Day: June 2, 2004

I felt compelled to post some blurble as it’s been a few days ….

I noticed how this Memorial Day holiday has now become a work day (I’m back in California briefly to fix visa screw up). Whatever happened to the parades and picnics on this day for remembrance? Next will be Labor Day, then Independence Day…. I guess corporate profit continues to win the day. The glut of patriotic war movies, celebrating (hm, glorifying) America’s finer moments is great for the testosterone and a salve for the on-going disaster happening in the Middle East. From across the Pacific, it’s hard not to wonder how more fucked up Iraq can be. How’s this for an SAT analogy question: Vietnam:1969 ; Iraq:2004. Hey, if the US can really withdraw after June 30th, then I’ll eat my words.

Is there any more proof needed that it’s the oil stupid? In the past few weeks, there’s been a slew of articles posted about the “oil situation”. Starting with Royal Dutch/Shell’s scandal where the company systematically overstated its oil reserves (gee, where have we heard this one before…Enron? Tyco? Worldcom-MCI?), IRAQ, record gasoline prices, IRAQ, OPEC, Saudi Arabia, IRAQ, Qatar decline oil production problems, China’s overheating economy, more Saudi Arabia (oops! Al-Qaeda), geez, did I mention IRAQ boys and girls? The real kicker though comes from all the recent news articles and commentaries about Hubbert’s Peak which states that oil production will decline rapidly after 2010. NY Press chimes in. Why is it always the older guys who come up with the good stuff? YC’s (borrowed) axiom of life — What’s old is new; what’s new is old.

In 1956, M. King Hubbert, an American geophysicist working at the Shell Oil research laboratory in Houston, came up with a startling prediction: Oil production in the United States would peak in the early 1970s, signaling the beginning of an irreversible decline in the domestic output of crude petroleum. This event would be merely the precursor of a peaking out of oil production on a global scale, signaling the onset of the end of the Age of Oil.

Almost every energy expert on earth rejected this thesis out of hand — until the early 1970s when, indeed, exactly that happened. Output of crude oil in this country peaked in the year 1970, and it has been falling ever since.

{…}

These scientists [Kenneth. S. Deffeyes and David Goldstein] have applied the same methodology developed by Hubbert in his analysis of the outlook for American crude oil output to world oil production. They have come to the conclusion that global output of crude oil now also is on the verge of peaking out and that when this happens, contrary to all expectations, the amount of crude of oil flowing into the world market will most probably begin fall by somewhere between 5 and 10 percent annually.

CBS Marketwatch’s Paul Erdman had an excellent analysis“Why the coming oil crisis will last”.

Guess good ol’ Hubbert gets the last laugh huh?

[Note: for the sake of fairness, see National Geographic’s contrarian article.]

OTOH, am I giving the US gov’t too much credit by saying that they knew this and so therefore manufactured a reason to invade a sovereign country on the pretext of “peace”? Hm, where have I heard this one before? US foreign policy in the Northern and Southern Hemisphere in the 19th and 20th centuries perhaps is a good start.

Oh right, Halliburton.

[Major mental mind-warp]

My on-going education continues rather frenetically in Taipei. To me, Scott Adams is brilliant, a present day Mark Twain. Dilbert’s May 20 cartoon is just side-splitting hilarious; cementing in my mind Adam’s genius in understanding the modern (and universal) work place and the human capabilities of stupidity.

=YC