Matt Simmons on Bloomberg
I was talking about the Matt Simmons story in BP and the Giant Blender. This is his Bloomberg interview. The Bonnie storm is bad, but if this story is true, a hurricane in the gulf is the least of BP’s problems, not to mention the US Administration. What if they knew? What if this is the Oil Industry’s Lehman Brother’s moment? Just imagine if it turned out that the largest of BP’s US shareholders, a little operation called BlackRock, had close connections to members of the Obama administration. When I say “little operation” I mean about $3.15 trillion under management, which is nearly a $trillion bigger than the Federal Reserve. But what’s spooky, in a Jason Bourne kind of way, is the friendship between BlackRock CEO Larry Fink and Timothy Geithner, the current Secretary of the Treasury. It would be weird if Larry Fink, who was the person who pioneered the Mortgage Backed Securities Market while he was at First Boston, and to whom Mr Geithner turned in his hour of need when Bear Stearns went into meltdown in March 2008, was mixed up in some sort of Oil Industry meltdown as well. I mean, that’s just a terrible run of bad luck. You invent a completely clever way to sell Mortages as a kind of faux investment, and you accidentally bring the global economy to its knees. Then, just when you think things are getting straightened out, you buy into a firm that is drilling for oil in the Gulf, for energy security. Makes sense. It’s really energy patriotism, in a way. But then that stupid bunch at Transocean go and blow the thing up. Just bad luck Larry.
I thought the profile of Larry Fink in Vanity Fair was, well, fair…
BP and the Storm of Idiots
Is this possible? The Communications people at probably the most beleaguered large corporation on earth thought it would be okay to (badly) Photoshop an image of the control room. Make the boys at the screens look busier while they’re stopping the oil spill. And then say that it was just some kid showing off. Yeah, that’s reassuring. We are handling the greatest environmental disaster in America’s history, but we thought it would be okay to let someone play with Photoshop. Not really. First you will look like (even worse) idiots, and second, there’s a tropical storm developing in the Gulf.
But when you look at this Jon Stewart video it all becomes clear, in a terrifying sort of way…
BP and the Syncrude Tailings Dam – an apology
In my post “Nature is not a Machine”, since I was essentially writing humour I didn’t think to include references. I apologize unreservedly. I got a comment from a person who disagreed with me that it was a large area and an ecological blight on the landscape. This is a picture of the Syncrude Tailings Dam. You are free to make up your own minds if this a) attractive, or b) an easily fixed piece of geo-engineering. You are looking at 540,000,000 cubic meters of toxic sludge. My original point was a comparison with the “catastrophe” in the Gulf, while this is business as usual in Alberta. Of course I realize that it’s the absolute right of the good people of Alberta to do this to their landscape if they wish. 
Note to Tony BP
You went sailing? You were racing your boat, Bob, in the JP Morgan Asset Management Round the Island race? I can understand the stress you’ve been under, but if that’s your level of insight into the public mood you need to make an appointment with your therapist for Monday. And while you’re at it, fire your publicist.
Nature is not a Machine
Nature is not a machine. I’ve noticed a growing hubris in the way in which people are talking about the BP catastrophe, not least Mr. Obama, who although he’s a lawyer, should know better. We are listening to these people talking about ‘putting it right’ in the same way that one would fix a broken watch. Replace broken parts and all is well. This drive for the metaphorical arises from the way our cognitive systems seek pattern, which is mostly an evolutionary good, but it has its limits. The wrong metaphor can lead us to desperately wrong analysis.
Nature is not a machine. There are no spare parts. There is no fix. Rather, it’s a cohesive biological system of unimaginable complexity. What has happened in the Gulf of Mexico has changed the environment – forever. The system state has been radically altered and the expectation that it can be put back the way it was is scientifically naïve. I’m sure there will be remediation efforts, but that will not, ever, put that coast back the way it was. This conceit of nature as our pet machine is clearly of machine age origin, but now that we have so much better metaphors for the way the world works, why do we insist on continuing with the same old nonsense? In the last 30 years, with the advent of genetics, the language of modern biology provides us with far more useful metaphors – and modes of analysis. We have nudged a complex ecosystem out of equilibrium. It will eventually find a new equilibrium, but that may not include the existence of blue fin tuna. You were tired of sushi anyway, right?
This is a map of what the Gulf looks like. Notice that it looks a lot more like a nervous system than a machine. It is. It is the nervous system of the beast we’ve made.
(Image thanks to Matthew Baker at ESRI Educational Services)
If we look at this as a biological system whose health we have compromised we can start thinking in terms of the way in which biological systems recover – they heal. And that healing process leaves scars. Life continues, but not with the same vigour as before. And sometimes recovery is impossible and life ceases. The Southeast coast of America may partially recover, but some of the more fragile populations will not. The complex web of life that makes up that ecosystem has been diminished, and pretending that it’s all just going to get taken to the mechanics and put right is offensive. Pretending that it’s just a matter of the BP executive writing impressive cheques makes it worse.
While we’re at it, why is the Gulf of Mexico a catastrophe and Alberta is a business opportunity? Every single peak oil geologist and ecologist I know has been on about what the downside of the oil production curve will look like since Colin Campbell started the Association for the Study of Peak Oil. No mystery. No magic. They have been saying for at least a decade that it will make parts of earth look like bad science fiction. Irrevocably damaged/destroyed ecosystems – which are not easily isolated from the larger planet wide ecology – will inevitably leak their toxins. What cancerous horrors await the good people of Alberta we can only imagine. Massive bird casualties are routine. But no one seems to think of it as a catastrophe.
Let’s put it in context. The largest dam in the world is China’s three gorges project. The second largest is in Alberta. It’s called the Syncrude Tailings dam. It contains 540,000,000 cubic metres of toxic sludge. That is one tailing pond. It total Alberta has 840,000,000 cubic metres in tailing ponds, covering 170 sq. km. This is an Edward Burtynsky photo of what that looks like…
And you thought Mordor was scary? So while I’m not in any way trying to diminish the scale of what is happening in the Gulf, I think it’s good to remember that it’s business as usual in Alberta. Maybe we’re at a turning point. Maybe the BP spill is the thing that finally makes us think about what we’re up to. Oil is killing us, because we are part of the same biology. We are not a machine.
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Soldiers on the School Run
Last night I was at the Royal Geographical Society for the annual IRC-UK lecture, ‘Soldiers on the School Run: Sensible Strategy or Disastrous Compromise?’ This is the latest in a series of events trying to define what it is we’re up to in the business of humanitarian interventions. It’s clear to honest professionals in both the military and the aid industry that the way we are dealing with complex emergencies is not working and needs to get a lot better – fast. There’s no choice. The rate of State failure is accelerating. We simply cannot afford too many Somalias.
On the one hand, the military is engaged in adapting to WW4 – the kind of battles waged or imagined in WW2 and the Cold War are history. WW4 is a counterinsurgency war. Neither the battles between national armies that characterized WW2, nor the long distance threatening of the Cold War are relevant to today’s forces fighting jihadists in the fields and villages of Afghanistan. It is a far more complex mission than previous forces had to consider. The WW4 soldier is expected to be part diplomat, part aid worker, and part nation builder. Panelist Ahmed Rashid believes there is a crisis between the military and the NGOs in Afghanistan. The rate of change in mission has been too rapid for the military to adapt its strategy from the Cold War, and their command structure is incompatible with the way NGOs work. But the heart of the problem is the very different perspective of each organization.
For the NGOs, whose objectives range from acute disaster relief to long term development, and who therefore expect to spend anything from a few weeks to years in a given place, the issue is how to maintain independence from the military on which they increasingly rely for logistics and security. It is axiomatic in the Aid industry that aid should be ‘independent, neutral and impartial.’ But in the management of complex emergencies there is increasing involvement of the military, and the politics of military intervention means that there is no neutrality or impartiality. The NGOs are fearful that the more they are identified with the military, their safety will be in jeopardy. It is well known that on this basis the Taliban considers Aid workers to be ‘American Slaves. Mike Young is IRCs director for Asia and the Caucasus, and he’s been at it for 12 years. He doesn’t believe in big plans, he’s all for local, which takes time and trust. He’s frightened that if the Taliban remain after the US and UK forces leave, the locals who worked with the Aid agencies will be killed as collaborators. He remains very doubtful of the long term effectiveness of military based Aid, but admits that we’re stuck with what we’ve got.
Major General (Ret.) Tim Cross, who is a veteran the Gulf, the Balkans and Iraq argued that for the military it wasn’t a question of whether they should be doing development and humanitarian intervention, but how. On balance he said that he thought both the military and the NGOs were doing ‘a reasonable job’, but that ‘we have to keep talking to each other.’ So they have very different missions, and very different ways of operating. But they find themselves working together out of necessity. And not only with NGOs. The US marines have been trying to use academics in its efforts for ‘hearts and minds’ and to avoid accidental civilian casualties. The Human Terrain Systems embed social scientists and anthropologists with combat troops to help tacticians with local knowledge. This new kind of counterinsurgency war/complex emergency situation is demanding rapid adaptation, and if that means embedding academics and /or humanitarian workers, so be it.
Uneasy bedfellows they may be, but it looks like they will be stuck with each other for the foreseeable future. Nation building is new and over the last 10 years it’s been pretty hit and miss. Perhaps what is happening is that two distinct mindsets are having to merge, because the prospect of large parts of Africa and Asia collapsing is too dire to imagine.
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Street Fighting Man
Everywhere I hear the sound of marching, charging feet, boy,
‘Cause summer’s here and the time is right for fighting in the street, boy
Jagger Richards 1968
Finally I’m back. My Atlantic trip was extraordinary and I ended up doing two deliveries to and from France, so in all I covered more than 6000 miles.
Before I left I wrote a post called 2010: The Next Leg Down. I wanted to go over it and see how I’m doing in the trend forecasting business.
Oil and the Deep Horizon rig: I’m still waiting for the oil price spike. But the good people at BP are doing their best on my behalf, bless ‘em. Or rather, Transocean. Although Transocean is not well known publicly, it’s the largest rig operator in the world, with about 300 rigs. What makes this accident so important was that it was an ultra-deep drilling operation and if the US bans more ultra-deep in the Gulf of Mexico it will impact oil supply within a year. As the cheap easy oil disappears we are faced with difficult choices: Just how much ecological horror do you think you can stand to stay on the highway? We need to remember that Deep Horizon was no mundane oil operation. They were tapping into the Tiber field – 40,000 ft down. It was the deepest vertical well in history. You could lose Everest and have 13000ft spare in that hole. This was the Apollo mission for deep drilling. Was it dangerous? Of course it was. Whenever we take one of those giant steps for mankind, it’s inherently dangerous. But in all the fervour to get to the 70 billion barrels deep in the Gulf, we chose to suppress that information. What happens if we have a big hurricane season this year?
Nukes: While the west mutters and hovers, Asia is going all out. It will be interesting to follow the split in attitude. Just this week, Monju, the giant Japanese breeder reactor was brought back online after a 14 years of repair. China, which has 11 reactors in commercial production, has 20 under construction. I’m waiting for the argument in the West to get much more heated as people start to wonder how we’ll compete with nuclear Asian countries in 10 years.
Immigration: I get a gold star. In the UK immigration has become the biggest issue in the election. It was an immigration argument with Mrs. Duffy that caused Mr. Brown’s worst moment in the campaign. As we hit the next leg down, and the European economy buckles under the sovereign debt bubble, which will make Lehman brothers look like the teddy bear’s picnic, immigration will turn ugly. Big right wing gains across Europe. As southern Europe goes into full street fighting man mode it’s only a matter of time before they decide that it’s the foreigner’s fault. Look out.
I’m off to the Frontline Club to have a glass of wine and watch as Britain has a revolutionary election, involving three white guys instead of two. No, really. It’s time for real change. Honest.
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