biohabit.org

This animated gif puts things in an interesting perspective...

The last star, YV Canis Majoris, has a diameter roughly that of the orbit of the planet Saturn!

It is an amazing study in contrast of the modern day GOP with the Republican Party Platform of 1872, eight years after Lincoln. Serious, I think the Tea Party call the Republicans of this era a bunch of Socialists.

Republican Party Platform of 1872 June 5, 1872

First. During eleven years of supremacy it has accepted with grand courage the solemn duties of the time. It suppressed a gigantic rebellion, emancipated four millions of slaves, decreed the equal citizenship of all, and established universal suffrage. Exhibiting unparalleled magnanimity, it criminally punished no man for political offenses, and warmly welcomed all who proved loyalty by obeying the laws and dealing justly with their neighbors. It has steadily decreased with firm hand the resultant disorders of a great war, and initiated a wise and humane policy toward the Indians. The Pacific railroad and similar vast enterprises have been generously aided and successfully conducted, the public lands freely given to actual settlers, immigration protected and encouraged, and a full acknowledgment of the naturalized citizens' rights secured from European Powers. A uniform national currency has been provided, repudiation frowned down, the national credit sustained under the most extraordinary burdens, and new bonds negotiated at lower rates. The revenues have been carefully collected and honestly applied. Despite large annual reductions of the rates of taxation, the public debt has been reduced during General Grant's Presidency at the rate of a hundred millions a year, great financial crises have been avoided, and peace and plenty prevail throughout the land. Menacing foreign difficulties have been peacefully and honorably composed, and the honor and power of the nation kept in high respect throughout the world. This glorious record of the past is the party's best pledge for the future. We believe the people will not intrust the Government to any party or combination of men composed chiefly of those who have resisted every step of this beneficent progress.

Second. The recent amendments to the national Constitution should be cordially sustained because they are right, not merely tolerated because they are law, and should be carried out according to their spirit by appropriate legislation, the enforcement of which can safely be entrusted only to the party that secured those amendments.

Third. Complete liberty and exact equality in the enjoyment of all civil, political, and public rights should be established and effectually maintained throughout the Union, by efficient and appropriate State and Federal legislation. Neither the law nor its administration should admit any discrimination in respect of citizens by reason of race, creed, color, or previous condition of servitude.

Fourth. The National Government should seek to maintain honorable peace with all nations, protecting its citizens everywhere, and sympathizing with all people who strive for greater liberty.

Fifth. Any system of the civil service under which the subordinate positions of the government are considered rewards for mere party zeal is fatally demoralizing, and we therefore favor a reform of the system by laws which shall abolish the evils of patronage, and make honesty, efficiency, and fidelity the essential qualifications for public positions, without practically creating a life-tenure of office.

Sixth. We are opposed to further grants of the public lands to corporations and monopolies, and demand that the national domain be set apart for free homes for the people.

There is an emergency response conference coming up in Portland in a few days and during the outreach effort a question was ask about FEMA & Katrina and this was my response. 

........

My view of FEMA is along the lines of 1) anytime you have a group from far away come in and impose a top down structure, things don't go very well and 2) FEMA's job is more about keeping the Country going, people are to a degree, secondary.      

Hurricane Katrina exposed many, many problems with our society.   Regarding emergency response, research done after Katrina showed that even if all of the emergency plans operated exactly as designed and operated at 100% efficiency, it would not enough by a long shot.   

It does help that the new Director at FEMA actually has a background in emergency response (yeah that is just crazy talk) and is highly critical of the massive, centralized top down responses because they are basically a massive single point of failure.

As for what I think we should be doing...  the more training we have, knowing all of our neighbors (and be on good terms) and the more organized we are, the better off we are going to be.     

Just to drive home the point with an example of a local, natural disaster... in the event of a subduction zone earthquake (see www.thedirt.org/node/5032 for more info), especially if the whole fault line breaks loose from northern California, all the way to Vancouver BC, all emergency response teams will be overwhelmed, instantaneously.   Keep one question to in mind, who is going to ride to the rescue? Boise?  Walla Walla?  FEMA couldn't handle another Katrina and a subduction zone earthquake would be a much, much larger problem.

For some broader structural suggestions, see www.thedirt.org/node/5057

Being an energy geek I've been forwarded an e-mail about the Bakken formation on several occasions, which basically says it will make everything better. Some of the e-mails had vague claims that environmentalists wouldn't... something or other.

Anyway, here is the short version and you can read the following for details. I really hope there is more the the roughly 5 billion barrels of recoverable oil that is currently reported by the oil geologists as it's their opinion that counts. Actually I hope there is considerably more then 100 billion barrels because it makes our job a hell of a lot easier AND... it doesn't change the long term policy decisions.   Please keep in mind that that in the context of 80 million barrels a day of worldwide oil consumption, the trajectory doesn't really change if Bakken had 500 billion barrels of recoverable oil with fairly high daily flow rates. 

How I came to the above conclusion:

Starting at the top, it is not that the world is running out of oil, there is at least 1 trillion barrels of recoverable, conventional oil. The problem is what is left takes considerably more energy to extract/refine/... AND the most important part is the amount that can be extracted in a given day appears to have flattened out. Unconventional oil (ultra deep water, tar sands, natural gas condensates (not LNG)), were taking up the slack before the economy tanked and destroyed a fair bit of demand. Sadly the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico also demonstrated that deep water oil is extremely complicated, expensive, and when things go wrong...

While there might be crazy amounts of shale/tar/... that can be converted into oil from the Bakken formation, Colorado shale, or Alberta tar sands, it is the amount that could be extracted and refined in a given day/week is the number that really counts. It is also important to note how much fresh water is necessary to use in processing. Last I heard it took somewhere between three and five barrels of water to produce one barrel of oil from oil tar or shale.

Given the expanding economies (now more slowly) in oil exporting countries, and the skyrocketing demand for oil in India and China, combined with the aging super-giant oil fields (who's production is flat or declining [note #1]) it wouldn't really change the long term trend if Bakken was 100 billion barrels. This is because even if world wide consumption of oil was increasing at only 3% per year, oil demand would double in 23 years [note #2].

I really hope there more then 100 billion barrels of available oil in Bakken, AND it doesn't really change the long term policy choices we need to make. The following blurb is from the US Department of Energy from 2005 titled: "PEAKING OF WORLD OIL PRODUCTION: IMPACTS, MITIGATION, & RISK MANAGEMENT" [note #3]

"The peaking of world oil production presents the U.S. and the world with an unprecedented risk management problem. As peaking is approached, liquid fuel prices and price volatility will increase dramatically, and, without timely mitigation, the economic, social, and political costs will be unprecedented. Viable mitigation options exist on both the supply and demand sides, but to have substantial impact, they must be initiated more than a decade in advance of peaking."

The US Army Corp of Engineers came to a nearly identical conclusion [note #4]

Petroleum Trends
The oil market will remain fairly stable in the very near term, but with steadily increasing prices as world production approaches its peak. The doubling of oil prices from 2003-2005 is not an anomaly, but a picture of the future. Oil production is approaching its peak; low growth in availability can be expected for the next 5 to 10 years. As worldwide petroleum production peaks, geopolitics and market economics will cause even more significant price increases and security risks. One can only speculate at the outcome from this scenario as world petroleum production declines. The disruption of world oil markets may also affect world natural gas markets since
most of the natural gas reserves are collocated with the oil reserves.

#1 http://www.simmonsco-intl.com/files/giantoilfields.pdf
#2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doubling_time
#3 http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/others/pdf/Oil_Peaking_NETL.pdf
#4 http://stinet.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=A440265&Location=U2&doc=GetTR...