Those who control oil and water will control the world

[lovuian]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/mar/30/fossilfuels.water?gusrc=rss&feed=environment

The biggest new player in the game is China and it is there that the emerging pattern is clearest. China's rulers have staked everything on economic growth. Without improving living standards, there would be large-scale unrest, which could pose a threat to their power. Moreover, China is in the middle of the largest and fastest move from the countryside to the city in history, a process that cannot be stopped.

There is no alternative to continuing growth, but it comes with deadly side-effects. Overused in industry and agriculture, and under threat from the retreat of the Himalayan glaciers, water is becoming a non-renewable resource. Two-thirds of China's cities face shortages, while deserts are eating up arable land. Breakneck industrialisation is worsening this environmental breakdown, as many more power plants are being built and run on high-polluting coal that accelerates global warming. There is a vicious circle at work here and not only in China. Because ongoing growth requires massive inputs of energy and minerals, Chinese companies are scouring the world for supplies. The result is unstoppable rising demand for resources that are unalterably finite.

Although oil reserves may not have peaked in any literal sense, the days when conventional oil was cheap have gone forever. Countries are reacting by trying to secure the remaining reserves, not least those that are being opened up by climate change. Canada is building bases to counter Russian claims on the melting Arctic icecap, parts of which are also claimed by Norway, Denmark and the US. Britain is staking out claims on areas around the South Pole.
more...

We are going to need a bigger army

[krispos42]

1. Can't be true

Oil and water don't mix.

:-)

[mahina]

2. This just in.

[Double T]

3. Oh great! Next thing you know President McCain will be attacking the UK.

Why should America be held HOSTAGE? The US should have the Second Coming of the Manhattan Project in the form of an alternative fuel engine to oil that produces no harmful emissions and is cost competitive with a combustion engine. NEVER, NEVER, NEVER ALLOW the privatization of our water resources and supplies so that the corrupt crooked criminals on wall street and corporate america can screw US some MORE!!

[JohnyCanuck]

5. The Paradox of Production

The Paradox of Production

One of the things that makes the challenge of peak oil so insidious, and so resistant to quick fixes, is the way in which many things that seem like ingredients of a solution are actually part of the problem. Petroleum provides so much of the energy and so many of the raw materials we take for granted today that the impacts of declining oil production extend much further than a first glance would suggest.

Read through discussions of the energy future of industrial society from a few years back, for example, and you’ll find that many of them treat the price of coal and the price of oil as independent variables, linked only by the market forces that turn price increases in one into an excuse for bidding up the price of the other. What these analyses missed, of course, is that the machinery used to mine coal and the trains used to transport it are powered by diesel oil. When the price of diesel goes up, the cost of coal mining goes up; when supplies of diesel run short in coal-producing countries – as they have in China in recent months – the supply of coal runs into unexpected hiccups as well.

I’ve pointed out in previous posts here that every other energy source currently used in modern societies gets a substantial “energy subsidy” from oil. Thus, to continue the example, oil contains about three times as much useful energy per unit weight as coal does, and oil also takes a lot less energy to extract from the ground, process, and transport to the end user than coal does. Modern coal production benefits from these efficiencies. If coal had to be mined, processed, and shipped using coal-burning equipment, those efficiencies would be lost, and a sizeable fraction of total coal production would have to go to meet the energy costs of the coal industry.

The same thing, of course, is true of every other alternative energy source to a greater or lesser degree: the energy used in uranium mining and reactor construction, for example, comes from diesel rather than nuclear power, just as sunlight doesn’t make solar panels. What rarely seems to have been noticed, however, is the way these “energy subsidies” intersect with the challenges of declining petroleum production to boobytrap the future of energy production in industrial societies. The boobytrap in question is an effect I’ve named the paradox of production.

http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2008/03/paradox-of-production.html

[malakai2]

6. Also remember

Many of the things we mine-metals, coal, phosphorus-were available before the advent of internal combustion because deposits were situated where we could get at them without large excavators and borers. That is no longer the case. Increased mining efficiency has allowed us to pick much of the low-hanging fruit, and now we need oil to reach what's left. Lose oil, waive goodbye to any hope of using most of the remaining raw reserves in the earth's crust.

Also, given the global population, the regional settlement patterns, surface and ground water contamination, ground water mining, and the expense of both proper filtration and pumping over long distances, the water issue will grow quickly. Those first four problems require time and energy to fix, but that isn't possible given the impending decline in oil production.

So yeah, people that control both substances will exert a lot of control, provided they maintain heavy influence on the media. Start letting people understand that they can only expect their standard of living to decline, and they start to get uppity. If a person in such control doesn't successfully portray himself as deeply sympathetic while also successfully portraying dissidents as radical threats to stability, he'll lose control via assassination or revolution. I suppose the alternative is to rule through fear and brutality, but I suspect that would be hard to do if petroleum was a deeply limiting resource...although if it were less limiting for plutocrats than for everyone else, it would be much less difficult to maintain control.

[physioex]

4. Your first paragraph is absolutely true.....

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3917027727063272369&q=secret+china%27s&total=2283&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0

Enjoy

[InkAddict]

7. Is your CUP half empty or half full?

Background:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_UnionPay
China UnionPay (simplified Chinese: 中国银联), also known as UnionPay (Chinese: 银联) or by its abbreviation, CUP, is the only credit card organization in the People's Republic of China (PRC). Founded in March 2002, China UnionPay is an association for China's banking card industry, operating under the approval of the PBOC. It is also the only interbank network in China excluding Hong Kong and Macau, linking the ATMs of some fourteen major banks and many more smaller banks throughout mainland China. It is also an EFTPOS network.

United States - Citibank accepts UnionPay cards at ATMs for USD withdrawal. In May 2005 Discover Network announced an alliance with China UnionPay Network. The two companies have signed a long-term agreement that allows acceptance of Discover Network brand cards at UnionPay ATMs and point-of-sale terminals in China and acceptance of China UnionPay cards on the PULSE network in the U.S.<5> As of November 1, 2007, China UnionPay cards may be accepted where Discover Network Cards are accepted in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.<6>

http://www.pbc.gov.cn/english//detail.asp?col=6500&ID=163
Chief Disciplinary Officer Wang Hongzhang's Speech at the National Teleconference on Corporate Card Reform - 01-30-2008

The purpose of promoting the use of corporate cards is to achieve universal use of non-cash payment instruments by budget units at various levels in small-value corporate purchase, reducing the use of cash; to enable the fiscal authority to achieve whole-process monitoring over small-value corporate payment; and to strengthen the management of fiscal expenditure. As such, it is of great significance to promote corporate cards.

The corporate card system will help to deepen the centralized treasury payment reform and regulate the management of treasury fund. The system is an institutional innovation following the initiatives of department budget, centralized state treasury revenue and expenditure, government procurement, separation of revenue and expenditure, categorization of government revenue and expenditure, representing a further deepening of the centralized state treasury revenue and expenditure reform. It is of great significance for safeguarding the safety of budget fund, improving budget implementation and preventing corruption to establish an interactive mechanism between fiscal authority and financial authority, expand the coverage of centralized state treasury payment information system, introduce monitoring over the range of use and transfer routes of cash once cash is withdrawn, achieve dynamic monitoring over treasury fund, as this helps to strengthen supervision and management of compliance and authenticity, promote transparency of business-related expenditure, avoid the occurrence of stealing cash through drawing up false invoices, "private coffers" and other illegal conducts.

Because cash-based transactions leave no traces to track, pervasive use of cash is not conducive to regulating the economic and financial order, strengthening tax collection or curbing corruption. In addition, unlimited use of cash precipitates abnormal growth in cash supply, increasing the workload of printing, minting, allocating and counting cash as well as destroying impaired cash. At the same time, cash transactions cannot separate logistics from cash stream, hence reducing the efficiency of turnover of commodities and economic performance.

Compare with:

http://www.kansascityfed.org/econres/PSR/psrconferences/2005/Constantine.pdf
Lloyd Constantine, Esq. (former Sr. Advisor to ex-Senator Eliot Spitzer(DEM-NY)

"Illustrating one of Visa’s arguments in defense of the tying arrangement, Popofsky told the court that Visa now functions like the Federal Reserve. Congress gave that job to the real
Federal Reserve. The time has come for the Fed to reassert its stewardship over the U.S. payments system."

[SteinbachMB]

8. I knew that being Canadian

would come in handy some day.