We May Well Have to ‘Geo-Engineer’ the Climate
December 4th, 2007Only lunatics believe in chemtrails!
Via: Globe and Mail:
Geoengineering would involve, for example, putting sulphate aerosols into the atmosphere…
National Debt Grows $1 Million a Minute
December 4th, 2007Hmm. An Associated Press article that reads like a tinfoil wrapped Cryptogon rant…
I don’t quite know what to make of it.
Via: AP:
Like a ticking time bomb, the national debt is an explosion waiting to happen. It’s expanding by about $1.4 billion a day — or nearly $1 million a minute.
What’s that mean to you?
It means almost $30,000 in debt for each man, woman, child and infant in the United States.
Even if you’ve escaped the recent housing and credit crunches and are coping with rising fuel prices, you may still be headed for economic misery, along with the rest of the country. That’s because the government is fast straining resources needed to meet interest payments on the national debt, which stands at a mind-numbing $9.13 trillion.
And like homeowners who took out adjustable-rate mortgages, the government faces the prospect of seeing this debt — now at relatively low interest rates — rolling over to higher rates, multiplying the financial pain.
So long as somebody is willing to keep loaning the U.S. government money, the debt is largely out of sight, out of mind.
But the interest payments keep compounding, and could in time squeeze out most other government spending — leading to sharply higher taxes or a cut in basic services like Social Security and other government benefit programs. Or all of the above.
A major economic slowdown, as some economists suggest may be looming, could hasten the day of reckoning.
The national debt — the total accumulation of annual budget deficits — is up from $5.7 trillion when President Bush took office in January 2001 and it will top $10 trillion sometime right before or right after he leaves in January 2009.
That’s $10,000,000,000,000.00, or one digit more than an odometer-style ”national debt clock” near New York’s Times Square can handle. When the privately owned automated clock was activated in 1989, the national debt was $2.7 trillion.
It only gets worse.
November Earnings
December 4th, 2007Cryptogon and Farmlet earnings came to a total of $1255.11 for November. That is about 2.5x the minimum monthly goal of $500.
As usual, a small group of extremely generous readers were responsible for most of the earnings. A few new contributors joined in too, which is nice to see. Becky and I appreciate all of your kindness very much. Owen probably would too if he wasn’t feeding, pooping, peeing and sleeping so much. HEHE
Thanks go out to all of Cryptogon’s Amazon shoppers. $209.70 to Cryptogon just from starting your Amazon sessions here. That’s fantastic. Quick and shameless (I’m sorry) note on Amazon’s Kindle: I personally wouldn’t go near that device because it’s brimming with DRM nonsense, but… Apparently, lots of people want it anyway. Amazon is paying an insane 10% commission on Kindle purchases. You can probably guess where I’m going here. If you must buy one, this Kindle link earns me $39.99. Again, I’d encourage you to avoid that thing (unless some maniacs liberate it with, uh, Kindle Linux perhaps???), but if you’re going to buy it anyway…
Amazon main page links with Cryptogon affiliate goodness built in:
amazon.com – amazon.ca – amazon.co.uk – amazon.de – amazon.fr
Thanks to the owners of Gizmo Werkz and Velocipedal for signing up for webhosting with BlueHost.
Finally, thanks to Cryptogon readers who use BullionVault for their gold purchasing and vaulting needs.
The pile of grist isn’t getting any smaller, so I better get busy. Thanks again to all of you!
European Central Bank Sold 42 Tons of Gold
December 4th, 2007WARNING: This is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any financial instrument.
“Don’t ask me how They would kill this rally… My hunch is that it would involve central bank collusion and tons of yellow stuff showing up on the spot market without warning.”
Been waiting for it…
And by the looks of the commission activity on my BullionVault account, so have many of you. I love that you guys beat ME to the trigger to take advantage of the ECB’s Christmas gift. BAAA HAHAHAHA.
NOTE: Please read about catching falling knives. Diversify, have fun and don’t hurt yourselves!
Via: Market Watch:
LONDON (MarketWatch) — The European Central Bank said that it sold 42 tons of gold on Friday, in conformity with the central bank’s gold agreement of which it is a signatory. That agreement limits combined annual sales by E.U. central banks to 500 tons a year until 2009.
Kleiner Perkins: Al Gore and Colin Powell, Together at Last to Save the Planet
December 3rd, 2007“You won’t have the clean technology without a total, fascist lockdown. I’ve said it from the beginning, and I’m saying it now. The technology to build the techno green utopia has been around for easily thirty years. Sorry folks, that’s not how it went, and that’s not how it’s going to go. The primacy of new killing technologies and technologies of political control go hand in hand with the clean energy systems.
The Blackwater USA mercenaries and the Global Warming fart tax crowd are on the same team, whether they realize it or not.”
I think Al and Colin realize it.
But can you feel the clean, green love yet?
Forget the technology. What kind of political and economic system are the limousine liberals and the four star generals creating here? (Rhetorical question.)
Via: Fortune:
It’s lunchtime on Sand Hill Road, and Al Gore wants answers. “How does the efficiency decline with latitude?” he asks. “What size community could be served by one plant? If a manufacturer like GE wanted to make smaller turbines, would the technology support a smaller scale?”
We’re sitting in the giant conference room at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, where the partners hold their weekly meetings. After loading his plate with Chinese food from a buffet, Gore is firing detailed questions at the management team of Ausra, a Kleiner-backed company in Palo Alto whose technology uses mirrors the width of a flatbed truck that focus the sun’s energy to generate electricity.
Once Gore is satisfied — sunlight lags north of South Dakota, an Ausra plant can serve 120,000 homes, and yes, smaller turbines will work fine — he shifts from inquisitor to fixer. He was chatting with California Senator Barbara Boxer “on the way over,” he reports, and he isn’t optimistic that Congress will extend the tax credits Ausra has been relying on. On the upside, he offers on the spot to organize a summit highlighting the company’s solar thermal technology to educate lawmakers and other policymakers on its potential. He also thinks a powwow at General Electric would be beneficial, even though Ausra is a tiny customer.
“I know Immelt well,” he says, referring to GE’s CEO. “We ought to set up a meeting.”
Gore appears utterly comfortable with this drill, but in fact he’s engaging in some on-the-job training. The recovering politician, environmental activist, and Nobel laureate is adding another title to his résumé: venture capitalist. After “a conversation that’s gone on for a year and a half,” according to Gore, he has decided to join his old pal John Doerr as an active, hands-on partner at Kleiner Perkins, Silicon Valley’s preeminent venture firm.
The move is more than another Colin Powell moment (the former Secretary of State signed on as a Kleiner “strategic limited partner” two years ago and has hardly been heard from since). Gore is joining the firm as Kleiner makes a risky move beyond information technology and health-care investing into the fast-growing and increasingly competitive arena of “clean technology.”
Related: The General and the Holy Grail of Energy Storage Devices
Related: EEstor: More Clues Emerge
U.S. Credit Crisis Adds to Gloom in Norway
December 3rd, 2007“We Americans Were Very Clever…”
Via: New York Times:
At this time of year, the sun does not rise at all this far north of the Arctic Circle. But Karen Margrethe Kuvaas says she has not been able to sleep well for days.
What is keeping her awake are the far-reaching ripple effects of the troubled housing market in sunny Florida, California and other parts of the United States.
Ms. Kuvaas is the mayor of Narvik, a remote seaport where the season’s perpetual gloom deepened even further in recent days after news that the town — along with three other Norwegian municipalities — had lost about $64 million, and potentially much more, in complex securities investments that went sour.
“I think about it every minute,†Ms. Kuvaas, 60, said in an interview, her manner polite but harried. “Because of this, we can’t focus on things that matter, like schools or care for the elderly.â€
Norway’s unlucky towns are the latest victims — and perhaps the least likely ones so far — of the credit crisis that began last summer in the American subprime mortgage market and has spread to the farthest reaches of the world, causing untold losses and sowing fears about the global economy.
Where all the bad debt ended up remains something of a mystery, but to those hit by the collateral damage, it hardly matters.
Tiny specks on the map, these Norwegian towns are links in a chain of misery that stretches from insolvent homeowners in California to the state treasury of Maine, and from regional banks in Germany to the mightiest names on Wall Street. Citigroup, among the hardest hit, created the investments bought by the towns through a Norwegian broker.
For Ms. Kuvaas, being in such company is no comfort. People here are angry and scared, fearing that the losses will hurt local services like kindergartens, nursing homes and cultural institutions. With Christmas only weeks away, Narvik has already missed a payroll for municipal workers.
Above all, the residents want to know how their close-knit community of 18,000 could have mortgaged its future — built on the revenue from a hydroelectric plant on a nearby fjord — by dabbling in what many view as the black arts of investment bankers in distant places.
Pandora’s Pantry
December 3rd, 2007Via: Celsias:
Monsanto’s key selling point for Roundup Ready seeds has been to tell farmers that one or two good dousings with Roundup will solve all their weed problems. The corporation placed print ads telling farmers that Roundup was “the only weed control you’ll ever need,†even while, in the words of University of California Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology J. B. Neilands, “the quantities of Roundup Monsanto is planning to apply to their proprietary Roundup Ready cultivars [varieties] humbles the imagination.â€(23)
Because so much Roundup is used on Roundup Ready crops, the residue levels in the harvested crops greatly exceed what until very recently was the allowable legal limit. For the technology to be commercially viable, the FDA had to triple the residues of Roundup’s active ingredients that can remain on the crop.(24) Many scientists have protested that permitting increased residues to enable a company’s success reflects an attitude in which corporate interests are given higher priority than public safety, but the increased levels have remained in force.
Advertisements and glossy brochures, seeking to convince farmers to plant Roundup Ready seeds, speak proudly of “clean fieldsâ€â€”clean in this usage meaning enormous fields with nothing growing in them but soybeans or corn or cotton or canola. This is intended as a selling point, and many farmers go for it, but it is an odd use of the word. The fields are actually so chemicalized that they are virtually sterile, and they bear no resemblance whatsoever to a healthy, flourishing, and biodiverse ecosystem. The soil, relatively void of decaying plant matter, and often impoverished of the worms, insects, and bacteria that feed off it, becomes completely dependent on chemical fertilizers.
Ironically, we’re spraying our fields and food with a toxic substance to make use of a sophisticated technology that is largely unnecessary. There are simpler mechanical ways to deal with weeds, including no-till farming, mulching, and companion cropping. But of course, none of these Earth-friendly methods can be patented and sold for profit, and none fit with massive mono-cultures and reliance on chemicals, so they hold no interest for Monsanto and the other agricultural chemical companies that dominate the business of genetic engineering.(25)
U.S. Says it has Right to Kidnap British Citizens
December 3rd, 2007Via: Times:
AMERICA has told Britain that it can “kidnap†British citizens if they are wanted for crimes in the United States.
A senior lawyer for the American government has told the Court of Appeal in London that kidnapping foreign citizens is permissible under American law because the US Supreme Court has sanctioned it.
The admission will alarm the British business community after the case of the so-called NatWest Three, bankers who were extradited to America on fraud charges. More than a dozen other British executives, including senior managers at British Airways and BAE Systems, are under investigation by the US authorities and could face criminal charges in America.
Until now it was commonly assumed that US law permitted kidnapping only in the “extraordinary rendition†of terrorist suspects.
The American government has for the first time made it clear in a British court that the law applies to anyone, British or otherwise, suspected of a crime by Washington.
Legal experts confirmed this weekend that America viewed extradition as just one way of getting foreign suspects back to face trial. Rendition, or kidnapping, dates back to 19th-century bounty hunting and Washington believes it is still legitimate.
U.S. Dollar: The Horror Scenario
December 2nd, 2007Via: Der Spiegel:
What if fear of a permanent decline in values spreads in all of those countries that have accumulated vast quantities of the US currency in the past few years, countries like China, Japan and the Asia Tiger states, as well as the oil-exporting countries and Russia? What if panic breaks out and the new mantra is to “get out while you can?”
If that happens — and this is the horror scenario — the dollar will crash and, along with it, the international financial markets. Then the globalized world will be in a worldwide depression. This scenario is less likely, because promoting it cannot be in anyone’s best interest. And yet it cannot be ruled out completely, as even the most sensible bankers privately concede.
EXXONMOBIL’S NEW BATTERY FOR ELECTRIC VEHICLE APPLICATIONS
December 1st, 2007“I don’t know. I see things like the ‘sustainable’ WalMart and the FedEx hub covered with solar panels and I have to wonder if this Peak Oil thing is actually going to be the kill shot that we think it’s going to be… Maybe They have a much better grip on this thing than we know. Maybe They’re ramping up alternatives at a pace that is congruent (or somewhat congruent) with the fall-off of conventional energy sources.
Those of us who despise the present global political and economic order look to Peak Oil with a sense of hope! Yes… Hope. Something tells me, however, we’re not going to be that lucky.
Peak Oil probably won’t take this thing down, simply because it seems so obvious that it will.”
And now, the ExxonMobil battery for electric vehicles.
HAHA! Imagine my shock.
This battery doesn’t appear to be related to the eeStor system, but let’s quickly take a look at, Pay No Attention to the General as “Liberals” Launch Green Energy Fund anyway:
An engineer friend of mine commented on the EEstor device… He told me that it sounded like a supercapicitor. Now, it’s obviously just an insane, tinfoil hat conspiracy theory that this technology is based on U.S. Patent 3288641, issued 29 November 1966 to—wait for it, this is good—STANDARD OIL COMPANY.
You know, of course, that Exxon is one of the companies that was spun off from the breakup of Standard Oil. All a coincidence, obviously.
Anyone who thinks that They don’t have a plan up their sleeves belongs sitting in a corner wearing a dunce cap at this point. As the oil declines, They’ll roll out the costly solutions that They’ve been sitting on for decades. But there’s still lots of oil to be sold for $100 per barrel. No need to move too quickly with this stuff.
Hold on to your wallet.
Via: The Energy Blog:
It seems that everyone is getting into the battery business, one of them will succeed in making a smaller, lighter and less expensive battery. This development by ExxonMobil sound very promising.
ExxonMobil Chemical and ExxonMobil’s Japanese affiliate, Tonen Chemical have developed a thin film separator for use in lithium-ion batteries, that would enable production of batteries like those found in cell phones and laptops, to power cars and trucks. These new film technologies are expected to significantly enhance the power, safety and reliability of lithium-ion batteries, thereby helping speed the adoption of these smaller and lighter batteries into the next wave of lower-emission vehicles.
This weekend, at the 23rd Electric Vehicle Symposium and Exposition (EVS-23) in Anaheim, Calif., Exxon Mobil will unveil a super-thin plastic sheeting the company says can improve the power, safety and reliability of lithium-ion batteries for use in automobiles.
Separator film is an integral part of battery system design and critical to overall performance. ExxonMobil Chemical’s new technology platform builds on twenty years experience in lithium-ion battery separators, applying advanced polymer and process technologies with flexibility to tailor products to battery manufacturer requirements.
Exxon Mobil considers the film a breakthrough because it allows battery makers to build smaller and cheaper battery systems — removing key obstacles that have kept automakers from building hybrid and electric vehicles on a wide scale. Porosity is one of the key parameters in building higher performance separators and Tonen has developed a prototype film with a 51% porosity compared to 37% in current production batteries while maintaining the same strength and thermal integrity.
Exxon Mobil developed its film with Japanese affiliate Tonen Chemical (see this earlier press release that discloses that Tonen has been manufacturing films for small Li-ion batteries since 1991). Invented in research labs at Exxon Mobil’s Baytown complex, the film is the first to squeeze multiple layers of plastic into a single white sheet the width (thickness?) of a human hair.
Tonen and Exxon are exploring the possibility of building a new production facility for the new generation of films in Gumi, Korea.
