All you idiots who blithely repeated the publishings of Exxon sponsored anti global warming / climate change groups as if you were doing some kind of ‘critical thinking’ are going to have to go out and find new flakes to listen to, sorry to give you the bad news…

Due to some shareholder pressure, primarily from the Rockefeller family, Exxon has agreed, finally, to stop funding some, but not all, note, of it’s anti-global warming pseudo researchers

The oil giant ExxonMobil has admitted that its support for lobby groups that question the science of climate change may have hindered action to tackle global warming. In its corporate citizenship report, released last week, ExxonMobil says it intends to cut funds to several groups that “divert attention” from the need to find new sources of clean energy.
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The ExxonMobil report says: “In 2008 we will discontinue contributions to several public policy research groups whose position on climate change could divert attention from the important discussion on how the world will secure the energy required for economic growth in an environmentally responsible manner.”

Nine groups have reportedly lost the company’s support, including the George C Marshall Institute, the Washington DC-based think tank that asserts there is no scientific consensus on climate change, and that changes in the sun, not greenhouse gases, could be responsible for rising temperatures.
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Greenpeace says ExxonMobil continues to fund over “two dozen other organisations who question the science of global warming or attack policies to solve the crisis.”
Exxon to cut funding to climate change denial groups, The Guardian, May 28 2008

Remember, for profit corporations have one and only one interest: profit, aka, maximizing shareholder value. This is their essence, and the only way they will change is if you force them, through legal means, or pressure like this shareholder action. Exxon never believed this crap, they simply, and correctly, see the need to cut CO2 emissions as a business expense that they would like to avoid. So they spend a pittance funding these intellectual whores who have made a career out of denialist pseudo-science.

Next time you hear some idiot spouting some nonsense that helps a huge corporation ‘maximize shareholder value’ by disseminating lies and half-truths, try to not fall for it, ok? I’m thinking of a few people I’ve heard repeat this crap as if they were actually being ‘critical’…. far too many people, in fact…

Here’s some thoughts from people interviewed about high fuel costs in Europe from a recent article in The International Herald Tribune

“This concerns everyone who drives,” Schneberger said. “And that makes a lot of angry people.”
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“Crude was our life and we didn’t know that everything depended on it,” said María José Aragón, a 56-year-old government worker in Madrid. “Groceries have gone up 20 to 30 percent. A loaf of bread that used to cost 30 cents now costs 55 cents.”
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“The prices are nightmarish,” said Arutsun Hachaturyan, the manager of a jewelry business, who said he pumps about $1,200 in gas a month into his black Range Rover. “This is Russia,” he said, while filling his tank at a Moscow gas station. “We live on oil.”
International Herald Tribune, Social pain of rising fuel costs spreads in Europe, May 29, 2008

At some point, who knows when, who knows how it will happen, governments are going to have to start understanding that our population depends on the oil that has now peaked. The adjustments will not be trivial. How will they explain this reality to them? The premise was that everything depends on cheap oil, and that premise is fast proving itself to be correct. And Europe is far better equipped to handle high fuel costs than the USA.

A very informative piece in the oil drum about how crude oil is refined, in terms of light sweet versus heavy crude, how much of each product (gas, gasoline, diesel, bunker fuel, etc) they get from each type, using different refining technologies.

This should help you understand a bit better how refineries are limited in the ratios of say gasoline and diesel / heating oil (‘distillates’ below) from every barrel. Keep in mind also, there is an energy cost to converting the heavier crudes which this article didn’t get into much, but the article’s comments did mention that question. Interesting stuff, well written, and informative, helps clarify the processes involved in creating our various fuels.

When a refinery purchases crude oil, the key piece of information they need to know about that crude, besides price, is what the crude oil assay looks like. There has been a lot of discussion here at various times about “light sweet”, or “heavy sour”, and how these qualifiers affect the ability of a refiner to turn these crudes into products. So, I thought it would be good to devote an essay to this subject, and discuss how different types of crude can affect a refiner’s bottom line.

Let’s compare light sweet oil to heavy sour oil by looking at a pair of assays:

Liquid Volume %	Generic Light Sweet	Generic Heavy Sour
Gas (Boiling Point to 99°F)	4.40	3.40
Straight Run (99 to 210°F)	6.50	4.10
Naphtha (210 to 380°F)	18.60	9.10
Kerosene (380 to 510°F)	13.80	9.20
Distillate (510 to 725°F)	32.40	19.30
Gas Oil (725 to 1050°F)	19.60	26.50
1050+ Residuals	4.70	28.40
Sulfur %	0.30	4.90
API	34.80	22.00

Table 1. Comparison Between Assays of Light and Heavy Crudes

Refining 201: The Assay Essay

I say, if we’re going to be addicted to, then run out of, this petroleum stuff, then let’s at least understand what the stuff is, and what it’s used for, and how it’s processed into all those fun compounds we’ve grown so overly fond of….

Another nice recent oildrum article, though ultimately unfullfilling, was Richard Heinberg’s Coal in the United States, an overview of US coal reserves. And, no matter what the long term survival of most species on this planet would prefer, we are going to end up using up as much coal as we can, no matter how badly it destroys our ecosystem. Why? Because we refuse to drop growth based economic systems feeding absurd desires and unrealistic expectations.

Ilargi posted a very thoughtful comment in the automatic earth, a response to a Der Spiegel article on the environment.

Sometimes it’s refreshing to read a straight ahead piece like this amidst all the talk about the economy, especially when you have to hear pretty much every mainstream media voice on the planet talk about the costs of not killing ourselves, ie, the economic costs of stopping growth, which is what this all really boils down to in the end.

As long as we keep stating the earth’s value in monetary terms, we are irrevocably doomed. If you accept that you come from, and belong to, the world around you, and understand that Darwin has delivered proof that (wo)man has come from all that has been before, that 90% of our genes are identical to those of our pets and so on, than putting a dollar price on plants and animals and rivers and skies is identical to putting a dollar price on your own life, and on your children and loved ones. Everything alive is a part of you. Dollars are not.

In our economic system, based on debt, credit and interest, the future value of everything under the sun necessarily gets discounted over time. That is because currencies lose their value over time. It’s also in our genes: we prefer what we have now over what we might have later. Our ancestors were the ones who focused on immediate threats. Those who focused on future ones, in general didn’t live long enough to procreate.

There is an economist in this article who says:
“Protecting diversity is much cheaper than allowing its destruction.”
He’s wrong, because of what I just said: all future values are discounted, so destruction is more profitable than preservation. This economist has never grasped the essence of his own chosen field.
What is the earth worth?, the Automatic Earth, May 27, 2008

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