END OF WARS (Part 16)

The following is largely excerpted from SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Humanity, Chapter 1:

Bush’s Axis of Evil

George W. Bush’s State of the Union Address on January 29, 2002, identified the Axis of Evil that sponsored terror: Iraq, Iran and North Korea. But while he devoted only 17 words to North Korea and 19 to Iran, he spent all of 84 words on Iraq, showing, no doubt, his priorities. In World War II there were the Axis Powers: Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan. These three are now close allies, maybe our most important ones, next to the U.K. So is it a matter of time before these terror regimes, too, become buddies?

Iraq and North Korea are worrisome because of their nuclear interests. North Korea’s exhibitionist tendencies with rockets are troublesome, although they have now shut down their nuclear program, I think. Israel just might serve as the armed angel of mercy for a safer Middle East, and Japan, might just step up its activity level because of those rockets, although the U.S. policy seems to be to just wait for the collapse, which more times than not in the past has worked, as both countries have now abandoned their original nuclear ambitions, sort of.

One of the problems with terrorism and the Middle East is that the U.S. is just not wanted there. On the same day, July 9, 2006, The Honolulu Advertiser had two articles on the very same page 12:

o “7 suspected terrorists escape from Saudi prison”
o “19 al-Qaida suspects acquitted in Yemen”

One would have thought that both Saudi Arabia and Yemen were close allies with us against terrorism, but actions speak louder than words. Word of the escape in Saudi Arabia was not reported until several days after the jailbreak and the Yemen judge said that these terrorists did not violate Yemeni law because Islamic Sharia law permits jihad against occupiers.

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Whew, after a drop of 118, the Dow Jones Industrials recovered to only minus 27 at 8742. Except for Canada, world markets also declined. Oil sunk another buck to $41.70/barrel. Remember how I was lamenting the lack of crises and that the Obama Regime would only focus on the economy? Well, apparently, I was wrong, for CNNMoney today reported on a $2 trillion bet on powering America, where Barack Obama today called for investments toward a new smart electric grid. While Obama was only suggesting billions, the Brattle Group (think tank) estimated the $2 trillion price tag for the full package. Gold rose $14/toz to $857.

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END OF WARS (Part 15)

The following is largely excerpted from Chapter 1 of SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Humanity, as Part 2 on George W. Bush:

This is but a short list of President Bush’s crises and travails:

o Started a cowboy war in Iraq without finding any weapons of mass destruction, while being unable to win the peace.

o Responded late and disastrously to the Hurricane Katrina destruction of New Orleans.

o Appointed a friend to the Supreme Court, which was rejected.

o Recommended a “no child left behind” education policy that failed.

o Promoted an anti-environmental program that included defying the Kyoto Protocol, dismantling federal control over protected areas, diluting federal rules governing air pollution, approving the drilling for oil and gas in pristine wilderness areas, easing rules for coal-fired power plants, permitting the continued use of 31 popular but controversial pesticides and allowing the sale of PCB-tainted lands.

o Formed an unholy alliance with the moral majority and religion in general, dismantling the wall between church and state.

o Developed a ruinous foreign policy program engendering considerable international distrust.

o Reversed the $5 trillion surplus earlier predicted for the first decade of this century to a deficit of $5 trillion.

o Disregarded personal rights through advocacy and conduct of the Patriot Act.

o Promoted fossil fuels and nuclear energy, with only token support for sustainable resources.

o Sponsored a health program biased towards rich people.

o Disregarded scientific integrity in policy making and disdained inconvenient research, with notable examples being for global climate change, lead poisoning, air pollution and stem cell study. Leading researchers (62, including 20 Nobel laureates and 19 recipients of the National Medal of Science, including a few advisors to Nixon and Eisenhower) gave Bush failing marks, and were joined by 12,000 other scientists.

The above no doubt caused the Democratic takeover of the U.S. Congress in the 2006 elections and White House in 2008. It was on his watch that the world economy collapsed. Ironically, he is being praised for establishing marine national monuments in the Pacific, but I worry that the future of the Blue Revolution will be compromised with these distinctions.

But the President of the United States is the most powerful person on the face of the Earth. His declarations carry a lot of influence. Plus, he is right about democracy and the Middle East.
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The Dow Jones Industrials sank 245 to 8770, and except for Sweden, the whole world also dropped. Crude oil tumbled $5.66/barrel to $42.72. Gold fell $22/toz to $842.

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THE END OF WARS (Part 14)

Well, back to Chapter 1 of SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Humanity. Parts 14 and 15 will deal with President George Walker Bush, #43 POTUS.

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President George Bush, #43

I can’t help but insert here another one of those internet jokes that regularly comes across as almost spam:

Subject: Presidential Alert

Donald Rumsfeld briefed the President this morning. He told Bush that three Brazilian soldiers were killed in Iraq.

To everyone's amazement, all of the color ran from Bush's face, then he collapsed onto his desk, head in hands, visibly shaken, almost whimpering.

Finally, he composed himself and asked "Just exactly how many is a Brazillion?"

No, this did not, in fact, occur, and the entire above aside, President George W. Bush, actually, just might have the clue to insuring for world peace forever. I have tended to disagree with him on just about everything else, but I support my President on maintaining the effort in Iraq. Why? As Ronald Reagan played a key role in ending the Cold War, George Bush the Younger could well have the solution to world peace, forever. We will discuss this later in the simple solution to wars.

But President George W. Bush is certainly unpopular. In 2004, historians rated Bush a disaster, as 81% of 415 classified this presidency a failure. This was in his first term. As we all know, it got worse.

I count more than 300 polls taken of his overall job rating since then, from August 2005 to 2007. (You need to wait until SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Planet Earth and Humanity, circa 2009, for the update). During 2005, approve averaged around 40% and disapprove 55%, with unsure at 5%. “Approve” began dropping to a low of 28% level in 2007, and almost always above 60% for disapproval. [But an update: except for FOX, which still tends to rate Bush's approval at 29%, all other polls at the end of 2008 had him at 22% or 23%.] The end of presidency job approval ratings were: Bill Clinton (65%), Ronald Reagan (64%), Dwight Eisenhower (59%), John F. Kennedy (63%), George Bush the Elder (56%), Gerald Ford (53%), Lyndon Johnson (49%), Jimmy Carter (34%) and Richard Nixon (24%). [Yes, Bush will probably do worse than Nixon, if you can delete FOX, waving it's conservative banner.]

Let’s look at the pluses. Bush has “incredible passion and resolve.” His religious feelings I place as a non-negative, but we'll revisit that in Chapter 5. He was quoted to say to Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia in 2004, courtesy of Bob Woodward in his State of Denial, “I get guidance from God in prayer,” and has thusly received guidance. God is great in the Middle East countries. God was, though, not particularly good to Bush.

We recovered from 9/11. He routed the Taliban and took out Saddam Hussein. On August 9, 2007, he put Iran on notice for supporting terrorism. Oh…oh. They overreacted and professed that they gave up on nuclear weapons to undercut any insanity on part of the Americans.

Oh yes, he did win re-election, although the Daily Mirror of London headlined: “How can 59,054,087 people be so dumb.” The U.K. is our closest ally. Further, people are still wondering how John Kerry was tainted by his heroics in the Vietnam war when Bush himself, Dick Cheney, Dennis Hastert, Paul Wolfowitz, Karl Rowe, John Ashcroft, Richard Perle, Andrew Card and Tom Delay somehow managed to avoid that conflict. Speaking of Delay, there was also that Jack Abramoff scandal that the White House deftly sidestepped.

A destructive influence on President Bush was Vice President Richard Cheney. During the transition period before entering the White House, I noticed his arrogance shown in secretly meeting with oil and nuclear executives to carve a national energy policy. During my U.S. Senate days, I recall Cheney as an authoritative figure with commanding presence working for Senator Scoop Jackson (who was a Democrat from Washington). Cheney’s one percent doctrine, from the book by Ron Suskind, might have been particularly damaging. In essence, if there was a 1% chance that certain terrorist acts were possible, he treated it as a certainty, or a 100% probability.

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The Dow Jones Industrials went up 62 to 9015, and are 2.75% higher for the year. World markets also increased, and for the year, particularly, Singapore +9%, Hong Kong +8% and Shanghai +3%. Crude oil is at $48.38/barrel, a few cents lower than yesterday. I'm not sure what this means, but the United Nations suspended the Russian Carbon Registry for non-payment, something on the order of $120,000+. Gold is up $9/toz to $864.

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I noticed that in 2008, McDonalds Corp went up 8.3% and WallMart Stores was plus 19.9%. How many realized that Hawaii Electric increased 2.7%, Cyanotech Corp +4.3% and Hawaiian Holdings (Hawaiian Air) zoomed 25.1%?

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The following is Part 4 of what started on December 31, 2008. This was my message to my Peak Oil and Global Warming friends today:

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Dear Colleagues:

Interesting that not one person reacted to my message about why I feel that nothing will happen anytime soon about combating Peak Oil and Global Warming because there is no obvious crisis to influence decision-makers. So, I thought I'd go national and publish this view in The Huffington Post. You can now comment there, but, after 36 postings in that virtual newspaper, I have observed that most of the resultant responses, save for a precious few, are either naive or deprecatory. I actually tracked some of the latter and found out why. The negative reactions to my global warming messages, for example, generally come from organizations like the Heartland Foundation (and they exist in myriad forms, usually with humanitarian sounding names) funded by the oil industry. My direct methanol fuel cell article was dumped on by an individual, who I later learned, had long been advocating the sodium borohydride fuel cell, and was bitter for being largely ignored by government and industry.

I became a regular contributor to the Huffington Post because I thought, surely, people concerned about Peak Oil and Global Warming would provide instant comments, galvanizing a movement to make a difference. Maybe even replace those so last generation protest marches. Nope, that did not work. A glimmer of potential came when I sent some of you my HuffPo on "Simple Solutions for 2009," and ask that you send this posting to your colleagues. That resulted in the train of comments from most of you, but only to the choir--us.

So, this time, why don't you send the above article to your entire mailing list. Of course, if you disagree with me about the necessity of crises, or, maybe feel that what I am saying is too depressing, in that nothing will happen until the SHTF, then, I implore you to come up with that magical solution for all of us to send to our mailing list. Just communicating to ourselves might be satisfying to some of you, but we can do so much more. We can make a difference!

Aloha.

Pat

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To expand the reach, I also sent the following:

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Dear Colleagues:

As you widen the network with your mailing list, there are two electronic contact points possibly worthy of your submission, no pun intended, but both are nevertheless similar to a powerball lottery. Better yet, send them to Barack Obama himself, if you have that channel available.

1. To become one of the ten Obama supporters winning a trip to his inauguration, simply write a short essay.

2. Or, you can communicate with his appropriate transition team. Note that they want real stamped letters...no doubt to reduce the input.

If enough people (about a million would do) send similar messages, something will click. Of course, when you send in your e-mail, that becomes a source of fundraising for our President-Elect. But another frequent spam or two should be at the noise level for most of us.

Aloha.

Pat

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The Dow Jones Industrials dropped almost 1% today, minus 82 to 8953. World markets all rose. Let's see if they all decrease tomorrow, playing copy cat to America. Crude oil increased $2.16/barrel to $48.50. Gold fell $17/toz to $859.

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THE SUN WILL CONTINUE TO SHINE...

...at least for another 5 billion years. The survival of humanity as we currently know it will, however, be tested. This is Part 2 of the fallout from my Huffington Post and Daily Blog articles on Simple Solutions for 2009. There were numerous comments, mostly among a core of Hawaii colleagues. On one hand, I feel a bit guilty about wasting so much time for so many friends. On the other, it is life on Planet Earth at stake, so I feel compelled to continue this effort.

.

To summarize, a few feel that it is too late and doomsday is coming. A few more are reconciled to a lower standard of living. Some believe that monumental changes might still be possible, but we need inspired leadership and major structural adjustments to government. My latest response to one such input follows:

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Dear XXXX:

.

You're, of course, absolutely right. In my second Huffington Post article on June 2, entitled, Why Is There No National Energy Policy?, I went so far as to say that we shouldn't blame George Bush, nor the U.S. Congress, and not the oil companies. We have no energy policy because we don't feel it is important enough. The problem is us, as Pogo could have said. There were more than a hundred comments.

.

It's like education. We grumble and complain, but generally do nothing much about the poor scores of our students in any K-12 international test. Why? Because, as a nation, we are doing fine. We are the greatest nation ever, and the reason why is that we have by far the best higher education system, spending more money than any other country where it does make a difference. You need 5% of the populace to lead the way, but maintain an adequate core of followers, sort of what we are doing. So don't expect any sudden increase in salaries for lower education teachers because that's the smart thing to do for our future. We might, though, look closer at Finland and Singapore, and borrow as necessary.

.

Essentially, we need a serious crisis. Hitler and the fear that Germany would develop the A-Bomb first was the reason for the Manhattan Project. Sputnik resulted in the Apollo Project, leading to the end of the Cold War. I thought we reached the energy equivalent with $147/barrel oil a few weeks after the above article. Alas, crude oil at less than $50/barrel will make it all but impossible for any drastic and accelerated change. Global Warming? Many millions will need to perish for any real movement.

.

So, I'll maintain my pontification crusade to continue the education process, awaiting the day when $200/barrel petroleum or that really hot summer arrives to make that crucial difference. In the meantime, I still think there is something to the direct methanol fuel cell and the biomethanol economy as a necessary bridge, plus the Hawaiian Hydrogen Clipper. For now, enjoy life as best as you can. The Doomsdayers might turn out to be right, but I'll continue to valiantly plug on hoping for the best.

Aloha.

Pat
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THE SUN IS SHINING

My Simple Solutions for 2009 drew a bunch of personal responses from a wide variety of individuals. For example, one esteemed faculty colleague responded that my solutions ignored the true issues, among them being resource depletion and population. Nothing much I can do about population, but nature seems to taking care of that problem, for, while the doubling times have continued to drop, our world population might never again double, and, perhaps peak below 10 billion. Plus, I thought my solutions were attempting to force conservation and convert to sustainable resources.

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Secondly, I should not mention names, and won't, but one respondent indicated that he endorsed essentially my simple solutions forty years ago, when we had time to implement them. Essentially, it is now too late, so rejoice, he says, to a tourist-less, isolated, self sufficient place, as Hawaii will soon become for the foreseeable future. I worry that he might be right.

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Also, too, I was admonished more than once, for referring to a few campus thinkers in my response as being doomsdayers. Apparently, I'm misunderstanding their message, for they are not saying all is hopeless. In their own way, they are striving to focus on awareness and appropriate action. Keep at it, guys.

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On this note, I would like to recognize another faculty friend, Fred Riggs, who, shaking his head about certain doomsdayers (we used to think alike), said, giving up is not an option. He created a web site, which still lives, although he passed away almost a year ago at the age of 90.

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In summary, then, I offer my limited view of Hawaii's future. The world economy will recover, tourists will return, but jet fuel prices will skyrocket within a few years, and Hawaii, especially, will enter into a deep state of depression for a long period. I'm even beginning to sound like those less than optimistic scholars. A century from now, though, this lonely spot in the middle of the Pacific should be doing just fine. Huh?

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So is there anything we can do to minimize the interim trauma, and, better yet, create a sustainable bridge to our future? I must side with those people I have been mis-labeling doomsdayers and express my frustration, too, that decision-makers do not realize the seriousness of Peak Oil and Global Warming, else, they would immediately be taking monumental steps to preclude the doom, which does not seem to be happening.

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As much as I have been almost against tourism and doing everything possible all my professional life to help diversify our economy, I face the reality that I miserably failed at this. So, as tourism remains so overwhelmingly crucial to our local economy, and will be for a long time to come, something must be done about finding a new option for bringing visitors to our State. For now, the Hawaiian Hydrogen Clipper is our best option, and I wish the developers well.

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In the 70's we had acid rain, limits to growth, Richard Nixon, the population bomb, embarrassment of Viet Nam and two energy crises. I was teaching a course called "Technology and Society," and then also had campus colleagues who were planning for the crash of civilization. They begun to hunker down, one going so far as having all his teeth extracted. Many say it is different this time, and the outcome will be worse.

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However, the world managed to survive the 70's doomsday, and I suspect most of our species will be around for a long time to come. In any case, the Sun is shining, the economy could well be recovering, Obama will soon be inaugurated and Hawaii seems destined to someday become that heaven on Planet Earth.

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The Dow Jones Industrials soared 258 today, to hit 9035. Most world markets did as well or better. Now anticipating a recovery, oil shot up $1.74/barrel to $46.34, and predictably, gold dropped $4/toz to $876.

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HAPPY NEW YEAR

The Dow Jones Industrials started on 1Jan08 at 13265, rising to 14165 on 9Oct08, and ended at 8,776, a drop of 34% for the year. How does this compare with the Great Depression?

On 2Jan1929 the DJI started the year at 307. A peak of 381 was reached on 3Sept1929. By the end of year, the DJI fell to 244, for a yearly drop of only 21%. By the end of 1930, the DJI fell to 170, for a yearly decline of 30%. Then there was a further crash of another 58% in 1931. Thus, 2008 was worse than 1929 and 1930, but nothing like 1931. There was a small decline of 12% in 1932, where the DJI reached a low of 41 on July 8. Most don't realize that 1933 saw a jump of 69%, with the DJI at 100 on 2Jan1934. On 28April1942, more than seven years later, the market slid to 93. Recovery came slowly, for it took until 26Nov1954 when the DJI finally reached 383, just above the peak in 1929, a span of a quarter century.

How did the U.S.do relative to world markets?

London...........minus 31%
Frankfurt........minus 40%
Seoul..............minus 41%
Tokyo.............minus 42%
Paris...............minus 43%
Sydney...........minus 43%
Taipei.............minus 46%
Hong Kong......minus 48%
Singapore.......minus 49%
Shanghai.........minus 70%
Moscow..........minus 70%

As terrible as the year was for the U.S., the world did a lot worse.

MSNBC reported that the New York Mercantile Exchange had its worst year. At this writing, crude is at $43.88/barrel, about $10/bbl higher than the low reported a week ago.

Gold is at $883/toz, a 5% increase for the year. Thus, if, at the beginning of last year you had bought gold instead of stocks in anticipation of the recession, you would have been about 40% ahead today.

I noticed that the stock market might well have been hitting a possible low in mid-November, so I tried to quickly purchase some stocks from my E-Trade and Ameritrade accounts. Both times I was stymied by my general ignorance, as, first, it took me several days just to wire funds into my accounts. Thus, I just missed the DJI low of 7552 (high for the year was 14165 on 9Oct) on 20Nov. I bought Microsoft because it seemed like a good buy, and ProShares Ultra Basic Materials because a friend mentioned it was a derivative, and you might as well get into some of those. I added Lockheed Martin because they had announced an OTEC project for Hawaii, GE because it was the leading American wind energy conversion system manufacturer (and invented the modern windmill) and Boeing because their staff recently showed the most interest in a hydrogen powered aircraft. These are not exactly recommended as reasons for acquiring stocks, but I'm being loyal to firms pioneering sustainable energy projects, not a particularly smart thing to do when the price of oil was approaching all-time lows. Anyway, the bottom line is that over the six week period since I initiated the effort, my five purchases have inceased in value by a ratio of 1.0118, so, if I had invested a million dollars, I would have been ahead by $11,800. But, of course, my monetary sacrifice was somewhat less, so, let's say I made a bit more than one cent on a one dollar comparison basis.
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HAPPY NEW YEAR!

SIMPLE SOLUTIONS FOR 2009

By now you have no doubt read a dozen reviews of 2008 and projections for 2009, all pure guesses, unless someone was carefully predicting that the Sun would rise tomorrow and the like. I would like to, instead, affect the future by sharing a few simple solutions. Here are my top five:

1. End to the Gaza Strip War: “Why don’t those #&%#@* Hamas idiots just stop lobbing rockets into Israel,” courtesy of a golf buddy pundit expressed at the Ala Wai Golf Course Clubhouse. He wanted me to repeat this in my daily blog, but I thought we should protect both of us from any possible fatwa by not specifically identifying the source. White House spokesperson Gordon Johndroe expressed those exact sentiments, with a safe political spin.

2. To initiate the process for Peace on Earth, forever: My very first Huffington Post article, circa 29May08, entitled, Well, Barack, We have a Problem…, can be quoted for the simple solution: …go to your very first G8 Nations Summit, by your declared emergency to be held at United Nations headquarters in New York City, and pronounce a Gorbachev-like bombshell: our country will reduce military spending by 10% this year, and will continue to do so for the next eight years. This scenario is described on page 65 of SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Humanity shown in one of the boxes on the right. You say, we want every country to do the same, for this 10% solution is our best response (create a global fund) to Peak Oil and Global Warming (PO/GW). At this stage, keep quiet about the "ending wars forever" part, as then, no one will take you too seriously. China's knee-jerk reaction might well be, what, cut defense spending? We haven't had a chance yet to attain your level of capability. But, on afterthought, they will realize that they will only need to decrease their spending by $6 billion in Year One while the U.S. takes a $60 billion hit. Ten percent of the worldwide $1.2 trillion/year for war means that at least $120 billion/year will suddenly become available in the first year to overcome PO/GW.

3. Saving the American auto industry: Each person has already loaned GM and Chrysler $44 (for a total of $13.4 billion), which could be up to almost ten times more ($410/person), based on the December Congressional hearing, when all the full bailout package is provided. The best that GM could offer about their future was a plug-in Volt electric car. Why copy the Japanese? Think, really think about the future of ground transport, and develop a truly promising next generation vehicle. Reference can be made to my posting on Is there an Option More Promising than the Plug-in Electric Vehicle? This alternative future is the direct methanol fuel cell. Unfortunately, the U.S. Department of Energy currently bans funds to develop this technology, and also any biomethanol production research. What better partnership than the auto industry and farmers, with government incentives, to manufacture the renewable fuel and power system to lead the world in a decade?

4. Saving the national economy: There will be an Obama stimulus package, perhaps with a trillion dollar value. The details are provided in Buy American, Again, but the timing is right for our new president to help Main Street when, on President Bush’s watch, $863.4 billion were provided to Wall Street, porkers and Detroit. An equivalent to each citizen, would then be just under $3,000. To save a few bucks for other needs, only give $6000 to each couple filing a tax return and $3000 for individuals. However, don’t send a check. Just give each couple/individual a credit card for the appropriate amount, which can only be used to buy products made in the USA. There are some downsides to this plan, but they are explained away in the indicated article.


5. Saving Planet Earth and Humanity: About global warming, I’ve published 35 articles in the Huffington Post, and all of them, to some degree, treat this subject. Let me then simplify with two specifics. First, immediately mandate a dollar a gallon investment surcharge on gasoline before oil prices rise again. Gas will still cost much less than European rates. Second, add a penny per pound carbon dioxide disenhancement charge (this will add 2 cents/kWh to your electricity bill if your power comes from a coal-fired facility), proportionately linked to $30/barrel oil, to adjust as oil prices vacillate, so that at $150/barrel, the tax should be 5 cents/pound. Yes, some of the revenues will need to be directly returned to the people, but a good fraction should be utilized to develop sustainable resource options.

What are the odds of any one of the above attaining reality? Zero, unless each of you sends this posting to ten colleagues, who….

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The Dow Jones Industrials rose 108 to 8776, but this means that the dollar drop for the year was the highest since 1931 during the peak of the Great Depression. The percentage decrease was 34% for the year. World markets all went up, except for the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. Oil jumped $5.57/barrel to $44.60, but this price represents a 61% drop for the year. Gold rose $7.20/toz to $880.80, or an INCREASE of close to 5% for the year. Yes, the pieces are falling into place, for a recession means that investors shift to gold.

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END OF WARS (Part 13)

The following is largely excerpted from Chapter 1 of SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Humanity:

What doesn’t the world like about the U.S.?

...........ISSUE ..................................APPROVE ..DISAPPROVE

o North Korea’s nuclear program ..........30% .............54%
o Iran’s nuclear program .......................28% .............60%
o Global warming .................................27% .............56%
o The Israeli-Hezbollah war ...................21% .............65%
o The war in Iraq ..................................20% .............73%

A good place to start is by introspection. We find every excuse for deriding China on virtually everything it does. So why did the United States in 2006 choose not to seek a seat on the new U.N. Human Rights Council? Why didn’t the conscious of the world, us, continue our attempts to improve the world? Very simple, the potential embarrassment that we would not win one of the seats, for we now rest at the top of the list for the exploitation and manipulation of human rights, that’s why. Add to these the Patriot Act, which provides an excuse for eavesdropping and circumventing civil rights at home, and one gets an uneasy sense of really Big Brother.

Internationally, America the Protector! A little loyalty, perhaps, might be nice. Our only wish is for you to become democratic. Why, then, in a poll taken early in 2006, half of South Korean youths who will be old enough to vote in the next elections, say that Seoul should side with their neighbors to the North if the United States invades North Korea? Also, 40% chose China as their most important partner, with the U.S. tying North Korea with 18%. What kind of thanks is that? U.S. attack North Korea? Preposterous! But, in a CBS/New York Times Poll taken in February of 2003, 52% of Americans responded that if diplomacy fails, military action should be taken if North Korea begins to develop nuclear weapons. Well, Great Leader Kim Jong Il finally did shut down his nuclear reactor in mid-2007. An actual agreement, though, awaits the Obama Administration.

Further, we saved France in World War II. How many there feel good about the ole US of A? Well, as a matter of fact, there is a book called The Arrogance of the French: Why They Can’t Stand Us—and Why the Feeling is Mutual. Written by a U.S. News and World Report correspondent in Paris, the bottom line being that France sucks. Remember our Freedom Fries and boycotts of French wine after their complicity with Saddam Hussein? The why has to do with a combination of arrogance and envy. I went to an energy conference in La Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean in 2005. I was the only American. There were some initial chidings and jokes. Then, I made a remark that I can’t understand why my President scuttled the Kyoto Protocol and how I can’t agree with him on virtually everything. All true. I became a virtual celebrity and relationships began to gel. So, maybe the problem is our Great Leader, George W. Bush.

I travel the world. Japan kind of likes us, especially their Ministry of Foreign Affairs, particularly when a Republican is president. Singapore seems okay, especially if you talk business. Ah….I don’t remember, though, encountering too many friends anywhere else. In Edinburgh, Scotland, at their annual Arts Festival, there were more down with Bush signs than any other protest. Anytime President Bush visits any site, from Pakistan to the U.K. to Timbuktu, you can count on significant to massive demonstrations.

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The Dow Jones Industrials leaped 184 to 8686. World markets also all went up, but crude oil dropped to $38.25/barrel and gold fell $7/toz to $873.60.

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TRILLIONS, QUADRILLIONS AND MORE

My HuffPo of 29July08, entitled, Billions and Trillions, provided an almost startling number: $240 billion or $0.24 trillion. That was the total amount the United States spent, in 2008 dollars, for the Manhattan Project (to bring a quick end to World War II), the Marshall Plan (which built the foundation for a strong Western Europe against communism) and the Apollo Project (which was the seed that bankrupted the Soviet Union, leading to the end of the Cold War). That was cheap, recalling that Congress just set aside $700 billion to rescue Wall Street.

On October 14, I followed with Billions and Trillions Revisited. I noted that the average U.S. Department of Energy annual budget for renewable energy research over the past decade was under $1 billion. The brand new nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the USS H.W. Bush, which will be commissioned on 10January09, cost taxpayers $4.5 billion. This will be our tenth Nimitz-class carrier. I have a problem with big ticket Defense expenditures in these days of rinky-dink terrorism, but, let’s face it, the decision to build came a long time ago. Watch, though, how compelling justification is provided for much more in the future.

But to go on, the profits of the top four oil companies alone were $100 billion in 2007 and Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz in his book estimates the cost of the Middle East wars to be $3,000 billion or $3 trillion. In June, the International Energy Agency said that the world needs to spend $45 trillion to halve planet-warming carbon dioxide by 2050. We have a growing problem because it’s hard to focus on Peak Oil and Global Warming when oil is selling for $40/barrel and it is cold outside.

Well, anyway, we are beginning to enter new territory: quadrillion dollars. A Katrina victim is suing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for $3 quadrillion. NASA once reported that an ounce of anti-matter would cost $2.3 quadrillion to manufacture, if they could do it. All this is meaningless, of course, but five years ago, CNN.com reported that global warming solutions could cost up to $18 quadrillion, which was the highest end determination of expenditures required by 2100 of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. But who takes them seriously? Not the G8 nations.

There is, though, at least one almost official sounding sum from the Bank of International Settlements: $1.144 quadrillion, which was the amount of outstanding derivatives worldwide at the end of last year. That would be equal to about $170,000 for each of the 6.7 billion people on Planet Earth. Mind you, this is funny money, for the current value of all the stocks and bonds around the globe is less than one tenth of a quadrillion dollars. Derivatives are unregulated and high-risk credit bets. Think Bernard Madoff. Warren Buffett, in a 2003 Fortune magazine issue, called derivatives the equivalent of financial weapons of mass destruction, and, surely enough, they exploded this fall.

But a quadrillion is 1,000,000,000,000,000—and only has 15 zeros. I calculated in SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Planet Earth that the odds of any of us being born were 1 chance in 1 with 34 zeros. A googol has 1 followed by 100 zeros. There are many stories, but the most accurate one is that the founders of Google misspelled googol, and, anyway, google.com was available, and googol.com was not. For the record, the largest number with a name is the googleplex, which is one followed by…ah, this is getting too scientific. So we have a long way to go before our economy runs out of numbers.

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The Dow Jones Industrials plunged 152, but slowly recovered during the final couple of hours to end minus 32 at 8484. World markets mostly went up today, and so did crude oil, increasing $2.31 to sneak above $40/barrel by two cents. Gold gained $8/toz to $880.
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