or tyrannical rulers want to kill entire populations or ethnic groups? I think it is because of this "we vs they" mentality. If people are dissatisfied with life, a tyrant can seize on this dissatisfaction and whip up hatred against another people, as Tutsis against Hutus or Germans against Jews. Religion makes the problem worse, as if people were houses, God would be an unoccupied property, and sooner or later, this tyrant will occupy that house and become God. Belief in one self and in those around you may be the best way to help combat genocide. Certainly if genocide exists, it needs to be wiped out, either by the victimized people or by others; for example, our troops should not be in Iraq and Afghanistan but in Myanmar and Sudan.

In any case, Peak Oil will make this problem worse, as people will say that we are running out of oil, so make sure we get it and not those barbarians over there. This problem is related to both Peak Oil and Discrimination, since committing genocide against a people is an extreme case of discriminating against them.

3. Food shortages. Population growth is strongly behind this one. If there are more mouths to feed, more land is needed to grow the food for them. Peak Oil is also strongly related to this problem. In fact, this may be one of the worst effects of Peak Oil. Food is grown for the world today in such bountiful places as Iowa and Brazil, but to grow this food requires oil to transport the food to where it is needed, to operate the farm machinery to grow the food, to make the fertilizer for the crop and so forth. About 90% of the cost of food nowadays is oil. And so food shortages will appear and get worse as oil production declines.

This problem is so related to Peak Oil that I include it as part of this problem.

So now I rank the problems of the world as follows:

1. Peak oil and Food Limits.
2. Global Climate Change and Water Problems
3. Retirement of Baby Boomers
4. Prevalence of mainline religions
5. Discrimination and genocide

She's Real Fine, My $4.09

2008-07-06T20:40:00.001-07:00

It's been a while since I blogged here, so I will do it now. What I see right now is a price of crude oil that keeps going up and up with seemingly no stop. The last time I saw it, on the Fourth of July, 2008, it was $145/barrel, or $3.45 a gallon. That is about the price of wholesale gasoline, and retail gasoline just recently hit $4.00 a gallon here in Virginia. That's right, $4 a gallon is here.

The national average is $4.09 a gallon. She's real fine, my $4.09, my $4.09. No, that wasn't what the Beach Boys meant when they sang their song about a hot rod car called a 409. That was back in the 1960s, when oil was plentiful, summers were endless, and were spent surfing at the beach and chasing all the girls, especially California girls. I looked up in Wikipedia to see just what a 409 was. I was not interested in beach music back in the early 1960s, and I could have cared less, and only know of the song because my brother played it all the time. I couldn't imagine it was a horse, despite the lyrics ("Giddy-ap, Giddy-ap, 409"). There was a brand of Chevrolet back then (i.e, not a hot rod but a schlock rod, like Mickey Mouse - that came from another song during those days) with a 409-cubic inch engine. That's 6.7 liters! Wow! My gas-guzzler Plymouth Voyager has at most a 3.0-liter. There was a Beach Boy mentality back then that said this would go forever.

We now know differently. There is only a finite amount of oil on this planet. Apparently there were 2 trillion barrels of oil in this planet, and 1 trillion has been pumped out. So therefore, a peak in production can be expected, and many analysts think it was somewhere between 2005-2008. The high price of oil and gasoline is causing Americans to cut back, but Indians and Chinese are still continuing to increase their use of oil. Now people are wondering when shortages will occur. I think they will not occur for some time. The shortages of the 1970s were caused by regulations on gasoline prices. There are none now, so instead prices will skyrocket. Those who have the last buck, instead of the last place in the gasoline line, will do without.

So what do we do? A mixture of developing new sources of energy, such as solar, wind, and batteries for cars, as well as conservation, is what will work in the long run. It is pointless to dig the ANWR, drill off-shore, or tear up Montana and Wyoming in search of oil for shale, since these are still non-renewable resources. We are already doing that. If it doesn't work we need to do something else.

And something else we need to do. I fear for what will happen if shortages develop and people have to do without. The Beach Boys sang about the 409; they have another song about a Thunderbird, which symbolizes our oil culture: "And with the radio blasting
Goes cruising just as fast as she can now, And she'll have fun fun fun 'til her daddy takes the t-bird away" When will Big Daddy Peak Oil take our fun away?

The Peak Oil Bomb Deal

2008-05-06T16:56:00.001-07:00

OK, here is my deal. There are many indicators that are saying that we have passed the world production peak of oil, including the ever-rising price of oil, now at $121 a barrel, food shortages worldwide, high prices of food in the United States, and the increasing trouble with the airlines (although some of this is due to max airline capacity, hit in 2000 and again in 2004). This threatens the way we live and perhaps even world civilization. So are the US Presidential candidates talking about it? You would think they would.

The truth is that I have heard just about nothing from any of the three of them about peak oil. Not a word. Michael Moore is now talking about it, and I wish he would make a movie about it. But not the Presidential candidates. Barack Obama is pointing the right way by saying that a gas tax holiday won't help, but he has never talked about it directly. John McCain came within a hair's breath of mentioning it. He said that the Iraq War was fought because of oil. If he meant the second one, he is correct. However, all the pundits and hypermediots ganged up on him, and he was forced to recant and say that it was about weapons of mass destruction. John, you blew it. You really blew it. If you had maintained a peak oil stance, I would have voted for you.

But right now as it stands, I favor Barack Obama and will vote for him in November if he is on the ballot.

However, Presidential Candidates, I am throwing this deal at you. Kenneth Deffeyes said recently that "My only hope is that a candidate, who learns from private polls that he or she is behind, will drop the oil bomb into the debate." I will vote for whichever candidate drops the oil bomb into the debate. It doesn't matter whether it is Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, or even someone else, provided they are of a major party and have a chance of winning. If you start talking about peak oil, I will vote for you. Else I will vote for Obama or Clinton, whoever is running and hope for the best.

So there's the deal, Barack, Hillary, and John. What you do is up to you, but the world depends on it.

Obama Forced to Apologize

2008-04-14T20:23:00.000-07:00

Yesterday my companion blog Beyond Opinion posted something called "Bitter, Indeed", in which it says that Barack's "bitter" comments don't matter at all and that Hillary was the pot calling the kettle black when she said that Obama was "elitist and out of touch", citing her high position and her ex-President husband. it seems that Obama made a mistake in calling Pennsylvanians bitter with belief in God and guns and wanting to do something about immigrants. This sounds funny. It seems like I am talking about myself, since I am the author of both Cliffhanger and Beyond Opinion.

But anyway, today I found someone who supports what Obama said, none other than peak oil blogger Jim Kunstler, author of the "Clusterf*ck Nation Chronicles" blog. In this blog, he said that Obama was brave enough to tell the truth about Pennsylvanians, and in fact about people in general. He agreed with Obama that "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them". He then said that the press and Hillary and others ganged up on him and forced him to apologize. Jim said that he should not have apologized and that he lost authority by so doing. That is important. Obama carries charismatic authority, and that is essential to his performance as a Crisis President the next few years. I hope he gets over being blasted by the media, by Republicans, and by other Democrats when he takes office. He needs to tell us a lesson.

This is the same one as Kunstler has been telling us all the time lately, namely that we must get away from driving cars so much and that we have to be prepared to live life dramatically different in the years ahead. Kunstler is thought of as a radical for saying these things, but what else can you conclude when you look at the oil and fossil fuel supply picture? Plus add in the credit crisis and retirement of baby boomers, as well as Iraq and Iran and you see where Kunstler gets the name of his blog.

Kunstler also says that Clinton is the pot calling the kettle black. Carville is a Clinton supporter. I got a request for funds from him today for the Democrats. I threw it out. No way. For Carville said the same things Obama said, in a more picturesque way, that Pennsylvania was a redneck sandwich, with Philadelphia and Pittsburgh the two pieces of bread and with Alabama meat (redneck meat - an interesting concept) in between. Kunstler also decries people not coming to the defense of Obama. Finally he concludes that the election and the serious problems of the future matter a lot more than whether a "cohort of Cheez Doodle addicted rural Pennsylvania morons prays out loud for God to shoot all the Mexicans." Jim makes them sound like idiots. Today's song, as William Faulkner says, may be that of an idiot full of sound and fury.

We may see some sound and fury soon.

It's Already Here, Jim Kunstler

2008-03-31T18:05:00.000-07:00

In his Clusterfuck Nation Chronicles of 2008 March 31, Jim Kunstler comments on his ordeal with the world aviation system on a recent trip to the American West. He says that high fuel costs, caused by Peak Oil, are killing them, and they can't fire any more employees or gyp employees on their retirement benefits. He then says, "For now, they slump like war refugees in the blow-molded plastic seats, numb with fatigue, anxiety, and disappointment. But I wonder if there will be riots in the concourses sometime later this year."

Guess what, Jim? It's already happened! It happened at Buenos Aires, Argentina's Ezeiza Airport on 2008 January 12. MSNBC reported it. Just click on MSNBC you will see how frustrated passengers, stranded two days by a strike, revolt against the airport, destroying computers and other toys of the Communications Age. It even includes a video. It may be caused by a strike, but I suspect the strike was caused by reasons having to deal with Peak Oil, such as high demand and low supply. The union said the stranding was caused by overbooking, trying to cram more cash-paying passengers per plane. So here comes Peak Oil. This one's already happened.

Peak Coal in South Africa?

2008-01-25T16:51:00.001-08:00

This week certainly was a roller-coaster on the stock market. Down 300, down another 300, then up 600, and now down 200. Gold went down in price during the week, but near the end, it suddenly jumped up to $913 an ounce, the highest I have ever seen it. With energy shares and more general shares going down, I wonder why gold would shoot up in price. I found out why today.

There is a shortage of coal in South Africa, as can be seen in many articles, including this one. This shortage has gotten so severe that the government is asking industries to cut back, and as a result all gold and platinum mining in South Africa has ended. So this explains the higher gold prices. But what about gold companies?

I checked a few that made up a gold fund that I have invested in. All mine from the Americas, Europe, or Australia, except Gold Fields, which is a South Africa company. All of the stocks went up today except Gold Fields, which went down.

But it makes me wonder about coal. People say that coal will last hundreds of years. I did a calculation recently and came up with 161 years, assuming linear growth rates. So why did this shortage occur? And will the rest of the world eventually be like South Africa? I hear recently that Virginia hit peak coal in 1996. So Virginia must be importing from other states. Will the world run out of coal soon?

So right now there are two reasons why gold investing is good: the current economic downturn and coal shortages in gold producing regions.

Stocks are Down because of OIL

2007-10-15T13:28:00.001-07:00

Today, 2007 October 15, the major stock market averages were down. In particular, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 108.28 to 13984.80; the NASDAQ was down 25.63 to 2780.05, and the S&P was down 13.09 to 1548.71. Why did the stock averages go down? The analysts on CNBC and other places have come up with a number of reasons. The financial stocks all went down, so therefore, they say, they caused the market downturn. We aren't out of the housing crisis yet. They are awaiting the Fed's next move. Earnings of companies are down. Bladada blah blah blah.

No, people. None of these are the reason why the stock market went down. If you will get your head out of all these mathematical models, computer programs, and analysis diagrams, and take a look at some real things, you will see the answer. Gold is real. It is element 79 with symbol Au. The Gold Bugs index (^HUI) was up 5.43 to 418.77, a 1.31% increase. Oil is real. You can never run out of money; you can just print more. But we can and are running out of oil. The AMEX Oil Index (^XOI) was up 15.43 to 1495.47, a 1.04% increase. Why? Because the dollar continues to sink. But more likely because oil continues to go up in price. It went up $2.44 or so today to $86.13, a new high, and only about 14 dollars removed from $100 a barrel.

Why? Oil stocks (meaning supplies) are down. The Energy department had expected them to go up. The International Energy Agency also reported a decline in world supply of oil. OPEC is saying that it will produce 110,000 fewer barrels this year than expected, when it expected a raise. World production of oil reached about 84 billion barrels a day in 2004, nearly a thousand barrels a second. Since then it has been holding steady. Four of the world's largest oil fields, namely Ghawar in Saudi Arabia, Daqing in China, Burgan in Kuwait, and Cantarell in the Gulf of Campeche near Mexico, are starting to decline, some precipitously, as Cantarell, which furthermore got hit by two Category 5 hurricanes this year.

That's the reason why stocks fell. It is also the reason why gold and oil stocks went up, and why the price of oil is up. Our civilization is beginning to run out of cheap oil. To me it looks like prices are going to go up. At $86 a barrel, gasoline prices should be $3.02 in southern Virginia; instead they are around $2.55. There is nowhere to go but up for these prices. Further, especially if prices don't go up much, shortages could develop. And then there will be a big outcry. The outrage at being fooled on the supply of oil will more than exceed that of finding out that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Dean Threaten's Mexico's Oil Output

2007-08-21T11:51:00.000-07:00

None of the media outlets have been telling us that the world's oil supply is threatened by Hurricane Dean. Dean is heading straight towards the Cantarell oil field, which has been failing as of late but still produces 1 million barrels of crude oil a day. Don't be surprised to see oil skyrocket after tomorrow.

Also, the sea ice has been melting at an accelerated pace, verifying that fact that global warming has been occurring.

See my other blog Beyond the Wind for more details.

Sixteen Tons and Polar Bear

2007-08-17T14:44:00.001-07:00

Someone was singing Merle Travis' "Sixteen Tons".

Coal Miner: "You load sixteen tons."
Polar Bear: "No, don't! Don't load sixteen tons."
Coal Miner: "But if I don't load sixteen tons, I won't have anything to eat."
Polar Bear: "If you load sixteen tons, I won't have anything to eat."

Branner Station

2007-08-16T19:29:00.001-07:00

I hear there is a meeting of the Chesterfield County's Board of Supervisors on 2007 August 21 at 7 pm. One of the cases being considered is Branner Station, a development in southern Chesterfield County bordering Branders Bridge road. Of course this is a bad name for the development; it will be confused with Brandermill. The developer, HHHunt, calls for 5000 homes on a tract of 1449 acres, which is about 2.5 square miles. With peak oil coming up and no businesses near the site, I wonder why HHHunt wants to build such a large monstrosity in the county. He says it will take 20 years to develop. Maybe we should call the developer HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHunt.

I read an editorial in the Chester Village Voice which suggests that this development will be built along the lines of something called "Smart Growth". That is, the development will take care of such problems as inadequate roads and schools. The developers plan to construct a road through the development and to improve Branders Bridge road, which was designed when horses were the main means of transportation. They plan to construct a school or to provide for the construction of the school on the grounds of the development. There will be a retail area, a park, and some trails. These are all in accordance with Smart Growth.

Fine. However, Smart Growth is still growth. That is one thing that Chesterfield (and indeed the entire world) does not need now. We already have too many developments here. How are the people in Branner Station going to travel once gasoline becomes really expensive, or even unavailable? How are they going to get food? Do they allow for residences to grow vegetables in suitable plots? How is this planned development going to shorten commutes for these people? Many of the residents of this development will probably go to work at Fort Lee, which is doubling in size due to base closures and cutbacks elsewhere. Fort Lee is a 25 minute drive from the area, and will get longer as population grows and traffic lights proliferate.

I think the county needs to reconsider Branner Station. HHHill has done about a 50% job in coming up with a good development design. But he and his people need to read up on peak oil, zero growth, permaculture, cohousing and other housing alternatives before coming up with a new design that takes these future trends into account.

Drop the Bomb!

2007-07-23T10:42:00.000-07:00

After a six-month hiatus, I have finally found new input on Kenneth Deffeyes' peak oil blog, at http://www.princeton.edu/hubbert/current-events.html. He reiterates what he has said before, with figures to support him in Excel spreadsheets. The peak of conventional oil occurred in 2005 May, and conventional oil production has held at around 73 million barrels a day since then. The peak of Saudi oil has apparently been hit at the same time, at about 9.6 million barrels a day; it now has shrunk slightly to the 8 millions. This is only conventional oil, apparently. Adding in unconventional sources raises the total to 84 million barrels a day, and this has also held steady for the past couple of years, indicating this peak has been reached.

I feel no change in my lifestyle, however, other than a constant carping at my church and other places to cut our carbon emissions. This may be cutting demand slightly. But there are some who say that the demand is the same as in the past few years, despite increases in demand from China, India, and the US, because third world countries like Zimbabwe can't afford it any more and has quit buying it. This plateau will last for a while, but will be followed by a decline, and I am not sure what is going to happen after that. I think that supply and demand will play a big role in holding back the ill effects of peak oil, reducing demand by making human life here in the states more efficient and bringing solar, wind, clean liquid coal (if there is such a thing) and nuclear power into the forefront. But eventually, a great depression may await us as we gradually run out of power to run our society as it is presently constructed, sometime in the twenty teens.

This should be a major issue in the 2008 Presidential campaign. But it is no issue at all. Some of the Democrats bring up global warming, but that is not the same thing. Kenneth Deffeyes notes this and says: "It looks as if we will go through another US presidential election with no candidate calling attention to the world oil problem, or to the North American natural gas problem. My only hope is that a candidate, who learns from private polls that he or she is behind, will drop the oil bomb into the debate."

This matter needs to be discussed. Almost nowhere in any of the debates have I noticed any of the political candidates talk about peak oil. They need to talk about it. So this is my message to the candidates, especially those who are not leading: Drop the Bomb!

Sell?

2007-07-12T19:03:00.001-07:00

Today, 2007 July 12, in his Clusterfck Nation Chronicles, Jim Kunstler said this in his "Daily Grunt":

Go figure. The Dow Jones is up over 100 points at 10:30 a.m. in the face of the following headlines:

U.S. Trade Deficit Widened 2.3% in May to $60 Billion
U.S. Foreclosures Increase 87 Percent as Prices Fall
Al-Qaeda Is More Capable of Attacking West, U.S. Report Says
Crude Oil at $73.48
Euro at $1.3773
More Subprime Woes to Come

Seems as though the bulls ran wild today. The Dow was actually up 283 points today. Yet Jim points out all these ominous events, including record foreclosures, rising oil prices, and Al Qaeda on the jihadpath. Sort of like a victory party on the Titanic.

Is Jim trying to say this is a Sell signal?

Cooling Dance

2007-07-09T05:53:00.000-07:00

On 2007 July 7, many places around the world celebrated Live Earth Day. At my church, we had a combined meeting of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network and Moveon.org that attracted many people from my congregation, featured what people, including Democratic Presidential candidates, would do about global warming, and even featured an actual product: an LED lamp.

But was Live Earth in general a success? Jim Kunstler doesn’t think so. In his Clusterf nation Chronicles for today, "Rain Dance", he says that the event was dominated by all these rock bands strutting out their stuff making loud noises that consume electricity. That is what some of us thought at First Church when the TV turned towards what was happening elsewhere for Live Earth Day. Actually, one might call Live Earth a Cooling Dance.

You cannot do anything about peak oil or curb global warming with prima donnas playing rock music all over the place to mesmerized audiences. What does this rock music have to do with global warming? These stars could eventually allow a dictator to make use of these crowds of "fans" to take absolute power.

And what's Al Gore doing anyway, says Jim Kunstler. Why does he make movies like the prima donnas do and wail about global warming instead of getting somewhere where he can do something about it? Why doesn't he run for President?

Localize Fireworks

2007-07-04T16:56:00.000-07:00

Every year at this time I go out into our development to see fireworks. I run or walk out among the streets hunting for fireworks displays. In past year, I have seen some impressive displays from people of our neighborhood, and I expect to do the same tonight. A problem is that these displays in many cases are illegal. They can also be dangerous and all the authorities are telling us not to do it and instead go to a public display. Indeed they can be dangerous. You need to handle them as if it could go off at any instance a flame is nearby. They cannot be handled by children and require adult supervision. But I still go out and see these displays.

Of course I could go see one of the public fireworks displays in the community, but the joy of seeing these fireworks is diminished by the traffic jams and parking problems that come with these displays.

Indeed that is a major problem of these displays. People every year get into their car or SUV and drive to a public fireworks display, causing parking and traffic problems, when so many people jam into such a small space. They consume huge amounts of gasoline, especially if they get stuck in displays. They go to the parking lots of big box stores such as Wal-Mart to watch a few fireworks ascend about 15 degrees above the horizon from some place far away.

Peak oil tells us there may be a day soon when we will not be able to drive all over the place for the pleasure of seeing pyrotechnic stars blaze in the heavens. What will we do then? All these years I go in the neighborhood to see local fireworks display, I run or walk - a good way to get exercise in too. I urge all of us to try that this year. It's a way of localizing fireworks.

A lot of other things will need relocalizing as well: growing food, getting medicine and health care, buying consumer goods, and celebrating community with the people around you. Until that day happens, at least we can enjoy fireworks and not get into traffic and parking hassles; see them locally.

Americans for Balanced Energy Choices Signs People Up Without their Permission

2007-07-03T07:28:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I received in the mail a letter from the Americans for Balanced Energy Choices (ABEC) (Warning: Music). This letter said that I have just joined the organization. Huh? I don't remember explicitly joining such a group. I have been a member of CCAN (Chesapeake Climate Action Network) and my church's Earth Committee. These organizations seek to combat global warming and other environmental concerns through a variety of methods. I went to a conference in Wilmington, NC on global warming. I have been attending meetings of the Charlottesville Peak Oil group, and have been concerned about peak oil for some time. Did I somehow join up for something that I did not remember, or did my signing something get me to be a member of yet another environmental group that fights pollution through oil, natural gas, and coal production, among other things?

I looked at the letter. It talks about providing affordable energy. Good enough. But you can't tell organizations from their own literature any more. That is not where you get the truth. I go to something independent of ABEC; in particular, Wikipedia. Surprise! I find that it is a political action committee promoting the coal industry. I would have never signed up for something like this. Although I think we should consider coal as an option, I know from my own calculations that the disasters spoken of by the global warming people can happen only because of the use of coal. So given this, do you think I would support a group that promotes coal production? That promotes civilizational suicide?

The only way I would support coal production and other coal activities, such as coal to oil conversion, is if it does not contribute to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and only as a last resort after other actions are taken. This group signed me up without my permission. They evidently seek to sign up people without their knowledge and then say this is a grass-roots effort on the behalf of the coal industry. I beg your pardon, ABEC. This is not grass-roots. This type of lying is more aptly described as Astroturf.

I request, ABEC, that you drop me from your membership rolls, and drop everyone else that you signed up without their permission.

Jim, We Have Someone

2007-06-18T18:39:00.001-07:00

One of the more interesting blogs I have seen on Peak Oil is Clusterfuck Nation by Jim Kunstler. Jim seems more than some of the others to say what he feels is what it's going to be. Some of his predictions have been way off (Dow Jones 4000, instead of the actual 12000), but his general thesis is well taken. People seem to be ignoring the signs of Peak Oil, so maybe someone like him is necessary to get people to listen. One of his points is that such things as Toyota Priuses, ethanol, CAFE standards and the like are merely ways of trying to get us to continue driving like we have been, instead of what he thinks would be better, namely to restructure the way we live and the places we live so we can do with less oil.

In his latest blog ("Both Ways"), he says he would rather have someone who wants us to discourage suburban development instead of pulling the troops home. We have someone, Jim. To me it follows that he would want us to support Dorothy Jaeckle in Chesterfield County, Virginia, who won an upset victory over Jack Wilson, more than Democrats such as Hillary and Obama who want to pull the troops home. At least Dorothy would be a start. She defeated a candidate supported by his boss and by developers all over the place. Her platform, which she documents in a letter (parts of which are here), is that something should be done about unbridled growth and development in Chesterfield County. She put her case convincingly, and won the election easily.

It's a start, but so far she has told us what she is against. What is she for? Hopefully, she will outline a design for the County that will include farmer's markets, design to make the automobile less necessary, and other facets of what is called the "urban village". For we are eventually going to have to adjust to such an environment. The oil may have already hit a peak worldwide, and there will be only less of it as the time goes by.

In the meantime, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and other candidates who yell about pulling troops out of Iraq, about energy dependence, and about bombing Iran should listen to what Dorothy Jaeckle is saying and call for all of us to head in the same direction.

In the meantime, I hope Jim continues his blog, and that his servers stand up better than they did tonight. I could not comment on his blog because of "this page can't be displayed".

Will gasoline hit $4 a gallon in 2007?

2007-04-25T17:29:00.000-07:00

Recently an article by Joe Carroll in Bloomberg said that gasoline prices could hit $4 a gallon this year. This is higher than gasoline has ever been around here. The most I have ever seen was $3.25 a gallon, a few days after Katrina struck, when power outages were preventing local pipelines from receiving fuel. But AAA of Maryland has struck back with an article saying that it is premature or irresponsible to say it will do that. So which is right?

There are many factors influencing the price of oil. Some of the ones Bloomberg mentions are hurricanes, tensions in the Middle East, Nigeria, and other places, supply, and demand from consumers, primarily in the US. Any one of these could cause shortages and cause prices to skyrocket. But suppose everything is OK? For a while, then, gasoline prices will stay in the upper $2s, as things will be mostly OK. There is an economic boom in this country, however, and this will cause demand to heat up. But the major factor, I feel, will be supply. There are some serious problems coming up.

The four biggest oil fields in the world are all declining: Ghawar in Saudi Arabia, Cantarell in Mexico, Burgan in Kuwait, and Da Qing in China. More oil is coming online, but this will be from smaller fields and I am not sure that this increase will counteract the declines in the Big 4. Already Pemex, the Mexican oil company, is showing pressure. It is seeing its profit margins declining, and is fearing for the future. If Mexico should stop sending fuel to the US, it could have a dramatic effect on prices.

So I say there is a possibility of gasoline going to $4, because the world has hit peak oil and world oil production is declining. Sooner or later, the decline will filter down to the gasoline pump.

Calm before the Storm

2006-08-29T14:40:00.000-07:00

Peak Oil? You wouldn't know it. People are talking all over the place about the promise of tar sands, ethanol, and wind power. Gasoline is dropping in price. I had predicted before the summer that oil would hit $95 a barrel and gasoline $3.50 a gallon. Summer is nearly over. The price of oil at its highest was about $78 a barrel and right now it is struggling to hold onto $70; gasoline is tumbling rapidly from a high of $2.95 a gallon to today's $2.56 a gallon. Iran's dictatoriot Ahmadinejad seems all huff and puff like a wolf that can't blow the house down. There's been a war between Israel and Hezbollahia, cohabitant of Lebanon, but that appears to be blowing over. The far prognosis for natural gas is grim, but right now there is a tremendous glut of the stuff. Hurricanes? This has been a dud of a season. Only now are threats coming up, but the latest one, Ernesto, has diminished from a potential Gulf rig and refinery whacker to just another thunderstorm with rain and tornado threats here in Virginia. So where's the peak oil? Where even is global warming?

It's coming. We don't know exactly when, but there will come a time when the world will not be able to increase oil production. Someone at the recent ASPO convention says that will occur 1500 days from 2006 July 26 or so; that's in the year 2010. Others say 2008. When it happens, they say, only "tremendous demand destruction" will cause demand to meet supply. In the past few months, oil production worldwide has stayed steady at 84 million barrels per day, but some of that could be the result of refinery destruction. But it also suggests we may be nearing the peak. We have trouble with the Alaska pipeline, although half of it is back up. They say that Saudi Arabia is experiencing trouble trying to match oil output with its rhetoric.

So this makes us all feel uneasy. What to do now? Move to the city? Grow a vegetable garden in our yard? Buy a Toyota Prius or a bicycle? Move closer to work? Stock up on food? Is this a disaster or something? It will be, but not of the kind that stocking up for disasters will help, because it will be long lasting. My thoughts are that we should reduce our output - take out all that is unneeded for fulfillment in our lives. Cut the lights. Ride the bike. Take the train. Move to the city, or even better yet, to a self-sufficient urban village or cohousing project. We do what we can, and we will just have to see what happens.