Hugo Chavez Steps Down

This morning, my first real "news input" of the day was a message from Brian Carnell's site about the violence in Venezuela last night that resulted in the deaths of twelve protestors.

Later I heard the same story on NPR, but they also mentioned that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez resigned his post, effective immediately, after the violence.

NPR says that it was a result of pressure from the military, but they didn't explain that this pressure has been a constant for months. Strategic Forecasting has been predicting his political demise for some time.

This could be significant in the U.S. mainly because Venezuela produces a lot of oil. Any changes in the political landscape could be reflected in a change in their adherence to OPEC's quotas and limits on oil production. Venezuela is not a member of OPEC, but (as with most oil producing countries) they generally go along with whatever the cartel decides. (That's a slight exaggeration... but they do follow OPEC's edicts as closely as most of the cartel members do, which is to say "when it suits their interest to do so.")

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Maybe it means free people are free to discuss the merits of different ideas and try to find the best way to productivly accomplish the goal.

I mean why do you not work for half of what you earn? Why not tell your employer to only earn 5% on their investments instead of marking up their prices by higher amounts?

Why not invest in Joe's computer business when he has two small clients instead of 3M stock or Apple stock?

That's the root of the problem as I see it. Making the best investment possible. Now granted, the price of gas should probably be a lot higher than it is since it is not a renewalabe energy source. What should the price be, I don't know.

We know that oil reserves will run out in less than 300 years.I bet they wait until the last 50 before anybody does anything about it.

Don

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Yes!!!

Here's another aside on that. Each time the Enron or Arthur Anderson stuff appears, the news channels usually show some scenes from a stock broker firm with tens or hundreds of people in front of terminals or on the phones. I would love to hear a reporter ask, at random, any one of those workers, if they themselves are chasing the almighty dollar. Would they ever be greedy like the top management of Enron or Arthyur Anderson.

I mean, why are those people working in that industry if not to become rich and greedy themselves someday? Some of them are the future Enron's and Arthur Anderson's of the world.

Don

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On 4/13/02, Donald W. Larson said:

>Any advice about avoiding a war over oil? That was my main thrust.
>The last time I looked, the war was outside my ass. Where have you
>been looking. ;-)

Don, knock it off. Keep it civil.

If you want to debate, that's fine. Keep the trash-talking off my site.

Seth

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On 4/13/02, Donald W. Larson said:

>Yes, I shouldn't let Greg's gutter level comment towards me cause
>me to seek that level in my responses. ;-)

No Don, I think you misread Greg's comment. His language was a bit colorful, but he didn't tell you to get YOUR head out of... he said "get OUR head out".

Don't debate me on this. Don't mention free-speech or censorship. Just drop it. Just keep it civil, or don't post here. It's as simple as that.

Seth

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Sorry to all offended.

Don

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Good response.

BTW, I don't like the environment to be messed with either. I agree we, as a species, have harmed this world to a great extent.

I drive a small car. I am voting with my gas-pedal. But look at number of SUV's and pickup trucks on the road. That observation tells me that people don't care, they want their gas at any price. Until that thinking is eliminated, the oil consumers of the world will act to DEMAND MORE OIL.

We have oil deposits. We have environmental issues. Tough choices.

We could all choose to live in the kind of world as existed before the Industrial Revolution, but I don't think that's very realistic.

As for leaders having short time horizons for goals, I agree. Long-term thinking is a dying concept.

I agree we should invest more money in the research and possible deployment of alternative sources. Palm Springs, CA uses wind-power to produce electricity. Those huge windmills are an impressive site. However, they are only effective after a breeze of 15MPH exists. For many regions of the world, the wind does not blow enough to produce in enough amounts to offset the investment or more importantly, to produce adequate power. Blackouts and brownouts have not yet earned favor among the population.

We don't want to build more dams in the United States because the dams cause their own problems, like silting up after 50 years or so. Not to mention the effect on aquatic life that was disturbed when free-flowing water ceased.

We are consumers. I have 3 TV's in my house, 4 computers, 3 VCR's, cordless phones, etc. Show me how to power them by plugging them into a plant and I'll do it.

Don

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Hey, that's an interesting problem. I haven't heard about that before. My opinion has been that wind-powered solutions are really cool when they are effective.

It seems we get boxed in one way or another. :-(

Don

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On 4/13/02, Jim Roepcke said:

>
>>But all of that simply relied on better, smarter exploitations of
>>existing technology to move around information. Notice that
>>although the information age has led to a dramatic increase in
>>the number of portable devices, for example, all of which keep
>>getting more and more sophisticated, there has been no attendant
>>technological revolution in batteries. Why? Because the physical
>>world has limits that are much harder to overcome than purely
>>information-related technologies.
>
>I think battery technology has improved greatly in the last 20
>years. Maybe not far enough, and maybe it's evolutionary rather
>than revolutionary, but it's improving.

I had the same reaction to this as Jim did.

Battery technology has come a long way in the last ten or twenty years. Unfortunately, I'm not willing to spend the time to back that up with references, but I *have* read articles related to batteries in laptop computers and cell phones that talk about the progress.

It hasn't progressed at the same rate as processor speed, but I believe it has been close to the same rate as computers overall.

Incidentally, some of the most impressive advances (related to this disucssion) have been made in solar cells. I read an article last year that said in the last 10 (or 20? can't remember) years, solor cells are 100 times more efficient, and cost 1% of what they used to... and they're still improving. Most of the solor panels installed on houses (from the late seventies and earlier eighties) are much much larger than would be needed now to produce the same amount of electricity.

Seth

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But regardless of solar cells effectiveness, we have hundreds of millions of fossil fuel vehicles on the roads. The cost of replacing them would bankrupt any economy if attempted in a short period of time.

Oil is here to stay until it's exhausted. People want oil for fuel. They'll fight wars over it, they'll drill where they need to to get it. When it's almost gone, then alternatives will surely get noticed because no choices will be left at that point.

It's been that way and will continue because most people don't care to complicate their own lives with additional knowledge or difficult choices. I think those are the real issues that decisions will be based on while fossil fuels still exist in large quantities.

I don't like some of the results from that thinking, but that's what I see happening. I still say, drill in any place we own and do our best to prevent damage. Doing nothing isn't preventing damage. People are dying and enduring other serious consequences as a result of oil demand pressures.

Don

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