The Peak Oil Bomb Deal

OK, here is my deal. There are many indicators that are saying that we have passed the world production peak of oil, including the ever-rising price of oil, now at $121 a barrel, food shortages worldwide, high prices of food in the United States, and the increasing trouble with the airlines (although some of this is due to max airline capacity, hit in 2000 and again in 2004). This threatens the way we live and perhaps even world civilization. So are the US Presidential candidates talking about it? You would think they would.

The truth is that I have heard just about nothing from any of the three of them about peak oil. Not a word. Michael Moore is now talking about it, and I wish he would make a movie about it. But not the Presidential candidates. Barack Obama is pointing the right way by saying that a gas tax holiday won't help, but he has never talked about it directly. John McCain came within a hair's breath of mentioning it. He said that the Iraq War was fought because of oil. If he meant the second one, he is correct. However, all the pundits and hypermediots ganged up on him, and he was forced to recant and say that it was about weapons of mass destruction. John, you blew it. You really blew it. If you had maintained a peak oil stance, I would have voted for you.

But right now as it stands, I favor Barack Obama and will vote for him in November if he is on the ballot.

However, Presidential Candidates, I am throwing this deal at you. Kenneth Deffeyes said recently that "My only hope is that a candidate, who learns from private polls that he or she is behind, will drop the oil bomb into the debate." I will vote for whichever candidate drops the oil bomb into the debate. It doesn't matter whether it is Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, or even someone else, provided they are of a major party and have a chance of winning. If you start talking about peak oil, I will vote for you. Else I will vote for Obama or Clinton, whoever is running and hope for the best.

So there's the deal, Barack, Hillary, and John. What you do is up to you, but the world depends on it.

Obama Forced to Apologize

Yesterday my companion blog Beyond Opinion posted something called "Bitter, Indeed", in which it says that Barack's "bitter" comments don't matter at all and that Hillary was the pot calling the kettle black when she said that Obama was "elitist and out of touch", citing her high position and her ex-President husband. it seems that Obama made a mistake in calling Pennsylvanians bitter with belief in God and guns and wanting to do something about immigrants. This sounds funny. It seems like I am talking about myself, since I am the author of both Cliffhanger and Beyond Opinion.

But anyway, today I found someone who supports what Obama said, none other than peak oil blogger Jim Kunstler, author of the "Clusterf*ck Nation Chronicles" blog. In this blog, he said that Obama was brave enough to tell the truth about Pennsylvanians, and in fact about people in general. He agreed with Obama that "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them". He then said that the press and Hillary and others ganged up on him and forced him to apologize. Jim said that he should not have apologized and that he lost authority by so doing. That is important. Obama carries charismatic authority, and that is essential to his performance as a Crisis President the next few years. I hope he gets over being blasted by the media, by Republicans, and by other Democrats when he takes office. He needs to tell us a lesson.

This is the same one as Kunstler has been telling us all the time lately, namely that we must get away from driving cars so much and that we have to be prepared to live life dramatically different in the years ahead. Kunstler is thought of as a radical for saying these things, but what else can you conclude when you look at the oil and fossil fuel supply picture? Plus add in the credit crisis and retirement of baby boomers, as well as Iraq and Iran and you see where Kunstler gets the name of his blog.

Kunstler also says that Clinton is the pot calling the kettle black. Carville is a Clinton supporter. I got a request for funds from him today for the Democrats. I threw it out. No way. For Carville said the same things Obama said, in a more picturesque way, that Pennsylvania was a redneck sandwich, with Philadelphia and Pittsburgh the two pieces of bread and with Alabama meat (redneck meat - an interesting concept) in between. Kunstler also decries people not coming to the defense of Obama. Finally he concludes that the election and the serious problems of the future matter a lot more than whether a "cohort of Cheez Doodle addicted rural Pennsylvania morons prays out loud for God to shoot all the Mexicans." Jim makes them sound like idiots. Today's song, as William Faulkner says, may be that of an idiot full of sound and fury.

We may see some sound and fury soon.

It's Already Here, Jim Kunstler

In his Clusterfuck Nation Chronicles of 2008 March 31, Jim Kunstler comments on his ordeal with the world aviation system on a recent trip to the American West. He says that high fuel costs, caused by Peak Oil, are killing them, and they can't fire any more employees or gyp employees on their retirement benefits. He then says, "For now, they slump like war refugees in the blow-molded plastic seats, numb with fatigue, anxiety, and disappointment. But I wonder if there will be riots in the concourses sometime later this year."

Guess what, Jim? It's already happened! It happened at Buenos Aires, Argentina's Ezeiza Airport on 2008 January 12. MSNBC reported it. Just click on MSNBC you will see how frustrated passengers, stranded two days by a strike, revolt against the airport, destroying computers and other toys of the Communications Age. It even includes a video. It may be caused by a strike, but I suspect the strike was caused by reasons having to deal with Peak Oil, such as high demand and low supply. The union said the stranding was caused by overbooking, trying to cram more cash-paying passengers per plane. So here comes Peak Oil. This one's already happened.

Peak Coal in South Africa?

This week certainly was a roller-coaster on the stock market. Down 300, down another 300, then up 600, and now down 200. Gold went down in price during the week, but near the end, it suddenly jumped up to $913 an ounce, the highest I have ever seen it. With energy shares and more general shares going down, I wonder why gold would shoot up in price. I found out why today.

There is a shortage of coal in South Africa, as can be seen in many articles, including this one. This shortage has gotten so severe that the government is asking industries to cut back, and as a result all gold and platinum mining in South Africa has ended. So this explains the higher gold prices. But what about gold companies?

I checked a few that made up a gold fund that I have invested in. All mine from the Americas, Europe, or Australia, except Gold Fields, which is a South Africa company. All of the stocks went up today except Gold Fields, which went down.

But it makes me wonder about coal. People say that coal will last hundreds of years. I did a calculation recently and came up with 161 years, assuming linear growth rates. So why did this shortage occur? And will the rest of the world eventually be like South Africa? I hear recently that Virginia hit peak coal in 1996. So Virginia must be importing from other states. Will the world run out of coal soon?

So right now there are two reasons why gold investing is good: the current economic downturn and coal shortages in gold producing regions.

Stocks are Down because of OIL

Today, 2007 October 15, the major stock market averages were down. In particular, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 108.28 to 13984.80; the NASDAQ was down 25.63 to 2780.05, and the S&P was down 13.09 to 1548.71. Why did the stock averages go down? The analysts on CNBC and other places have come up with a number of reasons. The financial stocks all went down, so therefore, they say, they caused the market downturn. We aren't out of the housing crisis yet. They are awaiting the Fed's next move. Earnings of companies are down. Bladada blah blah blah.

No, people. None of these are the reason why the stock market went down. If you will get your head out of all these mathematical models, computer programs, and analysis diagrams, and take a look at some real things, you will see the answer. Gold is real. It is element 79 with symbol Au. The Gold Bugs index (^HUI) was up 5.43 to 418.77, a 1.31% increase. Oil is real. You can never run out of money; you can just print more. But we can and are running out of oil. The AMEX Oil Index (^XOI) was up 15.43 to 1495.47, a 1.04% increase. Why? Because the dollar continues to sink. But more likely because oil continues to go up in price. It went up $2.44 or so today to $86.13, a new high, and only about 14 dollars removed from $100 a barrel.

Why? Oil stocks (meaning supplies) are down. The Energy department had expected them to go up. The International Energy Agency also reported a decline in world supply of oil. OPEC is saying that it will produce 110,000 fewer barrels this year than expected, when it expected a raise. World production of oil reached about 84 billion barrels a day in 2004, nearly a thousand barrels a second. Since then it has been holding steady. Four of the world's largest oil fields, namely Ghawar in Saudi Arabia, Daqing in China, Burgan in Kuwait, and Cantarell in the Gulf of Campeche near Mexico, are starting to decline, some precipitously, as Cantarell, which furthermore got hit by two Category 5 hurricanes this year.

That's the reason why stocks fell. It is also the reason why gold and oil stocks went up, and why the price of oil is up. Our civilization is beginning to run out of cheap oil. To me it looks like prices are going to go up. At $86 a barrel, gasoline prices should be $3.02 in southern Virginia; instead they are around $2.55. There is nowhere to go but up for these prices. Further, especially if prices don't go up much, shortages could develop. And then there will be a big outcry. The outrage at being fooled on the supply of oil will more than exceed that of finding out that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Dean Threaten's Mexico's Oil Output

None of the media outlets have been telling us that the world's oil supply is threatened by Hurricane Dean. Dean is heading straight towards the Cantarell oil field, which has been failing as of late but still produces 1 million barrels of crude oil a day. Don't be surprised to see oil skyrocket after tomorrow.

Also, the sea ice has been melting at an accelerated pace, verifying that fact that global warming has been occurring.

See my other blog Beyond the Wind for more details.

Sixteen Tons and Polar Bear

Someone was singing Merle Travis' "Sixteen Tons".

Coal Miner: "You load sixteen tons."
Polar Bear: "No, don't! Don't load sixteen tons."
Coal Miner: "But if I don't load sixteen tons, I won't have anything to eat."
Polar Bear: "If you load sixteen tons, I won't have anything to eat."

Branner Station

I hear there is a meeting of the Chesterfield County's Board of Supervisors on 2007 August 21 at 7 pm. One of the cases being considered is Branner Station, a development in southern Chesterfield County bordering Branders Bridge road. Of course this is a bad name for the development; it will be confused with Brandermill. The developer, HHHunt, calls for 5000 homes on a tract of 1449 acres, which is about 2.5 square miles. With peak oil coming up and no businesses near the site, I wonder why HHHunt wants to build such a large monstrosity in the county. He says it will take 20 years to develop. Maybe we should call the developer HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHunt.

I read an editorial in the Chester Village Voice which suggests that this development will be built along the lines of something called "Smart Growth". That is, the development will take care of such problems as inadequate roads and schools. The developers plan to construct a road through the development and to improve Branders Bridge road, which was designed when horses were the main means of transportation. They plan to construct a school or to provide for the construction of the school on the grounds of the development. There will be a retail area, a park, and some trails. These are all in accordance with Smart Growth.

Fine. However, Smart Growth is still growth. That is one thing that Chesterfield (and indeed the entire world) does not need now. We already have too many developments here. How are the people in Branner Station going to travel once gasoline becomes really expensive, or even unavailable? How are they going to get food? Do they allow for residences to grow vegetables in suitable plots? How is this planned development going to shorten commutes for these people? Many of the residents of this development will probably go to work at Fort Lee, which is doubling in size due to base closures and cutbacks elsewhere. Fort Lee is a 25 minute drive from the area, and will get longer as population grows and traffic lights proliferate.

I think the county needs to reconsider Branner Station. HHHill has done about a 50% job in coming up with a good development design. But he and his people need to read up on peak oil, zero growth, permaculture, cohousing and other housing alternatives before coming up with a new design that takes these future trends into account.

Drop the Bomb!

After a six-month hiatus, I have finally found new input on Kenneth Deffeyes' peak oil blog, at http://www.princeton.edu/hubbert/current-events.html. He reiterates what he has said before, with figures to support him in Excel spreadsheets. The peak of conventional oil occurred in 2005 May, and conventional oil production has held at around 73 million barrels a day since then. The peak of Saudi oil has apparently been hit at the same time, at about 9.6 million barrels a day; it now has shrunk slightly to the 8 millions. This is only conventional oil, apparently. Adding in unconventional sources raises the total to 84 million barrels a day, and this has also held steady for the past couple of years, indicating this peak has been reached.

I feel no change in my lifestyle, however, other than a constant carping at my church and other places to cut our carbon emissions. This may be cutting demand slightly. But there are some who say that the demand is the same as in the past few years, despite increases in demand from China, India, and the US, because third world countries like Zimbabwe can't afford it any more and has quit buying it. This plateau will last for a while, but will be followed by a decline, and I am not sure what is going to happen after that. I think that supply and demand will play a big role in holding back the ill effects of peak oil, reducing demand by making human life here in the states more efficient and bringing solar, wind, clean liquid coal (if there is such a thing) and nuclear power into the forefront. But eventually, a great depression may await us as we gradually run out of power to run our society as it is presently constructed, sometime in the twenty teens.

This should be a major issue in the 2008 Presidential campaign. But it is no issue at all. Some of the Democrats bring up global warming, but that is not the same thing. Kenneth Deffeyes notes this and says: "It looks as if we will go through another US presidential election with no candidate calling attention to the world oil problem, or to the North American natural gas problem. My only hope is that a candidate, who learns from private polls that he or she is behind, will drop the oil bomb into the debate."

This matter needs to be discussed. Almost nowhere in any of the debates have I noticed any of the political candidates talk about peak oil. They need to talk about it. So this is my message to the candidates, especially those who are not leading: Drop the Bomb!

Sell?

Today, 2007 July 12, in his Clusterfck Nation Chronicles, Jim Kunstler said this in his "Daily Grunt":

Go figure. The Dow Jones is up over 100 points at 10:30 a.m. in the face of the following headlines:

U.S. Trade Deficit Widened 2.3% in May to $60 Billion
U.S. Foreclosures Increase 87 Percent as Prices Fall
Al-Qaeda Is More Capable of Attacking West, U.S. Report Says
Crude Oil at $73.48
Euro at $1.3773
More Subprime Woes to Come

Seems as though the bulls ran wild today. The Dow was actually up 283 points today. Yet Jim points out all these ominous events, including record foreclosures, rising oil prices, and Al Qaeda on the jihadpath. Sort of like a victory party on the Titanic.

Is Jim trying to say this is a Sell signal?

Cooling Dance

On 2007 July 7, many places around the world celebrated Live Earth Day. At my church, we had a combined meeting of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network and Moveon.org that attracted many people from my congregation, featured what people, including Democratic Presidential candidates, would do about global warming, and even featured an actual product: an LED lamp.

But was Live Earth in general a success? Jim Kunstler doesn’t think so. In his Clusterf nation Chronicles for today, "Rain Dance", he says that the event was dominated by all these rock bands strutting out their stuff making loud noises that consume electricity. That is what some of us thought at First Church when the TV turned towards what was happening elsewhere for Live Earth Day. Actually, one might call Live Earth a Cooling Dance.

You cannot do anything about peak oil or curb global warming with prima donnas playing rock music all over the place to mesmerized audiences. What does this rock music have to do with global warming? These stars could eventually allow a dictator to make use of these crowds of "fans" to take absolute power.

And what's Al Gore doing anyway, says Jim Kunstler. Why does he make movies like the prima donnas do and wail about global warming instead of getting somewhere where he can do something about it? Why doesn't he run for President?

Localize Fireworks

Every year at this time I go out into our development to see fireworks. I run or walk out among the streets hunting for fireworks displays. In past year, I have seen some impressive displays from people of our neighborhood, and I expect to do the same tonight. A problem is that these displays in many cases are illegal. They can also be dangerous and all the authorities are telling us not to do it and instead go to a public display. Indeed they can be dangerous. You need to handle them as if it could go off at any instance a flame is nearby. They cannot be handled by children and require adult supervision. But I still go out and see these displays.

Of course I could go see one of the public fireworks displays in the community, but the joy of seeing these fireworks is diminished by the traffic jams and parking problems that come with these displays.

Indeed that is a major problem of these displays. People every year get into their car or SUV and drive to a public fireworks display, causing parking and traffic problems, when so many people jam into such a small space. They consume huge amounts of gasoline, especially if they get stuck in displays. They go to the parking lots of big box stores such as Wal-Mart to watch a few fireworks ascend about 15 degrees above the horizon from some place far away.

Peak oil tells us there may be a day soon when we will not be able to drive all over the place for the pleasure of seeing pyrotechnic stars blaze in the heavens. What will we do then? All these years I go in the neighborhood to see local fireworks display, I run or walk - a good way to get exercise in too. I urge all of us to try that this year. It's a way of localizing fireworks.

A lot of other things will need relocalizing as well: growing food, getting medicine and health care, buying consumer goods, and celebrating community with the people around you. Until that day happens, at least we can enjoy fireworks and not get into traffic and parking hassles; see them locally.

Americans for Balanced Energy Choices Signs People Up Without their Permission

Yesterday I received in the mail a letter from the Americans for Balanced Energy Choices (ABEC) (Warning: Music). This letter said that I have just joined the organization. Huh? I don't remember explicitly joining such a group. I have been a member of CCAN (Chesapeake Climate Action Network) and my church's Earth Committee. These organizations seek to combat global warming and other environmental concerns through a variety of methods. I went to a conference in Wilmington, NC on global warming. I have been attending meetings of the Charlottesville Peak Oil group, and have been concerned about peak oil for some time. Did I somehow join up for something that I did not remember, or did my signing something get me to be a member of yet another environmental group that fights pollution through oil, natural gas, and coal production, among other things?

I looked at the letter. It talks about providing affordable energy. Good enough. But you can't tell organizations from their own literature any more. That is not where you get the truth. I go to something independent of ABEC; in particular, Wikipedia. Surprise! I find that it is a political action committee promoting the coal industry. I would have never signed up for something like this. Although I think we should consider coal as an option, I know from my own calculations that the disasters spoken of by the global warming people can happen only because of the use of coal. So given this, do you think I would support a group that promotes coal production? That promotes civilizational suicide?

The only way I would support coal production and other coal activities, such as coal to oil conversion, is if it does not contribute to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and only as a last resort after other actions are taken. This group signed me up without my permission. They evidently seek to sign up people without their knowledge and then say this is a grass-roots effort on the behalf of the coal industry. I beg your pardon, ABEC. This is not grass-roots. This type of lying is more aptly described as Astroturf.

I request, ABEC, that you drop me from your membership rolls, and drop everyone else that you signed up without their permission.

Jim, We Have Someone

One of the more interesting blogs I have seen on Peak Oil is Clusterfuck Nation by Jim Kunstler. Jim seems more than some of the others to say what he feels is what it's going to be. Some of his predictions have been way off (Dow Jones 4000, instead of the actual 12000), but his general thesis is well taken. People seem to be ignoring the signs of Peak Oil, so maybe someone like him is necessary to get people to listen. One of his points is that such things as Toyota Priuses, ethanol, CAFE standards and the like are merely ways of trying to get us to continue driving like we have been, instead of what he thinks would be better, namely to restructure the way we live and the places we live so we can do with less oil.

In his latest blog ("Both Ways"), he says he would rather have someone who wants us to discourage suburban development instead of pulling the troops home. We have someone, Jim. To me it follows that he would want us to support Dorothy Jaeckle in Chesterfield County, Virginia, who won an upset victory over Jack Wilson, more than Democrats such as Hillary and Obama who want to pull the troops home. At least Dorothy would be a start. She defeated a candidate supported by his boss and by developers all over the place. Her platform, which she documents in a letter (parts of which are here), is that something should be done about unbridled growth and development in Chesterfield County. She put her case convincingly, and won the election easily.

It's a start, but so far she has told us what she is against. What is she for? Hopefully, she will outline a design for the County that will include farmer's markets, design to make the automobile less necessary, and other facets of what is called the "urban village". For we are eventually going to have to adjust to such an environment. The oil may have already hit a peak worldwide, and there will be only less of it as the time goes by.

In the meantime, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and other candidates who yell about pulling troops out of Iraq, about energy dependence, and about bombing Iran should listen to what Dorothy Jaeckle is saying and call for all of us to head in the same direction.

In the meantime, I hope Jim continues his blog, and that his servers stand up better than they did tonight. I could not comment on his blog because of "this page can't be displayed".

Will gasoline hit $4 a gallon in 2007?

Recently an article by Joe Carroll in Bloomberg said that gasoline prices could hit $4 a gallon this year. This is higher than gasoline has ever been around here. The most I have ever seen was $3.25 a gallon, a few days after Katrina struck, when power outages were preventing local pipelines from receiving fuel. But AAA of Maryland has struck back with an article saying that it is premature or irresponsible to say it will do that. So which is right?

There are many factors influencing the price of oil. Some of the ones Bloomberg mentions are hurricanes, tensions in the Middle East, Nigeria, and other places, supply, and demand from consumers, primarily in the US. Any one of these could cause shortages and cause prices to skyrocket. But suppose everything is OK? For a while, then, gasoline prices will stay in the upper $2s, as things will be mostly OK. There is an economic boom in this country, however, and this will cause demand to heat up. But the major factor, I feel, will be supply. There are some serious problems coming up.

The four biggest oil fields in the world are all declining: Ghawar in Saudi Arabia, Cantarell in Mexico, Burgan in Kuwait, and Da Qing in China. More oil is coming online, but this will be from smaller fields and I am not sure that this increase will counteract the declines in the Big 4. Already Pemex, the Mexican oil company, is showing pressure. It is seeing its profit margins declining, and is fearing for the future. If Mexico should stop sending fuel to the US, it could have a dramatic effect on prices.

So I say there is a possibility of gasoline going to $4, because the world has hit peak oil and world oil production is declining. Sooner or later, the decline will filter down to the gasoline pump.

Calm before the Storm

Peak Oil? You wouldn't know it. People are talking all over the place about the promise of tar sands, ethanol, and wind power. Gasoline is dropping in price. I had predicted before the summer that oil would hit $95 a barrel and gasoline $3.50 a gallon. Summer is nearly over. The price of oil at its highest was about $78 a barrel and right now it is struggling to hold onto $70; gasoline is tumbling rapidly from a high of $2.95 a gallon to today's $2.56 a gallon. Iran's dictatoriot Ahmadinejad seems all huff and puff like a wolf that can't blow the house down. There's been a war between Israel and Hezbollahia, cohabitant of Lebanon, but that appears to be blowing over. The far prognosis for natural gas is grim, but right now there is a tremendous glut of the stuff. Hurricanes? This has been a dud of a season. Only now are threats coming up, but the latest one, Ernesto, has diminished from a potential Gulf rig and refinery whacker to just another thunderstorm with rain and tornado threats here in Virginia. So where's the peak oil? Where even is global warming?

It's coming. We don't know exactly when, but there will come a time when the world will not be able to increase oil production. Someone at the recent ASPO convention says that will occur 1500 days from 2006 July 26 or so; that's in the year 2010. Others say 2008. When it happens, they say, only "tremendous demand destruction" will cause demand to meet supply. In the past few months, oil production worldwide has stayed steady at 84 million barrels per day, but some of that could be the result of refinery destruction. But it also suggests we may be nearing the peak. We have trouble with the Alaska pipeline, although half of it is back up. They say that Saudi Arabia is experiencing trouble trying to match oil output with its rhetoric.

So this makes us all feel uneasy. What to do now? Move to the city? Grow a vegetable garden in our yard? Buy a Toyota Prius or a bicycle? Move closer to work? Stock up on food? Is this a disaster or something? It will be, but not of the kind that stocking up for disasters will help, because it will be long lasting. My thoughts are that we should reduce our output - take out all that is unneeded for fulfillment in our lives. Cut the lights. Ride the bike. Take the train. Move to the city, or even better yet, to a self-sufficient urban village or cohousing project. We do what we can, and we will just have to see what happens.

Credit and debit cards at pumps could lead to disaster

How do I pay for gasoline? When I was a child, my father used to go up to a gas pump. A serviceman in a policeman hat would come out and put a pump in the gasoline tank. I would see the digits spin, until the terminate somewhere near $2 or $3. Then my father would pay the serviceman. When I got out of college and owned my first car, I would get gasoline on my own, getting out of my car and putting the pump in and pumping until it said something like $10. Then I would go into the establishment, which was now a small grocery or convenience store instead of a auto service station, and pay the $10. I would get gasoline like this all the way until well into the 21st Century.

Then a change occurred. I started getting out a card and sticking it into the pump. I now follow screen instructions, pumping in the gasoline, and getting a receipt. That is how much my credit or debit card was charged for the gasoline. Then I would drive away without having to go into the store. Usually the amount is now $25, or for my van, $45. How times have changed.

There is a danger here. As long as people went into the store or paid someone cash, higher gasoline prices would crimp people's desire to drive places. This would cause a needed decrease in demand, and a drop in gasoline prices. But if people are going to stick cards in machines and build up charges on a credit card, people are not going to conserve. The direct association between gasoline and money is no longer there. Drivers don't worry about money until their credit card bill comes.

And then people react in the usual way they react to credit card balances. They pay the minimum amount and interest starts accruing. If gasoline prices are going to be charged like this in an era of ever rising gasoline prices, this will cause serious trouble. People will keep charging bigger and bigger amounts as gasoline prices continue to go up. Demand will stay high, furthering bigger raises in gasoline prices. Eventually people will not be able to pay their credit balances, and bankruptcies and defaults will occur all over the place, and this could cause a string of bank failures. This could be exacerbated by inflation, causing the Fed to raise interest rates. In other words, we could have another Great Depression.

People need to start conserving now. Forget the credit card, and pay only with what you got. Else we are heading for a real monster of a financial crash.

The Five Biggest Problems in the World Today

You hear a lot of stuff happening on the news and elsewhere nowadays. People are fatter than they were 10 years ago, gasoline is $3 a gallon, Israel and Hezbollah are having a free for all with each other, the Iraq conflict is continuing on and on and on with no end in sight, hurricanes threaten Gulf of Mexico oil supplies, sex offenders maraud the landscape and so forth. But what really are the biggest problems we face today? This is important because some theories (Periodic Presidents, the Fourth Turning, and the Great Turning) are saying that a major crisis period may be coming shortly. If so, what's going to cause the crisis? I think it is likely to be one of these five problems that leads to the crisis, and I will enumerate them in terms of their likeliness.

5. Discrimination. No, it didn't end with Martin Luther King and the civil rights movements of the 1960s. We still see it nowadays, in the destruction of a gas station because its owners wear turbans (Sikhs), the murder of a gay man in Wyoming, and even in the way we associate with people in our everyday life. Discrimination is alive and well. It would help if everyone would recognize the worth and dignity of every person.

4. Prevalence of Mainline Religions. This is a large grouping of related problems. The problem is that mainline religions, such as Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Jainism, and so forth, promulgate belief in a higher power ("God") way up there that answers their prayers. "I thank God for helping me through this disaster." What about those that did not survive? Was God with them? Sounds like a retributive God to me. Further, many people and nations begin to make God in their own image. For since the Ultimate Reality is so immense as to be unreachable, the best we can do is make up images that are specific to ourselves, and from this develops the idea of Good vs Evil, with Good being us and Evil being those other guys. From this conflicts develop. Muslims are especially apt to spout off religion in their own name, from the death threats against people who draw caricatures of Mohammad to the majority of people in Afghanistan who want someone executed because he wants to practice Christianity instead. In this country, it manifests itself in forcing us to hear "Under God" in our schools, in demagogues such as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, and in forcing high school teachers to teach non-science, such as creation and intelligent design. I believe that religious beliefs are at the heart of the present crises in the Middle East that threaten the entire world. People need to understand each other before demanding that they be understood, and the world will be a better place.

3. Retirement of Baby Boomers As we go down the list, we get into more serious problems. This one was caused by all the World War II vets who came home and started manufacturing babies and families, creating a population boom that caused schools in the 1960s to rapidly expand, caused a glut of PhDs in the 1970s, a housing boom in the late 1970s. We baby boomers are headed into our retirement years, and when that happens, some nasty things could happen. What happens when boomers withdraw from their 401(k)s instead of putting money into them? Will the stock market crash? Certainly the presence of all these aging boomers requiring care will be a drag on the economy. I suspect people will want to work longer, but this is still a danger signal in the years ahead. It has caused Harry Dent, an economist, to call for the Mother of All Depressions next decade.

2. Global Warming. Or in general, global climate change. All these fossil fuels that we are burning up is spewing carbon dioxide in the air, which prevents sunlight from getting out and causes the Earth to warm up. Al Gore presented the case for this quite nicely in his documentary An Inconvenient Truth. This is a movie that needs to be seen, as Al Gore has presented a convincing case that indeed global warming is affecting the way we live. We see it now, in Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, in some of these storms across the nation such as the Great Northeast Storm of 2006 June and the St Louis Blackout storms of mid July, and in desert-like conditions in some areas and heat waves all over the place, especially the American West and Europe. This is a problem that needs to be dealt with in the years ahead if we are to avoid destructive events. But it is not the biggest problem we face. Al Gore went to all this bother to prepare a first-rate documentary on the Number 2 Problem. We need something like that on the Number 1 Problem:

1. Peak Oil Our whole civilization is based on it. Oil. It is nonrenewable, and the world is near the halfway point. This means that in the years ahead, while demand for oil soars, production of it will decline. This will result in all sorts of havoc if we are not prepared for it. Good descriptions of the problem are available at www.oilcrisis.com and its links, Jim Kunstler's Clusterfuck Nation Chronicles, although the use of the f-word and other such words in his chronicles detracts from the message, Kenneth Deffeyes' web page, and many other sites. Peak Oil is why the price of gasoline has risen from 88 cents a gallon in 1998 to $3.00 a gallon today, and we can expect it to rise further. It is hard to find substitutes - hydrogen has storage and other problems, ethanol has an energy return ratio of 1 or less, there aren't enough wind turbines (although they are easy enough to construct), and solar power is a long way from providing us all the energy we need. We need to conserve as well, by eliminating the use of energy that really isn't needed by us - computers that burn all night long, lights that light up the ground for nobody, and so forth. To me, Peak Oil tops all of the other problems. It will stop Global Warming. It is important enough that, although I would recommend voting for Democrats in general this fall, if you are in Maryland's Sixth District (Cumberland and Hagerstown), don't. Vote Republican - for incumbent Repv. Roscoe Bartlett, who shows more awareness for Peak Oil than anyone else in Washington.

These are all problems that we need to deal with. Note that I don't list terrorism. I believe this is a subproblem to Prevalence of Mainline Religions. Religions drive people to commit acts of terrorism, for example, to go to where there are 55 virgins. It is a red herring. Terrorism is not the problem. Global Warming is a serious problem but it is not The problem either. The Problem is Peak Oil. Focus our attention on that, and the other problems probably will work themselves out.

Interstate System Turns 50

As part of my membership in the American Automobile Association (not AAA - that's an honor student's report card), I get the magazine AAA World. The big picture on the front cover is an Interstate highway sign saying "50": The Interstate Turns 50. After some hunting around for it because the front page of the contents looked more like a blary ad than like a table of contents, I found it on page 62. On 2006 August 13, the Interstate System will be 50 years old. Interesting. It started on my 10th birthday, so on that date I will be 60 years old. 10 + 50 = 60, and the Interstate System has been an integral part of my life, as it has for everyone around me.

The article contains some interesting information on the Interstate highway system, including its history. It seems that Dwight Eisenhower started it by going on a tour of the United States in 1919 to document all the places in our country that it was hard or impossible to get to by automobile as justification for his plan to build a network of superhighways in our country. Later on, when this adventurer was President of the United States, on 1956 August 13, Congress passed and Eisenhower signed into law the Federal Highway Act of 1956. It mandated the construction of a network of superhighways across the nation. These highways would have no stop signs, no intersections, no rail crossings, no highway traffic jams, and in fact nothing to impede auto traffic. When you get on one, you just simply go and go and go forever into the distance. This made distant places a lot easier to go to and changed drastically our lifestyle in this country. In fact, it has been called not only an economic force, but a democratizing force as well.

Some of the early cartoons presented in the article are interesting. For example, one has the treasury secretary put a stethoscope to the highways of our nation; in his other hand is a doctor's satchel. Another one has a series of letters to Congressmen soaring in to the air to the nation's Capitol, with cars driving on it as though the letters were a superhighway. The cartoon was urging us to prevail on our leaders to construct such a highway system. The system is just about complete now, and in many places it looks like something unearthly or extraterrestrial, with all these highways crisscrossing all over the place. Take a look at Rochester, New York's Can of Worms, Richmond, Virginia's James River Bridge, Bryan Park area, or I-895 bridge, or Washington, DC's Springfield Mixing Bowl, and you see what I mean.

But has it all been good? Think of all the land that was used up in constructing the Mixing Bowl. It must be a square mile or more. And they are still making it bigger and bigger. The highways have encouraged us to drive cars all over the place and to go out farther and farther into the suburbs, engaging in what Jim Kunstler ("Clusterfuck Nation Chronicles") calls "an idea with no future". This network of highways makes us dependent on the automobile, and it does not do all what it was intended to do. It avoids city traffic jams, which are annoying, all right, but it causes superhighway traffic jams, which are colossal and waste huge amounts of our citizens' time and fuel. Further, the fuel which drives all of this Interstate is about to run out. The world is nearing "peak oil", after which production will decrease from year to year, causing shortages all over the place. This could lay waste to this entire assemblage of concrete ribbons. Maybe the superhighway system is the Great Moai Statue of our society, like the statues that Easter Islanders built before they ran their remote island out of trees and their way of life.

The AAA article says nothing about this ominous future of our interstate system, and further, they have the gall to praise, in a subarticle entitled "A Recipe for Success", Colonel Sanders and his Kentucky Fried Chicken enterprise. That's right, AAA. With these highways comes Kentucky Fried Cruelty and We Do Chickens Wrong, not to mention trans fat as well.

The Interstate System of highways is a great achievement of humankind. From out of dust and dirt arises an intricate and complex network of concrete ribbons throughout our nation. I say we should use what's coming up, the system's 50th birthday, to say "Mission Accomplished" and not build any more Interstate highways. Instead, let the rising cost of gasoline take traffic jams off the highways.

Economic Collapse and Bubble Boom, Part 2

I received both books today, The Coming Economic Collapse by Stephen Leeb, and The Great Bubble Boom, by Harry S. Dent. I haven't read all of these volumes, but I have read enough to come with some conclusions. I believe Leeb more than I do Dent.

Stephen Leeb believes that peak oil will profoundly affect our society. He shows this more than in his earlier book The Oil Factor, and in some cases suggests we could be nearing an end to our civilization, although he says this need not happen if we take the right actions. Like other peak oil people, he says that oil prices will continue to rise for the foreseeable future. This happened before, in the 1970s, and he uses that decade as a model for what is coming up in the next few years - the Double Zeroes and the Teens. During that time, inflation threatened to get out of hand. It was stopped by Fed chairman Paul Voelker raising interest rates so high that they suppressed inflation, and eventually caused things to come back to low inflation. Mr. Leeb notes this can't happen this time because of huge consumer debt. If Bernacke were to try that, housing buyers would disappear, people would not be able to pay their adjustable rate mortgages, and house prices would plummet, taking stocks and the economy with it. So the only thing left is to let inflation rage. This implies that we could be heading towards million-dollar homes, then million-dollar cars, then million-dollar computers and so forth, and I hope we aren't heading towards 1923 Germany.

Leeb says that wind holds the most promise to replacing oil in our society; he doesn't mention the idea of converting coal to gasoline, as in his earlier book, I guess because he says that wind can be used to electrolyze water into hydrogen for fuel for fuel-cell vehicles. Among the investments that should be shunned are those that did poorly in the 1970s: cash, bonds, stocks, and small-cap stocks (although the latter did well in the 1970s). Instead, he says we should invest in oil, gold, real estate, China, India, and alternative energy. It is hard to follow such a strategy now because it seems that oil and gold have a tendency to drop in price as of late. But he says we should invest in these things.

Harry Dent did not do as well with his Bubble Boom. He uses generational theory and the upcoming Fourth Turning for his predictions. He says that a booming market, to the extent of Dow 40,000, will come in the next few years, by 2010. Then he says the Mother of all Depressions will occur, because the Baby Boom generation will start retiring and require support. He even describes a mini-history of 2010-2024 and beyond. I read through this and it seems like a repeat of the Great Depression and World War II. He even calls for the election of an FDR-like president in 2012. If he is talking about a Crisis President, I think this president is more likely to show in 2008, and I made a claim on Beyond Opinion that this president could be Al Gore. He does present a graph in which there is an uncanny resemblance in the Dow of 1921+ and the Dow of 2002+, but many other authors have found such similarities, and they haven't panned out. The truth is that no two Fourth Turnings are the same. The one before the Great Depression and World War II was completely unlike those crises. Instead of dragging on for 16 years or so, this one, the Civil War, was over in only 4 years, and it did not involve much economic dislocation, at least for the North. Dent makes the same mistake as President Bush - overemphasizing terrorism and ignoring peak oil. Neither Leeb nor Dent mention global warming.

Harry Dent seems to completely ignore peak oil, and assumes we are going to have an adequate supply, and gives brief mention to the Athabasca tar sands in Canada, although that oil takes a lot of energy to get from the tar. He devotes an introduction to peak oil, and he suggests that prices are going back to under $40 a barrel and that oil and oil stocks are about to tumble. I don't think so. The problem is not some trick or some technicality in a figment of the imagination such as a stock's price, but is a genuine supply problem with the stuff. His reading is fascinating in places, however, and he demonstrates well the concept of the S-curve, which is also called the logistic curve. Dent applies this curve to automobiles, computers, and cellular phones. He says that we are 90% into the Internet S-Curve. I think he should apply his S-curve concept to cumulative oil production. He will find that we are near the 50% mark on that curve; i.e., nearing peak production. His recommendations are for stocks of all kinds until 2010, and then invest in money market funds and the like. Leeb says those investments will lose purchasing power to inflation.

I asked both of these men about the theory of the other. Leeb does say in his book that retirement of baby boomers (a prediction of the Fourth Turning) will drag the economy, but that peak oil is the more serious problem. A spokesman of his said that baby boomers will continue to find work into their later years and so that will not be a problem, unless peak oil makes it one. However, as we have seen, Dent does not mention peak oil at all, and actually says that oil prices are a bubble and are about to tumble.

Which am I to believe more? I'd go along with Leeb. The Fourth Turning is an interesting concept, but still merely an abstract concept, but oil is a real substance. Either way, we could be in for some hard times, and I believe that the Fourth Turning crisis will center on finding how to continue civilization without fossil fuels.