Energy Resources And Our Future

Admiral Hyman Rickover 1957

We live in what historians may some day call the Fossil Fuel Age. Today coal, oil, and natural gas supply 93% of the world’s energy; water power accounts for only 1%; and the labor of men and domestic animals the remaining 6%. This is a startling reversal of corresponding figures for 1850 – only a century ago. Then fossil fuels supplied 5% of the world’s energy, and men and animals 94%. Five sixths of all the coal, oil, and gas consumed since the beginning of the Fossil Fuel Age has been burned up in the last 55 years…

I suggest that this is a good time to think soberly about our responsibilities to our descendants – those who will ring out the Fossil Fuel Age…

We might even – if we wanted – give a break to these youngsters by cutting fuel and metal consumption a little here and there so as to provide a safer margin for the necessary adjustments which eventually must be made in a world without fossil fuels.

One final thought I should like to leave with you. High-energy consumption has always been a prerequisite of political power. The tendency is for political power to be concentrated in an ever-smaller number of countries. Ultimately, the nation which control – the largest energy resources will become dominant. If we give thought to the problem of energy resources, if we act wisely and in time to conserve what we have and prepare well for necessary future changes, we shall insure this dominant position for our own country.

Full speech:

http://www.chrismartenson.com/energy-resources-and-our-future

Dr. Albert Bartlett on Compounding

Dr. Albert Bartlett: Arithmetic, Population and Energy

[Transcribed from a speech]

It’s a great pleasure to be here, and to have a chance just to share with you some very simple ideas about the problems we’re facing. Some of these problems are local, some are national, some are global.

They’re all tied together. They’re tied together by arithmetic, and the arithmetic isn’t very difficult. What I hope to do is, I hope to be able to convince you that the greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.

Full article:

http://www.chrismartenson.com/dr_albert_bartlett

Global Research, September 4, 2008

As details of the larger strategic picture emerge over what is at stake in the Georgia and larger Caucasus crisis, it is becoming clearer that Moscow is not determined to roll back the borders of Stalin and the Cold War of 1948. What Putin and now Medvedev have begun is a process of defusing the highly dangerous NATO expansion, led by the Washington warhawks since the end of the Cold War in 1990.

Had events progressed as Washington had planned up until the surprise rejection of NATO membership from no less than ten European NATO member countries, including Germany and France at the April NATO Summit, Georgia would today have been in the admission process to NATO-ization along with Ukraine. That would have opened the door to full-scale encirclement of Russia militarily and economically…

Washington has made devastating strategic miscalculations, but not merely in Georgia. They began back in 1990 when there had been a beautiful opportunity to build bridges of peaceful economic cooperation between the OECD and Russia. Instead, George Bush senior and the US sent NATO and the IMF east to create economic chaos, looting and instability, evidently thinking that a better option. The next President will bear the consequences of having lost that opportunity.

Full article:

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10062

Spoken like a true Chess Master.

A Russian told me recently, it’s Russian chess versus U.S. poker.

I’m no geostrategist but it seems to me the U.S. has lost a Knight and a Bishop maybe even a Rook in Iraq and Afghanistan and is in the process of losing pawns (Georgia, Ukraine, etc.) while all the strategic advantages lie with Russia especially oil, e.g., QB1-KB4, i.e., S-300 to Iran and Syria.

But being an enthusiastic poker player with lots of poker fans at home who like poker talk you would never know what this conflict is really about, who is in the right, who is in the wrong and who has the advantage if war breaks out.

BTW, I’ve never seen a more astute political choice for VP in my lifetime; Putin and Palin are in our futures methinks.

02/09/08 “TomDispatch” — – Many Western analysts have chosen to interpret the recent fighting in the Caucasus as the onset of a new Cold War, with a small pro-Western democracy bravely resisting a brutal reincarnation of Stalin’s jack-booted Soviet Union. Others have viewed it a throwback to the age-old ethnic politics of southeastern Europe, with assorted minorities using contemporary border disputes to settle ancient scores.

Neither of these explanations is accurate. To fully grasp the recent upheavals in the Caucasus, it is necessary to view the conflict as but a minor skirmish in a far more significant geopolitical struggle between Moscow and Washington over the energy riches of the Caspian Sea basin — with former Russian President (now Prime Minister) Vladimir Putin emerging as the reigning Grand Master of geostrategic chess and the Bush team turning out to be middling amateurs, at best.

Full article:

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174971/michael_klare_the_bush_administration_checkmated_in_georgia

By Dmitry Medvedev

27/08/08 “Financial Times” — – On Tuesday Russia recognised the independence of the territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. It was not a step taken lightly, or without full consideration of the consequences. But all possible outcomes had to be weighed against a sober understanding of the situation – the histories of the Abkhaz and Ossetian peoples, their freely expressed desire for independence, the tragic events of the past weeks and inter­national precedents for such a move.

Not all of the world’s nations have their own statehood. Many exist happily within boundaries shared with other nations. The Russian Federation is an example of largely harmonious coexistence by many dozens of nations and nationalities. But some nations find it impossible to live under the tutelage of another. Relations between nations living “under one roof” need to be handled with the utmost sensitivity.

Full article:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20628.htm

To: “The A-List”
Subject: [A-List] Invasion of Poland Redux
From: “MARGARET WYLES”
Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2008 05:47:20 -0800

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20606.htm

If the Bush administration proceeds with its plan to deploy its
Missile Defense System in Poland, Russian Prime Minister Putin will be
forced to remove it militarily. He has no other option. The proposed
system integrates the the entire US nuclear arsenal into one
operational-unit a mere 115 miles from the Russian border. It’s no
different than Khrushchev’s plan to deploy nuclear missiles in Cuba in
the 1960s.

Early last year, at a press conference that was censored in the United
States, Putin explained his concerns about Bush’s plan:

“Once the missile defense system is put in place it will work
automatically with the entire nuclear capability of the United States.
It will be an integral part of the US nuclear capability….And, for
the first time in history—and I want to emphasize this—there will
be elements of the US nuclear capability on the European continent. It
simply changes the whole configuration of international security…..Of
course, we have to respond to that.”

by Jerome a Paris
Thu Aug 21st, 2008 at 09:55:53 AM EST
In a hard-hitting Op-Ed in this morning’s Financial Times, Singapore’s Kishore Mahbubani writes that The West is strategically wrong on Georgia.

He extends that diagnosis to our overall approach to the world (as quoted below the fold) and makes a convincing case that the West has an incoherent strategy towards the rest of the world. I would like to suggest, however, that the current ‘strategy’ has a narrow rationality intimately linked to our current dysfunctional politics.

Full article:
http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2008/8/21/95553/5042