Wave power snake reduces costs
Bob Morris @ 15:47 Category: Renewable energy Tags: wave power;
Treehugger has news of a potentially new way to do wave power with far fewer moving parts and thus way less maintenance costs.
July 3, 2008
The terrible jobs report
Bob Morris @ 09:22 Category: Unfiled;
Total job losses since the first of the year are now 438,000. That’s a loss of 73,000 a month. The economy needs to CREATE 125,000 jobs a month just to keep up with population growth.
In other words, this hole is getting deeper.
Nor does there seem to be any bottom to the hole, as yet.
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman strongly opposes any attack on Iran
Bob Morris @ 06:23 Category: Anti-war;
Mullen’s remarks are jaw dropping because they expose the unwillingness of the Pentagon to support an attack upon Iran.
I think the Bushies have been sending up trial balloons to see if there is support for their insane plan. The answer clearly is “No.” I think they are already weakened enough that no attack (even by a proxy Israel) will occur.
It’s now officially a bear market
Bob Morris @ 01:30 Category: Credit crisis;
An attempted stock market rally yesterday failed. An analyst said a bankruptcy of GM is possible. Oil hit another all time high. Bad moon rising.
Disclosure: I own puts on financials.
July 2, 2008
We’ve moved
Bob Morris @ 22:08 Category: Unfiled;
Polizeros is now hosted at Ziaspace.
The move went quickly and easily. Big thanks to “Unix Geek Extraordinaire” John Klos at Ziaspace and WordPress / Drupal wizard Jamie Holly of Intoxination for their help.
Is the Fed deliberately allowing inflation
Bob Morris @ 21:38 Category: Uncategorized;
Gary Dvorchak at TheStreet.com says maybe so.
So far, the Fed has decided that allowing lenders to absorb all of the losses they created would wipe out our financial system, so by necessity, the losses are going to be borne by society at large.
The Fed is doing this by deliberately allowing inflation, “actions that return liquidity to the system but devalue the dollars in your pocket.”
Given the huge dollar amount of counterparty risk in the system should a major financial institution fail, then maybe the Fed has little choice. A serious collapse could trigger a domino effect worldwide.
What has changed lately is the number and volume of major financial figures who say we are on the brink of a potential cataclysm.
Silent tsunami in the heart of America
Bob Morris @ 16:37 Category: Uncategorized;
Bruce Sterling on the recent midwest floods.
In order to imagine food prices going down, you have to hypothesize weather problems receding and fuel prices lower. And if ending a war is supposed to patch that, you have to imagine that starvation and a climate crisis doesn’t cause other military emergencies elsewhere. Is that plausible?
Impact of $7 a gallon gas
Bob Morris @ 11:45 Category: Uncategorized;
Earth2Tech details the scenarios that $7 gas would create, which include stagflation, fewer cars on the road, and families spending more on gas than food. While this would eventually lead to less pollution and carbon in the air, the getting there would be bumpy indeed. New cleantech industries will thrive, others, but like anything related to gas-powered cars, will suffer.
Heh, a commenter who lives London is not sympathetic
$7 gallon. Wow…if only! The price at the pump here (London) is 118p per litre (cheese-eating surrender monkey measurement of volume). That equates to about $11 a gallon. So I am pretty sure you can avoid the Apocalypse with those prices if we can. You might just have to stop needlessly burning up large amounts of the earth’s fossil fuels just to carry around 6 empty seats and a dozen cupholders.
Well, pass the cheese, because I suspected this could happen in 2000 so I bought a Prius. It gets 45 mpg and Sue’s VW Beetle diesel gets 40 mpg. We live right next to a BART station in the SF Bay area and thus don’t need the cars nearly as much as when we lived in Connecticut and L.A. Would it be everyone could live near excellent mass transit.
If speculators are driving up the price of oil
Bob Morris @ 11:36 Category: Uncategorized;
Then why did the number of open contracts peak a year ago? A speculative binge should result in more contracts, not less.
Pentagon official: Israel may attack Iran
Bob Morris @ 06:35 Category: Uncategorized;
If so, then why signal it in advance so many times? While I suppose the US could use Israel as a proxy for such an unprovoked attack, it would be disastrous both short-term and long-term. The price of oil would soar even more and it would create generations of new jihadis.
Are the neocons in the US and the hard right insane enough to want this? Yes. But they’ve been sabre-rattling so long and so loudly, something which certainly gives Iran time to prepare, that I’m guessing it’s just bluster. At least I hope so.
Biodegradable cow fat motor oil
Bob Morris @ 01:45 Category: Uncategorized;
Oil made from cow fat works great in high performance engines. Who knew? Even better, when you mix with a special disposal substance, it biodegrades in just a few days and is totally safe and non-toxic, even if you dump it on soil.
July 1, 2008
Judge blocks coal plant based on carbon emissions
Bob Morris @ 22:37 Category: Uncategorized;
Both opponents of coal use and the company that wants to build the plant said it was the first time a court decision had linked carbon dioxide to an air pollution permit.
And this happened in Georgia, a state one might normally think would not oppose coal. May many more states follow.
Per capita income falling in US
Bob Morris @ 20:03 Category: Uncategorized;
From John Robb
Given that we are moving into a period of extreme system shocks, this isn’t good news. There’s no income buffer to allow an easy transition to resilient communities. It’s looking it will end up being a bare bones bootstrap against a backdrop of rapidly expanding GG [Global Guerrilla] action.
This also means more populist movements and uprisings (both left wing and right wing), attempts to find scapegoats for the problems (immigrants), and the unsettling realization that - unless we act now and fast - our increasingly hollowed-out government will be unable to help much.
Server problems
Bob Morris @ 14:45 Category: Uncategorized;
We are having server problems, hence posts keep disappearing then reappearing. We are in the process of moving to a new host. Sigh.
What Obama will need to do
Bob Morris @ 14:43 Category: Uncategorized;
Dear President Obama:
You have inherited a mess. Your predecessor, fixated on emulating a former Republican icon from a far different economic era, chose to emphasize tax cuts for the rich and excessive consumption for all Americans. He promoted deregulation and free markets when, in fact, the markets and their institutions needed tough love. Over eight years, he failed to put forth a coherent energy policy. He needlessly invaded Iraq and lowered worldwide esteem for this nation as a symbol of freedom and benevolence.
But enough about W’s spilt milk. I’ve already ticked off so many readers that they’re questioning my Republican Party voter registration.
…
In the final analysis I wonder why you or anyone else would want to be President in 2009. But there’s the ego thing and a hope for a better tomorrow and all that. Come to think of it, “President Obama” does have a certain ring to it. When I listen to your speeches, you even have me half convinced!All the best, and a fist bump to ya!
Bill Gross
He’s the managing director of PIMCO. They manage $800 billion in bonds. Read the whole letter, he clearly explains what Obama will need to do to get the country back on track. Tax the rich (including him), throw homeowners a lifeline, get some form of universal healthcare, and spend $500 billion now to pump up the economy, producing the world’s first trillion dollar deficit..
Big Oil wants long-term Iraq oil contracts
Bob Morris @ 03:40 Category: Unfiled;
Major oil companies are trying to get long term contracts, says this Al-Jazeera report, for a share of Iraq oil fields that were developed years ago. Thus, there is little risk for them. The Iraqi government apparently says such contracts are illegal. But if that’s true, then who are the oil companies signing with?
It’s an attempted oil grab to be sure, aided and abetted by corruption within the country. The Kurds apparently have signed multiple contracts with multiple countries. Do they overlap? Which ones are valid, if any? Most important perhaps is who gets to determine which contracts are valid.
Tip: Juan Cole
June 30, 2008
This Brave Nation. Tom Hayden and Naomi Klein
Bob Morris @ 14:43 Category: Unfiled Tags: Naomi Klein, Tom Hayden;
From FireDogLake.
The final discussion in the This Brave Nation series is up — between Tom Hayden and Naomi Klein — and like all the others, it is fascinating. And inspiring. But, in this case, there is also a moment where Tom and Naomi are talking about how much activity and organization there is online…and how little there is in the streets.
It’s not enough to upload the movement to the net, something which happened instantly and with dramatic effect during the Battle of Seattle anti-globalization protests. Indeed, it was precisely because they were in the streets that they had something to upload! In the video Hayden says writing is fine but when you take action, you start to change what you are writing about and no longer are just an observer.
They both agree it is crucial to get out of one’s reality tunnel and talk to people outside of it. Hayden learned this talking to black sharecroppers in Mississippi during the civil rights struggles in the early 60’s and found they knew things about how the system worked that he, being a middle class white, had no clue about. Klein spoke with people working in Third World sweatshops. Same thing. We need multiple perspectives in the movement - including working class whites who too often and unfairly now get categorized as lumpen racists. Most aren’t. But do resent being approached in a patronizing manner.
Does the net itself deflect energy that could be going into the streets? Yes. The presidential elections are doing the same. So the movement is at a low ebb now. There’s a sense that old tactics are no longer effective. An Obama presidency will indeed raise expectations for change very high, and that presents a real opportunity for change. The net is a useful tool. But we need to be in the streets, organizing person to person too.
Hay is up 76% in nine months
Bob Morris @ 10:41 Category: Unfiled;
That’s what Asymptotic Life discovered when they went to buy more hay for their goats. The increase is due to the drought, which has cut supply, and oil prices, which has increased production costs. Those tractors run on diesel. So do they trucks that ship it.
Fertilizer is getting more expensive too, because natural gas is used to produce it.
Farmers and ranchers will be getting squeezed, and the price of food will continue to rise.
Financial markets worldwide getting shaky
Bob Morris @ 05:55 Category: Credit crisis;
I was emailing a friend recently about the stock market. He thinks the markets are “totally divorced from the reality of the time” and in many ways he’s right. They exist in a bizarre other universe, seemingly not affecting the rest of us much.
Except when they do, as witness the subprime debacle that has now morphed into a worldwide credit crisis.
- Former Sec. of Labor Robert Reich: “The economy is failing” and Congress needs to pass a massive stimulus package now, deficit spending be damned.
- Former Sec. of the Treasury Lawrence Summers: “In the months ahead there is the real possibility that significant financial institutions will encounter not just liquidity but solvency problems“
- Mish says forced sales of bank assets are coming soon as banks desperately try to raise money. WaMu is toast and Citigroup will be broken into pieces.
- Barclays Capital is warning clients that a major financial storm is coming and blames the Fed for not moving against inflation.
- The Royal Bank of Scotland advises all the chickens will be coming home to roost after the current excesses and that the contagion will be worldwide.
Banks will fail. Companies that rely on revolving lines of credit will find them more expensive or not available at all. Mortgages will continue to be harder to get. Businesses that rely on consumer spending will face slowdowns. Pensions fund will have serious losses. And so on.
The toxic waste spawned by subprime and its esoteric cousins, the CDOs and SIVs, has now spread to the financial system in general. And that means to all of us too.
Crude today is dirt cheap: Matthew Simmons
Bob Morris @ 01:35 Category: Unfiled Tags: oil prices;
Matthew Simmons is founder and CEO of Simmons and Co, an investment bank to the energy industry.
He says the Tata Nano at $2400 is the future of cars, that the US needs to get off its ravenous appetite for oil now, and that the primary driver of high oil prices is increasing demand and declining supply.
As for those evil speculators.
Speculators are mostly betting that crude will soon crash, so I suspect this group of investors is net short, and if they are banned from speculating, oil prices will jump higher.
June 29, 2008
How not to steady the markets
Bob Morris @ 21:15 Category: Unfiled Tags: short selling;
The Pakistan stock market recently dropped off a cliff so the government banned short selling for a month then pumped $446 million into the market. They also decreed that prices could not fall more than 1% a day. This of course forced the market up.
Traders there no doubt were overjoyed by this gift of free money and immediately went long too, riding that money train up. Then, when the ban on shorting is lifted, they’ll go short again. What will the government have accomplished by this? Not much that I can tell. Instead they might have made things worse.
This is an instructive example of why clueless governments should probably not try to clumsily intervene in markets. Joe Lieberman, who wants to ban speculation in oil futures, are you listening?
Odd, isn’t it, that no one wanted to ban speculation during the dot com boom or when real estate prices were zooming up?
NASA photo of California fires
Bob Morris @ 15:13 Category: Climate change Tags: California fires;
This NASA photo dramatically shows the amount of smoke from the hundreds of fires now burning, most of them started by lightning. Floods in the midwest, Omaha just got hit by a devastating storm with winds up to 115 mph. The weather, it seems, is changing.
Population control and the Peaks
Bob Morris @ 11:45 Category: Climate change, Peak oil Tags: Malthus, peak food, peak water;
Peak oil, peak food, peak water, global warming too. Is the root cause of all of these problems that there are just too many people on the planet?
The current world population is about 6.6 billion and growing fast. Yet suggesting that we need less people opens up all manner of ugly issues. Who gets to decide how to limit population growth? What will the rules be? Will it be voluntary? And in what countries?
Less Developed Countries are understandably highly suspicious of such proposals coming from the prosperous countries. There is also the undeniable problem of masked racism, with some using this as a pretext to get rid of Those People.
Malthusians say that limited resources on earth at some point will not be sufficient to feed the planet so that leaves us with what, that a good healthy die-off is what we need? This does present a teensy ethical dilemma, hoping for hundreds of millions to die so the rest may live better.
But the question remains: Are there too many people on the planet competing for too few resources?
