By Nicholas K. Geranios
The Associated Press
SPOKANE — It may already be too late for the United States to avoid massive economic disruption because of a decline in worldwide oil production, an industry expert said yesterday.
Roger Bezdek, a consultant for the U.S. Department of Energy, told the Global Oil Depletion conference that it will take more than a decade to find alternative sources of energy if oil production reaches a peak, which may be imminent.
"No one knows when oil will peak," Bezdek said. "But if we wait until the peak, we will be in deep economic troubles for decades."
The conference was presented by the Thomas S. Foley Institute at Washington State University and painted a gloomy picture of a future in which there is increased competition for diminishing resources.
Bezdek said it will take the nation 10 to 15 years to deal with a decline in oil supply by finding alternative means to move people and goods. That time is needed to find substitute fuels and get higher fuel efficiency.
"It may be too late to avoid economic dislocations," he said.
Matthew Simmons, an investment banker who recently wrote "Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy," said the United States has been in denial about energy issues for decades. The nation has built its economy and lifestyle around an endless supply of cheap oil and now finds itself with stiff competition for oil from India and China, he said.
The recent hurricanes on the Gulf Coast have knocked a big hole in oil and natural-gas supplies, and it is unclear when those refineries will be back in production, Simmons said.
Herman Franssen, president of International Energy Associates of Chevy Chase, Md., said that two-thirds of the world's oil comes from the Middle East, which probably cannot increase its production very much.
He predicted that the situation in Iraq will remain unstable for years, and that oil production will not rebound to the levels of the Saddam Hussein-era for years.
He predicted that India and China within 20 years will need as much oil as the industrialized world now consumes and that prices will skyrocket.
Simmons said the U.S. should switch to moving more goods by railroad and ship, rather than trucks, to cut oil consumption. More workers should work from home to cut down on commuting, he said.
The nation should also grow more of its own food to cut down on imports, he said.
Simmons predicted there will be natural-gas shortages this winter because of the damage from hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
In the news today oil prices have reached two month lows. Even the market is clearly in the dark about what is really happening.
Friday, October 07, 2005
1918 and Now
The worst natural disaster in human history (killing more people than all the wars of the past century combined) was a flu pandemic in 1918. It struck America between mid September and mid November. And it was also a bird flu.
People who suffered from the flu had blood coming out of their eyes. And at the time, in order not to alarm people, many people were not informed about what was really happening.
People wrapped handkerchiefs around their noses to prevent the inhalation of these germs.
The best way to stay alive was to stay away from other people.
My own fear is that once the pandemic starts, people will basically be stuck wherever they are for months, perhaps longer. Thus if you are in a foreign country, without the support of family and many caring and supportive friends, you might find yourself in a real dilemma.
Fear is not useful though, unless it drives us to protect ourselves, to take action.
Catastrophic 1918 Pandemic Was Also A Bird Flu
Scientists discover there's more than one way to trigger a global outbreak
By MICHAEL LEMONICK
SUBSCRIBE TO TIMEPRINTE-MAILMORE BY AUTHORFighting the Flu: Tamiflu: The Perils of Relying on a Single Drug
TIME Asia: Jakarta's Flu Scare
Posted Thursday, Oct. 06, 2005
For two years now, public health experts have been nervously monitoring the progress of a virulent strain of influenza known as H5N1, which has killed 140 million birds, mostly in Asia. Humans catch it too—100 or so have been hospitalized with the illness worldwide, and about 60 have died—but since this flu doesn't pass directly from one person to another, it isn't a serious threat so far. If it mutates, though, to allow easy human-to-human transmission, scientists fear it could rival the legendary Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 and 1919, which ravaged the planet, killing more than 50 million people.
A series of papers published this week in the journals Science and Nature suggest that such a mutation is all too plausible. Working from snippets of tissue from victims of that long-ago plague—one from an Inuit woman buried in permanently frozen soil in Alaska, two others from autopsy samples taken from American soldiers who died in the Northeast—scientists from the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, the Centers for Disease Control and other institutions determined that the lethal Spanish flu was itself a bird flu that evolved to infect humans directly.
None of the tissue samples contained an intact virus, but the researchers used the fragments they found to recreate the lethal virus, which they tested in mice and on human lung cells to confirm its virulence. They discovered that the 1918 bug was different in one crucial way from the viruses responsible for the flu pandemics of 1957 and 1968, better known as the Asian and the Hong Kong pandemics. (A pandemic is a worldwide epidemic.) Those were human influenza viruses that had incorporated a few bird flu genes, but the 1918 virus was a bird flu that changed to permit more efficient human-to-human transmission. It wasn't that many changes, either. Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger, one of the investigators, estimates that it took only about 25 mutations to cause that change—not a very large number, considering that influenza viruses mutate relatively easily. (That's why at least one new strain appears nearly every year).
It isn't yet clear precisely which mutations are key to turning a lethal bird flu into a worldwide human health crisis. And it's by no means certain that H5N1 will make that deadly leap. But sooner or later, experts say, it will happen. That's why 65 nations are meeting today and tomorrow in Washington to try and figure out how to respond when it does.
"God, is that you?"
Millions of people endorse Bush (not only in America, but around the world) because they believe he is a real Christian, and thus an instrument of God's will. In particular, the Evangelical Revelations-focussed Christians are happy to have someone like that (an Evangelical) doing God's work across the planet. The imbedded philosophy of a Born Again Christian goes something like this: If God doesn't bring about the apocalpse, then, by God, we'll make it happen. We'll go to the Middle East, stir up trouble and kill them in their own neighborhoods. It's all part of God's Plan. And we will have the victory because we're His Chosen People. Makes sense.
Actually, it doesn't make a lot of sense. I don't sniff much in the way of a devine purpose behind all this. Bush's tactics have created a far more unstable world than before he was President. He's weakened his country, and every day more and more nergy and resources are divided and drained away from the Middle Class and the poor, and pumped into the pockets of a very select number of individuals.
And I don't smell anything good where a powerful country with thousands of WMD attacks a another country, ostensibly just because it (pretended, as it turned out) to possess a handful of WMD. Iraq maintained this posture to ward off an attack because without WMD it was extremely vulnerable to attack.
Now, having been attacked, guess who learned valuable lessons? Iraq's neighbor, Iran. I don't believe they are pursuing WMD but you could hardly fault them for doing so. Every country has a right to defend itself from outside attack. That doesn't include the right to attack.
Furthermore, al Qaeda is now operating in Iraq (which was not the case before 9/11). ...The highly classified operation involving the U.S. intelligence community and the U.S. military was carried out against suspected al Qaeda operatives south of Baghdad, CNN has learned from a well-placed U.S. military official.
Bush uses this as evidence to support the war in Iraq. He is stimulating more and more fervor, generating more terrorism in the name of 'the war on terrorism'. Interesting.
The good news is more than 10 attacks (three on US soil) have been foiled since 9/11. The last was a plot to bomb targets in Paris.
The bad news is, eventually, they'll slip through.
I'm pretty sure all the nonsense about the war on terror is just spin anyway. It's just a smokescreen for the US getting access to Middle East oil, and making sure the area is stable and secure. They're failing in that mission too. None are more surprised than the US military that the insurgency has been as resilient and tough an adversary as its been, and it continues to innovate and recruit. The US army is not gaining ground, it's losing ground. And Iraqi oil is not flowing out of the Gulf any faster than a few years ago.
You've also got to wonder (when you look at the content of Bush's policies over the years)whether Bush spells God like this: M-O-N-E-Y.
And that's not all. By emphasising 'America's God', you inflame the other one, in the Middle East. Yes, it shouldn't work that way. There ought to be one God for all, but everyone wants it to be theirs. We're not a civilisation that's famous for sharing, and that alone is our undoing.
In sport, as it is in war, it's childish for one participant (or group) to pray for support (victory) before a soccer match, or tennis match. Why do we start a war and make it God's business?
Should God listen to one person and not another? Should God make subjective judgements? God is not Santa Claus - we don't get gifts based on good behaviour. The victory will go to the candidate who is strategically stronger and better, who is dedicated to a Higher Reality - which ios a grand way of saying, who is of sound mind and ability (or what we could also call a Higher Technology, or Higher Philosophy) in terms of themselves, in terms of their opponent and in terms of having an intimate knowledge of the context that both will face. Knowing the playing field. Knowing the arena. In layman's terms, the guy who worked the hardest and has the deeper desire will prevail.
Faith only becomes relevant as it reflects on the faithful person. If you believe that God is a God of love, chances are, you will be a more loving person. You'll act accordingly. If you believe God is primarily about justice, then you will get excited at every chance to offer retribution and revenge.
What you believe, as a believer in God, you also believe in yourself, so that God can work through you (and you can do effectively do what God's given you the potential to achieve). In this sense, God is really another way of saying Nature Operating Through Our Being.
I don't know what Bush believes, but I suspect he is trying very hard to make up for the first portion of his life, which was not very successful. He is trying to compensate for this failure by extending himself in these days and years, by attempting to be a great and powerful President. He's trying to create a legacy, for himself personally, and for his country. He has not lived a legacy, so he has no idea how to lead one, or leave a legacy to his countrymen, or to others affected all over the world. People like you and me. This is why he is an important subject. When things unravel, and they will, we ought not to ask this futile question: How did it happen, or worse, Why did it happnen? We are part of why things happen in the world. At some level or other, we consent to the world the way it is, the same way we have approved our being wherever we are.
We are after all part of God, in the same way that a brick is part of a building. But while the brick is not a building, it can sort of 'feel like' what the rest of the structure is 'doing'. What you believe, as a believer in God, is vital to how that brick helps the building stand upright. If the brick thinks its a window, and gets all its friends to be the same, the building will be in serious trouble. What we believe, you see, changes our reality, and reality itself.
But I don't need to explain it to you, you already know it implicitly, or should. It's an ocean of consciousness that we all create, and can all reach, through prayer, or meditation but especially through original action and firsthand experience.
I believe Bush's belief system is very simple. And very young. He recently overcame his alcholism and 'found God'. He thinks this rescue has provided him with front row access to God. No, that's an obese person believing they are slim after their first exercise session. It's a long road, but obviously the first step is a major paradigm shift. But it's a mistake, to make that shift and then to claim full enlightenment. It's a process. It requires patience and humility It works forwards and backwards; it's also reversible. Bush is not going forwards with his beliefs, I am sad to say. Pride is a bitch.
I also wouldn't support a leader who surrounds himself with cronies and yes-men. I don't know about you, but a truly faithful, spiritual person (as opposed to a well intentioned delusional person) has one vital, and easily recognizable quality. It's a dedication to the truth. It's obvious that the war in Iraq was initiated on foundations of lies and deceit.
Mr Bush, I have a message from God. Hang on, just writing it down. Okay, here it is, open your ears now:
I get to decide who is good, and who is evil (for the record, no one is, because we're all in this together)
Thus, Love your enemies.
and Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will inherit this Earth.
And moreover: Stop namecalling. You do it to me and to yourselves. It's because you call me one thing and my people elsewhere call me something else that you're fighting.
You're going to end everything I've given you for that, unless you change your ways.
Listen, and begin to see the bigger things you're about to face.
You will need everything I've given you, and none of those things you give yourselves.
Now open your eyes.
.
Do you think he heard that?
Bush claimed God told him to invade Iraq, Afghanistan: BBC 2 hours, 40 minutes ago
LONDON (AFP) - US
President George W. Bush allegedly said God told him to invade Iraq and Afghanistan, a new BBC documentary will reveal, according to details.
Bush made the claim when he met Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas and then foreign minister Nabil Shaath in June 2003, the ministers told the documentary series to be broadcast in Britain later this month.
The US leader also told them he had been ordered by God to create a Palestinian state, the ministers said.
Shaath, now the Palestinian information minister, said: " President Bush said to all of us: 'I'm driven with a mission from God.
'God would tell me, 'George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan'.'
"And I did, and then God would tell me, 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq...' And I did.
This Is The World We Live In
While dinner was simmering, I listened with half an ear to an interview on Discovery's 'The Big Idea'. The host was speaking to some interesting young males who do what is called, Ultimate Fighting. While half the screen was filled with gut wrenching scenes of a man beating his fist into another man's nose, the other half was filled with a face explaining 'the purity' of the sport. Please. The way they respond to criticism, is to point out how many people die, or are paralysed in other sports, like Football. Celebrities like Pamela Anderson, Cindy Crawford and Iced T say they regularly go to watch Ultimate Fighting. Right, so they're off the list of credible popular personalities.
Ultimate Fighting is human cockfighting in the 21st century, broadcast by American television networks; it's an orgy of violence and blood. The people who are entertained by this sort of thing ought to sign up for the next War, and stay there.
In 1999 I met an interesting Scottish guy (who had a gorgeous blonde sister). This guy was nuts. He had a pile of videotapes, and on each one were Bloodsport type tournaments, training documentaries (men performing karate kicks while standing under waterfalls of melted snow) and violent Van Damme-type movies.
Small talk with him was him describing a punch, a move. Later he explained how, as a bus driver, he stopped a bus, got out and beat up a driver who was honking the horn behind the bus.
My impression was that this guy was always looking for an excuse to beat someone up, constantly training to prepare himself for those beatings, and in a perpetual state of healing from the last encounter. His knuckles were scabs, but I'm no longer clear if he got that in a brawl or from punching a plank in his back garden. He'd punch it ten times hard. I hit it once, half as hard, and then winced in pain.
There was something about him that I liked, but I mostly felt sorry for him. It seemed to me, that if everywhere you go you are ready for a fight, you're guarded and reactionary, ready to pounce on someone who knocks into you, or makes a comment, if that's what your focus is, then eventually you're going to find yourself in a fight you can't win.
Ultimate Fighters
Speaking of which, in Florida a Burmese Python (yes, not endemic to the area, probably the daughter of an escaped pet) swallowed an alligator. Once the alligator was in the python's stomach, it may have pawed and scratched as the stomach acid started chewing into its leathery flesh. Or perhaps it had a bad case of gas, producing the same burst-belly syndrome in the python as happened in a rotting Sperm Whale that exploded in a Taiwanese city not long ago. Whatever the case, both these monsters ended up dead.
Giant Squids have one mortal enemy, Sperm Whales. This is truly a battle of Titans. Adult Sperm Whales often carry cars and lacerations inflicted by the Squid's powerful arms, during these fierce battles.
And then there is Alien Vs Predator. The Alien looks like a hodgepodge of squid, prawn, spider, wasp and T-Rex. Predator looks like a hybrid crab-lizard-rastafarian.
Predator is the odds on favorite, until the Alien reaches the breeding phase. At that point, all bets are off.
None of these Ultimate Fighters are dumb enough to fight their own species though.
Sinead 'o Connor
And speaking of Rastafarians...
I once went to a concert in London (The Fleadh '98) with almost no money, just to watch Sinead 'o Connor perform. She was one of my favorite musicians when I was a teenager, and I didn't want to miss an opportunity to see her live. I even got thrown off the train (for failing to produce a valid ticket) between London and Reading. I managed to sneak backstage after the concert without a pass, and got to within a metre of Sinead. Watched her adding sugar to cups of coffee in her camper after the concert, until a woman beside me screetched: "SINEEAAAAD!" She looked up and looked right at me. I went back to Bristol a happy young man.
Today I saw her on a chat show, to promote her latest album, "Throw Your Hands Down". It's a new approach, because now she is singing with a reggae band. It works. But Sinead's lost her charm for me.
During the interview she removed her shoes, sat crosselegged, and alternately picked at her feet and massaged her bald head. She is a very strange woman with very strange habits. She says, "I knew God when I was born. I never had to search for him." That's fine, except she starts the interview by describing her boring existence (for its involuntary celibacy) and then her and her host indulge in a few minutes of suggestive repartee. She asks him, "is that a hicky you have on your neck." I'm not sure if I understand her, or what she stands for. Perhaps all she really wants is attention, epitomised by her bald approach. Attention is fine, unless you're a spoilt brat, a delinquent or just plain confused. She's a fine musician, and at least in her music, she appeals. Today in the bus I was wondering whether there was any point to these Sinead 'O Conner lyrics:
She took my father from my life
Took my sister and brothers oh
I watched her torturing my child
Feeble I was then but now I'm grown
What makes this bizarre is that the 'she' refers to her own mother.
A troubled childhood is one thing, but being a troubled child for the rest of your life is not something to admire. Here's another opinion...
Irish missed
by Felicity Monk
Singer, songwriter, priest, Rastafarian, mum, lesbian, twice-married and recently retired (again), Sinead O'Connor is easily one of the most interesting – and controversial – musicians around.
Born in Dublin in 1966, O'Connor had a troubled childhood. Her parents separated when she was eight and she went to live with her mother, whom she later accused of sexual and emotional abuse. Her father won custody of her when she was 13, but soon after she was sent to a school for girls with behavioural problems. A nun gave her her first guitar and started her on a path that would be life-changing.
O'Connor studied voice and piano at Dublin's College of Music, recorded her first album at 14, and had a deal at 17. She made her debut in 1987 with The Lion and the Cobra, but it was her follow-up album featuring Prince's "Nothing Compares 2 U" that brought O'Connor, then 24, international recognition.
The shaven-headed, doe-eyed beauty was never short on shock tactics and as a result was often the target of condemnation and negative press. In the past she has spoken in support of the IRA and widely criticised the Catholic church – she tore up a picture of the Pope during her 1992 performance on Saturday Night Live. Then there was the time she refused to sing at a New Jersey concert if "The Star-spangled Banner" was played prior to her performance, prompting Frank Sinatra to publicly threaten to "kick her ass". "I would have been honoured if he had kicked my ass," she told an American reporter in October last year, "and the fact he even mentioned my name is good enough for me."
In April, O'Connor announced her retirement from the music business. She declared that one of her final recordings was for a track on – wait for it – Dolly Parton's upcoming tribute album. Figures.
This article was published in 2003.
So I wonder whether I want to close my eyes and listen to her sing when I am not sure whether I still support a lot of her dogma.
Nobody's Perfect
We're not perfect, but surely there is a middle ground between Superman and Clark Kent, between Paris Hilton and Sinead 'O Connor.
We live in a sick and distorted society. I recently watched a documentary on the American comedian (Sam Kinison, Why Did We Laugh)who says, "Why do we send bags of rice to millions of starving people in deserts? Why don't we send them buses and suitcases and get them out of the desert? Get them to where the food is."
We live in a world of cargo pants, rap and nonsense. The trouble is, fewer and fewer people can tell what makes sense and what doesn't. But help is at hand. A series of Reality Checks are on the way to wake us all up.
Thursday, October 06, 2005
31/4 Wish I Felt Like This
Not feeling invincible today. Been churning out a lot of words (last night I produced a Business Plan Motivation for Mark Shuttleworth), and editing a lot, which has the unenviable side-effect of a buzzing mind. Good for writing, terrible for sleep as it doesn't shut down. Sleepwalking through todzzzzz...
Mr Kunstler, I have a question or two
(Part 1 of 10)
Does the Iraq war presage the kind of resource wars that you see in the future?
The Iraq war is not hard to understand. It wasn't an attempt to steal Iraq's oil. If that was the case, it would have been a stupid venture because we've spent hundreds of billions of dollars occupying the place, not to mention the lives lost. It was not a matter of stealing the oil; it was a matter of retaining access to it. It was an attempt to stabilize the region of the world that holds two-thirds of the remaining oil, namely, the Middle East.
We opened a police station in the Middle East, and Iraq just happened to be the best candidate for it. They had a troublesome dictator. They were geographically located between Iran and Saudi Arabia. So we went to Iraq to moderate and influence the behavior of the two countries --Iran and Saudi Arabia -- that are so important to us. We desperately wanted the oil supplies to continue coming out of them in a reliable way. So the Iraq venture was all about stabilizing the Middle East. It raises the obvious question: How long can the U.S. hope to occupy unfriendly nations? The answer is, not forever.
Is your basic critique of renewable energy that wind, solar and biomass all depend, to some extent, on fossil fuels?
That's one critique. I'm not trying to militate against them. We are going to use them. But we're not going to run the interstate highways and Disney World on them. Suburbia is not going to run on biodiesel. The easy-motoring tourist industry is not going to run on biodiesel, wind power and solar fuel. The point I would repeat is this: We don't know whether we can fabricate the components for these things absent a fossil-fuel economy.
My beef with the alt-fuel people is not the renewable or alt-fuel ideas themselves. Sooner or later, there's no question we're going to have to rely on them. For me, it's an issue of scale. As far as I can tell, we're much more likely to use these things on a very small neighborhood or town basis.
We're going to have to make tremendous readjustments in every aspect of how we live. Let me give you an example. One of the main characteristics of the suburbs is that everyone can lead an urban life in a rural setting. But land is simply not going to be available for suburban development anymore. So what we're going to see in the years ahead is the return of a much firmer distinction between what is urban and what is rural, between what's the town and what's the country. Because we're going to have to grow so much more of our food close to home, we're going to have to value rural land differently than we have for the past half century.
(To link to this article, click on the title above)
Honestly Charlize
Charlize Theron was on Jay Leno this evening. She seemed nervous. I think part of that is possibly because she must think of herself as an imposter. It's a very unnatural place for a South African Benoni girl to be - Hollywood I mean. It's even harder to walk the walk and talk the talk (she does both) and carry it off as though it's your own. Because it's not her own, she's not American and her first language is not the language she speaks (perfectly) on screen. She says she is not comfortable in front of a large audience, and Leno provides a clip where she does something quite bizarre. She is at an awards ceremony and walks off stage and between the audience to literally kiss the rear end (covered in a black dress of course) of Shirley MacLaine. As she walks back to the stage, Ms MacLaine gives her a friendly shove.
To explain this bizarre behaviour, Charlize explains that she took pain pills for a neck injury, and, when mixed with alchohol they produced...well, a high. Does she look high in the clip. Yes. Very.
Perhaps her nervousness has something to do with what happened recently to Kate Moss. Or maybe not. Charlize, in a beautiful sky blue dress with plunging V neckline, blinks beautiful blue eyes under wheat blonde hair. She can't remember that 'Frankenstein' is that monster with the bolts in his neck...she's trying to explain that she walked like him after injuring her neck. It's refreshing to see an actress of her calibre appear so...well, human. Do the guests on Jay Leno get prepped beforehand? If so, Charlize didn't prep very well for this appearance, but what shines through even brighter, I think, is her nature, and her charm.
Cue the next clip. I don't remember the name of the flick (the pictures above are for a sci fi movie called Neon Flux) but Charlize enters an assembly full of hicks, and she's, I guess, the chick hick. She seems to like these roles, and certainly plays them plausibly (as she did in Monster). The preview I saw of Neon Flux appears to be an exception to that statement; the special effects didn't seem very special, the film had an immediately artificial feel about it.
In the interview with Leno, Charlize talks about wanting to be 'honest'. I think the grittier roles suit her better than the Sharon Stone scripts, especially because they require more sincerity to portray. She has the background, one suspects, for her to be able to identify closely with some of the hardships of the 'common American'.
Whether she is nervous or not, it would be nice to see her portray herself as elegantly as the icon she is becoming. Nicole Kidman is no longer a work in progress in the sense that her style and identity is clearly etched in filmography by now. Kidman has that grace about herself, without losing her sense of humor. But Kidman is older, and wiser after her marriage. We will have to see what fortunes honesty will really bring to Charlize in Hollywood. I suspect she will need something sturdier than that to keep the dogs at bay, but the twinkle in her eye suggests she's well aware of that.
More Insights On An Old Topic
It still surprises me how reluctant people are to think or talk about this. But then people are very comfortable. We are. We like to employ almost no effort to get the things we want - everything is push button convenience. The idea of this lifestyle being threatened frightens us.
I've recently finished an article I've called Donkey Carts, Bicycles and Scooters, which is an attempt to paint the Oil Dilemma in a few broad strokes to a South African audience, for Heartland magazine. I really believe this message needs to be heard, so I am thrilled it's going into mainstream media. Well, Heartland isn't mainstream, but it's certainly more mainstream than this blog.
I'm even considering writing a book on this subject, and maybe doing a fialry informal tour, of school's and campuses to promote readiness and develop strategies and alternatives among our countries developing youth.
Here's why it's important to try to do something:
Trouble in the World's Largest Oil Field-Ghawar
by Glenn Morton
Copyright 2004 G.R. Morton. This can be freely distributed so long as no changes are made and no charges are made.
There are four oil fields in the world which produce over one million barrels per day. Ghawar, which produces 4.5 million barrels per day, Cantarell in Mexico, which produces nearly 2 million barrels per day, Burgan in Kuwait which produces 1 million barrels per day and Da Qing in China which produces 1 million barrels per day. Ghawar is, therefore, extremely important to the world's economy and well being. Today the world produces 82.5 million barrels per day which means that Ghawar produces 5.5 percent of the world's daily production. Should it decline, there would be major problems. As Ghawar goes, so goes Saudi Arabia.
The field was brought on line in 1951. By 1981 it was producing 5.7 million barrels per day. Its production was restricted during the 1980s but by 1996 with the addition of two other areas in the southern area of Ghawar brought on production, Hawiyah and Haradh, the production went back up above 5 million per day. In 2001 it was producing around 4.5 million barrels per day. There have been 3400 wells drilled into this reservoir
I have noted elsewhere that the data I am being told by engineers who have actually worked on Ghawar, that this decade will see it's peak. (Morton, 2004 PSCF in press). Others have noted how the percentage of water brought up with the oil has been growing on Ghawar. There are published reports that Ghawar has from 30-55% water cut. This means that about half the fluids brought up the well are water. Today the decline rate is 8%. Thousands of barrels per day of production must be added each year.
"The big risk in Saudi Arabia is that Ghawar's rate of decline increases to an alarming point," said Ali Morteza Samsam Bakhtiari, a senior official with the National Iranian Oil Company. "That will set bells ringing all over the oil world because Ghawar underpins Saudi output and Saudi undergirds worldwide production." JEFF GERTH, "Forecast of Rising Oil Demand Challenges Tired Saudi Fields," February 24, 2004 New York Times, Late Edition - Final , Section A , Page 1 , Column 3 www.peakoil.net/Newspapers/20040224NYTTiredSaudiFields.doc
Unfortunately for the world, few know the actual state of Ghawar. Cumulative production from the field is 55 billion barrels. In 1975 Exxon, Mobil, Chevron and Texaco estimated that the ultimate recovery from the field would be 60 billion barrels. Without a doubt, new technologies have moved EURs from that which was possible in the mid 1970s. But the Saudis claim that the field can recover another 125 billion barrels.(this info come from www.simmonsco-intl.com/files/IEA-SOM.pdf slide 25 accessed 7-5-04) For someone like me who has spent a lifetime in the oil industry trebling the recovery factor is a fantasy we all wish we could do. But no one has ever figured out how. Thus, I doubt very much their claims, especially in light of the maps shown below.
But this is what is happening
"Saudi oilmen are usually a taciturn bunch, guarding their data like state secrets. But this was post September 11 and Riyadh was wooing western journalists and trying to restore the Saudis' image as dependable, long-term suppliers of energy--not suicidal fanatics nor terrorist financiers. And it was working.
"Then the illusion slipped. On a whim I asked my hosts about another, older oilfield called Ghawar. It is the largest field ever discovered, its deep sandstone reservoir at one time had held perhaps one-seventh of the world's known oil reserves, and its well produced roughly one of every 12 barrels of crude consumed on earth. In the iconography of oi, Ghawar is the mythical giant that makes most other fields look puny and mortal. . . .
"At Ghawar,' he said, 'they have to inject water into the field to force the oil out,' by contrast, he continued, Shayba's oil contained only trace amounts of water. At Ghawar, the engineer said, the 'water cut' was 30%."
"The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. Ghawar's water injections were hardly news, but a 30% water cut, if true, was startling. Most new oilfields produce almost pure oil or oil mixed with natural gas--with little water. Over time, however, as the oil is drawn out, operators must replace it with water to keep te oil flowing --until eventually what flows is almost pure water and the field is no longer worth operating."
"Ghawar will not run dry overnight, but the beginning of the end of its oil is in sight." Paul Roberts, "New Tyrants for Old as the Oil Starts to Run Out, " Sunday Times (News Review), May 16, 2004, p. 8
If I pick up a sign and walk the streets with The End Is Nigh, do you think people will laugh at me? Will you?
Wednesday, October 05, 2005
31/3 Fluey and Seoul is The Worst City - or is it?
No time to say much except I feel feverish and thick headed, and tired. Feel tired standing in class, then when I sit down I still feel a sort've shortness of breath. Sharon is also sick. Saw her lying on her arms in the teacher's room. Not sure if I am going to swim tonight, even though I packed a bag and have it with me.
The Asia-Pacific region boasts some of the world's most liveable cities but also a number of the most wretched capitals on earth, according to survey results issued.
Vancouver in western Canada topped the global list compiled by research firm the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).
Melbourne came in second and three other Australian cities -- Perth, Adelaide and Sydney -- were in the top 10, with Brisbane at 11th place.
Also among the 10 best cities were Vienna, Geneva, Zurich, Toronto and Calgary -- making Canada and Australia the most liveable countries based on their representation in the top tier of the list.
Tokyo was ranked 16th and Auckland 20th along with Osaka, Kobe and Wellington. Hong Kong was ranked 41st while Seoul and Singapore tied for 54th place.
I don't agree. I thought Singapore was awesome, and although I only flew over Hong Kong, Hong Kong didn't really impress me much. Singapore did.
I wouldn't put Singapore and Seoul next to each other in a million years. Seoul's major drawback is that it is a major culture shock to Westerners (far more than Singapore), and of course, very high levels of pollution.
On the plus side, as large as Seoul is, it maintains a large village atmosphere, which is quite unique. And crime is virtually non existent. This would put Seoul above Johannesburg in my book. What Seoul needs to work on is utilising exciting design and doing something with the Han River waterfront.
The massive apartment blocks under construction could do with a little imagination too.
Having dinner at Corneli tonight. Fortunately I was given off my last class. I usually teach an extra 30 minutes on Wednesdays, but that was because Abraham Lincoln had to go home early (to his wife). Since he's been replaced, I'm back to finishing at 7pm. I certainly needed that today ;-)
The Asia-Pacific region boasts some of the world's most liveable cities but also a number of the most wretched capitals on earth, according to survey results issued.
Vancouver in western Canada topped the global list compiled by research firm the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).
Melbourne came in second and three other Australian cities -- Perth, Adelaide and Sydney -- were in the top 10, with Brisbane at 11th place.
Also among the 10 best cities were Vienna, Geneva, Zurich, Toronto and Calgary -- making Canada and Australia the most liveable countries based on their representation in the top tier of the list.
Tokyo was ranked 16th and Auckland 20th along with Osaka, Kobe and Wellington. Hong Kong was ranked 41st while Seoul and Singapore tied for 54th place.
I don't agree. I thought Singapore was awesome, and although I only flew over Hong Kong, Hong Kong didn't really impress me much. Singapore did.
I wouldn't put Singapore and Seoul next to each other in a million years. Seoul's major drawback is that it is a major culture shock to Westerners (far more than Singapore), and of course, very high levels of pollution.
On the plus side, as large as Seoul is, it maintains a large village atmosphere, which is quite unique. And crime is virtually non existent. This would put Seoul above Johannesburg in my book. What Seoul needs to work on is utilising exciting design and doing something with the Han River waterfront.
The massive apartment blocks under construction could do with a little imagination too.
Having dinner at Corneli tonight. Fortunately I was given off my last class. I usually teach an extra 30 minutes on Wednesdays, but that was because Abraham Lincoln had to go home early (to his wife). Since he's been replaced, I'm back to finishing at 7pm. I certainly needed that today ;-)
How Our Consumption Has Changed
We're getting our food faster, and on the run, and usually not making very sure what we're stuffing our faces with. How will Peak Oil effect our consumption? More on that later.
Takeout, curbside dining are on the rise
By Nanci Hellmich, USA TODAY
Americans are doing a lot more dashboard dining and takeout than they did 20 years ago, according to a new survey from a leading market research firm.
"People don't want to get out of their cars to get dinner," says Harry Balzer, a vice president for NPD Group. That's why upscale restaurant chains are offering takeout and curbside services, he says.
He says takeout meals are popular because they are cheaper than dining in a restaurant, and people get fresh food without shopping, cleaning and preparing it.
Many people are experiencing "fresh stress," he says. "They want fresh foods, but they don't have time to make it."
For more than 20 years, the NPD Group has tracked people's eating habits in their homes and at restaurants. The company has 40 different ongoing surveys, including one in which 3,500 people fill out a form daily about what restaurants they visited the day before. The findings show that people today:
• Eat about 32 restaurant-purchased meals a person a year in their cars, up from 19 meals a person in 1985.
• Get 57 takeout restaurant meals for home a person a year, compared with 33 meals in 1985.
• Order 22% of restaurant meals from the car, up from 14% in 1998.
• Buy about 27 restaurant meals a person to take to work, up from 23 meals in 1985.
• Eat about 80 meals a person at restaurants, down from 93 in 1985.
Supermarkets might have to follow the restaurant trend and offer curbside service, Balzer says. "At some point, they are going to have to knock a hole in the side of the wall and throw the rotisserie chicken out as you drive by."
Hudson Riehle, senior vice president of research for the National Restaurant Association, says the popularity of takeout probably will continue.
"Most restaurant operators report that takeout, which includes curbside, drive-through and delivery, represents a higher proportion of their total sales than it did two years ago."
From the consumer perspective, one out of five diners say they'd like to be ordering even more takeout. Women are especially likely to report that, Riehle says.
Many people are cooking less, partly because so many homemakers have entered the workforce, Balzer says. Other findings:
• Foods that are more likely to be a part of today's diet than in 1985 include sweetened cereals for breakfast, carbonated soft drinks for lunch and dinner and salty snacks.
• Dishes that are less likely to be part of today's diet than in 1985 include toast for breakfast, coffee for lunch, vegetables for dinner and carbonated soft drinks as a snack.
Takeout, curbside dining are on the rise
By Nanci Hellmich, USA TODAY
Americans are doing a lot more dashboard dining and takeout than they did 20 years ago, according to a new survey from a leading market research firm.
"People don't want to get out of their cars to get dinner," says Harry Balzer, a vice president for NPD Group. That's why upscale restaurant chains are offering takeout and curbside services, he says.
He says takeout meals are popular because they are cheaper than dining in a restaurant, and people get fresh food without shopping, cleaning and preparing it.
Many people are experiencing "fresh stress," he says. "They want fresh foods, but they don't have time to make it."
For more than 20 years, the NPD Group has tracked people's eating habits in their homes and at restaurants. The company has 40 different ongoing surveys, including one in which 3,500 people fill out a form daily about what restaurants they visited the day before. The findings show that people today:
• Eat about 32 restaurant-purchased meals a person a year in their cars, up from 19 meals a person in 1985.
• Get 57 takeout restaurant meals for home a person a year, compared with 33 meals in 1985.
• Order 22% of restaurant meals from the car, up from 14% in 1998.
• Buy about 27 restaurant meals a person to take to work, up from 23 meals in 1985.
• Eat about 80 meals a person at restaurants, down from 93 in 1985.
Supermarkets might have to follow the restaurant trend and offer curbside service, Balzer says. "At some point, they are going to have to knock a hole in the side of the wall and throw the rotisserie chicken out as you drive by."
Hudson Riehle, senior vice president of research for the National Restaurant Association, says the popularity of takeout probably will continue.
"Most restaurant operators report that takeout, which includes curbside, drive-through and delivery, represents a higher proportion of their total sales than it did two years ago."
From the consumer perspective, one out of five diners say they'd like to be ordering even more takeout. Women are especially likely to report that, Riehle says.
Many people are cooking less, partly because so many homemakers have entered the workforce, Balzer says. Other findings:
• Foods that are more likely to be a part of today's diet than in 1985 include sweetened cereals for breakfast, carbonated soft drinks for lunch and dinner and salty snacks.
• Dishes that are less likely to be part of today's diet than in 1985 include toast for breakfast, coffee for lunch, vegetables for dinner and carbonated soft drinks as a snack.
A Treadmill That You Just Can't Keep Up With
The only hope for meeting growing world demand for oil is to tap Saudi Arabia's reserves. A Bush advisor on energy says those reserves don't exist.
By Kevin Drum
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As recently as a few years ago, only two groups of people were interested in the arid subject of oil depletion. The first was Texas oil moguls and their lobbyists who roamed the halls of Congress searching out ever juicier tax breaks from our elected representatives. The second was a tiny group of cranks and conspiracy theorists who not only wrote for Scientific American but also frequented the sparsely inhabited corners of the Internet and begged the world to pay attention to the obscure topic of “peak oil”—whether the world wanted to pay attention or not. Fast forward to 2005, and the oil moguls haven't changed much. The peak oil cranks, on the other hand, are cranks no longer. In fact, they've practically become rock stars. Half a dozen books on the subject have come out in the last two years, and magazines from Rolling Stone to National Geographic also have published articles on the subject. The “end of oil” is suddenly a hot topic.
It's not hard to understand the change. As the 1990s came to a close, the world was awash in oil. Oil company executives counted themselves lucky to get 10 bucks for a barrel of crude oil, and analysts were predicting that even this price might be cut in half. Forever. When former oil executive Colin Campbell, the dean of the peak oil doomsayers, warned that the end of cheap oil was only a few years away, he was easy to dismiss. After all, hadn't he said the same thing five years before? And five years before that?
More generally, we could consider the consistently dismal track record of other resource pessimists. Didn't professional doomsayer Paul Ehrlich make a bet with economist Julian Simon in 1980 that the prices of five different metals would rise over the next decade? And wasn't he forced to pay off Simon in 1990 as steadily increasing supplies combined with more efficient manufacturing techniques had cut prices in half? Yes and yes.
Today, though, things look very different. Royal Dutch Shell shocked investors last year when it unexpectedly announced that it was slashing its estimate of proven reserves by 20 percent. The price of oil has climbed dramatically since 9/11, passing $50 per barrel for the first time since the Ayatollah Khomeini touched off the world's last oil shock in 1979. At the same time, the demand for oil continues to rise inexorably, fueled by ever bigger SUVs in the United States and steadily growing appetites for Western standards of living in China and India. More than a few mainstream analysts believe that oil prices could hit $100 per barrel in the next several years.
None of this comes because we're literally running out of oil. Everyone agrees that there's still plenty left. Rather, the theory of peak oil derives from a simpler but less widely understood question: How fast can the stuff be pumped out of the ground? Right now, the world consumes oil at the rate of about 84 million barrels per day (bpd), and that's the number which matters. If the world's oil suppliers can continue to increase this production rate as demand grows, the global economy is in good shape. If they can't, we're in trouble no matter how many barrels of crude oil are lying under the ground.
Nor is this phenomenon unique to the continental United States; most oil fields peak and decline in the same way. Prudhoe Bay peaked in 1989. The North Sea peaked in 1999. China's massive Daqing field probably peaked a year or two ago. They're all still producing oil, but they produce less and less every year.
No less an authority than that legendary curmudgeon-cum-oil magnate T. Boone Pickens thinks this is clear evidence that world oil production has already peaked. “Global oil [production] is 84 million barrels [per day],” he told a conference of alternative-fuel advocates in May. “I don't believe you can get it any more than 84 million barrels. I don't care what Abdullah, Putin, or anybody else says about oil reserves or production. I think they are on decline in the biggest oil fields in the world today, and I know what it's like once you turn the corner and start declining. It's a treadmill that you just can't keep up with.”
Pickens's view is typically colorful, but it's not shared by everyone. Hard data is surprisingly rare in the oil industry, and production forecasts range all over the map, but if forced at gunpoint to provide a firm answer, most mainstream analysts would probably hazard a guess that oil production will peak in 10 or 15 years at around 100 million bpd. The problem is that when such forecasts are broken down, they start to look decidedly shaky. Where are we going to come up with 16 million bpd of new production?
To begin with, oil is found only in certain specific types of geological formations, and we already know where they all are. And while it's true that there are still many of these formations left to explore, recent history suggests that most will produce only modest amounts of oil. Of the hot prospects of the '90s, for example, probably only Kazakhstan's fields have lived up to expectations, while fields in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caspian Sea have been disappointments. Despite the marriage of huge amounts of money with the finest available advanced technology, it's likely we've already found most of the world's truly big oil fields. The rate at which new oil is discovered has been dropping steadily for four decades, and there's no good reason to think that's going to suddenly turn around in future decades.
The same is true of other prospects touted for the future. There might be lots of oil in the Arctic or in the deepwater off the coasts of Africa. There are also tar sands in Canada and heavy oil in Venezuela. But even if they pan out, projects like these take years—or decades—to develop, are likely to produce at modest rates, and, in the end, will do little more than replace declines from older fields elsewhere in the world anyway. We're still looking for 16 million bpd of new oil.
For that, we have to look toward the Middle East. But if you dig around in the details, it turns out that prospects there are surprisingly thin as well—except in one place: Saudi Arabia. In fact, widely respected oil projections share a common feature: They assume that Saudi Arabia, which today produces about 10 million bpd of oil, will be able to double its oil production over the next decade or two.
This is the elephant in the room, and it's something that nearly everyone agrees on. If Saudi Arabia can't double its output, there's not much hope that worldwide oil production can increase very much either. In the end, it turns out that everything hinges on Saudi Arabia.
The problem is that projecting the capacity of Saudi oil production is a tough nut. Ever since the Saudis took control of their national oil company, Aramco, from Western oil companies in 1980, a shroud has dropped over every facet of the kingdom's oil industry. The Saudis release no official data on how their aging fields are holding up, or how well their exploration efforts are going, and their published production totals may not be credible, let alone how much they will be producing a decade from now. As with most OPEC members, Saudi claims of proven reserves have increased steadily since 1980, but most analysts agree that these numbers have been manipulated upward for political reasons related to OPEC production quotas and bear little relation to reality. For oil industry experts, Saudi Arabia is a gigantic black hole, a target of guesswork, not analysis.
After 9/11, however, things began to change. Reeling from American revulsion at the discovery that 15 Saudi nationals led by the son of a Saudi billionaire had carried out the attacks, Saudi officials began a charm offensive. In an effort to demonstrate their bona fides as a reliable—and necessary—American ally, the Saudi oil ministry began inviting oil analysts over for tours of its facilities. And although they hardly became models of transparency, they did start releasing more detailed production data than they had in the past.
In retrospect, this effort may someday be viewed as one of the most disastrous PR campaigns in history. Far from reassuring everybody, a closer look at the Saudi oil industry caused some analysts to lose hope altogether. In The End of Oil, published last year, Paul Roberts recounted his visit to Saudi Arabia: “I was standing on a sand dune in Saudi Arabia's 'Empty Quarter,' the vast, rust-red desert where one-quarter of the world's oil is found, when I lost my faith in the modern energy economy.”
Peculiar as it sounds, Roberts's problem wasn't with Saudi Arabia's oil, it was with Saudi Arabia's water. In most large oil fields, including all of Saudi Arabia's, oil is forced to the surface by the natural pressure of the reservoir itself. In order to keep this pressure up as more and more oil is extracted, water is injected back into the reservoir.
This standard part of oil field maintenance still carries a cost: Eventually the injected water seeps into the oil itself, and the stuff that makes it to the surface becomes increasingly contaminated. That's perfectly normal, but what prompted Roberts's dismay was the discovery that at Saudi Arabia's Ghawar field, the biggest oil field in the world, the percentage of water mixed in with the oil is now 30 percent. That's a dangerously high level.
Another analyst who made the post-9/11 pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia was Matthew Simmons, an advisor to Dick Cheney's energy task force and a one time contributor to George Bush's energy plan during the 2000 campaign. An investment banker who has specialized in the energy industry for 30 years, Simmons visited Saudi Arabia for six days in 2003 as part of a U.S. energy delegation and, like Roberts, came away skeptical. Could Saudi Arabia really double its production rate over the next decade? For that matter, could it increase its production rate at all? Or had Saudi production already peaked?
His interest piqued, Simmons turned to perhaps the most honest available resource about Saudi Arabia's oil industry: The over 200 technical papers written since 1961 by Aramco (and then Saudi Aramco) engineers and managers and published by the Society of Petroleum Engineers in Richardson, Texas. Simmons admits that this is a very small keyhole through which to peer in order to estimate the true state of the Saudi oil industry, sort of like trying to decode Linear B from only a couple of slabs. Still, he is convinced that the reports, especially the more recent ones on which he primarily relied, present a consistently disturbing picture. The result of his analysis is Twilight in the Desert, whose title summarizes his conclusion: He thinks Saudi oil production—and therefore world oil production—is in a lot more trouble than anyone is letting on.
Once again, water is at the core of the critique. Of Saudi Arabia's 10 million bpd of oil, about 90 percent comes from a mere seven giant fields, all of them old. Ghawar, a uniquely gigantic field which all by itself accounts for more than half of Saudi Arabia's output, has been in production since 1951. A massive water injection program was begun in the early '60s, and today more than 7 million barrels of seawater are required daily to keep Ghawar going. Even at that, though, the best evidence indicates that Ghawar's production may have already begun declining.
Simmons presents a considerable amount of engineering evidence to back up his contention that Ghawar's best days are drawing to a close—and then, just as the lay reader is ready to scream for mercy, does the same in minute detail for Saudi Arabia's other major fields. In fact, Twilight in the Desert is more monograph than book, a detailed and technical assessment that's heavy on references to permeability (delightfully measured in millidarcies), the Arab D geological formation, rock homogeneity, oil-water contact planes (Ghawar's being mysteriously tilted), reservoir fractures, and more.
Fundamentally, though, Simmons's argument can be broken into two parts. The first and most detailed is a contention that Saudi Arabia's mainstay oil fields may have already passed their production peaks and are unlikely to ever supply more oil than they produce right now.
The standard response to this argument is that new technologies are allowing us to extract ever increasing ratios of oil from aging fields, but, in a clever bit of rhetorical jujitsu, Simmons stands this argument on its head. Saudi Aramco, he writes, is already using the most sophisticated technology in the world. Vertical wells are less and less common, replaced years ago by more efficient horizontal wells and more recently by even more efficient Maximum Reservoir Contact wells designed to suck the last possible drop out of aging oil pockets. Geosteering, 3-D seismic imaging, and increasing use of downhole intelligence are routine. Saudi technicians have a computer complex so sophisticated, they can literally stand in a room wearing special glasses and get a three dimensional view of reservoirs over a mile underground.
In other words, there remains nothing to try. The best technology known to man has already been put to use all over Saudi Arabia in an increasingly desperate attempt merely to keep production steady at 10 million bpd. In the vernacular of the oil industry, Saudi oil fields have been in “secondary recovery” mode for years, and long experience elsewhere in the world has already taught us the limits of the advanced extraction technologies now being used in Saudi Arabia. They can mitigate production declines after a field peaks, but they can't stave off the peak itself. More money and more technology won't bail us out here. We're up against geological limits, not financial ones.
The second part of Simmons's argument concerns exploration for new sources of oil in Saudi Arabia. Contrary to conventional wisdom, which assumes that Saudi Arabia is a vast expanse of desert that has only been lightly explored, Simmons presents considerable evidence to indicate that, in fact, almost every square mile has been mapped with the most sophisticated available modern tools—but with little return. In recent years, only one major field has been discovered outside the Eastern Province (home to all other major Saudi oil fields), and its performance has been problematic. The possibility of finding major new fields outside the Eastern Province looks considerably less promising today than it did a couple of decades ago.
Simmons suggests that the Saudis have tacitly acknowledged this reality in their decision to pour most new investment into seeking to revive old fields instead of drilling in new ones. After all, why would Saudi Aramco expend so much effort on expensive attempts to resuscitate aging fields were there any genuinely promising new fields to exploit instead? Simmons concludes: “Unless some great series of exploration miracles occurs soon, the only certainty about Saudi Arabia's oil future is that once its five or six great oil-fields go into steep decline, there is nothing remotely resembling them to take their place.”
Against Simmons's arguments are two things. First, he has access to extremely limited information. As he admits, he's trying to connect some very faint dots based solely on scattered technical reports and what little public data exist. Second, the Saudis themselves, who do have access to plenty of information, have consistently claimed that they can significantly increase oil production over the medium term—and they've never missed a shipment yet. As the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) recently put it, Simmons's argument “depends on the Saudi Aramco managers being wrong or covering up massive risks and development problems, and virtually all of the other analysts examining world oil reserves and production potential being wrong about both the size of the world's oil reserves and the ability of modern technology to provide future significant gains in ultimate recovery.”
In other words, Simmons's view is very much a minority one, a fact of which Simmons is well aware. Still, if Saddam Hussein was able to fool the world (and perhaps himself) about Iraqi WMD capabilities, it's equally possible that the Saudis are fooling the world (and perhaps themselves) about their production capacities. Indeed, just as Saddam felt that his power in the region depended on the perception that he possessed WMDs, perhaps the Saudis feel that their world influence depends on their reputation as a source of limitless oil.
Simmons himself avoids such speculations, but in other respects, he seems comfortable in his contrarian role. As the CSIS report implies, he is skeptical that magical new technologies that will allow oil companies to substantially reinvigorate old fields outside Saudi Arabia, and he does believe the Saudis themselves are either lying or in serious denial about their own future capacities—and that the rest of the oil industry has lazily taken their assurances at face value for years instead of investigating them closely. He also implicitly puts the question to his skeptics: If the Saudis are so anxious to soothe the world's fears, why don't they produce the detailed field-by-field reports, test-well analyses, and exploration results that would convince everyone they're telling the truth?
For Simmons, this is no idle question. His main fight these days is to push for increased transparency in the oil industry so that independent analysts can rely on more than guesswork to figure out how much oil we have left. It's a good cause as far as it goes, since the almost complete lack of solid information in the oil patch leads different analysts to wildly diverse conclusions. Peak oil doubters, for example, project a world production peak sometime around mid-century, if ever.
They note that production has continued to increase for decades despite warnings of decline ever since the first oil embargo. They point out that estimates of world oil reserves have increased since 1980 despite the fact that we've gulped down more than 500 billion barrels of the stuff during that time. And they argue that higher prices will promote additional exploration and more extensive use of costly technology, while making it profitable to develop otherwise remote deepwater and Arctic oil fields.
But a growing number of analysts view these arguments as Pollyannaish at best and obtuse at worst. Yes, production has risen steadily over the past century, but declining oil fields mean this is unlikely to continue in the future. Claimed reserves have increased, but this is due more to political and statistical finagling than to actual new discoveries. And the slowing rate of big new finds combined with the increasing number of disappointments suggests that we shouldn't count on future mother lodes to bail us out. Saudi Arabia really is our last, best hope. If Simmons is right that Saudi Arabia's oil production has peaked, so has the world's.
Still, even the peak oil ideologues who make these arguments can't agree on how close the peak actually is. Princeton professor Kenneth Deffeyes jokingly pinpoints the peak on Thanksgiving 2005, Colin Campbell's latest prediction puts the date around 2007, and other peak oil supporters suggest dates anywhere between last year and 2015. As Simmons and others admit (or perhaps warn ominously), we won't know for sure that oil production has peaked until a year or two after it happens.
Even if the doomsayers are right, solutions are hard to agree on. Market forces will certainly solve part of the problem. As prices increase, demand for oil will level out and production will—for a while—increase slightly as it becomes profitable to drill in marginal fields that are currently lying fallow. But this obscures the fact that high prices, as bad as they are for an economy addicted to cheap oil, aren't the worst prospect facing us. The real problem is spare capacity.
Spare capacity is not the same as the possibility of future discovery, which is necessarily speculative and, in any case, won't be on line for years, if ever. Rather, it's pumping capacity that is currently unused but can be turned on immediately if needed in a crisis. Saudi Arabia, for example, was able to open the taps on its wells practically overnight during the 1979 Iranian crisis, and then again in 1991 during the first Gulf War. If that immediate spare capacity hadn't been available, oil prices wouldn't have just spiked, they would have skyrocketed.
But those days are gone. Twenty years ago, OPEC had spare production capacity of about 15 million bpd. A decade ago that had dropped to 5.5 million bpd. By 1990, spare capacity has dropped almost to zero. What this means is that arguments over the exact timing of peak oil are increasingly academic. No matter who's right, what we can say with some certainty is that even if oil production continues to grow, it will grow slowly, which means that supply will barely keep up with rising demand.
In other words, it's likely that we're now in a permanent state of near zero spare capacity, which in turn will lead to an increasingly unstable world. As we enter an era in which even Saudi Arabia has no spare capacity to smooth out supply disruptions elsewhere in the world, any blip in supply, whether from political unrest, terrorism, or merely unforeseen natural events, will cause prices to carom wildly. A world with $100 per barrel oil is bad enough, but a world in which a single pipeline meltdown could cause prices to skyrocket to $300 per barrel for a few months and then back down is far worse.
What to do? Any serious policy solution has to be based on four fundamental pillars: increased production, development of alternative fuels, conservation, and increased efficiency. And because these are all very long lead items, the time to start is now. After all, if the peak oil theorists are right, we have only a few years left until oil production peaks and then starts to decline. But even if they're wrong, the peak is still only 10 or 20 years down the road—and instability induced by spare capacity is a looming problem regardless.
So, why hasn't anyone in either party seriously acknowledged the reality of peak oil? It's not because they don't know about it. George Bush is a former oil man, after all. “He tells me to keep speaking out loudly and honestly about our energy situation,” Simmons informed a reporter who asked what Bush thought of his recent peak oil warnings, but the all too obvious follow-up—does Bush believe he should do anything about it?—was left hanging.
Unfortunately, the answer is all too easy to guess. Among Bush and his Republican allies, energy policy is almost entirely focused on one thing: opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling. And while acknowledging peak oil might help with that fight, it would also open up a Pandora's box of issues Republicans are desperate to avoid. Conservative orthodoxy on taxes prevents any serious discussion of conservation measures like increased gas taxes, and Republican friendliness to business interests prevents consideration of stronger gas mileage standards for SUVs or federal standards for energy-friendly building codes.
Bush and other Republican leaders pay lip service to development of alternative fuels, but serious funding is nowhere to be seen. The energy plan currently on offer from the White House is derided by practically everyone on both right and left as little more than a transparent set of payoffs to Bush administration cronies.
Democrats have their own set of problems. No one wants to follow in the footsteps of the man who wore cardigan sweaters on TV and warned about an era of limits—and turned out to be wrong. Democrats paid for that with 12 years of political exile.
All of which is bad news. Even if we prepare ourselves for the peaking of oil production with a sensible, broad-based energy plan, we'll still be faced with the pain of prices marching relentlessly higher for years to come in order to match demand to steadily diminishing supplies. If we're not prepared, though, the bad news of peak oil becomes potentially catastrophic: An oil shock leading to global recession at best and a long string of resource wars at worst. Given the choice between these two bad alternatives, and the long lead time required to implement any kind of serious energy plan, we'd be well advised to get started now.
"The world based its future prosperity on an energy myth," Matt Simmons
By Jeanne Klobnak-Ball
9.28.05
Like the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Hurricane Katrina stands to become a defining moment in our nation's history. While the precise meaning of such moments remains to be interpreted, Matt Simmons believes the natural disaster may well be remembered as the start of "our great energy war." "We're almost at the verge of having real energy shortages," Simmons said last Friday, when he issued a wake-up call to a standing-room only audience at the Center for the Arts. "We could be looking at $10-a-gallon gas this winter."
Author of "Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy" and founder of Simmons and Company International, a Houston-based energy investment banking firm managing over $60 billion in assets, Simmons is also an energy advisor to President Bush. During his lecture which kicked off a two-day lecture series on the future of energy sponsored by the University of Wyoming's Ruckelshaus Institute of Environment and Natural Resources Simmons reviewed circumstances leading up to the current energy crisis.
Tipping points and false assumptions
Until recently, President Bush has said little about global oil and gas consumption outpacing supply, but, even before hurricanes hit the Gulf Coast, consumption was hovering near 99.8 of the world's percent ability to produce, refine and distribute transportation fuels. Katrina, considered the worst natural disaster ever to hit the oil and gas industry, further weakened domestic supply, tipping the entire global energy market on its collective head. "The storms have shown how fragile the balance is between supply and demand in America," Bush recently said to CNN, "We can all pitch in by being better conservers of energy people need to recognize the storm has caused disruption." Although pump prices rose quickly in Katrina's aftermath, they remain well below what Simmons considers reflective of the resource's true scarcity. Conventional oil discovery peaked in 1960, he said, after which no reserves of greater amounts were found. Simmons joins other energy analysts in claiming we are now at or very near peak production, after which no greater amount of conventional oil can be produced. Despite this geologic imperative, global oil demand escalates at a rapid pace.
"Peak Oil is the single most important issue of the 21st century," Simmons asserted. "The hurricanes, Katrina and Rita, may well be remembered as the start of our great energy war, just as Fort Sumpter was the beginning of our Civil War. "Fort Sumpter was the tipping point of a pending war over slavery that John Adams predicted we were going to have to finally resolve two weeks before he passed away, on the 50th anniversary of the founding of the United States," Simmons noted, adding that it became such a profound crisis because the problem was ignored and left to linger. "Likewise, our energy crisis didn't begin with Katrina or worsen with Rita, it got under way years ago as we laid one false assumption on top of another." The first and perhaps most egregious falsehood was basing the price of oil on political expediency, Simmons said, ignoring its true cost and creating what he lamented as a "false concept of cheap oil forever."
Precious resources were wasted as other false assumptions were made. "Our best quality natural gas was simply flared in the 1930s and '40s, seen as having no use," Simmons said. In 1956, Dr. King Hubbert, senior scientist for Shell Oil, warned that the U.S. would likely start to exceed peak oil production by the early 1970s. But by 1970, Hubbert's reputation was in shatters. "Too many papers were written about 'remember that old geezer who said the United States was gonna run out of oil? Look, we've never produced more.' That was the very year we peaked," Simmons said. When the U.S. did peak in 1970, oil was still being sold for $1 a barrel, 2 cents a gallon, one-tenth of a cent per cup, Simmons noted. By the early 1970s, another false assumption arose, he said. Conventional wisdom assumed that the Middle East's 38 super giant oil fields, discovered after World War I, could easily produce almost unlimited amounts of oil from a small number of fields and wells.
Middle East experts hitched their carts to the promising vastness of the region, without stopping to ponder if oil could exist outside the original area of discovery. Further, Simmons claimed, no one ever understood the logic concerning what influences energy demand or how large it could grow. During the 20th century, most investors worried about how energy would be used without creating a glut. "There was this worry about glut, how we handle glut, that always preoccupied people," Simmons said, "as opposed to looking closely at what was really happening to supply."
Shockwaves
In 1950, oil demand was 10 million barrels a day globally. By 1970, it was 50 mbd, but while demand grew five-fold, price stayed constant; oil was still selling at $1 a barrel. When U.S. production peaked in 1970, Saudi oil prices soared 18-fold between Jan. 1, 1970 and mid-June 1979, as demand grew another 15 mbd. "So for the concept that high prices quickly killed demand, there was never any supporting data," said Simmons. Iran's and Kuwait's oil production peaked in 1972, but no one noticed. "People continued to have this concept that there's oil in the Middle East and it's going to last forever," Simmons said. The second oil shock hit in 1979, when prices suddenly shot up from $18 to $40 a barrel, or about $105 per barrel in 2005 dollars. As a result, the U.S. finally curbed oil demand for about four years, Simmons said. Between 1979-1985, "We rolled out nuclear power and our coal plants got upgraded so they could operate at 100 percent," Simmons said. "To produce electricity from coal was vastly cheaper than using oil. In one short period of time we backed out oil as a feed stock for boiler fuel and electricity once and for all." At the same time, the U.S. exported "a big chunk of heavy manufacturing to Europe and Japan." The combination above resulted in four years when world demand actually fell, "prompting a great many people to say, 'Whoops, it just goes to show that if prices ever get high, demand just gets cannibalized,' " Simmons said. "Yet there was never any data for that."
Connecting the dots - 'glut' to blackouts
Siberian oil was discovered in 1967, Alaskan North Slope oil in 1968, and the North Sea in 1969, the last great frontiers to come on line.
"It took a decade to bring all these fabulous sources into production," Simmons said, "creating an enormous last amount of brand new oil, but all three peaked years ago, and are all now in steady decline."
Due to low prices, the decade between 1982-1992 crushed the oil industry into a massive depression, according to Simmons. "We put the oil contractors and drilling industry through a giant paper shredder, in which 90 percent of the industry participants collapsed during this sad, tragic 10 years, all based on the concept that there was a massive overhang of too much oil and so much natural gas that it would never have much of a future. Job losses and bank closures ensued due to a perceived glut that was, at best, 10 to 15 percent of demand," Simmons said.
Growth reemerged in fits and starts in the mid-1990s only to run up against a lack of drill rigs. By early 1999, as oil hung around $10/barrel, Simmons said, the perception among industry leaders was that this would never hold, but rather would drop down to $5/barrel and stay there for about a decade. "The Economist published an infamous cover story called 'Drowning in Oil' only four days before the price of oil finally took off," Simmons recalled.
"Eighteen months later, prices were so high that we had to take 30 million barrels out of the strategic petroleum reserve to cool off the market." Gas prices, which in 1999 were deemed to never exceed $3 per million cubic feet until at least 2015, by December 2000 were at $10 per mcf. California experienced blackouts, just as New York and New Orleans did the previous summers, but few people connected these dots, Simmons said.
"By 2004, my worry of energy dots had connected so tightly that the future of energy looked extremely dark to me. The North Sea peaked in 1999, and was rapidly falling. North America peaked, and a record drilling boom couldn't even stabilize supply." Non-OPEC suppliers flattened out for seven years, with no production surge in sight. Meanwhile, oil demand "became like Jack's bean stalk: It grew and grew and grew," Simmons said. In 1985, demand was 65 mbd. By 1995, it was 75 mbd. This year, it's roughly 85 mbd. Despite supply peaks against a backdrop of growing demand, Simmons said industry stuck to its guns, arguing that technology would bring on supply, demand would drop due to high prices, and the Middle East would turn on its taps.
"The world based its future prosperity on an energy myth," Simmons said.
In direct opposition to the Bush administration's energy projections earlier this year which assumes Saudi production, now at 10 mbd, would increase another 12.5 mbd Simmons said, "The likelihood of Saudi Arabia being able to produce 20 to 25 mbd is so low that it should almost be deemed impossible. The likelihood that they could hit 12 mbd and keep this up for 20 years, let alone 50 years or more, is not very high. "We are in a deep energy hole," he concluded. "We must create a Plan B to ensure the future of energy, or we won't have a future of energy."
Plan B
Simmons's Plan B begins with a reform of energy data, which would mandate that all key oil and gas producers compile field-by-field production reports on a timely basis. Such data would include the number of average wellheads, so that "for the first time analysts can do reliable supply forecasts."
Simmons next calls for rebuilding and modernizing the globe's aging energy infrastructure, lest it should decay and become unusable. "Supply on the ground won't matter if it can't get to where it needs to go," he said. Thirdly, "We need an R&D program that hasn't been tackled in 100 years to start inventing some new forms of energy that don't exist today."
Finally, Simmons advocated establishing a conservation plan to determine ways to do more with less. "We need to address the shipment of goods," he said, "which is by far the single worst way we use energy. Public Enemy Number One is ironically not the SUV; it's large trucks going long distances over our highways." To increase efficiency and cost savings, railroads and freight cars are preferred transport modes.
"One final word about Katrina and Rita," Simmons concluded. "They were our Fort Sumpters, but we needed a wake-up call."
- klobnak@planetjh.com
oblivion
"We now find one barrel of oil for every four we consume. The general situation seems so obvious.
...How can governments be oblivious of the realities of discovery and their implications...given the critical importance of oil to our entire economy"
Dr. Colin Campbell, ASPO president, in his testimony to the British house of Commons
...How can governments be oblivious of the realities of discovery and their implications...given the critical importance of oil to our entire economy"
Dr. Colin Campbell, ASPO president, in his testimony to the British house of Commons
Tuesday, October 04, 2005
Study: Most Will Be Fat Over the Long Haul
If you're running just to lose weight (like I am) and you're thinking, "Once I weigh X, I won't have to run anymore..." - if you're thinking that, stop.
You've basically got to integrate the idea into your psyche that fitness has to play an integral part of your lifestyle if you intend to remain fit and slim. It makes sense doesn't it.
It's interesting that we live in a world where it is so easy to become overweight/unhealthy. We need to make a conscious effort (we need to be conscious) to keep ourselves healthy.
Many businesses proft from successfully tempting us to consume products that are not even healthy:
- cigarettes
- alchohol
- icecream
- sodas
- chocolates
- other junk foods and especially fast foods
If you're going to consume these foods, you're putting yourself on a path to being fat, or even obese. Either stop eating these foods, or continue eating them, but then make an internal commitment to exercise at least once or twice a week for the rest of your life really. That should be a commitment that we can all make without thinking of it as a chore.
I know that most times when I come back from a run, I feel happier, and lighter. Running helps deal with stress, and flushes a lot of 'bad karma' out of the body.
It's useful to remember that every time we run, we work against the unhealthy debris that a greedy world throws at us. It's important that we do so regularly.
By ALEX DOMINGUEZ, Associated Press Writer
Mon Oct 3,11:09 PM ET
BALTIMORE - Just when we thought we couldn't get any fatter, a new study that followed Americans for three decades suggests that over the long haul, 9 out of 10 men and 7 out of 10 women will become overweight.
Even if you are one of the lucky few who made it to middle age without getting fat, don't congratulate yourself — keep watching that waistline.
Half of the men and women in the study who had made it well into adulthood without a weight problem ultimately became overweight. A third of those women and a quarter of the men became obese.
"You cannot become complacent, because you are at risk of becoming overweight," said Ramachandran Vasan, an associate professor of medicine at Boston University and the study's lead author.
He and other researchers studied data gathered from 4,000 white adults over 30 years. Participants were between the ages of 30 and 59 at the start, and were examined every four years. By the end of the study, more than 1 in 3 had become obese.
The study defined obesity as a body mass index, which is a commonly used height and weight comparison, of more than 30.
The findings, published Tuesday in the Annals of Internal Medicine, show obesity may be a greater problem than indicated by studies that look at a cross-section of the population at one point in time. Those so-called "snapshots" of obesity have found about 6 in 10 are overweight and about 1 in 3 are obese, Vasan said.
The findings also re-emphasize that people must continually watch their weight, Vasan said.
The research subjects were the children of participants in the long-running and often-cited Framingham Heart Study, which has been following the health of generations of Massachusetts residents.
Dr. Elizabeth G. Nabel, director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, which supported the study, said the findings show "we could have an even more serious degree of overweight and obesity over the next few decades."
Susan Bartlett, an assistant professor of medicine and an obesity researcher at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, said the study was one of the first to look at the risk of becoming overweight.
"The results are pretty sobering, really," said Bartlett, who was not involved in the research.
While the health risks of being obese are much more severe than being overweight, those who are overweight are much more likely to go on to become obese, Bartlett said.
The study shows Americans live in an "environment in which it's hard not to become overweight or obese. Unless people actively work against that, that's what's most likely to happen to them."
Obesity raises the risk of heart disease, some cancers, diabetes and arthritis, and being overweight raises blood pressure and cholesterol, which in turn can raise the risk of heart disease.
The number of deaths linked to obesity has been heavily debated. Earlier this year the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said obesity caused only about 25,814 deaths annually in the United States — far fewer than the 365,000 deaths the agency had earlier reported. Other scientists have disagreed with the revised conclusion, while organizations representing the food and restaurant industry think weight-related ills have been overstated.
As for the Framingham study, Mark Vander Weg, a Mayo Clinic psychologist who researches obesity but was not involved in the study, said it is one of a few to track a group of individuals over an extended period.
"What's particularly concerning is that these results actually may underestimate the risk of becoming overweight or obese among the general population" because minorities, who are at increased risk for obesity, were not included in the study, Vander Weg said.
Recent trends also suggest that people currently coming into middle age may be even more likely to become overweight or obese than those who were studied, Vander Weg said.
While more studies that include more diverse populations are needed, he said, the results "add to a growing body of evidence that makes it increasingly apparent that more effective prevention and treatment strategies are urgently needed."
3/15 Up and Down
Woke up feeling very good this morning, and the cool, sunny day made me want to be out exercising. I even felt tempted to extend my stay in Korea. But my first class reminded me that there are other factors at play, and by halfway I was feeling feverish and very tired. One thing I've had enough of this weekend is sleep, so something is up if after so much sleep I still feel drained.
Went running anyway, in the park, with Corneli. Was very nice, as we jumped 'onto the bus' with a few groups chugging past, some at a nice pace. When I slotted in behind one group I elevated my heart rate to 170, and we were just trotting. That is a sign that I have some bug that is effecting my heart. So took it easy after that:
Run: 8.5km (rough esitmate, we ran a sort of figure of eight loop, so not exactly certain about the distance)
Time: 58:30
Hr: 149 avg/ 170 max
Kcal: 1070
Temperature: 26 C (That can't be right, was more like 17 C)
Pilates: 5 minutes
Core felt very tired, probably from a combination of recent rollerbalding and the 10 pullups on Sunday where I took so much strain. Also did some stretching.
Pullups today felt a lot easier. The pullups on Sunday may have felt harder because I did them with rollerblade pads on, and I'd had a fairly big dinner with a lot of water earlier in the evening.
I've registered for a marathon in November, so want to do a few runs before then.
Feeling pretty drained now.
Mandela New World Leader
Mandela wins BBC's 'global election'
Mandela was selected by more than half the players
Former South African President Nelson Mandela has topped a BBC poll to find the person most people would like to lead a fantasy world government.
More than 15,000 people worldwide took part in the interactive Power Play game, in which players were invited to choose a team of 11 to run the world from a list of around 100 of the most powerful leaders, thinkers and other high-profile people on the planet.
The second choice was former US President Bill Clinton.
The winning 11 were exclusively male, with Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi the highest-ranking woman at 13th. Hillary Clinton was the next most popular woman at 16th.
Entrepreneurs feature prominently in the selection. Microsoft head Bill Gates, Apple chief Steve Jobs, and Virgin boss Richard Branson all made the final 11, as did stock market billionaire and philanthropist George Soros.
Players also placed emphasis on the need for financial probity - US Federal Reserve boss Alan Greenspan made the list at number five.
And two religious leaders, both associated with challenges to dominant authority, found a place in the winning line-up - the Dalai Lama in third and Archbishop Desmond Tutu in eighth. Pope Benedict XVI came 28th.
Politicians miss out
Perhaps the biggest surprise was the success of the American linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky, who came fourth. Another outspoken American, Michael Moore, was 15th.
Other placings included Osama bin Laden, at 70th, and Harry Potter author JK Rowling, who was 49th.
FINAL SELECTION
1 - Nelson Mandela
2 - Bill Clinton
3 - Dalai Lama
4 - Noam Chomsky (pictured above)
5 - Alan Greenspan
6 - Bill Gates
7 - Steve Jobs
8 - Archbishop Desmond Tutu
9 - Richard Branson
10 - George Soros
11 - Kofi Annan
Serving politicians were generally absent from the winning list. British Prime Minister Tony Blair narrowly missed out, coming 12th.
US President George W Bush was placed 43, ranking below two of his fiercest adversaries on the world stage, Fidel Castro - 36th - and Hugo Chavez, 33rd.
And UN General-Secretary Kofi Annan just made the fantasy world elite in 11th place.
A range of sports and entertainment celebrities were on offer, but few ended up in the higher placings. U2 frontman Bono came in at 14th, while Pele was the highest scoring sportsman at 25th.
Footballer David Beckham limped in at number 72, with Kylie Minogue five places below him. Jennifer Lopez was almost at rock bottom in 92nd place.
The game - modelled on the hugely popular Fantasy Football - was run as part of the BBC's Who Runs Your World season, which explores where power lies in the 21st century.
More than half of votes came from users in the United States.
Users were required to pick at least one each from a select list of leaders, thinkers and economists, and had a free choice of any other eight, including the option of selecting "wild cards" from areas such as sport, politics, arts and design
Click on the title of this post to link to the article.
Thanks to Jenny Lake for providing me with this news article.
31/2 Cold and Sunny
Beautiful day today. Very clear. I see it is 32 C in Johannesburg today. Well, it is only going to get colder here.
I'm having my children write out the Korea Creation Myth, about the bear, the tiger, the king and the cave. Some success.
Also doing an editing job, but it's more like a total rewrite.
One of the teacher's here confided to me that she's going to leave soon. She'll be the last of the original group. The director had her working here, yesterday, when the rest of the Korea was enjoying a day off. I think he'd make an amazing Pharaoh.
Hopefully it won't be too cold tonight for a run. The good news is I feel 100% healthy again, so want to get into a good training routine now.
I'm having my children write out the Korea Creation Myth, about the bear, the tiger, the king and the cave. Some success.
Also doing an editing job, but it's more like a total rewrite.
One of the teacher's here confided to me that she's going to leave soon. She'll be the last of the original group. The director had her working here, yesterday, when the rest of the Korea was enjoying a day off. I think he'd make an amazing Pharaoh.
Hopefully it won't be too cold tonight for a run. The good news is I feel 100% healthy again, so want to get into a good training routine now.
James Blunt: The Sounds of our Times
I have recommended this talented musician before and I'm recommending him again. His music is a heady mixture of lyrical crooning, swooning and crying, sung with almost Bono-esque passion. I say almost because James Blunt is an original, and that's beautiful.
JAMES BLUNT LYRICS
"Out Of My Mind"
Judging by the look on the organ-grinder,
He'll judge me by the fact that my face don't fit.
It's touching that the monkey sits on my shoulder.
He's waiting for the day when he gets me,
But I don't need no alibi - I'm a puppet on a string.
I just need this stage to be seen.
We all need a pantomime to remind us what is real.
Hold my eye and know what it means.
I'm out of my mind.
Judging by the look on the organ-grinder,
He'll judge me by the fact that my face don't fit.
It's touching that the monkey sits on my shoulder.
He's waiting for the day when he gets me,
But I won't be your concubine - I'm a puppet not a whore.
I just need this stage to be seen.
Will you be a friend of mine to remind me what is real?
Hold my heart and see that it bleeds.
I'm out of my mind.
"Tears And Rain"
How I wish I could surrender my soul;
Shed the clothes that become my skin;
See the liar that burns within my needing.
How I wish I'd chosen darkness from cold.
How I wish I had screamed out loud,
Instead I've found no meaning.
I guess it's time I run far, far away; find comfort in pain,
All pleasure's the same: it just keeps me from trouble.
Hides my true shape, like Dorian Gray.
I've heard what they say, but I'm not here for trouble.
It's more than just words: it's just tears and rain.
How I wish I could walk through the doors of my mind;
Hold memory close at hand,
Help me understand the years.
How I wish I could choose between Heaven and Hell.
How I wish I would save my soul.
I'm so cold from fear.
I guess it's time I run far, far away; find comfort in pain,
All pleasure's the same: it just keeps me from trouble.
Hides my true shape, like Dorian Gray.
I've heard what they say, but I'm not here for trouble.
Far, far away; find comfort in pain.
All pleasure's the same: it just keeps me from trouble.
It's more than just words: it's just tears and rain.
This is the best music I've heard since Green Day came out with American Idiot.
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