Nanook's Nook

Independence Day

noreply@blogger.com (Nanook) — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 10:15:00 +0000

I used to love July 4th, but as I've seen our freedoms rapidly eroded over the years I'm finding more and more difficulty finding a reason to celebrate.

We're not even allowed to set off fireworks here anymore. An annual tradition I looked forward to as a kid, I can not legally share with my children unless we drive far away on $4.50/gallon gasoline.

But I think about other freedoms we've lost... I love live music but decent sounding public performances are no longer possible in this area. The reason is sound regulations enforced by local municipalities. They place decibel limits on music that are not based upon good science and are too simplistic to allow for accurate sound reproduction.

First with respect to the science; all sound is not created equal and does not do equal hearing damage. You will find widely on the Internet that it does not matter if the sound is pleasant or unpleasant, except at extreme levels. This is untrue. Unpleasant noise does damage at lower decibel levels than pleasant sounds. Unpleasant noise causes greater constriction of the ear canal and reduces blood flow to the inner ear which over prolonged periods of time does damage to the nerves at volume levels far below those which would do mechanical damage. But most noise research is based upon noise exposure in industrial settings where this type of reaction happens even though it may not happen while listing to your favorite music.

A second problem is that noise in the 1-6 Khz band does the most damage. In an attempt to accommodate this noise meters and noise regulations use a weighted scale called a dbA scale, however the dbA scale only provides an accurate representation of how loud a sound is if that sound is a pure tone at 40 decibles. Complex noises do not follow this curve and your ear is considerably more sensitive at 6Khz than the dbA curve would indicate.

Also most sound systems aren't complex enough to follow this curve so to keep power levels safe at say 100 Hz, they tend to limit the power to the same level at 20 Hz where the ear is much less sensitive. This turns the sound of a kick drum into something like whacking on the end of an oatmeal box and turns bass guitar into just harmonic noise, the fundamentals all too far attenuated to hear well. On the high end, usually 6 Khz is going to be reproduced by the same speaker elements and amplifiers as are used to handle 15 Khz, but the ear is MANY times more sensitive at 6 Khz, and since 6 Khz will be limited to 85 DbA or some such by these damned noise ordinances, 14 Khz won't be audible. The result is that harmonics of instruments and percussion are all in the wrong proproportions. In the current regulatory context, music can not be reproduced accurately, or to put it more directly, music which actually meets legal restrictions in this area sounds like shit. So if I want to listen to decent music I've got to drive to Vancouver BC or somewhere else distant which at $4.50/gallon I can't afford to do, and now that it requires a passport, I REALLY can't afford to do it.

You know I'm all for education and if they want to post big signs that say, this music in this establishment may exceed 110 dbA and cause you to go permanently deaf, I'm all in favor. I think that is really actually the ideal solution, measure the levels at various areas within an establishment during a typical performance and post signs regarding the average and peak noise levels likely to be encountered in that particular spot. Then people can simply gravitate to what they are comfortable with.

Pretty soon you won't be able to ski, water raft, water ski, rock climb, surf, bicycle, oh hell pretty soon even going for a walk will be too damned dangerous. I'm sorry but BIG BROTHER GET OUT OF MY FACE! In my view government has an obligation to protect us from each other but not from ourselves.

Now we used to have this thing called a constitution, it was supposed to provide us with all sorts of inalienable rights, but now if you exercise your first amendment rights you must might be labled an enemy conspirator and tried for treason. The first amendment was supposed to grant you freedom of religion, and I guess that's true if you're still a right wing conservative fundamentalist Christian, but if you happen to be anything else forget it. Freedom of the press; well as long as it doesn't involve graphical depictions, which are restricted in many ways, or any media which really is functionally the press such as broadcast but requires an FCC license thus insuring government compliance, or is on a small enough scale it just doesn't get read. And then there was freedom of assembly, well, as long as you have the appropriate license and you're on the right side; and be sure to bring a gas mask.

You're allowed to own a gun as long as it's not something that might actually have some effect against a tyrannical government (which I think was why the 2nd amendment wanted us to have that right), so it's effectively gutted.

The 4th amendment that was supposed to protect us from searches and seizure without a specific warrant or probable cause. Government witch hunts are a regular thing now, random check points on roads, wiretaps without warrants, and probable cause is sufficiently undefined as it amounts to, "whenever we feel like it".

I had a situation a few years back, I run an internet service, and I used to have a bunch of high powered computers in my basement that drew several kilowatts, about like you might expect from say a marijuana grow operation. One day, Shoreline police show up at my house and demand to be let in to the basement claiming someone made a 9-11 call from there. They had no search warrant but told me I had to let them in because someone called from there and there could be an assault in progress.

So I let them in and they see that all that is there are power hungry antique computers (this was back in the days of 3/670's and the like) and they left and that was that. But I know what probably happened is they obtained records of power consumption, see that I'm eating a bunch of electricity and this room or area has a thermal signature and make up this BS about a call so they can bust me for a non-existent grow room. Oh I did buy a 250 watt halide bulb and ballast for someone that I experimented with for photography (but too much green light) and also used to work on cars so maybe they somehow had a record of that too. At any rate they didn't have any real probable cause and that operation was illegal just like all the warrantless wiretaps.

I could go on because there just seems to be no end, I mean the fifth amendment is side-stepped by plea bargaining, and you can say yes but you give that up voluntarily if you enter a plea bargaining agreement but not really because they make the threat so large if you don't agree that most do. You can get fined 250,000 for swearing on the radio. Yep, now if that isn't a violation of the eight amendment I don't know what is, but rather than go to trial most people faced with an obscenity charge by the FCC will just pay the initial lower proposed fines and give up their rights. And really what is an obscenity is a highly subjective issue. I hear songs played with part of the 'u' removed from 'Fuck' so that it sounds something like 'Fuh..ick' and I guess it passes because they keep playing it that way. Personally, I think that's bullshit and if people don't like it they can change the station just like they can change the URL on their browser if they don't like my blog. If they Really don't like that they can boycott the stations advertisers. In my view, the government shouldn't be involved in programming at all, otherwise you get arbitrary application of the law to any stations which don't happen to espouse the current administrations views, which is exactly the situation we have today and why 99% of AM talk radio is radical right-wing nut-cases.

The 12th amendment is one I think we should abolish; get rid of the electoral college and go to a direct popular vote; with no Diebold voting machines allowed.

The 13th amendment is meaningless if you can replace slavery by ownership with economic slavery. You are still just as effectively owned. Granted, slavery is no longer against race lines and I guess that's an improvement, now it's just a matter of economic class, but we still have slavery.

Personally, I'm not a believer that 9/11 had anything to do with angry Arabs, it had everything to do with people that wanted an excuse to totally usurp the constitution and grab power over the US people.

I used to be able to freely travel to Canada, I can't now. I can't afford passports for the entire family so we just can't go. Never mind I have birth certificates, drivers license, a car licensed in the US, and am probably in a gazillion databases they have access to. It's a bunch of BS used to restrict our freedoms. Most of the 9-11 hijackers were here on legal student visas anyway so all of these measures would not have prevented the 9-11 event.

I'm sick at the moment and probably would not have celebrated with great zeal even if the constitution actually meant something, we still had real freedom, gas wasn't $4.50 a gallon and I could afford to go somewhere, but still I wish that were the case.

Quality Parking

noreply@blogger.com (Nanook) — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 07:16:00 +0000

Just got back from taking my wife to work, and right across the street from where she works was this quality parking job:

People buy these things because they think they're safe; they're not. They do eat a lot of gas and pollute a lot of air. Good to see one of them off the road. If you don't drive safe, ten tons of scrap metal isn't going to make you safe. 4-wheel drive only helps you go. It doesn't help you stop or turn.

Fave

noreply@blogger.com (Nanook) — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 08:34:00 +0000

'till It's Gone

noreply@blogger.com (Nanook) — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 03:42:00 +0000

Joni Mitchell - Big Yellow Taxi

Neuter Your Pets

noreply@blogger.com (Nanook) — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 04:42:00 +0000

Rudi Giuliani

noreply@blogger.com (Nanook) — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 07:24:00 +0000

This is an interesting video. Rudi Giuliani is not someone I'd want to be president. As with our existing leader, he is clearly someone who has a serious disrespect for human life.

Lack of Posts

noreply@blogger.com (Nanook) — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 01:13:00 +0000

Sorry, I have not been very active here recently but I've been really super-busy with business and financial issues.

I'm pretty sure from the feedback I get from him that my father would prefer I never post here. He thinks I'm a nut case and I think he is extremely materialistic. It's a frustrating and depressing situation to put it mildly.

We now have DSL in most parts of the United States where DSL is available. I would like to find some ways to provide it in Canada as well since we have a dial-up user base there too but data transport is so expensive in Canada that most providers only provide measured or capped service and I really do not want to do that.

Here in the States we can now provide broadband services to Qwest, Verizon, BellSouth, SBC/ATT, and Covad service areas (Covad is a CLEC based DSL provider and overlaps much of service territory of other ILECs).

Need to find a way to better track new orders and get them through more efficiently but we'll work that out.

I have added some photos to my gallery and recently re-arranged it to make them easier to find since I use them for web work among other things. Take a look, it's at http://www.eskimo.com/~nanook/gallery.

56k Web Page Reworked

noreply@blogger.com (Nanook) — Tue, 08 May 2007 22:39:00 +0000

I completed reworking the 56K dialup page, http://www.eskimo.com/dial/, in the new style I intend for the website. Lotta work but I think once the whole site is redone it will be more functional and pleasant to use.

Methylphenidate

noreply@blogger.com (Nanook) — Sat, 05 May 2007 21:03:00 +0000

Methylphenidate (generic Ritalin) is so far turning out to be a better agent for me than Bupropion (generic Wellbutrin) was.

Bupropion, I'd get about three good days, and they would be good functional days, but then it would rapidly function less effectively and in about a week I was back to where I was. The doctor kept adjusting the dose and assured me this was normal but at some level a plateau would be reached with most patience where it would remain effective. But I rapidly acclimated to it each time and in a couple of months was at the maximal permissible dose, really past the maximum safe dose and into the area where seizure potential becomes an issue. Fortunately, I never experienced a seizure but further increases at that point really weren't an option. Bupropion was expensive as well.

I was afraid to go on Methylphenidate because I've had anxiety and panic attack issues in the past and didn't want to bring that back. It is generally considered to be a mild stimulant, much more powerful than caffeine but less so than amphetamines.

However, for me it had the opposite effect, initially it was quite sedating and still it has some anti-anxiety rather than pro-anxiety qualities. I have been told and I have read subsequently that for people with ADD this is not entirely uncommon.

There are side effects, one of which was supposed to be an appetite suppressant, didn't happen to me to any significant degree, does seem to kill sex drive though. It causes some digestive issues at times, particularly if taken with Loratadine (generic Claritin for allergies). No medical references to contraindications for taking the two together and the doctor wasn't aware of any issues but I've learned that if I separate them in time, and the Loratadine is a 24-hour pill so it doesn't really matter when I take it as long as it's the same time day to day, then the negative effects are much less.

All in all the functionality is worth the side effects. Really, I had reached such a point of dysfunction that pretty severe side effects would have been worth it. I am slowly chunking away at paperwork, got one years returns filed finally, and making some positive changes that I think will help business in a major way in time.

I've noticed that it seems to cause me a little more difficulty retrieving things from long-term declarative memory, things still seem to be stored but instant retrieval isn't always there. On the flip side though it seems to have improved short term declarative memory, procedural memory long and short term, the ability to plan and execute, and creativity, all in all very helpful, and it seems to be doing so in a steady rather than declining fashion.

I hate to be dependent upon chemicals for functionality; but I hate even more to be dysfunctional so chemicals it is, for now at least. I am hopeful that when I dig myself out of my current financial rut and am able to start getting better exercise and nutrition, perhaps the need for it will be less. There are procedural things I can do, make lists of things to be done, etc, that are supposed to be helpful but they really haven't been for me in the past. I have read about some brain-training software that is supposed to exercise the parts of the brain involved and improve functionality so that's something I am looking into also.

How do you like?

noreply@blogger.com (Nanook) — Sat, 05 May 2007 20:46:00 +0000

How do you like my new blog appearance?

I'm using this as a test-bed / learning tool to work out ideas on how I want to do the Eskimo North company website as far as general appearance and how to do specific things, like the drop-shadows around the Google ads and still have it blend properly with the background.

I am learning cascading style sheets and xhtml as well as image creation and manipulation and I'm discovering that a frustrating aspect is that web browsers don't react uniformly to xhtml and css just as they did not react uniformly to html 4, and all the incarnations that proceeded it, so one is left only with a subset of the specification that works properly that one can only arrive at through trial and error, mostly error. One of the founding principals in xhtml was that it would define the specifications strictly and concisely so these compatibility issues wound not exist.

Where Will We Meet Now?

noreply@blogger.com (Nanook) — Wed, 02 May 2007 07:52:00 +0000

Update

This was Dimitri's not Alfy's. For some reason the wrong name came to mind but my daughter just reminded me of the correct name.

Someone recently set fire to Romeo's Pizza on 147th St and 15th Ave NE, in Shoreline, previously was Dimitri's Pizza and it was where Eskimo North held user meetings after Godfathers went out of business. I haven't been in since it became a Romeo's, but as Dimitri's it had great Pizza and the owner was a very pleasant person.

Click on Any Image for a Larger Image

Nanook's Demolition

noreply@blogger.com (Nanook) — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 02:29:00 +0000

Perhaps I am in the wrong business...

This image is on www.cartoonstock.com and is only linked from this blog.

Cool Artwork

noreply@blogger.com (Nanook) — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 22:28:00 +0000

I have mixed feelings about Bruce Lee. There is no denying his accomplishments in the world of martial arts. Something about him always seemed unresolved however, right up to his strange death. He seemed to be destroyed from an anger from within even if it made him physically strong.

I ran across this interesting creation on youtube and thought it worth sharing.

Ancient Human Found in China

noreply@blogger.com (Nanook) — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 19:59:00 +0000

I found this article in BBS News interesting because it provides interesting information about early modern humans.

The Chinese unearthed human remains believed to be between 39,000 and 42,000 years old. There is evidence to suggest that the remains were of a hybrid individual, that is to say the result of interbreeding between modern humans and early human species such as Neanderthal or Homo Erectus. I've always believed this was likely, I think it is likely there are some Neanderthal genes in me.

The other thing that was interesting is that there were evidence this individual was wearing shoes, 40,000 years ago.

Most people today seem to be of the belief that we are the first advanced civilization, and that aside from civilization, or predecessors were incredibly primitive. This believe seems to be held in spite of evidence of burials, religious ceremonies, and art by Neanderthals.

DSL

noreply@blogger.com (Nanook) — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 09:35:00 +0000

As the result of Compass Communications being acquired by FiberCloud, which is in turn owned by Whidbey Tel, Eskimo North, the Internet service I run, is now able to provide DSL service throughout Qwest and Verizon's territory.

I spent a good portion of the day re-working the order page for Qwest DSL and Verizon DSL to reflect these changes but haven't got the main page done yet. Web work can be tedious.

This is good new though, we really needed a more widely available broadband offering.

Things

noreply@blogger.com (Nanook) — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 17:33:00 +0000

There have been some positive developments recently.

A number of things have hurt my business, chief among them my own mental state however, another thing that has been a major problem is dial customers moving to broadband connections and not being able to provide the latter in most locations.

Recently that has changed, a company we had used to provide DSL connectivity in the Western Washington 206 LATA was bought out by a larger company and while initially this resulted in total confusion with us not knowing what high speed services could be provided in what areas, this has been resolved.

We are now able to provide DSL in any part of Qwest and Verizon's service area that they have equipped to provide DSL (where DSLAMs are installed and qualified cable exists).

What is more the pricing on the higher speed circuits is favorable relative to what it previously was. Now I just have to figure out how we are going to price and re-work the DSL web page.

A second thing that has happened is that we are also looking at some high-speed WiMAX based wireless solutions and I believe at least one of these is likely to be viable.

In the long term it is my belief that most end-user connectivity will be wireless. The only thing that has really prevented this in the past was the unavailability of adequate bandwidth and affordable coding technology. These things are rapidly becoming historic.

I can't imagine people settling for being tied down with wires when they can flip open a laptop or turn on a pocket PC or PDA and be connected at high speed, affordably, anywhere.

Anywhere deserves some qualifications, there probably won't be WiMAX service on the top of Mt. Everest for a while. However, owing to the deep reach of WiMAX, I expect that it will eventually cover more footprint than cellular or PCS service. WiMAX can reach as far as thirty miles from the base, which makes it practical to cover larger rural areas, and to reach areas that would have been prohibitive for cell service because of difficulty of placing a cell tower closer.

What has made much of this technology possible is new modulation schemes. These modulation schemes aren't actually totally new but only recently have digital signal processors become sufficiently powerful to allow them to be used for high speed data transmission.

I'll cover this more in the near future on my Radio and Wireless blog.

Format Change

noreply@blogger.com (Nanook) — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 20:28:00 +0000

I have increased the width of my blogs to 1000 pixels in order to accommodate larger images and make generally better use of your monitor real-estate.

This will require at least 1024 x 768 resolution for proper viewing.

Halliburton

noreply@blogger.com (Nanook) — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 18:24:00 +0000

Halliburton opens new headquarters in Dubai. There's a big surprise!

If it wasn't for the war in Iraq, the no-bid contracts, and the like, this would seem to be a normal good sense business move. It makes sense to be headquartered near where your client base is.

The timing is a bit off. I would have thought, after Texas was pretty much drained and the middle east was booming, that would have been a logical time for the move.

Mesothelioma

noreply@blogger.com (Nanook) — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 18:39:00 +0000

The more I think about this whole mesothelioma legal situation the more it irritates me because really it's more general than that. I don't know the merits of the mesothelioma situation. It seems to me that if corporations employing people to work with asbestos were aware of the hazards and took no action to safeguard people from exposure or they were unaware of the hazards but it was reasonable to expect they should have been, then there should be liability. On the other hand, if they were unaware of the hazards and there was no reasonable expectation that they should have been, that's a different situation. I don't know the merits of this particular situation, I am just bothered by what I see as heavy advertising for victims when there might be around 300 victims in the country during their lifetime if the statistics I've read are correct. It just seems to me they are acting like a pack of wolfs fighting over a dead animal carcass.

It's the more general situation were people sue a third party for not preventing them from doing something stupid that troubles me. I really wish I could get a million bucks every time I did something stupid. I bet the lawyers do too. I'd be financially secure for life and so would be attorneys.

The woman who dropped hot coffee in her lap and then subsequently sued McDonalds for millions of dollars, is a case in point.

One of my customers discussed this particular case with me and for a while I almost believed the lady had a legitimate position but after more thought I've changed my mind back to believing it was basically absurd.

My take, coffee is supposed to be and is expected to be hot. If someone is fumbling with hot and liquid while driving and they manage to spill it in their lap, I don't see that as a third parties fault.

Their take was that McDonalds used a process in which water heated above the boiling point under pressure, was forced through the coffee grounds in order to extract a small percentage more coffee from the grounds. Thus the water was hotter than it normally would have been.

The water may have been heated beyond boiling point while it was being forced through the grounds under pressure, but once in the pot at atmospheric pressure it could not have remained that way.

You can superheat water without any impurities and it will remain above boiling point, but as soon as any impurities are added it will boil and rapidly reduce itself to a temperature below boiling.

I've gone back to thinking that case and the award were absurd. Whether or not McDonalds saved a few cents in the making of the coffee is not relevant. I don't believe that all attorneys are evil, I believe most are genuinely good people out there trying to help people understand the complexities of the law. Like any profession there is a small percentage who are not, and their knowledge of the law allows them to manipulate the legal system far more effectively than the average person could.

Another case that irritates me involved an individual who sued a toothbrush company because of enamel abrasion claiming the firm brush they used was too stiff and abraded the enamel off their teeth.

I've used a firm toothbrush all my life. For several years after this suit they were almost impossible to find. At 48 I don't have a problem with my teeth enamel. Quite the opposite, and I use a toothpaste the is actually more abrasive than most in addition to a firm toothbrush and still I don't have a problem with my tooth enamel. Further my gums not only have not receded abnormally, but they have receded less than is normal for my age.

I'm convinced that the claim that a firm toothbrush was the cause of damaged tooth enamel was bunk. They probably sucked on candy all day and the acid had weakened their tooth enamel to the point where a cotton swab would have abraded it.

I like to go to fairs, and when I go to fairs in the United States, Puyallup or Monroe for example, the animals all have signs by them, stay back a gazillion feet, don't touch the animals.

When I go up to the Pacific Northwest Exhibition in Canada, it's very different. There the occasional animal that has a bad disposition will have a warning sign, "Warning: This horse bites", but you don't see the kind of generic liability warning signs you see everywhere here. The general attitude seems to be more along the lines of, "If you're stupid enough to feed this horse your fingers thank you for saving me some hay."

I don't know if this law is still on the books in Canada because it's been a decade or more since I was told about this, but in Canada there used to be a $1500 fine if you filed a suit and it was found to be frivolous. Here in the US you risk your $40 filing fee. The Canadian frivolous law suit fine provided some disincentive to people suing because they had a remote chance of screwing someone with deep pockets out of some money. I really think that is a good idea although I think the fine should be a bit stiffer.

Given that the majority of our lawmakers were attorneys before they went into public office, it seems that the odds of a law getting passed that might reduce the demand for their services are slim to none no matter how much it might be in the nations best interest.

Mesothelioma

noreply@blogger.com (Nanook) — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 08:43:00 +0000

I got to thinking about this... We've been here for about 22 years now. When we moved in, our neighbors on east side of us, the husband had worked for a shipyard and had worked with asbestos and he was ill with asbestoses. After a few years he died, but his wife remained.

Not long after her husband died, his wife began to have lung problems, and eventually she had to be on oxygen as well. Eventually she died from lung problems as well.

I don't think either of them had mesothelioma, it was an issue with their lungs themselves rather than the lining.

I wonder why the lawyers are targeting only mesothelioma and not asbestoses which would appear to be more common.

You know that's gotta be a horrible way to die, not being able to get enough oxygen. Just thinking about the terrible feeling that comes when I hold my breath. When I was younger I used to suffer from asthma, and the feeling of not being able to breath was terrible and for me those were usually relatively short lasting attacks 15-30 minutes or so, only rarely longer. I can't imagine that on an ongoing basis until you reach the point where you can't get enough oxygen to support life any longer.

Mesothelioma Lawyers

noreply@blogger.com (Nanook) — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 07:31:00 +0000

Is it just me or does anyone else find it weird that the airwaves are saturated with commercials for Mesothelioma victims. As near as I can tell this must be the most profitable bandwagon for hungry lawyers to jump on at present.

According to what I read online, it is an extremely rare cancer affecting approximately 1-in-1 million, so it would seem there wouldn't be enough victims to make all of that advertising profitable so it just seems odd that I seem to hear it every time I turn on the radio.

Oil

noreply@blogger.com (Nanook) — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 23:03:00 +0000

First there was "peak-oil", the basic idea behind peak-oil is that production peaks at the point where about half the resources are consumed and then production declines and prices sky rocket. No doubt there will be a time when oil production peaks but quite possibly for reasons different than half of the worlds reserves being used up.

Oil production forecasting is difficult for a variety of reasons. For starters the Hubbert curve is based upon fitting data to a curve without understanding the underlying mechanisms. Sometimes this works but sometimes it fails miserably.

A second problem that makes oil forecasting difficult is that oil is a broad term that applies to a wide range of mixtures of hydrocarbons that are generally liquid at room temperature. Further adding to the complexity is the fact that it is possible to "crack" heavier hydrocarbons and make them into lighter molecules, and it is possible to combine short molecules into longer molecules to turn natural gas into liquid fuels. Doing either involves added expense.

Naturally oil which contains high quantities of molecules that have a high market value without the need for cracking or combining are tapped first since they are the most economic to get to market. These oils, light sweet crude, constitute only about 1/3rd of the worlds reserves.

In 2006, both non-OPEC production and OPEC production increased last year over 2005, and at faster rate increase than 2004-2005. A factor in this increased production was higher crude prices during much of last year. This is an important point, on average about 1/3rd of the oil in the ground has been economically extractable. A higher percentage can be extracted at higher oil prices.

For example, it costs around $7/barrel to pump a barrel of oil out of the ground in Saudia Arabia, about $14/barrel in California, $15 a barrel to extract oil from tar sands in Alberta Canada or from oil shale in Colorado.

Canada has become the United States largest oil supplier with oil from Alberta tar sands where there are some 300 billion barrels of recoverable oil. In the US there some 2.6 trillion barrels of oil locked up in oil shale in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. California has approximately 70 billion barrels of heavy crude.

Russia's production of deep abiotic oil that doesn't exist according to most western geologists continues to climb. They claim people supporting this theory are just making it up but can't explain how Russia's production from deep wells that have drilled past any sedimentary deposits and through granite capstone keeps increasing.

Then there are the White Tiger and Black Lion fields of Vietnam. Both of these involve drilling into granite basement rock and there where oil shouldn't exist, it does. Wallace G. Dow, refutes the claim of abiotic genesis for this oil claiming that the granite has been uplifted and overlies a sandstone formation that is the source of the oil. This is one of those things that I guess is yet to play out but I believe the abiotic oil theory is credible, even if it doesn't apply to these particular fields.

The reason I believe the abiotic theory is credible is two fold. First, the raw materials, hydrogen and carbon, of which hydrocarbons are comprised, is extremely plentiful on earth. The oceans are huge reservoirs of hydrogen and oxygen, two parts hydrogen to every one part oxygen. You see carbon everywhere, every life form that exists, coal, oil, natural gas, carbonate rocks, in the form of methane hydrates on the ocean floor, carbon is abundant.

There is a simple reason that carbon is abundant in the universe. After hydrogen fusion, stars fuse helium into carbon. Stars as massive as the sun only do this in the core, and so these elements remain behind as part of a white dwarf at the end of the stars evolution. Stars more massive than about eight suns will go on to fuse carbon in the core into heavier elements but there will be a carbon shell that will be blown off when the star eventually goes super-nova. Carbon is the 4th most abundant element in the universe after hydrogen, helium, and oxygen.

Generally speaking, light elements like these are considered volatiles, and planets that are either heavier or farther from the sun do a better job of retaining their volatiles and not losing them into space.

Thus mercury, which is both light and close to the sun has no atmosphere or water and would be expected not to have much carbon or other light elements as well. The reason is that heat accelerates these atoms to escape velocity and they are lost in space. The heavier an element, the tighter a planets gravitational force holds onto it. Thus hydrogen is lost most easily, then helium, and so on.

Now if we look at our nearest planetary neighbor, Venus, we see a planet that has close to Earth's mass and radius. Venus's mass is 4.87 x 10²⁴ kilograms, Earth's mass is 5.98 x 10²⁴ kilograms. Venus's equatorial radius is 6051.8 km, Earth's equatorial radius is 6378.14 km.
Earth's larger radius means that at the surface you're standing a tad farther from the center of gravity and so the gravity on Venus's surface is about 90% of earths. If you weighed 200 lbs on Earth, you'd weigh 180 lbs on Venus.

So Venus, is both much hotter and it only has about 90% of Earth's gravity and yet, Venus had enough carbon to make an atmosphere of CO2 100 times thicker than Earth's. Venus also lacks plate tectonics, so it's quite possible even more is trapped inside the planet. Earth's atmosphere is approximately 385 parts per million CO2 which means Venus's atmosphere has approximately, 260,000 times as much CO2 as Earth's.

That should give you an idea of just how much carbon is likely to be present on Earth, a whole bunch!

Laboratory experiments have been done where carbonate rocks, water, and iron oxides, all of which are present in the mantle, are heated to 1000C under high pressure and what emerges is a mix of hydrocarbons approximating that which is generally found in deep deposits.

Now, I do have a certain prejudice in preferring theories that can be demonstrated in the laboratory, but one of the things opponents of abiotic oil genesis point to is that the oxygen and carbon budgets at the Earth's surface have remained approximately constant through millenia.

I believe there is actually a reason for this, and that is that there is a natural recycling of carbon through the plate tectonic system. Hydrocarbons that do make it to the Earth's surface are eventually oxidized, one way or another. The CO2 is then taken up in part by plants on the surface, where they do decay and some are turned into biotic sources of hydrocarbons, but much more is taken up by algae in the Earth's oceans. That which is taken up by algae is mostly eaten up by other single celled animals which are mostly eaten by larger multi-cellular creatures which use the carbon and calcium to make, among other things, bone or skeletal structures. These animals eventually die and their skeletons settle to the ocean floor and over time form a thick later of carbonate deposits.

As the sea floor spreads from the mid-ocean rifts and eventually subducts under a continental plate, it carries with it carbonate rocks as well as water, back into the mantle, where the process can repeat itself under great pressures and temperatures creating new hydrocarbons.

So given all of these things, I believe a good portion of the Earth's carbon, and there is a huge amount of carbon, is tied up in hydrocarbons in the Earth's mantle, eventually a portion of it escapes through cracks in the bedrock and occasionally pools under certain formations where it can be extracted.

Now, I should add that this isn't to imply that all oil is abiotic in nature, some carbon does get recycled through biota on land, but that is a small percentage.

Because we've largely looked for the biotic oil, that's what we've largely found. The Russians have looked for abiotic oil, and they've found it in large quantities.

Even if this is all incorrect, I don't believe that it is, but even if it were, production figures still show we haven't reached a peak yet, at least not in 2006, and 2006 oil demand was did not increase as much as predicted, and so after a price peak crude prices fell somewhat.

So the next thing the oil companies tell us is that there is a shortage of refinery capacity in the United States. I posted recently about a Department of Energy report that showed world-wide refinery capacity utilization was 90-95%, while here in the United States in February of 2007, it was less than 83%.

Now the oil companies tell us the refinery capacity is inadequate because refineries are down for maintenance. This is beginning to sound a lot like Enron.

Now we're seeing a world stock market collapse which is based upon the fear that the world economy will slow, and that of coarse has a lot to do with the US economy, which is in the dumpers because we've got a huge trade deficit because of all the oil we import and a huge national deficit because of wars we fight.

The world economy has to grow in order to allow impoverished people to achieve a better standard of living. This is important in terms of a sustainable world economy because in countries where people have a good standard of living, the birth rate is low, population growth is negative, excepting immigration from regions of the world where the standard of living is not good.

Bringing all of the worlds impoverished peoples to an acceptable standard of living is the key towards global population stability and by extension sustainability. Otherwise world population will increase until we hit a resource wall and then collapse as many people starve.

In the long run we need to get off of burning hydrocarbons as a substantial portion of our energy budget because we can't breath the atmosphere on Venus, and it would have a disastrous effect on global climate.

That said I believe we'd be seeing dramatic climate change now in the absence of our CO2 emissions because we are still coming out of an ice age.

This graph, which is part of a EPA report on climate change, shows us that although we've created a carbon dioxide peak much higher than other interglacial periods, the temperature during this peak is not as great as it has been in previous periods even though the carbon dioxide levels are much higher.

This isn't to say that carbon dioxide plays no role in global warming, but given previous peaks and carbon dioxide levels it doesn't appear to be a huge role at current levels compared to temperatures that would be expected to occur as we come out of the last ice age.

So I feel at best it's increasing the rate that something would have happened at naturally but that we'd be seeing global warming eventually regardless and thus from my perspective, the world economy and poverty really deserve a higher priority.

Become a Republican

noreply@blogger.com (Nanook) — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 02:26:00 +0000

Until recently I never really thought seriously about joining a political party because there are frankly no political parties that I can whole-heartedly agree with.

This cartoon gives me pause for thought. It makes some really good arguments for joining the Republican party. I probably won't though. I prefer to remain an independent thinker and voter.

Personally, I want to see a party that is dedicated to the greater good of the entire planet. A party that is geared towards creating a sustainable future. A party that respects life, not just rich American lives, but all life. I want a party that is as fiscally conservative as the Republicans pretend to be.

I want a party that does not view sex as evil but rather views it as a normal part of life, advocates real education and provides the necessary resources to reduce the spread of disease and unwanted pregnancies, a party that doesn't feel it has the need to determine whether or not gay people can marry, let alone elevate that issue above the issue of an unjust war that has killed hundreds of thousands if not millions and has maimed millions.

I want a party that rationally addresses drug addiction and other addictions so that the greater social good is obtained. Presently, we jail two percent of the United States population, that's 1-out-of-50, and the majority are in jail for marijuana and cocaine use. This is an incredible waste of human productive potential. To the degree drugs are a problem, locking someone in a cage for years does not provide a solution.

I want a party that has respect for human life and dignity and respects the constitution as it was originally intended. I do think the people that created it actually had a pretty good idea but it's been watered down and ignored to the point of becoming meaningless.

I could go into a lot more details but right now, I don't feel there is any political party that meets even these minimal requirements, not the Democrats, not the Libertarians, and certainly not the Republicans.

Oil Stranglehold - History Repeats

noreply@blogger.com (Nanook) — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 00:52:00 +0000

While looking for information on current oil refinery capacity and utilization, I run across this Wikipedia page describing exactly the same kind of crap that is happening today happening back in 1911.

Exxon's 2006 profits, $39.5 billion. BP's 2006 profits, $22 billion, Shell's profits, $25 billion, all while 2006 was a year of "weak oil demand" (wonder if it has something to do with the price? Nah couldn't be).

Peak oil advocates keep telling us that the sky is falling even though production for both OPEC and non-OPEC sources reached record levels in 2006. Of particular significance is the fact that production of deep abiotic oil in Russia continued on a steep upward trend throughout 2006.

So having some difficulty convincing us there isn't enough of the raw material (even though the CEO of Exxon has repeatedly stated that he has never had any problems getting sufficient crude for Exxon's refineries), now they are saying that refinery capacity will result in gas prices ranging from $3.50 a gallon upwards this year.

Isn't 100 years of this crap enough? Obviously, they've got plenty of money to build refinery capacity, the only reason they don't is to create an intentional shortage and jack prices through the roof.

US refineries operated at 85.2% of capacity in early February 2007. This is actually below the world average and leads to the obvious question of just how much of this are we going to take? Here, take a look the numbers yourself in this US Department of Energy report.

Consider trading in that SUV for a nice Prius or other efficient vehicle, let's get that refinery usage down another few notches.

Hype

noreply@blogger.com (Nanook) — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 19:59:00 +0000

It used to be that a scientific breakthrough was something truly revolutionary. In the early days of search engines, before Google, back when Alta Vista ruled, if you searched on breakthrough you could be pretty much guaranteed that what you would stumble on was more than just mundane.

I blame the release of Jesus Christ Superstar for a lot of the modern day hype. Prior to it's release in 1970, there were "stars" and there were "models". But it wasn't long after it's release that media started to portray ordinary or even mediocre actors and actresses as "superstars", and then it spread to models, and every model that makes it is a "supermodel".

Gradually, it has spread, and now everything is mega or super or ultra. Ordinary things are gone. I suppose this is acceptable in the world of marketing. I can accept that commercials are going to make totally exaggerated outrageous claims because they need to generate excitement for whatever crap they are trying to sell.

Marketing hype does not belong in the world of science. Marketeers have entered and corrupted this field as well. Even the most mundane incremental improvement is a "breakthrough". Sometimes only the restatement of something that has been known for thirty years is a "breakthrough".

There is no significance to this post really other than to express frustration. Trying to Google breakthrough's in various fields that I'm interested in have only yielded so much marketing hype this morning.

For example, did you know the Atomic Force Microscope is a new invention? Neither did I. It was invented in 1986, but that's one of the items I came across that was hyped as if it had just been invented.