Petroleum and the cycle of death and birth

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[Michael]

I thought this might interest folks on this forum:

In 1988, Stan Grof wrote The Adventures of Self Discovery, wherein he mentions a ketamine experience he had earlier in his life.  Here it is:

The atmosphere was dark, heavy, and ominous. It seemed to be toxic and poisonous in a chemical sense, but also dangerous and evil in the metaphysical sense. I realized I was becoming PETROLEUM, filling enormously large cavities in the interior of the earth. I was flooded with fascinating insights combining chemistry, geology, biology, psychology, mythology, economy, and politics.

I understood that petroleum — immense deposits of mineralized fat of biological origin — had escaped the mandatory cycle of death and birth that the world of living matter is subjected to. However, the element of death was not completely avoided, it was only delayed. The destructive plutonic potential of death continues to exist in petroleum in a latent form and waits for its opportunity as a monstrous time-bomb.

While experiencing what I felt was consciousness of petroleum, I saw the death associated with it manifesting as killing based on greed and lust of those who seek the astronomical profits that it offers. I witnessed scenes of political intrigues and economic shenanigans motivated by oil money. It was not difficult to follow the chains of events to a future world war for the dwindling resources of a substance that has become vital for the survival and prosperity of all the industrialized countries.

It became clear to me that it is essential for the future of the planet to reorient the economic life to solar energy and other renewable resources. The linear policy of fossil fuels that plunders the limited existing reserves and turns them into toxic waste and pollution is obviously fundamentally wrong, being totally incompatible with the cosmic order that is cyclical. While the exploitation of fossil fuels was understandable in the historical context of the Industrial Revolution, its continuation once its fatal trajectory was recognized seemed suicidal and criminal.

In a long series of hideous and most unpleasant experiences, I was taken through states of consciousness related to the chemical industry based on petroleum. Using the name of the famous German chemical combinate, I referred to these experiences as the IG Farben consciousness. It was an infinite sequence of states of mind that had the quality of anilin dyes, organic solvents, herbicides, pesticides, and toxic gases.

Beside the experiences related to these various industrial poisons per se, I also identified with the states of consciousness associated with the exposure of different life forms to the petroleum products. I became every Jew who died in the Nazi gas chambers, every sprayed ant and cockroach, every fly caught in the sticky goo of the fly-traps, and every plant dying under the influence of herbicides. And beyond all that lurked the highly possible future of all of life on the planet — death by industrial pollution.

It was an incredible lesson. I emerged from the session with a deep ecological awareness and a clear sense as to which direction the economic and political development has to take should life on the planet survive.

[Michael]

Thanks so much for the lead in your Visionary List thread Jana!  (the videos below) Amazing.  But this sure gets confusing.  Following links from Steven's post in Media Map on this subject, compared to David Blume's message here I mean.

I don't know nearly enough about this subject to be able to have a strong opinion one way or the other, so I just stand in wonder at the incredible discrepancy of assertions between the energy guys.  And what's so amusing about this, is just that the fate of the world seems to hang in the balance of who's right and who's wrong here.

For some reason, I keep flashing on the movie Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.  If you want a taste of the hideous worldview-twisting bullshit the energy-brokers deal out, check out that movie...So I ask myself, how much of that bullshit is involved in the ethanol equation?  I can see firsthand the corruption involved in the LNG equation.  In fact my new locale is currently under assault from just such a threat.

http://www.dogwoodinitiative.org/newsstories/rafe-on-lng
http://www.cope378.ca/texada-lng-powell-river

I couldn't help but think of this when David Blume here mentioned the explosive danger involved with these facilities, which are not acceptable in the US for that very reason.  And the one they're planning on putting in here is fucking huge!  And this is completely out of the community's hands.  We have absolutely no say or power in the matter.  Amazing!

Anyway, how I hope this guy is right.  He seems to answer most or all of the objections given in the arguments of the naysayers, -that I've seen so far...via a systems approach, apparently transcending the linear assumptions of the old-school:

[Jana]

Look if the frecking Americans will not allow Arab nations to generate nuclear power in preparation for eventual decline in oil, then I suggest that alternative energy scientists, engineers and thinkers should get together with the Arabs to "use their existing oil funds" to generate alternative green earth friendly technologies. It is criminal to be blowing up other countries nuc.stations so something has to be done immediately to work around this issue.
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/11/02/4985/

Ethanol is not a viable alternative for the States, Mexico is already complaining that the US is starving them of corn and pushing their corn prices up. Water and disruptive weather are an issue, and also...what one farmer said: "What we are going to put the last 6" of US topsoil into our engines!" Farming is already at a breaking point, but soon their will be a lot of vagabond farm hands available for a more hands-on type of permaculture. They should be moving a lot of the urban buildings out into the country to provide housing for the collapse of urban economies. Ethanol works great in tropical places like Cuba and Brazil. Personally I think in the interum between the decline of oil and the development of ultra high tech energy systems we could run civlization on our waste alone...same as we would do on a interstellar space vehicle.

NEW ENERGY ALTERNATIVES
http://globalpublicmedia.com/james_howard_kunstler_remarks_to_the_commonwealth_club_of_california  —James Howard Kunstler, exceptional audio!!!!

Some leads on New Energy Systems…
www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdnV1umiJpo&NR=1  —Open Sourcing Free Energy Systems, Sterling Allan, pureenergysystems.com  newenergynews.com

HHO GAS
Fuel from Water, Denny Klein
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F719KNddFN8&mode=related&search=
www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6YYUOx6fBU
Oxyhydrogen - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
HHO gas or Klein gas is an oxyhydrogen mixture made by water electrolysis ... The claimed difference between HHO and Brown's gas is unverified, untested, ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxyhydrogen_flame

MAGNEGAS~from sewage to fuel tank, new type of matter produced magnetically from an electric arc, with carbon electrodes. Similar uses to natural gas.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wy0WXkj1Drw 
www.magnegas.com/ —Ruggero M. Santilli: Magnegas / Aquafuel ~ US Patents & articles "Recycling Liquid Wastes and Crude Oil into MagneGas and MagneHydrogen": http://magnegas.com/technology/part1.htm Santilli's Scientific Papers: www.rexresearch.com/santilli/santilli.htm


FUSION GOING AHEAD IN UK
Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxford UK, Nuclear fusion project http://technology.newscientist.com/channel/tech/dn12616-nuclear-fusion-project-gets-the-green-light.html  —UK, hopes to develop commercial nuclear fusion using lasers to crush together isotopes of hydrogen - deuterium and tritium - to create helium. This releases neutrons and huge amounts of energy.

WATER AS FUEL SOURCE WITH RADIO WAVES
Kanzius contact thru; Sterling D. Allan  sterlingda@pureenergysystems.com
John Kanzius new Radio-frequencies generator Could Cure Cancer. Radio-frequencies causes saltwater burning at high temperature
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tj5twYOxJaY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l13mWDcrqUw

POO POWER~METHANE —The bioaste from cities and farming should be going into digestors for production of methane and fertilizer.
http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/news/2005/07/68127
http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_library/MethaneDigesters/MD3.html
http://www.epa.gov/methane/sources.html
www.spirulinasource.com/earthfoodch8a.html
www.spirulinasource.com/earthfoodch9a.html  —MIcroalgae’s role in restoring earth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdaR33FqnfU  —Methane release from oceans

Clash of the Geniuses Inventing the Impossible DVD movie $14.99http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?id=1389622&skuId=14036125&type=product&ref=06&loc=01&ci_src=17588969&ci_sku=14036125
Clash of the Geniuses: Inventing the Impossible (DVD)
David Childress, Christopher Dunn

www.seaspower.com/  Space Energy Access Systems, Inc. (SEAS) identifies and tests new technologies that claim to be "over unity." A Zero Point Energy power source with aerospace applications could be in sight.

Daniel Dingel Former NASA scientist's invention, car that runs on ...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVhXrvCCILw

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9125003792513982191&q=dale+pond&total=35&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0  Dale Pond,  The basic principles of SVP and Keely's work; Sympathetic Vibratory Physics 3hrs total.

 Free Energy+Levitation.Tesla Schauberger Reich Russell Rife Keely
  ... Nikola Tesla, Wilhelm Reich, Walter Russell, Royal Raymond Rife, John Worrell ...
 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4475657609290019878


 Free Energy another Inconvenient Truth... Video from Google video. A Segment from a Documentary shot in the early 90's about Global Conspiracies.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWOxnXKB8VQ

 www.energyfromthevacuum.com  DVD

www.cheniere.org/sales/buy-ob.htm  —Oblivion: America at the Brink by Tom Bearden; discusses the uses and abuses of scalar electromagnetics.

http://www.prahlad.org/pub/bearden/scalar_wars.htm
http://www.infinite-energy.com/

TESLA AND HENRY MORAY’S ZEROPOINT GENERATORS
In Mark DeMucha’s movie The Tesla Conspiracy he said that in 1931 Tesla produced an electric motor for a Pierce-Arrow car made with vacuum tubes which must have run off zero point…hear Pt.5 of Coast to Coast with Nooney. Also in The Excalibur Briefing by Tom Bearden he says that Dr T. Henry Moray (UT) also produced a zeropoint electric device with valves that cost $500 each to make around the early 1900s. Henry’s son John Moray still carries on his father work, and may live in Salt lake City UT.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzxvhA72vGI&mode=related&search=Tesla%20free%20energy%20conspiracy%20Mark%20DeMucha
1-11 Parts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJBzwN_WKRg&mode=related&search=  —The Tesla Conspiracy: Mark DeMucha Pt.5***
Occult Ether Physics: Tesla's Hidden Space Propulsion System and the Conspiracy to Conceal It (2nd Revised Edition)  by William Lyne (Paperback - Nov 1998
Tesla: Man Out of Time by Margaret Cheney
Tesla: The Modern Sorcerer by Daniel Stewart  www.teslabook.com/

FUTURE TECH
John Hutchison thinks that natural mineral crystals actually are transducers of zeropoint energy, transducing energy from the vacuum photon flux.  (Google video)
Zero Point, Casmir Force, Monoatomic Solar Collectors, Water Implosion (Schauberger/Keely), Fusion, On Demand Water-Fuel-Cell Ignition (Stan Meyers), Joe Cell, Browns Cell,
Sacred Living Geometry -Enlightened Environmental Theories of Viktor Schauberger—http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5643559434275921302

HUDSON RHODIUM FUEL CELL
David Hudson originally built his plant in order to supply ORMUS rhodium as a catalyst for use in fuel cells. He claimed that the ORMUS rhodium catalyst worked as well as metallic rhodium in these fuel cells. One gentleman who worked for Hudson also told me that they were running one of these fuel cells on alcohol and switched to water to shut it down but it did not quit working when it was running on pure water. ORMUS rhodium looks to be way more abundant and inexpensive than metallic rhodium. Fuel cells contribute way less greenhouse gasses than other energy generating systems.
http://www.subtleenergies.com/ormus/tw/globalwarming.htm


www.myfacilitate.net/jana/Solaris.htm  —My futuristic vision of solar cities run with monoatomic and zeropoint technology.

[Michael]

Clash of the Geniuses Inventing the Impossible DVD movie $14.99http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?id=1389622&skuId=14036125&type=product&ref=06&loc=01&ci_src=17588969&ci_sku=14036125
Clash of the Geniuses: Inventing the Impossible (DVD)
David Childress, Christopher Dunn



Enron vision and values, setting the standards:

[Michael]

Arithmetic, Population and Energy

[jimtzu]

nice series of vids, he's a good teacher, i can almost undestand it 

here's something a little more current:

Preparing for Life After Oil

By Michael T. Klare

11/18/07 "The Nation" --- - This past May, in an unheralded and almost unnoticed move, the Energy Department signaled a fundamental, near epochal shift in US and indeed world history: we are nearing the end of the Petroleum Age and have entered the Age of Insufficiency. The department stopped talking about "oil" in its projections of future petroleum availability and began speaking of "liquids." The global output of "liquids," the department indicated, would rise from 84 million barrels of oil equivalent (mboe) per day in 2005 to a projected 117.7 mboe in 2030 -- barely enough to satisfy anticipated world demand of 117.6 mboe. Aside from suggesting the degree to which oil companies have ceased being mere suppliers of petroleum and are now purveyors of a wide variety of liquid products -- including synthetic fuels derived from natural gas, corn, coal and other substances -- this change hints at something more fundamental: we have entered a new era of intensified energy competition and growing reliance on the use of force to protect overseas sources of petroleum.
To appreciate the nature of the change, it is useful to probe a bit deeper into the Energy Department's curious terminology. "Liquids," the department explains in its International Energy Outlook for 2007, encompasses "conventional" petroleum as well as "unconventional" liquids -- notably tar sands (bitumen), oil shale, biofuels, coal-to-liquids and gas-to-liquids. Once a relatively insignificant component of the energy business, these fuels have come to assume much greater importance as the output of conventional petroleum has faltered. Indeed, the Energy Department projects that unconventional liquids production will jump from a mere 2.4 mboe per day in 2005 to 10.5 in 2030, a fourfold increase. But the real story is not the impressive growth in unconventional fuels but the stagnation in conventional oil output. Looked at from this perspective, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the switch from "oil" to "liquids" in the department's terminology is a not so subtle attempt to disguise the fact that worldwide oil production is at or near its peak capacity and that we can soon expect a downturn in the global availability of conventional petroleum.

Petroleum is, of course, a finite substance, and geologists have long warned of its ultimate disappearance. The extraction of oil, like that of other nonrenewable resources, will follow a parabolic curve over time. Production rises quickly at first and then gradually slows until approximately half the original supply has been exhausted; at that point, a peak in sustainable output is attained and production begins an irreversible decline until it becomes too expensive to lift what little remains. Most oil geologists believe we have already reached the midway point in the depletion of the world's original petroleum inheritance and so are nearing a peak in global output; the only real debate is over how close we have come to that point, with some experts claiming we are at the peak now and others saying it is still a few years or maybe a decade away.

Until very recently, Energy Department analysts were firmly in the camp of those wild-eyed optimists who claimed that peak oil was so far in the future that we didn't really need to give it much thought. Putting aside the science of the matter, the promulgation of such a rose-colored view obviated any need to advocate improvements in automobile fuel efficiency or to accelerate progress on the development of alternative fuels. Given White House priorities, it is hardly surprising that this view prevailed in Washington.

In just the past six months, however, the signs of an imminent peak in conventional oil production have become impossible even for conservative industry analysts to ignore. These have come from the take-no-prisoners world of oil pricing and deal-making, on the one hand, and the analysis of international energy experts, on the other.

Most dramatic, perhaps, has been the spectacular rise in oil prices. The price of light, sweet crude crossed the longstanding psychological barrier of $80 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange for the first time in September, and has since risen to as high as $90. Many reasons have been cited for the rise in crude prices, including unrest in Nigeria's oil-producing Delta region, pipeline sabotage in Mexico, increased hurricane activity in the Gulf of Mexico and fears of Turkish attacks on Kurdish guerrilla sanctuaries in Iraq. But the underlying reality is that most oil-producing countries are pumping at maximum capacity and finding it increasingly difficult to boost production in the face of rising international demand.

Even a decision by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to boost production by 500,000 barrels per day failed to halt the upward momentum in prices. Concerned that an excessive rise in oil costs would trigger a worldwide recession and lower demand for their products, the OPEC countries agreed to increase their combined output at a meeting in Vienna on September 11. "We think that the market is a little bit high," explained Kuwait's acting oil minister, Mohammad al-Olaim. But the move did little to slow the rise in prices. Clearly, OPEC would have to undertake a much larger production increase to alter the market environment, and it is not at all clear that its members possess the capacity to do that -- now or in the future.

A warning sign of another sort was provided by Kazakhstan's August decision to suspend development of the giant Kashagan oil region in its sector of the Caspian Sea, first initiated by a consortium of Western firms in the late '90s. Kashagan was said to be the most promising oil project since the discovery of oil in Alaska's Prudhoe Bay in the late '60s. But the enterprise has encountered enormous technical problems and has yet to produce a barrel of oil. Frustrated by a failure to see any economic benefits from the project, the Kazakh government has cited environmental risks and cost overruns to justify suspending operations and demanding a greater say in the project.

Like the dramatic rise in oil prices, the Kashagan episode is an indication of the oil industry's growing difficulties in its efforts to boost production in the face of rising demand. "All the oil companies are struggling to grow production," Peter Hitchens of Teather & Greenwood brokerage told the Wall Street Journal in July. "It's becoming more and more difficult to bring projects in on time and on budget."

That this industry debilitation is not a temporary problem but symptomatic of a long-term trend was confirmed in two important studies published this past summer by conservative industry organizations.

The first of these was released July 9 by the International Energy Agency (IEA), an affiliate of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the club of major industrial powers. Titled Medium-Term Oil Market Report, it is a blunt assessment of the global supply-and-demand equation over the 2007-12 period. The news is not good.

Predicting that world economic activity will grow by an average of 4.5 percent per year during this period -- much of it driven by unbridled growth in China, India and the Middle East -- the report concludes that global oil demand will rise by 2.2 percent per year, pushing world oil consumption from approximately 86 million barrels per day in 2007 to 96 million in 2012. With luck and massive new investment, the oil industry will be able to increase output sufficiently to satisfy the higher level of demand anticipated for 2012 -- barely. Beyond that, however, there appears little likelihood that the industry will be able to sustain any increase in demand. "Oil looks extremely tight in five years' time," the agency declared.

Underlying the report's general conclusion are a number of specific concerns. Most notably, it points to a worrisome decline in the yield of older fields in non-OPEC countries and a corresponding need for increased output from the OPEC countries, most of which are located in conflict-prone areas of the Middle East and Africa. The numbers involved are staggering. At first blush, it would seem that the need for an extra 10 million barrels per day between now and 2012 would translate into an added 2 million barrels per day in each of the next five years -- a conceivably attainable goal. But that doesn't take into account the decline of older fields. According to the report, the world actually needs an extra 5 million: 3 million to make up for the decline in older fields plus the 2 million in added requirements. This is a daunting and possibly insurmountable challenge, especially when one considers that almost all of the additional petroleum will have to come from Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Angola, Libya, Nigeria, Sudan, Kazakhstan and Venezuela -- countries that do not inspire the sort of investor confidence that will be needed to pour hundreds of billions of dollars into new drilling rigs, pipelines and other essential infrastructure.

Similar causes for anxiety can be found in the second major study released last summer, Facing the Hard Truths About Energy, prepared by the National Petroleum Council, a major industry organization. Because it supposedly provided a "balanced" view of the nation's energy dilemma, the NPC report was widely praised on Capitol Hill and in the media; adding to its luster was the identity of its chief author, former ExxonMobil CEO Lee Raymond.

Like the IEA report, the NPC study starts with the claim that, with the right mix of policies and higher investment, the industry is capable of satisfying US and international oil and natural gas demand. "Fortunately, the world is not running out of energy resources," the report bravely asserts. But obstacles to the development and delivery of these resources abound, so prudent policies and practices are urgently required. Although "there is no single, easy solution to the multiple challenges we face," the authors conclude, they are "confident that the prompt adoption of these strategies" will allow the United States to satisfy its long-term energy needs.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18742.htm

[Michael]

Great article, thanks Jim!

[Michael]

Peak Money

November 12, 2007
Source

Roadtrip

      The multi-dimensional meltdown underway in the finance sector illustrates perfectly how the complex systems we depend on start to wobble and fail as soon as peak oil establishes itself as a fact in the public imagination. Mainly what it shows is that we don't have to run out of oil -- or even come close to that -- before the trouble starts.  Just going over the peak and heading down the slippery slope of depletion is enough.  Peak oil, it turns out, is also peak money.  Or should we say, peak "money?"

      First of all, what is finance exactly?  I'd bet that a lot of people these days don't know, including many working in the financial "industry," as it has taken to calling itself.  Finance, until very recently, was the means by which investment was raised for useful economic activities and productive ventures -- in other words, the deployment of capital, which is to say accumulated wealth. Historically, this accumulated wealth was pretty meager.  There wasn't a whole lot to deploy and the deployment was controlled by a tiny handful of people statistically greater only than the number of Martians in the general population. They operated as families or clans, and everybody knew who they were: the Medici, the Rothschilds. Even the Roman Empire was a kind of financial Flintstones operation compared to what we see on CNBC these days. Not having the printing press, the Romans had to inflate their currency the old-fashioned way, by adding base metals to their gold coins.

      Finance in the 200-odd-year-long industrial era evolved step-by-step with the steady incremental rise of available cheap energy.  More to the point, the instruments associated with finance evolved in complexity with that rise in energy.  It was only about two-hundred years ago, in fact, that circulating banknotes or paper currencies evolved out of much cruder certificates that were little more than IOUs.  Once printed paper banknotes became established, and institutions created to regulate them, the invention of more abstract certificates became possible and we began to get things like stocks and bonds, traded publicly in bourses or exchanges, which represented amounts of money invested or loaned, but were not themselves "money."
 
      Much of this innovation occurred during the rise of the coal-powered economy of the 19th century. It accelerated with the oil-and-gas economy of the 20th century, up into the present time.  So, for about 150 years -- or roughly since the end of the American Civil War -- we've had a certain kind of regularized finance that enjoyed continual refinement.  Even in the face of cyclical traumas, like the Great Depression, currencies, stocks, and bonds retained their legitimacy if not always their face value.

      Russia was a bizarre exception.  Crawling out of the mud of medievalism relatively late in the game, Russia pretended to abjure capital while still faced with the need to deploy it in industry.  They solved this paradox conditionally by disqualifying the Russian public from participation in any part of the industrial economy except the hard work, and pretended to pay them in promises for "a brighter future," which never arrived as long as the Soviets remained in charge. (The Russian people repaid the system by only pretending to work.)

      In any case, finance for the purpose of deploying capital has prevailed as reality among people who use the implements of the dinner table, but something weird has happened to it in recent years.  It has entered a stage of grotesque, hypertrophic metastasis that now threatens the life of the industrial organism it evolved to serve.  Its current state can be understood in direct relation to the run-up to peak oil (peak fossil fuel energy, really, since coal and gas figure into it, too).  The oil age, we will soon discover, was an anomaly. Many of the things that seemed "normal" under its regime will turn out to have been rather special. And as the beginning of the end of the oil age becomes manifest, these special things are starting to self-destruct pretty spectacularly.

      For one thing, finance in the past twenty years has evolved from being an organ serving a larger organism to taking over the organism, becoming a kind of blind, raging dominating parasite on its former host.  Or to put it less hyperbolically, it has become an end in itself. That is what they mean when they say that the financial sector has been "driving" the economy.  A feature of this ghastly process has been the evolution of financial instruments into ever more abstract entities removed from reality-based productive activities.  Stocks and bonds were understood to represent direct investment in enterprise.  Sometimes the enterprise was a failure, and sometimes the people running it were swindlers, but no one doubted that common stock represented the hope for profit in a particular venture like making steel or selling laxative chemicals.  The new "creatively-innovated" financial "derivatives" of recent years are now so divorced from any real activities or product that often the people trafficking in them don't understand what they're supposed to represent.  I'd bet that more than half the people in the New York Stock exchange any given day could not explain  the meaning of a credit default swap if a Taliban were holding their oldest child over a window ledge across Wall Street.

      The innovation of mutant financial "products" is a symptom of the "crack-up boom" that characterizes society's response to peak oil.  The main implication of peak oil for an industrial economy is that the 200-odd-year-long expectation for continued regular growth in combined energy-activity-and-productivity at roughly 3 to 7 percent a year under "normal" conditions -- that expectation is now toast.  Under the new regime of peak oil and its aftermath, regular energy depletion, society can expect no further industrial growth but only contraction, and all the certificates, instruments, and operations associated with the expectation for further industrial growth lose their legitimacy.  Seen in this light, one can then understand the temporary value of these mutant financial derivatives. They allowed participants to conceal the fact that these "investments" were not directed at productive enterprise.  They also provided a cohort of sharpies with "vehicles" for converting the leftovers of the industrial economy into assets for themselves -- a form of looting, really.  Hence, the employees of Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, and Merrill Lynch gave themselves $50-million Christmas bonuses for trafficking in these inscrutable non-productive financial gimmicks, and were able to acquire fifty-room Easthampton houses, Gulfstream jets, and impressionist paintings.

      Of course, the aftermath might not be so pretty for these guys, since the next thing they may acquire could be long prison sentences.  If they flee prosecution in their Gulfstream jets, they will not be able to take their Hamptons estates aboard with them. Those who remain may live to see mobs with flaming torches outside their windows, as in the "Frankenstein" movies of their suburban childhoods.  But this has yet to play out.

      For the moment it appears that we have entered the climax of the crack-up. The slick and inscrutable derivative vehicles infesting the ledgers of the investment banks, are now being systematically revealed as frauds of one kind or another, and, self-evidently lacking in worth.  The process now underway is gruesome.  The sheer dollar losses involved are almost as incomprehensible as the phony operations and instruments that they are derived from -- twelve billion here, nine billion there.  As the late Senator Everett Dirkson once quipped, "sooner or later you're talking about real money...."  Or are we?  Is it money or "money."   And if it's "money," what will become of it?  And of us? How will it allow us to live?

[Michael]

Ignoring the Obvious

November 5, 2007,

One of the biggest laughs of the season came out of a New York Times business section story last Tuesday by reporter Michael Grynbaum, who wrote, "Oil is on a steady march toward toppling the inflation-adjusted high of $101.70 it set in April 1980, analysts said, though many are at a loss as to what keeps driving the price." (Italics mine.) Actually, lots of people know what is driving up the price -- just not anybody who works at that once-august and now-clueless newspaper. It can be stated simply -- the demand line has crossed the supply line -- though that simple fact has many curious ramifications.

Among the most subtle is a theory out of Doug Noland's latest Credit Bubble Bulletin (published every Friday).

    "There are literally trillions of dollars of liquidity sloshing around the world keen to hold “things” of value. Liquidity sources include the massive central bank reserve holdings as well as funds at the disposal of the sovereign wealth funds. Importantly, the more apparent becomes U.S. financial fragility, the keener they are to stockpile real 'things'. . . . Indeed, it should be noted that this is the Federal Reserve’s first attempt at reflation where U.S. securities are not the speculators’ or foreign central banks’ asset class of choice . . . . Not only is the pool of potential global buying power unparalleled in scope. It is fervidly attracted to tangible assets -- as opposed to U.S. securities -- and is highly speculative in character. At the same time, an unwieldy global boom is stoking unprecedented demand in China, India, Asia generally, and the other “emerging” markets including Russia and Brazil. Throw in various weather related issues and energy production constraints and the prospect for some very serious bottlenecks and shortages has developed."

In short, foreigners stuck holding dollars that are hemorrhaging value would rather spend them on something other than dollar-denominated financial paper, and nothing is more crucial to the maintenance of industrial economies than oil. Noland's theory comes on the heels of reported oil and gasoline shortages in China, bad enough to have caused some civil unrest -- and bad enough for China's leadership to want to spend some of its vast US dollar reserves bidding up oil prices in the open markets to quell that unrest.

This is nothing more complicated than hoarding behavior on a global scale, a mounting crisis of frightened self-interest that has already been well-described by investment banker Matthew Simmons. Simmons was only one of many analysts who spoke at the mid-October Houston conference put on by ASPO-USA (the Association for Study of Peak Oil) -- to which The New York Times failed to send a reporter. Simmons has also said that the American public (and its leaders) will probably not "get" the fundamental problem with oil until rising prices are joined by spot shortages -- i.e. gas station lines, which will represent hoarding behavior on the basis of individual motorists.

Behind the hoarding dynamics are several clear circumstances.

One biggie is the growing export crisis, described by geologist Jeffrey Brown. Countries like Saudi Arabia and Mexico that sell oil to importing nations like The USA and Japan are using more of their own oil and producing less. Mexico's trajectory is so steep (due to the severe depletion of its giant Cantarell oil field) that it could easily go from being America's Number 3 source of imports to zero in less than five years. The anticipated yearly growth in worldwide oil demand next year will equal 80 percent of the USA's entire oil production.

The export crisis is only an additional layer on top of the general peak oil situation, but it illustrates the way that complex systems we depend on -- and oil markets are one -- are liable to wobble and fail just as the world comes off the all-time oil production peak for good. Finance is another complex system and it, too, is entering a stage of robust instability. Food production is yet another, with a grain scarcity that has driven wheat prices to all-time highs. The roster of complex systems entering phase change is long and gruesome.

Another big element behind rising oil prices is oil nationalism. The old "major" oil companies -- Exxon-Mobil, Shell, BP, Chevron, et cet -- now only account for about five percent of world oil production. The other 95 percent comes from nationalized oil industries like Saudi Aramco, Mexico's Pemex, Petroleos de Venezuela, and Brazil's Petrobras. Russia's Lukoil and Rosneft are effectively state-controlled. Not only is worldwide oil in depletion (past peak) generally, but most of the remaining oil is controlled by entities that are inclined to both withhold (hoard) some remaining oil for their own future use and to direct whatever oil they do sell into places other than open auctions on the futures markets. Selling oil to favored customers will be an extremely potent instrument of geopolitics in the decade ahead, and is only one aspect of a desperate global resource contest that could turn ugly and violent. For the moment, though, its meaning for the US is that the two-thirds of our daily oil supply composed of imports is in jeopardy.

Another big element of the oil price story is the condition of the equipment used all over the world for getting it out of the ground, moving it around the globe, and refining it into useful byproducts like gasoline and aviation fuel. The world is woefully short of drilling rigs, and the cost of steel is way up. The demand for new equipment is out-of-sight. The existing worldwide inventory of equipment can be fairly described as decrepit. As Simmons points out, there is a frightening gap between the need for investment in new rigs, tankers, and refineries and the money available to just keep production at current levels. The outlook is grim. In fact, the worldwide lack of will to invest in oil industry equipment is itself a symptom of the crack-up of global finance as a complex system under duress. On top of the equipment problem is a human resource problem: the world us not producing enough oil technicians and engineers to keep up with production, let alone increase it, and every year another wave of senior specialists retires out of the system.

Beyond these parts of the oil price story are even more sub-plots, like the political strife in Nigeria that effectively holds its oil industry hostage, not to mention the fragile state-of-affairs throughout the Middle East, and dare we leave out the insane habits of America's Happy Motoring utopia.

There is really no excuse for The New York Times and the rest of the mainstream news media to not understand what is going on out there. The pervasive cluelessness is a symptom of another complex system out of whack -- the system that informs us what's going on. Meanwhile, the danger mounts. The heating season is underway and the furnaces are clanking. Many Americans will have to start choosing whether to pay their mortgage, fill the tank of the Chevy Suburban, buy that brick of Velveeta, or pay the heating oil guy. It looks like China will be spending more of its accumulated dollars bidding up the price of oil (or making favorable contracts with foreign suppliers) instead of buying Freddie Mac bonds. The USA could not find itself in a less favorable position among all these forces roiling the scene. It certainly can't afford to continue its pathetic pose of cluelessness.

[Michael]

 
Panglossian Disorders and Their Subtypes:

Panglossian Disorder: “The neurotic tendency toward extreme optimism in the face of likely cultural and planetary collapse.”

Temporal Subtypes:
Scarlet O’Hara-ism- “I’ll just have to think about that tomorrow.” A strategy of denial that allows the person to temporally compartmentalize the feared event(s).
Futurism: “Sure, that will happen, but it will occur after all of us are long dead.” A belief that something that might happen in the distant future is no concern in the present.
Y2K features : “They said everything would collapse with 2000, and it didn’t.” A belief that any prior concern about societal problems that didn’t occur demonstrates the impossibility of any others happening in the future.

Angry Subtypes:
Rhett-Butlerist Features - “Peak Oil? Planetary Collapse? Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” Aggressive denial of information not in keeping with one’s world view.
Kill the Messenger Redirection : “Why are you telling me this? What kind of sicko focuses on these kinds of facts? You need help!” The belief that those who bring bad news are doing it for malevolent reasons.

Narcissistic Subtypes:
Rigid Cheney-ism: “The American Way of Life is non-negotiable.” The belief that any undesirable change can be avoided by a sheer act of will.
Survivalistic features : “Hey, if the rest of the world is doomed, I don’t worry about it, because I’ve got mine.” A belief that personal preparation is adequate.

Religious Subtypes:
Religiousity : “God/The Planet/Mother Nature loves humans. He/She/It would never permit massive die-off.” Or “If that happens, I just put my faith in my Savior.”
Neoliberal Econo-manic Tendencies : “The market will sort it out.” A belief that market forces control all--- including geological realities.
Nascarian Features : “People love their automobiles. A solution will have to be found to keep us driving.”

Subtypes with Denial or Minimization as the Central Feature:
Pure Denial: “That can’t be right. It’s just impossible.”
Minimalization as a primary defense : “There may be some shortages, but I doubt it will be as bad as you say.”

Subtypes with Histrionic, Helplessness, Acquiescence or Submissive Features:
Submissive Features : You're probably right. [Shrug]" Too hard/scary to think about... A response that acknowledges the reality of the threat, but is emotionally frozen or unwilling to devote emotional time and energy to the matter.
Histrionic Features : “I just don’t know anything about that. Oh, Golly, I hope you’re wrong. That’s all I can say. Oh Golly, I just can’t think about it.”

Subtypes with Delusional or Magical Thinking:
Meglomatic Features :“This simply won’t happen to me.” A belief in one’s specialness, which will save them from the consequences affecting those around them.
Paternalistic Features : "The government/corporations will sort it out." A belief in the infallibility of organizational structures to resolve problems they aren’t willing to even acknowledge.
Doubting Thomas Features : “Peak Oil is a scam by the Oil Companies to raise prices!” Minimizing the possibility of the crisis by the belief that some one or some group has ultimate control over its happening.
Pure Cornucopian Features : “The more we need, the more they’ll be.” A belief that continued progress and provision of material items for mankind can be met by advances in technology.
The Flinestonian : “The stone-age didn’t end because they ran out of stones.” A belief that modern innovation is eternal.
Frank Zappa-ism : “As soon as things get really bad, they’ll come up with something.” A belief that necessity is the mother of invention.
Magical Thinking : “Don’t worry, we can build a car that can run on air!” Proposes solutions that are clearly outside the realm of physics.
McGiveristic Features - A belief that massive planetary problems can be solved with ordinary/common items found readily at hand. Eg.: “Pig dung will be the next fossil fuel.” Or “Coke Cans can be turned into solar panels.”

[Michael]

So yesterday I received the book plus DVD that I ordered from David Blume, Alcohol Can Be a Gas!.  I am amazed and gratified by this thing.  It is truly an opus and a life's work very well done.  The book has the heft of an SES, and is by far the most comprehensive volume on the history, technology, and sociology of renewable fuels.  It has just been published, and as far as I can tell, not reviewed yet.  The book, the author, and the whole business of this area of alternative fuels has a kind of weird background, full of disgusting powerplays, and backroom deals.  My impression is that the energy game is the most corrupt area of corporate power.

I completely recommend this book, and make the prediction that this work will emerge as one of the most important and controversial subjects in the coming days.  And I find it very strange how much prejudice and mis-info there is on this subject among experts and savvy "alternative" folks like us.

My sense is that there is a very real revolution in the works, but it's hard to characterize the exact nature of such a revolution(s).  I'm definately throwing my lot in with the likes of William McDonough and David Blume, who I find have much in common...

Here's a 1 1/2 hour basic spiel by David Blume:




Here is a recent Amazon review that I agree with:

This book gives me hope that not only can we survive the coming troubles (Peak Oil, climate change, pollution, corporate globalism), we can actually make the Earth into a really nice place to live. There is so much good plain common sense in this book, mixed with visionary genius, plus very detailed instructions, for breaking free of the need for gasoline. It is a blueprint for taking control of our energy future. It describes how combining sustainable agriculture and alcohol fuel production can solve most of the Earth's most pressing problems in elegant, simple ways, starting with you and me and our family and neighbors. And the author is no Pollyanna - he looks all the problems square in the face and shows what we can do. He answers all the myths about ethanol (which are fueled by oil companies), and, as far as I'm concerned, exposes and explodes them. The book has over 400 footnotes and is the most credible thing I've seen in ages.

Here is the 2 1/2 hour audio from the DVD, which is just an expansion on the above video.

[Jana]

Thanks Michael.

 I have to figure this out.
The U.S. is by far the largest consumer of oil, buying almost a quarter of the total supply. But as China and India emerge as world economic players, they are demanding significantly more oil for autos and industry. In fact, China has become the No. 2 world consumer of oil. And with a population almost four times ours (and yet, only slightly larger than India's), there's increasingly more demand for oil and natural resources.
http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/invest/extra/P140049.asp

The United States public debt, commonly called the national debt, gross federal debt or U.S. government debt, is the amount of money owed by the United States federal government to creditors who hold U.S. Debt Instruments. As of October 17, 2007, the total U.S. federal public debt held by the public was $5.04 trillion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt

US oilmen are fighting a costly war ($1.3 Trillion) for oil using tax payers money to go into debt with China, who is even more intent on Middle East Oil to fuel their growing economy, meanwhile US taxpayers have to try and ekk out a living in a broken economy to foot the bill for the war and the China-debt. The oilmen try to startup WW3 with Iran putting the country in greater debt, risking retaliation from Russia and China. China could call in the debt at anytime if the US gets out of hand. Meanwhile Russia is likely to give Iran the nucs it needs to protect itself. The US bombs Syria just for fun to keep up tension in the area. The oil is running out anyways, now there is no R&D money for developing post-oil tech, and the oilmen have killed off all the new-tech scientists and corrupted the educational system. The debt keeps building and the future goes down the toilet as the oilmen have their last fling. Without a new-energy economy there is no way that the US taxpayers can pay off the debt, thus they will have to sell off their land, and the US will become another provence of China.

2006 Production www.gravmag.com/oil.html
Saudi Arabia 267 billion bbl
Iran 132
Kuwait 104
Iraq 115
Canada 179 (includes tar sands)
USA 21

[Daniel]

Thank you for this intelligent and informative thread. What I would like to add here is a letter a friend of mine received from Congressman Jay Inslee in Seattle, WA (represents District 1, the islands across Seattle) about the "New Apollo Energy Project"





From your previous correspondence with me, you might be interested in an update on the New Apollo Energy Project, which I have been championing in Congress.

The New Apollo Energy Project, as you know, specifically addresses the shortcomings in our current energy policy, where 94 percent of taxpayer dollars allocated through the recent energy bill goes to oil and gas industries.  New Apollo advances a vision for this country’s energy future that relies on American technological prowess and can-do spirit, engaging an investment in clean energy that will create millions of domestic jobs – jobs that we are now losing to Japan, Germany and Denmark because the White House has avoided taking a stand on renewable energy policy. Washington State, with its hi-tech infrastructure and historic creativity, is poised to benefit from a clean energy investment. New Apollo envisions an energy policy where America leads the world in clean energy jobs and where an American President will not have to walk hand in hand with the Saudi royal family to lower our energy prices. New Apollo does this at no cost to the taxpayer, as the program is built to be self sufficient.

Key features of the New Apollo Energy Project:

*Clean Energy:  New Apollo provides $49 billion in government loan guarantees for the construction of clean-energy generation facilities that will produce power from wind, solar, geothermal, biomass, oceans, coal with carbon-sequestration technology, and other sources.  The legislation also commits $10.5 billion to research-and-development and investment tax credits for clean energy-producing operations.  In addition, it includes a 10-year extension of the current tax credit for electricity generated from clean sources.

* Oil Savings:  The boosts for clean energy and efficiency will make it possible to meet New Apollo’s call for notable reductions in daily domestic oil consumption -- cuts of 600,000 barrels a day by 2010, 1,700,000 barrels by 2015, and 3,000,000 barrels by 2020.  These numbers are estimates of the amount of oil the United States would soon be importing daily from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the entire Middle East, respectively, without a change in current policy.

* Fuel Efficiency:  The best way to generate energy is to not waste it, so New Apollo includes incentives for American consumers to drive fuel-efficient vehicles, including tax credits for the purchase of hybrid, alternative-fuel, low-emission advanced diesel, and fuel-cell vehicles. It also provides $11.5 billion in tax credits for the automotive and aerospace industries to develop new fuel efficient automobiles and planes, retool existing plants, and construct new plants to manufacture energy efficient vehicles. 

* Global Warming and Greenhouse Gas Emissions:  New Apollo enacts a proposal similar to the McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act by capping our emissions of greenhouse gases while allowing companies to purchase and trade credits among themselves to ensure the most cost-effective reductions, and funding research to help industries make the shift to cleaner operations. The bill targets one of the biggest greenhouse-gas offenders -- coal -- by providing $7 billion in loan guarantees for the development of clean coal power plants.

* Clean Energy Jobs:  New Apollo will close the existing technology gap with foreign competitors by investing billions of dollars in new federal research into advanced clean technologies, and creating a government-funded risk pool to help struggling start-up clean-energy companies commercialize their products.  One study by the Apollo Alliance has found that a substantial federal commitment to clean energy could yield up to 3.3 million jobs nationally.

* Renewable Portfolio:  New Apollo contains a Renewable Portfolio Standard requiring all utilities, by 2021, to produce 10 percent of their electricity from renewable energy sources. 

* Energy Transmission:  New Apollo creates national net-metering and interconnection standards that allow homeowners who generate clean energy to reduce their energy bills by feeding surplus electricity back into the grid.  New Apollo additionally increases regulatory oversight of energy trading markets, which was a problem during Enron’s manipulation of the West Coast energy crisis.

New Apollo is revenue neutral, meaning it does not increase the federal deficit. It pays for itself by closing abusive corporate tax shelters and loopholes, and through auctioning off some of the allowances under the carbon dioxide trading program. 

Other significant features in New Apollo:

Reducing Petroleum Dependence:

*An alternative fuel vehicle purchase requirement for government agencies.
*Tax credits for the installation of alternative refueling properties.
*Tax credits for the retail sale of alternative fuels.
*A renewable fuels standard set at 8 billion gallons by 2013.
*Modification of the tax credit for qualified electric vehicles.

*Loans for schools to buy high-efficiency vehicles. 
*Ethanol-blended gasoline and bio-diesel government agency purchase requirements. 

Clean Energy Economy:

*Federal support for the commercialization of carbon sequestration, coal gasification, and low emission coal technologies.
*Tax credits for the installation of minimum emission coal technologies.
*An order for the Secretary of Energy to create a credit for the creation of new electricity transmission lines to receive power from remote clean resources. 
*Tax credits for energy efficient recycling and remanufacturing units.
*Requirement that the Secretary of Interior standardize right-of-way requirements for wind projects.
*Requirement that government agencies reduce energy consumption and use clean energy.
*Permanent extension of the Energy Savings Performance Contracts. 
*Tradable renewable resource credits for public utilities. 
*Establishment of a new energy commission to certify new technologies that qualify for credits under New Apollo.
*Tax credits for distributed energy generation and demand management property in residences and businesses.
*Tax credits for fly-wheel properties. 
*Requires new federal buildings to be constructed using the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design’s (LEED) silver standard for energy efficiency.

Jobs:

*$36 billion in new federal research authorizations for advanced clean technologies, fusion power, and technologies focusing on existing energy sources.
*Federal support for the commercialization of clean technologies.
*Improved coordination of technology transfer activities. 
*Establishment of a clean energy technology export program. 
*Renewable energy lending requirements for the Export-Import Bank.
*Grants to improve mass transit programs.
*Grants for sewer and water energy improvements.
*Tax credits for the construction of energy efficient homes and commercial properties. 

Consumer Protections:

*Funding for LIHEAP and weatherization projects. 
*Implementing energy efficiency standards for certain appliances, and provides tax credits for the production of energy efficient appliances.
*Establishing a national energy efficient home mortgage association.
*Requiring the President to fill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
*Requiring the Secretary of Energy to issue Energy Star regulations for solar water heating devices.


For more information about the New Apollo Energy Project, please visit my website at http://www.house.gov/inslee/issues/energy/apollo_new.html.

As a service to my constituents, I maintain a website which contains valuable resources and information on Congressional activities. Please feel free to visit the website at http://www.house.gov/inslee for information on recent issues and to learn more about the services my office provides. If you have not done so already, please visit http://www.house.gov/inslee/signup.htm to subscribe to my e-mail updates.

I encourage you to contact me via email, telephone, or fax, because security measures are causing House offices to experience delays in receiving postal mail.  My email address is: Jay.Inslee@mail.house.gov.  Please be sure to include your full name and address, including your zip code, in your message.

Very truly yours,

JAY INSLEE
Member of Congress

[Michael]

I really hope that helps the situation Daniel, but I'm guessing it won't.  At this point, I don't see anything that the corporate government can do as ultimately helpful, besides getting the hell out of the way of individuals and communities who are actually doing things realistically.

The reason I say that, is that government and corporations have lost virtually all credibility due to corruption.  They shovel out the bullshit and greenwash anything and everything in an effort to sell us further down the river.  IMO  They are officially now guilty until proven innocent as far as I'm concerned, and yes I'm jaded as hell right now...

This one from Jana is at least hopeful...I'll be visiting this village on Monday, as I'm now in Vancouver and will be traveling to the island tomorrow.  (God, I hate city life!!!    )

[Jana]

Goodie, I was hoping you would go there, didn't think it would be so soon though.
Yep a certain sector of humans are spiritually criminal and are intent on destroying everything for profit. Thus we have to move ahead without them.

Good news is the tide has turned, Australia elected someone that is going to join Kyoto, and remove Aussie troops from Iraq. That means the US is toppling now.
http://article.wn.com/view/2007/11/25/Australias_Rudd_gets_straight_to_work/?template=cheetah-article%2Fdisplayarticle.txt