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Re: Afternoon Open Thread

djchefron — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:13:24 -0000

peak oil?
Key oil figures were distorted by US pressure, says whistleblower
Terry Macalister

The world is much closer to running out of oil than official estimates admit, according to a whistleblower at the International Energy Agency who claims it has been deliberately underplaying a looming shortage for fear of triggering panic buying.

The senior official claims the US has played an influential role in encouraging the watchdog to underplay the rate of decline from existing oil fields while overplaying the chances of finding new reserves.

The allegations raise serious questions about the accuracy of the organisation's latest World Energy Outlook on oil demand and supply to be published tomorrow – which is used by the British and many other governments to help guide their wider energy and climate change policies.
'There's suspicion the IEA has been influenced by the US' Link to this audio

In particular they question the prediction in the last World Economic Outlook, believed to be repeated again this year, that oil production can be raised from its current level of 83m barrels a day to 105m barrels. External critics have frequently argued that this cannot be substantiated by firm evidence and say the world has already passed its peak in oil production.

Now the "peak oil" theory is gaining support at the heart of the global energy establishment. "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.

The IEA acknowledges the importance of its own figures, boasting on its website: "The IEA governments and industry from all across the globe have come to rely on the World Energy Outlook to provide a consistent basis on which they can formulate policies and design business plans."

The British government, among others, always uses the IEA statistics rather than any of its own to argue that there is little threat to long-term oil supplies.

The IEA said tonight that peak oil critics had often wrongly questioned the accuracy of its figures. A spokesman said it was unable to comment ahead of the 2009 report being released tomorrow.

John Hemming, the MP who chairs the all-party parliamentary group on peak oil and gas, said the revelations confirmed his suspicions that the IEA underplayed how quickly the world was running out and this had profound implications for British government energy policy.

He said he had also been contacted by some IEA officials unhappy with its lack of independent scepticism over predictions. "Reliance on IEA reports has been used to justify claims that oil and gas supplies will not peak before 2030. It is clear now that this will not be the case and the IEA figures cannot be relied on," said Hemming.

"This all gives an importance to the Copenhagen [climate change] talks and an urgent need for the UK to move faster towards a more sustainable [lower carbon] economy if it is to avoid severe economic dislocation," he added.

The IEA was established in 1974 after the oil crisis in an attempt to try to safeguard energy supplies to the west. The World Energy Outlook is produced annually under the control of the IEA's chief economist, Fatih Birol, who has defended the projections from earlier outside attack. Peak oil critics have often questioned the IEA figures.

But now IEA sources who have contacted the Guardian say that Birol has increasingly been facing questions about the figures inside the organisation.

Matt Simmons, a respected oil industry expert, has long questioned the decline rates and oil statistics provided by Saudi Arabia on its own fields. He has raised questions about whether peak oil is much closer than many have accepted.

A report by the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC) last month said worldwide production of conventionally extracted oil could "peak" and go into terminal decline before 2020 – but that the government was not facing up to the risk. Steve Sorrell, chief author of the report, said forecasts suggesting oil production will not peak before 2030 were "at best optimistic and at worst implausible".

But as far back as 2004 there have been people making similar warnings. Colin Campbell, a former executive with Total of France told a conference: "If the real [oil reserve] figures were to come out there would be panic on the stock markets … in the end that would suit no one."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/...

Re: NFL Open Thread

djchefron — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 20:49:30 -0000

Leave my cubbies out of this

Re: Sunday Open Thread

RobM — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 17:30:32 -0000

"Save your anger for the dummycrats who voted for that taliban abortion amendment and still voted against the bill"

Stop making Sense!

Re: NFL Open Thread

djchefron — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 16:09:57 -0000

Tampa bay might just get their first win.

Re: NFL Open Thread

Coby_D — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 14:59:33 -0000

Holding out hope for the Titans....but not much.

Re: NFL Open Thread

djchefron — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 14:40:56 -0000

Stick a fork in them.The bears are done. 31 to 7 WTF!!!!

Re: Sunday Open Thread

Guns3000 — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 13:59:55 -0000

I just like picking on progressives. What I probably should have said I'm tired of people trying to derail Barry for inconsequential issues when I think this President has an understanding on the generational problems and trying to fix them.

Re: NFL Open Thread

djchefron — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 13:27:31 -0000

The Bears cannot tackle

Re: NFL Open Thread

Mirandalynn — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 13:25:53 -0000

What?!?!?

Re: Sunday Open Thread

morphusBfly — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 13:24:54 -0000

A form of ghost writing is an accepted practice in medicine.

"With medical ghostwriting, pharmaceutical companies pay both professional writers to produce papers, and other scientists or physicians to attach their names to these papers, which are then published in a medical or scientific journal. These scientists or physicians often have little involvement in the research or the writing process."

Re: NFL Open Thread

djchefron — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 13:08:06 -0000

Tommie harris of the Bears just got ejected for punching a player. WTF

Re: Sunday Open Thread

djchefron — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 12:51:50 -0000

Kucinich is a true Democrat.He wanted single payer and wouldn't compromise.Save your anger for the dummycrats who voted for that taliban abortion amendment and still voted against the bill

Re: Sunday Open Thread

djchefron — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 12:47:44 -0000

Most progressives agree with a Palestinian state.That dog wont hunt

Re: Sunday Open Thread

djchefron — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 12:35:44 -0000

2,000-Year-Old Scrolls, Internet-Era Crime
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/ny...l?ref=ny...

Early one morning in March, the law banged on the door of an apartment on Thompson Street in Greenwich Village. Investigators had a warrant to arrest Raphael Haim Golb and seize his computer. He was caught red-handed.

Mr. Golb is, or was, a guerrilla fighter in a cyberbrawl over the Dead Sea Scrolls, a war about the origins of 2,000-year-old documents that has consumed the energy of academics around the globe.

He was being arrested for fighting dirty.

Mr. Golb is 49 years old and had 50 e-mail aliases. He used pseudonyms to post on blogs. Under the name of a professor he was trying to undermine, prosecutors charged, Mr. Golb wrote a quasi confession to plagiarism and circulated it among students and officials at New York University.

His purpose, the Manhattan district attorney’s office said, was “to influence and affect debate on the Dead Sea Scrolls, and in order to harass Dead Sea Scrolls scholars who disagree with his viewpoint.”

In the classic 1993 New Yorker cartoon by Peter Steiner, two dogs are perched in front of a computer screen. “On the Internet,” one says to the other, “nobody knows you’re a dog.”

For a while, no one knew that 50 different names in the Dead Sea Scrolls debate were the prolific Mr. Golb, a graduate of Oberlin College who has a law degree from New York University and a doctorate in comparative literature from Harvard (dissertation: “The Problems of Privacy and Trust in Modern Literature, and their Relation to the Idea of Freedom”).

In court papers filed last week, Mr. Golb’s lawyers argued that prosecutors were trying to criminalize the commonplace. Both sides in the Dead Sea Scrolls debate, they said, use “sock puppets” — fake identities — on the Internet to make it seem as if scores of people are arguing a point.

“These bloggers marshaled their legion of sock puppets to engage in intellectual combat with the sock puppets allegedly created by Raphael Golb and others,” the lawyers wrote.

No other creatures in the animal kingdom behave like this, not when the stakes are lower than food or mating or survival. And here’s a bonus: a thread of the Shakespearean runs through the case.

Mr. Golb’s father is Norman Golb, a professor at the University of Chicago and a critic of claims that the Dead Sea Scrolls were the work of a sect called the Essenes, thought to have lived near the Qumran caves where the scrolls were found. Professor Golb has suggested that the scrolls were actually the product of several libraries in Jerusalem and were taken to the caves around the time the city fell to the Romans in the year 70. This is not a dispute for the fainthearted. Golb the Son has taken up his father’s cause with all the vigor permitted by multiple Gmail accounts.

When he was arrested, Mr. Golb was asked by prosecutors if he wrote under the name “Charles Gadda,” one of the most visible Internet advocates for his father. He would not answer directly.

“They would say that my father is doing it or asking me to do it,” Mr. Golb said, according to court papers. “My father certainly never asked me to do anything of the kind.”

But he allowed that “Charles Gadda” was doing pretty well. “Do you realize that the Charles Gadda articles have been read by thousands of people?” Mr. Golb continued. “I know that, because I look at them, it says on them.”

The Internet is, of course, both gold mine and sludge pile, where people lie about their ages, their abilities, the world. The prosecutors say that by adopting all those false identities, Mr. Golb was trying to obtain a benefit, and so committed criminal impersonation, identity theft and aggravated harassment. But Mr. Golb’s lawyers maintain that there was no tangible benefit, and therefore no crime.

“Gaining an advantage in academic debate about the Dead Sea Scrolls is not the kind of benefit required by the law,” said Ronald Kuby, one of the defense lawyers.

But what about the injury Mr. Golb apparently tried to inflict on Lawrence H. Schiffman, the chairman of Judaic studies at N.Y.U.? Someone wrote from larry.schiffman@gmail.com to Professor Schiffman’s graduate students and dean, alerting them to an article that suggested he had committed plagiarism. Perhaps two things go without saying: The article was actually written under one of Raphael Golb’s pseudonyms, and Professor Schiffman has been critical of the theories of Golb père.

The defense claims that the e-mail messages were transparent parodies, and that in any event, injury to a reputation is a civil matter, not a criminal violation.

“He writes letters in my names in which I am admitting to horrendous offenses,” Professor Schiffman said Friday. “This is the rough-and-tumble of the Internet?”

That 1993 cartoon could use an update. On the Internet today, everybody knows you’re a dog.

Re: NFL Open Thread

djchefron — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 12:32:31 -0000

My Picks for this week
ATL over Wash
Chi over Arz
Bal over Cin
Hou over Ind
Jac over KC
NE over Mia
GB over TB
Car over NO Upset Special
Sea over Det
NYG over SD
Tenn over SF
Dall over Phi

Re: Sunday Open Thread

djchefron — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 10:01:45 -0000

And people wonder why religion is ridiculed.

Re: Saturday Open Thread

Guns3000 — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 06:35:38 -0000

Ask about gay civil rights in Saudi Arabia? I'm sure Muslim terrorists really appreciate you defending them. I hope they send you a check.

Re: Afternoon Open Thread

Town — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 04:02:54 -0000

Va progressives were not enthused with Deeds before he said that mess about opting out; the "opt out" statement was the last straw.

Don't get me started on the VA election. People were practically BEGGING Deeds to give them a reason to vote for him and not McDonnell. People in VA did not want McDonnell. McDonnell didn't really start getting over 50% of the vote in the polls until around the time Deeds said that opt out mess.

Deeds wasn't ready for Richmond. Now he can stay his ass in his little one-stoplight county where he belongs. (I'm not busting on his county, they actually do only have ONE stoplight).

Re: Afternoon Open Thread

GreenLadyHere — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 23:43:22 -0000

dj: WHEN did I send that PIC 2 U?? :>) LOL!!! :>)

Re: Afternoon Open Thread

djchefron — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 23:04:27 -0000

When 50 looks GOOD
http://www.deephousepage.com/forums/showthread....

Re: Saturday Open Thread

Plantsmantx — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 22:35:41 -0000

"You are calling people bigots for pointing out Muslim extremism."

It's obvious that he's calling people bigots not for calling out Muslim extremists, but for calling out...Muslims.

Re: Saturday Open Thread

djchefron — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 22:29:19 -0000

First dont call me boy I am not your boy or someone who kisses your ass.Second I have been to the middle east and who am I to dictate how they want to live their lives.Third who the fuck do you think you are.You know whats best on how people should live.Women here in this country are treated as second class citizens.Gays have their civil rights voted down and you presumed to think whats bests for another culture.You need to get your head out your ass and look at the rot where you live at before you play Kipling and spread the western way of life.

Re: Saturday Open Thread

Guns3000 — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 22:17:07 -0000

What logic are you talking about? You are calling people bigots for pointing out Muslim extremism. And I'm simply trying to explain to you that it exists and it's NOT ALL because of US foreign policy. Some of the them want to destroy us because we are "infidels." And they don't like westernized culture.

I've been to the middle east the woman over there are treated like fucking property. They kill women for simply having pre-marital sex or having a boyfriend. And your dumbass is excusing it. Get off the computer and get your passport stamped. See the world boy and get back to me. Stop your talking points from the Daily Kos.

Re: Saturday Open Thread

djchefron — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 22:13:43 -0000

Explain your logic when we bomb villages and a mother has to bury her child.Explain your logic when we use depleted uranium shells and the cancer rate goes up in Samaria.Look there are no saints we all are devils.

Re: Saturday Open Thread

Guns3000 — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 22:08:42 -0000

Explain your logic to the innocent women and children that are injured in terrorist attacks. You know Muslim terrorist kill other Muslims. I guess that's because of US of foreign policy as well. My friend in Pakistan doesn't send his children to public places because a bunch of animals are corrupting his religion.