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Alarming charts: oil price spike since 2003. Solar & wind become vital to industrialized civilization, global economy as a whole
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Petroleum is also the raw material for many chemical products, including pharmaceuticals, solvents, fertilizers, pesticides, and plastics. The industry is usually divided into three major components: upstream, midstream and downstream. Midstream operations are usually included in the downstream category. Petroleum is vital to many industries, and is of importance to the maintenance of industrialized civilization itself, and thus is critical concern to many nations.
From the mid 1980s to September 2003, the inflation adjusted price of a barrel of crude oil on NYMEX was generally under $25/barrel. During 2004 the price rose above $40, then $50. A series of events led the price to exceed $60 by August 11, 2005, briefly exceed $75 in the middle of 2006, fall back to $60/barrel by the early part of 2007, then rise steeply to $92/barrel by October 2007 and $99.29/barrel for December futures in New York on November 21, 2007[1] Throughout the first half of 2008, oil regularly reached record high prices. On February 29, 2008, oil prices peaked at $103.05 per barrel,[2] and reached $110.20 on March 12, 2008,[3] the sixth record in seven trading days.[4] [5] The most recent price per barrel maximum of $140.05 was reached on June 26, 2008.[6]
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Images courtesy of Wikipedia
Original Source: Wikipedia
Sound familiar? In 80s, massive oil shortage, prices soared; economies into recession; prices flattened out, in 1985, collapsed
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The world's thirst for oil is growing so quickly humanity will consume more of it this decade than over the previous hundred years. Production can't possibly keep up. And the consequences will be dire. "This surge of demand will soon begin to send shock waves through the American economy and transportation system," wrote one expert. The American interior secretary agreed.
A massive oil shortage was coming in the 1980s. Everyone knew that. But before the predicted crisis could arrive, the world was hit with one that wasn't predicted: The Iranian revolution of 1979 turned a major American ally into a major American enemy. Oil prices soared. Economies slipped into recession.
Experts were certain the age of scarcity had arrived ahead of schedule. "The cardinal issue is how vicious the struggle for energy supplies will become," the head of the CIA told a Senate committee. In the summer of 1980, the journal Foreign Affairs captured the dismal mood in an article headlined "Oil and the Decline of the West."
Then a funny thing happened. The price of oil stopped rising. Instead, it fell. And fell some more. High prices had encouraged oil companies to explore like never before and producers to open their spigots. Supply gushed onto the market.
In 1985, the price of oil collapsed.
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Ron Paul: "I am just really concerned that this is going to lead to hostilities". Putin warns against military action
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*Update* Dec 15 2009
Statement of Congressman Ron Paul, United States House of Representatives, December 15, 2009
I rise in strongest opposition to this new round of sanctions on Iran, which is another significant step toward a US war on that country. I find it shocking that legislation this serious and consequential is brought up in such a cavalier manner. Suspending the normal rules of the House to pass legislation is a process generally reserved for “non-controversial” business such as the naming of post offices. Are we to believe that this House takes matters of war and peace as lightly as naming post offices?
This legislation seeks to bar from doing business in the United States any foreign entity that sells refined petroleum to Iran or otherwise enhances Iran’s ability to import refined petroleum such as financing, brokering, underwriting, or providing ships for such. Such sanctions also apply to any entity that provides goods or services that enhance Iran’s ability to maintain or expand its domestic production of refined petroleum. This casts the sanctions net worldwide, with enormous international economic implications.
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Mr. Speaker, I am concerned that many of my colleagues opposing war on Iran will vote in favor of this legislation, seeing it as a step short of war to bring Iran into line with US demands. I would remind them that sanctions and the blockades that are required to enforce them are themselves acts of war according to international law. I urge my colleagues to reject this saber-rattling but ultimately counterproductive legislation.
Date: 12/15/2009
Location: Congress
Legislation: Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act (H.R. 2194)
Transcript read more »
June 12 - US Supreme Court delivers its third consecutive rebuff to Bush Administration's handling of detainees
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WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday delivered its third consecutive rebuff to the Bush administration’s handling of the detainees at Guantánamo Bay, ruling 5 to 4 that the prisoners there have a constitutional right to go to federal court to challenge their continued detention.
The court declared unconstitutional a provision of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 that, at the administration’s behest, stripped the federal courts of jurisdiction to hear habeas corpus petitions from the detainees seeking to challenge their designation as enemy combatants.
Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said the truncated review procedure provided by a previous law, the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, “falls short of being a constitutionally adequate substitute” because it failed to offer “the fundamental procedural protections of habeas corpus.”
Justice Kennedy declared: “The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times.”
'Habeas corpus' (Latin: [We command] that you have the body) is the name of a legal action, or writ, through which a person can seek relief from unlawful detention of themselves or another person. The writ of habeas corpus has historically been an important instrument for the safeguarding of individual freedom against arbitrary state action. read more »
Discovery Channel 3-night series: NASA in 50 years, from Mercury to Gemini to Apollo, from Skylab to Hubble
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The Discovery Channel marks the 50th anniversary of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration with “When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions”, a six-part, three-night series crafted from what a network news release describes as "NASA's own secret film vaults."
As fliers who weren't involved in, you know, bombing anything, yet were continually putting their own lives at risk, astronauts were especially attractive: Indeed, they were potentially leading the country into a post-national, interstellar future, when we would all be simply citizens of Earth and aliens would come only from other planets. Wasn't John Glenn's spacecraft called the Friendship 7?
Living Legacy, Robert F. Kennedy (Nov20 1925-Jun6 1968). 40yrs ago, Kennedy, known as Bobby, was leaving a victory celebration..
Today the U.S. marks 40 years since the assassination of Senator Robert F Kennedy, known as Bobby, as he campaigned for the Democratic presidential nomination.
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Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, who was Maryland's first female lieutenant governor, is still moved by the strangers who approach her to describe how her father inspired them. "Not a day goes by that someone doesn't come up to me and say they were affected by my father's legacy in some way," Townsend, now 56, said during an interview this week at a Lutherville coffee shop.
Forty years ago, Kennedy was leaving a victory celebration at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles when he was felled by an assassin's bullets. Kennedy had just won the California Democratic primary for president. He died on June 6, 1968 at age 42. His death shattered his family, people across the nation and a generation of young idealists who had looked to him with hope during a decade of great upheaval. Though shaken, many went on to follow his path. Today, notable Marylanders point to his legacy of social justice, integrity and courage as an enduring inspiration for their lives and deeds. read more »
Pollack produced over 44 movies, directed more than 20 films, 10 television shows, and acted in over 30 movies/shows
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If Mr. Pollack, who died on Monday at 73, could be compared to a major figure from the Old Hollywood, it would not be to one of the great individualists like Howard Hawks or John Ford, but more like William Wyler: highly competent, drawn to projects with a certain quality and prestige and able above all to harness the charisma of movie stars to great emotional and dramatic effect.
Just about any film by Robert Altman or Martin Scorsese, for instance, will be immediately and primarily identifiable as such, no matter who’s in it. But if you think of “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?,” you’ll remember Jane Fonda, so desperate and defiant and sad as she pushes herself through a Depression-era dance marathon. “Tootsie” is Dustin Hoffman’s movie. “This Property Is Condemned” will conjure up Natalie Wood and Robert Redford, oddly cast but nonetheless generating Southern Gothic heat in an overripe Tennessee Williams scenario. And it is Mr. Redford who defines Mr. Pollack’s oeuvre nearly as much as the director himself. Over nearly 25 years, from “This Property Is Condemned” to “Havana,” they worked together on westerns (“Jeremiah Johnson,”); love stories both sweeping (“The Way We Were”) and intimate (“The Electric Horseman”); paranoid thrillers (“Three Days of the Condor”); and high-toned literary adaptations (“Out of Africa.”) read more »
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