Category Archives: industry apologists

Screw The Environment – Humans were meant to pollute and they have the right to pollute

Posted on by
Reply

I never thought I would be citing Kathryn Rem at the SJ-R for an environmental article. Don’t get me wrong she is a dandy writer, in the same league with Tim Landis (whom I regularly “borrow from”), but she usually writes a food column. I read it faithfully because I am a minor foodie, and she usually has cool things to say. In her Seeing Red About Green, she broke a story that I might have missed. Thanks Ms. Rem!

www.sj-r.com/features/x379998865/Kathryn–Rem-Seeing-red-about-the-green-movement

:}

This is the article that I think she based her article on:

http://industry.bnet.com/retail/2008/07/14/one-quarter-of-consumers-say-screw-the-environment/ 

 Retail Industry

Industry news and insights by Lisa EverittOne-Quarter of Consumers Say ‘Screw The Environment’Two new studies say 10-26 percent of shoppers are “Never Greens,” whose reactions to environmental claims ranges from apathy to outright anger.

Mintel International in Chicago coined the term “Never Green” to describe 10 percent of the shopper universe. A second study by The Shelton Group of Knoxville, Tenn., found that 26 percent of respondents were “hardcore skeptics,” mostly upper middle-class, conservative, middle-aged men.

 reporter Jim Edwards profiles William Coverley, a retired investment banker from Ohio, who just bought his 10th vehicle, a 2008 GMC Yukon XL that gets 14 miles per gallon.

“I don’t care about the environmental reasons and I’ll tell you why,” Coverley said. “All this stuff about carbon emissions, no one really knows about the output of the sun and yet it’s the single most important input behind global warming . . . Are the Chinese going to be environmentalists? Are the Indians going to be environmentalists? Are the Russians? I don’t think so.”

Edwards suggests studying your market carefully before launching green marketing, because emphasizing environmental claims may cost you the business of people like Coverley or Washington accountant Sally Herigstad. She bought organic produce by mistake at Fred Meyer and was dismayed to discover a recently deceased two-inch caterpillar in her steamed broccoli.

Shelton Group CEO Suzanne Shelton found that 46 percent of respondents felt “guilty, skeptical, irritated or unaffected by green issues,” and the same percentage put their comfort ahead of convenience and environmental concerns. The study was commissioned by Shelton Group client BP Solar.

Lisa Everitt

A Denver-based business writer, Lisa Everitt is a veteran of daily and weekly newspapers and trade magazines, including The Natural Foods Merchandiser, Rocky Mountain News, Inter@ctive Week, San Francisco Business Times, and the Peninsula Times Tribune. 

:}

So in the end that is what the environmental movement is up against.  The environmental Rape Crowd, proud that they are stealing from their grandchildren because their grandparents stole from them. If you think they aren’t vocal, you would be wrong.

:}

www.screw-the-environment.imgwebdesign.co.uk

www.deadbabyseals.gather.com

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2041643/posts

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODDDu25OG6M

http://screwtheenvironment.blogspot.com/

www.iammamahearmeroar.blogspot.com/2007/09/screw–environment.html

 http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/4/8/214522/1724

:}

State Journal Register Supports Big Oil –

Posted on by
Reply

Last week the State Journal Register solicited a “Guest OP-ED” piece from the mouth piece for the Illinois Petroleum Council that in simple form says we must overcome our current energy crisis by,  Conservation and
fuel economy  (which he instantly discounts), Stronger energy-trading alliances with neighbors, Expand domestic resources, and  Diversify supply.  By diversify he means Nukes. You can read the rest of the slop at:

http://www.sj-r.com/opinions/x833727955/David-Sykuta-We-have-to-get-over-it-and-explore-energy-options

I know for a fact that many people have written to respond against most of his ideas because many environmentalists including Will Reynolds and Diane Lopez always do. I posting my letter here because I sent one and they did not publish it:

Editor

State Journal Register

One Copley Plaza

Springfield, IL 62701

Emailed – 07/015/08

Dear Editor:

 

Dave Sykuta recent guest editorial “Get Over It” (the title of an Eagles song)  was nothing but one long environmental taunt. It had nothing to do with the irrationality we call the Oil Market.

 

Supply is not the overwhelming issue that he makes it out to be. The Iranians have 7 or 8 super tankers full of oil (depending on which report you listen to) parked in their main port because nobody is buying them. Why? Because the price is artificially elevated. Speculators beginning as far back as September of last year have bought up the cheap oil. We are now at a precipitous economic moment. An oil Mexican Standoff. The speculators can’t sell or the price will drop dramatically and hardly anyone is buying because they know the price is too high. Best guesstamates are that at least 40-50$$ of the current price of oil is due to speculators.

 

But the Drillers want to take advantage of this artificial shortage to get more Leases, because in their warped minds the leases that they hold are the leases the other guy don’t. The proof of this is the current 85 million acres that they lease that they won’t explore.

 

Really though nobody cares about the price of oil, what they car about is the prices of gasoline products. That price is being rigged as well. Refineries are at 85% of their capacity because if they ran the refineries at capacity they would lose money. In a perverse market flaw, the more they make the cheaper gas becomes and they lose money. Again the gasoline refiners are using the rigged higher oil prices to run up their profits by keeping refineries at the bare minimum it takes to run this country.

 

All the loud shouting at each other about the price we pay at the pump has obscured the realities on the ground. Oil production has been stuck on 85 million barrels a day now for sometime. Even though everybody has pledged to raise it. That may be the real limit on production and the world may have to learn live with it, discounting the fact that China is hording diesel in preparation for the Olympics.

 

Anyway, “if the drill here drill now” crowd had their way, what would they drill with? Brazil just bought or leased the 160 available rigs in the world to try to extract oil from their new alleged oil field off their southern coast.

 

When an oilman that I trust (there ain’t many – please see There Will Be Blood) T. Boone Pickens pledges to build a 1000 megawatt wind farm in Texas and then pays his own money for an TV advertisement to say why. (hint: we are running out of oil) Then I go with the wind farm guy every time.

 

I believe the Eagles said they would tour again when hell freezes over. Did I miss something?

  

Doug Nicodemus

948 e. adams st.

riverton, IL  62561

629-7031

dougnic55@yahoo.com

 

:}

AND YET THEY RUN STORIES LIKE THIS IN THEIR Business Section in the newspaper and don’t even acknowledge that they did on their web site:

http://www.pe.com/business/local/stories/PE_Biz_S_oilprofits22.3ad2ac6.html

Big Oil steers record profits to investors

MONEY: Critics say too much is going into stock

buybacks and not enough into exploration.

By JOHN PORRETTO
The Associated Press HOUSTON – As giant oil companies like Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips get set to report what will probably be another round of eye-popping quarterly profits, just where is all that money going?The companies insist they’re trying to find new oil that might help bring down gas prices, but the money they spend on exploration is nothing compared with what they spend on stock buybacks and dividends.It’s good news for shareholders, including mutual funds and retirement plans for millions of Americans, but no help to drivers already making drastic cutbacks to offset the high cost of fuel. The five biggest international oil companies plowed about 55 percent of the cash they made from their businesses into stock buybacks and dividends last year, up from 30 percent in 2000 and just 1 percent in 1993, according to Rice University’s James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy.

The percentage they spend to find new deposits of fossil fuels has remained flat for years, in the mid-single digits.

The issue has become more sensitive as lawmakers and Americans frustrated by high gas prices have balked at gaudy reports of oil industry profits. ConocoPhillips is scheduled to kick off the latest round of Big Oil earnings reports Wednesday.

Oil prices are set on the open market, not by the oil industry. But that hasn’t stopped public protests, a series of congressional grillings for top oil executives, and a failed attempt by lawmakers to slap Big Oil with a windfall profits tax.

In the first three months of this year, Exxon Mobil Corp., the world’s biggest publicly traded oil company, shelled out $8.8 billion on stock buybacks alone, compared with $5.5 billion on exploration and other capital projects.

ConocoPhillips has already told investors that its stock buybacks for April to June of this year will come to about $2.5 billion — nine times what it spent on exploration.

Stock buybacks are common throughout corporate America, not just for Big Oil. They shrink the amount of stock on the open market, essentially increasing its value and giving individual shareholders a bigger stake in the company.

But some critics say Big Oil focuses too much on boosting stock prices, in an industry that sometimes ties executive pay to stock price.

And in focusing on buybacks and dividends over exploring for new oil, some critics say, oil companies jeopardize its already dwindling share of world supply.

“If you’re not spending your money finding and developing new oil, then there’s no new oil,” said Amy Myers Jaffe, an energy expert at Rice University who’s studied spending patterns of the major oil companies.

Investor-owned companies like Exxon Mobil and Chevron hold less than 10 percent of global oil and gas reserves, way down from past decades. And finding new oil has become harder and more expensive.

No one questions that Big Oil is rolling in cash. The cash the biggest oil companies bring in from running their businesses, or operating cash flow, is four times what it was in the early 1990s.

“It becomes a management decision,” said Howard Silverblatt, a senior index analyst at Standard & Poor’s. “It’s not like they’re going to the board and saying, ‘Well, I can do one or the other or the other.’ The balance sheets are flush with cash.”
 

:}
:}

Oil Hits 128$$ Per Barrel – We are all going to die!

Posted on by
Reply

Oh never mind. As I said, all along, the oil run up was 3 parts speculation and 1 part nerves. As the August Senate hearings approach on speculation the speculators, like the cock roaches that they are, will scurry and the nerves will harden. Guess what? Oil will fall to 70$$ a barrel and gas prices will come down. How will the American public respond to the fact that they just stuffed 350 billion $$ in speculators pockets? Like sheep – BAAAAAAAAA?

This will happen again however so now that we have a house we can live in, in energy confort what shall we do with what is sitting in the driveway? Like the speculators – SELL

http://www.cartalk.com/

http://www.sj-r.com

Friday, July 18, 2008

.

It’s time to dump SUV

.

TOM AND RAY MAGLIOZZI 

.

DEAR TOM AND RAY: This will prob­ably seem like a really stupid question, but I need professional advice. I own a 1-year-old Jeep in perfect condition, which I purchased for my job. I was laid off from said job, and now I own a gas-guzzling, really nice-looking Jeep Grand Cherokee that is too big and too expensive for me to drive, espe­cially since I no longer have a job. My question is, Should I trade it in for a smaller, more fuel-efficient car? I have no payments, and being unemployed limits what I could purchase. With gas prices continuing to climb, I don’t real­ly know what I should do, since I own the vehicle outright. Care to advise an idiot? — Micci

RAY: I guess this is what you might call “idiot-to-idiot” communication.

TOM: Or, more accurately, “idiot-AND-idiot-to-idiot communication.” So consider yourself warned, Micci.

RAY: Actually, you’re hardly alone. SUVs and pickups were, for many people, a fashion trend during the past 10 years. And like many fashion trends, they were, at heart, exceeding­ly impractical.

TOM: Tell me about it. Try wearing a miniskirt like I did during the entire winter of’68!

RAY: People who didn’t need pick­ups and SUVs bought them anyway, because they were seen as cool, despite the fact that they handled like crud, tended to flip over more than other ve­hicles, ripped countless inseams during ingress and egress, and drank gas like it was a dark-chocolate-caramel-mocha freddo from Feet’s Coffee.

TOM: So now, here we are, with a lot of people stuck with SUVs that get 15 mpg while gas is $4 a gallon. What to do?

RAY: I’d say dump it, Micci. You’re going to take a bath on it, no question. Anytime you sell a car that’s a year old, you take a huge hit from initial de­preciation. Add to that the fact that you’re selling a vehicle that not many people want nowadays, for the same reasons you don’t want it. But there’s always a price at which someone will take it.

TOM: If you don’t want to sell it yourself, you can even try CarMax, if there’s one in your area. They buy late-model cars at the wholesale price.

RAY: And since you own it outright, you can take the cash you get, buy a cheaper 2-, 3- or 4-year-old fuel-effi­cient car, and then put aside a few grand to get you through this period of unemployment.

TOM: If you had an income and weren’t in desperate straits, you could hang on to it a little longer, to see if gas prices level off and come down a bit — which they might. That might make your Jeep a little more valuable on the used-car market. But if you can’t afford the gas to go out looking for a job, you need to do something now. Plus, I don’t see gas prices com­ing down a lot.

RAY: Me, either. Combine the insta­bility and war in the Middle East with increased demand from growing economies in China and India, and the decreasing supply of oil in the Earth, and the long-term trend for oil prices is up, rather than down.

Got a question about cars? Write to Click and Clack in care of this newspa­per, or e-mail them by visiting the Car Talk Web site at www.cartalk.com.

:}
:}

Barack Obama Or John McCain Whose Energy Policies Are Better? Time will tell

Posted on by
Reply

I am not even going to get into this until after the conventions. There will be plenty of time to talk about it then. Right now it looks like we are on a fault line. One guy wants to get us off hydrocarbons as fa uel and headed towards a new green future. The other guy wants nukes, clean coal, and “drill often and drill here”. I will let you guys figure out whom is who.

What A Difference A Month Makes – The mouth piece for the rich was bitchin about all the “money” we spend on alternatives

Posted on by
Reply

Oh I meant the Wall Street Journal, sorry….I bet this article wouldn’t see the light of day today. Wait till oil hits 200$$ a barrel and we shall see what they say then.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121055427930584069.html?mod=opinion_main

REVIEW & OUTLOOK

Wind ($23.37) v. Gas (25 Cents)
May 12, 2008; Page A14

Congress seems ready to spend billions on a new “Manhattan Project” for green energy, or at least the political class really, really likes talking about one. But maybe we should look at what our energy subsidy dollars are buying now.

Some clarity comes from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), an independent federal agency that tried to quantify government spending on energy production in 2007. The agency reports that the total taxpayer bill was $16.6 billion in direct subsidies, tax breaks, loan guarantees and the like. That’s double in real dollars from eight years earlier, as you’d expect given all the money Congress is throwing at “renewables.” Even more subsidies are set to pass this year.

An even better way to tell the story is by how much taxpayer money is dispensed per unit of energy, so the costs are standardized. For electricity generation, the EIA concludes that solar energy is subsidized to the tune of $24.34 per megawatt hour, wind $23.37 and “clean coal” $29.81. By contrast, normal coal receives 44 cents, natural gas a mere quarter, hydroelectric about 67 cents and nuclear power $1.59.

The wind and solar lobbies are currently moaning that they don’t get their fair share of the subsidy pie. They also argue that subsidies per unit of energy are always higher at an early stage of development, before innovation makes large-scale production possible. But wind and solar have been on the subsidy take for years, and they still account for less than 1% of total net electricity generation. Would it make any difference if the federal subsidy for wind were $50 per megawatt hour, or even $100? Almost certainly not without a technological breakthrough.

By contrast, nuclear power provides 20% of U.S. base electricity production, yet it is subsidized about 15 times less than wind. We prefer an energy policy that lets markets determine which energy source dominates. But if you believe in subsidies, then nuclear power gets a lot more power for the buck than other “alternatives.”

The same study also looked at federal subsidies for non-electrical energy production, such as for fuel. It found that ethanol and biofuels receive $5.72 per British thermal unit of energy produced. That compares to $2.82 for solar and $1.35 for refined coal, but only three cents per BTU for natural gas and other petroleum liquids.

All of this shows that there is a reason fossil fuels continue to dominate American energy production: They are extremely cost-effective. That’s a reality to keep in mind the next time you hear a politician talk about creating millions of “green jobs.” Those jobs won’t come cheap, and you’ll be paying for them.

Farming And Growing Food After The Oil Runs Out – We Shall Survive

Posted on by
Reply

People have been brainwashed to believe that our world will come to a crashing end without oil. The Peak Oil people in particular have a saying “back to the olduvai valley” because they believe that our civilization will crumble like the Egyptions, Greeks and other GREAT civilizations. Olduvai was the valley where they found the homonid Lucy’s bones.

Admittedly some of those societal “downs” caused famine and pestilence, but in others it merely led to lots of people going back to farming. As silly as it may sound, you can generate electricity with a bicycle and charge a battery to run a computer. Us modern humans have run on excess energy  for so long it might not hurt us or the planet to take a break and set some priorities.

So anyway from where I live in Riverton IL in the USA, I would just go back to farming and let a few yard birds run. Others are not so lucky. I have said with no malice or cruelty that a lot of people are going to die. But I think we will do what humanity has done for 1000’s of years…we hang together.

Here is what other people say:

http://www.forumforthefuture.org.uk/greenfutures/articles/602540

Farming without fossils

In a world on the cusp of fuel shortages, one enterprising collection of British farmers have come up with a solution they claim is practical, profitable – and close to home. They’re growing their own. Trevor Lawson reports

Barton reckons that the Goodwood estate’s tenant farmers could produce enough biofuel to supply the estate and themselves, and still have a surplus for sale. The key, he argues, is keep it local. “There’s no point in producing seed here, sending it miles for processing and then bringing the fuel all the way back. It’s too inefficient.” So Barton is looking at a combined rape press and refinery system that will produce 2,000 litres of fuel an hour, round the clock, for as long as there is rape seed to supply it. He’s also got plans for the pressed ‘cake’ that’s left over. “You can make it into dense briquettes for a superb solid fuel, burning more slowly than wood but at a higher temperature. So it can be used to feed boilers to generate heat and electricity.” Barton’s logic seems inescapable, and it’s finding allies in Whitehall, too. Nick Cooper manages the Farming Without Fossil Fuels project at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

http://globalpublicmedia.com/stephen_decater_on_farming_without_oil

 Stephen Decater speaks with Els Cooperrider of The Party’s Over on KZYX about biodynamic farming in Round Valley of Mendocino county. Stephen talks about draft horses, their history, and how he uses them. He also talks about the Live Power Community Farm, which is a community-based agriculture (CSA) project, and how this arrangement differs from a market-based relationship. They are looking for apprentices now. Contact info: livepower@igc.org and (707) 983 8196.

 :}

The above is a cool site complete with Post Carbon Institute and Energy Farming sections

:}

Then there are the back to the earth types:

 http://www.soilassociation.org/peakoil

Peak Oil: the threat to our food security

Peak oil refers to the point when the maximum amount of oil that can be extracted globally is reached. Thereafter, production will tail off as remaining reserves become more difficult and more expensive to harvest. Many of the services that we currently take for granted – cheap flights, cheap imports and global distribution of food – will be radically curtailed.
 One of the greatest impacts will be on how and where our food is produced. The dominant models of intensive agriculture and the global food trade depend on vast inputs of oil. In a post peak oil world, the combination of higher transport costs, climate change and increased conflict will necessitate us all relying far more on re-localised food supplies. Even though it requires far lower amounts of oil, organic farming is not exempt from the need to adapt.

You can find out more in our information sheets on peak oil and climate change and agriculture.

Over the last 20 years, the Soil Association has established organic farming as the most sustainable method of production and helped grow a burgeoning market for organic food. Now we must refine our focus if we are to adapt to the changing external circumstances which will touch all our lives very soon. The phrase that comes to mind is that we are ‘building the ark of sustainable agriculture’ for the new era ahead.

The challenge is immediate, but fear should not be the driver. The Soil Association is optimistic that we have the vision and means to create a new, localised food culture that will deliver long-term quality of life in place of the old dynamic of unrestrained globalisation and short-termist exploitation.

http://transitionculture.org/2006/12/20/applying-energy-descent-plans-to-food-and-farming-an-article-in-living-earth-magazine/ 

Applying Energy Descent Plans to Food and Farming – an article in Living Earth magazine.

samag1

The Soil Association is the UK’s organic certification body, and they are making peak oil and the relocalisation of food the focal point of their 60th Anniversary conference in Cardiff in February. I am editing a report that will accompany the conference, which explores this deeper, and to introduce this, I recently wrote an article that appears in Living Earth Magazine, the organisation’s publication. It suggests that the concept of Energy Descent Plans could be applied to food and farming in the UK, an idea that will be explored in more depth in the report. Here is the article followed by some additions from within the Soil Association.

Energy scarcity is an opportunity for a better world, says Rob Hopkins

I used to think that one day the world would literally run out of oil. A driver in Leicestershire would use the last drop and that would be that, similar to the felling of the last Truffula Tree in Dr Seuss’s The Lorax. It turns out that scarcity kicks in earlier than that. It’s not the last drop that is the problem but the mid-point of production, when all the oil that is easy and cheap to extract has been used up. It looks as if we are reaching that point soon.

:}

Where folks have “farmable” or “growable” land, all of us will have to plant Victory Gardens and raise rabbits and chickens. We will have to buy and sell local. For those that do not… well that is something we all should be planning for now. There are probably 2 billion people in harms way. What about the economy? Well what about it? Aren’t WE the economy. Money may be worrthless…but so what. That is only gona matter to people that gots a lot of it.

:}

Will Field Corn Kill Us? No but it’s killing the cows..

Posted on by
Reply

Many people were horrified by the scandal surrounding cattle that were so weak that they were either being prodded with a forklift or actually carried to the kill room with the fork lift. Most people, not being involved in agriculture, wondered how anyone could be so callous. BUT the most disgusting thing you run into when you look into the issue of Factory Farming Cattle (and there are a lot of nasty things here) is that the corn that is feed to the cattle after they are weaned is killing them. So to slaughterhouse staff and meat packers its a matter timing whether they get them in the kill room before they die.

http://richard-goodman.blogspot.com/2008/02/meatpacker-in-cow-abuse-scandal-may.html

 Meatpacker in Cow-Abuse Scandal May Shut as Congress Turns Up Heat

By DAVID KESMODEL and JANE ZHANG
Write to David Kesmodel at david.kesmodel @ wsj.com
and Jane Zhang at Jane.Zhang @ wsj.com
February 25, 2008; 
CHINO, Calif. — Last year, a man carrying a hidden video camera took a $12-an-hour job at a little-known beef slaughterhouse here. Now the meatpacker is about to collapse, and has become a flashpoint in a national debate over meat safety and the quality of food Americans serve their schoolchildren.

Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Co., one of the biggest suppliers of beef to the national school-lunch program before videos showing animal cruelty at the plant helped trigger the biggest meat recall in U.S. history, probably will shut down permanently, according to the company’s general manager, Anthony Magidow.

:}

As John Robbins points out modern cattle raising is all about carving up cattle quick:

What About Grass-fed Beef?

 Feeding grain to cattle has got to be one of the dumbest ideas in the history of western civilization.

Cows, sheep, and other grazing animals are endowed with the ability to convert grasses, which those of us who possess only one stomach cannot digest, into food that we can digest. They can do this because they are ruminants, which is to say that they possess a rumen, a 45 or so gallon (in the case of cows) fermentation tank in which resident bacteria convert cellulose into protein and fats.

Traditionally, all beef was grass-fed beef, but in the United States today what is commercially available is almost all feedlot beef. The reason? It’s faster, and so more profitable. Seventy-five years ago, steers were 4 or 5 years old at slaughter. Today, they are 14 or 16 months. You can’t take a beef calf from a birth weight of 80 pounds to 1,200 pounds in a little more than a year on grass. It takes enormous quantities of corn, protein supplements, antibiotics and other drugs, including growth hormones.

Switching a cow from grass to grain is so disturbing to the animal’s digestive system that it can kill the animal if not done gradually and if the animal is not continually fed antibiotics. These animals are designed to forage, but we make them eat grain, primarily corn, in order to make them as fat as possible as fast as possible.
 All this is not only unnatural and dangerous for the cows. It also has profound consequences for us. Feedlot beef as we know it today would be impossible if it weren’t for the routine and continual feeding of antibiotics to these animals. This leads directly and inexorably to the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. These are the new “superbugs” that are increasingly rendering our “miracle drugs” ineffective.

:}

Letting Corporations into anything in agriculture besides processing is turning out to be a disaster in many respects from beginning to end. To this end we could talk about any plant or animal that we eat, but if we keep our focus on corn it becomes clear that all the corporate ag production affairs require one thing energy and lots of it.

While the movie, King Corn, has a lot going for it, like cute college kids out for a lark and the absurdity of growing an acre of anything in the current farm system, it is actually a pretty good look at why growing as much corn as we do is stupid and corporate farming only compounds that.

:}

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/kingcorn/

While the planting, growing and harvesting of field corn takes an incredible amount of energy, the real energy comes after it has been harvested. You can’t eat the stuff so it all has to be PROCESSED to be used or eaten by animals most of which don’t like the stuff but eat it if they are forced to. As the film makers themselves say:

 http://kingcorn.net/

Almost everything Americans eat contains corn: high fructose corn syrup, corn-fed meat, and corn-based processed foods are the staples of the modern diet.  Ready for an adventure and alarmed by signs of their generation’s bulging waistlines, college friends Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis know where to go to investigate.  Eighty years ago, Ian and Curt’s great-grandfathers lived just a few miles apart, in the same rural county in northern Iowa.  Now their great-grandsons are returning with a mission:  they will plant an acre of corn, follow their harvest into the world, and attempt to understand what they—and all of us—are really made of.

 

But where will all that corn go? Ian and Curt leave Iowa to find out, first considering their crop’s future as feed.  In Colorado, rancher Sue Jarrett says her cattle should be eating grass.  But with a surplus of corn, it costs less to raise cattle in confinement than to let them roam free: “The mass production of corn drives the mass production of protein in confinement.”  Animal nutritionists confirm that corn makes cows sick and beef fatty, but it also lets consumers eat a $1 hamburger.  Feedlot owner Bob Bledsoe defends America’s cheap food, but as Ian and Curt see in Colorado, the world behind it can be stomach turning.  At one feedlot, 100,000 cows stand shoulder-to-shoulder, doing their part to transform Iowa corn into millions of pounds of fat-streaked beef.

 

Following the trail of high fructose corn syrup, Ian and Curt hop attempt to make a home-cooked batch of the sweetener in their kitchen.  But their investigation of America’s most ubiquitous ingredient turns serious when they follow soda to its consumption in Brooklyn.  Here, Type II diabetes is ravaging the community, and America’s addiction to corny sweets is to blame.

 

The breadth of the problem is now clear: the American food system is built on the abundance of corn, an abundance perpetuated by a subsidy system that pays farmers to maximize production.  In a nursing home in the Indiana suburbs, Ian and Curt come face-to-face with Earl Butz, the Nixon-era Agriculture Secretary who invented subsidies.  The elderly Butz champions the modern food system as an “Age of plenty” Ian and Curt’s great-grandfathers only dreamed of.

.

 November pulls Ian and Curt back to Iowa.  Their 10,000-pound harvest seems as grotesque as it is abundant.  They haul their corn to the elevator and look on as it makes its way into a food system they have grown disgusted by.  At a somber farm auction, Ian and Curt decide to tell their landlord they want to buy the acre.  The next spring their cornfield has been pulled from production and planted in a prairie, a wild square surrounded by a sea of head-high corn.

 :}

OKOKOKOKOK So maybe corn IS killing us but will we miss it when its gone because of energy prices. Probably not one bit though the first winter maybe tough if gasoline goes to $100 a gallon. The first to go though will be the exporting of grain. Do you believe we actually pile billions of tons of corn on diesal power ships so that other people can refine (errr spend their energy on) it? They can’t eat it either.

For more:

Iowa Corn
Get info on biotechnology, corn products and Iowa corn growers.

Corn Palace Convention and Visitors Bureau
As seen in KING CORN, Mitchell, South Dakota’s Corn Palace is a monument to the country’s leading crop.

American Corn Growers Association
“America’s leading progressive commodity association, representing the interests of corn producers in 35 states.”

A Zillion Uses for Corn!
An extensive list of products that contain corn.

Putting DNA to Work: Improving Crops: From Teosinte to Corn
See photos of corn’s ancestor and read about how its genetic makeup has evolved.

EWG: Farm Subsidy Database
View graphs and databases on corn subsidies in the United States.

Mountains of Corn and a Sea of Farm Subsidies
Reprinted from a 2005 New York Times article, this piece examines how the country’s corn overproduction is affecting its farmers.

No-Till Farmer
Top tips on growing monoculture corn.

Corn Refiners Association
Learn about corn refining and resulting products.

High Fructose Corn Syrup
HFCS, how it’s made and how it affects your health, plus other links.

:}

They Died For You – Energy Warriors

Posted on by
Reply

http://www.hcn.org/servlets/hcn.Article?article_id=16931

Fatalities in the energy fields: 2000-2006

SIDEBAR – April 2, 2007 by Ray Ring

At least 89 people died on the job in the Interior West’s oil and gas industry from 2000 to 2006, in a variety of accidents, including 90-foot falls, massive explosions, poison gas inhalations and crushings by safety harnesses. Some states choose to have the federal government handle worker safety regulation, and some create state agencies to handle it; all the agencies tend to go by the nickname OSHA, after the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Some fines in the cases listed below are not directly related to fatalities; sometimes investigators notice unrelated safety violations when they visit workplaces where workers have died.

This list is almost certainly incomplete, due to loopholes in requirements for reporting fatalities.

The list below includes the victims’ names, age at time of death, date of the accident, company(s) involved, a description of the accident, and fines, if any. Names with hotlinks connect to .pdf’s of complete OSHA incident reports.

COLORADO

Ricky Erb, 19 11/27/06 Schneider Energy Services
Head injury, blown out of 5-foot hole when a reportedly 40-year-old pipeline Pending ruptured. He and rest of crew were using a cutting tool to open the pipeline, and they didn’t expect it to contain pressurized gas.

Jacob Farmer, 19 11/16/06 Leed Energy Services Inc.
Struck by falling pulley on a well-servicing rig. The victim’s father works in oil and gas. Pending

Phillip Smith, 44 11/6/06 Easy Street Crane Service
Crushed by truck. Pending

Joshua Arvidson, 24 1/25/06 Calfrac Well Services Ltd.
Engulfed by 40,000 pounds of sand in a storage bin. $27,825

Zac Mitchek, 42 11/25/05 Patterson-UTI Drilling Co.
Electrocuted while doing maintenance on a light plant for a drill rig. $11,900

Larry Hill, 42 11/7/05 Union Drilling Inc.
Fell 55 feet from platform on drill-rig derrick while handling hoisted drill pipes. OSHA said the company did not ensure that the worker was using proper fall-protection gear. $19,990

Randall Taylor, 62 8/14/04 Wolverine Drilling Inc.
Crushed by pulley system that collapsed from top of derrick while rig was trying to lift 270,000 pounds of drill pipe from a hole 8,400-feet deep. OSHA issued violations for unrelated problems. $4,560

Scott Nelson, 26 6/1/04 Union Drilling Inc.
Crushed when the top of a drill rig collapsed. OSHA estimated the rig was built in the 1970s and said a faulty weld failed under the strain of more than 300,000 pounds of drill pipe. $18,225

Big Oil And The Gasoline Refiners Don’t Make Excess Profits? What a load of crap

Posted on by
1

Finally Dave Sykuta and the Illinois Petroleum Council have the nerve to tell us that they are making themselves rich at our expense. The Saudia’s, the Russian’s and the Venezuela’s are making billions, and the Oil Refiners are making 100s of millions of $$$ and he shuffles out the old “percentage of profit” arguement. Which any rich person does to make it look like they ain’t ripping you.

 ** The final factor in gasoline prices are earnings.  Major oil companies earned a little above the U.S. industrial average, 8.3 percent, on gasoline for 2007. No doubt, 8 percent earnings represent billions in profit. However, consider that oil companies are large due to their financial commitments, such as alternate fuels ($100 billion since 2000) and clean fuel technology ($65 billion since 1999). Moreover, between 33 percent and 37 percent of gross industry revenues are paid back to government in taxes. And while conspiracy theorists love to think dark thoughts about 8 percent earnings, the reality is that over 65 percent of oil industry assets are held by pension plans, IRAs and 401(k)s.  Industry executives hold less than 2 percent. When the “Who owns Big Oil?” question is raised, the answer is usually “You do!”

:}

When in fact the Oil Companies themselves were saying something different:

:}

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/02/17/business/rnrgoilcos.php

Despite record profits, oil companies find little comfort in high prices

By Christopher Knight

Published: February 17, 2008

PARIS: As crude oil prices topped $100 a barrel in January, some of the world’s major oil companies rang up annual profits that beat the bottom lines of any other company, in any other line of business. Yet, despite appearances, industry analysts are not rushing to pat the majors on the back.

Exxon Mobil, the largest oil company, reported at the start of this month a record 2007 profit of $40.6 billion, earnings that trounced any other company. Royal Dutch Shell reported the largest earnings of any company in Britain, at about $31 billion.

But amid rising consumer resistance to high prices of gasoline and other refined products, analysts and even some oil company executives have a hard time putting a positive spin on the future.

“As far as the outlook, it is pretty horrible,” said Peter Hitchens, an oil analyst at Seymour Pierce in London.

 :}

So why is Dave using the figure 8.2 %. Well because he knows that NO small business could get by on that. Heck not even a multi-state or a medium sized business could make it for long. So he knows that business men and women will cringe. But a for a world-wide international Corporation the size of Chevron or BP that is incredibly wrong. They made so much money that they don’t know what to do with it and it’s all coming out of MA and PA America. 

Then he has the gall to say that they pay taxes, when what he is actually counting are Taxes that you pay at the pump as their taxes. 

Finally he ends by claiming that WE the American People own the oil companies. While some long standing pension funds have oil stock. The price of Big OIL stocks has been out of the range of the middle class and modest investor for years. Only the supper rich trade those stocks now. For instance: 

query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB0712FC3F5F13738DDDA90B94D1405B868DF1D3

  ROCKEFELLER GAINS $8,000,000 MORE; Yesterday’s Advance in Standard Oil Stocks Shows an Increase of $32,000,000. THEIR VALUE $2,027,516,000 Market Worth of All Subsidiaries at Close of Day Is Double the Debt of the United States. ROCKEFELLER GETS $8,028,000 IN DAY 

http://seekingalpha.com/article/24347-oil-vs-energy-stock-prices-something-s-gotta-give

  The charts below show the ratio between the price of the S&P 500 Energy stock sector and the price of crude oil per barrel. The ratio is clearly at its highest level in the past three years, meaning that oil stocks have not fallen as fast as the price of the actual commodity during the current decline. So either the stocks are due to play catch up, or the decline of oil is a bit overdone.  oilvsoilstocks.jpg

:}

:}

Big Oil Charges Us To Maintain Their Gas Stations – And blame Walmart and other retailers for the volitility

Posted on by
Reply

Who really believes this? Normally profits are used for maintaining merchandising outlets. These guys are so greedy that they don’t even do that. And note he admits (and kinda seems proud of the fact) that some gas station’s margins are so thin that they make more money off everything but gas. In other words, the Big Oil people have taken the profits for themselves and left independent gas station owners to get by on the sale of snacks. These guys remind me of profit vacuum cleaners. They suck up every penny they can get. Maybe we should put a plug in it.

 ** The fourth-biggest factor in prices is the cost to establish and maintain the retail outlet. There are more than 5,000 service stations in Illinois and most experts believe gasoline sales are often a “loss leader.” Springfield is increasingly affected by large general retail chains selling gasoline.  Most experts conclude these “new era” marketers sometimes offer lower prices, but cause significant price volatility. My experience tells me many consumers are more upset about volatility than the actual price. Unfortunately, I don’t see price volatility going away.

www.ethosnw.com

gas1.jpg

smartmortgageadvice.wordpress.com

gas2.jpg

www.flickr.com

gas3.jpg

www.flumesday.com

gas5.jpg

:}

You pays your money and youse take your chances.

:}