Peak Oil Freaks

Saturday- Sound the Alarm to Save Our Nation

2009-04-04T09:56:00.000-07:00

Obama, the Carbon Tax Whore

2009-03-30T19:47:00.000-07:00

Obama’s involvement in Chicago Climate Exchange--the rest of the story

By Judi McLeod Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Good news to know that the truth will always out--even when you’re Barack Obama.

“Obama Years Ago Helped Fund Carbon Program He Is Now Pushing Through Congress” is a FOXNews story by Ed Barnes. In short, “While on the board of a Chicago-based charity, Barack Obama helped fund a carbon trading exchange that will likely play a critical role in the cap-and-trade carbon reduction program he is now trying to push through Congress as president.”

The charity was the Joyce Foundation on whose board of directors Obama served and which gave nearly $1.1 million in two separate grants that were “instrumental in developing and launching the privately-owned Chicago Climate Exchange, which now calls itself “North America’s only cap and trade system for all six greenhouse gases, with global affiliates and projects worldwide.”

And that’s only the beginning of this tawdry tale, Mr. Barnes.

The “privately-owned” Chicago Climate Exchange is heavily influenced by Obama cohorts Al Gore and Maurice Strong.

For years now Strong and Gore have been cashing in on that lucrative cottage industry known as man-made global warming.

Strong is on the board of directors of the Chicago Climate Exchange, Wikipedia-described as “the world’s first and North America’s only legally binding greenhouse gas emission registry reduction system for emission sources and offset projects in North America and Brazil.”

Gore, self-proclaimed Patron Saint of the Environment, buys his carbon off-sets from himself--the Generation Investment Management LLP, “an independent, private, owner-managed partnership established in 2004 with offices in London and Washington, D.C., of which he is both chairman and founding partner. The Generation Investment Management business has considerable influence over the major carbon credit trading firms that currently exist, including the Chicago Climate Exchange.

Strong, the silent partner, is a man whose name often draws a blank on the Washington cocktail circuit. Even though a former Secretary General of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (the much hyped Rio Earth Summit) and Under-Secretary General of the United Nations in the days of an Oil-for-Food beleaguered Kofi Annan, the Canadian born Strong is little known in the United States. That’s because he spends most of his time in China where he he has been working to make the communist country the world’s next superpower. The nondescript Strong, nonetheless is the big cheese in the underworld of climate change and is one of the main architects of the failing Kyoto Protocol.

Full credit for the expose on the business partnership of Strong and Gore in the cap-and-trade reduction scheme should go to the investigative acumen of the Executive Intelligence Review (EIR).

The tawdry tale of the top two global warming gurus in the business world goes all the way back to Earth Day, April 17, 1995 when the future author of “An Inconvenient Truth” travelled to Fall River, Massachusetts, to deliver a green sermon at the headquarters of Molten Metal Technology Inc. (MMTI). MMTI was a firm that proclaimed to have invented a process for recycling metals from waste. Gore praised the Molten Metal firm as a pioneer in the kind of innovative technology that can save the environment, and make money for investors at the same time.

“Gore left a few facts out of his speech that day,” wrote EIR. “First, the firm was run by Strong and a group of Gore intimates, including Peter Knight, the firm’s registered lobbyist, and Gore’s former top Senate aide.”

(Fast-forward to the present day and ask yourself why it is that every time someone picks up another Senate rock, another serpent comes slithering out).

“Second, the company had received more than $25 million in U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) research and development grants, but had failed to prove that the technology worked on a commercial scale. The company would go on to receive another $8 million in federal taxpayers’ cash, at that point, its only source of revenue.

“With Al Gore’s Earth Day as a Wall Street calling card, Molten Metal’s stock value soared to $35 a share, a range it maintained through October 1996. But along the way, DOE scientists had balked at further funding. When in March 1996, corporate officers concluded that the federal cash cow was about to run dry, they took action: Between that date and October 1996, seven corporate officers--including Maurice strong--sold off $15.3 million in personal shares in the company, at top market value. On Oct. 20, 1996--a Sunday--the company issued a press release, announcing for the first time, that DOE funding would be vastly scaled back, and reported the bad news on a conference call with stockbrokers.

“On Monday, the stock plunged by 49%, soon landing at $5 a share. By early 1997, furious stockholders had filed a class action suit against the company and its directors. Ironically, one of the class action lawyers had tangled with Maurice strong in another insider trading case, involving a Swiss company called AZL Resources, chaired by Strong, who was also a lead shareholder. The AZL case closely mirrored Molten Metal, and in the end, Strong and the other AZL partners agreed to pay $5 million to dodge a jury verdict, when eyewitness evidence surfaced of Strong’s role in scamming the value of the company stock up into the stratosphere, before selling it off.

In 1997, Strong went on to accept from Tongsun Park, who was found guilty of illegally acting as an Iraqi agent, $1 million from Saddam Hussein, which was invested in Cordex Petroleum Inc., a company he owned with his son, Fred.

These are the leaders in the Man-made Global Warming Movement, who three years later were to be funded by the man who was to become President of the United States of America.

If we follow the time line on where Obama was during the funding of the Chicago Climate Exchange, he was still a professor at the University of Chicago Law School teaching constitutional law, with his law license becoming inactive a year later in 2002.

It may be interesting to note that the Chicago Climate Exchange in spite of its hype, is a veritable rat’s nest of cronyism. The largest shareholder in the Exchange is Goldman Sachs. Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley is its honorary chairman, The Joyce Foundation, which funded the Exchange also funded money for John Ayers’ Chicago School Initiatives. John is the brother of William Ayers.

What a flap when it was discovered that the senator from Chicago had nursed on Saul Alinsky’s milk, had his political career launched at a coffee party held by domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, and sat for 20 years, uncomplaining in front of the “God-dam-America pulpit of resentment-challenged Jeremiah Wright.

Folk were naturally outraged that the empty suit who would go on to become TOTUS was spawned from such anti-American activism.

But the media should have been hollering, “Stop Thief!” instead.

The same Chicago Climate Exchange promoting public rip-off was funded by Obama before he was POTUS.

Even as man-made global warming is being exposed as a money-generating hoax, Obama is working feverishly to push the controversial cap-and-trade carbon reduction scheme through Congress.

Obama was never the character he created for himself in the fairy-tale version in “Dreams of My Father”. He’s the agent of Change and Hope for cohorts making money down at the Chicago Climate Exchange.

The Barbarians are pushing at the gate of the Global Warming fraud, and to borrow a line from children playing Hide and Seek, Here they come, ready or not!

UN 's Green Enslavement Taxes

2009-03-29T06:10:00.000-07:00

U.N. 'Climate Change' Plan Would Likely Shift Trillions to Form New World Economy
Friday, March 27, 2009
By George Russell

United Nations document on "climate change" that will be distributed to a major environmental conclave next week envisions a huge reordering of the world economy, likely involving trillions of dollars in wealth transfer, millions of job losses and gains, new taxes, industrial relocations, new tariffs and subsidies, and complicated payments for greenhouse gas abatement schemes and carbon taxes — all under the supervision of the world body.

Those and other results are blandly discussed in a discretely worded United Nations "information note" on potential consequences of the measures that industrialized countries will likely have to take to implement the Copenhagen Accord, the successor to the Kyoto Treaty, after it is negotiated and signed by December 2009. The Obama administration has said it supports the treaty process if, in the words of a U.S. State Department spokesman, it can come up with an "effective framework" for dealing with global warming.

The 16-page note, obtained by FOX News, will be distributed to participants at a mammoth negotiating session that starts on March 29 in Bonn, Germany, the first of three sessions intended to hammer out the actual commitments involved in the new deal.

In the stultifying language that is normal for important U.N. conclaves, the negotiators are known as the "Ad Hoc Working Group On Further Commitments For Annex I Parties Under the Kyoto Protocol." Yet the consequences of their negotiations, if enacted, would be nothing short of world-changing.

Getting that deal done has become the United Nations' highest priority, and the Bonn meeting is seen as a critical step along the path to what the U.N. calls an "ambitious and effective international response to climate change," which is intended to culminate at the later gathering in Copenhagen.

Just how ambitious the U.N.'s goals are can be seen, but only dimly, in the note obtained by FOX News, which offers in sparse detail both positive and negative consequences of the tools that industrial nations will most likely use to enforce the greenhouse gas reduction targets.

The paper makes no effort to calculate the magnitude of the costs and disruption involved, but despite the discreet presentation, makes clear that they will reverberate across the entire global economic system.

Among the tools that are considered are the cap-and-trade system for controlling carbon emissions that has been espoused by the Obama administration; "carbon taxes" on imported fuels and energy-intensive goods and industries, including airline transportation; and lower subsidies for those same goods, as well as new or higher subsidies for goods that are considered "environmentally sound."

Other tools are referred to only vaguely, including "energy policy reform," which the report indicates could affect "large-scale transportation infrastructure such as roads, rail and airports." When it comes to the results of such reform, the note says only that it could have "positive consequences for alternative transportation providers and producers of alternative fuels."

In the same bland manner, the note informs negotiators without going into details that cap-and-trade schemes "may induce some industrial relocation" to "less regulated host countries." Cap-and-trade functions by creating decreasing numbers of pollution-emission permits to be traded by industrial users, and thus pay more for each unit of carbon-based pollution, a market-driven system that aims to drive manufacturers toward less polluting technologies.

The note adds only that industrial relocation "would involve negative consequences for the implementing country, which loses employment and investment." But at the same time it "would involve indeterminate consequences for the countries that would host the relocated industries."

There are also entirely new kinds of tariffs and trade protectionist barriers such as those termed in the note as "border carbon adjustment"— which, the note says, can impose "a levy on imported goods equal to that which would have been imposed had they been produced domestically" under more strict environmental regimes.

Another form of "adjustment" would require exporters to "buy [carbon] offsets at the border equal to that which the producer would have been forced to purchase had the good been produced domestically."

The impact of both schemes, the note says, "would be functionally equivalent to an increased tariff: decreased market share for covered foreign producers." (There is no definition in the report of who, exactly, is "foreign.") The note adds that "If they were implemented fairly, such schemes would leave trade and investment patterns unchanged." Nothing is said about the consequences if such fairness was not achieved.

Indeed, only rarely does the "information note" attempt to inform readers in dollar terms of the impact of "spillover effects" from the potential policy changes it discusses. In a brief mention of consumer subsidies for fossil fuels, the note remarks that such subsidies in advanced economies exceed $60 billion a year, while they exceed $90 billion a year in developing economies."

But calculations of the impact of tariffs, offsets, or other subsidies is rare. In a reference to the impact of declining oil exports, the report says that Saudi Arabia has determined the loss to its economy at between $100 billion and $200 billion by 2030, but said nothing about other oil exporters.

One reason for the lack of detail, the note indicates, is that impact would vary widely depending on the nature and scope of the policies adopted (and, although the note does not mention it, on the severity of the greenhouse reduction targets).

But even when it does hazard a guess at specific impacts, the report seems curiously hazy. A "climate change levy on aviation" for example, is described as having undetermined "negative impacts on exporters of goods that rely on air transport, such as cut flowers and premium perishable produce," as well as "tourism services." But no mention is made in the note of the impact on the aerospace industry, an industry that had revenues in 2008 of $208 billion in the U.S. alone, or the losses the levy would impose on airlines for ordinary passenger transportation. (Global commercial airline revenues in 2008 were about $530 billion, and were already forecast to drop to an estimated $467 billion this year.)

In other cases, as when discussing the "increased costs of traditional exports" under a new environmental regime, the report confines itself to terse description. Changes in standards and labeling for exported goods, for example, "may demand costly changes to the production process." If subsidies and tariffs affect exports, the note says, the "economic and social consequences of dampening their viability may, for some countries and sectors, be significant."

Much depends, of course, on the extent to which harsher or more lenient greenhouse gas reduction targets demand more or less drastic policies for their achievement.

And, precisely because the Bonn meeting is a stage for negotiating those targets, the note is silent. Instead it suggests that more bureaucratic work is needed "to deepen the understanding of the full nature and scale of such impacts."

But outside the Bonn process, other experts have been much more blunt about the draconian nature of the measures they deem necessary to make "effective" greenhouse gas reductions.

In an influential but highly controversial paper called "Key Elements of a Global Deal on Climate Change," British economist Nicholas Lord Stern, formerly a high British Treasury official, has declared that industrial economies would need to cut their per capita carbon dioxide emissions by "at least 80% by 2050," while the biggest economies, like the U.S.'s, would have to make cuts of 90 percent.

Stern also calls for "immediate and binding" reduction targets for developed nations of 20 percent to 40 percent by 2020.

To meet Stern's 2050 goals, he says, among other things, "most of the world's electricity production will need to have been decarbonized."

Global Warming Not Manmade

2009-03-01T08:00:00.000-08:00

Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/25/jstor_climate_report_translation/

Japan's boffins: Global warming isn't man-made
Climate science is 'ancient astrology', claims report

By Andrew Orlowski (andrew.orlowski@theregister.co.uk)

Posted in Environment, 25th February 2009 12:23 GMT

Exclusive Japanese scientists have made a dramatic break with the UN and Western-backed hypothesis of climate change in a new report from its Energy Commission.

Three of the five researchers disagree with the UN's IPCC view that recent warming is primarily the consequence of man-made industrial emissions of greenhouse gases. Remarkably, the subtle and nuanced language typical in such reports has been set aside.

One of the five contributors compares computer climate modelling to ancient astrology. Others castigate the paucity of the US ground temperature data set used to support the hypothesis, and declare that the unambiguous warming trend from the mid-part of the 20th Century has ceased.

The report by Japan Society of Energy and Resources (JSER) is astonishing rebuke to international pressure, and a vote of confidence in Japan's native marine and astronomical research. Publicly-funded science in the West uniformly backs the hypothesis that industrial influence is primarily responsible for climate change, although fissures have appeared recently. Only one of the five top Japanese scientists commissioned here concurs with the man-made global warming hypothesis.

JSER is the academic society representing scientists from the energy and resource fields, and acts as a government advisory panel. The report appeared last month but has received curiously little attention. So The Register commissioned a translation of the document - the first to appear in the West in any form. Below you'll find some of the key findings - but first, a summary.

Summary
Three of the five leading scientists contend that recent climate change is driven by natural cycles, not human industrial activity, as political activists argue.

Kanya Kusano is Program Director and Group Leader for the Earth Simulator at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science & Technology (JAMSTEC). He focuses on the immaturity of simulation work cited in support of the theory of anthropogenic climate change. Using undiplomatic language, Kusano compares them to ancient astrology. After listing many faults, and the IPCC's own conclusion that natural causes of climate are poorly understood, Kusano concludes:

"[The IPCC's] conclusion that from now on atmospheric temperatures are likely to show a continuous, monotonic increase, should be perceived as an unprovable hypothesis," he writes.

Shunichi Akasofu, head of the International Arctic Research Center in Alaska, has expressed criticism of the theory before. Akasofu uses historical data to challenge the claim that very recent temperatures represent an anomaly:

"We should be cautious, IPCC's theory that atmospheric temperature has risen since 2000 in correspondence with CO2 is nothing but a hypothesis. "

Akasofu calls the post-2000 warming trend hypothetical. His harshest words are reserved for advocates who give conjecture the authority of fact.

"Before anyone noticed, this hypothesis has been substituted for truth... The opinion that great disaster will really happen must be broken."

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Key Passages Translated
What is the source of the rise in atmospheric temperature in the second half of the 20th century?
Shunichi Akasofu

[Founding Director of the International Arctic Research Center of the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF)

Introductory discussion.
Point 1.1: Global Warming has halted
Global mean temperature rose continuously from 1800-1850. The rate of increase was .05 degrees Celsius per 100 years. This was mostly unrelated to CO2 gas (CO2 began to increase suddenly after 1946. Until the sudden increase, the CO2 emissions rate had been almost unchanged for 100 years). However, since 2001, this increase halted. Despite this, CO2 emissions are still increasing.

According to the IPCC panel, global atmospheric temperatures should continue to rise, so it is very likely that the hypothesis that the majority of global warming can be ascribed to the Greenhouse Effect is mistaken. There is no prediction of this halt in global warming in IPCC simulations. The halt of the increase in temperature, and slight downward trend is "something greater than the Greenhouse Effect," but it is in effect. What that "something" is, is natural variability.

From this author's research into natural (CO2 emissions unrelated to human activity) climate change over the past 1000 years, it can be asserted that the global temperature increase up to today is primarily recovery from the "Little Ice Age" earth experienced from 1400 through 1800 (i.e. global warming rate of change＝0.5℃/100).

The recovery in temperatures since follows a naturally variable 30-50 year cycle, (quasi-periodic variations), and in addition, this cycle has been positive since 1975, and peaked in the year 2000. This quasi-periodic cycle has passed its peak and has begun to turn negative.

(The IPCC ascribes the positive change since 1975, for the most part, to CO2 and the Greenhouse Effect.) This quasi-periodic cycle fluctuates 0.1 degrees C per 10 years, short term (on the order of 50 years). This quasi-periodic cycle's amplitude is extremely pronounced in the Arctic Circle , so it is easy to understand. The previous quasi-periodic cycle was positive from 1910 to 1940 and negative from 1940 to 1975 (despite CO2 emissions rapid increase after 1946).

Regardless of whether or not the IPCC has sufficiently researched natural variations, they claim that CO2 has increased particularly since 1975. Consequently, after 2000, although it should have continued to rise, atmospheric temperature stabilised completely (despite CO2 emissions continuing to increase). Since 1975 the chances of increase in natural variability (mainly quasiperiodic vibration) are high; moreover, the quasiperiodic vibration has turned negative. For that reason, in 2000 Global Warming stopped, after that, the negative cycle will probably continue.

Regarding the current temporary condition (la Nina) JPL observes a fluctuation of the quasiperiodic cycle [JSER editor's note: this book is is still being proofed as of 12/19]. So we should be cautious, IPCC's theory that atmospheric temperature has risen since 2000 in correspondence with CO2 is nothing but a hypothesis.

They should have verified this hypothesis by supercomputer, but before anyone noticed, this hypothesis has been substituted for "truth". This truth is not observationally accurate testimony. This is sidestepping of global warming theory with quick and easy answers, so the opinion that a great disaster will really happen must be broken.

It seems that global warming and the halting of the temperature rise are related to solar activity. Currently, the sun is "hibernating". The end of Sunspot Cycle 23 is already two years late: the cycle should have started in 2007, yet in January 2008 only one sunspot appeared in the sun's northern hemisphere, after that, they vanished completely (new sunspots have now begun to appear in the northern hemisphere). At the current time, it can clearly be seen there are no spots in the photosphere. Lately, solar winds are at their lowest levels in 50 years. Cycle 24 is overdue, and this is is worrisome.

So, have there been other historical periods with an absence of sunspots? As a matter of fact, from 1650 to 1700 approximately, there were almost no sunspots. This time period has been named for the renown English astronomer Maunder, and is called the Maunder Minimum.

There is a relationship between transported energy and the light emissions from the photosphere and sunspots. It was thought that times of few sunspots are times of lower energy. Satellites were launched in 1980 to research this, and results were contrary to expectations. It became clear that these times were more energetic than periods of high sunspots. Periods of low sunspots have vigorous solar activity. The total change during sunspot cycles is usually .0.1%, from the Maunder Minimum to today the increase is .05%. The Maunder Minimum fell in the middle of the period of 1400-1800, the Little Ice Age, and it was theorized that this was due to a cut in solar emissions. The theory is that solar activity began to increase after that, and from 1800 global warming increased and recovery from the Little Ice Age began.

But sunspot change and climate change are not clearly correlated. Rather, the cycle was not the punctual 11 years, scientific research indicates that climate change is related to that change. Furthermore, according to the IPCC's computational investigation, this energy increase does not significantly contribute to global warming. But then, the IPCC insists that current global warming correlates to CO2, solar influence is estimated as minimal, this calculation should be redone. This 0.1-0.5% is an enormous sum of energy. The energy of solar emissions is not just light from the photosphere. Solar winds cause geomagnetic storms, yet comparisons of solar wind and light energy to particle emissions are rarely carried out. Research into the relationship between geomagnetic storms and climate change has been undertaken for almost 100 years. However, because during this time, this simple correlation has not been seen, no conclusion has been reached. The super-hot temperatures of geomagnetic storms higher than 100 kilometers have increased, and the chances of the stratospheric and tropospheric transference are low.

Through the 11 year sunspot cycle, ultraviolet rays vary considerably, the ionosphere and ozone layer are affected. Whether or not this affects the troposphere is unknown. More research is necessary. On the other hand, cosmic rays continuously fall, it seems that they constantly seed comparatively low clouds. The solar system may shield us somewhat from Geomagnetic storms caused by solar winds, so called "magnetic clouds" may shield us from extrasolar cosmic rays, so solar activity and climate are in a complex relationship.

In this way, climate change and solar activity's relationship is inconclusive. It is necessary to increase research efforts into the relationship between Earth's climate fluctuations and solar activity.

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Predicting the Future with Numerical Simulation

Kanya Kusano, Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science & Technology (JAMSTEC)

Numerical simulation by forecast models are generally classified as theoretical models and empirical models. The former follows universal laws and carries out predictive calculations, the latter makes models that are thought to be realistic from data of phenomenon. These two methods cannot be strictly differentiated, generally experiential methods gradually become theoretical methods, finally becoming the generally accepted dogma.

Celestial mechanics originated in astrological prediction of solar and lunar eclipses, calendars were experiential predictions; mechanistic theory evolved when we reached an era of accurate computation. Consequently, the predictability of celestial mechanics became extremely high and practical estimates gave way to proof. Similarly, modern Global Climate Models still largely dependent on empirical models. Fundamental principles, therefore must resolve very complex physical/chemical/biological processes and phenomenon. That is why many artificial optimization operations (parameterization tuning) are needed, or we will not be able to reproduce the phenomenon. Because of this, besides mathematical accuracy, the people who construct models' choice of processes and optimum operating guidelines will have large scale effects on the calculated results.

1. Scientific Understanding and Uncertainty
When constructing models, if our scientific understanding is poor, we are not able to capture the model. But we should pay attention to the importance of the naturally occurring processes when our scientific understanding is not yet clearly decided.

In the IPCC's 4th Evaluation Report, a few potentially major processes were discussed; but [since] scientific understanding was too low to decide, the evaluation of these was omitted. In order to scientifically understand the uncertainty of accurate estimates according to the potential importance of these processes, "the cause of lack of scientific understanding and uncertainty" must be assessed.

Finally, uncertainty estimates should be included. For example, the effect of variances in cosmic ray activity on clouds, caused by sunspot activity, solar flares accompanied by energetic protons striking the upper atmosphere and generating NOx and ozone effects [*], etc., are not sufficiently understood and incorporated into the models.

Also, there are great uncertainties in reproducing historical TSI (Total Solar Irradiance), TSI fluctuation and spectral change related climate sensitivity estimates are inadequate.

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2. The limits of modeling aerosols and clouds
The indirect effect of aerosols and aerosol generation as the greatest uncertainty is becoming widely recognized, but fundamental, naturally spontaneous (especially oceanic) aerosols are not yet well understood. Dimethyl sulfide (DMS: CH3SCH3) of biological origin is thought to be a primary source of sulphuric aerosol formation over oceans, but the process of cloud cores forming from DMS is not sufficiently understood. According to recent physical models, the percentage of involvement of cosmic ray ionization processes is not well understood.

Furthermore, the types of aerosols and the ways they affect climate systems are not well understood. The increasing number of aerosols, in this case, augments precipitation, but if it increases too much, water droplet diameter will decrease and cloud generation will be renewed, and the albedo will be changed significantly. Thus, the fine-scale physical processes of clouds causing feedback in geological climate fluctuation now clearly points at this as a decisively material effect.

However, the discussion of the properties and life span of aerosols in clouds in the IPCC 4th Evaluation Report is inadequate.

3. Predictability and estimation rules
The 4th Evaluation Report is confident of the reliability of its assessment that previous data does not differ from its model. But a more effectively persuasive assessment of its predictive ability has not come forth. This is like the ancient Greek Thales predicting solar eclipses, future predictions should be tested in practice. Again, by means of short metaphase models and domain models, future information feedback can be isolated in hindcast experiments (reproducing the past according to the model) and quantitatively compared to long term climate predictions assessments.

4. Conclusion: Anthropogenic global warming theory still hypothetical
To summarize the discussion so far, compared to accurately predicting solar eclipses by celestial mechanics theoretical models, climate models are still in the phase of reliance on trial and error experiential models. There are still no successful precedents. The significance of this is that climate change theory is still dominated by anthropogenic greenhouse gas causation; the IPCC 4th Evaluation Report's conclusion that from now on atmospheric temperatures are likely to continuously, monotonously increase, should be perceived as an unprovable hypothesis; it will be necessary investigate further and to evaluate future predictions as subject to natural variability. ®

[Translation by Charles Eicher.]

We Have the Energy, We Need the Leaders

2009-02-25T07:29:00.000-08:00

Why are EAU Parking Lots Full of Cars?

2009-02-14T09:26:00.000-08:00

Whats Left of the US Oil Business

2009-02-12T17:54:00.000-08:00

As any regular reader of this blog knows, the thousands of independent producers in this country drill over 95% of all wells in the US and produce in the 80's in percentage of US hydrocarbons. That's why we roll our eyes when lying politicians and pundits rage on "Big Oil". They know better. I know. I have spent time in DC on "educational missions". They know the facts. They just choose to lie to you about them. Oh well.

I went to the North American Prospect Expo in Houston this last week and I can confirm that fortunes will be made based upon the next 12 months.

This last boom saw huge amounts of outside capital come into the business, huge land grabs at breathtaking prices that amounted to a massive transfer of wealth from oil companies to mineral owners... certainly amounting to tens and maybe hundreds of billions of dollars, as bonuses began to like tulips did to the Dutch. Acreage was locked up, and services tripled in cost in 3 years. Strangely, the overall IRR weren't any better than they had been at $20 or $40 oil because of the massive ramp up in costs. Three things convereged to make this a craze.

First, easy access to capital in a commodity market that was growing in an overall capital market that had no other place to go.

Second, lots of locations and reserves via resource plays. We identified an oil and gas patch that dwarfs what has already been produced. Bye Bye Hubbards Peak at least with respect to resource and potentian reserves.

Third, we didn't make money actually producing these reserves, but flipping proven undeveloped locations (PUDs) for the same value minus drill and complete costs as proven developed reserves (actual producing wells).

Today, oil and gas are off 70% from their highs, and drilling and completing costs are on their way down as half our rigs have been laid down. A couple of months ago, costs were still needed to drop by 60%, today, maybe 30-40% to get back to normal. I give it 6 months. The mom and pops have been quick to respond, the big publics much slower due to the negative leverage whipsaw endemic to being a public company.

All these expensive big acreage blocks are starting to break apart. No drilling dollars available. A lot less competition. Domestic gas and oil will see this effect on deliverability in 2009, and really see it in 2010. Prices will strengthen, although, in the case of gas, buffered by the delivered price of LNG.

Those that have cash can access huge largely proven resource bases for ten to twenty cents on the mid 2008 dollar, and have a drill and complete cost to reserve base equivalent to what it was at $140 dollars per barrel equivalent. This, in an environment where oil and gas could possibly double in a year or two.

All in all, as a Red-State Texan, a much better for me than the patch of 6 months ago. For my poor brethren subject to the lying vagaries of Federal control, my condolensces. Your highly regulated loss will be my gain. I loved Nancy Pelosi's quote that she hated "filthy hydrocarbons". When she was asked how that jibed with her support for the Pickens Plan, she said she "loved clean burning natural gas". Delightful.

I'll close with a quote from Ronald Reagan, who said "The Federal Government's philosphy towards business is 'if it works, tax it. If it keeps working, regulate it. If it quits working, subsidize it."

Brilliant.

Peter Schiff , OIL to Skyrocket!

2009-01-26T05:33:00.000-08:00

Israel Becomes Natural Gas Player

2009-01-20T06:21:00.000-08:00

Noble Strikes Significant Gas Pay in 3 Reservoirs Offshore Israel
Noble Energy, Inc. 1/19/2009
URL: http://www.rigzone.com/news/article.asp?a_id=71826

Noble has announced a natural gas discovery at the Tamar prospect in the Matan license, offshore Israel. The Tamar #1 well, located in approximately 5,500 feet of water, was drilled to a total depth of 16,076 feet to test a subsalt, lower-Miocene structure in the Levantine basin. Formation logs identified more than 460 feet of net pay in three high-quality reservoirs. The thickness and quality of the reservoirs encountered were greater than anticipated at the well location.

Charles D. Davidson, Noble Energy's Chairman, President and CEO, said, "Tamar represents our first exploratory well offshore Israel in more than five years, and we are extremely excited by the results. This is one of the most significant prospects that we have ever tested and appears to be the largest discovery in the company's history. Early indications are that the resources identified are very substantial, at least equal to our pre-drill estimated gross mean resources of over three trillion cubic feet. Subject to the collection of additional data, the resource estimate for Tamar could further increase. This discovery continues to highlight the potential of our global programs and further demonstrates the significant value generated from our best-in-class exploration efforts."

"We were also very pleased with the drilling operations of this well, despite the uncertain conditions that exist when drilling in a highly under-explored area, with the nearest well control over 60 miles away," Davidson added.

Production testing at Tamar will be performed after the well is completed. Noble Energy and its partners may keep the rig to drill up to two additional wells in the basin. Pending positive test results, one well could be an appraisal at Tamar. In addition, the partners are considering drilling a second subsalt, lower Miocene prospect.

Noble Energy operates the well with a 36% working interest. Other interest owners in the well are Isramco Negev 2 with 28.75%, Delek Drilling with 15.625%, Avner Oil Exploration with 15.625% and Dor Gas Exploration with the remaining 4%.

Oil Tankers Wait for Prices to Rise

2009-01-15T06:10:00.000-08:00

Where is oil going next?
By Clifford Krauss

Thursday, January 15, 2009
HOUSTON: From the Indian Ocean to the South Atlantic to the Gulf of Mexico, giant supertankers brimming with oil are resting at anchor or slowly tracing racetrack patterns through the sea, heading nowhere.

The ships are marking time, serving as floating oil-storage tanks. The companies and countries leasing them for that purpose have made a simple calculation: the price of oil has fallen so far that it is due for a rise.

Some producing countries are trying to force that rise by using the tankers to withhold oil from the market, while traders are trying to profit by buying cheap oil now to store and sell at a higher price later. Oil storage has become so popular that onshore tank capacity is becoming scarce.

Only six months ago, companies up and down the energy pipeline were rushing oil to market, struggling to keep up with galloping demand and soaring prices. Now, with the global economy slumping and people driving less, demand for oil has plunged and the same companies are acting in ways that would have been unimaginable until recently.

Oil producers are shutting down rigs, refiners are producing less gasoline, and investment planning throughout the industry is in turmoil.

The problem for the companies is not just that prices are lower, but that they have become volatile historically, a sign of an unstable market whose direction is uncertain. Between Christmas and a week ago oil prices soared 40 percent, only to reverse course almost as sharply in recent days. Just last week, the price of a barrel of crude oil dropped by nearly 12 percent in one day alone.

"The oil markets are suffering acute whiplash," said Daniel Yergin, an energy consultant and author of "The Prize," a history of world oil markets. "Price volatility is adding to the sense of shock and confusion and uncertainty."

The wild price swings are a continuation of last year's trends, when the price of a barrel of oil swelled to nearly $150 in July from just below $100 in January before collapsing to less than $35 last month. Daily oil prices rose or dropped by 5 percent or more 39 times, versus just four times over the previous two years. The only recent year that was comparably volatile was 1990, the year Iraq invaded Kuwait.

The continuing volatility is sending waves of anxiety up and down the complex production and investment chains of the oil world.

A year ago, oil producers and refiners could not move their products fast enough to meet growing world demand and chase rising prices. Now, with demand and prices slumping, they are sitting on 327 million barrels at tank farms around the country, particularly at Cushing, Oklahoma, a major storage hub and a crossroads for pipelines. That is more than 40 million barrels more in storage than this time last year, and more than 30 million barrels higher than the five-year average.

The mounting buildup has come during the last 100 days or so, as consumption of oil fell behind imports and domestic production.

With storage tanks filling up onshore, private and national oil companies, refiners and trading companies are storing another 80 million barrels aboard 35 supertankers and a handful of smaller tankers, the most in 20 years, according to Frontline Ltd., the world's largest owner of supertankers.

The different players have different reasons for storing oil, whether onshore or offshore.

National oil companies are hoping to reverse the price slide by holding oil off the market. Iran alone is reportedly using as many as 15 tankers to store crude oil in hopes that higher prices will prop up its economy, which is dependent on oil exports.

Private trading companies like Vitol and Phibro are storing oil in expectation of higher prices. They are taking their cues from markets where traders buy and sell contracts for future delivery of oil, which are signaling higher prices down the road.

Adam Sieminski, chief energy economist at Deutsche Bank, noted that a trading company could buy oil at the spot price of nearly $40 a barrel, store it and sell a contract to deliver it in a year for about $60. "You pay between $6 and $10 a barrel to store it, and you can make $10 a barrel," he said. "That's why Cushing is filling up rapidly and people are leasing tankers."

One small example of how the price uncertainty has affected behavior is the Devon Energy Corporation, an Oklahoma City company that in recent years has excited the energy world with announcements about expensive new investments in Canadian oil sands and deepwater oil exploration projects.

The company recently put off announcing details of its drilling program. Chip Minty, a Devon spokesman, said: "The volatility we have seen in the last year, and particularly the last few months, is making it more difficult to plan a drilling program that is funded through cash flow. Everybody is laying down rigs."

Devon's caution is a sign that the go-go days of investment are giving way to more modest expectations. Schlumberger and Halliburton, the two top oil service companies, are cutting jobs. Many oil companies are delaying investments in more expensive projects, like mining Canadian oil sands. A couple of refiners face bankruptcy.

The volatility is showing up at the retail level. Drivers who only a few weeks ago were finding relief from the summer's $4-a-gallon, or 80 euro cents per liter, gasoline are now shaking their heads as the average national price for unleaded regular gasoline has surged to $1.79, from $1.62, since Dec. 30.

Oil volatility has complicated the efforts of automobile companies to figure out future strategies. Toyota had to suspend production at one plant that builds the Tundra pickup truck for several months when gasoline prices soared last summer. Toyota then delayed completion of a second plant meant to build the Prius hybrid when falling gasoline prices led to weakening demand for that fuel-efficient model.

The gyrations in prices affect shipping and other businesses around the world. Cathay Pacific, one of many airlines that use fuel hedging strategies, recently acknowledged that it had hedging losses of hundreds of millions of dollars as a result of the collapse in fuel prices.

The slowdown in oil investment is so rapid that some analysts say they believe it is a matter of time before shortages appear that will push oil prices to new heights and damage the economy.

From day to day, the price swings reflect a push and pull among the various players in the market, and diverging geopolitical and economic trends.

After months of sharply dropping prices, psychology on the oil markets seemed to shift strongly after Christmas sending oil prices to almost $50 in January, from just below $34 on Dec. 19.

Traders were putting investment money back into oil as OPEC appeared to be serious about cutting output. Fighting between Israel and Hamas in Gaza appeared to threaten a broader Middle East conflict that might crimp oil supplies. The conflict between Russia and Ukraine over natural gas shipments threatened European supplies, raising fears that Europeans might have to switch from natural gas to oil.

But the mood shifted just as quickly last week when the Energy Department reported that crude oil inventories at Cushing had climbed by four million barrels, to 32 million barrels, for the week that ended Jan. 2, the highest since the government started tracking supplies in 2004. That number jumped again in a report on Wednesday, to 33 million barrels, near Cushing's operating capacity of 35 million barrels.

Spooked by the signs of surplus, traders drove the spot price of oil down to $37.28 a barrel on Wednesday, a drop of 1.3 percent.

Gasoline, meanwhile, has become pricier at the pump because refiners have been producing less of it. Profits from refining have been so thin over the last several months that refiners have been earning little, or even losing money, on producing gasoline. So now they are storing oil or selling it to traders, or retooling their refineries to produce less gasoline and more products with better profit margins, like heating oil, diesel or jet fuel.

Valero has curtailed gasoline supplies by extending maintenance time at some refineries and cutting production at eight of its 16 refineries. "There is not a lot of incentive right now to produce gasoline because there is lots of it," said Bill Day, a spokesman for Valero, the nation's largest refiner. "Obviously it would be better for us if there were more stability in prices."

While Goldman Sachs has predicted the slumping global economy will soon drive the price of oil down to $30, a top Kuwaiti oil official predicted recently that big production cuts by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries would soon push oil prices back up.

"It's a sure bet that both will be right," Yergin said, basing his opinion on the sharp swings of recent days.

Analysts foresee prices staying volatile for much of the year.

"Volatility is just another way of saying uncertainty," said Adam Robinson, director of commodities at Armored Wolf, a California hedge fund. "The demand outlook is very uncertain, the general outlook for prices is very uncertain, and the supply outlook is very uncertain."

Web Bots 2009 Predictions

2009-01-06T15:53:00.000-08:00

Hear Green, See RED!

2009-01-02T18:14:00.000-08:00

Green Comes Clean
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, January 02, 2009 4:20 PM PT

Propaganda: The global warming alarmist in chief has unveiled the environmentalists' real objective. And no, protecting the planet is not their top concern.

In a letter addressed to President-elect Obama and his wife, Michelle, James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, makes an appeal for a carbon tax, ostensibly as a means for cutting emissions of carbon dioxide, a gas that's allegedly causing a dangerous greenhouse effect and warming trend.

Hansen suggests that the tax be levied "at the well-head or port of entry" from where it "will then appropriately affect all products and activities that use fossil fuels."

This tax will have "near-term, mid-term, and long-term" effects on "lifestyle choices," Hansen acknowledges. But he seems unconcerned about how such coercion will rearrange the lives and manage the behavior of a people who should be free of state coercion.

Acting either out of boldness or desperation, Hansen goes on to reveal the environmentalist left's deeper ambition: a collectivist redistribution of wealth. He recommends that the carbon tax be returned to the public in "equal shares on a per capita basis."

That means wealthier Americans whose activities emit more CO2 will pay more in carbon taxes than they get back, while those who earn less will receive more in refunds than they will lose through taxes.

"A person reducing his carbon footprint more than average makes money," explains Hansen, while "a person with large cars and a big house will pay a tax much higher than the dividend."

Hansen and his ilk never seem to question whether the government should be involved in behavior modification. They believe so zealously in their cause — establishing an egalitarian society where conspicuous consumption is limited to the few who make the rules — that they have no misgivings about using the police power of the federal and state governments to beat society into shape.

Nor do they question their hunch — the idea doesn't even rise to the level of theory — that CO2 emissions are causing climate change even as there are ample reasons to doubt it.

To his credit, Hansen expresses support in the letter for fourth-generation "nuclear power and coal-fired power plants with carbon capture and sequestration." But he's done so much yammering about global warming and encouraging "young people" to do "whatever is necessary to block construction of dirty coal-fired power plants," that any sensible ideas he might have are lost.

That's what happens, though, when a first-rate mind latches onto a third-rate assumption.

10 Worse Predictions for 2008

2009-01-02T09:48:00.000-08:00

The 10 Worst Predictions for 2008

Posted December 2008

Prognostication is by far the riskiest form of punditry. The 10 commentators and leaders on this list learned that the hard way when their confident predictions about politics, war, the economy, and even the end of humanity itself completely missed the mark.

1
Scott Gries/Getty Images“If [Hillary Clinton] gets a race against John Edwards and Barack Obama, she’s going to be the nominee. Gore is the only threat to her, then. … Barack Obama is not going to beat Hillary Clinton in a single Democratic primary. I’ll predict that right now.” —William Kristol, Fox News Sunday, Dec. 17, 2006

Weekly Standard editor and New York Times columnist William Kristol was hardly alone in thinking that the Democratic primary was Clinton’s to lose, but it takes a special kind of self-confidence to make a declaration this sweeping more than a year before the first Iowa caucus was held. After Iowa, Kristol lurched to the other extreme, declaring that Clinton would lose New Hampshire and that “There will be no Clinton Restoration.” It’s also worth pointing out that this second wildly premature prediction was made in a Times column titled, “President Mike Huckabee?” The Times is currently rumored to be looking for his replacement.
2
CNBC“Peter writes: ‘Should I be worried about Bear Stearns in terms of liquidity and get my money out of there?’ No! No! No! Bear Stearns is fine! Do not take your money out. … Bear Stearns is not in trouble. I mean, if anything they’re more likely to be taken over. Don’t move your money from Bear! That’s just being silly! Don’t be silly!” —Jim Cramer, responding to a viewer’s e-mail on CNBC’s Mad Money, March 11, 2008

Hopefully, Peter got a second opinion. Six days after the volatile CNBC host made his emphatic pronouncement, Bear Stearns faced the modern equivalent of an old-fashioned bank run. Amid widespread speculation on Wall Street about the bank’s massive exposure to subprime mortgages, Bear’s shares lost 90 percent of their value and the investment bank was sold for a pittance to JPMorgan Chase, with a last-minute assist from the U.S. Federal Reserve.
3
ERIC CABANIS/Getty Images“[In] reality the risks to maritime flows of oil are far smaller than is commonly assumed. First, tankers are much less vulnerable than conventional wisdom holds. Second, limited regional conflicts would be unlikely to seriously upset traffic, and terrorist attacks against shipping would have even less of an economic effect. Third, only a naval power of the United States’ strength could seriously disrupt oil shipments.” —Dennis Blair and Kenneth Lieberthal, Foreign Affairs, May/June 2007

On Nov. 15, 2008 a group of Somali pirates in inflatable rafts hijacked a Saudi oil tanker carrying 2 million barrels of crude in the Indian Ocean. The daring raid was part of a rash of attacks by Somali pirates, which have primarily occurred in the Gulf of Aden. Pirates operating in the waterway have hijacked more than 50 ships this year, up from only 13 in all of last year, according to the Piracy Reporting Center. The Gulf of Aden, where nearly 4 percent of the world’s oil demand passes every day, was not on the list of strategic “chokepoints” where oil shipments could potentially be disrupted that Blair and Lieberthal included in their essay, “Smooth Sailing: The World’s Shipping Lanes Are Safe.” Hopefully, Blair will show a bit more foresight if, as some expect, he is selected as Barack Obama’s director of national intelligence.
4
Spencer Platt/Getty Images“[A]nyone who says we’re in a recession, or heading into one—especially the worst one since the Great Depression—is making up his own private definition of ‘recession.’” —Donald Luskin, The Washington Post, Sept. 14, 2008

The day after Luskin’s op-ed, “Quit Doling Out That Bad-Economy Line,” appeared in the Post, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, and the rest is history. Liberal bloggers had long ago dubbed the Trend Macrolytics chief investment officer and informal McCain advisor “the Stupidest Man Alive.” This time, they had some particularly damning evidence.
5
YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP/Getty Images“For all its flaws, an example to others.” —The Economist on Kenya’s presidential election, Dec. 19, 2007

The week before Kenya’s presidential election, the erudite British newsweekly ran an ill-conceived editorial praising the quality of the country’s democracy and predicting it might “set an example” for the rest of the continent. If only. The ensuing election was rife with examples of voter fraud and ballot-stuffing. What followed was a month of rioting and ethnic bloodshed that left more than 800 dead and 200,000 displaced. The carnage ended in a messy power-sharing agreement between President Mwai Kibaki and his challenger Raila Odinga, leaving the country deeply divided and its government delegitimized.
6
Brad Barket/Getty Images“New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg will enter the Presidential race in February, after it becomes clear which nominees will get the nod from the major parties. His multiple billions and organization will impress voters—and stun rivals. He’ll look like the most viable third-party candidate since Teddy Roosevelt. But Bloomberg will come up short, as he comes in for withering attacks from both Democrats and Republicans. He and Clinton will split more than 50% of the votes, but Arizona’s maverick senator, John McCain, will end up the country’s next President.” –BusinessWeek, Jan. 2, 2008

No part of this prediction from BusinessWeek’s “Ten Likely Events in 2008” turned out to be even remotely true. After weeks of hints and press leaks, Bloomberg declared he would stay out of the race, saying that Barack Obama and John McCain showed signs of displaying the “independent leadership” needed to govern effectively. After overturning New York’s term-limits law, Bloomberg seems likely to run for a third term as mayor instead.
7
Sean Gallup/Getty Images“There is a real possibility of creating destructive theoretical anomalies such as miniature black holes, strangelets and deSitter space transitions. These events have the potential to fundamentally alter matter and destroy our planet.” —Walter Wagner, LHCDefense.org

Scientist Walter Wagner, the driving force behind Citizens Against the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), is making his bid to be the 21st century’s version of Chicken Little for his opposition to the world’s largest particle accelerator. Warning that the experiment might end humanity as we know it, he filed a lawsuit in Hawaii’s U.S. District Court against the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), which built the LHC, demanding that researchers not turn the machine on until it was proved safe. The LHC was turned on in September, and it appears that we are still here.*
8
JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images“The possibility of $150-$200 per barrel seems increasingly likely over the next six-24 months.” —Arjun Murti, Goldman Sachs oil analyst, in a May 5, 2008, report

The vaunted predictive powers of Murti, dubbed the “oracle of oil” in a glowing New York Times profile, failed him this time. Oil prices peaked in July at about $147 a barrel before beginning a long decline. Thanks to a decrease in demand because of the global recession, prices are now nearing the $40 mark, and some experts even see $25 as a possibility next year.
9
VIKTOR DRACHEV/AFP/Getty Images“It starts with the taking over of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which has already happened. It goes on to the destruction of the Georgian armed forces, which is now happening. The third [development] will probably be the replacement of the elected government, which is pro-Western, with a puppet government, which will probably follow in a week or two.” —Charles Krauthammer, Fox News, Aug. 11, 2008

Krauthammer immediately followed this inaccurate forecast (Russia eventually agreed to a cease-fire and pulled out its troops several weeks later, leaving Mikheil Saakashvili’s government in place) by predicting that Ukraine would be next on Russia’s hit list and suggesting that the United States station troops there. As for Saakashvili, his approval rating was at 76 percent in September.
10
Mario Tama/Getty Images“I believe the banking system has been stabilized. No one is asking themselves anymore, is there some major institution that might fail and that we would not be able to do anything about it.” —Henry Paulson on National Public Radio, Nov. 13, 2008

The U.S. Treasury secretary entered November with guns blazing. After much hemming and hawing before Congress a month earlier, he came out with what he called his “bazooka” —a $700 billion mandate to scoop up bad assets from troubled banks. By mid-November, he had already discharged $300 billion in munitions, albeit mostly via the kind of direct equity stakes he had rejected earlier. Unfortunately for Paulson, shortly after his vote of confidence, Citigroup’s stock price plunged 75 percent in one week, closing below $5 for the first time in 14 years.

*Wagner has written in to point out that the LHC broke down shortly after it was activated and that the particle collision experiments he’s worried about haven’t been conducted yet. “The experiment has not yet even been performed, so of course its outcome remains uncertain,” he writes. So, we’ll have to wait for 2009 to see if he is proved right.

Church of England Buys Al Gores Con

2008-12-31T09:52:00.000-08:00

Church of England puts its faith in Al Gore's investment arm
Tuesday, 30th December 2008. 9:00am

By: George Conger.

The Church of England’s Church Commissioners have gone green, investing £150 million with former US Vice-President Al Gore’s environmentally minded investment firm, Generation Investment Management.

On Nov 18 the First Church Estates Commissioner, Andreas Whittam Smith reported that in late September the Commissioners had placed the funds with Gore’s boutique management firm which follows an “environmentally sustainable global equities mandate.” Funding for the investment came from “cash and Treasury bills”, he said, and not from the sale of UK equities as initially planned.

In Oct 2007 Mr Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in raising awareness of the potential threats from climate change. Generation Investment Management was founded in 2004 by Mr Gore and David Blood, former head of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, and had almost £5 billion under management before the market collapse.

The firm invests in companies that follow “socially responsible” business model such as insulin manufacturer Novo Nordisk, Swiss food conglomerate Nestlé, and San Francisco’s New Resource Bank --- a “green” lender in the US.

Speaking at a press conference last March in Geneva, Mr Gore said private industry should take the lead in creating environmentally friendly market capitalism noting that “more money is allocated by markets around the world in one hour than by all the governments on the planet in a full year.”

“The principles and ways and values that have an impact on the way markets allocate resources can have an enormous effect" in tackling climate change, he said.

Institutional investors in his fund are “more attracted to the strategy we follow are managing long-term assets toward long-term goals.”

"Those looking for a quick hit in the market place, to skim the cream and go somewhere else, those are not the investors attracted to this strategy,” Mr Gore said, according to wire service reports.

Man Made Climate Change a Con

2008-12-31T09:15:00.000-08:00

Environment minister Sammy Wilson: I still think man-made climate change is a con
Wednesday, 31 December 2008

Spending billions on trying to reduce carbon emissions is one giant con that is depriving third world countries of vital funds to tackle famine, HIV and other diseases, Sammy Wilson said.

The DUP minister has been heavily criticised by environmentalists for claiming that ongoing climatic shifts are down to nature and not mankind.

But while acknowledging his views on global warming may not be popular, the East Antrim MP said he was not prepared to be bullied by eco fundamentalists.

“I’ll not be stopped saying what I believe needs to be said about climate change,” he said.

"Most of the people who shout about climate change have not read one article about it

“I think in 20 years’ time we will look back at this whole climate change debate and ask ourselves how on earth were we ever conned into spending the billions of pounds which are going into this without any kind of rigorous examination of the background, the science, the implications of it all. Because there is now a degree of hysteria about it, fairly unformed hysteria I’ve got to say as well.

“I mean I get it in the Assembly all the time and most of the people who shout about climate change have not read one article about climate change, not read one book about climate change, if you asked them to explain how they believe there’s a connection between CO2 emission and the effects which they claim there’s going to be, if you ask them to explain the thought process or the modelling that is required and the assumptions behind that and how tenuous all the connections are, they wouldn’t have a clue.

“They simply get letters about it from all these lobby groups, it’s popular and therefore they go along with the flow — and that would be ok if there were no implications for it, but the implications are immense.”

He said while people in the western world were facing spiralling fuel bills as a result of efforts to cut CO2, the implications in poorer countries were graver.

“What are the problems that face us either locally and internationally. Are those not the things we should be concentrating on?” he asked.

“HIV, lack of clean water, which kills millions of people in third world countries, lack of education.

“A fraction of the money we are currently spending on climate change could actually eradicate those three problems alone, a fraction of it.

“I think as a society we sometimes need to get some of these things in perspective and when I listen to some of the rubbish that is spoken by some of my colleagues in the Assembly it amuses me at times and other times it angers me.”

Despite his views on CO2, Mr Wilson said he does not intend to backtrack on commitments made by his predecessor at the Department of the Environment, Arlene Foster, to make the Stormont estate carbon neutral.

He said while he wasn’t worried about reducing CO2 output, he said the policy would help to cut fuels bills.

“I don’t couch those actions in terms of reducing Co2 emissions,” he said. “I don’t care about Co2 emissions to be quite truthful because I don’t think it’s all that important but what I do believe is, and perhaps this is where there can be some convergence, as far as using fuel more efficiently that is good for our economy; that makes us more competitive. If we can save in schools hundreds of thousands on fuel that’s more money being put for books or classroom assistants.

“So yes there are things we can do. If you want to express it terms of carbon neutral, I just express it terms of making the place more efficient, less wasteful and hopefully that will release money to do the proper things that we should be doing.”

Global Warming Disproved

2008-12-27T17:55:00.000-08:00

The first, on May 21, headed "Climate change threat to Alpine ski resorts" , reported that the entire Alpine "winter sports industry" could soon "grind to a halt for lack of snow". The second, on December 19, headed "The Alps have best snow conditions in a generation" , reported that this winter's Alpine snowfalls "look set to beat all records by New Year's Day".

Easily one of the most important stories of 2008 has been all the evidence suggesting that this may be looked back on as the year when there was a turning point in the great worldwide panic over man-made global warming. Just when politicians in Europe and America have been adopting the most costly and damaging measures politicians have ever proposed, to combat this supposed menace, the tide has turned in three significant respects.

First, all over the world, temperatures have been dropping in a way wholly unpredicted by all those computer models which have been used as the main drivers of the scare. Last winter, as temperatures plummeted, many parts of the world had snowfalls on a scale not seen for decades. This winter, with the whole of Canada and half the US under snow, looks likely to be even worse. After several years flatlining, global temperatures have dropped sharply enough to cancel out much of their net rise in the 20th century.

Ever shriller and more frantic has become the insistence of the warmists, cheered on by their army of media groupies such as the BBC, that the last 10 years have been the "hottest in history" and that the North Pole would soon be ice-free – as the poles remain defiantly icebound and those polar bears fail to drown. All those hysterical predictions that we are seeing more droughts and hurricanes than ever before have infuriatingly failed to materialise.

Even the more cautious scientific acolytes of the official orthodoxy now admit that, thanks to "natural factors" such as ocean currents, temperatures have failed to rise as predicted (although they plaintively assure us that this cooling effect is merely "masking the underlying warming trend", and that the temperature rise will resume worse than ever by the middle of the next decade).

Secondly, 2008 was the year when any pretence that there was a "scientific consensus" in favour of man-made global warming collapsed. At long last, as in the Manhattan Declaration last March, hundreds of proper scientists, including many of the world's most eminent climate experts, have been rallying to pour scorn on that "consensus" which was only a politically engineered artefact, based on ever more blatantly manipulated data and computer models programmed to produce no more than convenient fictions.

Thirdly, as banks collapsed and the global economy plunged into its worst recession for decades, harsh reality at last began to break in on those self-deluding dreams which have for so long possessed almost every politician in the western world. As we saw in this month's Poznan conference, when 10,000 politicians, officials and "environmentalists" gathered to plan next year's "son of Kyoto" treaty in Copenhagen, panicking politicians are waking up to the fact that the world can no longer afford all those quixotic schemes for "combating climate change" with which they were so happy to indulge themselves in more comfortable times.

Suddenly it has become rather less appealing that we should divert trillions of dollars, pounds and euros into the fantasy that we could reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by 80 per cent. All those grandiose projects for "emissions trading", "carbon capture", building tens of thousands more useless wind turbines, switching vast areas of farmland from producing food to "biofuels", are being exposed as no more than enormously damaging and futile gestures, costing astronomic sums we no longer possess.

As 2009 dawns, it is time we in Britain faced up to the genuine crisis now fast approaching from the fact that – unless we get on very soon with building enough proper power stations to fill our looming "energy gap" - within a few years our lights will go out and what remains of our economy will judder to a halt. After years of infantile displacement activity, it is high time our politicians – along with those of the EU and President Obama's US – were brought back with a mighty jolt into contact with the real world.

I must end this year by again paying tribute to my readers for the wonderful generosity with which they came to the aid of two causes. First their donations made it possible for the latest "metric martyr", the east London market trader Janet Devers, to fight Hackney council's vindictive decision to prosecute her on 13 criminal charges, ranging from selling in pounds and ounces to selling produce "by the bowl" (to avoid using weights her customers dislike and don't understand). The embarrassment caused by this historic battle has thrown the forced metrication policy of both our governments, in London and Brussels, into total disarray.

Since Hackney backed out of allowing four criminal charges against Janet to go before a jury next month, all that remains is for her to win her appeal in February against eight convictions which now look quite absurd (including those for selling veg by the bowl, as thousands of other London market traders do every day). The final goal, as Neil Herron of the Metric Martyrs Defence Fund insists, must then be a pardon for the late Steve Thoburn and the four other original "martyrs" who were found guilty in 2002 – after a legal battle also made possible by this column's readers – of breaking laws so ridiculous that the EU Commission has even denied they existed (but which are still on the statute book).

Readers were equally generous this year in rushing to the aid of Sue Smith, whose son was killed in a Snatch Land Rover in Iraq in 2005. Their contributions made it possible for her to carry on with the High Court action she has brought against the Ministry of Defence, with the sole aim of calling it to account for needlessly risking soldiers' lives by sending them into battle in hopelessly inappropriate vehicles. Thanks not least to Mrs Smith's determined fight, the Snatch Land Rover scandal, first reported here in 2006, has at last become a national cause celebre.

May I finally thank all those readers who have written to me in 2008 – so many that, as usual, it has not been possible to answer all their messages. But their support and information has been hugely appreciated. May I wish them and all of you a happy (if globally not too warm) New Year.

Proof that PEAK OIL is a Hoax (Executive Summary)

2008-12-25T15:47:00.000-08:00

Executive Summary

VIDEO
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(Chapter 1). The object of this report is to provide a holistic assessment of the global oil and natural gas resource base with the view to evaluate its production capacity over the medium and long term. Oil and gas not only share a common geologic thread and are generally found together, but their production is significantly intertwined—albeit driven by different economics: Oil fields contribute roughly 16% of the global gas produced, while natural gas liquids and condensate account for an additional 12% of petroleum liquids to the crude oil produced. Global conventional oil resources are appraised and further broken down by depth and API gravity, important indicators of their aptness for the variety of enhanced oil recovery (EOR) technologies available. The resource assessment is extended to the top 10 oil producing countries.

The development of unconventionals—shale oil, coalbed methane, shale gas, and tight sands gas—is reviewed, particularly in the US, where major strides have been made over the last 2 decades. The object is to quantify their impact on supply in the medium term.

Another major aspect of the report is an assessment of the production potential of global offshore oil. Offshore has been the main source of growth for world oil production in recent years, as onshore output has been essentially flat during the last 2 decades. Offshore is the new oil and gas frontier.

The final goal is to develop a model to provide a comprehensive medium- and long-term outlook for global oil and gas production potential sustainable by the capacity of the ultimate reserves of the system. This would represent the maximum production rates available, or best-case supply scenario in time. The long-term production potential of the Big Three oil producing countries is also projected.

(Chapter 2). Estimates are given for the world’s oil resource base, including extra-heavy oils from the Canadian and Orinoco oil sands. Light oils, which are the backbone of the industry, account for two-thirds of all global oil resources. A small fraction of the traditional (excluding extra-heavy oils) oil resource base has been produced.
Estimates are given for the global natural gas resource base. Less that one-fifth has been produced so far. The Big Three producers—Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the US—together hold almost one-fourth of the global traditional oil and gas resources.

(Chapter 3). The world is known to have substantial unconventional oil and natural gas resources that were largely overlooked until the last 20 years or so. The unconventionals reviewed are shale oil, coalbed methane, shale gas, and tight sands gas. The objective is to ascertain their medium-term supply potential.

Estimates are given for commercially viable oil shale deposits. Oil shales have yet to be proven economically recoverable on a large scale, and as such still remain a contingent resource without any measurable effect on oil supply in the medium term.

The situation is very different for natural gas unconventionals: tight sands gas, coalbed methane, and shale gas. The US has made significant strides in this area. Modest production from these three gas sources began in the 1980s, and thanks to major technological advances, has grown to almost half of the present US total natural gas output. Estimates are given for tight sands gas, which currently accounts for one-third of US gas production and one-third of US ultimate gas reserves. Tight gas sands are located primarily in the Rocky Mountain region.

Worldwide contingent resources of coalbed methane are estimated. Today, coalbed methane is a full-fledged industry in its own right. Coalbed methane deposits are primarily located in the Rocky Mountain region. Development is now widespread around the globe, with pilot projects in China and Russia.

Globally, shale gas activity is very low, with about two-thirds of this unconventional gas resource located in the US. In fact, the US is the only country with a large-scale shale gas industry. Shale gas was the last of the three natural gas unconventionals to take off, as late as the 1990s. At this time, gas shales have low recovery factors. The challenge is to release the gas locked in these stubborn, almost impermeable rocks. Estimates are provided for the potential ultimate recoverable resources of shale gas distributed around the US. Shale gas plays are continuous and very extensive throughout the US, offering attractive development costs.

(Chapter 4). The types of reserves are defined, and a comprehensive overview of the evolution of their classification systems and of the methodologies for reserves estimation is presented. The US Securities and Exchange Commission’s system of reserves valuation is sketched out, indicating that it has had a notable effect on the quality of reserves disclosures for new oil and gas projects worldwide.

Decline analysis is used to determine the ultimate reserves of several giant oil and gas fields, and of the top 10 oil and gas producing countries. The dilemma of extreme values of “reported” country-level reserves is examined; these values warp the usefulness of oil statistics in detriment of the general public and even for planning by national governments.

The ultimate reserves of traditional oil at the global level are established, and their half-life assessed. Half-life marks the beginning of production decline. The ultimate oil reserves and half-lives of the top 10 producers are established.

Contrary to the case of mature oil reserves, global natural gas is on a strong growth path, having produced barely one-fifth of its ultimate reserves. This precludes decline analysis, so a heuristic approach based on an assumed analogy of the size distributions of giant oil and gas fields was used to assess its reserves. The value is obtained for ultimately recoverable gas resources.

(Chapter 5). Light oils are the cream of the crop and comprise two-thirds of the world’s traditional oil resources—and only a small fraction has been produced so far. The overall expected recovery efficiency estimate is provided. EOR is indispensable to extract this massive volume of oil left in the underground while extending the economic life of the abundant mature oil fields. However, at the present time, only a tiny fraction of the world’s oil production comes from EOR.

Opportunely, EOR is now very competitive, thanks to the new levels of oil prices. What is at stake is that each percentage point increase in the recovery factor would unlock vast amounts of oil reserves from known reservoirs, thus reducing the need to rely so heavily on new discoveries. Estimates for both are provided and compared.

How fast can EOR be implemented on a large scale depends on the availability of high levels of investment, engineering manpower, and many more technical considerations. This chapter outlines a realistic plan of implementing EOR worldwide and provides projected incremental production levels over multiple timeframes. Thereafter, with more experience, the rate of incorporating new EOR oil most likely would quicken.

In order to facilitate a general assessment of the applicability of the variety of EOR techniques available, the global oil resource base was sorted by reservoir depth—deep, intermediate, and shallow—and by API gravity—light, medium, heavy, and extra-heavy crude—categories that reflect as best as possible the upper and lower limits of successful field EOR projects. A long-term tenable recovery goal is also provided.

(Chapter 6). Global offshore oil production is critical for the supply equation. In fact, it has been the main source of growth for world oil production in recent years, as onshore output has been essentially flat during the last 2 decades. The performance of the global offshore production sector has been remarkable.

Offshore oil and gas production together account for almost one-third of the oil-equivalent world production. Estimates of the ultimate recoverable offshore oil and gas reserves are provided and compared with their production capacity potential. A scenario for medium-term offshore oil production is also provided.

(Chapter 7). Our knowledge of the existing hydrocarbon resource base is now at a 90% confidence level, which provides a fairly solid platform from which to build a profile of oil and gas production in the 21st Century. A decline model is developed to predict the future production capacity of the crude oil and natural gas reserves, worldwide and for important oil producing countries. Crude oil accounts for four-fifths of the world’s present petroleum liquids supply mix of 85 million b/d. It should be emphasized that the projections of crude oil and natural gas production correspond to the maximum production capacity that their reserves can sustain at any time. In other words, it represents the best-case output scenario of crude oil and natural gas.

The decline model differs substantially from other models. Some use a “bottom-up” methodology based on building individual profiles of key oil fields—in effect a sample-like analysis valid at best for medium-term supply predictions. Others, like the EIA model, essentially assume an unlimited growth of reserves and consequently of production. The decline model in effect constrains production growth to the capacity of the known proved reserves; its parameters are obtained by previously fitting the model to the entire production history of all producing oil fields. In this report, medium-term projections from the decline model are compared with those of the EIA model.
Potential shortfalls of global oil production capacity in the absence of a comprehensive EOR effort are projected. Natural gas production capacity potential is also estimated.

In addition to global projections, the report also presents long-term projections of the crude production capacity of the US, Russia, and Saudi Arabia, and natural gas projections for the US. In synthesis, the decline model provides a comprehensive global outlook of the medium- and long-term production potential of both crude oil and natural gas.

Worship the Enviroment

2008-12-22T12:42:00.000-08:00

OIL$33, US Economy 0

2008-12-19T21:21:00.000-08:00

Oil prices this week plunged to their lowest level since February 2004, in spite of Opec’s latest effort to steady the market with an agreement to implement the largest supply cut in the cartel’s history, which was announced on Wednesday.

The benchmark US crude price sank below the $33-a-barrel level on Friday. Nymex January West Texas Intermediate dropped to $32.40, a near five-year low, before recovering to settle $2.35 lower at $33.87, down 26.8 per cent this week.

January contract expired at the close on Friday, so there was significantly more trading in the February WTI contract, the benchmark from next week, up 69 cents at $42.36 a barrel, recovering from a low of $40.90. ICE February Brent rebounded 64 cents to $44 a barrel, down 10.4 per cent this week.

Opec pledged to cut output by 2.2m barrels a day, on top of cuts totalling 2m b/d agreed earlier this year. But doubts that the cartel’s members would fully comply with the agreement and concerns about the outlook for demand ensured downward pressure on oil prices.

“Those in the market with a very pessimistic view on the global economic outlook and the prospects for oil demand thought the supply cut was not enough and the rest will be saying, well let’s see if Opec actually delivers,” said Mike Wittner, global head of oil research at Société Générale.

Mr Wittner noted that the supply cut that Opec announced in November was only now starting to show up in shipments and inventories data.

Gold fell 2.5 per cent to $8369.40 a troy ounce on Friday, under pressure from a recovery in the dollar. Over the week, gold rose 1.9 per cent, touching a two-month high of $881.20 on Wednesday after the Federal Reserve cut the main US policy interest rate to virtually zero.

Investor interest in gold remains strong, with holdings in exchange traded funds standing at a record 1,165 tonnes (around 47 per cent of mine output in 2007).

Among the base metals, copper sank below the $3,000 a tonne level for the first time since May 2005 with the red metal dropping 7.7 per cent to $2,930 a tonne over the week, under pressure from rising stock levels.

Hey, Russia Needs Help

2008-12-19T05:48:00.000-08:00

World Bank: Russia may need help if oil falls more

MOSCOW (AP) - Russia would come under crippling financial pressure and may need to raise money externally if oil languishes at an average of $30 a barrel over the next two years, the World Bank predicted Friday.
The bleak scenario would mark a rapid unraveling of Russia's oil-fueled economic gains over the past eight years, during which time the government has paid down most of its foreign debt and built up a vast stockpile of international reserves.

"If oil prices in 2009 and 2010 average $30 a barrel, that would be a nightmare scenario for a global economy," Zeljko Bogetic, the World Bank's chief economist in Russia told investors on Friday. "The pressures on the current account and public finances in Russia would quickly rise to a point where the financing constraint would become so sharp that it's possible even to envisage Russia's return from a creditor to international organisations to (that of) a borrower."

At $50 a barrel, Russia could drain much of its reserve funds and run budgetary deficits, but would not face a "meltdown" scenario, said Bogetic.

Oil prices took a sharp turn downward this week, with the February light sweet crude contract trading just over $42 a barrel—more than $100 lower than its July peak—despite a large output cut pledged this week by oil producers' cartel OPEC.

Some major oil-importing countries have criticized OPEC's move to push up prices during a global slowdown.

The World Bank currently forecasts an average oil price of $75 a barrel over the next two years, said Bogetic.

Among emerging markets, Russia has been one of the hardest hit by the global financial crisis and plunging oil prices, the mainstay of the Russian economy. These factors have put the national currency under intense strain and triggered massive stock market losses and capital outflows from the country.

Russia, which grew at over 8 percent last year, is facing a severe slowdown in growth, and possibly even recession next year, analysts say. Torrid figures released earlier this week showed that industrial output had plunged 10.8 percent in November from the previous month, signaling a dramatic slowdown in the final quarter.

"Clearly we are in the middle of a major growth recession in Russia," said Bogetic. "I would call it a growth recession, not an output recession—yet."

He said the World Bank had tweaked its earlier projection of 3 percent growth next year to between 2-3 percent.

Global Warming a Hoax, CNN 's Lou Dobbs

2008-12-18T19:39:00.001-08:00

CNN Meteorologist: Manmade Global Warming Theory 'Arrogant'
Network's second meteorologist to challenge notion man can alter climate.

By Jeff Poor
Business & Media Institute
12/18/2008 9:07:18 PM

Unprecedented snow in Las Vegas has some scratching their heads – how can there be global warming with this unusual winter weather?

http://www.eyeblast.tv/public/checker.aspx?v=yd4zDknz8z

CNN Meteorologist Chad Myers had never bought into the notion that man can alter the climate and the Vegas snowstorm didn’t impact his opinion. Myers, an American Meteorological Society certified meteorologist, explained on CNN’s Dec. 18 “Lou Dobbs Tonight” that the whole idea is arrogant and mankind was in danger of dying from other natural events more so than global warming.

“You know, to think that we could affect weather all that much is pretty arrogant,” Myers said. “Mother Nature is so big, the world is so big, the oceans are so big – I think we’re going to die from a lack of fresh water or we’re going to die from ocean acidification before we die from global warming, for sure.”

Myers is the second CNN meteorologist to challenge the global warming conventions common in the media. He also said trying to determine patterns occurring in the climate would be difficult based on such a short span.

“But this is like, you know you said – in your career – my career has been 22 years long,” Myers said. “That’s a good career in TV, but talking about climate – it’s like having a car for three days and saying, ‘This is a great car.’ Well, yeah – it was for three days, but maybe in days five, six and seven it won’t be so good. And that’s what we’re doing here.”

“We have 100 years worth of data, not millions of years that the world’s been around,” Myers continued.

Dr. Jay Lehr, an expert on environmental policy, told “Lou Dobbs Tonight” viewers you can detect subtle patterns over recorded history, but that dates back to the 13th Century.

“If we go back really, in recorded human history, in the 13th Century, we were probably 7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than we are now and it was a very prosperous time for mankind,” Lehr said. “If go back to the Revolutionary War 300 years ago, it was very, very cold. We’ve been warming out of that cold spell from the Revolutionary War period and now we’re back into a cooling cycle.”

Lehr suggested the earth is presently entering a cooling cycle – a result of nature, not man.

“The last 10 years have been quite cool,” Lehr continued. “And right now, I think we’re going into cooling rather than warming and that should be a much greater concern for humankind. But, all we can do is adapt. It is the sun that does it, not man.”

Lehr is a senior fellow and science director of The Heartland Institute, an organization that will be holding the 2009 International Conference on Climate Change in New York March 8-10.

Another CNN meteorologist attacked the concept that man is somehow responsible for changes in climate last year. Rob Marciano charged Al Gore’s 2006 movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” had some inaccuracies.

“There are definitely some inaccuracies,” Marciano said during the Oct. 4, 2007 broadcast of CNN’s “American Morning.” “The biggest thing I have a problem with is this implication that Katrina was caused by global warming.”

Marciano also said that, “global warming does not conclusively cause stronger hurricanes like we’ve seen,” pointing out that “by the end of this century we might get about a 5 percent increase.”

His comments drew a strong response and he recanted the next day saying “the globe is getting warmer and humans are the likely the main cause of it.”

BMI's Special Report "Fire & Ice: Journalists have warned of climate change for 100 years, but can't decide weather we face an ice or warming"

Climate of Bias: BMI's page devoted entirely to global warming and climate change in the media.

$36 Oil!

2008-12-18T13:40:00.000-08:00

Crude Oil Tumbles Below $36 as Demand Drop Swells Inventories

By Mark Shenk

Dec. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Crude oil fell below $36 a barrel for the first time since June 2004 as declining demand created a glut of crude and the weakening economy undermined OPEC’s efforts to reduce supply.

Oil for delivery in future months has dropped less than the contract for January as supply has swollen in the storage hub for crude traded in New York. The U.S. Energy Department said consumption will be lower in 2009 because of the recession. OPEC agreed to reduce output by 2.46 million barrels a day yesterday.

“There’s a lot of supply and not a lot of storage left,” said Adam Sieminski, Deutsche Bank’s chief energy economist, in Washington. “There’s a hope somewhere that the economy will be better in 12 months and the OPEC cuts will start to have their intended impact.”

Crude oil for January delivery dropped $3.84, or 9.6 percent, to $36.22 a barrel at 2:47 p.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the lowest settlement since June 29, 2004. Futures touched $35.98 during today’s session. Prices have tumbled 75 percent from a record $147.27 on July 11. The January contract expires tomorrow.

February futures cost $5.45 a barrel more than January oil today, based on Nymex settlement prices. It’s the biggest premium between the two most-active contract months in Bloomberg data going back to 1986. The spread allows oil traders who can line up credit and storage space to lock in profits by buying and holding crude oil to sell a month from now.

Oil Contango

Oil for delivery in January 2010 is 53 percent more than for delivery in January 2009, increasing the opportunity for traders to profit. This price structure, in which the subsequent month’s price is higher than the one before it, is known as contango.

Contango trading encourages companies to increase stockpiles. U.S. crude-oil supplies rose in 11 of the past 12 weeks, according to the DOE. Inventories at Cushing, Oklahoma, where oil that’s traded on Nymex is stored, climbed 21 percent to 27.5 million barrels last week, the highest since May 2007, the government said yesterday.

“Unless demand picks up appreciably, the front-month contracts will remain under pressure because nobody wants to take delivery,” said Phil Flynn, senior trader at Alaron Trading Corp. in Chicago. “We could see a lot of fireworks tomorrow.”

Volume in electronic trading on the exchange was 412,007 contracts, as of 3:20 p.m. in New York. Volume totaled 664,140 contracts yesterday, up 32 percent from the average over the past 3 months. Open interest yesterday was 1.17 million contracts. The exchange has a one-day delay in reporting open interest and full volume data.

Demand Decline

“The continuing decline in demand is running ahead of supply cuts,” said Robert Ebel, chairman of the energy and national security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “Right now OPEC has its fingers crossed. If this doesn’t work, they will have another meeting soon and make another cut.”

World oil consumption next year will drop by 0.2 percent to 85.68 million barrels a day, OPEC said in a Dec. 15 report. The U.S. Energy Department said on Dec. 9 that global demand will decline 0.5 percent to 85.3 million barrels a day.

JPMorgan Chase & Co., the largest U.S. bank by assets, reduced its 2009 average oil price forecast to $43 a barrel from $69 as a global economic slowdown causes a contraction in demand. The prospect of oil falling to $25 is “hard to dismiss amid a serious deterioration of economic conditions and building stocks,” the bank said in a report released yesterday.

Supply ‘Leakage’

“When you look at the spare capacity that is being created, even if prices do start to pick up, you will see more leakage of supply onto the market,” Lawrence Eagles, global head of commodities research at JPMorgan Chase in New York, said in a conference call today.

Yesterday’s record Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’ production cut is larger than a 2 million-barrel drop indicated on Dec. 16 by Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi. OPEC ministers met in Oran, Algeria.

OPEC has called on other exporters to help it bolster prices. Non-OPEC members Russia and Azerbaijan signaled yesterday that they may be willing to trim supplies to help the group.

Norway, the fifth-biggest oil exporter, according to the country’s Ministry of Petroleum and Energy, won’t follow OPEC’s decision to cut output, Stein Hernes, a spokesman for the ministry, said in an e-mailed response to questions today.

No Confidence

“Even though OPEC announced a substantial cut yesterday, the market doesn’t seem to have any confidence in their ability to manipulate the market,” said Tom Bentz, senior energy analyst at BNP Paribas in New York. “Even if they make the promised cuts, it will be a long time before we see evidence of it here.”

Oil companies have booked 25 supertankers to store crude, enough to supply France for almost a month. The vessels, equal to about 5 percent of the global fleet, can carry as much as 50 million barrels.

“The market is failing to find any support,” Bentz said. “The worries about demand are still out there because of the recession. We’ve got at least 45 million barrels of excess floating storage out there on top of all the storage we’ve got on land.”

Brent crude oil for February settlement declined $2.17, or 4.8 percent, to settle at $43.36 a barrel on London’s ICE Futures Europe exchange.

Central Planning Doesn't WORK!

2008-12-18T13:11:00.000-08:00

$38 Oil !

2008-12-18T09:27:00.000-08:00

Reuters
U.S. oil dives to $38 ahead of January expiry
Thursday December 18, 10:19 am ET

By Chris Baldwin
LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. crude dropped to around $38 a barrel Thursday, for the soon-to-expire January futures contract, after OPEC's record output cut failed to stem the price decline and U.S. inventories of oil swelled.

Oil is about $109 off its July peak, shedding value as a global recession cuts into fuel demand.

The January contract touched $37.71 Thursday, its lowest price since July 2004, and was trading down $2.07 cents at $37.99 a barrel by 9:55 a.m. EST.

February futures, which come to the fore after January's expiry Friday, were around $5 higher than the current front month but also fell $1.46 to $43.15.

"There is an unusually large contango spread, nearly $5, and the January contract expires in a few hours," said Kevin Norrish, analyst at Barclay's Capital in London.

"So what's the real price?...the February price is a much better bet."

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries on Wednesday made its third output cut since September to try to regain control of falling prices amid slackening demand.

U.S. crude for January delivery tumbled nearly 8 percent on Wednesday as traders dismissed OPEC's 2.2 million barrel per day (bpd) output cut, decided in Algeria.

U.S. stockpiles of crude oil rose last week slightly more that expected, with deliveries at the Cushing, Oklahoma delivery point for physical barrels of light sweet crude showing a build of 4.7 million barrels. This increase, announced Wednesday, continued to influence trading Thursday.

CHINESE GASOLINE

China Thursday said it will cut domestic fuel prices on Friday for the first time in almost two years to revamp its regulated pricing regime and revive growth.

The China cuts of roughly 13 percent for gasoline and 17 percent for diesel were brought forward from an expected January implementation by the National Development and Reform Commission. Analysts say cheaper fuel in China could stimulate demand.

Some forecasters now predict the first decline in world energy use since 1983.

"Following OPEC's announcement to cut so aggressively, market participants are reading the degree of this move as being indicative of just how weak demand is globally for crude oil," said Chris Jarvis, a senior analyst at Caprock Risk Management.

"A retest of levels with February contract becoming the front month shortly is to be expected and also a catalyst for this...weakness," Jarvis said.

For OPEC's curbs to be effective the fractious group will need to enforce compliance, historically a tricky task in a falling market. The producer group itself estimates November production cut compliance by its members at around 50 percent.

Next year's outlook is increasingly bleak as economic indicators show a deep global recession taking hold, causing oil demand to fall from the United States to China.

JPMorgan cut its 2009 average crude oil price forecast to $43 a barrel from $69 following OPEC's cut, and analysts say more losses are in store until a sufficient supply is taken off the market or demand levels swing back up.
!

$40 Oil, Maybe $30

2008-12-17T13:54:00.000-08:00

Oil prices tumbled below $40 for the first time since the summer of 2004 Wednesday despite an announcement from OPEC of a record production cut of 2.2 million barrels a day.
Markets had already priced in a vastly reduced flow of oil and traders focused instead on troubling economic data that points to a long and severe recession.

Light, sweet crude for January delivery tumbled 8 percent, or $3.54, to settle at $40.06 on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Benchmark crude prices fell as low as $39.88, a price last seen in July 2004.

"There's just so much oil in inventory out there right now," said Michael Lynch, president of Strategic Energy & Economic Research. "Nobody wants to buy this stuff."

Crude prices have fallen so low, producers have leased supertankers to store the oil at sea, hoping that oil will rebound.

U.S. gasoline inventories continued to rise, the government reported, providing further evidence of a major pullback by American motorists.

Demand for gasoline over the four weeks ended Dec. 12 was 2.7 percent lower than a year earlier.

OPEC had already announced cuts totaling 2 million barrels earlier this year, also with little effect. The unprecedented production cuts and the market reaction show just how fast energy demand has fallen during the worst economic downturn in at least a generation.

"You've got a commodity that people are buying less of because they can't afford to buy more," said Phil Flynn, an analyst at Alaron Trading Corp. "People are fearful. They have a lack of confidence in the economy. They're closing their factories."

Grim economic news radiates out of the U.S., Europe and Asia almost daily as consumers and industries pull back on spending.

The Cooper Tire and Rubber Co. said Wednesday it will cut 1,300 jobs and close a plant in Georgia.

Newell Rubbermaid Inc. is reducing its salaried work force by as much as 10 percent. The Atlanta-based company slashed its fourth-quarter and full-year profit guidance Wednesday.

In Detroit, General Motors Corp. put the brakes on construction of an engine factory trying to hold on to the cash that it has left.

Meanwhile, the dollar suffered its biggest one-day decline against the euro after the Federal Reserve cut a key lending rate target to historic lows.

That would typically lead more investors into the crude market because oil is bought and sold in dollars and you can get more bang for the buck.

But investors in this harsh economic climate are holding onto their wallets like never before, betting there's not enough global demand to support higher crude prices, said Gene McGillian, an analyst at Tradition Energy.

"Oil prices should be a lot stronger," McGillian said.

The last time oil prices dipped below $40 a barrel was July 21, 2004. Prices settled that day at $40.09, according to Peter Beutel, an oil analyst at Cameron Hanover.

Many analysts believe oil prices will continue falling next year with agencies ranging from the U.S. Department of Energy to the International Energy Agency forecasting weak demand.

IHS Global Insight Chief Economist Nariman Behravesh was among the industry experts forecasting lower prices for oil.

"Oil prices will (easily) fall below $40 per barrel in the next year, and could tumble all the way to $30," Behravesh said in a research note. "With the economic outlook deteriorating by the day, futures markets for commodities have not priced in the full extent of the 'demand destruction' taking place."

Doubts also remain about the willingness of some OPEC members to adhere to price-boosting production quotas.

"OPEC has lacked credibility for a long time on discipline," said Gerard Rigby, energy analyst at Fuel First Consulting in Sydney. "OPEC is going to have to show they are committed to the cut, that it's not just talk."

U.S. crude inventories rose slightly last week despite expectations for a drop, while gasoline reserves increased as demand stayed below year-ago levels, according to government data released Wednesday.

Analysts had expected a drop of 900,000 barrels, according to a survey by Platts, the energy information arm of McGraw-Hill Cos.

Gas prices, because it must be refined from crude, almost always lags the movement in oil prices.

Retail gas prices, which hit a low of $1.656 a gallon on Friday, rose to $1.667 a gallon Wednesday, according to auto club AAA, the Oil Price Information Service and Wright Express.

In London, February Brent crude rose 97 cents to settle at $45.53 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange.

In other Nymex trading, gasoline futures fell 3.45 cents to settle at $1.0055 a gallon. Heating oil fell 1.77 cents to $1.4425 a gallon while natural gas for January delivery fell 15.2 cents to settle at $5.619 per 1,000 cubic feet.

$25 Oil?

2008-12-16T09:55:00.000-08:00

Dec. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Francisco Blanch, the Merrill Lynch & Co. analyst who called the $147.27 record crude-oil price almost on the nose, sent markets into a tailspin with his forecast that the next move may be back to $25 a barrel in 2009. Such relief for consumers may be short-lived once the global recession ends, he said.

“If we reignite economic growth to a very fast level, we will have a shortage of energy again,” said the 35-year-old head of global commodity research at Merrill Lynch in London. Oil may rise to $150 in two or three years, said Blanch. World growth will reach 2.2 percent next year and rise to 4.8 percent by 2011, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Blanch changed his 2009 price forecast at least four times this year as the worst global slowdown since 2001 spreads. His most recent estimate that crude may fall to $25 came on Nov. 26. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’ 13 members meet in Oran, Algeria, tomorrow to try to stem crude’s decline.

“A shift of views from an analyst is a good thing,” said Pierre Andurand, chief investment officer at BlueGold Capital Management LLP, a London-based hedge fund that manages $1.1 billion. “It means he takes the change in economic conditions and the change in balances into account. We can’t say that for many of them.”

On Aug. 7, with crude about $27 below the record set about a month earlier, Blanch said he expected oil demand to be supported by “very healthy” growth in emerging markets.

The following month, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. declared bankruptcy, credit markets froze and recessions in the U.S. and the Europe deepened.

Global Recession

Blanch lowered his average 2009 forecast to $90 on Oct. 2 and said crude may fall to $50 in a global recession. Following the announcement, prices dropped 4.6 percent to $93.97 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Two months later, he forecast a fall to $25 if the recession extended to China. Oil tumbled 13 percent to $40.50 a barrel that day and the next.

“What changed our views is that the credit cycle became explosive. Suddenly the cost of money just absolutely ballooned,” said Blanch, who lives in London’s Hampstead area with his wife, Gabriela, a human rights lawyer, and a golden retriever named Guero.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. analysts Jeffrey Currie and Allison Nathan, and Deutsche Bank AG’s Adam Sieminski, have also reduced price forecasts.

Other Forecasts

London-based Currie and Nathan, in New York, predicted on Dec. 11 that oil would drop to $30 in the first quarter of 2009, half their previous forecast. Washington-based Sieminski predicted an average price of $47.50 for 2009.

Oil for January delivery rose 51 cents, or 1.2 percent, to $45.02 a barrel at 8:34 a.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The price has fallen 51 percent in the past three months.

Born in Madrid, Blanch received a doctorate in economics from the city’s Complutense University and a master’s degree in public administration from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He was in South Korea to research East Asian economic growth when a financial crisis struck the region, sending oil to $10.35 in December 1998.

At the time, he had “pretty much the same feeling we have now,” Blanch said.

After working as an energy economist for Goldman, Sachs & Co. and consulting for the European Commission, Blanch joined Merrill Lynch in April 2005. He declined to discuss his future after Merrill’s takeover by Bank of America Corp.

Blanch forecast $150 oil in November 2007 when crude was about $96, saying that would set the stage for a global economic slowdown sending the price to $50.

‘Cold Outside’

His $25 prediction may have received more weight than it deserved, said Sarah Emerson, managing director of Energy Security Analysis Inc., a consulting firm in Wakefield, Massachusetts.

“Sure, if the Chinese economy gets really bad, we could go below $25,” she said. “It’s kind of like saying if the temperature drops, it will be cold outside.”

Blanch, who runs half-marathons and takes the subway to work, said the likelihood of $25 oil is less than one in three.

“The best you can do is sort of set out a number of alternatives and try to set out within your central forecast what are the risks around it and what are the alternatives,” he said. “Nobody has a crystal ball.”

Suit Against Al Gore for Global Warming

2008-12-16T06:40:00.000-08:00

Ted Turner Thinks there's too many people!

2008-12-15T13:25:00.000-08:00

Global Warming Causes Record Low

2008-12-15T07:47:00.000-08:00

000
SXUS75 KBOU 151343 RRB
RERBOU

RECORD EVENT REPORT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DENVER CO
642 AM MST MON DEC 15 2008

...NEW RECORD LOW TEMPERATURES IN DENVER FOR DECEMBER 14TH AND 15TH...

THE LOW TEMPERATURE AT DENVER INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT ON DECEMBER 14TH
DROPPED TO -18 AT 635 PM AND NEVER DROPPED BELOW -18 PRIOR TO MIDNIGHT.
SO THAT ESTABLISHES A NEW RECORD LOW TEMPERATURE FOR DECEMBER 14TH
BREAKING THE OLD RECORD OF -14 DEGREES SET IN 1901.

THEN ON DECEMBER 15TH...THE TEMPERATURE BOTTOMED OUT AT -19 DEGREES
AT 231 AM. THIS IS A NEW RECORD LOW TEMPERATURE FOR DECEMBER 15TH
BREAKING THE OLD RECORD OF -6 SET IN 1951.

BENTON

Czech President , Global Warming Silly

2008-12-12T10:00:00.000-08:00

PRAGUE, Dec 12 (AFP) Dec 12, 2008
Czech President Vaclav Klaus hit out at the EU climate deal concluded Friday and described global climate issues as "a silly luxury."
"I do not like the way they forced it", Klaus said shortly after an agreement was announced in Brussels.

He also claimed that his French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy had "pushed" the deal so that it would not be left when the Czech Republic takes over the EU presidency from France on January 1.

"This is scandalous," he said. "We should have been able to discuss it during our presidency, to force it now is not very good."

"Environmental issues are a luxury good," Klaus added. "Now we have to tighten our belt and to cut the luxury."

Global climate issues "are a silly luxury good," he repeated.

Czech environmentalists had expressed fears that an EU agreement on how to tackle global warming would never have been concluded during the six-month Czech presidency of the bloc because of Klaus's views.

But Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Vondra said this week that Klaus's opinions were not shared by the government and would not alter EU developments.

"It is a question of ideology: one believes more, one believes less... there are some commitments which we have agreed to in 2007 and nobody would seek to change that," he said.

Oil Companies Bugging Out

2008-12-12T06:24:00.000-08:00

The chief executive of Weatherford International said Thursday he and his company headquarters will move from Houston to Switzerland, joining at least two other top Houston oil services executives in seeking closer proximity to emerging oil producing regions overseas.

Halliburton Co. relocated its top executives to a Dubai headquarters in 2007 and offshore driller Transocean has announced plans to move to Geneva.

Houston will become a regional headquarters for Weatherford, and could lose perhaps dozens of managers and engineers to a new office in Geneva.

Yet the company's hometown will still be a key hub for its North American operations and should not be greatly affected by the change, Weatherford Chairman and CEO Bernard J. Duroc-Danner said in an interview with the Houston Chronicle.

"The U.S. is an important market," he said. "It's just a market. It is not the primary market."

The move highlights the increasing shift in focus by U.S. oil field services firms from mature North American markets to fast-growing nations in the Eastern Hemisphere.

Growing needs
With commodity prices high in recent years, China, countries in the former Soviet Union, Africa and the Middle East have paid top dollar for western expertise that will allow them to unlock oil and natural gas reserves to feed their growing energy needs.

The trend has been a boon for services firms like Weatherford, which works on a contract basis to provide virtually every service involved in converting a discovery into a producing well.

In 2009, more than 50 percent of Weatherford's business will be in the Eastern Hemisphere, and it should grow to 60 percent in a few years, Duroc-Danner said. The U.S. will probably be 25 percent or less.

"Although we were born and raised in Houston ... the reality is we have to be closer to our markets," he said.

Weatherford has about 2,600 employees in the area out of more than 46,700 worldwide. Duroc-Danner said the number of managers and engineers who leave Houston for Geneva will be in the "tens and twenties," while the rest will remain.

On Wednesday, Weatherford said its board of directors voted to move the company's place of incorporation from Bermuda to Switzerland. While run from Houston, the company has been domiciled in Bermuda since 2002.

If approved by shareholders and the Supreme Court of Bermuda, the change could be effective by early 2009, the company said.

In addition to putting the company closer to key growth markets, the move will give the firm access to a corporate-friendly Swiss tax structure that will only tax its domestic income, rather than its worldwide income, Duroc-Danner said.

Multinational U.S. oil field services firms have long complained that while much of their income is earned overseas, it is taxed as if it were earned in the U.S. Bermuda is a tax haven, but lacks the same tax treaties the U.S. has with Switzerland, and Congress is considering tightening restrictions on companies headquartered in such countries.

Similar moves
U.S. oil field services firms also worry that the incoming Democratic administration and more solidly Democratic Congress will raise corporate taxes, and that may have spurred some companies to set up offices abroad, said Neal Dingmann, an industry analyst with Dahlman Rose & Co. in Houston.

Transocean, the world's largest driller, also run from Houston, said in October it would seek to change its incorporation from the Cayman Islands to Switzerland. The move has been approved by shareholders but is awaiting approval by a Cayman Island court. If approved, 14 company officers, including CEO Robert Long, will leave Houston to run the new headquarters in Geneva.

Last year, Halliburton CEO Dave Lesar left Houston to open a dual headquarters in Dubai.

Duroc-Danner, a native of France, said he still expects to spend about 20 percent of his time in Houston.

After living in Houston for 20 years, building a family and growing the company, he said the city has become home, and he wants it to remain an important part of the company.

"We're not trying to dismantle what we have in Houston," he said. "It's just that in terms of being in the hierarchical pecking order, it's not going to be Rome anymore."

Global Warming is about Taxing Your Work, IBD Editorial

2008-12-11T17:57:00.000-08:00

The wasteful, corrupt, dictatorship-dominated U.N. may not be successful in fulfilling very many of its supposed objectives — world peace, the end of poverty, mutual understanding, etc. — but when it comes to suppressing contrarian points of view that interfere with official U.N. stances, the organization ranks with the best.

Take the attempts two years ago to tell the truth about the anti-Semitism of the Hamas terrorist organization, elected into power by Palestinians.

"Israel will exist and continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it," was just one of many quotes from Hamas' charter that were blocked by the U.N. from being delivered verbally to members by defenders of Israel.

Instead, the World Union for Progressive Judaism, a U.N. non-governmental organization, had to settle for submitting a written statement documenting Hamas' violent, extremist beliefs.

Now the U.N. is telling the world that only nuts on the fringe question dismantling the global economy to fight global warming. The U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last year stated that warming was "unequivocal" and "caused by human activity."

Now, as 10,000 delegates and environmentalists meet in Poland to negotiate the successor to the Kyoto treaty, we hear complaints about demands that they prove warming is man-made.

"The skeptics are doing a good job," Lawrence Buja of the National Center for Atmospheric Research told the Associated Press, "because they are making us present ironclad proof."

(Buja mentioned the idea of injecting large amounts of sulfur into the atmosphere or scattering billions of refractors to reduce sunlight and reduce temperatures. Will climate change be the excuse for turning the world into Dr. Frankenstein's laboratory?)

Men and women of science are supposed to demand of themselves ironclad proof — not resent such challenges. Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, on Wednesday released a wealth of information contradicting the U.N. line.

Dissenting scientists on the subject now top 650. They include Nobel physics laureate Ivar Giaever, who calls global warming "a new religion," and Japanese chemist and IPCC member Kiminori Itoh, who calls warming alarmism the "worst scientific scandal."

New Zealand chemical engineering professor Geoffrey Duffy notes that "even doubling or tripling the amount of carbon dioxide will virtually have little impact, as water vapor and water condensed on particles as clouds dominate the worldwide scene and always will."

Inhofe and minority committee members are about to release an updated report with the dissenting arguments of those 650-plus scientists. Many of them are or used to be with the IPCC but have come to oppose the U.N. on climate change.

"The report has added about 250 scientists (and growing) in 2008 to the over 400 scientists who spoke out in 2007," Inhofe's office notes. They far outnumber the 52 U.N. scientists who authored the IPCC's 2007 Summary for Policymakers.

On top of this comes news of new research fueling the dissenters' skepticism. A peer-reviewed study focused on the Siberian Altai mountain region examined 750 years worth of the local ice core, with special emphasis on the oxygen isotope.

It found an apparently strong correlation between the concentration of this isotope and solar activity from the years 1250 to 1850. The findings indicate that about half of observed global warming in the last century can be explained by the activity of the sun.

It increasingly seems that ideology and a wish to see the industrialized free West reduced in economic status is what motivates U.N. climate policy, not science. But these hundreds of competent scientists dedicated to the truth are not about to let their mouths be covered — even by a United Nations olive branch.

UN Global Warming Hoax for World Carbon Tax

2008-12-10T06:55:00.000-08:00

UN Blowback: More Than 650 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims

Study: Half of warming due to Sun! –Sea Levels Fail to Rise? - Warming Fears in 'Dustbin of History'

POZNAN, Poland - The UN global warming conference currently underway in Poland is about to face a serious challenge from over 650 dissenting scientists from around the globe who are criticizing the climate claims made by the UN IPCC and former Vice President Al Gore. Set for release this week, a newly updated U.S. Senate Minority Report features the dissenting voices of over 650 international scientists, many current and former UN IPCC scientists, who have now turned against the UN. The report has added about 250 scientists (and growing) in 2008 to the over 400 scientists who spoke out in 2007. The over 650 dissenting scientists are more than 12 times the number of UN scientists (52) who authored the media hyped IPCC 2007 Summary for Policymakers.
The U.S. Senate report is the latest evidence of the growing groundswell of scientific opposition rising to challenge the UN and Gore. Full Report Set To Be Released in the Next 24 Hours – Stay Tuned…

A hint of what the upcoming report contains:

“I am a skeptic…Global warming has become a new religion.” - Nobel Prize Winner for Physics, Ivar Giaever.

“Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receiving any funding, I can speak quite frankly….As a scientist I remain skeptical.” - Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson, the first woman in the world to receive a PhD in meteorology and formerly of NASA who has authored more than 190 studies and has been called “among the most preeminent scientists of the last 100 years.”

Warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in the history…When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.” - UN IPCC Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning PhD environmental physical chemist.

“The IPCC has actually become a closed circuit; it doesn’t listen to others. It doesn’t have open minds… I am really amazed that the Nobel Peace Prize has been given on scientifically incorrect conclusions by people who are not geologists,” - Indian geologist Dr. Arun D. Ahluwalia at Punjab University and a board member of the UN-supported International Year of the Planet.

“The models and forecasts of the UN IPCC "are incorrect because they only are based on mathematical models and presented results at scenarios that do not include, for example, solar activity.” - Victor Manuel Velasco Herrera, a researcher at the Institute of Geophysics of the National Autonomous University of Mexico

“It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don’t buy into anthropogenic global warming.” - U.S Government Atmospheric Scientist Stanley B. Goldenberg of the Hurricane Research Division of NOAA.

In addition, the report will feature new peer-reviewed scientific studies and analyses refuting man-made warming fears and a heavy dose of inconvenient climate developments. (See Below: Study: Half of warming due to Sun! –Sea Levels Fail to Rise? - Warming Fears in 'Dustbin of History')

The Senate Minority Report is an update of 2007’s blockbuster U.S. Senate Minority Report of over 400 dissenting scientists. See here: This new report will contain the names, quotes and analyses of literally hundreds of additional international scientists who publicly dissented from man-made climate fears in just 2008 alone. The chorus of scientific voices skeptical grow louder as a steady stream of peer-reviewed studies, analyses and real world data challenge the UN and former Vice President Al Gore's claims that the "science is settled" and there is a "consensus." The original 2007 U.S. Senate report is available here: Full Report Set To Be Released in the Next 24 Hours – Stay Tuned…

Meanwhile, while the UN climate conference is in session here in Poznan, the bad scientific news for promoters of man-made climate alarm just keeps rolling in. Below is a very small sampling of very inconvenient developments for Gore, the United Nations, and their promoters in the mainstream media. Peer-reviewed studies, analyses, and prominent scientists continue to speak out to refute climate fears. The data presented below is just from the past week.
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Peer-reviewed study: Half of recent warming was solar! - December 10, 2008

Excerpt: In this dose of peer-reviewed skeptical climatological literature, we follow Climate Research News. The blog was intrigued by a new article in Geophysical Research Letters that was accepted on Friday, December 5th. Eichler, A., S. Olivier, K. Henderson, A. Laube, J. Beer, T. Papina, H. W. Gäggeler, and M. Schwikowski: Temperature response in the Altai region lags solar forcing - Recall that the Siberian Altai Mountains are found at the intersection of Russia, China, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan. The authors looked at 750 years worth of the local ice core, especially the oxygen isotope. They claim to have found a very strong correlation between the concentration of this isotope (i.e. temperature) on one side and the known solar activity in the epoch 1250-1850. Their data seem to be precise enough to determine the lag, about 10-30 years. It takes some time for the climate to respond to the solar changes. It seems that they also have data to claim that the correlation gets less precise after 1850. They attribute the deviation to CO2 and by comparing the magnitude of the forcings, they conclude that "Our results are in agreement with studies based on NH temperature reconstructions [Scafetta et al., 2007] revealing that only up to approximately 50% of the observed global warming in the last 100 years can be explained by the Sun." Well, the word "only" is somewhat cute in comparison with the "mainstream" fashionable ideology. The IPCC said that they saw a 90% probability that "most" of the recent warming was man-made. The present paper would reduce this figure, 90%, to less than 50% because the Sun itself is responsible for 1/2 of the warming and not the whole 50% of the warming could have been caused by CO2 because there are other effects, too. Note that if 0.3 °C or 0.4 °C of warming in the 20th century was due to the increasing CO2 levels, the climate sensitivity is decisively smaller than 1 °C. At any rate, the expected 21st century warming due to CO2 would be another 0.3-0.4 °C, and this time, if the solar activity contributes with the opposite sign, these two effects could cancel. Even if you try to stretch these numbers a little bit - but not unrealistically - you have to become sure that the participants of the Poznan conference are lunatics.

Flashback: New scientific analysis shows Sun “could account for as much as 69% of the increase in Earth's average temperature” (LINK) & (LINK)

Dr. Bruce West, A U.S Army Chief Scientist, Says Sun, Not Man, Is Driving Climate Change – June 3, 2008 – (LINK)

21 spotless days and solar magnetic field still in a funk – Meteorologist Anthony Watts Excerpt: We are now at 21 days with no sunspots, it will be interesting to see if we reach a spotless 30 day period and then perhaps a spotless month of December.

New Arctic ice analysis reveals ‘No clear evidence of a delay in the start of the later summer/early fall freeze up or the start of the late winter/early spring melt’ – Excerpt: Based on analysis by William Chapman, author of The Cryosphere Today website, graciously prepared an analysis of the dates of the minimum and maximum Arctic sea ice coverage since 1979.

Oscillation Rules as the Pacific Cools – December 9, 2008 Excerpt: A cool wedge of lower-than-normal sea-surface heights continues to dominate the tropical Pacific, ringed by a horseshoe of warmer waters. The continuation of this long-term cool phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation stacks the odds against a wetter-than-average winter/spring in the southwestern United States. The latest image of sea-surface height measurements from the U.S./French Jason-1 oceanography satellite shows the Pacific Ocean remains locked in a strong, cool phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, a large, long-lived pattern of climate variability in the Pacific associated with a general cooling of Pacific waters. […] Sea-surface temperature satellite data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration mirror Jason sea-surface height measurements, clearly showing a cool Pacific Decadal Oscillation pattern, as seen at: http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/map/images/sst/sst.anom.gif . "This multi-year Pacific Decadal Oscillation 'cool' trend can cause La Niña-like impacts around the Pacific basin," said Bill Patzert, an oceanographer and climatologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. […] This cool phase will likely persist this winter and, perhaps, beyond.

Report: Sea Level rise 'has stumbled since 2005' – Meteorologist Anthony Watts – December 5, 2008 Excerpt: We’ve been waiting for the UC web page to be updated with the most recent sea level data. It finally has been updated for 2008. It looks like the steady upward trend of sea level as measured by satellite has stumbled since 2005. The 60 day line in blue tells the story. From the University of Colorado web page: “Long-term mean sea level change is a variable of considerable interest in the studies of global climate change. The measurement of long-term changes in global mean sea level can provide an important corroboration of predictions by climate models of global warming. Long term sea level variations are primarily determined with two different methods.” - Yes, I would agree, it is indeed a variable of considerable interest. The question now is, how is it linked to global climate change (aka global warming) if CO2 continues to increase, and sea level does not?

Peer-Reviewed Study: Recent worldwide land warming' NOT 'a direct response to increasing greenhouse gases (GHGs) over land' - WorldClimateReport.com – December 3, 2008 ‘Rethinking Observed Warming?’ Key quote: “Evidence is presented that the recent worldwide land warming has occurred largely in response to a worldwide warming of the oceans rather than as a direct response to increasing greenhouse gases (GHGs) over land.”

Alert: 2008 will be coolest year of the decade!- December 5, 2008 Excerpt: This year is set to be the coolest since 2000, according to a preliminary estimate of global average temperature that is due to be released next week by the Met Office. The global average for 2008 should come in close to 14.3C, which is 0.14C below the average temperature for 2001-07. [Note: For evidence of the panic apparently gripping the promoters of man-made climate fear, read the quotes in the article from the warming partisans absolutely assuring everyone that cool temperatures are “absolutely not" evidence that global warming is on the wane. Those same voices are usually absent when it comes to linking heat waves to global warming. ]

Flashback: Global Cooling? - 'Thirty years of warmer temperatures go poof' - National Post – October 20, 2008

Report: NASA’s James Hansen "adjusts" a cooling trend into a warming trend - December 9, 2008 Excerpt: "[H]ere is what the data looks like before and after NASA GISS adjusts it. These are the USHCN “raw” and “homogenized” data plots from the GISTEMP website. The before and after is quite something to behold. ... What was down, is now up." "How not to measure temperature, part 79"

Geophysist: ‘It is time to file this theory in the dustbin of history’ – ‘Alarmists are in denial and running for cover'- Washington Times

By Geophysicist Dr. David Deming, associate professor of arts and sciences at the University of Oklahoma who has published numerous peer-reviewed research articles. Excerpt: Environmental extremists and global warming alarmists are in denial and running for cover. Their rationale for continuing a lost cause is that weather events in the short term are not necessarily related to long-term climatic trends. But these are the same people who screamed at us each year that ordinary weather events such as high temperatures or hurricanes were undeniable evidence of imminent doom. Now that global warming is over, politicians are finally ready to enact dubious solutions to a non-existent problem. […] To the extent global warming was ever valid, it is now officially over. It is time to file this theory in the dustbin of history, next to Aristotelean physics, Neptunism, the geocentric universe, phlogiston, and a plethora of other incorrect scientific theories, all of which had vocal and dogmatic supporters who cited incontrovertible evidence. Weather and climate change are natural processes beyond human control. To argue otherwise is to deny the factual evidence.

Climate Chancellor' No More – Der Spiegel Excerpt: Angela Merkel is facing withering criticism for remarks she made on Monday that seemed to back away from her earlier commitment to tackling climate change.

Alert: Under the Weather: Internal Report Says U.N. Climate Agency Rife With Bad Practices - Fox News – December 4, 2008

Excerpt: As more than 10,000 delegates and observers gather in Poznan, Poland, to discuss the next phase in the battle against "climate change," a U.N. agency at the center of that hoopla badly needs to do some in-house weather-proofing. […] But the WMO, the $80 million U.N. front-line agency in the climate change struggle, and the source for much of the world's information in the global atmosphere and water supply, has serious management problems of its own, despite its rapidly expanding global ambitions. The international agency has been sharply criticized by a U.N. inspection unit in a confidential report obtained by FOX News, for, among other things, haphazard budget practices, deeply flawed organizational procedures, and no effective oversight by the 188 nations that formally make up its membership and dole out its funds. The inspection was carried out by a member of the United Nations Joint Inspection Unit (JIU), a small, independent branch of the U.N. that reports to the General Assembly and is mandated to improve the organization's efficiency and coordination through its inspection process. […] WMO did not respond to a series of questions from FOX News regarding its future programs, sent on the eve of the Poznan meeting.

16-year-old suggests sheep dung can help save planet Card business has really dung good - Daily Post North WalesExcerpt: The company makes its products at the Twll Golau Papermill in Aberllefenni Slate Quarry using sustainable fuel and materials. Every sheet of paper is made from recycled materials, including sheep dung, waste paper and discarded rags, using processes designed to affect the natural environment as little as possible. […] Katie 16, from Tal-y-Bont, Conwy, was appointed to help spread the word on how Wales can reduce its carbon footprint and is urging other North Wales businesses to follow Creative Paper Wales’ example and adopt innovative approaches to the design and manufacture of products and the delivery of services.

Lord Christopher Monckton: 'Companies could be sued over climate change' Excerpt: The alarmist faction knows that, if it were to bring a case against a corporation whose executives were not minded merely to believe in the extremist presentation of "global warming" just because it is temporarily in fashion, they would lose. The case of Dimmock v. Secretaries of State for Education and for the Environment in the UK in 2007 was a very clear warning. The UK Government threw all of the resources of the taxpayer and of the Meteorological Office at the case, attempting to defend Al Gore's sci-fi comedy horror movie against the plaintiff's allegation that it was serially and seriously inaccurate. The Government failed and was humiliated. The judge, having heard both sides, said bluntly of Al Gore, and particularly of his unscientific allegation that sea level was about to rise by 20 feet, that "the Armageddon scenario that he depicts is not based on any scientific view". A few more judgments like that and the "global warming" fantasy would rapidly collapse. End of scare.

OOPS, We Forgot Siberia! (M4GW) - Weather Stations in Coldest parts No Longer Reporting

Excerpt: The thing that these skewed chart never take into account is that when the Soviet Union fell in 1990 the number of reporting weather stations went form a high of 15,000 in 1970 to 5,000 in 2000. This takes some of the coldest places on the planet out of the equation like Siberia.

Oil Prices to Stay Tanked

2008-12-09T16:23:00.000-08:00

Global oil demand will collapse next year and commodities will not return to the highs they reached this summer in the foreseeable future, two authoritative reports said on Tuesday as they forecast a long and painful worldwide recession.

The stark conclusions came as the World Bank’s chief economist predicted that the world faced “the worst recession since the Great Depression”.

“The increasing likelihood of a prolonged global economic downturn continues to dominate market perceptions, putting downward pressure on oil prices,” it said, forecasting that demand would drop 50,000 barrels a day this year and a hefty 450,000 b/d in 2009. US oil demand will drop next year to the lowest level in 11 years.

Meanwhile, the World Bank’s Global Economic Prospects report said the commodities boom of the past five years – which drove up prices 130 per cent – had “come to an end”.

The World Bank’s analysis of the commodities boom contrasts with the prevalent view among natural resources companies – and most Wall Street analysts – that the ongoing price drop is a correction within an upward trend.

Although it ruled out a return to the torrid high prices of this summer, it said commodities prices would not fall back to the depressed levels of the 1990s.

Oil would return to about $75 a barrel within the next three years, it said, while food would trade 60 per cent higher than in 2003, but about half below this year’s record.

“Over the longer run, the price of extracted commodities should fall,” the bank said, adding that because of slower population and income growth, world demand for raw materials will ease.

Andrew Burns, the leading author of the report, dismissed the idea – widely supported among the industry and international bodies such as the International Energy Agency – that the credit crunch could result in higher prices when the economy recovers as companies cancel supply expansion projects.

The bank forecast that world trade – an engine of growth for many developing countries – would contract for the first time since 1982.

Justin Lin, the World Bank’s chief economist, said the current downturn was likely to see simultaneous recessions in most of the industrialised world, and that these recessions were likely to last longer than in the early 1980s, and the decline in growth would be more universal than in past episodes in recent decades.

Dollar Collapse 2009

2008-12-06T16:50:00.000-08:00

Carbon Based Lifeform Tax- CO2 & Methane Odorless

2008-12-05T18:48:00.000-08:00

MONTGOMERY, Ala. – For farmers, this stinks: Belching and gaseous cows and hogs could start costing them money if a federal proposal to charge fees for air-polluting animals becomes law.

Farmers so far are turning their noses up at the notion, which is one of several put forward by the Environmental Protection Agency after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that greenhouse gases emitted by belching and flatulence amounts to air pollution.

"This is one of the most ridiculous things the federal government has tried to do," said Alabama Agriculture Commissioner Ron Sparks, an outspoken opponent of the proposal.

It would require farms or ranches with more than 25 dairy cows, 50 beef cattle or 200 hogs to pay an annual fee of about $175 for each dairy cow, $87.50 per head of beef cattle and $20 for each hog.

The executive vice president of the Wyoming Farm Bureau Federation, Ken Hamilton, estimated the fee would cost owners of a modest-sized cattle ranch $30,000 to $40,000 a year. He said he has talked to a number of livestock owners about the proposals, and "all have said if the fees were carried out, it would bankrupt them."

Sparks said Wednesday he's worried the fee could be extended to chickens and other farm animals and cause more meat to be imported.

"We'll let other countries put food on our tables like they are putting gas in our cars. Other countries don't have the health standards we have," Sparks said.

EPA spokesman Nick Butterfield said the fee was proposed for farms with livestock operations that emit more than 100 tons of carbon emissions in a year and fall under federal Clean Air Act provisions.

Butterfield said the EPA has not taken a position on any of the proposals. But farmers from across the country have expressed outrage over the idea, both on Internet sites and in opinions sent to EPA during a public comment period that ended last week.

"It's something that really has a very big potential adverse impact for the livestock industry," said Rick Krause, the senior director of congressional relations for the American Farm Bureau Federation.

The fee would cover the cost of a permit for the livestock operations. While farmers say it would drive them out of business, an organization supporting the proposal hopes it forces the farms and ranches to switch to healthier crops.

"It makes perfect sense if you are looking for ways to cut down on meat consumption and recoup environmental losses," said Bruce Friedrich, a spokesman in Washington for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

"We certainly support making factory farms pay their fair share," he said.

U.S. Rep. Robert Aderholt, a Republican from Haleyville in northwest Alabama, said he has spoken with EPA officials and doesn't believe the cow tax is a serious proposal that will ever be adopted by the agency.

"Who comes up with this kind of stuff?" said Perry Mobley, director of the Alabama Farmers Federation's beef division. "It seems there is an ulterior motive, to destroy livestock farms. This would certainly put them out of business."

Butterfield said the EPA is reviewing the public comments and didn't have a timetable for the next steps.

Coolest Year Since 2000, UK Paper

2008-12-05T11:33:00.000-08:00

This year is set to be the coolest since 2000, according to a preliminary estimate of global average temperature that is due to be released next week by the Met Office. The global average for 2008 should come in close to 14.3C, which is 0.14C below the average temperature for 2001-07.

The relatively chilly temperatures compared with recent years are not evidence that global warming is slowing however, say climate scientists at the Met Office. "Absolutely not," said Dr Peter Stott, the manager of understanding and attributing climate change at the Met Office's Hadley Centre. "If we are going to understand climate change we need to look at long-term trends."

Prof Myles Allen at Oxford University who runs the climateprediction.net website, said he feared climate sceptics would overinterpret the figure. "You can bet your life there will be a lot of fuss about what a cold year it is. Actually no, its not been that cold a year, but the human memory is not very long, we are used to warm years," he said, "Even in the 80s [this year] would have felt like a warm year."

And 2008 would have been a scorcher in Charles Dickens's time - without human-induced warming there would have been a one in a hundred chance of getting a year this hot. "For Dickens this would have been an extremely warm year," he said. On the flip side, in the current climate there is a roughly one in 10chance of having a year this cool.

The Met Office predicted at the beginning of the year that 2008 would be cooler than recent years because of a La Niña event - characterised by unusually cold ocean temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. It is the mirror image of the El Niño climate cycle. The Met Office had forecast an annual global average of 14.37C.

Allen was presenting the data on this year's global average temperature at the Appleton Space Conference at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, near Didcot yesterday. The 14.3C figure is based on data from January to October. When the Met Office makes its formal announcement next week they will incorporate data from November. "[The figure] will differ from it, but it won't differ massively," said Stott, "We would expect the number to go up rather than down because the early parts of the year were still under the La Niña conditions."

Assuming the final figure is close to 14.3C then 2008 will be the tenth hottest year on record. The hottest was 1998 - which included a very strong El Niño event - followed by 2005, 2003 and 2002. The data are a combination of measurements from satellites, ground weather stations and buoys which are compiled jointly by the Hadley Centre and the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.

In March, a team of climate scientists at Kiel University predicted that natural variation would mask the 0.3C warming predicted by the Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change over the next decade. They said that global temperatures would remain constant until 2015 but would then begin to accelerate.

$1 a Gallon Gas , Next Year, Gulf Exec

2008-12-04T10:08:00.000-08:00

RANDOLPH — Gulf Oil CEO Joe Petrowski said on Wednesday that the price of oil could sink to $20 per barrel, and there is a chance gasoline prices could drop as low as $1 per gallon by early next year.

Speaking at a South Shore Chamber of Commerce breakfast at Lombardo’s in Randolph, the Brockton native said that after speculators drove oil prices up, there is a chance that the market will overshoot on the way back down, resulting in much lower prices at the pump.

Gas prices have already sunk fairly rapidly this fall, reaching a statewide average of $1.85 for a gallon of regular-grade gasoline this week, following a plunge in crude oil prices.

Gulf Oil, which is based in Newton, is not an oil producer. Gulf stopped producing oil in 1986 and stopped refining oil in 1992, according to Petrowski. He said the company is a “fuel agnostic” wholesaler, and will sell whichever fuels customers and distributors demand.

Though he said the company benefits from lower energy prices, he said he believes the price of oil should range from $40 to $60 per barrel, depending on economic activity, in order to keep pace with inflation.

Petrowski said that policymakers should make low-cost energy a goal by investing in alternative energy sources, increasing domestic oil reserves, and diversifying the foreign origins of oil so as to be less dependent on unfriendly countries.

While he said he believes global warming is a danger, Petrowski is not sure there is as much of a correlation between carbon and global warming as some environmentalists claim.

“Carbon is our greatest threat – there’s another myth,” he said. “I do think economic devastation and reliance on foreign supplies of oil (are).”

Since gas prices peaked in July, Petrowski said some people have resumed driving habits that they avoided when gasoline was $4 a gallon in the summer. But he said he hopes that the motivation to create alternative energy sources will not be lost.

Gulf opened its first E85 ethanol fueling station at Logan Airport in October – just as gasoline prices sank and the demand for ethanol decreased. “Ethanol’s not a great business right now, but it will be,” Petrowski said.

He said that cellulosic ethanol will eventually replace corn-based ethanol, and that he thinks the U.S. should eventually get rid of the import tax on ethanol from places like Brazil.

Petrowski said that New England’s energy future is bright, with research and development going on at local universities as well as access to gasoline from refineries in Canada, the mid-Atlantic region, the Caribbean and Europe. “We’re no longer at the end of the pipe,” he said.

US to become MAD MAX AMERICA

2008-12-01T21:27:00.000-08:00

US Will Become MAD MAX AMERICA - More amazing video clips are a click away

Can You Work for NEW YORK TIMES?

2008-11-28T06:45:00.000-08:00

Czech President Vaclav Klaus Warns

2008-11-27T09:33:00.000-08:00

Real Free Trade versus Protectionism , Walter E. Williams

2008-11-26T17:20:00.000-08:00

There's a growing anti-trade sentiment in our country. Much of the dialogue is grossly misinformed. Let's try to untangle it a bit with a few questions and observations. First, does the U.S. trade with Japan and England? Put another way, is it members of the U.S. Congress trading with their counterparts in the Japanese Diet or the English Parliament? An affirmative answer is pure nonsense. When I purchased my Lexus, I had nothing to do with either the Japanese Diet or the U.S. Congress. Through an intermediary, a Lexus dealer, I dealt with Toyota Motor Corporation.

While it might be convenient to speak of one country trading with another, such aggregation can conceal a lot of evil, particularly when people call for trade barriers. For example, what would be a moral case for third-party interference, by either the Japanese Diet or the U.S. Congress, with an exchange between me and Toyota Motor Corporation? Some might reason that since Japan places restrictions on U.S. products entering their country, an appropriate retaliatory measure is not to allow Japanese products to freely enter the U.S. By the way, Japanese protectionist restrictions on rice imports force Japanese consumers to pay three or four times the world price for rice. How much sense does it make for Congress to retaliate against Japan by imposing restrictions on their products thereby forcing American consumers, say Lexus buyers, to pay higher prices? Should our rule be: If one country screws its citizens we should retaliate by screwing our citizens?

Since there is no moral argument for preventing one person from trading with another, anti-traders shift their argument to a patriotic appeal such as suggesting that we're losing our manufacturing sector. That doesn't square with the facts. According to a report given by Dr. William Strauss, senior economist for the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, titled "Is U.S. Losing Its Manufacturing Base?" (http://www.edcchicago.org/ecom/2008/edc062508.htm) the answer is no. In each of the past 60 years, U.S. manufacturing output growth has averaged 4 percent and productivity growth has averaged 3 percent.
Manufacturing is going through the same process as agriculture. In 1900, 41 percent of American workers were employed in agriculture; today, only 2 percent are and agricultural output is greater. In 1940, 35 percent of workers were employed in manufacturing jobs; today, it's about 10 percent. Again, because of huge productivity gains, manufacturing output is greater.

The decline in manufacturing employment is not limited to the U.S. Since 2000, China has lost over 4.5 million manufacturing jobs. In fact, nine of the top 10 manufacturing countries, which produce 75 percent of the world's manufacturing output (the U.S., Japan, Germany, China, Britain, France, Italy, Korea, Canada, and Mexico), have lost manufacturing jobs but their manufacturing output has risen.

Despite the pretense of being a free trade nation, the U.S. has significant barriers to trade that come in the form of tariffs, quotas and steep regulatory barriers. Our restrictions are just not as onerous as many other countries but there's a push to make them so. It's simple politics. The people who face foreign competition, say management and workers in the auto industry, are well organized, have narrowly shared interests and the resources to have considerable clout in Washington to get Congress to enact trade barriers. Restricting foreign competition means higher prices for their products, and hence higher profits and fuller employment in their industry. The people who are benefited by foreign competition, say auto consumers, have widely dispersed interests; they are not organized at all and have little clout in Washington. You never see consumers descending on Washington complaining about cheap prices for foreign products; it's always domestic producers who do the complaining.

The relationship between prosperity and economic freedom, including free trade, is a no-brainer. But if you need hard evidence, check out the Heritage Foundation's "Index of Economic Freedom" (http://www.heritage.org/Index). You'll find that nations having the greatest measure of economic freedom are the most prosperous and peaceful.

Baxter Black, Global Warming Sh*t

2008-11-25T13:12:00.000-08:00

Russian Analyst , US TO Break into Seperate Parts!

2008-11-25T06:39:00.000-08:00

A leading Russian political analyst has said the economic turmoil in the United States has confirmed his long-held view that the country is heading for collapse, and will divide into separate parts.

Professor Igor Panarin said in an interview with the respected daily IZVESTIA published on Monday: "The dollar is not secured by anything. The country's foreign debt has grown like an avalanche, even though in the early 1980s there was no debt. By 1998, when I first made my prediction, it had exceeded $2 trillion. Now it is more than 11 trillion. This is a pyramid that can only collapse."

The paper said Panarin's dire predictions for the U.S. economy, initially made at an international conference in Australia 10 years ago at a time when the economy appeared strong, have been given more credence by this year's events.

When asked when the U.S. economy would collapse, Panarin said: "It is already collapsing. Due to the financial crisis, three of the largest and oldest five banks on Wall Street have already ceased to exist, and two are barely surviving. Their losses are the biggest in history. Now what we will see is a change in the regulatory system on a global financial scale: America will no longer be the world's financial regulator."

When asked who would replace the U.S. in regulating world markets, he said: "Two countries could assume this role: China, with its vast reserves, and Russia, which could play the role of a regulator in Eurasia."

Asked why he expected the U.S. to break up into separate parts, he said: "A whole range of reasons. Firstly, the financial problems in the U.S. will get worse. Millions of citizens there have lost their savings. Prices and unemployment are on the rise. General Motors and Ford are on the verge of collapse, and this means that whole cities will be left without work. Governors are already insistently demanding money from the federal center. Dissatisfaction is growing, and at the moment it is only being held back by the elections and the hope that Obama can work miracles. But by spring, it will be clear that there are no miracles."

He also cited the "vulnerable political setup", "lack of unified national laws", and "divisions among the elite, which have become clear in these crisis conditions."

He predicted that the U.S. will break up into six parts - the Pacific coast, with its growing Chinese population; the South, with its Hispanics; Texas, where independence movements are on the rise; the Atlantic coast, with its distinct and separate mentality; five of the poorer central states with their large Native American populations; and the northern states, where the influence from Canada is strong.

He even suggested that "we could claim Alaska - it was only granted on lease, after all." Panarin, 60, is a professor at the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and has authored several books on information warfare.
Drudge Report

1ST Prisoners of North American Union

2008-11-24T19:14:00.000-08:00

Mr Bubbles Popping Out All Over

2008-11-23T06:25:00.000-08:00

by Eric deCarbonnel

So far, the credit crisis has produced four asset bubbles as investors shifted from one asset class to the next. Three of these bubble have burst, but the last one, US treasuries, remains.

The First Bubble—The Credit Markets

The credit bubble that imploded in August 2007 should have been obvious to everyone. When you give mortgages and loans to NINJA borrowers (No Income, No Job or Assets), you can't be surprised when you never see that money again. However, most investors ignored the risks and, despite the widespread mortgage fraud and non-existent lending standards (write down your income, we'll trust you), piled into subprime mortgage CDOs and CDOs squared. Naturally, these subprime CDOs didn't perform as expected, leading the credit markets to collapse.

The Second Bubble—Stock

Despite August 's subprime crisis, stocks rallied to new highs in October as investors fled the credit markets. Considering that the frozen credit markets are the lifeblood without which the economy can't function, these new highs made as much sense as subprime CDOs squared. It shouldn't not have surprised anyone that stocks collapsed.

The Third Bubble—Commodities

Running from both the stock and bonds, investors ignored a global economy falling into recession and piled into commodities, driving oil up to an insane level, In the face of the world's plunging demand, the only reason that could possibly have justified $147 oil would have been a complete collapse of the dollar. Since that was not the case, the oil bubble burst and commodity prices plunged.

The Final Bubble—US Treasuries

Now Investors are now panicking into the ’safety’ of US treasuries, the last and greatest asset bubble. To be blunt, $147 oil made more sense than .1% yield on the three months note. Anyone who believes treasuries are safe and that commodities will deflate in dollar terms doesn't understand the deep fundamental difference between the 1930s and now.

Back in 1930s, the economy was on much sounder footing than it is today. Stanley K. Schultz, Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin, gives a good description of the US's foreign balance of payments going into the Great Depression:

World War I had turned the United States from a debtor nation into a creditor nation. In the aftermath of the war, both the victorious Allies and the defeated Central Powers owed the United States more money than it owed to foreign nations. The Republican administrations of the 1920s insisted on payments in gold bullion, but the world's gold supply was limited and by the end of the 1920s, the United States, itself, controlled much of the world's gold supply. Besides gold, which was increasingly in short supply, countries could pay their debts in goods and services. However, protectionism and high tariffs kept foreign goods out of the United States. The Hawley-Smoot Act (1930) set the highest schedule of tariffs to date. This protectionism produced a negative effect on United States exports: if foreign countries couldn't pay their debts, they had no money to buy American goods.

From this passage, two clear differences between the 1930s and today should be obvious:

1) The fundamentals backing the Dollar

Back then, the US dollar was a hard currency backed by a mountain of gold. Today, the US dollar is a fiat (paper) currency backed by a mountain of debt.

2) America's Dependence on imports

Back then, the US had absolutely no dependence on foreign goods (discouraged all imports through protectionism and high tariffs). Today, America has a total dependence on foreign goods. We have outsourced a large part of our economy, and we are completely addicted to foreign oil. If the US was cut off from foreign imports due to a currency collapse (like what happened to Iceland), our economy would completely collapse within a matter of weeks if not days.

When the treasury market collapses…

Interest rates on treasury bills (even 3 months note) will quickly rise into the double digits. The dollars purchasing power will collapse, possibly leading to a foreign-currency lockdown like Iceland's Krona. All stocks (except those that benefit from high commodity prices) will crash. The credit markets will suffer further pain due to rising inflation and default risks. Finally, will Gold will skyrocket.

To protect yourself:

1) Buy physical gold. When the dollar collapses, there will be panic and confusions outside the US over how to replace the dollar's important role as the world's reserve currency. Since there is nothing else available, my bet is that gold will be used as the world's temporary emergency reserve currency, while nations try to work out a more permanent solution to replace the dollar.

2) Get out of all variable rate loans. If you have the option, refinance your mortgage into a fixed rate. As the rates of 30-year Mortgages are based on 30-year treasuries, the treasury bubble is creating a wonderful window of opportunity to lock in a low fixed rate.

3) Consider leaving the country. America is headed for a transition from being the world's only superpower to being a third world nation with an oversized military (same thing that happened to Russia), This transition is going to be painful, depressing, and probably violent. Once the initial shock is over, there is going to be a lot of anger. I would give serious thought to moving to a creditor nation until the worst has passed.

I would also advise keeping track of developments in Iceland following their financial and currency meltdown. It will offer an optimistic preview of what awaits the US.

14 Year Supply of Natural Gas

2008-11-19T20:48:00.000-08:00

Oil is a Tax on Your Work

2008-11-19T08:09:00.000-08:00

Dean, the want to be driller
Letter to the American Tax Payer

You’re just beginning to understand what’s happened to you, your savings, the economy and the country you so dearly love. Your 401 K’s and life savings are being openly looted by the Government and quazi-governmental entities to pay off favors. The government has told us the Constitution and your life’s work is not worth the blood and sweat paid for them. It’s every man for them self.

Our economy was killed off by the intentional manipulation of energy prices and our domestic energy is suffering the same fate. Most of the oil and gas discovered in this country was discovered by independent producers seeking to improve their lot of life. This compares to your life’s work, I’m sure.

Independent oil producers are stacking drilling rigs, laying off skilled professionals and shutting in wells. Most of the domestic oil business is mortally wounded just as our economy is. Investment capital is the lifeblood of the oil business and capital has dried up for everyone. The upheavals of the economy have killed the investor. He is being openly skinned alive in the equity markets.

I believe this is about control. Control of markets, resources and the open theft of your labor is the plan. The Carbon Tax and Cap and Trade are the tools that will be used to plunder your future and control your life. Think of oil as a tax on your life. It is controlled by the international banking establishments not by the independent oil business. Everything done by you or any business requires energy. Those that control energy control your life.

By keep the U S dependent on energy we allow others to control our lives. Peak Oil Theory is just a way of telling you that your job is to benefit the folks that control your energy supply. You are a slave to those that control the energy.

Global Warmers, Just Get Crazier

2008-11-18T14:22:00.000-08:00

November 18, 2008 - 12:54 ET

Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You Misinformed

Has anybody seen Whale Wars? Whale Wars is this new show. I haven't seen it yet but I have a feeling I'm going to be rooting for the whales to be killed. I don't -- no, I mean, I love whales and -- no, I don't. You know what? I was going to say I love the whales. I don't love the whales. I mean, they're great and everything. I don't have anything against the whales. Not like, I want all the whales dead! It's not like that. But I mean, I don't love them any more than let's say zebras. You know what I mean? Zebras are cool but if they all stopped being there I would be like, hmmm, that's weird, that's too bad, isn't it, but oh well.
fraud
So anyway, you know, I'm not against the whales but I'm not really, you know -- anyway. So I think this show is about these people who think that it is wrong to hunt whales even though it's legal. They think that it is illegal, even the legal scholar says it isn't illegal -- are you following here? And so they go try to stop all these whale killers. I don't know why you are killing all the whales anyway. I mean, is anybody using the oil anymore? Is it like, mmm, this is good tasty meat. What is it? Japan, they eat whale?

STU: I don't know what they do with whale but they seem to be whaling quite a bit and then there's little protestors that come up on the side of the boat and harass them.

GLENN: Whatever. And maybe it's just me, I haven't seen the show but this is what I think. I think I'd watch that show, rooting for the people. I think it should have a scoreboard on how many whales it killed. And it would be like, "Yeah, and they killed another one," only just to piss the left off. That's the only -- see, this is the wrong kind of attitude. This isn't very Christ-like -- oh, I'm sorry, I just remembered. You're not listening to Jesus now, are you?

All right, we have Chris Horner on the phone. Chris Horner is a guy who can help us celebrate green week like no one can. He is the author of Red Hot Lies, How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud and Deception to Keep You Misinformed. Chris?

HORNER: Yes.

GLENN: Are you saying people that believe in manmade global warming and that we can fix it are misinformed?

HORNER: They have been subjected to a lie palooza I have just discovered driving? Listening to the most recent NASA fabrication.

GLENN: Wait a minute, hang on. The most recent one is that this is the hottest month of October in forever, whatever?

HORNER: Right, since the last hottest October on record. Here's what happened this time.

GLENN: Okay, this time.

HORNER: Yeah. This guy, this Al Gore advisor named James Hansen who was muzzled by the --

GLENN: I'm sorry, wait a minute. Hold it just a second. He's who adviser for who?

HORNER: He's a Gore adviser working for NASA, yeah.

GLENN: A Gore adviser.

HORNER: He is not doing a very good job because he's been muzzled by the Bush administration, only able to give 1400 interviews to the press. He was muzzled and if it turns out if you do a little digging, he said the other George Bush muzzled him, too.

GLENN: Those damn Bushes.

HORNER: He has a long and unhappy history with the facts. I document in Red Hot Lies how he actually has gone into the historical record not once but twice to change history, making older years cooler and more recent years warmer to get a trend.

GLENN: Whoa, whoa, whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa. That's wild. That's a wild charge to make. Show me your -- tell me your evidence on that. I mean, you're changing, going into government records and changing the history?

HORNER: Yes.

GLENN: Give me your facts on that.

HORNER: Twice. Well, he's acknowledged it under distilled what is an argument because he's been caught essentially. This isn't data behind the curtain where he says he can't show it to you. Usually it's Canadians doing the jobs Americans won't do. Go and check his numbers just like what's happened this month and find that he's changed things and they --

GLENN: Explain what he did this month.

HORNER: This month he just carried over September temperatures from some cold weather latitudes in Siberia for October. And we know that September-October, there's no real temperature change in the northern hemisphere like July-August. It's essentially the same, right? It's not like it's getting colder this point every year. So he just carried over September -- or he said somebody else carried over September, warm numbers into October when they would have been 10 degrees cooler, giving us, voila, the hottest October on record, just like a bunch of other things he's been caught at.

GLENN: You know, it would have been easier to say this is the hottest October on record if every human being on planet Earth wasn't going, "Holy cow, have you noticed how cold it is." You know what I mean? I mean, I was sitting in my office this morning. It was 6:00 this morning and I'm -- you know, the sun's starting to rise about 6:30 and we have snow. Now I'm 30, you know, something stories up, but it was snowing at least up at this elevation in New York City. I mean, I can't tell you the last time I saw snow in New York City in October. I mean -- it is November, isn't it?

HORNER: It's November.

GLENN: Holy cow, disregard that. We haven't had it snow yet and it's the middle of November.

HORNER: Now you are getting with the program. Let me tell you how warm it is. It is so warm when George W. Bush, the planet is cooler than they went in office. Does that square with what you've read around the Times?

GLENN: No, but you are a lying liar that I've seen on Fox. I've seen on Fox, and you know you -- have you taken money from big oil?

HORNER: No, I'm not taking any money from big oil.

GLENN: Really? How is it that I have seen you at petroleum stations?

HORNER: Interesting. Well, a transaction does involve money but it's going the other way.

GLENN: So are you admitting on this program that there is a cash transaction happening at those petroleum outlets?

HORNER: I have paid big oil.

GLENN: Well, let's not get bogged down in all of those facts. Arnold Schwarzenegger said this week that global warming is causing all these fires.

HORNER: Remember they said that last year. Here's the problem. It's very busy historically, the fire seasons are very busy when it's cold, and it's not typically a busy fire season during warmer periods. And in fact, like I noted, we have been cooling -- do you know how -- we have lost a third of a degree since Al Gree leased his movie. You know his history of bringing ice storms where he goes. The planet has cooled almost a third of a degree since he released that movie and that wiped out a third of the entire 1 degree increase in the last 250 years that caused the global warming panic.

GLENN: Unbelievable. Let me ask you this: Is it true that China wants to sell the United States -- hang on, gang. If this is true, this is going to make blood shoot out of your eyes. They want to sell us carbon credits that they have gathered because they have aborted children.

HORNER: Yes. I've documented that. They said it publicly and Europe and the UN applauded that.

GLENN: Give me what they said.

HORNER: China said our carbon footprint would be much larger if it weren't for the coal emission reductions but they explained they were coal emission, through their family planning policy which helped force divorces. And their argument was very open and they said our carbon footprint would be much larger but for this policy. Therefore we should extrapolate out what it would be, subtract our actual emissions and sell you the difference in terms of ration coupons or carbon offsets because Europe, of course, isn't actually reducing emissions. They are just buying indulgences from typically China. But this takes it to a ghastly, ghastly new level and the UNSAID it was great.

GLENN: They are performing abortions and selling those carbon emission credits to people like us. I mean, it's amazing.

HORNER: You are 13 months ahead of schedule. They proposed this in Thailand during a Kyoto negotiation for the next treaty because the current one expires, and the U.S. is, of course, to agree to one next December. And if we agree to that, then yes, they will be selling us carbon offsets from abortions.

GLENN: So not only will our tax dollars here be going for abortions, you know, taxpayer-paid abortions here in this country, we will actually be taking our tax dollars and buying abortions in China so we can feel good about the global warming? That's not happening!

HORNER: Well, there's one footnote. Under Roe versus Wade not to trivialize this horror but aren't we afforded some carbon offsets, too? Given the -- think about it. Given that as Al Gore says the average carbon footprint, someone -- a child in the developed world is many times bigger on average than the developing world, I would say at best this evens out in China, not push this. But regardless, we shouldn't be going down this path.

GLENN: Unbelievable. Chris Horner, the name of the book is Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud and Deception to Keep You Misinformed. This guy has it all down. I mean, what did you do before, Chris?

HORNER: Oh, I was innocently practicing law until a little company called Enron asked me to be director of federal government relations and on my first day told me to go meet with the union of concerned scientists because they wanted a global warming treaty. So I wasn't there very long.

GLENN: Wait, wait. Now I've got to take a break because I have to get the Enron story from you. You kind of left that out. That should be on your business card as well. Hang on just a -- oh, and you didn't think there was a connection to big oil, did you? Hang on just a second. Back in a second.

(Break)

GLENN: 888-727-BECK, 888-727-BECK. Okay, so I'm talking to hate monger Chris Horner, Holocaust denier, global warming denier. You haven't technically denied the Holocaust, right?

HORNER: Not technically, right.

GLENN: Not technically but I mean first you are on the global warming and then the Holocaust. How long have we known each other? Two years?

HORNER: Yeah, I'd say at least.

GLENN: You just kind of now decide to announce that you were a member of the Enron group.

HORNER: Well, it was a glorious six weeks maybe.

GLENN: Is that -- that's really all you worked for Enron was six weeks?

HORNER: At most, probably more like four, yeah.

GLENN: Okay. So you were an attorney and they hired you to do what?

HORNER: It was essentially a job offer to be director of federal government relations and that's what law firms do is send associates in to clients. And off I went and was told that my number one priority was to get a global warming treaty. I ran into the natural resources defense counsel at Enron's palatial offices in D.C. and then my first or second day on the job I sat around the table with BP, American Gas Association. And on the other side, oh, union of concerned scientists and other equally measured folks. And I discovered that I was there chairing for Kenny boys who don't make it. This was in 1997 before there was a Kyoto protocol, before there was unanimous Senate instruction to not agree to a Kyoto protocol and it amazed me that we were figuring out how to get a Kyoto protocol. And I came back to my office, sent an e-mail, Houston, we have a problem; do you have any idea this group you are chairing is trying to get an energy rationing treaty. And that went over not too well and they said we didn't get a chance to explain our business plan, we bought a bunch of companies on the cheap that don't make any money now but they will if we get this regime in place, that subsequent memos after they came out of the unpleasantness were supposed to be good to Enron. Be the biggest boon to Enron depending on the, citing a bunch of green groups and so on. It's the world's second oldest profession.

GLENN: So then you left after that?

HORNER: Yeah.

GLENN: Or you were fired?

HORNER: Well, some strange things started happening and two secretaries told me that I needed to change my computer password and it turned out I was apparently sending e-mails to my boss when I wasn't in the office and anyway, my objection, my objections didn't go over too well.

GLENN: Chris, you have been through this for a long time. I really, I was in a Wendy's this weekend and -- oh, gee, we have two minutes here. I was in a Wendy's this weekend and I was accosted with a guy. I feel the hatred and the vitriol that is coming from the left is just staggering right now and with the Al Gore types that say, you know, you're a Holocaust denier if you think any of this -- are you concerned at all? I mean, I've talked to scientists before who said their careers had been destroyed. Are you afraid that we're entering a new kind of world here?

HORNER: I'm not thrilled about it. Let me give you a quick 40 seconds of Red Hot Lies. The reason I wrote the book, I told him about Greenpeace dealing my trash to smear me and the guardian of other places in a meeting of scientists around the world and a professor said, that's strange when I started speaking out after the pieces were delivered to my house every night and I wasn't intimidated, the wheels fell off my car not once but twice including once when my daughter was in the car. My mechanic said the lugs had been loosened. The first climate Ph.D., he gets death threats and has had to call the royal Canadian mounted police. The U.K. foreign secretary Margaret Beckett publicly demanded that people stop giving people like me airtime because we are "Just like Islamic terrorists." In Australia, the gathering of the best and the brightest that he addressed came out and put forth some great ideas like stripping Australians of their citizenship if they expressed global warming skepticism but it wasn't an extreme proposal. They were allowed to reclaim it upon reeducation.

GLENN: Oh, my gosh. Chris, we've got to run. The book is Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud and Deception to Keep You Misinformed. We'll have you on again. Thank you so much for calling. Gang, I was reading the Drudge Report last night, it was at 11:30. I read it and I see how there is yet another reporter in Russia that has been killed -- I'm sorry, no, no, no. He's in critical condition for speaking out. I'm telling you these are the times, this is what is coming our way if we don't speak out now, if we don't stand together.

Cooking the Global Warming Books

2008-11-16T18:34:00.000-08:00

By Christopher Booker
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 16/11/2008

A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.

A sudden cold snap brought snow to London in October
Read more from Christopher Booker
This was startling. Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China's official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its "worst snowstorm ever". In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years.

So what explained the anomaly? GISS's computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.

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Himalayan glaciers 'could disappear completely by 2035'
The error was so glaring that when it was reported on the two blogs - run by the US meteorologist Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre, the Canadian computer analyst who won fame for his expert debunking of the notorious "hockey stick" graph - GISS began hastily revising its figures. This only made the confusion worse because, to compensate for the lowered temperatures in Russia, GISS claimed to have discovered a new "hotspot" in the Arctic - in a month when satellite images were showing Arctic sea-ice recovering so fast from its summer melt that three weeks ago it was 30 per cent more extensive than at the same time last year.

A GISS spokesman lamely explained that the reason for the error in the Russian figures was that they were obtained from another body, and that GISS did not have resources to exercise proper quality control over the data it was supplied with. This is an astonishing admission: the figures published by Dr Hansen's institute are not only one of the four data sets that the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) relies on to promote its case for global warming, but they are the most widely quoted, since they consistently show higher temperatures than the others.

If there is one scientist more responsible than any other for the alarm over global warming it is Dr Hansen, who set the whole scare in train back in 1988 with his testimony to a US Senate committee chaired by Al Gore. Again and again, Dr Hansen has been to the fore in making extreme claims over the dangers of climate change. (He was recently in the news here for supporting the Greenpeace activists acquitted of criminally damaging a coal-fired power station in Kent, on the grounds that the harm done to the planet by a new power station would far outweigh any damage they had done themselves.)

Yet last week's latest episode is far from the first time Dr Hansen's methodology has been called in question. In 2007 he was forced by Mr Watts and Mr McIntyre to revise his published figures for US surface temperatures, to show that the hottest decade of the 20th century was not the 1990s, as he had claimed, but the 1930s.

Another of his close allies is Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, who recently startled a university audience in Australia by claiming that global temperatures have recently been rising "very much faster" than ever, in front of a graph showing them rising sharply in the past decade. In fact, as many of his audience were aware, they have not been rising in recent years and since 2007 have dropped.

Dr Pachauri, a former railway engineer with no qualifications in climate science, may believe what Dr Hansen tells him. But whether, on the basis of such evidence, it is wise for the world's governments to embark on some of the most costly economic measures ever proposed, to remedy a problem which may actually not exist, is a question which should give us all pause for thought.

Green is for Sissies, NY Times

2008-11-16T06:53:00.000-08:00

By JAD MOUAWAD
SIX years of relentlessly rising prices have showered the oil industry with record profits even as whipsawing energy costs have left many Americans alternately furious and baffled.

Now that the roller coaster ride appears to be screeching to a halt, one corporate giant remains confident it can weather the slowdown and uncertainty better than its rivals.

“It’s not that we like lower prices, but our competitive advantage is more obvious to people in a low-price environment,” says Rex W. Tillerson, the chairman and chief executive of Exxon Mobil, the world’s largest, mightiest oil company. “But in a high-price environment, our competitive advantage has been quite evident as well.”

However undaunted Exxon feels, it’s still facing more complicated scenarios than mere price shifts. It’s straining to adjust to a host of potentially seismic issues that raise pointed questions about its long-term strategy. Oil reserves are harder to find, resource-rich governments have become more assertive, and global warming concerns have spurred forceful calls to action on environmental matters.

Moreover, with the election of Barack Obama, a new chapter is about to open for the nation’s energy policy. Mr. Obama says he wants to move away from oil dependence, and his policies are likely to emphasize conservation, alternative energy sources and new limits on the emissions of greenhouse gases responsible for climate change.

The question for Exxon, which Mr. Obama repeatedly singled out as an exemplar of corporate greed during the presidential campaign, is whether the model that has served the company so well for so long will keep it competitive — or whether it will still be producing hydrocarbons long after the world has moved away from dirty fuels.

Last year, Exxon, which is based in Irving, Tex., celebrated its 125th anniversary, marking a straight line that connects it to John D. Rockefeller’s original Standard Oil Trust before the government broke up the enterprise. While other oil companies try to paint themselves greener, Exxon’s executives believe their venerable model has been battle-tested. The company’s mantra is unwavering: brutal honesty about the need for oil and gas to power economies for decades to come.

“Over the years, there have been many predictions that our industry was in its twilight years, only to be proven wrong,” says Mr. Tillerson. “As Mark Twain said, the news of our demise has been greatly exaggerated.”

FROM a purely financial standpoint, there’s no doubt that Exxon’s business strategy has paid off. Despite the broader economic turmoil, Exxon is worth around $375 billion — more than General Electric, Bank of America and Google combined — making it the world’s largest corporation.

Its balance sheet is pristine and its credit rating is better than that of most governments. If Exxon’s revenue were stacked against the world’s G.D.P.’s, it would rank between Austria and Greece as the 26th-largest economy. As oil prices peaked this summer, the company once again set a record as the most profitable American corporation, earning $14.8 billion in the third quarter. Since 2004 alone, the company has rung up profits of about $180 billion.

Throughout its various incarnations — the Standard Oil Trust, Standard Oil of New Jersey, the Exxon Corporation, and now Exxon Mobil — the company has been an ambiguous fascination for many Americans. It is an enduring icon, as lasting as Coca-Cola or General Electric, but also a perennial corporate villain, one that reminds the nation of its dependence on hydrocarbons.

For some, the environmental impact of that earnings gusher outweighs the financial gains.

“Being Exxon is never having to say you’re sorry,” says Kert Davies, the research director at Greenpeace, the environmental advocacy group that has battled with Exxon for years.

On the financial front, however, Exxon’s jaw-dropping results have continued to leave many analysts beaming.

“It’s the world’s greatest company, period,” says Arjun N. Murti, a Goldman Sachs oil analyst. “I would put Exxon up against any other company at any other period of time.”

“It is also the most misunderstood company in the world,” he adds. “For many people, the image of Exxon is the Exxon Valdez. But there is much more to Exxon than that. Somehow, Exxon has persevered over the past 100 years with the best culture and management team any company could have.”

What might be called the Exxon Way can be summed up in three ideals: discipline, patience and long-term vision. It is a formula the company drills into its managers from the moment they join Exxon, and which it keeps repeating through their careers. It explains the company’s resilience and its view that it has survived, and thrived, through countless commodity cycles.

“We are all homegrown,” Mr. Tillerson says. “That happens through a very deliberate and very closely managed process, and it starts the day the person walks through the door with us. And we are the product of that system. If there is a DNA it is something you grow into after many years of working with your colleagues. It is clearly the defining strength of the company.”

TAKE a room full of oil managers, and the Exxon people usually stand out, even as they try not to draw much attention to themselves. They typically band together, and often cultivate an aura of secrecy — and sometimes superiority — toward the outside world.

At Exxon, the engineers rule. From its very early days, the company has focused relentlessly on one thing: finding more ways to squeeze every penny out of each barrel of oil.

Mr. Rockefeller was an accountant who was obsessed with efficiency, and his fixations still run through the company’s veins, says Joseph Allen Pratt, a historian and management professor at the University of Houston. Mr. Pratt is writing the fifth volume of Exxon’s official corporate history, which the company is partly financing.

“There definitely is an Exxon way,” Mr. Pratt says. “This is John D. Rockefeller’s company, this is Standard Oil of New Jersey, this is the one that is most closely shaped by Rockefeller’s traditions. Their values are very clear. They are deeply embedded. They have roots in 100 years of corporate history.”

But the company’s DNA goes well beyond the surface. Rivals acknowledge its expertise around an oil field, even as they bristle at what they call arrogance. Exxon’s own executives brag that their company outperforms its peers by sticking to their playbook.

“Exxon is a very professional company,” says Jeroen van der Veer, the chief executive of a leading competitor, Royal Dutch Shell.

Others say they respect the company’s clarity of vision. “People know the rules when they work with Exxon,” said a top oil executive who asked not to be identified in order not to jeopardize his company’s relationship with Exxon. “Exxon can pick its battles. It’s a pretty good strategy to have if people know that you will fight to the bitter end.”

Examples of such grit abound. After a dispute with the Venezuelan government, during which Exxon persuaded a British court to briefly freeze $12 billion in government assets to fight what it considered an expropriation, the country’s oil minister accused the company of “legal terrorism.”

Whatever its critics might say about the company’s hard-headedness, it has paid off in Exxon’s bottom line. Last year, Exxon’s profit per barrel was $17, exceeding BP’s $12 a barrel, Shell’s $14 and Chevron’s $16, according to Neil McMahon, a Bernstein Research analyst.

No one is apologetic at Exxon about what it takes to get those results, especially Mr. Tillerson.

“The business model is based on a disciplined and rigorous approach to dealing with scientific data and facts,” he says. “What we do is largely invisible to the public. They see the nozzle at the pump, and that’s about it. They don’t see the enormous level of risk that is managed very well to get that gallon of gas.”

Exxon has battled powerful forces in recent years, locking horns with governments and multinational rivals from Africa to Central Asia, from Eastern Europe to South America. But last spring, the challenge struck closer to home — at the company’s annual shareholder meeting in Dallas.

As oil prices zoomed above $100 a barrel, a group of investors tried to force Exxon to lay out a new strategy for developing alternative fuels and addressing global warming. While the challenge was not unprecedented — raucous shareholder meetings have been a staple for years — the dissent was led by a symbolic, if slightly quixotic, constituency: descendants of Mr. Rockefeller, who founded Standard Oil in 1882.

“Exxon Mobil needs to reconnect with the forward-looking and entrepreneurial vision of my great-grandfather,” said Neva Rockefeller Goodwin, a Tufts University economist, speaking for the family. The company, she added at the time, was focused “on a narrow path that ignores the rapidly shifting energy landscape around the world.”

Exxon’s top managers easily brushed off the Rockefeller revolt, as they have so many obstacles over the years. Even so, Exxon and the other oil giants are facing a stark new landscape.

High prices have meant stratospheric profits, of course, but they have also led to more restrictions on access to oil fields around the world, making it harder for companies to increase their production and replace reserves.

“The largest oil companies are under tremendous pressure,” said Fadel Gheit, a veteran oil analyst at Oppenheimer & Company, who worked for the Mobil Corporation before moving to Wall Street.

In the 1960s, the so-called Seven Sisters oil companies, including Exxon and Mobil, controlled most of the world’s oil reserves. Today, state-owned companies, like Saudi Aramco, hold the vast majority of these reserves, while other resource holders like Russia and Venezuela have become increasingly assertive about limiting access to their reserves.

“The problem is very real,” said Henry Lee, a lecturer in energy policy at Harvard University. “The oil majors are looking at a very different world than 20 years ago. That has big implications for the future of these companies. They all know it and they are all trying to figure out where they are going to be in 10 and 20 years.”

The threat from state-controlled energy companies — and the larger question of tapping reserves — led to the big wave of industry mergers in the late 1990s, including Exxon’s $81 billion purchase of Mobil in 1999.

“We were worried,” says Lou Noto, the former chairman of Mobil. “We expected the environment to become more volatile, and more competitive, and more difficult geographically and geologically. The easy stuff had been found and we were getting into very esoteric stuff.”

While the combination of Exxon and Mobil created the world’s most valuable oil company, the joint entity has struggled to expand production. Exxon derives its strength from its size. But its problems are also a function of size: the company has become so large that to grow it must find increasingly big projects.

At an analyst meeting on Wall Street in March, Mr. Tillerson acknowledged the difficulty he faces: “The challenge we have today is continuing to have access to resources.”

Since 1999, Exxon has spent about $125 billion foraging for new energy supplies around the globe. It expects to spend $25 billion to $30 billion each year through 2012 to seek and develop hydrocarbons. Yet the company is pumping about as much oil and gas today as Exxon and Mobil once did separately. In fact, Exxon’s hydrocarbon production has been falling recently, dropping 8 percent, to 3.6 million barrels a day in the third quarter, compared with 3.9 million barrels a day in the period last year.

With about $37 billion in cash and a clean balance sheet, Exxon can afford to be picky about what prospects to explore. It has about 120 projects on its books, either in operation or in the planning stages, and it sits on up to 72 billion barrels of oil and gas reserves around the world, the most of any nonstate oil company.

To keep up momentum, Exxon plans to start up more than 60 fields or major projects by 2011, including dozens of offshore fields in West Africa, export terminals for liquefied natural gas in the Middle East, and scores of gas and oil developments in Australia, Indonesia, the United States and the Caspian Sea.

Still, despite its ability to stride the energy world like a colossus, Exxon remains more cautious than its rivals. Rather than overspend, it sows its huge returns in-house through share buybacks and large dividend payments to shareholders.

From 2003 to the third quarter of 2008, the company has paid out nearly $150 billion to shareholders — spending over $40 billion in dividends and buying back about $110 billion worth of shares.

Yet Exxon’s shares are on track for their worst performance since the early 1980s, a result of the market sell-off and the drop in oil prices recently. Some analysts also said it reflected the questions hanging over the company’s long-term strategy. “Exxon is a cash machine, and they could be using that cash to invest in clean technologies that would expand their base,” said Andy Stevenson, an energy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Right now, they have no growth story. They are trapped in oil and gas.”

IF Exxon maintained its current buyback rate of $8 billion each quarter, it would become a private corporation between 2020 and 2030, according to a report by Bernstein Research. While that’s unlikely, these payouts — $30 billion so far this year — have been criticized by some experts, who would like to see the company invest more to increase its production or expand its reserves.

“If a company is not replacing reserves, and they are spending their cash to buy back their shares, and they are not growing their production, that is called liquidating the company,” says Amy Myers Jaffe, the associate director of Rice University’s energy program in Houston.

Ultimately, the biggest test for Exxon’s long-term business model is the fact that rising energy use — whether in the United States or in China — will eventually have to be reconciled with reducing carbon emissions and finding low-carbon energy sources. But as its contentious shareholder meeting with the Rockefeller heirs demonstrated, few topics are as touchy as Exxon’s stance on climate change.

During the tenure of Lee R. Raymond, who ran the company from 1993 to 2005, Exxon became the lightning rod in the debate about climate change. Throughout the 1990s, the company was vilified by environmental groups and scientists for questioning the impact of human activities — especially the use of fossil fuels — on global warming.

Gingerly, over the last three years, Exxon has moved away from its extreme position. It stopped financing climate skeptics this year, and has sought to soften its image with a $100 million advertising campaign featuring real company executives, scientists and managers. One of the ads said the company aimed to provide energy “with dramatically lower CO2 emissions.”

The company has acknowledged that climate change is a risk to the world. In a speech given before the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London last year, Mr. Tillerson said policy makers should consider setting a carbon tax or a plan that limits carbon emissions through a cap-and-trade system.

But while Exxon is slowly unshackling itself from Mr. Raymond’s stance on global warming, it remains faithful to his legacy by dismissing most green alternatives and sticking with hydrocarbons. Although the company’s tone has changed, its strategy has not. Despite growing pressures on oil companies to invest in alternative energy, Exxon’s long-term view remains unapologetically tied to fossil fuels.

“Rex looks more approachable than his predecessor,” says a rival executive who requested anonymity because he did not want to jeopardize his relationship with Mr. Tillerson, “but he is more inflexible.”

Exxon’s belief is that as populations expand and economies grow in developing countries, they will aspire to the comforts and amenities taken for granted in industrialized nations, and this will mean more cars on the roads — and more oil to power them.

According to Exxon’s own outlook, global oil demand is set to reach 116 million barrels a day by 2030, up sharply from 86 million barrels a day today.

Meanwhile, renewable fuels, like solar, wind and biofuels, will grow at a brisk pace but they will account for just 2 percent of the world’s energy supplies by then, according to Exxon, while oil, gas and coal will represent 80 percent of global energy needs by 2030.

“For the foreseeable future — and in my horizon that is to the middle of the century — the world will continue to rely dominantly on hydrocarbons to fuel its economy,” Mr. Tillerson says.

For the moment, Exxon does not see much business sense in investing in solar, as BP has, or wind, like Shell, or geothermal, like Chevron. Like many oil executives, Mr. Tillerson also has little sympathy for corn-based ethanol, which he once derisively referred to as “moonshine.”

Exxon does not entirely close the door to alternative investments someday. But its previous forays into renewable fuels — it was a big investor in nuclear power, synthetic fuels and solar energy in the 1970s — are seen as a costly lesson.

“Being first in something is not necessarily the best position to be in,” Mr. Tillerson says. “You can be more profitable for your shareholders by coming at a later stage.”

Still, Exxon sees itself as a technology-based company. Its labs are developing a thin-film battery separator and an onboard hydrogen system that could increase the range of electric cars or make the current internal combustion engines much more efficient.

The company points out that it has invested more than $1.5 billion to improve its own energy use and cut carbon emissions since 2004. And it boasts that it is spending $100 million to finance a long-term research program at Stanford University, along with General Electric, Toyota and the oilfield-services company Schlumberger, to find ways to increase energy supplies while reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases.

But to many of the company’s critics, these measures look like a convenient smoke screens.

“That’s kind of laughable,” says Mr. Davies of Greenpeace. “What Exxon is clearly saying is that we are addicted to oil.”

THE biggest area where Exxon may have an impact in tackling climate change is in what the industry calls carbon capture and sequestration. Most climate experts say that combating global warming will involve preventing heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide from being spewed into the atmosphere by capturing them and pumping them underground.

In May, Exxon said it would invest $100 million in a demonstration plant in Wyoming to test a new cryogenic technology to capture carbon dioxide by freezing it. Managing these flows, and reducing the costs of this prohibitively expensive technology, may ultimately create a new business for Exxon if it can apply it to large emission sources, like coal-fired power plants.

But for the company to see this as a large-scale opportunity would require a “cultural leap,” Ms. Jaffe says.

“Exxon may wind up being the carbon sequestration king, by accident,” she says.

Whatever shape Exxon’s business model takes, analysts say it is unlikely that the company will get there quietly.

“They are tough, and they have the reputation of being an unyielding company,” says Michelle Michot Foss, who heads the Center for Energy Economics at the University of Texas at Austin. “But it’s a tough business. They are criticized for being too conservative. But they are very patient, and probably in the long term that pays off.”
Exxon Mobil is the 17th largest oil company in the world.

Lindsay Williams form 2006

2008-11-15T09:06:00.000-08:00

Global Warming Scam

2008-11-12T10:04:00.000-08:00

Peak Gas , LOL

2008-11-12T07:42:00.000-08:00

When we talk about drilling in the US, for all practical purposes we are talking about drilling for gas (I think we drill 8 times as many wells for natural gas as for oil). Look what this has brought us in the last dozen years. We have a supply glut. We are now talking about exporting gas to Europe and Japan, because at $5-7 per mcf here, the LNG cost of $2-4 dollars leaves a $5-9 spread with Euro and Japanese $16 per mcf delivery prices, AND competes with the Russians.

This year, we will produce the same amount we did in 1974... one year after Peak Gas!

With more detail...

And where it is coming from... the Shale Plays...

So ponder the numbers a little bit. At $10 gas, we can extract over 10 billion barrels of oil equivalent from ONE PLAY! Most of our drilling in the US is for gas. We are proving to be able to overcome Hubbard's Peak with regards to gas, as carbon-benign source of traditional energy as there is, we can challenge Russion power in western Europe with gas EXPORTS and many want us to stop drilling, citing OIL statistics? Huh? We drill for GAS!

FROM THE OPEN CHOKE BLOG

Killing the Domestic Oil Industry

2008-11-12T06:08:00.000-08:00

There are over 2,500 "non-profit" organizations focused on environmentalism in the US with over $1.4 billion in assets and $1.o billion in annual income. Most of this goes towards "education", in other words propoganda.

http://www.taxexemptworld.com/search.asp?type=adv&orgadv=enviro

The scale of this is astounding. In fact, Big (Tax Exempt ) Corporate America is comprised of 1,650,000+ entities with $4 trillion+ dollar in assets, $3.5 trillion+ in annual income industry. Given that our GDP is $13 trillion, this makes charity in general between 1/3 and 1/4th of our economy. Rather than feed people or provide access to education, huge chunks are devoted to advocacy and tearing down a capitalist society.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_United_States

The US consumes around $770 billion per year in oil at $100 per barrel, for a simple scale comparison between "Big Oil" and Advocacy. Worldwide, oil production is around $3 trillion dollars, of which less than 10% goes to "Big US Oil".

Interesting, huh?

From Open Choke Blog

Why They Peddle Peak Oil

2008-11-12T05:47:00.000-08:00

If you want to know why most of the mainstream media continues to spout the voice of energy shortages you only need to look at the example of the East Texas Oil Field. Production was so prolific from that field, oil prices went down to 10 cents a barrel and the Texas Rangers were dispatched to Kilgore and the Texas Railroad Commission was formed in response.

Oil Prices were unsustainable. Just like farm product prices are when productive Americans get involved. Oil prices just like corn, soybeans and wheat only become in short supplies when governments get in the way of production. Then prices go through the roof.

Oil and food have become a matter of control for the elites over the masses.
Oil shortages and food shortages are politically contrived events. Our energy supplies are not unsustainable only the prices that support them are. Did you know that most of the world’s oil reserved are owned by government owned oil companies? Based on reserves Exxon-Mobil is only #17.

When you buy in to the Peak Oil Theory you surrender to a limited life, when you open your mind to the ideas of abundance you take a step towards the light of freedom.

California Oil Prices

2008-11-11T12:10:00.000-08:00

$10 Oil???

2008-11-07T07:07:00.000-08:00

Crazy Idea , I Know

2008-11-06T18:04:00.000-08:00

I don’t know any other way to say this. I have always been critical of the doom and gloom crowd especially when it comes to Global Warming and people that use fear to profit from business schemes. I am not a gold bug or a La Rouse supporter. But I’ve been compelled by conscience to tell you this and I don’t even own any silver, yet. Heck, I never thought Y2K was anything but a joke.

Our economy is mortally wounded. The value of the dollar has been looted. The band aids the wiz kids in Washington and New York are placing on this gaping wound are for show. Our government and the Fed know their remedies will not work and time is quickly running out on the US Dollar and our government’s finances. I heard the financial disaster that’s about to befall our country will be similar to the towers falling on 911. It’s going to come fast and you need to take a few precautions to protect the health of you and your family.

Buy a few silver coins and 50# of beans and rice. Blow a couple of hundred bucks on an idea that may sound totally crazy to you now. If I’m wrong, give to coins to your grandkids someday, donate the food to the local food bank and flame me in an email.
If I am right it may be the difference between surviving and starving. I know that really sounds crazy but this can happen in our country in the very near future. I know Global Warming is a hoax but I believe this is real.

Do a little research; I believe you’re going to see some scary things in the next few months.

Let me know what you see, deanphilpot@yahoo.com

911 Truthers, Peak Oil and the Crash

2008-11-06T06:25:00.000-08:00

The 911 Disaster killed more than 2800 of our fellow friends and citizens. It killed trust. 911 killed the basic relationships between people that allows for the growth of enterprise and the free exchange of ideas that made America work. Alexis De Tocqueville described our nation’s business and trusting relationships in glowing terms of endearment in his travels across our nation. The immediate actions of our government and the opposite reactions of the Birch faction have ripped the quilted fabric of civility away from my idealistic visions of my beloved nation. Government openly paying off victims, while alternate realities are concocted for the disenchanted and our trusts are further depredated. Without trust there is no commerce, no barter of goods or prosperity of exchange or ideas. Trust is a problem.

The shining city on a hill was only a description of the goodness De Tocqueville and Regan saw in the people of our country. He marveled at our countrymen’s ingenuity and web of relationship of trust that allowed our new nation to prosper. Now we discuss the 911 attack as a conspiracy, with wildly concocted accounts of explosives and jet fuel being used to break the bonds of steel and Americans. I violently disagree with many of the actions of the Bush Administration but it’s hard for me to use him as my personal boogieman. I know he has some greedy masters hiding in the shadows exploiting the good and kind people of our nation.

I cannot defend Bush’s actions on the border and his dealings with Mexico. I’ve heard lies told by Johnny Sutton (Attorney for Southern District of Texas) that have imprisoned 2 innocent Border Patrol Agents for stopping a known drug smuggler and then giving the smuggler a get out of jail free card. I’ve heard Bush defend Sutton. In my heart I know there are powerful Bush backers that are raking in huge amounts of money bringing in drugs and illegal aliens into this country. This action along with my personal experience in South Texas leads me to believe that the North American Union is more that a social group promoting trade. This is a confirmed dark side of Bush that I believe is vile and corrupt that makes me consider other possibilities. The devil is in the details ruling the dark unseen side of our country. My trust is waning.

Now we see the great economic conflagration with eyes widened by predictable outcomes that could be seen by a first year student of economics. The holes in the system would have been easy to fix as a door left open. The door was intentionally left open so in the dark of the night thieves looted our economy and blamed it on the door, neither on the thieves nor the person on the inside that left the door open. Dealing with the Devils of enslavement and soul stealing in a new world order is almost impossible for me to rationalize. Of course, who would have believed that you could use new math to sell insurance to bankers that protects them from rational human behavior backed by the full faith and good credit of the American people?

So here we are my friend, I am open to the truth and actively seeking it. I know for a fact that all types of pop myths are being circulated for the financial benefit of a few powerful people. Peak Oil is an outright lie, global warming is so farfetched I am incredulous that even children would believe it. Knowing that these stories are believed and being used to control the masses allows me to consider things I would have scoffed at only a few weeks ago.

Obama's Plan to Bankrupt the Coal Business

2008-11-02T15:11:00.000-08:00

Oil Prices Drop, Gas $1.90 in Houston

2008-10-31T05:42:00.000-07:00

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aC3NH2x3xvf8&refer=worldwide

Limbaugh , Fair Story

2008-10-30T21:21:00.000-07:00

Global warming? A hoax. Barack Obama? A disaster. John McCain? A winner. So says Rush Limbaugh, America's most listened-to and influential – not to mention richest - radio personality. But will America prove him wrong in the US elections on Tuesday? Interview by Nigel Farndale.

Last Updated: 3:55PM GMT 30 Oct 2008

Rush Limbaugh: He says he's not retiring until everyone agrees with him Photo: NIGEL PARRY/CP
Although Rush Limbaugh doesn't actually work from a bunker, he does have a bunker mentality. His studio is on the third floor of a (purposefully) anonymous building 100 yards off the white sands of Palm Beach, Florida, and about a mile from his gated mansion (the one next to Chuck Norris's). Along with the Gulfstream jet (cost: $54 million), fleet of sports cars and eight-year contract, worth $400 million, this mansion is his reward for being the most listened-to talk-radio host in America, a title he has held for 20 years.

But it is also his compensation. Professional Right-wing controversialists do tend to upset people, and Limbaugh has had his share of death threats. He has also had his quota of criticism from the media, or the liberal media, as he tends to call it. He hates interviews and has rarely given any, though he does have a soft spot for this newspaper, because it was once owned by his sometime friend and neighbour Conrad Black (currently serving a 6½-year jail sentence for fraud; Limbaugh wrote a letter to the judge attesting to Lord Black's good character).

The 'drive-by media', as Limbaugh also calls it, came down to Florida looking for him when he insulted Michael J.Fox a couple of years ago – by saying the actor was hamming up his Parkinson's disease for political gain after he appeared in an appeal for embryonic stem-cell research. They came back a few months later when Limbaugh was arrested for 'doctor shopping' painkiller prescriptions; that is, persuading several doctors to give him overlapping ones. He pleaded not guilty and cut a deal; the charges were dismissed after 18 months on condition that he continue rehabilitation and treatment with a therapist. The press staked out his mansion on both occasions, but never found his studio on this palm-fringed boulevard. You wouldn't know it was here.

He calls it his 'Southern Command', having spent most of his career broadcasting from New York, and describes it on air as 'heavily fortified', yet when you travel up in a lift and step into a glass and leather reception area, there isn't even a receptionist, let alone a security guard, just several white locked doors and a CCTV camera that follows you. One of the doors buzzes. I am expected.

On the walls of the corridor there is evidence of Limbaugh's considerable power and influence, and his friends in high places. Here a framed picture of him with George Bush. Here one of him with Donald Rumsfeld. Here he is with Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan.

There is a humidor – Limbaugh is a connoisseur of cigars – and a bust of Churchill. There is also a bust of Beethoven, which has a plaque reading: 'A genius who produced masterpieces without hearing.'

Limbaugh became almost completely deaf at the age of 50, but is able to hear callers now thanks to a cochlear implant – an electronic device which stimulates nerves in the inner ear. It explains his way with a monologue, which actually is a dialogue with himself. But even if he could hear, he probably wouldn't listen. Rush Limbaugh is a talker, not a listener. He keeps it up for three hours at a stretch, five days a week from noon until three. There are commercial breaks and phone-ins, but mostly it is him delivering homilies on politics and current affairs, extemporaneously. His fluency is breathtaking.

Some 20 million Americans tune in to hear it on 600 stations across what he calls 'this fruited land'. And he says he's not retiring until everyone agrees with him.

He is on air now – I can hear him over the speakers – 'Welcome back, this is Rush Limbaugh, your shining light, the doctor of democracy, the all-knowing, all-sensing, all-caring Maha Rushie…' I get slightly lost as I'm looking for the control booth and end up in his private washroom. There are several big black polo shirts on hangers and, in his medicine cabinet, cold remedies and bottles of Listerine and Drakkar aftershave, but no painkillers. That ship has sailed, it seems.
For the next two hours I sit behind a glass panel and watch him perform. Though it is radio, his is a physical performance. He raises his arms and shakes them in mock frustration. He takes his glasses off and pinches the bridge of his nose. He drums his fingers, as you can sometimes hear on air. Though he doesn't use notes he does have some papers on his desk which he taps as a form of punctuation, and sometimes he will crumple them up in disgust, another sound effect.

In the corner of his studio he has a standard bearing a silky Stars and Stripes. Behind his desk, there is a neon replica of his signature. At 57, he is looking fitter than he has done for a long time, having shed a hundredweight (he weighed 23 stone at one point).

His hair is slicked back and he is dressed in a black polo shirt and deck shoes without socks. There is a rolling musicality to his voice.
His tone is warm and confidential. He has the rhetorician's habit of repeating himself three times in three different ways.

Today, as usual, he is riffing about Barack Obama – 'the Lord Messiah, the merciful, the acting President…' – whom he dislikes intensely.
When Former Secretary of State Colin Powell announced a few days ago that he would be breaking with his party to vote for Obama, Limbaugh said it was only because he was black. Groan. He was being insulting, of course, on many levels, to both men, but at least he was being consistent with the Limbaugh world view, the view of the fabled 'angry white man'. Indeed, it would have seemed hypocritical of him to start making compromises on the grounds of sensitivity at this stage in his career.
Besides, he doesn't go easier on the McCain camp. He described the Republican candidate as a phony conservative and, when Sarah Palin first appeared, dismissed her as 'some babe McCain met at a convention'. He has come round to Palin since then, saying that she 'kicked Biden's butt' in that vice-presidential debate. His politics are closer to hers than McCain's. And ultimately he would rather have McCain for all his faults than Obama. 'McCain's right,' he said on air recently. 'We do have them right where we want them because they think it's over.' Note the 'We'. Limbaugh does not pretend to be impartial.

Inside the control booth there is a staff of three: Jim, a sound engineer wearing headphones; Dawn, a stenographer with long blonde hair (who sends Limbaugh real-time transcripts of on-air phone-ins), and his long-time producer Bo Snerdly, a tall, well-cushioned Afro-American with an affable manner, a flat cap on backwards and spectacles dangling from a cord around his neck.

Limbaugh does not have sidekicks with him on air, but he does keep up a running conversation with Snerdly, who is almost as Right wing as he is. They banter via an internal talk-back circuit. Snerdly has his own twice-weekly spot on air in which he introduces himself as an 'African-American-in-good-standing-and-certified-black-enough-to-criticise-Obamaguy.' It is a deliberately insensate but amusing take on the race issue in this election. What Left-wingers, or 'Rush-deniers', as he calls them, don't get about the self-aggrandising Limbaugh is that he is first and foremost a satirist: funny, self-mocking and entertaining. He couldn't have held his audience for 20 years if he was only nasty, bigoted and extremely Right wing.
The broadcast over, I join Limbaugh in the studio and ask if he ever has off days when he's not in the mood. Though he can hear, thanks to the acoustics in here, he stares straight at me, lip-reading. 'I have days where I feel I've left half my brain at home and I'm not functioning 100 per cent, but I don't think the audience would ever know it, and there's never a day I don't want to do it. I prep it, but I don't think about it until it starts. At noon today I had no idea what the first thing was I was going to say until about 20 seconds into the theme music. It's improv. Stream of consciousness. That little pressure improves my performance. I do my best, most expansive thinking when I am speaking. I get on a roll.'
He surely does. Limbaugh is always a factor in American elections.
When the Republicans won the House of Representatives in 1994 for only the second time in 50 years, they made Limbaugh an honorary member of Congress. If by some fluke the Republicans win this time, in contradiction of the polls, will that be partly down to Limbaugh?

'That's so hard to measure,' he says.
He's being falsely modest and possibly disingenuous. One of his biggest successes in this election cycle was Operation Chaos, a radio campaign designed to encourage Republicans to vote for Hillary Clinton and prolong internecine fighting among Democrats. Karl Rove, 'the President's brain', reckons it helped tilt Texas for Clinton. She herself said as much the day after the vote: 'Be careful what you wish for, Rush.' Berkeley is doing a course study on it.

'I came up with Operation Chaos because we were facing a Republican primary that was over, with most of my audience dissatisfied with the choice. My audience wasn't up. Excited. Jazzed. I figured we had many more months of the liberal media salivating over the Democratic primaries on the cable networks and that that could be divisive. I don't want Obama to be President, he would be a disaster, but I do want him to be bloodied up politically, be forced to acquit himself to a political audience that isn't sycophantic. Someone had to do it.'

But Obama is the Democratic presidential candidate now and I wonder whether the race issue makes Limbaugh nervous. After all, at a White House correspondents' dinner during the Clinton administration, the President joked that Limbaugh had stood up for Attorney-General Janet Reno, but he 'only did it because she was attacked by a black guy'.

(The 'black guy' being Representative John Conyers.) Limbaugh was in the audience, and he was livid. He demanded, and received, a White House apology. 'There is nothing worse than being branded a racist,' he said afterwards.
On the race issue now, he reckons he has nothing to feel nervous about. 'Obama's people are trying to silence any criticism of him by implying it would be perceived as racist. It's a form of intimidation but I'm not going to be intimidated by them.'
Until 1988, when Limbaugh more or less invented the talk-radio format as a political tool, the liberal media in America had a monopoly, he reckons. 'The reason my show was successful was that so many people with a conservative viewpoint did not think it was being reflected in the media. I validate what they already think.' He reckons he is not always preaching to the choir, though. 'We get Democrats. Calls from people who disagree with me all the time. Last week I had a call from a woman in Dallas who said I was causing her high blood pressure because she couldn't stop herself listening to my show. The doctor told her to stop and she wouldn't.'
His audience is now 12 times the circulation of The New York Times, he tells me. 'And you can add up CNN, MSNBC and Fox, and my audience is 20 times that. They have no pretence of objectivity. They are activists now and they make no bones about it. CNN, MSNBC and Fox all opinionise. Like I do. They acknowledge this, and so it has become a battle between the two medias. The liberal media see this Obama candidacy as historic because race is a big deal to them. They think this country committed Original Sin. I actually believe that most of their support for Obama is that they are creaming in their jeans about the historical nature of the campaign. They want to be a part of it.They want to make it happen. They want a stake in it. They want to be able to say they did it if Obama wins.'

Well, he is going to win, isn't he? 'No. I don't see it, Nigel. I think he's been dead in the water since the primaries. He is going to need to be up 10 to 12 points to win by three or four. Don't forget that Hillary winning was a foregone conclusion, too. If the polls had been right it would have been Giuliani versus Hillary. That's why polls a year out are worthless. Obama is going around as the acting President. It's off-putting. Unionised blue-collar Democrats didn't vote for him, they voted for Hillary.'

Wasn't that to do with race? 'No… well it might be to a certain degree, but there was never any substance to his speeches, just soaring rhetoric. That guy can say nothing better than anyone I have ever heard say nothing.' He drums his fingers. 'My take on this is that we are all Americans and I am sick and tired of hyphenated Americans. Afro-American, Hispanic-Americans.

'I am truly colour blind and I wish everyone else was. We Balkanise when we say only women can represent women in Congress and only Jews can represent Jews and only blacks can represent blacks. It's BS. We all want the same things. Prosperity and a decent education for our kids. Treating this country like it is stuck 50 years ago is BS; we have made more progress than anyone over this. Get over it. If Obama says stupid things I'm not going to say they are not stupid because he's black. He's running for President, for God's sake. It's the Left who has been racist by agonising about whether he is black enough. Is he authentic enough? Does he have a civil rights record? For me he's a liberal. That is reason enough to oppose him.'
Limbaugh thinks there is a war going on between people like him who want small, efficient government and people who want a powerful state that decides who gets what. 'And they use hoaxes like global warming to advance their agenda of higher taxation and bigger government.'

Oh dear. You don't have to agree with his red-meat views to find them insightful. They represent, after all, the authentic voice of conservative, and neo-conservative, America. But there is one issue about which I think he is dangerously wrong. Global warming. After all, I point out, 98 per cent of the world's leading scientists in this area don't think global warming is a hoax.
He stares at me. 'Nigel, man-made global warming is a 100 per cent, full-fledged, undeniable hoax.'

That's his opinion. 'No, it's not even arguable in terms of science.'
Of course it is, I say, and he's being deliberately provocative to say it isn't. 'We don't have the power to make cold weather warm. We can't make warm weather cold. We can't produce rain clouds. We can't steer hurricanes, we can't produce diddly squat and the idea that only advanced democracies are doing this with their automobiles is absurd.

Global warming is a religion. It has what all religions have which is faith, because no one can prove their religion. It has a Garden of Eden element, destruction brought by humanity then redemption for our sins by paying higher taxes and getting rid of our cars and planes.'

Does part of him go after a subject like that just to wind people up?
'No, I believe it. I hate people who feel rather than think. Most people feel they don't matter. When they are told they can save the planet, well, that gives their lives meaning. These stupid ribbons – breast cancer, Aids awareness, they say – "I care more than you." ' He drums his fingers on the table again.
Limbaugh doesn't give the impression of having doubts, but does he?
Does he have long nights of the soul? 'I'd only have those if I had lied, made something up that I don't really believe, for an illicit motive. I won't be deliberately provocative just to get people to listen.'

Was there a point at which he decided he would have to thicken his skin if he was going to last in talk radio – not take insults personally, I mean? 'Insults are badges of honour. There is nothing anyone can say that would offend me. Prior to doing this show no one hated me. No one thought I was a racist, sexist or homophobic bigot.

No one thought I was a hate-monger. I was not raised to be hated. I was raised to be loved. Within six months I was getting death threats.'
For all his claimed equanimity, there is a residual paranoia, vulnerability and vanity that floats around Rush Limbaugh like a toxic cloud. He hates being photographed, for example, because: 'They are going to try to get the most embarrassing or unflattering shot of you they can.' They. Always they. These dark forces out to get him. I ask about the insecurities that lay behind his dependency on painkillers.

There was pain to kill, after all, and it wasn't physical. 'That's all in the past,' he says. 'Done. The rehab was in Arizona. A spartan place called The Meadows. Not one of these half-assed places for celebrities. It was five weeks and I really got into it. Very educational for me to learn about myself. It was inspiring. I can't imagine taking a pain pill now. It holds no attraction. I haven't had a relapse or craving since then. I had to talk to a therapist for 18 months afterwards. Never done that before. Thought it bunk. Actually that helped.'
Born into a family of lawyers, Limbaugh obtained his radio licence at the age of 15 and began Dj-ing on a local radio station. One insecurity that dates back to that time is that he was wounded by his father's disapproval of his chosen profession. He was also miserable when his father insisted he attend college. Under protest, he enrolled at Southeast Missouri State University, where he lasted a year before dropping out. After that he was fired six times by radio stations and other employers. It was a wobbly start and, as a defence mechanism, he seems to have acquired an ultra-confident alter ego.

Nevertheless, he tells me that when he's at home, when he can drop his public guard, he can feel flat. 'Mentally, I'm zapped after this show every day. I don't do anything for three hours. I go read a novel or play golf. I won't speak a word because I don't use the phone. Sure I can get melancholy.'

I never had him figured as an emotional man. Isn't his whole shtick that you have to think not feel? 'Don't cry easily. Get close to crying then I stop it. A movie or a book will get me misty-eyed. It's always happy ending good stuff that gets me crying, not bad stuff.'

'Last time?' Long pause. 'Last time was when my little cat died. Five years old. Had a stroke. I had two cats and this one had the personality and almost humanlike behaviour. Pets are like sports: you think you can invest a lot in them without consequences.'

And like wives. He has been married three times, though he hasn't had any children. He met his current girlfriend, a West Palm Beach events planner, last year. When I ask about the ups and downs in his personal relationships he hesitates again. 'I would find myself very difficult to live with because I am totally self-contained and resent having to do things I don't want to do. Now I can choose. When I'm put in a position where I don't want to be there, I make sure everyone else is miserable.'
That's some confession, even for a thick-skinned man. He seems to know himself well, knows he can be selfish and that he cuts quite a lonely figure – just him and his remaining cat rattling around in that big house. He also knows he is easily bored. 'I don't have guests on my show because I don't care what other people think,' he tells me. 'Most guests are boring.' But it's not only others he is bored with, it is also, perhaps, himself. This may be what explains his recklessness, his bravado, his determination to say the unsayable. And perhaps it also explains why he never misses a beat, until you draw him out about himself — how he is difficult to live with, how he cried when his cat died, how, to his surprise, he found it helpful talking to a therapist. Only then does he hesitate. As we part he bets me a cigar from Desmond Sautter's of Mayfair that Obama won't win. I'd better go and choose one.

Drill Here , Drill Now DEAD

2008-10-30T15:14:00.000-07:00

We will never be energy independent.

The ruling elites in Washington and New York have systematically sabotaged the domestic energy companies for the past 50 years. It has been policy to retard the oil business by government. It has been a fact that tax policy has been skewed toward going offshore to find and develop the resources of foreign entities while ignoring the vast supplies of oil, natural gas and coal in the US.

Alaska has not been developed; it’s been tested and logged but barely exploited. Manmade Global Warming and Peak Oil are hoaxes used to lock up the keys to energy independence. Do you think any politician with any common sense would ever let a snail, polar bear or a fish kill our economy?

Oil prices are now going down, do you ever ask yourself why?

A few months ago we were running out of petroleum and the price was $147 a barrel. I am seeing financial reports in major world publications calling for $50 oil and you soon will see there's plenty of oil in other places than the US.

Thinking about what’s happening with our economy I cannot come to any other conclusion other than this was a set up. Think about it-$147 oil to kill the economy and $50 oil to kill off the dollar and the domestic energy business. The net result is more ominous than just $2 gasoline at the gas pump.

Our dollar is now near worthless. You will see the end game soon, regardless of who wins the presidential election.

I have capitulated, drill here –drill now and energy independence will never happen because our rulers don’t want it.

See who capitulates next.

$50 Oil Will Cause Major Problems for the US and Worldwide

2008-10-26T18:34:00.000-07:00

Analysts at Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch are predicting that the price of crude oil could fall to $50 a barrel by December if the global economy slips into recession. Opec is due to meet this week and it is expected that the group will announce a cut in output.

The US Debt will be unsubtainable if the Oil Producing nations pull out their investment in Treasury Notes. The folly of Peak Oil Theory has been demonstrated once again.

Meet Your New Partner -OBAMA

2008-10-14T17:39:00.000-07:00

He doesn’t show up on Fridays to meet payroll. He doesn’t even come to the office Christmas party. “Uncle Sugar” Obama will set up a Chicago style fascist-Marx kingdom and will try to control your life.

Obama will be your new partner and here’s how I get there. A good sized chunk of U.S. Banks will be owned and controlled by the government. We’ve been assured by the Bush Administration that it’s only a temporary situation brought on by the economic crisis. Have you ever known of a modern Democrat that’s ever given up any power without being forced? Do you really believe Obama will be different?

He will control the supply of money, giving loans to crooks and cronies for dubious ventures with kick backs for other cronies and friends. He will use banks to collect taxes and gather information on political enemies. He will punish the disagreeable and reward those that play ball. Welcome to 3rd World America. The “haves” will have political connections and know how to enslave others in their schemes and the “have not’s” will only have faint memories of freedom. ACORN will become the business model for success in America. ACORN is already getting $420 per $100,000 mortgage kickback from our Democrat friends in Congress. That's half a billion a year.

Unfairness will be denounced in every speech and on posters plastered to walls with the image of the Obama urging you to give up more for your uncle. The middle classes will shrink into the helpless poor and the master bureaucrats and the few well connected business class. Our socialist banana republic will be a model for waste, corruption and extremes.

This isn’t my idea of Utopia, but it will be the results of Obama’s twisted vision.

The Crash Equasion

2008-10-12T14:35:00.000-07:00

Call FEMA, Weather Alert, We Could All Die, Panic!!

2008-10-12T08:53:00.000-07:00

1 Man Drill Rig

2008-10-11T10:01:00.000-07:00

Market Mess, Becks View

2008-10-06T15:18:00.000-07:00

Glenn Beck: What happened?
October 6, 2008 - 13:01 ET

Glenn's letter to his family explaining how we got into this economic crisis...
Yes, another email letter from your crazy brother. You raised a lot of questions in your last email and I am going to try to answer all of them.

I think all of your questions fall into three areas: (1) how did we get here; (2) what's coming; and (3) what can I do to prepare myself and my family.

Consider this email as my answer to your first question, "how did we get here?". I'll be sending you 2 more emails answering your other two questions. Since there's a lot of misinformation out there I will document each of the facts in my emails so you know where I pulled the information from and where you can go to read and learn more.

What you shouldn't do is panic. We'll get through this--don't pull all of your money out of the bank but have enough cash on-hand to meet any possible emergencies.

First, you've got to get the stock market's ups-and-downs out of your mind. The recent drops and upticks are short-term. Our economic problems are much bigger and deeper. Too many people believe that if the stock market goes up our problems are behind us and that's simply not true.

Last week the market had big drops and big upswings. In the end, the market ended down more than 800 points and lots of 'experts' were shouting it was a time to buy. I don't see it that way.

Did you know that just two days after the stock market crashed in October 1929 the market actually gained ground the next two days? The New York Times reported that "the market quickly regained its poise and stability...." Today, Wall Street 'pros' are telling us it's a good time to invest because Warren Buffet is investing. A lot of people were probably using the same argument when the Rockefeller family was buying stocks right after the 1929 crash, what they didn't know was that it would take Wall Street ten more years to see those prices again.

Our current economic crisis was caused by politicians, both Democrats and Republicans, who perverted the American Dream by treating home ownership as an undeniable right rather than what it really is, a privilege. President Bush aggressively promoted the benefits of home ownership through various policy positions, including a reckless zero down-payment initiative for some homebuyers and praised Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac even after concerns about their accounting standards began to surface.

Home ownership has always been part of the American Dream. It allows individuals and families to build wealth by having them pay themselves instead of a landlord or rental company and vests people in their communities by grounding them in local schools, stores and government.

The concept that owning a home was a privilege and not a right began to change in 1992 following a flawed Boston Federal Reserve Board study which allegedly found subtle discrimination in loan and mortgage lending by banks and mortgage lenders.

Politicians didn't care that the study was full of errors. The study found discrimination took place when five minority applicants were rejected for special low-income loans even though the applicants were rejected because they made too much money to qualify for a low-income loan, not because of their race. The report also classified as 'rejected' the applications of eight minority borrowers even though these borrowers voluntarily withdrew their mortgage applications. The study's sloppiness also went the other way.

The study reported that a white applicant was approved for a $3,115,000 loan in order to purchase a home valued at $445,000. It was later demonstrated that the actual loan was approved for $311,500, far less than $3 million reported and more importantly, less than the home's purchase price. When these and other errors were corrected no evidence of discrimination existed.

But politicians didn't care. They used this report as the basis to fix a problem which didn't exist. Leading the charge for change was President Clinton who immediately set-out to rework the Community Reinvestment Act to give federal officials the power to pressure banks to make loans they otherwise considered too risky or uneconomical.

Traditional lending requirements were labeled 'outdated' and discriminatory. What 'traditional lending requirements' were viewed as 'outdated' and 'discriminatory'? (1) banks were told that a "lack of credit history should not be seen as a negative factor" and that "past credit problems"
should be viewed and considered in light of any "extenuating circumstances" so loans could be extended when they otherwise would have been denied; (2) banks were encouraged to let borrowers without enough money for a down-payment make-up any deficiency with "gifts, grants, or loans from relatives, nonprofit organizations, or municipal agencies" even though banks considered this risky as the home buyer would have little or no equity in the house; (3) banks were also instructed that borrowers who received child support, welfare payments or unemployment benefits could count that as 'income' for borrowing purposes.

Call me crazy but if you need to count child support money that's intended for your child, or are in such bad economic shape that you're relying on welfare payments to make ends meet or are unemployed, maybe, just maybe, you shouldn't be buying a house. Too bad our politicians and the 'best and brightest' on Wall Street couldn't figure that out!

Community groups like ACORN, threatened to cry racism if banks didn't increase their loans to subprime borrowers. Banks typically avoided subprime loans as they carried a greater risk of default, but with law on its side, ACORN and other groups intimidated lending institutions into making such loans.

Banks soon learned, however, that making subprime loans actually could increase their profits without increasing their risk. Once the banks extended a loan to a subprime borrower that loan could then be sold by the bank to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, two government sponsored entities charged with making home ownership affordable to all Americans.

Banks, Wall Street, and mortgage lenders were soon eager to extend mortgages to subprime borrowers because they could make lots of money without carrying any risk. Fannie and Freddie carried all the risk once the original lending agency sold the loan to them. And once Fannie and Freddie bought the loan this freed up the banks to make even more subprime loans.

So everyone was a winner. The subprime borrower got the money to buy a house. The banks generated mortgages and made a nice profit and Fannie and Freddie executives made tens-of-millions of dollars in salaries and bonuses by hitting their annual goals.

The problem was that in order to keep all of this going lending standards were continually lowered to help the next level of subprime borrowers qualify for mortgages and no one had an incentive to make sure that the new subprime borrowers would actually be capable of making regular mortgage payments. The banks which extended the loans really didn't care because they were just going to sell the loan off to Fannie or Freddie. Fannie and Freddie weren't too concerned because it wasn't their money-they knew that they were insured by the 'full faith and credit' of the federal government (that's government lingo for "you and me").

So when federal regulators began to warn the executives at Fannie and Freddie about the increasing risks of non-payment by subprime borrowers the companies did nothing and when the regulators took their concerns to congress their warnings were met with scorn and contempt. The politicians who received the most political contributions from Fannie and Freddie, by pure coincidence, just happened to be their biggest defenders: Chris Dodd (D-$133,900), John Kerry (D-$111,000) and Barack Obama (D-$105,189).

Representative Barney Frank, who has been a fierce defender of Fannie and Freddie, actually said, while arguing against more regulation, "I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation towards subsidized housing.... " It's nice to know that he doesn't mind gambling with our money. Senator Chris Dodd, in praising Fannie and Freddie said, "I, just briefly will say, Mr. Chairman, obviously, like most of us here, this is one of the great success stories of all time.
"While Senator Charles Schumer said, "And my worry is that we're using the recent safety and soundness concerns, particularly with Freddie, and with a poor regulator, as a straw man to curtail Fannie and Freddie's mission."

Barack Obama has received more money from Fannie and Freddie than any other senator, with the exception of Senator Dodd, in the last four years. Before entering the senate, Obama filed a class-action lawsuit against Citibank, alleging that the bank was red-lining, or not doing enough lending in certain areas. That lawsuit was eventually settled. Arguably, Barack Obama helped cause the problem he now wants to fix.

The Federal Reserve Board was doing its part by throwing huge piles of cash at would-be home buyers by keeping interest rates too low. With low interest rates speculators began to look at houses as business opportunities, while others began to look at their homes as a giant piggy bank rather than a place where you actually lived and raised a family. Alan Greenspan encouraged this type of behavior and proudly said, "American consumers might benefit if lenders provided greater mortgage product alternatives to the traditional fixed-rate mortgages..." President Bush, responding to September 11th unwisely encouraged us to "go shopping" rather than hunker down financially and contribute to the War on Terror in other ways (can you say home equity loans?).

The SEC also shares in the blame. It failed to do its job (failed to adequately regulate mortgage brokers, the credit rating companies, and naked short-sellers), acted only after the markets froze-up (finally addressed mark-to-market rules) and refused to examine how the credit-default-swap market could grow from $919 billion in 2001 to over $54 trillion by 2008 (which allowed companies to make wild financial bets with the false confidence that 'insurance' would be there if the deal went south).

So what happened? Home-ownership rates which had been relatively constant for 25 years began a 10 year upward climb beginning in 1995, around the same time that government began its push and pressure for banks to make more subprime loans. The politicians, banks, lenders and Wall Streeters were thrilled because they were all making gobs of money.

Today we are all paying the price for the decisions made long ago. I have spoken to people involved at the highest levels and they now are all saying the same thing, "it is worse than anyone knows" and "worse than I even thought." Political and business leaders who I respect have told me that the economy is on the edge of an abyss.

The bailout is an outrage and is designed only to buy time for the politicians. It will delay the real hard times from hitting until after the November elections. Not one politician has said that this bailout legislation will put us on a better financial footing or that our economic problems will be put behind us. In fact, we'll be worse off because our politicians, even in this crisis, can't stop themselves from spending. This bill includes an extension of the rum tax benefits for Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands ($192 million), tax benefits for companies which manufacture wooden arrows for kids ($6 million), car racing tracks ($128 million), a provision which forces insurance companies to treat mental health problems like physical problems ($3.8 billion) and many, many more.

International markets don't offer any better alternative. Germany, England, the Netherlands, and Russia have all come out with their own government backed bailout plans. There are now calls for more international regulation (presumably led by the United Nations) and China has taken this opportunity to call for "a diversified currency and financial system and fair and just financial order that is not dependent on the United States." Meanwhile, there is increasing international indications that the dollar will lose its place as the reserve currency of the world.

The politicians from both political parties continue to lie to us. They promise us better healthcare and more government programs. The only thing either party will be able to deliver is higher, much higher, taxes as the debt swells and government revenues fall. The same politicians remain silent, while capitalism, which brought us the highest standard of living in the world, is increasingly attacked and discredited by its enemies.

But it's not capitalism which has been discredited by our current crisis, it's greed that has been shown to be at the root of our present economic uncertainty, and greed is unfortunately a universal human trait and has demonstrated its reach in socialism, fascism, communism and capitalism. The greed of Wall Street is nothing compared to the greed of our politicians who have continued to expand their power and influence at the expense of their country.

Our children and grandchildren will ultimately pay the price for their failure to act prudently and in the best interest of our country because they will be the ones saddled with mountains of debt and diminished standard of living.

I hope that this summary gives you a better idea of how the people who caused this fire are the same ones who are now telling us that they know best how to put it out and a reason not to believe their current promises.

We have faced tough times before. We fought the Nazis in World War II, defeated communism in the Cold War and Americans fought each other to keep our country together in our own Civil War. These tough times require us to educate ourselves and help others understand what has brought us to this point and the grave consequences of what will happen if we let this continue-that is our fight.

In my next email letter I will answer the other question you asked, "what's coming?"

Sis, I know you will always consider me your crazy brother but please pass this message on to all of your friends. There are too many rumors circulating and I want to put the facts out there. This isn't about slamming the Democrats or Republicans--this is about getting the truth out to as many people as possible. The more people we can wake-up the more people we will have restoring the hope, promise and opportunity of our great country. Please pass this on.

Glenn

Resource Play's Are Not Wildcatting from Open Choke Blog

2008-10-03T17:37:00.000-07:00

Our world changed with "resource plays". For mineral owners, the change was an unmitigated success. The froth created by folks trying to tie up chunks, at any price, before the deliverability of the play was known, created many, many multimillionaire mineral owners before a drop of oil or a whiff of gas was produced. Areas that were $5.00 per acre were now $1,000 per acre or more... up to $29,000 an acre in some parts of the Barnett and Haynesville before dropping now that Chesapeake is a net seller than buyer.

We will look at these last 3 years as a huge transfer of wealth from the oil industry to the mineral owner. Small percentages of these areas will be economic. Unfortunately, it will take years before mineral owners calm down. Once the expectation of $1000 an acre sets in, it doesn't go away easily.

THE BARNETT- This is a real play, and at $7 and MCFG, only a small percentage of it is really economic. The good part of it is that it can be infill drilled a long way down, which should support good residual prices and the "EXL Model" flip.... drill, prove up undrilled locations, infill just enough to demonstrate viability, and sell. This allows those high acreage prices to be allocated to 40 or 80 acre locations. Much easier economics at $10,000 an acre to shove $400k in acreage costs into a $2 MM drill and complete than $6.4 MM into a $2 MM drill and complete with 640 natural spacings.

THE BAKKEN- This is a real play too. Like the Barnett, cost control will become king. This play also lends itself to much smaller natural spacings than the legal ones today. A real plus to the Bakken is that you drill through some of the richest conventional reservoir section in the US to get to it. Once they downspace to 160 acres, expect to see an explosion of conventional 5 million barrel fields found.

THE MARCELLUS- I have looked at a few unpuplished production records here, and it concerns me. This play looks more like the Austin Chalk, with natural fractures playing a big role in producibility. Although this produces some great up front production rates, draining two miles of fractures doesn't support acreage prices at Barnett plus levels. The capability of draining this on 40s or 80s or 160s is a long way from being proved, and with natural fractures a real component, a long shot. This is a real play, but not a good bet at acreage prices over $1000 per acre.

THE HAYNESVILLE- LSD Man. We can all fly. And be one with the universe. All I know is that Aubry McLendon called it the best reservoir he has ever seen a week before he raised a billion in equity, and then he flipped a huge chunk to PetroHawk. Would you flip Guwar? I think this play could be big, and again, it is not a one-trick pony with regards to acreage. This play can be gummed up by operators playing tricks on unit designations in Louisiana, but I hope it is great. Can't tell you right now. Wish I was a Caddo Parish mineral owner.

THE WOLFBERRY- Basically, a conventional reservoir, or rather a whole bunch of conventional reservoirs with log normal distribution being accessed by fracs. AN incredible play in the right areas, and a huge money loser in the wrong. The Eastern Shelf component looks like it fails as a stand alone, but works as a secondary pay, which means it fails as a driver for huge acrege prices, because they go crazy when the average well is better than payout. The portion just east of the Central Basin Platform is like a narrow band of pearls. Lots of string areas, and some great sweetspots. Rationally, acreage is more valuable than what it costs in the sweetspots and a lot less valuable than what it costs between the pearls.

Of course, this it the opinion of one guy. Take it for what its worth. If I were smart, I'd be a lot richer... rich enough, at least, to think it patriotic to pay more taxes.

IKE…The Biggest Campout Ever!

2008-09-28T07:55:00.001-07:00

Imagine 5,000,000 of your closest friends and neighbors all sharing adventures of nature in an urban setting. It seems that nature invaded our city and surrounding suburbs with a vengeance. Who needs nature programs in HD? We had beautiful trees and wildlife in our living rooms.

With the exception of the random generator we lived an “Al Gore Green” primitive existence for more than week. I want a Nobel Prize for this feat. Hell, I’d like to see Al Gore survive a similar experience to validate his stupid movie and awards.

This experience brought the whole Peak Oil, Global Warming- Sustainable Living Crap that’s being pumped into American homes by soft headed liberals into prospective.

More than ever I want to denounce these dangerous misguided morons that want to destroy our country, economy and culture.

EVERY TIME I HEAR GREEN, I SEE RED.

Ideas to Destroy a Nation

2008-09-27T13:50:00.000-07:00

There are 3 theories that have been concocted to bring our nation to its knees and make the US a second tier country. These are “half baked” ideas that present untrue vision of our nation and its place in the world.

These theories are:

Peak Oil- The idea that all the easy cheap oil has been found so we give up our exploration for energy.

Man Made Global Warming- The idea that our industrial strengths have hurt others in the world and damaged the planet so it can’t sustain life unless we follow some “new green rules” for living.

The United States is on the decline as a world power- This theory can only be true if you believe and live like the other theories are true.

So, if you want to see the end of our nation, believe the world will soon run out of oil, we are destroying the planet and need to pay more taxes to the UN and fee’s to the likes of Al Gore and everything is going to hell in a hand basket and we need leaders like Obama to tell us what to do.

This would be my idea of Hell.

Now I understand why liberals are so unhappy.

Co2 is a Gas!

2008-09-23T08:27:00.000-07:00

Using Duct(k) Tape to Save the Planet

2008-08-27T20:44:00.000-07:00

Drill Like Your Life Depended on It, IBD Editorial

2008-08-21T18:20:00.000-07:00

Russia's invasion of neighboring Georgia has revealed the West's major weakness: Our dependence on questionable governments around the world for oil, the very lifeblood of our prosperity. So what do we do?

Rather than shrugging, as Congress' defeatist Democrats would have us do, or groveling, as much of Western Europe seems content to do, America should seize its energy future now — by opening drilling not just in a few selected areas off our coasts, but everywhere there might be oil.

Offshore, onshore, in the Arctic, in the Caribbean, in the oil-rich waters off California, deep in the mountain shale deposits of the Far West — wherever oil is, we should be getting it out.

We owe it to future generations to ensure an adequate supply of energy to maintain our way of life and standard of living. But this is about much more than having affordable fuel to power our cars, factories and businesses. It's also about national security.

Russia's rampage in Georgia was calculated to intimidate the former Soviet slave states of Eastern Europe. But Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin also wants to control Georgia's Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline — the main conduit from the oil-rich Caspian Sea to Europe. That would give him a chokehold on 25% of Europe's energy supply — and veto power over EU diplomacy.

As part of this geopolitical strategy, Putin is also forging new alliances in the Mideast, ranging from this week's deal with Iraq to build power plants, to a military accord for arms, energy and a possible Russian military base for Syria.

All this is on top of Russia's continued technical and financial aid to Iran's burgeoning nuclear weapons program.

In our own hemisphere, Putin is reviving Russia's long-dormant relationship with Cuba and selling advanced planes and weapons to socialist dictator Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, a major oil supplier.

This is a plain attempt to resurrect the old USSR strategy of stirring up trouble around the world, encircling the U.S. and its allies with enemies, then daring us to stop it. Only today, they have energy as a weapon.

One premise of the new Putin Doctrine is that oil prices will stay high and that Russia, with its plentiful reserves, can use oil profits to fund its global ambitions.

This is where Congress comes in. Since President Clinton refused to allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in 1995, Democrats have stood in the way of any rational energy plan. Today, we pump just 25% of our oil; 40 years ago, it was 60%. We send about $900 billion a year overseas to buy oil, money that helps fund Russian and radical Islamic mischief. This is a problem.

Now for the good news: The U.S. is the world's largest potential oil supplier — with as much oil, the Institute for Energy Research says, as has been used by the entire world over the last 150 years.

Just offshore, we have 86 billion barrels of crude. The U.S. Arctic region, including Alaska, holds 30 billion barrels. In the Far West, we have more than 800 billion barrels of shale oil.

In a mere 44 days, the U.S. moratorium on offshore drilling will expire. Congress should let this happen. It should also open up ANWR and the rest of Alaska to drilling and exploration. And while we're at it, let's get moving on oil shale and nuclear power.

Congressional Democrats get furious when they're accused of lacking patriotism. Fair enough. Want to be patriots? Help America make use of its abundant energy by drilling for more.

We are the Left, LOL Video

2008-08-21T17:35:00.000-07:00

Kill Peak Oil

2008-08-20T07:42:00.000-07:00

It’s time to kill the PEAK OIL Myth. It’s dangerous to our future. Like Global Warming hoaxes it perpetuates the notion than men are smarter than God. Knowing what resources God has given us and where he’s put them is to quote the Obama” is above my pay grade” but I have faith that we can find all we need if we keep looking.

The largest gas field in the US, the Barnett Shale was drilled through for more than 50 years before some people figured out how to produce it. Ditto for the Haynesville and a number of Shale plays that are just now coming online.

We have the Bakken formation found in the 1950’s. We have most of Alaska, the outer continental shelf, the oceans, the Arctic, and a great deal of the western US that has not been explored properly.

For years the greenies have been talking about our unexplored oceans and that we know more about the moon than the deep sea floor. We really know very little about the subsurface of our good green earth. With new exploration tools, drilling technologies, and completion techniques I am confident we can find all we need if we can keep the government and the chicken little’s from getting in the way.

It’s not time to fear the future, buy it to wind hucksters and carbon credit sellers, it’s time to drill.

Why we're losing the Energy War

2008-08-19T19:17:00.000-07:00

War Photos from Pipeline War

2008-08-15T08:23:00.000-07:00

Warning :VERY GRAPHIC PHOTOS

http://www.navoine.ru/forum/viewtopic.php?p=551

Lefties have their War for Oil..Georgia on my mind

2008-08-14T17:10:00.001-07:00

Pickens & Pelosi Picken Pockets

2008-08-14T06:50:00.000-07:00

TV commercials touting a new clean energy strategy and an environmental ballot measure in California have one thing in common: If they succeed, they'll make investors – from "big oil" to the U.S. Capitol – a lot of money.

The ads champion Texas oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens' "Pickens Plan" to move the U.S. from foreign oil dependence to domestically produced wind power and natural gas fuel for automobiles. The plan is touted as a cleaner, more eco-friendly alternative to our current reliance on coal power and gasoline.

The ballot initiative is California's Proposition 10, known as the California Renewable Energy and Clean Alternative Fuel Act, which would spend $5 billion in California bond money – $10 billion by the time the interest is paid, according to the L.A. Times – to promote natural gas as an cleaner alternative for automobile and truck fuel.

Not surprisingly, the nation's largest provider of natural gas for transportation, Clean Energy Fuels Corporation, or CLNE, has a great deal to gain from the adoption of Pickens' fuel strategy and the passage of Proposition 10. In fact, according to the California Secretary of State website, CLNE has contributed $3,247,250 to supporting Proposition 10's passage.

CLNE, however, was formerly known as Pickens Fuel after its primary investor, T. Boone Pickens.

While Pickens touts a plan in the name of environmentalism that will also line his company's pockets, a #dontgo investigation has revealed that another environmental champion and backer of Proposition 10 has also invested in CLNE: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California.

According to the investigation, Pelosi purchased $50,000-$100,000 in CLNE stock on May 25, 2007, apparently on its initial public offering.

Now the House speaker stands to make a large profit on her reported 22,000 shares of CLNE if she and other public figures can persuade the people of California to vote for Proposition 10 in the name of renewable energy and clean, alternative fuels

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=72225

The World War for Energy

2008-08-10T07:57:00.001-07:00

The war started years ago. It didn’t start in Iraq.

The Russians and the Chinese began aggressively exploiting the green movement to buck up their reserves at the expense of the west. The United States and Western Europe watched as the old communist gang began to gather economic strength and influence over the world’s energy supplies.
Building pipelines to the EU gives Russia power to dictate political terms to NATO and the west.

Russia has planted its flag over the Arctic which many believe contains as much as 18% of the world’s energy reserves.

Here Green, See Red has never been truer. The Georgia-Russian Pipeline War is just an obvious sign of battles to come.

We must join the fight at home to secure our energy supplies or fight a real shooting war.

It's time for the anti-war types to reject the Greenies before it's too late.

The Georgian- Russian Pipeline War

2008-08-10T07:12:00.000-07:00

The war in Georgia escalated dangerously last night after Russian jets reportedly bombed a vital pipeline that supplies oil to the West.

After a day of heightening international tensions, Georgian leaders claimed that the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which transports oil from the Caspian Sea to Turkey, had been attacked. But it is thought the bombs missed their target.

Their claims came after Russian jets struck deep into the territory of its tiny neighbour, killing civilians and ‘completely devastating’ the strategic Black Sea port of Poti, a staging post for oil and other energy supplies.

Reports last night also said that Russia had bombed the international airport in Tbilisi.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1043185/The-Pipeline-War-Russian-bear-goes-Wests-jugular.html

Confessions of An Aussie Climate Scientist

2008-08-09T19:22:00.000-07:00

David Evans
I DEVOTED six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian Greenhouse Office. I am the rocket scientist who wrote the carbon accounting model (FullCAM) that measures Australia's compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, in the land use change and forestry sector.

FullCAM models carbon flows in plants, mulch, debris, soils and agricultural products, using inputs such as climate data, plant physiology and satellite data. I've been following the global warming debate closely for years.

When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty good: CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the old ice core data, no other suspects.

The evidence was not conclusive, but why wait until we were certain when it appeared we needed to act quickly? Soon government and the scientific community were working together and lots of science research jobs were created. We scientists had political support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet.

But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming. As Lord Keynes famously said, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"

There has not been a public debate about the causes of global warming and most of the public and our decision makers are not aware of the most basic salient facts:

1. The greenhouse signature is missing. We have been looking and measuring for years, and cannot find it.

Each possible cause of global warming has a different pattern of where in the planet the warming occurs first and the most. The signature of an increased greenhouse effect is a hot spot about 10km up in the atmosphere over the tropics. We have been measuring the atmosphere for decades using radiosondes: weather balloons with thermometers that radio back the temperature as the balloon ascends through the atmosphere. They show no hot spot. Whatsoever.

If there is no hot spot then an increased greenhouse effect is not the cause of global warming. So we know for sure that carbon emissions are not a significant cause of the global warming. If we had found the greenhouse signature then I would be an alarmist again.

When the signature was found to be missing in 2007 (after the latest IPCC report), alarmists objected that maybe the readings of the radiosonde thermometers might not be accurate and maybe the hot spot was there but had gone undetected. Yet hundreds of radiosondes have given the same answer, so statistically it is not possible that they missed the hot spot.

Recently the alarmists have suggested we ignore the radiosonde thermometers, but instead take the radiosonde wind measurements, apply a theory about wind shear, and run the results through their computers to estimate the temperatures. They then say that the results show that we cannot rule out the presence of a hot spot. If you believe that you'd believe anything.

2. There is no evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause significant global warming. None. There is plenty of evidence that global warming has occurred, and theory suggests that carbon emissions should raise temperatures (though by how much is hotly disputed) but there are no observations by anyone that implicate carbon emissions as a significant cause of the recent global warming.

3. The satellites that measure the world's temperature all say that the warming trend ended in 2001, and that the temperature has dropped about 0.6C in the past year (to the temperature of 1980). Land-based temperature readings are corrupted by the "urban heat island" effect: urban areas encroaching on thermometer stations warm the micro-climate around the thermometer, due to vegetation changes, concrete, cars, houses. Satellite data is the only temperature data we can trust, but it only goes back to 1979. NASA reports only land-based data, and reports a modest warming trend and recent cooling. The other three global temperature records use a mix of satellite and land measurements, or satellite only, and they all show no warming since 2001 and a recent cooling.

4. The new ice cores show that in the past six global warmings over the past half a million years, the temperature rises occurred on average 800 years before the accompanying rise in atmospheric carbon. Which says something important about which was cause and which was effect.

None of these points are controversial. The alarmist scientists agree with them, though they would dispute their relevance.

The last point was known and past dispute by 2003, yet Al Gore made his movie in 2005 and presented the ice cores as the sole reason for believing that carbon emissions cause global warming. In any other political context our cynical and experienced press corps would surely have called this dishonest and widely questioned the politician's assertion.

Until now the global warming debate has merely been an academic matter of little interest. Now that it matters, we should debate the causes of global warming.

So far that debate has just consisted of a simple sleight of hand: show evidence of global warming, and while the audience is stunned at the implications, simply assert that it is due to carbon emissions.

In the minds of the audience, the evidence that global warming has occurred becomes conflated with the alleged cause, and the audience hasn't noticed that the cause was merely asserted, not proved.

If there really was any evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming, don't you think we would have heard all about it ad nauseam by now?

The world has spent $50 billion on global warming since 1990, and we have not found any actual evidence that carbon emissions cause global warming. Evidence consists of observations made by someone at some time that supports the idea that carbon emissions cause global warming. Computer models and theoretical calculations are not evidence, they are just theory.

What is going to happen over the next decade as global temperatures continue not to rise? The Labor Government is about to deliberately wreck the economy in order to reduce carbon emissions. If the reasons later turn out to be bogus, the electorate is not going to re-elect a Labor government for a long time. When it comes to light that the carbon scare was known to be bogus in 2008, the ALP is going to be regarded as criminally negligent or ideologically stupid for not having seen through it. And if the Liberals support the general thrust of their actions, they will be seen likewise.

The onus should be on those who want to change things to provide evidence for why the changes are necessary. The Australian public is eventually going to have to be told the evidence anyway, so it might as well be told before wrecking the economy.

Dr David Evans was a consultant to the Australian Greenhouse Office from 1999 to 2005.

Windmills vs. Oil from Open Choke Blog

2008-08-05T20:49:00.000-07:00

I was playing around with per capita energy use by type, and reduced it all to an interesting relationship.

1 Windmill (1.5 Mw) = 0.88 BOPD = 5357 cfg/d = .2446 short tons coal = 16,070 sq ft of solar voltaic cells = overall energy consumption of 5.5. Americans per day.

Thus, we can be energy independent on a pure play with either

54,727,727 windmills (at $1.5 million per = 75 trillion)

26,500,000 stripper oil wells (at .5 million per = 13 trillion)

3,311,000 80 bopd wells (at 1.5 million per = 5 trillion)

29,300,000 100 mcfg/d gas wells (at .5 million per = 15 trillion)

Huge amounts of strip mining

2921 sq ft/person or nearly a trillion square feet of photovoltaic cells or 23 million acres (around 1% of US land mass) (at $50 per sq. ft = $50 trillion)

More Taxes Will Mean Less Oil-IBD EDITORIAL

2008-08-05T17:28:00.000-07:00

Democrats say there should be a limit to the profits oil companies can make. Should there also be a limit on the taxes government can take? Just who's the profiteer here?

In an admission that increased supply means lower prices, Barack Obama, in yet another flip-flop, has proposed releasing 70 million barrels of oil, about a week's worth of imports, from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Last month he told reporters in St. Louis just the opposite: "I have said, and in fact supported, a congressional resolution that said we should suspend putting more oil into the strategic oil reserve," he said then. "The strategic oil reserve, I think, has to be reserved for a genuine emergency," he continued, saying a terrorist attack was an example of such an emergency.

The GOP campaign to "drill here, drill now" has resonated with the American public tired of paying $4 a gallon because of high gas taxes and congressionally restricted supply. Obama's poll numbers have dropped significantly during this effort, something team Obama obviously considers a "genuine emergency."

But as he supports releasing oil from the SPR to increase supply, he proposes a revival of the failed windfall profits tax that in its earlier incarnation decreased domestic supply and increased foreign imports. The man who pokes fun at John McCain's economic knowledge ignores the simple economic truth that when you tax something you get less of it.

Speaking in support of Obama's proposal to revive the windfall profits tax, Illinois' senior senator, Dick Durbin, recently declared that, "The oil companies need to know that there is a limit on how much profit they can take in this economy." Why is there no limit to the increased taxes Obama and the Democrats want to take in this economy?

View larger image
Obama once called the McCain-supported plan for a gas-tax suspension a "stunt." Now he wants to take a "reasonable amount" of oil company profits and rebate, a la George McGovern, $1,000 to families and $500 to individuals as a part of a second stimulus package to offset high gas prices, a big part of which is federal, state, and local taxes on both oil producers and consumers.

Obama does not define what a "reasonable amount" is. Nor does he define at what point profit, which is an indicator of success and not greed, becomes a windfall. Exxon made a dime on a dollar in 2007. The oil and gas industry as a whole made 8.3% compared with 8.9% of all U.S. manufacturing. Meanwhile, the federal government operated at a huge loss.

Electronics company LG saw its profits grow by 505% in 2007. Abbott Laboratories saw its profits soar 110% Google had a profit margin of 25.3%, more than double Exxon's. GE's profit was 10.7%, about the same as Exxon's, but do its subsidiary media outlets such as NBC and MSNBC report that?

In the first half of this year, Exxon Mobil's after-tax income rose 15% to $22.6 billion. The operative word is "after-tax," for what advocates of a windfall-profits tax to redistribute income ignore is that Exxon Mobil also paid a record $61.7 billion in taxes. The feds already are taking more than a "reasonable amount."

Oil exploration is a risky business. Vast sums are expended in the search for black gold, with dry holes too often the result. America was built by such risk-taking, motivated in part by the hope of great reward. Without such incentives, few chances are taken.

All this talk about allowing offshore drilling as part of some grand compromise on energy is a con game. Democrats know there will be no incentive to drill for oil if the profits from any success will be confiscated by a government that takes none of the risk. Then they'll criticize the oil companies for sitting on oil

Once upon a time, young America was advised to go west. Today, we should be telling our risk-takers to drill deep.

SIGN THE OPERATION WILDCAT PETITION www.bigoilfields.com/operationwildcat

Drill the Hill, If You Want to Win , McCain

2008-08-04T17:42:00.000-07:00

House Republicans recognize that drilling for our own oil has become the issue this election year. Will the rest of the party join their crusade and use it to win in November?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may have sent the House of Representatives on a five-week vacation, but Republicans have decided to remain in the sweltering Washington, D.C., heat, take to the in-recess House floor and demand that Congress be called back so that Americans can get some relief from high gas prices.

Led by Reps. Mike Pence, R-Ind., Tom Price, R-Ga., and Lynn Westmoreland, R-Ga., and fully backed by House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, this GOP attack could smack unwary Democrats as hard as the blast of a Texas oil gusher, because what Republicans are demanding is nothing more than a simple up-or-down vote on drilling for domestic oil in a Democratic-controlled House of Representatives.

Pelosi and the House Democratic leadership will not give them a roll call on drilling because she knows what doing so would mean: Enough Democrats would vote with the Republicans to pass legislation opening up offshore areas for oil drilling and to allow access to oil shale in Western states.

That would be public proof that Democrats are out of step with most Americans on how to bring down gasoline prices. And so on Sunday, we heard continual intransigence from Nancy Pelosi regarding having a simple floor vote in which the people's representatives could decide whether to drill or not to drill.

It was "a diversionary tactic," she said, "a decoy . . . not a solution," and so Republicans will just "have to use their imagination as to how they can get a vote . . . ."

Republicans have as an advantage the majority of the American public in support of drilling. Last month, an IBD/TIPP Poll found a broad-based 64% favoring offshore drilling, while 65% want our domestic oil shale made use of. A June Zogby poll found that a 74% majority of Americans in favor of offshore drilling.

Even in one of the bluest of blue liberal states, New Jersey, 56% of residents actually want oil rigs established off the state coast, according to a newly released Monmouth University/Gannett New Jersey poll conducted in mid-July. That shows just how deep and widespread pro-drilling sentiment now is.

During the House floor protest, Rep. Phil Gingrey, R-Ga., taunted Pelosi about conducting a tour to promote her new book while gas consumers suffer. Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, read a letter from a family in his state that "can't afford to both go on vacation and send their son to Boy Scout camp." And so if they can't afford to go on vacation "then neither should Pelosi and the Congress!"

Republicans may even be willing to shut down the government when time comes to vote on the 2009 fiscal year budget resolution.

On the other side of the Capitol, Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., is drumming up support from colleagues to demand that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., remove the drilling ban from that budget resolution. Such a ban has been renewed every year since 1982, prohibiting oil and gas leasing on most of the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS). As of now, Democratic leaders plan to extend it a year.

The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., now says he can live with "limited" drilling. But listen closely at what he said in his energy speech in Lansing, Mich., on Monday:

He called the inclusion of "a limited amount of new offshore drilling" in new bipartisan legislation a "drawback," adding that "I still don't believe that's a particularly meaningful short-term or long-term solution." But he said "I am willing to consider it if it's necessary to actually pass a comprehensive plan."

"Consider" should not be reported as "support," as the media have done. Moreover, Obama also wants a windfall profit tax — certain to exacerbate high fuel prices by lessening domestic production, as it did under Jimmy Carter.

John McCain and congressional Republicans have the opportunity to expose both Obama and Pelosi as enviro-extremists who refuse to let Americans use the treasure trove of oil that lies beneath our own soil, arctic ice and waters. Whether they take avail of that opportunity could determine both our economic and national security for years to come.

What did you do in the Gas Wars, Mommy?

2008-08-04T04:57:00.000-07:00

See Pelosi's Peeps

2008-08-03T15:32:00.000-07:00

She's trying to save the planet while her district is the most vile discusting place on earth. See what's happening at the Folsom Street Fair while you are paying through the nose for gasoline and diesel .

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2008/08/absent-of-moral.html#comments.

Every voter planning to vote for a Democrat needs to see this, I warn you shocking is not the word for these photos.

Sign of the Times

2008-08-02T16:51:00.000-07:00

Global Warming meets Abortion

2008-08-02T13:43:00.000-07:00

Al Gore's Green Utopia... Dirty China

2008-08-02T10:19:00.000-07:00

Nancy, Get off your Ass and Pass Gas

2008-07-31T17:17:00.000-07:00

No-Drill Kills

2008-07-31T17:13:00.000-07:00

By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi opposes lifting the moratorium on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and on the Outer Continental Shelf. She won't even allow it to come to a vote.

With $4 gas having massively shifted public opinion in favor of domestic production, she wants to protect her Democratic members from having to cast an anti-drilling election-year vote.

Moreover, given the public mood, she might even lose. This cannot be permitted. Why? Because as she explained to Politico: "I'm trying to save the planet; I'm trying to save the planet."

A lovely sentiment. But has Pelosi actually thought through the moratorium's actual effects on the planet?

Consider: 25 years ago, nearly 60% of U.S. petroleum was produced domestically. Today it's 25%. From its peak in 1970, U.S. production has declined a staggering 47%. The world consumes 86 million barrels a day; the United States, roughly 20 million. We need the stuff to run our cars and planes and economy. Where does it come from?

Places like Nigeria, where chronic corruption, environmental neglect and resulting unrest and instability lead to pipeline explosions, oil spills and illegal siphoning by the poverty-stricken population — which leads to more spills and explosions.

Just this week, two Royal Dutch Shell pipelines had to be shut down because bombings by local militants were causing leaks into the ground.

Compare the Niger Delta with the Gulf of Mexico, where deep-sea U.S. oil rigs withstood Hurricanes Katrina and Rita without a single undersea well suffering a significant spill.

The United States has the highest technology to ensure the safest drilling. Today, directional drilling — essentially drilling down, then sideways — allows access to oil that in 1970 would have required a surface footprint more than three times as large.

Additionally, the U.S. has one of the most extensive and least-corrupt regulatory systems on the planet.

Does Pelosi imagine that with so much of America declared off-limits, the planet is less injured as drilling shifts to Kazakhstan and Venezuela and Equatorial Guinea? That Russia will be more environmentally scrupulous than we in drilling in its Arctic?

The net environmental effect of Pelosi's no-drilling willfulness is negative. Outsourcing U.S. oil production does nothing to lessen worldwide environmental despoliation. It simply exports it to more corrupt, less efficient, more unstable parts of the world — thereby increasing net planetary damage.

Raped Rain Forests

Democrats want no oil from the American OCS or ANWR. But of course they do want more oil. From OPEC. From where Americans don't vote. From places Democratic legislators can't see.

On May 13, Sen. Chuck Schumer — deeply committed to saving just those pieces of the planet that might have huge reserves of American oil — demanded that the Saudis increase production by a million barrels a day. It doesn't occur to him that by eschewing the slightest disturbance of the mating habits of the Arctic caribou, he is calling for the further exploitation of the pristine deserts of Arabia. In the name of the planet, mind you.

The other panacea, yesterday's rage, is biofuels: We can't drill our way out of the crisis, it seems, but we can greenly grow our way out. By now, however, it is blindingly obvious even to Democrats that biofuels are a devastating force for environmental degradation. It has led to the rape of "lungs of the world" rain forests in Indonesia and Brazil, as huge tracts have been destroyed to make room for palm oil and sugar plantations.

Here in the U.S., one of every three ears of corn is stuffed into a gas tank (by way of ethanol), causing not just food shortages abroad and high prices at home, but intensive increases in farming with all of the attendant environmental problems (soil erosion, insecticide pollution, water consumption, etc.).

This to prevent drilling on an area in the Arctic one-sixth the size of Dulles Airport that leaves untouched a refuge one-third the size of Britain.

There are a dizzying number of economic and national security arguments for drilling at home: a $700 billion oil balance-of-payment deficit; a gas tax (equivalent) levied on the paychecks of American workers and poured into the treasuries of enemy and terror-supporting regimes; growing dependence on unstable states of the Persian Gulf and Caspian basin.

Pelosi and the Democrats stand athwart shouting: We don't care. We come to save the planet!

They seem blissfully unaware that the argument for their drill-there-not-here policy collapses on its own environmental terms.

Obama Wants to Share Your Wealth with the World

2008-07-29T17:12:00.000-07:00

We are citizens of the world, Sen. Obama told thousands of nonvoting Germans during his recent tour of the Middle East and Europe. And if the Global Poverty Act (S. 2433) he has sponsored becomes law, which is almost certain if he wins in November, we're also going to be taxpayers of the world.

Speaking in Berlin, Obama said: "While the 20th century taught us that we share a common destiny, the 21st has revealed a world more intertwined than at any time in human history."

What the 20th century really showed was a series of totalitarian threats — from fascism to Nazism to communism — defeated by the U.S. military. Hitler's Germany, Mussolini's Italy, Tojo's Japan and the Soviet Union offered destinies we did not share.

Our destiny of peace and freedom through strength was not achieved by a transnationalist fantasy of buying the world a Coke and singing "Kumbaya."

Obama's Global Poverty Act offers us a global socialist destiny we do not want, one that challenges America's very sovereignty. The former "post-racial" candidate obviously intends to be a post-national president.

A statement from Obama's office says: "With billions of people living on just dollars a day around the world, global poverty remains one of the greatest challenges and tragedies the international community faces. It must be a priority of American foreign policy to commit to eliminating extreme poverty and ensuring every child has food, shelter and clean drinking water."

These are worthy goals, but note there's no mention of spreading democracy, expanding free trade, promoting entrepreneurial capitalism or ridding the world of despots who rule and ravage countries such as Zimbabwe and Sudan.

Obama would give them all a fish without teaching them how to fish. Pledging to cut global poverty in half on the backs of U.S. taxpayers is a ridiculous and impossible goal.

His legislation refers to the "millennium development goal," a phrase from a declaration adopted by the United Nations Millennium Assembly in 2000 and supported by President Clinton.

It calls for the "eradication of poverty" in part through the "redistribution (of) wealth of land" and "a fair distribution of the earth's resources." In other words: American resources.

It's a mantra of liberals that the U.S. is only a small portion of the world's population yet consumes an unseemly portion of the planet's supposedly finite resources. Never mentioned is the fact that America's population, just 5% of the world's total, also produces a stunning 27% of the world's GDP — to the enormous benefit of other countries. Nonetheless, their solution is to siphon off the product of our free democracy and distribute it.

We already transfer too much national wealth to the United Nations and its busybody agencies. Obama's bill would force U.S. taxpayers to fork over 0.7% of our gross domestic product every year to fund a global war on poverty, spending well above the $16.3 billion in global poverty aid the U.S. already spends.

Over a 13-year period, from 2002, when the U.N.'s Financing for Development Conference was held, to the target year of 2015, when the U.S is expected to meet its part of the U.N. Millennium goals, we would be spending an additional $65 billion annually for a total of $845 billion.

During a time of economic uncertainty, the plan would cost every American taxpayer around $2,500.

If you're worried abut gasoline and heating oil prices now, think what they'll be like when the U.S. is subjected in an Obama administration to global energy consumption and production taxes. Obama's Global Poverty Act is the "international community's" foot in the door.

The U.N. Millennium declaration called for a "currency transfer tax," a "tax on the rental value of land and natural resources," a "royalty on worldwide fossil energy production — oil, natural gas, coal . . . fees for the commercial use of the oceans, fees for the airplane use of the skies, fees for the use of the electromagnetic spectrum, fees on foreign exchange transactions, and a tax on the carbon content of fuels."

Co-sponsors of S. 2433 include Democrats Maria Cantwell of Washington, Dianne Feinstein of California, Richard Durbin of Illinois and Robert Menendez of New Jersey. GOP globalists supporting the bill include Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Richard Lugar of Indiana.

Lugar has worked with Obama to promote more aid to Russia to promote nuclear nonproliferation. Lugar also promotes the Law of the Sea treaty, which turns over the world's oceans to an International Seabed Authority that would charge us to drill offshore and have veto power over the movements and actions of the U.S. Navy.

Obama's agenda sounds like defeated 2004 Democratic candidate John Kerry's "global test" for U.S. foreign policy decisions where "you have to do it in a way that passes the test — that passes the global test — where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you're doing what you're doing and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons."

Obama has called on the U.S. to "lead by example" on global warming and probably would submit to a Kyoto-like agreement that would sock Americans with literally trillions of dollars in costs over the next half century for little or no benefit.

"We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times . . . and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK," Obama has said. "That's not leadership. That's not going to happen."

Oh, really? Who's to say we can't load up our SUV and head out in search of bacon double cheeseburgers at the mall? China? India? Bangladesh? The U.N.?

In an Obama White House, American sovereignty will become an endangered species. The Global Poverty Act is the first toe in the water of global socialism.

IBD EDITORIAL

Had Enough Of Eco-Lobby's Energy Prices?

2008-07-29T07:19:00.000-07:00

By M. DAVID STIRLING from IBD

The dramatic escalation in the price of oil — a 40% spike just this year — has many Americans in a heightened state of anxiety.

Not only are soaring gas prices causing shock and fear at the household level, but commercial heavy fuel users such as trucking, shipping, and airlines are significantly reducing services, laying off workers, and increasing fares. For consumers, this means much higher prices for all goods and services.

With natural gas prices also climbing, utility companies are raising rates, some by as much as 29% beginning July 1. This is on top of the 30% rate increase consumers have paid over the past five years.

Yet, for all the uneasiness over super-heated oil prices, which some analysts have predicted will reach $200-a-barrel by year's end, both consumers and business leaders seem bewildered at the state of their predicament.

When they ask why oil prices are so high, the usual answer they receive — as a leading newspaper recently reported — is "higher demand, the falling dollar and lots of new investors." That's true, but not something people can do much about.

But there's another major reason that oil and gas prices are off the chart, and it's one that's not being talked about enough. And most importantly, should Americans choose to change it, we could positively impact the high price of oil.

For more than a half century, the increasingly powerful and wealthy environmentalist organizations have used laws like the Endangered Species Act (ESA) to impose a harsh, uncompromising regime on the nation's economy, on families' pocketbooks, and on every resident's quality of life.

Their frequently unfounded and typically exaggerated claims of countless species of plant and wildlife becoming extinct unless human endeavors are halted or severely curtailed underlies their ultimate goal of returning major portions of the country to an imagined pristine state. The sharp run-up in oil and gas prices is their "perfect storm" for accomplishing that goal.

Consider that in the 1980s the U.S. Geological Survey estimated some 17 billion barrels of recoverable oil lie under the 1.5-million acre Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. One million barrels of oil produces 27 million gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel; here there are potentially 17 billion barrels.

Many urged drilling in ANWR to capture this oil and natural gas. With modern drilling technology, only about 2,000 surface acres would be required to recover the oil and natural gas under the Coastal Plain. But the environmentalist organizations began a "no drilling in ANWR" PR campaign, claiming that wildlife species such as the porcupine, caribou, arctic wolf, polar bear and others were on the brink of oblivion, and would be lost forever if drilling occurred.

Several bills to allow extraction of this oil and natural gas were presented in Congress over the past 20 years, but each was either killed or vetoed. Nor was there scientific evidence supporting the claim that any of the wildlife species were even close to the brink of extinction.

Besides ANWR, the U. S. Mineral Management Service has estimated as much as 19 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas lie under the Atlantic, Pacific and Florida Gulf coasts.

But since a 1981 congressional moratorium on drilling from three to 200 miles offshore and a 1990 reinforcement of the ban by the first President Bush, the environmentalist lobby has killed all efforts to reinstate such drilling. They point to old oil spills from off-shore oil drilling that killed birds and other marine wildlife.

But consider that with new off-shore drilling technology, even Hurricane Katrina's major wallop was unable to cause oil spills from any of the numerous drilling platforms operating in the Gulf of Mexico.

As a result of the environmental lobby's years of influence in the nation's capitol, two-thirds of the oil used today in the United States is imported from countries such as Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Venezuela, Iraq, Algeria, Angola and Russia.

With natural gas traditionally imported from Venezuela, Iran and Russia currently terminated, the U.S. is relying on countries like Angola, Yemen, and Algeria for this critical commodity. This dependence puts us in an uncomfortable, if not precarious, national security position.

If increased demand for a product drives its price up, then increasing the supply will drive its price down. The vast oil and natural gas supplies within the U.S. can be tapped with little environmental harm to the land or wildlife species.

It will happen whenever the American people are ready to tell the hard-core environmental lobby and its congressional followers: "Enough is Enough!"

Stirling is vice president of Pacific Legal Foundation, a nationwide public interest legal organization working in the courts to defend private property and environmental balance. He is author of the new book, "Green Gone Wild — Elevating Nature Above Human Rights."

Call Congress for Drilling Now ! IBD Editorial

2008-07-25T20:24:00.000-07:00

When it comes to giving relief at the pump by drilling for more oil, this is truly a "do-nothing" Democratic Congress. President Bush should give 'em hell like Harry Truman did.

Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution states that the president "may, on extraordinary occasions, convene both houses" of Congress. On more than two dozen occasions in our history, presidents have done just that, forcing the Senate and House of Representatives to meet on extraordinary matters of defense or economic peril.

Sixty years ago this month, President Truman called such a special session to shame into action what he labeled a "do nothing" Republican Congress. He dubbed it the Turnip Day Session, because of the day on which it began. According to folklore in Truman's native Missouri, "On the 25th of July, sow your turnips, wet or dry."

Congress refused to do Truman's bidding in the session, but the bold move saved the president's political skin. He defied the odds that November and was re-elected — largely because the public came to view the 80th Congress as in the grip of a cowardly paralysis.

Today's Democratic-controlled 110th Congress is just as paralyzed, but the stakes are far higher. Our irrational dependence on oil from foreign nations is squeezing American consumers and businesses with sky-high fuel prices. And it makes us vulnerable to blackmail by hostile, oil-rich regimes.

Americans use nearly 21 million barrels of oil a day. The U.S. Geological Survey has just identified 90 billion barrels of recoverable oil in the Arctic — nearly 30 billion barrels of it in Alaska. Yet House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refuses to allow a floor vote on drilling because the idea it would make a difference is "frivolous," she said last week.

Suffering consumers disagree. This month, an IBD/TIPP Poll of 920 adults found that by more than 3-to-1 Americans believe gas prices to be a bigger problem than global warming. A broad-based 64% of respondents favor offshore drilling, and 65% want oil shale development in the Western states.

A Rasmussen survey in June found 67% of voters in favor of drilling off the coasts of California, Florida and other states, and 64% believing gas prices would drop as a result. A Zogby poll last month found that 74% want offshore drilling in U.S. waters.

This is a potential political gusher, if only Republicans would fully tap into it. Bush has the opportunity to do so before this hot, cash-guzzling summer ends. Like Truman, he can use his constitutional authority to call this negligent Congress back once it embarks on its long August recess to campaign for re-election.

In so doing, he can demand that instead of nonsolutions like its failed attempt to release more oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve [SPR], Congress carry out the will of the vast majority of Americans by passing laws that authorize drilling.

In one fell swoop, a presidential recall of Congress would strengthen national security, boost our economy and maybe even turn things around for Republicans and avoid the losses being predicted for them this election year.

If giving 'em hell worked for Harry, you bet it can work for Dubya.