The US Navy Worries About Global Warming

The US Navy worries that reduced ice in the arctic will increase its responsibilities for maritime patrols in that area.

Climate change and reduced sea ice cover may result in opening up the Arctic to vastly increased resource development and commercial traffic. These trends will inevitably spark international conflicts and create a need for more military forces to provide security and protect interests in the Arctic region. This is bad news for the U.S. Navy, already hard-pressed by shrinking fleets and rising challenges elsewhere.

Rear Adm. David Titley, the U.S. Navy's top oceanographer, was recently in Barrow, Alaska supervising a global warming research expedition. According to Titley, changes in Arctic sea ice cover will require a new assessment of the Navy's maritime strategy. Such an assessment will likely recommend changes to military infrastructure in the Arctic, military force structure deployed to the Arctic, and new capabilities to respond to a changing Arctic climate.

Resource development in the Arctic will certainly be a problem. Especially if there are conflicts between Russia and the USA or Russia and Canada. However the worries about the Russians may be overblown because the Russian Fleet is in serious decline. And fears of loss of Arctic Sea ice may also be overblown. Because the extent of Arctic Sea Ice appears to be rebounding unusually early compared to 2007 and 2008. Of course that is weather and not climate. But the Climate experts at the IPCC expect a cooling trend until at least 2020. So the Navy may have a bit of time to get its act together.

Pakistani Blogger in Canadian Trouble

Isaac Schrodinger needs your help. He is an apostate Muslim trying to get asylum in Canada. It appears that the Canadian authorities are not too sympathetic.

I was presented with a few documents such as the photocopy of my personal file and the supporting papers that I had provided them a few months earlier. A curious two-page document called the Screening Form was also given to me. Basically, in there, my claim was boiled down in a few words. I wasn't satisfied with the summary. In turn, the person(s) who made the Screening Form weren't satisfied with my claim.

For example, a part of the "Claim Description" in the Screening Form:

"PAKISTAN, Punjab, Lahore
Fear is unspecified/unclear
appears to fear persecution because of his anti-Islamic views."

Apparently, I have done an atrocious job of presenting my case. Fortunately, I still have three months to rectify the situation (since I can mail in documents at least 20 days before the hearing).

I asked a few questions about the summary. I was told that it comes down to credibility or rather the lack of it. The Refugee Protection Officer tried to console me by saying that that is the problem with everyone in my situation.

The officer made a phone call to schedule the time for my hearing. She inquired if X day in January is alright. I thought to myself for a second and then asked if it was possible to make it the day after that. The officer went back to the call and in a few seconds answered in the affirmative.

I left the building at 11:30 a.m. Leading up to the meeting, I tried to stay calm but somehow anxiety crept up ever so slowly. When I exited the building, I was mentally tired. I walked to the bus station in zombie-mode.

On the trip back, only one thought echoed in my mind: On my next birthday, I will fight for my life.

If you can offer any support (even just kind words) visit his blog.

H/T Instapundit

Update: 10 Sept '06 0743z

Captain's Quarters is covering the story. Thanks Carol Herman for the heads up.

BTW the way these immigration depts. work is that a generalized muslim threat will not help. What is needed is incidents in Pakistan.

Hemp Makes Wonderful Fiber

As a break from war news and related misery, I'm re-publishihing some stuff I wrote about hemp in response to the California bill on hemp growing which just passed and is awaiting the governor's signature. I'll have more about the bill later.

From July 2001.

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Hemp the non-psychoactive cousin of marijuana makes wonderful fiber and has been cultivated for its fiber for at least 5,000 years.

It is well known for its use in rope and in canvas ( the word itself is derived from cannabis ) sails for the sailing ships that dominated the seas for many thousands of years. Hemp was so precious in America that early Colonists were required to grow it for its cordage and cloth uses. Hemp was required to maintain the lifeline between the early colonies and Britain.

George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were known to have grown hemp. As far as can be definitely determined they were only interested in fiber.

Modern uses for the fiber still include hemp twine for use in fine quality shoes and boots. New uses being researched include fiberboard for walls and laminated structural beams for building construction. The very long hemp fibers make these products especially strong compared to their wood counterparts.

Surprisingly hemp may find its way into your automobile body. In fact there is a chance it may already be in the car you drive. The use of hemp as a replacement for fiberglass is just beginning. Hemp composites are easier to recycle than fiberglass composites and due to their long fibers they may be stronger. Using hemp fibers can reduce the weight of car by as much as 40 percent and reduce the energy requirements for car manufacture as well. Hemp is sixty-five cents a pound cheaper than fiberglass and a new crop can be grown every year.

Two percent of automobile fiberglass matts, seat backs and other plastic composites had organic fiber reinforcement last year . Hemp is the dominant organic fiber in this field.

The number one problem in this field is that the DEA unlike its Canadian counterparts cannot tell the difference between hemp and marijuana. In America you need DEA approval, a fenced garden with razor wire to top the fences and 24 hour monitoring. In Canada all you need is a license. Admittedly the Canadians had a little problem with pot poachers the first year they grew a hemp crop. But soon enough the word got out that all you got from smoking hemp was a headache and the poaching all but ceased.

The Illinois legislature has twice passed bills for the study of hemp in Illinois in the hopes of getting a bill that the DEA would approve of and the Governor would sign. So far the Governor has not acted favorably on the latest hemp bill HB 3377. ( HB stands for House Bill not Hemp Bill ) The vote in the House was 72 to 43 in favor.

The Governor needs a little nudging on the hemp issue. He can be reached at: [217] 782-6830 or e-mail the Illinois Governor or you can get the full street address and other phone numbers from: State of Illinois. Click on "State Government" on the upper right. Then State Telephone Directory.

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That was what was going on in 2001. What about 2006? Governor Blagojevich has an ambitious plan for organic liquid fuels. Illinois Energy Independence Plan. There is no mention of hemp oil which can be converted into bio-diesel or the conversion of the celulose in the stalks to alcohol. Perhaps he needs to be informed.

Now is this hemp for fuel idea economical? We have no idea. Moderate scale trials (thousands of acres for a few years) will be required in order to find the answer. So far such trials are illegal in America.

Update: 29 Aug '06 2012z

The politics of hemp.

Energy Supplies - Good News

Good news on the enery front. The Chinese are planning to increase their energy supplies by building an oil pipeline. In Canada.

Canada is going into the oil sands business in a big way. With China.

CALGARY -- China is looking for deals of any kind or size in Canada's oil sands, a senior Sinopec executive says, and the world's most populous country might pull off a "much bigger" move than this week's small, $150-million investment.

"We are looking for profitable projects," which could include everything from minority stakes to full ownership of oil sands projects, said Hou Hongbin, a vice-president of a unit of government-controlled China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. (Sinopec).

Verrrry interesting.

However, that is not all China is up to.

Yesterday, pipeline company Enbridge Inc. announced a preliminary deal with PetroChina Co. Ltd. for half the supply on the proposed $2.5-billion Gateway line, which is supposed to move 400,000 barrels of oil sands crude to the West Coast for export. Chinese companies have made inquiries about the oil sands for several years and last year visited Alberta with a long list of detailed questions, leading to months of speculation about what sort of moves the giant and increasingly powerful country would make. Enbridge's connection with China had been widely expected.

Mr. Hou said securing oil supplies for his energy-hungry country is China's chief goal. "The more sources of import, the more safe" those supplies are, Mr. Hou said. He added that prices for assets in North America are "slightly high," but the continent's political stability and strong rule-of-law are "one of the most important factors for [China's] investment decisions."

North American stability. A very important factor in China's investment decisions. Rule of law is important. You know. I wonder if this is filtering up to top managemt in China.

Well what are the Chinese really up to? There may be an answer here:

Tuesday’s deal makes CNOOC the first mainland China firm to gain a stake in the industry after visits by Chinese government and oil officials to Alberta over the past year.

“These skills may help facilitate the exploitation of oil sand and shale in China,” CNOOC Chairman Fu Chengyu said in a statement.

So this is a technology buy disguised as a production/transport buy. Very Clever.

Privately owned MEG owns a 100 percent working interest in oil sand leases on 32,900 acres in Alberta, Canada. The holdings are estimated to hold 4 billion barrels of bitumen, a kind of tar, that can be processed to produce about 2 billion barrels of crude oil, CNOOC said.

Current high crude oil prices have prompted Chinese oil companies to consider alternative sources of oil to help meet surging demand.

"Lower operating costs and higher recoveries resulting from recent advances in technologies have made many similar projects economically viable," Yang Hua, CNOOC's chief financial officer, said in a statement.

CNOOC's chairman and chief executive officer, Fu Chengyu, said the skills learned in Alberta would be useful in exploiting oil sand and shale in China.

According to the Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Post, China's two major onshore producers, China Petrochemical Corp. and PetroChina are also negotiating purchases of oil sands assets in Alberta.

Now I wonder who they are buying from. I have a guess. Who said the future of envirnmentalism was China? I think it was Maurice Strong.

Doesn't Strong have connections with oil interests in Canada and France?

In a word.

Yes.

Well any way. The good news is that one of the largest oil resources in the world - oil sands - is now being developed.

We are not running out of oil.

Update: 23:51z 25 April 2005

I found this interesting article on the technology and politics of Canada's tar sands.

CALGARY -- Chinese demand for the Alberta oil sands -- the second largest reserve of crude on the planet -- puts the United States in the difficult position of balancing its commitment to open markets with its desire for secure supplies of energy, says Alberta's new envoy to Washington.

"That's exactly what the U.S. is wrestling with," said Murray Smith, the former Alberta energy minister who begins work as the province's representative in the U.S. capital next week. The question, which has been pondered quietly for several years, is likely to burst into the spotlight in 2005.

Enbridge Inc. is pushing ahead with a plan to build a $2.5-billion pipeline from Edmonton to the British Columbia coast, saying that the majority of the oil will probably head to China and that a Chinese company may take a 49-per-cent ownership stake in the line.

The line would carry about 20 per cent of the oil sands' projected daily production in 2010 of two million barrels. At present, oil sands production is about one million barrels, with very little of it going to Asia.

We know oil is fungible. Any new source relieves pressure on demand. And that is precisely what a U.S. Expert says:

"There would be some concerns [for the United States]," said Robert Ebel, head of energy studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, citing the possibility of having to pay more for foreign oil than it would have to pay to get it from Canada. "But, all in all, it would benefit the world market as a whole."

Canada is the No. 1 exporter of crude oil and petroleum products to the United States, which is the world's biggest importer and consumes a quarter of the planet's daily production. China recently became the No. 2 importer, moving past Japan. In 2003, Canada produced 2.39 million barrels of crude a day, exporting almost two-thirds of that -- 1.55-million barrels -- to the United States.

Mr. Ebel said that while Chinese competition for a safe source of U.S. oil isn't great news, the fact that China is diversifying its own supply is important, potentially making the global oil market more stable.

"It's not necessarily a surprise that [China] would knock on Canada's door and take a long look at the oil sands," Mr. Ebel said. "Should we be concerned that some of that oil goes east instead of south? Probably not."

Ah, but there may be a fly in the ointment. First the good news:

The oil sands -- whose reserves of 174 billion barrels rank No. 2 in the world behind Saudi Arabia's -- have the attention of the White House. In 2001, U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney's National Energy Policy report said "their continued development can be a pillar of sustained North American energy and economic security."

But Canada needs new markets, a government agency here says. In a 158-page report in May on the challenges and opportunities in the oil sands, the National Energy Board said the United States historically has absorbed any additional production of crude oil from Canada. But it concluded that "additional markets will be required to keep pace with oil sands expansion."

China doesn't have much refining capacity for the heavy oil such as that produced from the oil sands, but has significant plans to build new refineries.

So where is the bad news? America hasn't built a new refinery in 30 years. In fact our refining capacity over that time has declined by about 2 million barrels a day. In addition our multiple blends of gasoline make it harder to match supply and demand. You can't ship blends designed for one region to another. Environmental regulations don't you know.

And new refineries? Well they cost a lot more due to environmental regulations and getting all the permits required is not easy. Here is some interesting climate change info along with this report:

The industry forecasts 8 to 10 new refineries will be needed to keep up with demand; each refinery is estimated to cost $2.5 billion and take seven years to complete.

Even if companies wanted to build a new refinery, the environmental burden is huge and the costs are overwhelming. Approval of a new refinery could require as many as 800 different permits and NPRA says environmental regulatory costs over the past decade reached $47 billion.

The lack of slack and flexibility is resulting in exaggerated seasonal shortages and price volatility, putting our energy supply, economy and national security are at risk, says IBD. [Investor's Business Daily]