Jared Diamond Is A Jackass, Answering A Good Question

I positively loved this post on Peak Oil Debunked regarding Jared Diamond and his cottage industry pitching disaster. In that, he's remarkably like another of Debunked author JD's bêtes noir, Matt Savinar, whose idiocy has already been commented upon.

But JD raises a really good point when he asks the useful question when he asks of folks at The Oil Drum, "Why do you link to [Savinar, From the Wilderness, dieoff.org, Richard "Olduvai" Duncan] if you guys are the moderates?" While this is pure speculation, it seems to me there are two plausible explanations:

• Scratch an environmentalist and you will find a communist, or at least a guy who has a false but very, very strong sense that his simple-but-wrong solution to all problems can be made to work if only he had enough cops behind it. In practice, the two are indistinguishable.
• Scratch an environmentalist and you will find a fascist. This came out recently in a comments that JD uncovered from various peakers, including Richard Heinberg, and out of the orifaces of the allegedly scholarly ASPO, when Colin Campbell let fly his idea that's almost as fun as Charlton Heston's 1973 discovery.

So, JD, why do I still have these jackasses on the sidebar? Well, as Mencken once answered a similar question, why does one go to the zoo?

More Fun With Torture

A long New Yorker piece about the dishonorable Cheney gang looking to find legal ways to make thumbscrews a reality in the United States. Impeachment isn't good enough.

Just a few months ago, [former U.S. Navy general counsel Alberto J. Mora] attended a meeting in Rumsfeld’s private conference room at the Pentagon, called by Gordon England, the Deputy Defense Secretary, to discuss a proposed new directive defining the military’s detention policy. The civilian Secretaries of the Army, the Air Force, and the Navy were present, along with the highest-ranking officers of each service, and some half-dozen military lawyers. Matthew Waxman, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, had proposed making it official Pentagon policy to treat detainees in accordance with Common Article Three of the Geneva conventions, which bars cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment, as well as outrages against human dignity.Going around the huge wooden conference table, where the officials sat in double rows, England asked for a consensus on whether the Pentagon should support Waxman’s proposal.

This standard had been in effect for fifty years, and all members of the U.S. armed services were trained to follow it. One by one, the military officers argued for returning the U.S. to what they called the high ground. But two people opposed it. One was Stephen Cambone, the under-secretary of defense for intelligence; the other was [Department of Defense general counsel William J. Haynes II, Mora's former boss]. They argued that the articulated standard would limit America’s “flexibility.” It also might expose Administration officials to charges of war crimes: if Common Article Three became the standard for treatment, then it might become a crime to violate it. Their opposition was enough to scuttle the proposal.

In exasperation, according to another participant, Mora said that whether the Pentagon enshrined it as official policy or not, the Geneva conventions were already written into both U.S. and international law. Any grave breach of them, at home or abroad, was classified as a war crime. To emphasize his position, he took out a copy of the text of U.S. Code 18.2441, the War Crimes Act, which forbids the violation of Common Article Three, and read from it. The point, Mora told me, was that “it’s a statute. It exists—we’re not free to disregard it. We’re bound by it. It’s been adopted by the Congress. And we’re not the only interpreters of it. Other nations could have U.S. officials arrested.”

Point, Counterpoint In The Boston Globe

Via peakoil.com, here's a pretty good summary piece on the current state of thinking about peak oil from the Boston Globe.

Francis Fukuyama Pulls The Plug On Neoconservatism

Francis Fukuyama has come out against the end results of neoconservatism, in a great and wide-ranging New York Times Magazine piece that reviews the "naïve Wilsonianism" animating the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq. Samples:

The problem with neoconservatism's agenda lies not in its ends, which are as American as apple pie, but rather in the overmilitarized means by which it has sought to accomplish them. What American foreign policy needs is not a return to a narrow and cynical realism, but rather the formulation of a "realistic Wilsonianism" that better matches means to ends.

Of course, in this Fukuyama merely retreats into ever-smaller jars; if you can't whup the terrorists, he seems to be saying, push them into power directly or indirectly and watch as they grapple with the rubber-hits-the-road details of governance:

A durable Israeli-Palestinian peace could not be built upon a corrupt, illegitimate Fatah that constantly had to worry about Hamas challenging its authority. Peace might emerge, sometime down the road, from a Palestine run by a formerly radical terrorist group that had been forced to deal with the realities of governing.

...

But the overarching lesson that emerges from these cases is that the United States does not get to decide when and where democracy comes about. By definition, outsiders can't "impose" democracy on a country that doesn't want it; demand for democracy and reform must be domestic. Democracy promotion is therefore a long-term and opportunistic process that has to await the gradual ripening of political and economic conditions to be effective.

The most charitable view of the Bush administration's views going into Iraq was that the adventure would end with a stable and democratic Iraq on friendly terms with the United States and the West generally, on perhaps hostile terms with neighbor Iran, all to the general betterment of the world oil markets. That this has not happened reveals a profound failure of imagination on the part of the Bush administration when it came time to draft the post-invasion parts of their plans.

Not Getting It On Ports

"Arabs See Phobia Behind US Uproar Over Ports Deal" says the Reuters headline, but given the deaths caused by a few cartoons, who can blame anyone for this attitude? The Wall Street Journal ($$$) thinks Bush may be outmaneuvered here:

President Bush vehemently defended the transaction, summoning reporters accompanying him on Air Force One to insist it posed no security threat and to say that if legislation cleared Congress to block the deal, "I'll deal with it, with a veto." Mr. Bush, who hasn't vetoed any legislation during his presidency, said the U.S. would be sending "mixed signals" by acting when a British company faced no such objections, and he challenged lawmakers to "step up and explain why a Middle Eastern company is held to a different standard."

See above, and 9/11, also, duh. Anyone expecting this to pass quietly was kidding themselves.

Back at the White House later, he added, "If there was any chance that this transaction would jeopardize the security of the United States, it would not go forward. But I also want to repeat something again, and that is: This is a company that has played by the rules, that has been cooperative with the United States, a country that's an ally in the war on terror, and it would send a terrible signal to friends and allies not to let this transaction go through."

Really? That's pretty amazing considering the party line from the Bushites now reads that the President didn't know about the deal ($$$, again) until after it had been approved! The Journal's opinion page calls the sudden opposition a "rare" marriage of left and right against him, with the New York Times coming out squarely against the deal as part of a wider pattern of choosing business interests over security, while the Washington Post declared the whole affair a "humbug":

None of the U.S. politicians huffing and puffing seem to be aware that this deal was long in the making, that it had been reported on extensively in the financial press, and that it went through normal security clearance procedures, including approval from a foreign investment committee that contains officials from the departments of Treasury, Commerce, State and Homeland Security, among other agencies. Even more disturbing is the apparent difficulty of members of Congress in distinguishing among Arab countries. We'd like to remind them, as they've apparently forgotten, that the United Arab Emirates is a U.S. ally that has cooperated extensively with U.S. security operations in the war on terrorism, that supplied troops to the U.S.-led coalition during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and that sends humanitarian aid to Iraq. U.S. troops move freely in and out of Dubai on their way to Iraq now.

Indeed, the Emirates' track record in the history of terrorism needs to be duly recorded, and while I haven't looked into this, it may indeed be a tempest in a teapot. On the other hand, the lunatic portion of the Muslim world, which is a sizeable percentage, and possibly a majority, hasn't exactly behaved itself well lately, either. In the final analysis, the taint of Islam and its all-too-easily-roused homicidal tendencies will poison deals like this one. As Roblimo said in the link above,

Muslims all over the world really ought to stop the "My way or die" crap. And those who say, "It's in the Koran. Violence against all unbelievers -- especially against Jews -- is a core part of my faith," had better watch out, because if that's your attitude you really are at war with the rest of the world.

The Trouble With Slashdot

I normally love Slashdot for bringing to the fore interesting stories I would have never heard about otherwise. Despite the collective kvetching (much of it deserved, by the way) about numerous dupes in the story feed, the bottom line is that the site provides a much-needed filter on the huge volume of tech news. It's arbitrary, sure, but it's also useful.

That is, I had that opinion until I read this article about a supposed "self-contained power source" which fits the definition of a perpetual motion machine. My first reaction to this was... what the hell? And then when I found out that the contributor McOSEN was from the lunatic fringe, conspiracy-theory-believin' Open Source Energy website, that's when I lost it. What the hell, Roblimo? Can you no longer get editors capable of discerning between science and rank nutjobbery? F'r chrissakes, they take the zero-point energy loons seriously! This is not an accident, although this particular transgression has to rank as one of the worst of their most recent. It's well past time to clean house over there; who should do it?

New Power Plant Gasifies Petroleum Coke, Pumps CO2 Into Old Oil Wells

A new $1 billion power plant proposed by BP in California will gasify petroleum coke, separating the hydrogen and burning that to produce electricity, while sending the resulting CO₂ into depleted oil fields to enhance productivity. Peak Oil Debunked pointed to an Oil Drum post about enhanced CO₂ recovery in Canada that, if applied to US reserves, has the potential to unleash 43 billion barrels of oil -- another Alaska!

I believe we are going to increasingly see a phenomenon which is familiar to anyone who has watched a marijuana smoker clean an old resin-encrusted pipe for a few more hits. There are incredible volumes of oil still remaining in old holes we discovered a long time ago, and pumped all the easy oil out of. So what are we going to do when we run out of new discoveries? We're going to go back to the old discoveries, and "clean the pipe".

Currently, most petroleum coke is shipped to Asia where it's used directly as a fuel. But the plant is far from a sure thing, and BP will be running feasibility studies over the next year. The critical problem I see thus far is the request for subsidies from the state; none of that, now.

Bermuda To Generate Power From Ocean Currents

Bermuda will add up to 20 MW of electric power generation using undersea currents. The first 10 MW of capacity will come online in 2007, and will be supplied from equipment made by Current to Current Corporation of Massachusetts.

ITER Physicists Reply To Focus Fusion

Thanks to these Froggy guys (whom I found in my referrers today) for pointing out this pesn.com reply from the ITER boys as to the feasibility of focus fusion:

From: Bill Spears
To: Sterling D. Allan
Sent: Thursday, November 10, 2005 11:46 AM
Subject: Re: comment please: Tokamak has serious competitor in Focus Fusion


Dear Sterling,

Sorry for the delay in replying. It takes time to give you a reasoned reply and not just shoot from the hip. It also takes time to read and understand detailed scientific reports to make sure you are not missing something. I asked Dr. Michiya Shimada, our Head of Physics Unit, to review the material and make a comment. After he and his people reviewed the background papers indicated in your article, he concluded:

"The plasma focus isn't going to be a rival of the tokamak unless there's some very strange physics nobody has seen before.

Using the plasma parameters quoted in their publication, the proton-boron fusion energy obtainable in a plasma focus discharge is estimated to be 0.6 x 10^-4 J, which is a fraction of a billionth of the electrical energy spent to create this plasma (~ 160 kJ). The point is that the plasma volume is very small (~ 6 x 10^-9 cm³) and the discharge duration very short (~ 1 x 10^-8 s).

The dense plasma focus has been studied extensively in the early years of fusion research. They might find it interesting to compare their results with those obtained a few decades ago to see whether anything new has really been discovered here."

I hope you find that a significantly strong counter-remark to your original article to be worth publishing also this viewpoint.

Best regards,

Bill

The FF guys respond:

From: Eric Lerner
To: Sterling D. Allan
Sent: Thursday, November 10, 2005 7:32 PM
Subject: Re: ITER response: Tokamak has serious competitor in Focus Fusion


Dr. Shimada did not read the papers carefully enough. His calculation is based on the plasma parameters that we actually achieved in our last experiments in 2001. We did not claim that those parameters are near breakeven. They were not even optimal for the current we achieved, because the radius of the anode (the inner electrode) on this device could not be changed

What the paper does demonstrate is that scaling laws that have both good theoretical foundations and experimental backing indicate that break-even parameters can be achieved with a somewhat higher current but a physically smaller device. With the parameters that we expect to reach in our next set of experiments, fusion yield per shot should be of the order of 5-20 KJ. No strange physics is needed. We are aiming for a 40-fold increase in plasmoid magnetic field and fusion yield (at fixed ion temperature) scales as B⁴. Temperature will also be higher.

Eric Lerner

I dunno. You'll have to show me you know what you're doing, guys. Also, for giggles' sake, here's a Slashdot thread on this stuff. Science by press release isn't the most compelling thing on the planet.

Ex-SEC Official Pushes For New Reserves Standards

Former SEC Dallas branch office head Harold Degenhardt has called for a push to change reserves accounting rules ($$$) in the oil industry.

"Now is the time to push your efforts with the commission to having some of your questions answered," Harold Degenhardt, the former head of the Fort Worth regional office, told an energy industry gathering.

Degenhardt said the commission under new chairman Chris Cox is more sensitive to the unintended consequences of policy. While Cox probably won't radically alter agency policy, "some relief" is possible, Degenhardt told a conference sponsored by the Energy Forum, a Houston group.

...

Degenhardt said he is troubled by the SEC's lack of responsiveness to a Feb. 2005 industry-sponsored report that called on the SEC to modernize the rules for calculating reserves, a major benchmark for valuing oil and gas companies. The SEC hasn't provided a substantive response to the report, which was authored by industry consultant Cambridge Energy Research Associates.

Without taking a position on CERA's new reserves classification system (something I wrote about last February), Degenhardt said that the industry should push for more action now that the CERA report is a year old and has elicited no comment from the government.

Peak Oil, Debunked?

Whether you believe it or not, Peak Oil Debunked doesn't quite live up to its name, but it is full of interesting if not always satisfying commentary about peak oil.

More On Microwaving Waste Tires Into Oil

I wrote about John Dobozy and his method for microwaving scrap tires into oil last year. Checking up on him again, he's got a lovely website up under the Molectra name, although the "About" page indicates he still hasn't been able to scale up his project to a fully-functional plant as of yet.

It turns out there's some precedent. At least two companies -- Environmental Waste International of Canada, and Carbon Recovery Corporation -- have tried to make similar processes work. The latter was more recently acquired by an outfit known as RECOV Energy Corp, who in turn changed their name to General Metals Corporation, primarily a gold and silver mining company operating out of Nevada, as of January 26, 2006. So maybe there isn't a pot of gold at the end of this particular rainbow after all.

What's even more interesting to me is this 1987 Rand Corp. report on using microwaves to process oil shale, which would seem to predate all of these attempts to make this technology work on tires by at least a decade. This might be a good idea, but the lack of commercial progress on this front is discouraging.

Putterman Crystal Fusion Device Duplicated, Improved

Seth Putterman's crystal fusion device has been duplicated by a Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute team that claims to have improved on it.

A research team led by Seth Putterman, professor of physics at UCLA, reported on a similar apparatus in 2005, but two important features distinguish the new device: “Our device uses two crystals instead of one, which doubles the acceleration potential,” says Jeffrey Geuther, a graduate student in nuclear engineering at Rensselaer and lead author of the paper. “And our setup does not require cooling the crystals to cryogenic temperatures — an important step that reduces both the complexity and the cost of the equipment.”

...

“Nuclear fusion has been explored as a potential source of power, but we are not looking at this as an energy source right now,” Danon says. Rather, the most immediate application may come in the form of a battery-operated, portable neutron generator. Such a device could be used to detect explosives or to scan luggage at airports, and it could also be an important tool for a wide range of laboratory experiments.

The concept could also lead to a portable x-ray generator, according to Danon. “There is already a commercial portable pyroelectric x-ray product available, but it does not produce enough energy to provide the 50,000 electron volts needed for medical imaging,” he says. “Our device is capable of producing about 200,000 electron volts, which could meet these requirements and could also be enough to penetrate several millimeters of steel.”

Hat tip: Slashdot.

The Side Effects Of Canadian Tar Sands

One of the more interesting things about the Canadian tar sands is that it's a petri dish for investigating techniques for dealing with heavy oil, something that came up in another Wall Street Journal article ($$$, sorry):

One of the heaviest types of oil is bitumen, a tar-like crude found mixed with grit in Alberta's oil sands. While oil sands are found in many countries, Canada's deposits stand out because they are the biggest, consisting of an estimated 1.7 trillion barrels of oil in place, though the amount recoverable depends on further technology improvements and whether oil prices justify the expense of a project. Alberta has become the world's proving ground for emerging technology for extracting and handling ultra-heavy crude at lower cost.

Canadian and international energy companies are prepared to pour as much as 100 billion Canadian dollars (US$86.7 billion) into oil-sands development over the next 10 years, if all the announced projects are built. Canada's top oil-industry research investors spent a total of C$272 million on research and development in 2004, according to Research Infosource Inc., of Toronto.

I wrote last month about the possibility of using some of these techniques in other circumstances, and the Journal surmises as much given the relatively small amounts of money the Chinese are committing to their tar sands projects, and the fact that the pipeline-to-the-Pacific that's been proposed as the primary transport mechanism is unlikely to be completed any time soon, if ever.

Peter Zeihan, chief analyst for global economic issues at private-intelligence firm Stratfor, Washington, D.C., believes China isn't likely to seek significant new oil supplies from Canada, partly because of logistics. "There's a reason why the pipelines run south and east from Alberta, not west," he said. More likely, he reckons, China will build pipelines to import more oil from its Asian neighbor Kazakhstan, and that it will invest heavily in new technology for producing and processing its own untapped oil resources.

The Other Kind Of Optimist, Part 2

Hey, for only $99 you can get yer copy of this Newsmax report that tells us all how $40/barrel oil is about to make a big comeback. I wrote about one such back in May of last year based on a post in Disinterested Party, who to his credit went on to write followups in June, two in October, and most recently in January, all of which call for lower oil prices. $61/barrel oil made news because it had been so high for so long.

Obviously I'm still bullish on oil -- an expression that seems to be at odds with my actual feeling regarding this -- especially considering the wildly differing views as to Chinese production. Deffeyes, of course, is so certain he's right that now he's changed his specialty to that of "historian". We'll see who's right, but my money's on Deffeyes.

Update: I wonder if Disinterested Party's analysis includes declines in Mexico's Cantarell field ($$$, again).

The worst two scenarios suggest a drastic decline in output to 875,000 barrels a day by the end of 2007 and to just 520,000 a day by the end of 2008. If such projections turn out to be correct, Mexico's overall oil exports would decline by about one million barrels a day -- equal to about 63% of its daily crude exports to the U.S. -- from its current 1.8 million.

I wrote about this last year; one wonders how the Journal gets away with calling this an "exclusive" when the knowledge has been available for almost a year.

What We Have Here Is A Failure To Communicate

Apropos of the Charles Groat interview I found earlier, I have to wonder what moron is in charge of coming up with the price estimates for oil over at GM and Ford. I actually subscribed to the Wall Street Journal earlier in the week, and lo and behold but here's their review following the Chicago Auto Show ($$$, of course) which has some whoppers:

The large-SUV market is about to experience a near-total renaissance, right on the heels of its disastrous 2005 sales collapse. General Motors is rolling out its new generation of large Chevrolet, GMC, and Cadillac SUVs. The new Cadillac Escalade, with its 400-horsepower engine and its chrome-jeweled exterior, was the star of a glitzy Super Bowl ad. And GM executives are talking up the early sales results for the new Chevrolet Tahoe.

That's to be expected from GM, since large SUVs are the money-losing No. 1 auto maker's primary new product this year. If they sell, GM stands a chance of significantly narrowing its automotive losses. If they don't, GM is in big trouble.

Well, look for that to be "big trouble", good buddy...

But overshadowed in GM's Big SUV hoopla is the fact that Ford is also launching a restyled and expanded lineup of large SUVs this year. Of special significance are new, extra-long versions of the Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigator large utilities, designed to give Ford dealers what they have long wished for: "extended length" large SUVs to compete with GM's plus-sized Chevy Suburban and Cadillac Escalade ESV.

Are they for real? Does nobody pay attention to what the sales of Toyota hybrids are doing? At least the author of this piece, Joseph B. White, isn't entirely without a clue:

How much oil could we avoid burning if gasoline were $3 a gallon and consumers had an economic incentive to buy small cars that got 30 to 40 miles per gallon, or better, using ethanol, diesel or hybrid technology? Right now, it seems unlikely we'll get to find out. In the absence of a clear direction from policy makers or consumers, auto makers will hedge all bets, expanding the range of small, fuel-efficient subcompacts aimed at young buyers, and investing more in plus-sized rides such as the extended-length Navigator L at the same time.

This is obviously crazy. It's the a massive failure to misread the future direction of the market that essentially amounts to wishcasting by Ford and GM, and after this summer, I bet both come tumbling down.

Former USGS Head Charles Groat On Peak Oil

The USGS has been taken out behind the shed numerous times for all manner of crimes by peak oil mavens, not least of which is their complicity in overstating reserves. The most recent culprit behind this, Charles Groat, gave an interview at AAPG Explorer in which he said

“The doomsayers say we’re running out of oil,” he noted, “but just from the undiscovered resource assessments the Survey has done nationally and internationally, even with the oil that’s known now the reserve growth has amounted to a lot more than the new discoveries.”

Huh? Isn't that the very definition of the problem?

“We haven’t even applied reserve growth numbers to some of the big fields in other parts of the world,” Groat said.

I'm sure Kuwait will be glad to hear about that...

“It’s finite, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to run out next year, or 10 years or even in the next 50 years.”

Um... uh... running out of things to say...

G8 Looks At One Of Their Members In Fear

Should the G8 become the G7 again? It seems that way, given that their finance ministers will be looking at energy security when they meet in Moscow next week. Between Iranian oil and Russian natural gas, the Europeans are concerned:

Higher oil prices have increased oil protectionism, analysts said.

"There was an assumption in the past that high prices would lead to increased investment and more oil," said Antoine Halff.

"But high prices have instead fostered resources nationalism, and there has been a drive by countries not to open up to investment, but instead to preserve resources and claim a higher share of revenue."

So, how's that work, again? Is the EU getting nervous? Oh, my, yes:

The European Union and the United States should cooperate more closely on energy issues, the president of the EU executive Commission said on Thursday.

"In today's world, if the energy security of either one of us is impaired, it affects the other. I believe this situation calls for a transformation in our cooperation on energy issues," Jose Manuel Barroso said in a speech at Washington's Georgetown University where he was receiving an honorary degree.

"Just as it is ridiculous to have 25 separate energy policies in the European Union, so it would fly in the face of common sense for the transatlantic partnership to pull in different directions in this critical area," Barroso said, according to excerpts of his speech released in Brussels.

The Russians have done themselves no favors by baring their teeth at the rest of Europe, shutting off gas, if indirectly, to their Western customers, and before that with the Yukos fiasco. It's fairly clear now that the G8 has one member too many, one that nobody else trusts anymore.

Ethanol From Candy

... or what have you:

Since 2003, Xethanol has operated two Iowa plants that can cheaply distill a gasoline additive called ethanol from bizarre sources such as stale butterscotch candy. When technicians mix the sweets with a special form of yeast, fermentation results, producing ethanol. (Typically producers of ethanol derive the clean-burning, high-octane fuel from corn.) Big oil companies then combine it with unleaded gasoline to reduce the cost of gas and the air pollution it causes.

Xethanol claims they will be profitable this year, the first time since their founding in 2000, but that's in part because of federal subsidies. Geesh.

Exxon: President's Energy Goals "Not Feasible"

Multiply this times peak oil and it's Kunstlerville.

The United States will rely on foreign imports of oil for the foreseeable future to feed its energy needs and should stop trying to become energy independent, a top Exxon Mobil Corp. executive said Tuesday.

"Realistically, it is simply not feasible in any time period relevant to our discussion today," Exxon Mobil Senior Vice President Stuart McGill said, referring to what he called the "misperception" that the United States can achieve energy independence.

Let's hope he's wrong, eh?

Followup: Nanosolar

Remember this? Well, I'm still waiting. So is everyone else, apparently.

Belated: Missouri TDP Plant Allowed To Restart

The thermal depolymerization plant in Carthage, MO has been allowed to restart despite horrible smells eminating therefrom. The problems have been traced to a faulty gasket that has since been replaced.

Titania Nanotubes May Make Better Solar Cells, Hydrogen Generators

No, not the character from Love's Labour Lost, but a titania nanotube might just make solar energy cost-efficient. I know, tell me if you've heard this one before. Meantime, back at Penn State, researchers are working on titania nanotubes to split hydrogen from water using only sunlight.

More Contempt For Amendment I

The Bush administration, which wouldn't know the First Amendment from first base, has issued a statement condemning the recent publication of a cartoon Muslims found offensive because it depicts Mohammed. That by itself is blasphemy, according to the imams, but worse, they portrayed him as a fellow with a bomb in his bonnet.

I could go on about the meaning of freedom of the press including the right to be offensive, especially to the Muslim mob; surprisingly enough, I agree wholehartedly with this New Republic Online article, to a limited extent, which rightly castigates Bill Clinton for his wrongheaded support of the outraged Muslims. If the West has accomplished anything since the days of the Praetorian Guard, it is this: nobody's idea of piety should be taken as law over empirical fact. That the Muslims still can't grasp this -- when was the last time you heard of a Nobel laureate in the sciences from Cairo? -- is testamony to their blinkered worldview. But that men such as Clinton, and Bush's henchmen, both of whom ought to know better, should issue condemnations for the works of such wits is preposterous.

Update: More on this at Reason, whose Tim Cavanaugh has published his usually clear-headed commentary.

Peak Oil? Can I Introduce You To Peak Tar Sands?

Running out of oil? What about the tar sands? asks Shell president Jeroen van der Veer, in response to Bush's State of the Union address.

Jeroen van der Veer, Shell's chief, said: "President Bush has to run America and we have to run Shell, but there is a huge energy challenge in the world. We have plenty of opportunities. This is not about proved resources, but hydrocarbon resources."

Shell was feeling "very good" about the prospect of finding plenty of oil and gas, by developing hitherto untouched parts of the globe.

World oil and gas production was nowhere near peaking because of the potential of untapped reserves made economic by the higher oil price.

He said: "There is the theory of 'peak oil' - that the big discoveries have all gone. But we don't know where the peak will come with oil sands. With oil shale, we have not yet started. There will be many peaks in many time frames."

Well, maybe. Let's just see you actually do it, buster... Meantime, "[Shell] admitted it only replaced six or seven of every 10 barrels the company extracted last year, up from five out of every 10 in 2004."

What Fun

Heh:

(UCS News:Washington D.C.) George W. Bush lashed out at US citizens blaming them for the current instability in the middle east. "You have forced your government to invade oil producing nations and to have relationships with unsavory countries like Saudi Arabia." "The US is addicted to oil and this has got to stop, regardless of my campaign donors windfall profits." he said.

The President then blasted his Vice President Dick Cheney. "I have had enough of Mr. Cheney, his days of cuddling with oil companies is over!" The President went on to say that he would release the names of oil company executives and documents generated by the Vice President's energy Task force. Mr. Bush stated "It's time the public knows how deeply big oil has corrupted my Government."

&c...

State Of The Moron

I didn't listen to the State of the Union address last night, knowing it wouldn't matter, though I did see via Drudge that Bush has made the comment that maybe, possibly, imported oil is a problem. Well, duh. It's a reason for possible optimism that he's mentioning it at all, but perhaps more subtly, this amounts to a belated recognition of the failure of his Iraq policy. Wasn't Iraq's oil going to get us off the hook for our energy problems? It didn't, not with China and India coming online, and so we hear that foreign oil is bad.

The arrest of Cindy Sheehan was probably the most symbolic moment of the night; Bush plans on demolishing free speech, and unfortunately, with the Supreme Court packed with rubber stamp creeps like Alito, it's likely to get worse. The Democrats won't be any better; for the reasons why, see the Daily Kos thread about their newfound respect for the rule of law, and yet on the same front page, Kos himself claims that Clinton's failure to engage the services of a judge and get a warrant prior to a search of Aldrich Ames' home was somehow ameliorated by later signing a (unconstitutional) law into force that exempted him from needing to do so! It's all very repulsive, and a reminder that power flows from the end of a gun, just like Mao said; and if the ballot box works a good second place in this country, it might not be for much longer if these sorts of creeps get into office and their apologist hacks win the day, on either side of the aisle.