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<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>Thanks for that Keith, I check his website too as I
find he is so refreshingly candid. Read his book years ago & am waiting to
see how his predictions pan out.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>Keith, I have a few queries re the GST &
wonder if I might come a bit earlier tomorrow to discuss. Otherwise another time
at your convenience but before you lodge the next BAS.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>Susan</FONT></DIV>
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style="BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="FONT: 10pt arial; BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=keith@evfit.com href="mailto:keith@evfit.com">Keith Thomas</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=peakoil@act-peakoil.org
href="mailto:peakoil@act-peakoil.org">'Peakoil Discussion'</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Tuesday, April 05, 2011 5:54
AM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> [Peakoil] James Kunstler puts
the oil numbers in perspective</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>Bright and early every Monday morning, James Kunstler published
his bulletin - basically a weekly report on US progress into The Long
Emergency. Hope you all drop in to see it occasionally:
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV><A href="http://kunstler.com/blog/">http://kunstler.com/blog/</A></DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>This week he includes a few critical numbers on oil reserves, petroleum
usage and also looks at the tar sands of Canada and the shale oil in the US in
terms of their EROEI. But Kunstler is always good at putting the numbers into
social, political and historical context.</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>Read on! <BR>
<DIV>
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<DIV>-----------------------------</DIV>
<DIV>Keith Thomas</DIV>
<DIV><A href="http://www.evfit.com">www.evfit.com</A></DIV>
<DIV>-----------------------------</DIV></DIV></SPAN></DIV></SPAN></DIV></SPAN></DIV></SPAN></DIV></SPAN></DIV></DIV><!--StartFragment-->
<P
style="LINE-HEIGHT: 31pt; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 24pt; mso-pagination: none; mso-layout-grid-align: none"
class=MsoNormal><B><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Lucida Grande'; COLOR: #262626; FONT-SIZE: 18pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 24.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US"
lang=EN-US>Blowing Green Smoke<O:P></O:P></SPAN></B></P>
<P style="mso-pagination: none; mso-layout-grid-align: none"
class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Lucida Grande'; mso-bidi-font-size: 15.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US"
lang=EN-US>By James Howard Kunstler, </SPAN><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Lucida Grande'" class=Apple-style-span>on April 4,
2011</SPAN></P>
<P style="mso-pagination: none; mso-layout-grid-align: none"
class=MsoNormal><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Lucida Grande'"
class=Apple-style-span>"</SPAN><I>We also have Secretary Steven Chu, my Energy
Secretary. Where is Steven? There he is over there."</I><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Lucida Grande'" class=Apple-style-span> </SPAN><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Lucida Grande'" class=Apple-style-span>- President Obama
at Georgetown U last week</SPAN></P>
<P style="mso-pagination: none; mso-layout-grid-align: none"
class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Lucida Grande'; mso-bidi-font-size: 15.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US"
lang=EN-US><O:P></O:P></SPAN></P>
<P style="mso-pagination: none; mso-layout-grid-align: none"
class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Lucida Grande'; mso-bidi-font-size: 15.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US"
lang=EN-US> Blame Steven Chu, then, because when it
comes to America's energy predicament, the president has been woefully
misinformed. Mr. Obama pawned off a roster of notions and proposals already
product-tested in the public meme-o-sphere. Almost everyone of these ideas is
inconsistent with reality, based on faulty premises, or represents some kind
of magical thinking. What they have in common is that they're ideas the public
wants to hear, whether they are truthful or not, because we don't want to
change the way we live.<O:P></O:P></SPAN></P>
<P style="mso-pagination: none; mso-layout-grid-align: none"
class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Lucida Grande'; mso-bidi-font-size: 15.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US"
lang=EN-US> The central idea in Mr. Obama's speech is that
we will reduce our oil imports by one-third in a decade. This is a gross
distortion of reality. The truth is that our oil imports will be reduced
automatically, whether we like it or not. The process is already underway. The
nations that export oil to us are using much more of their own oil even while
their supplies have passed peak production and entered depletion. Countries
like Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Mexico have some of the highest population
growth-rates in the world. They sell gasoline to their own people for less
than a dollar a gallon. At the same time China and India are driving more cars
and importing a lot more of the world's declining supply. (China has perhaps
the equivalent of a four-year supply of its own oil in the ground, and India
has next-to-zero oil of its own).<O:P></O:P></SPAN></P>
<P style="mso-pagination: none; mso-layout-grid-align: none"
class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Lucida Grande'; mso-bidi-font-size: 15.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US"
lang=EN-US> One meme circulating around the Web these days
is that the USA has the equivalent of "three Saudi Arabias" in the shale oil
fields of North Dakota, Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana. That is not true. A
lot of this magical thinking focuses on the Bakken fields of Dakota. We're
currently producing less than 400,000 barrels a day out of Bakken and the
projected maximum ten years from now is around 800,000. We use 20 million
barrels a day in the US running suburbia, Wal Mart, and the US military. By
the way, Bakken shale oil requires extensive rock fracturing operations -
"fracking" - which means a lot of horizontal drilling, which means a lot of
steel pipe. It is not just a matter of sticking a steel straw in the ground
like we did in Texas in 1932.<O:P></O:P></SPAN></P>
<P style="mso-pagination: none; mso-layout-grid-align: none"
class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Lucida Grande'; mso-bidi-font-size: 15.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US"
lang=EN-US> Note: much of the shale "oil" in other western
states is not actually oil. It is kerogen, an organic precursor to oil, in
effect organic polymers that have not been subjected to enough heat and
pressure to turn into oil. If you want to turn it into oil, you have to cook
it - which takes energy! That's after the mining operation to scoop it out of
the ground. That takes energy too. Or, you can send machinery into the ground
and cook it in place. That takes energy, too. We are not going to get oil out
of there anytime soon - and perhaps never.<O:P></O:P></SPAN></P>
<P style="mso-pagination: none; mso-layout-grid-align: none"
class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Lucida Grande'; mso-bidi-font-size: 15.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US"
lang=EN-US> The "drill drill drill" gang is under the
impression that North America has vast unexplored regions where oil is just
begging to be discovered. This is not true. The New York Times reported after
Obama's speech - in a disgracefully dumb story by Clifford Krauss - that the
eastern Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Coast contain 3.8 billion barrels of oil.
Really? Hello! The US uses over 7 billion barrels of oil every year. Does the
Arctic National Wildlife refuge contain between 4 and 11 billion barrels (US
gov estimate)? Great, that averages out to about a year or so of US
supply. And I'm not even against drilling there, only against the idea that it
represents a meaningful "solution" to our problem.<O:P></O:P></SPAN></P>
<P style="mso-pagination: none; mso-layout-grid-align: none"
class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Lucida Grande'; mso-bidi-font-size: 15.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US"
lang=EN-US> Meanwhile, the old standby Alaskan oil fields
at Prudhoe Bay are depleting so remorselessly that there may not be enough
flow in a year or so to move the oil through the famous
pipeline.<O:P></O:P></SPAN></P>
<P style="mso-pagination: none; mso-layout-grid-align: none"
class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Lucida Grande'; mso-bidi-font-size: 15.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US"
lang=EN-US> How about Canada's tar sands? Well, first of
all, they belong to Canada, not us, unless we want to change that - and that
could be politically messy. The tar sands will never produce more than 3
million barrels a day. The operations are already too huge, costly, and
damaging to the northern watershed. Canada is our number one source of
imported oil, but China would also like to buy Canadian oil. Are we planning
to invoke the Monroe Doctrine to prevent Canada from selling its oil to
parties outside the Western Hemisphere? That could be messy,
too.<O:P></O:P></SPAN></P>
<P style="mso-pagination: none; mso-layout-grid-align: none"
class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Lucida Grande'; mso-bidi-font-size: 15.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US"
lang=EN-US> Mr. Obama returned to the popular theme of
bio-fuels. Our initial venture into this area was the ethanol fiasco which,
predictably, took more energy to make than it produced, and had disastrous
effects (still does) on corn commodity prices - in effect stealing from the
food supply in order to drive to the Wal Mart. The next venture will
apparently be in algae. We'll discover (once again) that what works as a
science project doesn't scale to run millions of cars.<O:P></O:P></SPAN></P>
<P style="mso-pagination: none; mso-layout-grid-align: none"
class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Lucida Grande'; mso-bidi-font-size: 15.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US"
lang=EN-US> Mr. Obama told the nation that we have a 100
year supply of natural gas. (The moronic Larry Kudlow of CNBC told his
audience it was 300 years). Neither of them knows what he is talking about
(and evidently Energy Secretary Chu doesn't either). So far, proven reserves
of shale gas amount to about a 4 to 6 year US supply at current rates, and
total natural gas reserves - including conventional gas, the kind that doesn't
require fracking - amounts to about a 12 year supply. The idea that we are
going to ramp up an entire natural gas fueling system for America's
tractor-trailer trucks is an absurdity.<O:P></O:P></SPAN></P>
<P style="mso-pagination: none; mso-layout-grid-align: none"
class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Lucida Grande'; mso-bidi-font-size: 15.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US"
lang=EN-US> Ditto the notion that we are going to electrify
the US auto fleet.<O:P></O:P></SPAN></P>
<P style="mso-pagination: none; mso-layout-grid-align: none"
class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Lucida Grande'; mso-bidi-font-size: 15.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US"
lang=EN-US> Here's something to chew on: we run about 250
million cars in the USA. Let's say we ramped up an electric vehicle fleet of
10 million cars - which, by the way, is a purely hypothetical and wildly
optimistic number. Do you think it might be a political problem if 10 million
lucky Americans get to drive electric cars while everybody else either pays
through the nose for gasoline, or can't even afford to own a car
anymore?<O:P></O:P></SPAN></P>
<P style="mso-pagination: none; mso-layout-grid-align: none"
class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Lucida Grande'; mso-bidi-font-size: 15.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US"
lang=EN-US> There are a few things you can state
categorically about the US energy predicament and the national conversation
we're having about it - including the leaders of that conversation in
government, business, and the media. One is that we are blowing a lot of green
smoke up our collective ass. None of these schemes is going to work as
advertised. The disappointment over them will be massive and probably lead to
awful political consequences.<O:P></O:P></SPAN></P>
<P style="mso-pagination: none; mso-layout-grid-align: none"
class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Lucida Grande'; mso-bidi-font-size: 15.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US"
lang=EN-US> Another is that we are ignoring the most
obvious intelligent responses to this predicament, namely, shifting our focus
to walkable communities and public transit, especially rebuilding the American
passenger railroad system - without which, I assure you, we will be most
regrettably screwed ten years from now. Mr. Obama had one throwaway line in
his speech about public transit and nothing whatever about walkable
neighborhoods.<O:P></O:P></SPAN></P>
<P style="mso-pagination: none; mso-layout-grid-align: none"
class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Lucida Grande'; mso-bidi-font-size: 15.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US"
lang=EN-US> The reason for this obvious idiocy is that it's
all about the cars. That's all we care about in the USA, the cars. We can't
get over the cars. We can't talk about anything except how we'll find magical
new ways to run all the cars. This is a very tragic sort of stupidity and if
we don't change our thinking about it, from the highest level on down, history
is going to treat us very cruelly.<O:P></O:P></SPAN></P>
<P style="mso-pagination: none; mso-layout-grid-align: none"
class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Lucida Grande'; mso-bidi-font-size: 15.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US"
lang=EN-US> A special shout-out here to The New York Times,
whose abysmal reporting on these issues, once again, is due to their reliance
on a single source: the IHS-CERA group, Cambridge Energy Research Associates,
the paid public relations auxiliary of the oil industry, led by that
mendacious sack of shit Daniel Yergin, whore-in-chief.<O:P></O:P></SPAN></P>
<DIV><SPAN lang=EN-US><SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"></SPAN></SPAN><BR
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