<Lots of wells needing enhanced recovery in US are near demand sources for electricity.>
David, that's true, for the USA, but as a solution to alleged greenhouse warming, it's a minor contributor at best. All contributions are welcome of course.
I guess that new technology and ways of life will be the actual outcome. A bit like generals want to fight the previous war, but the next one is nothing like it, they prepare for nuclear war with cavalry. I suspect that either there is no real problem and even if there is, more efficient technologies and different ways of life will be the answer. As examples: telecommuting, internet solutions to physical needs - many journeys are to get or give information which people would prefer to transact in cyberspace, mind jobs instead of physical jobs, a rapidly dropping human population, photovoltaics becoming competitively priced, crops for energy, insulation, turbine/fuel cell combinations with 75% efficiency.
<Actually the Princeton dudes want to strip out the hydrogen as mobile fuel source.>
Doing what with the carbon? Perhaps burning it in power stations using oxygen rather than air, then compressing the carbon dioxide and pouring it 400 metres under the ocean or dissolving it. I mentioned that my ex-boss did work on hydrogen as a mobile fuel in the early 1970s with Shell. He thought it was a good idea.
<I see what you mean now. Possibly in part at least. Lot of volcanic gas emissions are sulfur oxides and carbon dioxide, steam I guess too.>
Yes, the gases from volcanoes, which there is a lot of, come from the subducted material. When you subduct water, radiolarian ooze and the other stuff on the floor of the ocean, you are taking down hydrocarbons, water, bones and things which settle on the ocean floor. When those are super-compressed, super-heated, then let out a volcanic vent, it is quite a chemical reactor, which mixes with oxygen from the air and "BANG". The gases in pumice are not from air. They are the liquids in the magma which changed to gas as the pressure came off as it flew up the vent and into the atmosphere. That's my theory anyway.
<The Aussie isn't collapsing at the moment :) Don't know about your flightless currency :)> My frightened little stash of Kiwi cash is hiding in the bush and doing very well [now] compared with the US$. Bear in mind that the flightless Kiwi tried to get airborne 5 years ago, but crashed back to earth, all the way down to 39c to the US$ a year or so ago; now at 43c, so back on its feet with beak out of the mud.
<This discussion is relevant to price of fuel commodities which were partly responsible for current US crisis so I don't think it is irrelevant.>
I agree and I was ranting over two years ago that we would get a substantial lurch down in the markets when oil zoomed from $8.50 a barrel at Xmas 1998 to $33 a barrel. SUV drivers can't take increases like that without feeling it. Also, the dot.bombs had to come back to earth and the general irrational enthusiasm had to be skooshed. So it was a crunch waiting to happen.
While there might be more to go, the majority of the tidying up has been done and there has been NO financial collapse, which I have feared for 5 years. I wondered what the heck would happen when the debt levels were tested in a serious down market. They have now been tested and margin calls and market clearing have successfully handled the situation, combined with my idol printing lots of new money, as expected, and lowering interest rates, as expected.
Yes, the test isn't totally over, but I had worried that the whole thing would go like a stack of cards, with each debtor's equity collapsing, forcing selling, which would drive prices down, taking out the next creditor who would have to sell, which would lower prices, which would get the next creditor, and so on down the debtor list until the whole business imploded in massive deflation, economic collapse and mayhem. We would have had plenty of money, but little economic activity because the mess would be too great.
Even in the very worst of the manic, speculative, margined to the max zone, the dot.coms and Nasdaq techstocks, the collapse was major, but not out of control. It was really a reversion to more realistic valuations, which many say are still too high, so it wasn't an economic collapse.
It was simply the manic, irrationally exuberant, being shown the door. Investing is not a simple activity, with profit guaranteed by following the herd. A lot of people have had their savings destroyed, lives disrupted and are back at work.
The argument now [here in this stream] is that the whole USA is still in the manic phase, with lifestyle expectations based on the false premise that while the USA might not actually be superhuman, it is in any way that matters; the world owes the USA a living. Well, it doesn't. But for now, the USA is providing a continuing economic, legal, political and military system which gives safe harbour to investors compared with the ugly scene in their home village where the tribal chief takes the goods and cargo-cults reign supreme.
My bet remains that the productive enterprises of the USA are robust [for the most part - the weak have already been sorted out] but the currency value represents the USA's lifestyle expectations which are overinflated. Perhaps not greatly and maybe their expectations are reasonable given the success of their companies in the globalizing world.
There are a lot of companies like QUALCOMM, Microsoft, Intel, IDEC, Globalstar, Motorola, Exxon, Ford, Boeing, which are supplying the world with the means to live in the 21st century. Yes, there are other companies doing similar things in other countries, but the USA is pre-eminent. It might be that the world does indeed owe the USA a living via the shareholders and employees of those companies and the taxes they pay to the government.
So, I own no US$, but will own the US companies [QUALCOMM and Globalstar assets] while holding survival house and cash in NZ. If the US$ is revalued, the productive value of QUALCOMM, Globalstar, Microsoft etc, which sell to the world, won't go away. They are essential industries in the 21st century, not lifestyle luxury providers. So I expect their share prices will go up, denominated in US$, if not other currencies, though even there I think they will go up.
That's the short version folks!
Mqurice |
