June 15: Apparently the official start of the big "Gas Price Increase for Independence Day"

Did you notice that?

It was exactly, I believe, June 15 when gas prices jumped at least 10 cents per gallon.

Just in time for the Independence Day holiday.

I swear it happens annually.

The lowest price I was aware of was $3.19 per gallon (in Lee's Summit, with ethanol) and now it's $3.39/gallon.

It's disgusting.

There oughta' be a law.

(Said only half seriously).

But still, part serious, too.

That pipeline from Canada to Texas is all but done

When the question of a Keystone XL company's oil pipeline being brought up in the last few months, I thought it was a "suggestion" or request put on the country. And maybe it was. But first, I learned later (recently) that parts of the pipeline have already been built, however far North that is and that, second, the route it was going to take would be examined but that yes, it was going through. Now, today, there is this news: Sinopec, Total pour $4.5 billion into U.S. shale

(Reuters) - China's Sinopec (600028.SS) and France's Total SA (TOTF.PA) made major purchases into the U.S. energy sector on Tuesday, pouring $4.5 billion into deals to buy into booming production from shale rock formations. (link below). So not only is it going through but 2 foreign companies--and one of them our supposed "arch-enemy"--is going to own and run it. If it has an oil spill on it somewhere here in the States, they'll be the ones seeing to its cleanup. This seems like bad news that just keeps getting worse. Links: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/03/us-shale-us-idUSTRE80215S20120103; http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/03/us-athabasca-idUSTRE8020OW20120103

And then another protest, next month, from "the people"

 

Last post, I told of an effort by "Anonymous" to organize people to occupy Wall Street in New York this month. This is being followed next month by another organization--October 2011--to protest, also. They are asking people to take the following pledge: "I pledge that if any U.S. troops, contractors, or mercenaries remain in Afghanistan on Thursday, October 6, 2011, as that occupation goes into its 11th year, I will commit to being in Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C., with others on that day or the days immediately following, for as long as I can, with the intention of making it our Tahrir Square, Cairo, our Madison, Wisconsin, where we will NONVIOLENTLY resist the corporate machine by occupying Freedom Plaza to demand that America's resources be invested in human needs and environmental protection instead of war and exploitation. We can do this together. We will be the beginning." They also express their goals as the following: --Tax the rich and corporations; --End the wars, bring the troops home, cut military spending; --Protect the social safety net, strengthen Social Security and improved Medicare for all; --End corporate welfare for oil companies and other big business interests; --Transition to a clean energy economy, reverse environmental degradation; --Protect worker rights including collective bargaining, create jobs and raise wages; --Get money out of politics. I have said, time and again, that if we don't do that last one, that is, get "campaign contributions" (read: legal bribes) out of our political system, nothing will likely change. It seems the American electorate--some of us, anyway--are finally waking up. Let's see if we can do constructive, positive and so, non-violent but changing, improving things for the country with all this. "You say you want a revolution?" Link to their site: http://october2011.org/welcome

Why is this allowed?

Yesterday, the price of gas near my office was $1.78 per gallon.

Today?

$1.92

A 14 cent jump in less than 24 hours.

We all see this and, for those of us who pay attention, we wonder "why?" And we wonder this again and again and again.

I watch gas per barrel fairly closely and haven't seen any extraordinary swings in the price of oil lately.

What's to explain these swings? Why do we, as a country, put up with this?

Oh, that's right. We love the free market, capitalist system.

So now I see, fresh off the news, that oil has jumped above $51.00 per barrel today, on news and hopes that the recession is cooling.

Get ready for a screwing folks.

Further reason why I write this blog

I was reminded today of why I first started this blog and why I continue to write.

The outrageousness and ignorance and stupidity and greed and ugliness that comes out of this White House and this George W. Bush administration is just too much.

This blog is meant to give information for some and catharsis for me.

President George W. Bush (man, it has always hurt to say that) was on the radio yesterday for his weekly radio address and, unbelievably, blamed the Democrats for high gas prices.

OH MY GOD...

I couldn't believe it. I still can hardly believe it.

This President, the one from Texas, the one from and for oil companies, the one with a Vice President and Secretary of State and a lot of others both in and around this administration, from the oil companies, has the nerve and gall to accuse the Democrats of being the reason for the high oil prices.

Holy cow.

Don't you think your arbitrary, internationally illegal war in the Middle East which you at least "misrepresented" to us, the American people, had anything to do with it, Mr. President?

It's as I've said the last several months--all Americans, be they Republican, Democrat, black, white, conservative, liberal--all of us, from all walks of American life--should have automatically bought oil stocks in 2000, once this shill for Big OIl and Big Business stole the White House election.

It was one thing we could have counted on--oil prices going up.

We just didn't know how far up.

From Slate Magazine, yesterday, on Pres. "McSame" (God forbid)

Slick John McCain and the offshore oil ruse

The safety and economics of offshore drilling are distractions from the much larger challenges that humanity faces: Climate change and peak oil.
By Andrew Leonard

Jun. 25, 2008 | An example of leadership or reckless chutzpah? On Monday, John McCain visited Santa Barbara, the scene of one of the great environmental disasters in American history, and proceeded to downplay the potential consequences of lifting the federal moratorium on new offshore drilling. Modern drilling technology is environmentally safe, he told the audience. According to the Associated Press, McCain "cited the examples of Louisiana and Texas, noting they have allowed drilling and weathered two devastating hurricanes with minimal or no oil spills."

McCain exaggerated. A 2007 report by the U.S. Minerals Management Service unearthed by Outside the Beltway documented the damage caused in the Gulf of Mexico by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita: "124 spills were reported with a total volume of roughly 17,700 barrels of total petroleum products."

Now, 17,700 barrels of oil equals 743,400 gallons. Whether you consider that a lot or a little depends on your perspective. Compared with the 1.5 million barrels pumped out of the Gulf every day, it is a trivial amount. But it's also within shouting distance of the 3 million gallons of oil spilled in the Santa Barbara offshore oil disaster of 1969.

That spill is considered the "environmental shot heard 'round the world." The catastrophe crystallized the environmental movement into a potent political force, resulting in the quick passage of the National Environmental Protection Act later that year, the creation of the EPA in 1970 and, ultimately, the ban on new offshore drilling.

But the safety of offshore drilling is a distraction from what's really at issue in the current tussle over energy policy. An oil spill here or there is irrelevant to the much larger challenges that humanity faces: climate change and peak oil.

The truth is, we can probably make offshore drilling as safe as we reasonably want it to be. Norway, with its environmentally aware citizenry and tight coordination between a watchful government and a state-oil owned company, has been drilling for decades in the North Sea with reasonably good environmental results (notwithstanding the horrific explosion of the Piper Alpha offshore platform in 1988 or the spillage of 24,000 barrels of oil just last December). Then again, for an example of how it can all go terribly wrong, visit Nigeria, where lax environmental controls have resulted in a huge mess in the Niger Delta, and where rebel forces attacked an offshore oil platform just this week.

But drilling practices and technology have improved. With the appropriate government oversight and regulation, it may be possible to drill off the coasts of Florida and California without covering the beaches with sludge and killing thousands of seabirds. Provided we acknowledge, of course, that a few nasty hurricanes in Florida will make at least a little bit of mess, and an earthquake in the wrong spot in California could be a slight problem. And provided we are capable of following the example of Norway, where the government and the people tell the oil company what to do, rather than the example set by the current Bush administration, where the energy industry is in charge of policymaking.

But drilling for more oil in the United States will not lower the price of gas in the short term -- even McCain admitted as much when he said on Monday, "I don't see an immediate relief, [but] the fact that we are exploiting those reserves would have psychological impact that I think is beneficial." Bush's own Department of Energy concluded in 2004 that the long-term impact of lifting the moratorium on offshore drilling on oil prices would be "insignificant." The only way that expanded drilling, offshore and in ANWR, could make a difference at the pump is if global production of oil started significantly outpacing the growth of global demand. Which would probably require that Saudi Arabia crank open the spigot and China, India, and the rest of the world's rapidly emerging economies start to lose their enormous thirst.

In other words, not only is it unlikely, it is completely out of our hands.

For those who accept that burning fossil fuels is contributing to climate change and that there are finite limits to the amount of inexpensive oil that can be pumped out of the earth, a new offshore oil rush is a psychological and practical disaster. It would accelerate climate change and, in the unlikely scenario that new drilling even momentarily slowed down global oil price appreciation, would still postpone that inevitable day of reckoning with the even higher fossil fuel energy prices sure to arrive.

The longer we wait to deal with either problem, the more painful and expensive our options for coping with these challenges will become and the more constrained our maneuvering room will be. The sorry truth is that from the perspective of grappling with climate change, and encouraging investment into alternative energy technologies, expensive gas now is far preferable to even more expensive gas later.

Of course, there are plenty of people, mostly on the right-wing of the political spectrum in the United States, who do not accept that climate change is real or caused by human industrial activity, and who believe there are no real constraints to the global oil supply. They'd prefer to blame environmental activists, present-day descendants of the rabid left-wing commies who exploited the Santa Barbara spill to pursue their anti-business agenda, for today's "high" gas prices.

Such accusations are the stuff of daily grandstanding rhetoric from Congressional Republicans and constitute a major, longstanding front in the culture wars.

There's a large contingent of Americans who do acknowledge that global warming is real and that it would be smart to consume less oil. But the prospect of $5 gasoline tends to reduce their focus from the long term to the here-and-now. The oceans haven't flooded their homes just yet, but their pocketbooks are hurting today.

And there's an election campaign going on.

In Las Vegas on Tuesday, Barack Obama delivered a significant speech on energy issues. He criticized McCain's proposal for new offshore drilling and commented that McCain's reference to "psychological impact" is "Washington-speak for 'It polls well.'" No joke.

In Santa Barbara, McCain attempted to assuage Californian sensitivities by saying that his real position on the moratorium on offshore drilling is that it should fall under the rubric of "state's rights" -- meaning that if Californians want to keep their coastline pristine, they will have the power to do so under a McCain administration. But McCain knows he's not going to win California, so it doesn't matter what he says in Santa Barbara. The offshore oil ploy is a calculated gambit aimed at cashing in on the pain that economically stressed voters in swing states far from the coast (as well as Florida, where environmental sensitivities seem to be on less solid ground than in California) are feeling. In Ohio and Michigan, the ugliness of oil derricks blotting out the sunset isn't a number one problem on anyone's priority list.

McCain's goal is to marry the anti-environmentalist Republican base with the I-like-the-environment-but-am-economically-hurting moderates. Call it the coalition of the unwilling to pay high gas prices.

In his speech, Obama set forth a pretty straightforward platform of vastly increased investment in renewable energy, conservation and efficiency, and proposed to ease the pain of working-class Americans with an economic stimulus plan. One can question how he would end up paying for his proposals or whether he will succeed in steering them through Congress, but one thing that must be conceded is that his approach represents a clear difference from McCain.

Suppose that McCain's strategy works. Suppose voters in enough swing states decide that the pain of high gas prices is so great that they will go with the candidate who is promising them the easy way out -- the gas tax holiday and offshore drilling and a nuclear power plant in every pot. What will that tell us about the American ability to suck it up and face down the challenges of the future?

Easy. It will tell us that we've lost the battle before we've hardly begun to fight. It will tell us that the environment is toast. We will have established that we, the citizens of the richest and most powerful country on the earth, are unwilling to pay the price necessary for embarking on a long-term ecologically sustainable path for existence on the planet. If $4 gasoline is enough incentive to lift the moratorium on offshore drilling, then $10-a-gallon gasoline will inspire even more drastic consequences. We will drill for every drop of oil, we will dig up every ounce of coal, we will sacrifice every environmental regulation, because we just can't take the heat. And then we'll fry.

It will also tell us that the environmental movement that took so much power from the Santa Barbara oil spill of 1969 has failed. That sustainability and conservations were luxuries we decided we could not afford.

(The original link:
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2008/06/25/mccain_offshore_oil/print.html)

The George W. Bush Administration vs. The American People

Did you hear this today on NPR? Yeah, more proof of just how great a job George W. Bush and his pals are doing for--no, to--the American People.

You know? When I was younger, I knew there was a part of the government that was fighting for us. There was the part regulating big business. There was the part having corporations to keep pollution to a minimum.

No more.

Not since George Bush got elected in 2000.

Check this out.

In December, 2000, the Enron Corporation--yeah, no kidding, THOSE GUYS--recommended that the Bush Administration DEREGULATE the oil speculation markets. It is now, technically considered a "dark" market. That is, we don't know who's speculating on or in the oil markets, we don't know how, we don't know what they're doing, nothing. All thanks to those geniuses at Enron. Oh, and the White House. Dick Cheney. George Walker Bush. All of 'em. et al.

Prior to 2000 and this "Enron Clause", as it is now referred to, THE UNITED STATES REGULATED THE OIL INDUSTRY AND THIS SPECULATION FOR 78 YEARS. No kidding. For all that time, it was that important. Once we put the foxes in charge of the chicken house, it was all over.

Now does it make any sense why oil is over $130.00 a barrel?

In this same radio show, it was speculated that oil would likely fall to between $60.00 to $80.00 per barrel WITHIN A MONTH if we again regulated the oil speculation markets.

So the question was, do you want to do this with a deep, painful recession, that hurts millions of people around the globe, over time, to reduce the price of oil or do you want to do this more logically, with regulation, over about a month?

Tough question, eh?

Proof of why, I think, we should be optimistic about solar power--and all of our futures

Ray Kurzweil, the scientist and futurist, writes the following about the future of solar power, our harnessing it and why we can be optimistic about mankind's future on this planet, even when considering climate change, the oil lobby, oil coming out of the lunatic Middle East, pollution, etc:

I'm Confident About Energy, the Environment, Longevity, and Wealth; I'm Optimistic (But Not Necessarily Confident) Of the Avoidance Of Existential Downsides; And I'm Hopeful (But Not Necessarily Optimistic) About a Repeat Of 9-11 (Or Worse)
by Ray Kurzweil (see more at this link:
(http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=memelist.html?m=7%23692)

Ray Kurzweil responds to John Brockman's The Edge Annual Question - 2007: WHAT ARE YOU OPTIMISTIC ABOUT? WHY?

Published on Edge on January 2007. Reprinted with permission.

Optimism exists on a continuum in between confidence and hope. Let me take these in order.

"I am confident that the acceleration and expanding purview of information technology will solve within twenty years the problems that now preoccupy us.

Consider energy. We are awash in energy (10,000 times more than required to meet all our needs falls on Earth) but we are not very good at capturing it. That will change with the full nanotechnology-based assembly of macro objects at the nano scale, controlled by massively parallel information processes, which will be feasible within twenty years. Even though our energy needs are projected to triple within that time, we'll capture that .0003 of the sunlight needed to meet our energy needs with no use of fossil fuels, using extremely inexpensive, highly efficient, lightweight, nano-engineered solar panels, and we'll store the energy in highly distributed (and therefore safe) nanotechnology-based fuel cells. Solar power is now providing 1 part in 1,000 of our needs, but that percentage is doubling every two years, which means multiplying by 1,000 in twenty years.

Almost all the discussions I've seen about energy and its consequences (such as global warming) fail to consider the ability of future nanotechnology-based solutions to solve this problem. This development will be motivated not just by concern for the environment but also by the $2 trillion we spend annually on energy. This is already a major area of venture funding."


A final note from yours truly: it's just that none of this positive, intelligent, optimistic stuff will happen while this numbnuts, small-minded, no imagination, greedhead President is in office.