"Peak Oil" Makes It To The NYT Magazine

A devoted faction of Americablog readers have been pushing the argument over "peak oil" at every opportunity. They can rejoice! The NYT Magazine has a lengthy, interesting article about peak oil that goes into the debate in-depth. In short, the world has perhaps a trillion of barrels of oil in reserve, per the NYT. But peak oil is a genuine concern worth looking at. The biggest revelation is a top Saudi expert who has retired and isn't afraid to say that the demand is increasing too dramatically for suppliers to keep up.

''You look at the globe and ask, 'Where are the big increments?' and there's hardly anything but Saudi Arabia,'' [Husseini] said. ''The kingdom and Ghawar field are not the problem. That misses the whole point. The problem is that you go from 79 million barrels a day in 2002 to 82.5 in 2003 to 84.5 in 2004. You're leaping by two million to three million a year, and if you have to cover declines, that's another four to five million.'' In other words, if demand and depletion patterns continue, every year the world will need to open enough fields or wells to pump an additional six to eight million barrels a day -- at least two million new barrels a day to meet the rising demand and at least four million to compensate for the declining production of existing fields. ''That's like a whole new Saudi Arabia every couple of years,'' Husseini said. ''It can't be done indefinitely. It's not sustainable.''

A crisis could come in 1 year or 2 or 10, says the writer and it will be all the more painful because we're doing nothing to prepare. Read the rest of this post...

Bush Iraq Strategy = 9/11 x 5 + WWI + WWII

The five day campaign to sway America begins. Still no plan to solve the Iraq mess but he is spinning out of control:

President Bush compared the fight against terrorism to both world wars and other great conflicts of the 20th century as he tried to reassure an increasingly skeptical public on Monday to support U.S. military involvement in Iraq.

With the anti-war movement finding new momentum behind grieving mother Cindy Sheehan, Bush acknowledged the fighting in Iraq is difficult and dangerous. But he told the Veterans of Foreign Wars national convention the fight is necessary to keep terrorists out of the United States.

As he did in last year's election campaign and more recently as war opposition has risen, Bush reminded his listeners of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 - reciting the date five times in a 30-minute speech. (my emphasis)

"We're not yet safe," Bush said. "Terrorists in foreign lands still hope to attack our country. They still hope to kill our citizens. The lesson of Sept. 11, 2001, is that we must confront threats before they fully materialize."

Read the rest of this post...

Reuters nails Bush

Just read it. Rarely has any reporter gotten it as clearly as the one who wrote this article about Bush trying to link Iraq AGAIN to the war on terror. The article calls him on every lie.

I especially like the quote from the pathetic Vietnam vet who thinks the only way you "support" the troops is by sending them to die for a lie without the necessary armor. Exposing that lie, and exposing the fact that our troops don't even have the supplies they need to stay alive - that's anti-troop. But supporting a policy that sends our soldiers to their deaths for no reason, and in fact for all the wrong reasons, that's true love.

I hear freedom is slavery too. Read the rest of this post...

Early Evening Paris Blogging

Some pics I took yesterday around my neighborhood, in Montparnasse. And, as always, consider this an open thread :-)



A woman crossing the rather busy intersection of Boulevards Montparnasse and Raspail.



A man sitting outside La Rotonde.



An old bicycle waiting for its owner outside the Vavin metro stop on Blvd. de Montparnasse. Read the rest of this post...

Who would Jesus assassinate?

Religious right leader Pat Robertson calls for the assassination of the president of Venezuela. Nice. Read the rest of this post...

Pope Hopes To Inspire Youth

World Youth Day is over and Pope Benedict is clearly no pop star a la John Paul II, but he was still able to attract massive crowds (and fringe cult Opus Dei was especially prominent, according to the LA Times). The Church likes to pretend JPII really lit a fire among young people, but that just isn't true. JPII oversaw a dramatic DECLINE in young people feeling called to enter religious orders. In other words, no new priests. JPII was simply a disaster for inspiring growth in the West because the Church lied and misled its flock, abused boys, and increasingly insisted to be a good Catholic you had to close your mind to common sense. Pope Benedict isn't going to change that at all and the Church is going to continue to suffer. Read the rest of this post...

Deadline for Iraqi Constitution extended

No agreement yet after all. CNN just had live coverage where the National Assembly received the draft, but gave themselves three more days to work on issues.

Hmmmm..... Read the rest of this post...

Iraqi Draft Constitution: Governed by Islamic Law

Word out of Iraq is that they have a constitution. Doesn't look good for women:

Shiites and Kurds were sending a draft constitution to parliament on Monday that would fundamentally change Iraq, transforming the country into a loose federation, with a weak central administration governed by Islamic law, negotiators said.

The draft, slated for action by a Monday deadline, would be a sweeping rejection of the demands of Iraq's disaffected Sunni minority, which has called the proposed federal system the start of the breakup of Iraq. Shiites and Kurds indicated they were in no mood to compromise.

So is this Bush's "noble cause"? Read the rest of this post...

Afghanistan Sinks Into Turmoil

Afghanistan has never been a success story. Now, most of the country is controlled by drug lords and the Taliban. And the news is getting worse, per the NYT.

This year is already the deadliest for American soldiers in Afghanistan since the war of 2001, and the violence is likely to intensify before the nation's legislative elections on Sept. 18.

One culprit? Bush's buddies Pakistan.

The Afghan officials said it was increasingly clear in recent weeks that the elections were not the only target and they accused Pakistan, in particular, of supporting a long-term strategy of destabilization in Afghanistan to keep the country weak. "Maybe they see a stable Afghanistan as a threat to themselves," the security official said.

The simple truth is that Bush can't do ANYTHING right. Read the rest of this post...

Open Thread

Im writing this on a God forsaken French keyboard. For those who dont know the keyboard is all screwed up different keys than ours or theyre in the
wrong position. Im not even daring to write apostrophes or dashes as God only knows where they are. Grrrr.... Read the rest of this post...

Still More On The False God Of Intelligent Design

The NYT does another big piece on creationism -- again, it's portrayed as a debate, as a back-and-forth argument about the world around us. A "balanced" article would have emphasized that ID has virtually no backing in the scientific community -- they claim 400 scientists support ID or at least think it's worth debating. I can find 400 scientists who think UFOs and aliens visit earth regularly. 400 scientists is what, .0001 percent of all scientists in the world? You don't teach grade school children "both sides" -- you teach them what is widely accepted. Period.

The article calls ID a "school of thought," when it should be called a religious belief with no scientific standing which can't be proved or disproved because it depends on faith. The article hints at how its all been stirred up by just a handful of people funded by the Discovery Institute and ALL their successes are at school boards and in politics -- none of them are in the laboratory or in science journals. Shouldn't that be the focus of every article?

William Safire even weighs in via his grammar column. Annoyingly, he ends it with a quote from an apparently clueless Nobel laureate at Brown University named Leon Cooper:

''If we could all lighten up a bit perhaps, we could have some fun in the classroom discussing the evidence and the proposed explanations -- just as we do at scientific conferences.''

First, middle school kids aren't trained scientists debating an issue. Second, can you imagine the outcry if a science teacher really "taught the debate" and emphasized that ID -- as far as science is concerned -- is total hogwash? Read the rest of this post...

Krugman: Don't "prettify" Iraq

Tough sometimes to face reality. Easy to deny it like we did with the 2000 elections. A simple request from Krugman, tell the truth about what's going on:

But we aren't doing the country a favor when we present recent history in a way that makes our system look better than it is. Sometimes the public needs to hear unpleasant truths, even if those truths make them feel worse about their country.

Not to be coy: election 2000 may be receding into the past, but the Iraq war isn't. As the truth about the origins of that war comes out, there may be a temptation, once again, to prettify the story. The American people deserve better.

Read the rest of this post...

NY Times: Dems Divided on Roberts Hearing

Yet, another story about discord among Democrats. One would almost think that Democrats have somehow become relevant again:

The party's liberal base, whose contributions during judicial confirmation fights earlier this year have helped the Senate Democratic campaign fund amass twice as much as its Republican rival, is pressing for another vigorous fight against Judge Roberts as documents from the Reagan administration clarify his conservative credentials.

But as Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and other liberal stalwarts on the Judiciary Committee step up their criticism of Judge Roberts's record, other Democrats are reluctant to join them.

"I am turned off by senators trying to act like they have already found the guy out and they know what he is like," said Senator Russell D. Feingold, a Democratic committee member from Wisconsin who spent last week focused instead on calling for a pullout from Iraq. "I am not part of any Democratic effort to 'set the table' " for the hearings by laying the groundwork to criticize Judge Roberts, he said.

Hey, Russ, can you at least try to get him to answer some questions during the hearing? And get all the documents? There are some big issues...like the right to privacy...that need answers. Remember, this is the same White House that lies and hides the facts. Don't expect they've changed on the Supreme Court nominee. Plus, when I read this, I can't shake the fact that Feingold voted for Ashcroft's nomination in 2001. At the time, the Judiciary Committee was evenly split. Without him, the Judiciary Committee would have tied and the nomination would have probably died. But, he sided with Bush on that one. Read the rest of this post...

Monday Morning Open Thread

What's this week got in store? Read the rest of this post...