Author: Brian

1. G8 leaders say, “In response to the sharp rise in oil prices … we emphasized the need for increased production and refining capacities …”
2. G8 leaders say, “We seek … the goal of achieving at least 50-per-cent reduction of global emissions by 2050.”

How can burning more oil reduce emissions?
Maybe the same way wind flooded New Orleans….

In a society where slogans and fibs are repeated to shape our beliefs rather than inform or lead, here’s a few crude tidbits of facts:

Around 80 per cent of global oil production is from state-owned fields. At $130 per barrel, global oil trade is over $11-billion per day, or almost $4-trillion annually, $3-trillion of which goes directly to producing-state treasuries.

Sixty per cent of the 87 million barrels-per-day global oil production comes from countries where fields have already reached peak production. Four million [new] barrels-per-day must be ‘brought on’ each year just to sustain current output.

Current world activity demands over 100 million barrels per day in the next 20 years.

Jim Gray says, “Crisis means opportunity…”

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“They’ve got a set of Republican waiters on one side and a set of Democratic waiters on the other side, but no matter which set of waiters brings you the dish, the legislative grub is all prepared in the same Wall Street kitchen.” – Huey Long

Right Hand Thief says, “Read this wonderful piece by James Grant, entitled “Why No Outrage?” It gets so many things so right, and describes them so concisely. Very powerful people want you to debate oil drilling during the current run-up in energy prices, instead of connecting the energy crisis to the incredibly serious financial crisis. They don’t want you to internalize recent dollar/oil correlations like this one.”

Fun page about Picasso
and how he could reduce any subject into 12 lines, refactoring.

New Orleans, NOLO Free Press – Gulf State election officials announced today they are pinning their hopes on the sharpened results introduced after delivery of upgraded voting machines.

While continuing their coverage of vote rigging and e-voting in New Orleans, Mississippi Gulf and Gulf South, investigators at New Orleans News Ladder showed contents of a package only identified by the scrawled address to Mr. and Mrs. John and Cindy McSame.

After a frenzy of conferences today, policy agreement has been reached to launch investigations along Gulf States levee and lowlands impacted by Hurricane Katrina but only the areas FEMA declared had been flooded by wind.

Helicopter-based infrared scanning will not be funded as part of the tactical round up after local residents repeatedly assured officials that the perpetrators did not give off sufficient heat for detection by conventional instruments.

An emergency presidential campaign committee assured the RNC that this is not aimed at the voodoonomics of the Reagan era, but worried about repeating vote rigging in Florida, representatives of the Southern Gulf states are acting quickly before November polls.

An unattributable voice left the impression that ‘voodoo-voting’ will likely quiet down if the pinpetrators fail to unseat McCain’s presumptive candidacy at the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis-Saint Paul.

A 2007 Worldchanging post, revealed that China is beginning to pollinate crops by hand due to severe population losses in bee and flying pollinators.

By hand?!

Hand pollination is an interesting method of pollinating crops and provides employment and income generating opportunities to many people during apple flowering season. But at the same time it is an expensive, time-consuming and highly unsustainable proposition of crop pollination owing to the increased labor scarcity and costs.

As a dearth of pollination continues worldwide, the high cost of oil might seem picayune in comparison to the shock we’ll feel paying $5 for a peach.

Not to worry. The decision makers we elect to Congress, while handling today’s plethora of problems they’re busy enough to ignore on behalf of their contributors, have plunked $10 million into the 2008 Farm Bill to identify causes and solutions for bee colony collapse disorder.

But many species of flying insect pollinators are rapidly disappearing!

The problem is far beyond the research dole at the Federal honey pot. It’s far beyond the shrinking profit of farmers, more than 90% of which are vertical conglomerates. And it’s far beyond bee vendors renting empty hive boxes.

Sex-hungry crops want to know, “What’s killing bees, bumble bees, wasps and other flying insects needed for pollination?”

Toronto’s Globe and Mail reports that Steve Buchmann can tell you everything that is currently known about Colony Collapse Disorder, killer bees and a plant’s promiscuity.

Buchmann has been warning us about the pollination crisis at least since 1994. His Forgotten Pollinators Campaign started in 1995. Years ago his research shows that it’s unlikely we’ll save any single pollinator species unless we rebuild farming at the landscape-level.

Bee Seeing You Differently

Pollinators respond to a great variety of lures from plants, but it doesn’t seem to be that they’re happy with a 100 miles of corn flowers. Industrial mono-crop agriculture may be the first weakening of these insects.

Hive and nest chemistry might require nutrients, compounds and enzymes from a far greater variety of plants and environments. Gee whiz, I should tease and tease our imagination! We’re learning enough about complex ecology these days, such as the DNA bending powers of rainforest orchids, perhaps it’s plants killing bees! Yes, plants might be playing a part in pollinator killings – revenge of the starving mitochondria – because bees and insects fail in a ‘fair exchange’ of diverse compounds in exchange for nectar.

It seems to be the advancing theory that a richly diverse landscape are the answer, not monocultures of corporate crops, not merely sprinkling wildflowers amidst the pastures and paddies of corporate farms. Oaks and pine and willow and birds and worms and fungi and, well, you get it. Pollinators may not survive by Farm Bills alone.

Protecting the Birds and Bees, By Mrill Ingram, Gary Nabhan and Stephen Buchmann.

Resonating Bodies is a series of mixed media installations and community outreach projects, which focus on the biodiversity of pollinators, such as bumblebee colonies and their foraging activities, ultraviolet bee vision, and pollinator/plant co-evolution.

Post about Resonating Bodies, art with living systems.

Big Brother in the Beehive, 2005

And one more thing for the pent-up real estate and mall developer in us all.

Schools, families, gardeners and farms, corporate conglomerates too, can begin to assist pollinators. Holding back on pesticides, of course, but providing habitat too. Dr. Peter Hallett of the University of Toronto is encouraging condo developments for pollinators.

Bee Haven. Bumble Corners. Pollinator Palisades.

Karl Rove and his entire ilk shame our world, shrink our goodwill and sucker us with slogans until we believe lies.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan describing the Bush administration:

“…deliberation and compromise, elements central to governing, all but disappeared.”

Pennsylvania Avenue is a campaign of dominance. The “mentality of political manipulation” operates around the clock.

Thomas Jefferson warned that Washington D.C. should be moved every generation or so. You didn’t know that?

He worried that an embedded class would, just naturally, infiltrate every office and hallway until every politician and bureaucrat would serve only themselves, a perpetual Versailles.

Jefferson’s recommendation to the American people was to relocate the three branches of government, train and hire new staff, and invigorate our Constitution with new officers and elected representatives.

As pop-up cities easily appear in Dubai and China, as raising an Olympics or building new trade routes consume billions of dollars, what can be a better investment for America than revitalizing justice and honor in a new capitol?

…a recent pest and disease epidemic that has ravaged Asian rice fields and sharply curtailed the supply of the main food staple of half of the world’s population.

Putting institutionalized corruption to bed is a task this generation ignored to the peril of the earth. I do not forgive my fellow citizens because the writing on the wall is more than fifty years old.

It’s difficult these days; not hopeless, difficult; not dangerous, difficult.

For example, by AlexRosin, A Tough Row To Hoe:

The idea was to reduce hunger through the magic of economies of scale. The plan was to implement a new approach to farming across the developing world.

And so, starting in 1945, the U.S.-backed Green Revolution did to farming what the Model T did to auto production.

It subsidized peasants in developing countries [ed: subsidized elites!] to abandon centuries-old, small-scale farming techniques that used diverse, locally adapted crops and instead plant vast fields of single crops specially bred for high yields. And, since the new monocrops were often less suited to local conditions, farmers were also encouraged to use plenty of pesticides and fertilizers to improve harvests.

Playing a major role in the Green Revolution was the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), set up in the Philippines in 1960 by the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations with the collaboration of the Philippine government.

Now, almost half a century later, the Green Revolution’s key innovations – chemicals and monocultures – are being blamed for a recent pest and disease epidemic that has ravaged Asian rice fields and sharply curtailed the supply of the main food staple of half of the world’s population.

The shortages have helped to send rice prices into orbit and sparked unrest across the developing world.

We are not short of opportunity and tasks.

For years John McCain is cashing monthly Social Security checks the Associated Press reports [link].

In 2007, he received benefits of $23,157 from Social Security, approximately $1,930 a month.

“I’m receiving benefits,” McCain told campaign reporters, but added, “the system is broken.”

Annihilation politics?
Concussion diplomacy?
Why, when a peptide will do?

Tom Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, says in an article at TIME, “Somehow, the peptide increases trust, or alters the way individuals see each other.”

Without oxytocin people would be far less inclined to seek social interaction, let alone fall in love and mate for life (or, as scientists call it, “pair bond”).

The brain releases gobs of it during orgasm, mothers are awash in it during breastfeeding and, in clinical trials, a spritz of oxytocin has been shown to reduce anxiety, increase feelings of generosity and even ease the symptoms of shyness.

Conversely, researchers are beginning to discover that low levels of the hormone — or the body’s faulty response to it — may contribute to severe social dysfunctions like depression and autism.

Research on oxytocin, not the brand but the molecule [wiki], has focused on animals, not terrorists.

And yes, I’m just chewin’ on a straw, but have we studied the food and mood of an enemy? It wouldn’t surprise me if…

The India Daily reports:

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has created disaster for the American economy. The Wall Street trader just did not understand the precarious condition of the housing and mortgage market.

…what the Bush Administration has done since 2001 is called “protected socialism to enrich the rich”.

Simply put they have done everything to help the ‘rich by inheritance’ go richer.

However, whenever the rich made mistakes, they became the biggest socialist economy to back their mistakes with common people’s hard earned tax money.

But maybe there’s an opportunity for Americans too. The conclusion of the article says:

Paulson’s failure will end Wall Street’s dominance in American politics – misguided and misinformed policies take its toll.

Food Industry News:

The growth of the global middle class is expected to increase to 1.2 billion by 2030, triple the 2005 level. U.S. exporters believe this growth in wealth over the next 12 years will provide continued strong demand for high-valued agricultural products from the United States such as meat, fruits, nuts, and vegetables.

U.S. exports grew 21 percent in the first 4 months of the year.

In 2007—and so far in 2008—agricultural exports have reached record levels. The weak U.S. dollar and growing Asian economies have increased demand for high-valued U.S. agricultural products that are moved in containers.

Did you know railroads are charging the same amount to move empty containers as full containers?

Filthy conditions at PetCo violate the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.

Widespread rodent and bird infestation near open food containers of dog and cat food.

Busted in April, an FDA inspection found widespread and active rodent and bird infestation. Busted in May, continuing and widespread infestation. Seized in June

Warrant issued by the US District Court in Chicago to end rodent and pest contamination.

Marshals seized animal food and products stored in unsanitary conditions.

Distribution center quits shipments to Alabama, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, and Wisconsin. [story]

Americans abhor socialism yet vote and parade for dominating leaders and social controls without realizing they may have created a top down system of brigands and bullies. Perhaps never in history have a people delivered more to the top.

In this era of tremendous volatile argument as we seem to die for a democracy we have never built, isn’t it a surprise that the people of Russia seem to be ignoring their gaggle of greats and the puppets of the Presidium while, ninety years after he was executed, Tsar Nicholas II is leading a tight race to be named the greatest Russian in history?

Maybe the poll is sour. In 2005, a similar USA poll named Ronald Reagan the “Greatest American” which to me is the equivalent of naming Tom Cruise the greatest among religions.

So many poor architects of our lives; so few builders…

“Geothermal sources could supply Germany’s electricity needs 600 times over,” said Werner Bussmann, CEO of the German Geothermal Association.

About 150 geothermal power plant projects are in the pipeline representing an investment of 4 billion euros. The best geothermal generation opportunities in Germany are located in southern Bavaria — where water of temperatures of 140°C or hotter can be found 5,000 meters below the ground. [link]

We’re borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet. Every bit of that has to change. – Al Gore

Prime Minister of the UK Gordon Brown has backed Barack Obama in the “war on terror” and made a historic shift of policy and troops.

The French are in the midst of a renaissance of the tram as an antidote to traffic jams and gridlock – and the costs are much easier for citizens.

Tram lines are now operating at full capacity. Passengers who park at a “Park & Ride” lot pay a single price of €2.70 ($4.30) and receive a ticket valid for both parking and the tram. And for each car parked in the lot, up to four passengers can be rewarded with tram tickets at no extra charge.

In almost two dozen French cities, trams have become the hallmark of urban transformation. Nantes and Grenoble were the first cities to bring back what many had long considered to be an outmoded form of transportation. Since then, Bordeaux, Clermont-Ferrand, Marseille and even the southern part of Paris have also welcomed back urban rail lines. Lille and Lyon are looking into the idea; Caen, Brest, Nancy, and Toulon are in the planning stages. Throughout France, the network of tracks is set to grow to 576 kilometers (358 miles) by 2015.

Story here.
Photo gallery here.

Remarkable readiness and response from a supposedly languishing industry!

Thirty-six new reactors are currently being built worldwide, while another 81 are in the planning stages.

Germany’s Speigel investigates:

• The US Goes Nuclear: Prefab Reactors and Longer Life-Spans
• Atomic Turkey: Nuclear Power in the Earthquake Zone
• Switzerland: Putting Nuclear to the Vote
• United Kingdom: The British Atomic ‘Green Revolution’
• Russia Eyes the Atom: The Monologue of Nuclear Power
• Japan Unshaken: An Archipelago of Staunch Nuclear Supporters
• China’s Race for Nuclear: An Energetic Newcomer

Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki said Barack Obama’s timeframe for a withdrawal from Iraq is the right one. more…

Answer: Yes

You won’t believe this, will you? This picture is your nervous system.

It’s on exhibit as part of dozens of displays of animals and human bodies traveling the world.

To permanently preserve bodies, plastination [wiki] replaces water and fat with plastic. The displays do not smell or decay, and even reveal microscopic properties of the original.

Link to BodyWorlds.

Link to photo series at IHT.

To shave costs, airlines may no longer provide hotel vouchers to stranded passengers. On the bright side, sleeping at airports might become a new profit center to offset jet fuel prices.

The opposition steers media to doubt Obama’s foreign policy, but he’s already built a foreign policy team of more than 300 top advisors!

Real journalism.

Unlike George W. Bush, who entered the presidential race in 2000 with scant exposure to national security issues, Obama has served since his election to the Senate in 2004 on the Foreign Relations Committee and has had a running tutorial from aides steeped in the issues.

His campaign says that he is well prepared and that he often alters and expands on the talking points provided to him by his foreign policy advisers.

At Bill Moyers’ review of the economy, Cuyahoga County treasurer Jim Rokakis said:

“Back in the old days when there was no sheriff in town, people would rob the banks. Well, here we are in the modern day era, and there’s no sheriff in town. The banks were robbing the people…

I learned a hard lesson: I learned that the Fed really is there to protect banks, and not to protect the consumers.”

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Update:
Moyers’ contest is to bring us to our senses, and he’s not afraid to say we’re dimwits.

We can have grand days ahead I think while we throw out the libertine, stop usury, build our communities and restore liberty.

One of our first tasks is to put a wallop on our current class of politicians and the brigands both on Wall Street and downtown. What’s so difficult?

Freddie Mac CEO Richard Syron is paid $18.3 million, up 24% from a year ago. Six other executives or former executives made at least $2 million last year

Johann Hari at The Independent writes a superb summary of errors as viewed by the 6 billion watching this election from outside the USA:

We have everything to fear from McCain

Yessir: if you liked the credit crunch, you’ll love McCainomics.

Once George W. is out of the White House, he’s building a “legacy polishing” institute – a presidential library and think tank at Southern Methodist University in Dallas at the cost of half a billion dollars.

From dems.gov, the Democratic Caucus, found at Dvorak’s.