U.S. Declines To Prosecute Shell For Reserves Overstatement

Was this a surprise?

The US Department of Justice said June 29 that it will not prosecute Royal Dutch/Shell Group for a series of oil and gas reserves estimates writedowns, which were announced last year for statistics from 2002 and 2003.

US Attorney David Kelley, who represents the Southern District of New York, said the fact that Shell agreed to pay $120 million to settle fraud charges with the US Securities and Exchange Commission contributed to his office's decision against prosecution (OGJ Online, July 29, 2004).

Okay, so it was essentially a question of double jeopardy -- kind of. Still, I wonder how many favors they pulled in the Bush Administration to get this one done.

A Silly Question

Can democracy survive without fossil fuel? I surely hope he is kidding. Or does what happened in the northern states prior to the civil war not count?

Geoffrey Styles On Iran's Nuclear Ambitions

Geoffrey Styles at Energy Outlook has an excellent long post on Iranian nuclear ambitions. The Iranians are sitting on a sea of energy, making their nuclear-power-for-peaceful-purposes schtick look pretty bogus, but Iran's ability to ignore the West is on a timetable, one that is tied to the absence of a 2-3 million bpd surplus in the market. (When this will come online, Geoff doesn't say, but we have to assume he's thinking 2-3 years in the future, as some analysts have suggested.)

Carbon Dioxide For Sale

In today's MIT Technology Review, an article about Dakota Gasification Company and its long struggle to make coal gasification profitable. They're now converting gasified coal into methane and selling that, as well as shipping CO₂ to old oilfields and ratcheting up production, a synergy I seem to recall the Engineer-Poet discussing somewhere fairly recently.

Administrivia: New Font Size

I kept having rendering issues on my browser, so I've increased the font size a notch. Hope that doesn't bother anyone.

IHT: US, India Sign 10-Year Defense Pact

Thanks to Pundita for this International Herald Tribune article announcing a 10-year defense pact between the US and India. The pact involves "joint weapons production, greater sharing of technology and intelligence as well as an increased trade in arms." Former Indian foreign secretary Lalit Mansingh said, "China is like the ghost at the banquet - an unspoken presence that no one wants to talk about", driving the pact.

"No one in Washington or Delhi would admit that this has anything to do with China," he continued with a reference to ideological neoconservatives in the United States. "But the U.S. neocons say that the long-term threat to the U.S. can only be from China, and India also realizes that it has a neighbor with whom it has border disputes, whose economic and military growth is greater than its own."

Contradictions with U.S. military arms sales to Pakistan will no doubt complicate this relationship.

WSJ On Simmins' Twilight In The Desert

The Wall Street Journal has an editorial reviewing Matt Simmins' Twilight In The Desert. Excerpt:

Mr. Simmons's critics say that, by relying on technical papers, he has biased his survey, since geologists like to concentrate on problem wells the way that doctors focus on sick patients. Still, the experience in America and the rest of the world shows that oil fields don't last forever. Prudhoe Bay, which was producing 1.2 million barrels a day five years after being brought on line in 1976, is now down to less than 400,000.

The mystery of Saudi oil capacity bears an eerie resemblance to Saddam Hussein's apparent belief that his scientists had developed weapons of mass destruction. Who are the deceivers and who is the deceived? No one yet knows the answers. But at least Matthew Simmons is asking the questions.

Hat tip to Winds of Change.

Venezuela Proposes Caribbean Energy Cartel

Oh, sure, they won't call it a cartel, but Venezuelan egomaniac Hugo Chavez imagines his proposed Caribbean energy venture will have the salutory -- for him -- effect of booting foreign companies from the oil and gas fields of South and Central America:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Cuban President Fidel Castro and 14 other Caribbean delegations are expected to sign an accord later today creating PetroCaribe, said Rafael Ramirez, Venezuela's oil minister. Venezuela is touting PetroCaribe as a way to lower energy prices by cutting out third parties and speculators and lessen the influence of foreign oil companies.

``We will be free no matter what,'' Chavez, 50, said at a conference in Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela. ``We want to make an arc of energy cooperation in the region.''

Chavez, whose country has Latin America's largest oil reserves, has advocated greater cooperation to lessen the impact of higher energy costs on the region. He has also said Venezuela is seeking to diversify its oil customers to lessen dependence on the U.S., where it sells more than half of its oil.

Yes, and presumably so would some of these other countries. Trinidad and Tobago has remained silent on whether it would sign the treaty; the country produces a simply staggering amount of anhydrous ammonia, 90% of which is exported. The other "planned" signatories include Belize, Guyana, Suriname, Cuba, Jamaica, and the Dominican Republic.

It's hard to look at this and not think Chavez is bearbaiting the U.S.

Congressional Panel Requests Information From Mann

At Prometheus:

[T]he House Committee on Energy and Commerce has requested information from Michael Mann (and collaborators) and the heads of IPCC and NSF. The tone of the letters places House E&C essentially in ethics investigation mode.

The letters, author K. Vranes concludes, "are primarily meant to embarrass and harass and the hearings, if they ever happen, could be seen as an abuse of power."

More at Climate Audit.

Michael Manville On Kunstler

James Kunstler is probably my unfavorite star in the peak oil constellation, simply because he's a hack and a millennialist carnie, a circus operator who preaches on the side. Today (via peakoil.com), I found a useful review of Kunstler's recent book, The Long Emergency, by Michael Manville in the New York Press. Manville came to the same conclusion as I did about Kunstler a while back:

There are some sane and knowledgeable people who subscribe to [the idea that peak oil production is upon us]. One of them is Matthew Simmons, an energy advisor to George W. Bush. But there are also some silly people who subscribe to it. One of these is James Howard Kunstler. Simmons, in his book Twilight in the Desert, makes a persuasive case that Saudi Arabia has been overstating its oil reserves for years, and he offers policy recommendations for dealing with this reality. Kunstler, in his book The Long Emergency, skips the evidence and the policy and decides that the end times are upon us. The oil age will end, alternative fuels won't save us, and the planet will enter a period of strife and instability called the Long Emergency.

...

Kunstler made a name for himself in 1993 with The Geography of Nowhere, a well-written if overwrought jeremiad against suburbia. The book made him a celebrity among New Urbanists, perhaps because his unremitting hatred of big cars and ugly homes read like New Urbanism distilled into some poisonous byproduct of itself. In The Long Emergency his hatred has not subsided. Kunstler despises the way most Americans live, and his arguments are soaked in intolerance. The result is a book that disserves a worthy topic.

...[M]eticulousness and patience have never been Kunstler's strengths, and he doesn't engage, or even identify, anyone who is more sanguine than he about the world's energy future. He simply dismisses them all as "cornucopians" lost in something called the "consensus trance." The economists, the geologists, the energy experts—all are delusional. Kunstler's book, meanwhile, which makes sweeping and magnificently confident claims about geology, technology and geopolitics, has no bibliography and miserably few footnotes. None of its footnotes references scientific journals.

We soon see why. Kunstler isn't interested in the nuances of energy scarcity, nor in the various measures we might take to address it. The real business of The Long Emergency is to describe in lurid detail the forthcoming and well-deserved collapse of suburban America. Kunstler has been nursing a grudge against modernity for some time now, and despite his protestations to the contrary, he takes clear glee in imagining the punishments Americans will endure for their profligate ways.

These punishments include but are not limited to: famine; war; epidemics of deadly disease; governments releasing viruses into their own populations to cull the weak; the demise of the car culture; the bankruptcy of every big box retailer; a return to local, even pre-industrial, economies; and —- I'm not making this up -- Asian pirates plundering California.

California, of course, will collapse. The Long Emergency wouldn't be a disaster narrative if the Golden State didn't get some unholy comeuppance. On his blog, Kunstler imagines the day when "the reality of our oil predicament falls on the hapless public like a hammer of God and the people of California die for their fucking cars in their fucking cars and over their fucking cars." Spoken like a true humanist.

I part company with Manville on some of the specifics he suggests -- for reasons I have already discussed, I am hard against carbon taxes as just another excuse to raise taxes that sets the state on a precarious long-term path -- but his analysis of Kunstler is spot on, withering, and insightful.

Update 6/30: found the Kunstler quote on his blog, and applied some highlighting to the money quote, all my own.

Senate Passes Energy Bill, To Reconcile With House

The Senate passed the energy bill 85-12, but now needs to reconcile its version with the House version. Plenty to criticize, including an increase of a mandatory eight billion gallon annual production of ethanol for motor fuels and a handout to MTBE producers.

It's Official? ITER In Cadarache

Or so says the BBC, replete with Luddite quotes:

... some environmental groups are doubtful about the viability of nuclear fusion, and have warned that Cadarache lies on a known earthquake faultline. The management at Cadarache insists there is no risk to existing or future installations.

... because, of course, a breach of the fusion core would release all that deadly helium.

"Governments should not waste our money on a dangerous toy which will never deliver any useful energy. Instead, they should invest in renewable energy which is abundantly available, not in 2080 but today."

And you know this, how?

---

More on this from the US DOE (PDF), where Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman said:

Plentiful, reliable energy is critical to continued worldwide economic development. Fusion technologies have the potential to transform how energy is produced and provide significant amounts of safe, environmentally-friendly power in the future. The ITER project will make this vision a reality.

Additional commentary by the USDOE Office of Science (PDF), and the joint declaration of the participants (PDF).

Mexico To Delay Vote On Pemex Tax Reform

Earlier, I noted that the Mexican government had taken steps to reform the amount of taxes Pemex will have to pay as a way to prevent foreign participation. Now we learn that Mexico's lower house will delay a vote on tax reform because it wants to stretch out the tax decrease over seven rather than four years. Taxes on Pemex amount to a third of the Mexican government's budget.

Dueling Editorials On LNG Terminal Siting

The Los Angeles Times has an anti-LNG editorial in today's edition. Actually, I should say that it comes out against the Port of Long Beach LNG terminal, and in favor of a terminal fourteen miles offshore of Oxnard, in Ventura County. Meanwhile, the Ventura County Star comes out against an ill-discussed plan it considers the child of "a company's ability to woo the governor." (Schwarzenegger last week said in passing that he prefers the Oxnard site based on public safety considerations. This caused something of a firestorm in Ventura County, needless to say.) Will NIMBYism turn out California's lights?

Props to California Energy Blog for some of the links here.

Schwartzenegger's Solar Plan Takes Heat

California governator -- er, governor -- Arnold Schwartzenegger is finding his solar rooftop plan has generated some backlash, according to the Los Angeles Times. Not only are big box retailers -- who would pay a lot more -- unhappy about the rate hikes that would be required to subsidize solar power, but a coalition of utilities, business lobbies, and consumer groups seems to be forming in opposition.

The governor's solar plan is "so expensive that it's not cost-effective," said Joseph Lyons, an energy lobbyist for the California Manufacturers and Technology Assn.

"Our members need rate relief, and this goes in the other direction," Lyons said.

Southern California Edison Co., the state's second-largest investor-owned utility, is also skeptical, saying the governor's bill favors rooftop solar systems over what it says are more cost-effective centralized solar generating stations.

Of course, you probably would expect them to say that; centralized generation and distribution is what the utilities know best how to do.

Even fans of solar power — who view photovoltaic panels as a crucial part of the state's alternative energy mix — question the wisdom of earmarking the bulk of funding for one source, to the detriment of less-glamorous energy efficiency and conservation programs.

"Solar is not even close to competitive," said Severin Borenstein, director of the University of California Energy Institute in Berkeley. He noted that solar power's long-run, average production cost of 25 cents to 30 cents per kilowatt hour, not including government subsidies or tax credits, is much higher than the 5 cents to 9 cents for wind power and 6 cents to 7 cents for modern, natural-gas-fired generation plants.

Even a leading energy consumer advocate, the Utility Reform Network, is critical of the governor's solar dream, contending it would drive up utility bills for some lower-income residential ratepayers.

"It singles out one technology … it's not giving us the biggest bang for the buck," said Michael Florio, an attorney for the group.

This is an important point I've been meaning to write about for a while now (actually, "drive home again" would maybe be better). There's a constant authoritarian itch, it seems, with much Green thinking, and one wonders whether they ever consider the net result of their proposed moves. That is, if solar cells are uneconomic, subsidies won't change that; they'll merely force taxpayers to make up the difference. This is not a small consideration, one I've written about previously. Picking winners and losers in advance is a very bad idea.

$60/Barrel

Is it worth mentioning that crude oil has jumped past the $60/barrel level now?

More ITERating

New Scientist has ITER news:

Recent reports that Japan has accepted that the reactor will be built in France are accurate, UK government sources have told New Scientist. But officials are nervous about publicly confirming the agreement in case it falls apart at the last minute.

Which would tend to explain the vehement denials going on over the last couple months.

Meta: 10,000

Thanks to all the site visitors for stopping by!

Meta: Hello, Visitor!

Well, here's an interesting referrer:

http://google.mitre.org/search?q=uranium&restrict=Blogs
&btnG=Search&ie=&site=news&output=xml_no_dtd
&client=news&sort=&lr=&num=10

Nice to know somebody out there likes me...

Renewables Attract Venture Capital

Nanosolar you of course know about, as well as Miasolé, but they're not the only ones, according to a recent New York Times article:

In Silicon Valley these days, more venture capitalists are following Mr. Ehrenpreis's lead. They are driven in part by the high price of oil, which hovered around $59 a barrel on Tuesday, and the vast unmet demand for electricity in China and India.

"The reason we're allocating dollars to this sector is we think we can deliver attractive returns," said Mr. Ehrenpreis, who also serves as co-chairman of the advisory board of the Cleantech Venture Network. "It's not because we want to do great things for the environment or great things for the world," though he adds that that is a "great byproduct."

...

"This is an area where we've been seeing a lot of quiet investing going on," said Mark G. Heesen, president of the National Venture Capital Association. "People are saying so far it's more talk than action, but I think there's been a lot of sub rosa action."

That action comes with a big risk: many of the companies involved simply don't know what's going on, echoing a situation that occurred during the Carter administration. The potential for total failure is high.

CAFE Reemerges, To Include Light Trucks

The Senate has entered debate upon CAFE increases in the energy bill, as well as adding light trucks (SUVs) into CAFE standards. While I'm sure this will make some people happy, as Geoff Styles showed back in May, the problem of oil consumption is more at the number of miles driven rather than fleet mileage. That is to say, I'm not sure increased CAFE standards now will matter much, especially considering that consumers have already made their decisions on. The fleet of SUVs is large, and those cars just won't disappear anytime soon.

ExxonMobil CEO: North American Gas Production "Has Peaked"

Well, it doesn't get blunter than this: via peakoil.com, ExxonMobil CEO Lee Raymond says "Gas production has peaked in North America".

Asked whether production would continue to decline even if two huge arctic gas pipeline projects were built, Raymond said, "I think that's a fair statement, unless there's some huge find that nobody has any idea where it would be."

...

The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that natural gas production will be flat this year and increase only one-half percent next year.

At the same time, demand for the cleaner burning fossil fuel is expected to grow by two percent this year and almost 2.5 percent in 2006, according to EIA, the statistical arm of the Department of Energy.

Leaving LNG or demand destruction through pricing as the only mechanism for reducing cost. Ergo, coal, ergo nuclear for electricity baseload generation. You want a reason why we don't want an official energy policy? It's myopic policies that encourage natural gas use above all else.

G8 Meeting To Decide ITER?

Call it wishful thinking: Robert Aymar, director-general of the Swiss-based European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), thinks ITER's siting will be decided at the next G8 meeting. Nobody, but nobody wants to take a decision on this it seems. But, hey, free opinion.

Mexico To Reform Pemex Tax Structure?

The Mexican government may reduce the amount of taxes Pemex pays annually, according to Rigzone. One of the problems the Mexican oil giant faces is that it has inadequate resources to funnel into exploration, principally because the company has been run as a patronage device and not as an oil company. A reform bill is expected to easily go through the Mexican legislature.

The Future And Its Discontents

A giggle from the Onion's 2056 issue: Solopec Nations Warn Sun's Output May Fall Short Of Demand:

RIYADH, MUHAMMAD ARABIA—The governing board of the Solar Output Power Exporting Countries announced Monday that, in spite of attempts to raise production levels, increased global-power consumption may begin to outstrip the sun's output by early next year.

"Our solar-accumulation arrays in Muhammad Arabia, Iraq, Jordan, and Mexico are operating at full capacity, and still, we're struggling to meet demands," said Muhammad Arabia's Prince Fayahd al-Saud, whose family has controlled the world's energy market for more than 100 years. "In a very short time, the sun will not be able to meet the world's energy needs."

Shortages, always to be with us, I guess.

Bodman: "Easily Accessible Oil" Era Ending

Via Green Car Congress, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman says the era of easily accessible oil is coming to a close:

We believe that the days of easily accessible oil are coming to a close. That is already the case for the lower 48 in the United States. Increasingly, the global oil demand will have to be met by developing petroleum resources that involve serious technical, and often political, challenges.

Essentially, it's a straight-up admission that we're on or near peak oil production. The challenge, then, is to do something about it, but it certainly puts the lie to so many of the doomsayers who have wrongly claimed (to this day!) that this is some verboten topic.

Increasing Internal Combustion Engine Efficiency

Green Car Congress reports on a concept engine designed by the aptly named Frank Tinker. He claims this engine could produce an efficiency gain of 30%. (Current designs are about 20% efficient.) He has developed a prototype he claims requires 71% less energy to operate than existing internal combustion engine (ICE) designs.

Tinker's website, dvrhome.com, has some interesting stuff on it, too, including the white paper "On the Efficiency of Heat Engines" (PDF). They further claim -- in an unrelated area, but having taken signal processing in college, I know just how cool this is -- to have discovered an even faster Fourier tranform (faster than the fast Fourier Transform) that can perform one operation in two cycles -- "500 times faster than any existing fourier transform processor". Wow.

CERA: Peak In 2020, Not 2005

An AP story quotes Cambridge Energy Research Consultants as saying peak oil production will hit in 2020 rather than in the near future.

In a report that builds upon earlier analyses by the Cambridge, Mass.-based consultancy, CERA said it believes that between now and 2010 there will be a substantial increase in worldwide oil production capacity. It said that "as a result, supply could exceed demand by as much as 6 million to 7.5 million barrels per day later in the decade" that will lead to an extended period of lower prices beginning as early as 2008.

The price of oil could "slip well below $40 a barrel as 2007-08 nears," CERA said.

Contradicting Matt Simmons' projections about the Saudi oilfields, CERA claims that even without large new discoveries, more oil can be extracted from existing fields.

"The main risks to our supply expansion scenario are above ground, not below ground — changes in the political and operating climate that could delay expansion," [CERA chairman Daniel] Yergin said.

Senate Approves Offshore Drilling Inventory

The Senate, worried about energy prices, has retained language promoting an offshore oil and gas inventory in a bill today, defeating a bipartisan effort by coastal state senators to remove the language, 52-44. The measure is seen as a first step to renewing offshore drilling in the U.S.

Update: The Mad Oilman is quite correct. The change is that this affects California, Florida, and other states that have traditionally been against offshore oil drilling.

Pickens: $60+/Barrel Oil In 2006

Oilman T. Boone Pickens foresees $60 a barrel for oil, and even up to $70/barrel, "but at some point it's going to cost on the demand side." "Sixty may slow everything down," he said, and predicted that about 2Mbpd demand would have to be shed worldwide.

Oil prices today eased a bit today but are expected to rise further on supply disruption worries.

Bill Lockyer, Kidnapper

California Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer, on what he would do to improve energy prices:

"We need to pull everybody together," he said, "lock them in a room somewhere, and not let them out until the conclave has produced some solid answers."

Big Jump In Utah Drilling

Rigzone reports on a record 1,500 drilling permits for 2005, making this year the second consecutive year such a record has been set. Much of this is fueled by the Wolverine Gas & Oil strike at Covenant Field.

Fénix Rises

A long while ago, I did a nuclear energy roundup describing France's Superfénix breeder reactor, which looked dead as the proverbial nuclear doornail. Not so fast. According to this briefing paper at Melbourne, Australia's Uranium Information Centre, the U.S. is contracting with France to perform research on actinide irradiation and conversion:

There have been two significant fast breeder reactors in France. Near Marcoule is the 233 MWe Phenix reactor, which started operation in 1974. It was shut down for modification 1998-2003 and is expected to run for a further few years. A second unit was Super-Phenix of 1200 MWe, which started up in 1996 but was closed down for political reasons at the end of 1998 and is now being decommissioned. The operation of Phenix is fundamental to France's research on waste disposal, particularly transmutation of actinides.

In 2004 the US energy secretary signed an agreement with the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) to gain access to the Phenix experimental fast neutron reactor for research on nuclear fuels. The US Department of Energy acknowledged that this fast neutron "capability no longer exists in the USA". The US research with Phenix will irradiate fuel loaded with various actinides under constant conditions to help identify what kind of fuel might be best for possible future waste transmutation systems.

There's a whole lot more at the UIC, including a wide array of other briefing papers. Some of the more interesting ones include uranium supply, the nuclear fuel cycle, and advanced reactor designs.

Update: GRLCowan in the comments notes the title is incorrect; it's not the Superfénix that's being used here, it's just the plain old Fénix. Oops.

Two At NEI Nuclear Notes

I had long ago sent off a list of questions to the folks running NEI Nuclear Notes, but had got nothing back from them on two of the more important issues, namely, the longevity of world uranium reserves were a substantial increase in nuclear power generation to go forward. They answered that question recently:

(IAEA) estimated world uranium resources in 2003 to be 3,537,000 metric tons, an amount adequate to fuel conventional reactors for approximately 50 years. The IAEA further estimated all conventional uranium resources to be 14.4 million metric tons, an amount which would cover over 200 years' supply at current rates of consumption.

Importantly, these forecasts do not include non-conventional sources of uranium, such as those contained in phosphates or in seawater, which are currently not economic to extract but represent a near limitless supply of uranium to meet increased demand. Clearly, there are very adequate uranium (and thorium) resources to fuel the world's expanding nuclear fleet.

Of course, "conventional uranium" means U-235, relatively rare.

Many European countries (e.g. Belgium, France, and Switzerland) and Japan now reprocess used nuclear fuel to produce new, mixed-oxide fuel (MOX), thereby reducing the need for new primary uranium supplies. Moreover, advanced breeder reactors that produce as much, or more, fuel than they consume, will be commercially available within the next two decades. In fact, these reactors use the uranium 238 isotope as fuel which is one of the more abundant elements in the earth's crust.

Of course, what that means is that breeder reactors are commercially unproven.

(As a brief aside, this piece refers to the Club of Rome report made famous in the 1970's as "fully discredited", which one of the commenters suggested was only true for those who had never read it. He provides a link to a Matt Simmons PDF document, in which Simmons claims he is not a Malthusian. Simmons may be right about oil, but there's no evidence we're out of everything else just yet. He protests too much about his characterization as a Malthusian; anybody who can seriously use the word "overshoot" (p.37) needs to check his objections at the door.)

The second item talks some about the Nuclear Waste Fund, which of course is nothing of the kind. If it were, there would be an actual disposal site by now, but in fact the money is going toward almost everything but. As usual, most of the revenues from this tax -- and it is a tax -- is being funneled toward other projects.

Magnesium Alloy Blocks Reduce Engine Weight, CO2 Emissions

Engineers from Australia's CSIRO have tested a novel magnesium alloy engine that weighs only 30% of a typical cast iron engine. Over the lifetime of the vehicle, the lighter engine could save 200 kg of CO₂ emissions.

Why Solar Cells Lose Potency

Science Blog has an interesting article about why solar cells lose potency under high levels of radiation.

When [hydrogenated amorphous silicon, or a-Si:H] is exposed to intense light, hydrogen atoms move into new arrangements in which some silicon atoms become bonded to two silicon and two hydrogen atoms, creating a structure called silicon dihydride, or SiH2, said David Drabold, Presidential Research Scholar and professor of physics and astronomy at Ohio University, who co-authored the paper with graduate student Tesfaye Abtew and P. C. Taylor, Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of Utah.

It's a process analogous to what happens when light hits photographic film, Drabold explained. Light prompts small clusters of silver atoms to accumulate at the surface and form an image. In the case of the photovoltaic material, however, light makes hydrogen atoms move, which creates undesirable defects.

Now that they know what's happening, the next step is to figure out why. With more research, they could improve solar cells.

$60/Barrel Oil Presently

After climbing 6% over the last three days, oil prices are seen as going to $60/barrel and even higher, with a few dissenters.

"The insistence of many OPEC members that they are unable to prevent prices rising because of such refinery capacity shortages is likely to be taken as a further bullish signal by the market," Barclays Capital analysts wrote in a note Wednesday. "We expect $60 for crude to be breached in pretty short order."

Not everyone is a believer, though:

There are dissenters. Crude oil prices may be headed for a collapse, according to Morgan Stanley economist Andy Xie, in part because Chinese oil imports are weakening and massive investment has been made in alternative sources like liquefied natural gas and oil sands.

"The financial sector may have become dependent on the trading profits from oil," he wrote in a note Thursday. "As evidence accumulates over weakening demand and strong supply, I believe oil prices could collapse."

Update 6/19: More from Morgan Stanley's Andy Xie here.

What's Good For Toyota Is Good For America

Standing the old axiom about GM sideways is Thomas Friedman's NYT piece that it's about time Toyota bought out what's left of GM:

It is not that I want any autoworker to lose his or her job, but I certainly would not put on a black tie if the entire management team at G.M. got sacked and was replaced by executives from Toyota. Indeed, I think the only hope for G.M.'s autoworkers, and maybe even our country, is with Toyota. Because let's face it, as Toyota goes, so goes America.

Having Toyota take over General Motors - which based its business strategy on building gas-guzzling cars, including the idiot Hummer, scoffing at hybrid technology and fighting Congressional efforts to impose higher mileage standards on U.S. automakers - would not only be in America's economic interest, it would also be in America's geopolitical interest.

The way GM is going, I could think of worse fates. Detroit and Michigan might not like their new nihongo masters, but what choice do they have? Auto industry executives have historically been rather arrogant; the point of bankruptcy is to undo such arrogance.

A Couple New Blogs Today

Thanks to John Atkinson's monthly Energy Currents post, I discovered two new interesting blogs: the first, California Energy Blog, about energy in California (duh), which has a useful piece about opposition to the Long Beach LNG plant. (I keep wondering why they don't put it at sea, or on the far side of Catalina island.)

The second blog is Ocean Renewable, which John notes their roundup of renewable wave energy considerations in the current energy bill in Congress. (Blecch.) To the sidebar!

Preventing Methane Hydrate Buildup In Gas Pipelines

The seabed is apparently not the only place that methane hydrates are formed. They also appear inside natural gas pipelines in the seabed, which eventually restricts flow and causes well abandonment. The Engineer has an article about a novel method of dealing with the problem: introducing chemicals that cause the hydrates to become a slush rather than solid chunks.

‘The principle is to allow the hydrates to form, but to make them transportable,’ said Tohidi. The additives encourage the methane to crystallise into specially tailored hydrates where the size of the crystals is controlled so that they do not stick together.

...

When hydrates form, methane molecules are trapped individually within a cage-like lattice and can exist much closer together than when in their gaseous form. This means that creating a slurry for transportation will also increase the capacity of pipelines.

Meta: Slow

Is it because other blogs (notably Green Car Congress, but take your pick of the guys on the sidebar) are covering things more ably than I am? Is it that I've temporarily lost interest in the pending disaster? Is it summer? Whatever the cause, I find myself doing less and less here, as if you couldn't tell over the last week. (Of course, I always say this and then a flurry of posts goes out. Shows you what I know.)

Now Germany Gets Cold Feet About The EU

First France conceded the current iteration of the EU constitution was undesirable. Then it was the Dutch. (But Latvia signed up!) Now we discover the Germans are having reservations about the EU, though not in a way that would let you think their politicians are walking away from it:

The German upper and lower houses of parliament both backed the treaty, leaving President Horst Koehler to sign it into law.

But the German constitutional court is still to rule on an MP's complaint against parliament's approval.

[President Horst Koehler's] signature is required for German ratification to take effect.

...

A statement from Mr Koehler's office said: "The federal president will not process the corresponding ratification law until the Federal Constitutional Court has decided."

Is the German president crossing his fingers that the Constitutional Court will reject the treaty? It makes sense to me. Some 40% of Dutch voters rejected the treaty on concerns of EU expansions, which you may read as "inclusion of Muslim Turkey". But under the treaty, Germany becomes something of a slave state to the rest of the EU nations, paying out far more than they get back. For a country with substantial unemployment and actuarial problems, that's no small matter.

A similar issue -- known as the UK rebate -- clouds British participation in the union. Because the largest subsidies in the EU will go to farming, and Britain has a relatively small farm sector, it got shortchanged between outgo and income for the EU budget. In recompense for joining, the EU gave Britain a rebate -- which the EU now wants back. Too many states, too many conflicting desires. My bet is that the EU is a dead duck; it may take a while to collect on that, but the bird is sick if nothing else.

Iraq: 1.5Mb/d And That's All, Folks

Iraq, previously thought capable of pumping more, has 'fessed up and can only pump 1.5Mb/d. "Iraqi Oil Minister Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum said early Wednesday that the country's oil exports in the fourth quarter of this year would be virtually unchanged over its current 1.5 million barrels a day." This came as a surprise to many analysts, who expected 300,000 bbl/day more.

Another Overview Of Canadian Tar Sands

Not much here that you haven't read already, but here's a Washington Post article about the Canadian tar sands, and the impact it's having on Alberta. The big thing to remember is that while the tar sands now use lots of natural gas, the companies profiting from this also aren't stupid; Suncor, for one, plans on using gasified petroleum coke to fuel its next generation of conversion plants.

Fun With Commerce!

How to decode the Commerce Clause, thanks to Catallarchy.

Belated: The Conversion Of Paul Erlich

I seem to remember someone else writing about this recently, but the only mention I can now recall is over at Chiasm (again): Paul Ehrlich, he of the famous Julian Simon bet and all that 1970's doomsaying, seems to be coming around to a more nuanced comprehension of economics. That is to say, Ehrlich and the economists are coming together and understanding each other better. This will, no doubt, annoy anyone fond of the word "overshoot" and the intellectual pygmies shouting about the "Olduvai cliff" and suchlike, but as always, John provides a bunch of links and summarizes the state of the conversation. There is hope that the Greens may yet be teachable, and converting one of their icons to a more rational mindset snares yet another millennialist from the mist.

PINR Report On Bolivia

Thanks to John Atkinson over at Chiasm for passing along this Power And Interest News Report article on Bolivia. It's not all that different from the others I've read recently, though some of the details are interesting (for instance, regional governors are not locally elected).

Not Enough Rail To Get Coal To Market?

mdmhvonpa alerted me to an interesting situation: apparently there's a shortage of rail to get coal to market. This reminds me of a situation I discussed last December with a former Reynolds Aluminum engineer (that company long ago got absorbed into Alcoa, much to the dismay of the former). Once upon a time, they had envisioned using Wyoming coal to power a smelter in Arkansas, but the only problem was transport; the plant couldn't be made to operate profitably if the coal was carried by rail, but it could if the coal were powdered and shipped via pipeline. (Such a pipeline is already in use at SCE's Mojave Generating Station in Laughlin, NV.) However, all the rights-of-way needed for the pipeline coincided with existing railroad rights-of-way, and therefore the railroads would fight every step of the way. Therefore, the coal couldn't be delivered economically, and the plant was never built. (In the case of Edison's pipeline, the coal is shipped using water as a carrier; in the case of the proposed Reynolds operation, they had planned on using CO₂ as a propellant.)

It's easy to be somewhat skeptical here, and justifiably so; this smells like the first round of railroads seeking even larger eminent domain grabs in the near future.

BTW: warning to Firefox users: mdmonvonpa's site above is running a ticker that seems to cause Firefox to hang after not very long. If you're running the Adblock extension, you might want to add cnsnews.com/ticker before linking over there.

LA Times On Nuclear Waste Storage

The Saturday edition of the Los Angeles Times had an extensive article about nuclear waste storage, namely, that it's not really being done in a planned manner:

Along the headwaters of the Illinois River, engineers at the Dresden nuclear power station have erected two dozen steel and concrete silos that rise 20 feet above the Midwest plain.

The gray structures are unremarkable except for what is loaded inside: Each contains roughly 13 tons of high-level nuclear waste that has been accumulating at the plant since the Eisenhower administration. With nowhere to go, the waste will most likely remain in place for decades.

Dresden's reactors have produced one of the largest stockpiles — 1,347 tons — of civilian nuclear waste in the nation. With the plant churning out nearly 48 tons more waste each year, engineers are preparing to double the size of the outdoor storage pad this summer.

The plant has the same problem as nearly all of the nation's 103 commercial reactors: They were never designed to store waste long-term and are now forced to deal with large quantities of spent uranium fuel rods that produce high levels of radiation.

The problem reflects decades of miscalculations and missteps by the federal government, which promised at the dawn of the nuclear age to accept ownership of the waste. The plan to build a waste repository at Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert has faced so many political, legal and technical problems that it's impossible to project when — or even if — it will be built.

The problems with nuclear waste storage are well-known, but political forces have prevented storage facilities from being built. From what I can tell, the Yucca Mountain facility looks like a good solution if it were larger, but NIMBYism prevents its completion. According to the article, Yucca Mountain as proposed is insufficient, and will only slow the outside storage of nuclear waste.

Here's An Interesting Claim

Seaborne uranium at $200/kg? I'd like to see someone actually provide a study saying as much...

Winds Of Change On Bolivia

Okay, really, I'm not kidding... well, okay, you forced me into it. Winds Of Change has another bang-up post on Bolivia, full of linkety goodness, including accusations that the demonstrations are being not only bankrolled by Venezuela's Hugo Chavez but the local thugs are going around making sure the locals demonstrate... or else.

The military appears to be acting on its own "until full nationalization of the hydrocarbons industry". This is weird, because previously we read that the Bolivian officer corps consists primarily of Cruceños, who would tend to be against nationalization.

One More Tonight: Nanosolar Gets A $20M Infusion

I'm surprised Monkeysign, who usually picks up on this stuff first, didn't beat me to the punch on this one, but thanks -- indirectly -- to Odograph for forwarding this San Jose Mercury-News story about Nanosolar getting yet another round of capital funding, this time to the tune of $20M, from an investor group led by Mohr, Davidow Ventures. A competitor, Miasolé, got $16M from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Miasolé believes they will have production next month. These companies use nontraditional products to make solar cells, but even conventional silicon-based cells are hot sellers at the moment:

Large solar cell wholesalers are struggling to ensure supply of solar cell modules, with BP Solar saying it is 70 megawatts short -- the equivalent of about $250 million in revenue. ``That's the magnitude of the demand issue we're looking at,'' Pearce says.

Several From FTD

A few posts from the link farm that is Flying Talking Donkey:

• Marshall Brain thinks peak oil will be a non-event. File under Man, I Hope He's Right Dep't. He has a followup here, as well as an interesting article about cheap Chinese electric cars. (Does it always have to be from China, though?)
• Outside The Beltway takes a look at Kevin Drum's peak oil series, starting with Part 1.
• One of the premisses of a lot of peak oil buffs is that Chindia (i.e., China plus India) are going to grow forever to the sky. As the dot-com bust proved, neither trees nor economies grow to the sky, and according to Robert Blumen at the Mises Economic Blog, neither will China, whose state-run economy is investing in pretty much everything, all at once, regardless of returns. Money quote:

  Across town at investment bank Morgan Stanley, its China-watching economist Andy Xie also sees an economic machine going at high speed towards a crash, similar to the meltdown that hit Asian economies in 1997.

  "China is an export and investment-driven model and the connection between exports and investment is basically that the state banking system takes the money earned by exports and puts it into investment regardless of returns," Xie says. "That model is likely to last until the crisis."

• Bacteria that generate electricity and clean up toxic wastes? Believe it.
• This Dmitri Orlov piece at PowerSwitch almost demands no comment (it appeared earlier in the week at Odograph), except to say that its author was a former occupant of the Soviet state and has a similarly blinkered idea of how things work outside that prison.

SCE Sues To Keep Electricity Forecasts Confidential

The Los Angeles Times reports that Southern California Edison is suing the state to keep electricity demand forecasts confidential. The problem, of course, remains the idiotic rules under which the rigged game of "deregulation" occurred. Stuart Hemphill, Edison's director of resource planning and strategy, likened the current situation to "playing poker with our cards face up, and everyone else's face down."

I'm somewhat sympathetic to Edison's position, but on the other hand, this is a significant public matter that shouldn't be brushed under the table, whatever the reason. It really points to the vacancy of the current regulatory scheme, which remains unaddressed.

UK Energy Minister: Drill Or Be Damned

The UK's Energy Minister, Malcolm Wicks, has fired a warning shot across the bow of leaseholders in the North Sea: drill 'em or lose 'em. Under a new plan, assets not actively being drilled will revert to the government, to be resold to others willing to do so.

Wicks will also warn that unless such drastic moves are taken the North Sea could be extinct as an oil-producing basin by 2035 - with billions of barrels of oil left under the seabed.

In the report, Wicks warns that it is "important that licences are in the hands of players with the appetite, expertise and capital to fully exploit all opportunities".

MIT, Other Schools Warn Of Research Budget Cuts

After years of increases, federal research dollars will be cut in fundamental research areas of physics, warns MIT.

MIT is only one among many prestigious schools to see key research initiatives threatened. Other cuts by the energy department would mothball a separate fusion energy research experiment at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, and scale back operations of a heavy ion collider for nuclear physics research at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, operated by Stony Brook University. And the National Aeronautics and Space Administration budget for the current year already has forced Stanford University to delay one space science project and recast another.

The new funding constraints -- federal research spending is expected to rise only 0.1 percent next fiscal year -- add to already deepening anxieties among campus researchers. Federal agencies in recent years have been steering university labs away from long-term basic research and toward shorter-term applied research. The agencies also are funneling more funds toward areas driven by national security priorities, such as developing battlefield robots and combating bioterrorist threats, leaving non-defense fields feeling shortchanged.

The continuing war in Iraq and federal budget pressures have exacerbated the pressures.

So, of course finding alternate energy sources besides oil wouldn't help that pressure? Really, what is oil except the most convenient energy source to date? I'm of two minds on this: first, federal research money will tend to get into the wrong hands anyway or be directed into meaningless channels; but the other issue is that research is useful and necessary. The article notes trend of researchers following the money:

The pressure on open-ended research programs has been accelerating in recent years. Bienenstock said space science initiatives at Stanford have fallen victim to a NASA shift away from basic research to the Moon-Mars Program championed by Bush. Similar shifts are underway at other agencies, ranging from the energy department to the Pentagon to the National Institutes for Health.

There is going to be money in energy, no question about it. The issue is whether federally-funded research will get us to commercial success; I have my doubts.

Bolivian Unrest May Cut Natural Gas To Brazil

Bolivian unrest may cut natural gas lines to Brazil. If you think the Brazilians are going to stand around if that were to happen, well...

Brazil has drafted a plan to radically cut use in the event such a scenario becomes a reality.

Saudis: "Plenty Of Oil"

Of course, this already made it to Drudge, but in case you missed it, the Saudis continue to claim they'll have plenty of oil for everyone. Whether that's true or not is anybody's guess.

Russia: The Democracy That Never Was

It turns out that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was interviewed by the London Times over the weekend, and what he had to say about Russia was surprisingly encouraging:

"It is often said that democracy is being taken away from us and that there is a threat to our democracy. What democracy is threatened? Power of the people? We don’t have it,” he told Rossiya, the state-run channel.

“We have nothing that resembles democracy. We are trying to build democracy without self-governance. Before anything, we must begin to build a system so that the people can manage their own destinies.”

He said that the State Duma, dominated by the Kremlin’s supporters, was acting “as if it were drunk” and the country could face an upheaval similar to last year’s Orange Revolution in Ukraine if the Government did not change course.

“An Orange Revolution may take place if tensions between the public and the authorities flare up and money begins flowing to the opposition,” he said.

Of course, he fails to make the connection between independent parties and independent financing, something that Putin didn't miss when the Russian government opted for a show trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Add this to the short but growing list of sins for Solzhenitsyn: "he attacked Mr Putin for failing to crack down on the oligarchs, the two dozen businessmen who bought state assets cheaply in the privatisations of the 1990s".

I came across this as the result of a Washington Post transcript of an online interview with Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, authors of Kremlin Rising: Vladimir Putin's Russia and the End of Revolution. (For those itching for a taste, you can read this excerpt at the Post's website.) I quote here the most interesting paragraph therein:

... the famous Soviet gulag survivor Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was interviewed over the weekend. [He] told Russian TV that Russian democracy isn't in jeopardy because there is no such thing as Russian democracy -- in essence, this is really the line that Putin himself and his aides take. In fact, in our book we quote Putin ex-chief of staff Voloshin telling colleagues in private, "the Russian people are not ready for democracy." This is a key to understanding Kremlin thinking.

Regarding Bush's relationship with Putin:

The Bush-Putin relationship has evolved from that first, very generous view, "soul" gazing and all that. Now it seems to be much more skeptical. But Bush, having basically embraced Putin in the past, finds himself in the tricky position of being stuck with the his dance partner. And Russia right now is not exactly the center of the administration's attention

Obviously, the great interest these days in Russia is about oil. One questioner suggested the current regime parallels that of Czar Nicholas II. Baker and Glasser reply:

[O]n the historical comparison to the age of Nicholas II, one difference is that the economic deprivation of that time was so stark and for the moment at least oil has managed to float the economy and raise overall a standard of living battered sorely in the 1990's.

Which somewhat implies that, if the Russians have a half a clue, they will have to allow foreigners access to their oilfields, like it or not.

OT: Bibliophilic? Moi?

For some reason, Lynne labors under the delusion that I read or something. Taking Matt Welch's cranky response to this virus as my keynote, the answers:

1. How many books do I own? Probably around 1,000. I've never really inventoried them.

2. What was the last book I bought? Statistics, Robert S. Witte, 4th Ed.

3. What was the last book I read? I guess that depends on what you mean by "read". Cover-to-cover? That would be The Dodgers: 120 Years of Dodger Baseball by Glenn Stout. But on a daily basis, I spend far more time in reference books, so stuff like Statistics, 2005 Baseball Prospectus, and with the recent baseball draft, Baseball America Prospect Handbook 2005. Yeah, I know, I gave up fiction years ago, which is weird since I get all dewy- (or is that Dewey-?) eyed in libraries; all those books, and I don't have to pay for them!

4. What are the five books that mean the most to me?

1984: I had to read this one in high school but it still stands large in my iconography.

The Last Lion: William Manchester's planned three-part biography of Winston Churchill that will remain sadly uncompleted, he captures beautifully Churchill's defiance at seemingly impossible odds against a barbaric, implacable foe.

The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract: the first and largest of the James books I own, he's an absolute master of baseball analysis. More, he writes a beautiful, lucid, and immediately comprehensible prose. A profound thinker on statistical analysis, his ability to explain himself is also unique. People will be reading his Baseball Abstracts well after he is dead; what will they say of Bill Plaschke in sixty years, if they can find anyone outside the Los Angeles Times newsroom who even knows who he is?

My autographed copy of Chuck Amuck: for the interests, and more importantly, friendships I had then, and subsequently lost.

A Distant Mirror: maybe not the whole book so much as the chapter on the Black Death. I've always been fascinated by (some would say attracted to and transfixed by) apocalypses, and Barbara Tuchman's account of the Plague years in Europe is simply some of the best writing I've ever encountered anywhere.

A Mencken Chrestomathy, but I would add pretty much everything he ever wrote, which I own a great deal of. America's master stylist and its first real libertarian since Jefferson, he sets on the page the kind of blistering, horselaugh-inducing prose I can only hope to squeeze out once in a decade.

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations: because, hey, why not?

Well, enough.

Fusion News

Two thing on the ongoing mess that is ITER, and a new item:

• According to a Nomiuri Shimbun article, nameless "government experts" don't expect usable fusion energy for 50 years. Yeah, and I bet they spend most of that time arguing over where the damn reactor should be sited...
• Thanks to the FIRE Place for news that Congress has blocked ITER spending (PDF) until somebody can figure out whose ox is going to be gored in the process. The problem seems to be that the U.S. still funds plasma research, but apparently ITER was assumed to come out of that budget. Hilarity ensues.

  The House action revives the possibility that the United States could repeat its 1997 decision to leave ITER, a project it helped launch 2 decades ago and then rejoined in 2003. "It will be important for us to be part of it," says Stephen Dean of Fusion Power Associates in Gaithersburg, Maryland, but not at the expense of domestic work. And will U.S. scientists utilize ITER if their government fails to help build it? "[S]omehow or another, we'll participate," Dean predicts.

• A Japanese official says ITER is unlikely to move forward sans an agreement with Japan, though this is at odds with earlier statements by France saying they'd be willing to go it alone if Japan doesn't back down.
• Sandia researchers have created a gun that can fire a small plate to 72,000 mph in less than a second. This is about half again faster than the previous record for the Z Machine, 21 km/s (vs. 34 km/s currently). Such a gun could ultimately provide enough energy to cause fusion in its target.

Mesa: Civil War Threatens Bolivia

President Carlos Mesa of Bolivia has warned his country will slip into civil war unless elections are held immediately. Just a reminder: this is all about the country's extensive natural gas reserves, which some people (i.e., those who don't live near them) want to nationalize.

Update: The State Department has issued a travel alert for Americans to avoid Bolivia, and has authorized all but non-emergency personnel to leave the country.

3/4 Of Iranians Want Reconciliation With U.S. - Poll

True or not, this Persian Journal story about softening public attitudes in Iran towards the U.S. by non-mullahs is nothing short of astonishing. With so much propaganda from both sides (especially in the U.S. from LA-based expatriates), the truth is hard to know. But it makes interesting watercooler fodder, nonetheless.

GM To Cut 25,000 Jobs By 2008

GM will eliminate 25,000 jobs by 2008, leaving me to wonder who really will pay for all those retirees' benefits. I've thought previously that GM shrinking is getting to the unthinkable point, but apparently not for GM. Nary a word about this on the FastLane Blog.

Bolivia's President Resigns

According to CNN, Bolivian President Carlos Mesa has submitted his resignation. The article goes on to say that this is likely just a plea for further support.

Bolivian military planes were scheduled to rescued 24 Israelis from the country who were affected by the "internal strife".

I briefly covered Bolivian secession and the natural gas reserves playing a part in it here.

Turning Farm Waste Into Biodiesel

One problem with biodiesel is that it uses relatively little of the plant -- the harvestable fatty acids from the rape plant, for instance -- and yields are too low to realistically grow any but a tiny fraction of the energy needed to replace petroleum diesel. But perhaps not. In this MIT Technology Review article, Dartmouth researchers have found a way to take any cellulosic material and convert it into biodiesel:

The new method is divided into four parts. First, a stream of processed biomass consisting of waters and sugars is fed over a nickel-tin catalyst to strip off some of its hydrogen molecules. Then the stream is treated with acids that take out most of the water. The resulting "goo" is then transported over a solid base catalyst, which forms it into long carbon chains, called alkanes. Finally, those alkanes are run through a platinum-silica-alumina catalyst at high temperatures, while the hydrogen from the first step is fed into the reactor. The resulting liquid has almost the exact same chemical structure as traditionally refined biodiesel and burns the same way in diesel engines. And the only byproducts are water and heat.

As usual, the economic problems remain the principle stumbling blocks, and so we await a commercial version of this process.

Green Car Congress published an article about these guys a little earlier in the month, using the Science source articles.

EIA: Oil To $60 In 2005 4Q

John Cook, chief oil statistician of the US EIA, says oil is headed to $60/bbl, possibly for as long as a month.

"I think we will see new records, not necessarily by much, but I think we may even average $60 for a month," Cook said. "The demand growth is going to be there, and the inventory surpluses we have are pretty paltry to begin with, and they are going to disappear. We are not going to have much spare capacity at all in the fourth quarter."

Grassy Knolls Everywhere, I Tell You

Searching For The Truth comes no closer to that aim by publishing a strange and paranoiac document that seems to me to be the ravings of a conspiracy theorist. Without reading too closely, I note at least one substantive error that keeps getting re-made in certain circles: Richard Perle didn't resign in 2003 from the Defense Policy Board, but on February 18, 2004. A number of people have made the erroneous conclusion that Perle's resignation from the chairmanship of that board was the same thing, which it was not. Likewise, the author of this piece makes the unsubstantiated claim that Perle is an Israeli spy, and falls prey to the usual pink thinking so often seen in these circles. That is to say, like so many of Alexander Cockburn's pals at Counterpunch, he has his predispositions. If this is "well-researched", I should question what a poorly researched document would look like.

High-Output Electric Motor For Cars

Via Slashdot, a Welsh team has designed a high-output electric motor for cars that can supposedly compete with Ferraris.

The motor is revolutionary in that it contains no bulky permanent magnets.

Instead it relies on transmitting electric pulses across up to seven rotors, arranged in different phases. These are "fired up" in turn, much like the pistons of an internal combustion engine.

There are no gears - the motor provides enough torque at one revolution per minute to put a vehicle into motion - and it spins at up to 2,500rpm.

"Size for size, we can provide 400% more torque than any type of motor currently available," says managing director John Bryant.

Now if they could only create an extension cord as long as the I-5...

Another Bunch On Cars

Rick Todd had been busy with his bar exams (and maybe still is for all I know), but he somehow found time to fix some annoying technical problems with Autoguy, which leads me to drop a bunch of links today from his blog:

• A really good summary of where GM's brands are headed. It looks like they really haven't figured out Saab, Saturn is going upmarket, Chevy will continue to be everyman's car, and Cadillac will bolt down the top of the line. "Buick, Pontiac, GMC, Saturn, Hummer and Saab will exist as "focus brands" with more limited portfolios."
• Despite Standard & Poor downgrading Ford's paper to junk status, the company has real direction and has not been caught unawares by the side effects of high fuel costs.
• Coming low sulfur gasolines combined with direct-injection engines could render the cost/performance improvement of hybrids immaterial. (Of course, the Engineer-Poet would probably hasten to add that the reason you have a hybrid in the first place is to recharge the batteries at home every night, thus giving you miles and miles of electric -- rather than gasoline -- powered travel every day.)

More EU Votes

Yesterday, the Dutch rejected the EU constitution, with 61.6 percent voting against, while Latvia's parliament accepted it. I'm not going to even surmise a guess at what will happen next, but there's already talk over at Knowledge Problem that all that will happen is a more honest dialogue between the current nation-states over what the EU really means. (For starters, I could suggest that a 400+-page constitution is not a good idea.) The Capital Spectator seems to think that

There’s no immediate risk to Europe’s currency. Betting otherwise seems like a fool’s game at this point. But that won’t curb the doubts, which carry a bit more resonance in the wake of France’s resounding vote.

In a Bloomberg News article, Guy Stern of Credit Suisse Asset Management says, "We will have a problem with the euro. It could depreciate 5 percent to 10 percent." This is a short-term problem until the EU's direction becomes clearer. But as I've said before, my suspicion is that France sees the EU as a way to eat lunch, and have Germany pay for it. That is, the internal contradictions of the various parties' wish lists is both non-negotiable and irreconcilable at last.

Update: still more from Knowledge Problem.

Two New Kunstler Slapdowns

One each at The Ergosphere, and John A.'s reaction to it at Chiasm. John, in his usual ebulliant, raucous prose is just four-letter fantastic. In case you can't tell, I'm getting a little tired of apocalyptic visions from guys with books to sell.

So Much For The Day After Tomorrow, Tomorrow

Over at RealClimate, Gavin McLeod remarks upon an already much-remarked-upon story, namely that thermohaline circulation is slowing in the North Atlantic. This was the basis for the recent dystopian thriller, The Day After Tomorrow. But, unusually for McLeod, the news is fairly good this time:

It is important to bear in mind that while the changes being seen are indeed significant given the accuracy of modern oceanography, the magnitude of the changes (a few hundredths of a salinity unit) are very much smaller (maybe two orders of magnitude) than the kinds of changes inferred from the paleo data or seen in climate models. Thus while continued monitoring of this key climatic area is clearly warranted, the imminent chilling of the Europe is a ways off yet.

The images we have of our world influence our thinking, something that the Day After Tomorrow were clearly trying to do. Roger Pielke, Jr. recently brought up the "hockey stick" as a lever to gain political power regardless of the merits of that projection. I fear that we're in for a lot of apocalyptic stories, some of which have plausibility, but few of which are unavoidable, the xenophobic, I Love Lucy-hating space aliens attacking and destroying all life on earth scenario notwithstanding.