Archive for November, 2009

Format Change

Wednesday, November 11th, 2009

I’ve re-organized the categories to be more straight forward.

Now all news, interviews, commentaries from outside sources, will go in the category Our World.

All items that are general commentaries will go into Reflections. If it’s a story about a specific news item, it will go in Our World, if it’s a general commentary, it will go in Reflections.

Since we’re now entering into the decline phase of many key global commodities, there’s no real point in pretending that an economic grind down event is separate from oil price spikes and other raw material instabilities.

But mostly I’ll be writing about things I like to do, like backpacking, being out in nature, and so on.

I will try to present more overviews now and then, and will try to tie things together a bit for readers who might find their way here.

Best of luck to you in the future, but don’t expect the present or past to reproduce, it’s just not in the cards. Stay out of debt, that’s the best advice at this point, live within your means, whatever you may feel you are entitled to have, what you can afford is what you actually should have today.

Posted in General | Comments Closed

No doubt any longer the peak is here

Wednesday, November 11th, 2009

With the required denials, a leak from the International Energy Administration (IEA) confirms that not only is that agency fully aware of peak oil, it is being pressured by the USA to deny it is here to avoid full spread panic.

Among some of the more choice quotes:

“The IEA in 2005 was predicting oil supplies could rise as high as 120m barrels a day by 2030 although it was forced to reduce this gradually to 116m and then 105m last year,” said the IEA source, who was unwilling to be identified for fear of reprisals inside the industry. “The 120m figure always was nonsense but even today’s number is much higher than can be justified and the IEA knows this.

“Many inside the organisation believe that maintaining oil supplies at even 90m to 95m barrels a day would be impossible but there are fears that panic could spread on the financial markets if the figures were brought down further. And the Americans fear the end of oil supremacy because it would threaten their power over access to oil resources,” he added.

A second senior IEA source, who has now left but was also unwilling to give his name, said a key rule at the organisation was that it was “imperative not to anger the Americans” but the fact was that there was not as much oil in the world as had been admitted. “We have [already] entered the ‘peak oil’ zone. I think that the situation is really bad,” he added.

And there you have it.

(more…)

Posted in Our World | Comments Closed