The mysterious rash of tree murders sweeping our nation

A rash of tree murders have popped up in my neighborhood. Trees, 6 feet or so tall, primarily of pine ethnicity, cut down in the prime of life, reportedly the corpses are put on display for bizarre rituals while the tree carcasses are still fresh, and then the dead trees are dumped unceremoniously on the street where cleanup crews have to work extra shifts to clean up the carnage.

We hear reports these murders are going on not just in our town, but around the country, and perhaps, if reports are correct, around the world.

Who knows why these tree murders are happening? It's a puzzling mystery that is now several years old. Looking back in the records we see similar flurries of tree murders every year. It's not clear even how long this has happened or even what the real purpose is.

What we do know is that, if our numbers are accurate, and we hope they aren't, the slaughter numbers in the millions every year. How can so many trees be brutally slain every year and nobody says a peep?

GrowthBusters, "Most Important Film Ever Made," premiere Nov 2, challenges growth-at-all-costs policies

A key but little discussed aspect of the environmental threat is the ever-growing population.  Al Gore didn't mention this issue in An Inconvenient Truth perhaps because the implications of raising the high population issue is rather scary.  It's easy to do the numbers and realize that if there were fewer people alive, the environmental impact of humanity would shrink, and we wouldn't have global warming or the other environmental issues (see Arithmetic, Population and Numbers).  But the implications of that observation are really scary, because it immediately asks how do you reduce the population and all sorts of dictatorial means come to mind.

I suppose the least dictatorial means to reducing over-population is via educating the public and getting voluntary cooperation in, for example, not having children.  A new movie, GrowthBusters: Hooked on Growth, seems aimed to do just that.

Too much consumption, too much stuff, all that stuff being built means "resources" that are "extracted" from the planet - climate disruption and economic collapse and other kinds of collapse are directly related to over-extraction of resources, straining the planet's ability to keep up.  While we can decrease consumption by being more efficient and use less resources per person, especially in rich countries like the United States.  Another way is to reduce the population.  Fewer people, fewer resources being used, smaller impact on the planet, it's really simple.

Simple, except for the question of how to implement a smaller population.  And whether it's truly necessary.  It's also possible to reduce consumption with a smaller consumption rate per person.  Business interests tend to fight this solution because it means they sell smaller quantities of stuff, and make smaller profits.  Likewise business interests want to see more people because they can sell their stuff to more people.  Part of the growth train is business interests who demand continual growth, so that their quarterly profit figures continue to increase.  But... oh, there's a rathole here of considerations, and things to ponder, and so on, so just go see the movie and see what you think.  

Trailer



GrowthBusters: Hooked on Growth Trailer from Dave Gardner on Vimeo.

Controversial Documentary Challenges Policy and Perceptions as World Population Passes 7 Billion

WASHINGTON, Oct. 20, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- The provocative documentary, GrowthBusters: Hooked on Growth, will hold its world premiere November 2 in Washington, D.C. It's released to the public worldwide the next day. World population passes 7 billion on October 31. "This could be the most important film ever made," writes Paul Ehrlich, Author of The Population Bomb.

GrowthBusters delivers a full-frontal assault on the "taboos, myths and greedy growth profiteers that keep us speeding toward a cliff," says filmmaker Dave Gardner. "Population growth is not inevitable, but it won't stop until we acknowledge its role in the major crises we face." "The scale of the human presence on Earth has reached unprecedented proportions," ecological footprint pioneer William Rees states in the film. "We've outgrown the planet."

The film also challenges the wisdom of economic growth as a public policy goal. According to Gardner, "We've been programmed from birth to believe in the pot of gold at the end of the growth rainbow, but chasing that gold has let us down. The Occupy Wall Street Movement is right to challenge this system. It is crumbling around us; it should not - and cannot - be revived."

"Continued economic and population growth are not sustainable, plain and simple," declares Gardner. "Every citizen of the planet agrees we do not want to condemn our children to lives of misery and desperation." The film demonstrates our economy would be one billion times the size it is today in just 720 years at 3% annual growth.

Gardner interviewed psychologists, physicists, ecologists, sociologists and economists to research and create GrowthBusters. It features interviews with experts like former World Bank senior economist Herman Daly and former presidential advisors Gus Speth and Robert Solow.

GrowthBusters examines the beliefs, attitudes and propaganda causing people to ignore evidence perpetual growth is not possible or desirable. Gardner calls "Worship of Growth Everlasting the most powerful and widespread religion in the world."

Gardner takes on presidents and prime ministers, economists, news media and wealthy capitalists who keep society hooked on growth. Sociologist Juliet Schor and environmental leader Bill McKibben discuss how the relentless drive to earn, spend and consume is not making people happier.

It sounds depressing, but the film is actually humorous at times and hopeful. It profiles "GrowthBusters in Action," groups and individuals pioneering new value systems and ways of life that don't depend on growth, and they seem quite happy.

Once you see this film, you'll never again view the world the same way. After its world premiere November 2 at the West End Cinema in Washington, D.C., groups and individuals will hold screenings of the film around the world.

Trailer: http://vimeo.com/30647439
Photos and Video: http://www.growthbusters.org/media-and-bloggers
Buy Film: http://www.growthbusters.org/about-2/buy-the-film/
Screening/Premiere Info: http://www.growthbusters.org/about-2/screenings/screening-event-schedule/

http://www.growthbusters.org

World Population to Reach 7 Billion on October 31: http://www.unfpa.org/public/home/news/pid/7597

Contact:

Rick DeHoff, Grey Stone Media
888 777 0111 x7
rick.dehoff@greystonemedia.org

Dave Gardner, Citizen-Powered Media
719-576-5565 (office/cell/all hours)
dave@growthbusters.org

SOURCE Citizen-Powered Media

Some thoughts on making tea

You are missing some Flash content that should appear here! Perhaps your browser cannot display it, or maybe it did not initialize correctly.

Everything we do has an impact on the world, even the lowly event of making a cup of tea. The first step to breaking the patterns that hold us in creating ecological disaster is to recognize the patterns for what they are. Only after recognizing the harmful patterns in even the most mundane of our activities can we begin to change the patterns.

Some thoughts on making tea

Links: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJxOhSbFR8Y

Technosanity #42: contemplating the cost of making tea

You are missing some Flash content that should appear here! Perhaps your browser cannot display it, or maybe it did not initialize correctly.

Making tea is such a simple thing isn't it? Or, is it? Where do the tea leaves come from and what is the environmental impact of growing the tea? Where does the paper for the tea bag come from, what is the environmental impact of that? What about limited water resources? Is the tea shipped across the planet?

Many tea makers attempt to appeal to green consciousness with fair trade practices, or claiming to grow the tea sustainably, etc. All that is laudible, but then they ship the tea thousands of miles and the environmental impact of the globalized shipping probably destroys several times over the gains from the sustainable farming practice.

Technosanity #42: contemplating the cost of making tea

Links: 

Making Tea (on youtube)

TechnoSanity #35: Buy Nothing Day

You are missing some Flash content that should appear here! Perhaps your browser cannot display it, or maybe it did not initialize correctly.

It's thanksgiving day, 2009. I am thankful for my life, the work I'm doing, the ability to speak the message which I have to share.

Today is supposed to be a moment of being thankful, grateful for the bounty of our lives. Of course gratefulness is a practice for every day, not just one day a year, but it's helpful to have the reminder of gratefulness due to the day for giving thanks. But, wait, is this what most of thanksgiving celebrations are about? Is the orgy of football games a practice of gratefulness? Is the orgy of eating a practice of gratefulness? Well, okay, maybe that one is, or at least can be. Is the orgy of shopping on the day after, commonly called Black Friday, a practice of gratefulness?

Black Friday is supposed to be the official start of the Christmas Season. It's commonly the day a guy dressed as Santa lights the Christmas Tree, and there is the Thanksgiving Day Parades led by guys dressed as Santa. Sure it makes sense to have a ceremony to launch a period of other ceremonies leading up to a major celebration. But, just what part of Christs story does Santa come from? Just what part of Christs story do Christmas trees come from? And most importantly just what part of Christs story implies we should shop til we drop and engage in an orgy of consumption?

Buy Nothing Day is organized by Adbusters. It is observed on the day following Thanksgiving, the day commonly known as Black Friday, and the idea is to engage in activities other than shopping. Part of the message of Buy Nothing Day is the above points and others I'll be making below. I believe the purpose Adbusters has in mind behind Buy Nothing Day is to interrupt the practice of overconsumption tied into Black Friday and the way Christmas is currently practiced in the prevailing paradigm.

There are a lot of videos on youtube about Buy Nothing Day, just search for them. Some are linked below.

Buy Nothing Day is important to me for several reasons. One is the subversion or destruction of the real meaning of Christmas discussed above. Christmas is supposed to be a celebration of the birth of a great spiritual teacher, and it is supposed to be symbolic of the awakening within us of attributes taught by that spiritual teacher (Jesus Christ). But think about how Christmas is celebrated and the common symbols. Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Santa Claus, the Nutcracker, Good King Wenceslaus, the Christmas tree, candy canes, elves, the orgy of presents bought and gifted, and on and on. None of this has a single thing to do with celebrating the birth of this great spiritual teacher. Not a thing.

Still, those things are the focus of most activities related to Christmas. And it is Black Friday which starts off the orgy of buying.

Another reason BND is important has to do with the ecological impact of the economics of this orgy of buying. Our Capitalistic system is driven by Consumerism. You hear it pretty plainly in the news if you care to listen. They talk about "Consumer Confidence" which is gobbledygook for measuring how much people are spending. The more we spend the more confident we are, supposedly. The news during Christmas season is full of analysis over how much we spend, and it is Christmas spending that keeps the economy going.

What this means is that rates of consumption drive rates of economic activity which drive rates of production which drives rates of mining resources to build this stuff. Often it's stuff that isn't truly needed, and in any case is produced for a celebration that's a subversion of a very real tradition our society has had with over 1000 years of history behind it. That very real tradition of Christmas has been destroyed and replaced by a fake mockery pretending to be the real tradition, but instead is a total and complete sham.

This sham is harming our traditions and harming our environment.

TechnoSanity #35: Buy Nothing Day

References: 

What did you do for Buy Nothing Day?

References: 

The battle for christmas

TechnoSanity #34: Our collective responsibility as consumers for the things we consume

You are missing some Flash content that should appear here! Perhaps your browser cannot display it, or maybe it did not initialize correctly.

What is the extent of responsibility we have when we buy a thing? In this podcast I suggest we have a lot of responsibility over the cradle-to-grave effects over the thing we buy, as well as the packaging that comes with the thing. Our purchases set in motion a bewildering array of activities aimed at fulfilling the desire we expressed through that purchase. Bags are made so we can carry home the purchase, the gizmo is made, the packaging to hold the gizmo is made, trucks and airplanes and cargo ships are made, forests are cut down, minerals mined, and on and on, all so we can have a plethora of stuff in the stores to buy.

This evening I went to the store to buy a few kitchen gizmos. Each were packaged primarily in cardboard boxes but then came the question at the counter, "Do you want this in a bag?" At least he asked, often the clerks don't ask and just start getting a bag ready causing me to say "I don't need a bag" but this time the number of items was enough to actually need a bag. But the whole situation brought my mind back to a common line of thinking. I'm responsible, now, for the existence of that bag, and what the heck do I do with that bag once I've used it to carry things home?

Maybe this seems overly anal to think that, hey, I'm responsible for the manufacture of this bag. But if I hadn't allowed the clerk to put those gizmos into the bag, then the store would have used one fewer bag that day, and their weekly purchase of bags would have been smaller. In other words because the gizmos were put in a plastic bag the store had to buy another bag to replace the one I used, something for which I am clearly directly responsible.

And, it doesn't stop there. It's of course not just the bag but also the gizmos I bought as well as the packaging the gizmos were contained in.

The responsibility includes the full lifetime of the gizmo, the packaging, the bags, and all the materials that went into making all those things. The gizmo you buy in the store would not exist unless all those materials were mined and manufactured into gizmos, packaging and bags.

The gizmo, the packaging and the bag, they all will eventually be disposed somewhere. They'll wear out or something and you'll want to throw the thing away. For example the plastic bag isn't terribly useful so most people wad up their bags and throw them in the trash. I tend to use whatever plastic bags I receive as trash can liners instead of buying normal trash bags.

The plastic bag is an interesting artifact. The plastic doesn't break down readily so assuming it ends up in a landfill it'll stay in that form for who knows how many thousands of years. Ponder that for a moment .. the bag I received tonight, I used it once to carry those gizmos home, I'll use it again as a trash can liner, and then it'll be taking up space in a landfull for a thousand years or more. How completely NUTS is that???

TechnoSanity #34: Our collective responsibility as consumers for the things we consume

TechnoSanity #34: Our collective responsibility as consumers for the things we consume

You are missing some Flash content that should appear here! Perhaps your browser cannot display it, or maybe it did not initialize correctly.

What is the extent of responsibility we have when we buy a thing? In this podcast I suggest we have a lot of responsibility over the cradle-to-grave effects over the thing we buy, as well as the packaging that comes with the thing. Our purchases set in motion a bewildering array of activities aimed at fulfilling the desire we expressed through that purchase. Bags are made so we can carry home the purchase, the gizmo is made, the packaging to hold the gizmo is made, trucks and airplanes and cargo ships are made, forests are cut down, minerals mined, and on and on, all so we can have a plethora of stuff in the stores to buy.

This evening I went to the store to buy a few kitchen gizmos. Each were packaged primarily in cardboard boxes but then came the question at the counter, "Do you want this in a bag?" At least he asked, often the clerks don't ask and just start getting a bag ready causing me to say "I don't need a bag" but this time the number of items was enough to actually need a bag. But the whole situation brought my mind back to a common line of thinking. I'm responsible, now, for the existence of that bag, and what the heck do I do with that bag once I've used it to carry things home?

Maybe this seems overly anal to think that, hey, I'm responsible for the manufacture of this bag. But if I hadn't allowed the clerk to put those gizmos into the bag, then the store would have used one fewer bag that day, and their weekly purchase of bags would have been smaller. In other words because the gizmos were put in a plastic bag the store had to buy another bag to replace the one I used, something for which I am clearly directly responsible.

And, it doesn't stop there. It's of course not just the bag but also the gizmos I bought as well as the packaging the gizmos were contained in.

The responsibility includes the full lifetime of the gizmo, the packaging, the bags, and all the materials that went into making all those things. The gizmo you buy in the store would not exist unless all those materials were mined and manufactured into gizmos, packaging and bags.

The gizmo, the packaging and the bag, they all will eventually be disposed somewhere. They'll wear out or something and you'll want to throw the thing away. For example the plastic bag isn't terribly useful so most people wad up their bags and throw them in the trash. I tend to use whatever plastic bags I receive as trash can liners instead of buying normal trash bags.

The plastic bag is an interesting artifact. The plastic doesn't break down readily so assuming it ends up in a landfill it'll stay in that form for who knows how many thousands of years. Ponder that for a moment .. the bag I received tonight, I used it once to carry those gizmos home, I'll use it again as a trash can liner, and then it'll be taking up space in a landfull for a thousand years or more. How completely NUTS is that???

TechnoSanity #34: Our collective responsibility as consumers for the things we consume

Review: The End of Suburbia

The End of Suburbia is a documentary concerning itself with predicting the effects of the coming peak of oil production. It consists of interviews with leading peak oil educators including Richard Heinberg, Colin Campbell, Michael Rupert, and James Howard Kunstler. The movie paints a very dark story, and calls on America to relocalize into walkable urban centers rather than continue the folly of suburban sprawl. Additionally it calls for relocalization of our economy, a reversal of globalization, ending the "3000 mile ceasar salad", and other practices which result from abundant cheap energy supplies.

The core of the story is Peak oil, which is the theoretical construct studied by some scientists which predicts production from oil fields as they age. What's been observed over decades of oil production is that once the easy oil is pumped out of a field it is harder and harder and harder to extract the oil. The United States went past its peak of oil production in 1971 and its thought that the world went past its peak of oil production a year or three ago.

Economics 101 "supply and demand" theory says that a commodity with rising demand and decreasing supply will see an increasing price. Right? The history of oil usage is an ever increasing rate of use. That is, except for a short period in the late 70's to early 80's, immediately after the oil crises of the 1970's (and the Carter Administration years). The last few years have seen a wide range of fuel prices leaving us with gasoline cost far higher than recent history. The higher price hasn't been adequately explained to us. It's my belief that the root cause is production peak issues as predicted by the peak oil theory.

This is the sort of problem that The End of Surburbia asks the viewer to ponder. The movie doesn't dwell on questioning whether the peak oil theory is right or wrong. Clearly the people behind this movie assume that it is a correct theory, and their job is to put viewers through a thinking process about the folly of suburbia, the vast amounts of energy wasted to fund the suburban lifestyle, the vast amounts of energy wasted in globalization, and to ponder how we might survive through the coming crisis spawned by less energy availability.

The issue with suburbia itself is the low population density and the unwalkable nature of modern suburbs. Low population density means mass transit is an uneconomic unprofitable business which cannot survive (in most cases). Part of the reason for this is a concerted effort by General Motors, Firestone and Standard Oil to destroy mass transit (street car) systems all over the country replacing them with cars on rubber tires fueled by gasoline.

A byproduct of unwalkable cities is that we as a people have gotten out of the habit of casual exercise. We can't walk to the store, we can't walk to work, etc, instead we drive everywhere. Lack of casual exercise is a likely culprit in obesity.

The "3000 mile ceasar salad" is a way of describing a key flaw in globalization. Globalization is about shipping goods all over the world to serve a global search for the lowest price. The "3000 mile ceasar salad" is when globalization means the ingredients for your ceasar salad at lunch are shipped from 3000 (or more) miles away. An example of globalization is availability of fresh fruit in grocery stores all year long even when the fruit is out of season. This is enabled by cheap shipping costs in turn enabled by cheap abundant energy (fossil oil) supplies. If fuel costs continue rising it will make global-wide shipping expensive, making it unprofitable to ship ceasar salad ingredients across the world.

These are the things discussed in The End of Suburbia. It is an excellent movie, very informative, and for some it was a life-changing experience to watch.

AASIN: 

AASIN: 

The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience (Transition Guides)

The Twitter Death Machine

Twitter is this new phenomena that is raging across the world wide web. It is a massive interactive chat system, at least that seems to have been its original intention. They call it "microblogging" which means that each posting is minimized in size (140 characters or less). The brilliant thing is it is easy to "follow" people and there are several other social aspects to the system which makes it possible to create communities of interest. With the rising popularity of twitter there are some working on gaming twitters system for financial game. One of the more successful systems is the "Twitter Traffic Machine" which is an automated system to build up huge followings for the sole purpose of squirting advertising at them and gaining revenue. While the Twitter Traffic Machine is a brilliantly conceived Internet Marketing system, it is also contributing to global warming and other negative environmental impacts. To explain I will reveal how the Twitter Traffic Machine works. I used the title "Twitter Death Machine" because TTM is an example of the growth of the Internet causing more and more server systems to exist in order to handle the traffic load on the Internet. What's nefarious about the Twitter Traffic Machine is how much of the traffic it generates is machines talking to machines with no human benefit from the data those machines generate. As one who advocates for green web hosting and green computing the growing environmental impact of the Internet concerns me deeply.

The Twitter Traffic Machine relies on these automated systems:

• A twitter account which you set up to look convincing and appealing to the audience you wish to reach
• An automated system to generate relevant content, tweeting it into the account (Google Alerts plus twitterfeed.com)
• An automated system to searching for and following other accounts tweeting with certain keywords of interest to the audience you wish to reach (twollow.com)
• An automated system automatically managing which accounts to follow, such as autofollowing any accounts that follow your account and unfollowing any accounts that unfollow yours (tweetlater.com)
• An automated system to send advertisement(s) for a product or service (tweetlater.com)

I've just set up the system on a couple accounts and it appears to be working. As a method of marketing a message, the idea is a brilliant one that promises an automated method to build a large following. However...

What happens when two of these machines detects one another? Two twitter traffic machines may be programmed to target accounts showing an interest in golf courses. Both would be locating content having to do with golf courses, and tweeting that content. Because the model is to find other accounts tweeting on the targeted subject (golf courses) the two accounts would follow each other. Since it appears there are a large number of twitter traffic machines being operated, it appears many of these accounts are robotically choosing to follow each other.

There appears to be a flood of automated tweeting traffic generators. Maybe it's the accounts my accounts are following but I'm seeing a lot of traffic consisting of article titles with links to news or blog sites. Further many are the same title from different accounts generally leading to the same article. Given the large number of solicitations I've received concerning the Twitter Traffic Machine, it's clear many people are setting up their own TTM's. Even if they're not following the precise TTM model, the value of automated content generation is pretty obvious and it's pretty trivial to set up a system to autotweet automatically generated content. I had worked it out on my own several months ago on the electric vehicle news and information portal I run.

I'm receiving many follows on my accounts from accounts focused on Internet Marketing or other topics totally off-topic to my accounts. These look like an automated seek-accounts-and-follow-them process with the strategy to follow as many other accounts as possible. It's well understood that a large percentage of people who are followed will reciprocate with following the account which followed theirs.

This makes for a growing number of twitter accounts operated by robots. Further it's likely many of them are not monitored by humans. I'm seeing many twitter accounts following 20,000 or more other accounts, which would be a crushing load of twitter traffic for anybody monitoring those accounts. Heck, I have two accounts following a very modest 2-300 accounts each, and find it impossible to keep up with that traffic flow.

An ominous question here is how many of the accounts following a given account are themselves operated by robots?

Every transaction on the Internet creates a requirement for the Internet infrastructure to transmit those transactions. Hence the more Internet traffic which exists, the more Internet infrastructure which much exist, and there is a direct correlation of Internet infrastructure to resources (energy and materials) consumed to build and operate the Internet. This growing level of traffic aimed at Twitter and services related to running twitter traffic machines is contributing to more transactions on the Internet. Therefore twitter traffic machines contribute to ever-increasing resources consumed by the Internet, and directly contributes to global warming and other side effects of resource consumption.

The measure I would apply to this is, does the expenditure of resources lead to human benefit? The expenditure of resources from robots talking to robots with zero human benefit is, to me, a waste. It's just as wasteful as the SPAM flooding my email, or the junk mail arriving via the post office every day. These get dumped immediately and they all consume resources to generate the SPAM. It would be better for all of us if the SPAM did not exist in the first place, to avoid consuming the resources required to create and transmit SPAM.

The twitter traffic machines aren't necessarily generating SPAM. It's possible that in some cases real people are gaining real value from following these robot controlled accounts. Especially if a given TTM operator is doing a sparklingly good job generating useful and relevant content. However I hope to have made it clear some portion of the robotic Twitter traffic is simply consumed by other robots, and that there is a growing web of Internet services adding "value" to the Twitter. Some portion of this traffic is wasted in a similar fashion that SPAM is a waste, in that no human being is gaining any positive benefit from robots talking to robots.

The Twitter Death Machine

Twitter is this new phenomena that is raging across the world wide web. It is a massive interactive chat system, at least that seems to have been its original intention. They call it "microblogging" which means that each posting is minimized in size (140 characters or less). The brilliant thing is it is easy to "follow" people and there are several other social aspects to the system which makes it possible to create communities of interest. With the rising popularity of twitter there are some working on gaming twitters system for financial game. One of the more successful systems is the "Twitter Traffic Machine" which is an automated system to build up huge followings for the sole purpose of squirting advertising at them and gaining revenue. While the Twitter Traffic Machine is a brilliantly conceived Internet Marketing system, it is also contributing to global warming and other negative environmental impacts. To explain I will reveal how the Twitter Traffic Machine works. I used the title "Twitter Death Machine" because TTM is an example of the growth of the Internet causing more and more server systems to exist in order to handle the traffic load on the Internet. What's nefarious about the Twitter Traffic Machine is how much of the traffic it generates is machines talking to machines with no human benefit from the data those machines generate. As one who advocates for green web hosting and green computing the growing environmental impact of the Internet concerns me deeply.

The Twitter Traffic Machine relies on these automated systems:

• A twitter account which you set up to look convincing and appealing to the audience you wish to reach
• An automated system to generate relevant content, tweeting it into the account (Google Alerts plus twitterfeed.com)
• An automated system to searching for and following other accounts tweeting with certain keywords of interest to the audience you wish to reach (twollow.com)
• An automated system automatically managing which accounts to follow, such as autofollowing any accounts that follow your account and unfollowing any accounts that unfollow yours (tweetlater.com)
• An automated system to send advertisement(s) for a product or service (tweetlater.com)

I've just set up the system on a couple accounts and it appears to be working. As a method of marketing a message, the idea is a brilliant one that promises an automated method to build a large following. However...

What happens when two of these machines detects one another? Two twitter traffic machines may be programmed to target accounts showing an interest in golf courses. Both would be locating content having to do with golf courses, and tweeting that content. Because the model is to find other accounts tweeting on the targeted subject (golf courses) the two accounts would follow each other. Since it appears there are a large number of twitter traffic machines being operated, it appears many of these accounts are robotically choosing to follow each other.

There appears to be a flood of automated tweeting traffic generators. Maybe it's the accounts my accounts are following but I'm seeing a lot of traffic consisting of article titles with links to news or blog sites. Further many are the same title from different accounts generally leading to the same article. Given the large number of solicitations I've received concerning the Twitter Traffic Machine, it's clear many people are setting up their own TTM's. Even if they're not following the precise TTM model, the value of automated content generation is pretty obvious and it's pretty trivial to set up a system to autotweet automatically generated content. I had worked it out on my own several months ago on the electric vehicle news and information portal I run.

I'm receiving many follows on my accounts from accounts focused on Internet Marketing or other topics totally off-topic to my accounts. These look like an automated seek-accounts-and-follow-them process with the strategy to follow as many other accounts as possible. It's well understood that a large percentage of people who are followed will reciprocate with following the account which followed theirs.

This makes for a growing number of twitter accounts operated by robots. Further it's likely many of them are not monitored by humans. I'm seeing many twitter accounts following 20,000 or more other accounts, which would be a crushing load of twitter traffic for anybody monitoring those accounts. Heck, I have two accounts following a very modest 2-300 accounts each, and find it impossible to keep up with that traffic flow.

An ominous question here is how many of the accounts following a given account are themselves operated by robots?

Every transaction on the Internet creates a requirement for the Internet infrastructure to transmit those transactions. Hence the more Internet traffic which exists, the more Internet infrastructure which much exist, and there is a direct correlation of Internet infrastructure to resources (energy and materials) consumed to build and operate the Internet. This growing level of traffic aimed at Twitter and services related to running twitter traffic machines is contributing to more transactions on the Internet. Therefore twitter traffic machines contribute to ever-increasing resources consumed by the Internet, and directly contributes to global warming and other side effects of resource consumption.

The measure I would apply to this is, does the expenditure of resources lead to human benefit? The expenditure of resources from robots talking to robots with zero human benefit is, to me, a waste. It's just as wasteful as the SPAM flooding my email, or the junk mail arriving via the post office every day. These get dumped immediately and they all consume resources to generate the SPAM. It would be better for all of us if the SPAM did not exist in the first place, to avoid consuming the resources required to create and transmit SPAM.

The twitter traffic machines aren't necessarily generating SPAM. It's possible that in some cases real people are gaining real value from following these robot controlled accounts. Especially if a given TTM operator is doing a sparklingly good job generating useful and relevant content. However I hope to have made it clear some portion of the robotic Twitter traffic is simply consumed by other robots, and that there is a growing web of Internet services adding "value" to the Twitter. Some portion of this traffic is wasted in a similar fashion that SPAM is a waste, in that no human being is gaining any positive benefit from robots talking to robots.

Energy Crossroads: A burning need to change course

American policies were designed for a world economic arrangement of $20 per barrel of oil. Oil is now at $120 per barrel and climbing. There may be, in the short term, a decrease in the price of oil if the short term supply situation straightens itself out. However, long term, the price of oil is only going to go up. As our dear president said, America is Addicted to Oil but like true addicts we haven't even entered the first step in the 12 step program to recovery. We haven't admitted to our addiction and are in deep denial.

That's what this documentary, Energy Crossroads: A burning need to change course, is all about. It is about exploring the problem, shining light on the addiction, and a half dozen ways the problem can be solved with technologies that are already known.

Cheap energy is what converted our society from primitive horse-drawn ways of doing things, to the sleek modern technological marvels we have all around us. But the people who are adults today have no memory of where we came from. Speaking for myself, my whole life has been embedded in a lifestyle of extravagant energy use which seemed perfectly normal. Driving everywhere, having lights to keep the house bright any time I want, heating the entire house even in the coldest winter, not freezing in the winter, having hot showers at any time of the year, etc. All that's normal, right? Nope. All that came from one effect on society, cheap abundant energy.

Our society is at a crossroad, a choice point in terms of how we resolve this energy crisis. If our society continues being in denial, our society will fail. If on the other hand our society learns to use our energy wisely and responsibly, we will continue developing and growing into even greater technological marvels than we can imagine today.

That's what this documentary, Energy Crossroads: A burning need to change course, is all about.

AASIN: 

Energy Crossroads: A burning need to change course

The use-once-and-toss treadmill

It seems the businesses surrounding us, the businesses that fill our stores with products, that these businesses are dependent on ever growing sales. The stock market values companies whose earnings are always growing, and punish those whose earnings are stagnant or declining. But, what does this have to do with "use it once and throw it away"?

It used to be that products were reliable, that they would last for years, that you could repair things, and that people did actually repair things and keep using them for years on end. Today most products are cheaply built, they don't last, they are unrepairable, they tend to fall apart quickly, and many products are meant to be used only once and then thrown away.

If a product can only be used once doesn't this encourage more consumption of products? If your eating utensils are plastic and unwashable, then you have to buy a new set of them after every meal. If your pen cannot be refilled then you have to buy a whole new pen, rather than buying just a refill. If your MP3 player cannot have its battery replaced, if the circuit board is too complex to repair, what do you do when it breaks? It goes on and on like this with product after product.

This makes for an ever increasing flow of stuff being sent to landfills, and ever increasing destruction of the planet to make raw materials. Well, to be precise there is always a constantly increase in products being made simply because the population constantly increases. But I think that compounding the ever increasing population is the higher quantity per person on the rate of consumption, that we are consuming more per person than did our ancestors.

Making any raw material, whether it's a metal, a plastic, a fabric, or a wood, requires taking some sort of resource and converting it to the raw material. For example it might mean mining and smelting copper ore, and the copper ore is gotten by tearing rocks out of the depths of the earth or in some cases by destroying mountains. Producing the copper leaves a residue of many other chemicals and slag left over from the industrial processes. And, then, say the raw material is turned into a product that's used once, and thrown away. This isn't making very good use of the resources given to us by the planet. An ever increasing use of raw material means an ever increasing destruction of the planet.

If a resource is reused multiple times then that planetary destruction rate is lessened. But a use-once-and-toss paradigm hastens planetary destruction.

Our ancestors did a lot of recycling through simply reusing discarded stuff. Recycling and repairing used to be normal, but today recycling seems to be so completely foreign that one almost has to beg and plead with everyone to get them to recycle.

External Media

Why Having More No Longer Makes Us Happy

The average wage in the United States is less now, in real dollars, than it was 30 years ago. Even for those with college degrees, and though productivity was growing faster than it had for decades, between 2000 and 2004 earnings fell 5.2 percent when adjusted for inflation, according to the most recent data from White House economists.

...The median predictions of the world's climatologists -- by no means the worst-case scenario -- show that unless we take truly enormous steps to rein in our use of fossil fuels, we can expect average temperatures to rise another four or five degrees before the century is out, making the globe warmer than it's been since long before primates appeared.

...During the same decades when our lives grew busier and more isolated, we've gone from having three confidants on average to only two, and the number of people saying they have no one to discuss important matters with has nearly tripled.

Article Reference: 

Why Having More No Longer Makes Us Happy

AASIN: 

Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future

What to do with old glass bottles?

Tree Hugger notes What Should You Do with Extra Glass Bottles? riffing off a question on Apartment Therapy. The question is, you've bought something in a glass bottle, used the contents of the bottle, and now what?

I just recycle stuff. I recycle so much stuff that I hardly ever take out "trash" as most of what I take out gets into the recycling bin instead.

But, Tree Hugger suggests an alternative. Make stuff out of it. That glass bottle could be remade into several kinds of uses.

I remember as a kid we had a glass bottle cutter gizmo that we'd stick in the neck of a bottle, zip the cutter around the bottle, and off cops the top of the bottle. Instant flower vase, or instant pitcher, or instant drinking glass.

Well, not so "instant". The edges tend to be sharp, so you have to smooth them down. Especially if you want to use the ex-bottle as a drinking glass. Also you should be careful in handling the thing because you can accidently break the bottle while cutting it.

But ... as one of the commenters on Tree Hugger says, you only need so many drinking glasses. After you've made a set of drinking glasses, then what?

Yup... then what?

Recycle, my friend. The Earth will love you for it.

What they don't want you to know about the coming oil crisis

This: What they don't want you to know about the coming oil crisis is perhaps the most important thing you could read to aid understanding the oil and energy problem. The oil and energy problem is very likely going to sink our modern way of life. Why? Because our way of life is utterly dependant on hugely extravagent energy use, facilitated by fossil fuels like oil and gas. Why is this a problem? Because the oil and gas are in limited supply, and relatively soon the oil and gas companies will be unable to supply the demand.

The other day I wrote a posting quoting an oil company economist saying not to worry, market forces will take care of it. Consider this effect of market forces:

Meanwhile, domestic gas bills, which rose by more than a third last year, are expected to rise even higher in the next few months. For many people, such fluctuations have lethal implications. Last winter, there were some 35,000 "excess winter deaths" in the UK, most of them attributable to old people not being able to keep warm enough; and last winter was a relatively mild one.

That's market forces at work. The price rises, people can't afford to stay warm, and 35,000 people die as a result. Yup, sorry about your grandma, but that's just market forces at work.

We have allowed oil to become vital to virtually everything we do. Ninety per cent of all our transportation, whether by land, air or sea, is fuelled by oil. Ninety-five per cent of all goods in shops involve the use of oil. Ninety-five per cent of all our food products require oil use. Just to farm a single cow and deliver it to market requires six barrels of oil, enough to drive a car from New York to Los Angeles. The world consumes more than 80 million barrels of oil a day, 29 billion barrels a year, at the time of writing. This figure is rising fast, as it has done for decades. The almost universal expectation is that it will keep doing so for years to come. The US government assumes that global demand will grow to around 120 million barrels a day, 43 billion barrels a year, by 2025. Few question the feasibility of this requirement, or the oil industry's ability to meet it.

They should, because the oil industry won't come close to producing 120 million barrels a day; nor, for reasons that I will discuss later, is there any prospect of the shortfall being taken up by gas. In other words, the most basic of the foundations of our assumptions of future economic wellbeing is rotten. Our society is in a state of collective denial that has no precedent in history, in terms of its scale and implications.

The article goes on from there to describe America's contribution to this mess. The U.S. domestic oil supply reached its peak output in 1970, and U.S. domestic oil production has only declined since, while U.S. oil demand has only climbed. "Of America's current daily consumption of 20 million barrels, 5 million are imported from the Middle East, where almost two-thirds of the world's oil reserves lie in a region of especially intense and long-lived conflicts. Every day, 15 million barrels pass in tankers through the narrow Straits of Hormuz, in the troubled waters between Saudi Arabia and Iran. " The U.S. could reduce demand by 5 million barrels of oil very easily by requiring an increase in fuel efficiency of only 2.5 gallons per mile. This would be easy for Detroit to achieve, but realistically speaking with President Enron and Vice President Halliburton in office is there a chance of that happening?

The SUV market share in the US was 2 per cent in 1975. By 2003 it was 24 per cent. In consequence, average US vehicle fuel efficiency fell between 1987 and 2001, from 26.2 to 24.4 miles per gallon. This at a time when other countries were producing cars capable of up to 60 miles per gallon.

With this kind of trend, we are literally driving ourselves to oblivion.

The importance to this question lies with how is it going to be solved. No amount of economic free market theory will cover up the fact that what we have is a limited, and declining, resource. We will not have the luxury of waiting 6 million years for oil reserves to recover through geologic mechanisms. Instead, when the oil peaks and begins to run dry, the wars we're seeing now will seem tame in comparison.

If we are to avoid that fate, we must begin working on some alternative way of moving our butts from place to place. And it's not just transportation, it's our food supply. As the article says, agriculture is a huge user of oil if only because the Market Economy has resulted in most cities not having their own food production capacity, and instead relying on the ability to ship food from far remote places. How else can arctic cities have fresh fruit in the dead of winter???

It takes time to develop a new energy technology. A lot of time. Fortunately there are some alternative technologies being worked on, but they are all struggling with limited funding for research. Plus they all are suffering from a playing field shaped by market forces that are strongly favoring the entrenched fossil fuel resources.

What they don't want you to know about the coming oil crisis

This: What they don't want you to know about the coming oil crisis is perhaps the most important thing you could read to aid understanding the oil and energy problem. The oil and energy problem is very likely going to sink our modern way of life. Why? Because our way of life is utterly dependant on hugely extravagent energy use, facilitated by fossil fuels like oil and gas. Why is this a problem? Because the oil and gas are in limited supply, and relatively soon the oil and gas companies will be unable to supply the demand.

The other day I wrote a posting quoting an oil company economist saying not to worry, market forces will take care of it. Consider this effect of market forces:

Meanwhile, domestic gas bills, which rose by more than a third last year, are expected to rise even higher in the next few months. For many people, such fluctuations have lethal implications. Last winter, there were some 35,000 "excess winter deaths" in the UK, most of them attributable to old people not being able to keep warm enough; and last winter was a relatively mild one.

That's market forces at work. The price rises, people can't afford to stay warm, and 35,000 people die as a result. Yup, sorry about your grandma, but that's just market forces at work.

We have allowed oil to become vital to virtually everything we do. Ninety per cent of all our transportation, whether by land, air or sea, is fuelled by oil. Ninety-five per cent of all goods in shops involve the use of oil. Ninety-five per cent of all our food products require oil use. Just to farm a single cow and deliver it to market requires six barrels of oil, enough to drive a car from New York to Los Angeles. The world consumes more than 80 million barrels of oil a day, 29 billion barrels a year, at the time of writing. This figure is rising fast, as it has done for decades. The almost universal expectation is that it will keep doing so for years to come. The US government assumes that global demand will grow to around 120 million barrels a day, 43 billion barrels a year, by 2025. Few question the feasibility of this requirement, or the oil industry's ability to meet it.

They should, because the oil industry won't come close to producing 120 million barrels a day; nor, for reasons that I will discuss later, is there any prospect of the shortfall being taken up by gas. In other words, the most basic of the foundations of our assumptions of future economic wellbeing is rotten. Our society is in a state of collective denial that has no precedent in history, in terms of its scale and implications.

The article goes on from there to describe America's contribution to this mess. The U.S. domestic oil supply reached its peak output in 1970, and U.S. domestic oil production has only declined since, while U.S. oil demand has only climbed. "Of America's current daily consumption of 20 million barrels, 5 million are imported from the Middle East, where almost two-thirds of the world's oil reserves lie in a region of especially intense and long-lived conflicts. Every day, 15 million barrels pass in tankers through the narrow Straits of Hormuz, in the troubled waters between Saudi Arabia and Iran. " The U.S. could reduce demand by 5 million barrels of oil very easily by requiring an increase in fuel efficiency of only 2.5 gallons per mile. This would be easy for Detroit to achieve, but realistically speaking with President Enron and Vice President Halliburton in office is there a chance of that happening?

The SUV market share in the US was 2 per cent in 1975. By 2003 it was 24 per cent. In consequence, average US vehicle fuel efficiency fell between 1987 and 2001, from 26.2 to 24.4 miles per gallon. This at a time when other countries were producing cars capable of up to 60 miles per gallon.

With this kind of trend, we are literally driving ourselves to oblivion.

The importance to this question lies with how is it going to be solved. No amount of economic free market theory will cover up the fact that what we have is a limited, and declining, resource. We will not have the luxury of waiting 6 million years for oil reserves to recover through geologic mechanisms. Instead, when the oil peaks and begins to run dry, the wars we're seeing now will seem tame in comparison.

If we are to avoid that fate, we must begin working on some alternative way of moving our butts from place to place. And it's not just transportation, it's our food supply. As the article says, agriculture is a huge user of oil if only because the Market Economy has resulted in most cities not having their own food production capacity, and instead relying on the ability to ship food from far remote places. How else can arctic cities have fresh fruit in the dead of winter???

It takes time to develop a new energy technology. A lot of time. Fortunately there are some alternative technologies being worked on, but they are all struggling with limited funding for research. Plus they all are suffering from a playing field shaped by market forces that are strongly favoring the entrenched fossil fuel resources.

RIGZONE - U.S. Won't Run Out of Fuel if Iran Flows Stop - API

This is meant to calm us? In U.S. Won't Run Out of Fuel if Iran Flows Stop - API, an economist is quoted about near term oil supply and pricing worries. Namely, the U.S. is probably getting ready to beat up on Iran like we've been doing to Iraq. As I've pointed out in numerous postings, the Project for a New American Century (and the NEOCON's in general) have had this plan since at least 1992, to reshape the Middle East beginning with Iraq and moving on to either Syria or Iran (or both), toppling governments as they go and "installing" moderate democracies in their wake.

The current tough stance against both Iran and Syria fits right into that plan, regardless of how dangerous either country really is.

But back to this nutball economist and his attempt at psychological mass influencing of opinion.

In all likelihood it will be a tight market," said John Felmy of the American Petroleum Institute. "But as long as the market system is allowed to work we will have price adjustments that allocate scarce supplies," he told reporters at a briefing, "I would not expect to see shortages."

... Felmy acknowledged that Saudi Arabia, the world's only producer with significant spare capacity, would not be able to totally fill the gap should Iranian flows stop and that U.S. motorists could experience spot shortages of fuel.

... We can see occasional gas lines and spot (supply) problems like we experienced right after Hurricane Katrina if the public panics but that was a real special situation," he said.

The context is that ... assuming some significant action is taken against Iran, then we can expect an oil supply disruption. Quite possibly Iran will become unable to export oil. Oil prices have been surging the last couple weeks because of that expectation.

So, when the economist says "the market system is allowed to work we will have price adjustments that allocate scarce supplies" ... well ... let me provide an interpretation.

• It means that oil products will become scarcer ...
• hence the price will go up ...
• hence once the price goes up, people will decrease their usage ...
• then with decreased usage, the demand will fall (some) and eventually the supply/demand equation will reach some equilibrium.

He says the same thing himself, but he's pussyfooting around the effect. It means disruption to our calm lives in the U.S. It means there will be a lot of angst this year, again, just like last year, over oil, gasoline prices, and "why won't the government do something about this". Just like last year.

Why won't the government do anything about this? Well, it's because the people re-elected that sleazeball corrupt President Enron, Vice President Halliburton and Secretary of Defense Chevron. That's why.

The government isn't about to do anything about this, because the government was bought and paid for by the oil industry. That's why.

Oh, and what should the government do about it anyway? The people in their grand lunacy are buying humongous SUV's that get 10 miles/gallon when there's a tailwind. In other words, the oil demand has only been going up, and up, and up, and up. So long as the U.S. demand for oil keeps going up the problem will only get worse and worse.

The fact is the U.S. has very little oil within its own territory. That means we have to look outside the U.S. for the majority of the oil we consume (aroundd 70% of our oil comes from foreign sources). Since oil is such a crucial part of the U.S. economy (we can hardly do anything without burning some oil), the supply of oil is absolutely essential to continuing life as we know it in this country.

That means, like it or not, that the government has to go to great lengths to ensure supplies of oil. Because without the oil the country will collapse.

And what are those great lengths? Try, for starters, to consider the purpose of invading Iraq.

The reasons given by the government for the war have all been shown to be poppycock, and what's worse is it's clear they were consciously lying to us and the world as they originally told us those stories. It wasn't about WMD, it wasn't about evil Saddam, etc. There's lots of WMD and evil dictators in the world which the U.S. is doing nothing about. Instead Iraq has the second largest oil reserves in the world. And Iran, the next target apparently, is right up there with its own large oil reserves.

The real solution is for the U.S. to permanently decrease its oil usage. But so long as President Enron, Vice President Halliburton and Secretary of Defense Chevron are in office don't expect that kind of wisdom to escape from the mouth of government.

Instead it's up to the people to do this on our own.

RIGZONE - U.S. Won't Run Out of Fuel if Iran Flows Stop - API

This is meant to calm us? In U.S. Won't Run Out of Fuel if Iran Flows Stop - API, an economist is quoted about near term oil supply and pricing worries. Namely, the U.S. is probably getting ready to beat up on Iran like we've been doing to Iraq. As I've pointed out in numerous postings, the Project for a New American Century (and the NEOCON's in general) have had this plan since at least 1992, to reshape the Middle East beginning with Iraq and moving on to either Syria or Iran (or both), toppling governments as they go and "installing" moderate democracies in their wake.

The current tough stance against both Iran and Syria fits right into that plan, regardless of how dangerous either country really is.

But back to this nutball economist and his attempt at psychological mass influencing of opinion.

In all likelihood it will be a tight market," said John Felmy of the American Petroleum Institute. "But as long as the market system is allowed to work we will have price adjustments that allocate scarce supplies," he told reporters at a briefing, "I would not expect to see shortages."

... Felmy acknowledged that Saudi Arabia, the world's only producer with significant spare capacity, would not be able to totally fill the gap should Iranian flows stop and that U.S. motorists could experience spot shortages of fuel.

... We can see occasional gas lines and spot (supply) problems like we experienced right after Hurricane Katrina if the public panics but that was a real special situation," he said.

The context is that ... assuming some significant action is taken against Iran, then we can expect an oil supply disruption. Quite possibly Iran will become unable to export oil. Oil prices have been surging the last couple weeks because of that expectation.

So, when the economist says "the market system is allowed to work we will have price adjustments that allocate scarce supplies" ... well ... let me provide an interpretation.

• It means that oil products will become scarcer ...
• hence the price will go up ...
• hence once the price goes up, people will decrease their usage ...
• then with decreased usage, the demand will fall (some) and eventually the supply/demand equation will reach some equilibrium.

He says the same thing himself, but he's pussyfooting around the effect. It means disruption to our calm lives in the U.S. It means there will be a lot of angst this year, again, just like last year, over oil, gasoline prices, and "why won't the government do something about this". Just like last year.

Why won't the government do anything about this? Well, it's because the people re-elected that sleazeball corrupt President Enron, Vice President Halliburton and Secretary of Defense Chevron. That's why.

The government isn't about to do anything about this, because the government was bought and paid for by the oil industry. That's why.

Oh, and what should the government do about it anyway? The people in their grand lunacy are buying humongous SUV's that get 10 miles/gallon when there's a tailwind. In other words, the oil demand has only been going up, and up, and up, and up. So long as the U.S. demand for oil keeps going up the problem will only get worse and worse.

The fact is the U.S. has very little oil within its own territory. That means we have to look outside the U.S. for the majority of the oil we consume (aroundd 70% of our oil comes from foreign sources). Since oil is such a crucial part of the U.S. economy (we can hardly do anything without burning some oil), the supply of oil is absolutely essential to continuing life as we know it in this country.

That means, like it or not, that the government has to go to great lengths to ensure supplies of oil. Because without the oil the country will collapse.

And what are those great lengths? Try, for starters, to consider the purpose of invading Iraq.

The reasons given by the government for the war have all been shown to be poppycock, and what's worse is it's clear they were consciously lying to us and the world as they originally told us those stories. It wasn't about WMD, it wasn't about evil Saddam, etc. There's lots of WMD and evil dictators in the world which the U.S. is doing nothing about. Instead Iraq has the second largest oil reserves in the world. And Iran, the next target apparently, is right up there with its own large oil reserves.

The real solution is for the U.S. to permanently decrease its oil usage. But so long as President Enron, Vice President Halliburton and Secretary of Defense Chevron are in office don't expect that kind of wisdom to escape from the mouth of government.

Instead it's up to the people to do this on our own.

The Story about Oil you NEED to Hear

Wow, now I understand the significance of something I've seen mentioned in the press. The U.S. Federal Reserve is planning to stop publishing the M3 number. I've seen this in the news, but it didn't register for me the significance, but according to The Story about Oil you NEED to Hear this technical detail in the economic statistics reporting couldn't be more important.

M3 is a measure of American currency in circulation. It is the total of physical currency in actual circulation (M0), the amount held in bank accounts (M1), the amount held in other kinds of accounts (M2) and the amount held outside the U.S. (M3).

What's important here is that oil is traded in only two exchanges: New York and London. For all oil bought and sold worldwide, the transaction occurs either in the New York or London market. Plus, the transaction occurs in U.S. Dollars, and the M3 statistic is largely a measure of the currency used in those oil transactions.

Enter Iran and a plan they announced. They wish to establish another oil exchange, and on that oil exchange the transactions will be denominated in Euros.

And, enter Iraq with a plan they launched shortly before they were invaded. Namely, they began, in 2000, to sell their oil with transactions denominated in Euros.

Look at what happened to Iraq, and what the U.S. government is threatening to do to Iran.

The conclusion that's being implied is that the Iraq war was launched so the U.S. would retain control over the world oil market, and that an Iran war is threatened for the same reason. Hmmm...??

The Story about Oil you NEED to Hear

Wow, now I understand the significance of something I've seen mentioned in the press. The U.S. Federal Reserve is planning to stop publishing the M3 number. I've seen this in the news, but it didn't register for me the significance, but according to The Story about Oil you NEED to Hear this technical detail in the economic statistics reporting couldn't be more important.

M3 is a measure of American currency in circulation. It is the total of physical currency in actual circulation (M0), the amount held in bank accounts (M1), the amount held in other kinds of accounts (M2) and the amount held outside the U.S. (M3).

What's important here is that oil is traded in only two exchanges: New York and London. For all oil bought and sold worldwide, the transaction occurs either in the New York or London market. Plus, the transaction occurs in U.S. Dollars, and the M3 statistic is largely a measure of the currency used in those oil transactions.

Enter Iran and a plan they announced. They wish to establish another oil exchange, and on that oil exchange the transactions will be denominated in Euros.

And, enter Iraq with a plan they launched shortly before they were invaded. Namely, they began, in 2000, to sell their oil with transactions denominated in Euros.

Look at what happened to Iraq, and what the U.S. government is threatening to do to Iran.

The conclusion that's being implied is that the Iraq war was launched so the U.S. would retain control over the world oil market, and that an Iran war is threatened for the same reason. Hmmm...??