Auspundits

Energy & Geopolitics

Just under two months ago, I noted that Dick Cheney had gone to Saudi Arabia to discuss oil only a month or so after his boss, the President of the United States visited the Kingdom, groveling for more. On this second visit, Cheney did not go to discuss the bandwidth of Saudi oil pipelines. Rather, he went armed to deliver an ultimatum of sorts: pump more crude, or we start turning coal to oil.

Well, looks like the rhetoric has been ratcheted a notch. The President was in Sharm el-Sheikh delivering a (long overdue) lecture to Arab leaders in which he threatened to have the world's largest consumer of energy move away from that precious black fluid to alternative sources of energy:

The rising price of oil has brought great wealth to some in this region, but the supply of oil is limited, and nations like mine are aggressively developing alternatives to oil.

Get rid of the "brought great wealth to some in this region, but the supply of oil is limited" nonsense and you have the following:

The rising price of oil has...nations like mine are aggressively developing alternatives to oil.

This came a day or two after he delivered the following remarks:

Our problem in America gets solved when we aggressively go for domestic exploration. Our problem in America gets solved if we expand our refining capacity, promote nuclear energy, and continue our strategy for the advancement of alternative energies, as well as conservation.

Is the Administration beginning to condition the Saudis and the American people to the fact that the U.S. needs to develop alternative sources of fuel? And that the Saudis are being to scrape the bottom of the barrel? I think so.

Prince Caspian & C.S. Lewis

Opens in Australia on 5 June. Here's the trailer:

Or if you prefer the High Definition sort, click through here.

I've just started to reacquaint myself with the books and am currently half way through the first book (chronologically), The Magician's Nephew. For one reason or another, I had forgotten about these books after I had read them at high school (probably year 7). How I did, I have no idea. For in The Founding of Narnia we have creation described so vividly and spectacularly; his writing is as enchanting as the world he describes.

I have loved C.S. Lewis' non-fictional works (The Four Loves, Mere Christianity, The Problem of Pain etc). However, at first glance his fictional work is a masterpiece.

The Five Faces Of Darkness

Despite the setbacks that God has inflicted upon us, these painful blows will mark the beginning of the wiping out of America and the infidel West after the passing of tens of years, God willing. - Osama bin Laden, 17 December 2001

These Guys Are Shameless

* By Grant Harris

Emerson is now trying to kick the productivity can and link our prosperity somehow to the China boom.

This may well be a narrative that they start to run as a way of protecting themselves from mismanagement - ie, blame it all on China.

Skill and infrastructure shortages - the latter is a state government issue dominated by Labor government ineptitude and what are the ALP's changes to IR laws going to do to assist the first?

And then he pushes the notion of a seamless national market - just wait until the states get hold of that one and start kicking it around for their own leverage.

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* Grant Harris likes thinking about big picture issues and tries to connect dots where they haven't been connected before.

Wonder Where This Will Lead ?

* By Moose

Europe's cultural heritage: will the ROP (Religion of Peace) take it on, or can it be used as a powerful antidote to anti-blasphemy laws ? A "second front" alongside the pope's apostasy push ?

Rudd & Swan Really Committed To Working Families

* By Grant Harris

Or so it would seem from their latest efforts to kill peoples' aspirations to make life a little easier and enjoyable for themselves and for those trying to get ahead and make something for themselves and their loved ones.

I am referring to the increase in tax on luxury cars. And framed in such a way it sounds innocuous enough because luxury cars are not something that working families can afford - only the rich buy them.

Liberal Party & Blogs

General info - Been very busy in the last few weeks, hence the low blogging volume. Hopefully, I can pick things up again going forward.

The Liberal Party in Victoria has sacked two staff members from its campaign unit to "publicly [undermine] the party's leader", Ted Baillieu. Now, being a NSW Young Liberal, this was concerning at first from a free speech angle, until it dawned on me that they were most likely paid staff members. In which case, tough luck and good riddance to the two.

When you are being paid by the party to successfully strategize for a coming election in a critical state, you shouldn't be seeking to destroy the leader of the party, either on the blogs or otherwise. That's disloyality and political stupidity.

Amen

...to this.

The CoE is very sick. And is in desperate need of healing. It's mission is to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ "in season and out of season" (2 Tim 4:2). The Gospel is to be the centre of its message. Not repackaged Dr Who or The Simpsons episodes.

Or if the CoE's that far gone, then some the sick limbs need amputating.

Hysteria Pays Dividends

Al Gore has just raked in another $US700m from institutional investors, including the Victoria Super Fund. The monies raised will be dished out in lots of approx $US30m to "renewable energy; energy efficiency technologies; energy from biofuels and biomass; and the carbon trading markets." Supposedly, Gore has also taken a "sizeable stake" in the fund and is thus contributing to the humanitarian crisis caused by grains being used to drive cars rather feed people. But Gore has a Nobel Peace Prize. So there!

David Blood, who manages the fund said that:

The fact we were able to raise $683m was extraordinary...A fear expressed by some is that the first thing to go in a downturn is the nice-to-have sort of investment. Some people put green investments in that category, but we think that is nonsense. This is not nice-to-have – it is fundamental finance...because the transition from a high-carbon to a low-carbon economy is a ginormous step that is going to happen quickly

I guess when you create an existential panic using Styrofoam you can trump panicked markets and create your own words. Why not?

Update 30/4/08 6:00PM AEST: If this trend continues, then we will all be having to wear two jumpers in winter. And there will be some unhappy super fund members in Victoria. So much for global warming.

Wikigate Continues

Mid last year, I put up a post regarding some self-interested/malicious edits being posted on Wikipedia. Now we have the manifestation of something far worse and systematic: AGW activists are routinely editing sceptical scientists entries and associated scientific entries to discredit and "greenify" them. This is an absolute disgrace. Were Exxon Mobil involved in a similar systematic and unabashed editing spree with respect to anything related to Exxon Mobil, oil spills or other assorted misdeeds, it would viral news. A quick sniff about who has edited Fred Singer's page identifies a number of private IP addresses as well as the following organisations:

• Branford Public Schools - Malicious entries
• LOGIS: an IT hub that Minneapolis/Minnesotan local government agencies use - one good, one bad change
• University of Phoenix: two malicious entries. This could be anyone on the UoP's intranet including a student high on pot

I am sure that one could sniff out more about these miscreants using WikiScanner. Alas, I don't have much time.

John Ray - your ball game.

H/T: Andrew Bolt