Burner Trouble- global warming and climate change from a personal perspective

With oil hitting the $120/barrel mark today and local gas prices here in Rochester hovering around the $4 level, Dan Dorfman of the NY Post is predicting prices reaching $7-10 gallon by next year based on a move of oil prices over the $200 level.

A number of things reinforce this beyond those things he covers in his op-ed piece. First, much of the world’s oil production takes place in extremely unstable geopolitical regions. Exxon Mobil has shut down its 800,000 barrel a day Nigerian sources due to strikes. A UK union strike has shut down a BP oil pipeline that supplies one quarter of that country’s oil. Oil production in Iraq is corrupt and undependable due to the war, Iraqi incompetence and the US failure to modernize and repair war damaged facilities. Venezuala’s Chavez sees oil as a weapon to advance his nutty authoritarian agenda. And on and on.

Demand worldwide has skyrocketed and this will only increase. It appears that we have reached the tipping point on oil energy costs. A doubling of fuel prices means a doubling of the cost of virtually everything else except wages. And there is no going back.

As I write this oil prices are at $105.97, an historical high. So what is US policy on energy? Apparently it consists of our President begging OPEC to increase production to bring prices down, which they refused to do. This begging is sickening in its stupidity. Does he not have any understanding of how markets work? We may be OPEC’s biggest customer but they know that China and India will soon surpass us so why lower prices? This administration destroyed our credibility in the Middle East and now doesn’t understand that the oil producing nations may not need us in the long run.

Get ready for $5/gallon gas (which Bush won’t know about until a reporter asks him).

During a press conference last week Bush asked what he thought about economists’ predictions that we would see $4+ gas prices by early spring. He was surprised and said he had not heard that. This is frightening to say the least. The President of the United States, who started a war over oil that is estimated to cost us $5 trillion dollars before it is over, doesn’t know how much gas costs. I wonder if he knows what a burden this is for the average family- prices have tripled during his administration. And it’s not just gas. Heating oil and energy prices have skyrocketed.

Today oil passed the inflation-adjusted high reached during the Arab Oil Crisis of the late seventies and early eighties. World stock markets are in a tailspin. The House of Representatives have passed a bill ending $17 billion in handouts to oil companies (who made $146 billion in profits last year) and moving that money into alternative energy tax credits. These credits are critical to encouraging rapid development of sustainable energy alternatives that can help us end our oil addiction. Yet Republicans in the Senate are blocking this bill and the President is threatening a veto. This partisan block voting is destroying our economy in exchange for short term gain by an industry sector intimately associated with this Administration.

David Sassoon writes:

“With this e-mail, I want to introduce myself and bring you a most important story from Bali, Indonesia that is not being reported in the US media.

It comes from an eyewitness who tells the dramatic tale of how the nations of the world, assembled there to make progress on climate change, overcame the singular obstruction of the Bush delegation.

“Then occurred one of the most remarkable sounds that has perhaps ever been heard in the annals of international diplomacy–like a collective global groan–descending then to a murmer, then increasing in volume to a full-throated expression of rage and anger and booing and jeering, lasting for a full minute, so that finally the Minister had to call the meeting back to order.”

It brought tears to my eyes. Please read it. The link is here:

Of course, I would like everyone in America to read this story, so please amplify it in every way possible.

I hope you find the story of interest, and will also take a minute to look around and get acquainted with my blog called SolveClimate.”

Thanks, Dave.