Eric Margolis: Mr. President, oil isn't worth dying for

[Sticky]

NEW YORK -- President George Bush should heed the wise old New York garment district maxim: "First loss, best loss."

Translated from New Yorkese, this means when you get into a bad deal, bail out fast. The longer you stay in and refuse to face reality, the more you will end up losing.

That, alas, is just what Bush is doing in Iraq. Better he had gone to the garment district for hard advice instead of the regal photo op in London thrown for him by Queen Elizabeth and her dysfunctional family.

snip>

"We just can't cut and run," said Bush in London, trying to sound Churchillian. Why not? The best way to get the U.S. out of this quagmire is to follow France's sage advice: bring in a UN-run government as a fig leaf, declare victory, and pull all U.S. troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Yes, chaos will ensue. But Iraq and Afghanistan are in chaos now, and terrorism, as we saw in Istanbul last week, still rages.


Immediate retreat saves $100 billion-plus. Iraq and Afghanistan are not worth the lives of one more American or Canadian soldier, nor more wear on overstretched U.S. forces. Withdrawal will damp down raging anti-Americanism around the globe.

http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/margolis_nov23.html

[Dudley_DUright]

1. Great column as usual from Eric

I love this phrase he coined describing the chickenhawk neocons: "sofa samurais". That is up there with "Mayberry Machiavellians".

[JohnyCanuck]

5. I sent the following email to Eric

I have had replies from him to my emails in the past. I hope he reads this one.

Hi Eric,

Re. your most recent Sunday Sun column where you suggested to Pretzledent Dumbya that "it's cheaper to buy oil than conquer it."

There are some experts in the petroleum and energy industries who are concerned that world oil production is going to peak much sooner than previously expected, i.e within the next 10 years or so. Geophysicists Dr. M. King Hubbert devoted much of his career to the study of resource depletion and in the 50s was predicting that US production would reach a peak in the early 70's. At the time he was laughed at by many of his contemporaries as when Dr. Hubbert made his prediction the US was the world's leading oil producer, and it was unthinkable to the US petroleum industry that in a mere 20 years they would have peaked in oil production. However, Hubbert's predictions re. US production were exactly on target and the "Hubbert Peak" in US production occurred in the early 70's just as he had predicted. The peaking of the US production had a direct effect on the oil price shocks and supply shortages of the early 70s.

Today, other energy industry insiders such as Petroleum Geologist Dr. Colin Campbell are warning that when the techniques developed by Hubbert are applied to world oil production, the "Hubbert Peak" of world oil production is going to occur in a much shorter time frame than we have allowed for. Once world oil productions peaks, it means that all the world's most easily and cheaply exploitable oil will have been removed and from that point on producing oil and petro-chemicals will require ever increasing amounts of money and resources to extract and refine smaller and smaller quantities of oil. Simultaneously to the decline in production we will of course have and exponentially increasing demand as the West has paid only lip service to energy conservation over the last 30 years while the right-wing, "patriot" extremists in the US insists it is their God given right to drive 10 mpg Hummers to the store to pick up a gallon of milk, and even more importantly the continent of Asia continues to industrialize in an attempt to meet he standard of living of the Western industrialized countries.

The situation with Natural Gas is also close to reaching crisis proportions, especially in North America. While it's true Russia and the former states of the USSR do still have untapped gas fields, to get the gas to North American markets will involve costly LNG processing facilities and LNG tankers to transport the liquefied gas across the ocean.

Matthew Simmons is an energy investment banker in the US and was on Dick Cheney's 2001 energy task force. In a recent address to the Association for the Study of Peak Oil, ASPO, meeting at the French Petroleum Institute, Mr Simmons said the following:

"The pessimists unfortunately and ironically might also be wrong. Most serious scientists worry that the world will peak in oil supply. But most assume that this day of reckoning is still years away. Many also assume that non-conventional oil will carry us through several additional decades. They were right to ring the alarm bell. But they too might also be too optimistic. Non-conventional oil unfortunately is too non-conventional. Light oil is easy to produce and convert into usable energy. Heavy oil is hard to produce and extremely energy intensive and very hard to grow rapidly. It turns out the United States of America has nine fields left that still produce over 100,000 barrels a day. And three of the nine have turned out to be located in California and on average are 103 years old. The reason these fields are still there is that they're very heavy oil. And heavy oil can last forever but it's very hard to get out of the ground. And it takes a remarkable amount of energy to convert heavy oil into usable energy.
Five years ago I barely had thought about the question of, "What does peaking mean and when might it occur?" I was intending at the time though to study the concept of depletion and the phenomenon that field after field was tending to peak fast and decline at rates that were unheard of before. The uh, uh, I think basically that now, that peaking of oil will never be accurately predicted until after the fact. But the event will occur, and my analysis is leaning me more by the month, the worry that peaking is at hand; not years away. If it turns out I'm wrong, then I'm wrong. But if I'm right, the unforeseen consequences are devastating."

Full text of Mr. Simmons' address at: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/061203_simmons.html

Eric, you don't need to have the mind of a great strategist to understand the military and economic implications for the world if the Peak Oil theories concerning an imminent peak in world oil and gas production are valid. The nation that controls the bulk of the world's oil supply will have an enormous strategic advantage in enforcing its will over the other energy hungry nations. Remember in this context the agenda of the neo-cons to assert US hegemony over the world using basically whatever means necessary to impose their Pax Americana. I believe the mad dash to drive the bumbling fool of a sock-puppet President into invading Iraq has much to do with a clumsy attempt at asserting control over one of the last remaining sources of easily available crude oil. It's not a question of being able to buy the oil. It's a question of asserting control over the rest of the world by controlling the supply of a vital but increasingly scarce commodity necessary to the survival of us all. Geologist Dr. Colin Campbell agrees:

FTW: What will be the likely effects of hitting the downslope of production?

Campbell: Big question. Simply stated: war, starvation, economic recession, possibly even the extinction of homo sapiens, insofar as the evolution of life on earth has always been accomplished by the extinction of over-adapted species (when their environmental niche changed for geologic or climatic reasons) leaving simpler forms to continue, and eventually giving rise new more adapted species. If Homo sapiens figures out how to move back to simplicity, he will be the first to do so.

FTW: How soon before we start to feel the effects of dwindling oil supplies?

Campbell: We already are -- in the form of the threatened U.S. invasion of the Middle East. The U.S. would be importing 90 percent of its oil by 2020 to hold even current demand and access to foreign oil has long been officially declared a vital national interest justifying military intervention. Probable actual physical shortage of all liquid hydrocarbons worldwide won't appear for about 20 years, especially if deepening recession holds down demand. But people are coming to appreciate that peak is imminent and what it means. Some places like the U.S. will face shortage sooner than others. The price is likely to soar as shortage looms, which itself may delay peak

Above quotes from a May 2002 interview with Dr. Colin Campbell posted at: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/102302_campbell.html

For a brief summary of the theory behind Peak oil see:
http://www.hubbertpeak.com/summary.htm

See also the other links posted at www.hubbertpeak.com and the various articles and interviews posted at: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/index-oil_energy.html

Regards
xxxxxx

[pansypoo53219]

2. Somalia

could have been much worse, but Clinton did get out now didn't he.

[zbdent]

3. The people who skewered Clinton for cutting and running

after the dragging incident were indeed the same people who were sitting there saying "What are we still doing in there?". Also the same people who conveniently forgot that Bush41 put US forces there in the firs place.

Then they had the nerve to complain about the humanitarian reasons for going into Haiti.

[Martin Eden]

6. Pat Buchanan skewers Bush

There is much to dislike about Pat Buchanan, but at least he's a conservative as opposed to a neoconservative. He's been against the Iraq war, and in this column he discusses Somalia and the straregy of cut and run:
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=34598

[Vitruvius]

4. If Bu$h were smart enough to think before jumping in and cut his losses

when things go bad, he wouldn't have been such a flop as a "businessman".

But he never learned. And why should he? His daddy's friends -- including the Bin Ladens -- were always ready to set him up with another oil company for him to run into the ground.

Now he's got the whole of America to play with -- again courtesy of his daddy's friends, who stole the 2000 election for him. And he's doing to America what he did to his oil companies and what he did to Texas.