Articles by Joseph Romm

Saudis/OPEC don’t control the price of oil any more

With Bush going to Saudi Arabia to beg -- again -- for lower prices, the media is gaga over a confrontation that has about as much significance as a Rocky Balboa fight.

Even the venerable NYT just published an article, "Bush Rebuffed on Oil Plea in Saudi Arabia," that opens, "With the price of oil hitting record highs, President Bush used a private visit with King Abdullah to make a second attempt to persuade the Saudis to increase oil production and was rejected yet again."

Unlike the 1970s and 1980s and even much of the 1990s, neither OPEC nor the Saudis any longer control the price of oil.

If any country had a million barrels a day of (sellable) spare oil capacity, they could make more than $100 million a day selling it, even if that much new oil dropped prices 20%, which it probably wouldn't.

Who would sit on that kind of money? Yes, the Saudis are selling over 8 million barrels a day, so they don't really need the money. But if they have any significant excess capacity, it is sour or high-sulfur crude (see the other experts on the full CNBC interview here). Such crude is not currently in demand: "Many refineries are not set up to process such crude because it is more difficult and expensive to refine into products."

Prius sales top one million

The Toyota Prius is "the world's first mass-produced petrol-electric hybrid car to hit 1 million in sales." More than half of those were sold in North America. Toyota's goal is to sell more than one million per year.

I own one and must say it is a terrific car. I get about 45 miles per gallon combined city and highway -- double the mpg of my old Saturn, which was not as big.

I think the comments from the Wired blog bear repeating, considering how GM (and others) mocked Toyota for pushing what they claimed was a money-losing vehicle:

Human-caused warming is resulting in a broad range of impacts across the globe

Nature has published the first article to "formally link observed global changes in physical and biological systems to human-induced climate change, predominantly from increasing greenhouse gases." See news story here and the article, "Attributing physical and biological impacts to anthropogenic climate change" (subs. req'd, abstract below).

NASA's discussion of the piece here explains, "human-caused climate change has made an impact on a wide range of Earth's natural systems, including permafrost thawing, plants blooming earlier across Europe, and lakes declining in productivity in Africa." The image at right: "Impacts from warming are evident in satellite images showing that lakes in Siberia disappearing as the permafrost thaws and lake water drains deeper into the ground." The lead author explained:

Polar bear is endangered, but ‘Rule will allow continuation of vital energy production in Alaska’

The Department of Interior suffers from a rare form of bipolar disorder called bye-polar disorder. There is one major symptom of this disorder: You list the polar bear as "threatened" because of its melting polar sea ice habitat, but then do nothing to actually protect that polar habitat from its primary threat, greenhouse-gas emissions from fossil fuel combustion.

The disorder is accompanied by an occasional burst of logic, as when the DOI noted: