MONTEREY, California (AFP) — A scientist who mapped his genome and the genetic diversity of the oceans said Thursday he is creating a life form that feeds on climate-ruining carbon dioxide to produce fuel.
Geneticist Craig Venter disclosed his potentially world-changing "fourth-generation fuel" project at an elite Technology, Entertainment and Design conference in Monterey, California.
"We have modest goals of replacing the whole petrochemical industry and becoming a major source of energy," Venter told an audience that included global warming fighter Al Gore and Google co-founder Larry Page.
"We think we will have fourth-generation fuels in about 18 months, with CO2 as the fuel stock."
Simple organisms can be genetically re-engineered to produce vaccines or octane-based fuels as waste, according to Venter.
Biofuel alternatives to oil are third-generation. The next step is life forms that feed on CO2 and give off fuel such as methane gas as waste, according to Venter.
"We have 20 million genes which I call the design components of the future," Venter said. "We are limited here only by our imagination."
His team is using synthetic chromosomes to modify organisms that already exist, not making new life, he said. Organisms already exist that produce octane, but not in amounts needed to be a fuel supply.
"If they could produce things on the scale we need, this would be a methane planet," Venter said. "The scale is what is critical; which is why we need to genetically design them."
The genetics of octane-producing organisms can be tinkered with to increase the amount of CO2 they eat and octane they excrete, according to Venter.
The limiting part of the equation isn't designing an organism, it's the difficulty of extracting high concentrations of CO2 from the air to feed the organisms, the scientist said in answer to a question from Page.
Scientists put "suicide genes" into their living creations so that if they escape the lab, they can be triggered to kill themselves.
Venter said he is also working on organisms that make vaccines for the flu and other illnesses.
"We will see an exponential change in the pace of the sophistication of organisms and what they can do," Venter said.
"We are a ways away from designing people. Our goal is just to make sure they survive long enough to do that."
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iYXm1UNEI-ViI-p5S6TAaogyDv8Q
Friday, February 29, 2008
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Rating the real cost of inflation
The fedaral government says that inflation is under control at 2% to 3% a year – with prices up 15 percent since 2002 – but some key prices have risen much faster, and critics charge that the government is undercounting the pace of inflation
By Dean Calbreath
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
September 30, 2007
If you're like the average American, when you fill your car up at the gas pump, you're paying 84 percent more than you were in 2000, for an average price rise of 12 percent per year, according to the latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Many of the goods in your grocery basket – such as bread, eggs, orange juice, lettuce, tomatoes and ground chuck – have risen between 4 percent and 5 percent per year. The cost of electricity has risen 4 percent a year, while natural gas has risen 8 percent. And medical care has gone up about 5 percent a year, according to those same data.
Those rates of inflation – the kind of price rises that Americans feel on a daily basis – are often far higher than the official rate of inflation, which has increased an average of 2.6 percent per year since 2000.
Although the official inflation rate includes many items that decline in price, such as consumer electronics, discrepancies such as that lead many economists to question whether the government is undercounting the inflation rate.
“Any housewife can tell you that the official inflation rate is just not true,” said William Rutherford, a former Oregon state treasurer who runs an investment management firm near Portland.
“If you don't drive or don't eat, maybe the CPI (consumer price index) has a little resemblance to your life. But I don't see how anybody with any ordinary experience could see the CPI is being accurate,” Rutherford said.
Rudolph-Riad Younes, a co-manager of the Julius Baer International Equity Fund, told Barron's magazine this month that if the government counted home prices and energy correctly, the real inflation rate would be between 7 percent and 10 percent.
John Williams, a Dartmouth-trained economist who works as a consultant for a number of Fortune 500 companies, says the only reason the inflation rate is so low is because the Reagan and Clinton administrations rewrote the way the CPI is calculated.
In his monthly online newsletter Shadow Government Statistics, Williams has painstakingly attempted to recreate the inflation rate using its older guidelines. Under his calculations, inflation is actually running at an annualized rate of 9.95 percent.
Steve Reed, an economist at the Bureau of Labor Standards, which maintains the CPI, conceded that “you do get a lower (CPI) because of the changes we've made.” He said that today's CPI might be between half a point and a full point higher using the old methods of calculation.
“The numbers (that Williams uses) don't jive with what I've seen,” Reed said.
He said the current CPI rate is accurate, but added that the government does have a vested benefit in keeping the rate lower.
Understating the inflation rate can save businesses and the government money, although it can be a burden on the elderly, people on fixed incomes or salaried workers, since wage raises, pension benefits, welfare payments, Social Security payments and other items are tied to the CPI.
“Even if the CPI was one percentage point higher, it could cost the government hundreds of millions of dollars,” Reed said.
Inflation is likely to spike further, thanks to the Federal Reserve, which last month pumped money into the economy to support an interest rate cut.
“Since the increased supply of money does not come from productivity and savings, there is no increase in goods and services to absorb the new money,” said Michael Pento, a market strategist with Delta Global Advisors in Huntington Beach. “And therein lies the problem: The result of an increased money supply without increases in productivity is higher prices. Inflation.”
One of the first major revisions to the CPI came in 1983, in Ronald Reagan's first term in the White House. One of Reagan's campaign themes was an attack on the inflation rate, which averaged more than 12 percent in the last two years of Jimmy Carter's presidency.
Inflation remained at 10 percent in 1981, Reagan's first year in office. Thanks to Fed Chairman Paul Volcker's restrictive monetary policies, it dropped to 6 percent the next year. But it took some changes to the method of counting inflation to get it to 3 percent in 1983.
Toward the end of the Clinton administration, the inflation rate was still 3 percent. But economists in the government and Alan Greenspan's Federal Reserve said that was too high and once again changed the way inflation was calculated. In 1998, the first year after the recalculation, the CPI was cut in half to 1.6 percent – the lowest rate since 1965.
One change that draws criticism is the CPI's use of “substitutions.”
The consumer price index assumes that if prices get too high, consumers will start buying cheaper products. For instance, if steak gets too expensive, they will switch to ground beef.
As a result, when items in the CPI's basket of goods get too expensive, the weight that they are given in the index is lessened and more weight is put on cheaper substitutes. Naturally, that helps keep the CPI lower.
Williams said that such a move “violates the original intent, purpose and concept of the CPI,” which was to measure the costs of the same goods year after year.
Reed disagreed. “We're not substituting beef for chicken, or driving for flying,” he said. “The weight of academic expertise would argue that what we did was right.”
Another factor that draws ire is the CPI's reliance on high-ticket items – DVD players, audio equipment, televisions. Six percent of the CPI is based on video and audio equipment, sporting goods, cameras and recreation, compared with 8 percent that is spent on food at home.
Critics say that the concentration on high-tech items – which typically decline in price over time – disguises the price rises in other areas. They also say that the CPI reflects upper-class tastes and expenses that might not catch the price hikes for poorer individuals.
“If I'm not a terribly wealthy person, that might not reflect how I'm spending my money,” Reed said.
The mix of items in the CPI has left some critics scratching their heads.
Since the Reagan administration, for instance, the CPI costs for housing have been based on rental costs, rather than home ownership. As a result, between 2000 and 2006, when home prices were skyrocketing, the CPI showed a price rise of only 3.3 percent per year. Property tax payments, which typically rise with the value of a house, are not counted in the CPI.
“We wanted to be out of the business of dealing with interest rates and interest expenditures,” Reed said. “The true value is more accurately reflected in its rental value.”
The low growth rate in the CPI can have surprising consequences.
Over the past four years, for instance, the cost of construction materials rose 28 percent, while the CPI rose only about 13 percent.
When construction companies work on government projects – where contracts are typically tied to the CPI – they sometimes have to cut corners to make up for the fact that their supply costs are rising more than twice as fast as the inflation rate, said Kenneth Simonson, an economist for the Associated General Contractors.
John Browne, a former British parliamentarian who is now a financial commentator in Florida, said the low inflation rate also helped fuel the bubbles in dot-com stocks and real estate.
“The great inflation lie enabled the banking system – first under Greenspan and now under Bernanke – to lend lots of money at rates that were sometimes below the rate of inflation,” Browne said. “If you can borrow for less than inflation, you can buy anything, including assets like houses.”
Now that the housing bubble is bursting, Bernanke's response has been to inject more money into the economy, which economists fear will create more inflation.
Market strategist Pento says that even if the CPI doesn't show strong inflation now, other measures do, including this year's surges in the price of gold and the money supply.
“Gold and the money supply are true inflationary indicators,” Pento said. “If they're growing at that pace, inflation is at least in the upper single digits. At least.”
Pento warned that it is risky for the Federal Reserve to start cutting interest rates when inflation is running at such “very dangerous levels.”
David Joy, chief market strategist for RiverSource Investment, said he worries that the latest interest rate cut means that “eventually, and possibly sooner now than otherwise, the Fed will be forced to deal with higher inflation, accelerating the day of reckoning and making it more painful.”
By Dean Calbreath
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
September 30, 2007
If you're like the average American, when you fill your car up at the gas pump, you're paying 84 percent more than you were in 2000, for an average price rise of 12 percent per year, according to the latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Many of the goods in your grocery basket – such as bread, eggs, orange juice, lettuce, tomatoes and ground chuck – have risen between 4 percent and 5 percent per year. The cost of electricity has risen 4 percent a year, while natural gas has risen 8 percent. And medical care has gone up about 5 percent a year, according to those same data.
Those rates of inflation – the kind of price rises that Americans feel on a daily basis – are often far higher than the official rate of inflation, which has increased an average of 2.6 percent per year since 2000.
Although the official inflation rate includes many items that decline in price, such as consumer electronics, discrepancies such as that lead many economists to question whether the government is undercounting the inflation rate.
“Any housewife can tell you that the official inflation rate is just not true,” said William Rutherford, a former Oregon state treasurer who runs an investment management firm near Portland.
“If you don't drive or don't eat, maybe the CPI (consumer price index) has a little resemblance to your life. But I don't see how anybody with any ordinary experience could see the CPI is being accurate,” Rutherford said.
Rudolph-Riad Younes, a co-manager of the Julius Baer International Equity Fund, told Barron's magazine this month that if the government counted home prices and energy correctly, the real inflation rate would be between 7 percent and 10 percent.
John Williams, a Dartmouth-trained economist who works as a consultant for a number of Fortune 500 companies, says the only reason the inflation rate is so low is because the Reagan and Clinton administrations rewrote the way the CPI is calculated.
In his monthly online newsletter Shadow Government Statistics, Williams has painstakingly attempted to recreate the inflation rate using its older guidelines. Under his calculations, inflation is actually running at an annualized rate of 9.95 percent.
Steve Reed, an economist at the Bureau of Labor Standards, which maintains the CPI, conceded that “you do get a lower (CPI) because of the changes we've made.” He said that today's CPI might be between half a point and a full point higher using the old methods of calculation.
“The numbers (that Williams uses) don't jive with what I've seen,” Reed said.
He said the current CPI rate is accurate, but added that the government does have a vested benefit in keeping the rate lower.
Understating the inflation rate can save businesses and the government money, although it can be a burden on the elderly, people on fixed incomes or salaried workers, since wage raises, pension benefits, welfare payments, Social Security payments and other items are tied to the CPI.
“Even if the CPI was one percentage point higher, it could cost the government hundreds of millions of dollars,” Reed said.
Inflation is likely to spike further, thanks to the Federal Reserve, which last month pumped money into the economy to support an interest rate cut.
“Since the increased supply of money does not come from productivity and savings, there is no increase in goods and services to absorb the new money,” said Michael Pento, a market strategist with Delta Global Advisors in Huntington Beach. “And therein lies the problem: The result of an increased money supply without increases in productivity is higher prices. Inflation.”
One of the first major revisions to the CPI came in 1983, in Ronald Reagan's first term in the White House. One of Reagan's campaign themes was an attack on the inflation rate, which averaged more than 12 percent in the last two years of Jimmy Carter's presidency.
Inflation remained at 10 percent in 1981, Reagan's first year in office. Thanks to Fed Chairman Paul Volcker's restrictive monetary policies, it dropped to 6 percent the next year. But it took some changes to the method of counting inflation to get it to 3 percent in 1983.
Toward the end of the Clinton administration, the inflation rate was still 3 percent. But economists in the government and Alan Greenspan's Federal Reserve said that was too high and once again changed the way inflation was calculated. In 1998, the first year after the recalculation, the CPI was cut in half to 1.6 percent – the lowest rate since 1965.
One change that draws criticism is the CPI's use of “substitutions.”
The consumer price index assumes that if prices get too high, consumers will start buying cheaper products. For instance, if steak gets too expensive, they will switch to ground beef.
As a result, when items in the CPI's basket of goods get too expensive, the weight that they are given in the index is lessened and more weight is put on cheaper substitutes. Naturally, that helps keep the CPI lower.
Williams said that such a move “violates the original intent, purpose and concept of the CPI,” which was to measure the costs of the same goods year after year.
Reed disagreed. “We're not substituting beef for chicken, or driving for flying,” he said. “The weight of academic expertise would argue that what we did was right.”
Another factor that draws ire is the CPI's reliance on high-ticket items – DVD players, audio equipment, televisions. Six percent of the CPI is based on video and audio equipment, sporting goods, cameras and recreation, compared with 8 percent that is spent on food at home.
Critics say that the concentration on high-tech items – which typically decline in price over time – disguises the price rises in other areas. They also say that the CPI reflects upper-class tastes and expenses that might not catch the price hikes for poorer individuals.
“If I'm not a terribly wealthy person, that might not reflect how I'm spending my money,” Reed said.
The mix of items in the CPI has left some critics scratching their heads.
Since the Reagan administration, for instance, the CPI costs for housing have been based on rental costs, rather than home ownership. As a result, between 2000 and 2006, when home prices were skyrocketing, the CPI showed a price rise of only 3.3 percent per year. Property tax payments, which typically rise with the value of a house, are not counted in the CPI.
“We wanted to be out of the business of dealing with interest rates and interest expenditures,” Reed said. “The true value is more accurately reflected in its rental value.”
The low growth rate in the CPI can have surprising consequences.
Over the past four years, for instance, the cost of construction materials rose 28 percent, while the CPI rose only about 13 percent.
When construction companies work on government projects – where contracts are typically tied to the CPI – they sometimes have to cut corners to make up for the fact that their supply costs are rising more than twice as fast as the inflation rate, said Kenneth Simonson, an economist for the Associated General Contractors.
John Browne, a former British parliamentarian who is now a financial commentator in Florida, said the low inflation rate also helped fuel the bubbles in dot-com stocks and real estate.
“The great inflation lie enabled the banking system – first under Greenspan and now under Bernanke – to lend lots of money at rates that were sometimes below the rate of inflation,” Browne said. “If you can borrow for less than inflation, you can buy anything, including assets like houses.”
Now that the housing bubble is bursting, Bernanke's response has been to inject more money into the economy, which economists fear will create more inflation.
Market strategist Pento says that even if the CPI doesn't show strong inflation now, other measures do, including this year's surges in the price of gold and the money supply.
“Gold and the money supply are true inflationary indicators,” Pento said. “If they're growing at that pace, inflation is at least in the upper single digits. At least.”
Pento warned that it is risky for the Federal Reserve to start cutting interest rates when inflation is running at such “very dangerous levels.”
David Joy, chief market strategist for RiverSource Investment, said he worries that the latest interest rate cut means that “eventually, and possibly sooner now than otherwise, the Fed will be forced to deal with higher inflation, accelerating the day of reckoning and making it more painful.”
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
"Honest to God boss, I was at my desk!"
Desiree Palmen's photos of camouflaged people
Rotterdam-based artist Desiree Palmen creates incredible photographs of highly camouflaged people.
Whole article is here
Photo in the News: Viking Women Wore "Sexy" Outfits
WTF Journal's equivalent to the Page 3 girl! And Sven the Viking with a real big sword to boot for equal opportunity gratuitous imagery.
Damn National Geographic. They sure used to show far more risque pictures of topless stone age ladies in New Guinea or pygmy boobies from Africa. Here they have a chance to unload some hot pictures of Nordic Viking Honey's and..... we get photos that are a bit less than provocative? Looks like Hustler's market share is safe.
LOL. Yeah, not taking any of this seriously at all.
More at http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/02/080227-viking-picture.html
Damn National Geographic. They sure used to show far more risque pictures of topless stone age ladies in New Guinea or pygmy boobies from Africa. Here they have a chance to unload some hot pictures of Nordic Viking Honey's and..... we get photos that are a bit less than provocative? Looks like Hustler's market share is safe.
LOL. Yeah, not taking any of this seriously at all.
Photo in the News: Viking Women Wore "Sexy" Outfits
February 27, 2007—Call it the Viking version of a low-cut top.
A modern reconstruction of a Norse outfit (worn above by textile researcher Annika Larsson of Uppsala University in Sweden) is a single piece of fabric held in place by clasps that sit on the middle of each breast.
Such a provocative outfit was probably common among Viking women before Christianity took hold in Scandinavia, Larsson said in a statement. She recently analyzed ancient textiles from the Lake Mälaren Valley, which was inhabited during the "Viking Age" from about A.D. 750 to 1050.
More at http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/02/080227-viking-picture.html
Creepiest Story I've Read in a Long Time
This story is nearly as creepy as the plumetting EROI of North American gas.
LOL.
Full text below as the link will probably go dead in time:
LOL.
Full text below as the link will probably go dead in time:
Prepare to be creeped out - but in a good way
Mark Morford
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
I admit only to this: I can get deeply creeped out, down to my very core, now and then and hopefully not all that often because, well, I still like to sleep at night.
Ah, but the occult. The paranormal. The deeply weird, mysterious, unsolvable, disturbing. That can get to me. A good creep-out, those unknowable things that get under your skin and crawl around and tug at the shirtsleeves of your fears, those are the things that can last for years. Lifetimes. I love that. I hate that.
The final shot in "The Blair Witch Project." A possessed Linda Blair crawling down the stairs on all fours, upside down, backward, in a full backbend, on her toes and fingertips, in the uncut version of "The Exorcist." The ending to (and overall creepy feel of) "Don't Look Now," the famous cult horror movie from the '70s with Donald Sutherland, Julie Christie and the little midget in the red robe. Peter Weir's "Picnic at Hanging Rock," another classic '70s occult flick, chaste schoolgirls disappearing up a bizarrely haunted mountain - entirely fictional, but plays all too damn real.
Still, they're just movies. Fiction, mostly. No matter how good they are, they all kneel before the one true god of interminable creepiness: reality.
Here's one. It's called the Dyatlov Pass Accident. I stumbled over this delicious tale just recently over at Metafilter, and it's one of those stories that contains all the best elements of a deep, resonant creep-out. Inexplicable behavior. Bizarre factoids. Inconclusive evidence. Missing body parts. And not a single clue, almost 50 years later, as to what really happened.
The nutshell: In 1959, nine experienced Russian cross-country skiers - seven men and two women, including the leader, Igor Dyatlov - head to the Ural Mountains, to a slope called Kholat Syakhl (Mansi language for "Mountain of the Dead," ahem) for a rugged, wintry trek. On their way up, they are apparently hit by inclement weather, veer off course and decide to set up camp and wait it out. All is calm. All is fine and good. They even take pictures of camp, the scenery, each other. The weather isn't so bad. They go to sleep.
Then, something happens. In the middle of the night, all nine suddenly leap out of their tents as fast as possible, ripping them open from the inside (not even enough time to untie the doors) and race out into the sub-zero temps, without coats or boots or skis, most in their underwear, some even barefoot or with a single sock or boot. It is 30 degrees below zero, Celsius. A few make it as far as a kilometer and a half down the slope. All nine, as you might expect, quickly die.
And so it begins.
Why did they rush out, unable to even grab a coat or blanket? What came at them? The three-month investigation revealed that five of the trekkers died from simple hypothermia, with no apparent trauma at all, no signs of attack, struggle, no outward injuries of any kind. However, two of the other four apparently suffered massive internal traumas to the chest, like you would if you were hit by a car. One's skull was crushed. All four of these were found far from the other five. But still, no signs of external injuries.
Not good enough? How about this: One of the women was missing her tongue.
Oh, it gets better. And weirder.
Tests of the few scraps of clothing revealed very high levels of radiation. Evidence found at the campsite indicates the trekkers might've been blinded. Eyewitnesses around the area report seeing "bright orange spheres" in the sky during the same months. And, oh yes, relatives at the funeral swear the skin of their dead loved ones was tanned, tinted dark orange or brown. And their hair had all turned completely gray.
Wait, what?
The final, official explanation as to what caused such bizarre behavior from otherwise well-trained, experienced mountaineers? An "unknown compelling force." Indeed.
Here's the problem: All the convenient, logical explanations - avalanche, animal attack, secret military nuke test - fail. Russian authorities held a three-month investigation. Rescuers and experts picked through every piece of evidence. There were no signs of natural disaster. And if it was just an avalanche, why was the area closed off for three years following the event, and all related documents put in a secret Russian archive until 1990? If it was some sort of weird nuclear megablast (which I suppose may tint you orange, but won't turn your hair gray), what the hell happened to her tongue?
I love stories like this. I hate stories like this.
Sure, you want to go for the logical. Hell, who knows what hellish weaponry they were testing in the mountains in Khrushchev's Russia in the late '50s? Who knows what dark mysteries are buried in the landscape by the world's militaries as they test their dark deeds? The rule goes like this: Any weapon of horror and death man's mind can conceive, odds are gruesomely good the government or military has considered it. Or even built it.
This is both the joy and horror of stories like Dyatlov: They make your mind jump and bend and struggle. Logic fails quickly. Easy explanations don't work. Complicated ones feel incomplete. The creepiness takes hold, begins to burrow, make you squirm. Because the bizarre military-testing explanation? It fails, too.
So of course, you jump further. You reach for the paranormal, metaphysical, unknowable, to things like UFOs and spirits and ghosts, dark forces and mysticism and the occult, because, well, that's where the action is. That's where we get to touch the void, dance on the edge of perception, realize how little we truly know of anything.
After all, if you really think all there is to this world is what your five senses show you, if you think there's always got to be a logical, earthbound explanation for stories like Dyatlov, well, you might as well just join a megachurch and wipe your brain and your intuition and your deep, dark curiosity clean right now.
As Dyatlov himself might say, his skin orange and hair gray and eyes wide wide wide, you think you know, but you have no idea.
-- Mark Morford columns with inset links to related material can be found at sfgate.com/columnists/morford.
Mark Morford's column appears Wednesdays and Fridays in Datebook and on sfgate.com. E-mail him at mmorford@sfgate.com.
This article appeared on page E - 5 of the San Francisco Chronicle
North American Natural Gas Production and EROI Decline
Very interesting article, a real "must read" along with some of the comments that follow it.
The general public, and even most petroleum industry insiders are not aware of the massive decrease in Energy Return on Investment (EROI) that is occurring in petroleum developments. The implications of EROI falling off a cliff are even less understood by nearly all.
I intuitively thought that we were experiencing rapid decreases in EROI but didn't know how to quantify. This was based on observations of some plays I thought would have many years of development essentially stopping, and observations of statistics I'd done on WCSB gas production on wells by vintage. The stats were shocking, to put it mildly. The article below fills in some blanks on how to calculate EROI and also describes what the implications are.
North American Natural Gas Production and EROI Decline
Many energy stocks, including Encana and Breaker were at or very close to all time highs today.
The general public, and even most petroleum industry insiders are not aware of the massive decrease in Energy Return on Investment (EROI) that is occurring in petroleum developments. The implications of EROI falling off a cliff are even less understood by nearly all.
I intuitively thought that we were experiencing rapid decreases in EROI but didn't know how to quantify. This was based on observations of some plays I thought would have many years of development essentially stopping, and observations of statistics I'd done on WCSB gas production on wells by vintage. The stats were shocking, to put it mildly. The article below fills in some blanks on how to calculate EROI and also describes what the implications are.
North American Natural Gas Production and EROI Decline
Many energy stocks, including Encana and Breaker were at or very close to all time highs today.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Energy Prices, Inflation and Denial
Higher energy prices are feeding through to rampant consumer energy price inflation. And yet the authorities and many investment houses still see energy prices falling in the future. This naive view of global energy supplies is starving energy markets of the capital required to expand conventional and alternative energy supplies.
Whole story is here - note interesting graph of spot natural gas prices in the world
Multinationals control only 10% of world oil reserves
The share of the world's oil reserves controlled by the big Western oil companies, such as BP, Shell and ExxonMobil, has fallen to less than 10 per cent, compared with 70 per cent in 1978.
The world's reserves are dominated increasingly by government-controlled national oil companies in big producer countries such as Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran and Venezuela. These groups control about 90 per cent, according to a book due to be published this year. The figures in the book point to the diminishing power of international oil companies by comparing the reserves held by what were in 1978 the eight largest global oil companies — Exxon, Shell, BP, Gulf, Texaco, Mobil, Socal (Chevron) and the Compagnie Françaises Des Petroles (CFP-Total) — with those of the five companies they have merged into today.
“In 1978, these companies together held roughly 70 per cent of world reserves,” Wajid Rasheed, the author of The Hydrocarbon Highway, says. “Today, there are ‘five sisters': ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, ChevronTexaco and Total and their reserves amount to approximately 10 per cent of world reserves.”
Whole story is here
Pig brains are fine for hot dogs but......
Paralysis Outbreak In Meat Workers Handling Pigs' Brains
Article Date: 04 Feb 2008 - 6:00 PST
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued an update last week to its investigation of an outbreak of a paralysing condition that is affecting certain meat processing plant workers who use compressed air to remove the brains from the heads of pig carcases.
The illness is called Progressive Inflammatory Neuropathy (PIN) and its symptoms range from acute paralysis to gradual increase of weakness on both sides of the body, which in some cases happens over 8 days and in others over 213 days. The symptoms vary in severity from slight weakness and numbness to paralysis that affects mobility, mostly in the lower extremities.
Whole story here
BP Layoffs at $90/bbl Oil
BP slashes jobs as profit falls 20pc
By Angela Monaghan
Last Updated: 2:15am GMT 06/02/2008
Oil giant BP is to cut 5,000 jobs by the middle of next year following a near 20pc fall in full-year profits for 2007, but is softening the blow with a fourth-quarter dividend rise of 31pc.
The tumble in profits follows poor production levels as BP failed to get oil out of the ground quick enough to take advantage of its soaring cost, as well as weaker refining margins.
full story here
Iranian Bourse to Devalue US Dollar?
Iran Oil Bourse to deal blow to dollar
Fri, 04 Jan 2008 20:45:41
The long-awaited Iranian Oil Bourse, a place for trading oil, petrochemicals and gas in various non-dollar currencies, will soon open.
Iran's Finance Minister Davoud Danesh-Jafari told reporters the bourse will be inaugurated during the anniversary of the Islamic Revolution (February 1-11) at the latest.
"All preparations have been made to launch the bourse; it will open during the Ten-Day Dawn (the ceremonies marking the victory of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran)," he said.
The Minister had earlier stated that the Oil Bourse is located on the Persian Gulf island of Kish.
Some expert opinions hold inauguration of the bourse cold significantly devalue the greenback.
Fischer-Tropsch in the Deep Sea
The wonders never cease.
Ocean hydrocarbons made from rocks
31 January 2008
Researchers investigating 60-metre high carbonate chimneys in the Atlantic Ocean - the so-called 'Lost City' deep ocean vent field - have discovered that hydrocarbons seeping out from the vents don't come from a biological source such as bacteria, plants or animal matter.
Instead, say Giora Proskurowski from the University of Washington, US, and colleagues, inorganic carbon leaching from surrounding sea-floor rock (which has risen from the Earth's mantle) combines with hydrogen, heat and water to make the hydrocarbons. These Fischer-Tropsch style reactions have been shown to be plausible in the laboratory, but the team's observations were the first consistent evidence measured in situ on the ocean floor, co-author Gretchen Früh-Green, of the Swiss Federal Institute for Technology, told Chemistry World.
The mantle-derived rocks in the Lost City field have been active for over 30,000 years, and the researchers think many other similar formations could exist, undiscovered, in the deep Atlantic Ocean. 'Hydrocarbon production by Fischer-Tropsch type chemistry could be a common means for producing precursors of life-essential building blocks in ocean-floor environments,' they conclude.
There's not enough evidence, though, to substantially rewrite the familiar story that fossil fuels are formed from the carbon in compressed plant and animal matter, said Früh-Green. 'We haven't done the calculations to suggest whether hydrocarbons originate more from mantle-derived rocks than from a biological source like organic-rich sediments or methane hydrates. It will be hard to honestly quantify,' she said.
THE BIG CHILL
http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7009739004
Jupiter Kalambakal - AHN News Writer
Moscow, Russia (AHN) - Russians are bracing for temperatures of as low as minus 55 degrees Celsius (minus 67 degrees Fahrenheit) in Siberia as Russia's emergencies ministry warns on Wednesday of its impending dangers in the coming weeks.
Government agencies were placed on high alert, reports AFP. The ministry ordered local administration officials to prepare for the extreme chill expected to last until Jan. 21.
The ministry warned that the unusually cold weather could kill, cause frost-bite, conk heaters and cut electricity to homes, disrupt transport, increase the rate of car accidents and even destroy buildings across Siberia.
The freezing temperatures have already caused overloading of electricity grids and power interruptions in the regions of Irkutsk and Tomsk because of overused heaters in homes. Two people have already died and more than 30 others hospitalized with forst-bite in Irkutsk, reports AFP citing state media.
Bloomberg reports that worst hit will be the Siberian region of Evenkiya, while neighbor Georgia, whose climate is subtropical, already plunged to as low as minus 35 degrees Celsius. Lake Paliastomi in the western Georgia froze for the first time in 50 years, reports Rustavi-2 television.
Average temperatures in large Siberian cities in January usually range between minus 15 degrees Celsius and minus 39 degrees Celsius, according to data from weatherbase.com. Schools have been closed down in at least four regions because of the cold.
Jupiter Kalambakal - AHN News Writer
Moscow, Russia (AHN) - Russians are bracing for temperatures of as low as minus 55 degrees Celsius (minus 67 degrees Fahrenheit) in Siberia as Russia's emergencies ministry warns on Wednesday of its impending dangers in the coming weeks.
Government agencies were placed on high alert, reports AFP. The ministry ordered local administration officials to prepare for the extreme chill expected to last until Jan. 21.
The ministry warned that the unusually cold weather could kill, cause frost-bite, conk heaters and cut electricity to homes, disrupt transport, increase the rate of car accidents and even destroy buildings across Siberia.
The freezing temperatures have already caused overloading of electricity grids and power interruptions in the regions of Irkutsk and Tomsk because of overused heaters in homes. Two people have already died and more than 30 others hospitalized with forst-bite in Irkutsk, reports AFP citing state media.
Bloomberg reports that worst hit will be the Siberian region of Evenkiya, while neighbor Georgia, whose climate is subtropical, already plunged to as low as minus 35 degrees Celsius. Lake Paliastomi in the western Georgia froze for the first time in 50 years, reports Rustavi-2 television.
Average temperatures in large Siberian cities in January usually range between minus 15 degrees Celsius and minus 39 degrees Celsius, according to data from weatherbase.com. Schools have been closed down in at least four regions because of the cold.
Turning physics on its ear
Has college dropout done the impossible and created a perpetual motion machine?
February 04, 2008
Tyler Hamilton
Energy Reporter
Thane Heins is nervous and hopeful. It's Jan. 24, a Thursday afternoon, and in four days the Ottawa-area native will travel to Boston where he'll demonstrate an invention that appears – though he doesn't dare say it – to operate as a perpetual motion machine.
The audience, esteemed Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Markus Zahn, could either deflate Heins' heretical claims or add momentum to a 20-year obsession that has broken up his marriage and lost him custody of his two young daughters.
Zahn is a leading expert on electromagnetic and electronic systems. In a rare move for any reputable academic, he has agreed to give Heins' creation an open-minded look rather than greet it with outright dismissal.
It's a pivotal moment. The invention, at its very least, could moderately improve the efficiency of induction motors, used in everything from electric cars to ceiling fans. At best it means a way of tapping the mysterious powers of electromagnetic fields to produce more work out of less effort, seemingly creating electricity from nothing.
Such an unbelievable invention would challenge the laws of physics, a no-no in the rigid world of serious science. Imagine a battery system in an all-electric car that can be recharged almost exclusively by braking and accelerating, or what Heins calls "regenerative acceleration."
No charging from the grid. No assistance from gasoline. No cost of fuelling up. No way, say the skeptics.
"It sounds too good to be true," concedes Heins, who formed a company in 2005 called Potential Difference Inc. to develop and market his invention. "We get dismissed pretty quickly sometimes."
It's for this reason the 46-year-old inventor has learned to walk on thin ice when dealing with academics and engineers, who he must win over to be taken seriously. Credibility, after all, can't be invented. It must be earned. "I have to be humble. If you say the wrong thing at the wrong time, you can lose support."
The creation in question is a new kind of generator called the Perepiteia (read related story "Holy crap, this is really scary"), which in Greek theatre means an action that has the opposite effect of what its doer intended. Heins torques up the definition to mean "a sudden reversal of fortune that's a windfall for humanity."
Deep down, Heins has high hopes. But he also realizes that merely using those controversial words – "perpetual motion" – usually brands a person as batty. In 2006, an Irish company called Steorn placed an advertisement in The Economist calling on all the world's scientists to validate its magnet-based "free energy" technology.
Steorn was met with intense skepticism and accused of being a scam or hoax. Seventeen months later the company has failed, despite worldwide attention, to prove anything under scrutiny. Well-educated people, from Leonardo da Vinci to Harvard-trained engineer Bruce De Palma (older brother of film director Brian De Palma), have made similar claims of perpetual motion only to be slammed down by the mainstream scientific community.
Heins has an even greater uphill battle. He isn't an engineer. He doesn't have a graduate degrees in physics. He never even finished his electronics program at Heritage College in Gatineau, Quebec. "I have mild dyslexia and don't do well in math, so I didn't do very well in school," he says.
What he does have is a chef's diploma, and spent time as chef at the Canadian Museum of Civilization before launching his own restaurant in Renfrew called the Old Town Hall Tea Room. He has also had political ambitions. In 1999 he ran unsuccessfully as a candidate for the Green Party of Ontario, deciding a year later to run as an independent in the federal election.
Today, Heins is focused on showing his invention to anybody willing to see it, in hopes that somebody smarter than him will give it credibility. His long-time friend, Kim Cunningham, manager of communications and government relations at the Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation (OCRI) is working part-time with Potential Difference to help get the message out.
Together, they have demonstrated the Perepiteia to a number of labs and universities across North America, including the University of Virginia, Michigan State University, the University of Toronto and Queens University.
"It's generally always the same reaction," says Heins. "There's a bit of a scramble on the part of the observer to put what they're seeing into some sort of context with what they know. They can't explain it. They don't know what it is."
He'd be happy if somebody did, even if the news was bad. His wife has kicked him out. He doesn't earn an income. He can't pay child support. The certainty would be welcome. "I've tried to quit many times, and thought if I could just be a normal guy I would have a normal life ... But I had this idea and I believe it works."
Others want to believe – or at least help out. Cunningham, whose brother is general manager at Angus Glen Golf Club, introduced Heins to the club's president, Kevin Thistle. For two years Thistle has acted as angel investor, providing start-up capital needed to incorporate Potential Difference, file patents and continue research.
Cunningham's boss, OCRI president Jeffrey Dale, helped open doors at the University of Ottawa and make introductions to its dean of engineering. As a result, Heins teamed up last fall with Riadh Habash, a professor at the university's school of information technology and engineering.
"Dr. Habash has essentially rolled out the red carpet," says Heins, explaining that he now has access to a university lab and all the equipment he needs to test and simulate his generator.
In an interview with the Toronto Star, Habash was cautious but matter-of-fact with what he's seen so far. "It accelerates, but when it comes to an explanation, there is no backing theory for it. That's why we're consulting MIT. But at this time we can't support any claim."
In the meantime, Heins has been on a letter-writing campaign to raise money for his mission. He's written former U.S. vice-president Al Gore, Virgin Group founder and billionaire Richard Branson and John Doerr at venture capital powerhouse Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. He's also tried to contact entrepreneur Elon Musk, chairman of electric car upstart Tesla Motors, and the "ReCharge IT" project run by Google's philanthropic arm.
So far no bites, though there have been nibbles. Heins has had discussions with a well-known investor in Oregon, known to many as the "godfather of start-ups," who is apparently flirting with the idea of investing in Potential Difference. "We got the impression ... he's not necessarily interested in making a tonne of money, he just wants to see us succeed."
Just before the big day at MIT, the Star spoke with professor Markus Zahn about what he expected to observe.
"It's hard for me to give an opinion," said Zahn, who admitted he was excited to see the demonstration. "I don't believe it will violate the laws of physics. You're not going to get more energy out than you put in."
He said it's easy for people to set up their tests wrong and misinterpret what they see. "You've got to look closely."
It's now Jan. 28 – D Day. Heins has modified his test so the effects observed are difficult to deny. He holds a permanent magnet a few centimetres away from the driveshaft of an electric motor, and the magnetic field it creates causes the motor to accelerate. It went well.
Contacted by phone a few hours after the test, Zahn is genuinely stumped – and surprised. He said the magnet shouldn't cause acceleration. "It's an unusual phenomena I wouldn't have predicted in advance. But I saw it. It's real. Now I'm just trying to figure it out."
There's no talk of perpetual motion. No whisper of broken scientific laws or free energy. Zahn would never go there – at least not yet. But he does see the potential for making electric motors more efficient, and this itself is no small feat.
"To my mind this is unexpected and new, and it's worth exploring all the possible advantages once you're convinced it's a real effect," he added. "There are an infinite number of induction machines in people's homes and everywhere around the world. If you could make them more efficient, cumulatively, it could make a big difference."
Driving home – he can't afford to fly – Heins is exhausted but encouraged. He says Zahn will, and must, evaluate what he saw on his own terms and time. What's preventing the engineer from grasping it right away, he says, is his education, his scientific training.
Step by step, Heins is making progress, but where it will all lead remains uncertain.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)