"capable of fulling EROI" was supposed to be a cheesy pun--capable of 'fueling' but I blew it.

I'm curious Truman. Tell me about the Wall Street manufactured crisis. Peak oil is a term for when we have reached half way. So it exists as a period in time as well as an amount, estimates no one will ever be able to predict accurately anyway. Are you going to deny global warming and climate change next?

Abiotic Oil: Science or Politics?
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/100404_abiotic_oil.shtml

Quote: What is the relevance of the abiotic theory in practice? The answer is "none."

Years ago, in a very well respected magazine, they did an investigative report into so-called oil shortages/energy crises , and at the time, (early 1970's) they claimed there were 20-25 manufactured oil crises recorded over the "then" past 100 years.

Really, who REALLY knows how much Oil and Natural Gas etc. there REALLY is except a Resource company who has both the expertise and can spend the millions to explore and determine the size of these Oil etc. reserves, ....AND whose best corporate interest are in keeping prices as high as they can , which can only be done by keeping supply low.

Call them Debeers: Fossil Fuel versions?

They also must love the Environmental movement,...it benefits them.

What if the TRUE number of Oil and Natural Gas reserves could be determined...my guess is that the amounts would be FAR greater than what has been previously " reported " ... and all hell would possibly break loose.

Some claim the Middle East turmoil and the subsequent U.S occupation are not, in fact, to actually secure a stable supply, but instead are aimed at actually restricting supply, and restrict /discourage further exploration , hence maintain a higher world price than might be achieved otherwise.

Perhaps there is thus more evidence of an even greater symbiotic relationship between the Military Industrial complexes and Big Oil Corporations etc. interests.

PS Truman ..good to see you again.

Hi Maestro, good to read you, too.

Ianmack and Clubfrome, here's an excellent link to a debate on abiotic oil, but there's now millions of pages of it all over the internet.

http://www.peakoil.com/fortopic1664-15.html

I've known that the 'fossil fuel' theory of oil is a joke for fifty years. Now it's wonderful to see that some real science on this subject has reached the internet.

Ianmack, I think you must be aware of the relevance of the actual origin of hydrocarbons. From a scientific point of view it's always important to understand good science, whether or not it coincides with the goals of capitalists.

This is a scarcely-known subject in the West, because Mainstream Media, now fatally monopolized, has refused to allow its writers to investigate and report on new developements in the science of hydrocarbon origins, but Russian scientists have known for many years that fuel hydrocarbons are produced chemically, not biotically, and have tailored their oil production accordingly.

Big Money has preferred to do middle east invasions, support of emirs, shahs and monarchy families and phony WMD rationals and clandestine attempts at rejuvenating the Mosul to Haifa pipeline, instead of investing the tons of American dollars that would be required to go deep into the earth's mantle where there's thousands of years worth of oil supplies.

Incidentally, there's probably lakes of the stuff on Titan. Google all about it.

Maestro, you're mentioning of the de beers diamond hoax is spot on, and I can't think of a better metaphor for peak oil.

What Maestro knows, but didn't quite explain is that, like the peak oil scam, the demand and cost of diamonds is phony, as de beers has enough diamonds kept off the market to supply the world for thousands of years.

Not to mention: who really needs a diamond, anyway?

There's no shortage of industrial usage diamonds.

Read all about: "Deep Oil in Vietnam," "Abiotic Oil" "Russian theory of abiotic oil." "Thomas Gold's l967 theory of abiotic oil."

Stuff like that.

Whether there's one barrel left or a trillion, the way in which we are using fossil fuels is poisoning the planet.

Just because there's plenty of candy left in the world is hardly a reason to embrace a diet of sweet-based gluttony.

Here we are driving at full speed toward the cliff of environmental degradation, and we're arguing whether we have enough gasoline to get there!

If you like Wyler's article (and I do), check out the good folks at

http://www.prwatch.org/

who have lots of (primarily US) news about the spinmeisters.

Further to the grand oil company conspiracy to keep prices high, my understanding of oil pricing is that it is based upon current and near future supply. Oil isn't expensive because there's only a little left, it's expensive because it's getting harder to get out of the ground. Which is to say the price is based upon the current reality, not where we'll be in a thousand years.

If there truly were vast deposits of oil just waiting to be pumped, the petroleum companies would be shouting "don't worry, be happy" from the rooftops and advising one and all not to worry about developing new sources of energy in a bid to keep their customers using their product down the road rather than finding (and sticking with) less-polluting alternatives.

Then again, maybe Icke's lizard people fuelled the planes with abiotic oil to crash into the Twin Towers to hide the evidence of the planted explosives which brought down the buildings as a way of destroying the evidence that Jesus still lives... in a reasonably-priced condo somewhere in Yaletown with his roomie Ogopogo whose groundbreaking work on perpetual motion machines is being covered up the Masons who are really high-functioning zombies.

It's all fiction, esp. the part about the condo.

Stump, you're a god. Your theory explains the world. I've always known deep down that the Ogomeister was in Yaletown.

And just yesterday my tinfoil hat was buzzing like just like it did when McCartney died and they covered it up. I knew the buzzing in my head meant I was being watched by one of the giant lizard-people, maybe even QE2 herself!

take a look at 'deep' well or abiotic oil.

Japan spends huge amounts of money on imported oil. Japan is one of the most technically advanced nations in the world. If there was anything at all to the strong abiotic oil theory, Japan has the motivation, technical knowledge and financial clout to quickly tap into such an oil source. The fact that Japan is not seriously pursuing abiotic oil tells us everything we need to know. Japan is vigourously pursuing energy conservation with hybrid vehicles and other technologies. They're also big on solar energy.

Japan charges the TRUE cost of electricity, which is about 20 cents per KWH. Charging the REAL cost of electricity (including health/environmental costs) has not destroyed Japanese industry. This approach has strengthened Japanese industry by motivating them to become far more efficient at utilizing an expensive resource, which has made their already high quality products even more in-demand in the international marketplace.

Meanwhile, crybaby industries in Canada have demanded electricity and oil at below true cost rates so they can spend their fat profits on yachts instead of re-investing them in more efficient technologies. Idiotic politicians have gone along with this scam. The dumbest politicians of all are the NDP types who impose both sales taxes and ongoing capital taxes on investments that increase energy efficiency in homes and industry.

Another important thing the Japanese are doing to move toward sustainability is to stabilize their population size. This is mostly accidental and not planned as in China. Either way, the only chance we have for global sustainability is to combine the best technical approaches with the best organizational approaches (living within walking or cycling distance of work and school) and the best international population control methods. The evidence is starting to point toward some sort of international pension system funded by resource extraction taxes and pollution taxes as ultimately the best international birth control system. The countries with the highest birth rates are the ones that rely on lots of children and grandchildren as their pension system.

Stump, there are no 'fossil fuels.'

Hydrocarbons are not made from the fossils of once-living organisms, but rather chemically produced from mantle magma flows. There's hydrocarbons all over the galaxy.

Western-developed wells are merely seepage from mantle flows.

And yes, the burning of hydrocarbons which produces carbon dioxide for Acquired Greenhouse Global Warming, (unlike natural Greenhouse Warming, without which our planet would be too cold for human habitation) is a real environmental problem, but the concentration of wealth to the extent that 2% of the population own 50% of the wealth--mostly in North American and Europe--is accomplished with the aid of a number of scientific and political and military hoaxes. Peak Oil, like the war on terror, is one of them.

The abiotic bus will make a few more stops before it plummets over the cliff full speed. You can have my seat Truman.

More technology won't save us. Curbing our magpie desires for more shiny things getting to us faster just might.

As I say Truman, I don't much care where the oil comes from or how much is left, it's what we are doing with it that's the big problem.

"QE2 herself"

Oh Frank. The Queen a woman? Where DO you get these delightful fantasies?

:-)

Vietnam is deservedly rescuing itself from financial oblivion by allowing the Russians in to successfully develope 'deep wells.'

This issue can be successfully obscured by the global warming issue, but I think it would be unfortunate. They are related but really two different issues.

Hydrocarbons remain the energy source most capable of supplying the world's demands, and will remain so for many years, regardless of the wisdom of using them.

On a local talk show this week, BOTH Oil AND Diamonds were discussed in the global perspective

BTW Stump, not disagreeing with you, just that these so-called shortages have their own conspiratorial spin.

The Oil = "rotting dead dinosaur" theories never made much sense, if nothing else the anaerobic environments they would most likely be under are not conducive to that theory. Also, why would a bunch of dinosaurs die in one spot???...and create huge reserves ??? and not rot quickly prior to being buried under the earths crust???

Diamonds are apparently very very plentiful, but clever marketing has historically given them an inflated value...one comment was that a 1 Carat diamond is really worth only 5 dollars. Rubies and other precious stones are apparently rarer and hence technically much more valuable.

Diamonds are apparently a nasty business, involving Hessian militaries and workers subjected to frequent X Rays for security reasons and often eventual Cancer.

Apparently the term Blood Diamond is not so much a " left wing " political term to decry the abuse, but actually being used by DeBeers and other major players to taint those areas that they, Debeers etc., once had more control over, ie taint the "new" competition

Re Non fossil /less polluting fuels...I was talking to a colleague who rode in a Hybrid car and was truly impressed, that seems to be the way to go.

Hydrogen?? well apparently , it is THE BEST FUEL, but there is little or none of it "naturally", the current most economical source is it has to be derived from a fossil fuel, which of course leads to another ecological impacting footprint.

Like it or not, you guys, wars are being fought and planned over oil. The war on terror is actually the war for oil and the usage of Euros to buy it instead of Dollars.

The American reserve system and the American dollar is faltering. Yesterday American diplomats were in China begging for the Chinese (who hold a trillion bucks in treasury notes) to rise the price of the yuan so that the West can get a breather from the cheap Chinese products. (Can you imagine, advising the Chinese how to increase Chinese consumerism?)The Iraq War was fought over the demise of the dollar and Saddams selling oil for Euros as much as the Mosul to Haifa pipeline.

To make a nicer world, we've got to start telling the truth about everything.

There's plenty of oil to go around if the benefit of it is not concentrated into the hands of the undeserving.

Can't wait to see how the maestros of denial will spin the unstoppably rising oceans! Sell more green surfboards? Sell more green insurance? Sell more green boats? I'm getting sick of that colour now... starting to see red.

I hope Truman is wrong. The one positive note in this past decade has been Peak Oil. It means this ridiculous system has to come to an end. If there is an unending supply of oil it means suburbia and shopping malls pole to pole. But I think Truman is wrong. I read about anerobic oil about 2 years ago and think it a fantasy.

Truman Green

Um, would you mind bringing us up to date on the changed status of coal, please?

Why does water pool? Liquid plus gravity.

Also, it's not just dinosaurs, it's all that biomass from so long ago. We're talking about processes millions of years in the making.

Anarcho, I'm as positive about the origin of oil as I am about whether the sun will rise tomorrow. Why you say that peak oil is the one positive note is a bit of a mystery to me. The peak oil theory is a device suddenly got up a few years ago by surrogates of the oil industry to ensure that the rationale for high oil prices will remain intact.
Mainly that oil is non-renewable.

Which it isn't!

They even have a fake bell curve to predict when oil will peak. Like the rapture, though they have to keep advancing their dates. I recall l997, l991, 2005. I bet you can find more.

(Cost is usually based on availability, I'm sure you'll agree.)

I'm confident that if you spend a few months going over the hundreds of sites on the web under 'abiotic oil,' you'll begin to understand the truth about the origin of oil. It's not really derived from dead plants and animals, eh. That's just silly, and I'm sure the scientist who pretend that they believe it have to bite their tongues to stop themselves from laughing.

Becaue there is an unlimited supply of oil in the earth's mantle doesn't mean that we've got to continue basing our economies on the stuff. Even with abiotic oil the question of EROI (estimated return on investment) is still paramount.

So far the Russians and Ukranians,(now that they've jailed that Russian oil tycoon, who tried to sell the rights to the technology to the West)are the only major force that has spent the money to develope deep oil. The West, brainwashed by their 'made' scientists would have to invest such massive sums of money to catch up that they've decided to just continue confiscating rights to the stuff with their fake wars and sleazy political adventures.

If you read about 'anerobic oil' (without oxygen) a few years ago, that might have been interesting.

I'm talking about abiotic oil, though, anarcho. And it's certainly no fantasy.

"Abiotic" refers to an origin which is not based on the pressurizing and heating of dead plants and animals in the sedimentary layers beneath the ocean--first to a waxy substance known as kerogen then to fuel hydrocarbons such as natural gas (90% of which is methane) and oil.

The idea was first theorized, ironically, by a Russian scientist in 1780, or so, but now the Russians have completely discarded it. The entire Russian oil industry, the largest in the world, by the way, is totally based on the abiotic theory, which says that oil is derived from magma flows deep beneath the oil wells currently developed by Western petroleum companies. The idea is that as the tectonic plates shifted, as they always have, cracks in the plates allowed the leakage of mantle oil into shallower depths above, which are the sources of our current Western-developed oil wells.

This is really not arguable.

Try Thomas Gold, anarcho, who, by the way plagiarized the Russians, notably Alexandrovitch Kudryavtsev, who published his ideas in l951.

I understood astroturfing to mean fake grassroots, which could be environmentalist, but not exclusively. Like Microsoft and the "Freedom to Innovate Network", or big tobacco and the "Advancement of Sound Science Coalition", or big pharma and the "United Seniors Association", or "Working Families for Wal-mart".

And also I agree we should stop being dependent on burning hydrocarbons as our major fuel source - but not because we're running out or it's getting harder to get or it causes wars, but because it's just plain old f*#%ing filthy. Those other reasons help (I too feel a twisted kind of sadness at the thought that peak oil is a marketing myth), but when you get down to basics I simply enjoy breathing clean air. Second to that is all the waste - no matter if it's oil or trees or fish, all the waste really makes me sick.

Let's get rid of that century old invention the internal combustion engine already! Let's face the facts about burning *anything* to "generate" energy!

Snert, suffice to say that coal was once a liquid. But go here, entitled, "If hydrocarbons are renewable then is "Peak Oil" a myth.? Although, we don't really have to worry about coal too much, eh. There's a thousand years worth of the stuff in known deposits.

http://www.321energy.com/editorials/bainerman083105.html

Here you'll find one of the freudian slips perpetuated by the oil interests. This one by research geochemist, Michael Lewan of the US Geological Survey.

"I don't think anybody has ever doubted that there is an inorganic source of hydrocarbon. The key question is, Do they exist in commercial quantities?"

Uh, yeah, its all inorganically produced. Only some of it is quite deep.
As if Lewan doesn't know!

Smell a rat yet, you guys?

How do you explain the temperature problem Truman?
Wouldn't all those abiotic hydrocarbons be nothing but methane? Which would of course jive with the evidence that there is abundant methane in the atmosphere of several outer planets - but hardly allows for the kind of oil production you're talking about.

When temperatures get to around 275 degrees F the chemical bonds break so why would most of the HC in the deep earth mantle be nothing but methane?

F
in A
Haven't had time to read all the posts but I like the article!
Kinda imagined that this situation had developed.
So let's imagine how to contact and enliven all the folks who do not post on thetyee (or read it).

I ain't into violent revolution. I have seen countries where the basis is destroyed. Not pretty and it takes a long time to rebuild roads and the other stuff. So:

We gotta get rid of Harper and Campbell.

Assuming that the Canadian voting public has a working bulb on the top of their spinal column (long shot, but we have no other choice) I'm thinkin' of advising my local candidate (whoever she/he is) to hire someone to watch thetyee.
Some may think I'm a radical and some may think I'm a radish but the internet is going to change this goofy settup
MARK MY Words

How does stuff leak up?

It doesn't. There was a major test drilling in Sweden - through fractured igneous rock from a meteorite strike - produced 'minimal' oil.

Most oil-fields are in sedimentary basins, where drilling is feasible. Getting oil from below dense non-sedimentary rock - even if it is in 'oil' and not methane form - is going to be extremely difficult. The Russian fields in the Donets Basin don't necessarily 'prove' much. In my view.

Truman Green

So the fossils found in coal were actually reconstituded from concentrate. OK That explains everything.

Stump, does the word 'pressure' ring a bell? It's a local and temporary trashing of the 2nd law of thermodynamics, not to mention gravity, but trust me, it works. Think artesian well. Think 'gusher' even, Stump.

(But I bet you realized this after you clicked 'post comment,' though, eh.

Hi. G. West, good to read you again. Thank your friend Alcibiades for the support he lent me after my family feud on the forum (which understandably got me banned for a month) if you get a chance, please. I really appreciated it.

About chemical bonds. You got this from http://www.rense.com/general58/biot.htm

Right?

Where it says, coincidentaly VERY similarly to you:

"More to the point, Gold also claimed the existence of liquid hydrocarbon-oil-at great depths. But there is a problem with this: the temperatures at depths below about 15,000 feet are high enough (above 275 degrees F) to break hydrocarbon bonds. What remains after these molecular bonds are severed is methane, whose molecules contain only a single carbon atom."

Paraphrasing from the same article, the claim is made that because of the tendency toward chemical bond breakage outside of the "window" of oil location--(which would render hydrocarbons into methane and not oil) which, the article claims is between 7500 and 15,000 feet, oil cannot be formed.

Simply not true. A good hint to you, G.West should have been that if it IS true, it would have immediately killed the entire abiotic oil controversy and no oil will ever be found below the 275 degree window of opportunity.

C'est-a-dire, or something: no oil below 15,000 feet. End of story! Right?

Heard it all before. Does "the proof of the pudding being located within the eating" ring a bell, G. West?

The Russians have drilled more than 300 wells far deeper than this "window" of oilinization, notable the one at Kola SG 3, Zapolzarny, (40,230 feet) which you can verify yourself.

Also the entire White Tiger Field in Vietnam is comprised of 20 wells, all deeper than 17,000 feet.

So your googled chemical bond prerequisite just might be within the window of propaganda and not oil discovery, in all due respect, G.

Had a school principal/social studies teacher way back in the late 40's state that North Americans would be known as 'oil burning barbarians' in the future. He was right.

G.West, I'm surprised that you don't understand that the fluids comprising the outer mantle (whatever their composition) are UNDER PRESSURE. How would you imagine that methane leaks from the mantle into our atmosphere, (mid ocean or surface vents) or, for that matter, how do you imagine that volcanoes spew molten lava?

Snert, oil also contains vestiges of organic materials. Good question, though. It's standard fare for this discussion.

Nope.
Rense is a site I don't go to Truman. I have a cousin and his wife in Calgary - both of them have their Master’s degrees in Engineering; one of them has been in the field of fluid dynamics and depleted field resuscitation for upwards of 25 years. She actually teaches such techniques in China from time to time things like injecting steam and other fluids into the appropriate strata to induce extract additional oil from depleted fields. I have a son who worked for Talisman analyzing seismographic data as well. I just ask the questions and wait for answers. Not my field, not my interest – except in passing.

Great to have you back by the way.

Truman Green:
Aten't the EROI the "little people" eaten by the Morlocks.........?

Cycling Commuter:

Ah, those "inscrutable" Japanese. Likely they've tapped into the abiotic oil reserves, and like all the good wood they buy from Canada and preserve in their rivers, they are doubtless pumping this oil into giant salt caverns for the day they'll take over the earth.......

I don't think so, RickW, barring an unbelievable synchronicity, which not even a determined Sheldrakian like myself will contemplate.

EROI means 'estimated return on investments,' I like to imagine, or more precisely, "energy returned over energy invested," the determination of which decides how much loot the big oil guys are willing to put into the search and production of oil, whether in shallow sedimentation or through basalt and igneous rock, and the extent they will go to to trash the abiotic theory of hydrocarbon origin, which is truly a no-brainer.

The Japanese have a hedge against oil depletion. It's called tons and tons of American dollars with which to buy the stuff. They do tend to be fairly successful with their finished-consumer- product exporting programs, after all, eh. They also tend to shy away from big stupid SUVs a lot.

...origninally - puzzling over how to pronounce that. oh-rig-ninaly or orinyinally (which seems nicer). Not sure what it means, though. This by way of a copy edit note to Ed.

"Rex, take a look at 'deep' well or abiotic oil"
I have taken a good look at Abiotic Oil and would say from a geological and economic perspective the idea is bunk for a variety of simple reasons.
Would an oil company such as Shell invest an estimated $11B to increase their tar sands production by 100,000 barrels per day, if the center of the earth was a soft carmel center of easy oil?
Would the USA's oil production have peaked in 1970, as forecasted by MK Hubbert in the 1950's, if abiotic oil was real?
Would Exxon have come out two weeks ago and said "Peak Oil is garbage"?
Would the Saudis be cutting the worlds largest oil field (Ghawar) with 7M barrels of salt water per day, if Truman Green was correct?
If Iraq had no oil do you think the USA would be spending billions per week to remain on a war footing in Iraq?
Peak oil is here now and it can be clearly seen by studying the falling living standards in Africa as people can't afford petrol to fire their cook stoves.
Abiotic Oil my eye, what a bunch of unmitigated horse droppings!

TG:
ELOI means "estimated leverage on investments". But I prefer to think of Eloi's as the naive innocents in all this......
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_Machine

Ah! The great and much lamented H.G.Wells.

Did you ever his 'Experiment in Autobiography'

It's wonderful - in my view.

Maybe we could think of the Provincial Liberals as Warlocks, silently, hungrily eating the province every night - while during the day the beautiful and innocent eloi play blissfully as though everything is fine and dandy. Gazing at the lovely mountains rising from the blue water in the distance and never noticing the increasing wreckage around their tiny delicate feet.

Truman:

So why doesn't this theoretical abiotic oil keep 'leaking' upward in the same way as real oil and magma you've which finds its way to the planet's surface?

Science is definitely not my area of expertise, but with all due respect, you know what they say, "if it sounds too good to be true...."

Burgess:

It's when we run out of oil to burn that we'll really earn the moniker 'barbarians' yeah?

I'm guessing the fight for the last few drops won't be pretty.

Oops, should read "you've mentioned". I cut, but I forgot to paste.

Worrywart most of your claims are strawman and red herring techniques.

For instance: the starvation and poverty can not blamed on the reality of abiotic or biotic oil. In fact, if my ideas are correct, and oil is actually plentiful in the earth's mantle, it should follow that acceptance of the Russian and Ukranian model will make oil cheaper for everyone and for petrol-starved Africans as well.

Shell's 15B investment in the Tar Sands depends on their estimated return on investments within the biotic oil paradigm. Only Russians and Ukrainians are doing deep well explorations. Under Putin they are not inclined to mail huge dividend cheques to investorsas are the Western companies. As I said, the West would have to spend hundreds of billion to catch up to them, as only recently has deep well exloration been contemplated in the West.

You say, "If Iraq had no oil do you think
the US would be spending billions...?"

Answer. Who says Iraq has no oil? Certainly not me.

And: "Would the US oil production have peaked in the 1970s as predicted by Dr. Hubert.

Well Hubert (Shell Oil geologist, by the way) also predicted that global oil production would peak in l995. Wrong!

As for the bell curve. Well bell curves are pretty easily manipulated and developed according to required conclusions, eh. I bet I could get up a bell curve to describe even the seriousness of your opposition to the abiotic origin ideas.

AS far as the Saudis diverting water supplies... That too is not relevant to the abiotic controversy. They'll do whatever allows them to reap the most profits from oil sales. Anyway they use most of the money to invest in army tanks and other US bling anyway.

And as for abiotic oil being only in your eye, and a pile of horse droppings to boot, I would conclude that unless the horse droppings are yielding methane-releasing bacterial binary fission, your arguments aren't even remotely persuasive.

Stump, for the same reasons that sedimentary-located wells don't automatically seep up to the surface without drilling.

They're capped by the earth's crust, eh, and require openings called 'wells' for their release.

Also, you might study the possibility of whether I am correct in claiming that supposedly depleted oil wells often appear to 'top themselves up.'

Well, I'm not aware of that phenomenon happening too often Truman - can you give us some examples?

I think there's one small field in the Gulf of Mexico which has behaved that way but I believe - again according to evidence I know nothing about - that there are perfectly plausible explanations for the phenomenon within the rationale of sedimentary basin extraction modalities.

No?

Oil for Euros, has often been cited as the motivating factor for US military action against the Saddam.

http://www.energybulletin.net/12125.html
&
http://www.energybulletin.net/2913.html

etc.

So, it wasn't about WMDs or, ultimately, oil, it was about the US dollar.

But, nasty as it is, there is still lots of oil.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3070813.stm

"Worrywart most of your claims are strawman and red herring techniques."
I obviously disagree with your statement and it seems you completely missed my points. For example you replied:
"AS far as the Saudis diverting water supplies... That too is not relevant to the abiotic controversy. They'll do whatever allows them to reap the most profits from oil sales."
Of course water cutting is relevant in that it increases costs of production and my point was why would a producer go to a higher cost method if abiotic oil was readily available?
In regards to Iraq, my point is why would the US being spending billions to fight a war if abiotic oil was avaialble to produce without killing anyone.
Hubbert was wrong in his world peak estimate, however he did not anticipate the 1973 embargo, plus it was an estimate.
You missed my point entirely which is why spend a ton of money on oil production if abiotic oil is real?
The abiotic oil theory is similar to alchemy,in that they are both flakey.
Wake up, more then half the worlds major oil proucing countries have peaked, including the recent additions of the United Kingdom (now a net importer) and Mexico whose Canterall Field has just gone below 2M barrels per day. This may soon cause a second Mexican revolution as oil revenues make up 40% of the governments budget and living standards are falling significantly.
Given the dire situation faced by humanity as energy depletes, your analysis is disgusting to me.

figured it wouldn't be long till you woke up realisticman.

Still flying in aluminum tubes and loving it?
This:

Sounds like same old, same old to me.
There is NOT lots of oil. The idiots in the multinational oil companies come up with these little ruses every few months.

You can collect them - like the story about opening up ANWAR oil would guarantee US supply for, what was it?

Six Months.

We need less and more expensive oil - not more.

I am sorry Truman, but you lose me on this one. I am willing to believe a lot of things about the ruling classes, things that are often dismissed as "conspiracy theories" by the media gate keepers. But this oil story is, as other have pointed out, just too much. For the oil companies not to capitalize on abiotic oil entails a conspiracy that is beyond my ability to accept.

Surprised me West, shilling for the oil companies now, huh? Less and more expensive oil will affect the poorer nations the most and oil companies will prosper. In north America it will mean more oil sands development and a worldwide shift to nuclear and coal in the short term. BC has 250 years of coal. In the US;
"Coal is present under 458,600 square miles of the United States, about 13 percent of the country’s land area. Coal is found in at least 38 states and mined in 27.

It is estimated that the United States has about 35 percent of the world’s potentially minable coal reserves, the largest of any nation. The Federal Energy Information Administration reports that the United States has close to 500 billion tons of demonstrated reserves (minable with current technology). According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the United States may have as much as four trillion tons of coal resources (total coal deposits, regardless of whether they can now be mined.)"

Conservation will make some impact but be offset by increasing demand from developing nations. Alternatives will come, but not for a long time.

Cycling Commuter points out that Japanese companies have to pay the

See that sweet deal that Quebec just gave yesterday to Alcan for their new smelter? Around $476 million in taxpayers money and water rights on a river until 2058, and electricity at 4 cents per KWH. That's cheap. Not much incentive to conserve there.

Quite an assault on your psyche, I know, anarcho, but spend a few months studying the science. Petroleum is produced chemically, not biotically.

Did I suggest somewhere that I'm recommending that you merely take my word for it?

You say that the oil companies would take advantage of abiotic oil if it existed. Not if they could concentrate wealth by ignoring it. Think about it, Anarcho. If oil was secretly as plentiful as water in the oceans, do you think the oil companies would destroy their profits by telling us about it?

Also, anarcho the Russian oil companies are taking advantage. Have a look. Google, "Russian abiotic oil production."

Or start here: http://www.gasresources.net/Introduction.htm

There are other, more intuitive ways of knowing things, anarcho. For instance, compare the hundreds of thousands of 'abiotic oil' hits on the internet with the complete lack of coverage in the Mainstream Press of this entire issue. Have you ever read a single word about it in the MSM, radio or television?
I haven't. Isn't that weird? Don't you think that they'd at least have a good chuckle about how silly it is now and then, if they were really reporting the news of the world as they pretend they are doing?

realisticman
I'm not shilling for anyone. That's your job. Last week it was the airlines, this week it's the oil companies you really care about. Make up your mind.

Name goes here:

Stump said:

I tend to agree with you Stump and ngh... We need to look for ways to curb global warming. Entertaining the thought of more oil and gas, is NOT a happy thought to me as it may simply prolong change, and humans are barely able to stay on track as it is ( as Stump said "Magpie desires".

In saying all this, I must say, it is an interesting paradigm shift to consider, and I will read up on what my friend Truman is saying. I find it slightly mind-bending, and this is usually a good thing...:-)

Hey Truman, awesome you are back. Missed reading you friend...!!

Peace brother,

Bear :-)

G West:

Thumb's up! Actually, there IS lots of oil. Just not for everyone........

stump:

Nor will it be pretty.....

er, "pretty" should be "petty"....(blush)

Wiley:

Not quite getting your insinuation...but say hi to Al Gore while you are at it.

Truman Green

In all of your extensive reading on the subject do you have a link to an article showing the results of carbon dating tests used to find out the actual age of various oil deposits?

Hi, Right To Bear. Thanks for taking the time to look my number up in the phone book and giving me a call last month, just to check on how I was doing. Much appreciated!

There was a conference on abiotic oil in Calgary June, 2005.

If you read nothing else on the issue, RTB may I suggest that you look at the article on it by Jerome Corsi.

Go here: http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=47551

G West:

The process you referred to ealrier is calaed " Frac " ing. A family member has worked in the Alberta Oil industry for years. Oil Wells are effectively "milked" further by specialized companies as they start to deplete in production.

Entire convoys of equipment set up near the given well and begin a massive injection process to create underground pressure and Fracturing the subsurface areas. This ultimately releases more oil etc.

Jerome Corsi is part of the right-wing lunatic fringe who makes Pat Buchanan look like a socialist by comparison. Not a good example, Truman

Isn't it safe to say the barriers to entry into the oil and gas industry are pretty high? Its' not like I'm going to buy a rig and start my own company to compete with the established players is it?

The major players have a stranglehold on the means of production for the most part and as I noted earlier, oil pricing is based upon extraction costs more than the perceived amount available in total, correct?

I won't attempt to address the scientific aspects as I don't have the expertise to understand more than a fraction of what y'all are discussing here, but the giant conspiracy aspect just isn't ringing true (for me).

If it was, how could it be kept a secret?

When a scientific theory relies on conspiracies for part of its proof my b.s. detector starts pinging like a poorly-tuned motorhome full of Albertans grinding its way home up the big hill east of Osoyoos.

An interesting discussion. And always good to read the interesting and challenging viewpoints of Truman Green again.

Though I think the major issue is less what supplies of oil remain, as important as that is, than it is a question of the "scale" of our dumping the consequences of their use into the global atmosphere and land spaces. (I don't think there is especially anything wrong with oil as an energy source per se, though there may be better alternatives we could make or develop as a matter of choice or necessity.)

The problem we have, I would suggest, is less the issue of oil itself, even whether we use it or some other alternative... (For I don't like the idea of all my vistas being polluted by giant windmills harnessing air power either.) ...as it is the "scale" again of human impact activity upon the planet, and the "scale" of the consequences of that being dumped into and wrought upon the world's atmosphere, oceans, lands and forests etc. It is precisely here that the "consequences", which are the real problems, are manifesting themselves.

A bottomless reservoir of oil, abiotic or otherwise, there may or may not well be. That is not the real issue, I don't think.

The issue is US. The issue is us and the trail of garbage, debris, cutting down, uprooting, species genocide, air, ocean and land polluting "waste stuff" that our sheer numbers and activity levels are effecting upon the planet. Oil is not the problem in and of itself, as much is our global population numbers, and the nature of our economic and political systems and assumptions.

Oil itself is much like a gun. It just lays there, a dumb inanimate object of itself. Until, that is, some human picks it up and decides how it will be used and with what effect.

Oil is not an "evil". Nor even are we especially, though there are more grounds for some doubt about that here.

It is simply a matter, mostly, that up to here in human history, we have been able to shit in our own bed oer time, and to fold up our tents when the stench is too great and the sustenance opportunities depleted and move on to another. Even if we had to beg, borrow or steal it, as in the case of North America, and repeat the cycle. And it seemed there was always somewhere else to go-, some other land, its species and resources to exploit.

Which, if it is not already obvious, I think, points to the real source of the problem we have here. It is us-, ourselves, arguably the most successful species on the planet: our sheer numbers and the scale and effect of our consumption and economic defacation behaviours on the planet.

from previous post...

It is less of a matter of whether or not we are at peak oil, again, which is not to deny the significances that may have, as it is of our finally having arrived at a place in our own species evolution where we have to deal "mainly" with two inter-related things. One is our sheer population numbers and the degree to which we and our consumption needs are crowding out all other species and values etc., and the other is the nature of the rapacious, greed driven capitalist economic and social system we have evolved, to not only meets our needs but also drives a cycle of greed that creates and continually fulfills it own needs. All of which has finally created a "crisis of mass" that is more and more Apocalypse threatening.

All of these things, of course, as I've attempted to indicate are very much inter-related and mutually impact upon each other-, but two stand out as the nodal points we absolutely MUST address post haste, as a species and societies; bringing our population numbers down, over the objections of religious and wingnut "dominance" nuttery, to levels which can be comfortably sustained by the resources and spaces of the planet, without laying waste to it, while allowing for the sustenance needs of other species as well. But all of which depends very much upon our also finally dealing with the greed driven social and economic model upon which we have to here relied, by way of interfacing with the rest of nature.

It is these element, I suggest, and less the matter of oil, in and of itself as we have tended to reduce it to, which addressed or un-addressed, will largely determine whether or not we survive as a species and rediscover a sane and sustainable relationship with the rest of nature.

My view. :-)

Oil and Diamonds.

There are many parallels here.
(BTW isn't coal somewhat related to diamonds... seem to recall that if coal was subjected to higher pressures it would result in a diamond)

Experts are often wrong, and none more obvious that the discovery of diamonds in the North West Territories.

Apparently, evidence of diamonds in Canada goes back to the late 1800's. In the 1960's many mining companies were systematically exploring for Diamonds in Canada. In the 1990's the first ones were found in the Lac de Gras area of the NWT. This was after 10 years of geologist Charles Fipke thinking outside the box and taking all the geological indicators and pinpointing a certain area. Prior to this, diamonds were thought of to exist only in warm temperate areas. The Ekati mine opened in 1998.

Interestingly enough, the term "Conflict Diamond" came about in 2000 to deal with the politics of diamomds extracted in areas with political turmoil,.. particulary rebel groups using diamonds towards funding military actions against established Gov'ts.

DeBeers is apparently currently establishing its first mine outside of Africa in the NWT and scheduled to open soon. I am not sure about DeBeers connections to Canadian mines currently in production, though I beleive DeBeers are involved to some degree.

Unlike say trees, which are an "above ground" natural resource whose gross volumes are quite quantifiable ,and whose harvest rates can also be determined, anything underground is subject to a major conflict of interest...those that (i)have the assets to explore and indentify them are coincidentally , (ii) THE SAME miners/extracters , and simply they open the valve as they see fit.

Hence OPEC (OIL) and DeBeers (DIAMONDS are effectively the same .

There is admittedly a finite amount of Oil and Diamonds... but who knows how much ? Those with the best info are the explorer -extracters.

Was Saddam Hussein taken out because of his rogue-ness in opening the IRAQI taps (well documented )during sanctions and lowering world OIL PRICES and pissing of THAT cartel aka OPEC ?

As the world turns , but always think "what lays below the surface " in most things .

There was nothing 'lunatic' in his reporting of the Calgary abiotic oil conference, anarcho. Anyway, I sometimes listen to Pat Buchanan. I agree with him about 10% of the time.

snert, carbon dating is only good for about 50 thousand years, but interestingly, traces of C-14, (the radioactive isotope on which is based, and which always decays at a predictive rate, half in 5320 years) have been found in coal and oil which might suggest that their age is not the millions or hundreds of millions of years claimed by the 'fossil fuel' theorists. But I admit this is a bit too Stockwellian for me to put a lot of trust in.

For a discussion about why C-14 decay is not applicable to the age of oil and coal deposits, snert, go here:

http://ww.nosams.woi.edu/about/carbon_dating.html

From the article: "Fossil fuels provide a common example. They are derived from biomass that initially contained atmospheric levels of C-14. But the transformation of sedimentary organic debris into oil or woody plants into coal is so slow that even the youngest deposits are radiocarbon dead."

This, of course, is relevant only if you accept the conventional theory of the biotic origins of oil and gas.

I do agree that we should not shoot the messenger. But if the messenger is a notorious liar, we have reason to be suspicious, right? We have already seen scientists who have claimed that tobacco does not cause cancer and that global warming is not happening. There are even scientists who endorse creationism. With enough money – or ideological fervor, there are scientists who will say anything, whether true or not. Now the US extreme right hates the environmental movement with a passion bordering on a 17th century witch hunt. The notion of abiotic oil gives them a club to hit back at carbon taxes, conservation measures and alternative energy sources. Abiotic oil allows them to continue with the “American Way of Life” which for them is mini-mansions, SUV's, suburban sprawl, cheap slave labor imports and endless shopping malls. Peak Oil means the end of this grotesque life style. Abiotic oil means its continuation, indeed its expansion. Of course, if abiotic oil is wrong, and but accepted and becomes the basis of policy, it will create a disaster of historical proportions.

anarcho, gotcha, but 'abiotic oil' is not a right-wing or a left wing tool. It's a scientific theory about the origin of fuel hydrocarbons.

Oil is not derived from the dead bodies of plants and animals, nor from kerogen.
Have you ever studied the conventional biotic theory?

The strangest thing about this whole controversy is that the Russians are already employing the theory as the basis of their oil exploration and have already located 400 wells that have been drilled into the basements far away from the sedimentation supposedly required for the location of biotically-derived oil.

Anarcho, it might be helpful for you to to do a thorough study of the history of the concept of Peak Oil and its founder Colin Campbell, his associations and disclosures with the oil industry and his role as the founder and chairman of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and as trustee of the Oil Depletion Analysis Centre.

And studying the conventional abiotic theory, as silly as it is, might be helptful, too.

And go here for the entire story in a l999 debate entitled, "The Origin of Oil."

http://www.prouty.org/oil.html

Anarcho, if you're ideologically suspicious of Jerome Corsi, how about looking at the ideas of Calgary geologist, Warren C. Hunt, who pretty much concurs with Thomas Gold and the Russians.

To wit. "At the White Tiger Fields in Vietnam 90% of the oil is found in basement rock where there never were any fossils...What they've been teaching us in schools about oil coming from fossils is wrong."

Or maybe just google: White Tiger Fields, Vietnam.

For the record:

Some may or may not be aware, but they have explored for Oil in the Fraser River Delta.

The Steveston area has archival photo of an old oil derrick/rig established at the turn of the century. A test well was recently drilled on Federal Property about 5 miles away. The current theory was that such geological formations (ie river deltas )often held Oil deposits or were prime sites to explore.

However, the results of the recent exploratory drills were not made public to my knowledge.

Ah, the old Col. Prouty, Truman.

Author of:
The CIA and Its Allies in Control of the United States and the World

I was reading him back in the days when David Horowitz was a left winger.

What's the old fella up to these days?

Who did he finally decide had killed Kennedy, I forget?

Lovely man.

I think we need, according to my personal sources in Calgary, to spend a lot more time looking at the dynamics of plate tectonics before we draw too many conclusions in this here bun fest.

Critiques of Abiotic Oil
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/100404_abiotic_oil.shtml
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/102104_no_free_pt1.shtml
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.07/gold_pr.html

Who cares how plentiful oil is or isn't?

If we keep burning it in the air, we're hooped.

White Tiger according to Wikipedia,

White Tiger is the only oil field convincingly shown to be hosted in granite; however, inspection of the seismic profile of the area shows faulted basement passive margin which is sealed by an onlapping sedimentary sequence.

It is plausible that the oil has migrated laterally from the lowermost, mature sediments into the fault systems within the granite. The CuuLong seismic profile shows a definite basement horst with onlapping sedimentary source rocks, draped by a reservoir seal. The orthodox trap view would see the oil migrate up the horst bounding faults from the lower source units, into the trap unit draped over the top.

Oops, in the above post I wrote: "And studying the conventional abiotic theory..."

I should have written: "And studying the conventional biotic (not abiotic) theory..."

Everyone's missing an important point: It doesn't matter how much oil or gas is left - if we can't get it. And economists (who are like theologians with their unprovable theories), completely miss the point when they allege it is the financial costs which determine when it is ineffective to attempt extraction.

It doesn't take money to drill for oil, it takes energy. When the energy cost to extract more energy exceeds the energy of the product, the game's over. At that point, the best use of the money would be to burn it at the wellhead and make steam for secondary or tertiary extraction.

Abiotic oil is an unproven theory, like religions, and seems to be adhered to by some in this thread like it was Gospel. It gave me hope in the 1970's, but is not what we need now.

We need efficiency and long-term planning for the sake of society instead of the wealth of whoever happens to control things at the time.

Here is another article which explores the possible reasons for the promotion of the notion of abiotic oil,
http://www.oilempire.us/abiotic.html

Maestro observed,.

There are many parallels here.

And these gory and discredited parallels all arising out of and being driven by the same greed characterized market forces.

G West;

Speaking of your personal Calgary sources and bun fest...what else did Ralph K. have to say ?

Just curious.

Amen, gkam. You, and Bailey above you, have it nailed. I think.

An increasingly larger world population is certainly becoming a challenge. The places where the oil is cheaper is where population growth is lower. The idea that "We need less and more expensive oil - not more.", as some people would try and make us believe, will only perpetuate the growth of populations and the widening of the gap between the wealthy and the poor.

In the developed Western world where the cost of fuel is far less onerous due to higher earnings population rates decline. In poorer places where the cost of fuel, relative to their earnings, is far higher, population rates continue to climb. Anyone who has been to Indonesia, the Philipines, India, etc. also knows that their mopeds and trucks are far more damaging to the environment that the vehicles in most western countries.

Canada is particularly affected by increased oil prices due to vast geography. Food costs rise with fuel costs due to transportation cost increases. Truckers will need more money to bring up the vegetables and fruit from the southern US. Everything from BC Ferries to public transit will cost more. This leads to inflation which affects the poorer in society more than the richer. At times of high inflation existing holdings have higher numbers attached to their values and unless salaries and earnings at the lower levels catch up quickly items like houses become farther out of reach for the poorer in society.

Bio-fuel from agriculture only means that farmland used for human food will be employed and the stewards will be big agri-energy businesses. It won't be organic either. Tons of chemical fertilizers on gene-modified crops for maximum yeild. Better to have cheap oil and leave the land for wheat.

Coal is being burned to the tune of 2.9 billion tonnes per year, with India increasing use by 5% per year and China 10%. This is a 30% increase in coal use in 10 years.

For the sake of the environment, for the benefit of the poor at home and for the negative ramifications of increased global population, we should hope for more and cheap oil.

Excellent link on White Tiger, anarcho. That 'lateral migration' explanation is actually their best shot at refuting the granite hosting of the oil source. I see it as not plausible, but it you believe it, you got yourself a fairly decent explanation for the Vietnamese deep basement well being far away from sedimentation.

You still haven't heard about trains and rapid transit? Or locally sourced foods?

Yields are not the problem. Country of origin rules regarding trade - and enormous local subsidies in the western world are far more critical to feeding the starving than GM foods. While refugees from Darfur wait for shipments of grain in those stars and stripes bags, local food and African farmers both rot in other parts of the continent.

DO you work for Monsanto?

Oil solves no problems, only creates and exacerbates them. If we got out of Nafta tomorrow the amount of greenhouse gas pouring our of Alberta (30% of Canada's total) would be reduced immediately and we'd have more than enough for ourselves. We’re polluting our environment to help out a neighbour who could care less about its agreements with the Great White North.

Wake up man!

Self-sufficiency is a dirty word for Americans who are now living almost 9 trillion dollars beyond their means.

As to the bugbear of inflation. I'll let Ed deal with you on that point.

We need less and more expensive oil to get the idiots out of their SUV's - even a muscle-bound Californian understands that - although you apparently don't realisicman.

That name is certainly ironic!

Some interesting info re:

"US Electrical power ....Net generation by energy source ".

Link:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat1p1.html

Hydroelectric generation is way down the list, fossil fuels appear to be the top dogs.

Mr West, I have no idea how you jumped into GM foods. I was writing, as I clearly wrote, about bio-fuels. I did mention transit and how higher oil prices will escalate the costs for these, as well as other, forms of transportation.

I have no sympathy for chemical companies and I do not work for them, I pointed out that if vast tracts of food-growing land is coverted to bio-fuel crops then the chemicals shall rain down upon them.

How do YOU see the increased cost of oil, which the oil companies do not really care about one way or the other, affecting the poorer of the world? Do you care or are you on a crusade to expand the population and keep the poor down?

Jerome Corsi is a kook! Do a google search yourself and read some of the comments the man has made about the Clintons, Muslims and the Catholic Church, not to mention John Kerry.
I have heard Corsi debate Peak Oil and he came off like a moron. The man is a lot like Anne Coulter, Sean Hannity and Rush Lumbaugh.
This conversation is way off topic as we should be discussing on a world wide basis what to do as energy depletion reduces our standard of living. Instead we get the Abiotic Oil Kooks telling us that oil is unlimited, which implies conservation is not necessary. Funny, that the last thing the oil industry wants to discuss is conservation, as that would effect profits. The abiotic oil turkeys are actually doing the oil industry a favour.
Finally, of course Colin Campbell is associated with the oil industry as he is a retired geologist with a Phd who worked for big oil. Who better to understand the industry?

Coyote said:

I agree too "yote, and good posts on the subject...thanks. :-)

I think there will be many "red herrings" in times to come, that will come to try and take us off the path to of helping to heal the earth. "Eternal Vigilance" is what an 85 year old activist friend of mine said, is the key to change. We need to stay true to the fight for the health of Mother Earth, and not be detracted.

Thanks Truman, but it just feels unimportant in the relative scheme of things happening and to come...but I have to say, it is sure good to have you back bud. Your contributions are irreplaceable... :-)

Peace,

Bear

Worrywart, did you notice a poliical agenda in my comments? The 'abiotic oil turkeys' are taking into consideration the massive body of evidence that the conventional 'fossil fuel' or dead plants and animals theory of fuel hydrocarbons may be incorrect. I've known it wasn't possible because of the kinds of pressures that would be required to magically convert dead organics to hydrocarbons most of my life.No thanks to MSM though, I only recently became aware that there's a legitimate scientific controversy about the origins of hydrocarbons.

More than likely space exploration will prove that oil is present elsewhere in our solar system before the debate is settled regarding deep well sourcing. Last I heard that spaceship that just went around Titan was taking pictures of suspected hydrocarbon lakes.

Remember ten or so years ago when they mistoook polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons for bacteria on Mars?

And there's no life on Titan, by the way, from which the 'fossil fuels' could have been produced.

I'll get back to you on that. I've forgotten about it.

Look WW, hydrocarbons have been in the fluid upper levels of our earth's mantle since the beginning. The real scientists, astronomers, cosmologists and geologists know this.

As usual, people will use the theory--correct or incorrect--for their own purposes, but that's another question.

It's pretty well known that the Russians are successfuly doing deep well exploration. No doubt they are becoming the greatest producers and exporters of oil. (I think they already are.)

As RTB considers, WW, we're just in a scientific paradigm shift. No agenda and secret motives, here, eh.

Do you have a good understanding of the conventional theory, by the way? (In the service of which you rave about the 'abiotic turkeys.') Believe it or not it's this:

As plants and animals die their remains get mixed with sedimentation on the floors of oceans and, over hundreds or thousands, or millions or hundreds of millions of years (nobody knows which) the remains form a waxy substance known as kerogen, which over more whatever massive amounts of time this kerogen, because of perfect pressurization and heat converts itself into fuel hydrocarbons. Poof!

Honest, I wouldn't kid ya. People actually believe this.

Because this, is already happening - brought to us by big oil as a panacea. Cheap plentiful oil won't mean less, but in fact more of this.

Re Oil supplies

From my Alberta relative who works in the Oil patch :

In the Oil patches, there are myriad exploratory wells that have been drilled and subsequently capped. At the present time , many of them have yields are not economical for them to enter into production but may do so in the future.

RE: Hibernia on the East Coast, I seem to recall it was only feasible if oil was at a much LOWER price than it is now, (seem to recall $10 -20 per barrel ??? ) and it was almost scrapped.

BC offshore oil potential? .... are we in B.C. being " DeBeer'ed " for political etc. reasons ?

Me

hardly. That’s your job.
While the rich use more of that cheap oil to fly unnecessarily from place to place -
Hey Mr Realisticman:
Two weeks ago you were spouting how we couldn't get along without air travel and the whole international economy would fall apart - forgotten that too?

Those lobsters and shrimp winging their way across the oceans aren’t going to feed the poor.

Just as the Chinese noted that most of the profits from big American firms who now manufacture in the Far East aren’t going to the Chinese – much of what they get is our garbage.

You could be right maestro. As the extreme enviros team up with the big oil bosses to up the price of oil the feasibility of offshore BC oil and gas becomes financially viable.

Will we all be rich like Kuwait, Norway and Alberta?

Good one, Maestro. There's no shortage of oil now, whether it's biotically or abiotically derived. As you wrote, there are companies which specialize in fixing oil wells by removing the impurities from around the wells which diminish the volume of flow. Whether such wells become known as 'depleted,' often depends upon the cost of repair, rather than the lack of available oil.

It's all about EROI.

This problem is solved in engines by the use of oil filters to trap the impediments, but so far, no such device has been developed for wells.

You do make me laugh, sometimes, Garth. I wish you would read first before spouting off though.

Intellectual self-appointed elites tend to be paternal to the poor and it is quite distastful. Go tell the asian riding his moped to work, with his wife and a load of goods on it too, that the price of oil must go way up because nasty Americans are driving too many Lincoln Navigators. What a crock!

On your menu today? Pickled cabbage from last season and a few carrots from the cold store? Did your chicken lay any eggs today? Do you miss oranges and lemons?

It never takes you long to display your ignorance and prejudice does it?

I suggest you find a film called Manufactured Landscapes and have a look at what "our" solutions are doing to the Far East and Bangladesh, as just two examples - It's not me and the way I live that's turning the third world into the greatest human sewer of all time.

Your solutions aren't funny. I think you need to stop laughing. Canada uses more energy each year than the whole continent of Africa.

Fat lot of good it has done Africa.

Enjoy your shrimp and lobster - or is it Bistro fare at Elixir Restaurant in the Opus Hotel tonight for monsieur et madame?

THE APOSTROPHE

Correct:

She bought 10 SUVs.
Her SUV's window was broken.

He was an NDPer.
The NDP's convention was held in Toronto.

She grew up in the 1970s.
She lived in Calgary in the '90s.

At the convention, the Liberals discussed important policy changes.
Some of the Liberal's policies were outdated.

A dozen 707s landed at the airport.
The 707's wing fell off.

Incorrect:

The Liberal's governed for most of the decade.

The GM's met to discuss rule changes.

SUV's are becoming less popular.

I saw at least 10 CEO's at the meeting.

Bird's fly south in the winter.

Schools stopped teaching spelling and grammar in the 1980's.

I am very familiar with Edward's magnificent work. I find your paternalistic suggestions to be just that. Short sighted and based on dislike of your profligate contemporaries. Higher oil prices will not help the poor.

Ce soir en mange chez nous avec nos invitees.

A MESSAGE FOR THE SPELLING AND GRAMMAR POLICE

Please stay a while. Don't go.

Me - paternalistic?
My profligate contemporaries?
Don't think so dude.

It's paternalism that's got us into the mess we’re in today - that and the idea that actions don't have consequences and bills can be put off until tomorrow; combined with the worn out notion that everyone wants to live like an American. God forbid.

Bring on the expensive oil - nothing else shows any signs of working. Cheap oil just permits us to continue with our wasteful and egocentric ways. You'd be surprised how egalitarian society gets when the props are knocked out from under.

Ask anyone who lived through the depression on the prairies - no gas at all. No picnic, but at least everyone was in the same boat.

If we hadn't surrendered democratic control to elites we might not be in the mess we are in today. The Third world would have been far better off if we'd left them alone. I don't want Bangladeshi youths ripping apart our garbage for a living, not a moment longer. That’s not hopeful, that’s slavery.

We need to take responsibility, not pretend cheap oil is a solution to anything.

Moi aussi.

Spelling & Grammar Police

Bugger off! - good.

Please bugger off! - better.

Please bugger off now! - best.

C'mon dudes

Sound's like a school playground...its getting closer to Xmas.

We're going to have to close the (TAR ?)SAND BOX ...

maestro
You, apparently, still haven't learned to take, tell, or understand a joke.

I LOVE the spelling and grammar police!

G ' ster

Lookwho'stalkin' !!!

BTW : how is your's and Frank's Canucks bandwagon powered ??? They remind me of the Federal LIEberals, tease everyone with false hope but fold like a cheap tent when its money time .

Close! Still needs work.

Canada to the Rescue:

4 cents a KWH for Alcan, now refined products for the US NE.

Dec 12, 2006
SAINT JOHN, NEW BRUNSWICK (MarketWatch) -- The long wait for a new refinery in North America could soon be over, at least on the East Coast, where a privately held Canadian project is showing signs of progress.
Irving Oil, a privately owned Canadian company, is looking to build a $5 billion to $7 billion, 300,000 barrel-a-day crude oil refinery in the eastern Canadian port city of Saint John, New Brunswick.

...If constructed, the facility would be the first new refinery built in North America in over 25 years.

...The firm is being circumspect over who it's in negotiations with, citing confidentiality agreements. However, the type of feedstock the refinery expects to run provides a clue to who a potential partner might be; the partnering company would likely have access to large quantities of extra-heavy crude supply, either a multinational such as Chevron (CVX) or ExxonMobil Corp. (XOM), or a national oil company like Saudi Aramco, the Kuwait Oil Corporation or Petroleos de Venezuela.

GM Place unfinished food and beer and a pair of Cdn Tire jumper cables. I'm told by people who would know that the energy supply is thus quite secure.

ps. If the Wild beat the Canucks 9-1 tonight there's a good chance the bandwagon will break an axle.

Rather see $7 billions put into clean energy....................
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20050828&articleId=872

The only link between Green Spin and what I need to say is that bunker oil is probably still leaking out of the sunken Queen of the North and into those clear waters near Hartley Bay. Today's news makes me want to kick somebody really really hard. David Hahn. Then Premier Campbell. Then Kevin Falcon.

David Hahn has decided that the agreed name for the replacement ferry will not, as promised, be SPIRIT OF HARTLEY BAY. He says it doesn't fit into his marketing strategy.

What if the courageous people of Hartley Bay had figured out that it did nothing for THEIR marketing strategy to risk their lives going out into rough seas in the dark of night to rescue most of the passengers off that sinking B.C. ferry?

What if their best marketing strategy would've been to stay home that night?

What if they had left 50 or 60 people to drown in that shipwreck?

Could've happened, if it hadn't been for the SPIRIT OF HARTLEY BAY.

And how come it's OK for BC Ferries, operated by real humans, to pause in salute when they sail past the crash-site ... but it's NOT OK because Hahn says it's not OK for one of our ships to symbolize the debt we owe to, you know, to the SPIRIT OF HARTLEY BAY.

Hi, Mary. I bet Hahn's not excited about the name conjuring up disaster images everytime people read it. But, as you say, it seems pretty appropriate, considering the effort of Hartley Bay citizens in the rescue. As usual, bucks before well-earned tribute. I'm totally dazzled by all the effort you've put into your blog on the Virk-Basi legislature affair and congrats for doing your best to keep the issue before your readers. And also thanks for the kind words of support for moi and wondering when I'd be coming back to the forum.

If snake oil were combustible we could wring Hahn dry and have enough to fuel this province for generations.

Yes, I would like to welcome you back too, Truman. Got so caught up in this discussion I forgot my manners! I too was concerned when you dissapeared and am glad that you have returned to us.

Hey Truman - you're back. That's great. I've been watching for you since the 6th of December.

Hope you have a great Christmas holiday and so glad you got all the messages from us here at Tyee. You weren't hard to find.

I heard that on the news, too, and was disgusted. Schlocky marketing names are the curse of BC these days; in this case it's an affront not just to the people of Hartley Bay (who are, I'll bet, too humble to admit that they care) but to the popular sentiment in favour of the Spirit of Hartley Bay name. It was thus ever in BC, with things like Terry Fox Stadium becoming BC Place, and the abandoned chances for something cool with names like SeaBus, SkyTrain and WestCoastExpress (a curious name since it runs east into the Valley, no?).

With any luck, Falcon and Campbell will get the boot and the next government can rename one of the craft, or better yet a new one that services the coastal ports (and is meant to bolster their economy and quality of life). But crass and tasteless are in the stylebooks of Vancouver marketing and p.r. outfits so we're always going to be confronted with this yucky stuff. Heritage Mountain, for instance, UniverCity, Sea to Sky and others, and no doubt more. You get used to it here; but when it's such an obvious snub to a community who deserve commemoration at least as much as Prince George or Kelowna (Spirit of this, Spirit of that). BC isn't just about its cities, and often the best people can be found in the smallest of its places - which deserve recognition in the public mindscape, instead of obscurity (and poverty).

Right on Skookum1.

Hahn has trotted out a few goodies to keep the people of Hartley Bay quiescent - a new rescue boat and some other goodies which one couldn't blame them for taking.

The people of BC ought to rise up and scream about how they feel about this and do it now before the Uriah Heep who now runs this corporation for the citizens, and on the citizens' behalf, can put his stupid and tasteless plans into force.
No doubt Hahn thinks the village will soon be part of history as his corporate friends in Victoria continue their plans to transfer the assets of every tribal nation in this province into transferable fee simple real estate their friends in the corporate world can convert to their own selfish needs.

I was hoping the Lil'wat would have fought harder over that stretch of highway too. Campbell’s plans seem to be falling into place all too easily.

The crushing reality of what he’s done to this province, when it arrives in 2010, will be devastating.

By the way, I've seen some of the early publicity for 'Little Mosque on the Prairie'.

Where do these appalling ideas come from?

An elderly native woman who lives in the community of Harley Bay said of their efforts to save the victims of the ferry disaster, "We are All of One Heart..." To these people, we are all of one heart, but sadly, to people like Hahn and too many others, this isn’t their belief. They do not believe these peoples efforts are worthy of being memorialized. A colonialist mentality methinks.

Are developers going to pay the HB residents more peanuts and then continue to rape their culture by rolling over them, steal their land and all their resources??? Some stories never change. Any way you look at it, they will likely continue to seek to exploit and then eventually eliminate these people, NO not through “hate” but through their “indifference” to them. It is worse then “hate” as it has no feelings attached to it at all…almost psychopathic really. Anything is possible...

Maybe I am reading in to this too much, but I don't think so. This is just my opinion. Not naming the ferry after the people of HB symbolizes the above written to me. It is a manifestation of the dark hearts of these takers,these exploiters of people...Pathetic.

More peace,

Bear

Alcibiades said:

Ageed, and so true Alcibiades...

Campbell is out of control. He is taking the Great Bear apart clear-cut by clear cut right now. This primordial rainforest of B.C. will be 2\3rds gone by 2009 when the EBM logging practice will be supposedly defined finally. This is not soon enough for this area. Valley by valley, and spawning stream by spawning stream, all too soon there will be no more. 80% of all salmon streams are NOT protected in this area under the new GBA. The GBA catastrophe is largely due to the "Big Green" sellouts who signed on to the GBAgreement in the first place last February, instead of protecting this area as they always had done. I think Capitalism is addictive to some, and clearly this is the case here imho. Anyways the wreckage of this area called The Great Bear is something too many people do not know about. That is why I bring this up. I was there last summer, and sadly I saw the devastation first hand.

The "Takers" of this world have got to be held accountable for their actions, by the people themselves, before it is too late to save these cultures, these animals, and these areas. Save them NOT for us, but for the sake of these cultures, these animals, and these areas themselves...

Peace Alci,:-)

Bear

Indeed, there is too little originality and "heft" on what I'll call the Left these days, having been replaced by a trite social democratic intellectualism which attempts to hide the conventionality which has much replaced it, (which the neocon wingnuts are even likely to leap in and agree with here) to lose one such as our Truman Green.

Indeed, welcome back. We value and need you, brother. (Though I always knew you could not be gone long. :-)

G ' ster and Frank;

Opening intro was good, Donnelly is a great singer.

Re Game: I guess the Canucks somehow snuck the horseshoes through the metal detector.

Couldn't believe the disallowed Wild goal. The penalties they call are screwing up the game, it's like women's hockey. The Wild were a bit slow countering the Canucks "secret play" , but other teams will take it away soon.

Luongo did earn his paycheque last night, being the good NHLPA Union man that he is, and NHLPA Union leader Linden increased his season goal production by 100% from 1 to 2 goals !!!

Regardless, keep the duct tape and jumper cables handy , the Bandwagon ain't over the hump yet.

You all know that nothing has ever evolved, by any progressive measure, out of rightista rule. Anything that may be even remotely attributed to them, has come as a result of "leftist" agitation, and the desire of the rightistas not to be overthrown (either directly, or through the ballot box). The rightistas sole raison d'être is to tear down and destroy. There is no light at the end of their tunnel.

And institutionally, the "left" is no better. It merely adopts the practices of the "right", and runs it through a commitee. The result is the same.......

Berserkers comes to mind, high on Hennry Kissingers "aphrodesiac".......

Sorry RickW....

Your train of thought if extrapolated further is implying that the Left is solely responsible for all that is good, and that the Right is programmed to rape and pillage and would do so without the presence of the Left. LOL.

I recall that Bethune used to be held up to score Brownie points with the Red Chinese , but even they began to hint it was getting old and tired. They have also moved on from the "little Red Book". The Left can only hold up Tommy Douglas type PR etc. for so long... and Tommy was probably more a pragmatist than an ideologue.

In my view, most of what is pragmatic and practical from the Left is basically incorporated, the rest is simply on the ideology and dogma shelf gathering dust if not ignored in perpetuity. This assumes that the so -called "Right" would not have come to the same conclusions separately and enacted them , again Leftie -hubris. Recall " Leftie " right- winger WAC Bennett and some of his moves ?

I see we are at the 359.9 degree mark(ie almost full circle) and " the environment " is being politically re-hashed. Gee what the hell will that mean ? Maybe all political parties love this new old "environment" initiative so then can create more Royal Commissions and patronage based consultant reports and new UNenforceable laws without enforcing old existing ones.

The Left's continual insinuation, direct or indirect, as a monopoly of virtue is simply poli-hubris, and having people question it more and more. The good old days had people casting their votes to support the Left , perhaps via some knee- jerk touchy -feely guilt factor.

Many who used to vote "left" will say " Hey wait a minute!!!...why am I doing this like Pavlov's dog ....and what if they get in again ? "

I think that now, many people are thinking a vote for the Left is , in " political environmental" terms " a waste...hence " recycle" it elsewhere.

Sheeesh! I can't leave you kids alone for a moment!
Look at this mess you made ^

Just phoned my Scource (head of oil exploration for ESSO western canada for 14 years)
He chuckled when I mentioned the "Deep Oil" notion.

"There IS oil everywhere, but in miniscule amounts. When someone gets a "dirty finger" from a test hole it makes the news."

Forget "deep oil"

Pretty much what we have and continue to see so far, from what passes for the "institutional left", that's for gol'darn sure. :-) lol.

Maestro, you have to look at actual history to get a handle on this left-right thing. Who ended slavery? Who fought for women's emancipation? Who built the coops and credit unions? Who organized the trade unions? Who struggled against war and imperialism? Who has fought for small business and small farmers against the corporate state? Who created the environmental movement? Who supports the FN in their struggles? Who works to extend democracy? Who struggles for worker self-management? Who supports fair trade? Who favors genuine decentralization, and the regions? Who favors local cultures visa vis Korporate Krap Kulture? How was slavery ended? How did women get a measure of equality? How has environmental legislation come about? How have succesful land claims come about? How did hiogh wages and better working conditions come about?

anarcho:

I am simply extrapolating Rick W's comment, (and not the TYEE Leftie Manifesto I saw in the freebie bin at WalMart / Costco).

Otherwise, there must be a time warp and we are going back in time to the 1960's and early 1970's.

I know today is a slow day on THE TYEE, today's NFL games kinda suck.... and Rick appears to be musing.

BTW slavery has ended....women CAN vote...co-ops and credit unions were born decades ago yet STILL capitalist- principle driven...Henry Ford also decided to pay his workers a fair wage...Environmental movement had gone uber -corporate(where is Greenpeace these days??? )...Lefties claim they uphold democracy but are often the least tolerant unless its their patronage driven version....NDP "lip service" waffled on the FN issues...had 8 years...did 0....Worker self -management sems to be nice in theory but " where's the beef " ?

etc etc etc.

Again, the Left seems to take ALL the credit, and none of the blame...If the Left can take MOST of the credit..fine..congrats and kudos..but re-read my Bethune reference..time to move on..the old laurels are getting worn out...and why the Left is being tuned out...need new laurels, yet none on the horizon.

Anarcho wrote,

Indeed, virtually all of the major "social" and "equalizing" achievements that have occurred within Capitalism since the time of the 17th-18th century Industrial Revolution, have been secured over and against the intent and wishes of the ruling class, and those other right wing/conservative factions within "the system" who support and serve the ruling class interest. And these achievements have been secured as a result of the efforts, frequently near and actual revolutions, clandestine movements and many, many strikes, and other sacrifices of the working-class, other poor and women themselves. None of the achievements these class and gender strata now tend to take for granted, how e'er imperfect they remain, came to them as an outcome of the capitalist system per se, but over, around and through its objections and efforts to squelch, sideline, discredit and obfuscate. (As Maestro himself, along with his pals here, frequently attempts to do.)

And there every step of the way and integrated into these struggles of ordinary folks has been "The Left" which arose out of them and which has generally, with exceptions, attempted always to serve and be useful to them.

Which is NOT to say The Left, in its various camps, has not made serious mistakes, or even committed crimes against its own en route, but such occur in the confusion and pressure cooker of every war, including class and gender wars.

Now, The Left is struggling to find its feet again and re-connect with its class base, after a long period of co-optation, opportunism and dysfunctionality in this country, such as arose out of the brief period of Prosperity Capitalism as existed from the late 40s to late 70s. Meanwhile, it's also been true that the working-class, over the same period, had itself come/been bamboozled into buying into the ruling class mythology of its, ruling class natural beneficence, and forgotten its own actual working class history.

So, of course, we, the left and working class have some ground to cover, coming out of this period, and some internal struggles to engage in, if we are now going to successfully deal with this re-arisen period of Neoconservative Capitalism, which is actually more a return to a state of "bear down on the working class and poor/make the rich richer" normalcy for the syste-, such as many had been fooled into thinking no longer existed.

And we will get there.

But don't take our word for it. You Neocons keep doing what you're doing and driving society and we in the directions which you are. It is in this way you best help assure the fulfilment of this bit of our socio-political prophecy. :-)

Hang in there such as Maestro and the rest of you wingnuts. I urge you. In the perverse way of real history, you really are our greatest allies. :-) lol. You are the real, bedrock instigators of the great social transformation we would have-, where capitalism finally gets left behind.

Without you folks, we would be nothing-, totally irrelevant.

You bet we take none of the blame for capitalism. That is this ruling class's baby, and those who work to apologize for it. We have ever been trying to smother The Thing, save for the smiley-face social democrats, since it took its first breath and we could see the real Satan's Child nature of it. :-)

doggone, you can consider a phone call to your 'source,' as due diligence if you wish, but what might be even better is a googling of "Hedberg Conference on Oil Origins."

The hydrocarbons (think methane) have been in the mantle of the earth since the beginning.

Uh, slightly longer than plants and critters, eh. "Fossil fuels,' eh. Nope!

Honest! Same goes for coal and diamonds. Diamonds from compressed coal, eh. Right! This is alchemy, not science, you guys.

Natural gas from dead plants and animals? Not! Just because the MSM doesn't permit a discussion of this silliness, doesn't mean we have to accept it, eh.

Remember: "Hedberg Conference on Oil Origins."

Thanks so much Alcibiades, Anarcho, Coyote et al. All the best!

I can smell the very sulphur of capitalism, right here, at my computer. B-D LOL.

No No Coyote:

C'mon comrade...I can't handle all the ammo you keep to substantiate my premise.

On the subject of Left vs Right... that smell of sulfur you allude to is likely from the 666 tattoo....I can recommend a product to neutralize it. LOL

BTW...you know which left wing Canadian Prime Minister drove Medicare forward from a Provincial initiative ....do you ?

The so-called Right Wing you historically allude to was the Robber Baron's class, no different than the totalitarian left and its own dictators.

Please note: Red China. with about 20% of the world's population... was granted Hong Kong back upon expiry of the lease and non renewal...,... it could have absorbed H.K. without a whimper, but seems to me sort of ripped off the ol' non left wing formula..

P.S. Any invite to the long promised Revolution's premiere ? Borscht and champagne ... correct?

maestro,
Sneaking horseshoes through the metal detector is part of the game. Sure that goal shoulda counted but I can't believe how bad the Wild cried over it. Geez, we've had several bad calls made against us from Toronto on video goal replays but I don't think Nonis attacked anyone. The fans whined for a week on the radio but that's par for the course. As far as I'm concerned us and the Wild are even. They got the lucky bounce earlier in the season. Next game should be fun.

But yes, I agree, the way penalties are being called is screwing up the game. Its so bad even Cdn viewership is down.

"Regardless, keep the duct tape and jumper cables handy , the Bandwagon ain't over the hump yet."

Spoken like a man who's not worried about getting a seat on the parade route!

That was a much better game actually. Althought the Canucks are lucky to have Luongo. They are scoring goals now and it makes a real difference...now if they just had a better power play.

Be a good time to retire Linden on a positive note now though, don't you think?

My son ran into him at Mass last Christmas.

He may have to take up praying more.

Graphite and diamond are both allotropes of carbon. The conversion of one allotrope to another is not alchemy, which was primarily concerned with converting one element into another.

From a chemical point of view, and I am a chemist by training, I find the abiotic conjecture to be preposterous.

The oil age is grinding to a halt.

No energy source has the qualities of easy transport, portability, energy density, and relative ease of access as fossil fuels. No alternative will enable us to continue as we have been doing. The EROI (energy return on investment)for biofuels is minimal at best, not to mention the prospect of reducing food crops to produce biofuels in their place.

Nevertheless, let us all continue to hope for a robot maid and a hovercar under the tree this year. Maybe they'll run on water, magnets, cold fusion, or pyramid power.

P.S. Any invite to the long promised Revolution's premiere ? Borscht and champagne ... correct?

You may not be there, anymore likely than may I, Maestro. Nobody said changing the world was or is, going to be easy. Or is necessarily even going to happen in our lifetimes. History moves at its own pace and to its own criteria, not necessarily ours-, either yours or mine. :-)

After all, the slave system existed for many, many centuries throughout much of the world, after and out of which monarchist feudalism arose and ruled until the 17th Century, out of which again, after many, many revolutionary and otherwise attempts capitalism finally succeeded in establishing itself as the ruling class, over the opposition of the feudal monarchists, first in England, as a consequence of the English Civil War of 1642-49.

Which is the nub of the problem for most of you wingnuts. You are mere propagandists for capitalism, and lack a real understanding of real history. Hence you fail to appreciate even the complex history out of which the very social order you champion for, finally arose. And if you did have that understanding, though some of you do, and are merely fighting an "intellectual" ridicule action here, you would understand the complexity of what this age's "left" forces for change are having to go through, to finally get it right.

Then ye need also remember that, like the US Empire in its bid to re-establish western colonialism in the Middle East, ye must get it right every time for all future history, in order to continue-, whereas we need only finally get it right once. :-)

After which the current status quo becomes but a distant historical memory like the feudalism of Charles I and II of England, and shortly thereafter, King Louie or France, who totally lost his head over it. :-)

Ye know not enough, my wingnut friend, to be either really good or convincing at ridicule. :-)

black, I anticipated your carbon allotrope comment-actually thinking about it as I posted. And my 'alchemy' was merely ridicule of the idea that coal was converted into diamonds in the earth's crust--like hot fusion progression from hydrogen to helium to carbon etc.

Transitional stages, please!

Have you spent time on the Hedberg Conference on Oil Origins?

And of course, the abiotic theory is correct. Otherwise we have to believe the 'fossil fuel' theory, which is just silly. A simple comparison of the amount of volume of fuel hydrocarbons already used up by human consumption with the amount available from "kerogen" should suffice.

As a chemist you just might be the only one on earth who doesn't understand that oil can be easily created in the lab, ABIOTICALLY, and so, whether you believe that abiotic oil might not fullfull EROI requirements, (you might be correct, but I doubt it), I'd suggest you go have a look at the chemistry of hydrocarbon synthesis in the laboratory.

Allotropes require specific pressures and temperatures for conversion and it should be obvious to any chemist that such conditions exist in the mantle, but not in the crust, which varies from 3 to 9 miles in thickness, and certainly not from the minute percentage of the remains of organics that would be available from which to manufacture kerogen, then natural gas,(methane) oil and coal.

Ditto on biomass for fuel, though, black. Maybe just stop eating meat, and grow biomass for fuel, instead. 35% of crop vegetation in the world is used for animal feed so that rich people can eat meat. Use this percentage for fuel biomass and bingo we've got a huge reduction in atmospheric greenhouse CO2.

Interesting, though--the Brazillians get 40% of their fuel from biomass.

Truman said:

Right on Truman... :-)
The water these animals take in is unbelievable too. At the very least people can perhaps cut back on their meat eating. The earth would appreciate it, and so would the cows...
Good to have you back brother...Bear.

Truman:
For me that's actually pretty good - gotta phone my father-in law every now and then anyway. Once I find a topic he is comfortable with: geology or 2nd world war Bomber piloting he is a wealth of knowledge. He was familiar with the deep test holes (though I worked as a mineral geologist for a few years I had never heard of this notion) He has testified as an "Expert Witness" to the NEB and continued as a consultant to different oil concerns long after he retired from Esso. I've known him for a long time and I trust he has had access to more information regarding oil reserves than anyone else you or I can talk to.

In fact you have interested me in the topic and I will visit the site mentioned.

maestro:
I can't handle all the ammo you keep to substantiate my premise.......(pardon my plagiarism)

Everything you cited only confirms my original premise. If you will recall, I did leave myself a lifeline, in that I alluded that the "left" as an institution was among the worst of despots. "The dictatorship fo the proletariat" comes to mind.
But I stand by my premise that NOT ONE social advancment can be credited to RIGHTISTAS, without the threat from the "left", either through the ballot box or the guillotine. The so-called "right" can be exemplified by the notion of The Corporation as Psychopath:
http://www.threemonkeysonline.com/article_the_corporation_film_Mark_Achbar_Jennifer_Abbot_Joel_Bakan.htm

ui

If they got 240 acres I'd say they surrendered less than 20; most of the 20 would be for straightening from the village down to Lillooet Lake, and for paving that; as mentioned elsewhere it's a safety and dust issue around there, and with 99 turning into a major artery (as it is). I'd say the radical element probably went along with it without too much opposition because it's needed; and they got some dough too, right? The 240 acres they got was probably prime, too, so in return for straigtening a few corners it's probably a pretty fat deal.

There are realists in the Lillooet Tribal Council and a lot of them are on Mt. Currie's council, including Chief Stager (if he's still the chief...or is it a Leo now?). If there's gonna be tons of sama7 (shama, their word for us) rolling through the valley it's better if too much dust don't get stirred up, and there's no more kids on their bikes getting wiped out on sharp corners. A payout is a payout, but this isn't in the same league as the Maa-nulth and Tsawwassen deals; and the Lil'wat and other St'at'imc are gonna be among the last to settle (neither are in the treaty process, unlike the breakway In-SHUCK-ch and I think also N'quatqua/D'Arcy).

So did I. Unfortunately I only get two channels so am bound to watch it sooner or later. I wonder which goon/comic it is they got to play the comic relief redneck white guy? No doubt Shaun Majunder's in it - he's "done Saskatchewan" before in 22 Minutes skits.

A bottomless pond of dreck hidden in catacombs deep beneath Yonge and Queen Streets, festering with the ooze of tepid imaginations and more money than brains....

One mediabite that stuck with me in the imediate coverage of the rescue was your typically crass city-chick Global reporter shoving a microphone in a woman's face asking all the usual crass questions, one of which was "what did you do for them?". The native woman looked mildly stunned at the stupidity of the comment, as it was obvious, saying softly and a bit shyly, "We comforted them." Spoken from a simple place inside the heart, as in "what else could we do?". Having a few hundred panicked outsiders descend on a community half that size was met with powerful resolve and personal and communal giving. These were people with nothing, who still gave at risk of their lives and out of every larder and blanket closet in the community, with aplomb, courtesy and no sign of stress. If that Global reporter wasn't humbled by the reply, and just by being in the midst of a community in action, giving everything out of nothing, then you have to wonder at the state of moral education in journalistic education and training.

The mass act of compassion (and bravery) shown by the Gitga'at of Hartley Bay desrves something even more than a vessel name, and hopefully public memory will honour them in a way officialdom is not seeing fit to.

In writing this it occurs to me that perhaps Gitga'at Spirit might be even more apt than Spirit of Hartley Bay. The Gitga'at are too humble, and too used to being ignored, to expect anything more than the rescue boats and other doodads; naming of the ferry would be nice but I doubt they see it as much of a slight to them as the rest of us do. I'll take it a step further and suggest that, pending government/ferry management change, new vessels are given native-community names. Mamelilaqula Spirit, Namu Spirit, Skidegate Spirit. Not that I've ever liked the "spirit" affectation in BC govt marketing, but if they're gonna use it I'd say there's better things to be in the spirit of than Surrey or Abbotsford.

Deeds of selflessness of this kind should tell people something about the way native people are, beyond all the politics and cultural differentiation. I meant a while ago to dig out a passage from Chilco Choate's books on a related experience which gives a similar window on the worth of our rural communities (native and otherwise) but will save it for when I find it.

It's a pity that Dave Hahn can't see the meaning and value in all this nor the government (though I have my doubts about Campbell's road-to-Damascus conversion, i.e. that it's not just a play, he's sincere - believing his own bullshit policies, but sincere...). The maritime history of BC is filled with grotesque passenger disasters, long forgotten and to newcomers to BC largely unknown - this is, after all, the "Graveyard of the Pacific" (albeit more in refernce to the outer coast). That Gil Island wasn't another one of them is entirely due to the people of Hartley Bay, and that deserves more than even a name on a boat, or even a boat. What that might be I don't know, and they themselves would not presume to ask. It's for the rest of us to come up with some kind of appropriation recognition. A name on a boat would be nice, if it ever happens. But what else?

I think that's one of the funniest of my typos/mindslips I've ever seen...."appropriate" was meant, of course...

Skookum1
Did you see this:

After much consideration, BC Ferries has decided the new vessels earmarked for the

Inside Passage and Prince Rupert – Queen Charlotte Islands routes will bear the northern family name in recognition of the uniqueness and pride of the northern communities they serve. The first two vessels in the northern fleet will be named Northern Adventure and Northern Expedition to capture the bold spirit of exploration and discovery that define the region.

From Hahn's Press Release.

I think Campbell has convinced himself he's born again.

Pretty typical of the sociopathic personality.

Nice slip - Freudian, I mean.
Posted a we nugget (turd) from Oaxaca in the other place, btw.

should be 'wee' nugget.
I'm beginning to think the CBC, like the Redcoats, isn't worth saving in its present form.

Out for the evening.

...Good point Skookum 1, and so beautifully said my friend.

I think yes, they deserve better, not sure what, but Hartley Bay residents deserve better. Maybe through children's books this story will live on and carry within the lesson from these brave and humble people. Maybe a sculpture on Gil I. which stands out for all passing vessels to see and pay tribute to in memory of these peoples selfless efforts... I am not sure, but, something more is what they will get. I believe that is true...

Bear

In answer to maestro. Why a minority section of the left became brutal and dictatorial is a long involved question and probably should not be discussed here, as there are enough tangents present. Furthermore, no matter what evidence I present, I know that people who do not wish to know the truth will ignore it anyway as in “don't confuse my mind with facts.” But, fug it I will try anyway.
Throughout the 19th Century the left was a democratic left, one that wished to extend democracy and replace authoritarian capitalism with worker cooperatives. There was a minor conspiratorial current begun by Gracchus Babeuf in 1796, continued by August Blanqui. But this tendency did not amount to anything. It is also true that my ideological ancestors got into a fight with Karl Marx and called him an authoritarian. But this was nothing more than one of the bitch fights that sometimes take place on the left. Marx and Engels were democratic socialists down to their toes.
Then in 1871, Prussia goaded stupid Nap 3 into a war. The French were defeated and basically abandoned Paris. The Parisian artisans created a direct democratic government and formed a militia. This was known as the Paris Commune and it had nothing to do with “communism” but was called a commune because that is the French word for “municipality.” The French ruling class was not amused, so they attacked and defeated the Commune, murdering 25,000 people in cold blood and deporting another 30,000 to Devils Island and New Caledonia. The butchery of the Commune traumatized the left and France for a generation or more.
The result was a tiny handful of traumatized radicals began to plant bombs and engage in assassinations. This had never occurred before in all the previous 50 years of socialism. (Sadly, they called themselves anarchists and we have yet to live down that stigma.) Meanwhile, in Russia, young people struggled to liberate the peasantry and engage in democratic reform. They were rounded up and carted off to Siberia. The youth, having no democratic outlet, replied with bombs and many of them were executed by the Tsarist state. One of these was the elder brother of a boy named Vladimir Ulianov.

In the rest of the industrializing world the artisans, skilled workers and farmers resisted the destruction of their lives and their conversion into wage slaves by forming organizations and going on strike. They were met with vigilante terrorism, clubs and bullets.
In the colonial world, people of color are undergoing wave after wave of genocidal attack by the European and American ruling classes.

Part 2
In 1903, Vladimir Ulianov, now called Lenin, looks back on the last 30 plus years of history and concludes, “No more Mr. Nice Guy, No More Mr. Clean!” The ruling classes are simply too savage to be overthrown with the ballot, the strike or even democratic mass organizations. Fire must be fought with fire. The proletariat must be led by a tightly centralized, military style organization. From this comes the Bolshevik Faction of the Russian Social Democratic Party.
In 1917 the Tsar is overthrown and shortly after the dithering liberal government that replaced him by a united front of Bolsheviks, Anarchists and Left-populists. The Western Powers invade Russia and support the counter-revolutionary factions. In the civil war which follows 5 million people lose their lives. Disputes erupt between the revolutionary groups and the Bolsheviks govern alone. They begin to persecute their ex-allies and many people resent the centralization of power that the Bolsheviks have engaged in. The Russian Navy at Krondstadt has enough, and led by Left-Bolsheviks, Anarchists and Populists declares the Krondstadt Commune and demands a third revolution. Trotsky sends the Red Army to fight the Red and Black Navy. Navy loses. Lenin tells the Left Bolsheviks to put up or shut up.
Lenin dies. Trotsky is out maneuvered by a minor Bolshevik from Georgia. Over the next few years, Stalin converts the Bolshevik Party into a completely totalitarian vehicle for his own power and the mass murder begins on an unprecedented scale...

Whew! One must become evil to fight evil, eh? So the end result is evil. No light at the end of that tunnel. No wonder the prols embrace the water garden and 70-odd vigins........(in whatever form it comes)

Yup, those are the ones. It's like there's a blandness factory somewhere, isn't there? These words have nothing to do with life for people on the coast but are in fact embelmatic of the "Age of Discovery" bent of white man historical perspective. These names are tourism-market-oriented pretty obviously, and smack of "heartland" style hackneyed nationalism as well.

The Gitgaat people didn't discover anything, and while their life for us would be an adventure, for them it's more or less the way things always have been. "Celebrating" the life and culture of the North Coast with these names must not resonate very well with the locals up there. It all boils down to how widely management and marketing people have read, and how much outside the mainstream paradigm they've let their minds roam. Which is to say, not very far.

Postscript to that last bit: Most people really are that boring....

which is why "mass common demoninator" marketing works....

I really enjoyed that, anarcho, but I must admit honestly, that I'm wondering if it's really a better story than those 'how the tiger got its spots' stories.

A minority of the left became brutal in response to brutality?

Isn't it true that a minority of any group is brutal, and that a minority of any group will always justify its brutality as a response to injustice--mainly its lack of power?

Regardless, it didn't pay off, except in Stalin's rise to--and worse brutality. I bet the minority of the left who thought brutality would work have learned a lesson.

Did Lenin's 'no more Mr. Nice Guy,' present fertile ground for Stalin's brutality?

In writing this it occurs to me that perhaps Gitga'at Spirit might be even more apt than Spirit of Hartley Bay.

I'm for that myself. Excellent suggestion.

Larger masses of folks have been trying to escape reality, likely since the beginning of time, certainly since the rise of class societies. It's called religion, of course, and has taken many forms.

And yep, as incomplete as Anarchos condensed version history of the class war goes, though it serves its purpose very well, the class war has been going on across the millennia, in one form or another-, here beneath the surface of life and events, there in open contest and warfare.

(And along with it, as if that were not enough, as Kris Kristofferson once wrote in a song, such that it seems indeed that in the cycle of repression "Everyone needs somebody else to look down on", so within the class war there has also been a gender conflict going on between men and women. In the way that all shit runs downhill. Which, contrary to Maestro, I think, is yet to be satisfactorily resolved to all the participants satisfaction as well.)

And as some attempt to find escape from the full realities of life in general through religion and all other manner of escapist pursuits and "belief" systems, so do no less numbers from this class and gender aspect of real life, as real people and real groups live it, in real societies.

But then, that is all I will have to say on the subject here as well-, for indeed we do digress. :-) It's just that once in awhile one does need to go after these little wingnut blackflies with the swatter, if for no other reason than to reduce their overpopulation numbers. :-)

"3 blog reactions"!!! Now where the hell did that come from in this just downloaded Firefox 2 browser of mine?

That should have read,

in the quote box, of course.

Certainly does seem to have taught the right a lesson Truman - they've used violence consistently from the very beginning. The Left were just slow learners.

It's not your Firefox; I've had v.2 installed for a while now and this 3 blog reactions thing just started tonight; must be something in the dtp/forum software used here; there's other problems with the buttons on Tyee Books (and have been for a while).

About Gitga'at Spirit, I suppose on thing that might move things in that direction might be an online petition to the Premier and to Hahn. I don't know how to set such a thing up, though I'm certain the networks will be all over it once it's up and going (i.e. public p.r. power will triumph marketing consultants if enough pressure is applied).

I toyed with some "Queen" ideas and wonder why they don't already exist: Haida Queen, Tsimshian Queen, Nisga'a Queen, Owekeeno Queen all have a nice ring, as with Skidegate Queen, Namu Queen, Kyuquot Queen and so many others (each commemorating a people or particular community, such as the Gitga'at whose namesake would be the first of this line.

One thing that hasn't come up in all the lack-of-foresight hype over offshore drilling is the consequent demand on travel infrastructure on an industrialized and more populated coast, of which there's been no discussion. The BC "outports" would be more numerous, and better-off, if there were more easy coming and going, and of course more people rolling through spending money en route. The model I'm thinking of is Norway's Huterute but that's a discussion for a separate post/day. That you can only come and go from the Charlottes once a week is primitive by world standards. What is this? The South Atlantic?

Lofoten, Finnmark and Nordnorge - boat access only (other than via Sweden) - all have daily service and more. Norway has 4 million people, only part of which is along its coast (well-settled as it is, granted), and they have modern, up-to-date access to the outside world and daily comings-and-goings. It wasn't too long ago that coastal Norway was as isolated as BC, including in some areas in terms of poverty...

BC has 4 million people. Instead we're getting the South Fraser Perimeter whatsit (another miracle of infrastructural naming tackiness around here). And an endlessly upgraded 99. I wonder if the company that has the management contract for the Coquihalla will get the Sea-to-Sky and Duffey Lake ones during the Olympics? Great way to save money, huh? Just don't spend it...

The point I am making is that the brutality of the ruling class is the root cause of the brutality of a section of the left. Apologists for the system always make out like it is our fault, or that somehow it is inately part of socialism, that such horrors occur. I say it is not. The abused often become the abusers. But we have learned. The revolutionary movements of today are trying everything possible to avoid the militarism, the centralization, the sectarianism of the past. We see this in Oaxaca, with the Zapatistas, and in Bolivia and Venezuela. nO matter how many of us the rulers torture and kill, we must never become like them, even for an instant. I should also like to point out that I do not demonize Lenin and the old Bolsheviks (unlike some of my comrades) I think they were honestly trying what they saw was a new method of organization and new tactics...

"Lofoten, Finnmark and Nordnorge - boat access only (other than via Sweden) - all have daily service and more. Norway has 4 million people..."

Except Norway is almost always governed by sane, progressive people, whereas BC is governed by reactionaries and sociopaths...

You guys should put your good insights to some use. E-mail your concerns to members of cabinet or other MPs. Otherwise, this is just an ivory tower discussion.

------------

Steven Harper, Prime Minister

Rob Nicholson, Leader of government in House of Commons, Minister for Democratic Reform

David Emerson, Minister of International Trade, Minister for the Pacific Gateway and the Vancouver-Whistler Olympics

Jean-Pierre Blackburn, Minister of Labour, Minister of the Economic Development Agency of Canada for the Regions of Quebec

Greg Thompson, Minister of Veteran’s Affairs

Monte Solberg, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration

Chuck Strahl, Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, Minister for the Canadian Wheat Board

Gary Lunn, Minister of Natural Resources

Peter McKay, Minister of Foreign Affairs
Minister of the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency

Loyola Hearn, Minister of Fisheries and Oceans

Stockwell Day, Minister of Public Safety

Carol Skelton, Minister of National Revenue, Minister of Western Economic Diversification

Vic Toews, Minister of Justice, Attorney General of Canada

Rona Ambrose, Minister of the Environment

MP’s in other parties:

Stephane Dion, leader of the Liberals

Jack Layton, leader of the NDP

Gilles Duceppe, leader of the Bloc Quebecois

Bill Graham, Liberal MP

Judy Sgro, Liberal MP

These ferry names are about as exciting as an air bubble... Typical.

Yeah, if Gitga'at Spirit was to be the new name of the ferry, that would be very appropriate imo...

Bear

skookum:

'cause we white guys can't pronounce them.....?

Alci, Coyo, Anarcho:
I suppose one mustn't forget that the dictators have no power whatsoever without cannon fodder...........

Frank, ALCi etc.

Yes...correct...Canucks theoretical parade route will not have me in attendance...I may take a peek on the TV,channel surfing as MLB starts about the same time.

Actually, last year the World Junior's were held in Vancouver, and the PNE Forum building held a great exhibit with items from the Hockey Hall of Fame...including many of the NHL trophies, ie Conn Smythe. Lady Byng, and yes Lord Stanley's mug was there . I was able to hold it,( got the photo evidence), and thus I got a chance to hold it that many Canucks likely never will.

Canucks tend to put their eggs into one basket...Luongo is a great goalie...but in the "new" NHL...and the salary cap...they should have looked into diversifying more. Looks good so far, but then again they may be peaking too early.

RickW

...true, and that is a stickler for sure.
B.

Ah.....the "cannon fodder":
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2006/12/17/douglas-rcmp.html
Brings to mind the Winnipeg General Strike, the Regina "Riot"...
Don't recall our national police service putting down the Saskatchewan doctors strike though..............

Which is about as effective as sticking one's erect phallus out an open window and trying to shag the world. This "Let's have a letter writing campaign!" has been the main strategy to occupy the masses of the smiley face left since way before my time-, and it's yet to produce anything more than writer's cramp. (This Smiley-face Left characterization of much of the institutional "social democratic/liberal left" is Anarcho's creation. What I like, I steal and use as if it were my own.:-)

If that's the only option or opportunity for "action" available to us, then we might as well all just lay low through the current period, and go fishing-, in my view.

Nor do I. First because I were one, of course. But also because though history has proven they were wrong for their place and time, and the stage of development of Russian Empire "feudal-capitalism" societies, and did indeed in that chaotic and dangerous situation do some incredibly horrible things-, and even under Stalin evolved into a political form that was as much

in effect as Hitlers "right fascism", they still have to be seen in the context of that very particular Civil War and foreign intervention time, coming out of WW1, between and into the horrors of WW2 for Russia, and that period's life and death struggles.

Now that's my view.

Though I see a new "Freedom of Information" release out of the

Which is about as effective as sticking one's erect phallus out an open window and trying to shag the world. This "Let's have a letter writing campaign!" has been the main strategy to occupy the unwashed masses of the smiley face left since way before my time-, and it's yet to produce anything more than writer's cramp. (This Smiley-face Left characterization of much of the institutional "social democratic/liberal left" is Anarcho's creation elsewhere in our conversations. What I like, I steal and use as if it were my own.:-)

If that's the only option or opportunity for "action" available to us, then we might as well all just lay low through the current period, wait for it to reach critical mass, and go fishing through the interim-, in my view. (Which has been my actual policy practise for some time now.)

Nor do I. (And I understand that Fait Lux, for example, has an understandably different perspective on this.) First because I were one, of course. But also because though history has proven these Bolsheviks were wrong for their place and time, and the stage of development of then Russian Empire "feudal-capitalism" societies (Yes, plural.), and did indeed in that chaotic and dangerous time do some incredibly horrible things-, and even under Stalin evolved into a political form and practise that was as much

in effect as Hitlers "right wing fascism", they still have to be seen, I think, in the context of that very particular Civil War and foreign intervention time, coming out of WW1, between and into the horrors of WW2 for Russia, and that period's life and death struggles.

Now that's my view.

Though I see I was in good company as an ex-Canadian Communist. A new "Freedom of Information" release out of the RCMP has, according to news reports, revealed that Tommy Douglas actually joined the Communist Party of Canada in his university days, and was closely spied upon by RCMP intelligence throughout his life.

Always knew Tommy was a cut above the average Smiley-Face Social Democrat. :-)

----------------------------------------

But returning back again to this "Green Spin" discussion, as much as I have enjoyed and learned from the "biotic/abiotic" oil discussion, much to the thanks of Truman G. and others on both sides of the issue, I think we tend to look too much, as only seems easier to politically deal with in this time and society, and is its navel gazing preoccupation, to "technical fixes" to the emerging global problems of energy, pollution and total environmental degradation now becoming inescapably obvious to all but the most die-hard wingnut apologists for capitalism here. And which is not to say that technical innovation is or may not be part of the fixes that will be the final solution. I have no doubt they will be, in fact.

BUT, there remains the deeper, more entrenched, harder to get at and potentially conflict generating cause and effect realities which arise out of the social, political and economic core of our species activity, and the dominant "systems" in place there-, and at root the class dividing, greed serving and excess driving social realities of that particular socio-economic and political system. And unless this overarching/underpinning reality is finally addressed and conclusively resolved here in relative short order, the temporary "patches" that are really the technical fixes will finally all and sooner or later come undone to even worse effect in the end.

Continued next post...

From previous post...

It is us, our species global numbers, the excessive demand this places on all aspects of our living space biosphere and resources, and accelerated by our obsessively individualist, self-serving, so-called wealth creation, oriented and centred economic and political system, that is more at the heart of the problem than these "technical" issues. And which, while this capitalist socio-economic form with its built-in "private accrued profit incentive" structure and dynamic has served to lift us to our current, and no doubt superior to feudalism level of development, is finally hitting the wall of the social and environmental realities within which it operates, in the finite space and resource systems of Mother Earth.

Such that the way ahead, if we are to continue to maintain "the system" here beyond its "suitable" time and historical role limits, and an effort is underway in the global economic capitals of the world to do precisely that, we must soon find another planet on which to dump our excess species numbers-, a new planetary North America if you will, and transport back its resources. (Until the new colony rises up against earth, for its independence, mind you. :-)

Even then, this is clearly not a real or lasting alternative, nor likely to happen anywhere near fast enough. Nor does it address the still remaining pollution and other planetary life systems issues, let alone the quality of life or socio-economic "equality" and "democratic development" ones that are still also a problematic part of capitalism.

So, in my view, even if there are "technical fixes" which can tide us over for a time and stall what is still the inevitable end already beginning to appear with global warming, ocean and air system failures and species extinctions over the horizon-, if we do not act, we still have to deal with the sheer mass of our global numbers and its deleterious effects, such as increasingly space constricted, crowded urban spaces and a shrinking land and resource base-, to say nothing of the agricultural land base upon which they tend to sprawl and spawn, and the air-shit spewed out for us to breathe back in.

And underpinning all that, of course, the economic and political system upon which it is all predicated, and by which it is in turn driven. And this is the underpinning reality everyone is scared poopless to touch with a ten foot pole.

RickW

Well, my basic view is the Left and Right exist in EACH of us in some sort of equilibria, and my own critique about the Left's so-called " monopoly of virtue " BS. This "personal poli-compass" gets tweaked by internal and external forces. I think each of us have a fairly in -sync and across- the -board definition of what is Left and Right but there is also a lot of overlap between the two.

I personally don't know any hard core Rightista Daddy Warbucks...and other than a few "anonymous" TYEE Commies, not really any hard core Leftie zealots. FTR, most of the Lefties I know are or were Public Servants.

Neo-con this, neo-con that ... that is just dogma tattoo - labelling. TYEE posters' etc. history lessons are good, and admittedly interesting, with some old lessons to always keep in mind.

Much of what we see on the political stage is no different than Pro-Wrestling...simply posturing with the "look" of beef when NO beef in fact exists.

What I see on the Left is simply in a holding pattern...and perhaps in the midst of a transitional stage...but certainly avoiding the old ways. Many of the TYEE posters perhaps yearn for the "good old days" (?) when the Left had perhaps more say, and enjoy reminiscing about this , but perhaps these old lefties are the very reason the " old " Left is withering away. The "new" Left in my view will be absorbed or "merged" into the political mainstream.

Layton's so called balance of power is perhaps more an NDP suicide bomb package with a long fuse....NDP are the ones who may be annihilated if Layton makes one wrong move in the ideology vs pragmatism minefield.

Lefties I know are either teachers, union officials or government employees. As soon as they break out by choice or otherwise become the victims of downsizing and start their own small businesses they quickly learn that there ain't much left over after working 70 hour weeks for themselves. Then they complain about high business property taxes and loose sympathy for able bodied beggars. Sunday's become days to catch up on paperwork and sales tax filings and cleaning their premises. Long paid vacations a distant memory. But they're happy and wouldn't go back!

Back to fuels. BC has lots of coal. I wish I were a cartoonist for this one:

"Liquid coal: A cheaper, cleaner 21st century fuel?

By Steve James
Reuters
Sunday, December 17, 2006; 1:18 PM

NEW YORK (Reuters) - When railroads ruled, it was the sweating firemen shoveling coal into the furnace who kept the engines running.

Now, nearly two centuries after Stephenson's "Rocket" steam locomotive helped usher in the Industrial Revolution, that same coal could be the fuel that keeps the jet age aloft.

But with a twist: The planes of the future could be flown with liquid fuel made from coal or natural gas.

Already the United States Air Force has carried out tests flying a B-52 Stratofortress with a coal-based fuel.

And JetBlue Airways Corp. (JBLU.O) supports a bill in Congress that would extend tax credits for alternative fuels, pushing technology to produce jet fuel for the equivalent of $40 a barrel -- way below current oil prices.

Major coal mining companies in the United States, which has more coal reserves than Saudi Arabia has oil, are investing in ways to develop fuels derived from carbon.

The technology of producing a liquid fuel from coal or natural gas is hardly new. The Fischer-Tropsch process was developed by German researchers Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch in 1923 and used by Germany and Japan during World War II to produce alternative fuels. Indeed, in 1944, Germany produced 6.5 million tons, or 124,000 barrels a day.

And coal-to-liquid (CTL) fuel is already in use elsewhere, like South Africa, where it meets 30 percent of transportation fuel needs."

says realisticman(sic)

Then you don't know many. They are also: professionals, writers, small businessmen and entrepreneurs, actors, service people, farmers, retired folks and students. They are also the sick, the homeless, the poor and the handicapped.

You need to get out more.

The Fisher-Tropsch process is old news. It has a huge and significant environmental downside as anyone who's done any research in this area knows.

Besides, it's at least the 2nd and maybe the 3rd time you've brought it up...BORING!!!
Do you own some of their stock?

Weird things indeed going on with the "buttons" and "posting" works here in Tyee, Skookum.

Thanks for the headsup.

Indeed Alci, so-called Realisticman obviously does have a severely restricted experience of real life. (Near every serious "leftie", as opposed to the "smiley-face" liberal/social dem kind, understands, for example, that within capitalism, unless he has a union that will actually defend him, and even then there are security "issues", his job could will be on the line, from any number of formal causes, if the full nature of his politics was known, say to his boss. So we do tend to lay low in particular environments and company. Such that Realisticman has been correctly read by most of the "lefties" around him, ditto so-called Workingman, and they have simply chosen to NOT reveal themselves to him. Within capitalism there is a "formal democracy" of course, and then there is real/actual democracy. The two are not necessarily, or likely even, the same thing. :-)

It's elementary, dear Wingnut.

Alci says, "The Fisher-Tropsch process is old news. It has a huge and significant environmental downside as anyone who's done any research in this area knows.

Besides, it's at least the 2nd and maybe the 3rd time you've brought it up..."

Wrong again Alci. Today was the first time I mentioned it because today was the first time I heard about it.

Coyote, I agree with you that an increasing population is a strain on the environment. I wonder what you suggest would be a suitable way to reduce the population growth. Do you think that to discourage more children being born that taxes for those with children should go up?

Cute, but entirely obvious. :-)

But actually no, I don't think, at this place in time, that it is really necessary. Mostly what is needed, I think, is educating women AND men on the consequences of continued and unrestricted population growth. And that, in part, means dealing with, by countering the arguments of, the largely patriarchal religious and other dinosaurs with their heads and belief systems in a more ancient time, when encouraging population growth was one of the means of securing the dominance of the species, and in the contest of the then prevailing tribal group rivalries for land and resources.

Secondly, the latest developments in birth control need to be made widely available to everyone, along with early childhood sex education.

But especially important is, hold your breath, the "liberation" of women from male control, and empowering women to take control of their own reproduction rates: what they want and feel comfortable with in a consultative relationship across the whole of society.

Men, left to their own instincts, no less myself, are inclined to just pump the wee beggars out, because it is women who largely bear the burden of the consequences-, if family size becomes a burden and threaten impoverishment of the family unit.

(By the by, two children is a declining population, about three is a stabilized population, and four or more a growing population. So we already know the levels at which, in particular population situations, to encourage "family size"-, if we intend to establish our own human populations at comfortably maximized but sustainable levels. Though we likely do need to get a better and more scientific estimation of the global "human" population carrying capacity, at such levels as yet secures other species, plant life biodiversity and resource needs.)

So first, the education, empowerment and involvement of women in the work and decision making processes of the economy, along with men, ie democracy is the key, not only to social and political life generally, but to reducing and stabilizing human population size and impact as well.

Which is not to say that such administrative measures as taxation may not have a place in the mix entirely, but simply that such "administrative methods" are not the key to getting to where we need to be.

As I would put it. :-)

And WE do not have a population problem, but a declining one, save for, I suggest, the unsustainably high levels of immigration. (And I am not advocating zero immigration, just not at levels desired by capitalism to provide it with cheap labour and endless, never-ending market/population growth.)

Nope, wrong again realisticman. You posted to a link about exactly the same process but based on press reports from a different company.

Go back to the thread where you made the comments and check. If you read a little more you'll get the picture: The details behind process were clearly pointed out at the time and on the same thread.

Not by you of course. I freely acknowledge you didn't know what you were talking about at the time.

You're right Alcibiades. I just checked. My apologies.

I never noticed the cited proprietory process (The Fisher-Tropsch) name but, as you say, it is the same one. It is fascinating stuff. I must watch all this festive debauchery, be more diligent and read more.

This coal stuff is certainly receiving lots of press these days. Perhaps a stock purchase would be a good idea.

Nobody appreciates a showoff, I know, but...21 hours ago I posted this:

"Maybe just stop eating meat, and grow biomass for fuel, instead. 35% of crop vegetation is used for animal food so rich people can eat meat. Use this percentage for fuel biomass and bingo we've got a huge reducion in atmospheric greenhouse C02"

To which nobody commented except Right To Bear.

So here I am reading the "Reported Elsewhere" links on the Tyee home page a few minutes ago and I come across this:

"Alberta's not going to like this...Cattle worse for environment than cars: UN."

From the article: "What causes more greenhouse gas emissions, raising cattle or driving cars?"

Surprise!"

You gotta read it.

Anyway, the answer is raising cattle, which is what I have always figured, but had no evidence. Added to my hypothesis about the silliness of meat consumption the degradation done to the environment, and as I say, bingo, you got the answer to the environmental greenhouse problem, not to mention global warming; not to mention the availability of land for human food production.

(It takes eight pounds of vegetation to grown 1 pound of meat)

Stop eating all that super-hormoned and antibiotic-laden meat, and stop worrying about global warming, too, which is nice.

And seeing as how it's been proven that prostate glands and breasts are more likely to become cancerous if their owners consume large amounts of meat...well, the perks are endless.

Truman,

I recall at one time in my "agricultural career" :-), driving around with a bumper sticker in my dusty old pickup, with a bumper sticker that scolded, "This is cattle country. Eat beef you bastard."

But you are right, and not for the first time my friend, and I was wrong. :-)

The fact is, we would be better off if we didn't eat so much meat, and I eventually had the cancerous prostate to prove it. :-)

Though I can't speak for women's breasts. Only enjoy them. :-)

For nine of us in a year, we used to slaughter and consume two entire grain finished, yellow fat marbled young steers, in the fall of their second year at about 600-800 lbs.(?), and at least one older hamburger cow culled from the herd, four pigs, 24 chickens and two turkeys. Like the Eskimo, my favourite part of the bovines was the liver from a fresh killed animal, taken from the carcass immediately, put in waiting ice cold water, and taken up to the house to be consumed for that very evenings supper.

Mmmmmmmm, fresh liverrrr. Mmmmmmm, hamburger. :-)

realisticman,

tip 'o the hat to you sir. You're a gentleman.

Truman,
the news about cow gas and cars isn't new - but good of you to bring it up. It was even mentioned once before here on Tyee - on a thread where someone else brought up the potential methane production from melting permafrost across the Arctic.

The fact that the news has finally gotten to Alberta probably is new, they have a way of always being the last to know.

I think that there's some doubt about this:

although you're undoubtedly correct on this score:

Good post again Truman… :-)

There you go, just in case people didn't have enough reason to not eat meat, greenhouse emissions ... Perhaps another paradigm shift eh Truman...?

Truman again is correct on the drugs these animals get and the effect on the health of humans. I was raise in Southern Alberta, "Ranch Country". One of my first jobs was working for Western Stock Growers. Strange history for an animal lover, but I learned a lot, so I am thankful for it. This job included selling Ralgro and Synovex, (both growth hormones) to feedlot cattle. I also sold long and fast acting penicillin. Since then the science on the effects on human health in this area is quite clear, as Truman implied, it's bad our health to eat these animals. (I could support this with the ethical, and spiritual argument, but this is not the thread to do so).

The Cattle industry largely contributing to global warming... If we take this as truth, it sounds like humans have to take a deeper look at their responsibility for the food choices they make in the future. I hesitate to say, but it is about time...

Interesting thought here...one would have to question which is more powerful, the Cattle industry and all its trimmings, or the Petroleum industries and all their trimmings...?? Both issues clearly need to be addressed in a serious way imo.

Thanks Truman,

Bear

...Yote', I have heard of prarie oysters bud, but shiver my liver that is gross...

But seriously, thanks for sharing dude.

Bear

Truman, that's wild about the cows! Never knew they produced more emmissions than the cars. Guess its eat veg and buy a bike. Certainly a lot more healthy for you as well as the planet.

maestro:

Agreed! But why must the right invariably be Mr. Hyde?

More Methane:
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7046

Good one, RickW. :-)

Bear,

It turns out there are some inaccuracies in my meat consumption stats above. I am but a man, of course. Mrs. Coyote knows. :-)

First, there were 11 of us, being 6 kids across the full spectrum and five adults. 8 of whom were females and three adult males. (A long story.) I forgot to include a couple of the kids in my earlier piece on this subject. And I'm reminded by She Who Must Be Obeyed that while we in fact slaughtered and ground up a "hamburger cow" annually, typically we would consume about half of it and barter or sell the other half.

I would trust Mrs. Coyote's recollection over mine. She never forgets anything. :-) lol.

Now, I'm away for the day. Catch ya's later.

More 'great' news from China
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/19/world/asia/19shenzhen.html?hp&ex=1166590800&en=30ad7b00638d156e&ei=5094&partner=homepage

You might be interested in this realisticman, if you happen to stop by.

I wonder which is less useful. Knowing how oil was formed, or knowing the deleterious effects of burning it.

A more useful piece of knowledge would be an effective method of using less. Could each individual somehow manage to use 4% less energy per year, per year ?

Is there a political party that would publicly advocate that everyone should drive 4% less per year, each year ?

Everyone is averse to wandering down off the mountain, when they can continue barrelling towards the cliff.

Then they can blame the government, the scientists, the businesspeople, the churches, everyone, save themselves.

Park the fukin thing one Sunday per month, for a whole year. Then park it for 2 Sundays a month, for whole year. Then do it 3 Sundays, then 4. In 4 years, you will have had a 4-year chance to figure out what to do next.

Gee, all we need is a permanent recession, focused solely on energy use. Hopefully we could shrink enough to have single wage earner families, and single-car households.

Imagine, our kids could have parents again, and a healthy planet.

jwstewart, did you go here yet:

http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2006/1000448/index.html

Livestock's worse than cars, eh.

I can't imagine that you can't see the importance of the truth about the origin of fuel hydrocarbons. They're only, so far, the most important source of energy on the planet. Wars are being fought over them.

I'm doing research now on whether David Suzuki's ever presented the truth about the degradation caused by the production of Livestock--or not. Anyone have any knowledge of this?

This is a "departure tangent", but since this is the greenest thread around here right now:

The blowdown in Stanley Park brought to mind a few things, which resonated when the parks board chair and Global reporter visiting the park both commented on the emotional, disorienting, psychic devastation of suddenly being faced with a huge clearing where before had been dense forest.

Brought to mind on the one hand the old nostrum from the Share BC types that Vancouver is the province's biggest clearcut (close, but not true anymore although once it certainly was), and the ongoing reminder from forestry types that Stanley Park, beautiful though it is, is not old growth, not even close, and that's why cutting and silviculture/forestry are a good thing; SP was always trotted out as a way forestry had "improved" the forest. But here's a thought - not that it could ever have come to pass and the trees in question were probably high-graded in the 1870s, but what if that whole area had still been first-growth. Would it have withstood the winds? Or would an accordion fall still have been the result? Mind that second-growth is a lot denser, a lot more susceptibal to accordion fall...on the other hand from what I could see in the aerial shots this almost looked like a "hammer wind", a sudden downward gust that maybe nothing could have withstood.

That being said, I've always mused what North Van's and West Van's reaction would be if somebody got cutting permits above Delbrook, the Properties and the Hollyburn Club, and whatever else up there isn't provincial park. The outcry wouldn't just come from those neighbourhoods - British Properties, Delbrook and Capilano being inhabited by many who've made their fortunes in money-spinning off forestry or forest investments, but the first to be eco-forward as we saw at Eagleridge Bluffs this last summer...the outcry would obviously come from the whole of Vancouver and Burnaby, whose "view would be ruined". And, presumably, their psyche would be subjected to the same kind of devastation that those visiting post-windstorm Stanley Park are reporting.

Thing is, Vancouver's economy and society exist by cutting forests in far more beautiful landscapes than the North Shore or Stanley Park. The emotional devastation described by the Parks Chair and the Globalite is familiar to me; I experienced a really bad case on viewing the first big clearcuts in the upper Bridge River back in '81 or so; mind-numbing, reduced me to tears, both up close and what it had done to vistas that were as memorable as anything in the most famous American parks or the best of Switzerland or the Pyrenees...but "out of sight out of mind" is the way of Vancouver: only Stanley Park needed be preserved as an example of "ancient forests", even though it wasn't ancient. Same deal with the Cache Creek trash mountain, and the new one that's proposed for beautiful Ashcroft Manor (easily one of the most scenic and historic ranchscapes in the province); we don't have to see it so we (Vancouver) don't care. Clearcut and patchwork-cut the wilds to the limits of the North and the steepest parts of the Coast; but harm Stanley Park and it's some kind of civic emergency....

As observed, the kiddie train and petting zoo are in an area created by blowdowns from Hurricane Freda. There was, as I recall, another big blowdown earlier in the 20th Century as well as a forest fire or two in the 19th. Edwardian gilded-age tourist pictures of the park show ladies posing on huge lawns adjacent to what trees remained; the blowdowns and fire clearings were grassed over, though I think much of that's regrown (where the big rhodos are above the Rowing Club); I don't have the VPL index nos. of some of those pictures because they're quite revealing. Can't remember when the field by Brockton Oval was first cleared; in the 1870s or early '80s, specifically for sports (since Gastown didn't have a field, not until Larwill Park - the old bus depot site - was established in the course of building the CPR Townsite); the newer oval built much later (the one with the track).

Always remember the park is a natural landscape and hence subject to change, human and otherwise. During Pauline Johnston's time Lost Lagoon was separated from English Bay by only a tidal pebble-beach; the little brook there now is entirely contrived, and most of Ceperley Park is partly fill. And the causeway's meaning as a causeway is long gone; I'm not even sure if Lost Lagoon is still salt water or what.

Truman, this is what I found dude:

That's largely because of Manitoba's rapidly expanding cattle and hog processing industry and the widespread use of manure on pastures and land, the foundation says.

(Manure not only seeps into our soil, rivers and lakes, it creates greenhouse gases, too).

It's also because Manitoba's emissions from cars, trucks and SUVs continue to climb, and the province has no strategic plan on how to curb it, the report says.

"The province will have to get serious if it still intends to reverse the upward trend in GHG emissions and meet the target laid out by the Kyoto Protocol," says the report called All Over the Map: 2006 Status Report of Provincial Climate Change Plans.

In 2004, Manitoba's greenhouse gas emissions jumped to 11.4% of 1990 levels, according to the report. That's up from 8.2% of 1990 levels in 2003.

Hardly sounds "green" to me. Sounds more like brown. And I don't mean the Ivy League university south of the border.

The foundation gives Manitoba high grades for its wind power, hydro electricity and scarcity of carbon-fuelled electric power.

But those "green" energy sources are more than offset by two main polluting factors: greenhouse gases from the livestock industry and transportation emissions.

"Agriculture emissions are high and rising in the province (up 45% since 1990) because of the increasing beef cattle and swine populations, and the increasingly popular practice of spreading their manure on pastures and agricultural land," says the report. "Emissions from agriculture are rising and remain largely unaddressed."

I am pretty sure that I saw a program where David Suzuki spoke also about the waste of food, water and land use, when it came to cattle industry. I will see if I can find it...

Have a great day... :-)

Bear

Skookum 1,

Thanks for the post on Stanley Park. How people can come unraveled about SP, and because of the lack of "visuals" not fight to save the old, ancient forest they don't see, is mind-boggling and pathetic... I wish we could somehow just channel that protective energy from people into protecting forests that really do matter...

Peace,

Bear

'Yote,

I hope you know I was kidding on the food choice issue earlier friend... :-) We eat what we have to eat when it comes to our survival and the survival of our family, and with the big numbers in your family, clearly that is what you did, and I respect and appreciate that...:-)

Have a great day friend, :-)

Bear :-)

Skookum1:
In fact, if I don't miss my guess, most of Stanley Park is hemlock, isn't it?
Weed trees to the high-graders who logged the place in the late 19th & early 20th century and likely left behind as worthless.

No doubt the more or less single-species ‘urban forest’ was (and will be) more susceptible to blow down. All your points are, as usual, well taken. Crocodile tears often seem to roll off the North Shore at the slightest provocation.

Another reason I support a LNG terminal at Roberts Bank (or even at the foot of Lonsdale) and not on the North Coast. Keep all the crap together so the money doesn't have so far to travel and the effects of the way the city makes its living won’t devastate what little real beauty is left elsewhere in the province.

Truman;

I beleive knowledge of petrochemcial fuels is equal to knowing how to grow tobacco. Useless except to make a profit.

Tobacco can cause disease, lethargy and is generally a self desctructive activity. It is best not to take part in that activity.

The same can be said of petrochemical fuels, although the noxious emissions will take much longer to accumulate to deadly levels, but will get there at our current pace.

The more useful knowledge is how to stop using them. It might save many species including ours.

At some point, use of petro fueled vehicles needs to be frowned upon similar to lighting up a smoke in a restaurant. It needs to become socially unacceptable, regardless of the price or supply levels.

No wars would be fought over oil if no one required any oil. Fewer wars would be fought if demand for oil drops, and the value therein drops too.

As for livestock, maybe that's a larger problem than is commonly known. If so, knowledge of a solution is required and would be more valuable than simply acknowledging there is a problem.

(Maybe a carbon tax on cow farts ?)

Thanks RTB.

Yes it does seem that Suzuki's people are fairly up on the threat to the environment from the production of meat. The UN report raises the problem to a vastly higher level, I suspect, though.

Number 4 on Suzuki's new list of ways we can protect the environment is to, "Eat meat-free meals one day a week."

Well, in my opinion (radical, I admit) this doesn't quite cut it--I think this is merely bandaiding of the problem--'minimalizing' perhaps--but at least he's seriously acknowledging the issue.

Google: Suzuki, ten ways to conserve nature.

jwstewart the obvious point is that fuel hydrocarbons are vastly more plentiful than the peak oilists would have us believe, and therefore a part of the cost of them is merely the result of farcical propaganda that they were derived from the remains of dead plants and animals--the 'fossil fuel' theory, on par with the idea of alchemy or the 'flat earth' hypothesis.

There are no 'fossil' fuels.

To some extent hydrocarbons are being replenished in the mantle of the earth. The scienfific and EROI question is: at what rate of renewal, and how deep are the hydrocarbons and can they be brought to the surface as cost-effectively as that produced from conventional shallow wells, etc.

The solution regarding livestock production is for rich people in North America and Europe to stop their meat gluttony, and return the land and resources required for it to the production of food and biomass for cleaner fuels.

Cow farts--methane prouction--are only a small part of the problem, and any refugee from a 12-step program will tell you that acknowledging the problem is always essential to its resolution.

As in: Hello, we're rich Americans, Canadians and Europeans. We eat way too many dead animals for luxury food, and we admit it. We need to reduce it by 90%.

...I couldn't have said it better or agreed more Truman. Well said brother...

Bear

Truman;

As I said, the supply is irrelevant, we could be hip deep in oil, or maybe we're past the Thanksgiving day peak.

My point is that burning oil is basically giving the planet a giant cigarette, and we need to cut back.

As in: Hello, we're rich Americans, Canadians and Europeans, and we'll drive a long way to eat dead animals.

jw, the supply may be irrelvant to you, but you're a special case, eh.

So you have absolutely no interest in the price of oil, then?

To everybody else on earth the supply of natural gas, oil and coal is quite important--especially people who can't get their share.

I know what you mean though, but you gotta try for a bit of perspective.

Ideally, there'd be no need for fuel hydrocarbons that increase the natural greenhouse effect. (Without which our planet would not be liveable.)

But the massive amount of money that is spent on hydrocarbon production--and the profits realized because of real or invented scarcity--as a result of their availability, might just be the reason why the big global interests are slow to develope other energy sources.

People tend to get addicted to profits.

Cheap oil would allow the capital needed for its production to be placed in other 'greener ventures.'

The prospect of running out of the stuff is what makes its production so profitable. Even closing a few giant refineries doesn't always do the trick. Remember the big one in California they shut down. I'll find it for you, if you like.

Human beings, unfortunately, tend towards greediness, not to mention unearned profits if they can con somebody into them.

The big guys won't get green just because it's better for the planet.

We've got to call them on 'peak oil' first. They love the stuff!

Who to trust?
Peak Oil was a scare tactic manufactured by big business so it makes greater profit?
Sorry, I'm having trouble accepting that one.
Oil was manufactured from inorganic precoursor chemicals somewhere down in the mantle?
Contradicts my Geology 101 textbook but where is there a concice explanation of this wonder?
Guess I should phone or visit my father-in-law. I'll get back here

Just off the phone with my "source".
Sure gets him chuckling when I attempt to decsribe the theories above.
1) Oil below 10000 feet
Zip!
2) Coal:
Quote Exxon Mobile's Special Coal Expert:
"We don't know how to mine it
We don't know how to transport it
We don't know how to burn it."
3) "Peak Oil":
"We passed that point when we first started using oil for fuel!"

Put that in your "Scare Tactic" basket

just checked the "hedberg" thingy
Prompts one more quote from my source:
"The oil companies, especially Shell but also Exxon Mobile, are so far ahead of the local universities it ain't funny."
"Yes there is lot's of Methane - but OIL is only produced in a tiny window of conditions: too cool = tar. too hot = tar and methane."
He recommends anyone actually interested in the topic to search oil company records freely given to all governments.

Shell went through first
Exxon checked them out
There ain't no more oil
This was their "cash Cow"
Do you imagine you are gonna strike
"Black Gold" in your
Backyard?

"oil below 10,000 feet, zip"

Your source just lost all credibility, doggone.

He's either putting you on or completely incompetent. The Russians and the Vietnamese have between them 420 wells below 10,000 feet and they're all producing.

"Passed that point when we first started using oil for fuel," says your source, eh doggone.

This is totally nonsensical, and he's the only one making such a bizarre claim.
There have been several peak oil dates claimed by the advocates of Peak Oil. 2005 is the most recent.

Of course abiotic oil contradicts your geology 101 textbook. Its writers were still using 18th century science.

Science does this kind of stuff. Absurd paradigms continue for decades, sometimes centuries.

Phone your source and tell him to go here, doggone:

http://www.gasandoil.com/goc/company/cnn64724.htm

From the article: "On July 4 of that year the BP well reached its final depth of 29,000 fet, after having gone through 6,000 feet of water and 2500 feet of salt. BP made the biggest discovery in the Gulf of Mexico."

I'll explain all of this Gulf of Mexico geology to you if you want doggone; this is all ABIOTIC OIL, and has to do with that same asteroid hitting the earth that was supposed to have ended the era of dinosaurs--another hoax, but that's a different story.

Anyways, fire your source. He doesn't know a single thing about oil exloration.

The White Tiger Field in Vietnam which was completely paid for by the Russians, employing their deep well, abiotic oil techniques has 20 wells, each going 17,000 feet through basalt.

Why do you think Vietnam is suddenly crawling with obsequious Americans?

And that 'tiny window of conditions' stuff is an ongoing peak oil scam.

You realize though, eh doggone, that this guys is, in effect, admitting that oil is derived abiotically, not from once-living fossils.

Prior to the second Iraq War - before the current boost in Oil prices - I didn't see all that many indictions that capital was heading that way Truman.

I think exactly the opposite is the case, sadly.

Well you havta think about it more, G.

The oil companies started getting into biomass when the prices for oil were low. As long as hydrocarbons are so profitable, there's little incentive to change.

There's two ways to change the direction of energy exploration and production: political will and profitability.

Now with the global, uh...well interests, yeah, that's it--interests-- pretty well controlling political will, EROI is the whole ball of wax, or kerogen, one might say.

Peak Oil is probably one of the best hoaxes ever devised. Imagine if there's hundreds of miles of methane and natural gas in the outer mantle--and oil too, G. Whadya think the Tar Sands would be worth?

The outer mantle is almost 500 miles deep.

Everybody except doggone's expert knows the hydrocarbons are down there, abiotically-derived.

I guess you've already figured out, G, that if there's fuel hydrocarbons down there, none of them ARE FOSSIL FUELS, WHICH DON'T, IN FACT EXIST. No fossils down there, eh.

I bet even you have grasped the gist of the science by now yourself, G.

This is good: http://www.eurekalert.org/features/doe/2005-08/drnl-tsf082205.php

I disagree Truman, and my sources in Calgary do as well. Like I said these are engineers (both with advanced degrees) who’ve been consultants or employed directly by the industry all their professional lives (they are both in their late 50s).

Look, I respect your enthusiasm and I know you spend a lot of time on these things; but, just as I don't agree with your conclusions about the current US administration and 9/11 conspiracies, or your ideas on 'intelligent design', I don't agree with you on abiotic oil either.

I also think that without very expensive and scarce oil that absolutely nothing substantive will change. The fact that some ideas get attention from a lot of people on the internet, and the fact that there are often no 'simple' answers to many complicated questions, doesn't make me disinclined to like you very much. I don’t know what the future and more research will prove and I’d be more than happy to agree with you if I were convinced.

I’m not. I don’t think the evidence is there, at all. I like your enthusiasm – as I think I’ve said before – but I disagree with your conclusions.

Still I do find that last sentence a little pretentious and unfair. I’d be happier if you could accept that people who disagree with you aren’t all uneducated and thoughtless fools.

You can’t say stuff like this: “I bet even you have grasped the gist of the science by now yourself, G.” without tending to raise people’s hackles. I think you know better.

As I said once before on this thread - I also think you need to pay a lot more attention to plate tectonics and the role of subduction zones and volcanic activity.

Cheers.

By the way, I've never disagreed with the idea that there is methane in the mantle.

Cut it out, G.West. Methane in the mantle is abiotic fuel hydrocarbon.

The science is that chemists have exactly duplicated the theory of abiotic hydrocarbon--in the lab. Did you read my last link?

You know, of course, that 90% of the composition of natural gas is methane?

Plate tectonics and subduction zones, eh, G. Go on...

Weird, you'd mention that because it's the movement in the earth's crust that allows the mantle's hydrocarbons to flow into the conventional sedimentary-based oil fields. In fact, if it wasn't for the fissures created by shifting of the plates, abiotically-derived hydrocarbons would probably have not been noticed, and the conventional wells would neve had filled up either.

It'd be a whole 'nother' world, eh.

So you're on to something; you just don't understand what.

As far as you liking me or my ideas making me popular, G, I'm not going for affection here. Just trying to bring up some stuff that the global snakes who run big media will never mention.

May I recommend to you, G. West, that while you're phoning Calgary scientists and engineers, you add this guy's name to your list: Warren Hunt, Calgary geologist. And read his books, "Environment of Violence," and "Expanding Geospheres."

All about the real source of fuel hydrocarbons.

I read it Truman. Including the words 'may', 'might', 'possibly' and 'could'.

You are wonderfully enthusiastic about everything you discover on the internet and subsequently become a passionate advocate for: It is revealed in everything you write, but it doesn't make you right.

You'd be a far more convincing advocate for all your many causes if you became less of a promoter. In fact, the way you become such a cheerleader for new and radical ideas makes me nervous and far more likely to search through the evidence you present with a fine tooth comb.

I don't know if it's a popularity thing with you - probably isn't. I don't think truth is a popularity thing anyway. You must know that plate tectonics and subduction also provide a very persuasive model for shifting the location of sedimentary basins relative to basement rock as well. The existence of deep pools of hydrocarbons is not necessarily a proof of abiotic oil production - it might be, but it might just as easily be a consequence of plate shifting. The existence of the Vietnam deep pools relative to major fault lines (the so called ring of fire) and subduction zones is not something which can be ignored.

fossils at 29,000 feet? I don't think so, G. It's really as simple as that!

There IS actually one legitimate contraindication to the abiotic theory: another biotic theory--chemosnythesis of hydrocarbons from critters whose energy needs were not derived from photosynthesis. We know these critters exist near hot vents at the bottom of the oceans. Problem is like the volumes of critters and plants needed to produce all this liquid oil--tubeworms et al seem to be in remarkable short supply, and their numbers wouldn't have supported a very substantial economy.

Serious biotic researchers only have this possibility for their denials of deep well hydrocarbons, because, like you, everybody admits that methane exists in the mantle of the earth.

You write: "You'd be a far better advocate....if you weren't a promoter."

What's this? A promoter?

Meant to ask you: Can't find our friend, Nana, on these threads. Did she go on holidays, or something while I was away?

Oil from the Tar Sands is only worth what it costs to extract it, plus the profit margin. Oil from the mantle, if it could be extracted, would be worth what it costs to extract it, plus the profit margin; and in both cases all the "market fluctuations" which are the delight of Lower Mainland drivers at this or any time of year...

The point is any petrochemicals in the mantle might as well be on Mars. Actually, Mars is easier to get to, so let's say they might as well be on Jupiter. Fine, there's abiotic hydrocarbons in the mantle and no doubt in the core; there's gold too, lots of it, and more. But mining or drilling in the mantle or below is a non-starter; we don't have the technology, if we did it would be prohibitively expensive to proceed.

The "environmental" consequences of releasing compressed gases from the mantle trouble me; I don't mean the further degradation of "our" atmosphere, but the shifting of pressures and chemistries below the unstable (and rather weak) crust. Sounds like a recipe for major geotectonic disruptionw, and not a small risk of "punching" holes for new volcanic systems.

By comparison, steam-injection geothermal, as in the Capers bldg on W 4th or the Cornerstone Bldg in UniverCity at SFU, manages to extract huge amounts of heat from the crust (not the mantle) without rivalling a trip to another planet in costs. Not even the Tar Sands are commercially viable yet; the mantle can be conjected to never, ever be because of its depth and the dangers and challenges associated with extracting from that depth. Gee-whiz scientists who trumpet this are also the kind of guys who blow lots of money on OTHER dangerous and dead-end technological ideas too, so don't listen to them as to whether it's doable or not; they're a vested interest and only want to spend "your" money to find something out, not to actually make something work.

"Synthetic geothermal" or whatever it's called is so much cheaper, involves only water and ordinary hard-rock drilling, an there's no risk of opening up a new magma vent or releasing a huge pool of contained gas that (a) will ruin the atmosphere and (b) in its absence from its former position beneath the crust, will engender movement of tectonic/mantle materials "outside of the norm". Whoopee. Another way to destroy the earth, brought to you by the nerds in labcoats.

Truman,
I'm sure Nana's out there watching and reading.

She and I had a profound disagreement on a Shannon Rupp thread here a while back.
http://thetyee.ca/Life/2006/12/08/Christianity/

I haven’t seen a post from her since. The story’s all there, toward the end of the comments thread.

Good point Skookum1:

Truman
As to the depths of possible migrations in zones of macro lithosphere subduction activity Truman - I think you need to look at the geology of diving and floating plates a bit more closely. If liquid oil can exist at the depths you're proposing (given the necessary chemistry to allow it to persist in that form) then it's not inconceivable that sedimentary trapped pools could get to that level through encapsulated tectonic activity. You might want to look a little more closely at the depths in the Marianas Trench.

One step at a time, eh, Skookum. The first step is to seriously consider the validity of the 'fossil fuel' theory.

Which I have. Oil, natural gas and methane from fossils. I don't think so.

You're looking at it objectively, though. You actually understand that it is at least possible that there are fuel hydrocarbons in the outer mantle of the earth.

But you're wrong in your claim that the Tar Sands are worth: "What it costs to extract them, plus the profit margin."

Fuel hydrocarbons are a global product. The value of the Tar Sands depends on the global cost and availability of fuel hydrocarbons from all sources. If oil reverts back to 20 dollars a barrel, the Tar Sands are going to be worth nothing.

'Peak Oil' or the threat of scarcity is therefore the brilliant underpinning of the entire production and marketing of fuel hydrocarbons, especially expensive ventures like tar sand extraction.

If it is found that mantle fuel can be sourced substantially cheaper than sedimentary oil, the Tar Sands might not be viable.

But you are one hundred percent correct about the Peak Oilists, most of whom are admitting the scientific reality of abiotic oil--only claiming "So what; they're too expensive to get out of the ground, anyway."

Don't quite understand your use of the word, 'petrochemicals.' I think you mean hydrocarbons, Skookum. Nobody's claiming there's gasoline in the mantle.

At any rate, the question is whether fuel hydrocarbons, might "just as well be on Mars or Jupiter" as a few miles down through the crust of the earth. But your post seems a bit contradictory. You claim these fuels might be viable. But you say they might just as well be on Mars or Jupiter.

How can you just 'know' this, Skookum?

Can I suggest you go have a look at the Russian oil industry, which they claim is deep well, abiotically-inspired?

Calgary geologist, Warren Hunt's good, too.

Truman,

We've got to call them on 'peak oil' first. They love the stuff!

...it almost sounds like you're advocating the status quo. Call them on PO ? To what end ?

Our so-called need for hydrocarbon fuels is far in excess of what is actually needed, it is gluttony, and there are functional alternatives available to cut use significantly.

Why call them on PO, why concern ourselves with supply and price? I'm talking about the 3rd part of that equation, demand.

Simply weaning ourselves off of the big corporate tit will solve both problems.

WE can control the price of oil by controlling our demand for it.

I submit that a 4% reduction in fuel use will have the desired effect on the supply and price of oil.

I talking about the REAL Peak Oil. The point in time when we decide to peak our consumption and begin to get off the shit.

A permanent man-made Peak of Oil Demand.

Can I suggest you go have a look at the Russian oil industry, which they claim is deep well, abiotically-inspired? reactions

Interesting how you pick up the dissonance in others that you often seem to be unaware of in your own writings my friend.

However, I applaud the use of 'claim' in this post p well done.

You did know that the deep trenches along the eastern Pacific ring of fire exceed 8,000 meters didn't you.

"You did know that the deep trenches..."

I think you should include your analysis of the meaning of this for our discussion, G.West.

jw, what I'm advocating is that readers take a year or so to go over all the information regarding the origin of fuel hydrocarbons and decide for themselves if it is more likely that they are derived from the mantle of the earth as a kind of hydrocarbonation of magma, where no fossilization has reached, or in accordance with the 'fossil fuel,' theory as first formulated by that Russian scientist in 1780 or so.

G.West, I think you're blowing hot air about the Marianas Trench, eh. If not, what's your point? They've got a new well far below the Trench, now. What's your take on this and how does it relate?The oil's not in the water, you know.

Truman,

You implied that drilled depths of 29,000 feet below sea level were sufficient to access abiotic oil. I suggested that sedimentary pools trapped in structures forced down by subduction processes could also account for the oil being pumped from deep-well fields. What is now submerged at the bottom of the sea along the margins of the Asian continent and the Indonesian Archipelago was once covered by sedimentary layers laid down in the long distant past while the continents were a single unit called Pangaea and during the process of continental drift. Some of the deep sea geography is also a product of volcanic activity as well.

Your point is that the lithosphere transformation generates methane, with which I don't argue; I disagree that it is necessarily 'creating' the heavier hydrocarbons necessary for the fluid and semi-fluid quantities of oil which have been accessed in reasonable commercial activities for the past 200 years or so. The evidence from the deepest wells drilled in Sweden indicates to me that the amounts of oil (in that case encased in fractured granite) are probably a result of migration from oil bearing strata at higher, not lower levels. I’ve seen nothing convincing to disabuse me of this impression in the stuff I’ve read. The fact the Gold had some success in some of the ideas he proposed during his career should not ignore his failures.

Furthermore, if the transformative effects of subduction in the lithosphere are creating hydrocarbons (ascending) in one location, they must be consuming or transforming them at the same time in other locations where plate and crustal layers metamorphose at the descending boundary between the lithosphere and the Asthenosphere.

I have no particular need to debate whether or not a lot of deep well natural gas comes from internal methane sources partially generated and trapped in the mantle and partly from sedimentary processes – the question is whether any significant amount of liquid oil can be the result of this speculative theory.

To this point, and I freely admit to relying upon people I take to be experts in the oil industry (but who are consultants and self-employed), I’m as skeptical about abiotic oil as they are.

Further, I don't think that the veracity of scientific theory is a consequence of anyone just 'deciding' what her or she happens to believe in. There needs to me a lot more research and a lot more empirical evidence, in my view. Just like saying that George Bush was behind 9/11 doesn't make it true.

You don't get that methane is supposed to be a 'fossil fuel,' G. You gotta start, there, eh.

Partly from abiotic and partly from once living fossils, eh. I don't think so, G.
This is how scientific paradigms shift--with partial admissions.

The point is that there's no validity to the 'fossil fuels fom kerogen' theory in which hydrocarbons are created as animals sink into the sedimentation below the oceans.

Don't understand this: "Just like saying that George Bush was behind 911 wasn't make it true."

The mere verbalization of anything doesn't make it true, G. Who would make such a silly claim.

How does this relate to the issue at hand?

Not at all Truman, I see no evidence that this is a paradigm shift. We get enough methane out of the local landfill here to run a number of engines and generate a lot of electricity - and there will be a lot more methane in the atmosphere as the permafrost melts up north. The fact that some chemical reactions at high temperature also produce gases is not surprising. And then of course there’s all those feedlots – methane is everywhere.

You may think there's no validity to the fossil source mechanism but that doesn't mean it's so - any more than the notion that you think the POTUS and his friends demolished the WTC towers means it's true. Who would make such a silly claim?

Mere verbalization of a claim doesn't make it true, eh!

Still up to your old baiting tricks, I see, G. West--trying to morph this discussion into a debate bout G.W Bush and 911. Why not leave it for a more suitable thread?

What the abiotic oil controversy has to do with the World Trade Centre, I can't imagine!

Honest, G., I'd give credit where credit's due, but your reference to swamp gas just proves beyond any doubt that you haven't the foggiest about the issues here.

The whole issue of methane is about the conincidentality of it being produced by anerobic binary fission in bacteria, but known also to arise from the mantle, which almost all scientists are willing to admit--even you. It was the methane emanating from certain digestive system orifices that kept me with an open mind on the 'fossil fuel' theory--until I realized that Russians and several Western oil companies were finding the stuff far deeper in the earth than any fossils have ever been found.

Fossils don't have digestive systems nor do they make swamp gas as far as I know.

You're a force of nature in Canadian politics, G., but you might profit by takng in an overview of the Russian-Ukrainian abiotic exploration program.

Go here:

http://www.gasresources.net/Introduction.htm

Almost forgot, G. What the heck did Nana say, anyway? Was it deleted? Nothing from her since, as far as I can find. Now I'm really curious. Was it the David Duke stuff?

Oh, and...methane being a major constituent of all the other planets around here kinda urged me on too, as you would imagine.

No life up there I don't think. Now when they find life on the other planets, I promise you, I'll concede that that methane could be derived from dead dinosaurs and ancient forests, too.

See what I mean, yet? My abiotic ideas were a bit shaken up when the scientists figured for about fifteen minutes that the methane on Mars proved the presence of life, but they've quietly retreated from that--for the most part.

Truman,
I've read the stuff. I've read the counter arguments. I've talked to my friends - I'm not (just as I wasn’t by your claims about 9/11 conspiracies) convinced. No big deal.

Methane is produced in all kinds of ways. There is no persuasive empirical data that any sizeable amounts of abiotic oil exist at all. If biological and anaerobic action can produce methane in landfills then it's not too hard to imagine other organic sources of the gas is it?

Moreover, that's what conventional science says - although over a much more attenuated time frame, correct? I've acknowledged the presence of methane in or on other planets from the beginning - just as I acknowledged that there's deep methane.

The key here is what mechanism produces both it and liquid oil and that's where we part company.

You're far too clever not to understand why I brought up your 'tendency' to support unconventional theories and conspiracies. Nothing to do with debating tactics.

Nana posted two or three things that the editors expunged completely (first time I've ever seen them just wipe the whole slate clean - as you know, they usually just remove the offensive comment and replace it with a warning). No warning this time - stuff just disappeared, along with the comment pane, as if it had never existed - it had to do with something called the Babylonian Talmud and also a couple of Holocaust deniers.

You'll notice Nana acknowledged it was over-the-top stuff.

The Duke debate came afterward.

I see Austria has paroled David Irving.

I see what you mean. I just don't accept or believe it the way you do.

I'm not concerned with whether or not there are abiotic hydrocarbons in the earth's mantle; that wasn't my point. My point was if there was the technology to extract it is far beyond our means: it is, literally, easier to get to Mars than 100 miles beneath the earth's surface.

The 29,000' measure mentioned above barely reaches the upper level of the mantle, underneath continents anyway. And what we don't know about "down there" is very likely to harm us, especially when pressures trapped beneath the crust and built into the molten whirlpool/dynamo (which has its own coriolitic forces and also tidal and convectional patterns) are released. Can we build a well-cap that can withstand that? Can we manufacture metals to build drill bits that can bore into molten rock? What kind of metal is that going to be.

The Russians may have penetrated the crust; I haven't seen anything to say that they have. To be sure, it would seem that the middle of a continental plate is a better place for such drilling than in a subduction zone such as around here; but it may be that the centre of a tectonic plate turns out to be the worst place for such a deep-tapping of the earth's materials to take place; pressures there may be even higher than in the flux areas of the subduction zones.

It's an extremely old nostrum but still very true that science knows more about distant galaxies than it does about the earth's insides. We have more knowledge of the mantle than we did a decade or two ago thanks to new deep-sensing technologies. But sensing and drilling are two entirely different things. Given the various problems with shallow-depth wells, why would it be any easier - or safer - to engage in super-deep wells?

Lost my last post and a day later I'm still logged in even though I did click "log out"
Thetyee does need the programmers it is calling for in the "help wanted section"

Given that methane is ubiquitous I have to agree that it can be produced "Abiotically" whatever that means. If we concentrate for a moment on Oil we still find that:
1) Too hot (read deep) conditions produce tars and methane from the source "reef"
2) Too cool conditions also produce only tar
3) given perfect conditions generating the oil, it still has to "pool" in a reservoir and preserve the stuff for the millions of years for us to be able to poke a pipe down and suck it up.

I'll conceed that theres lots of methane but there ain't more oil

Answer Skookum as to why go deep? Cause it just might be feasible. You wouldn't have to go a hundred miles, though. The Russians have gone to 42,320 feet. The earth's crust is only 9 miles thick. (5280 feet in a mile, eh)

There's a whole body of suspicion that the Russians have developed the technology because they have always had faith in the abiotic theory and that Russian zillionaire who Putin jailed was trying to sell it all to the West and the entire Russian industry with it.

And that Putin jailed him, not because he was too involved in politics, as claimed, but because he was trying to hand over eighty years of classified Russian oil technology to the West.

I'm still working on that, though. Pretty hard to confirm, as you'd imagine.

So Skookum, are you basically saying that the oil might be down there, but just too hard to get out?

Interesting question, eh! By the way Skookum, according to the Russian-Ukrainian theory, you don't have to go right through the crust, anyway.

Even if they're wrong in their claims about their oil and the oil they've found for the Vietnamese being abiotic, the claim that oil is abiotic and seeping into the conventional wells means that OIL IS NOT REALLY A NON-RENEWAL RESOURCE and if the scientists can figure out the scale of renewability of mantle hydrocarbons refilling conventional wells, we just have to plan concurrently to the renewability rates--even if western oil producers never drill deep wells as the Russians have.
And this alone might counter the claims of the Peak Oilists that we're running out of the stuff, which in turn underpins the cost of a barrel of oil.

The science is crucial. According to Solomon the truth will set you free... or did he say the truth will make you sad in Ecclesiastes?

I'm mentioning 29,000 feet to indicate that if they found oil down there it's highly unlikely that it's a 'fossil fuel' because noone's found fossils below 16,000 feet.

There's two questions here: Is it down there, and can we get it?

Truman:
Gotta thank you for a lot of information that I had no knowledge of

But I'm not convinced that I should leap on your band wagon quite yet (and it would cause some ruction here if I fired my father-in-law)
The value of thetyee forum to me (and I am behaving like an addict according to my source's daughter) is just what I thanked you for above

thanks doggone. If there was a poster on the side of my bandwagon it would be:

"Climb aboard if you want to examine conventional wisdom."

Conventional wisdom

You just won the Oxymoron of the week award

Changes in pressure and temperature are exponential, or even more than exponential, the deeper you go down; and at some point the melting-point of known alloys becomes an issue, as does the security of the shaft (because of pressures, and also because of the tidal/semi-liquid movement of the mantle, which unlike the crust is in flux. Actually getting to the mohorovivic discontinuity (where crust and mantle meet) would be even easier on an ocean floor, where only 6 miles is involved. But again, the danger is in what happens when that is pierced; tampering with powers beyond our control is the bane of all our sciences...which has been warned about long before even Goethe's Faust. Beware the Jabberwock, my son....

Gold, uranium, platinum, name a metal or other substance it's probably down there, and more compounds that we haven't guessed at (that could only develop in that environment; an environment which, again, is largely unknown to us...). But that something is down there doesn't mean it can be gotten out. Or should.

?QUOTE]Interesting question, eh! By the way Skookum, according to the Russian-Ukrainian theory, you don't have to go right through the crust, anyway.

Abiotic hydrocarbons I know are theorized to "bubble up" through the crust's porous nature, true; if that does prove to be the case then deep-drilling is not involved. But the corollary to that is maybe the Saudi and Texan and North Sea and other oilpatches are already self-replenishing; just not at the rate we're consuming them.

The point remains about why consume it, since we all know the problem with burning hydrocarbons for energy. If we're going to be deep-drilling, why not just use steam-injection and heat-exchange systems to tap the earth's energy, and the differential between crust and atmospheric temperature/pressure, since that has the potential to light and heat nearly everything but maybe heavy industry...

Used to use a number of instruments to guage all the energies we could use over an ore body. Magnetometer was one, gave us readings in very precice scale of the local magnetic field.
EM was another
You tune it to the Long wave frequency the yanks use to jabber to their subs and you walk about the area and take readings on a grid pattern.
It works on the theory that any conductor (read: ore body) will when subjected to radiated energy, in this case the long wave transmission: create a feild around itself. I think it is called "Induced"
Has to do with the main reason nobody ever used the Nukes during the Cold War:
EMP
Electromotive Pulse.
Look that up

Skookum, what do you think about my point that knowing whether oil is of abiotic or biotic origin is important-- whether or not the wells ever go deep enough to access it--depending upon the reliability of the claims of replenishment made by abioticists?

If the conventional wells really are being 'topped up,' as claimed wouldn't that tend to bring in to disrepute the theory that oil is a 'non-renewable' resource--a fossil fuel--and demand more scepticism that 'peak oil' will arrive any minute, or has already been reached?

Many big-time peak oilists claim that the gig is just about up; that we've only got a few years left before the scarcity of oil brings the world economy grinding to a collapse.

How does 'Peak Oil' affect the current price, do you think?

Forgot to mention: "Fossil fuels," afterall, are definitely non-renewable, at least as far as human civilization goes. There's a finite amount, if they take hundreds of millions of years to to develope from 'kerogen.'

Already knew about it. Are you referring to the notion that a modern nuke's irradition of ore bodies would magnetize/electrify them? Or, more sinisterly, that their EM bursts, or EM fields generated by them, could stimulate the mantle? Or just to the reality that at 65 megaton bomb doesn't even have to be radioactive (e.g. fuel-air equivalents) but if it is radioactive and with an EM burst, it could have other consequences?

Or were you just bringing up your magnetometer in the context of my comments about "deep knowledge" of the earth? In which case, what's the depth limit for magnetometers these days? My understanding of core research is it has made some progress by studying refracting waves, presumably seismic, and there's some means they've established to mark where the mantle's "vents" are - the top of its boiling convection currents. Here's a goodie for ya, re the induction of fields - Earth's field, as far as I understand it and only more or less, is the result of its highly dense core (whatever it is; no longer thought to be iron-nickel AFAIK) and its different rate of rotation from the outer core and/or the mantle, plus conceivably all the coriolitic and convection currents in the mantle; some of which may be magnetically rather than thermally driven presumably; not that coriolis force affects magnetic fields (?).

The risks of tampering with through-the-crust power, open-air and communications transmission, a la Tesla, were I'd bet one of the reasons why Tesla's papers were seized/disappeared, and also why he never wrote a lot of his ideas down (more from fear of patents, but also from fear or what others might exploit to evil ends; not that that stopped him from drafting up a death ray design and some theory to go with it. Tesla's comprehension of field dynamics might have helped in deep earth sciences nowadays; but even he would be building his probes and measuring experiments without any knowledge of "what lies beneath"; nor any sensory capacity to find out, as anything he or you or I could make is going to melt, or get crushed, after a certain depth. Fine-tuning MRI-type imaging and the like may get somewhere.

Biotic/abiotic more later; but just in the news these last coupld of days there've been a few new bacterium found; one that's radiation-hardy enough to transit cosmic-ray saturated interplanetary space, the other living so deep it draws its life energy from low-level radiation in the rock around it; and exists at utterly ridiculous temperatures. The idea, only a speculation really, that life may have evolved in not just compeletely alien environments like Mars or Triton but in the fiery but sun-less bowels of the Earth is very provocative. Yes, life may have arrived via meteorite. It may, perhaps, have also been part of the molten soup to start with....

Skookum:
I was a bit screwed up when I ran that survey with the Mag and EM. I imagined that every time I toggled the button it sent a signal vertically down into the earth and I still have no idea what is down there. Your information is helping and I have not worried about this for many years.

I do connect all things I read, see or hear.

The EMP burst was probably the reason that neither the US nor the USSR was really tempted to use nuclear weapons:

One (very small) nuclear weapon detonated in the rare atmosphere a few miles up would knock out ALL electronics
Below. There was even a stratigy proposed to "Blast a corridor" ahead of the main strike

One (very small) nuclear weapon detonated in the rare atmosphere a few miles up would knock out ALL electronics
Below.

It's worse than that. There were fears the pulse would disrupt the ionosphere and other electrical/chemical layers of the atmosphere. This is something like Oppenheimer's worry that Alamagordo might ignite not only the whole atmosphere but basically everything, since it was unknown if atom-splitting was infinite once it started (Teller said, "Vot, who cares? Push da button, already!").

No; I was thinking in the opposite direction; not that there'd be any of us around after a MAD launch (20-50,000 warheads a side) but that many near-simultaneous explosions might create standing waves - like rogue waves on the sea - exponentially much larger than regular EMPs. If I recall with heavy nuclear issues it was more a problem of (maybe) piercing the crust (which is one reason they decided not to work on designs over 120 megatons). Never mind that a mere 50 such warheads or less is enough to start a nuclear winter; it's the theoretical aspect of a spherical shell of EMP pulses framing the giant ball of magnetizzed, molten metal that the earth really is (for all that we like to think of it as its blue and green surface....well, blue and brown these days...)

Right on, Skookum--about these deep-living bacteria--not only bacteria but tube worms and many other weird and wonderful creatures, only discovered in the last ten years.

They don't derive their energy from the sun (as once claimed for all living things up to about ten years ago--another quiet paradigm shift) or by way of photosynthesis, but from thermal and chemical energy from the hot vents bringing up materials which originate in the mantle of the earth.
Chemosynthesis.

BTW "I read it on the internet" sorta factoid (no source, just seen somewhere):

The amount of energy needed to travel to another habitable planetary solar system (speculating a certain radius, whatever it was, 15-30 light years) would take ALL of the energy contained within the materials of the earth; or was it the sun. Can't remember whether that's active energy, or energy potentials. The point of the item was the resource waste of the effort at penetrating interstellar space; that also in effect it would take the annihilation of our star to propel us to another (targeted) place (and get there in one piece, not riding as fragments on a superstring supernova shockwave thingy/soliton)....not by conventional understandings of spacetime and matter and energy available to physics anyway. True enough that one of the interstellar "warp" designs would ride the solar wind, building slowly from negligible to sub-light speed by the time it reaches Pluto (freaky); that one at least doesn't call for blowing anything up. Or fusing it or whatever other witches' brew goes on in warp design ideas; the energy needed in some cases is ridiculous, as in the "why don't we blow up the planet to see if this will work" mad scientist category. (from what I've seen of ufological materials, there's a case to be made that special relativistic engineering (space warp) has been designed by someone),

- all this by way of commenting on Hawkings' latest diatribe about having to evacuate to another planet in order to rescue the species; but only, as the implication of the other information makes clear, at the expense of all the available resources of the planet we're having to leave because of wanting to climb to the stars, or to heaven or whatever, in the first place.

When I was a kid I thought it would be fun to climb on the "Starship Noah" or ride back in time (or forward) to a pristine planet.
I grew up.

Have not lost my sense of adventure yet. I would likely ride the "shuttle" right now if the option was open to me.

But I would not imagine that it would solve any problems of this world nor the human species.

Some of the proponents of the notion that we can send even a small expedition to the moon (much less another planet) and maintain it in the long term have grey hair

They just never grew up

The original article Had to do with "Spin".

I imagine I'm immune to that influence in areas where I have some knowledge, but I wonder. Partly because there are a lot of areas where I have very little personal expertice (Women for instance - I have a lot of "experience": four sisters,one mother, a few girlfriends, one wife, two daughters, two grand daughters, no brothers and only one grand son but little "Expertice")

I further assume that I am influenced by the barrage of information from News in all it's incarnations. (carnal being the root here).

So I'll likely vote for Dion if they don't take him out

Merry Christmas, or Happy Holidays my friend Truman...!!

Looking forward to reading you in 2007...!!

Peace and Love brother,

Bear

Thank you RTB, and the same to you!

Speaking of "Spin":
The Ayles ice shelf just spun off (a while ago, but we are hearing about it now) from Ellesmere. Now that's a statement from the other agent in the discussion: Nature.

Stanley Park "Blowed down Real Good". I've seen unusual wind damage before: North Nanaimo 15 - twenty years ago a narrow path of wind simply flattened trees in it's path and back in the '80s boating up in the area of Smith's Sound there were patches of shattered trees hundreds of feet up the mountain sides. I assume these were due to "Downburst" winds. What is new is the perception of increased frequency. I'm a young person (60) so I don't have long term records but the shattering is obviously not a common event. I had been in the area of Smiths a number of times prior to that visit and at least once since. The latest visit maybe 4 years ago there was no obvious recent damage. (and this stuff really stands out on a mountainside).

It does not really matter if the climate trend is due to human activity or not. The point is that we should be attempting to prepare for it's affects.

Maybe 2007 will be calm and familiar weather.

Happy New Year
Ken