The Nuclear Taboo - Rethinking Armageddon

Rethinking Armageddon

The First Nuclear Age was characterized by the Cold War era bipolar international system and a corresponding bipolar nuclear competition between the United States and the Soviet Union. While a few other states, such as Great Britain and France, also possessed nuclear arms, their arsenals were very small compared to those of the two superpowers.

The world is far different today. On the one hand, both the United States and Russia have far smaller nuclear arsenals than they did at the Cold War’s end. At the same time, new nuclear powers have emerged in pace with advanced conventional precision warfare capabilities. The rise of cyber warfare has also led to concerns over the security and reliability of early warning and command-and-control systems, and weapon systems as well. Advances in the cognitive sciences and research on Cold War crisis decision-making have challenged some of our thinking as to how strategies based on deterrence work, or risk failing. Together, these and other recent developments have combined to form what some are calling a Second Nuclear Age.

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Climate Change Dramatically Affects Africa

 Climate News

 

Africa 2050 Human Existence Still Possible?

Climate: Africa’s Human Existence Is at Severe Risk 

“Africa’s human existence and development is under threat from the adverse impacts of climate change – its population, ecosystems and unique biodiversity will all be the major victims of global climate change.”

This is how clear the Nairobi-based United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is when it comes to assessing the negative impact of climate change on this continent of 54 countries with a combined population of over 1,200 billion [1.2 billion] inhabitants. “No continent will be struck as severely by the impacts of climate change as Africa.”

Other international organisations are similarly trenchant. For instance, the World Bank, basing on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, confirms that Africa is becoming the most exposed region in the world to the impacts of climate change.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, extreme weather will cause dry areas to become drier and wet areas wetter; agriculture yields will suffer from crop failures; and diseases will spread to new altitudes, say the World Bank experts, while alerting that by 2030 it is expected that 90 million more people in Africa will be exposed to malaria, “already the biggest killer in Sub-Saharan Africa.”

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Baher Kamal, IPS News 

Believe it or Not; #India Cooks at Unbelievable 45.8 Degrees Celsius

CLIMATE  NEWS

Temporary relief in Bhubaneswar from the deadly heat  

Forcing Odisha government to shut down its grievance cell and schools till April 20, the heatwave in Bhubaneswar has given temporary relief to the residents. The day temperature has witnessed a drop -marginal though- only to be accompanied by high humidity.

Owing to comparatively cool and moist southerly winds, the city has seen a drop of 3 degrees in its day temperature. Though the temperature has come down to 42.9°C from the all-time highest 45.8°C, heatwave is still persisting in the area as the temperature is still 6 degrees above normal.

This temporary relief is likely to be maintained till tomorrow after which, temperatures will rise again. As per latest reports by Skymet Weather, heatwave will continue to prevail in the region as dry weather is likely to persist till the weekend. 

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Just Awful: "Beautiful Cambodian Tigers Functionally Extinct"

CLIMATE NEWS

Tigers Are Now Extinct In A Country Where They Used To Thrive

Six years after 13 countries pledged to double the number of tigers in the wild by 2020, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) declared tigers “functionally extinct” in Cambodia on Wednesday.

According to WWF, the last wild tiger in the country was observed in 2007 thanks to a hidden camera in the Mondulkiri Protected Forest. Cambodia, one of the 13 countries in the world where tigers live, has approved a plan to reintroduce tigers into the Mondulkiri protected forest in eastern Cambodia, the Guardian reports. “We want two male tigers and five to six females tigers for the start,” said Keo Omaliss, director of the department of wildlife and biodiversity at the Forestry Administration, according to the Guardian. “This is a huge task.”

Though it may be a huge task, the announcement comes a week after researchers said in a studythat forest loss has been lower than expected in tiger habitats, so there is enough space for tigers to come back from the brink of extinction, if habitats are preserved. Habitats are critical for any species, said Anup Joshi, one of the study’s authors, “and especially so with tigers, which need large areas to survive.”

Tigers are solitary animals apart from the connection between mother and cub. They traverse large territories and their size is determined mostly by the availability of prey. Joshi, a conservation biologist at the University of Minnesota, told ThinkProgress that out of the 76 conserved landscapes where tigers live, 29 were recognized as areas where tiger populations could double.

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Peak Oil Today - 25 April 2016

"PEAK OIL TODAY"

The End Of Fossil Energy 

The very best weekly analysis and evaluation of the global peak oil situation with additional briefings, charts and videos, added by the curator from accredited professional sources, to enhance the informed investor's knowledge and understanding of its deep complexities and evolving outlooks. 

Everyone should "Bookmark ' this very important weekly post to stay abreast of this most critical aspect of global economics and life on this planet.

 

Peak Oil Review – 25 April 2016 

By Tom Whipple

Quote of the Week

“What we are experiencing today is far beyond headwinds; it is unsustainable. My definition of an unsustainable market is one where all service companies are losing money in North America, which is where we are now.”

Jeff Miller, President ,Halliburton

Contents

1.  Oil and the Global Economy

2.  The Middle East & North Africa

3.  China

4.  Russia/Ukraine

5. The Briefs

1.  Oil and the Global Economy 

Market sentiment has switched to the opinion that prices are not going much lower, despite warnings from Goldman Sachs and other respected observers that there is no fundamental support for higher prices at this time.  Last week various pieces of slightly bullish news that are usually are ignored by the markets were enough to move prices higher for the eighth time in the last ten weeks. Crude now is up 67 percent since February, closing on Friday at $43.73 in New York and $45.11 in London.

US crude stocks continued to increase the week before last while the gasoline inventory fell by more than expected. US drivers appear to be taking full advantage of the low gas prices by buying larger, less fuel-efficient cars and driving more as the weather gets better. Occasionally somebody wonders whether at least some of the increased demand for gasoline is going to exports. Goldman Sachs continues to say flat-out that the markets are still oversupplied, and that meaningful “rebalancing” is not happening as quickly as speculators would hope, and the IEA is forecasting.

Having been burned by false prices rebounds in the past year, US shale drillers are showing no sign of increasing production as yet. The US oil-rig count was down by another seven units last week. Many US drillers are busy working their way through bankruptcy proceedings, selling off assets, or negotiating for lines of credit to continue their unprofitable operations.

One interesting phenomenon of the two-year price slump is the amount of oil that is still being produced by companies undergoing bankruptcy. Many drillers already had large backlogs of drilled but not-yet-fracked wells when the price slump began. As much of the cost producing the oil has already been sunk, the marginal profit of continuing to operate producing wells makes sense even when in bankruptcy. Despite the rapid depletion curves for shale oil wells, overall production is holding up remarkably well considering the large cut in active drilling rigs and overall capital expenditures.  The EIA and IEA keep forecasting large cuts in US oil production. However, when the actual figures come out a couple of months later, these show that in comparison to the size of the estimated overproduction, the forecast drop in US production does not seem to be “rebalancing” the markets as rapidly as forecast.  Thus, with Chapter 11 protections keeping the creditors away, many oil companies find it profitable to keep already completed wells pumping.

First quarter reports for the oil industry have been coming out, and the results are not good. While the producing oil companies have the flexibility to reduce capital expenditures as much as necessary to maintain dividends or stay solvent, the oil service companies which are mostly dependent on fees for supporting new drilling operations are being hurt badly. Halliburton says it cut 6,000 jobs in the first quarter as its revenue slumped by 40 percent from last year. Schlumberger saw a 36 percent drop from the 1^st quarter of last year and has now cut 36,000 jobs since the oil price downturn began in 2014. The company’s CEO expects business will continue to deteriorate in the 2^nd quarter as prices are not yet high enough to spur much capital investment. Much of the drilling still going on is in the massive offshore megaprojects that have too much already invested to suspend completion.

Given the large losses that US banks are suffering on the loans to the oilindustry, it will likely take much higher prices continuing for a while before the oilindustry considers increasing drilling. While $60oil would be great for the economies of some of the low-cost OPEC producers, it is doubtful that high-cost producers such as the deep-water drillers, tar sands companies and those working in the less productive shale oil acreage will be doing much new drilling until selling prices start approaching $100 a barrel again.

Concerns are rising about the future of the oil industry. Total industry debt now has increased to roughly $3 trillion with at least $1 trillion being spent on unprofitable projects.  Goldman Sachs recently concluded that two-thirds of the world 400 largest oil projects are unprofitable with oil selling below $70 a barrel.  Should these projects stop producing due to unprofitability, the world economy would be in danger from much higher prices. Then there is the carbon emissions issue which says that the world simply cannot burn all the oil being unlocked by $3 trillion in capital spending.  This fear is beginning to impact investment decisions with people asking why invest in new oil production projects if the oil can never be sold due to environmental constraints. In many regions, including the US, China, and the EU, this fear is already becoming a reality for the coal industry.

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