Falling gasoline prices are a reflection of the broader economic collapse, says a local oil industry analyst, and it probably won't be good news if they stay low.

Richard Heinberg is the author of Peak Everything and The Party's Over, among other books on oil and energy policy issues.

Heinberg says that pump prices and the per-barrel cost of crude were not the only things that peaked last summer.

 

 

Reining in oil speculators would be a constructive response to the events of the past year, Heinberg says, but that's only a first step.

 

 

Where there's fire there's smoke, and on Spare The Air days that's not a good thing.

 

The Bay Area Air Quality Management District has adopted new rules that prohibit district residents from using wood burning stoves or fireplaces on specified Spare the Air Days during the winter months.

 

You can subscribe to an automated email notification system for "no burn: days here. There is also an automated telephone notification system. The Spare the Air Winter alerts are also available by calling 1-877-4-NOBURN (1-877-466-2876).

Most of Sonoma County is part of the Bay Area Air Quality District, and subject to the new rules.The coastal and northern parts of the county which lie outside the  District are not covered by its regulations, and compliance in these areas is voluntary..To see a list of cities and counties covered by the Spare The Air no-burn rules, click here .

 

 

Virtually every business in California will be affected when the state's climate change bill, AB 32, kicks in next year. But one of the bill's co-authors says it's not likely to be as painful as many people fear.

 

Compliance with the new rules for reducing greenhouse gas emissions will come in three forms:  incentives, regulations, and some form of trading of emission costs and credits. Joe Nation explains that such a mechanism will reward those businesses that have already taken steps to reduce their carbon footprint.

 

 

Joe Nation

 

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was  joined by international leaders with a consistent record of addressing the global threat of climate change, New York Governor George Pataki and other environmental and industry leaders at the bill signing for AB 32 on Treasure Island in San Francisco on Tuesday, September 27, 2006.  

Now, as the state's businesses prepare to work under the law's provisions, Joe Nation offers the following 11-point to do list to help them cope:

 

AB 32 "To DO" List

Action Item	Specific Steps to Take
1. Don't panic.	Think long term.  AB 32 implementation will result in some modest economics challenges, but over several years, it will help more than it hurts.
2. Know your energy and carbon footprint.	Knowing what you use and emit will help you create a reduction plan.  Even if you don't have to reduce, you may have to report emissions.
3. Make energy management and carbon management a priority.	Create your own company's version of the "Prius" effect.  Energy users typically reduce consumption 10 percent just by monitoring their use.
4. Become even more energy efficient.

Physicists know that anti-matter is the electrical opposite of the elements we know and use; but they don't know why there is more matter than anti-matter.

 

Dr. Helen Quinn is a researcher and professor of physics at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, where her studies have focused in particle interations and the behaviors of quarks.

 

Even though we may tend to think of the universe as being mostly vast expanses of empty space, Quinn says that's not really true, so there's no place any extra antimatter could be hiding.

 

Looping eruptions on the Sun, like this one (right)  on July 24, 1999, create antimatter. Earth is shown for size comparison.

 

Science fiction has long speculated about the possibility of using some kind of matter-antimatter reactor as a means of propulsion for spacecraft. Quinn says for that to become a reality, there is one huge problem that would have to be overcome first.

Researchers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center developed the sketch (below) of a hypothetical antimatter rocket of the future. 

 

The emerging lesson of the war in Iraq, says critic Michael Schwartz, is that foreign policy and energy policy cannot be separated.

In this analysis, commentator Michael Schwartz demolishes the myths used to sell the U.S. public the idea of an endless "war on terror" centered in Iraq, and shows how the real U.S. interests in Iraq have been rooted in the geopolitics of oil and the expansion of a neoliberal economic model in the Middle East.

Michael Schwartz, Professor of Sociology and Faculty Director of the Undergraduate College of Global Studies at Stony Brook University has written extensively on the war in Iraq at sites including TomDispatch, ZNet; Asia Times and Mother Jones, and in many print outlets, including Contexts, Against the Current, and Z Magazine.   

 

The dynamics of the debate  and speculation over the war in Iraq changed during the past year, as defenders of the administration pointed to what they called the success of the "surge," the boost in troop levels in 2007, in damping down the levels of violence there. Schwartz says that comparative quiet was a byproduct of widespread factional cleansing that was actually enabled by the military surge.

The election of Barack Obama as America's next president has boosted hope that he will take actions to expediently wind down the Iraq war. Schwartz cautions, however, that  as a candidate, Obama's position papers did not show a marked break from the polices that got us into the war.