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David Seaton's Energy Links®
Lenny Bruce, Picasso, Christine O’Donnell and the gates of hell
Once upon a time a proud samurai of legendary ferocity approached an elderly
Zen
master famous for his wisdom and asked him if heaven and hell existed.
The ancient monk looked at the warrior with withering contempt written all over
his wizened face and sneered, "How dare an ignorant dolt like you waste my time
with idiotic questions like that?" The offended Samurai, blind with rage, began
to draw out his great katana from its scabbard, fully intent on killing the
impertinent monk.
On hearing the sound of metal on metal as the sword was being drawn, the monk
calmly said, "Listen, I hear the sound of the gates of hell being opened",
whereupon, the samurai, finding enlightenment, bowed humbly before the master
and returned his sword to its scabbard.
On hearing the sound of metal on metal as the sword was being sheathed, the monk
smiled and softly said, "Listen, I hear the sound of the gates of heaven being
opened" Classic Zen Tale (Children don't try this at home)
The other day I followed a link to youtube and found myself watching a chain of something
like 20 stand up comedy routines with a lot of funny people like George Carlin,
Chris Rock, Greg Giraldo, Sarah Silverman, and a hugely talented
Korean-American, named Margaret Cho, that I'd never seen before... and in the
middle of them all was a short monologue by Lenny Bruce. It was obvious to me
and probably to the person who stuck the whole series together, that these
performers were all the artistic children of Lenny Bruce.
With all their talent, however, these comedians reminded me of the painters that
tried to follow or be influenced by Pablo Picasso. But Picasso had "squeezed the
lemons" of western figurative painting so dry, that all that there was left for
other painters to do after he got finished with painting was abstract
expressionism and pop-art. He revolutionized painting and sucked all the air out
of it. The law of diminishing returns has set in for stand up comedy too. Après
Lenny le déluge.
Bruce suffered like a romantic poet from the 19th century, to see him or to hear
him was to participate in that suffering, with his humor as the catharsis. I
could say, without moving a muscle in my face, that Lenny Bruce "died for our
sins". His comedy sent him to jail, he broke all the rules because he could,
because he had heart, and because there were rules that could be broken.
However, it was one thing to say "fuck" on stage in the 1950s and go to jail for
it and quite another thing to say it today, when even little children use the
word. There is no liberation in the word anymore, only something of the monotony
of soldier-speak. How could anybody get the sort of reaction today that Lenny
Bruce got in the 1950s. It's hard to imagine something having that effect today:
to have riots break out, videos pulled from Youtube and a performer banned from
TV and thus becoming a viral, forbidden fruit. Except for Youtube, that was what
happened with Lenny Bruce.
Lenny Bruce was enriching, but I think there is too much comedy today. Finally
all the edgy irony is deadening not enriching. Bruce was enriching because, not
in spite, of the intensely square atmosphere of the period. Too many people act
"hip" today... a bit like Thomas Frank's "Conquest of Cool", there is something
shallow and phony about it. Bruce was deep, in part because of the hostility he
faced so bravely.
Probably the only thing that would shock people today like Bruce shocked people
in the 50s and 60s would be if a lightening-witted, beautiful, deep America,
white woman did routines about black people etc, similar to Chris Rock's. To say
out loud, with the same cutting edge of a Carlin, Cho and Silverman, the sort of
things that Sarah Palin only says in code. I think the Tea Party is searching
for something like this, but the closest they've come till now is Christine
O’Donnell. If ever they find the real thing, listen, and you'll hear the gates
of hell opening.
David Seaton
David Seaton's
Energy Links®
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Long-Term Study of Gulf Oil Spill Health Effects Needed - The Epoch Times
In September, the British oil company BP issued a controversial report on the cause of the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico four months ago.
Regardless of who was at fault, the release of an estimated 4 million barrels of oil had a major environmental impact. But there has been relatively little scientific study of the long-term human health effect of this kind of event.
In a world dependent on petroleum fuels, oil spills seem inevitable. However, Gina Solomon of the University of California San Francisco Medical School says the medical consequences don’t get sufficient attention from scientists.
“Of the 35 or so major oil spills that have occurred in recent decades,” says Solomon, “there’s only some health study from eight of those spills, and most of those are just contemporaneous studies.”
Meaning there was no long-term study of the health effects.
One exception was a 2002 spill off the coast of Spain, where scientists documented DNA damage among volunteers doing cleanup along the beach.
Crude oil is full of toxic materials, and when oil from a leaking underwater well hits the surface, many of those materials can enter the air near where cleanup workers are breathing.
“The chemicals that evaporate off of the oil are quite toxic,” says Solomon. “These are what are called volatile organic compounds that include cancer-causing chemicals like benzene and chemicals that are linked to neurological effects, such as toluene.”
Other chemicals enter the food chain, not only eaten by fish and seafood harvested for human consumption but also consumed by smaller sea creatures that are more-distant links in the human food chain.
Other threats from the Gulf oil spill include particulate matter generated by burning oil floating on the surface and from the large amount of chemical dispersants used.
Solomon says the BP spill was very disruptive to all three legs of the Gulf economy—the oil business, tourism, and fishing—and it came as the region was still recovering from Hurricane Katrina five years ago. So the impact on emotional or psychological health is likely to be significant.
“One of the health effects that was studied after the Exxon Valdez disaster was psychological effects, and there were severe effects that were found even years later in the communities in Alaska affected by that oil spill,” says Solomon. “So I think we can expect the same on the Gulf Coast.”
The U.S. National Institutes of Health is funding studies of the effects of the Gulf oil spill. Writing in JAMA, the journal of the American Medical Association, Gina Solomon says that in the meantime doctors and nurses in the area should be alert to the possibility that patients might be experiencing symptoms related to the oil spill.
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Fed Moves Oil More Than OPEC - CNBC
What do the Minnesota Twins and Gas Bulls have in common?
The crude oil and natural gas markets are mirror images of one another. Bears in the former are scrambling to defend the 62% retracement (May 03rd/25th) at $84.67, while bulls in the latter are hanging by a thread, i.e. on Friday the bears hit a new year-to-date low, $3.583.
On the other hand, in the wake of a poor jobs report, the U.S. dollar moved to another 8-month low and spot Nymex crude oil rallied 1.2% in response. As we look ahead to the new trading week, both markets remain on the cusp of breakouts; crude oil to the upside, gas to the down.
On Friday the ratio between Nymex crude oil and gas settled at 2.3. That is to say, 1 Nymex oil contract (1,000 barrels) could purchase 2.3 natural gas contracts (10,000 MMBtus). That is 3.1 standard deviations beyond the mean relationship as measured since the start of the decade.
What’s more, even if we allow for the bearish impact of shale production, the ratio is still 1.9 standard deviations beyond the mean relationship since the second quarter 2009. In other words, oil is dear and gas is cheap.
We will have more to say regarding Friday’s job’s numbers in tomorrow’s issue of The Schork Report, but suffice it to say, it was not good. Crude oil in the mid $80s translates into around $3 at the pump for occupationally-challenged consumers. Be that as it may, as long as traders continue to chase the dollar lower, they will continue to push oil prices higher.
As such, rather than OPEC, the Fed now has more say in the direction of crude oil prices!
As far as the gas market goes, we said it last Monday and we will say it again… the market is due for a rally (the same way the Minnesota Twins were due to beat the Yankees)… but it is just not happening.
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Feds to study whether oil endangered bluefin tuna - Miami Herald
The National Marine Fisheries Service will study whether the Gulf of Mexico oil spill has depleted the population of Atlantic bluefin tuna to the point that the food fish should be placed on the endangered species list.
The fisheries service will make a recommendation by May 24, 2011 - a year after The Center for Biological Diversity filed its petition. The center provided enough scientific information to warrant protecting the fish under the Endangered Species Act, the fisheries service said on its website in September.
Bluefin begin spawning in the northern Gulf of Mexico in April - when BP PLC's undersea well blew wild and began spewing millions of gallons of oil - and continue through June. By then, more than one-third of federal waters were closed to fishing because of that oil. The only other place bluefin are believed to spawn is the Mediterranean Sea.
"Any eggs or larva that happen to float into the oil would probably die," said the center's attorney, Catherine Ware Kilduff. Mating itself is stressful, so spawning adults would be more vulnerable to harm from the oil, she said.
Adult bluefin can cross the Atlantic in less than two months. Those spawning in the Gulf of Mexico, known as the western Atlantic population, then spread throughout the ocean, including rich fishing grounds along the East Coast.
The center and other environmental groups say bluefin had been headed for extinction long before the April 20 rig explosion that unleashed the spill, though other researchers counter that the fish's numbers remain strong. Numerous studies have been done on the bluefin's population, though few are universally accepted.
Molly Lutcavage, a professor at the University of Massachusetts and until recently director of the University of New Hampshire's Large Pelagics Research Center, said recent data showed a bluefin resurgence in the western Atlantic.
Catch numbers are a poor gauge of the tuna's population, added Lutcavage, who also is a member of the international commission that sets catch limits for Atlantic tunas.
"We can be out for days and days trying to catch bluefin to put satellite tags on them. If fish aren't biting, we don't get any," she said. "But our eyes and spotter plane and sonar show schools of fish available but not being caught."
The Center for Biological Diversity contends the western Atlantic bluefin population has fallen more than 80 percent from 1970 to 2007, mainly because of high demand on the sushi market, where it's known as "maguro." For instance, a 513-pounder was auctioned for $177,000 in January in Japan, the center said in its petition.
However, Mark Godfried of Gloucester, Mass., who works for tuna buyer Maguro America Inc., said fishermen are seeing more bluefin now than ever. He has fished tuna commercially for more than a decade.
He said Maguro America's boats are catching their quotas within three hours, and catching many small tuna, indicating a very large breeding population somewhere in the Atlantic.
The Center for Biological Diversity's petition is "just another attempt by environmental terrorists to cut down on the ability of American fishermen to make a living," he said.
Although small tuna seem "surprisingly abundant" in some areas this year, even a 25-pound tuna can swim thousands of miles, said Carl Safina, who has a doctorate in ecology and is co-founder of the Blue Ocean Institute, an environmental advocacy group in Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.
As for the large numbers, he said, "Fishermen always say they've shown up in huge numbers regardless of what the numbers are. I can't say that they have or have not," he said.
"Thirty or 40 years ago we would have had incredible fishing here in our area, and we generally don't see that any more. We haven't seen that for quite a few decades."
Both U.S. senators and three congressmen from Massachusetts say that European overfishing is the tunas' biggest problem, and that listing the fish as endangered in this country would hurt fishermen in Massachusetts.
"We should be looking for ways to help our fishermen get back on their feet so they can continue creating jobs and contributing to the New England economy instead of burdening our already-struggling fishing industry with even more job-killing regulations," U.S. Sen. Scott Brown said in a news release.
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Basra in southern Iraq has been transformed - thanks to oil - Guardian
For the five years that British forces camped on the Basra air base, the nearby city that they came to liberate remained a lethal tinderbox. Militias ran rampant; residents cowered. Services were medieval.
But a drive through Basra in mid-2010 reveals an entirely different picture. The despairing sprawl British forces left behind 16 months ago is now heaving with new money. Wide boulevards, once scarred with bomb craters and decades of putrid refuse are now full of new cars and touts hawking trinkets.
Three weeks ago something happened that few in Basra thought they would ever see – the reopening of the city's most recognisable landmark, the giant hotel dubbed the Sheraton, that has stood in ruin since April 2003.
The 250-room hotel – five-star by European standards – has been rebuilt, renamed the Basra International hotel, and redesigned by local architect Waad al-Radhi, who left the city two decades ago.
"This is very complicated and very costly," said Radhi, standing in the foyer of the hotel as work neared completion. "But we decided to make the best for this city."
Asked why he had come back at a time when central Iraq remains lethal and when a government has been unable to emerge from the country's third tilt at a democratic election, seven months ago, Radhi said: "When I have an opportunity to work here, the same standards, the same salary and priviliges which I can take abroad, why not work here. All our Iraqi experience will be back home when you can guarantee them life standards."
Outside the window, motorboats and fishing skips churn through the brown silt of the river. A freighter turned turtle off the city's main dock and bullet-strewn buildings on the foreshore are reminders that this was recently a city at war. But the hordes of garish shopfronts, rampant neon lights and streets teeming with shoppers and revellers also reveal a city that is embracing change. Another new four-star hotel across town is constantly full – mostly with foreign businessmen – and new car dealerships line most main roads.
Nationwide security reports released daily since January constantly demonstrate that southern Iraq has evolved from a war zone to a benign place where weeks often go by without a single shooting, or bombing.
Violence has not stopped completely and more than 50 people were killed during a day of bombings in early August. But the contrast to the rest of Iraq is marked.
"We are flourishing this year," said mobile phone salesman Irfa Abbas Khudier, in front of a row of fake iPhones inside his downtown Basra stall. "Incomes are up, the people are feeling better, the jobless are finding work and many foreign investments have started."
This cruel and desolate city seems to have found a softer edge, where the trappings of the west and even foreigners who come to revel in the spoils are suddenly welcome. Against many expectations, Basra is steadily being transformed into a Mini-Me of the Kurdish city in northern Iraq, Sulaymaniya. There is one common denominator between them – oil and the flush of wealth it has brought.
The first round of oil auctions in Iraq last year cast Basra as potentially the largest beneficiary of the move to lure foreign investors to untap Iraq's vast amounts of underground black gold. But it was a projection that those who had lived through nothing but worst-case scenarios found difficult to believe.
"Visitors come here and say they don't recognise Basra anymore," said Firas Mohammed, who opened a cosmetics centre late last year. "I left for two years from 2006 and I returned to open my business. It is already going very well and will be much better very soon. This was the city of nightmares. Now shops are open until midnight and families are playing in new fun parks."
Throughout the centre of the city, several hundred shops have opened in recent months, selling anything from Turkish shawls, Gulf fragrances and Lebanese sweets. Fun park rides compete for space along riverside parklands that were deserted for most of the past five years. Even the riverboat restaurants are plying a trade of sorts, serving fried food on rusting decks that had been empty since 2004.
The deep south had been persecuted throughout Saddam Hussein's totalitarian regime, during which he viewed the predominantly Shia Muslim population as proxies of his mortal foe, Iran.
Oil pipes, roads, and other services had not been updated since the 1960s. Many Basra suburbs did not have sewage lines. Most had next to no electricity, or hope that things could ever get better.
This hardly dissuaded the global oil giants who flooded into town once the first round of contracts were awarded last August. In their wake came hundreds of smaller outfits on the hunt for service contracts, as well as prospectors and carpet baggers. BP and the Chinese oil giant CNPC are setting up camps at the huge North Rumaila oilfield north of town and Exxon Mobil are digging in in the nearby Majnoun field.
Wedged into the ground 40-70 metres below their feet is around 40% of Iraq's oil, a resource that could eventually transform the economy into one of the world's leading economic powerhouses. "This is potentially the fourth biggest oilfield in the world," said Gary Jones, BP's director of operations in North Rumaila. "The intention is not just to create a spike but to build production to nearly triple capacity."
Immense amounts of infrastructure, drills, turbines and rigs, are being brought on to Rumaila and Jones says the consortium is on track to increase the production of barrels per day by 10%, from 1.045m to roughly 1.2m by the end of the year. The nationwide barrel per day optimum is 2.5m, but Iraq's collective oil output has so far reached only 80% of that.
Jones says that any excess electricity generated by North Rumaila could be sent down the line to Basra city, which is reeling under the effects of a catastrophic under-supply of national grid power that has seen most homes in the centre and south of the country reduced to around four hours of government supplied electricity per day – most of it too weak to run air conditioners to ward off staggering summer heat. Yet from his Baghdad office, oil minister Hussein Shahristani is presiding over one of Iraq's few success stories and he likes what he sees. "I have always had a soft spot for the Shias of the south," said Shahristani, himself a Shia Muslim. "What is happening down there is truly remarkable.
"We know that we cannot start a proper rebuilding programme without the oil sector," he said. "That's why we were so committed to making sure we attracted the oil companies and we are very pleased with the results.
Elsewhere in Iraq, however, the Shia revival is being seen as part of a Persian-led conspiracy that will enrich the Shia south at the expense of the already disenfranchised Sunni centre of Iraq. Development in the rest of Arab Iraq remains paralysed by a political stalemate, which has stirred the ghosts of the sectarianism that tore the country apart not long ago. In Basra, there is little mood to spread the wealth around. "We have had it very tough here for so long and it is now our time to prosper," said the chairman of the Basra provincial council, Jabbar Jaber al-Latif. "I can now say that we are into the first step to change Iraq and especially the south. To turn infrastructure around we will need a long time and a lot of money - but this is a start."
There is still though a fear that the dark days could easily return and that anarchy will never be far away. Iranian influence remains strong, the rule of law feeble and, despite the calm, a belief prevails that the militias that have downed tools are going with the flow for now – not changing their ways for good.
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Offshore Wind Power: Cleaner, Cheaper, More Jobs Than Oil - EnergyMatters
A recent report from the U.S has found that focusing investments in that country on offshore wind power would be cost effective, generate more jobs and be better for the environment and ocean than offshore oil and gas exploration and development.
The study from Oceana says offshore wind can generate nearly 30% more electricity than offshore oil and gas resources combined while costing around USD $36 billion less than offshore oil and gas production. Additionally, approximately three times as many jobs per dollar invested could be created than in fossil fuel production.
New Jersey, Virginia and South Carolina could supply 92%, 83% and 64% respectively of their current electricity generation requirements with offshore wind. In each state, wind energy could provide more power than the states currently get from fossil fuels.
On the Atlantic Coast alone, the United States could install at least 127 gigawatts of wind power, creating between 133,000 and 212,000 jobs annually - more than triple the jobs that new offshore oil and natural gas development is expected to create.
The U.S is yet to install any offshore wind farms and Europe is currently the leading supplier of offshore wind turbines. Oceana points out that building a domestic manufacturing base would allow related investment to stay within the nation's shores and also allow the U.S. to become an offshore wind technology exporter.
An interesting aspect of the study is that it is based on conservative assumptions for offshore wind and generous assumptions for offshore oil and natural gas.
The group also says a small fraction of U.S. renewable energy resources is enough to provide power for the nation the country several times over.
Oceana is the largest international organization focused solely on ocean conservation.
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OPEC May Maintain Quota After Saudi Says Market ‘Well-Balanced’ - Businessweek
OPEC may leave oil production quotas unchanged when it meets in three days after Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi described the market as “very well- balanced” between consumers and producers.
Asked by reporters as he arrived at his hotel in Vienna late today if an increase in supply was needed this year, al- Naimi responded, “I just said the market is very well balanced. Everyone is happy with the market. Consumer, producer, everyone is happy.”
Members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries are all exceeding their quotas after prices surged 78 percent in 2009 and a further 3.6 percent this year. Naimi said oil between $70 and $80 a barrel “is an ideal price.”
Saudi Arabia is OPEC’s largest producer, pumping 8.25 million barrels a day in September, based on Bloomberg News estimates. Fuel demand in the U.S., the world’s biggest oil consumer, dropped 6.4 percent to 18.5 million barrels a day, according to the U.S. Energy Department, the biggest weekly decline since 2004.
“I don’t think there will be any shift” in quotas by OPEC, Qatari Oil Minister Abdullah al-Attiyah said in an interview yesterday after meeting in Kuwait with ministers from Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf nations. “Producers and consumers are happy” with current oil prices, he said.
Growth in oil demand will be uneven next year, with the International Energy Agency forecasting a 4.3 percent increase in China and a 0.8 percent reduction in Europe’s five biggest countries. OPEC members, which supply 40 percent of the world’s oil, meet Oct. 14 at the group’s headquarters in Vienna.
“We are comfortable with the whole market today,” Naimi said at the Grand Hotel. “The situation in the market is very comfortable. The economic growth of the world has been remarkable in 2010.”
Crude for November delivery lost 45 cents, or 0.5 percent, to settle at $82.21 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange today. Prices increased 1.3 percent last week in the third consecutive weekly gain, the longest stretch since June.
“OPEC wants oil to be around the $80-$100 a barrel bracket, as to risk higher prices may damage the fragile recovery,” said Rebecca Seabury, an analyst at Inenco Group Ltd., a London-based energy consultant. “Although production levels are currently above quota levels, it is unlikely that quotas will be changed unless we see some very strong signs of growth in the economy.”
While China’s gross domestic product will grow 8.9 percent in 2011, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey of 24 economists, the poll shows growth of 2 percent for Germany, Europe’s biggest oil-consumer.
OPEC agreed to a record 4.2 million-barrel-a-day cut in production in late 2008 as global demand fell 0.6 percent, the first decline since 1983. Members are now adhering to about 53 percent of that cut, OPEC Secretary-General Abdalla El-Badri said on Sept. 14.
OPEC has raised production 5 percent from a five-year low in March 2009, and now exceeds its own target by 1.9 million barrels a day, about the same amount as Angola produces. Output from the 12 members was 29.1 million barrels a day in September, according to Bloomberg estimates.
Demand for OPEC’s crude will decline from 29.3 million barrels a day in the third quarter of this year, to 28.6 million in the first quarter of 2011, before recovering thereafter, according to IEA calculations, which take into account world consumption and non-OPEC supply. The Paris-based agency’s next monthly report is due on Oct. 13.
“We don’t want to rock the boat and do something that maybe will have a negative effect on the world economy,” OPEC’s El-Badri said in a Sept. 14 Bloomberg Television interview from Vienna.
West Texas Intermediate crude, the U.S. benchmark grade, will average $85 in 2011, according to the median of 23 analysts forecasts in a Bloomberg News survey this month. All of the respondents said OPEC will leave production targets unchanged when oil ministers meet this week.
OPEC may still seek a higher price for its oil given that the dollar is weakening because of speculation the Federal Reserve will sell bonds to revive economic growth, said JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Oil is traded internationally in dollars.
The Chinese yuan last week climbed to its strongest level against the dollar since 1993. The Brazilian real has rallied for eight straight weeks against the U.S. currency, a decline that the country’s finance minister, Guido Mantega, last month called a “currency war.”
“If we continue to see what the Brazilian finance minister described as a currency war, it is likely that OPEC will take notice and will demand a higher price for its oil,” Merrill’s head of global commodity research Francisco Blanch said in an Oct. 7 interview in London.
OPEC’s 12 members are Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela.
Ministers will arrive in the Austrian capital today and tomorrow, and then hold informal discussions on Oct. 13 before their policy meeting the next day.
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