Putin’s Shanghai Expedition Stokes Deal Talk That Lifts Gazprom

Bloomberg: "“Russia and China are closer to a deal than they’ve ever been before,” Karen Kostanian, an analyst at Bank of America, said by phone from Moscow last week. “While Russia seeks to diversify its natural gas exports away from Europe, China wants to diversify its fuel imports.”

Gazprom will have to spend about $56 billion through 2019 to build a new pipeline to China and develop the Kovykta and Chayanda gas fields in eastern Siberia to supply the gas, Kostanian said."

Split in 1% over #climate

Rift Widening Between Energy And Insurance Industries Over Climate Change - Forbes: "Being a big business, the insurance industry is a strong backer of free enterprise and its laissez-faire leaders. But a rift could be developing now that some major carriers are staking claims in the climate change cause while many of their congressional backers have remained skeptical of the science."

Capitalists turn on each other as costs come due for climate delaying

CSMonitor.com: "Climate change lawsuits: Farmers Insurance filed class action lawsuit last month against nearly 200 communities in the Chicago area for failing to prepare for flooding. The suits argue towns should have known climate change would produce more flooding."

Auto overproduction crisis -- waiting for recovery that is not coming

Zero Hedge: "The car industry cannot stop making new cars because they would have to close their factories and lay off tens of thousands of employees.  This would further add to the recession.  Also the domino effect would be catastrophic as steel manufactures would not sell their steel. All the tens of thousands of places where car components are made would also be effected, indeed the world could come to a grinding halt."

What is net energy and why is it falling?

Net energy is the amount of energy that can be put to use from a system. For example, oil is found, pumped, transported, refined, and burned. You can see that a lot of energy was invested before the benefit is reaped. When that net energy is less that 1:1, that means you are spending more energy than you are getting.

The problem with transport energy is that it must be liquid because trillions of dollars have already been invested in the system that uses it. So, even if the net is a loss, we still pursue liquid fuel. The tarsands are a good example. Some economists say that the net energy of tarsands is greater than 1:1. But they do not include the following:

• clean up costs of toxic waste
• loss of forest
• cancer
• greenhouse gas emissions during extraction
• cost of train derailments
• carcinogens leaking into rivers

If these costs were in included, then tarsands would be a net LOSER in energy.

Tarsands are an extreme example.  Many energy sources in general are not as generous as they seem. And to make matters worse, humans, at current growth rates, will cook the biosphere (100C/212F degrees) in 400 years NO MATTER WHAT WE BURN.

Solution - Degrowth. How to get there? Make cities carfree. Urbanization will drop birthrates. Waiting for collapse is not acceptable.

Energy industry sacrifices safety as net energy falls

Deadly Fire Roars Through Coal Mine in Turkey - NYTimes.com: "ISTANBUL — An explosion on Tuesday in a coal mine in western Turkey killed at least 151 miners and left more than 200 others trapped underground, Turkey’s energy minister said early Wednesday."

Why #peakoil must be ignored or denied by government

Peak Oil : "They CANNOT talk about peak oil, much less implement plans to mitigate the problems of peak oil — not publicly, anyway. The reality of peak oil MUST be kept quiet.
Why?
Because the moment that government recognition of peak oil is made public, the stock market will crash, banks and businesses worldwide will flip onto their backs and wiggle their little legs for a while and then die — in other words, global economic crash and subsequent collapse.
The only thing keeping the global economy and the stock market sleezing along is the confidence of millions of investors living in a state of denial and the multiple trillion$ of freshly printed money being pumped into the system.
But don’t take my word for it. Read this:
Stock Market will Crash when Investors realize Peak Oil is Real
“David Fridley, an expert on oil economics, worked under Chu. In an interview given in 2009, Fridley claims, “[Chu] was my boss…He knows all about peak oil, but he can’t talk about it. If the government announced that peak oil was threatening our economy, Wall Street would crash. He just can’t say anything about it.” (Morrigan)
A whistleblower at the IEA alleged that oil reserves had been overstated, and that the IEA had downplayed the lowering rates of production because it feared panic could spread on the financial markets if the figures were brought down further. ‘Politicians are terrified of mentioning peak oil,’ says Chris Skrebowski, director of Peak Oil Consulting and former editor of respected industry magazine Petroleum Review. ‘They are frightened of the social and financial reactions. Peak oil has been placed on the pile marked “too difficult” (Rowe).”
energyskeptic.com/2012/stock-market-will-crash-when-investors-realize-peak-oil-is-real/

the above is comment by Northwest Resident on Mon, 12th May 2014 9:59 am 

Brazil Zero Fare Movement fights fare increase

. #tarifazero .

. #passelivre .

Read more here and here

Voters approve millions for #publictransit in Michigan

Aggressive TWU Transit Funding Campaign in Michigan Yields Landslide Victory at the Polls: "

The tax millage will generate an estimated $3.4 million in Ann Arbor, $202,730 in Ypsilanti and $778,207 in Ypsilanti Township annually, and will fund the implementation of the AATA’s five-year transit improvement plan. That plan includes more than 90,000 hours of additional fixed-route bus service in the county's urban core, including about 57,000 in Ann Arbor, more than 8,500 in Ypsilanti, and over 9,400 in Ypsilanti Township. 

"

More signs of split in 1% as interests diverge from oil industry

Leaders of Tampa Bay's biggest public companies cite mass transit as priority | Tampa Bay Times: "Yet when the leaders of the region's 10 biggest public companies were asked what Tampa Bay should do to improve its business climate, a majority echoed the same suggestion: make it easier for people to travel between work and home.

"It's hard to get around Pinellas and Hillsborough if you don't have a car," said Mark Mondello, CEO of Jabil Circuit. "Compared to Chicago, Dallas, L.A., Boston … it's night and day. If we're going to attract progressive types of workers and progressive types of corporate businesses, mass transit is an issue.""