Energy News

Live Science Writer Falls For Possible Abiotic Oil Scam

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Live Science has what I think is a very misleading article about oil. This is quite common, actually. We desperately need to believe that oil is going to appear magically, forever. Unfortunately, most oil, coal or gas deposits developed thanks to the earth's environment taking really wild swings especially several spectacular extinction cycles.

Live Science:

Nature has been transmuting dead life into black gold for millions of years using little more than heat, pressure and time, scientists tell us.

But with gas prices spiking more than $1 per gallon in the United States this year and some experts predicting that the end of oil is near, scientists still don't know for sure where oil comes from, how long it took to make, or how much there is.

A so-called fossil fuel, petroleum is believed by most scientists to be the transformed remains of long dead organisms. The majority of petroleum is thought to come from the fossils of plants and tiny marine organisms. Larger animals might contribute to the mix as well.

"Even some of the dinosaurs may have gotten involved in some of this," says William Thomas, a geologists at the University of Kentucky. "[Although] I think it would be quite rare and a very small and insignificant contribution."

But another theory holds that more oil was in Earth from the beginning than what's been produced by dead animals, but that we've yet to tap it.

How it works

In the leading theory, dead organic material accumulates on the bottom of oceans, riverbeds or swamps, mixing with mud and sand. Over time, more sediment piles on top and the resulting heat and pressure transforms the organic layer into a dark and waxy substance known as kerogen.

The idea that petroleum is formed from dead organic matter is known as the "biogenic theory" of petroleum formation and was first proposed by a Russian scientist almost 250 years ago.

In the 1950's, however, a few Russian scientists began questioning this traditional view and proposed instead that petroleum could form naturally deep inside the Earth.

This so-called "abiogenic" petroleum might seep upward through cracks formed by asteroid impacts to form underground pools, according to one hypothesis. Some geologists have suggested probing ancient impact craters in the search for oil.

Abiogenic sources of oil have been found, but never in commercially profitable amounts. The controversy isn't over whether naturally forming oil reserves exist, said Larry Nation of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. It's over how much they contribute to Earth's overall reserves and how much time and effort geologists should devote to seeking them out.

Great meteor impacts of course also cause major extinction events. This is, in other words, times when tremendous masses of living things cease living simultaneously. This leaves lots of rotting debris. And virtually no one to eat the dead. Instead, the climate takes a severe turn and coupled with the death of many living things, the mountains are stripped bare as if humans were logging there, heh. And water runs down and takes tons of rock and dirt and this washes over the dead creatures and plants, burying them.

Or the great Ice Age cycles which have been going on, more or less, for millions of years. Cyclothems:

VII. Periodicity of cycles.
Mid Pennsylvanian estimates:
Arizona: 352 ka (Connolly and Stanton, 1992)

Other widely separated areas with different tectonic settings and styles of sedimentation:

235-400 ka (Heckel, 1986)
330-370 ka (Algeo, 1991)
230-385 ka (Goldhammer, et al., 1991).

Given the error margins of time scales these still fall within the upper end of the Milankovitch band!!..... eccentricty of the Earth's orbit.
To make such a inference suggests that astronomic variables were the modulators of late Paleozoic ice sheet fluctuations as during the late Pliocene-Pleistocene. Would such be the case in the Paleozoic world?

VIII. Cause.

¥Recent work has resulted in sea-level curves on the order of 60-100 meters.

¥Glacial eustasy is the only major mechanism for global sea-level changes of this magnitude and with the stated periodicity.

A. Estimates of Carboniferous ice volume and sea level response (Crowley and Baum, 1991).

Based on application of area volume relationships developed for Quaternary ice sheets
estimates derived for Westphalian (305Ma)
Three estmates made with different ice extent configurations
Ice I- 17.9 million sq. km 39.8 million cubic km
Ice II- 27.2 million sq. km 63.9 million cubic km
Ice III- 40.0 million sq. km 108.4 million cubic km
Greatest ice in West Gondwana, Antarctica-India-Mad., Australia, Andean
sea level influence of Ice I (once volume adjusted to a water equivalent by mult. by 91.7% and reducing the sea level equivalent by 28.4% to adjust for the isostatic effects of ice loading on continental shelves) = 45-75m
For comparision these figures are for the max. Pleistocene reconstruction
Laurentide ice sheet- 11.6 million sq. km
East Antarctic ice sheet- 10.2 million sq. km 21.8 million sq. km
Maximum Pleistocene global ice volume- 65.4 million sq. km.

B. Estimates of mid-continental Pennsylvanian sea level variations between maximum regressive phase and maximum flooding surface (Klein, 1992).

In other words, time periods like the Mississippian which produced tremendous amounts of coal on the American continent, was a time of occilating hot/cold cycles which alternately flooded the continent which rode pretty low in the water, the only mountains being the barest beginnings of the Appalachians. My corner of the continent, upstate New York, had the highest ground back then which is why we have no coal seams here, unlike the Appalachians. The main coal producing areas in America alternated between flooded by hyper-warm seas and then when Ice Ages took enough water out of the ecosystem to drop the sea level by 50+feet, the land exposed would first be sand dunes and windswept salt plains and then slowly colonized by land plants and animals and then huge forests would end up colonizing what was earlier, shallow seas and then suddenly, the ice would melt rapidly thanks to the rise in CO2 plus the sun, never a quiet star to begin with, flaring up again in its eternal cycles, and the water would, over a million years, reflood the continents and this cycle happened again and again while living things, struggling to survive this very variable cycle, was sufficiently stressed to cause tremendous Darwinian evolution.

This is why we see layers that have sharp boundries. The occilating climate/tectonic plate movement/volcano/sun cycles are why huge globs of rotting carcasses and plants have been sealed away multiple times in the distant past.

But today, this is very unlikely. As the table I presented here shows, the Ice Ages of the Permian past were hugely, gigantically greater than the ones that have occured during our own evolution. 108 million cubic kilometers back then compared to a measly 11.6 million c km during the last Ice Age!

This makes me wonder about something humans tend to forget: was there more H2O back then? We know Mars had more water. It is nearly gone. My grandfather used to study Mars up at Mt. Wilson Observatory. Going back to the turn of the 19th century, he drew the ever-changing landscape of Mars. Definitely, the poles were bigger. Each time the sun blasts us, our own lithosphere barely saves us from destruction but Mars has very little to protect itself to each cycle, the sun strips off a little more and eventually the planet will be as dry as the moon.

The ice moons around Saturn still retain much of their primal ice because they are very far from the sun, I am guessing.

Well, we are very much closer to the sun! And thanks to living things, we have had, for much of our planet's life, a generous blanket of various gasses to protect us! Except during the great extinctions. Especially during the Permian extinction which was the worst one of all.

There would have been precious little evolution if the climate remained steady-state. A rapidly changing environment is the engine that fuels drastic changes in evolution. And this runs alongside the creation of oil. There could be no oil if there were no violent swings in water/land cycles. Instead, this is the bedrock of energy which is why geologists look for oil, it isn't like using pigs to find truffles.

They have to understand geological applications to know where to look and they know that oil exists mostly where there have been great tepid seas/severely dry deserts/lush vegetation/tepid sea cycles over and over again!

Birmingham Edu:

Natural petroleum has formed from fossil organic material throughout geologic time, but because a minimum amount of time is required to form oil and gas, no deposits younger than 2 million years are known. Since petroleum in many older rocks has since been eroded away or heated to high temperatures where it breaksdown to methane, 60 percent of the world petroleum reserves are less than 65 million years old. Organic material is buried in fine grained sediments where is is protected from being oxidized by relatively rapid burial in an oxygen poor environment. Burial in more porous units such as sandstone results in oxidation of most of the organic material before it has a chance to be converted into useful hydrocarbons. Buried organic material is converted to Kerogen during diagenesis at shallow depths and temperatures below 50 degrees C. Kerogen converts to oil at temperatures of 50 to 100 degrees at depths of 2 to 4 kms. Burial at depths of 4 to 7 kms and temperature of 100 to 200 degrees C results in oil being converted to natural gases (propane, butane, etc.). Still deeper burial (greater than 7 kms) and hooter temperatures (greater than 200 degrees C.) converts complex natural gases into methane CH4. Oil prospectors look for rock units that have not been buried below 4 kms and have not been heated above 100 degrees C, because oil is worth much more than natural gas. A oil reservoir need 4 things: 1. a source rock; 2. a reservoir rock; 3. a capping layer above the reservoir; and a structural trap (such as an anticline, fault, or salt dome) or a stratigraphic trap (such as a channel deposit, an isolated beach or bar deposit, or a lateral facies change).

So not only does oil bearing strata have to be a certain age, they must have only so much sedimentary layering above themselves or the organic matter is overheated. And the deeper one goes into the earth, the warmer it is and 100 million years ago, it was warmer indeed.

And all oil prospectors know, salt domes can often hide fine oil deposits. Saudi Arabia was very low in the water up until Africa hit it and rammed it into Eurasia. So the multiple Ice Age/Hyper Warm occilations layered a tremendous amount of dead matter in such a fashion as to make it one of the greatest oil fields on earth.

Not one drop of which is abiotic!

We humans have to face the truth: either we change or we die and become oil, ourselves.

Culture of Life Main Page

22% Of Gulf Of Mexico Oil Rigs Destroyed Last Summer

Elaine Meinel Supkis

The report is just in. 113 petroleum platforms in the Gulf destroyed completely last year. Many gas and oil lines destroyed. This was a huge hit on the world oil markets. And the oil companies are making a lot of money not pumping oil.

New Orleans:

5/1/2006, 2:36 p.m. CT
By ALAN SAYRE
The Associated Press
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Hurricanes Katrina and Rita destroyed 113 petroleum production platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, a federal agency overseeing offshore drilling said Monday.

The storms also damaged 457 pipelines connecting production facilities in the Gulf and bringing oil and natural gas to shore — a sharp rise from the 183 damaged pipelines identified in January, the Minerals Management Service said.
Interruption of the Gulf supply has played a role in the recent round of record-high oil and gasoline prices. Officials have said that it is likely that as much as a fifth of the Gulf's normal daily oil production of 140,000 barrels will still be off market when the next hurricane season begins on June 1.

The MMS warned that additional damage likely would be discovered as more underwater inspections are conducted.

"These have been delayed because of overwhelmed support resources, such as diving equipment, support vessels, and remotely operated vehicles," said MMS regional director Chris Oynes.

Of the 113 destroyed platforms, four replacements have been approved by the MMS. The agency said those will take the place of eight destroyed platforms with a pre-storm daily production of 16,700 barrels.

I was curious about the lack of curiosity shown by the press about the oil rigs being wrecked. When hurricane Dennis raged through the Gulf of Mexico, it caused a bit of damage which made zero news impact. Just like the 5+mag earthquake right in the middle of these same oil fields was pretty much ignored, too. One would imagine with high fuel costs and the fact that our nation is now importing much more than the official figures of foreign oil, one would imagine the top brains in the news business would be hard at work on this story.

Well, I am glad the blogsphere forced the media to talk about how Colbert made Bush squirm at his "roast." Of course, if Bush were to go biking without guards, he would get a lot more flack than he got out of this TV comedian.

Mother Nature likes to balance stuff. Put something in, She takes something out. We have released the energy and chemistry of many millions of years of sun shining on Her creatures who were then killed nearly wholesale, all at once, at the end of the Permian. Much of our oil today came from that holocaust. Nearly everything died. Then lots and lots of dirt washed off of the land and it covered the moldering dead forests of primitive plantlife. Huge, thick layers of compost that built up during the glory years of the first flowering of life on earth, unimaginably thick peat, peat that was so thick, all forms of compost today are a molehill in comparison, this peat was crushed by the rocks and dirt and super-salty seas spread over this dark matter and over the eons, it was crushed, smashed into a warm stew, a liquid trapped under hundreds of feet of rock and salt.

Mother Nature abhors imbalance. Once things get out of whack, Her pendulum becomes a Edgar Allen Poe swinging scythe that hisses as it swishes out of the dark, swooping down and then rising up in its arc of destruction. We suck in our stomachs as this scythe hisses down over us and then breathe easy as it moves upwards again.

But each swing, it is set slightly lower. So it is with us today. We pump in greenhouse gasses and each season cycle, the effects are more and more exaggerated. Eventually, all hurricanes might be catagory 5s. There is that possibility.

Culture of Life News Main Page

Many Americans Want Cheaper Oil But Don't Want To Stop Sabre Rattling

There are two propaganda points used by our rulers to fool us about oil. One is, China is using oil ergo, prices are going up. The other one is, sudden oil price hikes have nothing to do with recessions, they are caused by "inflation." Both are false.

WP:

By Robert J. Samuelson
Wednesday, May 3, 2006; Page A23

The United States has the energy policy it deserves, although not the one it needs. Having been told for years that their addiction to cheap gasoline was on a collision course with increasingly insecure supplies of foreign oil, Americans are horrified to discover that this is actually the case. But for all the public outcry and political hysteria, high gasoline prices haven't significantly hurt the economy -- and may not do so. Since 2003 the economy has grown about 3.6 percent annually. It's still advancing briskly. That may be the real news.

But first, how did we get to $3 a gallon? The basic story is simple enough. Oil was cheap in the 1990s. From 1993 to 1999, crude prices averaged about $17 a barrel. Low prices discouraged exploration and encouraged consumption. China emerged as a big user. In 1995 global demand was about 70 million barrels daily; now it's almost 84 million barrels daily.

This little story leaves out a lot of information. First, our "economy" is growing only because of the false yen/yuan/dollar triangle. We are building virtually no factories nor anything worth exporting, we are simply consuming like mad and this is due 100% to the fact that Asian importers are bankrolling every penny we spend. This is very bad on many, way too many, levels.

Secondly, the rise in "demand" has been fueled to a great degree by the USA. This happened in two ways. One is, our output has dropped dramatically especially in the last year. Namely, we are not pumping as much oil as before and we are importing much more than before. So our impact on world markets is double since we also consume more oil than ten years ago. Our population is rapidly rising due to illegal immigration on top of this so there are many more oil consumers and they all drive cars just like all Americans.

And gas guzzling isn't only bad, we live much further from work than a mere ten years ago! So commuting use of oil is way up over the previous several decades!

Of course, ignoring reality has a downside. Congress, Bush, everyone is anxious to drop the price of oil. But at the very same time, they are all sabre rattling like mad! At Iran! It is louder than ever! Bang that oil drum!

The Iranians are openly laughing at us as we run in circles here, shrieking like demented children being sprayed by a hose, "Why is oil so expensive?" The WP story above is just as clueless.

Spare production capacity slowly vanished, meaning that now any supply interruption -- or rumor of interruption -- sends prices up sharply. An Iraqi pipeline is attacked; prices jump. Nigerian rebels menace oil fields; prices jump.

Note how the reporter very carefully leaves out any mention about Congress, Bush and the media's sabre rattling! It just doesn't bear mentioning.

It is like a man hammering on his thumb screaming, "Someone stop the pain!"

It's conventional wisdom that big increases in oil prices usually trigger a recession -- or at least a sharp slowdown. Why haven't they? One oft-cited reason is that the economy has become more energy-efficient. True. Compared with 1973, Americans use 57 percent less oil and natural gas per dollar of output; compared with 1990, the decline is 24 percent. Cars and trucks have gotten more efficient, though not much more so since 1990. New industries (software programming, health clubs) use less energy than the old (steelmaking, farming). But there's a larger reason: The conventional wisdom is wrong .

Comparing 1973 with 1990 is false. I have lived a long time, on my own. Since 1967, when I was just 16. So, having paid bills, fought for raises, lived the horrors of more than one economic downturn, I have a lot of built-in knowledge.

During my long life, nearly every bad recession had two shadows: war and oil. War and oil, over and over again. The Vietnam war plus the Arab/Israeli wars caused not only oil prices to shoot up, they caused inflation because ALL GOVERNMENTS DEBASE CURRENCIES DURING WARS!

This is a rock hard, iron-clad rule.

During the Iran/Iraq war, the same problems here thanks to the fact that we started to heavily arm again to fight Russia and to side with Saddam in an oil war! Interest rates had to go up to stop the raging inflation caused by the oil wars and eventually, we righted our ship by going into the Bretton Woods II agreement with Japan which started the Japanese sucking up all our excess dollars for us to hide inflation.

Yet when Bush went to war with Saddam over Kuwaiti oil, again! War+oil=recession! Duh! Now here we are again, the same stupid formula. Pretending inflation comes out of nowhere is insane. We have inflated our buying ability by exporting our inflation to China which uses cheap human labor to wring wealth out of resources. But the rising cost of oil caused by this process coupled with wars we launched has created the classic war+oil=inflation nexus. Pretending there will be no inflation and the Japanese people will do without energy or comfort and billions will be worked and starved to death across the planet just so we can have no inflation is insanity because workers around the world are getting very violent about this. Unlike American workers, they don't intend to bear all the costs of this oily war stuff themselves.

Government will be rent limb from limb by enraged populations.

Big oil price increases in the past (1973-74, 1979-80 and 1990-91) did not cause recessions, though recessions occurred at roughly the same time. The connection has been repeated so often that most people probably accept it as gospel. But much economic research has concluded that it's a myth. These recessions resulted mainly from rising inflation -- inflation that preceded higher oil prices -- and the Federal Reserve's efforts to suppress it. Higher oil prices merely made matters slightly worse. In 1980, for example, consumer prices rose 12.5 percent; excluding energy prices, they increased 11.7 percent.

The Washington Post deliberately leaves out all mention of wars so they can pretend it is pure coincidence that oil prices go up and inflation is already up so it is just another manifestation of inflation.

On this blog, I keep track of many seemingly odd matters. Bees, for example. Yet bees are part of the energy system, the economy, the ecosystem and world events. Everything is tied intimately into everything else. Our abuse of oil has not only accelerated the run up the Hubbert Oil Peak, it is causing terrible problems for all of nature due to greenhouse gasses! The paving of America thanks to cheap oil has destroyed millions of acres of prime farmlands while using oil to farm is destroying even more acreage. Our lifestyle is very destructive for this planet. If all humans lived like us, it would take six planet earths.

We are the engine of world inflation. Our expectations of consuming all the planet is being bankrolled by nations that consume far less than we, they not only make everything for us, they do it while living in miserable squalor. Even the Japanese. They have been the number 2 economy for years and they live terribly restricted lives.

This may explain the economy's resilience. One hopeful sign: most nonenergy companies aren't yet passing along higher energy costs to their customers. "Businesses have had wide profit margins," says Mark Zandi of Moody's Economy.com. "They may be willing to eat the higher costs." In 2006, he expects the economy to grow 3.5 percent, with average unemployment of 4.7 percent.

Indeed, he thinks oil prices may retreat to about $50 a barrel, from today's levels of about $70, later this year. Higher prices will slightly dampen demand, and added supplies will create some spare production capacity. Naturally, he could be wrong. Energy economist Philip K. Verleger Jr. thinks oil could be headed for $100 a barrel, with inflation going to 5 percent and inducing a recession. Continuing strong oil demand will collide with rigid supply (both production and refining). The conventional wisdom -- wrong in the past -- could be right in the future.

Almost never are manufacturers or businesses selling discressionary items able to pass on inflation easily. This is because consumers simply cut back, too! But as in all previous inflationary cycles, the hard necessities shoot up in price. The pretense we have low inflation is laughable. I live on a fixed income and it hurts! It hurts badly! I see personal inflation of over 10%.

As for the silly prediction oil will be going for less than $50 a barrel: hahaha. If we impeach Bush, maybe, but then the Democrats are sabre rattling as furiously as the Republicans! This is because they want to scare Iran and protect the Israelis as they steal Palestinian lands. So I see no end to price hikes. As Iran laughs at us, we rattle harder and harder. We bluster and snarl and they laugh at us again. They tease us by poking at Israel and Israel then bristles and talks nuclear war.

And if oil+war+inflation, oil+nuclear bombing= WWIII. And I dare not put a price tag on that. It is too many trillions of dollars. Uninflated dollars.

Culture of Life News Main Page

Now Bolivia Nationalizes Gas Fields

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Bolivia is nationalizing their collective national resources. What an amazing idea! Instead of using public resources to enrich a very few, it will be used for the entire nation. Meanwhile, as American energy companies make record breaking profits, American schools struggle to run their buses and buildings.

NYT:

By PAULO PRADA
Published: May 2, 2006
RIO DE JANEIRO, May 1 — President Evo Morales of Bolivia ordered the military to occupy energy fields around the country on Monday as he placed Bolivia's oil and gas reserves under state control.

Surrounded by soldiers at an oil field operated by the Brazilian energy giant Petróleo Brasileiro, or Petrobras, Mr. Morales ordered foreign producers to relinquish control of all fields and channel future sales of hydrocarbons through the state-owned energy company.

He gave foreign companies 180 days to renegotiate existing contracts with the government, or leave the country.

"The time has come, the awaited day, a historic day in which Bolivia retakes absolute control of our natural resources," Mr. Morales declared, according to The Associated Press. "The looting by the foreign companies has ended."

The decree is the latest step by Latin America governments from Venezuela to Ecuador to assert greater control over the energy sector, moves that have sent shivers through foreign producers.

Shivers? How about insane hysteria! After the entire American media spent the last five years howling like fiends over Venezuela, now this! The pesky people in South America, one by one, shaking off American sponsored dictators all because America made this big thing about spreading freedom and democracy....no! The oil companies now see clearly the mistake, doing all that propaganda!

The American media is still pushing for democracy and freedom. Dafur! Save Dafur! The people there are being beaten up and their lands stolen! Beat up Palestinians and steal their lands! Oops.

And democracy might come to Saudi Arabia or Egypt. Thoughts about that nightmare keeps oil executives awake, sweating fear. Naturally, once people get to really vote about things they vote for things the oil executives loathe. In America, a lifetime of propaganda about how all natural resources belong only to those people who "find" them is part of the "pot of golden oil at the end of the rainbow" fantasy of sudden wealth, diamonds as big as the Ritz gold rush mentality, it is hard to overcome.

Right now, most Americans realize there is no gold in them thar hills so they go to Vegas or the casinos on the rivers and streams and try to strike it rich there just like in the gold rush days. Meanwhile, everything is falling apart thanks to the high cost of energy.

AP:

By BILL POOVEY,
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. - The high price of diesel fuel for school buses meant children in one Tennessee school system got a holiday Monday — their second in a row.

Some 3,800 youngsters got Friday and Monday off because of the action taken by Dallas Smith, superintendent of Rhea County schools in east Tennessee, to ease transportation spending.

"That kind of situation is probably the most extreme I have heard," said Mike Martin, executive director of the National Association for Pupil Transportation, based in Albany, N.Y., and a spokesman for the Washington-based School Bus Information Council.

Schools were closed last winter, the snow days were taken even though there was precious little snow. Anything to cut costs which are devastating schools and governments and wrecking budgets everywhere. Many people will be laid off, classes made larger, things cut, property taxes will go up and up. And the oil companies love this. Their executives will be living inside of diamonds as big as the Ritz and the slaves will be allowed spartan pens to live in. Whoopee.

AP:

By JEFF DONN, Associated Press Writer Sat Apr 29, 1:57 PM ET
BOSTON - On the brink of the 21st century, a group of energy experts peered into the future of natural gas, and what they saw was quite rosy — and quite wrong.

To satisfy growing demand, producers could crank out a third more natural gas over the next decade at "competitive prices." It could "power our economy" for decades beyond. Or so said the National Petroleum Council in its 1999 report.

But natural gas prices soon headed skyward, with prices charged by producers spiking late last year at nearly five times 1999 levels. This past winter, though starting off warm, saw the average gas-heating household spend a record $867, a 17 percent increase, according to federal data. As for that predicted robust supply, the country's annual gas output has strangely slipped by 3 percent over the past six years.

Something is broken in the economics of natural gas, say people inside and outside the industry. The bright dream of an economy built squarely on clean-burning natural gas is slowly deflating. Although we still derive almost a quarter of the country's energy from natural gas, its share will slip in coming decades, federal forecasters now say.

"What's going on now is so dysfunctional, it is really remarkable," says industry consultant Jim Choukas-Bradley.

As all energy companies rush to the end of the rainbow to collect their pots of gold, they all know that energy gets cheaper if you have more and more expensive if you have less. It is pretty simple. They are not "competing" with anyone. At this point in history, the Hubbert Oil Peak applies to all energy systems since oil is the cheapest element in this system.

Whatever form of BTU is used, it will start off at the point of value of oil. Namely, if oil is cheap, all other systems have to drop prices but if oil is expensive, all can raise their prices. This is why heating a home with electricity is never ever cheaper than heating it with oil. Natural gas was cheaper than oil for a while but only thanks to government controls. Now, free at last, it rises like a bird into the sky. There is zero incentive to increase oil or natural gas production. And at this point in time, it is also geologically impossible.

Alternative fuels like solar and wind energy can be made ever more efficient but it will never be cheap. Instead of living at odds with nature, we will have to live in harmony if we want to be comfortable. Namely, this means becoming used to not living in a bubble and even more so, building so we can take advantage of sun or shade rather than ignoring reality. Americans are by far and away, the world's biggest users of energy. This is now going to become increasingly expensive as we have to price out of reach, much of our energy use.

Xinhua net:

World crude oil prices surged to near 74 dollars Monday amid continued worries over Iran and Bolivia.

New York's main contract, light sweet crude for delivery in June, rose 1.82 dollars to close at 73.70 dollars a barrel. On London's ICE Futures exchange, the price of Brent North Sea crude for June delivery was up 1.87 dollars to finish at 73.89 dollars a barrel.

Traders are concerned about the possibilities that Iran's oil exports would halt if the United Nations imposes an international sanction on Teheran for its nuclear activities.U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Sunday that the United States might seek actions against Iran outside the United Nations Security Council.

The UN Security Council on Friday received IAEA's report on Iran, which says Tehran failed to comply with UN deadline to end uranium enrichment activities.

The United States, along with Britain and France, have been hoping to push the United Nations Security Council to pass a resolution to punish Iran for its noncompliance. However, Russia has been reluctant to see Iran under sanctions.

Countries unable to tap into world financing systems unlike super-red-ink America, are really hurting now. Every time Bush and his oily friends swing the sword of war and sanctions over the head of the defiant Iranians, thousands of people perish in distant third world countries. If this keeps up, next year, thousands of Americans will die, too. Even as we pretend to worry about Dafur, our government is showing depraved indifference when it comes to millions of Pakistanis or Indians rioting over high energy prices.

How many people will be facing starvation in two years because of this? Not just in Dafur but all over? Hyper inflation is already beginning to devour the world's poorest nations. Eventually, the cyclone of currency devaluations will visit our own shores. Already, the dollar staggers onwards, propped up only by the yen and yuan. And the yuan is letting us go.

Culture of Life News Main Page

Japanese Government Ordering Employees To Not Use Elevators

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Japan is the second largest economy in the world. And they are desperately trying to squeeze out very last yen from their energy systems because they are facing very serious financial problems due to the high cost of energy. The balancing act between Japan and the USA client state is becoming a serious problem for the Japanese.

AP:

Staff at Japan's Health Ministry are being asked to ditch the elevator and take the stairs as the ministry strives to conserve energy and reduce the risk of obesity and health-related problems among its employees, a newspaper reported Sunday.

From Monday, staff and visitors to the 26-story building in downtown Tokyo will be greeted with a sign in the elevator lobby saying "Please use the stairs," the Asahi newspaper reported.

The idea was proposed by a senior ministry official who overheard employees grumbling about the long wait for elevators since the ministry suspended the daytime use of six of its 18 elevators to curb global warming, the Asahi said.

I read all sorts of stories about how Japan is trying to wring out the costs of higher energy by simply eliminating all sorts of support systems. Not heating buildings in the northern half of Japan during the winter, cutting air conditioning in Tokyo's hot, humid summer is yet another. The Japanese have to keep their balance of trade firmly in the surplus column. Why does the world's number 2 economy always run a huge surplus? While the world's supposedly number one runs an ever widening deficit?

Since Reagan took over DC, America has had a trade deficit with Japan that only gets worse and worse. The Chinese, when they sent people around the world to study economic systems, examined the Japanese/American dysfunctional trade model and decided to imitate the Japanese not the Americans. This was a gigantic success. The Japanese, like the Americans, have to prevent inflation or their dysfunctional relationship with their main "trading" partner will collapse. To do this, they had to set up factories in cheap labor countries like China which has in turn, caused Japan to run a tighter trade relationship with China which used to be in Japan's favor but no longer is, thus all the sabre rattling by the Japanese.

If energy didn't rise in price, the Japanese could easily evade opening their markets to the Chinese but now, thanks to energy costs, inflation has begun to creep into deliberately deflated Japan. Yes, the yen is kept on a very short leash and is allowed to mostly only drop against the dollar! This is vital for the US importers who must keep inflation off the books. If the Japanese admit to inflation, this means no more cheap IOUs they can hand out like candy. This means setting realistic interest rates. And worker unrest.

The working class has been hammered brutally in Japan. So have the outer villages and towns that reaped the benefits of the USA/Japanese unbalanced trade as the government plowed trillions of yen into various construction and government projects. Now that is being ruthlessly cut back because of this hidden inflation. So instead of inflating money, the Japanese are restricting it by cutting and cutting. This deflationary process ends up killing the communities it hits.

NYT:

By NORIMITSU ONISHI
Published: April 30, 2006
OGAMA, Japan — This mountain village near the Sea of Japan, withered to eight aging residents, concluded recently that it could no longer go on.

In Ogama, many houses and fields have been abandoned as residents left to find work in cities, a trend that threatens Japan's rural villages.
So, after months of anguish, the villagers settled on a drastic solution: selling all of Ogama to an industrial waste company from Tokyo, which will turn it into a landfill.

With the proceeds, the villagers, mainly in their 70's, plan to pack up everything, including their family graves, and move in the next few years to yet uncertain destinations, likely becoming the first community in Japan to voluntarily cease to exist.

The unbalanced system created by the present form of international trade means countries pegging themselves into only exporting end up esvicerating themselves. Namely, internal trade matters! Peasants across the planet are beginning to understand this. The rush to create things to be traded far away must not interfer with primary, internal trade! Protecting one's own internal trade while shipping out things that others need but can't get any other place is what trade is all about. When Europeans wanted indigo dyes, for example, they needed to trade something for the indigo (this was fixed two ways: capturing islands in the New World, removing by force, slaves from Africa and then using both to grow their own indigo rather than trading with the Far East!). Rubber came from the Amazon and wheat from the great plains of Russia and the USA. Every country that started a manufacturing base used it first to make things for itself.

Britain was the first to need to sell their manufactured goods outside of their homebase. They did this by forcing unfair trade with their colonies. This kept the colonies in debt to the home base in London and England then became a banking center since they held all the IOUs from the colonies.

Japan thought it had solved the riddle of trade vs internal use. They simply made their people live debased lives rather than raise their standard of living, deliberately keeping their own people's standards below the top 20 industrialized nations. Indeed, as America runs on only red ink, our standard of living has shot up thanks to the Japanese (and the Chinese imitation of the Japanese model). We live in bigger houses, dress better (though tastelessly), eat like fiends, drive much bigger and fancier cars than even 15 years ago, we are literally high off the hog here. The Japanese cornocupia of plenty has poured into our laps even as the Japanese are now forced to struggle along with increasing privations.

WP:

By IRWAN FIRDAUS
The Associated Press
Monday, May 1, 2006; 5:38 AM

JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Workers across Asia rallied Monday to press for better factory conditions and higher wages, often encountering a heavy police presence and, in some places, outright resistance.

Demonstrations were planned in major cities across Indonesia, with up to 50,000 people expected in the capital alone to protest government plans to revise a labor law. The new law would cut severance packages and introduce more flexible contracts that would chip away at worker security.

Indonesian workers march toward the parliament building during a rally in Jakarta, Indonesia, Monday, May 1, 2006. Tens of thousands of workers marked May Day by taking to the streets of Jakarta and other major cities to demand better employee benefits and urge the government not to change labor laws.
"Don't change the law," thousands of laborers chanted at Jakarta's main downtown roundabout, as others arrived in buses and trucks, waving green, yellow and red flags and banners expressing their demands.

Fearing violence, about 13,000 police were deployed on the streets, some carrying riot shields and manning water cannons, said police chief Maj. Gen. Firman Ganisaid.

Thanks to the baby derth and no foreign labor allowed, there is no labor unrest in Japan. Instead, the status quo is silently accepted and more opt for suicide or removal from participation in the system than taking advantage of today, May Day, to demonstrate for change. The average Japanese worker lives only a precious few degrees better than the average Chinese worker. The wealth generated by the unequal trade with America barely trickles down past the top three levels of society. The Chinese leadership is very aware of this problem and are studying it, seeing if there is some way out of the trap that is now destroying Japan internally.

We, on the other hand, are out on a limb. Our standard of living is stupendous, the best in the whole world but it rests entirely on Asian loans, Asian labor, Asian desire to control our internal markets. And this whole thing is doomed to collapse because it is now so out of whack, it is out of control. We can't run up infinite debts, Asia can't run up infinite trade deficits, this is overdue for a loud crash.

If anyone should be climbing stairs, using no airconditioning or heat and all the other deprivations, it is the USA, not Japan. The fact that this is backwards is not a sign of American strength but of fatally unbalanced international trade dynamics. Only America can break this system down and change it and we refuse to do this because we like consuming without paying.

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