http://www.cfr.org/ publication/ 19345/ canadian_oil_sands.html

Read the report. I mean, to say that the Council on Foreign Relations is obsessed with big oil is unfounded. Check out climatesecurity.blogspot.com for more!

Link to what I think is a 60 Minutes video clip of Scott Borgerson (Visiting Fellow at the CFR, in other words he’s on the payroll) promoting the economic benefits of a melting Arctic, being “interviewed” by Dan Rather (another CFR member):

http://www.cfr.org/content/bios/Borgerson1.mp4

If you go the CFR website, and search for Borgerson (he’s not hard to find, having written a series of articles there touting Arctic resources), you’ll find such gems as:

2009

May 5, 2009
Prepared Remarks: The Global Implications of a Warming Arctic
Testimony before the House Foreign Relations Committee

May 2009
The National Interest and the Law of the Sea
Council [CFR] Special Report No. 46

Addressing the Crisis in America’s Oceans
Expert Brief

March 28, 2009
An Arctic Circle of Friends
Op-Ed
New York Times

March 25, 2009
Prepared Testimony on U.S. National Security Interests in the Arctic Before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs

October 15, 2008
Sea Change
Article
The Atlantic

Scott Borgerson visually explores the changing Arctic using an interactive map.

September 24, 2008
Palin’s Alaska Makes Case on Climate Change
Op-Ed
USA Today

September 15, 2008
Is the U.S. Prepared for the Melting Arctic?
Transcript

August 19, 2008
Russia’s Other Front
Op-Ed
Huffington Post

President Bush is right to demand an immediate end to the looting and shooting in Georgia by Russia, but he should also turn his attention to recent aggressive Russian activity in the opening Arctic, writes Scott Borgerson

March 10, 2008
Homeland Security is Like a Poorly Equipped Junior Varsity Squad
Author:
Scott G. Borgerson, Visiting Fellow for Ocean Governance

March/April 2008
Arctic Meltdown

Foreign Affairs Article — Summary

Wake up, Henry Hudson: Thanks to global warming, the Northwest Passage will soon be open for business.

December 13, 2007

August 8, 2007
An Ice-Cold War
Author:
Scott G. Borgerson, Visiting Fellow for Ocean Governance
Op-Ed
New York Times

ExxonMobil, David Rockefeller, and the CFR promoted the invasion of Iraq, apparently according to Greg Palast to gain more control over oil prices, which subsequently went up, up, up.

Now the CFR is promoting the economic benefits of a melting Arctic, and appears unaware of the danger of igniting a methane catastrophe.

We should be very, very worried about this, IMO.

Greg Palast says that one of the motives for invading Iraq was to restrict the supply of oil coming from Iraq, and drive up oil prices. Another motive was to stabilize oil prices, and keep Saddam from swinging them up and down by sudden decisions:

http://www.alternativeculture.com/books/saddam.htm

n the sanitary words of the Council on Foreign Relations’ report (written up by Jaffe herself), Saddam’s problem was that he was a “swinger”:

Tight markets have increased U.S. and global vulnerability
to disruption and provided adversaries undue potential in-
fluence over the price of oil. Iraq has become a key
“swing” producer, posing a difficult situation for the U.S.
government.

Now hold on a minute: Why is our government in a “difficult” position if Iraq is a “swing producer” of oil?

The answer was that Saddam was jerking the oil market up and down. One week, without notice, the man in the moustache suddenly announces he’s going to “support the Palestinian intifada” and cuts off all oil shipments. The result: Worldwide oil prices jump up. The next week, Saddam forgets about the Palestinians and pumps to the maximum allowed under the Oil-for-Food Program. The result: Oil prices suddenly dive-bomb. Up, down, up, down. Saddam was out of control.

“Control is what it’s all about,” one oilman told me. “It’s not about getting the oil, it’s about controlling oil’s price.”

So, within days of Bush’s election in November 2000, the James Baker Institute issued this warning:

In a market with so little cushion to cover unexpected
events, oil prices become extremely sensitive to perceived
supply risks. Such a market increases the potential lever-
age of an otherwise lesser producer such as Iraq…

I met with Falah Aljibury, an advisor to Goldman Sachs, the Baker/CFR group and, I discovered, host to the State Department’s invasion planning meetings in February 2001. The Iraqi-born industry man put it this way: “Iraq is not stable, a wild card.” Saddam cuts production, or suddenly boosts it, playing games with the U.N. over the Oil-for-Food Program. The tinpot despot was, almost alone, setting the weekly world price of oil and Big Oil did not care for that. In the CFR’s sober language:

Saddam is a “destabilizing influence… to the flow of oil
to international markets from the Middle East.”

With Saddam out of control, jerking markets up and down, the price of controlling the price was getting just too high. Saddam drove the oil boys bonkers. For example, Saddam’s games pushed the State Department, disastrously, to launch, in April 2002, a coup d’etat in Venezuela.

This could not stand. Saddam delighted in playing cat-and-mouse with the USA and our oil majors. Unfortunately for him, he wasn’t playing with mice, but a much bigger and unforgiving breed of rodents.

Saddam was asking for it. It was time for a “military assessment.” The CFR concluded:

Saddam Hussein has demonstrated a willingness to
threaten to use the oil weapon to manipulate oil mar-
kets… United States should conduct an immediate pol-
icy review toward Iraq, including military, energy,
economic, and political/diplomatic assessments.

The true motive to invade Iraq, Saddam’s “manipulation of oil markets,” was there, but not yet, in April 2001, the official excuse.

I had even a problem in the 80’s using FASB standards reflect income from what I call inventory profits as earnings.
Example. If a tanker in July held 1 million barrels of oil (there are 3,000 chemicals tankers) and they anchored off shore and waited 2 weeks to unload, they could earn by reason of price increses 5 milion dollars. That is not calssical earnings. That is earniongs by reason of speculation. If southwest airlines locked in jet fuel prices by contract, they could make an additional 5 million a month savings during the same months.
Some ethonal plants had corn contracts at 6 dollars a bushel and the market was 4 dollars. They filed bankruptcy because they wanted out of their contracts. That is fraud. As a CPA we report fraud.
Now if Exxon has a tanker with a million barrels and crude a few months ago fell to 35 dolars, they get write downs and save income taxes. I do not call them an efficient operator by reason of their incomes being from inventory profits.

I was aware last June that several liberals in securities and several Arab entities were manipulating the hedges of crude upward. Exxon benefitted from this. I also know who was setting up profits from naked shorts. There is no industry that supplies more tax revenue for the feds than does energy. None even close. And a lot of that is actually earned outside the US and taxed here.

Today several persian gulf countries have much lower revenue. I also know several of those countries lost about half a trillion on the wrong side of speculation when crude dropped. I am a strong proponent for highly increased North American drilling. Drilling costs will double in 4 years. Whether people pump and produce the oil is a different matter. The prairie of america contains a lake that is huge. The Ogallala aquifer. We will need the water one day. The aguivfer is over the Hugoton embayment of the Anadarko basin, I know of several gas storage fields that are huge and gas that is gathered is stockpiled for future use. Crude underground storage is also a way for reserve. wind generation has extremely high eneger storage costs. fossil fuel storage costs are extremenly low.

Making at least some alternative energy free is the purpose of replacefossil.com.

The idea is that a way to bring down the price of alternatives to consumers is to see that some consumers get it for free. I believe there are many people who want to hasten the transition to 21st century energy willing to participate.

Our first partnership is with the Beverly Arts Center, a regional educational and performance facility in Chicago. Minimal deployment is $5,000 – $8,000 solar water heating to assist the forced air system. A below ground temperature electric heat pump for heating and air conditioning costs about ten times more.

I’m hoping to have enough success with the Arts Center that Habitat for Humanity will also agree to partnership.

Actually, I also would not expect anything of the sort.

What is it so difficult for folks to again remember that these are public companies owned by their shareholders, not by the Gov’t or some altruistic board. They exist to make a profit for their shareholders, not to save the world. Someday, yes, someday, when clean-energy technologies and fuels become profitable, then companies like Exxon will be in those technologies as well, but never before.

Tom Friedman and his ilk are again trumpeting the profit in total dollars and leaving out the essential fact that Exxon’s net profit was a measly 9.47%. My own company’s net profit is over 11%, and we’re considered to have excellent margin. Perhaps Tom should join their board and tell the shareholders and pension fund owners with Exxon shares within how they should make even less profit by over-investing in technologies that won’t earn a return and just barely produce results.

Of course wind and solar energy are free.

The equipment needed to harvest them — e.g. wind turbines & photovoltaic panels — is of course not free. But then, neither is the equipment needed to burn coal or oil, or the equipment needed to produce controlled fission of uranium, free.

That much, wind and solar energy have in common with fuel-based energy sources. It costs money to put up wind turbines and photovoltaic panels, just like it cost money to build coal-fired power plants and nuclear reactors and internal combustion engines.

The difference is, that with wind and solar there is no fuel to be burned or fissioned. There is just an endless supply of free, ambient energy to be harvested.

So sure, in a solar-wind based economy, there will be companies that profit from manufacturing and selling the technology needed to harvest wind and solar energy — just as there are companies today building coal-fired power plants, residential gas furnaces, internal combustion engines, etc.

But ExxonMobil won’t be making tens of billions of dollars profit per year selling fuel for the wind turbines and solar panels.

Alternative energy is not and will never be free. It is a losing argument to claim that it is. That is why I’ve formed Replacing Fossil Fuel for like minded people to work within the market to bring down the costs.

Does the 4% include, for example, investments in cogeneration, biofuels, and in company efficiencies?

What is the profit compared to capital investment or gross sales or taxes?

What is the value of the dividends paid from the profits to the retirees, educational institutions and foundations who hold stock in these companies?

If ExxonMobil had the second-largest lobbying expenditures of any company in any industry, who was first? How does it compare with lobbying expenditures by GE?

I wonder: given that a large number of readers have to buy fuel, is it possible to identify any company that is less bad than the rest?