In Response to Citizen Pressure, Officials Safeguard Voting Machines inOhio and New Jersey

In case you missed this great news, Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell has blocked further deployment of paperless voting machines.  When the Computer Ate My Vote campaign started the year in Ohio, a crucial battleground state, 31 counties were considering unsecure computer voting machines.  Now, every one of them has decided against these problematic machines for this November’s election.  That’s some victory, thanks to the efforts by members of TrueMajority, our partner groups, and especially the Citizens’ Alliance for Save Elections in Ohio.

In New Jersey last week, we ran a radio ad during Thursday morning drive time urging listeners to call the Mercer County official who’s in charge of local elections and ask him to offer the paper ballot option.  Before the day was over, County Executive Brian Hughes faxed TrueMajority confirmation that he will seek permission from state Attorney General Peter C. Harvey to do just that.  We shifted the ad to a "Thanks, Brian Hughes" message to honor his action.  Next, we’ll make sure Attorney General Harvey issues the "all clear," then get New Jersey’s other counties to follow Mercer County’s lead.

We are running ads in New Mexico and Washington as TrueMajority goes down the list of localities that are still bent on using unsecure machines.

All the efforts to educate citizens, register them to vote, and get them to the polls will be for naught if the votes aren’t counted.  Ensuring that votes actually get counted is our goal, and we’re honored to have a hand in it.

In thanks for your part,
Matt Holland and Mark Floegel
The Computer Ate My Vote coordinators
alerts@truemajority.org

- posted by AquarianM @ 5:20 PM

 
Record number of U.S. tires are being recycled
A record 80 percent of old tires were recycled for other uses including fuel and playground equipment in 2003, according to a U.S. industry report released Wednesday. http://www.enn.com/news/2004-07-22/s_26098.asp

- posted by AquarianM @ 11:09 PM

 
National Center for Policy Analysis:
STATE AGs TAKE GLOBAL WARMING INTO THEIR OWN HANDS

- posted by AquarianM @ 11:08 PM

 
Environmental Construction Outfitters of New York - For over 15 years ECO of NY has been monitoring the issues related to safer, healthier, and environmentally responsible building products and systems. Visit them on the web at http://www.environmentaldepot.com.

- posted by AquarianM @ 11:07 PM

 
Alternative Energy Store - retailer for solar panels, windmills/wind turbines, inverters, solar water pumps, solar home heating systems and other solar and wind electric power systems for your home or business. Visit them on the web at http://www.altenergystore.com/.


- posted by AquarianM @ 11:06 PM

 
Tough criticism of WTO trade pact triggers rethink
Mediators bowed to pressure Thursday and began revising plans for farm trade reform, the centerpiece of a hoped-for global trade pact, after an earlier blueprint was mauled by both rich and poor nations.
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-07-23/s_26129.asp

- posted by AquarianM @ 11:05 PM

 
Missing Points In The Spin Tornado

It's interesting to note something that is a nearly completely un-mentioned aspect of corporate class warfare on the U.S. middle class.By moving our manufacturing base overseas the corporate powers are slowly doing two things. First, they are moving a huge portion of their wealth to countries where they believe it will be easier to control the populace. Assets in foreign nations are very difficult for a U.S. government driven by angry citizens to clamp down on. This would require the support and cooperation of often totalitarian regimes that have little interest in supporting Washington. Somehow they think they will be able to retain this wealth in these countries. It will be an interesting statement on their international political connections if they prove to be right.

Far more important however, is the grave national security issue they are creating here in the United States.  If we lose our manufacturing base to offshore companies, and we are attacked by the very countries they have moved to, we have only our existing military ammunition stockpiles to rely on. Once existing munitions are exhausted, and the manufacturing base in this country is greatly weakened or no longer exists, we no longer have the capacity to manufacture war materiel EVEN IN OUR OWN DEFENSE.

We had better never tick off the countries that now make our bullets, or anything else for that matter. We will not be able to turn our vast manufacturing capacity to our defense as was done in world war two, and Rosie the Burger Flipper will not be able to supply "our boys (and our girls now)" with the means to defend themselves as Rosie the Riveter could in WWII.

If one adds up the current belligerence of U.S. foreign policy with current trade and economic policy, our leaders are woefully undermining our national security. Even the greatest fleets on Earth are useless if they cannot re-supply in an extended conflict. Dennis Kucinich was the only candidate that even briefly touched on this subject that I am aware of.

Perhaps we need a bill of Workers' Rights in addition to the current Bill of Rights. Number one is that every company that sells goods of any kind within the borders of the United States must be able to produce a minimum of 30% of their total global product sales volume here in the United States. In the case of war, (not this so-called "war" on terrorism) all companies should be able to continue to manufacture at least this much product even if isolated from foreign suppliers. This would also require the retention of copies of intellectual properties and thirty percent of the core skilled personnel within U.S. borders at all times.

In the U.S. Civil War, and both World Wars, the victors were those whose industrial capacity was best able to sustain their war efforts. This is a basic fact of all conventional non nuclear conflicts. We can NOT afford to lose our manufacturing base or the critical skills of our personnel unless we wish to bare our backsides to the swords of enemies created by those "leaders" chosen by the same corporations that  weakened our defenses.

Allowing this to continue will leave the middle class exposed to hostile takeover by foreign nations, and the removal of the U.S. representative government and installment of any form of government a conquering nation might wish to impose. Those who have moved their wealth to just such nations might well move where their wealth is - leaving the rest of us sitting ducks for an extended siege and take over.

For those who think the U.S. military is invincible, hear the words of all those voices stating that the U.S. military is already stretched thin imposing U.S. "protection" on nations all over the globe, all the while struggling with supply shortages even as I write this logical deduction at this minute. 

This country can not defend itself over the long term with it's factories shuttered and decaying away unused and the workers who ran them aging away without passing on and building upon the skills needed to produce everything we need to survive.

This is an insidious and highly dangerous long term trend that MUST be reversed. Almost no one speaks of this - and I wonder if anyone will have the freedom to do so if the trend continues. We can not afford the luxury of extended empire by whatever name it is called and we can not afford the slow bleeding to death fallacy of completely un-regulated trade. There must be a minimum standard set. There must be a work force ready and willing to man the defenses should the need arise. If there is not, we risk the fate of all global powers before us - decline and fall and relegation to a footnote in histories written by others.  This is the true reason global empires are not sustainable.

If we made life good enough that all people upon this planet have the basic things they needed to maintain food, health, and shelter, global cooperation just might become sustainable. So might life on Earth, and so might a more reasonable level of corporate wealth, even.

Dan Stafford

http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=2020
- posted by AquarianM @ 12:44 AM

 
Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Oil Depletion, Paris, France, May 26-27 2003, Edited by K. Aleklett, C. Campbell and J. Meyer, www.peakoil.net/iwood2003 .

Revealing Statements from a Bush Insider about
Peak Oil and Natural Gas Depletion

© Copyright 2003, From The Wilderness Publications, www.copvcia.com. All Rights Reserved. May be reprinted, distributed or posted on an Internet web site for non-profit purposes only.

Published June 12, 2003

....The 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. But unfortunately the world has no Plan B if I'm right. The facts are too serious to ignore. Sadly the pessimist-optimist debate started too late. The Club of Rome humanists were right to raise the 'Limits to Growth' issues in the late 1960's. When they raised these issues they were actually talking about a time frame of 2050 to 2070. Then time was on the side of preparing Plan B. They like Dr. Hubbert got to be seen as Chicken Little or the Boy Who Cried Wolf....

– Investment Banker Matthew Simmons

[Matthew Simmons has been a key advisor to the Bush Administration, Vice President Cheney's 2001 Energy Task Force and the Council on Foreign Relations. An energy investment banker, Simmons is the CEO of Simmons and Co. International, handling an investment portfolio of approximately $56 billion. He has served previously on the faculty of Harvard Business School.

On May 27th, 2003 Simmons addressed the second international conference of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil&Gas (ASPO) which was meeting at the French Petroleum Institute (IFP) via a satellite teleconference video link from his Houston offices. His remarks were so revealing that I had them transcribed from my tape recording of the event. It is becoming clearer by the day that the Bush administration was aware of Peak Oil before taking office (pun intended) and Simmons' remarks indicate an awareness of Peak Oil's implications. They also predict extremely severe consequences arising from natural gas depletion in North America. – MCR]

Matthew Simmons Transcript

[Regarding peak energy] It might turn out actually to be one of the most important topics for the well being of the globe over the next fifty years, which basically (is), "Is the energy glass half full or half empty?" So let me, in the course of the next thirty or forty minutes, just share some of the issues that I think are important.
First of all, the topic of whether the energy glass is half full or half empty is right. It basically elicits some of these talks from so many people that start out with positions saying, "The glass is half empty, we will never run dry."
But the real issue is, basically speaking, does not basically mean running dry. The debate on how long the dwindling of supplies might take has been extremely controversial. In fact, I'd say that most of the debate has been one-sided.
Optimists argue that the issue is still years away, and to their support is that it has never happened before and it's too often been predicted. And each time the future looks bleak, the optimists argue, it's always darkest before dawn. It is also interesting how many people basically look at undiscovered reserves and basically say that we really don't know how much we still have left to find, and that's true, but we also, with the evidence of the reserves, there's no guarantee that the reserves are actually there.
I come back to the basics and say I think that one thing that we do all know is that oil and gas resources are genuinely non-renewable and so someday they will basically run out. And also, we are using 28 billion barrels a year, that's a lot of energy to be consuming. And peaking, as you all know, is different than running out. Is "peaking" an important question or issue?
First of all, if you start out by saying usable energy is the world's most critical resource then obviously it is an important issue. Without volume energy we have no sustainable water, we have no sustainable food, we now have no sustainable healthcare. And since five-sixths of the world still barely uses any energy it really is an important issue. And since five-sixths of the world is still growing fast or too fast it's even a more important issue.
What peaking does mean, in energy terms, is that once you've peaked, further growth in supply, is over. Peaking is generally, also, a relatively quick transition to a relatively serious decline at least on a basin by basin basis. And the issue then, is the world's biggest serious question.
Peaking of oil is also probably then assuming peaking of gas too. So is this issue important, I think the answer is an emphatic yes. Why does this issue evoke such controversy? Well, I think for several reasons, first of all the term "peaking", unfortunately, does suggest a bleak future. It also suggests high future energy prices and neither are pleasant thoughts.
I think it is human nature, basically, to say that we really like to have pleasant thoughts. And crying wolf is bad business unless the wolf turns out to be already at the front door, and by then, the cry is generally too late. And crises are basically problems, by definition, that got ignored. And all great crises were ignored until it became too late to do anything about it. And so if the issue is serious, why are the answers so dissenting. I think the reasons are several-fold. First of all, the data and the methodology to estimate total energy resources is still remarkably hazy and takes a lot of fuzzy logic to get to the bottom line.
Judging the data, for instance, on current decline rates on even fields per basin is very hard to define and it turns out that peaking is one of these fuzzy events that you only know clearly when you see it through a rear view mirror, and by then an alternate resolution is generally too late.
Over the course of the last few years, conventional wisdom in the energy business became "do not trust conventional wisdom." The voice of energy, for better or worse turns out to be the International Association of Energy Economists and I will be attending this group's 26th annual meeting next week in Prague.
This group basically had a mantra throughout the decade of the nineties that growth in energy demand is suspect, that energy supplies are surging, that Moore's Law has brought down semiconductors at a cost so dramatically it will bring energy prices considerably lower, that OPEC is obsolete, and a non-sustainable concept.
Last year, the IAEE had their 25th annual meeting in Aberdeen, and I attended the program. It was really interesting. On Saturday morning, they had 13 of the past 25 presidents talking for the better part of two hours, and individually reflecting on the lessons that they had learned over the past 25 years. And I heard 13 consecutive people basically state...what I heard most, was the word, "conventional wisdom." This was the big mistake I personally made 25 years ago. Twenty-five years ago, I thought demand was going to go up fast and that was wrong, I thought that oil prices were going to 100, and that was wrong, and I thought the OPEC was omnipotent, and that was wrong, and I thought that supplies basically were going to be a pot of gold and that was wrong, and what I learned personally is to never trust "conventional wisdom." And by the time all thirteen speakers had spoken, it was clear that their belief had become conventional wisdom. It turned out that basically the generals, as happens so often in the military, were fighting the last war. The big energy mistake that was made, circa 1980-1981, was that oil was going to go to 100, was that the demand growth was insatiable, and that OPEC was omnipotent. And what all these people missed at the time was that the oil prices had already grown tenfold; that nuclear energy was at the front door, that the fear of a hundred dollar oil had finally created a conservational efficiency move and that a ten-year E.P. [environmental protection movement] movement created a surplus glut. And preventing making this mistake again became public enemy number one and literally led a generation of energy experts to mistrust demand, to assume supply growth and just to know that price collapse was just around the door, the corner.
But it is interesting now with the benefits of being in a new millennium, to look back and see what really happened to oil demand over the last 30 years. First of all, global oil demand did fall in 1974 and half way through 1975. But over the course of the first eight years of the 1970's, global oil demand grew significantly. Global oil demand then fell in 1979 through 1983. And so you had five of thirteen years down but the two events that caused this down demand were a tenfold increase in product and the introduction of the only new energy source native to the 20th century; nuclear. Global oil demand began to grow again in 1983. The collapse of the F.S.U. from 1988 to 1995 created the illusion of global stagnation while the rest of the world's oil demand and energy just grew and grew and grew.
And it's interesting to step back and look at the difference between 1986 when non-FSU oil demand was just under 54 million barrels a day, to 2002, when we crossed 73 million barrels a day... a 21 million barrel a day change during an era that people thought basically that demand growth was over.
And then let's turn briefly to what happened to the world's supply. Well, first the former Soviet Union supply collapsed. Secondly, the North Sea had its second boom. Third, deep water became the new frontier and probably the last frontier, and fourth, OPEC remained the swing producer. If you basically look at the non-OPEC numbers excluding the former Soviet Union, you basically have a growth between '86 and 2002 of 8.3 million barrels a day. Now it's interesting to see that global oil growth and demand was 20 and non OPEC non-FSU growth was 8.3. But if you look carefully at the 8.3, in the first ten years, '86 thru '96, during an era of low oil prices, we grew by 6.7 million barrels a day, and in the last six years, during the era of high oil prices, we grew by 1.5 million barrels a day. So 81% of the last fifteen years growth, came in the, sixteen years growth, came during the era of low prices, and 19% came during the era of high prices. It turns out with just hindsight that we can now clearly see that the growth engine of non-OPEC oil, excluding the former Soviet Union petered out. The North Sea peaked, Latin America excluding Brazil peaked, North America, excluding heavy oil peaked, Africa excluding deep water peaked, the middle east excluding OPEC peaked, and the F.S.U. turned out the be the only lasting pleasant surprise.
Which then raises the following question: Was the F.S.U. recovery real and sustainable? In 1998-1999 not a single oil expert assumed that the F.S.U. would suddenly turn around and start creating supplies again. But then low oil prices created through the saga of the missing barrels caused the ruble to collapse. And subsequently high oil prices created an F.S.U. bonanza, low global prices and unbelievably high revenues. 67% of the 2000-2003 non OPEC supply came with the F.S.U.'s oil recovery. Some of this increase was unlikely due to bad data and some of the increase was a one time gain.
There has been no significant FSU exploration yet. It's simply too expensive. And logistical bottlenecks create some significant limits to further export growth. So I think it's dangerous to assume that the FSU growth will continue. In the meantime the cost to create new oil supply soared.
While conventional wisdom believes where there's a will there's a supply, real costs to maintaining flattening supplies soared. Between 1996 and 1999, the 145 Public E&P companies which were worldwide, spent 410 Billion Dollars to merely keep their full production flat at about 30 Million barrels of oil per day. The Big Five, Exxon, Shell, BP, ChevronTexaco, and Total spent 150 Billion dollars between 1999 and 2002 to barely grow production from 16 billion barrels of oil a day to about 16.6.
The Big Four, excluding Total, because there numbers weren't out yet, between the first quarter of 2002 and the first quarter of 2003 went from 14 million, 611 thousand barrels of oil equivalent per day to 14 billion 544. These four companies spent collectively over 40 billion dollars over a 12 month period of time actually lost 67 thousand barrels a day of total production. So while people were assuming costs would fall the cost to stay in the game went through the roof.
One of the other interesting mantras of the last decade was that technology had eliminated dry holes. Well we never came close to obsoleting the dry hole. The reason dry holes dropped so much is we drill far less wells. We also stopped doing most genuine exploration. Even projects that are called wildcats today probably 20 years ago were called modest step-outs. It turns out that now that we look back with good data it takes four straight dry holes, it is still a risky business. The U.S. statistics are appalling. Here basically is the table going back from 1973 to 2002 of U.S. exploratory success rates and their dry holes as a percentage, and this yellow one going through there is 67% meaning that two out of three of those failed. We modestly drop the line from about 75% down to 67% but two third failure rate, we've just killed building dry holes. The North Sea exploration, in appraisal statistics is still basically about 25% chance of success. Angola, of the major Block 17's has had a string of dry holes. Eastern Canada's recent statistics have been troublesome.
The Caspian Sea, other than one great discovery, potentially has been bad. And even the Middle East is starting to dig a remarkable string of dry holes. The single biggest reason that this supply surge that so many people assumed was happening for so long was that depletion became the missing link. The reason supply flattened out or peaked was not the lack of effort and no new technology. The industry in fact had many great successes over the last decade. But they were not about to offset depletion. Oil field technology created not an easy way to grow supply but a depletion rat race. Smaller new fields were found, technology allowed them to be commercial but we raised the climb rate to an amazing level and therefore it began to flatten out.
Why is oil depletion so hard to grasp? Well the definition by itself is hard. Many would hear the term depletion and assume it meant that we ran out, and we obviously never ran out of oil. Depletion data was sketchy at best. Its amazing how hard it is to actually dig out statistics for, even on a field by field basis, what the net decline is. And the elusive data that you can find is not real depletion but it's actually the net decline after lots of additional drilling and money is spent to take a natural decline rate that would have been far more drastic if you flattened out. And finally no one really likes to discuss it much because it should generally mean bad news.
Forecasting next year's decline still remains an art form. I don't think anyone has ever been very good at predicting bad news. There are many ways also to slow natural decline, but it takes money and effort, and it's only when you look back, after these remediation efforts have been done that it creates real depletion answers. But let me tell you that as you all know, wells, fields and basins really do deplete. Our firm a year ago conducted a very intensive analysis of what was happening to the natural gas supply in Texas by examining the detailed records of the Texas Drill Commission from 50% of the state's production in 53 counties. What we found was amazing. What we found was that in this 53 county area (this is 16% of the U.S. gas supply) the wells drilled in 2001, 2400 wells out of 37,000 wells that are in production created 30% of the total supply, and it turns out that 7% of these 2400 wells, 167 wells, created 49% of the supply and the other 93% of the wells created the remaining 51%. These giant 167 gas wells - a year later, we went back and tested their January 03 production; they had suffered a decline across the board of an average of 82% in a year, so wells do decline rapidly these days. The Cruz Beana field in Columbia, the biggest find in the Western Hemisphere since Prudhoe Bay, in 1991-92 it was still estimated that it could possibly exceed Prudhoe Bay or Hatchet. But it turns out that this field basically just barely gets 500,000 barrels a day. And in 2002 it's struggling to stay above 200,000 barrels a day. The Forty Field, which BP just recently sold to Apache peaked at approximately 500,000 barrels a day in the middle eighties and the oil production is now under 50,000 barrels a day. It still produces about 500,000 barrels a day of fluid, but the balance is processed water.
And then you finally have the interesting graph, that's in the papers that I think you should have of the last two Super Giant fields ever found. Ironically these two fields, Prudhoe Bay and Samotlor, were both found in about the same crust underneath of the Arctic Ocean. They were just found on two sides of the earth. Both were basically found within twelve months of one another, '68 and 1967, both were presumed to have 15 to 20 billion barrels of oil. It's interesting to see that Prudhoe Bay, says Platt's Oil reservoir management, they basically choked off the field at 1.5 million barrels a day and for over 11 and almost 12 years, like clockwork, it produced 1.5 million barrels a day without missing a beat. But in late 1989 the field rolled over and is now producing about 350,000 barrels a day. Samotlor [Russia] had just the opposite experience. They basically started aggressively water-flooding a very wide field and it produced peak production at about 3 and a half million barrels a day and then came off like a water fall and is again down to 325,000 to 350,000 barrels a day. And so when giant fields do peak they basically also do decline. There's no question that when you take 50% of a remaining resource you tend to alter peak. What is difficult though is to obtain the right data to know whether you've reached fifty percent. And it's basically that you're looking back through events with hindsight. It turns out that total energy resources, uh, is still a mystery. And recoverable percentage of resources is also largely a function of cost. The higher the cost the more you can extend, recovering more and more of the harder and harder to get resources.
And it's also interesting when I think back on this that the technology to gauge resources, absent of seismic, is still effectively 100 years old. We have no better technology today to know how much resources are there before seismic is done than we had 100 years ago. And even after a few of them test their research you still leave many questions and so it's based on opinions. Let me give you some interesting examples of the uncertainness of this data. I attended a Natural Gas Workshop in Washington, D.C. about three weeks ago and the head of the U.S.G.S. made an interesting presentation about how hard it is to basically get experts all on the same page even when you have a complete set of data. One of his examples was the [unintelligible] basin in Argentina.
Two hundred and nineteen mature fields. They had a data set that allowed all of the experts to basically use any one of the 7 conventional methodologies to say how much remaining resources are there. And after a weekend of study the estimates came back with a low of 600 million barrels to recover to a high of 17 billion barrels. This is on a mature field area with 219 individual fields. Canada's recent experience in Sable Island is a classic example of how little you sometimes know even after the fields have been in mature stages of production. It turns out that Sable Island looked like a fabulous project through wells one through five, and then well six was drilled and they found basically it was little, they miscalculated the amount of reserves and so thirty seven percent of the proven reserves of Sable Island in the last few months were written off. The Leaden Field, which is the largest project in U.K. sector of the North Sea last year; six months into its production the company had new data that basically highlighted the reserves, the reservoirs complexity so that half the reserves were transferred from proven into probable.
And then another interesting presentation in the natural gas workshop in Washington was on center basin gas which basically pipes gas in the Green River basin where some new evidence would indicate that we've overstated potential recoverable reserves by three to five times.
All of which highlights how difficult it is to basically get your hands around how much is left until you're looking back at events with hindsight. Hindsight turns out to be a wonderful, unreliable tool. Some events are unpredictable until after the fact. Some of the classic unpredictable events turn out to be weather, death, one's peak net worth and maybe the future of anything important. It turns out that peaking even for an individual well is only proven after the fact. And predicting peaking of energy has been an elusive art form for a long period of time. So back to the United States of America and our experiences in oil as a classic example of how hard it is to predict peaks. In 1956 Dr. Hubbert predicted in the early seventies... in the early seventies the United States would peak. In 1970 it was obvious he was wrong when the U.S. set a new record, the new U.S. peak. In 1981, what had been 9.6 million barrels by, at its peak was already down to 6.9 million barrels a day after a record drilling boom. And by 2003 this 9.6 billion barrel basin in 1970 is now close to 3 million barrels a day. The U.S. was Saudi Arabia in 1956. We had great statistics, we had total transparency and yet only one person predicted the peaking in 1970. Did the United States get a lot smarter? Well the U.S. Natural Gas experience is a great new case study.
In 1999 the Natural Petroleum Council projected that supply growth in natural gas would be adequate to increase gas use by 36% by 2010. In 2001 we had a record drilling boom for Natural Gas. This failed to budge supply. In 2003 natural gas clearly faces a crisis. The United States and Canada is in decline.
What we all missed in 1999 was that no one could come to subtract unconventional supply growth, coal bed methanes, tar sands, deep water associated gas, and these giant gas wells down to 18 to 20 thousand feet vertical, from the conventional base, and discovered conventional base at about fifty feet... (unintelligible) [p]eaked through Europe in the nineties and is now approximately 35 BCF (Billions of Cubic Feet) a day. So it turns out the United States gas experience, uh, has experienced about the same phenomena that oil did 30 years ago.
The North Sea experience is interesting. The North Sea had all the worlds' best operators, state of the art technology. Its peak was assumed to be years away in 1996 and 97. In 1999 the U.K. Sector peaked. In 2002 the New Eastern sector peaked. The North Sea has the world's best field by field production data. Seeing peaking is easier in the North Sea than anywhere else but few people seem to study the data. Peaking, it turns out, even in the North Sea is easy to ignore. And then there's the experience of the Caspian Sea.
In the early nineties the Caspian seemed to be the next Middle East. In 2001 we had 20 out of 25 dry holes that dampened the enthusiasm for the Caspian significantly. In 2001 Kashagan was finally discovered, deemed to be the greatest field in the decade. In 2002 BP and Stat Oil quietly sold their 14% of Kashagan for 800 million dollars. In 2003 British Gas put their 17% on the block for 1.2 billion dollars. Which raises, in my opinion, the question, "What do these original parties know about the world's greatest field or do they merely want to spread the wealth? I think what this all means is that non-OPEC oil, particularly outside the Soviet Union, is either peaking as we speak, or has already peaked.
Any serious analysis now shows solid evidence that the non-F.S.U. non-OPEC oil has certainly petered out and has probably peaked. F.S.U.'s supply is suspect or should be. A new frontier is always a possibility but it is becoming increasingly unlikely now that deep water is basically here and come and gone.
And serious energy planners need to assume non-OPEC supply is at a plateau. But thank heavens for the Middle East. The big non-Middle East OPEC producers are also past the peak. Algeria and Libya could probably still grow but they're too small to offset everyone else. And only the Middle East can logically be explained to replace declines elsewhere.
The Middle East's transparency is an oxymoron but there are some data that shed some light. And so let's basically spend a few minutes looking at the Middle East, the Promised Land.
Middle East energy is the Promised Land. All roads the roads lead to Rome and to the future of oil and gas Rome is the Middle East.
The Middle East is where we still have abundant reserves. It's still cheap to produce; it's still extremely unexplored. So if the rest the world is long in the tooth thank Allah for Mecca. But are we so sure this is the truth? It turns out that the Middle East oil and gas so far is not all over the Middle East. The Middle East covers an enormous land mass, but all of the oil and gas as we know it today is compressed into an interesting golden triangle. And all the great finds happened years ago. In the past three decades exploration success has been modest in the Middle East abyss. Is this because no one looked very hard or because there's not much else to find? Here is the interesting golden triangle of the Middle East; If you start at Kirkuk in the north and you draw a line down through the great oil fields of Iran, going down south and come over six or seven hundred miles picking up the great fields of the UAE and come back up 800 miles to Kirkuk virtually every field of any size between 1909 and the late sixties is probably in that basin.
It turns out that Saudi Arabia has what they thought was a fabulous discovery outside that in 1989. By 2003 one field and five satellites needed gas injected to create flows to get about 200,000 barrels a day. So it's also interesting to take the United States and superimpose this same golden triangle on part of the United States on the part of the United States I grew up in. It basically covers most of Arizona and part of Utah, so it's not a very big area. So if all roads lead to Rome then one area, Saudi Arabia, is clearly home port. Saudi Arabia became the most important oil exporter once the U.S. peaked. Though also not trusted, Saudi Arabia has constantly tried to become the world's most trusted supplier of oil and they generally have done that. Saudi Arabia has assumed a virtually limitless amount of cheap oil. But let me tell you about some of Saudi Arabia's oil and gas challenges. In Saudi Arabia there have been no major exploration successes since the late sixties. Almost all of Saudi's production comes from a handful of very old fields. Almost every field has high and rising water pressure. Ghawar, the world's largest field injects seven million barrels a day of seawater to prop up reservoir pressure. And outside North Core hundred barrel [unintelligible] have been very hard to find. Some key fields have never worked out. Others have now watered out. And it takes utter logic to plan for Saudi Arabia's future.
What Saudi Arabia's real energy costs might be is that Saudi Arabia is probably no longer a low cost producer. Lifting costs, plus, may now rise exponentially. Natural gas parting costs are extremely high and have been elusive. But what is Saudi Arabia's right price for oil? I would argue that no one really knows because we lack the data.
But it turns out with a little bit of hindsight that the optimists turned out to be wrong. While the optimists estimate, the economist rectifies, the debate still rages on; the jury basically has now rendered the verdict. The optimists have lost. Too much field data now proves their total thesis was wrong. Supply never surged, demand did grow. But as it grows it still falls. This doesn't prove though that the pessimists were right. 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
But unfortunately the world has no Plan B if I'm right. The facts are too serious to ignore. Sadly the pessimist-optimist debate started too late. The Club of Rome humanists were right to raise the 'Limits to Growth' issues in the late 1960's. When they raised these issues they were actually talking about a time frame of 2050 to 2070. Then time was on the side of preparing Plan B. They like Dr. Hubbert got to be seen as Chicken Little or the Boy Who Cried Wolf...
In 1957 the Sputnik woke up to the rest of the world. By 1969 we had a man on the moon. That was not easy, but the job got done. Could an energy Sputnik create a similar wake up call? If we had such a wake up call is it too late? Is there a Manhattan Project or an Apollo program that would work? It turns out that reliable energy is the world's number one issue. Creating reliable and affordable energy opens the door to solving the problem of the world's water, food, and healthcare. Without reliable energy all these other needs dull.
The world is still growing. There five billion people on the earth today that are still either maturing in age or yet to be that old. And five billion people still use little or no energy. If the world's oil supply does peak, the world's issues start to look very different. Thank heaven the debate began even if it might have been too late. Thank you. I'd be happy to answer any questions.
Questions and Answers (not verbatim)
Hi. I'm Steve Andrews. Given your message now and given that you've had a half hour in the Oval Office with president Bush, why is there such a disconnect between the apparent policy of the administration and the harsh reality of the message you just gave this audience?
A. I think that there are people within the Bush Administration including the President and Vice President... I think it was unbelievably discouraging to see what occurred after the Bush Energy Plan was introduced .... And then after 9/11, the administration got totally distracted in dealing with all the events that they've been dealing with since then. I will tell you that there is a growing genuine concern in Washington about what is happening with natural gas today.
Q. I've been reading your papers for the last two years, and I want to congratulate you on really good work, and in many cases it's work that I would have expected from a gas company, not from an investment banker. Last year, you defended the administration's concept of depletion...and you show a real genuine concern for the future of the world,... and the hydrogen proposal is really a fantasy, don't you think it is time for a more enlightened energy policy.
A. That would be wonderful but I think that it is going to take a while. There really aren't any good energy solutions for bridges, to buy some time, from oil and gas to the alternatives. The only alternative right now is to shrink our economies. This is a tough question and I have no answers.
Q. I know that you are on the books to bring back nuclear power back into the industry.
A. Positive news. The Yucca Mountain is not complete. We have to figure out how to remove the nuclear waste. The bad news is that we have had one bad accident in Ohio and one in South Texas in which they found some borax acid that had become powder...is this a defect in the Westinghouse design. These are things which could set nuclear back 5 to 10 years.
Q. Mike Ruppert, From The Wilderness -- In the Baker Institute-CFR Report from April, 2001, you were kind of dissenting and you called for a Manhattan Project-type investment, what would that entail?
Q. Second question – In the war on terrorism since 9/11, we have gone to Afghanistan, and we've seen some pipeline development across Afghanistan, we've seen Iraq, now Saudi Arabia, developments in West Africa, also in Colombia where the terrorism coincidentally seems to appear exactly where the oil is or in the swing producing nations, do you believe that is all coincidental? (Laughter)
A. (More laughter) Those are pretty intelligent questions. What I encourage people to think about in terms of energy blueprints is to think about them in terms of the Marshall Plan. I still believe that there is an urgent need for an energy Marshall plan. And couple that with a water energy program. I don't know if you can draw any parallels that every place we have energy we also have terrorism other than just musing about the fact that all I the last twenty years while we have apparently benefited from these unbelievably low bargain basement prices, the prices were so low that none of the host nations were able to basically create any semblance of a modern society, and over a 20-year period of time, all of their populations exploded, they all have high birthrate, very young people, and terrible economies. Unfortunately, we ended up with the door prize that was so low that it was hard for them to maintain a company infrastructure and doing nothing to start rebuilding their societies. I suspect that had they been lucky enough to have had energy ...two or three times higher and then worked carefully with these producing countries to be enlightened about how... instead of putting in some young and powerful leaders to start creating a middle class... and people would have started focusing more on how to become more prosperous. I guess in hindsight that is easy to say.

http://www.peakoil.net/iwood2003/MatSim.html
- posted by AquarianM @ 7:32 AM

 
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
6/3/04
CONTACT: Nancy Gores, (608) 265-3299, nagores@wisc.edu

RFID CONFERENCE TO DRIVE STATE TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION

MADISON — Ever since Wal-Mart and the U.S. Department of Defense decided that their product suppliers must integrate radio frequency identification (RFID) into the supply chain by 2005, companies have been scrambling to learn how.

The Wisconsin RFID Conference, scheduled for Thursday, June 17, in Waukesha, will teach business and technology leaders how RFID technologies are poised to revolutionize inventory tracking through the supply chain. The conference will be held at the Country Inn Conference Center.

RFID uses tiny computer chips, or “smart tags,” to transmit wireless data. The technology offers the potential to communicate from the moment a product leaves a manufacturer’s warehouse until it is purchased by a consumer.

RFID communication will help businesses to cut costs, and to boost productivity and the flow of products through the supply chain — a fundamental shift in the way that industry currently tracks, traces and manages assets. Given its potential for the manufacturing, retail, transportation, distribution, healthcare and pharmaceutical industries, among others, even businesses that are not yet mandated to implement RFID technology want to learn more about it.

The Wisconsin RFID Conference is sponsored by e!nnovate, a premiere association for technology professionals based in Milwaukee, and the UW E-Business Institute, a campuswide initiative to help enhance economic development of Wisconsin industry clusters through adoption of e-business strategies, technologies and practices.

The conference will feature RFID practices and technologies on the national level. Speakers from International Paper, Rockwell Automation and other businesses will participate. Two parallel business and technology tracks will help companies identify when best to adopt RFID, discuss case studies based on industry pilots and share practical strategies developed by the UW E-Business Consortium RFID Industry Workgroup.

The workgroup was formed in 2003 to help Wisconsin companies understand the issues and challenges associated with RFID implementation. Many of the group’s 30 companies will be represented at the conference.

A pre-conference workshop, scheduled for 8 a.m., will provide basic knowledge of RFID fundamentals. The main conference will be held from 10 a.m.-4:30 p.m.

For more information about the conference agenda and to register, visit http://www.uwebi.org



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- posted by AquarianM @ 3:54 PM

 
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
5/4/2004
CONTACT: Lawrence (Larry) Casper, (608) 265-4104; casper@engr.wisc.edu

RESEARCHERS INVESTIGATE WAYS TO DETECT DELIBERATE FOOD CONTAMINATION

MADISON-The University of Wisconsin-Madison will use its share of a three-year, $15 million grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (HS) to investigate ways to detect intentional contamination of the nation's food supply.

The work is part of the University Center for Post-Harvest Food Protection and Defense, a national consortium of academic, private and government partners housed at the University of Minnesota. The center will establish best practices and attract new researchers to manage and respond to food contamination events, both intentional and naturally occurring. UW-Madison is a partner institution in the center.

On campus, College of Engineering experts in sensing technology will collaborate with College of Agricultural and Life Sciences experts on food pathogens and toxins to develop a variety of sensing systems that can respond rapidly to food contamination. Research will be aimed at improving the reliability and the speed at which biological toxins and other chemical agents can be detected.

David Beebe, associate professor of biomedical engineering, and Eric Johnson, professor of food microbiology and toxicology, have developed detection devices for monitoring a host's response to toxins. "This center will allow us to work to adapt these methods for use in food protection as well as explore new methods," says Beebe.

One solution might be to improve food packaging by including sensors that could detect when the package's integrity is compromised or the contents contaminated. "It is extremely important to ensure that a food product has not been tampered with," says Michael Pariza, a professor of food microbiology and toxicology and campus principal investigator.

While research outcomes could address contamination detection in everything from fresh produce to canned goods, including imported items, UW-Madison investigators will focus on ways to protect the milk supply.

"Milk is a very dispersed production and collection system," says Lawrence (Larry) Casper, assistant dean for research and technology transfer in the College of Engineering and a member of the project's research steering committee. "It's very easy for someone to access a large storage tank on a farm, on a dairy truck or at a milk-processing plant."

And because milk spoils rapidly, "cow-to-mouth" time is short. As a result, it reaches consumers within a couple of days and contaminated milk could quickly affect a large number of people.

It's an effort that hits close to home. "This research will help ensure a safe and secure dairy industry for Wisconsin as well as the nation," says Casper.

Other biosecurity research efforts of the overall center, which is comprised of more than 90 investigators, include informatics, scenario planning and epidemiological modeling, among others. Michigan State University and North Dakota State University also are partner institutions, while experts from 12 additional universities, independent research facilities, state health and agriculture agencies, professional organizations, agriculture and food industry companies, and private consultants also will participate.

Pariza, who directs the nationally recognized Food Research Institute, says UW-Madison investigators' contribution will be substantial. "The overall product of this research is going to be safer food," he says.
###
-Renee Meiller, (608) 262-2481; meiller@engr.wisc.edu




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University Communications
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- posted by AquarianM @ 3:49 PM

 
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
5/25/2004
CONTACT: Julia Kim-Cohen, 44-207-848-0595 (London), julia.kim@iop.kcl.ac.uk; Terrie Moffitt, 44-207-848-0936 (London), t.moffitt@iop.kcl.ac.uk

STUDY SHOWS THAT GENES CAN PROTECT KIDS AGAINST POVERTY

MADISON - For children growing up poor, money isn't the only solution to overcoming the challenges of poverty.

According to a new study, the genes and warm support received from parents also can buffer these children against many of the cognitive and behavioral problems for which poverty puts them at risk. The findings are published in the May issue of the journal Child Development.

Numerous studies show that economic hardship during childhood elevates a person's risk of developing conduct problems and lower intelligence, says Julia Kim-Cohen, co-author of the recent paper and postdoctoral fellow in psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London.

But, as she notes, some children overcome these odds and, in fact, perform better on intelligence or behavioral tests than would be expected, given the level of poverty in which they're raised. These children, says Kim-Cohen, are considered to be "resilient" - or capable of doing well despite adversity.

Interested in understanding the factors that contribute to a child's resilience to poverty, Kim-Cohen and her colleagues studied genetic and environmental differences among 1,116 mothers and their five-year-old same-sex twins, part of the E-Risk longitudinal study being conducted in England and Wales.

"Children in our study experienced more than just poverty, as measured by family income level," explains Kim-Cohen, adding that often their parents were poorly educated, owned no car and held menial jobs or no job at all. "Living in the poorest neighborhoods, their homes were rated as being overcrowded, damp or in disrepair," she says.

After determining the economic conditions of each family, the researchers conducted interviews and tests to evaluate the mother's warmth and support toward her children, as well as the children's temperament and intelligence. The children who performed better than expected on behavioral and cognitive tasks, says Kim-Cohen, are the ones more resilient to the poor conditions in which they were raised.

To determine the role of genes in buffering children against poverty, the researchers studied differences among the twins, some who were identical (sharing all genes) and others who were fraternal (sharing half their genes). If identical twins have levels of resilience similar to each other, compared to that between fraternal twins, Kim-Cohen says it would be due, in part, to genetics.

"Genetic endowment is known to influence a variety of children's capabilities, such as how well they use language, how quickly they learn new skills, and how outgoing and cheerful they are," says co-author Terri Moffitt, a psychology professor at UW-Madison and King's College London. Given these genetically influenced capabilities, Moffitt adds, "We reasoned that they might help poor children in their struggle to overcome their lack of economic advantages."

Results from the study show that genetic makeup does play a part in resilience. According to the statistical analysis, genes explained 70 percent of the variability in children's behavioral resilience and 46 percent of the difference in their cognitive ability.

"This means that when the children in a classroom or neighborhood differ on behavior problems or cognitive achievement," explains Moffitt, "about half of that variation across the group emerges from the fact that every child has his or her own individual genetic endowment."

But as these numbers suggest, genes are only partially responsible for a child's ability to do better than expected in the face of poverty. Environmental factors, such as the mother's warmth and participation in the child's development, also are involved.

The researchers found, for example, that twins who engaged in more stimulating activities with a parent, compared to those who didn't and were from a similar background, generally scored higher on intelligence tests.

Kim-Cohen explains, "The warmth, mental stimulation and interest that parents pay toward their young children can make a big difference in their children's lives." She adds that many of the stimulating activities that were measured, such as taking a long walk or going to the park, cost little or no money.

With the joint role of genes and upbringing - nature and nurturing - on development, the researchers conclude that both children and their parents are agents capable of protecting children against the hardships of growing up poor. This conclusion, they add, may provide an impetus for researchers, as well as policymakers, to seek out the particular genes and non-genetic factors that promote a child's ability to overcome the odds poverty predicts for them.

"The main point of the research is that neither genes nor poverty can determine a child's fate," says Moffitt. "The study showed that many children - and parents - use their natural talents and abilities to turn lemons into lemonade."
###
- Emily Carlson, (608) 262-9772, emilycarlson@wisc.edu




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- posted by AquarianM @ 3:46 PM

 
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
07/02/04
CONTACT: Jonathan A. Patz (443) 413-4195, jpatz@jhsph.edu

AS HUMANS ALTER LAND, INFECTIOUS DISEASES FOLLOW

MADISON - As people remake the world's landscapes, cutting forests, draining wetlands, building roads and dams, and pushing the margins of cities ever outward, infectious diseases are gaining new toeholds, cropping up in new places and new hosts, and posing an ever-increasing risk to human and animal health.

Writing this month (July 2004) in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, an international team of experts warns that widespread changes in the global landscape are providing new opportunities for dozens of infectious diseases, including scourges like malaria, dengue fever, Lyme disease, yellow fever, cholera, influenza, foot and mouth, and hemorrhagic fevers.

"Evidence is mounting that deforestation and ecosystem changes have implications for the distribution of many other microorganisms, and the health of human, domestic animal and wildlife populations," according to the report compiled by the Working Group on Land Use Change and Disease Emergence, an international group of infectious disease and environmental health experts.

"Many of our current activities, primarily for economic development, have some major adverse health effects," says Jonathan A. Patz, the lead author of the report, and a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor in the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment (SAGE) of the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and the department of population health sciences.

Indeed, a detailed understanding of the influence of human activities on the spread of pathogens, the report notes, is limited to only a few diseases. In the northeastern United States, for example, studies have documented that forest fragmentation, urban sprawl and the erosion of biodiversity have contributed significantly to the spread of Lyme disease.

A more global example is the AIDS virus, which scientists think may have first infected "bush meat" hunters given access to Africa's tropical forests by the growing network of logging roads in the continent's interior. The disease subsequently spread by human contact and has become a global tragedy through the ability of humans to travel the world with relative ease.

In scope, the issue is broad, affecting nearly every corner of the globe. The causes are as varied as the human activities that create the opportunities for pathogens to thrive, spread geographically and invade new hosts. It involves well-known and pervasive pathogens such as the parasite that causes malaria, a disease that claims more than 1 million lives annually, to diseases like SARS that are relatively new and, so far, limited.

"There is no single smoking gun," says Patz. "The causes are interwoven into current unsustainable development practices. "

The list of activities that contribute to the spread of infectious disease, according to the Environmental Health Perspectives report, is long and varied, ranging from seemingly innocuous pursuits like ecotourism and agriculture to war and civil unrest.

Even climate change or extremes, the report notes, can trigger a chain of events that manifests itself in the emergence of new diseases. An example cited in the report is the emergence of nipah virus in Malaysia and Singapore in 1999 when El Nino-fueled fires are thought to have driven fruit bats from their forest habitat to farms where the virus was transmitted to pigs and humans.

The report makes a series of recommendations to address the issue, including linking land use to public health policy, expanding research on deforestation and infectious disease, the development of policies to reduce "pathogen pollution," and the establishment of centers for research and training in ecology and health research.

"While there are many health crises around the world today, there are ongoing human activities that threaten natural resources key to sustaining the health of future generations," says Patz. "We need to look at the root causes of the spread of infectious disease, and many of these are related to habitat and ecosystem change."
# # #
-- Terry Devitt (608) 262-8282, trdevitt@wisc.edu




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University Communications
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- posted by AquarianM @ 3:39 PM

 
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
6/17/2004
CONTACT: Phil McDade, (608) 265-8592 (work), (608) 221-0645 (home); mcdade@engr.wisc.edu

UW-MADISON WINS NATIONAL FUTURETRUCK COMPETITION

MADISON-The third time around produced another winning result for the UW-Madison FutureTruck team.

The team won its third consecutive national championship, easily beating 14 other universities at the 2004 FutureTruck Competition held in Dearborn, Mich. The competition was held from June 9 through Wednesday (June 16) at the testing grounds of the Ford Motor Company.

The UW-Madison team, comprised of undergraduate students and based at the College of Engineering, scored 924 points out of a possible 1,000, easily outdistancing runner-up Penn State University, which finished with 802 points.

The competition pits teams of students who spend a year modifying a sport-utility vehicle supplied by Ford. The teams work to reduce fuel emissions and increase fuel economy, while maintaining the characteristics of an SUV - such as towing ability, safety, and storage - that consumers want. Teams also compete in off-road races, handling, braking, workmanship, acceleration, design and technical reports.

The UW-Madison team finished first in the categories of on-road fuel efficiency, lowest greenhouse gas emissions, best consumer acceptability, and best oral presentation. The team also won third place for most innovative use of electronics.

Ford and the U.S. Department of Energy are the primary sponsors of the FutureTruck competition. Argonne National Laboratory, a DOE research and development facility, provides management, technical and logistical support at the competition. Fifteen other government and industry sponsors support the competition.
###






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University Communications
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- posted by AquarianM @ 3:35 PM

 
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
6/9/2004
CONTACT: Don Waller, (608) 263-2042, dmwaller@wisc.edu; Thomas P. Rooney, (608) 265-2191, tprooney@wisc.edu; David A. Rogers, (608) 262-2593, darogers@students.wsic.edu

STUDY PORTRAYS CREEPING ‘IMPOVERISHMENT’ OF STATE’S FORESTS

MADISON — Tramping parcel after parcel of Wisconsin’s north woods, botany researcher David Rogers is finding less and more.

There are fewer native species in fewer numbers in some places. There are more exotic species almost everywhere. And in some places, some native species, in reaction to human-induced change, are beginning to behave like pernicious exotics, crowding out other native species and reducing the overall diversity of plant life on the forest floor.

Rogers, a University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate student, is retracing the steps of John T. Curtis, the botanist best known for his comprehensive surveys of Wisconsin plant life, and for his seminal book, The Vegetation of Wisconsin.

Fifty years ago, the late Curtis and Grant Cottam, fellow UW-Madison botany professor, surveyed the north woods, cataloging the enormous diversity of plant life under the forest canopy. The work conducted by Cottam and Curtis on the state’s northern highland plateau in the early 1950s gives Wisconsin an ecological baseline that exists in few other places in the world.

“The original purpose of their survey was to describe the vegetation of the state,” says Thomas Rooney, another UW-Madison botany student who, with botany Professor Don Waller and Rogers, have resurveyed 62 of the original Curtis and Cottam sites in northern Wisconsin. The study was conducted with the support of the National Science Foundation.

The team’s findings, published in the June 2004 issue of the journal Conservation Biology, paint a bleak picture of the steady decline of forest plant biodiversity.
Among the team’s findings:
* The average site lost nearly 20 percent of its native flora from 50 years ago.
* Species diversity declined at 45 of 62 sites surveyed.
* Found on only one site 50 years ago, exotic species have now colonized two-thirds of the sites resurveyed.
* Plant generalists, whether exotic or native, are replacing more specialized plants, reducing biological diversity in the forest.
* Plants that depend on insects for pollination are disappearing faster than plants that have developed other ways of dispersing pollen.
* Areas where hunting is restricted, such as state parks and natural areas, are faring the worst as deer populations grow unchecked.
* Indian reservations, with longer hunting seasons and better overall forest management, have not only experienced less loss of biodiversity, but have gained species since the original surveys of 50 years ago.

“What we are seeing is that things are slowly changing. We’re slowly starting to lose a lot of things that make forests interesting,” says Rooney. “It’s not a crisis situation — but it’s not good.”

The new study is important, according to Waller, because it is among the first to quantify what many conservation biologists believe is the sixth and latest mass extinction event in the history of the Earth. The decline of species is so gradual, he says, that it passes unnoticed over the course of a human lifetime, and only with the help of such baseline studies as the ones conducted by Curtis and Cottam can biologists today take stock of what’s changing.

“Things are vanishing before our eyes,” says Waller. “The natural world is getting less interesting.”

Primary among the causes of eroding biodiversity, the botanists say, are the spread of exotic plant species and the state’s booming deer herd.

Fifty years ago, the exotics were absent from all but one of the 62 sites. The new survey found exotics such as orange hawkweed, Kentucky bluegrass and hemp nettle at 43 sites. Although the non-native plants have yet to reduce the richness of native plant species, the study warned that it may only be a matter of time before foreign plants begin to pose a far more serious threat to native flora.

“These are the shock troops,” Waller says. “They represent the leading wedge of the invasion.”

The study implicates the white-tailed deer as “a key driver of ecological change in this region.” Rates of species lost, the study notes, were highest at sites without deer hunting.

“The smoking gun we have at the moment is the high density of white-tailed deer,” Waller says.

That finding suggests that researchers and land managers need to pay much more attention to the interactions of deer and other animals in an ecosystem. Changes imposed by one animal, for example, can have a “cascade effect” that influences many other animals and plants.

“Decline in relative abundance of animal-pollinated and animal-dispersed species, particularly in protected areas and areas without deer hunting, suggest that a systematic shift in guild structure is underway,” the Wisconsin botanists write. Plants especially at risk include the bluebeard lily, wild sarsaparilla, sessile bellwort and bishop’s cap.

The study concludes that the systematic decline in forest species richness is a signal that “existing conservation efforts in the region are insufficient or ineffective. Together, these results suggest that a major and largely unacknowledged wave of biotic impoverishment is sweeping temperate forests throughout North America.”

###
Terry Devitt, (608) 262-8282, trdevitt@wisc.edu




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University Communications
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- posted by AquarianM @ 3:32 PM

 
6/2/2004
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Volker Radeloff, (608) 263-4349 (Madison office) or (715) 356-9070 (Kemp Natural Resources Station, Woodruff, Wis., until June 4), radeloff@wisc.edu; or Roger Hammer, (608) 263-2898, rhammer@wisc.edu

PARTNERSHIP GIVES FEDERAL, LOCAL FIRE MANAGERS A POWERFUL TOOL

MADISON — Visitors to the forests and waterways of northern Wisconsin know that the landscape there is changing. Clusters of homes and resorts are springing up along the lakeshores and in the woods, dividing the natural landscape into smaller and smaller fragments. Both in Wisconsin and across the nation, these wildland/urban interfaces — where residential areas meet undeveloped vegetation — are increasingly the sites of environmental conflict, including the destruction of homes by wildfires.

To help federal agencies and local authorities manage fire risk, a team of researchers from the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service has analyzed and combined existing census and vegetation data in an innovative way. The result of this partnership is a new understanding of wildland/urban interfaces across the country, and a map that reflects congressional policymakers’ definitions of at-risk communities.

The CALS researchers also have created a Web site with maps and data about the national landscape, which is already being used by fire managers and scientists.

Fire management, though always an important issue, was thrust into the spotlight following the catastrophic western wildfires in 2000.

“At the national level, there was a question of how best to allocate the additional funding Congress set aside to manage fire risk,” says Volker Radeloff, a CALS assistant professor of forest ecology and management. “To do this effectively, we want to know where people are building houses in the woods, and what ecosystems are being most affected.”

Radeloff, who is an expert in geographic information systems, knew that he could use land cover data from the United States Geological Survey to classify areas according to vegetation type. However, the project needed the perspective of Roger Hammer, a CALS rural sociologist, to incorporate census data and handle demographic variables.

“Volker and I began working together after other colleagues noticed that even though we are in different fields, we work with similar techniques,” Hammer says. “Our analysis — which integrated demographic and satellite information — was fairly unique.”

“The partnership was crucial,” Radeloff adds. “This project was only possible because we collaborated from separate parts of the college to use existing data in a completely new way.”

They began their research in 2002, with support and assistance from the USDA Forest Service. Using a collaborative approach, the team found that 9 percent of all land area in the lower 48 states could be classified as wildland/urban interface, which includes one-third of all homes. The data shows that the eastern United States contains more interface areas — reaching a maximum at 72 percent of the land area in Connecticut — but that California has the highest number of affected homes.

“We also noted that while the devastating 2003 California wildfires affected 533 square kilometers of wildland/urban interface areas, and burned more than 3,600 structures, that represents only about 5 percent of southern California’s total interface area,” says Radeloff. “This highlights the need for ecological principles in land-use planning, as well as sprawl-limiting policies.”

Hammer adds that analysis of one 2003 California wildfire shows that the entire periphery of the fire was largely wildland/urban interface.

In Wisconsin, Radeloff says that Vilas and Oneida counties show the most wildland/urban interface expansion. There is also strong growth in areas of the state that have the highest fire risk, including the central sands region. On land protected by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, about 1,500 fires burn more than 5,000 acres annually. While many fires burn less than an acre, Wisconsin has had fires burn hundreds and thousands of acres of land across the state. This year, there is some cause for heightened concern, because the spring — Wisconsin’s peak fire season — began with a drought.

To assist researchers and fire managers, wildland/urban interface maps are available online at:
http://www.silvis.forest.wisc.edu
http://silvis.forest.wisc.edu/Library/WUILibrary.asp

Maps specific to Wisconsin can be found at:
http://silvis.forest.wisc.edu/Library/WUI_state_download.asp?state=Wisconsin&abrev=WI

An interactive mapping tool, which allows users to create, modify and print custom WUI maps, is available at:
http://wui.forest.wisc.edu/website/wui/index.htm

The site is already being used to identify areas that need fire planning and outreach.

“These maps were designed to be usable, and to help fire managers and policymakers implement fire policy,” says Susan Stewart, a project collaborator and research social scientist with the Forest Service’s North Central Research Station.

Hammer and Radeloff intend to apply this research to Nicolet National Forest in northern Wisconsin. They will work with forest managers to study how low-density housing affects wildfires in the Langlade and Oconto counties.

The collaborative wildland/urban interface project was funded by the National Fire Plan and supported by the state of Wisconsin.
###
— Katie Weber, (608) 262-3636, klweber1@wisc.edu




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- posted by AquarianM @ 3:26 PM

 
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Great Lakes News: 13 July 2004
A collaborative project of the Great Lakes Information Network and the Great
Lakes Radio Consortium.

For links to these stories and more, visit http://www.great-lakes.net/news/

IJC Cheers Groundbreaking for Asian Carp Barrier
http://www.ijc.org/rel/news/040712_e.htm
Source: International Joint Commission (2004-07-12)

Great Lakes debate boils over in Lansing
----------------------------------------
A partisan battle has erupted in Michigan's state capital over a package of
bills designed to preserve the state's groundwater supply and protect the
Great Lakes against raids from thirsty states to the south and the west.
Source: The Detroit News (7/13)


High-speed ferry has drawn 25,000 since June opening
----------------------------------------
The new ferry that zips across Lake Ontario at over 50 miles an hour has
been less than half-full during its first three weeks in service, though
ridership may be increasing. Source: The Ithaca Journal (7/13)


Shield from carp surge
----------------------------------------
Illinois and federal officials attended a groundbreaking Monday for a
permanent electronic barrier designed to keep Asian carp from entering Lake
Michigan, though full funding for the project is still being sought. Source:
The Herald News (7/13)


Vision set out for cities' growth, transit
----------------------------------------
The expected arrival of four million people to the Toronto area and beyond
over the next 30 years has sparked sweeping proposals from the Ontario
government to identify where future growth and transit investment will go.
Source: The Globe and Mail (7/13)


Pledge boosts chance of acquiring duneland
----------------------------------------
A campaign to acquire 500 acres of Lake Michigan duneland in Michigan's
Ottawa County has received a $100,000 donation. Source: The Holland Sentinel
(7/13)


Curly-leaf pondweed turning lakes green
----------------------------------------
More than 500 Minnesota lakes are choked with the invasive curly-leaf
pondweed, which can be transported when fishermen don't clean off their
boats before heading to a new lake. Source: Duluth News Tribune (7/13)


Toledo Coast Guard getting up to speed
----------------------------------------
A high-speed "Defender" class boat, the latest in U.S. Coast Guard
enforcement, security, and search-and-rescue capability, has officially
arrived in Toledo. Source: The Toledo Blade (7/13)


Concerns over contamination in a significant Muskegon waterway
----------------------------------------
Many Muskegon residents fear that heavy metal toxins from an old plating
plant still threaten their local watershed, though officials say that's not
the case. Source: WOOD TV8 (7/12)


Lake Michigan boaters cautioned about invasive flea
----------------------------------------
Boat owners are being advised to avoid accidentally transporting a new
exotic water flea that out-competes young fish for food and is poised to
invade Wisconsin's inland waters. Source: The Appleton Post-Crescent (7/11)


U.S. Steel to sell 275 acres in Chicago
----------------------------------------
U.S. Steel plans to sell part of the former South Works steelmaking facility
along Lake Michigan on Chicago's South Side for conversion into housing,
retail and commercial use. Source: The Northwest Indiana Times (7/11)

For links to these stories and more, visit http://www.great-lakes.net/news/

Did you miss a day of Daily News? Remember to use our searchable story
archive at http://www.great-lakes.net/news/inthenews.html


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- posted by AquarianM @ 2:54 PM

 
Mexico revs high-tech ambitions
Last modified: July 14, 2004, 11:41 AM PDT
By Michael Kanellos
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

SAN FRANCISCO--Mexico in conjunction with a U.S. corporation is trying to woo high-tech companies south of the border with a new industrial park, fairly easy transportation and a massive tax break.

Full story: http://news.com.com/Mexico+revs+high-tech+ambitions/2100-1006-5269500.html?part=dht&tag=ntop
- posted by AquarianM @ 2:41 PM

 
Alternative energies are looking good again

By Michael Kanellos
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
July 12, 2004 4:00AM PT
One of today's more promising growth engines could come from an industry that harks back to beanbag chairs and Jimmy Carter.

Companies promoting solar power and other alternative-energy concepts are rapidly attracting venture funding, research grants and, just as important, the interest of many of the tech industry's deep thinkers and influential figures.

"We have a huge energy issue in this century, and it will not be solved by policy. The only real solution is technology," said Jim Plummer, dean of Stanford University's School of Engineering. "The alternative is to shut down our economy."

Full story: http://news.com.com/Energy+heats+up+high+tech/2009-7337_3-5263772.html?tag=st.pop

- posted by AquarianM @ 2:25 PM

 
Study: States doing plenty of offshoring
Last modified: July 14, 2004, 10:32 AM PDT
By Ed Frauenheim
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

At least $75 million in U.S. state contract work has been captured by 18 companies that specialize in offshore outsourcing, according to a new study.

Full story: http://news.com.com/Study%3A+States+doing+plenty+of+offshoring/2100-1022_3-5269261.html?tag=st_lh
- posted by AquarianM @ 2:18 PM

 
Vote For America

CauseNET
July 1, 2004

Today Common Cause launches a new campaign to bring tens of thousands of new voters to the polls on Election Day. Vote for America is a grassroots non-partisan effort that engages people from all walks of life in a shared campaign to increase voter turnout. Using the proven strategy of person-to-person contact, Vote for America volunteers inspire their friends, family, and colleagues to make a personal commitment to vote by signing a Pledge to Vote card.

The Vote for America campaign is important, because there is a real problem today with how few Americans use their power as citizens to make their voices heard in the polling booth. Voter turnout in America has declined steadily for four decades. In fact, only half of eligible Americans voted in the 2000 presidential election and only 39% voted in 2002.

We need your help to begin to turn this disturbing trend around. Volunteer to talk to people you know about why voting is important and ask them to make a promise to you that they will vote. Help those who make this commitment to overcome their reservations about registering or voting, and make sure they get to the polls on Election Day, Tuesday, November 2, 2004.

You can help by recruiting volunteers and running Pledge to Vote, voter registration, and get out the vote drives.

We can help you. We have put all kinds of useful tools and resources on our website: www.commoncause.org/VoteForAmerica. Everything you need to be successful is there.

The Vote for America strategy really works. In a pilot project in Rhode Island during the 2000 elections, Vote for America brought thousands of new voters to polls, raising overall turnout by 5.6% and youth participation by 41%! We want to repeat this success all across America.

But we cannot do this without YOU. Take the Pledge to Vote and volunteer to get as many of your friends and colleagues to take the Pledge with you.

Visit: http://www.commoncause.org/VoteForAmerica
- posted by AquarianM @ 2:12 PM

 
President Boooosh. We Are "In A Pickle" By James Boyne OpEdNews.com

Dear President Boooosh: We are in a pickle!

I got my Allstate auto insurance renewal in the mail. Times sure are a changin'.

Here's the scoop. Allstate just merged with United Healthcare so they said I would have to switch my health insurance from Blue Cross to United Healthcare in order to be an Allstate Advantaged Preferred Policyholder

I called my local Allstate agent right up on the phone and a friendly, pleasant sounding young lady answered with a slight accent. I asked where she was from and she said Bombay, India. I asked how long she had been here in the U.S. She said she wasn't in the U.S. She was still in Bombay and that she just got this great job with Allstate/United because of the Great American President, Mr. Booosh.

She said Allstate/United just hired 10,000 administrative people in Bombay and that she makes 35 cents and hour. "Wow", I said, "How do you make ends meet?". I said, "How do you pay your rent"?.

She said there was not rent in Bombay. Everyone lived in grass huts in the suburbs or just on the street. "Way cool". I said. "That sounds cozy". "Kind of like perpetual spring break". She didn't know what spring break was.

I asked her if she got good benefits. And she said no. There is no such thing as benefits in Bombay, just 35 cents an hour and a nice calendar with a picture of Mr. Booosh on it. I asked her what everyone did with no benefits if they got sick. She said that she wasn't allowed to get sick and if she did there were no doctors because all the Indian and Pakistani doctors went to the U.S. to help Mr. Booosh and vote for him and be Indian and Pakistani doctors and collect co-pays.

She said that there were no more Indians in India or Pakistanis in Pakistan----that everyone was just a Republican now----that President Boooosh wanted it that way.

I asked her about my new Allstate policy. She said Allstate was now like an automobile HMO. She said to read my new policy. I wished her luck. And read my new policy.

My new Allstate policy says that I can only be covered if I also have health insurance with United Healthcare. It also said that Allstate just merged with Sprint also, and it's new name was Allstate United Sprint PCS. The policy said that I would get a package instructing me on how to switch from AT&T (my present carrier) to Sprint.

Also, Allstate would now only insure me while driving on certain roads. I would only be insured while driving on Allstates officially approved roads, mainly the Interstate roads. On off-roads, which would be all State highways and local roads, I would need a "special insurance rider" with a $10,000 deductible. The "special rider" was flexible with a menu of selections (like health care insurance) so I could select the roads I liked to travel on the most.

Also, the policy said that I could insure my wife and children as long as they also had Sprint PCS. But they could only be covered if they were riding in the digital area. If I got in an accident with them in the car and we were all in an analog roaming area we wouldn't be covered except with a "special insurance rider", called the "Allstate Advantage Automobile Analog Roaming Rider for Special Customers". I signed up for it, just to be on the safe side.

The Allstate Policy said, since they were an Automobile HMO that I would have to have bought my car at the new network of Allstate Approved Advantage Auto Dealers. It said, if I purchased a new car I could go through Allstate, through United, or through Sprint PCS, or I could elect to be in the PPO and go out of network for my automobile needs. Of course, if I went out of network and just bought a car at my local Ford dealer, I may have to pay a "maximum out of pocket" over the sticker price, adjusted for the exchange rate differential between the U.S. and India.

I called Allstate again. A pleasant sounding young man answered with a slight Chinese accent. I asked him how long he had been in the U.S. He said that he wasn't in the U.S. He was in Zyandong Province in Mongolia, next to China. He said, "Mr. Booosh is a good man. He make lot's of jobs for people in Zyandong Province". He said, "everyone in Zyandong make big money, 50 cent and hour, Mr. Booosh, he a good man."

I decided to take a break from the phone and go get the mail. In the mail was a notice from my employer, asking me to report to Human Resources on Monday, or I could log on at www.youarelaidoff.com. I had a sinking feeling in my chest.

I turned on the TV and Mr. Booosh, I mean President Bush, was speaking at some place in the pouring rain, wearing a baseball cap and a leather jacket. He said he was all for work, and work was good, and he himself liked work, and working people were good, decent people, even if they were out of work, and that he would go get the workers, and "smoke 'em out and bring 'em ta justice". And Mr. Booosh, I mean President Bush, said that "everyone deserved ta work, dead or alive", and he said "work can run, but it can't hide". He said, "we will win this war on workers (I think he meant to say terrorists) no matter how long it takes". He said he liked work so much that he was going to his ranch in Crawford, Texas and take a month off in order to work.

And he said the Iraqi people were happy now. That we made 'em happy cause we freed 'em and gave 'em freedom and now they can work. And President Booosh said that he wouldn't stop until everyone in America was fired, or rather, fired up, about work. And that he would get the whole world workin'. Even if we "have ta smoke 'em out and bring 'em ta work". When a reporter in the audience asked where the workers were, Mr. Booosh said, "bring 'em on", dead or alive".

I just got my calculator out and divided $50,000 into $350 billion (the amount of the tax reduction Mr. Bush just gave) and it came out to be 7 million. That means that the Federal Government could hire 7 million people and pay them $50,000 each for a year to work on the national parks, the roads, Federal buildings, and other programs. Instead, the $350 billion didn't create one single job. As a matter of fact, 93,000 more jobs disappeared last month. If there is a single businessman, a single company or corporation that has hired even one person based upon the "incredible affect" that the sudden influx of $350 billion has had on their business, I would like to hear from them. As a matter of fact, I'd like the job myself, since I am unemployed.

The world sure is changing. I think I'll just go out for a drive and try to stay off the "off roads" and out of the analog roaming areas and just keep to the digital roads so I have proper coverage.

I am a former staunch conservative Republican who has recently been "born again". I have been "born again" into a progressive, populist and will vote for Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio). I really don't care what his party affiliation is or whether is called a liberal, moderate or conservative. Mr. Kucinich is a man of integrity, honesty, common sense and sincerity.

Congressman Kucinich (D-Ohio) is straightforward, articulate, says what he means and means what he says. He writes his own speeches and delivers them without notes. He doesn't read from a teleprompter and doesn't need a team of a dozen speechwriters. He actually believes that the unemployment rate should be 0%. He believes we need to rebuild America before spending $600 billion rebuilding Iraq. He is for single payer, universal health care for all because one should not have to barter away their entire life savings to afford health care.

We now have 9 million unemployed with jobs disappearing at the speed of light. We have over 40 million individuals with no health insurance. (Howard Dean wants to provide health insurance for children and poor people.) That doesn't help the 40 million people, since most of them are working people between 23 and 65 years old that can't afford the health insurance premiums that are priced in the stratosphere.

President Booosh wants to spend $600 billion to totally rebuild Iraq. I don't think the entire country of Iraq was worth $600 billion before we bombed it. And what the hell happened to all that oil. The Iraqi people have all that oil, but all they complain about is the fact that they don't have water. I guess you can't drink oil.

I'm worried that Bush will wants to attack Syria, Iran, North Korea and even Cuba. That will cost about $1 trillion. Its good Bush wasn't President at the height of the Cold War or we may have made a pre-emptive strike on the USSR with 40,000 hydrogen bombs and we would all be living in caves right now.

The Iraqi's don't have electricity either which means that their monthly electric bill must be pretty damn small, so they must have some extra money to spend. Maybe Nike, and Pepsi, and Dunkin Donuts will open up some businesses in Baghdad and jump-start the economy. Maybe President Booosh should give the Iraqi's a $350 billion tax rebate.

Just think, if the average annual earnings in Iraq is $1000 a year, a $350 billion dollar Iraqi tax rebate could put all 27 million Iraqi men, women and children to work, and provide a damn good health insurance policy. And there would be lots of money left over. Last month President Bush said he needed another $87 billion for Iraq. When he asked for it, he was talking to the TV teleprompter, so no one actually answered him with a "yes, let's go for it" or a "no, not in your life" type of response. All I know is, President Booosh, didn't ask me. I think I am going to write to him and tell him to "not include my portion in the $87 billion". I think I would rather just have my portion sent to me directly.

South Carolina has a budget deficit of a billion or so maybe Presidetn Booosh can give $2 billion to South Carolina, and give $598 billion to Iraq. That would be a good idea. And maybe he could spare some pocket change out of the $87 billion (maybe a half billion) so South Carolina can hire some teachers and fix the schools).

I invite all Americans, whether staunch conservative Republicans, liberal Democrats, independents, progressives, environmentalists, small business owners, and corporate executives to join me in rebuilding America by electing a man of honesty, integrity and common sense, Dennis Kucinich in 2004. He is a man who will watch how our money is spent, and watch who is spending it for what purpose. He will set a goal of 0% unemployment so all Americans can work. He will provide all Americans with the right to high quality health care that is affordable. And he will restore the time honored trust of the doctor/patient relationship. He will spend American money on America, to rebuild our dams, our bridges, our roads, our national parks. He will restore the pride and potential of our educational system and give back to teachers the enthusiasm and dedication that they previously had in years past.

I truly believe that Mr. Kucinich is the only man capable of solving the Israeli/Palestinian problem. I encourage anyone and everyone who has an open mind to read and ponder his positions on all the issues of our day at his web site, www.kucinich.us.

I believe Americans are the most likeable people on the earth, and the most generous. We don't need to dominate, threaten, coerce, and control, badger, bully and bribe the world. Yes, there are some brutal dictators in the world but we can't declare war on the world, forever, and spend $50 trillion dollars to make it a picture perfect planet.

If we don't all come together and achieve Dennis Kucinich's goals we are "in a pickle". That's for sure.

James Boyne dboyne@aol.com is a computer trainer, and former sales executive for IBM, Sony and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He is a former staunch conservative Republican who after becoming of victim of the health care industry, has researched, studied, and written about the health care industry as a freelance satirical writer. He has made a 180 degree turnabout an now supports Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) for President. Mr. Boyne has a B.S degree in Marketing, and MBA in Marketing/Economics, and a degree in Certified Financial Planning. This article is copyright by James Boyne, originally published in OpEdNews.com but permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog, or web media if this entire credit paragraph is attached
- posted by AquarianM @ 4:28 PM