And apparently based on the so-called favorable employment report released Friday, U.S. sweet crude increased by $1.48 to end the week at $97.84 per barrel, while Brent picked up $2.51 to finish at $114.58 per barrel.
Gas-pump prices appear erratic, depending where ye be: Statewide average in California is $3.73 a gallon for regular, up 3.7 cents in a week, but meanwhile, a good friend of mine residing less than two hours south of me recently paid $4.19 a gallon — Sup with that?

(Illustration found here).

Maybe we should take the plunge already and go Eurozone — $10-a-gallon gas would force stiff-necked US peoples to alter lifestyles and move on before the whole thing becomes reality.
New fuel for old vehicles — there’s about 240.5 million cars and light trucks cruising US highways and the average age of those vehicles rose to 10.8 years last year from 10.4 in the year before, due mainly to bad times in Detroit and the economy.
Apparently from indications beyond a recession, US peoples have been easing off the private vehicle for awhile now.
Via AlterNet  two years ago:

Among the trends that are keeping sales well below the annual figure of 15-17 million that prevailed from 1994 through 2007 are market saturation, ongoing urbanization, economic uncertainty, oil insecurity, rising gasoline prices, frustration with traffic congestion, mounting concerns about climate change, and a declining interest in cars among young people.
Market saturation may be the dominant contributor to the peaking of the U.S. fleet.
The United States now has 246 million registered motor vehicles and 209 million licensed drivers — nearly 5 vehicles for every 4 drivers.

Kids and cars:

Perhaps the most fundamental social trend affecting the future of the automobile is the declining interest in cars among young people.
For those who grew up a half-century ago in a country that was still heavily rural, getting a driver’s license and a car or a pickup was a rite of passage.
Getting other teenagers into a car and driving around was a popular pastime.
In contrast, many of today’s young people living in a more urban society learn to live without cars.
They socialize on the Internet and on smart phones, not in cars.
Many do not even bother to get a driver’s license.
This helps explain why, despite the largest U.S. teenage population ever, the number of teenagers with licenses, which peaked at 12 million in 1978, is now under 10 million.
If this trend continues, the number of potential young car-buyers will continue to decline.

Plus these kids now are also faced with an incredible financial burden, not only with a humongous student-loan debt, but a bleak employment picture (despite Friday’s numbers) — unless one is an oil/gas person (corporations are people).

Maybe a bit of inequality right there: Exxon’s $41.1 billion in 2011 profit translates into nearly $5 million in profit every hour, or more than $1,300 every second. The annual profit comes near the record revenues of $46.23 billion in 2008…Between 2008-2010, Exxon Mobil registered an average 17.6 percent federal effective corporate tax rate, while the average American paid a higher rate of 20.4 percent.

Maybe venture into the ugly-oddness of fuel:

Gasoline prices are higher at the beginning of 2012 than at the beginning of any previous year ever — even at the beginning of 2008, a year when the national average for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline reached a record $4.114 on July 7.
In its Daily Fuel Gauge Report, AAA Texas noted Friday a national average of $3.467 for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline — up from $3.455 a day ago, $3.389 a week ago, $3.288 a month ago and $3.116 a year ago.
“We’re seeing the highest gasoline prices that we’ve seen,” Sarah Schimmer of AAA Texas said Friday.
“2011 was a record year, and in 2012 we’re definitely seeing higher prices.”

And all this for mobility, not only just for driving my Jeep around town, but oil/gas framed within the way-big picture of how the existence of an entire civilization depends on the black, bubbly shit — no way yesteryear can continue into the nowadays.
In reality, peak oil is actually the end of easy oil, low prices at the pump and so forth, and this peak supposedly occurred worldwide in about 2005 — so we’re already on the downside.
One interesting look at future possibilities comes from “Fleeing Vesuvius: Overcoming the Risks of Economic and Environmental Collapse,” a collection of essays from economists, environmental scientists, a couple of architects and even a corporate lawyer on the premise of how close we are to being totally f*cked.
From a review by Stuart Jeanne Bramhall of Fleeing Vesuvius and posted Friday at DissidentVoice:

The title refers to the volcano that destroyed Pompeii in 79 AD, specifically the large number of residents who failed to save themselves, despite weeks of earthquakes, gaseous clouds and other obvious signs that an eruption was imminent.
For more than a decade, a growing body of evidence suggests that the planet is on the verge of economic and ecological collapse.
Yet the vast majority of us do absolutely nothing to prepare for the stark conditions ahead.
…
All (the essay writers) are in basic agreement around the book’s central premise: the industrialized world needs to urgently downsize its energy use, both to stave off catastrophic climate change and to conserve dwindling fossil fuels.
In his Introduction, “Where We Went Wrong,” the late Irish economist Richard Douthwaite points out that one barrel of oil provides the equivalent labor of a man working forty hours a week for twelve years.
He goes on to stress that before the advent of cheap fossil fuels, capitalism was impossible — an economy relying on human labor and animal power is too inefficient to support it.
By definition capitalism depends on capital accumulation, the production of an economic surplus that can be reinvested in new capital (property and machines) to expand production even further.
Producing a surplus of this size only became possible because of the vast amount of cheap (practically free) work performed by fossil fuel energy.

And Ms Bramhall also reveals a brightness from the essays, not all doom-n-gloom: The last five sections of the book focus on solutions, with inspiring examples of new approaches to land use, agriculture and industrial design from individuals, groups and communities who have begun the transition to a less energy-intensive lifestyle.
Inspiration needs to have already been popped — too much pie-in-the-sky without actual political reality.
One updated  sample chapter of Fleeing Vesuvius can be found at The Oil Drum.
And another review of the essay collection can be found here.

A major snag in the optimism — the above-mentioned political reality.
So says Kumi Naidoo, head of the environmental group Greenpeace, who spoke Friday at the big-wig, pow-wow Munich Security Conference, and chimed a loud alarm.
Via Raw Story:

“The moment of history we are in can be described as a boiling point or a perfect storm,” he told the assembled gathering of world leaders, ministers, top brass and defence policy experts at the annual Munich gathering.
“We are seeing a convergence of multiple crises happening at the same time. A food crisis, climate crisis, poverty crisis … and then of course the financial crisis and a demographic crisis and a global governance democratic crisis,” he added.
“The bottom line is that too many of our leaders … are sleepwalking us into a crisis of epic proportion,” he claimed.

One of those doing the sleepwalking is US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who’s also in Munich, Germany, this weekend for the conference, but her schedule has no room for end-of-life-as-we-know-it antics fostered by environmental activists — Clinton will most-likely reminisce about “…what a key partner Europe is in the global security, economic, democracy promotion agenda that we have.”

Just wake ‘em later.

A penny here, a penny there and soon you’ve have a pile of some real money.

(Illustration found here).

Crude is still gushing upward.
From liveoilprices: In London, Brent crude oil futures for March 2012 delivery was trading at $111.22 a barrel, 15.30 GMT today on the ICE Futures Exchange.
Meanwhile, WTI: US Light crude oil futures for March 2012 delivery was trading at $99.67 a barrel, 15.06 GMT today in trading on the NYMEX. The US oil contract is up 1.2 percent over this mornings opening price of $98 a barrel.

The shit with Iran is the bad bet at the pump.
The International Monetary Fund warns the planet:

The International Monetary Fund warned on Wednesday that global crude prices could rise as much as 30 percent if Iran halts oil exports as a result of U.S. and European Union sanctions.
If Iran halts exports to countries without offsets from other sources it would likely trigger an “initial” oil price jump of 20 to 30 percent, or about $20 to $30 a barrel, the IMF said in its first public comment on a possible Iranian oil supply disruption.
The IMF highlighted the risks of rising tensions over Iran sanctions in a note on Wednesday sent to deputies from G20 countries who met in Mexico City last week.
The price impact caused by a cut in Iranian exports could be exacerbated by below average oil stocks in many countries, the result of tight oil market conditions through much of last year, the IMF said.

And in this the old ‘peak oil’ ugly raises its head.
Via the New York Times:

In an opinion piece (paywall) released on Wednesday by the journal Nature, James Murray of the University of Washington and David King of the University of Oxford point out that global oil production appeared to hit a cap of about 75 million barrels a day in 2005.
Since then, they note, small supply bumps have caused big price gyrations, yet even when prices spike above $100 a barrel, supply appears incapable of rising to meet the demand.
The professors make only a glancing mention of the term “peak oil,” a widely promoted and widely attacked concept, but their argument resembles some of the less feverish versions of the peak oil case.
They essentially argue that oil supply now represents a large strategic risk to global economic growth, and that smart governments ought to be developing comprehensive plans and pushing hard to move their citizens into more efficient cars, onto public transit and so forth — a greener energy path that would also be good for the climate.

Even with all this mess at the gas pumps, there’s an underlying bullshit irony to it all.
Oil companies know the future is coming — via TreeHugger:

Utilities, the oil and gas industry, agricultural companies and insurers are building assumptions about rising temperatures and extreme weather events into their scenario planning.
This is what’s being called climate adaptation or climate preparedness.
The payoff from investing in adaptation could be substantial.
In 2011, insured losses in the U.S. from natural catastrophes, including tornadoes, floods and hurricanes, topped $105 billion, breaking the record of $101 billion set in 2005, the year of Hurricane Katrina, according to Munich Re, the world’s largest reinsurance firm.
Some of those losses had nothing to do with climate change, but others did.

Pump it down and dirty.

In the US today, apparently all collective eyes were glued to South Carolina where intelligence-deficit Republicans held their primary to select from among a short-list of bullshitters a warm body to run against President Obama this November.
And Newt Gingrich is now the man of the hour — a later laugh is always loudest.
From a late afternoon post at CNN: “Gingrich has been harder to kill than Rasputin,” Republican strategist and CNN contributor Alex Castellanos said Saturday. “He has been dead three times in this campaign, and … the guy keeps coming back.”

US politics for 2012 so far has Never-Ever witnessed such a handful of completely worthless and despicable characters — a line up of reasons why this country/world is f*cked.

A most-likely insurmountable obstacle is truth of priorities and sight.
And Newt is no friend of the environment — he’s goes where be Robert Dollar.
An entire US political party (there’s only two) is working way-hard to create calamity for the coming years — twisting knowledge like a pretzel, cherry-picking data and just out-and-out lying — which in turn morphed a most-important circumstance into a cultural/religious phenomenon.
Last week, the Washington Post‘s Michael Gerson positioned correctly: But however interesting this sociology may be, it has nothing to do with the science at issue. Even if all environmentalists were socialists and secularists and insufferable and partisan to the core, it would not alter the reality of the Earth’s temperature.
There it is — reality.
And a shit-biscuit reality for our kids.

What set me in this thought direction was a post at The Dish earlier today which included the writings of Thomas Paine and Edmund Burke, especially Burke, who was concerned that the ‘earlier’ generation made up of his own contemporaries ought not jeopardize the future of still later generations who had not yet been born by creating chaos and disorder.
And a further look at the US future via five trends, the biggest problem being the national debt.
Debt?

The US has one, and really only one problem, and it’s a humongous one (along with the entire freakin’ planet), and it ain’t financial.
The near-immediate by-and-by carries a most-disconcerting view like this quick clip found right here  — a sight of the near-immediate past into the nowadays that casts a look at a future horror for all our offspring.
Another related contemplation comes from Dianne Monroe at Speaking Truth to Power — she portends this is an unique period in world history and “an amazing time to be alive.”
Some snippets:

If you are reading this, you are alive today, and that means you are part of this Great Unraveling/ Great Turning, or whatever name we choose to call it.
If you, like me, are middle aged or beyond, we have lived through the apex of a global empire now passed irrevocably into decline.
When exactly that point of turning was passed is the topic of many discussions.
I am not sure how important it is to know that precise point.
We can see that it happened sometime as we were following our dreams and passions, pursuing careers, raising families, paying mortgages… or however we chose to spend those years of our lives.
We know that something big happened on the way down with the economic crisis of 2008, even if the mainstream economic pundits keep assuring us that prosperity is just around the corner.
…
We are experiencing this great crumbling from within, as it is happening.
We will not experience it as an academic lecture or experiment (although some may try), with us standing outside of and observing some scientific process.
We are each in different locations as it unfolds.
One analogy I have heard is that it is like a long, slow train wreck.
The people toward the back are still riding along comfortably.
They may not have even noticed that something is amiss.

Good post, but like a lot of others has way-too much chasing windmills in the mind.
Despite some success in gaining traction — the Occupy movement opened eyes to the impact of income inequality, the Internet blackout rebellion last week knocked SOPA for a loop, and even the public demonstrations that helped put a end to the Keystone pipeline — all good results with good intentions, but the broad matter of a swiftly-changing climate hasn’t been seriously addressed, and it may never even have a chance.
And yes, this age is most-interesting and amazing, and therefore will become more violent and dangerous.
Some US peoples — currently tagged a subculture — have become “preppers,” or those preparing themselves for what they call, “uncivilization,” the disintegration of society and government — the end of life as we know it.
Take a look  at American Preppers Network.
And this from Reuters‘ interviewee Patty Tegeler on acquiring survival equipment and stockpiling supplies of freeze-dried food: “I think it’s silly not to be prepared,” she said. “After all, anything can happen.”
Anything always happens.

Good sense goes back a long way.
From IPS and the modern Mayans:

But the end of a cycle does not mean the end of the world, and the collective hysteria triggered by the supposed 2012 Maya doomsday prediction does not at all reflect the thinking of today’s Maya Indians in Guatemala.
“There are leaders who let themselves be carried away by what they hear, or because ’13′ has very strong energy and they are worried that a catastrophe will happen, but none of that is true,” said Antonio Mendoza, an activist with Oxlajuj Ajpop, a local NGO whose name in the Maya Quiché language refers to the 13 forces represented by the Maya calendar.
On the contrary, he said, “this new stage is extremely important for reflection and analysis about human coexistence and nature,” he told IPS.
…
Mario Molina of the national network of Maya youth organisations, RENOJ, told IPS that Dec. 21 “will not mark the end of the Maya or the world, but will be a moment to assess the progress made in the development of nature and humanity.”

One must remember the operative words here: ‘neoliberal policies.’
A concept that take in absolutely no account of nature and humanity.

A view from the UK’s Guardian:

For decades, many of the poorest in developing countries have been left reeling from free-market World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) economic policies.
Structural Adjustment Policies (SAPs) included forced privatisation, public spending cuts and lowered taxes on the global south.
They spelled a triumph for Milton Freedman’s Chicago School of Economics, which proposed that only by leaving everything to the market could economies flourish.
Prosperity did rise for the few, as levels of inequality deepened.
Sound familiar?

And the children will cry and wonder why.

In all the saber rattling in the Persian Gulf, US motorists stayed away from the gas pump in record numbers last week.
Post holiday denial or what, demand dropped 14 percent: Drivers bought 8.16 million barrels a day of gasoline in the week ended Dec. 30, down from 9.46 million the week before, according to MasterCard’s SpendingPulse report. MasterCard’s data goes back to July 2004.

(Illustration found here).

Despite all that, pump prices are still 21-cents more than this time last year.
And it don’t stop there, according gasbuddy.com, we could see a near $4-a-gallon pump price as the weather warms — or worse if the shit hits the fan with Iran.

Just the noise of possible Persian Gulf trouble move the loins of oil.
From liveoilprices: In London, Brent crude oil futures for February 2012 delivery was trading at $112.88 a barrel, 15.37 GMT today on the ICE Futures Exchange.
And WTI: US Light crude oil futures for February 2012 delivery was trading at $102.65 a barrel, 19.05 GMT today, or 3.9 percent higher than session open this morning.
This past weekend saw a a couple of nasty offshoots — on Saturday President Obama signed into law sanctions against Iran’s central bank (which controls much of that country’s oil revenue), while on Sunday, Iran conducted missile tests in the Strait of Hormuz, where bad doo-doo dominates.

And that’s some nasty shit, which could spread way-quickly to even my Union 76 gas pump.
According to the New York Times yesterday, if action blockades the strait the price of oil could skyrocket 50 percent within days.
Despite all kinds of deterrents to such foolishness, hot heads in battle are at minimum bat-shit crazy:

“I fear we may be blundering toward a crisis nobody wants,”said Helima Croft, senior geopolitical strategist at Barclays Capital.
“There is a peril of engaging in brinksmanship from all sides.”
…
“To close the Strait of Hormuz would be an act of war against the whole world,” said Sadad Ibrahim Al-Husseini, former head of exploration and development at Saudi Aramco.
“You just can’t play with the global economy and assume that nobody is going to react.”
…
“My guess is this is a lot of threats,” said Michael A. Levi, an energy expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, “but there is no certainty in this kind of situation.”

The double winners/losers of the Iowa sideshow this week, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, both would bomb the shit out of Iran without as much as blinking an eye; Santorum even going so far as “treating them like Al Qaeda.”

Well beyond the Mayan bullshit, 2012 has all the earmarks of one nasty roller-coaster ride — does oil and blood mix?

Although prices here in northern California have dipped a bit, it’s still freakin’ high compared nationwide — the national average for regular this week is $3.258 a gallon, still more than 20 cents higher than the same time last year.

Meanwhile, in California the statewide average hit $3.576, up 2 cents since Dec. 19, according to the Energy Department’s weekly survey of service stations. That shattered — by 28.9 cents — the old record of $3.287 a gallon set in December 2007 and was tied in December 2010.

(Illustration found here).

The price of oil — beyond the natural-technical problems — has been influenced by more swinging bullshit centered around Iran, which, in the face of new efforts by the US and the European Union to halt Iran’s nuclear program, has threatened to close the most-vital Strait of Hormuz if the shit gets too deep.
Some experts Iran is bullshitting.
Maybe not — the two-mile-wide strait is much closer to Iran than just the physical: After boasting yesterday: “Shutting the strait for Iran’s armed forces is … easier than drinking a glass of water,” Iran’s navy chief Admiral Habibollah Sayari said: “Today, we don’t need [to shut] the strait because … it is completely under the control of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
A nasty set of circumstances, though, it doesn’t seem to ruffle many feathers.

The US, however, will not be intimidated, and pooh poohed the possible action as an empty gesture:

However, playing down the threat, State Department spokesman Mark Toner called it as nothing more than mere “bluster.”
According to Toner, this was just another attempt by Iran to draw attention away from the key issue, that of their habitual “non-compliance with international nuclear obligations,” he added.

A lot of drama is being played out with this Iranian deal — the US claims it has certain “red lines” (kind of like those famous, ‘line in the sand’ routines) that if crossed would justify a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, and then, the shit would really hit the fan.
Israel is the most concerned.
Jason Ditz at antiwar.com:

Officially, of course, both sides would insist such an attack was about Iran’s nuclear program.
But since both nations have been claiming Iran is within striking distance of acquiring nuclear weapons since the mid-1980s, the excuse isn’t going to really fly internationally, so both nations are hoping to settle on something which could be the “trigger” for the attack.

This ‘trigger’ ain’t no horse on some happy trail.

Bluster or not…
From liveoilprices: In London, Brent crude oil futures for February 2012 delivery was trading at $107.90 a barrel, 08.03 GMT this morning on the ICE Futures Exchange.
And WTI: US Light crude oil futures for February 2012 delivery was trading at $99.53 a barrel, 07.42 GMT this morning in electronic trading on the NYMEX.

The quickly approaching new year signals even higher prices to come.

Humanity is fatally blind.
Seeking oil for energy is akin to eating poison — it tastes good and makes us feel good all over, but will kill us in a horrible, twitching death.
Talk about bat-shit crazy — the intake of this crude is making an environment already stunned near-beyond recovery even worse and apparently the glutton forces are stronger than self-preservation.
Even the so-called ‘saving grace’ of the Canadian tar sands oil creates a horrible future:

Extraction of Alberta’s energy-intensive tar sands has expanded steadily in recent years, with about 232 square miles now exposed by mining operations.
That expansion is expected to double over the next decade, which could mean the destruction of 740,000 acres of boreal forest and a 30 percent increase in carbon emissions from Canada’s oil and gas sector.

And in perspective (via DeSmogBlog): The latest tally (2008) puts Canada’s GHG emissions at “only” 1.8 per cent, which is swell as long as you don’t think about Canada’s population amounting to just 0.004 per cent of the world’s total. That makes Canada the fourth worst polluter per capita. It also makes our 34 million inhabitants the seventh largest source of CO2 among all the countries in the world – that’s seventh from a list of 216 countries and jurisdictions.

And the end result?
From TreeHugger:

A new study in the Journal of Glaciology shows that the glaciers in Peru’s Cordillera Blanca mountain range are melting so quickly that the water they supply to the arid region is being threatened 20-30 years earlier than expected.
Lead researcher Michel Baraer, from McGill University, told IPS News that the time needed for the region to adapt to the coming water shortages, previously thought to be decades off, “those years don’t exist.”
Baraer said that the glaciers feeding the Rio Santo watershed are now too small to maintain past flows of water.
During the dry season water availability is expected to be 30 percent lower than historic levels.
In the 1930s glaciers in the Cordillera Blanca covered 850 square kilometers.
Today they cover less than 600 sq km.
In a global context, the World Glacier Monitoring Service recently has said that 90 percent of the glaciers studied in its latest Glacier Mass Balance Bulletin are losing mass.
In the Himalaya, 75 percent of the glaciers there are melting; the USGS fully puts the blame on this on global warming and not other factors.

My underline for some way-emphasis — and that, my friends, ain’t bluster.

In facing the greatest threat to humanity, maybe in all of recorded history, Americans still can’t decide whether they should give a shit or not on climate change.
The latest Gallup poll revealed 53 percent of US peoples see global warming as a very or somewhat serious threat, down 10 percent from two years earlier – “We have got a big problem, domestically, in terms of climate reality,” said Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

(Illustration found here).

Christiana Figueres, the UN’s chief for managing climate talks, considers the US a way-dangerous slacker, and could lead the planet into destruction.
Via Climate Progress:

“The U.S. is hamstrung.
And I wonder how long it’s going to take the U.S. civil society … to realize that climate change is affecting them directly — it’s not just affecting somebody else.
I really think the … U.S. population needs to understand that this is not just their historical responsibility, but this is their future that they’re compromising.
And when that awareness is raised, then I think the government will make more ambitious decisions.
I think there’s no public pressure in the United States to take any more ambitious decision.”

And the woman is most-passionate about the coming climate calamity.
Last year, Figueres nearly broke down and wept while addressing some young people during the Cancun climate talks: “The fact is, I’m the mother of two women about your age, and I realized many years ago that I had inherited a planet that was a diminished planet. And that if I didn’t do something about it, my daughters would grow up in a planet that had been severely diminished by what we’re doing. And I just can’t look at my daughters in the eyes and not do whatever I can.”

Yes, ‘whatever I can,’ not to be confused, of course, with the infamous failed, ‘Yes, We Can.’

The major problem in the US is loud-mouthed assholes.
One big dip shit is Sen. James Inhofe, the Oklahoma climate-change denier who is so f*cked he can’t see his own state boiling in its own juices.
Even after stating in 2003 global warming “the greatest hoax ever,” Inhofe now claims he’s “doing the Lord’s work” in fighting this massive falsehood.
Talk about one hypocritical sonofabitch.

And these assholes are in it for the cash.
From The Atlantic yesterday:

Republicans have long had close financial ties to the fossil-fuel industry, of course.
Between 1998 and 2010, the oil-and-gas industry gave 75 percent of its $284 million in political contributions to Republicans.
But the 2010 Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which allowed unlimited corporate spending on campaign advertisements, opened up a whole new avenue for interest groups to influence campaigns by flooding the airwaves with ads that support a political candidate or position.
In the 2010 elections alone, the top five conservative and pro-industry outside groups and political action committees—including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Karl Rove-backed PAC American Crossroads, which have close ties to fossil-fuel interests—spent a combined $105 million to support GOP candidates (compared with a combined $8 million that the top five environmental groups spent to back Democrats).
Both sides could double those numbers in 2012.

Humans are stupid, irrational and playing mind games: Our species’ irrational side adds to the genuine, inescapable complexities of forging sound climate policies. But I suspect the more immediate obstacle to climate progress isn’t cultural cognition so much as it is political cowardice.

All this shit on the heels of two different studies, one last month, the other just this week, which reveal worldwide ‘emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel burning jumped by the largest amount on record‘ in 2010.

Time keeps moving right along, which is something the planet can’t handle.
One must keep in mind that all these scientific papers, studies, surveys and whatnot show bad shit coming, but yet all this supposed knowledge is still limited most-likely by what’s called ‘educated guesses,’ though on a most-advanced level, thus, no one truly understands how fast this shit is traveling.
The concept, “abrupt climate change” has been banged about, but no one seem to know what tipping point will set-off domino-like, chain reactions where the whole shebang goes pop real quick.

In that case, time is so a-wasting and gotta make more money — the lottery, maybe.

After seemingly being stuck at $3.99 a gallon for months, it was odd to see a difference in the numbers.
Prices are down in California and the rest of the US, but way-higher than last year.

From the LA Times: The average price of a gallon of regular gasoline in California today is $3.710, according to AAA. Prices in California have fallen by 13.1 cents a gallon over the last month, but a gallon of gasoline cost only $3.164 on the same day last year. The current price is also 29.5 cents a gallon higher than the old record for this day, which was set in 2007.
National average is down 5.6 cents over the last month to $3.295 a gallon, although just one year ago at this date the price was at $2.86 a gallon — still nearly 20 cents higher than the old record.

(Illustration found here).

Beer prices at my store carries a similar characteristic as gas at the pump — the cost goes up by a dime one week, drops a nickel the next, providing a happy incentive to the buyer for the moment, seemingly unaware total price has gone up a quarter the past month.
Way up, a little down, up again, then down a little less — a process which eliminates price shock.

Oil itself is also getting banged around.
From liveoilprices: In London, Brent crude oil futures for January 2012 delivery was trading at $109.01, 08.30 GMT this morning on the ICE Futures Exchange.
And WTI: US Light crude oil futures for January 2012 delivery was trading at $97.79 a barrel, 08.15 GMT this morning in electronic trading on the NYMEX.
Prices are choppy due to the horror of the 17-nation Eurozone blow-out, which forecasters seem to think will lead to a break-up of the confederation, and eventually-quickly to a break-up of whatever kind of global economy the world is experiencing right now — investors continue to shun European government bonds, driving interest rates up and thereby digging a deeper hole for countries that need to refinance debt.

The US is hiding, or just too scared to come out and play.

In deflecting the shit across the pond, the US received a temporary/smoke-screen-bounce for the economy from Black Friday/Cyber Monday, which pumped up retailers for the upcoming big-spending holiday season.
Reportedly, last Friday was the largest single-day sales in US retail history — Overall, Black Friday 2011 sales set records, pulling in $52.4 billion, according to figures from the National Retail Foundation.
And yesterday, a record again with nearly $1.2 billion (yes, that’s billion) spent on Internet buying — nearly half-a-billion dollars more than last year.

Despite overall records for the weekend, which now includes Thanksgiving, (was) up 16 percent from $45 billion last year, according to a survey by the National Retail Federation, the money may not be there for the next month.
From CNN Money:

“Black Friday is only one piece of the puzzle,” noted NRF spokeswoman Ellen Davis.
“You could have the best Black Friday in the world but the rest of the season wouldn’t match up and that’s what happened in 2008.”
Typically, sales over Black Friday weekend comprise 10 percent of total holiday sales.
But, in 2008, experts believe many consumers rushed out during Black Friday weekend to take advantage of the best bargains then hunkered down for the rest of the season.
“A lot of people went out as a result of desperation because they knew the deals were really good,” Davis said.
“In some ways, the economic environment is very similar to 2008 but shoppers are acting very differently.”

The difference is in cash on hand:

“The strong holiday sales figures thus far underscores how bargain conscious American consumers still are and it doesn’t guarantee those strong results will hold over the next several weeks,” said Greg McBride, Bankrate’s senior financial analyst.
“Consumers are still worried about their savings, job security, debt and net worth,” he said.

All ingredients for staying alive.

And all this could be just another wad of bullshit — Barry Ritholtz at The Big Picture says: If it’s the Monday after Black Friday, then its national hype the fabricated data day!
In other words, all that information in the above might be just inflation of results.
And Ritholtz, who’s one of the better dudes putting financial shit together, even goes so far as to wager a bet:

Here is my challenge to the CEOs of the National Retail Federation and ShopperTrak: $1,000 to the charity of the winners choice that your forecasts for Black Friday, the Thanksgiving weekend and the entire holiday shopping season are wildly off.
I bet you your forecasts miss the mark by at least 10 percent-20 percent (though I believe its closer to 40-50 percent).

Pump it up, then pump it down, shake the facts all around.

The oil scene, however, is a slow news generator right now, buried among some horror stories, like the ugly, disgusting ugly shit at Penn State (hence, the double-ugly), or the coyote-female-ugly from Herman Cain, or the blockhead, dumb-ass utterings of Rick Perry, or the clashing OWS crusade, or the fiscal escapades of the Europeans, or….you get the not-so-pretty picture.

Unlike climate change, the oil/energy situation is a slow-coming catastrophe — disaster seemingly right now measured in pennies.

(Illustration found here).

According to all indications, oil prices are starting another climb upward, even as the Libyans start cranking back up its own oil production, supposedly to be back to pre-revolt levels within months.
From liveoilprices: Brent oil prices closed Friday’s trading session at $114 a barrel as the spread between Brent and US WTI oil moves back to around $15 as US oil supply data pushes the American oil contract higher, back near the $100 mark.
And WTI is following suit: WTI oil futures end the week near $99 a barrel which is a 4 month high as traders cheered positive sentiment data out of America and the US dollar was trading lower which typically fuels commodity prices to rise.
And if the shit gets deeper in the Middle East — Israel attacks Iran’s nuclear facilities, or something similarly dumb — oil could go whacky: “It is the $200 a barrel scenario.” says Philip Verleger, an independent consultant who correctly predicted in August 1990 the price rally after Iraq invaded Kuwait.
Touchy, touchy.

The pump prices in northern California are still more than a dime more than down south, and is still higher than the US as a whole, but some folks are worse than others.
I guess it’s all in how it’s handled locally.
Despite all the obvious indicators, no one is shouting out the coming calamity — no one playing playing the role of a Paul Revere in proclaiming the quick-coming-end of cheap oil.
Only business as usual.

The LA Times on Saturday:

The Energy Department says surging diesel prices have “provided incentives to refiners to shift some production away from gasoline.”
The result is more expensive gasoline.
The average cost of a gallon of regular gasoline in the U.S. on Friday was $3.438, up 57.4 cents from a year earlier, according to the AAA Fuel Gauge Report.
That’s 32.7 cents a gallon higher than the old record for this time of year, set in 2007.
The average cost in California on Friday was $3.839 a gallon.
That’s 70.4 cents a gallon higher than a year earlier and 47.3 cents a gallon higher than the record for fall reached in 2007.

And in October, US peoples spent 8 percent of their household incomes, or an estimated $332.40, at the gasoline pump — and in a time when traditionally pump prices go down, the numbers are spiraling up.
The experts claim next year will be a female dog: “We are at the highest fuel prices ever for this time of year, even though they have dropped a bit in recent weeks,” said Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst for the Oil Price Information Service. “I think we will see prices in 2012 that will break … records.”
Indeed.

What do we do? Drill, baby, drill?
President Obama continues his wishy-washy, environmental bullshit by announcing last week a proposal to open some Arctic areas to oil drilling, and such in the words of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, “…we must proceed cautiously, safely and based on the best science available.”
Incredible amount of bullshit — need some high waders.

The LA Times had a most-excellent opinion/commentary last week on the subject, titled, “New oil leases in the Arctic: How dumb is that?”
Money bit:

It’s a discouraging time to be a friend of the Earth.
The Obama administration, seemingly, is looking for some way, any way, to approve another environmental nightmare, the Keystone XL pipeline.
And last week came this cheery bit of news:

The global output of heat-trapping carbon dioxide jumped last year by the biggest amount on record, the U.S. Department of Energy calculated, a sign of how feeble the world’s efforts are at slowing man-made global warming.

The new figures for 2010 mean that levels of greenhouse gases are higher than the worst-case scenario outlined by climate experts just four years ago.
Really now, is this the best we can do?
In October, the world’s population hit 7 billion; most of those people are busy doing their part in heating up the planet by burning fossil fuels — and our response is to go looking for more of the stuff?
If the world were named Michael Jackson, and fossil fuels were called propofol, someone would be going to jail about now.
Forget stopping the bullet train.
We need to stop the doomsday train.
A few years back, I attended an engineering day at Stanford. One presentation on oil and the environment featured this quote, from a Saudi oil minister: “The Stone Age didn’t end because of a lack of stones.”
There’s only one way to save those polar bears — and ourselves — and it’s not by drilling for more oil.

Don’t the people in charge know there’s no hanging onto oil?
Not only is the shit finite, but it’s bringing an end to civilization as we know it.

In a timely time, today Dr. Richard Muller, the climate-change “skeptic” who changed his tune, will speak at a US Congressional climate briefing: “Undeniable Data: The Latest Research on Global Temperature and Climate Science” — heffy title that, kind of like the ‘undeniable‘ part.
Should be interesting.

Max Singer, founder of the Hudson Institute, warned in 1999 that the world would soon be downsizing.
“Fifty years from now,” he predicted, “the world’s population will be declining, with no end in sight.”

Throw that one on the dustbin floor of  history.

(Illustration found here).

A population bomb is one with a long, long fuse (a baby born every 2.6 seconds) — the situation is not directly in your face like climate change or peak oil, both being garnished by way-too-many-folks, and this can of worms will become like the thief in the night, quiet, stealthy and dangerous.
Just as the news cycle cranks out all kinds of bullshit, the world is dying even as life comes alive, creating a most-strange take on the future.

In the next few years, some striking changes will be taking place — some you’ll be able to witness first hand, others will just be just things you need, but can’t get.
Earlier this month, Columbia University’s Earth Institute held a conference to explore and discuss the impacts of this human population explosion, and came away with at least five big examples of some real bad shit — shifting population, urbanization, water wars, energy, and, wait for it, mass extinctions.
Via LiveScience:

“In 1950, there were three times as many Europeans as sub-Saharan Africans, said Joel Cohen, a population biologist at Columbia University.
“By 2100, there will be five sub-Saharan Africans for every European.
That’s a 15-fold change in the ratio,” Cohen said.
“Could you imagine that that might have an impact, geopolitically and on international migration?”
…
Globally, the number of people living in urban areas matched and then overtook the number of rural people sometime in the past two years.
The trend will continue.
According to Cohen, the number of people living in cities will climb from 3.5 billion today to 6.3 billion by 2050.
This rate of urbanization is equivalent to “the construction of a city of a million people every five days from now for the next 40 years,” he said.
…
No resource is more precious and vital than water, and, according to economist Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia, there are already parts of the world that, because of the rapidly changing climate, are at a severe crisis point.
“Take the Horn of Africa for example: Somalia’s population has risen roughly fivefold since the middle of the 20th century,” Sachs said.
“Precipitation is down roughly 25 percent over the last quarter century.
“There’s a devastating famine under way right now after two years of complete failure of rains, and [there is] the potential that this is entering a period of long-term climate change.”
…
Currently, there isn’t enough energy being extracted from known sources of fossil fuels to sustain 10 billion people.
This means that humans will be forced to turn to a new energy source before the end of the century. However, it’s a mystery what that new source will be.
“Energy is the basic resource which underlies every other,” said Klaus Lackner, director of the Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy.
“And actually, technology is not quite ready to solve the [energy] problem.
We know there’s plenty of energy in solar, in nuclear, in carbon itself — in fossil carbon — for probably 100 or 200 years (if we are willing to clean up after ourselves and pay the extra to make that happen).
But none of these technologies are quite ready.
Solar has its problems and is still too expensive.”
…
As humans spread, we leave scant room or resources for other species.
“There is good evidence that we are in the sixth massive species extinction of the history of the planet, because of the incredible amount of primary production that we take as a species to maintain 7 billion of us,” Sachs said.

All that shit gives one a nice, rosy glow, huh?

And it’s already coming, and is now here.
From the UK’s The Guardian in March 2010:

The world’s mega-cities are merging to form vast “mega-regions” which may stretch hundreds of kilometres across countries and be home to more than 100 million people, according to a major new UN report.
The phenomenon of the so-called “endless city” could be one of the most significant developments — and problems — in the way people live and economies grow in the next 50 years, says UN-Habitat, the agency for human settlements, which identifies the trend of developing mega-regions in its biannual State of World Cities report.

And climate change is already causing problems, in this particular case, around the Mediterranean Sea region: “The magnitude and frequency of the drying that has occurred is too great to be explained by natural variability alone,” said Martin Hoerling, Ph.D. of NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo., lead author of a paper published online in the Journal of Climate this month. “This is not encouraging news for a region that already experiences water stress, because it implies natural variability alone is unlikely to return the region’s climate to normal.”
And that most precious of material things, even more precious than oil — water.
The US will have problems with water very soon, especially in the parched, drought of the southwest, and will we be able to get that precious liquid to people.
From Reuters:

“In 1985-1986 there were historical (water level) highs and now in less than 25 years we are at historical lows.
“Those sorts of swings are very scary,” said Robert Glennon, speaking at the State of the Lakes Ecosystem Conference in Erie, Pennsylvania.
Glennon, a professor at Arizona State University and the author of “Unquenchable: America’s Water Crisis and What To Do About It,” said that that according to climate experts, shorter, warmer winters mean less ice and greater exposure to the air, leading eventually to more water evaporation.
“We think about water like the air — infinite and inexhaustible but it is very finite and very exhaustible,” Glennon said.
“When you have a shorter ice season you have great exposure to the air and more evaporation. As temperatures go up it is very troubling,” Glennon said.
“The cycles are going to become more acute which is very troubling.”
…
The problem isn’t just getting water to obviously needy areas like the desert city of Las Vegas, Glennon said.
Areas with high rainfall and seemingly abundant freshwater sources also are increasingly exceeding capacity.
“The population of the U.S. is supposed to be 420 million by 2050,” said Glennon,
“Where are we going to get the water to support another 120 million Americans?”

The nasty economic situation right now has caused another population shift — US poor are becoming suburbanites.
In the past decade, the increase in the suburbs was 53 percent, compared with 26 percent in cities, but the recession accelerated the pace: two-thirds of the new suburban poor were added from 2007 to 2010.
Times shift the times: “The whole political class is just getting the memo that Ozzie and Harriet don’t live here anymore,” said Edward Hill, dean of the Levin College of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University.

Do Ozzie and Harriet types live anywhere nowadays?

Happy Halloween — Go trick-or-treating as Lady Gaga — shock ‘em.

Now, it’s the enthusiasm and optimism on future oil and gas supplies from the Department of Energy, painting a rosy picture that’s not only untrue, but a dangerous lie.

(Illustration found here).

In a kind of preview of next week’s meeting of the the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas USA to be held in Washington, DC, a group of distinguished energy experts representing academia, industry, think tanks, and non-profit organizations held a press conference on Wednesday in front of the DOE to highlight misleading data that supposedly shows resources “could make the United States self-sufficient in oil and gas.“
The group also dispatched a letter to DOE Secretary Steven Chu to make matters more clear.
From Jim Baldauf, President and Co-Founder of ASPO-USA:

“The risk/benefit ratio is out of balance.
If these exuberant predictions are wrong, the consequences could be catastrophic.
We need to be conservative and prudent in planning for the future.
We can’t bet America’s economy and national security on Pollyanna predictions.
Exuberance about cheap energy may serve the short-term interests of Wall Street, but it threatens the future of our country.”

Not surprising, the DOE seems under the influence: Such rosy forecasts are typical of industry sources.
Duh!

Furthermore, Tom Whipple, a former CIA analyst and chief editor of ASPO-USA’s Peak Oil Review:

“There are literally dozens of reports and analyses appearing every week around the world pointing to the fact that the world is facing major challenges in maintaining, much less growing, the global supply of oil in next few years.”
He added, “Our concern here today is the growing disconnect between the solid evidence of serious troubles ahead and the Department of Energy’s benign projections concerning the availability of fossil fuels in the next 30 years.”

The DOE’s bullshit flies in the face of a pile of reports to the contrary, even last year from the US Department of Defense, saying shortages could start appearing by as early as 2015.
From the DOD report:

“By 2012, surplus oil production capacity could entirely disappear, and as early as 2015, the shortfall in output could reach nearly 10 million barrels per day,” says the report, which has a foreword by a senior commander, General James N Mattis.
It adds: “While it is difficult to predict precisely what economic, political, and strategic effects such a shortfall might produce, it surely would reduce the prospects for growth in both the developing and developed worlds.
Such an economic slowdown would exacerbate other unresolved tensions, push fragile and failing states further down the path toward collapse, and perhaps have serious economic impact on both China and India.”

Also last year, a report was leaked from the German army that concluded peak oil is not bullshit and things could get a bit dicey as time wears on — and the report didn’t pull punches, according to spiegelonline: It warns of shifts in the global balance of power, of the formation of new relationships based on interdependency, of a decline in importance of the western industrial nations, of the “total collapse of the markets” and of serious political and economic crises.

So one wonders why President Obama’s administration is so tongue-tied and dumb-ass about energy.
Of course, Obama’s been the same way with climate change, and he’s noodling around with some dangerous shit in attempts to get his ass re-elected.
Yesterday, at an University of Colorado rally talking to the young people who flocked to his name four years ago, but now recognize…
He continued to put off making a decision about the upcoming Keystone XL pipeline: “We’re looking at it right now,” Obama told the crowd. “No decision has been made. And I know your deep concern about it, so we will address it.”

‘Deep concern?’
Obama has always had a kind of Pollyanna quality to him, a notion from the old days of “yes, we can.”
Now, we all know it’s just political bullshit.