Jim’s Blog

Econbrowser publishes oil price estimates in more detail

Bottom line:  Demand is going to rise one hell of a lot.  Supply for that demand just is not there.

This paper does not review supply from coal to liquids or gas to liquids.  The only way to meet demand is to generate liquids from coal by underground gasification followed by gas to liquids conversion.  This will require many, many quite gigantic projects, but at present we have only a small number of small exploratory projects, most them scheduled to start producing around 2015 or so.  So the price of oil will have to rise to quite astonishing levels, at least for a couple of decades.   We have only seen the beginning.

Here is a blog by an American officer that tells us the Iraq war from inside.

The war cannot easily be summarized. If it could be, he would summarize it for us. But we are clearly winning, it is clearly costing, Iraq remains all @#$%^&*, and is likely to rapidly become more @#$%^&*, the moment US troops leave. Clearly Iraq is not going to become a Jeffersonian democracy any time soon, but looks increasingly probable it will not be overrun by Islamic radicals the moment US troops leave.

On the one hand, nation building has not been a total failure. On the other hand, it is taking a lot longer, costing a lot more, and producing a lot less than had been promised.

The problem is that after this experience, it is not a credible to threaten that tyrants who attack Americans, or sponsor terrorists who attack Americans, are going to suffer overthrow followed by nation building

When foreign tyrants attack America, it