Oil, gas and Syria

Mike Shedlock repeats his strong suspicion that the impending incursion into Syria is to do with oil. He illustrates this with a German map of the Transarabian Pipeline which also appears on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Arabian_Pipeline



Apparently written in 2008, the Wiki article says that the line ceased operation in 1990 and "Today, the entire line is unfit for oil transport."

 

But things may have moved on since then. There is another line to note, the Kirkuk-Banias Pipeline:




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirkuk%E2%80%93Baniyas_pipeline

This too has been out of service for some time, but in 2010 Iraq and Syria "agreed to build two new Kirkuk–Baniyas pipelines" for heavy and light oil." It has been said that President Assad saw this as part of a "Four Seas" strategy to become a key link between the East and the Mediterranean.

Martin Armstrong says that Assad has been blocking the Nabucco gas pipeline, the West's counter to Gazprom's tendrils in Europe:

 

http://www.economist.com/node/14041672

But there's also the question of not putting all your eggs in one basket. The proposed Nabucco pipeline route in the above 2009 Economist Magazine map runs from Kurdish areas via a semicircle though Erzerum and on to Ankara and Europe, giving Turkey control of additional vital energy supplies.

It's possible that the West has seen Syria not so much a threat, or obstacle, as an opportunity to diversify supply lines.

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Belief in experience

I’m not a close follower of Santayana’s philosophy, not making much use of his ideas on modes of being for example. Yet I greatly admire his wisdom, his elegant insights into the human situation.

Take this quote for example:-

Belief in experience is the beginning of that bold instinctive art, more plastic than the instinct of most animals, by which man has raised himself to his earthly eminence : it opens the gates of nature to him, both within him and without, and enables him to transmute his apprehension, at first merely æsthetic, into mathematical science.

This is so great a step that most minds cannot take it. They stumble, and remain entangled in poetry and in gnomic wisdom.

Science and reasonable virtue, which plunge their roots in the soil of nature, are to this day only partially welcome or understood. Although they bring freedom in the end, the approach to them seems sacrificial, and many prefer to live in the glamour of intuition, not having the courage to believe in experience.

George Santayana - Scepticism and Animal Faith

For me, a key phrase here is not having the courage to believe in experience. Surely it does require courage to believe in experience – often considerable courage.

What Santayana does so extraordinarily well is draw our attention to it without the need to illustrate his meaning. He writes as if he is fully aware that there will be those who know just what he means and those who don’t. He isn’t writing for the latter group.

Maybe we experience told him there was no point and he had the courage to write on that basis. After all, the courage to believe in experience isn’t something easily instilled in others merely by words. Santayana knew he wasn’t likely to stiffen the rational backbone of anyone lacking this most necessary brand of intellectual courage.

Science and reasonable virtue, which plunge their roots in the soil of nature, are to this day only partially welcome or understood.

Indeed - they still are.

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Decision time for America - and the free world

“By 930, most arable land had been claimed and the Althing, a legislative and judiciary parliament, was initiated to regulate the Icelandic Commonwealth [...] The Commonwealth lasted until the 13th century, when the political system devised by the original settlers proved unable to cope with the increasing power of Icelandic chieftains.” - Wikipedia on Iceland

And the implication for the USA?

Say 930 = around 1910, 13^th century = 21^st century.

Karl Denninger fulminates on the illegality of mortgage transfers into those bundled swindle-packages - and the banks could still win anyway. Jesse reflects on Frank Church's warning from 1975 that the nation could head into a spy-ridden society, and it has; and John Kerry says war can now be declared without Congressional approval, though that is still being sought.

You will have the rule of law, or the rule of persons. You will be citizens, or subjects. You will be safeguarded by a Constitution, or ravaged by untrammeled power.

This is the three-century decision point.

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FACT: dragons really do exist

"A.D. 793. This year came dreadful fore-warnings over the land of the Northumbrians, terrifying the people most woefully: these were immense sheets of light rushing through the air, and whirlwinds, and fiery dragons flying across the firmament."

 

- The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

 

In mythology, there are dragons or wyrms, but also two-legged or legless, poisonous or fiery wyverns, or lindworms. I have seen long ago but cannot now find on the Internet an engraving, possibly sixteenth century, of one of the latter, destroying whole villages with its fiery breath. I wondered then how someone could dare invent something on that scale, so disprovable.

 

And then on St Valentine's Day 2013 (or 15th February, depending on the time zone you were in at the time), one visited Chelyabinsk.

 

This time the evidence was direct and undeniable, not merely reconstructed with an artist's imagination. According to James Higham, Russians commonly drive with dashcams because of the risk of fake, compensation-seeking "accidents" like this. And so at last we got the proof, for the world to see.

 

Down it flew, a long, fiery shape with a snake-like body and no legs, its deafening roar sufficient to blow in windows and doors and knock down walls, the flames of its breath bright enough to cast shadows. Had it not landed in an ice-covered lake, but hit solid ground, the destruction would have been enormous, as it had been a century ago in Tunguska.

 

Here be dragons.

 

Images taken from this video compilation, and this.

 

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Britain's food security: the future challenge

Land area needed to feed a family of four. Graphic: Dave Llorens (2011)

According to this Wikipedia article, for each square kilometre of arable land Russia has 117 people to feed, the US has 179, and the UK... 1,077. In a future where energy has become very expensive and other countries feed their own people first, could Britain sustain itself without imports?

The infographic above suggests not. The author calculates that a family of four would need 89,050 square feet of land for food, or slightly over 2 acres. Per 4 people in the UK, we have 39,977 square feet of arable land, i.e. only 45% of the estimated requirement.

We may not always be able to fly in cheap vegetables from Kenya and Zimbabwe, and out-of-season fruit from around the world.

Do we have a plan?

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Salt Power

Where river meets sea we have an opportunity to extract not just tidal energy, but energy derived from the difference between salt water and fresh. Maybe if energy policies were rational we wouldn’t have such opportunities, but we are where we are.

Pressure Retarded Osmosis

With pressure retarded osmosis, or PRO, the idea is to take advantage of the osmotic pressure created when river water and sea water are separated by a semi-permeable membrane.

Under these conditions, water molecules from the river pass through the membrane into the sea water, creating a pressure on the sea water side of the membrane which may be used to drive turbines and generate electricity.

A pilot plant in Norway which has been generating a few kilowatts since 2009. As with so many sustainable energy technologies, the problem is one of energy density. There simply isn’t much energy to be extracted from each square metre of membrane.

Huge areas of membrane, in the order of square kilometres may be required to scale up the technology, but these membranes are also prone to fouling, so the technical issues are formidable.

 

Reverse Electrodialysis

A less developed but simpler and perhaps more interesting way to extract energy from seawater and river water is Reverse Electrodialysis or RED.

In the RED approach, the osmotic energy of mixing fresh and salt water is captured by directing the solution through an alternating series of positively and negatively charged exchange membranes. The resulting chemical potential difference creates a voltage over each membrane and leads to the production of direct electric energy.

As with PRO, there are many technical hurdles and much research to be done, but a Dutch company called REDstack B V began work on a pilot plant in July. Both technologies are clean, highly modular and relatively well understood.

Could the Severn estuary be used to generate both tidal power and power from a technology such as PRO or RED?

We certainly have the ingenuity - pity about the politics.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

The war for the Mediterranean

Simplified version of the Hereford Mappa Mundi (c. 1300). Picture source: Atlantis Maps.com

CNN reports that the number of refugees from the Syrian civil war now exceeds 2 million. Yet Classicfm radio news this morning says that people are showing some reluctance to give money to charities working in that area. I can understand why, since I fear we've already been paying involuntarily through our taxes to create and inflame this disaster.

The US certainly has, according to Barry Ritholtz, for the last 6 or 7 years. But I suspect that the UK, ever keen to show that it still has a real pair, not Neuticles, has been assisting, as it did with the clandestine insertion of an SAS unit into Libya to help oust Gaddafi. The Syrian government has admitted responsibility for shooting down a Turkish warplane it says was violating its airspace, but denies firing an artillery shell into Turkey and rebels in Damascus have allegedly confessed that they were the ones who let off the chemical bomb that nearly precipitated direct US military intervention.

I think history will judge that Secretary of State John "we know" Kerry's reputation is now toast, but it hasn't dissuaded him from a hawkish insistence that Obama can go ahead even if the Congressional vote goes against him. And we now hear that the ruthlessly ambitious and pseudo-affable Mayor of London is proposing a second vote in Parliament so MPs can be given the chance to get it right this time.

Those who set a fire cannot be certain of controlling its spread. Burning round the eastern Mediterranean, the flames could tickle other countries too, as Russia becomes involved in the new Great Game. The same tactics that have destabilised the Arab Street could be used against nations on the northern coast of the Middle Sea, which have been suffering as a result of the overbearing rule of the EU and the predations of international banking. Greece for example, with its high youth unemployment, history of internecine strife and 8,500 miles of coastline, might be a tempting target for subversion and infiltration.

You can lose power through overreaching. I used to have a postwar edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and one of its articles traced the roots of the Reformation to the attempt by mediaeval Popes to maintain and strengthen their control while Western countries settled down and their kings grew stronger. Is the US risking upsetting the balance of power by trying to secure the Levant?

Conversely, the collapse of the Soviet Union has allowed Russia to get a better grip on its affairs and its developing energy resources are giving it something to bargain with rather than invade. (She also has a very promising agricultural position: 117 people per km2 of arable land, versus 179 for the US and - dangerous, this - 1,077 for the UK.) The potential economic power is seen in control of gas supplies to Northern Europe, but also perhaps in the events that led to the fall of Greek Premier Kostas Karamanlis in 2008 - he was negotiating with Russia for their South Stream gas pipeline, a rival to the EU/US Nabucco line. There are even allegations of an assassination plot against Karamanlis and foreign threats against the Greek government.

It doesn't take much to drop a country into chaos. It's said that a satphone and $20,000 can get you an African armed revolutionary movement. A organized minority can overthrow and seize a nation. For example, in the Soviet Union of 1986 only 10% were in the Communist Party, of which more than half were industrial workers and farmers; in pre-Purge 1933, maybe 2.5%; in 1918 just after the Revolution, a mere 200,000 members or one-fifth of one per cent.

In Greece, the average electoral turnout for the Communist KKE has been over 6% since 2000, and back in 1958 it was 24%. The average of c. 470,00 votes (not that voting means much to Communists, and some of the most dangerous will stay in cover) represents around 5% of the population aged over 15. The KKE vote halved between May and June last year (from 536,072 to 277,122) and one has to wonder whether there may be some foreign support for some of the alternative parties; but Greeks are quite capable of quarrelling without the help of outsiders. The point is that the politics there are volatile, and there are lots of hormonal youngsters to recruit for one cause or another.

Not that Greece is the only southern European country ripe for trouble. Think of Italy and Spain; and the Balkans. A direct confrontation between major global players seems unlikely, at this stage; but goodness knows what is going on in the world of Spy vs. Spy. And it's not only the US Sixth Fleet aiming to "keep the peace" in the Eastern Med: Russia is reported to be sending a missile cruiser and an anti-submarine ship.

Russia still has only one port that is ice-free all year round, and that is on the Baltic and separated from the Mother Country by the land of three other nations. But she controls land joining the Caspian and Black Sea, and has ethnic Slavic connections with Bulgaria, Macedonia and even currently Turkified Slavs in Anatolia. Oh, for free naval passage through the Hellespont and a base in Alexandroupoli, or even Thessaloniki.

The sides are getting too close to each other. A little less car use and turning down the central heating a bit might save us from unintended consequences in a very perilous game in the centre of the world.

UPDATE (3 Sep 2013): Steve Quayle says the plan is to use Syria to break Russia's plans for gas exports in the region (htp: Autonomous Mind).

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy.