Oil at $300

[Guest]

Re: Oil at $300

Methinks Master Shake is a bit too glib with the dismissals. The art of separating politically informed ethos from astute and fully agnostic assessments of the sort of reports Chris calls to your attention is subtle Master Shake. It requires "detachment", and an "agnostic spirit of curiosity".

From the way in which panacea references to "free market solutions" creep into your discourse on the environment, and resource depletion, and your apparently urgent need to caricature anything even vaguely associated with evironmental concerns, I get the sense these topics are for you a bit tangled up with stances you feel compelled to adopt versus percieved "socio political groups" - with the emphasis on "percieved".

A series of positions informed more by percieved "sociopolitical groups" than by agnostic general curiosity will arrive at a point where they are simply outflanked by what are evidently fast developing events in these early days of the new century. There is a good deal more to what Chris is putting before you to elicit a spark of curiosity than apparently meets your eye.

[Rajiv]

Re: Oil at $300

I think also relevant to this discussion is Wendell Berry's article in the May issue of Harper's - Faustian economics: Hell hath no limits

The general reaction to the apparent end of the era of cheap fossil fuel, as to other readily foreseeable curtailments, has been to delay any sort of reckoning. The strategies of delay, so far, have been a sort of willed oblivion, or visions of large profits to the manufacturers of such “biofuels” as ethanol from corn or switchgrass, or the familiar unscientific faith that “science will find an answer.” The dominant response, in short, is a dogged belief that what we call the American Way of Life will prove somehow indestructible. We will keep on consuming, spending, wasting, and driving, as before, at any cost to anything and everybody but ourselves.

This belief was always indefensible—the real names of global warming are Waste and Greed—and by now it is manifestly foolish. But foolishness on this scale looks disturbingly like a sort of national insanity. We seem to have come to a collective delusion of grandeur, insisting that all of us are “free” to be as conspicuously greedy and wasteful as the most corrupt of kings and queens. (Perhaps by devoting more and more of our already abused cropland to fuel production we will at last cure ourselves of obesity and become fashionably skeletal, hungry but—thank God!—still driving.)

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The problem with us is not only prodigal extravagance but also an assumed limitlessness. We have obscured the issue by refusing to see that limitlessness is a godly trait. We have insistently, and with relief, defined ourselves as animals or as “higher animals.” But to define ourselves as animals, given our specifically human powers and desires, is to define ourselves as limitless animals—which of course is a contradiction in terms. Any definition is a limit, which is why the God of Exodus refuses to define Himself: “I am that I am.”

Even so, that we have founded our present society upon delusional assumptions of limitlessness is easy enough to demonstrate. A recent “summit” in Louisville, Kentucky, was entitled “Unbridled Energy: The Industrialization of Kentucky’s Energy Resources.” Its subjects were “clean-coal generation, biofuels, and other cutting-edge applications,” the conversion of coal to “liquid fuels,” and the likelihood that all this will be “environmentally friendly.” These hopes, which “can create jobs and boost the nation’s security,” are to be supported by government “loan guarantees . . . investment tax credits and other tax breaks.” Such talk we recognize as completely conventional. It is, in fact, a tissue of clichés that is now the common tongue of promoters, politicians, and journalists. This language does not allow for any computation or speculation as to the net good of anything proposed. The entire contraption of “Unbridled Energy” is supported only by a rote optimism: “The United States has 250 billion tons of recoverable coal reserves—enough to last 100 years even at double the current rate of consumption.” We humans have inhabited the earth for many thousands of years, and now we can look forward to surviving for another hundred by doubling our consumption of coal? This is national security? The world-ending fire of industrial fundamentalism may already be burning in our furnaces and engines, but if it will burn for a hundred more years, that will be fine. Surely it would be better to intend straightforwardly to contain the fire and eventually put it out! But once greed has been made an honorable motive, then you have an economy without limits. It has no place for temperance or thrift or the ecological law of return. It will do anything. It is monstrous by definition.

In keeping with our unrestrained consumptiveness, the commonly accepted basis of our economy is the supposed possibility of limitless growth, limitless wants, limitless wealth, limitless natural resources, limitless energy, and limitless debt. The idea of a limitless economy implies and requires a doctrine of general human limitlessness: all are entitled to pursue without limit whatever they conceive as desirable—a license that classifies the most exalted Christian capitalist with the lowliest pornographer.

This fantasy of limitlessness perhaps arose from the coincidence of the Industrial Revolution with the suddenly exploitable resources of the New World—though how the supposed limitlessness of resources can be reconciled with their exhaustion is not clear. Or perhaps it comes from the contrary apprehension of the world’s “smallness,” made possible by modern astronomy and high-speed transportation. Fear of the smallness of our world and its life may lead to a kind of claustrophobia and thence, with apparent reasonableness, to a desire for the “freedom” of limitlessness. But this desire, paradoxically, reduces everything. The life of this world is small to those who think it is, and the desire to enlarge it makes it smaller, and can reduce it finally to nothing.

However it came about, this credo of limitlessness clearly implies a principled wish not only for limitless possessions but also for limitless knowledge, limitless science, limitless technology, and limitless progress. And, necessarily, it must lead to limitless violence, waste, war, and destruction. That it should finally produce a crowning cult of political limitlessness is only a matter of mad logic.

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(contd)

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Oil at $300

Thanks. This article is excellent. Click on the link to Harpers and read it all. "The art of living" will be difficult to pursue when the art of farming, the art of animal husbandry, and so many other arts have been lost or buried for generations.

[FRED]

Re: Oil at $300

Master Shake, (Is that Master as in youngster, meaning young master Shake?)

regardless of your age, you have only read the headlines. If you sit down and read all of the news on the subject you will discover that:

Ten years ago the probable outcome, North Pole free of ice, was a thousand years into the future.

Five years ago, the timescale was down to about a century.

Three years ago, the authors of a report suggesting that the North Pole was going to be free of ice by 2025 were themselves accused of hyperbole.

So what?

NASA has just informed us that the North Pole is expected to be ice free by this September. That for the first time in human history, you could sail a boat to the North Pole. Not in a thousand years, nor a hundred years, nor sixteen years but simply two months from now.

What I am saying is that those scientists worrying about the latest ice shelf collapse during mid winter in Antarctica are worrying, not about melting ice, but the quite reasonable suggestion that ice can also slide into the sea if it is on a slope and has a liquid layer at the base. Last year NASA announced that all the ice in Antarctica is afloat. At the time, a great many thought they were talking about the ice already afloat in the sea. they were not, they were talking about the ice on the slopes, above sea level.

The disappearing ice shelves were acting as a barrier to the potential for the sliding to start. One of the biggest sloping ice sheets is held back by the ice shelf that has just a small area left and of which the last piece of it is expected to disappear very soon.

You can laugh all you wish, but I am saying, from a forward looking perspective, you may not have much time left before hyperbole turns into reality.

Please, think about that.

The NASA site has a lot of information.

[MEDIA]http://mfile.akamai.com/18566/wmv/etouchsyst2.download.akamai.com/18355/wm.nasa-global/environment/AMSR_E_SeaIce2.asx[/MEDIA]
"The decline in the amount of thick ice that survives the summer melt season this year is quite remarkable," said Josefino C. Comiso, senior scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. "The extent of this 'perennial' sea ice and the area it covers are both nearly 38 percent lower than average. Compared to the record low in 2005, the extent and area are 24 percent and nearly 26 percent lower this year, respectively."

[c1ue]

Re: Oil at $300

Check out the Rant and Rave post I put up. It contrasts both the Arctic ice pattern - which historically has had periods of lower ice buildup and also talks about the Antarctic ice situation - may well be getting thicker.

[Andreuccio]

Re: Oil at $300

Check out the Rant and Rave post I put up. It contrasts both the Arctic ice pattern - which historically has had periods of lower ice buildup and also talks about the Antarctic ice situation - may well be getting thicker.

Link: http://www.itulip.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4435

[Andreuccio]

Re: Oil at $300

Check out the Rant and Rave post I put up. It contrasts both the Arctic ice pattern - which historically has had periods of lower ice buildup and also talks about the Antarctic ice situation - may well be getting thicker.

No way for me to tell who's right in this debate, but I much prefer reading your posts. At least I can sleep at night and don't spend all my time looking at the ramifications of selling my house, which, at only 160 feet above sea level, is apparently about to become beach-front property on the wrong side of the beach.

[GRG55]

Re: Oil at $300

No way for me to tell who's right in this debate, but I much prefer reading your posts. At least I can sleep at night and don't spend all my time looking at the ramifications of selling my house, which, at only 160 feet above sea level, is apparently about to become beach-front property on the wrong side of the beach.

I recommend you go long sponsons on the house...

Sponsons are projections from the sides of a watercraft, for protection, stability, or the mounting of equipment such as armaments or lifeboats, etc. They extend a hull dimension at or below the waterline and serve to increase floatation or add lift when underway.

Sponsons are commonly used on jetskis and other personal watercraft such as canoes to provide either additional buoyancy and thus stability against capsize, or hydrodynamic forces to resist capsize. They can often be easily attached to an existing craft in order to improve its stability.

They are far less common on ships than such stabilizing means as pontoons, outriggers, and dual hulls due to their comparatively poor performance in stabilizing large hulls...
More on sponsons from Wiki...

[Andreuccio]

Re: Oil at $300

I recommend you go long sponsons on the house...

Sponsons are projections from the sides of a watercraft, for protection, stability, or the mounting of equipment such as armaments or lifeboats, etc. They extend a hull dimension at or below the waterline and serve to increase floatation or add lift when underway.

Sponsons are commonly used on jetskis and other personal watercraft such as canoes to provide either additional buoyancy and thus stability against capsize, or hydrodynamic forces to resist capsize. They can often be easily attached to an existing craft in order to improve its stability.

They are far less common on ships than such stabilizing means as pontoons, outriggers, and dual hulls due to their comparatively poor performance in stabilizing large hulls...
More on sponsons from Wiki...

Good idea. Of course, I'll need transportation to and from the house, as well. Maybe I'll buy a Beetle:

http://www.jasoncoleman.com/Media/Im...etleFloats.jpg

[politicalfootballfan]

Re: Oil at $300

----nm----

[Guest]

Re: Oil at $300

Politicalfootballfan -

Go try your "Wide Open Range is my birthright" ethos out in Bangladesh maybe, with a Bangladeshi passport? (Hint, that means you own a Bangladeshi passport but you no longer own a US passport - to unpack this concept, this equals slightly fewer "natural birthrights" for you). This exercise might provide some rapidly induced perspective.

Sounds similar to U.N. Agenda 21, except the "U.N."plans to move the public away from private transportation and into public transportation, reduce their need to travel, and concentrate their residence within "sustainable human settlements."

Are these market forces, that are being discussed here, naturally occurring or socially engineered?

[politicalfootballfan]

Re: Oil at $300

----nm----

[FRED]

Re: Oil at $300

Politicalfootballfan -

Go try your "Wide Open Range is my birthright" ethos out in Bangladesh maybe, with a Bangladeshi passport? (Hint, that means you own a Bangladeshi passport but you no longer own a US passport - to unpack this concept, this equals slightly fewer "natural birthrights" for you). This exercise might provide some rapidly induced perspective.

Knock it off. Argue your point without attacking your opponent.

[Rajiv]

Re: Oil at $300

PFF,

My question for you, are human needs, wants and desires, endemic to the individual, or are they manufactured?

Consider again the message of "The Century of the Self", "Spin" and Herman Hesse's "Siddhartha"

[Guest]

Re: Oil at $300

Politicalfootballfan -

Go try your "Wide Open Range is my birthright" ethos out in Bangladesh maybe, with a Bangladeshi passport? (Hint, that means you own a Bangladeshi passport but you no longer own a US passport - to unpack this concept, this equals slightly fewer "natural birthrights" for you). This exercise might provide some rapidly induced perspective.

Knock it off. Argue your point without attacking your opponent.

Sorry - fail dismally to see how this constitutes an "egregious personal attack". We have commentators here routinely suggesting that if others don't agree with iTulip views they should "go take your comments elsewhere" - and you actively endorse such responses. What they really amount to is "if you don't agree then piss off"?

You regard the following comment as a personal assault in comparison to "piss off if you don't agree with us?

"You might consider going to Bangladesh, without the escape afforded by a US passport, to discover just how many natural birthrights any of us really have."

For a "rugged individualist" who wears a football helmet, Mr. "Politicalfootballfan" seems to have an inordinately delicate regard that his expressed (and quite peremptory) views not be disrespected. Conversely, he is not shy of depositing brusque and dismissive comments regarding things like "fraudulent social entitlements for the poor or indigent, mandated by a "socialist fraud" in the White House", or words to that effect.

Such comments broadcast the "rugged individualism" and (presumably) "blunt honesty" of a person accustomed to speaking straight to the point and in unvarnished terms. From this chap's avatar, the name "Politicalfootballfan" seems to denote "rough and tumble", and his utterances, suggest he likes to deposit haughty remarks about the indigent, work ethic deprived inner city welfare recipients, etc, - as being "moochers of his tax money" or words to that effect.

Mr. Politicalfootballfan seems to be employing on the one hand tough, ruggedly self reliant individualist language, yet on the other hand exhibiting inordinately sensitive skin when it is suggested he go to Bangladesh to discover how many viable options he might *really* have there if he was shorn of his first world passport and had to "rely on his ingenuity" to maintain his current options in life. You know, sort of like an educational excursion - or a safari maybe?

Mr. "Political Football Fan" here is a suggestion: Show you can roll with a few pointed comments then, as you don't shy from depositing haughtily peremptory assertions of your own. Take them like the tough skinned football fan you must really be!