Plugs into home power and water supplies to make ethanol for as little as $1 a gallon (3.8 liters), according to E-Fuel

By Timothy Gardner

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A new company hopes drivers will kick the oil habit by brewing ethanol at home that won't spike food prices.

E-Fuel Corp unveiled on Thursday the "MicroFueler" touting it as the world's first machine that allows homeowners to make their own ethanol and pump the brew directly into their cars.

The portable unit that sells for $10,000 resembles a gasoline station pump and nozzle -- minus the slot for a credit card, or the digital "SALE" numbers that whir ever faster at retail pumps as global demand pushes fuel prices to record levels.

Being a fan of Wired and a graduate of MIT, I stumbled across this article. It has some interesting food for thought on the whole Global Warming issue. The article is alright, but the paper itself makes for some interesting reading.

The study primarily examined energy requirements, and thereby carbon footprints, as a function of different lifestyles, from the homeless to Oprah. Interestingly, when you factor in government services and other "subsidies" to our lifestyles, there is only so much you can do...

Tehran | April 30

AP - Iran, OPEC's second-largest producer, has completely stopped conducting oil transactions in U.S. dollars, a top Oil Ministry official said Wednesday, a concerted attempt to reduce reliance on Washington at a time of tension over Tehran's nuclear program and suspected involvement in Iraq.

Iran has dramatically reduced dependence on the dollar over the past year in the face of increasing U.S. pressure on its financial system and the fall in the value of the American currency.

Earlier today in Salon I posted something very similar to the quick essay below. It's rather pointed, and awfully pro-oil of me. But I think it's an honest and even moral assessment of reasons to drill in ANWR. I would be delighted to get any and all reactions from Agonistas on this.

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It pains me to point out the massive NIMBYness of not drilling in ANWR, because I've been a card-carrying environmentalist since childhood. But I have also consulted on the North Slope and see the deliberate and careful practices of the oil industry across our existing Arctic oilfields -- they are really some of the safest and cleanest oilfields in the world.

Washington | April 24

BBC -

The United States has accused North Korea of helping Syria build a nuclear reactor that "was not intended for peaceful purposes".

The site, said to be like one in North Korea, was bombed by Israel in 2007.

Syria must "come clean" about its secret nuclear programme, the White House said in a statement after CIA officials briefed members of Congress.

Syria has repeated denials that it has any nuclear weapons programme, or any such agreement with North Korea.

But the White House said the "cover-up" operation that Syria carried out after the Israeli air strike reinforced the belief that the reactor "was not intended for peaceful activities".

Randall Mikkelsen | Washington | April 23

Reuters - Crime groups operating as "mobsters without borders" have gained significant footholds in global markets and provide logistic support to terrorists, the United States said on Wednesday.

Launching a campaign against such international criminals, Attorney General Michael Mukasey said they were more adaptable and sophisticated than La Cosa Nostra and other syndicates the U.S. government set out to defeat half a century ago.

"These international criminals pose real national security threats to this country," Mukasey said in a speech to the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank. He cited recent cases, many with links to the former Soviet bloc.

Franco Ordonez | Mexico City | April 23

McClatchy - The price of oil is reaching record levels worldwide, but Mexico, long considered an oil power, is failing to reap the rewards because its state-owned oil company hasn't developed many of the areas known to be rich in petroleum.

President Felipe Calderon this month proposed allowing the ailing state oil company to contract with international companies to help drill deeper in those areas. But leftist lawmakers have blocked the legislation to allow that, claiming that Calderon's proposal amounts to privatizing a national treasure.

Since I was having Marvin L. Zimmerman, the author of The Ovum Factor, on my radio show (http://www.blogtalkradio.com/liberalpro you can hear the podcast of the interview there), it meant that I was obliged to peruse the novel that was sent to me by his publicist. The Ovum Factor arrived at my home, and before I got a chance to look through it, my wife picked it up first and wouldn’t let go of it for three days. During that time my dinner was late, I had to do the vacuuming (the dogs are shedding), and I had no real conversation with her as her head was behind the novel. When she finished it, she just looked at me and said “Wow”. That meant only one thing… I had to read it.

The end of cheap food, and absolute shortages are on the way. There are a number of reasons, which include the following:

1) The early instability caused by global warming, whose first effects are less increased temperatures than unpredictable weather patterns has lead to key areas having lower crops than in the past.

2) Aquifers in large parts of the world are being drained at unsustainably fast rates. This includes most of the American southwest, large parts of China, huge swathes of India and many areas in Africa. In India there are already villages that have had to be abandoned because no matter how deep they drill, there's no water. This is only going to get worse.

3) Desertification and reduced fertility. US farmland fertility is less than half of what it was 50 years ago. Large areas of China are deserts, with dust storms boiling out of them on a regular basis. It is only a matter of time before we have full on dust bowls in many major food producting regions, just as we did in the 20's and 30's.

4) Modern agriculture is actually very dependent on oil, and the demand and supply curves for oil are not looking good. Reduced soil fertility has been made up for by increasing the amount of energy used. That energy, at the very least, is becoming more and more expensive and will continue to do so. That will drive up food prices significantly, or force a return to the use of much more human labor. Probably both.

5) In the short run foolish subsidies for ethanol have driven up the price of food staples as farmers switch to corn to sell for ethanol.

I hardly expect the current administration to do a great deal about this, but I still encourage people to sign the ONE Campaign's petition for Bush. Making it very clear that this is an issue that matters to a lot of people is the only way that politicians will take it seriously. The sooner we start, the better, and the life you save (or the pocketbook you help) will as likely be your own as anyone else's.

So please take a few moments and go sign.

The traditional narrative of the industrial revolution begins in the mid 19th century in Britain. One obsession of various scholars is to prove a cause for why Britain, including appeals to genetics, while others attempt to prove that Britain was merely in the right place at the right time.

However, this ignores the substantial changes in technology, living standards and organization. It also ignores the profound shift in the energy basis of the Eurasian economy that took place in the 1400-1800 period. More over, it conveniently ignores just how long it took industrialization, in the old sense as being driven by the steam engine, to really become the dominant mode of transportation and production.

The industrialization narrative is not without rivals. Two of the most important are the information narrative, which focuses on movable type, and the gunpowder narrative, which focuses on the ability of fire arms to rapidly raise armies capable of defeating previous armies. Both of these narratives have well known exponents. Together they can be thought of as the informationalist viewpoint: that it was crucial technology in service of unified culture that was the driver of European victory.

Both of these narratives suffer, as pure narratives, from crucial defects, and these defects are sufficient to reject either narrative in its pure form.

Huffington Post Apr 14, 2008

The Coming War with Iran: It's About the Oil, Stupid
by Joe Lauria

World civilization is based on oil. The world is running out of oil. The oil companies and governments are not telling the truth about how close we are to the end. Dick Cheney knew about peak oil back in 1999 when he spoke to the London Petroleum Institute as Halliburton CEO. He predicted it would come in 2010. After that it's just a matter of years before it runs out. Whoever controls the remaining oil determines who lives and who dies.

Mary Pemberton | Anchorage, AK | April 9

AP - BERING SEA: Opponents say move could wipe out the rare species.

The Bush administration took a first step Tuesday toward allowing oil and gas leasing in an area of the Bering Sea considered important for the recovery of the world's most endangered whale.

Caracas | April 9

AFP - Venezuela and India on Tuesday signed a five-year, 400-million-dollar joint venture to drill for oil and gas in Venezuela's oil-rich southeastern Orinoco region, Oil and Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez said.

"It's the first association agreement between the two countries," Ramirez said after signing the agreement with his Indian counterpart Murli Deora, the first energy minister from India to visit Venezuela.

“Clean Coal” sounds good; in fact, I saw a picture of a clean coal plant on TV this morning while watching “American Morning” on CNN. It was then when I remembered I had read an article yesterday that stated that the technology for “clean coal”, which consists of capturing the CO2 emitted from the burning of coal and trapping it deep into the Earth, hasn’t even been invented yet! Still, I saw a picture of a “clean coal” plant on the commercial. Since no plant like this currently exists, and the plans for one have been scrapped by the US Government, what I saw was probably a “rendering” of what the plant would someday look like. This made me think the coal industry is selling something that doesn’t yet exist.

April 5

The Guardian - As the polar icecap melts, huge deposits of gas and oil below the seabed will become accessible for the first time. But the question of who owns what in the Arctic is far from clear. With major military build-ups beginning in the area, Oliver Burkeman heads north to investigate

Dominic Moran | Tel Aviv | April 4

ISN - A period of hiatus following a wave of Arab nuclear announcements appears to have ended with the signing of a Franco-UAE atomic pact, as Egypt prepares to launch a tender for the country's first nuclear energy plant.

There are strong indications that the UAE deal could constitute the first step in a developing trend of atomic development and competition promoted both by pressing energy needs and regional instability.

Randy Boswell | March 21

Ottawa Citizen - U.S. firm lays claim to nearly all of what it says will be 400 billion barrels

A U.S.-based company that has controversially laid claim to nearly all of the Arctic Ocean's undersea oil said yesterday that new geological data suggest a "potentially vast" petroleum resource of 400 billion barrels.

That figure is backed by a respected Canadian researcher who recently signed on as the firm's chief scientific adviser.

Las Vegas-based Arctic Oil & Gas has raised eyebrows around the world with its roll-of-the-dice bid to lock up exclusive rights to extract oil and gas from rapidly melting areas of the central Arctic Ocean, currently beyond the territorial control of Canada, Russia and other polar nations.

Steven Mufson & Blaine Harden | March 20

WaPo - With Supplies Short, Price Rise Surpasses Oil and U.S. Exporters Profit

Long considered an abundant, reliable and relatively cheap source of energy, coal is suddenly in short supply and high demand worldwide.

An untimely confluence of bad weather, flawed energy policies, low stockpiles and voracious growth in Asia's appetite has driven international spot prices of coal up by 50 percent or more in the past five months, surpassing the escalation in oil prices.

Abdujalil Abdurasulov | Almaty, Kazakhstan | March 14

CSM - It's been an important week for Russian energy giant Gazprom's bid to strengthen its hold on oil and gas markets.

After withholding 50 percent of Ukraine's gas supplies in a brief dispute last week, Gazprom on Thursday struck a deal that cuts out middlemen and gives it more access to the ex-Soviet country's industrial gas customers. But while putting the squeeze on Ukraine, Gazprom also felt new pressure from increasingly bold Central Asian states, whose energy resources are being sought by the US, Europe, and China, as well as Russia.

Facing the heightened competition, Gazprom agreed to pay European prices for gas from key energy partners Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan. Although it could result in lower revenues for Gazprom, experts say Russia has effectively bought control of Central Asian exports, jeopardizing two new pipeline projects to be run by China and the West.

"Russia will maintain its control on gas supplies even though its profit will go down," says Sergey Smirnov, energy expert from the Expert Kazakhstan journal. "All other alternative routes that are on paper today become unreal."

Brussels | March 6

BBC - The head of the UN World Food Programme has warned that the rise in basic food costs could continue until 2010.

Josette Sheeran blamed soaring energy and grain prices, the effects of climate change and demand for biofuels.

Miss Sheeran has already warned that the WFP is considering plans to ration food aid due to a shortage of funds.

Some food prices rose 40% last year, and the WFP fears the world's poorest will buy less food, less nutritious food or be forced to rely on aid.

Speaking after briefing the European Parliament, Miss Sheeran said the agency needed an extra $375m (244m euros; £187m) for food projects this year and $125m (81m euros; £93m) to transport it.

Jad Mouawad | March 6

IHT - OPEC, rebuffing calls from U.S. President George W. Bush to increase oil output, cited "mismanagement" of the American economy as a major factor driving prices up.

Record prices are suddenly creating the sharpest tensions in years between the oil cartel and the United States, the world's largest oil consumer. Two days after the president called for more oil on the global market, OPEC members, meeting in Vienna, Austria, chose to leave their production levels unchanged, declaring that the market has plenty of oil already.

The cartel's president on Wednesday blamed financial speculators and American economic problems, which have helped lower the value of the dollar, for the high oil prices. After the meeting, oil prices settled above $104 a barrel, a record.

"I think it's a mistake to have your biggest customer's economy to slow down" because of high energy prices, he(Bush) said.

Chakib Khelil, Algeria's oil minister and OPEC's president this year, said Wednesday that the high price of oil was due not to a lack of supplies, but instead resulted from the "mismanagement of the U.S. economy" that has helped send the dollar tumbling.

Kenneth Chang | Los Alamos, NM | February 19

NYT - If two scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory are correct, people will still be driving gasoline-powered cars 50 years from now, churning out heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere — and yet that carbon dioxide will not contribute to global warming.

The scientists, F. Jeffrey Martin and William L. Kubic Jr., are proposing a concept, which they have patriotically named Green Freedom, for removing carbon dioxide from the air and turning it back into gasoline.

Ouch, plain and simple:

Oil futures shot higher Tuesday, closing above $100 for the first time as investors bet that crude prices will keep climbing despite evidence of plentiful supplies and falling demand. At the pump, gas prices rose further above $3 a gallon.

Texas refinery and OPEC noises apparently led to the rise.

http://agonist.org/topic/global/global_energy

Andrew C. Revkin | Washington | February 3

NYT - Capturing heat-trapping emissions from coal-fire power plants is on nearly every climate expert’s menu for a planet whose inhabitants all want a plugged-in lifestyle.

So there was much enthusiasm five years ago when the Bush administration said it would pursue “one of the boldest steps our nation has taken toward a pollution-free energy future” by building a commercial-scale coal-fire plant that would emit no carbon dioxide — the greenhouse gas that makes those plants major contributors to global warming.

That bold step forward stumbled last week. With the budget of the so-called FutureGen project having nearly doubled, to $1.8 billion, and the government responsible for more than 70 percent of the eventual bill, the administration completely revamped the project.