In this week’s Economist, Chevron is running a series of ads on alternative fuels and sources of oil that are absurdly out of touch with reality. The first opens with this ‘amazing’ factoid:

"With current technology, one acre of soybeans yields 60 gallons of clean-burning biodiesel fuel."

Let’s think about this. Say I’m a farmer and I’m growing 100 acres of soy beans. If I turn them into fuel I’ll end up with 6000 gallons of biodiesel. At 55 gallons to the barrel, I’ll have 110 barrels of fuel. At $75 bucks a barrel I just spent an entire growing season to realize a gross of $8250. before any expenses. This makes no business sense at all unless the government is subsidizing this farmer to grow soy for fuel, which in fact is what’s going on. We’re paying huge amounts of money to generate fuel so we can sell it at a huge loss and declare ourselves to be dedicated to ‘alternatives’. Bunk!

The next ad is about Oil Sands as a source of fuel. They gloss over the fact that it not only costs more to produce than its worth, but also that it is extremely destructive to the environment.

At least British Pretroleum pays lip service to conservation and true alternatives like wind and wave power. However I don’t buy that line either.

These oil companies are not our friends, whatever they say.

Exxon Mobil announced record earnings increases yesterday of 36% over the same quarter last year. Let’s look at this both from a global perspective and a personal one. We are in a regional war which would not be taking place were the region not oil-rich. This isn’t a theory- we’re alledgedly fighting terrorism which is funded by oil money. Remember 19 of the 9/11 terrorists were Saudis.

Oil is a commodity which means its price is driven by market conditions rather than brand quality or added value. Therefore, all things being equal, if light sweet crude rises a penny a gallon, then gas should rise exactly the same amount and oil company profits should remain steady. If they don’t and gas rises proportionately higher than an increase in the underlying cost then we are seeing additional mark-ups added, hence higher profits. If your local station does it, it’s called goudging; if ExoonMobil does it, its called profits. I call it profiteering.

Profiteering, which is illegal, is taking advantage of wartime or disaster conditions and scarcity to make higher than normal profits on a product. Our 2600 dead soldiers and the thousands of maimed and wounded soldiers and the innocent civilians dead in the middle east are the source of these profit opportunities. It is malignant. If these oil companies are willing to increase profits based on the misfortune of others then we certainly can’t expect them to care a whit about climate change, regardless of what their ad campaigns say.

Now to the personal:

Coincidentally, I filled my tank this morning at an Exxon Mobil. I paid $3.18 a gallon and the fill-up was $46. (four cylinder Honda Accord). This is about twice what I paid a year ago. These increases have decreased my ability to buy other stuff by about $45 a month or $540 a year. This loss of discretionary income takes that money out of the rest of the economy including local businesses and global businesses and puts it into burnt fuel and oil company profits. Their obscene profiteering is literally coming out of everyone else’s pockets.

And what is our government doing? Absolutely nothing.

Check out this graphic. It shows the birth and pathes of last year’s hurricanes. According to this story in New Scientist, they are just beginning a research project to look at the conditions on the west coast of North Africa to figure out why it is the nursery for virtually all Atlantic hurricanes and tropical storms.

Wonder why they waited until now?

Quick note: looking at the local weather in the paper at lunch. The stats are odd. Rainfall is more than twice normal month to date (~6" vs. 3") with four days to go and thuderstorms predicted through the weekend.

Cooling degree days (days above 65 degrees requiring air conditioning) 411 ytd to date vs. 310 normal, a 32.4% increase.

These are not minor changes.

Update 7/30/06: We got another 2" of rain yesterday bringing our MTD total to 8" or 266% of normal. Things are downright tropical and we’re forecast for three days in the 90s this week. This is cool compared to most the country where they’re seeing 100+ in many areas.
150+ people died from heat in CA this week.