Sunday 21 August 2011

Peak Oil stories top the headlines

8 Maersk Drilling Puts Oil Rig Fleet Expansion on Hold as Build Costs Soar



For many years the giants of the Peak Oil movement (Campbell, Simmons, Heinberg, Deffeyes, Le Herrere... all of them) predicted this. They said that there would always be oil in the ground but that there would come a point where the cost of extraction would exceed the value of the oil, either in energy or money. -- Michael Ruppert

Aug 19, 2011 10:55 PM GMT+1200

Maersk Drilling, the oil rig unit of Denmark’s largest company, may put its expansion on hold because the cost of building platforms is rising and takeovers are too expensive.

“We see newbuilding orders being at a fairly high price and we will certainly not go out and order something tomorrow or in the near future,” Chief Executive Officer Claus V. Hemmingsen said yesterday in a telephone interview. “We would have to watch the market, they’re very expensive currently.”

For article GO HERE



For first time, more corn used for ethanol than livestock


For how many years has the Peak Oil movement warned that this lunacy would result in starvation as food prices soared? 

15 August 2011 | 6:45 pm

Some observers see report as noteworthy, others as a 'footnote'

For the first time ever, more of the corn crop may go into gas tanks than into the stomachs of cattle and poultry destined for kitchen tables.
The prediction drew little response last week when it was released by the USDA in its Crop Production and Supply/Demand Report for the 2011 crop season. The USDA kept its prediction for ethanol production demand for corn at 5.05 billion, but lowered demand projections for livestock feed by 100 million bushels to 5 billion bushels.

For article GO HERE


World Vehicle Count Tops 1 Billion



August 19, 2011

Despite the fact that 2010 was the year when most car manufacturers were recovering from recession, the number of vehicles on the streets passed the 1 billion-unit marer. 

According to Ward's research which looked at government-reported registrations and vehicle population trends, worldwide registration grew from 980 million units in 2009 to 1.015 billion in 2010.

For article GO HERE


US scrambles to ease shortage of vital medicine

New York Times, 8/20/2011 12:07:27 AM ET
Federal officials and lawmakers, along with the drug industry and doctors' groups, are rushing to find remedies for critical shortages of drugs to treat a number of life-threatening illnesses, including bacterial infection and several forms of cancer.

The proposed solutions, which include a national stockpile of cancer medicines and a nonprofit company that will import drugs and eventually make them, are still in the early or planning stages. But the sense of alarm is widespread.

'Shortages are just killing us' 
"These shortages are just killing us," said Dr. Michael Link, president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the nation's largest alliance of cancer doctors. "These drugs save lives, and it's unconscionable that medicines that cost a couple of bucks a vial are unavailable."

So far this year, at least 180 drugs that are crucial for treating childhood leukemia, breast and colon cancer, infections and other diseases have been declared in short supply — a record number.
Prices for some have risen as much as twentyfold, and clinical trials for some experimental cures have been delayed because the studies must also offer older medicines that cannot be reliably provided.

For article GO HERE

Riots: Now governors warn of prison time bomb



How long before they hit upon the novel idea of concentration camps?!

Saturday, 20 August 2011

Hundreds of rioters are being “warehoused” in jails across the country, pushing the prison population to record levels and increasing the risk of internal disturbances, violence and mass re-offending, the Government was warned yesterday by its own prison governors and officers.

Insiders spoke frankly of the huge strain placed on the system by the riots, painting a portrait of a service buckling under the weight of the increase in inmates – in contrast to public reassurances from the Ministry of Justice (MoJ).

For article GO HERE

Civil unrest like 9/11 for Cameron, says Iain Duncan Smith


The nation is in “the last-chance saloon” on solving the “social crisis” at the root of the riots, the Work and Pensions Secretary has said.
In a Spectator interview, Iain Duncan Smith predicted the unrest would prove to be a turning point in David Cameron’s leadership.

He believed the PM saw the riots as just as important to his time in office as 9/11 was for Tony Blair.
Mr Duncan Smith said: “This is our warning... the crisis is coming.” His comments came hours after Mr Cameron had defended the courts for handing out tough sentences to rioters.

This was amid criticism from some MPs and campaigners that certain sentences were not proportionate to the crimes. Mr Duncan Smith, with Home Secretary Theresa May, is to present a report in October on tackling gangs.

He said: “The Prime Minister made it clear that this, now, is his big focus. It is not possible to have watched or experienced any of these riots without realising that we’re in the last-chance saloon.

“This is our warning. We can’t let this go on any more.”

For article GO HERE

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