| Tuesday, September
30, 2003
Joanne Dow on Iraq:
In regards to the Iraqi war episode 2:
As a pure exercise in going over to nail Saddam
because of anything other than supporting International Terrorism it was
sort of silly. All the reasons given directly or indirectly were items to
support international terrorism. Not all of them bear out upon gaining
further knowledge. Ironically the item most people focus upon as their key
button issue, WMD, has been proven to the extent that Saddam has been
shown to have WMD capabilities in "Heathkit" form. It has also
been "shown" (by papers supposedly recovered by a British
tabloid) that Saddam's facilities were used for training al Qaeda
terrorists. At the very least it appears that the knowledge al Qaeda has
with regards to the manufacture of chemical and nuclear (dust not
explosive) weapons may trace to Saddam's facilities. They may not trace to
Saddam himself.
Saddam did support international terrorism. He may
not have supported al Qaeda, which seems to be chiefly a Saudi Arabian
issue. He DID send large sums to the families of Palestinian homicide
bombers. He was quite public about doing so.
Nonetheless I was rather skeptical about the need to
go in there rather than Saudi Arabia, the real viper's den, until a friend
put forth this analysis. We cannot risk going in to Saudi Arabia and
cleaning out the viper's den. It would affect too much of the WORLD'S
energy supply, although its affect on the US energy supply would be
minimal. (We import rather small amounts of oil from Saudi Arabia. Europe
is very dependant upon Saudi Arabia, however. Bear this in mind.)
So let's look around for a way to apply major
pressure upon Saudi Arabia. One means is to reduce world dependence on
Saudi Oil which would reduce their income. Since they're on the edge now
it would be rather decisive as an attitude changer. Note that changing the
US dependence on Saudi oil would not be enough. Unfortunately this would
take decades, especially with the government involved in the project. And
it might not work, especially with our government involved in the project.
(As a case in point look at NASA and the Shuttle. Contrast that with the
minimal governmental involvement in creating the airline industry in the
US. The airmail subsidy was a master stroke. A similar subsidy for pounds
to orbit would have had luxury hotels on the Moon or at least in Earth
orbit by now. Instead we "let the government do it all." We seem
to be attacking oil dependency the same way. It's a non-starter, guys.
It'll employ people, waste money, and produce next to nothing.)
We don't have decades or even one decade to waste on
applying a weak lever. Let's look for a better lever. We had a half an
excuse to nail Saddam. Saddam had lots of oil present in his country. If
we can get that oil flowing freely to Europe and wherever else Saudi oil
is sold undercutting the Saudi prices the leverage on Saudi is instant.
(We are seeing its effect already. The Saudis are at least picking up
token terrorists. Once the oil flows it's time for them to get the big
fish and clean it all up - or lose control and die at Moslem hands. Neat
trap, eh?) Of course, even neater none of that oil money needs to line US
pockets to any degree for this to work. We can feed that money back into
the Iraqi pockets in such a way that they have to work for it and maintain
their infrastructure themselves. They can be coerced into the 22nd century
with the rest of the world. Think of the additional pressure this places
on all the Islamic despots in Syria, Palestine, Iran, and so forth. (Even
Jordan will feel the pressure such as is appropriate.)
Note also that Islamic people cannot 'do the work'
without in some way compromising their militant religion's basic
teachings. So a newer brand of Islam that is not so militant, that
reinterprets the rather bald words about convert or die, must evolve. And
the pressure for this evolution will come from the Moslem's themselves.
"If you want your satellite dishes then you'll have to generate an
income that pays for it. In order to earn an income you must come out of
the 15th century."
That looked like an interesting analysis to me so I
shut up about not supporting the effort in Iraq in spite of any misgivings
I may have had. And now that we are in it is a damn fool thing to simply
walk away from the situation or turn it over to the UN, either of which
would truly waste those soldier's lives. If we have class we finish the
job and THEN leave gracefully shaking hands with a new very friendly
country in the Middle East. (Then we can give Israel the metaphorical
finger, by the way.)
Our military is good. Our military is sworn to the
Constitution of the United States of America. We may overstress that just
a little when a collection of well trained, and for soldiers unusually
smart, young men are told they wasted their time, effort, blood, sweat,
and tears for a government that is routinely violating the very document
they are sworn to protect. If we walk away we might experience the worst
possible outcome from this episode. It will certainly be very detrimental
to any defense capability this country might have as recruiting drops to
zero and people leave as soon as their contracts run out. At that time we
learn to speak Chinese or fire off our nukes in a huge nasty Hail Mary
play.
Of late a very interesting and in retrospect
predictable side effect of this whole conflict is becoming apparent. Al
Qaeda is trying to move into the vacuum in Iraq. So are several other
terrorist nests. It's easy to hide in Yemen with a barely cooperative
government to track them down. (WE can't - "legally".) It's easy
to hide in the Afghanistan/Pakistan area even with modestly cooperative
governments. Iraq is flat and exposed with none of the neat traditional
terrorist sorts of hideouts. We're catching more al Qaeda members in Iraq
of late than we capture in Afghanistan or the Pakistani's capture in their
country. We're pulling in the terrorists to an irresistible bait and a
nice large desert trap. The populace are at the "I've had enough
already" state and are turning these creeps in. We're happy to pull
them in or let the Iraqi officials do it for us. (That latter is precisely
the right way to have this all end up, by the way. If we're to be an
empire then let's do it right. Clinton set us onto the Empire gig with
Bosnia, Somalia, et al. Escape is futile at this point with Bush finishing
the job.)
So in summary three important points from the above
might be that we're now in a position to place incredible pressure on
Saudi Arabia, we're in there now and simply abandoning Iraq might be the
worst possible thing to do with al Qaeda moving in, and we really DO have
the al Qaeda people putting themselves right where we want them regardless
of what you might feel about Rummy.
Maybe it is about the oil. But if it is, it's not
about the US getting the oil or even huge amounts of revenue from the oil
- unless we really ARE incredibly dumb.
{^_^}
===============================
A large
dose of conventional wisdom (encouraged by the international oil/gas
giants who have a lot of gas to sell in the wrong places) has been
reinforced by backward-looking projectionists quoted below. Doom
and gloom seems to be the only recent energy outlook that can be sold.
Few folks seem to believe that more than a doubling of natural gas
market prices will bring larger quantities into the market from domestic
sources; I think that the domestic natural gas producers will
perform much better than forecast.
It is still
my belief that coal and nuclear will preclude the importation of huge
quantities of liquified natural gas over long periods of time.
Allan
Smalley
U.S. to Become More Reliant on Foreign
Natural Gas, Says RBC Capital Markets Poll; Prices to Rise Higher into
2005, Respondents Say
Source: Business Wire
Publication date: 2003-09-29
HOUSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept.
29, 2003--The biggest issue facing the U.S. energy industry today is the
shortage of domestic sources of natural gas. That's what a poll of 400
oil and gas executives and investors found at an industry conference
held by RBC Capital Markets recently in Houston.
More than half the executives polled likened it to being as bad as or
worse than the oil crisis of the 1970s, while 48 percent said this
crisis would be manageable.
And while 92 percent of the respondents said that foreign sources of
natural gas will increasingly supply the United States within five
years, results were mixed as to whether the United States will become as
dependent on foreign gas as it is on foreign oil, with 54 percent
believing it will. Though nearly the same portion - 55 percent - does
not think that foreign gas-producing nations will form an OPEC-like
cartel to control supply and prices.
Meanwhile, the energy executives said that natural gas prices will
continue to trend higher and remain above their more historical levels.
On average, they felt that natural gas would hit $5.03 per thousand
cubic feet at the end of this year; $5.16 at the end of 2004; and still
higher, $5.32, at the end of 2005.
"It's interesting to note that when we conducted this survey
last year, the group ended up being cautious in their prediction for
natural gas prices," said Joe Allman, an E&P analyst at RBC
Capital Markets. "So if that trend holds true again this year, it's
good news for the leading suppliers but bad news for the consumer."
When the survey was last conducted in November 2002, respondents
predicted the price to be $3.89 at the end of 2002. The actual price
ended up at $4.59.
Where will the natural gas come from? Nearly one-third of the
respondents cited Canada as the leading source going forward outside of
the United States, while 19 percent said the Middle East; 15 percent,
Russia; and another 15 percent, South Asia.
Canada is currently the largest exporter of natural gas to the United
States at approximately 10 billion cubic feet (bcf) per day, or about 15
percent of daily U.S. consumption.
Allman agrees that Canada will play an important ongoing role as the
leading foreign supplier of natural gas. However, he sees the survey's
modest enthusiasm for the Middle East, Russia and South Asia reflecting
the turn towards a liquified natural gas (LNG) infrastructure, industry
wide. "We're not looking at Canada to grow significantly above and
beyond the current level," Allman said, referring to RBC Capital
Markets' research model which projects out to 2010. "We think the
most significant increase in U.S. imports will come from LNG."
According to Allman, LNG consumption in the United States was
reported at 1.7 bcf per day, as of June 2003. RBC Capital Markets is
projecting that number to climb to 7 bcf per day by 2010, while Canadian
natural gas exports to the United States will show just a slight
increase of 0.5 percent per year.
With a U.S. Senate vote on the national energy bill coming, the group
also was asked about drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge.
While 52 percent believed that drilling in the refuge would
significantly relieve the present natural gas supply crunch, only 3
percent believed that Alaska would emerge as a leading source of natural
gas going forward. "This suggests that few believe that Congress
will ultimately allow drilling in the refuge and that other supplies of
gas from Alaska would not make it to the lower 48 anytime soon,"
Allman said.
When asked about crude oil prices, respondents predicted the price
per barrel to end 2003 at $28.24, similar to current levels, and
trending down in 2004 to $27.83 by the end of the year.
Respondents were neutral on the outlook for oil service stocks,
consistent with RBC Capital Markets' outlook on the sector. They
predicted, on average, that the Oil Service Index (OSX) would end 2003
at 95.21 and finish 2004 at 100.52, a modest 6-percent rise.
RBC Capital Markets has a 12-month price objective of 105 for the OSX.
"We see the OSX trading between 85 and 95 into November. At this
point, investors are hesitant to put substantial incremental capital to
work before seeing data on oil and gas companies' 2004 spending plans
and before the start of the winter heating season," said Kurt
Hallead, oil service analyst at RBC Capital Markets. "We expect to
see an upward bias for oil service stocks into the first half of 2004
consistent with seasonal trading patterns." Over the past five
years, the OSX has increased by an average of 20 percent in the first
five months of the year and declined by 16 percent in the remaining
seven months.
Conference attendees were also asked about the impact of the August
blackout in the Northeast. Respondents repeatedly said they saw two
major outcomes from the blackout: more government regulation and more
investment to upgrade the transmission grid.
Only one-third of the respondents felt the United States would
experience a blackout of similar magnitude within the next two years,
while nearly 70 percent believe there would be no recurrence.
Nevertheless, when asked what government should do to prevent such a
blackout, 39 percent said government should make a major investment in
the energy infrastructure, while 26 percent said government should
create incentives for industry players to invest in infrastructure.
Does the blackout increase the likelihood of a terrorist attack on
the U.S./Canadian electrical grid and other energy supply points? Sixty
percent said "no." However, nearly three-fourths of those
surveyed felt the United States and Canada are not prepared for such a
terrorist attack.
Attendees polled about alternative energy sources cited clean coal as
the most viable near-term source of alternative energy (46 percent)
followed by fuel cell energy (21 percent) and wind (21 percent). Longer
term, half of the group saw hydrogen as a realistic option to fuel
alternative energy relative to ongoing dependence on petroleum.
The poll was taken of participants at the RBC Capital Markets North
American Energy & Power Conference. More than 400 energy experts,
company representatives, institutional investors and securities
professionals converged in Houston, Sept. 15-17, for a conference about
the outlook on the energy industry. The questionnaire was distributed to
all attendees. Respondents were asked about a wide range of topics
including oil and gas prices and supplies, the August blackout and
alternative energy.
============================
Subject: Factory closures devastate U.S. towns
http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/030930/bizfeature_manufacturing_1.html
The layoffs have carved a swath of
unemployment through the Midwest, where cornfields made way for factories
after World War II as industry shifted from big cities to comparatively
low-cost rural areas.
In Wichita, Kansas, some 11,000 aerospace workers
have lost their jobs since 2001 as employers outsourced both parts supply
and assembly overseas, sideswiping the local economy.
Rich
The problems of transitions in economies are
not addressed by most economists. Schumpeter looked into creative
destruction and concluded that it was necessary, but that it would
politically doom capitalism in democracies. No democracy will tolerate the
displacements needed to keep a capitalist society going.
That may not be correct, but it needs to be
thought about.
Of course rule by the enlightened
in the interests of their benighted subjects may be the answer, provided
that the enlightened are enlightened enough to understand the necessity of
market capitalism and don't become leftists and socialists.
To some extent I am being cynical, but that
is because I have thought about this a long time, and every time I say
anything the theorists come out of the woodwork and send me copies of
their undergraduate economics class notes.
And See Below for more
discussion
===============================
Subject: Aerospike engine flight test
http://www.garvspace.com/News.htm
PAtrick Hoag
=========================
Installing Office from Hard
Drives
Jerry,
In this week's column you touched on copying
Microsoft Office to a hard drive so that Office Update (and others) will
no longer require the installation CDs during updates.
The readme files for Office 2000 applications
contain a section for "installing from a network administrative
point" or some such. Once that is done you run setup from the shared
location to make the install on the local machine. It's pretty elegant and
makes all the proper registry entries so you won't be asked for the CD
again, and makes a defacto backup of your Office files at the same time.
I have no idea if this works from Office XP/2003.
The "share" referenced below is just the disk directory where
you want the files from the CD copied. It should be set up for sharing
(read/write) over the local network.
I quote from the Office 2000 readme:
Installing Office 2000 SR-1 on a Network
--------------------------------------------------------- >>>To
create an administrative installation point for Office 2000 SR-1:
1. Create a share on a network server for the
administrative installation point. The network share must have at least
550 megabytes (MB) of available disk space.
2. On a computer running Microsoft Windows 95 or 98
or Microsoft Windows NT (including Windows 2000) and that has write access
to the share, connect to the server share.
3. On the Start menu, click Run, and then click
Browse.
4. On Office Disc 1 in the CD-ROM drive, select
Setup.exe and click Open.
5. On the command line following Setup.exe, type
/A DATA1.MSI
and click OK.
For example:
e:\setup.exe /A DATA1.MSI
6. When prompted by Setup, enter the organization
name that you want to define for all users who install Office from this
location.
7. When prompted for the installation location,
enter the server and share you created.
For additional information about network and
administration issues, see the Office Resource Kit Web site at:
http://www.microsoft.com/office/ork/
END QUOTE
Regards
Ron Morse
=======================================
Subject: Paging Luis Alvarez . . .
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3146692.stm
and
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/asiapcf/south/09/28/india.meteorite/
Roland Dobbins
===============
On Energy Independence
Dr.Pournelle
You have frequently stated that you would like to
see this country (and the world) move away from being so heavily dependent
on middle eastern oil for energy. The recent elimination of MTBE in
California gasoline may be an opportunity for a step in that direction.
Since environmental regulations require the addition of an oxidant to all
gasoline sold in the United States and since the only alternative to MTBE
currently allowed is ethanol imported from the midwest, California
gasoline prices have been up near $2 a gallon. Lowering those gasoline
prices would act like a tax cut in stimulating the California economy.
Since the origin of California's high gasoline price
is political, I propose a political solution - allow ethanol to be
imported into California to be mixed with gasoline. This will require
California's congressional delegation to cut a deal permitting these
imports, but I believe that it is a doable deal. For one thing, the most
likely suppliers of ethanol will be third world countries where sugar cane
can be grown. They can substitute manual labor for diesel fuel and
expensive machinery and bring in dollars to raise their standard of
living. Fermentation and distillation are well within the capability of
even the most primitive country place on earth.
Since domestic political pressure will limit the
amount of ethanol that can be imported, the United States will have a
hefty hammer to swing at the United Nations. If Burkina Faso would like a
permit to export ethanol to California, they had better show a more pro US
voting record than their competition. If France or the EU decides to
counter bid by also importing ethanol to mix with their gasoline that is
also a good thing.
Ethanol has only half the energy content of
gasoline, but that still means that every gallon of ethanol imported is
displacing demand for half a gallon of gasoline. When the price of
gasoline dropped below a dollar a gallon in the mid 1990s, that was due to
a world wide 1% decrease in demand due to the south east Asian economic
meltdown. The price of gasoline is apparently pretty elastic. Between
Europe and the United States, we could probably displace at least 1% of
the demand for gasoline with ethanol from the third world and our own
subsidized farmers.
Lets see, lower prices in the United States
stimulating economic growth, diversion of some fraction of our energy
dollars from the Middle East to various third world countries stimulating
their economic growth, and environmentalists can convince themselves that
the air is getting cleaner and that they bullied the rest of us into
behaving virtuously. I've probably overlooked something but I really don't
know what.
Mark Kelly Deer Park, TX
You fascinate me. I need to think on this. But of
course one reason for requiring ethanol is to make work for US farmers...
g
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