US Fleet Fuel Economy

US Vehicle Miles Traveled

The 1990 Recession

Interesting Contrast

Krugman this morning

Oh, and about commodity prices: rises on the order of what we’ve seen lately aren’t at all unusual, even during periods now considered to have been characterized by low and stable inflation. Here’s the IMF commodity price index...

Just not something to get frantic about.

Meanwhile, here's a UN press release about this report from a couple of days back:

Global consumption of natural resources could almost triple to 140 billion tons a year by 2050 unless nations take drastic steps, the United Nations warned Thursday.

A UN environment panel said the world cannot sustain the tearaway rate of use of minerals, ores and fossil and plant fuels. It called on governments to "decouple" economic growth from natural resource consumption.

With the world population expected to hit 9.3 billion by 2050 and developing nations becoming more prosperous, the report warned "the prospect of much higher resource consumption levels is far beyond what is likely sustainable."

A UN Environment Programme (UNEP) panel said the world is already running out of cheap and quality sources of some essential materials such as oil, copper and gold, which in turn need rising volumes of fuel and water to produce.

It said governments must find ways to do more with less, at a faster rate than economic growth -- the notion of "decoupling".

"We must realize that prosperity and well-being do not depend on consuming ever-greater quantities of resources," said the report.

"Decoupling is not about stopping growth. It's about doing more with less. Global resource consumption is exploding. It's not a trend that is in any way sustainable."

Count me with the UNEP.

Note On Interruption

Google Blogger had a massive outage since sometime yesterday. Yesterday's post has been removed by them, and will hopefully be restored soon. Some recent comments have also gone missing. Hopefully normal blogging can resume soon...

Global Oil Supply Flat in April

Other Commodities and Recessions

OPEC: Oil Supply Recovers Slightly in April

Methane in Well Water from Gas Fraccing

US Household Deleveraging Slows in Q1

Rumors of Iraqi Target Cutback

The Australian has a news article claiming, based on anonymous sources, that Iraq will soon renegotiate the 12mbd worth of contracts that were issued in two rounds of bidding in 2009.  The goal, according to the article:

Aaah

Der Spiegel:

Greece's economic problems are massive, with protests against the government being held almost daily. Now Prime Minister George Papandreou apparently feels he has no other option: SPIEGEL ONLINE has obtained information from German government sources knowledgeable of the situation in Athens indicating that Papandreou's government is considering abandoning the euro and reintroducing its own currency.

Alarmed by Athens' intentions, the European Commission has called a crisis meeting in Luxembourg on Friday night. The meeting is taking place at Château de Senningen, a site used by the Luxembourg government for official meetings. In addition to Greece's possible exit from the currency union, a speedy restructuring of the country's debt also features on the agenda. One year after the Greek crisis broke out, the development represents a potentially existential turning point for the European monetary union -- regardless which variant is ultimately decided upon for dealing with Greece's massive troubles.

Unemployment Rate Up to 9%

A Refuge for 2008 Peakists

April Food Prices Steady Near Recent Highs

Oil Prices...

US Initial Unemployment Claims

Final Crude and Condensate Stats show New Highs

Energy Prices and US Recessions (II)

Click for larger version in new window

Energy Prices and US Recessions

Osama bin Laden Dead

Better to have died in obscurity, I think, than with this as your signature achievement.

Blogger in Distress

Paula Hay has an interesting new blog with a theme of looking at the rise (and possible fall) of civilization through a religious lens.  Right now she is in personal distress and in need of donations.  I encourage readers to help her out.  There but for the grace of God...

Update 4/30/11: Good news.  Paula has a rather heartfelt and emotional video thank-you here. Apparently she got enough donations to get over the immediate hump at least, and she now has a place to live for the summer and some work.  Thanks to any readers who may have helped her out.

I thought what she did was a pretty interesting experiment (and rather gutsy).  In a desperate situation, can you basically throw yourself on the mercy of the Internet, and expect it to help you?  And, for her, the answer was yes!  Of course, she wasn't trying to raise that much ($800), but on the other hand, she only has been blogging for two months, so I assume hasn't built a very large audience yet.

Small Saudi Arabia Caveat

Sigh

Congress returns next week to a flaring brawl over oil industry profits and tax breaks, with both parties hoping to capitalize on growing public ire at high gasoline prices.

President Obama touched off the latest flurry with a letter to Congressional leaders last week calling for the repeal of $4 billion a year in tax incentives for domestic oil and gas production, saying the industry was doing very well, thank you, and needed no help from the government. Republicans responded that the president’s proposal would only raise the cost of production and the price of gasoline, which now tops $4 a gallon in many parts of the country.

Both parties are planning legislative maneuvers this week to try to caricature their opponents as either in the pockets of the oil companies or hostile to domestic energy production.

An entire article in the paper of record on the politics of high gas prices.   And no mention of "Libya", "Saudi Arabia", "Iraq", "fuel economy", "China", or any other factor that actually matters to the price of oil.  The disconnect between our political elite and reality couldn't be much wider, could it?  I mean, I suppose we could be launching rockets to drill for oil on the moon...  That would be worse, right?

IMF Short Term Elasticities Are Not Crazy

EIA Slashing Energy Data

Via Gregor, the following immediate cuts are amongst those being made in production of EIA stats, in response to the latest budget cuts:

There are more detailed in the press release.  There's some pretty big deal stuff that's being slashed.  It's certainly not going to make doing energy analysis any easier.

Chinese Inflation, and Next Recession Musings

Latest Data on IPO Filings

A Few Notes on Personal Strategies around Peak Oil

There is a whole genre of advice on peak oil sites for how to deal, at a personal level, with peak oil, most of which is so inane that I have tended to steer clear of the whole subject.  Things like gardens, solar panels, etc, can be overemphasized.  I also am wary because everyone's situation is completely different and so there's a limited amount of advice that really generalizes.

But this morning, I feel inspired to offer a few suggestions, mostly with a focus on the situation in the US, and focussed on people in the struggling middle.  They may only be worth what you are paying for them.

Gross World Product Will Not Grow at 4%+ for Five Years

Anyone Read Arabic?

It would be really great if someone competent could translate this.

Russian Oil Production

Wow, just Wow.

Latest IMF World GDP Forecasts

Disquieting Saudi Oil Indicators and the Next Oil Shock

Drought History in Texas

Latest Iraq Oil Production

Cardiovascular Disease Burden Around the World

Saudi Arabian Oil Rig Count

Life Expectancy around the World

Saudi Arabia did not make up for Libyan Oil

IEA: March Oil Supply Down 0.7mbd

Checking in with Iraqi Stability

Texas/Oklahoma Drought in Context

Note to Krugman

Paul Krugman complains about the Ryan plan (in which he has exposed massive quantitative flaws in a series of recent blog posts):

I’m in an airport lounge, for my sins, and there’s no avoiding the TV running CNN. And there’s David Gergen, telling me that the Ryan plan, whatever its flaws, is “serious”. So I guess that’s the Very Serious People line.

...

So, we have a plan that proposes to cut spending to Calving Coolidge levels, without explaining how it will do that; that includes $2.9 trillion in tax cuts, but asserts that it will make that up by broadening the base — yet says literally nothing about what that means; and has as its centerpiece a Medicare plan that will collapse as soon as seniors start getting their grossly inadequate vouchers.

Oh, and it directs us to a totally ludicrous Heritage Foundation analysis for support.

There’s nothing serious about this plan. And the way our pundit class swooned over this fantasy document suggests that all those people lecturing the American people about our unwillingness to face up to reality and make hard choices should spend some time looking in the mirror.

The reason for this is that the pundit class is by and large innumerate.  And the reason for that is that journalists and TV producers are by and large innumerate.  I don't mean that they can't add or subtract, but they can't look at numbers or statistics and begin to ask or answer the most elementary but important questions: how big is this number as a fraction of other important numbers in the problem space?  How does the current instance of the number compare to the trend over time?  What would happen if I corrected this for inflation or economic growth?

The blogosphere is the best hope of this improving over time.  At a minimum, it has meant that some of us now have access to expert opinion that is not filtered through the lowest common denominator of what a news culture dominated by one-time english or journalism majors thinks the public wants to know.  And hopefully, over time it will elevate to more prominence thinkers who are extremely savvy and quantitative (Calculated Risk comes to mind).

Evolution of Animal Consumption with Wealth

Will China Slow Down by 2015?

A Little Relief on Food Prices

New Email Address

Note that I'm using a new personal email address: stuart -- at -- earlywarn -- dot -- org.  Anyone that ever writes to me, please change your address book.  The old sbcglobal address has become unreliable and will be retired altogether shortly.  (At some point, I may set up the blog to be at the earlywarn.org address too, but at the moment it just has an email address).

Trends in Animal Product Consumption

Food and Macronutrients Around the World

State of the Blog, Q1 2011

Locating the US Oil Production Recovery

Reducing US Oil Imports By a Third

Short Note on NYT subscriptions

The New York Times has a new policy in which regular readers will only get 20 free articles per month.  After that, you'll have to get a subscription to keep reading, with the exception that if you are reading based on an inbound link from a blog (like this one) or social media, you can read even if you don't subscribe and have used up your allowance of twenty free articles.

I approve of what the Times is doing.  Although it's not a perfect institution, I do read their website every day and it's struck me as crazy for some time that I can do so for free - there's clearly no future in that.  And since their paywall seems to be well designed such that I can safely link to articles there with the guarantee that all my readers will be able to read what I'm linking to, I intend to continue to do so freely.

If anyone runs into trouble reading Times articles linked here, let me know.

The US Disability Explosion

WTI-Brent Spread Persisting

Biofuels versus Animal Feed

Long Term Crop Prices

Attributing the Food Price Spike

Radioactive Drinking Water

I imagine politicians will be having even more second thoughts about approving nuclear power plants, after these guys had to go on TV and explain that the water supply of the capital of the country is now radioactive and babies shouldn't drink it:

TOKYO — Radioactive iodine detected in the capital’s water supply spurred a warning for infants on Wednesday as the government issued a stark new estimate about the costs of rebuilding from the earthquake and tsunami that slammed into the northeast of the country this month.

Ei Yoshida, head of water purification for the Tokyo water department, said at a televised news conference that infants in Tokyo and surrounding areas should not drink tap water. He said iodine-131 had been detected in water samples at a level of 210 becquerels per liter. The recommended limit for infants is 100 becquerels per liter.

For adults, the recommended limit is 300 becquerels.

The Health Ministry said in a statement that it was unlikely that there would be negative consequences to infants who did drink the water, but said it should be avoided if possible and that it should not be used to make infant formula.

The warning applies to the 23 wards of Tokyo, as well as the towns of Mitaka, Tama, Musashino, Machida and Inagi to the west of the city.

It probably is true that the health risks are not that great, but the optics are terrible.

The good thing is that Iodine 131 has a half life of only eight days, so when the authorities can bring the reactor under control, the iodine should go away pretty quickly.

Global Wind Trends

US Wind Energy Installations Collapsed in 2010