US Leads Largest military exercises in Middle East in 10 years

The United States is leading what it described as the "largest military exercises in the Middle East in 10 years" in Jordan on Tuesday. Eager Lion 2012 “is the largest exercise held in the region in the past ten years,” Major General Ken Tovo, head of the US Special Operations Forces, told reporters in Amman. “Yesterday we began to apply the skills that we have developed over the last weeks in an irregular warfare scenario … They will last for approximately the coming two weeks,” he added. “The message that I want to send through this exercise is that we have developed the right partners throughout the region and across the world … insuring that we have the ability to … meet challenges that are coming to our nations,” Tovo said. Over 12,000 soldiers are taking part in the war games, representing 19 countries, ...

Iran Seen Losing 500000 Barrels of Oil Shipments Daily

Iran’s oil exports have the potential to fall another 300,000 to 500,000 barrels a day or more when the European Union’s embargo takes effect in July, according to Barclays Plc. The decline will extend existing losses of 500,000 barrels a day, Barclays analysts led by Helima Croft in London said in an e-mailed report yesterday. Iranian exports may fall even further because of the unavailability of shipping insurance, she said. “The risk from the lack of shipping reinsurance is that in a market in which fundamentals are set to tighten in coming months, any loss of Iranian output sustainably beyond 1.5 million barrels a day can provide a significant upside to prices,” the analysts said. The EU banned the purchase, transportation, financing and insurance of Iranian oil. That affects 95 percent of the world’s tankers because they’re covered by the 13 members of ...

Free energy does not occur in nature

[F]ree energy does not occur in nature... There's one thing about that Orlov quote that has struck me over the years: how it applies more broadly than he originally meant it. It's not just that what we generally think of as free energy doesn't occur in nature, but also that free energy does occur in the everyday lived environments of people in industrial nations, which we might thus say are unnatural. (To apply the name of this blog: if nature implies a lack of free energy, then the presence free energy implies a lack of nature.) So what are instances of free energy that we experience in our lives, and why do they matter? They matter for two reasons: a) they're the easiest places to save energy (and money) and b) they're likely to go away in the coming decades. Before we get ...

Stuart Staniford: Feeling my Inner Kunstler

I'm currently in Surfer's Paradise on the Gold Coast of Australia in order to give a talk for work. If you are in a bad mood when you frame the photo, the place looks like the above. Or like this if you try to make it look good (say be capturing the sunrise from your hotel): I absolutely detest this kind of place - there's nothing that destroys the spirit of a once beautiful place quite as effectively as a bunch of 20-100 story concrete and glass hotel towers. I went for a walk early this morning, and by the time I came back, I was seething. I was trying to figure out why places like this make me so mad. I don't mind major cities nearly as much as this kind of beach+concrete-jungle resort. I don't like to live in cities ...

Medical Records Could Yield Answers On Fracking

A proposed study of people in northern Pennsylvania could help resolve a national debate about whether the natural gas boom is making people sick. The study would look at detailed health histories on hundreds of thousands of people who live near the Marcellus Shale, a rock formation in which energy companies have already drilled about 5,000 natural gas wells. If the study goes forward, it would be the first large-scale, scientifically rigorous assessment of the health effects of gas production. Secret Weapon: A Very Large Database In recent years, there have been lots of anecdotal reports about people who say they have been harmed by the chemicals associated with gas wells and the drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. ut "there doesn't seem to be a lot of hard data to either support or refute those claims," says David Carey, associate chief research ...

At Least One Million Will Die From Fukushima Radiation

Fukushima Video by The Japanese College of Intravenous Therapy The government of Japan has failed ...

Acknowledging The Arrival Of Peak Government

Most informed people are familiar with the concept of Peak Oil, but fewer are ...

Tom Murphy: Time to be honest with ourselves about our looming energy risks

Chris Martenson: Hello. Welcome to another ChrisMartenson.com podcast. I am your host, of course; ...

India will cut oil imports from Iran by 11%

A week after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged New Delhi to reduce its ...