Gas, Oil, and Palestine. A most reliable source tells me this. "[I]t appears that along the Gaza coast there is oil and gas deposits. The CCC company of Hasib Sabbagh and Sa`id Khuri are the leading company that will explore and extract gas and oil on a 60% to PA and 40% to CCC basis. Sa`id Khuri is the man paying large sums to both Muhammad Dahlan and Jibril Rajjub." Now we know who is funding their campaign (along most likely with US taxpayers' money).
Table 8.16 Bicycle Sales, 1981-2002
Table 8.17 Specialty Bicycle Sales by year, 2000-2002
Figure 8.3 Walk and Bike Trips by Trip Purpose, 2001 NHTS
... riders go out to organic farms, native american communities and sustainable businesses, doing service projects and learning about sustainability.More information at the Sustainable Energy in Motion Bike blog.
CommentaryI find it kind of odd that he calls Central Asia a frontier for the "real war for oil". Which begs the question: Does that make Iraq a phony war for oil? The "arrangements" for Iraqi (or for that matter Iranian) oil that the blogger talks about show no solidification as far as I can tell. It may or may not quite shake out as expected according to A Story About Oil You NEED To Hear.
There was always something odd about calling OIF a "war for oil". Oil from the Middle East has been shipped through established marketing channels for decades. OIF is unlikely to alter those arrangements. Perhaps the real war for oil, in the sense of a struggle for arrangements that do not yet exist is over the reserves in Central Asia. In that struggle Russia has the key advantage of geography. It lies right across the Eurasian landmass and the petroleum roads of the 21st century must pass within or close to her borders. The future oil fields are redoubts of the Islamic fundamentalism and the traditional arena of the Great Game power rivalry between Russia, China and the leading maritime power, once Britain, now the United States.
Ice roads and helicopter pads, which will melt each spring, will minimize man's footprint, which will be on a 2,000-acre plot about one-fifth the size of Dulles Airport. Nevertheless, opponents say the environmental cost is too high for what the ineffable John Kerry calls "a few drops of oil." Some drops. The estimated 10.4 billion barrels of recoverable oil -- such estimates frequently underestimate actual yields -- could supply all the oil needs of Kerry's Massachusetts for 75 years.Let us all follow George Will's advice, pile into the van, and move to Massachusetts. This should keep us supplied with oil for three more generations, at least.
* Draws a dotted line on the graph , pushing the peak back another week or so *
Is this what we are reduced to ?
No doubt some effort has gone into this "discovery" and it amounts to a weeks worth of oil ? And it warrants "huge" ?
Im rather dissapointed in the BBC for not qualifying exactly what 700 million barrels really means in the big scheme of things. There should have been a foot note or something saying how much the world uses a day , or a year to put things into perspective.
I guess some politicians will indicate that its like a billion years worth of oil for Nebraska or something.
"White House Counsel John Hinderaker has conclusively demonstrated that, since there has never been a legal challenge to a President's decision to run for a third term, there is no controlling legal authority in this area."
The world has never hit peak in the past, therefore no one can demonstrate how and if it can actually happen.Why must we have a Patriot Act? Why pretend to have a detailed energy policy in any case? The powers in charge will just end up adapting to what amounts to The Queensberry Rules as they go along.
Dec 24 - City of Lakes Loppet Trail (Minneapolis):Granted, Rybak takes a personal interest in this particular trail system, which hosts the only urban XC race in the country, but I laud the contribution in any case. XC skiing will never make more than a cursory dent as a means of transportation, but word-of-mouth makes a huge impact in making enthusiasts aware of good quality trails. Strange as it may seem, but give me a passably groomed trail which happens to follow a commuter route and I would not hesitate to use it daily in the winter, finding the mode of transportation pretty much equivalent to biking.
Conditions: Good, deteriorating.
I just got off the Loppet trails at Theodore Wirth and they are still very good. With the cloud cover I guess they will still be good into early afternoon....a few dry patches but mostly enough cover to get a good run. I also skiied them yesterday and there was surprisingly little deterioration.
The best are the trails back in the wood, esp. behind the Quaking Bog....but even the straight away from the golf course to Wirth beach was good. I suggest parking at Wirth Beach and skiing in both directions.
A huge thank you to all the people who have made this amazing trails!
(Reminder to stay on the marked trails. We sold these trails to the fierce protectors of the park by saying it would keep people off unmarked trails. Please also remind mountain bikers, who now also have their own great trails, to do this, too.)
(RT Rybak)
Even odder, a quality set-track XC course has amazing positive implications for the intrepidly-inclined handicapped individuals. Check out how cross-country programs for the blind started in Norway during the 1950's, which continue as a highly progressive initiative even today. Off the top of my head, only tandem bicycle riding can compare as a "blind"-friendly form of human transportation, and that necessitates a greater degree of dependence on an able body. And not only the blind, but mobility-impaired skiers can take advantage of set-tracks.As early as the 10th century, cross-country skiing was basic transportation.So we can dream:
D: How is the freeheel scene in Norway?By the way, my own ski report for today:
FG: During the "rebirth," everyone did it, or at least wanted to. But what happened, the way I see it, is this. People in Norway are not that comfortable with having to travel to go skiing, they would rather just walk out the door and put their skis on. Therefore, every little place in Norway with a few houses has their local hill or ski area. Cause everyone skis!
Uber-blogger DarkSyde (aka ~DS~) has gained front-page status at the DailyKos. Watch that space for good stuff, as ~DS~ has displayed quite a gift for getting people interested in often-times arcane science and technical topics. Great post. I will say that it was incredibly refreshing to hear NPR describe folks walking across the Brooklyn Bridge this morning as chipper. So often media plays unwitting advocate for antilabor forces when they report on how the public is against strikes.Wanna bet that the strike will provoke a few new commuters to join the pedal-power ranks? Monbiot provides a timely bit of advice on what we can expect as a backlash:
After the London bombings in July, he (Clarkson) observed that “many commuters are now switching to bicycles … can I offer five handy hints to those setting out on a bike for the first time. 1. Do not cruise through red lights. Because if I’m coming the other way, I will run you down, for fun. 2. Do not pull up at junctions in front of a line of traffic. Because if I’m behind you, I will set off at normal speed and you will be crushed under my wheels. ...”(6) Clarkson wants society out of his way when he’s driving, and he isn’t too particular about how it’s done. One day, one of his fans will take him seriously.I fully expect us bicyclists to become the family dog, getting arbitrarily kicked silly because patriarch WingDad McNutt had a bad day at the office.
She (Maggie Thatcher) spoke of “the great car-owning democracy”, and asserted that “a man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus can count himself as a failure”(13).Treated like a dog and then a failure. Pretty good fighting words there.
Re:win-win
(Score:5, Funny)
by Himring (646324) on Sunday December 18, @10:24AM (#14284962)
(http://fatkiddown.blogspot.com/
There might be a surplus of seals since the bears won't
be around to eat them so go ahead and hunt them too.
So this baby seal walks into a club....
Try the veal....
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
*
Re:win-win
(Score:2, Insightful)
by fatmal (920123) on Sunday December 18, @05:58PM (#14287491)
Q: What's a fur seals favourite drink?
A: Canadian Club on the Rocks!!
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Writer-director Stephen Gaghan (who won an Oscar for writing "Traffic") creates a plot is so complex we'’re not supposed to follow it, we're supposed to be surrounded by it. Since none of the characters understand the whole picture, why should we? Strangely, even when I couldn'’t understand exactly why something was happening, I always knew what the scene meant. . In the short run, you can see who wants oil and how they're trying to get it. In the long run, weÂ’re out of oil.
Danny Dalton: Corruption. Corruption is our protection, corruption keeps us safe and warm, corruption is why we win.Oily indeed.
CO2 injection and sequestration (which gives the secondary peak in Purple). I went to the original paper, and transcribed the data to see how well I could understand the shape in terms of the generic model which works so well for depletion profiles in the context of a much larger macro-depletion scope. I concentrated on the initial depletion behavior first. | Discovery delta | 51 million m3 (320 million barrels) backdated to 1954 |
| Fallow phase | 1.25 years |
| Build phase | 2.5 years |
| Maturation phase | 2.5 years |
| Depletion rate | 7% of remaining total per year |
An estimated 34% of the oil in place will be recoverable under waterflood. In excess of 80% of this oil has already been produced according to government statistics. Incremental production with injection of CO2 is estimated to be in the order of 15% of initial oil in place, in the area of the field to be flooded. This will produce an additional 130 million barrels (21 million m3) of oil over the anticipated 25 year life of the tertiary recovery project.If I put in the difference from the recent infill drilling, treating it as essentially a new discovery circa 1986, the new model looks like the following:
CO2 injection will cost us in dollars and sweat remains a big question.
I have read this entire thread from start to end. It is a huge, huge shame that what started out as a civil conversation has taken such a sour turn thanks to a few doomers who feel that personal attacks will silence the optimists.The bolded part (emphasis: Mine!) apparently causes certain people lots of grief. Actually, only the most rudimentary models of oil depletion assume a symmetric production profile. By inspection one can see that the 50% consumption point obviously occurs at the peak for the Logistics curve, Gaussian normal, and other symmetric profiles. This in fact has become the conventional wisdom among certain analysts.
Mr. Lynch - thank you for your time on this thread - lots of great stuff!!
With regards to this chart, I spent the past hour doing a year by year analysis. I will admit I rounded to the nearest whole number so the numbers may not be 100% accurate but fairly close. For the consumption numbers I used the same chart on LATOC that has consumption line drawn from 1930 to today.
Here is what I came up with:
Total Discoveries 1930-2005: 1.814 billion barrels
Total Consumption 1930-2005: 1.052 billion barrels
Some interesting points of interest from the chart:
1) It is my understanding that it takes roughly 10 years to get a new discovery online. Based on this, the chart says in the past 10 years, 123 billion barrels were discovered - which has yet to come online. I could be off on the 10 years but the point is it is not all online yet as of now.
2) The chart estimates that we have 137 billion barrels of oil of yet to be discovered oil between today and 2050.
Now for the problems I have found with this chart (and why I believe it to be a Peak Oil doomer scam):
1) According to the chart, we should only have around 760 billion barrels of oil left in the ground, yet most proven reserve estimates I have seen say we have at between 1.000 to 1.278 trillion barrels (depending if you count the Tar Sands in Canada or not).
2) Assuming worldwide Peak Oil is the point at which we consume 50% of the oil in the ground, Peak Oil should have happened in the year 2000 yet we have continuted to produce more and more oil. This also does not take into account that the new oil discovered in the past 10 years are not online yet (which should have put Peak Oil around 1997).
3) This chart does not account for the 5 trillion barrels of unconventional oil in the world (of which we can get around 1.1 trillion barrels of oil with current technology).
...
Gas-peak detractors
William L. Fisher, director of the school of geosciences at the University of Texas at Austin, contends that application of the Hubbert curve for resource assessment or for projection of production peaks is "seriously flawed."
"It assumes that the amount of oil or gas is known, which it is not. It assumes that the peak will come midway through the production of the resource, thus the symmetry of the curve, which is not necessarily the case. It also assumes that resources are inelastic, not responding measurably to economics and technology."
From 1991, a tape collage of audio bits recording during the events of the first Gulf War set subliminally to a John Lennon tune.
More Songs about Trucks and Oil here.
I extracted the following editorial from a fishing magazine published nearly 30 years ago. Mr. Pazik published Fishing Facts from a suburb of Milwaukee, gearing it to the hard-core freshwater fisherman (both young and old) amongst us. "The Way It Was" seemingly has frozen in time, with our political atmosphere staying in a holding pattern, waiting for the right conditions to make a landing. In hindsight, it looked like we had a soft landing in store for us. With more than 30 years of procrastination behind us, that has turned into a bumpy landing today.
Update: George Pazik died October 22 at the age of 84. For another extended piece of his, see this editorial on peak oil.
On Wednesday, a videotape by al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri was shown on the Internet calling for attacks against Gulf oil facilities. Portions of the video were released Sept. 19 and shown on Al-Jazeera television.
"I call on the holy warriors to concentrate their campaigns on the stolen oil of the Muslims, most of the revenues of which go to the enemies of Islam," said the Egyptian al-Zawahri.
"The enemies of Islam are exploiting such vital resources with incomparable greed, and we have to stop that theft with all we can and save this fortune for the nation of Islam."
Meanwhile, villagers in the community of Dongzhou in the southern province of Guangdong said armed police were continuing to hold them at bay, four days after authorities allegedly opened fire on thousands of demonstrators protesting the amount of compensation being offered for land to be used in the construction of a wind power plant.Watch in the next few days as this will either get spun as "China: The very worst in fascism" (by the right-wing wurlitzer) or "Time to head for the hills?" (by the die-off crowd) or, the rather highly unlikely, "I have no freaking idea what this means" (by me).
The film observes various American and middle east actors running about with idealistic, nihilistic, greedy and personal agendas, bumping into each other sometimes at random and at others by design. But the single most important player is oil (which in real life, for reasons that are mystifying, is widely considered to be a tin-foil hat, loony-left explanation, even among liberals.) I don't normally consider myself a cynic, but on this topic, it's very hard not to be. In the final analysis, this really is a modern version of the Great Game. When we ask ourselves "why are we in Iraq?" it makes more sense to refine the question and ask whether we would be in Iraq if it weren't for oil. I think it's fairly obvious that we would not be. Terrorism, in the grand scheme of things, is not an existential threat no matter how hard the warbloggers wank. Invading Iraq was actually counter-productive to the threat of Islamic fundamentalism and may end up creating another Islamic state. Even the Bush administration knew that this was not an adequate rationale for invading Iraq so they pimped the WMD threat.The facile cynic in me says that it took Hollywood to wake up L.A.'s Digby to matters of energy. On the other hand, up to now, he has had his hands full going after the rapscallions dominating our political culture. And with that, he covers the ground with great panache.
dU/dt/U versus U, where U refers to cumulative oil extracted, you can extrapolate a negatively sloped line that intercepts the axis at ultimately recoverable resources. Most analysts use the logistic curve or Verhulst equation to "prove" this limiting behavior. Whereas, in practice, any peak will do.dU/dt, which gives the production rate. When plotted, this will give a Hubbert-like peak somewhere in its lifetime. Any somewhat symmetric peak when Taylor-series expanded about its center point looks like this -- an upside-down parabola:dU/dt = A (1 - k2(t - t0)2)U = a (1 + b/a(t - t0))t0, T = t - t0, and you get this relationship: dU/dt/U ~ (1+kT)(1-kT)/(1+b/aT) dU/dt/U ~ C (1-kT) I'm skeptical about the use of this method to present production data because the relative error doesn't seem to be distributed uniformly. The relative error in the log domain of the vertical ordinates according to the logistic model is the following:I checked the math on this, and it really gets you thinking about what data visualization expert Tufte says about graphing data in a biased fashion. That convergence on a continuously shrinking error acts like a laser beam and gives people the impression of an excellent fit that may have dubious value at best.D(ln(aP/Q)) = Dk/k - DQ/Q x Q / (1 - Q)
where D stands for the greek symbol Delta,Dk/kandDQ/Qare the relative errors on k and Q which can be presumed constant. The error behaves has following:
- Production start Q -> 0:
D(ln(aP/Q)) = Dk/k- Production Q -> 1 (total URR has been extracted):
D(ln(aP/Q)) = -infinity
Because we are in log domain,D(ln(aP/Q)) = -infinitymeans that deviation around the asymptotic line will tend toward zero!
That's why, we observe these wild deviations around the line when production is starting whereas it seems to converge nicely when Q tend toward 1. This behavior can be misleading for an observer because it seems to reinforce that there is some inexorable mechanism at work pushing the production data around the line.
The last time I drew attention to the hazards of making diesel fuel from vegetable oils, I received as much abuse as I have ever been sent by the supporters of the Iraq war. The biodiesel missionaries, I discovered, are as vociferous in their denial as the executives of Exxon. I am now prepared to admit that my previous column was wrong. But they're not going to like it. I was wrong because I underestimated the fuel's destructive impact.Proving once again how much you have to work to get unstuck between a rock and a hard place.
Before I go any further, I should make it clear that turning used chip fat into motor fuel is a good thing. The people slithering around all day in vats of filth are performing a service to society. But there is enough waste cooking oil in the UK to meet one 380th of our demand for road transport fuel(2). Beyond that, the trouble begins.
[...]
It is prepared to sacrifice the South East Asian rainforests in order to be seen to do something, and to allow motorists to feel better about themselves.
All this illustrates the futility of the technofixes now being pursued in Montreal. Trying to meet a rising demand for fuel is madness, wherever the fuel might come from. The hard decisions have been avoided, and another portion of the biosphere is going up in smoke.
I've explained to you about 10 times what you need to do to establish that you have a better model. You never do it - you just complain that people still choose to use the best predictive model we have right now If you had the first bit of sense, you'd realize that Hubbert was a first-rate scientist, and name-calling him takes away from your credibility rather than his.Which prompted me to reply with this:
What is wrong? I have a theory. Theorists don't always have to defend their position. That's what experimentalists are around for. It's a classic position in the scientific world. Theorists don't mind getting attacked for their ideas. And that's not to say I am any first rate theorist, just that I know how the game is played.I remember clearly the rallying cry my co-researchers and I would sing out when faced with challenging circumstances, man-made or not, "Nature's fighting us. We must be on the right track!"
No use getting worked up over this.
Hubbert never used any mathematical model; as far as I can tell he did his computations graphically. And why would I name call Hubbert anything? I think I dissed "Hubbert Linearization" because it is based on that ridiculous Logistic curve. It doesn't have any basis in reality.
Robert Bea, a University of California, Berkeley professor who led a National Science Foundation investigation of the levee failures, said the mistakes made by the engineers on the project were hard to accept because the project was so "straightforward."
"It's hard to understand, because it seemed so simple, and because the failure has become so large," Bea said.
"This is the largest civil engineering disaster in the history of the United States. Nothing has come close to the $300 billion in damages and half-million people out of their homes and the lives lost," he said. "Nothing this big has ever happened before in civil engineering."
Apparently, the British and other members of the international reality-based community do not think highly of Bush for his oil industry connections. I do computer visualizations for a living, and despise Macromedia Flash for its prorietary, non-open format, but this stuff keeps me grinning. 
"NO SKATES ALLOWED!". The Hypno Skates bring back some of that freedom. As for advice, resist the temptation to use the heel brakes; practice until you get good at doing slalom/pivot stops.
Clap Ice Skates: These speed skates use cross-country ski bindings and boots. A European idea, I bought these from REI a few years ago; I don't think they caught on but they do work amazingly well. As a word of advice, unless you live on a series of canals ala Amsterdam, don't depend on the consistency of lake ice; prepare to take a number of "headers". In the last few years, we haven't had as much snow, so I have gotten used to unexpectedly flying through the air hat first. 
Bombshell from the assmissile:"With oil prices declining rapidly since September, prospects for current and future economic growth appear excellent."Excellent? Not.
In my humble opinion, we should now have reached 'Peak Oil'. So, it is high time to close this critical chapter in the history of international oil industry and bid the mighty 'Peak' farewell... At present, global oil output fluctuates around 82 mb/d as some institutions try vainly to push 2005 statistics towards 83 and 84 mb/d (as they always do). But they will be obliged to backtrack as 'actual' oil supplies fail to follow their 'paper' ones.But if you believe this will cause people to rethink their energy extractionist ways, David Roberts passes it through the gristmill first:
So that, in the 'Peak Oil' aftermath, we are about to enter what I call 'Transition One' [T1] --- a rather bizarre phase akin to a vague 'no-man's-land' between still adequate oil supplies and the clear realization that demand has definitely left supply behind. I see the tragic '2004 Tsunami' and the heart-breaking '2005 Katrina and Rita' as the precursors signs to 'T1'. This fresh phase might come to burst on the global stage during the coming winter 2005-2006 --- maybe taking large swaths of the public by surprise...
Fortunately, the hidden advantage of 'T1' is that worldwide oil supplies will remain almost constant during this initial phase, allowing those with foresight, intelligence and agility to begin preparing for the next, more-turbulent phases: 'T2', 'T3', .....
It's this: Environmentalists seem to have a somewhat naive faith that once the concept of peak oil sinks in, people will move -- as though by the force of tides -- to support renewable, decentralized energy.
But why should that be true? A much more natural, predictable reaction would be to push like mad for more drilling and for more coal gasification. Both more drilling and more coal-to-liquid-fuel production would fit better with our existing infrastructure and practices, however environmentally malign they may be.
Welcome to the modern-day Luddite movement, which once raged against the machine, but now targets the automobile. Just last month, environmentalists organized a "world car-free day," celebrated in more than 40 cities in the U.S. and Europe. In the left's vision of utopia, cars have been banished -- replaced by bicycles and mass transit systems.
[...]
To be sure, if the entire membership of the Sierra Club and Greenpeace surrendered their cars, the world and the highways might very well be a better place. But for the rest of us the car is indispensable -- it is our exoskeleton. There's a perfectly good reason that the roads are crammed with tens of millions of cars and that Americans drive eight billion miles a year while spurning buses, trains, bicycles and subways. Americans are rugged individualists who don't want to cram aboard buses and subways.
Coming back to reality, I have found that the smaller U-locks work just as well as the bigger Kryptonites as a prophylactic against thieves. You can easily slip it in your pocket and just about any hand-rail will work. Strange that I finally figured this out after all these years. Well, Well: Oil Rigs Return
New technology and rising demand for petroleum are fueling a comeback of drills in the Southland, where they once numbered 33,000.
By Roy Rivenburg, Times Staff Writer
They once ruled Southern California, staking claim to broad stretches of coastline and hillsides. Then, in the 1980s, they began vanishing -- driven from their native habitat by tract houses, mini-malls and pesky environmentalists.
By the time gasoline prices barreled into the stratosphere this year, local oil wells had become the industrial equivalent of an endangered species.
From a peak population of 33,000, they dwindled to about 4,000. Surviving drills were forced to forage in strange locations, such as restaurant parking lots, residential lawns and inside faux office buildings.
Today, these holdout rigs stand as a symbol of both a bygone era and -- oddly -- the future.
Because of technological breakthroughs and rising demand for petroleum, the previously doomed hulks have gained a new lease on life. And abandoned wells are being pressed back into service.
If crude prices spiral high enough, "it might get to the point where people start tearing down houses to drill for oil," said Rich Baker, who oversees the Southern California branch of the state Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources. "It's happened before ... and there's still a lot of oil left."
In recent months, "we've had companies putting 45-year-old wells back into production," said Rock Zierman, spokesman for the California Independent Petroleum Assn.
Iraj Ershagi, director of USC's petroleum engineering program, predicts that the number of abandoned wells -- about 3,000 statewide -- might soon drop to zero.
But he said people probably wouldn't notice the resurgence of drilling. Since 1943, when Shell Oil pioneered the first "noiseless" derrick -- swaddled in fluffy insulation -- oil pumps have grown increasingly adaptable to urban settings.
In Signal Hill, grasshopper-style rigs drill for oil behind backyards, next to a Starbucks, in public parks and on the edge of a cemetery.
At Huntington Beach City Hall, three drills lurk in the parking lot. Like giant mechanical mosquitoes, they spend their days slurping up syrupy crude from beneath the earth's skin.
Some wells try to blend in with their surroundings. In the waters off Long Beach, rigs have disguised themselves as tropical islands with 45-foot waterfalls, banana trees, hibiscus and carved tikis. At night, the illuminated oases look like "giant orange, lemon and blue Popsicles looming out of the sea," one writer said.
Elsewhere, drills have masqueraded as a Venice Beach lighthouse and a 13-story office building. The derrick at Beverly Hills High School hides inside a decorated tower.
But oil wells haven't always been so unobtrusive.
Flash back to the 1890s, when prospector Edward Doheny transformed a 60-foot tree trunk into a primitive drill and struck a vein of black gold near Echo Park. Aspiring Jed Clampetts promptly ripped up homes in downtown Los Angeles and planted a forest of oil derricks.
The same thing happened in Huntington Beach in the 1920s and '50s, according to news accounts. Colonies of pumps sprang up along local beaches. Just up the coast, Signal Hill became carpeted with so many derricks that it was nicknamed Porcupine Hill.
Then, in 1969, a massive oil spill tarred the shoreline in Santa Barbara -- and public opinion began to sour.
The backlash gained ground in the 1980s and '90s. As oil prices nosedived and land values and environmental restrictions soared, oil companies decided it was more lucrative to replace rigs with houses.
A surprising hunk of Los Angeles County and Orange County real estate now rests atop oil reservoirs, according to state maps of abandoned wells.
As oil attorney Bruce Webster once complained to Los Angeles magazine: "They ruined a perfectly good oil field by building a city on top of it."
If you want to know what the young, internet-residing, tech-savvy crowd -- an influential if lamentably self-regarding demographic -- thinks about peak oil, read through the comments on this post over at Digg. Eye-opening, and not all bad.Which proves that not all tech-savvy people have good judgment.
SiGe heterostructures. Although the advances don't show emission of light, a kind of Holy Grail for column IV semiconductors, they showed completely unexpected optical modulation properties 100 to 1000 times greater than conventional silicon. Minnesota auto buyers' requests for hybrids such as the Toyota Prius and other fuel-efficient cars have accelerated since hurricanes Katrina and Rita sent gasoline prices temporarily soaring past $3 a gallon, said David Luther, chairman of Rudy Luther Automotive, one of the Twin Cities' largest dealerships. "I wouldn't call it a flood," he said.? .. if I read that correctly, a most Dominionist attitude .. they didn't save any buffalo for me, God's will I guess, so deal with it. (apologies to Lawton Smalls)
Luther said some buyers of low-mileage SUVs seem to have the attitude that "they didn't save any buffalo for me."
Apparently number 3 locally behind the PowerLie'n and Captain Edd, Myers dedicates lots of time analyzing the wingnuts as they try to change the scientific landscape. As you can see from the chart that Powerline themselves posted, leading engineers and scientists don't buy the foolishness. Assmissile tries to explain the lopsided opinions on the the fact that these particular scientists and engineers belong to the National Academy of Sciences and Engineering. What do they expect? That they all belong to the Dominionist Union Local #666?SG: ... and, particularly, THE PARALLAX VIEW, where at the end of the day, it's the military-industrial complex, and in CONDOR, Redford's on the steps of The New York Times, and he's going in there, and the guy says, "Y'know, the people that are behind me... do you really think they'll let you..?" And in the '70s, it was always the punchline. The last moment. "Ta-dah! It';s the oil companies and the military-industrial complex! Ta-dah!" And I thought today, with what's happened in the 30 years since then, is... FADE IN: It's the Oil Companies. Now what? The punchline's gone. The punchline's become the starting point. FADE OUT became FADE IN. Okay. Now what? The conspiracies are in broad daylight. Nobody's hiding them. The lingua franca has so changed in terms of what we would consider a conspiracy. I just... I thought, "What an interesting thing for this type of movie.";The punchline has transformed into the premise of conventional wisdom. No wonder I haven't taken in many movies over the past few years. You can find a specialty blog associated with Syriana here (registration required).
As a caveat, the statistical data for New Zealand NG does not contain any extra cruft. Just a few fields contribute to the sample space. This means that the stochastic approximations I make do not have as great a bearing on the results as a larger sample would, and deterministic effects consequently have a greater effect. However, the prospect of a "natural gas cliff" has some potentially huge ramifications; the New Zealand case study has proved the best example yet. So, if we model correctly, the cliff will show up -- whether we have determinism or not. 
But clearly, right around the year 1996, you can see production (in billion of cubic feet) starting to ramp back up. To get this to work out, in the context of the oil shock model, I have to add a strong linear extraction rate increase (see the dotted green line).New Document Shows Big Oil Dictates U.S. Energy PolicyI heard that the oil companies lied during the recent Senate hearings because Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Ak) allowed them to skip the oath. But, as a few authorities on the legislative and judicial branch note, they forgot about the implicit rule that lying to congress can get you 1 to life.
A document from the White House may prove executives from big oil companies met with Vice President Cheney's energy task force in 2001. When the Oil Executives from Shell, BP America, Conoco and Exxon Mobil "testified" at a joint hearing last week in front of the Senate Energy and Commerce committees, they denied ever meeting with Cheney or officials from the Energy task force. This document gives specific names and lists specific times of meetings that took place in the White House between oil execs and task force staff members. The document shows most meetings took place with Andrew Lundquist, the task force's executive director.
It looks like their desperation to sell a book written by itchy nuclear triggerman and swiftboater Jerome "FatMan" Corsi, has caused them to publish a spate of spew: