If you think that the current governmental and corporate interest in ethanol has something to do with global warming, think again. It is dawning on the U.S. government that (1) most of the remaining supplies of oil are in unfriendly hands, and (2) that there isn't enough oil remaining to feed a constantly growing global demand.
With oil production plateauing, governments can turn to three main strategies to maintain fuel supplies: (1) consume what's left of the planet by growing huge amounts of biofuels; (2) fry what's left of the atmosphere by converting coal to oil or exploiting dirty, expensive tars and oil sands; or (3) conquer the planet to forcably take whatever oil is left.
Michael T. Klare brings this problem right to the door of the U.S. military in his new article, "The Pentagon v. Peak Oil: How Wars of the Future May Be Fought Just to Run the Machines That Fight Them."
According to Klare:
That global oil output will eventually reach a peak and then decline is no longer a matter of debate; all major energy organizations have now embraced this view ... If there is a consensus emerging, it is that peak-oil output will occur somewhere around 2015. Whatever the timing of this momentous event, it is apparent that the world faces a profound shift in the global availability of energy, as we move from a situation of relative abundance to one of relative scarcity. It should be noted, moreover, that this shift will apply, above all, to the form of energy most in demand by the Pentagon: the petroleum liquids used to power planes, ships, and armored vehicles.
How will the military respond to this unexpected challenge? One approach, favored by some within the DoD, is to go "green" -- that is, to emphasize the accelerated development and acquisition of fuel-efficient weapons ...
But there is also a more sinister approach that may be far more highly favored by senior officials: To ensure itself a "reliable" source of oil in perpetuity, the Pentagon will increase its efforts to maintain control over foreign sources of supply, notably oil fields and refineries in the Persian Gulf region, especially in Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. This would help explain the recent talk of U.S. plans to retain "enduring" bases in Iraq, along with its already impressive and elaborate basing infrastructure in these other countries.
As Klare concludes,
It would be both sad and ironic, if the military now began fighting wars mainly so that it could be guaranteed the fuel to run its own planes, ships, and tanks -- consuming hundreds of billions of dollars a year that could instead be spent on the development of petroleum alternatives. "
Governments, whether democratic such as the U.S. or tyrannical such as China, now depend on a steady flow of liquid fuels for the legitimacy that keeps their leaders in power. As the global oil markets tighten, the last item on their agenda for "energy independence" will be the problem of global warming. The only way out of this mess is to move toward a fuel-free society.
City preps and countries posture ahead of Copenhagen talks
Oil: enough energy to melt glaciers!
Comments
View as Flat
sunflower Posted 9:36 am
15 Jun 2007
Ethanol and liquid coal are instruments of propaganda for political war support.
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odograph Posted 10:29 am
15 Jun 2007
The only good thing you can say is that we move fast enough on them that we can't ignore the problems in them for too long.
The blush is off hydrogen, I expect the same to happen with corn ethanol (corn hataz rule).
What happens next depends on ... what happens next.
It's funny, I expected $3.50 gas prices here in California and essentially got them, but I'm less sure about next year. I sense consumer response building, or preparation for response building. We could get a few flat years. Or I could be completely wrong ;-). Having read "Fooled by Randomness" I am not emboldened by the success of my last prediction, nor am I wedded to my current one.
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Rune Posted 10:33 am
15 Jun 2007
I dunno, maybe Klare ran out of ways to say Peak Oil means war and strife, but this really wasn't one of his more insightful attempts.
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birdboy Posted 11:08 am
15 Jun 2007
a liberal in redsville
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Jon Rynn Posted 12:28 pm
15 Jun 2007
I'm not sure what griffins have to do with it, but I've always loved the images. On a more serious note, I don't think that Bush and co have the mental capacity to plan for a Middle Eastern civil war. They are vultures, and they are certainly capable of taking advantage, just as they took advantage of 9/11. The oil companies like the idea of peak oil even less than global warming, they are doing quite nicely right now and they don't want to rock the boat.
Rune --
Thanks for the links (who wrote the first one?), the third link you gave is the famous (or infamous) Hirsch report that everybody who cares about the environment should read. It was actually suppressed by the Bush administration because it talked about peak oil (as per above, bushies hate the idea), but it outlines all of the awful ways to overcome peak oil that we are hearing about now, such as tar sands and coal to liquids.
I think Michael T. Klare is one of our great scholars, and probably the best writer on the machinations of the U.S. military. He's concerned about peak oil, which is rare, and he has also tied in other resources (in the book "resource wars"), such as water, so I think he is worth listening to. He doesn't have to be right on the money each time, nobody does. But your points about the missing $2.3 trillion from the DOD and the lack of the peace dividend are very important and need more exploration, they are problems I have dealt with myself -- and gets to birdboy's point, which is why in my very first post I suggested we find much of the money for a shift to sustainability in the Pentagon's budget.
Odograph -- There are so many crises and so much complexity going on here (peak oil, global warming, mass extinction, ecosystem destruction) that prediction will be very difficult, but hey, somebody's gotta do it!
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odograph Posted 12:50 pm
15 Jun 2007
It's good TV, it sells ... it sells a lot of things.
The rigorous guy who holds back and makes not prediction is not invited on TV. He's no fun, and he certainly doesn't help sell anything. If he's lucky, he'll be the "counterpoint" to predictions in slow parts of the news cycle.
So does somebody gotta do it? In that same sense, maybe. We all stop to listen to those DOW predictions even if we know they are crap. We are fascinated by the future. Our prefrontal cortex is arguably for fascination with the future. We want to know ...
Even when there isn't data. Even when a rational part of our brain should put on the brakes.
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odograph Posted 12:55 pm
15 Jun 2007
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GreyFlcn Posted 1:04 pm
15 Jun 2007
Wean ourselves off Oil and shift our transportation to Electricity.
And even if we go with Coal, we're still better off on CO2 emmisions than if we had stuck with Oil.
However we needn't stick with Coal, since Renewable Energy in all of it's forms is used most efficiently for transportation as Electricity.
More or less we can consolidate our Two biggest CO2 problems and solve them more easily.
(With the advantage of solving our third problem as well, which is BioFuels causing an area the size of New Jersey to be deforrested every year in countries like Brazil, and Indonesia)
Electricity, Cars, and Deforrestation.
Solve thoses and we've got it made.
_
Oh yeah, and "Energy Independance" and all that jazz.
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justlou Posted 8:34 pm
15 Jun 2007
If our mission is to prevent future wars related to energy, resources, ecological collapse, and mass migrations, then the faster we can lead the world away from oil and coal and a more sustainable vision of the future the more secure we will be.
We have built our empire on this flow of oil and have sucked the entire globe into the stream via our globalized economy. It is now the role of our military to attempt to stabilize the world economy to maintain the standing of the US. Mission impossible.
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Delay And Deny Posted 5:06 am
16 Jun 2007
Oil is far from peak. There are 200 to 300 reserves in Venezuela alone.
And if, like me, you adhere to the abiotic theories of Thomas Gold, you know that oil is a renewable resource.
The thing that amazes me about your Gristers is that you take everything that's told to you at face value. The oil companies are a business -- of course they want you to think there's a limited supply because that means they can raise the price.
For myself, I could care less because it spurs the development of alternatives to have a high per gallon cost -- more than any government based "incentives" ever could.
John Bailo
You Read It Here First
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GreyFlcn Posted 5:16 am
16 Jun 2007
We just need to wait a couple million years for it to replenish itself.
_
Thats the split we're I'm not particularly fond of "Renewable", even if it is common jargon.
The real thing we should be talking about is "Sustainable"
i.e. Harvesting a resource at a rate which is less than it takes for it to regenerate.
_
That said, all BioFuels are Renewable.
But they aren't Sustainable.
Mainly because we are destroying our topsoil in the process.
_
Another particularly scary prospect is that we have 1 big water resivour in the middle of the US called the Ogalala Resivoir. It's already starting to experience the beginnings of shortages.
Water intensive farming to create biofuels is only going to make it collapse even faster.
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GreyFlcn Posted 5:22 am
16 Jun 2007
And then importing BioFuels from Brazil and other Tropical Regions.
How exactly is that energy independance?
_
Isn't that merely "Independance from Muslisms"?
_
And even to that extent, we wouldn't even be decreasing our Oil imports at all in even the most rosy growth scenarios.
_
So wouldn't that instead merely just be raising our dependance on foreign energy?
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Delay And Deny Posted 6:06 am
16 Jun 2007
http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/16/spectrolab-designs-hig ...
Boeing-Spectrolab have just succeeded in building a multi-junction solar cell that achieves an incredible 40.7% efficiency, or -- to the best of our knowledge -- about twice that of the reigning champ in this space
John Bailo
You Read It Here First
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odograph Posted 6:13 am
16 Jun 2007
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Delay And Deny Posted 10:42 am
16 Jun 2007
The abiotic theory holds that there must therefore be nearly limitless pools of liquid primordial hydrocarbons at great depths on Earth, pools that slowly replenish the reservoirs that conventional oil drillers tap.</blocquote>
defn of Internet Barnacle:
http://you-read-it-here-first.com/viewtopic.php?t=559& ...
John Bailo
You Read It Here First
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GreyFlcn Posted 2:30 pm
16 Jun 2007
http://www.rasertech.com/media/movies/html/renewing_our_f ...
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Rune Posted 4:58 pm
16 Jun 2007
I was not saying that Klare is not worth listening to, only that he muddied the water rather than zeroing in on the bigger and more important issues with this latest article in which he tries to argue that the Pentagon itself will be pushed into a desperate hunt for oil for its own uses. That just doesn't wash. Clearly, as things are run in the U.S., the Pentagon will get all the oil it needs for the rest of our lifetimes. The real issues involving the Pentagon have to do with how far they will go to remain in control of cash and oil flows for the political and economic purposes of the political class and their corporate masters, difficult though it may be to distinguish the two at times.
By the way, if you are looking for an entertaining way to get these points across to a broad base of people, check out Robert Newman's History of Oil.
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GreyFlcn Posted 6:44 pm
16 Jun 2007
Nukes
Coal with Sequestration
Agrofuels
Or basically:
Nuclear Winter
Global Summer
Destroying the Rainforrests, our topsoil, and our clean water resources
All of them being the most costly, most risky, and hardest to enforce policies in their areas.
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GreyFlcn Posted 7:03 pm
16 Jun 2007
One of the main reasons I really don't like Nuclear.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pjidsOytZ8
If things can go wrong, they will go wrong.
(Particularly if there's money to be made from cutting corners)
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GreyFlcn Posted 7:31 pm
16 Jun 2007
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPE9BjkMwXg
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Nucbuddy Posted 10:28 pm
16 Jun 2007
Could you please clarify your comment?
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GreyFlcn Posted 1:37 am
17 Jun 2007
Now obviously the plant may be safe, however the mining tailing and the waste as shown in nearly all points in the past has not been handled responsibly.
And in general, who gets stuck with the bill when that happens? US Tax payers, usually via CERLA.
AND they get stuck with the cost of babysitting the companies to make sure they are behaving themselves.
_
In short, murphy's law amplified by corporate greed is a great way to ensure that something will go wrong.
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Nucbuddy Posted 2:06 am
17 Jun 2007
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GreyFlcn Posted 2:47 am
17 Jun 2007
They had to go through years of lawsuits merely to get them to comply with one detail, much less build the whole facility correctly.
And it was later found that they had created the same defects at 60 other facilities.
As goes on with Nuclear, and Carbon Capture Sequestration, massive oversight would be neccisary to make sure they comply with the law, much less prepare for the unexpected.
Now if we can't expect responsible oversight in the US, then what you think the chances are in other countries around the world?
_
In short, Nuclear is great as long as nothing goes wrong.
But thats not an assumption we can make.
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Rune Posted 6:24 pm
17 Jun 2007
Bombings by means of radioactive material would certain make for a catastrophic emergency.
The more nuclear facilities we have, the more nuclear material there must be transported around the country. That means there will be that many more opportunities to pirate the stuff or just blow it sky high as it passes upwind of population centers. The forces guarding against this (at public expense) are the same ones that still can't get it together to make sure similar material isn't moving through U.S. harbors all these years after the 9/11 event. And, by law, again, these are the same forces that are to protect nuclear fuel and waste at each nuclear facility. In fact, the plan being floated at the moment has it that nuclear waste from other countries will be shipped to the U.S. as part of a push to promote nuclear energy here and abroad. Then, said waste will be guarded by the same forces that could not find even one of four hijacked airliners before 9/11 became the seemingly unstoppable argument for gutting many of civil rights once believed protected by the Constitution, before so much of it was "rendered quaint."
So, with the writing on the wall, I really think we should be asking ourselves, do we really want to be saying, in effect, "bring it on," when it comes to one of the next most likely means manipulating the unmistakable end to the freedom and democracy that we in the U.S. once thought made our country great? Just asking, because I don't get the sense that anyone has really thought this through, let alone considered sacrificing elsewhere so we don't end up sacrificing our ability to make further choices for ourselves at all. I've been in countries under martial law. It's not particularly good for the spirit, to say nothing of effective problem solving on the scale we must act in the face of multiple environmental and social challenges.
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Jon Rynn Posted 11:11 pm
17 Jun 2007
Theres' a story in the chicago tribune about coal and biofuels in Illinois that is more pertinent than nukes. Nukes can't supply fuel, and that is what people will be most concerned about (there was a huge discussion in a previous post of mine about nukes). Although they are thinking of putting a nuke on top of the tar sands in Canada to provide the energy to process it!
Also, in terms of Klare not focusing on the bigger problem, I think he (certainly I) agree that the military is a huge problem in itself -- he has written before that it is an oil-protection service -- I would just say that my intellectual mentor, the late Professor Seymour Melman had very profound writings on the subject, and there may be noone else like him around now, although a couple of good people are Bruce Gagnon and Ted Glick, who seems to be at the cutting edge of tying together global warming with military issues (such as the cutting edge is, which isn't very good).
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ethanol Posted 5:20 pm
05 Jul 2007
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