Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation & Risk Management

The_Hirsch_Report_Proj_Cens.pdf (application/pdf Object)

Apparently, Richard Heinberg feels that someone may be suppressing this report.

I don't know. I suppose it's possible, and I have been puzzled and concerned over the lack of coverage this issue receives in US press.

Heinberg complains,

Here, then, is a significant report produced by an independent research company for the US Department of Energy, warning of a global problem of "unprecedented" proportions with economic, social, and political impacts that are likely to be extremely severe. The authors forecast "protracted economic hardship" for the United States and the rest of the world. It is a problem that deserves "immediate, serious attention."

Yet, half a year after its release, the Hirsch report is nowhere to be found. ...

I think that by "nowhere to be found" Heinberg must really mean "nowhere in the mainstream". The report is out there, but you'd never know it without stepping outside the mainstream, which is too bad because it again implies a number of possibilities, none of them particularly agreeable.

Hat tip to Energy Bulletin.

[Update to add a link to Resource Investor's piece on the report.]

[Update to add a link to The Oil Drum's take on the missing report. One of the comments posted to The Oil Drum's piece contained a working link to the Hilltop Lancers' cache of the report, which was said (in Heinberg's piece linked above) to have disappeared. I think it was probably just a typo on Heinberg's part, and then the consequences of cut-and-paste. The link to the Hilltop Lancers site in Heinberg's note starts out with "htto://" not "http://", so of course it didn't work. Hey, I didn't catch that typo the fist time I tried the link either. Maybe Heinberg's eyes are getting old like mine, on top of which the link, as it appears in Heinberg's note, excludes the "http://" part at the beginning.]

Sysinternals Freeware - RootkitRevealer

Sysinternals Freeware - RootkitRevealer
I hope it is not offensive to any possible deity for this old heathen to say, "God bless Bryce and Mark at Sysinternals," but this really pisses me off.

This rootkit shit essentially means that nobody should have confidence in the security of their machines, irrespective of the efforts they expend to keep the operating system up to date, to keep the anti-virus, anti-spyware, boot monitoring and registry guarding software up to date, and all that other horseshit.

It makes me want to just stop using the computer as anything other than a dumb terminal. I'm already doing that for email, having I switched to webmail a few months ago. I've got a few other programs I like, but I might as well toss all that shit, download Knoppix 4.0 and use it exclusively from the CD-Rom to do a few things online.

Whether evil bastards who'll sneak around and take what's not theirs, or computer and software manufacturers who make the products such that the evil bastards can do their piggish thing, some people should burn in hell.

Or, I could just do what I have taken to doing is various other areas - simply decide not to give a shit any more because it does no good.

I might have to modify this post when I'm less angry.

Natural Gas Supply, Demand and Pricing - EnergyPulse

Natural Gas Supply, Demand and Pricing - EnergyPulse

Overall, the expectation that relatively untested (on a massive scale) sources of NG will offset the issues mentioned here is a high stake gamble. Like the Greek tragedies of old, salvation may arrive from out of the blue but submitting our energy future to a complex and fragile series of unverified assumptions is risky indeed.

Here's a good article followed by a discussion thread illustrating, in part, how some people place great faith in what I ignorantly think is economic dogmatism while others are more reality-based.

Interesting reading for while we sail ever closer to the falls.

Robert G. Ingersoll - Wikipedia

"What an organ human speech is when employed by a master." Mark Twain on Ingersoll.

Thanks to Effect Measure for the tip.

Skeptacles: Atheists and Patriots Under God

Skeptacles: Atheists and Patriots Under God: "'I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.'

Stephen Roberts"

OK, so here is the origin of the quote I blogged about in the previous post. Thanks to Keith, a member of the Brights forum, who posted the quote's author's website in this forum thread.

At first glance, Stephen F. Roberts' website seems well worth visiting again, but now I've got to go to work.

Atheists and Patriots Under God

"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."

Stephen Roberts

My first reaction to this quote was that it was spot on. Upon reflection, though, in isolation (as I found it floating around the internet) I think it is lacking.

The quote addresses a person of monotheistic faith who, presumably, rejects all other gods as a tenet of his faith. "Thou shalt have no other gods before me."

Surely the speaker is not atheistic on the basis of dogma.

Or maybe he is. ThoughI tend to doubt it, maybe that's the proper context. I'll try to learn a bit more about the context of quote.

This next quote, which I happened upon while looking into the one above, bothers me a bit more:

"No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered as patriots. This is one nation under God."

George Bush - 41st US President

This one doesn't seem to require much context.

The Hyprogen Economy?

The Daily Telegraph | Hydrogen to 'solve energy crisis': "In Brisbane for the Austmine Mining Innovation from Downunder Conference, Mr Macfarlane said he believed hydrogen fast fusion technology, under development in the United States, was the only viable alternative energy source."

Various sources have uncritically picked up on this comment by the Australian federal Industry and Resources Minister Hon. Ian Macfarlane.

Trouble is, what is this thing he is said to have called "hydrogen fast fusion"? Every Google or Clusty or Lexis Nexis search I did found nothing except in reference to his comment. If I exclude "Macfarlane" from the search ("hydrogen fast fusion" AND NOT "Macfarlane") I get no hits at all.

A site search at his Departments web site yields no hits.

It seems either the term is Mr. Macfarlane's, or he was misrepresented. I'll email him to request a clarification.

Test of Russian Courts

BBC NEWS | Europe | Russian sues Nasa for comet upset

Let's see if this Russian court can come up with a higher-quality ruling than some of the decisions the US Supreme Court has been delivering lately.

Penetrating the Fog, or, He Said She Said

A person I have reason to respect recently suggested that I was not following the hockey stick argument in the right place, and suggested I see an alternative source of information on the topic.

The Hockey Stick is a graph showing the reconstruction of Northern Hemisphere temperature for the past 1000 years. It's the subject of considerable controversy.

This controversy is a perfect example of the difficulty in trying to make sense of the world, and why I so like the line from The Quiet American that goes something like:

Sometimes, in order to preserve your sanity, you just have to pick sides.

The climate scientists behind the Hockey Stick run a blog called RealClimate.org.

Some of the chief Hockey Stick detractors run another blog (the alternative I was referred to) called ClimateAudit.org.

I decided to add ClimateAudit to my regular rounds because among the very few certainties I hold is that I am frequently mistaken. Maybe I'm too easily impressed with the Hockey Stick.

Well, it turns out I had read ClimateAudit before, and after a while had turned away. Now that I've again invested several hours in seeing what they have to say, I intend to read their stuff for a while longer, but frankly, I'm afraid I'm going to have to turn away again. I'm just not persuaded that their arguments are as likely as RealClimate's Hockey Stick to represent reality.

How do I make that determination? Malcolm Gladwell, the author of The Turning Point, wrote another book, Blink, reporting on how human beings deal with complex situations through a process of rapid cognition involving a process called "thin slicing". Gladwell's book is about snap judgments and first impressions, whereas the process I appear to use in deciding how to pick my side is longer-term. I think there's still some "thin slicing" type of stuff going on between my ears, and I think it's a valid enough mechanism. Valid enough, but subject to error, which means I always have to entertain some uncertainty about my positions.

Why turn away though? Because I only have a certain amount of time, and I don't want to spend it all trying to penetrate the fog enshrouding the issue of climate change. I have other interests and concerns, too.

Based on what I know and read and see, I think the odds are quite high that the scientists behind RealClimate.org are more credible than the minerals consultants and economists behind ClimateAudit.org. I agree with Scientific American, whereas my referrer probably agrees more with the Wall Street Journal.

Scientists and economists. Maybe they're all priests. I'll stick with the scientists for now.

For every expert there's an equal and opposite reexpert. - Anonymous

Onward through the fog together.

What he said. Kinda.

BBC [To] pretend this emotional, ad hoc response to the complex and chronic problem of famine in Africa made a positive difference was naive, rooted in a fictional idea that rock changes the world.

I'm so sick of Bono.

Debunking the Debunkers - American Prospect Online

Debunking the Debunkers - American Prospect Online

The Wall Street Journal lost me as a subscriber a while back because, thought their reporting on events was good, their editorial policy was, well, not to my liking.

What precipitated my departure was their support for Bjorn Lomborg and their adoration of his book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, which I read and though was clearly bullshit (along with a bunch of other people whose views I respect).

When WSJ's support of Lomborg extended to their completely ignoring news of Lomborg's censure by the Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty (not one syllable in the WSJ), I left.

Now WSJ is debunking climate change science on their editorial pages, and their Rep. Barton has scheduled hearings in the House to that end.

One can only hope that the Barton hearings will trip them up on the basis that when you call hearings, you have to actually listen to testimony.

Or maybe that's the catch.

Only 85 years of Uranium Supplies?

ALTERNATIVE ENERGY BLOG: Only 85 years of Uranium Supplies?

James in London publishes one of the blogs I regularly visit and whose RSS feed I subscribe to. He's got a good blog and puts out good information. I clicked on one of his Google adds because the company it linked to is preparing to market roof-top heliostats, which are a particular interest of mine. I built a small heliostat back in 1978, and then again in college about eight years later. It worked, too. I think heliostats make a great deal of sense and I wish them all the success in the world.

In the post I link here, James reports on the position of some anti-nuclear people, the New Economics Foundation. I think the position of the NEF is unwise, so I tried to make a case to that effect. I only regret that there were a couple of things I didn't say (possibly due to haste in the service of domestic tranquility).

What I should have included was that my support of nuclear energy in no way is meant to denigrate any clean energy source. I support anything that makes sense on the energetic front (I worry that some popular renewable schemes don't provide substantial positive net energy, but that's the subject of a prior post).

I might have included that a joule of nuclear energy might displace one from coal, and I might have mentioned support of conservation. I can always think of ways I might have said things more better, eh? Oh, well, maybe some of James' other readers will make those points for me.

Corrupt Hypocrites, and Stupid, Too

"I hate to ask your help with something so silly," Jack Abramoff wrote to his friend Daniel Lapin on September 15, 2000. Abramoff, of course, is the now-disgraced Republican lobbyist who stands accused of defrauding several Indian tribes of millions of dollars and trying to buy off various Republican congressmen. Lapin is a Seattle-based rabbi who is a close friend and spiritual advisor to Abramoff. Now Abramoff, at the time still hustling his way to the top of Washington lobbying, was coming to him for help:

I have been nominated for membership in the Cosmos Club, which is a very distinguished club in Washington, DC, comprised of Nobel Prize winners, etc. Problem for me is that most prospective members have received awards and I have received none. I was wondering if you thought it possible that I could put that I have received an award from Toward Tradition with a sufficiently academic title, perhaps something like Scholar of Talmudic Studies?... Indeed, it would be even better if it were possible that I received these in years past, if you know what I mean. Anyway, I think you see what I am trying to finagle here!

Indeed he did. "Mazel tov, the Cosmos Club is a big deal," Lapin replied. A few days, later the rabbi wrote again:

Let's organize your many prestigous awards so they're ready to 'hang on the wall.'... I just need to know what needs to be produced. Letters? Plaques? Neither?

"Probably just a few clever titles of awards, dates and that's it," Abramoff replied.

Clever indeed. ...

These guys were around when Ollie North [*] got himself in trouble over emails he thought he'd deleted. That they were so free in their email exchanges shows them to be stupid. Maybe that's why they are corrupt.

[*] "...self-incriminating computer notes that indicated his deep involvement in drug trafficking, as North did; ..."

If there's a Hell, there's got to be a special corner just for assholes like these.

"Iraq is gonna get it."

All this talk about the 2002 Downing Street memos again brings back a memory seared into my brain by the surprise I felt at the time.

This was a week or two after the WTC attack on September 11, 2001, a time during which all sorts of closed-door meetings were being held in the Senate and elsewhere. The media, it seemed, had reporters and cameras parked outside these closed doors at all times.

At the conclusion of one of these meetings (probably a meeting of the Senate Intelligence or Foreign Relations Committees), as the members streamed out from behind the massive doors, a camera at about shoulder height recorded the sights and sounds of the distinguished gentlemen passing by.

As Senator Jesse Helms walked past the camera he looked at it and said, "Iraq is gonna get it."

I was floored by the indiscretion of the statement and because it was the first mention I'd heard of Iraq in connection with the WTC attack. My sense is that Iraq was always "gonna get it" and that the WTC attack only added further cover.

As the Iraq invasion drew closer and closer my position became that the war was probably necessary. The real reason had to do with bringing about change in the Arab Muslim world, to increase the chances for democratic change, which would, in turn, make the governments there more answerable to the populace, thereby reducing conditions leading to Islamic radicalism and terror. Something like that. In other words, I thought the neocons might be right.

I thought the neocons might be right in the sense of John Perry Barlow's brilliant "SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL". Barlow was trying to understand events, and came up with his Mexican-drunk-driver-ploy analogy (sorry, you'll just have to read his piece).

I don't know if Barlow's take is correct, whether the neocons were right, or much of anything in this world. But when Helms quipped, "Iraq is gonna get it," I was stunned.

I'm puzzled, now, by the fact that I can't find any references to his quip. I'd have though someone besides me registered it. Hell, maybe it was a dream.

Edge: THE SCIENCE OF GENDER AND SCIENCE

AN EDGE SPECIAL EVENT
THE SCIENCE OF GENDER AND SCIENCE
PINKER VS. SPELKE
A DEBATE
[5.16.2005]

...on the research on mind, brain, and behavior that may be relevant to gender disparities in the sciences, including the studies of bias, discrimination and innate and acquired difference between the sexes.

Harvard University • Mind/Brain/Behavior Initiative

Hansey RIP

It was my greatest displeasure today to have to put down another pet.

Hansey, our 15-year-old or so long-haired dachshund went down literally (count them, as I did) in five seconds, peacefully, with not the slightest twitch of discomfort.

Actually, it was more like four and a half seconds. I shit you not: it was just that fast.

We should treat people with such humanity.

The vet and his assistant were both, individually, highly compassionate and professional. The vet, rightfully, reserved for himself the decision of whether the time was right. That he immediately agreed made the act a bit less bothersome for me, and made my wife (who bore the burden of decision) feel better about her decision. He warned me that in older dogs with poor circulation it might take a bit longer than usual, but afterwards he also told me that the rapidity of the transition was further indication that Hansey was "ready to go." Nice man. Nice assistant. It's got to be hard on them, too, to provide this service, no matter how many times they've done it.

Our son has been around for the passing of two of our other dogs (one by accident, one by euthanasia). Now, though, Eddie's probably old enough to understand better what goes on. I think this marks a milestone in his development.

Sleep tight Hansey. Onward and upward.

SCOTUS Motivates NORML Membership

Join NORML

The idea that private, intra-state, non-commercial, medically driven provision or acquisition of marijuana (in a state that has deemed such things legal under its own laws) is enough to justify the federal government's exercise of federal law enforcement powers under the commerce clause of the federal constitution, as the US Supreme Court just ruled, is a ridiculous travesty.

NORML can thank the Supreme Court for at least one new membership.

The New Republic Online: Joint Venture

Here is a different take on the medical marijuana ruling. The New Republic's Editors think the decision was correct because, had the Supreme Court ruled against the government in this case, it would have opened the door to challenges of many other regulatory schemes.

So?

In essence, TNR's editors are arguing that slavery should not have been addressed because it might have threatened other property rights. (Yeah, yeah. Close enough.)

What a weird conservatism.

The notion that private, non-commercial, entirely intra-state medical marijuana activities impact inter-state drug traffic enough to validate federal commerce clause authority is just asinine. What the court has done is validate scoffing at the law, which in this case is an ass.

Commerce Clause, Supreme Court and Bullshit

Though the Supreme Court's decision on medical marijuana is pretty much what I expected (cynic that I've become), I am thoroughly disgusted. The idea that traffic in medical marijuana impacts overall drug trade enough to invoke federal commerce clause powers is contemptible and nothing more.

As Prof. David Bernstein writes in his post at Volokh, there's a lot of hypocrisy going on. Actually, Bernstein wrote that "The five-member majority of the Court simply does not take federalism seriously", which is close enough for me.

Nothing's necessarily changed in the practical sense, but something should have changed. I was hoping for a little honesty, a little sanity, but no. Power and money talk.

In San Francisco we have the chief narc saying We respect state law and we're not going to shut down all the medical marijuana clubs tomorrow. Well, why the hell not? It's the law! Shut them down, damn it!

Prosecutorial discretion - what a crock.

Selective enforcement of the law is a tool of the tyrant. Got a rabblerouser on the loose? Bust him for a joint and put him away for 30 years. It's happened, and it'll happen again. It ought never happen. That's why selective enforcement of the law is evil, prosecutorial discretion is evil, and why laws ought not exist if they're not to be enforced uniformly.

God! I am so disgusted.

The usual suspects urge us to urge our representatives to back the Hinchey-Rohrabacher measure to prohibit the spending of federal money to undermine the will of the States, and the Truth in Trials Act, which would allow victims of federal meddling to introduce testimony that they followed State law. I've done that, but it probably amounts to no more than log flogging. My representative is on the dark side. I'd be shocked to hear he'd reconsidered.

FOUL FELT - Yahoo! News

FOUL FELT - Yahoo! News: "As evidence accumulated of wrongdoing and crime, he reported not to the director of the FBI (his immediate superior), not to the Justice Department, but to the two journalists."

Jesus Christ Bill! What was he supposed to do? The two you mention were IN ON IT!

I can't believe this is from Buckley. Had he suggested that Felt should have gone to Congress, OK, but to those two?! Come on.