Tuesday, October 30, 2007

World oil production has already peaked and will fall by half as soon as 2030, according to a report which also warns that extreme shortages of fossil fuels will lead to wars and social breakdown.

The German-based Energy Watch Group will release its study in London today saying that global oil production peaked in 2006 - much earlier than most experts had expected. The report, which predicts that production will now fall by 7% a year, comes after oil prices set new records almost every day last week, on Friday hitting more than $90 (£44) a barrel.

"The world soon will not be able to produce all the oil it needs as demand is rising while supply is falling. This is a huge problem for the world economy," said Hans-Josef Fell, EWG's founder and the German MP behind the country's successful support system for renewable energy.

The report's author, Joerg Schindler, said its most alarming finding was the steep decline in oil production after its peak, which he says is now behind us.

The results are in contrast to projections from the International Energy Agency, which says there is little reason to worry about oil supplies at the moment.

However, the EWG study relies more on actual oil production data which, it says, are more reliable than estimates of reserves still in the ground. The group says official industry estimates put global reserves at about 1.255 gigabarrels - equivalent to 42 years' supply at current consumption rates. But it thinks the figure is only about two thirds of that.

Global oil production is currently about 81m barrels a day - EWG expects that to fall to 39m by 2030. It also predicts significant falls in gas, coal and uranium production as those energy sources are used up.

Britain's oil production peaked in 1999 and has already dropped by half to about 1.6 million barrels a day.

The report presents a bleak view of the future unless a radically different approach is adopted. It quotes the British energy economist David Fleming as saying: "Anticipated supply shortages could lead easily to disturbing scenes of mass unrest as witnessed in Burma this month. For government, industry and the wider public, just muddling through is not an option any more as this situation could spin out of control and turn into a complete meltdown of society."

Mr Schindler comes to a similar conclusion. "The world is at the beginning of a structural change of its economic system. This change will be triggered by declining fossil fuel supplies and will influence almost all aspects of our daily life."

Jeremy Leggett, one of Britain's leading environmentalists and the author of Half Gone, a book about "peak oil" - defined as the moment when maximum production is reached, said that both the UK government and the energy industry were in "institutionalised denial" and that action should have been taken sooner.

"When I was an adviser to government, I proposed that we set up a taskforce to look at how fast the UK could mobilise alternative energy technologies in extremis, come the peak," he said. "Other industry advisers supported that. But the government prefers to sleep on without even doing a contingency study. For those of us who know that premature peak oil is a clear and present danger, it is impossible to understand such complacency."

Mr Fell said that the world had to move quickly towards the massive deployment of renewable energy and to a dramatic increase in energy efficiency, both as a way to combat climate change and to ensure that the lights stayed on. "If we did all this we may not have an energy crisis."

He accused the British government of hypocrisy. "Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have talked a lot about climate change but have not brought in proper policies to drive up the use of renewables," he said. "This is why they are left talking about nuclear and carbon capture and storage. "

Yesterday, a spokesman for the Department of Business and Enterprise said: "Over the next few years global oil production and refining capacity is expected to increase faster than demand. The world's oil resources are sufficient to sustain economic growth for the foreseeable future. The challenge will be to bring these resources to market in a way that ensures sustainable, timely, reliable and affordable supplies of energy."

The German policy, which guarantees above-market payments to producers of renewable power, is being adopted in many countries - but not Britain, where renewables generate about 4% of the country's electricity and 2% of its overall energy needs.

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Big Brother: At the Border

U.S. Plans to Screen All Who Enter, Leave Country

By Ellen Nakashima and Spencer S. Hsu, Washington Post Staff Writers

Friday, November 3, 2006; A18

The federal government disclosed details yesterday of a border-security program to screen all people who enter and leave the United States, create a terrorism risk profile of each individual and retain that information for up to 40 years.

The details, released in a notice published yesterday in the Federal Register, open a new window on the government's broad and often controversial data-collection effort directed at American and foreign travelers, which was implemented after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

While long known to scrutinize air travelers, the Department of Homeland Security is seeking to apply new technology to perform similar checks on people who enter or leave the country "by automobile or on foot," the notice said.

The department intends to use a program called the Automated Targeting System, originally designed to screen shipping cargo, to store and analyze the data.

"We have been doing risk assessments of cargo and passengers coming into and out of the U.S.," DHS spokesman Jarrod Agen said. "We have the authority and the ability to do it for passengers coming by land and sea."

In practice, he said, the government has not conducted risk assessments on travelers at land crossings for logistical reasons.

"We gather, collect information that is needed to protect the borders," Agen said. "We store the information we see as pertinent to keeping Americans safe."

Civil libertarians expressed concern that risk profiling on such a scale would be intrusive and would not adequately protect citizens' privacy rights, issues similar to those that have surrounded systems profiling air passengers.

"They are assigning a suspicion level to millions of law-abiding citizens," said David Sobel, senior counsel of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "This is about as Kafkaesque as you can get."

DHS officials said that by publishing the notice, they are simply providing "expanded notice and transparency" about an existing program disclosed in October 2001, the Treasury Enforcement Communications System.

But others said Congress has been unaware of the potential of the Automated Targeting System to assess non-aviation travelers.

"ATS started as a tool to prevent the entry of drugs with cargo into the U.S.," said one aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. "We are not aware of Congress specifically legislating to make this expansion possible."

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, chaired by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), yesterday asked Homeland Security to brief staff members on the program, Collins's spokeswoman, Jen Burita, said.

The notice comes as the department is tightening its ability to identify people at the borders. At the end of the year, for example, Homeland Security is expanding its Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology program, under which 32 million noncitizens entering the country annually are fingerprinted and photographed at 115 airports, 15 seaports and 154 land ports.

Stephen E. Flynn, senior fellow for national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, expressed doubts about the department's ability to conduct risk assessments of individuals on a wide scale.

He said customs investigators are so focused on finding drugs and weapons of mass destruction that it would be difficult to screen all individual border crossers, other than cargo-truck drivers and shipping crews.

"There is an ability in theory for government to cast a wider net," he said. "The reality of it is customs is barely able to manage the data they have."

The data-mining program stemmed from an effort in the early 1990s by customs officials to begin assessing the risk of cargo originating in certain countries and from certain shippers. Risk assessment turned more heavily to automated, computer-driven systems after the 2001 attacks.

The risk assessment is created by analysts at the National Targeting Center, a high-tech facility opened in November 2001 and now run by Customs and Border Protection.

In a round-the-clock operation, targeters match names against terrorist watch lists and a host of other data to determine whether a person's background or behavior indicates a terrorist threat, a risk to border security or the potential for illegal activity. They also assess cargo.

Each traveler assessed by the center is assigned a numeric score: The higher the score, the higher the risk. A certain number of points send the traveler back for a full interview.

The Automated Targeting System relies on government databases that include law enforcement data, shipping manifests, travel itineraries and airline passenger data, such as names, addresses, credit card details and phone numbers.

The parent program, Treasury Enforcement Communications System, houses "every possible type of information from a variety of federal, state and local sources," according to a 2001 Federal Register notice.

It includes arrest records, physical descriptions and "wanted" notices. The 5.3 billion-record database was accessed 766 million times a day to process 475 million travelers, according to a 2003 Transportation Research Board study.

In yesterday's Federal Register notice, Homeland Security said it will keep people's risk profiles for up to 40 years "to cover the potentially active lifespan of individuals associated with terrorism or other criminal activities," and because "the risk assessment for individuals who are deemed low risk will be relevant if their risk profile changes in the future, for example, if terrorist associations are identified."

DHS will keep a "pointer or reference" to the underlying records that resulted in the profile.

The DHS notice specified that the Automated Targeting System does not call for any new means of collecting information but rather for the use of existing systems. The notice did not spell out what will determine whether someone is high risk.

But documents and former officials say the system relies on hundreds of "rules" to factor a score for each individual, vehicle or piece of cargo.

According to yesterday's notice, the program is exempt from certain requirements of the Privacy Act of 1974 that allow, for instance, people to access records to determine "if the system contains a record pertaining to a particular individual" and "for the purpose of contesting the content of the record."

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Hiding Exaggerations of Iraq's Powers

Diplomatic Diary: Credibility Gap

Why The White House Can't Drive A Stake Through The Story Of Niger, Uranium And The Cia Agent

By Richard Wolffe

Newsweek Web Exclusive
Written Sept. 30, 2003

Updated: 12:58 PM ET Oct 23, 2007

It started out as just 16 words in the president's State of the Union address. But like all good examples of political chaos theory, it's the smallest details that can cause the biggest dislocations. If only the White House had dropped the brief line about Saddam's nuclear program and the link with Africa. That, at least, was the sentiment inside the Bush administration back in July, when it first got a taste of the kind of trial by fire that Tony Blair, the British prime minister, has been enduring for months.

Back then, at the start of summer, the White House halted the runaway train by tying two senior officials to the track: George Tenet, the director of the CIA, and Stephen Hadley, deputy national security advisor to the president. With not one but two officials sacrificing themselves (at least with public admissions of guilt), the seemingly technical story just evaporated into the summer heat. But the truth is that the story never went away. The White House tactics of dumping on Tenet and Hadley left many inside the administration--including at the White House itself--bitterly disappointed with their own leadership. That bitterness did not fade over the summer.

Yet there's another reason the White House can't drive a stake through the heart of this story. Over the coming days and weeks, there will be much talk of former ambassador Joe Wilson, his wife the CIA agent, political operatives close to the White House, and the all-too-cozy media. (For those not familiar with the details, the story resurfaced this week when the Justice Department, at the request of the CIA, opened an investigation into who illegally disclosed that Wilson's wife was a CIA officer. Some are accusing Bush senior advisor Karl Rove of leaking the information to retaliate against Wilson for his outspoken criticism of the case for going to war. While the White House denies the involvement of any senior officials, Democrats are calling for the appointment of an independent counsel.) In fact, the scandal lives on because it's about a fundamental question: Did the Bush administration mislead the world in going to war in Iraq?

Joe Wilson's investigations in Africa--which led him to dismiss the uranium story-- only scratched the surface. The really exhaustive study took place in the days after the January State of the Union speech, in Tenet's conference room at CIA headquarters. It was there that the agency's analysts sat down with senior aides to Secretary of State Colin Powell for 96 hours, preparing for Powell's landmark speech at the United Nations in February.

The team of CIA and State officials were examining something that Powell called "the script" that emerged from the president's national security council. Powell had little confidence that he could trust the script in full. "Had the script been accurate or even reasonably accurate, it would have been not nearly as tough to build the presentation," one senior State Department official told NEWSWEEK. "But the script was grossly inaccurate. Suffice it to say, the secretary of State would never have given that presentation."

How could such poor intelligence rise all the way to the top of the Bush administration? The original material came from the Iraqi National Congress, the umbrella group of exiles headed by Ahmed Chalabi, the former banker who now heads Iraq's governing council. Chalabi's material found its way up to the highest levels of U.S. policymaking--and the White House script--through three routes, according to officials present at the CIA review.

The most critical was Vice President Dick Cheney's office. But the veep's aides found vital allies inside the president's national security council, where Bob Joseph, the senior director dealing with weapons of mass destruction, guided the process of building the case against Iraq. Both offices worked hand-in-hand with intel analysts under Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary.

The hawks' script was full of holes. Powell was determined to test the story with a simple question: show me more than one source. "There were things that were unsubstantiated and uncorroborated," said one of Powell's staff. Still, the wrestling contest over the case against Iraq raged for several days and nights, as the hawks fought to reinstate their most aggressive accusations.

Top of the hawks' agenda: Saddam's links to terrorists and especially Al Qaeda. For months, Wolfowitz and his aides had argued forcefully that Saddam was working with Al Qaeda, raising that specter within days of the 9/11 attacks. But Powell's aides were deeply skeptical of the intel used to support that indictment. Drawing on foreign intelligence from the British, French and German governments, they threw most of the terrorist allegations out of the White House script. "In some cases we refuted and in other cases invalidated it with multiple sources to the contrary," said one senior State official.

The dispute over Saddam's links to Al Qaeda raged through to the end. Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser, spent 10 hours over two nights overseeing the review, arguing forcefully for the terrorist allegations to be re-inserted in Powell's speech. Her message was echoed by Hadley, and by Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the vice-president's chief of staff.

Even Tenet, who had closely aligned himself with Powell's mission of weeding out the poor intel, was pushing for more terrorist accusations to survive. The pressure on Powell continued with phone calls through the night before he traveled to the U.N. Tenet's anguish was clear to those present at the intelligence review. "If you've briefed the president and the vice-president on some things and then suddenly you are backing off them, you have a lot of ground to cover," said one official in his conference room before Powell's speech. "You've got to make the pitch, even if your heart isn't in it."

As for the now-discredited claims that Saddam attempted to purchase uranium from Niger, the allegations were contained in the White House script, but were kicked out at the earliest review. Less than a week after the State of the Union address, Powell and Tenet's aides concluded that the Niger story was deeply flawed.

"No one could give us anything that was credible about that," said one senior State Department official. Another official said the story was rejected not because they realized they were based on forged documents, but because they proved nothing about the Iraqi nuclear program. All the documents showed was an intent to develop some kind of nuclear program: something the officials already knew. "It doesn't mean squat," said one Powell aide. "The Iraqis had access to uranium all over the place. It didn't mean anything."

So why did Powell join in and lend his credibility to such a flawed exercise? Powell's position, dating back to his experience during the first gulf war, was that Saddam would strike at the United States if he could. He also believed that Saddam had effectively hidden his weapons programs to avoid detection. But he was also deeply concerned that no evidence might be found on the ground--either by U.N. inspectors or U.S. forces. "The nuclear program was all piecemeal," said one State official, "so what were you going to find? We were worried about that. But we knew what the man's intent was. We knew he wanted to do it when he had an opportunity, and we felt the same way about terrorism, even though there might not be too many connections now."

Were such fears enough to convince the world to go to war? Probably not. That's why the battle over Powell's speech was so intense, and why some administration officials were so desperate to discredit Joe Wilson. The Niger story is about far more than 16 words, or a CIA agent's identity. It's about the credibility of the White House.

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/59896

Saturday, October 27, 2007

Hiding Important Information on Environment

Sen. Boxer Seeks Answers On Redacted Testimony: White House Cut Climate Warnings

By Juliet Eilperin,

Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 25, 2007; Page A02

Bush administration officials acknowledged yesterday that they heavily edited testimony on global warming, delivered to Congress on Tuesday by the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, after the president's top science adviser and other officials questioned its scientific basis.

Senate Democrats say they want to investigate the circumstances involved in the editing of CDC Director Julie L. Gerberding's written testimony to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on "climate change and public health." Gerberding testimony shrank from 12 pages to six after it was reviewed by the Office of Management and Budget.

The OMB removed several sections of the testimony that detailed how global warming would affect Americans, according to White House spokeswoman Dana Perino, because John H. Marburger III, who directs the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and his staff questioned whether Gerberding's statements matched those released this year by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

"As I understand it, in the draft there was broad characterizations about climate change science that didn't align with the IPCC," Perino told reporters yesterday. "When you try to summarize what is a very complicated issue and you have many different experts who have a lot of opinions, and you get testimony less than 24 hours before it's going to be given, you -- scientists across the administration were taking a look at it, and there were a decision that she would focus where she is an expert, which is on CDC."

White House officials eliminated several successive pages of Gerberding's testimony, beginning with a section in which she planned to say that many organizations are working to address climate change but that, "despite this extensive activity, the public health effects of climate change remain largely unaddressed," and that the "CDC considers climate change a serious public concern."

In another deleted part of her original testimony, the CDC director predicted that areas in the northern United States "will likely bear the brunt of increases in ground-level ozone and associated airborne pollutants. Populations in mid-western and northeastern cities are expected to experience more heat-related illnesses as heat waves increase in frequency, severity and duration."

The Associated Press, citing anonymous sources, first reported that Gerberding's testimony had been edited.

In an e-mail yesterday, OSTP spokeswoman Kristin Scuderi wrote that the president's science adviser and his aides were trying to "strengthen the testimony, not to remove the weak sections entirely." After Marburger questioned "inconsistencies in the use of language between the [IPCC] report and the testimony . . . the OMB editor decided to transmit a version that simply struck the first eight pages" because there was not time to reconcile the concerns raised by Marburger's office and Gerberding's original statement.

But several experts on the public health impact of climate change, having reviewed Gerberding's testimony, said there were no inconsistencies between the original testimony and the IPCC's recent reports.

"That's nonsense," said University of Wisconsin at Madison public health professor Jonathan Patz, who served as an IPCC lead author for its 2007, 2001 and 1995 reports. "Dr. Gerberding's testimony was scientifically accurate and absolutely in line with the findings of the IPCC."

Just as the CDC director predicted climate change could exacerbate air-pollution-related diseases, the IPCC 2001 report predicted that dangerous summer ozone levels may increase across 50 cities in the eastern U.S., and said, "The large potential population exposed to outdoor air pollution, translates this seemingly small relative risk into a substantial attributable health risk."

Michael McCally, executive director of the advocacy group Physicians for Social Responsibility, said the editing means that the "White House has denied a congressional committee's access to scientific information about health and global warming," adding: "This misuse of science and abuse of the legislative process is deplorable."

Gerberding, however, said in a statement yesterday that the editing did not alter the underlying message of her testimony.

"It is important to note that the edits made to the written testimony document did not alter or affect my messages to the Senate committee," she said. "I was perfectly happy with the testimony I gave to the committee, and was very pleased for the opportunity to have a frank and candid discussion with the Senate committee on the public health issues associated with climate change."

But Gerberding's statement did not satisfy Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), the committee's chairman, who wrote Bush yesterday to demand that he turn over "a copy of all drafts of the CDC director's testimony sent to the Office of Management and Budget or other offices within the Executive Office of the President or other agencies," along with any comments administration officials made on the draft testimony.

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Tuesday, October 30, 2007

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Sunday, October 28, 2007

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