Group items tagged

The Middle East's oil reserves have served as the flashpoint for conflicts, and military leaders are keeping a close eye on Yemen these days, as the country suffers through instability related, in part, to water shortages, which are expected to worsen with climate change.

Corell said Asian countries, including China and South Korea, are already plotting new navigation routes and building cargo ships that can push through seasonal ice. The shift would eliminate some travel that now passes through the Straits of Malacca, between Malaysia and Indonesia, where piracy remains active, but it could also enable Asia to take firm control of global trade.

Long-term drought in Sudan contributed to the ethnic cleansing in Darfur, he added. The conflict also exposed how poorly prepared the international community is to respond to such scenarios.

By definition, starvation is a process. Our bodies are not like cars which immediately shut down when they're out of gas. When we experience prolonged low energy intake, and as long as water is available, our bodies enter into a successive series of metabolic modes.

Soon after eating, our bodies start to break down glycogen (molecules that store energy) to produce glucose (an important carbohydrate that fuels cells).

In terms of energy allocation, our brains require 25% of the body's total stored energy (which is a lot if you think about it), with the rest going to fuel our muscle tissues and red blood cells.

Germany's economic performance is tied strongly to external developments because of the country's reliance on exports.

Europe is Germany's largest customer, so the German economy depends on the strength of the European consumer base.

However, Germany's economy has not escaped the crisis unscathed. Over the past few years, German economic growth has slowed. According to the International Monetary Fund, Germany's GDP grew by only 0.9 percent in 2012, down from 4 percent in 2010.

The armies fought to the limits of their empires and, after a series of wars culminating in the Treaty of Zuhab of 1639, the Zagros Mountains came to define the borderland between the Ottomans and Persians, with the Kurds stuck in the middle.

The Turkic-Persian competition is again being fought in Kurdistan, only this time, energy pipelines have taken the place of gilded cavalry.

Roughly 25 million Kurds occupy a region that stretches from the eastern Taurus Mountains in Turkey through the Jazira Plateau of northeastern Syria across the mountains and plateaus of southeastern Anatolia before dead-ending into the northern spine of the Zagros Mountains, which divide Iran and Iraq.

A crappy old plant with inadequate safety features was hit by a monster earthquake and a vast tsunami. The electricity supply failed, knocking out the cooling system. The reactors began to explode and melt down. The disaster exposed a familiar legacy of poor design and corner-cutting. Yet, as far as we know, no one has yet received a lethal dose of radiation.

But energy is like medicine: if there are no side-effects, the chances are that it doesn't work.

And how do we drive our textile mills, brick kilns, blast furnaces and electric railways – not to mention advanced industrial processes? Rooftop solar panels? The moment you consider the demands of the whole economy is the moment at which you fall out of love with local energy production. A national (or, better still, international) grid is the essential prerequisite for a largely renewable energy supply.

The president ran his finger over a map showing how Romania's neighbors such as Bulgaria and Hungary were almost completely dependent on Russian natural gas, while Romania -- because of its own hydrocarbon reserves -- still has a significant measure of independence. In the 21st century, the president explained, Gazprom is more dangerous than the Russian army.

Thus, Moscow's strategy is about taking over countries from within. In this battle, it is precisely during the quiet periods, when an issue like Ukraine drifts off the front pages because of the Middle East, for example, that we should be worried.

Analysis

The Nord Stream pipeline project was initially designed by Russia to bypass transit states to supply Russian natural gas directly to Germany, its largest European market. In the mid-to-late 2000s, Russia had a series of energy and political spats with states that its oil and natural gas transited to reach greater Europe, leading to energy cutoffs and intentional pipeline breaks. So Gazprom, in consortium with the Netherlands' Gasunie, Germany's E.ON and Wintershall and France's GDF, built two lines from the Russian coast at Vyborg under the Baltic Sea to the German coast at Greifswald. Once on German soil, Nord Stream's natural gas supplies split into two systems. The first goes through the Opal pipeline system that supplies eastern Germany and connects to Slovakia and the Czech Republic. The other spur goes through the NEL pipeline system to enter northern and eastern Germany.

Currently, the first two legs of Nord Stream have a shared capacity of 55 billion cubic meters, though the pipeline carried only 28 billion cubic meters in 2012, since the second leg was unfinished. The 2012 exports also were intended mostly for German consumption. Though the primary purpose of Nord Stream was to link Russia directly to Germany, Moscow has long had further plans for the pipeline system. Since Nord Stream 1 and 2 were conceived, two more legs -- Nord Stream 3 and 4 -- have been considered. Nord Stream 3 would expand Nord Stream 1 and 2 under the Baltic Sea to Germany, while Nord Stream 4 would connect Russian supplies through the Dutch export networks to the United Kingdom. The Netherlands exports natural gas to the United Kingdom via the Balgzand-Bacton underwater interconnector pipeline (with a capacity of 16 billion cubic meters) and via Belgium along the Belgium-U.K. underwater interconnector (with a capacity of 25.5 billion cubic meters). Gazprom has said that preliminarily it would like to export an additional 40 billion cubic meters along Nord Stream 3 and 4 to the United Kingdom -- something BP said it is interested in discussing. If completed, these expansions would bring large amounts of Russian natural gas to Western Europe at a time when regional supplies are in decline and some of Russia's Central and Eastern European customers are diversifying their options.

In many ways, Russia's geopolitical strength is derived from its inherent geographic weaknesses. There are few natural barriers protecting Russia's core, and this has required Russia to expand into and consolidate territories around its core to acquire buffers from external powers.

It brought Moscow into conflict with numerous external powers and gave it the difficult task of ruling over conquered peoples (who were not necessarily happy to be ruled by Russia).

For the sake of this article, I’ll use the terms “cleanse” and “detox” interchangeably as any dietary strategy that employs strict rules on eating or drinking – usually involving the elimination of many foods/drinks/substances and/or involves fasting or the addition of special supplements for a period of time.

The word “toxin” itself is largely misunderstood and misrepresented by peddlers of cleansing plans.  They keep things intentionally obscurantist when it comes to the precisely what they mean by “toxins” for good reason.   Making specific claims ie. “Our sooper-dooper clenz™ removes polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons”, would place a specific burden of proof on the manufacturer.

from Poland to Azerbaijan, I heard two questions: Are the Russians on the move? And what can these countries do to protect themselves?

Moscow is anxious too, and some Russians I spoke to expressed this quite openly. From the Russian point of view, the Europeans and Americans did the one thing they knew Moscow could not live with: They installed a pro-Western government in Kiev.

With the wingspan of a jetliner, the bauplan of a dragonfly, and flying at a maximum speed of less than eighty miles an hour (and with an average speed of about 35 mph), Solar Impulse circled its home field in Payerne, reaching an altitude of more than 28,000 feet while drinking in solar rays and storing the energy in its batteries for a flight that would last through the night.

If Iraq invaded Saudi Arabia, something that it probably could have accomplished in less than a week, Saddam could have potentially controlled 45% of the world's total oil reserves. It was no wonder that the U.S. was able to get quick international support for Operation Desert Shield.

Earlier this month, the European Commission reported that the EU was on track to get 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020.

A "super-smart" grid powered by solar farms in North Africa, wind farms in northern Europe and the North Sea, hydro-electric from Scandinavia and the Alps and a complement of biomass and marine energy could render carbon-based fuels obsolete for electricity by 2050, said the report.

Under a variety of business-as-usual scenarios, the EU's projected to import about 70 percent of its energy by 2050, including loads of natural gas from Russia, which hasn't always been the most stable of suppliers. So the EU has plenty of reasons beyond climate change to want to decarbonize.

Since Russia and Turkey are both resurgent powers in the region, the energy issue can turn quite thorny at times, particularly as the West is leaning on Turkey to keep its distance from Moscow. But Russia and Turkey are not looking for an energy brawl at the moment. Tensions exist between these historic rivals, but the current geopolitical environment is pushing the two sides to work with — instead of against — each other.

The directors of several oil companies in the Gulf of Sidra region of eastern Libya announced they were splitting from embattled leader Moammar Gadhafi and had “pledged loyalty to the people,” Zawya Dow Jones reported Feb. 23.

Currently, the fluid situation in eastern Libya makes it difficult to draw boundaries between cities controlled by pro- and anti-Gadhafi forces. While there appears to be an east-to-west domino effect, protests are still contained in individual cities, and their success in recruiting the support of local tribes, military forces or business leaders is different from city to city. Geographic limitations will further constrain the ability of protesters in these cities to coalesce for a push westward.

It is still very early in the conflict, and there is no indication that anti-Gadhafi forces are consolidating in eastern Libya, but control of the Gulf of Sidra could provide crucial strategic depth to a region of Libya that is breaking away from Tripoli’s control.

Gadhafi has never displayed any intention of leaving Libya, a point he reportedly reiterated to Ilyumzhinov during his visit.

the best option he can hope for at this point is maintaining power of a rump Libya following a partition of the country (a course of action neither side has advocated publicly).

What is known is that no serious effort is being taken to arm and train rebel forces to do the job for the West. This means hopes for regime change ride on NATO planes or the possibility that members of Gadhafi’s own regime might overthrow him. Otherwise, negotiations will eventually have to take place, because no one is prepared to invade Libya or keep bombing it forever.

Whatever the origins of the events in Ukraine, the United States is now engaged in a confrontation with Russia.

At most, the Russians have reached the conclusion that the United States intends to undermine Russia's power. They will resist. The United States has the option of declining confrontation, engaging in meaningless sanctions against individuals and allowing events to take their course. Alternatively, the United States can choose to engage and confront the Russians. 

A failure to engage at this point would cause countries around Russia's periphery, from Estonia to Azerbaijan, to conclude that with the United States withdrawn and Europe fragmented, they must reach an accommodation with Russia.

In the case of Yangtze development, an official from China's National Development and Reform Commission noted in May 2011 a shift in the focus of central government port development policy from the coast to the interior, adding that most of the opportunities for future port-related investment would be in cities along the Yangtze River.

The central government's heightened emphasis on inland waterway port expansion is incongruous with port throughput trends during the previous five-year period, 2007-2011.

“Middle-aged people – like me – often look back on our teenage selves with some mixture of amusement and chagrin,” said one of the authors, Daniel T. Gilbert, a psychologist at Harvard. “What we never seem to realize is that our future selves will look back and think the very same thing about us. At every age we think we’re having the last laugh, and at every age we’re wrong.”

On the other hand, French postmodern philosopher Jean Beaudrillard contends that Fukuyama’s modernist theory is no more than an illusion caused by our particular relationship with time. He writes that contemporary civilization has simply “lost” its sense of history:

Thucydides chronicles how the Peloponnesian War began in the latter part of the late fifth century B.C. with disputes over the island of Corcyra in northwestern Greece and Potidaea in northeastern Greece. These places were not very strategically crucial in and of themselves. To think that wars must start over important places is to misread Thucydides.

Corcyra and Potidaea, among other locales, were only where the Peloponnesian War started; not what caused it. What caused it, he writes in the first book of his eight-book history, was the growth of perceived maritime power in Athens and the alarm that it inspired in Sparta and among Sparta's allies.

Hobbes writes that a pretext for war over some worthless place "is always an injury received, or pretended to be received." Whereas the "inward motive to hostility is but conjectural; and not of the evidence." In other words, the historian or journalist might find it hard to find literal documentation for the real reasons states go to war; thus, he often must infer them. He often must tease them out of the pattern of events, and still in many cases be forced to speculate.