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Mormans, Nuclear Waste and the NBA – What do they all have in common?

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Energy Solutions that’s what.

http://www.energysolutionsarena.com/

Construction of the EnergySolutions Arena began June 11, 1990 after several months of conceptual design meetings and negotiations with potential lenders. Sumitomo Trust and the Redevelopment Agency of Salt Lake City saw the vision of Larry H. Miller and agreed to fund this new multi-purpose home for the Utah Jazz.
While the “normal” construction period for a project of this type is usually 24 to 30 months, only 15 months and 24 days were available for the completion of the EnergySolutions Arena before the Utah Jazz 1991/92 season opener. This ambitious endeavor was achieved through the cooperation and teamwork of hundreds of individual subcontractors and suppliers and literally thousands of workers both on and off the job site.

Sahara Construction of Bountiful, Utah established a joint venture, O.C./Sahara, with Ohbayashi Corporation for the construction of the 743,000 square foot base building. Sahara also acted as General Contractor for the 7.6 acre pedestrian plaza and the interior tenant improvements within the building. Time constraints required that “fast-track design/build” construction techniques be employed. This method dictates that design is completed as construction is on-going. Responsibility for the structural, mechanical, electrical and civil engineering design was undertaken by the General Contractor. Mechanical and electrical systems were designed and constructed by CCI Mechanical and Western States Electric respectively.
FFKR Architecture/Planning/Interior Design of Salt Lake City worked closely with the construction team to provide design drawings and resolve design issues during the construction process. Based on FFKR’s conceptual design drawings, the General Contractor, with help from its major subcontractors, prepared a guaranteed maximum price contract for the Owner.

Excavation of the 170,000 cubic yards of soil began on an around-the-clock basis as design team members worked feverishly to complete the first design package for the footings and foundations. This process was typical throughout the course of the project as 61 separate bid packages were ultimately prepared.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EnergySolutions

EnergySolutions

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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EnergySolutions is one of the world’s largest processors of low level waste (LLW), and is the largest nuclear waste company in the United States. EnergySolutions is a publicly traded company NYSE: ES) based in Salt Lake City, Utah, although it has operations in 40 states. Steve Creamer is the founder and current CEO of the company, which formed from the merger of four waste disposal companies: Envirocare, Scientech D&D, BNG America, and Duratek. The company took over several Magnox atomic plants from British Nuclear Fuels plc in United Kingdom on June 7, 2007.[1]

EnergySolutions owns and operates a licensed landfill to dispose of radioactive waste in Tooele County, Utah and operates another in Barnwell County, South Carolina. The company also possesses technology to convert waste into environmentally safe forms, such as durable glass, and is contracted by the United States Department of Energy to assist in waste conversion efforts.

The company holds the naming rights to EnergySolutions Arena.

Creation of EnergySolutions

Envirocare of Utah purchased the Connecticut-based Scientech D&D division in October 2005.[2] On February 2, 2006, Envirocare announced the $90 million purchase of BNG America a subsidiary of British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) based in Virginia.[3] The merged company would change its name to EnergySolutions, with corporate headquarters based in Salt Lake City, Utah. On February 7, 2006, EnergySolutions announced it would buy Maryland-based Duratek, a publicly-traded company, for $396 million in an all-cash deal.[4] The leveraged buyout was financed by banks led by Citigroup, effectively taking the company private.

After the acquisitions, EnergySolutions has 2,500 employees in 40 states with an annual revenue of $280 million.[5] Additionally, EnergySolutions owns two of the nation’s three commercial low-level nuclear-waste repositories, although its primary competitor, Waste Control Specialists, hopes to build a fourth repository in Texas.

Envirocare

Envirocare was founded by Iranian immigrant Khosrow Semnani in 1988. Semnani served as president of the company until May 1997, when Envirocare’s largest customer—the Department of Energy—requested that he step down in the wake of a bribery scandal.[6] Semnani allegedly bribed Utah’s Division of Radiation Control director, Larry B. Anderson, with $600,000 in cash, gifts, and gold coins over several years. Semnani alleged that he was extorted by Anderson, and the two sued each other in civil court. Semnani agreed to testify against Anderson in a plea bargain forcing him to pay a $100,000 fine for aiding in the preparation of a false tax return.[7] Anderson was convicted to serve 30 months in federal prison on tax charges.

In mid-December 2004, Semnani sold Envirocare for an undisclosed sum. Steve Creamer became the company’s new CEO. The deal was financed by private equity firms, led by Lindsay Goldberg & Bessemer of New York, Creamer Investments, and Peterson Partners both of Salt Lake City. Envirocare management promised to drop plans to bury hotter class B and C nuclear waste in Utah in deference to developing political opposition to the company, which was poised to ban the waste anyway.[8] Envirocare’s management and ownership was retained as it made the acquisitions to become EnergySolutions.

Duratek

Based in Columbia, Maryland, Duratek was founded in 1983. In 1990, the company merged with General Technical Services (GTS); the resulting company was known as GTS Duratek[9]. That year, the company formed a joint venture with another firm — Chem-Nuclear Systems, Inc. — to build a commercial vitrification system.

In 1997, GTS Duratek acquired the Scientific Ecology Group (SEG). In 2000, the company purchased the nuclear services business arm of Waste Management Inc.[10] One year later, the company announced that it was dropping GTS from its name, and was once again known as Duratek.

Duratek was purchased by EnergySolutions at 25.7% premium over the February 7, 2006 stock price when the merger was announced.[4]

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Aww they are soooo green. Watching the basketball team from New Orleans play in the desert got them to think about the environment. The one thing that the Morman’s believe that God will never allow men to harm.

http://www.energysolutions.com/

OUR COMPANY

EnergySolutions, headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, is an international nuclear services company with operations throughout the United States and around the world. With over 5,500 world-class professionals, EnergySolutions is a world leader in the safe recycling, processing and disposal of nuclear material. EnergySolutions provides integrated services and solutions to the nuclear industry, the United States Government, the Government of the United Kingdom, hospitals and research facilities.

With an unparalleled safety record, EnergySolutions has implemented a comprehensive “Safety First” approach that provides safety for our workers, the environment and the communities in which we operate.

EnergySolutions offers a full range of services for the decommissioning and remediation of nuclear sites and facilities, management of spent nuclear fuel, the transportation of nuclear material and the environmental cleanup of nuclear legacy sites such as the uranium mill tailings site in Moab, Utah. We own and operate several state-of-the-art facilities including a metal melt facility in Tennessee and a low-level waste disposal facility in Utah.

EnergySolutions is committed to reasserting America’s leadership in the global nuclear industry and to helping the United States achieve energy security, reduce carbon emissions and protect the environment. As a clean, safe and affordable source of energy, nuclear power plays a vital role in solving the world’s energy crisis and meeting the nation’s growing energy demand.

EnergySolutions, we’re part of the solution.

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Wonder if they have been hiring the MAFIA to bury their waste…oh I mean sink boats loaded with their waste at sea? hmmmm

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This Planet Is About Shot – They argue over climate change cause they do not want you to see the big picture

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What the Industrialists of the world and their Bankers do not want you to see is  that the oceans are depleted, the atmosphere is seriously screwed up (not just with green house gases), and the land has effectively been stripped. Humanity has literally sucked the resources out of this planet, goaded on by religious and political leaders.

http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20090824001733data_trunc_sys.shtml

24 September 2009
New doomsday map shows planet’s dire state
by Kate Melville

Human activities have already pushed the Earth beyond three of the planet’s biophysical thresholds, with consequences that are detrimental or even catastrophic for large parts of the world, conclude 29 European, Australian and U.S. scientists in an article in Nature. This force has given rise to a new era – Anthropocene – in which human actions have become the main driver of global environmental change.

“On a finite planet, at some point, we will tip the vital resources we rely upon into irreversible decline if our consumption is not balanced with regenerative and sustainable activity,” says report co-author Sander van der Leeuw, of Arizona State University. The report started with a fairly simple question: How much pressure can the Earth system take before it begins to crash? “Until now, the scientific community has not attempted to determine the limits of the Earth system’s stability in so many dimensions and make a proposal such as this. We are sending these ideas out to be vetted by the scientific community at large,” explains van der Leeuw. Nine boundaries were identified in the report, including climate change, stratospheric ozone, land use change, freshwater use, biological diversity, ocean acidification, nitrogen and phosphorus inputs to the biosphere and oceans, aerosol loading and chemical pollution. The study suggests that three of these boundaries -climate change, biological diversity and nitrogen input to the biosphere – may already have been transgressed.

Using an interdisciplinary approach, the researchers looked at the data for each of the nine vital processes in the Earth system and identified a critical control variable. Biodiversity loss, for example, is based on species extinction rate, which is expressed in extinctions per million species per year. They then explored how the boundaries interact. Here, loss of biodiversity impacts carbon storage (climate change), freshwater, nitrogen and phosphorous cycles, and land systems.

The researchers stress that their approach does not offer a complete roadmap for sustainable development, but does provide an important element by identifying critical planetary boundaries. They also propose a bold move: a limit for each boundary that would maintain the conditions for a livable world. For biodiversity, that would be less than 10 extinctions per million species per year. The current status is greater than 100 species per million lost per year, whereas the pre-industrial value was 0.1-1.

“Three of the boundaries we identify – 350 parts per million of atmospheric carbon dioxide, biodiversity extinction rates more than 10 times the background rate, and no more than 35 million tons of nitrogen pollution per year – have already been exceeded with fossil fuel use, land use change, and agricultural pollution, driving us to unsustainable levels that are producing real risks to our survival,” notes report co-author Diana Liverman, of the University of Arizona.

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We are in the midst of a very large extinction event that we are essentially causing…

Mass extinctions require 2 events. In other words the Dinosaurs didn’t evolve into birds because of a single event…the comet strike. What happened was they filled every niche, ate themselves out of house and home. Probably started eating themselves, thus the gigantisism movement AND then the comet struck. Humans are heading for the same fate.

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/02/17/mass-extinction-theory.html

Mass Extinctions May Follow One-Two Punch

Michael Reilly, Discovery News

Illustration of Volcanic Eruption

The “Press” | Discovery News Video

 

Feb. 17, 2009 — As agents of extinction, comet and asteroid impacts may be losing their punch.

According to a new theory about how mass dyings work, cosmic collisions generally aren’t enough to cause a major extinction event. To be truly devastating, they must be accompanied by another event that inflicts long-term suffering, like runaway climate change due to massive volcanic eruptions.

In other words, a comet couldn’t have killed the dinosaurs by itself — unless they were already endangered species.

This kind of one-two punch could explain more than the extinction of dinosaurs, Nan Arens of Hobart and William Smith Colleges said. In a recent paper in the journal Paleobiology, she and colleague Ian West argue that there are two types of events that can cause extinctions — “pulses” (quick, deadly shocks, like comets) and “presses” (drawn-out stresses that push ecosystems to the brink but may not kill outright, like million-year-long volcanic eruptions).

The chances of mass dyings go way up when both happen together, argues Arens.

 

eruption

WATCH VIDEO: What constitutes a mass extinction?

Related Content:

But are all mass extinctions created equal? Can researchers come up with a “Grand Unified Theory” of ancient apocalypse?West and Arens think so. They combed the last 300 million years of geologic record, noting impact craters, massive eruptions, periods of ancient climate change, and then comparing them to extinctions. The rate at which species die off spiked dramatically, they found, when a “pulse”-type event occurred within a million years or so of a “press.”The theory fits well for the dinosaurs. Around the time of their demise 65 million years ago, a comet slammed into the Yucatan Peninsula and a huge volcano, the Deccan Traps, was erupting in what is today India.

But other extinctions are problematic. The greatest dying in geologic history, the Permian-Triassic extinction, killed 90 percent of all life on Earth, but there is no record of an impact. Instead, all signs point to a 200,000-year-long volcanic eruption in Siberia as the murder weapon.

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Carbon Sequestration At Mountaineer Coal Fired Power In West Virginia

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What do you think Industrial America has against the Appalachian Mountains?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/22/science/earth/22coal.html?_r=1

NEW HAVEN, W.Va. — Poking out of the ground near the smokestacks of the Mountaineer power plant here are two wells that look much like those that draw natural gas to the surface. But these are about to do something new: inject a power plant’s carbon dioxide into the earth.

Multimedia

Captured, Then Buried

Related

Times Topics: Coal

 

Kevin Riddell for The New York Times

The inside of the plant.

The New York Times

The Mountaineer plant in New Haven is ready to inject carbon dioxide into the earth.

Readers’ Comments

 

Share your thoughts.

A behemoth built in 1980, long before global warming stirred broad concern, Mountaineer is poised to become the world’s first coal-fired power plant to capture and bury some of the carbon dioxide it churns out. The hope is that the gas will stay deep underground for millennia rather than entering the atmosphere as a heat-trapping pollutant.

The experiment, which the company says could begin in the next few days, is riveting the world’s coal-fired electricity sector, which is under growing pressure to develop technology to capture and store carbon dioxide. Visitors from as far as China and India, which are struggling with their own coal-related pollution, have been trooping through the plant.

The United States still depends on coal-fired plants, many of them built decades ago, to meet half of its electricity needs. Some industry experts argue that retrofitting them could prove far more feasible than building brand new, cleaner ones.

Yet the economic viability of the Mountaineer plant’s new technology, known as carbon capture and sequestration, remains uncertain.

The technology is certain to devour a substantial amount of the plant’s energy output — optimists say 15 percent, and skeptics, 30 percent. Some energy experts argue that it could prove even more expensive than solar or nuclear power.

And as with any new technology, even the engineers are unsure how well it will work: will all of the carbon dioxide stay put?

Environmentalists who oppose coal mining and coal energy of any kind worry that sequestration could simply trade one problem, global warming, for another one, the pollution of water supplies. Should the carbon dioxide mix with water underground and form carbonic acid, they say, it could leach poisonous materials from rock deep underground that could then seep out.

Given the depths to which workers have drilled, they also fret that the project could cause earthquakes, although experts at the Environmental Protection Agency discount the risk of catastrophe.

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While this comment was insightful…the problems they have had with Earthquakes in Texas is more troubling:

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EDITORS’ SELECTIONS (what’s this?)

 

raschumacher

united states

September 22nd, 2009

10:02 am

This project will demonstrate that the costs of carbon capture and sequestration make coal more expensive than nuclear and wind power. Let’s get it over with so that we can face up and move beyond fossil fuels. There’s less than a 100 year supply left so we have to do it eventually anyway; let’s do it before global warming destroys the climate that nurtured the development of civilization. Burning stuff is for cavemen.

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YES – Burning stuff is for cavemen!!!!

James Howard Kunsler – Say what you like but his writing is pretty good

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OK OK so he got Y@K (oh Y2K) wrong, he is an apoplectic apocalypse dude where everything turns out badly, and he is probably anti-arabic. Nonetheles he writes with a cogent powerful logic. I wish that he had a little bit better appreciation for the power of the Sun however.

This just hot off the presses and then more about him:

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/50173

Energy Bulletin now includes multimedia and other new features

Published Sep 21 2009 by kunstler.com blog, Archived Sep 21 2009

Original Sin

by James Howard Kunstler

In our history, the American nation committed obvious sins against select groups of people, and we’ve paid bitterly for some of that. But now it’s our sins against the land itself that threaten to sink the USA as a viable enterprise.

It’s odd, that in his otherwise excellent blow-by-blow account (“Eight Days,” in the Sept 21 New Yorker Magazine) of the September 2008 Wall Street meltdown that left Lehman dead, and AIG croaking in a ditch, and the banking system in general functionally crippled, reporter James B. Stewart never got around to really describing the cause of it all — namely, the on-the-ground material catastrophe of American suburbia.

It was the worthlessness of the tradable securitized debt associated with all those overpriced (and overvalued) chipboard and vinyl houses, smeared recklessly over the American landscape, that started all the trouble in the first place. And it is our inability to come to grips with that underlying catastrophe that prolongs the resolution of the still-florid banking crisis — since the federal government is doing everything possible to prop up the failed capital equation of terminal suburbia, and to deny the obsolescence of that version of the American Dream and all the mechanisms for delivering it.

The suburban project was not a conspiracy by the likes of Robert Moses, Walt Disney, Frank Lloyd Wright, and President Eisenhower to produce a living arrangement with no future. It was the emergent, self-organizing result of special circumstances in a particular time and place: post World War Two America, with an immense supply of cheap oil, cheap land, and the industrial capacity to churn out all the necessary components for a car-dependent development pattern. Suburbia was spawned out of a couple of persistent themes in American cultural history: 1.) that cities and city life were no good; 2.) and that the romance of settling the wilderness could be reenacted, at great profit, in all that space beyond the towns and cities. It would be silly to deny the appeal of this arrangement at its inception. By the end of WW II, city life in the popular imagination was reduced to one potently awful image: Ralph Kramden’s apartment in “The Honeymooners” TV show.

blog_honeymooners.jpg

There had to be something better than that. Suburbia was engineered as the antidote to the Kramden’s apartment: country-living-for-everybody. The evacuation of the cities to the new outlands proceeded as relentlessly as the landings at Normandy. It wasn’t until the program was well underway that the self-destructive essence of it became obvious — that every new housing subdivision killed the original rural character of the land, with the result that suburban life quickly became a cartoon of country living in a cartoon of a country house in a cartoon of the country. With additional layer-on-layer of, first, the shopping in the form of highway strips, then malls, along with the office “parks,” these places elaborated themselves into a kind of cancer-of-the-landscape, a chronic and expensive condition that Americans had no choice but to live with, because of the monumental investments they had already made in it. The discontents it produced lent it to psychological depression and dark humor, just as chronic illness does. But we were stuck with it.

Meanwhile, all the machinery of culture and politics made it impossible to construct anything differently. The exquisitely fine-tuned planning-and-zoning codes generated by the thousands of town boards mandated a suburban outcome everywhere — with plenty of help from the DOT traffic engineers, the fire marshals, and the even the mandarins of academia who trained all these professionals. As a natural consequence of all this, the disinvestment in cities — especially the older cities of the industrial heartland — continued remorsely until it seemed as if the Second World War had taken place in St. Louis and Cleveland.

This mode of behavior persisted through the first, short-lived oil scarcity tremors of the 1970s. It was so completely embedded in the popular imagination that it had become the baseline American identity. The suburban project caught a second wind in the 1990s, when the last great non-OPEC oil fields of the North Sea, Alaska, and Siberia nullified the grip of the Islamic cartel for while, and sent the price of oil down to $11-a-barrel. Ironically, it was during those years that the warnings of “peak oil” first circulated beyond the geology offices, and it was clear to anyone who reflected on the connections that the project of suburbia was doomed.

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He goes on to point out that there is no economy LEFT in the US anymore. Besides food, which has been corporatized there is nothing left in the US to make money with. The manufacturing  jobs were sent overseas.

For more about Kunsler:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Howard_Kunstler

Background

Kunstler was born in New York City to Jewish parents,[1] who divorced when he was eight.[2] His father was a middleman in the diamond trade.[1] Kunstler spent most of his childhood with his mother and stepfather, a publicist for Broadway shows.[1] While spending summers at a boys’ camp in New Hampshire, he became acquainted with the small town ethos that would later permeate many of his works. In 1966 he graduated from New York City’s High School of Music & Art, and then attended the State University of New York at Brockport where he majored in Theater.

After college Kunstler worked as a reporter and feature writer for a number of newspapers, and finally as a staff writer for Rolling Stone. In 1975, he began writing books and lecturing full-time. He lives in Saratoga Springs, New York and was formerly married to the children’s author Jennifer Armstrong.

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You can find out more than you ever really cared to at:

http://kunstler.com/blog/

Interestingly here is the part that Energy Bulletins left out…I wonder why?

Clusterfuck Nation
Comment on Current Events by the Author of “The Long Emergency”

By James Howard Kunstler
on September 21, 2009 6:34 AM


In our history, the American nation committed obvious sins against select groups of people, and we’ve paid bitterly for some of that. But now it’s our sins against the land itself that threaten to sink the USA as a viable enterprise.
 It’s odd, that in his otherwise excellent blow-by-blow account (“Eight Days,” in the Sept 21 New Yorker Magazine) of the September 2008 Wall Street meltdown that left Lehman dead, and AIG croaking in a ditch, and the banking system in general functionally crippled, reporter James B. Stewart never got around to really describing the cause of it all — namely, the on-the-ground material catastrophe of American suburbia.
It was the worthlessness of the tradable securitized debt associated with all those overpriced (and overvalued) chipboard and vinyl houses, smeared recklessly over the American landscape, that started all the trouble in the first place. And it is our inability to come to grips with that underlying catastrophe that prolongs the resolution of the still-florid banking crisis — since the federal government is doing everything possible to prop up the failed capital equation of terminal suburbia, and to deny the obsolescence of that version of the American Dream and all the mechanisms for delivering it.
The suburban project was not a conspiracy

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Levittown will have killed us..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levittown,_New_York

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Mafia Sinks Nuclear Waste – Some stories defy catergorization

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So I was preparing another post on weatherization and I was searching through Digg and Peak Oil for such stories…probably on window replacement or maybe weather stripping and I came across this WTF story that I just had to post.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8257912.stm

Mafia ‘sank ships of toxic waste’

By Duncan Kennedy
BBC News, Italy


A shipwreck apparently containing toxic waste is being investigated by authorities in Italy amid claims that it was deliberately sunk by the mafia.

An informant from the Calabrian mafia said the ship was one of a number he blew up as part of an illegal operation to bypass laws on toxic waste disposal.

The sunken vessel has been found 30km (18 miles) off the south-west of Italy.

The informant said it contained “nuclear” material. Officials said it would be tested for radioactivity.

Murky pictures taken by a robot camera show the vessel intact and alongside it are a number of yellow barrels.

Labels on them say the contents are toxic.

The informant said the mafia had muscled in on the lucrative business of radioactive waste disposal.

But he said that instead of getting rid of the material safely, he blew up the vessel out at sea, off the Calabrian coast.

He also says he was responsible for sinking two other ships containing toxic waste.

Experts are now examining samples taken from the wreck.

Other vessels

An official said that if the samples proved to be radioactive then a search for up to 30 other sunken vessels believed scuttled by the mafia would begin immediately.

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Tree Hugger and the New York Times adds this:

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/09/toxic-waste-ship-sunk-mafia-found-italy.php

!

calabria coast photo
Somewhere out there are more toxic waste ships waiting to be found. Photo: Peter Rohleder via flickr.

This may sound like a pretty good TV crime show plot, but this is non-fiction: Reuters reports that Italian authorities have discovered a ship containing 180 barrels of toxic waste (some of which may be radioactive), which was purposely sunk by the Mafia, off Italy’s southern coast. What’s more, it’s suspected there are 32 more vessels waiting to be found:

The ship was discovered after a former member of the ‘Ndrangheta organized crime organization tipped off police — the informant was personally responsible for sinking this ship and two others.

The 360′-long vessel is about 18 miles off the coast of Calabria, in 1600′ of water. Based on TV images, at least one barrel has fallen off the ship and it now empty on the sea floor.

Since tighter environmental regulations in the 1980s, illegal dumping of toxic waste has been embraced by the Mafia as another lucrative income stream.

Mafia Has Used Somalia As Dumping Ground for 20 Years
Here’s the broader connection here: Since the 1990s the Mafia have been known to dump toxic waste in the waters off Somalia — where the utter lack of government means it costs one-tenth that of dumping in Europe. In 2004, toxic and radioactive waste washed up on Somali beaches, causing illness in local people. This toxic waste dumping is also cited by local fisherman as contributing to declining fish stocks in the region, thereby pushing people to piracy.

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The New York Times and the Associated Press adds this:

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/09/15/world/AP-EU-Italy-Toxic-Mafia.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=mafia%20sink%20ships&st=cse

Giordano said the former mobster, Francesco Fonti, from the Calabria-based ‘ndrangheta crime syndicate, has claimed the mob sank ”hundreds” of barrels of illegally disposed of waste.

The prosecutor, based in Paola, Calabria, has promised that if analyses do turn up toxic substances, the hunt would be on for more sunken ships.

Fonti claims mobsters made millions of dollars illegally dumping radioactive and other toxic wastes for northern Italian businesses. Fonti has said he himself has been involved in the alleged sinking of three vessels, including the ship the robotic diver is now filming.

In recent interviews, Fonti’s face was blackened out to protect his identity, since he is under state protection.

Fonti claims the ship being filmed was carrying 120 barrels of radioactive waste when he alleged he used explosives to sink it some 20 miles (32 kilombers) off the Calabrian coast in 1992.

Investigators have long looked into claims that Italy’s southern-based crime syndicates, including the Naples-area Camorra and the ‘ndrangheta ran illegal rackets disposing of toxic wastes, including in clandestine land dumps.

The plot of the Italian hit movie ”Gomorrah” revolved around a Camorra racket that dumped toxic refuse in farmland near Naples.

Greenpeace and the Italian environmental group Lega Ambiente have been compiling lists over the last few decades of ships that have disappeared off Italy and Greece as they pursue reports of boats laden with toxic substances being sunk.

A Greenpeace official, Alessandro Gianni, told Associated Press Television News in an interview Tuesday that in the ’90s, his organization tried to learn the fate of ships that might have been involved in toxic dumping.

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So that is the story of Somalian Piracy…Since the various organized crime families are world wide now how much of this has been going on. The Russians sank a Chinese Ship in January. Another Russian Ship went “astray” in July. Has the Mafia turned the high seas into their personal toxic dumping ground? Better question to ask is, did Big Businesses like the Nuclear Power Plants of the world turn to the Mafia to dump their toxic waste…hmmmmm?

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DARPA And The Military Seek Farout Energy Sources – But then farout is what DARPA does best

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(fittingly – today is Jam Band Friday and Carlos is up – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ml3NUIDpFg  )

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is a black agency in the sense that much of what it does is shrouded in some secrecy. Its a Think Tank at one level. It is a contractor at another. It is a black site in the sense that it has no budget. But heh, they got a webpage and a Facebook Page too. How Hip and Modern.

http://www.darpa.mil/

http://www.facebook.com/DARPA

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( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rRlBmJiz5k&feature=related )

 http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/09/darpa-seeks-to-tap-waters-power-potential/

Danger Room What’s Next in National Security

Darpa Seeks to Tap Water’s Power Potential

 

baltic_sea_wave_cien_water

The quest for limitless energy has preoccupied military researchers for years, and Darpa, the Pentagon’s far-out science arm, has often led the way. Now the agency is looking for yet another method to harness cheap and environmentally friendly energy that would be as simple as turning on the tap.

Well, sort of. Darpa is soliciting proposals for using seawater to create liquid fuel. Their hope is to harvest the abundance of carbon and hydrogen in ocean water, and somehow convert the molecules, via chemical reaction, into usable energy. Since fuel is mostly made up of hydrocarbons, the right interplay between water molecules and the carbon dioxide lurking among them would — in theory — yield fuel compounds.

Sounds good, right? Except Darpa’s not entirely sure what reaction needs to take place, or how to make it happen. That’s the first step for researchers: coming up with an efficient, effective catalyst, and one that won’t be affected by water pollutants, pH levels or the carbon dioxide concentrations of different water samples.

Of course, this isn’t the only out-there energy proposal the military’s got researchers working on. In July, the Air Force started investigating purple bacteria whose pigment could power flying drones. And Darpa’s already throwing money at another water-based energy source: last year, they spent $20 million dollars on converting algae into jet fuel. No word yet on how that worked out.

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( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAf3gqdCrDs&feature=related )

They even have a Wikipedia Page now. You used to have to turn over rocks and stuff to find out anything about them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA

DARPA

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
Formed 1958
Headquarters Arlington, Virginia
Employees 240
Annual budget $3.2 billion
Agency executive Regina Dugan[1], Director
Website
www.darpa.mil

 

 

DARPA headquarters in the Virginia Square neighborhood of Arlington.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is an agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of new technology for use by the military. DARPA has been responsible for funding the development of many technologies which have had a major effect on the world, including computer networking, as well as NLS, which was both the first hypertext system, and an important precursor to the contemporary ubiquitous graphical user interface.

Its original name was simply Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), but it was renamed DARPA (for Defense) during March 1972, then renamed ARPA again during February 1993, and then renamed DARPA again during March 1996.

DARPA was established during 1958 (as ARPA) in response to the Soviet launching of Sputnik during 1957, with the mission of keeping U.S. military technology more sophisticated than that of the nation’s potential enemies. From DARPA’s own introduction:[2]

DARPA’s original mission, established in 1958, was to prevent technological surprise like the launch of Sputnik, which signaled that the Soviets had beaten the U.S. into space. The mission statement has evolved over time. Today, DARPA’s mission is still to prevent technological surprise to the US, but also to create technological surprise for our enemies.

DARPA is independent from other more conventional military R&D and reports directly to senior Department of Defense management. DARPA has around 240 personnel (about 140 technical) directly managing a $3.2 billion budget. These figures are “on average” since DARPA focuses on short-term (two to four-year) projects run by small, purpose-built teams.

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( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yoGTVzgow8&feature=related )

Here is a little bit of the things they are working on that we know of:

http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Technology-Article.asp?ArtNum=59

Here’s a listing of the DARPA-related projects presented on the Technovelgy site:

  • Silent Talk ‘Telepathy’ For Soldiers
    ‘…allow user-to-user communication on the battlefield without the use of vocalized speech through analysis of neural signals.’
  • TASC – DARPA’s Psychohistory
    The agency is seeking whitepapers to fuel the development of a scientific approach to predicting the actions of large masses of people.
  • Guided Bullets By Exacto From DARPA
    How is it possible that a bullet could redirect its own course in mid-flight?
  • DARPA Seeks Self-Repairing Hunter-Killers?
    Tests to date have seen small aerial robots lose large chunks of themselves to hostile fire, yet carry on with their mission.
  • DARPA Gandalf Project And Philip K. Dick
    A new defense department project to locate enemies precisely, and target them, by phone.
  • EATR – DARPA’s Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot
    Project to develop a robotic platform able to perform long missions while refueling itself by foraging.
  • You Can’t Hide From DARPA
    Harnessing Infrastructure for Building Reconnaissance (HIBR).
  • Squishy SquishBot ChemBots Desired By DARPA
    ChemBots are soft, flexible robots that are able to alter their shape to squeeze through small openings and then regain their full size.
  • Fracture Putty For Compound Fractures – DARPA
    An alternative to today’s standard treatments, which often lead to further complications, and are not fully load-bearing,
  • Submersible Aircraft – DARPA’s Flying Sub?
    The minimal required airborne tactical radius of the sub-plane is 1000 nautical miles (nm).
  • MAHEM Metal Jets Like Clarke’s Stiletto Beam
    Create compressed magnetic flux generator (CMFG)-driven magneto hydrodynamically formed metal jets and self-forging penetrators (SFP).
  • Precision Urban Hopper Robot Must ‘Stick’ Landings
    Intended to give wheeled robots an additional edge; the ability to jump up onto or over obstacles up to nine meters high.
  • Katana Mono-Wing Rotorcraft Nano Air Vehicle
    The Katana Mono-Wing Rotorcraft is a coin-sized one-bladed helicopter.
  • Micro Imagers For Sensing On Nano Air Vehicles
    With the impetus toward micro-air and -ground vehicles for military applications, there is a compelling need for imaging micro-sensors compatible with these small platforms.
  • RESURRECT High-Fidelity Computer Battlefield Simulations
    Create high-fidelity computer simulations of in-theatre events for tactical, operational and strategic review
  • Aqua Sciences Water From Atmospheric Moisture
    The program focused on creating water from the atmosphere using low-energy systems.
  • Shape-Shifting Bomber In Need Of Plowsharing
    Shape-shifting supersonic bomber fans are feeling bereft this weekend.

    • :}

    for the old school

    ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnamP4-M9ko&feature=related )
    Oh and for another high tech energy firm across the pond try:

    http://www.entity-group.com/About-Us.aspx

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    A Volkswagen In Every Basement? What are you offloading

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    This was an eye catching headline and hundreds of bloggers posted it. But what are they really accomplishing here. If the people have electric water heaters maybe they are accomplishing something. If the people have gas water heaters then the impact is much less. You have off loaded an inefficient gas heater for an efficient one. But if you installed a solar water heater well…then you would be doing something. This is just a publicity stunt…AND apparently it worked:

    http://www.afp.com/afpcom/en/

    http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/284909,volkswagen-plan-would-rev-up-power-for-apartments.html

    Volkswagen plan would rev up power for apartments

    by Aurelia End Aurelia End – Wed Sep 9, 11:06 am ET

    Salzgitter,Germany – Automotive giant Volkswagen and a small German power company unveiled Wednesday a plan to build up to 100,000 mini power stations in apartment house basements. The generators would run off more or less the same natural-gas- powered engines as those that currently drive some

    Volkswagen Golf cars. Exhaust heat from the engines would warm up water for showers and central heating.“It’s a true revolution in the electricity business,” said Christian Friege, chief executive of Lichtblick, a small “green energy” supplier to homes and offices which teamed up with
    Volkswagen for the project. The plan, sealed with an agreement at Volkswagen’s Salzgitter factory in northern Germany, is a challenge to big utilities that generate power with huge steam turbines driven by nuclear or coal heat. Germany’s infrastructure could help make the plan a reality, with gas, mostly drilled in Siberia, already being piped to most city streets in Germany. Volkswagen said the “green” internal-combustion engines it has developed for cars were quiet enough to operate in building basements and emitted 60 per cent less carbon dioxide than comparable thermal power plants. Lichtblick, based in Hamburg, is a company with 550,000 customers and a focus on supplying non-nuclear electricity. Engineers said the key to the system’s success would be a home power station’s efficiency, with up to 94 per cent of the energy in the gas used for heating or to make electricity, whereas gas-fired power plants only use 40 to 60 per cent..

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    This was YAHOO’s take on it:

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090909/ts_afp/germanyclimatewarmingtechnologycompanylichtblickvw_20090909151116

    Home power plants project unveiled in Germany

     

    Home power plants project unveiled in Germany

    AFP/DDP – A technician of German automaker Volkswagen’s adjusts a mini gas-fired power plant at the VW plant …

    by Aurelia End Aurelia End – Wed Sep 9, 11:06 am ET

    BERLIN (AFP) – An ambitious project was unveiled in Germany on Wednesday to install mini gas-fired power plants in people’s basements and produce as much electricity as two nuclear reactors within a year.

    The Hamburg-based renewable energy group Lichtblick and its automaker partner Volkswagen say the plants would produce not only heating and hot water but also electricity, with any excess power fed into the local grid.

    The two firms said the concept of “SchwarmStrom” (literally, “swarm power”) would allow Germany to abandon nuclear and coal power stations sooner and help compensate for the volatility of renewables like wind and solar power.

    The plants also reduce harmful carbon dioxide emissions by up to 60 percent compared to conventional heat and electricity generation, they added in a joint statement.

    In the coming year the programme will install 100,000 of the mini plants, producing between them 2,000 megawatts of electricity, the same as two nuclear plants, Lichtblick and VW said.

    “SchwarmStrom is revolutionising power production in Germany. It clears the way for more renewable energy and an exit from power from nuclear and coal,” the statement added.

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    These people ran it too:

    http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/09/10/0246238

    http://www.thelocal.de/sci-tech/20090909-21821.htmlhttp://www.france24.com/en/20090909-home-power-plants-project-unveiled-germany

    http://www.german-info.com/press_shownews.php?pos=Economy&pid=1600

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    Energy Citizens Rally Or Protest Was Not Just Surreal It Was Sad

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    1

    I got into the rally because Roy Wehrle got stopped by Security. The lengths that they went to keep out “undesirables” was pretty amazing. Will Reynolds, of the Sierra Club went in and gave some materials to their Press Table. He was then barred from reentry by 2 Sangamon County Sheriff’s Deputies for distributing political literature. Apparently after that anyone seen talking to Will was a thoroughly dangerous man like in Alice’s Restaurant. When I went in the ballroom they pounced on mild mannered Economics professor Roy and turned him away.

    Remember this is the compelling protest designed to defeat Cap and Trade WHICH is the INDUSTRIES proposal NOT the Environmentalists. I like a huge Carbon Tax myself. Most European countries pay 6 $$$ per gallon for their gasoline…and that tax money is invested directly into renewables and infrastructure. Why not do something like that in the US?  This is what the “protest” looked like:

    catprotest1.JPG

    Photos by Wes King

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    This is what they stand for:

    http://energycitizens.org/about/

    About Energy Citizens

    Energy Citizens is a nationwide alliance of organizations and individuals formed to bring together people across America to remind Congress that energy is the backbone of our nation’s economy and our way of life.

    Energy Citizens are voicing their concerns about the impact climate legislation passed by the U.S. House of Representatives would have on American jobs, families and businesses. The alliance is urging the Senate to get it right and make sure that climate, energy and tax legislation would not take money out of Americans’ pocketbooks and cost millions of jobs.

    See personal stories from people across the country, or take a look at the list of participating organizations that have joined Energy Citizens in support of American jobs and affordable energy

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    This is who paid for it:

    http://www.redcounty.com/illinois-business-groups-schedule-anti-cap-and-trade-rally-sept-1st

    Illinois Business Groups Schedule Anti-Cap and Trade Rally, Sept. 1st

    By Warner Todd Huston | 08/31/09 | 07:41 PM EDT

    A group called Energy Citizens made up of 23 Illinois business associations have scheduled a September 1st rally in order to protest the seriously damaging policies of the Cap and Trade bill. The rally will be held near the State Capitol in Springfield.

    The event will start a noon and will be held at Crowne Plaza Hotel, 3000 Dirksen Parkway, Springfield, Illinois.

    A notice was posted at the Illinois Farm Bureau website.

    A lunch will follow the roughly 45-minute event, one of 22 rallies nationwide sponsored by the group Energy Citizens to oppose House-approved legislation. IFB members are encouraged to attend, and may contact their county Farm Bureau for additional details.

    The Illinois members of Energy Citizens includes the Southwestern Illinois Employers Association and Wayne-White Counties Electric Cooperative, the Illinois Association of Convenience Stores, Associated Builder and Contractors of Illinois (ABC), Illinois Petroleum Marketers Association, Grain & Feed Association of Illinois, Growmark, Home Builders Association of Illinois, Illinois Association of Aggregate Producers, Illinois Coal Associations, Illinois Energy Forum, Illinois Farm Bureau, Illinois manufacturers Association, Illinois Petroleum Council, Illinois Pork Producers, Illinois Retail Merchants Association, Illinois Trucking Association, MidAmerica Energy, Mid-West Truckers Association, Illinois Oil & Gas Association, National Federation of Independent Business, Rural Electric Convenience Cooperative and the Illinois Fertilizer & Chemical Association.

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    The saddest part was  they used local “personality” Bob Murray as the MC. I hate to pick on anyone but there is a reason that Bob moved from TV to Radio and there are no pictures available of him below the waist…I mean he is huge. When I walked in he looked pretty normal but when I got off to the side I was stunned. Then he made a joke about it. “I am so big”, he said, “When I asked my mom when I was born she said July 4rth….July 5th and July 6th”

    http://www.spoke.com/info/pF0Rf1m/BobMurray

    I just wanted to cry. They were giving away bright yellow Tshirts that read, “I will pass on $4 gas”. I wish now I would have grabbed one. There was even a sign that read, “RVer’s Against Waxman-Markey” and another sign that read, “Crap and Trade”.  As I  walked out Murray said, “The great thing about this country is that you can hold a meeting like this and then there is no one waiting for you in the parking lot to shoot your ass”.  He then turned and launched into the Pledge of Allegiance.

    WHAT a parking lot it was too. As I walked back to my car, past the hundreds of Lincoln Town cars, giant SUVs and the huge Chevys I noticed that they had filled up half of the parking lot with displays. There was   a huge 16 head combine that had a Rural America Needs Affordable Energy banner slung across it. A huge semi trailer display for Illinois Crude Oil and Natural Gas. To add insult to injury the last display I walked by was 2 bucket trucks with their buckets up holding a banner that said Stop Cap and Trade. The trucks were owned by the Rural Electric Convenience Coop in Auburn that just put up a 1.2 million $$$ wind turbine.

    It may take me years to get the images out of my head…..yuck

    :}

    Oh and thanks to the college students who drove all the way from Chicago when we were thinking about disrupting this madness.

    catprotest5.JPG

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    Energy Citizens Protest Rally In Springfield Was The Most Surreal Event I Have Ever Attended

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    I could add sick, disgusting, phony and funny to that list but why bother? I can show you how it was by example. But on the 150 aniversery of the first oil well..it is just plain sad. Oil guys used to be such roughnecks now they are kinda wussy.

    The 2 most surreal events I had ever been to before was an Alice Cooper concert in 1969 and the Opening of Ticket Sales at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion for the English Opera Peter Grimes in Los Angeles in 1984. I know Alice doesn’t need any explanation (it does really), but the opening of ticket sales for an obscure opera?

    But first a picture:

    catprotest31.JPG

    (thanks for the pictures Wes King)

    It is in a BALLROOM. I have never been to a protest in one of the ritzyest ballrooms within a 100 miles of Springfield. This is the most senior citizens I have seen at a protest not sponsored by the AARP ever. There is no ethnic diversity in the room. I have been to plenty of protests, some where there were simultaneous counter protests and I have never seen this Caucasion of an audience since my last KKK rally. It is probably tough to see but the 2 black skinned men in the room are a waitstaff member at the bottom of the picture and way off in the distance there is a black camera man for the only news organization I saw that day, Channel 20 TV. Considering the cost of this rally that in itself was bizarre. But back to Alice Cooper.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LA-sjSkRM4M&feature=channel

    This Alice Cooper concert was when I was 14, and it was my first rock concert ever. It was in Peoria in a place since torn down called the Cow Palace. Which it literally was. A barn like structure with a dirt  floor where they sold cows (and other live stock). It was my 3rd acid trip…my first in public and I was with my fiance’ Denise and some other San Jose (Illinois) crazies. All the lights were on so it was real bright, and all of the sudden the Wedding March starts playing, these flowers POP up on the stage and simultaneously a man in a tux (stage left), a women in a wedding dress (stage right) and a minister (center stage) all walk to the center of the stage. The audience was stunned. The minister performs the wedding complete with “is there anyone here who may object to this union”? Stunned silence. Towards the end of the ceremony Alice Cooper and his band in their full make up started peering through the flowers. At the “kiss the bride” part the room goes to BLACK, the stage lights come on low and giant trash cans come hurtling over the flowers, followed by Alice and the band…In that 2 second period my life changed for ever.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUFO_04J1r4

    :}

    My second most surreal moment could take some set up but I will try to make it as quick as possible. But first another picture of the event:

    catprotest4.JPG

    I mean really do these people look angry? Do they look passionate about preventing “cap and trade” in the area of carbon production because it has already worked for sulfur? NO these people look like people at the Republican Convention in Minnesota last year.

    Anyway in 1984 I lived in Las Vegas with a woman who celebrated her 30 birthday. I had patiently gone to the Lyric Opera in Chicago for 2 seasons with her. Then I said enough! I am not going to another Opera unless it is in English and I was off the hook for a couple of years. BUT someone (probably her sister) told her that Peter Grimes was playing at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in LA.  Yes the same place where the Academy  Awards are occasionally given out. So we got a room in a South Central L.A., yes the place that burned down in the riots which was surreal enough as it was. We went for a driving tour of the LA area (Hollywood, Venice Beach, Malibu) and then we had Oriental Food downtown someplace. The next day we had to go pick up our tickets at the Pavilion. Yes I know that seems quaint now but you had to physically pick up your tickets. While we were waiting in this 500 person line we were subjected to a surprise Japanese Performance Art piece.

    http://www.musiccenter.org/

    http://www.asianinfo.org/asianinfo/japan/pro-performing_arts.htm

    http://outwestarts.blogspot.com/2008/03/attend-tale-of-peter-grimes.html

    Nobody was looking up so I have no idea how it started, but suddenly you hear a huge horn sound…like a foghorn or something real deep and loud. I looked up and there on top of the Pavilion (4 stories maybe) was a long robed Japanese figure in an elongated paper masked, flanked on each side by 2 naked guys in diapers. He blew on this big horn again. It was about 8 ft. long and rested on the ground like an Alp Horn:

    http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070905040636AAXDrTt

    Then these 4 nearly naked Japanese guys rappelled down the front of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion Australian style to some really weird Japanese music played through the Pavilion’s very small very tinny outdoor speakers:

    swatman6.tripod.com/srt1.html

    This rapel took forever. When they landed in front of us they did some short welcoming ritual (I am guessing). The guy on the roof blew the horn again. These naked guys jumped up and down once, turned and ran to the entrance way. They threw open the doors and ran inside the building and the guy on the roof was gone. People were so stunned nobody actually went through the door. Then people started clapping and several brave soldiers advanced into the que.

    So there you have it. What I witnessed at the Energy Citizens protest rally yesterday was somewhere between an Alice Cooper Concert and a Japanese Performance Art piece on my surreal scale. WHOA

    :}

    :}

    He Was Shootin At Some Food And Up Came Some Bubbling Crude

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    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkOGM6gHvao

    Oil that is, Texas Gold….Hmmm maybe like population bustin, human cancer makin, pollutin the atmosphere…dead plants and animals from the past black gunk.

    http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/26/after-150-years-whither-oil/

    2009-08-27 T00:52:03-04:00″ Updated: 12:52 am

    After 150 Years, Whither Oil?

    By Jad Mouawad

    Drake Well

    The Associated Press A replica of the well and tower stand over the site in Titusville, Pa., where Edwin L. Drake drilled the first oil well in 1859.

    This week marks the 150th anniversary of the first oil well drilled in Titusville, Pennsylvania by “Colonel” Edwin Drake. The commodity would prove essential to the development of modern societies, enabling communications, travel and trade on a global scale.

    But its central role is now facing unprecedented challenges.

    Governments are concerned about the need for energy security and reliable supplies. The threat of climate change requires shifting away from fossil fuels that currently dominate the world’s energy mix. And fears of “peak oil” — the notion that half the world’s reserves have been pumped and that global production is now on a slow path of decline — have gained followers as prices have soared.

    How much longer will the “Oil Age” last?

    In our own opinion page on Monday, Michael Lynch, an oil consultant, suggested that the notion of peak oil amounted to uninformed fear-mongering, and that it ignored the realities of the modern oil industry. The bottom line, Mr. Lynch argued, is that the world is not about to run out of oil and that new exploration and drilling technologies continue to expand the pool of global reserves

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    http://www.energypublisher.com/article.asp?id=20230

     

    Insights:  Energy and Environment

    150 Years of Commercial Petroleum

    One hundred and fifty years since the discovery of oil at Titusville, Pennsylvania, it is time to reflect on what are the next steps towards energy independence.

     

     

    Tuesday, September 01, 2009

    by Gal Luft

    One hundred and fifty years ago, give or take a few days, in the sleepy lumber town of Titusville, Pa., “Colonel” Edwin Drake was persistently hammering a pipe into the ground in search of a replacement for depleting whale oil as a fuel for lamps. At a depth of 69 feet below ground he finally struck oil, and the world changed forever. Over a century and a half his 25 barrels per day well would give rise to a global industry of 85 million barrels per day, making oil the world’s most strategic commodity, one that supplies 40 percent of the world’s energy.

    Just like in Drake’s own life — he died two decades later penniless — oil has been both a curse and a blessing for humanity. It has been a driver of seminal events and a backdrop behind great powers’ foreign policy. During World War I, “the Allies had floated to victory upon a wave of oil,” as the British statesman Lord Curzon noted. The post-war contention between Turkey and Britain in the early 1920s over Iraq’s oil-rich Mosul, Imperial Japan’s expansionist policy of the 1930s that led to a four-year war in the Pacific, Adolf Hitler’s invasion of Russia, America’s repeated military interventions in the Middle East and the “New Great Game” currently taking place in Central Asia have all been tied to oil dependence.

    :}

    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052970203706604574370511700484236.html

    Why Oil Still Has a Future

    By DANIEL YERGIN

    ( :} This is an excerpt from a much longer piece…the first paragraph was …titusville blah blah)

    Why this debate about the single most important source of energy—and a very convenient one—that provides 40% of the world’s total energy? There are the traditional concerns—energy security, diversification, political risk, and the potential for conflict among nations over resources. The huge shifts in global income flows raise anxieties about the possible impact on the global balance of power. Some worry that physical supply will run out, although examination of the world’s resource base—including a new analysis of over 800 oil fields—shows ample physical resources below ground. The politics above ground is a separate question.

    But two new factors are now fueling the debate. One is the way in which oil has taken on a second identity. It is no longer only a physical commodity. It has also become a financial asset, along with stocks, bonds, currencies and the rest of the world’s financial portfolio. The resulting price volatility—from less than $40 in 2004, to as high as $147.27 in July 2008, back down to $32.40 in December 2008, and now back over $70—has enormous consequences, and not only at the gas station and in terms of public anger. It makes it much more difficult to plan future energy investments, whether in oil and gas or in renewable and alternative fuels. And it can have enormous economic impact; Detroit was sent reeling by what happened at the gas pump in 2007 and 2008 even before the credit crisis. Such volatility can fuel future recessions and inflation

    :}