Penetration

James Howard Kunstler writes: The telling moment last week was Robert Hirsch's appearance on the CNBC morning "Squawkbox" financial show in which he proposed the probability of $500-a-barrel oil within "a three-to-five-year time-frame." Squawkhead Becky Quick was clearly nonplussed by the stolid Mr. Hirsch, author of a (then)-startling 2005 US Dept of Energy report (since referred to as the Hirsch Report and buried by the Secretary of Energy) that warned of dire effects on the American way of life as the Peak Oil predicament gained traction. Perhaps more reality-challenged was the uber-idiot Larry Kudlow on CNBC's night-time money show, who kept repeating the mantra "drill, drill drill" when presented with signs that something other than "oil speculators" was driving up the price and creating global scarcity. These idiots always return to the shibboleth that "there's plenty of oil out there." What they don't get is that even while the world is enjoying the all time peak of production (somewhere around 85-million barrels-a-day), that same world is demanding at least 86-million barrels -- so even though there's more oil than ever, there's not enough. And the gap is only bound to get bigger. The difference between what's available and what's demanded is being felt by poor countries and poor people in richer countries. Third world nations lacking their own oil are simply dropping out of the bidding, and the lower classes in the US are having to choose between buying gasoline and velveeta. The floods in the corn belt will surely aggravate the problem here in the USA. Lunch breaks may soon be a thing of the past for WalMart Associates. Maybe they'll just play video games on their cell phones in the parking lot to allay their hunger. (06/23/08)

Getting Beyond Denial

Tom Engelhardt writes: It's been a curious experience, each evening recently, turning on the NBC or ABC nightly news, with historic levels of flooding in Iowa as the lead story. ("Uncharted territory," National Weather Service meteorologist Brian Pierce called these floods.) After all, there are those stunning images of Cedar Rapids, a small city now simply in the water. The National Weather Service has already termed what's happened to the city an "historic hydrologic event," with the Cedar River topping its banks at, or above, half-millennium highs. (That's an every 500 year "event"!) But here's the special strangeness of this TV moment: Network news loves weather disasters, and yet, as with historic droughts in the Southeast or Southwest, as with the hordes of tornadoes coursing through the center of the country, as with so many other extreme weather phenomena of recent times, including flooding in Southern China and the Burmese cyclone, when it comes to the Midwestern floods, night after night no TV talking head seems ever to mention the possibility that climate change/global warming might somehow be involved. (Nor, by the way, are our major newspapers any better on the subject.) As an omission, it's kinda staggering, really, for an event already being labeled "a Midwestern Katrina." All that soggy Iowa acreage and an estimated 20% of the corn and soya crops in the region already lost -- forget ethanol, but think soaring food prices -- and yet not a word. Of course, it's true that no single weather catastrophe like this one can be simply and definitively linked to climate change -- and undoubtedly some may have nothing to do with it. But when the weather is this extreme, wouldn't you want, as a reporter or news editor, to make sure the subject was at least raised and considered? Or is it simply: been there, done that? My theory of life is that, when you see a four-legged, black-and-white striped horse-like animal on a savannah, you should call it a zebra until evidence proves otherwise. You would certainly think that, this late in the game, this post-Al Gore, this post-all those melting icebergs, icecaps, iced-over seas, and glaciers, such levels of denial might have abated a bit, but no such luck, it seems. And in this case, where the mainstream media leads, Americans seem inclined to go. So, can we be truly surprised that an April poll from the Pew Research Center actually found a modest decline since January 2007 in "the proportion of Americans who say that the earth is getting warmer"? Or that, while a majority of the world, in Pew's latest Global Attitude Study, blames the U.S., at least in part, for accelerating global warming, we are one of the countries "where majorities do not define global warming as a very serious problem." Fair warning, then. Think of this as the Tomdispatch equivalent of the Surgeon General's caveat on a cigarette pack: If you value the health of your state of denial, you will read the following remarkable piece by John Feffer, co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus and Tomdispatch regular, slowly, carefully, and at your peril. Tomdispatch takes no responsibility for what may happen. (06/23/08)

Why Iraq? Really!

Tom Engelhardt writes: More than five years after the invasion of Iraq -- just in case you were still waiting -- the oil giants finally hit the front page… Last Thursday, the New York Times led with this headline: "Deals with Iraq Are Set to Bring Oil Giants Back." (Subhead: "Rare No-bid Contracts, A Foothold for Western Companies Seeking Future Rewards.") And who were these four giants? ExxonMobil, Shell, the French company Total and BP (formerly British Petroleum). What these firms got were mere "service contracts" -- as in servicing Iraq's oil fields -- not the sort of "production sharing agreements" that President Bush's representatives in Baghdad once dreamed of, and that would have left them in charge of those fields. Still, it was clearly a start. The Times reporter, Andrew E. Kramer, added this little detail: "[The contracts] include a provision that could allow the companies to reap large profits at today's prices: the [Iraqi oil] ministry and companies are negotiating payment in oil rather than cash." And here's the curious thing, exactly these four giants "lost their concessions in Iraq" back in 1972 when that country's oil was nationalized. Hmmm. You'd think the Times might have slapped some kind of "we wuz wrong" label on the piece. I mean, remember when the mainstream media, the Times included, seconded the idea that Bush's invasion, whatever it was about -- weapons of mass destruction or terrorism or liberation or democracy or bad dictators or… well, no matter -- you could be sure of one thing: it wasn't about oil. "Oil" wasn't a word worth including in serious reporting on the invasion and its aftermath, not even after it turned out that American troops entering Baghdad guarded only the Oil and Interior Ministries, while the rest of the city was looted. Even then -- and ever after -- the idea that the Bush administration might have the slightest urge to control Iraqi oil (or the flow of Middle Eastern oil via a well-garrisoned Iraq) wasn't worth spending a few paragraphs of valuable newsprint on. I always thought that, if Iraq's main product had been video games, sometime in the last five years the Times (and other major papers) would have had really tough, thoughtful pieces, asking really tough, thoughtful questions, about the effects of the invasion and ensuing chaos on our children's lives and the like. But oil, well... After all, with global demand for energy on the rise, why would anybody want to invade, conquer, occupy, and garrison a country that, as Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz once observed, "floats on a sea of oil"? (06/23/08)

Sore Knees? Try some Cream

BBC Medical Science -- Gels or creams containing painkillers are better than tablets for chronic knee pain, NHS research suggests. A study of almost 600 patients aged over 50 found the anti-inflammatory creams worked as well as the oral versions and had fewer side-effects. And although they cost more initially, topical treatments may save the NHS money in the long run, the Queen Mary University of London researchers said. It is estimated that a third of over 50s suffer from knee pain. In half of those the problem is classed as severe. The most common cause of pain in the knee is osteoarthritis - a condition caused by abnormal wearing of the cartilage. A total of 585 patients from 26 general practices around the UK took part in the study which looked specifically at non-steroidal anti-inflammatories (NSAIDs) - a class of drugs which includes ibuprofen. Both tablets and creams containing the drugs had the same effect on knee pain, the study showed. But those treated with oral medication had more minor adverse effects such as indigestion, increased blood pressure, or worsening asthma. ... An Arthritis Research Campaign spokeswoman said GPs had probably under-prescribed topical creams in the past because they did not believe they were as effective. "But this new research appears to show they both as effective and safer, with fewer of the side affects associated with NSAID tablets," she added. (06/23/08)

Co-Operation on the Future of Whales?

BBC Science -- Countries on both sides of the whaling divide are pledging a new spirit of co-operation as the International Whaling Commission (IWC) convenes. There is general agreement that the global body charged with conserving whales and regulating whaling does neither task very effectively. A year-long diplomatic effort by the US has built bridges between the parties. But there is still deep suspicion, and a fundamental divide over whether it is right to hunt whales at all. It appears that Japan, the head of the pro-hunting bloc, and most of its traditional opponents sense they have something to gain from trying to find common ground. ... If the spirit of harmony survives this week, another year of diplomacy is expected, aiming to agree a package of reforms by the next annual meeting. "Every party I've talked to senses that the IWC cannot continue on the path it's on and I think that's the first thing, to recognise that you have problems," said William Hogarth, the US whaling commissioner who, as IWC chair, has been leading the diplomacy. "There's no doubt that the only way to do this is to negotiate a package - everybody wins, nobody loses - but for the sake of the whales, we need to do this." (06-23-08)