Clipmarks | JICWyllie's clips

Mexico hedges against falling oil prices

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 16:42:56 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie

Mexico has taken out a $1bn insurance policy against oil prices falling next year, a clear signal that commodities producers remain wary about the threat of a double-dip recession.

The world’s sixth largest oil producer said on Tuesday that it had hedged all its net oil exports for 2010, by buying protection against oil prices falling below $57 a barrel.

“We want this as an insurance policy,” said Agustín Carstens, Mexico’s finance minister. “If we don’t collect any resources from this transaction, it’s OK with us.” That would mean the oil price had remained above $57 a barrel, he added.

Olivier Jakob, of the Swiss-based consultancy Petromatrix, said there was potential for a drop in oil prices in 2010 unless demand recovered meaningfully. “The fundamental supply and demand picture looks weak, but the weakness of the US dollar and financial flows are supporting oil prices right now,” he explained.

Tags: 1-prices, 1-recession, 2-decrease, 2-risks, 3-forecast, 4-mexico

Japan GDP revised heavily downward

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 16:35:42 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie
clipper's remarks: Governments took a bet with stimulous policy: double or nothing. And they keep doubling. Any betting man will say this bet a very easy way to lose a lot of money, and is a sign of complete desperation.

Clip Source: www.ft.com

Growth on the previous quarter was revised down from 1.2 per cent to 0.3 per cent. At an annualised rate the revision was from 4.8 per cent to 1.3 per cent.

The growth revision highlights the risk of a “double dip” recession – with the economy turning down again by the second quarter of next year – that prompted Japan’s government to announce a Y7,200bn ($81bn) fiscal stimulus package on Tuesday.

A recovery in business investment reported in the first release proved an illusion. The figure was revised down from a 1.6 per cent rise on the previous quarter to a 2.8 per cent fall, accounting for two-thirds of the total revision.

Fiscal stimulus – such as incentives to scrap old cars – has been a prime cause of increased consumer spending, and economists have feared it would drop back as stimulus measures expired at the end of the fiscal year in March.

Tags: 1-growth, 1-policy, 1-stimulous, 2-failure, 2-risks, 3-reported, 4-japan

Greece downgraded over high debt

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 10:38:56 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie
clipper's remarks: Europe is falling. What will the order be: 1) Greece, 2) Ireland, 3) Italy, 4) Portugal, 5) UK, 6) Spain? What could Germany and France do then, but follow. What happens then is the $64 trillion question. Hyperinflation? More deflation? Nobody knows, but they will know soon. The knowledge is liable to be depressing for believers in eternal economic growth.

Clip Source: www.ft.com

Greece saw its credit ratings downgraded to the lowest level in the eurozone on Tuesday as fears mounted over its deteriorating public finances.

Heavy selling of Greek stocks and bonds came amid fears that the country was heading for financial disaster unless politicians tackled dangerously high debt levels. Shares on the Athens stock exchange fell more than 6 per cent.

Fitch cut ratings on Greek debt to BBB plus with a negative outlook. It is the first time in 10 years a leading ratings agency has given Greece a rating of below A grade.

Greek finance minister, said the country would do “whatever is required” to reduce a record budget deficit and achieve its medium-term fiscal targets.

Analysts also warned that the downgrade could pose problems for Greece in raising money in the bond markets and through the European Central Bank’s liquidity operations.

Tags: 1-depression, 1-insolvancy, 2-increase, 2-risks, 3-forecast, 3-reported, 4-eu, 4-greece

Americans Toss Out 40 Percent of All Food

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 17:25:00 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie
clipper's remarks: First people need to learn to care about themselves, as well as others. The servings in urban fast food fast food outlets are obscene. The price of fast food calories will have to rise drastically. A tax on MCDonalds etc. would be able to fund price reductions in far less wasteful slow food and collaborative cooing strategies.

Clip Source: www.livescience.com

U.S. residents are wasting food like never before.

a new study finds food waste per person has shot up 50 percent since 1974.

while some have plenty of food to spare, a recent report by the Department of Agriculture finds the number of U.S. homes lacking "food security,"

an international group estimated that up to 30 percent of food — worth about $48.3 billion — is wasted each year in the United States.

ScienceNOW, an online publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, reports that food waste occurs at the manufacturing level and in distribution, but more than half is wasted by consumers,

Addressing the oversupply of food in the United States "could help curb to the obesity epidemic as well as reduce food waste, which would have profound consequences for the environment and natural resources,

food waste is now estimated to account for more than one quarter of the total freshwater consumption

and

about 4 percent of the total U.S. oil consumption."

Tags: 1-hunger, 1-waste, 2-increase, 2-record, 3-reported, 3-research, 4-us

Energy industry geoscience and pools of moral hazard

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 16:29:58 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie

Clip Source: energybulletin.net

if the issue at hand stinks of party politics, make sure you don't get recruited into one side or the other of the debate. Remember, the goal of politicians is to get campaign contributions and get re-elected; their goal is not to find the truth or to solve problems. Indeed, for them it is even better if problems remain unsolved forever, in order to be perpetually useful as campaign material.

moral people hold fast to their deepest core beliefs, but have the ability to change their opinions and actions based on conditions.

The danger here is that the individual geoscientist may find it easier to at times succumb to the prevailing group mentality and just go along with the program, rather than think and feel things through for himself or herself. This self-silencing could have the deleterious effect of removing a potentially influential voice (one's own) from the debate.

Tags: 1-corruption, 2-risks, 3-indicated, 4-intl

Why We Find it so Hard to Act Against Climate Change (2)

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 16:07:42 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie
clipper's remarks: Be the change. Jump out of the industrial mindset, first. The rest becomes an adventure with no certain outcome. In my experience, the journey is fun and rewarding. See www.worldwidewood.wordpress.com to see an example. Updates coming soon on Amplify.

Clip Source: www.yesmagazine.org

the issue had been burdened with a set of associations and metaphors that allowed the general public to exclude it from their primary concerns (“I’m not an environmentalist”), as could senior politicians (“environment is important but jobs and defense are my priority”).

If a disbelief in climate change becomes a mark of someone’s political identity, it is far more likely to be shared between people who know and trust each other, becoming ever more entrenched and resistant to external argument.

there are plentiful examples of times when public attitudes have changed suddenly in the wake of traumatic events—as with the U.S. entry into both world wars.

The priority for environmentalists and scientists should be to step back and enable a much wider diversity of voices and speakers.

We must recognize that the most trusted conveyors of new ideas are not experts or celebrities but the people we already know.

People must see the necessary change being made all around them:

Tags: 1-climate change, 1-participation, 1-strategy, 2-change, 3-advocated, 4-intl

Why We Find it so Hard to Act Against Climate Change (1)

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 15:51:17 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie
clipper's remarks: Classic SEP (Someone else's problem). It's all too much. I've got my own problems. Leave me alone. What can I do anyway? I'll try to get around to it. And above all: I don't want to know.

Clip Source: www.yesmagazine.org

It should be easy to deal with climate change. There is a strong scientific consensus supported by very sound data; consensus across much of the religious and political spectrum and among businesses including the largest corporations in the world.

In States of Denial: Knowing About Atrocities and Suffering, Stanley Cohen studies how people living under repressive regimes resolve the conflict they feel between the moral imperative to intervene and the need to protect themselves and their families. He found that people deliberately maintain a level of ignorance so that they can claim they know less than they do. They exaggerate their own powerlessness and wait indefinitely for someone else to act first—a phenomenon that psychologists call the passive bystander effect. Both strategies lie below the surface of most of the commonly held attitudes to climate change.

most people have tacitly agreed that it is socially inappropriate to pay attention to climate change.

Tags: 1-climate change, 1-denial, 1-psychology, 2-consequences, 2-risks, 3-argued, 4-intl

The Complexity Myth

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 13:49:23 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie
clipper's remarks: I think the author means complicated, hierarchical control, not the 'complexity' of chaos theory and living systems. Still, it's his idea of 'simplicity' that's important.

Clip Source: energybulletin.net

We have been sold The Complexity Myth, the idea that something is only good if it is a product of a complex set of processes, in order that we can be controlled. We are kept in check by this idea and do not question it because we have forgotten how to live simply; we have been brainwashed to love the world of the complex, and as a result we are prepared to defend the thing that is causing the collapse of the natural world, and our own basic humanity.

Simplicity is democratic: As we have seen, complexity is used to enforce the systems of control that the Culture of Empire uses against us, to keep us subjects of that culture. One man with a sword can control perhaps half a dozen people without swords;

Within a cooperative society, a simple society working on egalitarian principles, no one can wield power without challenge. You have a say, as does everyone, for there can be no ivory towers or impregnable fortresses in the simple society – you need complexity to build them.

Tags: 1-complication, 1-hierarchy, 1-policy, 2-argued, 2-risks, 4-intl

Nuclear fusion is the future

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 13:25:06 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie

Clip Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

An international consortium known as ITER ("the way" in Latin), is about to start building a prototype fusion reactor in Cadarache, France, at a cost of £6 billion. Critics argue that given the difficulties involved, that sum could be better spent on solar power, using the fusion reactor that nature has already given us.

scientists have come tantalisingly close to the break-even point at which the device releases as much energy as is required to get the fusion going.

ITER's objective is to release 10 times as much energy as is used to initiate the reaction: if 50 MW is put in, ITER will generate 500 MW.

The hope is that ITER will pave the way for a demonstration power plant in the 2030s, which will feed energy into the grid by the middle of this century. Meanwhile, research will continue in other installations worldwide. If the gamble pays off, the last quarter of this century will see the end of the age of carbon, and usher in a future of almost limitless potential.

Tags: 1-climate change, 1-innovation, 1-technology, 2-opportunities, 3-forecast, 4-intl

Dominic Lawson: Roll up, roll up for the great Copenhagen emissions-fest

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 13:14:33 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie
clipper's remarks: And that's not counting the media flying in from everywhere. The very concept that politicians have the power to restrict climate change to 2C or 3C is as absurd as waving a magic wand. No wonder many people are skeptical about what they are doing. It doesn't change the sad facts of glacier melting, water poisoning, mass extinction, deforestation etc.etc. which are the direct consequences of industrial civilisation.

Clip Source: www.independent.co.uk

If there really is just a fortnight left before we are all doomed, it is good to see that the 20,000 or so delegates are going out in style. More than 1,200 limousines have flooded into the Danish capital

This great emission-fest will be mightily augmented at the conference's conclusion, when the really big cheeses – presidents, prime ministers, and (naturally) the Prince of Wales – arrive in upwards of 140 private jets.

the EU, with an obligation under the Kyoto Treaty to reduce its emissions by 8 per cent by 2012, has managed to claim success, while actually increasing emissions by 13 per cent. This has been achieved by purchasing "offsets" from countries such as China.

You might well ask why the politicians of the developed world – believing, as they allegedly do, in anthropogenic CO2's dire threat to the planet – don't follow Mr Hansen's suggestion of imposing blanket taxation on carbon emissions, so that people decide it's too expensive to carry on driving, or flying

Tags: 1-climate change, 1-policy, 2-consequences, 2-risks, 3-reported

UK output signals weak start to fourth quarter

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 12:51:46 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie
clipper's remarks: Double dip leads to double debt. Yesterday, I bought a 145 'Maine' branded, made in China, winter coat for 45. That's the state of the Chistmas retail market, even before the stimulous has been switched off.

Clip Source: business.timesonline.co.uk

British industrial output failed to grow in October and manufacturers expect it to fall in the coming months, denting hopes that the economy is set to bounce back in the final three months of the year.

In March's Budget, he forecast that the economy would shrink by 3.5 per cent this year, but the drop in economic output is set to be closer to 4.75 per cent.

Britain is now the only major economy still in recession, trailing the US, China, Japan, Germany and France, after gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 0.3 per cent in the third quarter.

Meanwhile, the CBI's monthly survey of British factories showed that 18 per cent expect output to rise in the coming three months, while 25 per cent expect it to fall.

"Manufacturing prospects were starting to look up but have dipped again in the latest survey.

British Retail Consortium revealed “disappointing” 1.8 per cent rise in high street sales in November,

Tags: 1-growth, 1-recession, 2-consequences, 2-decrease, 3-reported, 4-uk

Greece warned about credit rating risk

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 12:36:25 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie
clipper's remarks: Who's next?

Clip Source: www.ft.com

Greece’s financial difficulties escalated on Monday after it was warned of a possible credit rating downgrade and Jean-Claude Trichet, European Central Bank president, said Athens would have to act “courageously” to bring its budget under control.

Interest rates on Greek bonds surged back close to their highest levels for seven months after Standard & Poor’s put Greece’s A minus credit rating on “negative watch”, which usually leads to a downgrade within a month.

Two days of violent protests in Athens marking the first anniversary of the killing of a 15-year-old boy by a police officer have created further mayhem.

Alarm intensified when the Socialist administration, elected in October, revealed the public finances were far worse than feared. Its deficit this year is expected to reach almost 13 per cent of gross domestic product and government debt more than 110 per cent.

Tags: 1-deficit, 2-consequences, 2-increase, 2-record, 2-risks, 3-reported, 4-eu, 4-greece

Twitter Is Top Word For 2009

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 12:12:40 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie
clipper's remarks: As a slice of the new global human consciousness, what the world is thinking about is hardly inspiring.

Clip Source: www.penn-olson.com

In Global Language Monitor’s annual global survey of the English language, top words were sourced out from throughout the whole English speaking world.

Here are the top 5 words of 2009:

#5 Vampire — Vampires are very much en vogue, now the symbol of unrequited love

#4 Stimulus — The $800 billion aid package meant to help mend the US economy

#3 H1N1 — The formal (and politically correct) name for Swine Flu

#2 Obama — The word stem transforms into scores of new words like ObamaCare

#1 Twitter — The ability to encapsulate human thought in 140 characters

It might not be surprising for some that Twitter has made it into the list but to top it? With widespread news on H1N1 and the popularity of Obama, who would have thought Twitter could beat them? There are 1.58 billion English speakers in the world and to be a top word is really something.

Tags: 1-language, 1-self signifying, 2-trends, 3-reported, 4-intl

Climategate controversy has echoes of Watergate, UN says

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 18:43:22 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie
clipper's remarks: Reminds me of the Dirty Tricks times of the Bush administration. And "tricky Dickie" was behind Watergate. I would put it past the same bunch to invest in these kinds of attacks.

Clip Source: www.timesonline.co.uk

UN officials likened the Climategate controversy to Watergate today, claiming that computer hackers who stole thousands of e-mails sent by a senior climate scientist were probably paid to do it by people intent on undermining the Copenhagen summit.

Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, vice-chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said the theft from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was not the work of amateur climate sceptics but a sophisticated and well-funded attempt to destroy public confidence in the science of man-made climate change.

He said the fact that the e-mails were first uploaded to a sceptic website from a computer in Russia was an indication that the culprit was paid.

"It's very common for hackers in Russia to be paid for their services.

"One effect of this is to make scientists lose lots of time checking things.

Tags: 1-attacks, 1-climate change, 1-corruption, 1-security, 2-increase, 2-risks, 3-reported, 4-intl

Break-in targets [Canadian] climate scientist

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 18:14:03 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie
clipper's remarks: The Canadian authorities are controlled by Stephen Harper's government -- climate change deniers in the Bush mode. Who are really behind these people? Holy rollers? Oil companies? Is it something to do with psychology of greed?

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

The attempted breaches, on top of the hacking of files from British climate researcher Phil Jones, have heightened fears that climate-change deniers are mounting a campaign to discredit the work of leading meteorologists

"The key thing is to try to find anybody who's involved in any aspect of the IPCC and find something that you can … take out of context," said Weaver. The prospect of more break-ins and hacking has forced researchers to step up computer security.

The victim was Andrew Weaver, a University of Victoria scientist and a key contributor to the work of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

New incident raises fears of a smear campaign

Tags: 1-attack, 1-climate change, 1-security, 1-theft, 2-increase, 2-risks, 3-reported, 4-canada