In the news

http://www.oregonlive.com/search/index.ssf?/base/news/116521350473820.xm...

The prophets of gloom meet every Wednesday in a church basement to plan for the end of oil as we know it.

Seated in folding chairs under fluorescent lights, the members of Portland Peak Oil share tips about switching to propane, planting vegetable gardens and harvesting fruit and nuts from local trees in case the food supply goes south along with affordable gasoline.

One of the main reasons I have mostly stopped watching pro sports was I tired of watching various millionaires and billionaires whining about ... whatever.  I'm continually amazed to see cities plunk down hundred's of millions of dollars to build stadiums when from everything read there is little economic justification for it if you side step the Enrun style accounting.   It kinda of reminds me of(US gov't style) foreign aid which sadly seems to go overwhelmingly to rich people, dictators or right wing religious fundies. 

So Mr. Allen wants to take his marbles and go someplace else to play if he doesn't get public financial ass

I barely know what to say other then to wish Terri Schiavo peace in death, a peace that was clearly denied her over the last 15 years when she was left in a condition that she never wanted to be kept in.

Do ya think it might be time to get serious about energy conservation? Maybe? Remember the issue is not about justing running out of oil, it is also a problem of disruptions to the supply. Keep a sharp eye on Saudi Arabia, if anything happens to them the world economy is going to tank.

Prices rose to $44.24 a barrel in New York - a level not seen in the 21 years of the New York Mercantile Exchange's oil contract - before dipping slightly.

Earlier, the president of Opec said oil prices were at "crazy" levels, but that Opec was powerless to cool the market.

"There is no more supply," said Opec president Purnomo Yusgiantoro.

Opec's president said that officials in Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil exporter, had told him that that country could raise production, but not immediately.

Oil analysts agree that Opec is pumping flat out, so there is limited scope to calm prices by boosting output

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Personally I wouldn't even give civilization 50-50 odds, but I'm glad that someone with authority, Sir Martin Rees, Britain's Astronomer Royal, is speaking out about it. He went as far as to publish a popular book about it called Our Final Hour.

He saw some of the likely pullers of the linch pin as:
* out-of-control technology: biotechnology and nanobots. You only have to really screw up once.
* strangelet: Brookhaven National Laboratory's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) could produce particles called strangelets, which grow by consuming nearby ordinary matter and basically eat the planet. The odds of this were put at one-in-50-million, which is about the odds of winning the lottery. Again, you only have to really screw up once.
* environmental disaster/destruction: my guess is parts of the biosphere might still be functional in the even of a global disaster, however you have to be very lucky/rich to live which is the ultimate form of class warfare.