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Federal Authorities Launch Investigation Into West Virginia River Spill

January 11, 2014 4:12 pm / Leave a comment

Federal Authorities Launch Investigation Into West Virginia River Spill.

 

investigation west virginia spill

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — A company president apologized to West Virginia residents for a chemical leak that got into a public water treatment system, and a state agency ordered Freedom Industries to remove its remaining chemicals from the site.

About 300,000 people in nine counties entered their third day Saturday without being able to drink, bathe in, or wash dishes or clothes with their tap water. The only allowed use of the water was for flushing toilets.

Officials remain unclear when it might be safe again.

Federal authorities, including the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, began investigating how the foaming agent escaped from the Freedom Industries plant and seeped into the Elk River. Just how much of the chemical leaked into the river was not yet known.

“We’d like to start by sincerely apologizing to the people in the affected counties of West Virginia,” company President Gary Southern said. “Our friends and our neighbors, this incident is extremely unfortunate, unanticipated and we are very, very sorry for the disruptions to everybody’s daily life this incident has caused.”

Some residents, including John Bonham of Cross Lanes, were willing to accept Southern’s apology.

“Yeah, I understand that stuff can happen,” said Bonham, who also works in the chemical industry. “I don’t think it’s going to get him out of legal liability. OSHA is the one they’re going to have to answer to.”

Officials are working with a Tennessee company that makes the chemical to determine how much can be in the water without it posing harm to residents, said Jeff McIntyre, president of West Virginia American Water.

“We don’t know that the water’s not safe. But I can’t say that it is safe,” McIntyre said Friday.

For now, there is no way to treat the tainted water aside from flushing the system until it’s in low-enough concentrations to be safe, a process that could take days.

The leak was discovered Thursday morning from the bottom of a storage tank. Southern said the company worked all day and through the night to remove the chemical from the site and take it elsewhere. Vacuum trucks were used to remove the chemical from the ground at the site.

“We have mitigated the risk, we believe, in terms of further material leaving this facility,” Southern said. He said the company didn’t know how much had leaked.

The tank that leaked holds at least 40,000 gallons, said state Department of Environmental Protection spokesman Tom Aluise, although officials believe no more than 5,000 gallons leaked from the tank. Some of that was contained before escaping into the river, Aluise said.

Freedom Industries was ordered Friday night to remove chemicals from its remaining above-ground tanks, Aluise added.

The company was already cited for causing air pollution stemming from the odor first reported Thursday, Aluise said.

The primary component in the foaming agent that leaked is the chemical 4-methylcyclohexane methanol. The spill has forced businesses, restaurants and schools to shut down and forced the Legislature to cancel its business for the day.

Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin said the Federal Emergency Management Agency and several companies were sending bottled water and other supplies for residents.

“If you are low on bottled water, don’t panic because help is on the way,” Tomblin said.

At a Kroger near a DuPont plant along the Kanawha River, customers learned the grocery store had been out since early Friday.

Robert Stiver was unable to find water at that and at least a dozen other stores in the area and worried about how he’d make sure his cats had drinkable water.

“I’m lucky. I can get out and look for water. But what about the elderly? They can’t get out. They need someone to help them,” he said.

___

Associated Press researchers Rhonda Shafner and Monika Mathur in New York and AP writers Jonathan Mattise, Brendan Farrington, Mitch Weiss and Pam Ramsey in Charleston; Ray Henry in Atlanta; and John Flesher in Traverse City, Mich., contributed to this report.

Peak Oil Is Dead | Michael T. Klare

January 11, 2014 3:00 pm / 1 Comment on Peak Oil Is Dead | Michael T. Klare

Peak Oil Is Dead | Michael T. Klare.

Long Live Peak Oil!

Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com

Among the big energy stories of 2013, “peak oil” — the once-popular notion that worldwide oil production would soon reach a maximum level and begin an irreversible decline — was thoroughly discredited.  The explosive development of shale oil and other unconventional fuels in the United States helped put it in its grave.

As the year went on, the eulogies came in fast and furious. “Today, it is probably safe to say we have slayed ‘peak oil’ once and for all, thanks to the combination of new shale oil and gas production techniques,” declared Rob Wile, an energy and economics reporter for Business Insider.  Similar comments from energy experts were commonplace, prompting an R.I.P. headline at Time.com announcing, “Peak Oil is Dead.”

Not so fast, though.  The present round of eulogies brings to mind the Mark Twain’s famous line: “The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”  Before obits for peak oil theory pile up too high, let’s take a careful look at these assertions.  Fortunately, theInternational Energy Agency (IEA), the Paris-based research arm of the major industrialized powers, recently did just that — and the results were unexpected.  While not exactly reinstalling peak oil on its throne, it did make clear that much of the talk of a perpetual gusher of American shale oil is greatly exaggerated.  The exploitation of those shale reserves may delay the onset of peak oil for a year or so, the agency’s experts noted, but the long-term picture “has not changed much with the arrival of [shale oil].”

The IEA’s take on this subject is especially noteworthy because its assertion only a year earlier that the U.S. would overtake Saudi Arabia as the world’s number one oil producer sparked the “peak oil is dead” deluge in the first place.  Writing in the 2012 edition of itsWorld Energy Outlook, the agency claimed not only that “the United States is projected to become the largest global oil producer” by around 2020, but also that with U.S. shale production and Canadian tar sands coming online, “North America becomes a net oil exporter around 2030.”

That November 2012 report highlighted the use of advanced production technologies — notably horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) — to extract oil and natural gas from once inaccessible rock, especially shale.  It also covered the accelerating exploitation of Canada’s bitumen (tar sands or oil sands), another resource previously considered too forbidding to be economical to develop.  With the output of these and other“unconventional” fuels set to explode in the years ahead, the report then suggested, the long awaited peak of world oil production could be pushed far into the future.

The release of the 2012 edition of World Energy Outlook triggered a global frenzy of speculative reporting, much of it announcing a new era of American energy abundance. “Saudi America” was the headline over one such hosanna in the Wall Street Journal.  Citing the new IEA study, that paper heralded a coming “U.S. energy boom” driven by “technological innovation and risk-taking funded by private capital.”  From then on, American energy analysts spoke rapturously of the capabilities of a set of new extractive technologies, especially fracking, to unlock oil and natural gas from hitherto inaccessible shale formations.  “This is a real energy revolution,” the Journal crowed.

But that was then. The most recent edition of World Energy Outlook, published this past November, was a lot more circumspect.  Yes, shale oil, tar sands, and other unconventional fuels will add to global supplies in the years ahead, and, yes, technology will help prolong the life of petroleum.  Nonetheless, it’s easy to forget that we are also witnessing the wholesale depletion of the world’s existing oil fields and so all these increases in shale output must be balanced against declines in conventional production.  Under ideal circumstances — high levels of investment, continuing technological progress, adequate demand and prices — it might be possible to avert an imminent peak in worldwide production, but as the latest IEA report makes clear, there is no guarantee whatsoever that this will occur.

Inching Toward the Peak

Before plunging deeper into the IEA’s assessment, let’s take a quick look at peak oil theory itself.

As developed in the 1950s by petroleum geologist M. King Hubbert, peak oil theory holdsthat any individual oil field (or oil-producing country) will experience a high rate of production growth during initial development, when drills are first inserted into a oil-bearing reservoir.  Later, growth will slow, as the most readily accessible resources have been drained and a greater reliance has to be placed on less productive deposits.  At this point — usually when about half the resources in the reservoir (or country) have been extracted — daily output reaches a maximum, or “peak,” level and then begins to subside.  Of course, the field or fields will continue to produce even after peaking, but ever more effort and expense will be required to extract what remains.  Eventually, the cost of production will exceed the proceeds from sales, and extraction will be terminated.

For Hubbert and his followers, the rise and decline of oil fields is an inevitable consequence of natural forces: oil exists in pressurized underground reservoirs and so will be forced up to the surface when a drill is inserted into the ground.  However, once a significant share of the resources in that reservoir has been extracted, the field’s pressure will drop and artificial means — water, gas, or chemical insertion — will be needed to restore pressure and sustain production.  Sooner or later, such means become prohibitively expensive.

Peak oil theory also holds that what is true of an individual field or set of fields is true of the world as a whole.  Until about 2005, it did indeed appear that the globe was edging ever closer to a peak in daily oil output, as Hubbert’s followers had long predicted.  (He died in 1989.)  Several recent developments have, however, raised questions about the accuracy of the theory.  In particular, major private oil companies have taken to employing advanced technologies to increase the output of the reservoirs under their control, extending the lifetime of existing fields through the use of what’s called “enhanced oil recovery,” or EOR.  They’ve also used new methods to exploit fields once considered inaccessible in places like the Arctic and deep oceanic waters, thereby opening up the possibility of a most un-Hubbertian future.

In developing these new technologies, the privately owned “international oil companies” (IOCs) were seeking to overcome their principal handicap: most of the world’s “easy oil” — the stuff Hubbert focused on that comes gushing out of the ground whenever a drill is inserted — has already been consumed or is controlled by state-owned “national oil companies” (NOCs), including Saudi Aramco, the National Iranian Oil Company, and the Kuwait National Petroleum Company, among others.  According to the IEA, such state companies control about 80 percent of the world’s known petroleum reserves, leaving relatively little for the IOCs to exploit.

To increase output from the limited reserves still under their control — mostly located in North America, the Arctic, and adjacent waters — the private firms have been working hard to develop techniques to exploit “tough oil.”  In this, they have largely succeeded: they are now bringing new petroleum streams into the marketplace and, in doing so, have shaken the foundations of peak oil theory.

Those who say that “peak oil is dead” cite just this combination of factors.  By extending the lifetime of existing fields through EOR and adding entire new sources of oil, the global supply can be expanded indefinitely.  As a result, they claim, the world possesses a “relatively boundless supply” of oil (and natural gas).  This, for instance, was the way Barry Smitherman of the Texas Railroad Commission (which regulates that state’s oil industry)described the global situation at a recent meeting of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists.

Peak Technology

In place of peak oil, then, we have a new theory that as yet has no name but might be called techno-dynamism.  There is, this theory holds, no physical limit to the global supply of oil so long as the energy industry is prepared to, and allowed to, apply its technological wizardry to the task of finding and producing more of it.  Daniel Yergin, author of the industry classics, The Prize and The Quest, is a key proponent of this theory.  He recently summed upthe situation this way: “Advances in technology take resources that were not physically accessible and turn them into recoverable reserves.”  As a result, he added, “estimates of the total global stock of oil keep growing.”

From this perspective, the world supply of petroleum is essentially boundless.  In addition to “conventional” oil — the sort that comes gushing out of the ground — the IEA identifies six other potential streams of petroleum liquids: natural gas liquids; tar sands and extra-heavy oil; kerogen oil (petroleum solids derived from shale that must be melted to become usable); shale oil; coal-to-liquids (CTL); and gas-to-liquids (GTL).  Together, these “unconventional” streams could theoretically add several trillion barrels of potentially recoverable petroleum to the global supply, conceivably extending the Oil Age hundreds of years into the future (and in the process, via climate change, turning the planet into an uninhabitable desert).

But just as peak oil had serious limitations, so, too, does techno-dynamism.  At its core is a belief that rising world oil demand will continue to drive the increasingly costly investments in new technologies required to exploit the remaining hard-to-get petroleum resources.  As suggested in the 2013 edition of the IEA’s World Energy Outlook, however, this belief should be treated with considerable skepticism.

Among the principal challenges to the theory are these:

1. Increasing Technology Costs: While the costs of developing a resource normally decline over time as industry gains experience with the technologies involved, Hubbert’s law of depletion doesn’t go away.  In other words, oil firms invariably develop the easiest “tough oil” resources first, leaving the toughest (and most costly) for later.  For example, the exploitation of Canada’s tar sands began with the strip-mining of deposits close to the surface.  Because those are becoming exhausted, however, energy firms are now going after deep-underground reserves using far costlier technologies.  Likewise, many of the most abundant shale oil deposits in North Dakota have now been depleted, requiring anincreasing pace of drilling to maintain production levels.  As a result, the IEA reports, the cost of developing new petroleum resources will continually increase: up to $80 per barrel for oil obtained using advanced EOR techniques, $90 per barrel for tar sands and extra-heavy oil, $100 or more for kerogen and Arctic oil, and $110 for CTL and GTL.  The market may not, however, be able to sustain levels this high, putting such investments in doubt.

2. Growing Political and Environmental Risk: By definition, tough oil reserves are located in problematic areas.  For example, an estimated 13 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil lies in the Arctic, along with 30 percent of its untapped natural gas.  The environmental risks associated with their exploitation under the worst of weather conditions imaginable will quickly become more evident — and so, faced with the rising potential for catastrophic spills in a melting Arctic, expect a commensurate increase in political opposition to such drilling.  In fact, a recent increase has sparked protests in both Alaska and Russia, including the much-publicized September 2013 attempt by activists from Greenpeace toscale a Russian offshore oil platform — an action that led to their seizure and arrest by Russian commandos.  Similarly, expanded fracking operations have provoked a steady increase in anti-fracking activism.  In response to such protests and other factors, oil firms are being forced to adopt increasingly stringent environmental protections, pumping up the cost of production further.

3. Climate-Related Demand Reduction: The techno-optimist outlook assumes that oil demand will keep rising, prompting investors to provide the added funds needed to develop the technologies required.  However, as the effects of rampant climate change accelerate, more and more polities are likely to try to impose curbs of one sort or another on oil consumption, suppressing demand — and so discouraging investment.  This is already happening in the United States, where mandated increases in vehicle fuel-efficiency standards are expected to significantly reduce oil consumption.  Future “demand destruction” of this sort is bound to impose a downward pressure on oil prices, diminishing the inclination of investors to finance costly new development projects.

Combine these three factors, and it is possible to conceive of a “technology peak” not unlike the peak in oil output originally envisioned by M. King Hubbert.  Such a techno-peak is likely to occur when the “easy” sources of “tough” oil have been depleted, opponents of fracking and other objectionable forms of production have imposed strict (and costly) environmental regulations on drilling operations, and global demand has dropped below a level sufficient to justify investment in costly extractive operations.  At that point, global oil production will decline even if supplies are “boundless” and technology is still capable of unlocking more oil every year.

Peak Oil Reconsidered

Peak oil theory, as originally conceived by Hubbert and his followers, was largely governed by natural forces.  As we have seen, however, these can be overpowered by the application of increasingly sophisticated technology.  Reservoirs of energy once considered inaccessible can be brought into production, and others once deemed exhausted can be returned to production; rather than being finite, the world’s petroleum base now appears virtually inexhaustible.

Does this mean that global oil output will continue rising, year after year, without ever reaching a peak?  That appears unlikely.  What seems far more probable is that we will see a slow tapering of output over the next decade or two as costs of production rise and climate change — along with opposition to the path chosen by the energy giants — gains momentum.  Eventually, the forces tending to reduce supply will overpower those favoring higher output, and a peak in production will indeed result, even if not due to natural forces alone.

Such an outcome is, in fact, envisioned in one of three possible energy scenarios the IEA’s mainstream experts lay out in the latest edition of World Energy Outlook. The first assumes no change in government policies over the next 25 years and sees world oil supply rising from 87 to 110 million barrels per day by 2035; the second assumes some effort to curb carbon emissions and so projects output reaching “only” 101 million barrels per day by the end of the survey period.

It’s the third trajectory, the “450 Scenario,” that should raise eyebrows.  It assumes that momentum develops for a global drive to keep greenhouse gas emissions below 450 parts per million — the maximum level at which it might be possible to prevent global average temperatures from rising above 2 degrees Celsius (and so cause catastrophic climate effects).  As a result, it foresees a peak in global oil output occurring around 2020 at about 91 million barrels per day, with a decline to 78 million barrels by 2035.

It would be premature to suggest that the “450 Scenario” will be the immediate roadmap for humanity, since it’s clear enough that, for the moment, we are on a highway to hell that combines the IEA’s first two scenarios.  Bear in mind, moreover, that many scientists believea global temperature increase of even 2 degrees Celsius would be enough to produce catastrophic climate effects.  But as the effects of climate change become more pronounced in our lives, count on one thing: the clamor for government action will grow more intense, and so eventually we’re likely to see some variation of the 450 Scenario take shape.  In the process, the world’s demand for oil will be sharply constricted, eliminating the incentive to invest in costly new production schemes.

The bottom line: Global peak oil remains in our future, even if not purely for the reasons given by Hubbert and his followers.  With the gradual disappearance of “easy” oil, the major private firms are being forced to exploit increasingly tough, hard-to-reach reserves, thereby driving up the cost of production and potentially discouraging new investment at a time when climate change and environmental activism are on the rise.

Peak oil is dead!  Long live peak oil!

Michael T. Klare, a TomDispatch regular, is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and the author, most recently, of The Race for What’s Left.  A documentary movie version of his book Blood and Oil is available from the Media Education Foundation.

The secret to fixing a pollution problem: Do something about it | – Environmental Defence

January 11, 2014 3:00 pm / Leave a comment

The secret to fixing a pollution problem: Do something about it | – Environmental Defence.

Canada has a problem. Our greenhouse gas pollution is soaring. With climate impacts hitting harder and closer to home (ice storms, polar vortexes, floods…), our country is recklessly racking up a huge carbon bill that will saddle future generations with a debt impossible to pay off.

In a new report prepared for the United Nations, for the first time Environment Canada did the number crunching all the way to 2030. We’ve known for awhile that our 2020 target has become a mission impossible. But this report also paints a sorry picture of 2030, where Canada still doesn’t have its act together and climate pollution, specifically from the tar sands, continues to skyrocket (check out this detailed analysis by the Pembina Institute).

The report reaffirms that the growth in pollution from the tar sands – if the tar sands are allowed to continue expanding as projected – will wipe out any progress made to reduce emissions in any other sector, including Ontario’s coal phase-out, B.C.’s carbon tax, or other provinces’ energy efficiency and carbon reduction measures.

The result is while some pull up their bootstraps and clean up their acts, soaring pollution from the tar sands will cancel out everyone else’s hard work. And this means if Canada is to meet a national goal to cut emissions, some regions and sectors will need to do more than their fair share because one sector – oil – is getting off scott-free.

We hear a lot of talk these days about pipelines as “nation building projects” and being in the “national interest.” But if tar sands expansion is allowed, made possible by big new pipelines, this is a recipe for dividing our country, not uniting it.

Here’s why: At some point, Canada will need to get serious about reducing emissions, and how the carbon pie is divided between regions will become important. We can expect regions to speak up loudly if they’re asked to do more than their fare share to reduce carbon emissions because the oil industry is being irresponsible.

All provinces have a stake in major pipeline proposals like Enbridge’s Northern Gateway and TransCanada’s Energy East. There’s the tangible danger that these pipelines could spill tar sands oil into forests, farmland and drinking water sources. And then there’s the less tangible – but critical – impact they would have on the amount of carbon the country is pumping into the atmosphere and the impacts of climate change.

Will Ontario, British Columbia or Quebec be keen to do more than their fair share to cut carbon to make up for the impact of these pipelines? Doubtful. And they should not be asked to. All sectors and regions will need to reduce emissions. For the oil sector, that means keeping production at current levels and cleaning up existing operations – not expanding. It also means seeing the government put in place robust regulations on the oil sector that will see emissions go down, rather than up. Even the weak regulationsunder discussion now have just been punted  ‘a couple of years’ further down the road by the Prime Minister.

The idea that Canada may fail to rein in soaring emissions by 2030 may not seem like the brightest news to kick off the New Year, but there is an important caveat to this story. It can only come true if industry and government get their way when it comes to rapid and reckless tar sands expansion.

The good news is that new pipelines and oil projects aren’t getting a free ride these days. With ever-growing public concern about moving oil (by tanker, rail, or pipeline), a world feeling the early impacts (and paying the price) of a changing climate, and new conversations in the financial sector about the risks of investing in high-carbon fuels, the tar sands are facing a serious uphill battle.

The world is waking up to climate change and the environmental devastation of projects like the tar sands, and while our current government chooses to leave their head in the sand, Canadians are also standing up to demand the safe, smart, clean energy future we deserve.

EIA International Energy Statistics for August and September » Peak Oil BarrelPeak Oil Barrel

January 11, 2014 2:59 pm / Leave a comment

EIA International Energy Statistics for August and September » Peak Oil BarrelPeak Oil Barrel.

The EIA has finally published its International Energy Statistics. The last one had July data. This one is has two months updates, August and September. All the data I publish comes is Crude+Condensate from January 2000 through September 2013.

Again, all data is C+C in thousand barrels per day with the last data point September 2013.

World

As you can see from the chart World C+C production has leveled out in the last year and one half. September 2013 is slightly lower than February 2012.

There were a couple of major revisions in the July data. Canada was revised down by 269 kb/d while Non-OPEC was revised down by 228 kb/d. There were other small revisions upward. OPEC C+C had no revisions so that left World C+C for July revised down by 228 kb/d.

Both the USA and Canada are on a real tear, owing of course to Light Tight Oil and the Oil Sands. Their combined production is up about 1.9 mb/d since in one year, since last September.

USA + Canada

But they are the only ones on a tear. Almost everyone else is flat to down with a few small producers up slightly.

World Les US & Canada

World less USA and Canada is actually below where it was in June 2004 and is swiftly approaching the bottom it hit after the crash of 2008. The peak was in January 11 and they are down 2.65 mb/d since that point.

Actually only Light Tight Oil is keeping the world from declaring peak.

World Less USA

World less USA is down over 1.5 mb/d since the peak of January 2011.

Non-OPEC is up on the strength of the USA and Canada.

Non-OPEC

However the EIA has OPEC C+C down considerably.

OPEC C+C

Charts of all Non-OPEC producers are now up on the Non-OPEC Chartspage.

Also a new page has been added, World Crude Oil Production by Geographical Area

Tar Heel Scandal and the Myth of the University » The Epoch Times

January 11, 2014 10:42 am / 1 Comment on Tar Heel Scandal and the Myth of the University » The Epoch Times

Tar Heel Scandal and the Myth of the University » The Epoch Times.

The great lie of American higher education is the idea of the university.

We all believe these places exist. Not just in the physical sense–there they are–but as coherent organizations that operate with something resembling identifiable cultures, values, systems, and ideas of themselves. Our whole system of rationing, financing, and credentialing higher education depends on this notion. Yet, it is largely a myth. The American university does not actually exist as we believe it does. For evidence of this, see the academic scandal consuming the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The Raleigh News & Observer has the most comprehensive coverage of the scandal, which first came to light in 2011, when a suspended UNC football player sued to have his eligibility restored. His court documents included a paper he had submitted for a Swahili class allegedly taught by the chairman of the UNC African and Afro-American Studies Department, Julius Nyang’oro. Fans of rival NC State quickly determined that the paper had been plagiarized.

That pulled string unraveled what appears to be a major credit mill fraud operation being run with total impunity inside one of America’s premiere public research universities. Multiple independent investigations suggest that hundreds of African and Afro-American Studies Department courses offered over more than a decade, many “taught” by Nyang’oro, simply did not exist. No syllabi were created, no lectures delivered, no grading standards imposed. Hundreds of additional courses grades were changed and hundreds more “independent study” grades awarded. A large and disproportionate number of students involved were male football and basketball players. As a result, UNC’s chancellor and football coach both lost their jobs, and Nyang’oro was indicted on felony charges last week.

This is, to say the least, awkward for UNC Chapel Hill. Like all universities, particularly those with prestige, it depends on the idea that it actually exists, in the sense that a UNC Chapel Hill degree means something that is common to all other UNC Chapel Hill degrees and distinct from all degrees awarded by other universities. The elaborate marketing schemes and high-stakes admissions tournaments run by elite universities suppose that admission means something other than the act of selection itself, that the experience of going to school in Chapel Hill is tangible, identifiable, and in some way real.

In fact, none of this is true. UNC Chapel Hill is not a coherent undergraduate institution. It’s a holding company that provides shared marketing, finance, and physical plant services for a group of autonomous departments, which are in turn holding companies for autonomous scholars who teach as they please. This is the only possible explanation for the years-long, wholly undetected operation of the African and Afro-American Studies Department credit fraud scam. Or, rather, it’s the only possible explanation other than a huge, organization-wide conspiracy in which the university administration, department, and football team colluded to hand out fake grades to hundreds of athletes.

The university, of course, vehemently denies that anything resembling the latter scenario is true. Despite damning emails between Nyang’oro and the athletic department, UNC is desperately selling the story that the entire credit fraud operation was the work of just two people–Nyang’oro and an assistant–and involved no athletic department wrongdoing of any kind. That’s because while academic misconduct gets you nothing more than a wrist-slap from your accreditor and year of sad/absurd “monitoring” in which the university administration randomly checks classes to make sure they actually exist, athletic misconduct can cost the university things it actually cares about, like money, bowl appearances, and athletic scholarships.

In other words, the only way for UNC administrators to avoid blame for gross academic misconduct is to admit that academic conduct was never their concern.

Meanwhile, the football team must be saved because the intense tribal loyalty generated by big-time sports is one of the chief mechanisms employed by universities to create the illusion that they exist. I’ve lived in Chapel Hill and experienced the closest thing to full-scale Dionysian revelry one is likely to find in modern America, on Franklin Street after the men’s basketball team won it all. It was thrilling. It felt like we were one people, all of us, conquerors. But it was also an illusion (I wasn’t a student at the time), a false consciousness manufactured by the university to conceal its non-existence as an academic institution.

The cynicism and dishonesty inherent to that seep into the cracks of university life, occasionally as outright criminality but far more often as mediocrity and simple indifference. If Julius Nyang’oro had simply bothered to show up in a room on campus from time to time, say something–anything–to some “student” athletes, and hand out a bunch of A-minuses, he never would have been caught. In the modern non-university, he wouldn’t even have been doing something wrong.

This article was first published on the New America Foundation website. Read the original. 

The New America Foundation is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy institute that invests in new thinkers, breakthrough research, and policy innovation to address the most important challenges facing the United States.

Baby boomers not to blame for youth unemployment – Canada – CBC News

January 11, 2014 10:42 am / Leave a comment

Baby boomers not to blame for youth unemployment – Canada – CBC News.

Policy makers in North America and Europe have used the lump labour theory to argue in favour of curbing immigration and validating early retirement programs.Policy makers in North America and Europe have used the lump labour theory to argue in favour of curbing immigration and validating early retirement programs.

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A commonly held opinion is that older workers who stay on the job past the usual retirement dates and baby boomers just hanging on to their jobs are somehow denying young people entry to the workforce. But researchers say that’s not true.

U.S. research economist April Yanyuan Wu says there’s no evidence to support the view that retaining older workers hurts younger ones by reducing the number of jobs, and she co-authored a paper on the subject last year.

Wu, with the Center for Retirement Research at Boston, challenges the co-called “lump labour” theory, which can be traced to Henry Mayhew’s 1851 London Labour and the London Poor collection of research material.

The Victorian-era social researcher and journalist argued that cutting the number of hours employees worked would reduce unemployment.

Taking inspiration from this long-held simple premise that there are a fixed number of jobs available, some policy makers in North America and Europe have used this theory to argue in favour of curbing immigration and validating early retirement programs.

But most economists tend to frown on what they call the labour lump fallacy.

Wu points to what was happening in the 1960s and ’70s when women entered the workforce in greater numbers. There weren’t fewer jobs for men. The economy simply expanded.

Canadian labour force researcher Rosemary Venne says career patterns have changed dramatically since the post-Second World War era and the birth of the baby boom generation.

Venne, who has written papers on demographic effects on the labour force and careers with Canadian economist and demographer David Foot, says young people of today are taking “longer to launch into adulthood,” but it’s not simply a numbers game of pitting one generation against another.

Always higher youth unemployment

“I don’t see it,” she says. “One of the reasons why youth are having trouble getting established — and they always have trouble; there’s always higher youth unemployment — is they’re not as job ready as young people were maybe 20 or 30 years ago, because career patterns have changed, organizational hierarchies have changed, they’ve flattened. There are not as many entry level positions.

“So the fixed career ladder of the 1950s and ’60s has really given way to more varied career patterns where people don’t stay in a workplace.”

Organizations don’t hire the army of entry-level labour they use to and have fewer layers in the corporate hierarchy, says Venne, who teaches at the University of Saskatchewan’s Edwards School of Business. More companies are using technology, direct data entry and robotics.

Period of youth a ‘complex life stage’

“The stage of youth has become a more complex life stage. It used to be a stage that you were job-ready after high school. You jumped into a job and you left home pretty young,” Venne says, but home-leaving ages have really increased over the years.

Here are a couple of Canadian “launch” stats:

  • In 2006, 60 per cent of young people from the ages of 20 to 24 were still living at home.
  • In 1986, that figure was less than 50 per cent (49.3 per cent).

Clearly, 15- to 24-year-olds in Western society face different challenges than their parents at that age.

In 2010, Venne released her paper titled “Longer to launch: Demographic changes in life-course transitions.” In it, she writes that many stages of life are lengthening, including the period when young people are dependent on parents.

“They’ve got a lot choices in education, and jumping into that is going to delay the launch into a career,” she says. “It’s a reflection of new realities, changing career patterns, longer life expectancy. You just need flexibility.”

She says, in some ways, parents are providing that by supporting adult children still living at home, “and sometimes paying for their education.”

Their children are not only staying in the nest and starting jobs later, but also marrying and having a family of their own later, so it’s a given that they’re relying on their parents a little bit longer.

 

 

 

Central Hong Kong Sees Near-Record Pollution Levels in 2013 – Bloomberg

January 11, 2014 10:41 am / Leave a comment

Central Hong Kong Sees Near-Record Pollution Levels in 2013 – Bloomberg.

Roadside pollution worsened in Hong Kong’s Central district last year as vehicular emissions helped send nitrogen dioxide concentrations to near-record levels, an environmental advocacy group said.

Citywide levels of the pollutant, linked to damaged lung function, were the second-highest on record, according to Clean Air Network Ltd.. Particulate matter levels at all monitoring stations exceeded World Health Organization guidelines by two to three times, the group said in a report yesterday.

Hong Kong’s legislators yesterday approved HK$11.4 billion ($1.5 billion) in funding to replace old diesel vehicles. Aging buses and trucks have led to a worsening in air quality since 2007. Nitrogen dioxide levels are getting worse because of local emissions, rather than from China’s Pearl River Delta region, the environmental group said.

“As you can see from the air quality in 2013, end-of-pipe solutions are not enough considering the time it takes,” Sum Yin-Kwong, chief executive officer of Clean Air Network, said in a statement. “To speed up the improvement in air quality, we hope to see the government look into the problem from a comprehensive transport management perspective in this year’s policy address.”

The city will use the approved subsidies to phase out 82,000 pre-Euro IV diesel commercial vehicles in a program that will begin on March 1, according to an e-mailed government statement citing the Environmental Protection Department. The plan should lead to a cut in levels of respirable suspended particulates and nitrogen oxides by 80 percent and 30 percent respectively, the department said.

Roadside Monitors

Hong Kong has three roadside pollution monitoring stations in the busy districts of Central,Mong Kok and Causeway Bay. The Central monitor, sandwiched between the Asian headquarters of JPMorgan Chase & Co. and a Tiffany & Co. outlet, recorded nitrogen dioxide concentration levels of 126 micrograms per cubic meter last year, according to the environmental group report.

The Central roadside gauge stood at 6, the highest level in the “moderate” health risk range, at 3 p.m. today. The reading at the Causeway Bay roadside station, located in a busy shopping area, hit 7, considered to pose a high health risk, according to data posted on the department’s website.

Hong Kong introduced an air quality index on Dec. 30 pegged to pollution-induced hospital admission risks. Readings on the index are calculated based on health risks from inhaling concentrations of ozone, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide and particulate matter. Air pollution in the city contributed to 3,183 premature deaths last year, according to the group.

To contact the reporter on this story: Natasha Khan in Hong Kong at nkhan51@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Hwee Ann Tan at hatan@bloomberg.net

Case of the Missing Recovery: Paul Craig Roberts

January 11, 2014 10:03 am / Leave a comment

Case of the Missing Recovery: Paul Craig Roberts 

No Jobs For Americans

Paul Craig Roberts

The alleged recovery took a direct hit from Friday’s payroll jobs report. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the economy created 74,000 net new jobs in December.

Wholesale and retail trade accounted for 70,700 of these jobs or 95.5%. It is likely that the December wholesale and retail hires were temporary for the Christmas shopping season, which doesn’t seem to have been very exuberant, especially in light of Macy’s decision to close five stores and lay off 2,500 employees. It is a good bet that these December hires have already been laid off.

A job gain of 74,000, even if it is real, is about half of what is needed to keep the unemployment rate even with population growth. Yet the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the unemployment rate fell from 7.0% to 6.7%. Clearly, this decline in unemployment was not caused by the reported 74,000 jobs gain. The unemployment rate fell, because Americans unable to find jobs ceased looking for employment and, thereby, ceased to be counted as unemployed.

In America the unemployment rate is a deception just like everything else. The rate of American unemployment fell, because people can’t find jobs. The fewer the jobs, the lower the unemployment rate.

I noticed today that the financial media presstitutes were a bit hesitant to hype the drop in the rate of unemployment when there was no jobs growth to account for it. The Wall Street and bank economists did their best to disbelieve the jobs report as did some of the bought-and-paid-for academic economists. Too many interests have a stake in the non-existent recovery declared 4.5 years ago to be able to admit that it is not really there.

I have been examining the monthly jobs reports for a decade or longer. I must say that I am struck by the December report. Normally, a mainstay of jobs gain is the category “education and health services,” with “ambulatory health care services” adding thousands of jobs. In December the net contribution of “education and health services” was zero, with “ambulatory health care services” losing 4,100 jobs and health care losing 6,000 jobs. If memory serves, this is a first. Perhaps it reflects adverse impacts of the ripoff known as Obamacare, possibly the worst piece of domestic legislation passed in decades.

I was also struck by the report that the gain in employment of waitresses and bartenders, normally a large percentage of the job gain, was down to 9,400 jobs, which were offset by declines elsewhere, such as the layoff of local school teachers.

Aren’t Washington’s priorities wonderful? $1,000 billion per year in Quantitative Easing, essentially subsidies for 6 banks “too big to fail,” and nothing for school teachers. It should warm every Republican’s heart.

A tiny bright spot in the payroll jobs report is 9,000 new manufacturing jobs. The US manufacturing workforce has declined so dramatically since jobs offshoring became the policy of American corporations that 9,000 jobs hardly register on the scale. Fabricated metal products, which I think is roofing metal, accounted for 56% of the manufacturing jobs. Roofing metal is not an export. Employment in the production of manufactured products that could be exported, such as “computer and electronic equipment,” and “electronic instruments” declined by 2,400 and 3,500 respectively.

Clearly, this is not a payroll jobs report that provides cover for the looting of the prospects of ordinary Americans by the financial and offshoring elites. One can wonder how the BLS civil servants who produced it can avoid retribution. It will be interesting to see what occurs in the January payroll jobs report.

French firm Total to join UK shale gas search | Environment | theguardian.com

January 11, 2014 10:03 am / 1 Comment on French firm Total to join UK shale gas search | Environment | theguardian.com

French firm Total to join UK shale gas search | Environment | theguardian.com.

Fracking protesters

Fracking protesters in Balcombe last summer. Photograph: Rod Harbinson/Demotix/Corbis

The French energy company Total will become the first major international oil company to join the exploration for UK shale gas when it announces an investment package on Monday.

Total is to join a shale gas exploration project in Gainsborough Trough in Lincolnshire currently operated by Ecorp of the US, according to the Financial Times. The other partners in the project are Dart Energy and UK-listed Igas and Egdon Resources.

The coalition government has made the exploitation of Britain’s unconventional gas reserves a priority, offering tax breaks to shale developers and promising big benefits. This is in contrast to France where hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, the process by which shale gas is released, is banned.

George Osborne, the chancellor, has argued that shale has the potential to reduce Britain’s reliance on increasing expensive gas imports and create thousands of jobs.

Exploration for shale gas and other unconventional hydrocarbons is taking place or is planned in Wales, Scotland, the south of England and the Midlands and the north.

Opposition from environmentalists has hindered the work. Protesters say the fracking process – injecting water, sand and chemicals underground at high pressure into shale rock to release the oil and gas trapped inside – can contaminate groundwater and cause earthquakes. The operation of rigs and attendant noise and truck movements can disrupt the local area.

Last summer Cuadrilla Resources faced protests in the Sussex village of Balcombe, and protesters are currently camped outside a drilling pad at Barton Moss in Salford where Igas plans to drill an exploratory well.

Geologists estimate there could be as much as 1,300tn cubic feet of shale gas lying under parts of the north and Midlands. One-tenth of that would equal around 51 years’ gas supply for the UK.

Activist Post: The Plundering of South Sudan

January 11, 2014 10:02 am / Leave a comment

Activist Post: The Plundering of South Sudan.

image source

Tony Cartalucci
Activist Post

RT’s report “Who is to blame for the crisis in South Sudan?” gave a succinct background on the warring factions inside the new “nation” of South Sudan and the Western genesis of the conflict. The report would state:

The SPLM has received support from the US and Israel throughout the duration of the civil war fought between southern rebels and Khartoum, which has historically had unfriendly relations with the West and has moved very closely to China in recent times to jointly develop the country’s oil wealth prior to the separation. Romantic notions for self-determination did not motivate the West to support southern secession; the objective was to partition Sudan and deprive Khartoum of economically relevant territory in the south where most of the oil fields lie. In exchange for the financial, material, political, and diplomatic support received from the West, the new government in Juba endorsed a ‘Faustian pact’ with its sponsors to open its economy to international finance capital and multinational interests. The government in Juba even applied for IMF membership before it had even officially gained independence from Sudan.

The piece would continue by laying out the current dilemma for the West:

Despite supporting the South’s independence with diplomatic muscle and military aid, the United States has been unable to gain a foothold in the country’s oil sector; Juba’s crippled economy remains dominated by Asian companies, primarily from China. South Sudan must rely on pipelines that run through Khartoum to export its oil, and the two countries produced around 115,000 barrels of oil per day in 2012, less than half the volume produced in the years before South Sudan’s independence. Both sides have nearly gone to war over disputed oil fields that straddle a poorly demarcated border. Judging from the poor economic performance of both countries since the partition and the dramatic loss of the life in the ongoing crisis, the experiment of South Sudanese independence is failing.

Image: Violence predictably is centered around currently Chinese-controlled oil infrastructure. The goal is to have violence drive the Chinese out just as was done by NATO in Libya.

The piece would go on to note that peace deals reached leaving Sudan intact could have avoided the deadly conflict now raging – and that of course is correct. However, peace is not and never was the goal of the West and its involvement in Africa – economic gain is.

Precisely because China still maintains extensive holdings in Sudan and South Sudan’s oil infrastructure, the conflict will be brought to a fever pitch – and unsurprisingly the conflict’s epicenter corresponds with South Sudan’s primary oil producing regions. If and when the Chinese are pushed out of South Sudan, the West will continue either across the border to establish routes for exporting their newly gained oil wealth from the landlocked country, or proceed through Kenya with or without the current government in Nairobi’s backing.

The BBC would report in their article, “China’s oil fears over South Sudan fighting,” that (emphasis added):

The stakes could not be higher for China, the largest investor in South Sudan’s oil sector, as fierce fighting continues between forces loyal to President Salva Kiir and those of his former deputy.

Some of the largest oil fields China operates are in areas controlled by fighters backing Riek Machar, the country’s vice-president until he was sacked in July.

Oil production has already dropped by 20% since the onset of the conflict three weeks ago and more than 300 Chinese workers have been evacuated. 

The spectre of their Libyan experience also weighs heavily on the Chinese minds – project after project now lies deserted because of heavy fighting during the Arab Spring uprising of 2011, inflicting huge losses on China.

Most telling of all is the BBC’s reference to Libya – another nation destroyed by Western military aggression that saw both Russian and Chinese interests crumble overnight and replaced by Western corporations. While South Sudan’s chaos is being orchestrated more covertly by the West, the final goal of pushing out the Chinese and taking over is the same.

Similar covert destabilization can be seen all across what the 2006 Strategic Studies Institute’s report “String of Pearls: Meeting the Challenge of China’s Rising Power across the Asian Littoral” calls China’s “String of Perals.” This includes US-backed militants attempting to carve off the province of Baluchistan from Pakistanwhere China has established a port at Gwadar and at another Chinese port in the state of Rakhine, Myanmar that has been the scene of brutal, genocidal violence carried out by “democracy icon” Aung San Suu Kyi’s “saffron monks” against Rohingya refugees.

Setting Up Shop in South Sudan

There is no doubt that the US and its accomplices Israel and Uganda have decided to stay in South Sudan. TheUS corporate foundation-funded “Enough Project” provided the rhetorical justification for an enduring presence in the war-torn African state in its Al Jazeera op-ed titled, “Al Jazeera America Op-ed: South Sudan’s Salva Kiir needs to put his black hat back on,” which stated:

To be sure, growing pains are common in societies working to secure their independence after years of marginalization and authoritarian rule. Building a cohesive national identity among South Sudan’s 81 ethnic groups will take generations. Still, the looming specters of mass intercommunal violence means we cannot afford to be complacent. The United States committed itself to the South Sudanese people’s long march toward independence decades ago. It would be a shame if America allowed a return to war when the South Sudanese are so close to securing their future.

With that humanitarian/freedom-promoting foot-in-the-door, the West has the pretext it needs to meddle for decades to come.

To begin with, Israel Military Industries Ltd. (IMI) signed what it called a “water infrastructure and technology development” deal with South Sudan’s government in 2012. The deal allegedly covers desalination, irrigation, water transport and purification, but a visit to Israel Military Industries Ltd. website indicates they are military contractors and arms manufacturers, not engineers and certainly not specialists in water infrastructure. Other sources claim IMI will serve as a conduit for actual Israeli water firms – but in light of US, Israeli, Saudi, and Qatari joint operations elsewhere, IMI will most likely serve as a conduit for weapons, cash, and conflict as well (or instead).

Image: It is not entirely clear how a military contractor and weapons manufacturer like Israel’s IMI is going to develop South Sudan’s water infrastructure. Just like Qatar’s use of humanitarian aid groups to smuggle weapons into Syria, Israel is most likely using “development” as cover for perpetuating conflict both within South Sudan to drive out the Chinese, as well as across the border in Sudan to the north to finally topple the government in Khartoum.

In 2013, Israel and South Sudan would begin forging oil deals. In UPI’s report, “South Sudan signs oil deal with Israel,” it was stated:

South Sudan says it has signed an agreement with several Israeli oil companies, a potentially significant strategic move that will consolidate the Jewish state’s relations with the fledgling, oil-rich East African state.

UPI would continue, highlighting the glaring problem of actually exporting the oil to turn a profit:

South Sudan’s petroleum and mining minister, Dhieu Dau, announced the oil deal last week after he returned from a visit to Israel.

He said negotiations were ongoing with Israeli companies, which he did not identify, seeking to invest in South Sudan.

Dau indicated the southern government in Juba, ramshackle capital of the infant state, hoped to export oil to Israel, but observed that this could not happen before March.

He gave no indication how the landlocked south would achieve this, or what volume of crude would be involved. But it’s a move Khartoum would do everything possible to wreck.

Finally, the UPI report indicates the much larger implications of Israel’s (and the US’) involvement in South Sudan, using it as a springboard to topple neighboring Sudan in the north:

The prospect of Israel actually getting oil from South Sudan remains uncertain, given Juba’s difficulties with Khartoum.

There has been talk of building a 1,000-mile export pipeline from South Sudan across Kenya to the Indian Ocean that would free Juba from reliance on Khartoum’s pipelines.

But no definite plans for the project, expected to cost around $2 billion, have yet materialized.

It may be that Israeli companies are seeking to help out in that regard — if only to undermine the Islamic-oriented Khartoum regime and its alliance with Tehran, and to gain access to the Nile River, Egypt’s primary source of water and a strategic target.

During Sudan’s civil war, one of Africa’s longest conflicts in which some 2 million people died, Israel provided the southern rebels with arms, training and funding, as it has done in other parts of Africa seeking to weaken its Arab adversaries.

Clearly, the presence of Israeli arms dealers is not to develop South Sudan’s infrastructure but rather to flood the region with weapons to flush out the Chinese and eventually stab northward toward Sudan and its capital of Khartoum. UPI’s report would go on to admit that military aid was still undoubtedly flowing to South Sudan for this very purpose.

In addition to a proxy military confrontation with Sudan, the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar have been attempting to overthrow the government in Khartoum from within – attempting an “Arab Spring-style” uprising in late 2013 that eventually fizzled.

Enter US AFRICOM and Uganda’s Museveni 

Infamous Western collaborator and Ugandan dictator-for-life Yoweri Museveni has been fighting the West’s proxy wars in Africa for decades. He has also done much within his borders to appease the West including selling large tracts of land to foreign developers right out from beneath the feet of his own people – many times killing landowners who refused eviction.

Image: Whatever pretext the West attempts to use to place Western troops inside of Africa while Fortune 500 corporations scoop up the continent’s vast resources, it is nothing more than modern recolonization. US troops placed in Uganda to fight “Kony” are now conveniently in place to aid in the despoiling of neighboring South Sudan – a state carved out of proper Sudan via Western-fueled civil war. 

In 2011 under the false pretext of fighting Joseph Kony’s “Lord’s Resistance Army” the US would begin deploying troops to Uganda. By 2013, these troops would still be there – when violence began to spread across nearby South Sudan, US troops conveniently still stationed in Uganda would be mobilized for the evacuation of US citizens. Stars and Stripes would report in their article, “Marines airlift US Embassy personnel out of South Sudan,” that:

Nonessential U.S. Embassy personnel were evacuated Friday from South Sudan aboard two KC-130 aircraft assigned to a Marine crisis response team positioned in nearby Uganda.

The article would also report:

Last week, the Special Purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force-Crisis Response also was pre-positioned at Entebbe, Uganda, to provide additional support. The unit, from Moron, Spain, was formed less than a year ago to bolster AFRICOM’s crisis-response capabilities.

Uganda, like Sudan, has clearly been permanently brought into AFRICOM’s fold under an initial false “humanitarian” pretext that was then quietly shifted to the permanent occupation of African territory. And Uganda not only serves as a base for US AFRICOM, but is also using its soldiers to carry out AFRICOM’s objectives beyond Uganda’s borders.

The Guardian would report in its recent article, “South Sudan peace talks falter as Uganda sends in troops,” that:

The South Sudan peace talks being held in Ethiopia have stalled, officials say, as a rebel commander claims big victories against the South Sudanese government and Uganda sends in more troops and military hardware.

The report would also claim:

Uganda, he said, had sent 1,200 troops to secure installations such as the airport and state house, adding that Ugandan military aircraft had bombed several rebel-held positions.

Uganda says its deployment of more troops and military hardware to Juba this week came at the request of Kiir. Lieutenant Colonel Paddy Ankunda, a Ugandan military spokesman, said on Wednesday that reinforcements were dispatched on Monday and Tuesday “to plug security gaps”. He denied the Ugandans were actively involved in combat.

Yoweri Museveni, the president of Uganda, is a strong ally of Kiir. The neighbouring countries have built a bond that goes back to South Sudan’s armed struggle for independence from Sudan and the Khartoum government. Museveni recently warned Machar that East African countries would unite to defeat him militarily if he does not agree to attend peace talks.

In essence, Uganda is providing the manpower on the ground while the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and others provide the cash, weapons, and everything else. It is another proxy war, just like the ongoing conflict in Syria, albeit with Ugandan troops literally invading South Sudan to prop up the West’s proxy government in Juba.

Who is funding and arming rebel groups fighting the West’s proxy government is still unclear. Reports indicate it may be dissident factions of South Sudan’s own armed forces involved in a recent coup attempt. Other theories suggest that US, Uganda, and/or Israel may be funding and arming both sides hoping to carry the conflict onward to Khartoum. It is clear that Khartoum, Sudan, one way or another, is the US-Israeli-Saudi-Qatari goal – to complete the theft of Sudanese oil as well as the means to export it out of the broken, worn-torn, decimated country.

This is the current state of the Wall Street-London global order in Africa – and a tattered, exploited Africa in our future should this state persist.

Tony Cartalucci’s articles have appeared on many alternative media websites, including his own at 
Land Destroyer Report, Alternative Thai News Network and LocalOrg.

Read other contributed articles by Tony Cartalucci here.

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