DefDog: North Dakota – Our Oil Reserves, Obama Refuses

03 Economy, 03 Environmental Degradation, 09 Justice, 11 Society, 12 Water, Commerce, Corruption, Earth Intelligence, Government, IO Impotency
DefDog

North Dakota is debt free with a surplus of cash that can only be spent with 66% of the legislature approving.  Integrity seems to be plentiful there, but not in Washington, where Obama refuses to free up access to oil in our ground, at the same time that he is blowing taxpayer money on fraudulent green schemes.

How North Dakota Became Saudi Arabia

Harold Hamm, discoverer of the Bakken fields of the northern Great Plains, on America's oil future and why OPEC's days are numbered.

By STEPHEN MOORE

Wall Street Journal, 1 October 2011

Harold Hamm, the Oklahoma-based founder and CEO of Continental Resources, the 14th-largest oil company in America, is a man who thinks big. He came to Washington last month to spread a needed message of economic optimism: With the right set of national energy policies, the United States could be “completely energy independent by the end of the decade. We can be the Saudi Arabia of oil and natural gas in the 21st century.”

“President Obama is riding the wrong horse on energy,” he adds. We can't come anywhere near the scale of energy production to achieve energy independence by pouring tax dollars into “green energy” sources like wind and solar, he argues. It has to come from oil and gas.

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota:  The difference between North Dakota reserves and the Canadian oil tar scam is that the latter requires vast amounts of aquifer water to flush, a trade-off that no honest person would ever make.  The Governor of North Dakota has every right to nullify federal interference with his state's natural resources.

Chuck Spinney: The Contradictions of Green

03 Economy, 03 Environmental Degradation, 07 Health, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Earth Intelligence, Government
Chuck Spinney

Democrats in the US like to think they can use green politics to revitalize their base. But will going green achieve this end when most of the people in the world (and the US) are either poor or lower middle class and the distribution of income is getting worse in a global economy dominated by the ideology of neoliberal economics? The attached essay in the French journal Le Monde Diplomatique provides some interesting food for thought in that regard, at least as far a Germany is concerned.

Greens now just ‘neoliberals on bikes’

Germany goes for sustainable capitalism

The Greens are likely to be a major part of the next German government; few seem to have noticed that they’ve already been a substantial part of its regional governments for 59 years

by Olivier Cyran, Le Monde Diplomatique, October 2011

EXTRACT:

The fat cats who live in [the totally green] Marco Polo Tower may not vote Green in the elections. The tower was built on a natural promontory in the port that gives residents a bird’s eye view of the landing stage for liners. But the designers forgot that these floating palaces belch out toxic smoke that the wind blows back on to the balconies and windows of the tower. According to an investigation by Der Spiegel, a “breath of fresh air” for Marco Polo’s residents contains the equivalent of the emissions from “50,000 lorries travelling at 130kmph, with significant quantities of sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and other carcinogenic particles”. Multi-millionaires poisoned by luxury cruises: sustainable development has some surprising twists.

Read more…

Chuck Spinney: Big Oil Screwing US for Peak Profits

03 Economy, 03 Environmental Degradation, 05 Energy, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Blog Wisdom, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corporations, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Government, Misinformation & Propaganda, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Waste (materials, food, etc)
Chuck Spinney

It looks increasingly likely that President Obama is going to cave into the oil interests promoting the pipeline to move oil mine in tar sands of Canada to the Port Arthur Free Trade Zone in Texas.

One of the prime selling points of this scheme, which has environmentalists all in uproar will no doubt be that the pipeline is needed  for energy security.  So what is going on?  My good friend Pierre Sprey's answer may surprise you.  He has graciously given me permission to distribute it.

Peak Oil or Peak Profits?

email from Pierre Sprey, 5 September 2005

A new Oil Change International report has injected a breath of fresh air into the endless stream of media BS about peak oil, declining US oil production, disastrous dependence on foreign oil, need for new offshore drilling, blah, blah , blah, blah…. The report's charts show that our domestic oil production has been rising  markedly since 2008. The excess domestic oil and the new Keystone pipeline oil are unneeded for the domestic market and will go largely to exports to fatten Big Oil's bottom line.

The most interesting conclusions are:

  • “Gasoline demand is declining due to increasing vehicle efficiency and slow economic growth;
  • Meanwhile the surge in new shale oil production in North Dakota and Texas has led to the first rise in U.S. oil production since 1970 and is forecast to continue for some time;
  • As a result of stagnant demand and the rise in both domestic and Canadian oil production, there is a glut of oil in the U.S. market.

Refiners have therefore identified export markets as their primary hope for growth and maximum profits.

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Big Oil Screwing US for Peak Profits”

Dolphin: USA’s First Coast to Coast Climate Network

03 Environmental Degradation, Advanced Cyber/IO, Communities of Practice, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Policies

Construction of nation's first coast-to-coast climate network begins

KSL.Com, August 7th, 2011

By Geoffrey Fattah<

LOGAN — Imagine being able to put your fingers on the pulse of America's biosphere — keeping real-time track of weather, water/soil temperature, animal populations and much more. Armed with this information, scientists would be able to detect sudden shifts in climate, perhaps even predict them, allowing the nation to prepare for potential disasters.

Click on Image to Enlarge

The National Science Foundation has given the financial go-ahead to begin construction of the nation's first coast-to-coast network of observatories, including one in Utah, to measure real-time climate changes.

The National Ecological Observatory Network, or NEON, is designed to gather vast amounts of data, every second, from around the country using satellites, observation towers, aircraft sensors, mobile motorized sensors and field work by scientists. From insect samples to weather data, the information will be fed into a central lab to build a picture of the nation's ecological health.

What scientists will keep an eye out for are “threshold events,” or sudden changes in climates, that can lead to droughts, floods, even the spread of diseases, said James MacMahon, dean of Utah State University's College of Science and chairman of NEON's board of directors.

Read more….

Phi Beta Iota:  The most righteous thing the White House has done in our view, starting under Clinton-Gore and continued by Bush-Cheney, has been the Earth Science information-sharing initiative.  The above article neglects the importance of the same initiative being carried out across the oceans, 75% of the Earth's surface.  This particular initiative would do well to adopt the four fundamental opens: Open Source Software, Open Data Access, Open Spectrum, and Open Source Intelligence.

John Robb: Soros Dumps Gold, Could Local Virtual Currencies and Local Water, Food, Energy, and Production be Next Big Thing?

01 Poverty, 02 Infectious Disease, 03 Environmental Degradation, Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Policies
John Robb

BIG QUESTION: Gold or Virtual Currencies?

As anticipated, we're on the brink of a global economic depression (again).

There's a strong possibility that a long running global depression will lead to a reshuffling of the global economic and political landscape.  IF that happens, many of the fiat currencies we currently use will simply evaporate.

Given this backdrop, here's today's big question:

If the dollar and euro implode…

…will the next global currency be gold or networked virtual currencies (like bitcoin)?  

Until the new currency platform emerges, the safest hedge for the future is building, buying, or trading for anything that can produce food, energy, water, and products locally.

Phi Beta Iota:  George Soros has dumped gold and is largely off the stock market.  John Robb is one of the best observers of chaos versus resilience–his advice above coincides with William Greider's finding in Come Home America, to wit, financial offerings are fraud, asset investments (at the local level) are real.  What all of this leads up to is that we should all stop investing in old systems, and instead do the right thing: invest in bottom-up localized resilience that yields sustainable benefits for all–real assets for real people.

Koko: US Government Changes It Story — BearGate

03 Environmental Degradation, 07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Journalism/Free-Press/Censorship, Misinformation & Propaganda, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests
Koko

29 July Koko: US Government Suspends Scientist For Integrity Inquiry – Who Suspends the USG?

2 August  Scientist suspension is about project's management

The government's new new story:

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — The U.S. government suspended an Arctic biologist over how he awarded a polar bear research project to the University of Alberta and its management, not for his earlier scientific work detailing drowned polar bears, a watchdog group said Monday.

The reality check:

Documents provided by the watchdog group showed questioning by investigators earlier this year focused on the polar bear observations that Monnett and researcher Jeffrey Gleason made in 2004.

Continue reading “Koko: US Government Changes It Story — BearGate”

Koko: US Government Suspends Scientist For Integrity Inquiry – Who Suspends the USG?

03 Environmental Degradation, 05 Energy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Articles & Chapters, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Government, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests
Koko

Arctic scientist who exposed climate threat to polar bear is suspended

US government conducts ‘integrity inquiry' on federal biologist amid lobbying by oil firms for Arctic permits

, US environment correspondent

guardian.co.uk,

It was seen as one of the most distressing effects of climate change ever recorded: polar bears dying of exhaustion after being stranded between melting patches of Arctic sea ice.

But now the government scientist who first warned of the threat to polar bears in a warming Arctic has been suspended and his work put under official investigation for possible scientific misconduct.

. . . . . .

Some question why Monnett, employed by the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, has been suspended at this moment. The Obama administration has been accused of hounding the scientist so it can open up the fragile region to drilling by Shell and other big oil companies.