Yes, Football is here

The lowdown on the world's best 18 May 2006
by FIFAworldcup.com

The quadrennial, month-long carnival that is the FIFA World Cup™ finals is not just about the football, just as football itself is so much more than just '22 hirelings kicking a leather ball', as was once famously suggested.
From the tens of thousands of visiting fans to the hard-working volunteers, many factors conspire to make the FIFA World Cup a spectacle without peer in the world of organised sport. However, one thing is certain: without the players, 736 footballers from 32 different nations spread over six continents, nothing else would really matter.
Whether they started their journey on bumpy Caribbean pitches or in the cathedrals of the European game, they come to Germany all in search of the same thing: glory, respect and a chance to lift the most-coveted prize in sport, the FIFA World Cup.
FIFA team lists in Excel format
FIFA team lists in Text format
FIFAworldcup.com is the place to come to find out about the men who will write the story of the 18th FIFA World Cup. From the tournament's eight new teams to the silken-footed stars of Brazil, we have compiled the most comprehensive collection of player profiles available anywhere. You will find a biography, career history and exclusive written profile of every player in every squad, together with extended profiles of five key players from each team.
Of the 736 players, there are seven preparing for their fourth FIFA World Cup: Cafu and Ronaldo (both Brazil), Oliver Kahn (Germany) Mohammed Al Deayea and Sami Al Jaber (both Saudi Arabia), and Kasey Keller and Claudio Reyna (both USA). Only Cafu, Al Deayea and Al Jaber actually appeared in all three previous tournaments while USA goalkeeper Keller is the only player going to Germany who was at the 1990 finals.
Keller may be a veteran at 36 but he is a youngster compared to Tunisia goalkeeper Ali Boumnijel, the tournament's oldest player. He turned 40 in April and in the entire history of the FIFA World Cup, only Roger Milla, Pat Jennings, Peter Shilton and Dino Zoff have been older.
By contrast the youngest player in the competition, England's Theo Walcott, is just 17 and will become the FIFA World Cup's youngest ever scorer if he finds the back of the net in Germany.
Click on the links below to access the player profiles for each team:
Group A:Germany/ Costa Rica/ Poland/ Ecuador
Group B:England / Paraguay / Trinidad and Tobago / Sweden
Group C:Argentina / Côte d'Ivoire / Serbia and Montenegro / Netherlands
Group D:Mexico / Iran / Angola / Portugal
Group E:Italy / Ghana / USA / Czech Republic
Group F:Brazil / Croatia / Australia / Japan
Group G:France / Switzerland / Korea Republic / Togo
Group H:Spain / Ukraine / Tunisia / Saudi Arabia
Add headlines to your personalized My Yahoo! pageFIFAworldcup.com Tournament News

A Profile in Defiance

by Ray Takeyh posted on The National Interest on 17/3/2006

IN JUNE the hard-line mayor of Tehran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, walked across American and Israeli flags painted on the pavement of a mosque and voted in Iran's ninth presidential election. After all the ballots were counted, the results stunned the international community--an unreconstructed ideologue had emerged triumphant, confounding all predictions that Iran's youthful populace and sophisticated middle class would somehow press its politics in a reformist, even liberal direction. In the intervening months, Ahmadinejad has gone on to perplex and outrage the international community through his denials of the Holocaust, incendiary denunciations of America and a marked indifference to global opinion.

As Iran's nuclear program crosses successive thresholds and edges closer to a military capability, the Western capitals are struggling to understand the man at the helm of power in Tehran. Is Iran's president as irrational as his rhetoric would suggest? Is Ahmadinejad driven by a messianic religious fervor that makes him immune to practical considerations? What are the political and ideological determinants of Ahmadinejad's policies? Before contemplating measures to arrest Iran's impetuous impulses, it is important to have a better appreciation of the ideology that animates the new president and the new cohort of hardliners that are leading the Islamic Republic.

The War Generation Comes to Power

AFTER 27 years, the complexion of the Iranian regime is changing. An ascetic "war generation" is assuming power ...with a determination to rekindle revolutionary fires long extinguished.
For Ahmadinejad and his allies, the 1980-88 war with Iraq defined their experiences, and it conditions their political assumptions. The Iran-Iraq War was unusual in many respects, as it was not merely an interstate conflict designed to achieve specific territorial or even political objectives. This was a war waged for the triumph of ideas, with Ba'athi secular pan-Arabism contesting Iran's Islamic fundamentalism. As such, for those who went to the front, the war came to embody their revolutionary identity. Themes of solidarity, sacrifice, self-reliance and commitment not only allowed the regime to consolidate its power, they also made the defeat of Saddam the ultimate test of theocratic legitimacy. War and revolution had somehow fused in the clerical cosmology. To wage a determined war was to validate one's revolutionary ardor and spiritual fidelity--the notions of compromise and a "ceasefire" were anathema to this point of view.
Suddenly, in August 1988, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini declared the conflict to be over. After eight years of brutal struggle and clerical exhortations of the inevitability of the triumph of the armies of God, the war ended without achieving any of its pledged objectives. For veterans like Ahmadinejad, not unlike post-World War I German veterans, there was a ready explanation for this turn of events. It was not the inadequacy of Iran's military planning or the miscalculations of its commanders, but the West's machinations and its tolerance of Saddam's use of chemical weapons that had turned the tide of the battle.
And although many Iranians wanted to forget the war, for people like Ahmadinejad the war, its struggles and its lessons are far from being a faded memory: They are constantly invoked. In his much-discussed speech in front of the UN General Assembly in September, Iran's new president used the platform offered to him to pointedly admonish the gathered heads of state for their shortcomings:
For eight years, Saddam's regime imposed a massive war of aggression against my people. It employed the most heinous weapons of mass destruction, including chemical weapons, against Iranians and Iraqis alike. Who, in fact, armed Saddam with those weapons? What was the reaction of those who claim to fight against WMDs regarding the use of chemical weapons then?
A pronounced suspicion of the United States and the international community would come to characterize Ahmadinejad's perspective. After all, neither America's human rights commitments nor the many treaties prohibiting the use of weapons of mass destruction saved Iran's civilians and combatants from Saddam's wrath. The lesson that the veterans drew from the war was that Iran's independence and territorial integrity could only be safeguarded by its own initiatives and not by international legal compacts and Western benevolence.
The postwar direction of the Iranian society also disturbed the returning veterans. Despite its duration, Iran waged the war largely with volunteers; only in the latter stages of the conflict did it have to rely on conscripts. As such, the war touched only a narrow segment of the populace, usually religiously zealous young men from traditional, lower-class families. As with America's own current war in Iraq, vast numbers of young men from affluent families were unaffected by the carnage of the conflict and unharmed by the vicious nature of the war. Even more disturbing, the postwar society treated the returning veterans with a degree of indifference and seemed determined to discard the revolution and its exalted values. The lure of Western culture, the focus on accumulating wealth and calls for cultural freedom preoccupied Iran's youth. For those who suffered the war and took its religious claims seriously, such callous disregard was contemptible. While much of Iran had moved on in the 1990s, the austere veterans nursed their grievances and, more ominously, assumed important positions in the security services and the Revolutionary Guards. The move to political office was natural, even inevitable.
"We must return to the roots of the revolution", proclaimed Ahmadinejad during his many campaign stops. It seemed like yet another empty slogan by yet another politician brandishing retrogressive shibboleths in the hope of mobilizing his constituents. A theocratic state that is riddled with corruption and a clerical elite that has long abandoned sublime pursuits of faith for temptations of power have generated a degree of popular cynicism. Even genuine expressions of revolutionary convictions are treated with skepticism. Ahmadinejad in many ways seemed an anachronism, as he genuinely believed that the "government of God" still had relevance. And he was earnest in his perception that somehow all the problems could be resolved if only Iran went back to the roots of the revolution.
As with his presidency, Ahmadinejad's candidacy was a rebuke of the establishment and a challenge to the elders of the revolution who had grown cautious and complacent. For Iran to be revitalized and reawakened, its leaders had to capture the moral cohesion and the stern discipline of those who bravely confronted Saddam's war machine. The instrument of Iran's redemption had to be Islam--not the passive, indifferent, establishment Islam, but the revolutionary, politicized and uncompromising devotion that launched the initial Islamic Republic under the leadership of Grand Ayatollah Khomeini. A united Iranian populace would once more redeem its faith from the transgressions of the West and the stagnation of a corrupt ruling class. By appropriating Islam's sacred symbols and invoking the history of struggle against foreign infidels and their domestic enablers, Ahmadinejad sought to transform religion once more into a revolutionary ideology. Such a faith would galvanize the masses to reclaim their lost republic and defend their patrimony.
Iran, a country of contradictions and paradoxes, elected to the presidency a politician that pledged to turn back the clock. "Today we should define our economic, cultural and political policies based on the policies of the imam's return. We should avoid copying the West's political systems", he announced. Ahmadinejad's vision for Iran constituted a mixture of statist economic policies, the reimposition of Islamic cultural strictures and the reversal of the limited political freedoms that Iranians had come to enjoy during the reformist interlude. A populace struggling with persistent economic dislocation and offended by the rampant corruption of the men of God seemed to have hoped that a humble politician with limited taste for material wealth would somehow bring about the revolution's pledge of social justice and economic equality. However, it would be on the international stage that Ahmadinejad would garner the greatest attention and cause considerable alarm and anxiety among both his countrymen and his larger global audience.
Ahmadinejad's Foreign Devils
AS THE face of Iran changes and the elders of the revolution recede from the scene, a new international orientation is gradually beginning to surface. A combustible mixture of Islamist ideology, strident nationalism and a deep suspicion of the international order comprise Ahmadinejad's global perspective. As an uncompromising nationalist, Ahmadinejad is unusually sensitive of Iran's national prerogatives and sovereign rights. As a committed Islamist, he continues to see the Middle East as a battleground between forces of sinister secularism and Islamic authenticity. As a suspicious ruler, he perceives Western conspiracies and imagined plots where none may in fact exist.
Nowhere has this new ideological determinism been more evident than in perceptions of America. For the aging mullahs such as Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the more pragmatic head of the Expediency Council, Hashemi Rafsanjani, America remained the dominant actor in Iran's melodrama. For the those hardliners, the United States was the source of all of Iran's problems, while for the older generation of more pragmatist conservatives it was the solution to the theocracy's mounting dilemmas. In either depiction, America was central to Iran's affairs. Given that this cohort came into political maturity during the reign of the shah and his close alliance with the United States, was engaged in a revolutionary struggle that was defined by its opposition to America, and then led a state often in conflict with Washington, it was natural that they were obsessed with the United States.
In terms of their international perspective, Ahmadinejad's generation of conservatives does not share its elders' preoccupation with America. Their insularity and their ideology-laden assumptions about America as a pernicious, imperial power lessen their enthusiasm for coming to terms with a country long depicted as the "Great Satan." Even a cursory examination of the younger hardliners' speeches reveals much about their view of international relations: that power in the international system is flowing eastward. As Ali Larijani, the head of the Supreme National Security Council, noted, "There are certain big states in the Eastern Hemisphere such as Russia, China and India. These states can play a balancing role in today's world." In a similar vein, another stalwart of the new conservatives, the current mayor of Tehran, Muhammad Qalibaf, declared, "In the current international arena we see the emergence of South Asia. And if we do not take advantage of that, we will lose." From the perspective of the new Right, globalization does not imply capitulating to the United States but cultivating relations with emerging power centers on the global landscape. It is hoped that such an "eastern orientation" might just obviate the need to come to terms with the United States.
In a stark contrast to their elders, the war generation displays a unique degree of indifference and passivity toward America. Ahmadinejad emphasized this point, stressing, "Our nation is continuing in path of progress and on this path has no significant need for the United States." The notion that Iran should offer concessions on important national priorities for the sake of American benevolence has a limited appeal to Iran's new leaders. After a quarter of a century of hostility, war and sanctions, Iran's emerging leadership class is looking east, where its human rights record and proliferation tendencies are not particularly disturbing to its commercial partners.
In Ahmadinejad's pantheon of angels and devils, Israel maintains an important position. During one of the usual gatherings of radicals, reactionaries and militants from across the Middle East (which are all too familiar to observers of the Islamic Republic), Ahmadinejad issued his infamous call for the eradication of Israel. Far from being chastened by the international outcry, he followed up his outrageous remarks by calling the Holocaust a "myth." For a politician that had advocated the pan-Islamic dimension of Khomeini's revolution, the flagrant attack on Israel was a natural, even routine affair. After all, one of the core pillars of Khomeini's vision was the notion that Israel was an illegitimate entity and an imperial infringement on the Islamic realm.
However, beyond the glare of publicity and international condemnation, what was missed about Ahmadinejad's speech was his attempt to reverse the reformist policy adjustment on Israel. Under the Khatami regime, Iran had gradually moved beyond some of its pathologies about Israel and stressed that it would be willing to countenance a peace compact acceptable to the Palestinians. As I noted in a previous article for The National Interest, the Iranian pragmatists were not going to be "more Palestinian than the Palestinians."
In contrast, Ahmadinejad declared, "Anybody who takes a step toward Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nations' fury." In essence, Iran's president was suggesting that the Islamic Republic, on behalf of the entire Islamic community, would no longer be prepared to accept a peace treaty that was endorsed by the Palestinian officials and the Arab states. Indeed, Iran would not just continue its assistance to radical Palestinian groups determined to scuttle any peace treaty, but would potentially renew its earlier policy of seeking to subvert Arab regimes that normalized ties with the Jewish state.
At a time when the Middle East peace process appeared in tatters, Ahmadinejad may have perceived a unique opportunity to exploit the Palestinian cause to assert his influence on larger regional deliberations. Iran could use its opposition to the peace process to burnish its Islamist credentials and gain popularity with the Arab street, in turn allowing Iran to have an impact on regional issues. By embracing an inflammatory posture toward Israel, Ahmadinejad sought to press the theocratic regime, with its increasing penchant for diplomacy rather than confrontation, toward a more defiant international outlook.
A similar mixture of wariness and nationalism is driving the new regime's approach to the nuclear issue. The bitter experience of the war has led to cries of "never again", uniting the veterans-turned-politicians behind a desire to achieve not just a credible posture of deterrence but potentially a convincing retaliatory capability. After decades of tensions with America, Iran's reactionaries perceive that conflict with the United States is inevitable and that the only manner by which America can be deterred is through possession of the strategic weapon. Although today the United States may seem entangled in an Iraqi quagmire that tempers its ambitions, for Iran's rulers it is still an aggressive state whose power cannot be discounted and whose intentions must not be trusted.
Given their suspicions and paranoia, the hardliners insist that American objections to Iran's nuclear program do not stem from its concerns about proliferation, but its opposition to the character of the regime. They argue that should Iran acquiesce on the nuclear portfolio, the perfidious Americans would only search for another issue with which to coerce Iran. "The West opposes the nature of the Islamic rule. If this issue [the nuclear standoff] is resolved, then they will bring up human rights. If we solve that, they will bring up animal rights", emphasized Ahmadinejad. Given such views, there appears no sufficient incentive to compromise on such critical national issues, since acquiescence will not measurably relieve American antagonism.
America's Strategy
UNFORTUNATELY, BOTH American rhetoric and strategy have implicitly validated such perceptions. In the aftermath of September 11, Washington quickly forgave Pakistan its pervasive nuclear sins because of its tentative cooperation on the war on terrorism. In yet another gesture of power politics, the desire to buttress the evolving strategic relationship with India led the Bush Administration to absolve New Delhi of its persistent snubbing of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). It is difficult to make the case that counter-proliferation is an important American priority when the Bush Administration is busy absolving serial nuclear proliferators of any responsibility.
Moreover, the Iranian hardliners find an unusual source for validating their suspicions: the American hawks. Too often, America's vigilant conservatives muse that a more democratic Iran could be permitted to have an advanced nuclear infrastructure, if not an actual weapon. Robert Kagan captured this flawed reasoning best by recently claiming, "Were Iran ruled by a democratic government, even an imperfect one, we would be much less concerned about its weaponry." Such arguments are dangerous, for they implicitly affirm Ahmadinejad's claims that it is the regime, not its nuclear program, that the United States finds objectionable. In essence, the American hawks indulge in an inept argument that under a different regime, Iran should be permitted to violate its treaty obligations. When American conservatives say that a democratic Iran should be permitted to have nuclear weapons, then in essence they concede that a pluralistic Iran should be allowed to violate the NPT, but not an Islamic Iran. As a result, neither the Bush Administration's discursive counter-proliferation policies nor its allies' preposterous assertions contribute to a conclusive resolution of Iran's nuclear impasse.
As Iran plots its nuclear strategy, the American demands that it relinquish its fuel-cycle rights granted to it by the NPT have aroused an intense nationalistic uproar. Larijani emphasized this point, stressing, "Access to nuclear technology is our right and [we] will insist on it." As a country that has historically been the subject of foreign intervention and the imposition of various capitulation treaties, Iran is inordinately sensitive of its national prerogatives and sovereign rights. The new rulers of Iran believe they are being challenged not because of their provocations and previous treaty violations, but because of superpower bullying. In a peculiar manner, the nuclear program and Iran's national identity have become fused in the imagination of the hardliners. To stand against an impudent America is to validate one's revolutionary ardor and sense of nationalism. Thus, the notion of compromise and acquiescence has limited utility to Iran's aggrieved nationalists.
It is still too early to suggest that Iran is re-entering the dark ages of the early revolutionary period. The Islamic Republic is a government ruled by factions and competing power centers. The intriguing aspect of Iran that tends to persistently puzzle Western observers is that these political factions never completely lose their influence despite poor electoral performance. The fact remains that they all represent important constituencies and have a presence in the complicated web of informal and formal institutions that govern the Islamic Republic. The pragmatic elements of the state and the reformist politicians are engaged in a subtle attempt to restrain Iran's impetuous new president and are pressing Khamenei to curb Ahmadinejad's ideological edges. The power plays and rivalries have hardly disappeared, as the perennially divided state is once more battling itself.
However, it is undeniable that a new, harsh political tendency led by a severe war generation has infiltrated the corridors of power. Ahmadinejad and his allied faction (with their powerful appeals to Khomeini's legacy and open contempt for their elders' corruption) cannot be discounted or dismissed. Although it may be difficult for a Western audience to appreciate, Ahmadinejad's message of economic populism and nationalistic self-assertion does enjoy a level of public support, particularly among the lower classes struggling with Iran's inequalities. A strident new voice has now enshrined itself within the landscape of the Islamic Republic, pressing Iran toward confrontation abroad and reaction at home.

Ray Takeyh is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a contributing editor to The National Interest. He is author of the forthcoming Hidden Iran: Paradox and Power in the Islamic Republic.

So, what is Peak Oil?

The Peak Oil Primer-- From Energy Bulletin

What is Peak Oil?

Peak Oil is the simplest label for the problem of energy resource depletion, or more specifically, the peak in global oil production. Oil is a finite, non-renewable resource, one that has powered phenomenal economic and population growth over the last century and a half. The rate of oil 'production,' meaning extraction and refining (currently about 84 million barrels/day), has grown in most years over the last century, but once we go through the halfway point of all reserves, production becomes ever more likely to decline, hence 'peak'. Peak Oil means not 'running out of oil', but 'running out of cheap oil'. For societies leveraged on ever increasing amounts of cheap oil, the consequences may be dire. Without significant successful cultural reform, economic and social decline seems inevitable.

Why does oil peak? Why doesn't it suddenly run out?

Oil companies have, naturally enough, extracted the easier-to-reach, .....cheap oil first. The oil pumped first was on land, near the surface, under pressure, light and 'sweet' (meaning low sulfur content) and therefore easy to refine into gasoline. The remaining oil, sometimes off shore, far from markets, in smaller fields, or of lesser quality, takes ever more money and energy to extract and refine. Under these conditions, the rate of extraction inevitably drops. Furthermore, all oil fields eventually reach a point where they become economically, and energetically, no longer viable. If it takes the energy of a barrel of oil to extract a barrel of oil, then further extraction is pointless.

M. King Hubbert - the first to predict an oil peak

The Hubbert Curve is used to predict the rate of production from an oil producing region containing many individual wells. Source: aspoitalia.net
In the 1950s a U.S. geologist working for Shell, M. King Hubbert, noticed that oil discoveries graphed over time, tended to follow a bell shape curve. He posited that the rate of oil production would follow a similar curve, now known as the Hubbert Curve (see figure). In 1956 Hubbert predicted that production from the US lower 48 states would peak between 1965 and 1970.

Shell tried to pressure Hubbert into not making his projections public, but the notoriously stubborn Hubbert went ahead and released them. In anycase, most people inside and outside the industry quickly dismissed Hubbert's predictions. In 1970 US oil producers had never produced as much, and Hubbert's predictions were a fading memory. But Hubbert was right, US continental oil production did peak in 1970, although it was not widely recognized for several years, and only with the benefit of hindsight.

No oil producing region fits the bell shaped curve exactly because production is dependent on various geological, economic and political factors, but the Hubbert Curve remains a powerful predictive tool.

Although it passed by largely unnoticed, the U.S. oil peak was arguably the most significant geopolitical event of the mid to late 20th Century, creating the conditions for the energy crises of the 1970s, leading to far greater U.S. strategic emphasis on controling foreign sources of oil, and spelling the begining of the end of the status of the U.S as the world's major creditor nation. The U.S. of course was able to import oil from elsewhere, and life continued there with only minimal interuption. When global oil production peaks however, the implications will be far greater.
So when will oil peak globally?

Hubbert went on to predict a global oil peak between 1995 and 2000. He may have been close to the mark except that the oil shocks of the 1970s slowed our use of oil. As the following figure shows, global oil discovery peaked in the late 1960s. Since the mid-1980s, oil companies have been finding less oil than we have been consuming.
Source: peakoil.ie

Of the 65 largest oil producing countries in the world, up to 54 have past their peak of production and are now in decline, including the USA (in 1970/71) and the North Sea (in 2001). Hubbert's methods, and variations on them, have been used to make various projections about the global oil peak, with results ranging from 'already peaked', to the very optimistic 2035. Many of the official sources of data used to model oil peak such as OPEC figures, oil company reports, and the USGS discovery projections, upon which the international energy agencies base their own reports, can be shown to be very unreliable. Several notable scientists have attempted independent studies, most notably Colin Campbell and the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO).
Source: peakoil.ie

ASPO's latest model suggests that 'regular' oil peaked in 2004. If heavy oil, deepwater, polar and natural gas liquids are considered, the oil peak is projected for around 2010. Combined oil and gas, as shown above, are expected to also peak around 2010. Other researchers such as Kenneth Deffeyes and A. M. Samsam Bakhtiari have produced models with similar or even earlier projected dates for oil peak. Precise predictions are difficult as much secrecy shrouds important oil and gas data.
Other quite different types of analysis have provided supporting evidence to these 'early peak' s

Scenarios, most notably UK Petroleum Review editor Chris Skrebowski's Oilfields Megaproject reports, and energy banker Matthew Simmons' analysis of Saudi Arabian oil fields.
The effects of natural gas peak are more localized due to the economic and energetic expense of liquefying and transporting natural gas as LNG. Both British and North American natural gas production have already peaked, so these nations may be facing dual energy crises.


What does Peak Oil mean for our societies?


Our industrial societies and our financial systems were built on the assumption of continual growth – growth based on ever more readily available cheap fossil fuels. Oil in particular is the most convenient and multi-purposed of these fossil fuels. Oil currently accounts for about 43% of the world's total fuel consumption [PDF], and 95% of global energy used for transportation [PDF]. Oil is so important that the peak will have vast implications across the realms of geopolitics, lifestyles, agriculture and economic stability. Significantly, for every one joule of food consumed in the United States, around 10 joules of fossil fuel energy have been used to produce it.


The 'Hirsch Report'


A risk mitigation study on Peak Oil was released in early 2005, commissioned by the US Department of Energy. Prepared by the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), and titled “Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation and Risk Management” [PDF], it is known commonly as the Hirsch Report after its primary author Robert L. Hirsch. The executive summary of the report warns that "as peaking is approached, liquid fuel prices and price volatility will increase dramatically, and, without timely mitigation, the economic, social, and political costs will be unprecedented. Viable mitigation options exist on both the supply and demand sides, but to have substantial impact, they must be initiated more than a decade in advance of peaking." [Emphasis added.] Unfortunately nothing like the kind of efforts envisaged have yet begun.


But it's just oil - there are other fossil fuels, other energy sources, right?


To evaluate other energy sources it helps to understand the concepts of Net Energy, or the Energy Returned on Energy Invested ratio (ERoEI). One of the reasons our economies have grown so abundant so quickly over the last few generations is precisely because oil has had an unprecedently high ERoEI ratio. In the early days of oil, for every barrel of oil used for exploration and drilling, up to 100 barrels of oil were found. More recently, as oil recovery becomes more difficult, the ratio has become significantly lower. Certain alternative energy 'sources' may actually have ERoEI ratios of less than one, such most methods of industrially producing biodiesel and ethanol. That is, when all factors are considered, you probably need to invest more energy into the process than you get back. Hydrogen, touted by many as a seamless solution, is actually an energy carrier, but not an energy source. Hydrogen must be produced using an energy source such as natural gas or nuclear power. Because of energy losses in transformation, the hydrogen will always contain less energy than was invested in it.
Some alternatives such as wind and hydro-power have much better ERoEI, however their potential expansion may be limited by various physical factors. Even in combination it may not be possible to gather from renewable sources of energy anything like the amount of energy that industrial society is accustomed to. Richard Heinberg uses the metaphor that whereas fossil fuels might be considered a massive energy inheritance, and one spent perhaps unwisely, renewables are much more akin to a hard won energy wage.

For certain tasks, such as air travel, no other energy source can readily be substituted for oil. As noted by the Hirsch Report, alternative energy infrastructures require long periods of investment, on the scale of decades, to be widely implemented. We may be already leaving the period of cheap energy before we have begun seriously embarking on this task.

It's perhaps worth noting briefly that any ERoEI study is complex and different methods of accounting can come up with vastly different results, so any net energy study might be viewed with some suspicion. Perhaps the best method yet developed is Howard Odum's eMergy analysis. But we may not know with total certainty the usefulness of any renewable energy technologies until the hidden fossil fuel energy subsidies are finally removed.

What can be done?

Many people are working on partial solutions at various different levels, but there is probably no cluster of solutions which do not involve some major changes in lifestyles, especially for the global affluent. Peak Oil presents the potential for quite catastrophic upheavals, but also some more hopeful possibilities, a chance to address many underlying societal problems, and the opportunity return to simpler, healthier and more community oriented lifestyles.

The Post Carbon Institute Outposts.

The Post Carbon Institute is a think tank devoted to exploring the implications of, and preparing for, Peak Oil, focusing on relocalization. They write, “the most important initiative of the Post Carbon Institute is working with groups of concerned citizens to prepare their community for the Post Carbon Age. These groups are Outposts in the sense that they are community-based extensions of the Post Carbon Institute; they operate autonomously yet receive guidance and electronic infrastructure from the Institute. Outposts work cooperatively in their local community to put theory about living with less hydrocarbons into practice while sharing knowledge and experiences with the global network of outposts.” http://www.postcarbon.org/http://www.relocalize.net/

The Community Solution to Peak Oil. Many excellent resources are available through the website of this US based organisation "dedicated to the development, growth and enhancement of small local communities... that are sustainable, diverse and culturally sophisticated." The Community Solution have organised two recent grassroots Peak Oil conferences, and have developed a case study of Cuba, a country which has relatively successfully adapted to an artificial oil peak. http://www.communitysolution.org/

Permaculture: Permaculture is a 'design science' which can allow us to live in relative abundance with minimal resource use. Permaculture principles can be used to functionally redesign social systems, built environments, ecological and agricultural practices for energy descent. David Holmgren's recent book, Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability, deals explicitly with the global oil peak and proposes permaculture as the best set of strategies for dealing with 'energy descent'. http://www.permaculture.org.au/http://www.holmgren.com.au/

Local Energy Descent Action plans: Several communities around the world have begun their own preparations for Peak Oil, and are documenting the process. The Kinsale Energy Descent Action Plan out of rural Ireland is the world's first local action plan for Peak Oil, dealing with many issues including health, education, tourism and youth issues. Local organisers within the town of Willits, Califonia have begun work on the Willits Economic LocaLization Project in response to Peak Oil. http://www.transitionculture.org/ -
Kinsale EDAP editor Rob Hopkins' bloghttp://www.willitseconomiclocalization.org/

Oil Awareness Meet Ups is a grass roots awareness raising network helping people meet up and discuss peak oil. Join or start a meet-up in your neighborhood.oilawareness.meetup.com

Local Currencies and Steady State Economics: Local Currencies: Richard Douthwaite, a 'recovering economist', has proposed a number of alternative monetary systems to deal with energy decline and the associated monetary crises which might arise post-peak. Local currencies like LETS are in operation around the planet already (although LETS itself may be somewhat problematic). Experiment now with local currencies to help survive economic crises.
The Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability (FEASTA) has some of Richard Douthwaite's publications available for free online, including entire books as well as masses of other excellent research and articles by other writers, relating not just to economics and local currencies, but to various aspects of sustainability.
See also: www.communitycurrency.org/resources.htmlSteady State Economics: The Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy (CASSE) promote alternatives to the ecological insanity of growth based economics. Read their position paper here:www.steadystate.org/PositiononEG.html

Intentional Communities: Intentional Community (IC) is an inclusive term for ecovillages, cohousing, residential land trusts, communes, student co-ops, urban housing cooperatives and other related projects and dreams... ICs represent one of the sanest ways of dealing with energy peak.http://www.ic.org/gen.ecovillage.orghttp://www.cohousing.org/

Surviving Peak Oil: A good collection of essays edited by Dale Allen Pfieffer on "what measures can people of limited means undertake to ease their transition into a post-petroleum world."http://www.survivingpeakoil.com/

The Depletion Protocol: (previously refered to as the Uppsala or Rimini Protocol) is an ethical global political framework for sharing the world's remaining oil reserves more equitably than free market forces would allow, to avoid resource wars and profiteering. Help promote it: Introduction to the Depletion Protocol by Colin Campbell (Word .doc format)
How to avoid oil wars, terrorism, and economic collapse by Richard Heinberg

Tradable Energy Quotas (TEQs) are a system for rationing fuel which includes everyone – individuals, industry and the Government – and which enables users to sell any rations they do not use. http://www.teqs.net/

Lobbying: Lobby governments to spend now on renewable energy and improving agricultural practices. Many facts are summarized in the following 'convince sheet' by Bruce Thomson: greatchange.org/ov-thomson,convince_sheet.html

Online Discussions:Got questions? Want to talk with like-minded people? See these links:http://www.peakoil.com/ - online news and forum http://www.peakoilaction.org/ - meet people on and offline groups.yahoo.com/group/RunningOnEmpty3 - a group for Peak Oil beginers groups.yahoo.com/group/EnergyResources - original peak oil focused email listgroups.yahoo.com/group/RunningOnEmpty2 - a more solutions, self-sufficiency focused listgroups.yahoo.com/group/EnergyRoundTable - a group emphasizing discussion and politics There are numerous local mailing lists too, many on yahoo can be found at this link:groups.yahoo.com/search?query=peak%20oil&ss=1


3. Other links

Where can I get more information?

Several articles already published on this site provide good introductions to this topic:The coming global energy crunch. A great introductory article by Aaron NaparstekPlan War and the Hubbert Oil Curve, an interview with Richard HeinbergThe Petroleum Plateau by Richard Heinberg on the current plateau in world oil production.Debunking the mainstream media's lies about oil by Dale Allen Pfeiffer The oil we eat by Richard Manning looks at modern agricultures' dependence on fossil fuels

There are some great introductory websites like:Wolf at the Door: A Beginner's Guide to Oil Depletion - available in French, Polish and English.Life After The Oil Crash – a question and answer style introduction. Peak Oil Center - a very concise introduction.

Some excellent original media about peak oil is being generated at:Global Public Media - many excellent interviews in multiple formatsFrom The Wilderness Publications - passionate site with a geopolitical and conspiracy themes

Research and reference articles can be found at: ASPO - original research from The Association for the Study of Peak Oil & GasASPO Ireland - The Irish branch of ASPO through which Colin Campbell now publishes the ASPO monthly newsletterDieOff.com - an alarming but scholarly collection of research. The original Peak Oil website.
More energy news: Crisis Energética - in Spanish
More links, and books to read: An excellent list of links is maintained here:www.dynamiclist.com/?worldview/peakoil

Peak Oil Webring

4 days of holliday communism

End of June- every year the same procedure ... on an old russian military airfield FUSION rises, the biggest holiday and party camp all oer the place. 4 days of holiday communism is the motto and so the programme covers it all. Music of all kinds, theatre, performance and cinema and last but not least the whole spectrum of installations, interaction and communication.
As different as the people showing up their intentions are ... unified by the look for individualism and freedom everybody finds her/his own way of action. Free of boundaries and prejudice.
Far from everyday life there are 4 days of parallel society of a special kind ... looking for a possibly-better-world.

But we also feel that there is no real place where this all comes true but nevertheless and especially due to this it´s so important that FUSIONists from everywhere meet here and feel what makes us all brothers and sisters....the desperate search for more than THIS life can offer.....it´s all that we want and we want it NOW. Right now.

Francis Bacon (1909-1992)

The leech's kiss, the squid's embrace,
The prurient ape's defiling touch
And do you like the human race? No, not much
Aldoux Huxley -- Ape and Essence

"I myself and the life I've lived happen to be more profoundly curious than my work. Then sometimes, when I think about it, I'd prefer everything about my life to blow up after I die and disappear".
Francis Bacon

I opened this short post on Bacon by a quote from Huxley for a reason. First let me say that Bacon's paintings are really quite unsuitable for electronic viewing and must be experienced upfront. Sorry—back to Huxley. Huxley's last two works--after realizing that he was dying are: Doors of Perception, and Heaven and Hell. Although Huxley has always been a savvy commentator on arts and literature in his novels--these last two books are the only ones that directly approach Huxley's unique philosophy of arts.

The idea is that Huxley while on LSD, observes.... with the help of his second wife who was a concert violinist turned psychiatrist-- Works of visual arts, music, and literature in hopes of finding clues to the nature of creative process, beauty, and collective consciousness. Huxley's observations are astonishing at times, but he is driving at something even bigger--that there is a relationship between genius on one hand, and Psychosis and Schizophrenia on the other. He suggests that Blake's Poetry can only be imagined by an alternated mind --that his visions were not only the result of Opium (the use of which by Blake is well documented ) but also madness--that Van Gough did not imagine a violet sky with big yellow stars reflected in the dark blue water of the quay--he actually saw them that way. The examples are numerous in the two books and I recommend reading them to (well, almost) everyone.

I visited in 1993 an exhibition of Bacon’s works that had traveled through Europe--at the tiny Lugano Museum of Art which was literally overrun by the extensive show (there were paintings hanging in the stairs) . The result was overwhelming and well worth the long wait outside. It was there that I realized that bacon's paintings or at least important ones are reflections of what he had seen, and that seeing them had made him mad -- he merely was trying to affect us with his madness. His paintings so emotionally involve you that at one point I found myself under moonlight in a field of tall green blades of the most incredible dark-green where a boy couched on his knees where I could only see his buttocks, was softly crying.

Bacon remained to his last days a difficult, and unhappy person, you can see in his works reflections of a tormented life, a life that at the height of his success and recognition -- he was unable to accept. To me Bacon and William S. Burroughs are two shadows cast from the same central object during the middle of last century-- you can visualize Burroughs’ novels by looking at Bacons works as you can read Bacon’s works in Burroughs’ novels. By the way I am interested in knowing if the two men had met in real life. Anyone knows the answer?

Links: Artcyclopedia, wiki, James Hyman, Bacon in Tehran , exhibition at Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Francis Bacon.cx