September. Remember, you don’t introduce a new product in August.

Posted by: beq | Aug 5 2005 15:11 utc | 3

Hubris. American’s right wing believed their own think-tank propaganda and thought a small force could easily kick the Sunni out of power and take over Iraq’s oil fields. They ignored all of the successful past national liberation movements and the thousands of years of animosity between the major patriarchal religions.
The only course where the GOP controls their destiny is to declare victory and pull out. The Pentagon needs a pull out too because the Reserves are all used up and a Vietnam style mutiny is in the works as lifers start pulling their fourth and fifth tour in a never ending war.
In all scenarios, Saudi’s oil is at jeopardy: 1) The US pulls out and Shiite and Sunni Civil War breaks out next door in Iraq, 2) US stays the course and more and more Sunni boys are drawn to Iraq to kill infidels radicalizing their families, or 3) the US bombs Iranian Nuclear Sites leading to the closure of the Straits of Hormuz.

Posted by: Jim S | Aug 5 2005 16:18 utc | 5

There were some small, one-off attacks in the kingdom last year (or was it 2003?) and oil bounced around a bit. But what really pushed oil higher were strikes in Nigeria and trouble in Venezuela.
That the attacks haven’t happened on a scale large enough to cause problems on their own tells me a lot about al-Qaeda’s ability to operate in the Arabian peninsula and of the oil industry’s resilience there. It’s gonna take more than a couple beheadings or bombing to run the westerners out. And I don’t think al-Qaeda has the wherewithall to pull off a sustained campaign there.
The real issue is this: As we approach the point of production capacity-demand parity (which may come as soon as this fall) it won’t take much of a disturbance to send oil shooting upwards. There’s a close analogy with the California electricity markets of the high Enron era, where price spikes and shortages could occur (and be manufactured) by the dropping out of just a handful of suppliers. This is going to occur naturally, as storms and strikes and pipeline ruptures are going to be no less common than they were before.
But a smart strategy for al-Qaeda would be not to go after the well-guarded Saudi oil field infrastructure, but hit at softer targets elsewhere in the world. How much easier it would be to disrupt production in Angola or Equatorial Guinea or even Trinidad, or to cut pipelines, or to attack tankers. Indeed, my Tom Clancy-ish scenario for the next big attack would be to reprise 9/11 with supertankers hijacked in the mid-Atlantic exploding in major U.S. ports.

Posted by: jlw | Aug 5 2005 17:03 utc | 7

Lest you think I’m blowing smoke on the notion that we immediately start replacing old GM factories w/new ones building cars that run on air, turnkey factories are ready to go.link
People should deluge their newspapers w/this information. GM has to be forced to move now.

Posted by: jj | Aug 5 2005 18:02 utc | 9

Excuse me but Friedman is ALWAYS desparate. Some still refuse to do things Tom’s way. (They may not know that he won a PULITZER).

Posted by: della Rovere | Aug 5 2005 20:42 utc | 11

I like Friedman’s use of the neologism “islamo-fascist” to jazz up the small-car prudent lifestyle thing for the Republican base. “Hey, everyone, let’s all eat tofu this evening, so our team will be able to have an extra portion of red meat before the big game tomorrow.” Cute.
In fairness, that logic would occur to him because he has seen societies that are not swimming in excess. The readers he is trying to reach with this one have never had that experience, even vicariously. Uh, yet.

Posted by: Jassalasca Jape | Aug 5 2005 22:18 utc | 13

jj,
A rural diaspora will bring about some interesting lifestyle changes, if there is serious interest in establishing a more durable civilization in the United States of America:
In the villages, the precious commodity was carefully collected. In a community near Tokyo in the early twentieth century, ‘Once a year, in fact, the terrace people were given what they called ‘dung cakes’. A local farmer used regularly to bring along a cart and buy up all the night soil from the communal toilet; then, at the end of the year, he’d take them some of the special rice used for making rice cakes to thank them for the year’s supply of ‘dung’…”you can see ‘business’ has been good this year – there are plenty of dung cakes”, we’d joke to each other.’ Likewise in the towns human excrement had a market value. ‘I was told in Hiroshima in the renting of the poorer tenement houses, if three persons occupied a room together the sewage paid the rent of one, and if five occupied the same room no rent was charged!.’ We are told that ‘Rent was adjusted on the basis of how many tenants there were and was raised if the number of occupants dropped.’ The excreta might even be sub-divided. ‘The value of human wastes was so high that rights of ownership to its components were assigned to different parties. In Osaka, the rights to fecal matter from the occupants of a dwelling belonged to the owner of the building whereas the urine belonged to the tenants. Feces were considered more valuable and hence commanded a higher price.’ The commodity became more and more valuable, so that ‘as the price of fish and other fertilizers rose, the value of night soil rose correspondingly, and vegetables were no longer sufficient to pay for it. By the early eighteenth century, with the increase in new paddies in the Osaka area, the price of fertilizer had jumped to the point that even night soil had to be purchased with silver.’ The competition for night soil even led to open conflict. ‘In the summer of 1724, two groups of villages from the Yamazaki and Takatsuki areas fought over the rights to collect night soil from various parts of the city.’ Even in the 1930s ‘every scrap of human manure is used to-day…The school and village office rent out the right to collect their night-soil.’ (citations omitted)
(HTML PDF)
The last great “spring forward” by the US military may be driven as much by the American’s innate fear of feces as by his love of oil.

Posted by: Jassalasca Jape | Aug 6 2005 1:56 utc | 15

did,
A pricing mechanism will be required to determine which uses of petroleum should be permitted and which should be banned outright. Fortunately, the Founding Fathers had the foresight to establish Congress for that purpose.

Posted by: Jassalasca Jape | Aug 6 2005 5:17 utc | 17

On aircars: I’ve looked at your link and I’m very suspicious. Compressing air is a wasteful means of storing energy, as you can tell by feeling the heat of a running compressor. I’m not sure of the exact figure, but I recall from somewhere that compressed air tools run by an electric compressor are about 20% as efficient as a similar electric tool.
There is no drop-in replacement for oil as a transport fuel.

Posted by: Cog in the machine | Aug 8 2005 1:05 utc | 19

jj: re: Aircar
The report from the French Goverment seems to say that this car will have a range of like 100 miles at 35 mph. Not really impressive. We can demand that GM build these things, but I really do question how many people will buy them.
This is basically the same problem hydrogen has. The difference is that I think there is hope for hydrogen.

Posted by: Brian Hurt | Aug 9 2005 18:40 utc | 21

If there is hope for hydrogen it is only as a (difficult-to-deal-with) carrier of energy, not as a source. All the natural hydrogen on earth is bound in tight chemical bonds to other elements, which means that much more energy must be expended to free the element from these bonds and make it useful as a fuel, than is gained by re-burning it in an engine or fuel cell.
There may be some convenience gained if hydrogen is available “at the pump” but it comes at a large expense. Hydrogen because of the tiny molecule size, leaks from tanks made of steel or anything else; it seeps out thru and between the molecules of the tank material. And liquifying it of course is ridiculously expensive and dangerous. Hydrogen, whether cold or warm, causes embrittlement of steel over time (a chemical process) so you then have CRACK – POP – SHATTER and a free hydrogen cloud drifting toward an ignition source.
And that is all I have to say about that.

Posted by: rapt | Aug 10 2005 2:17 utc | 23

It might also be an idea to prepare folks for a drastic reduction in their standard of living, since that’s what’s coming. But then Americans are a practical people, aren’t they, who resent government intrusion into their lives and love to learn by doing …. They’ll cope, I guess.

Posted by: Jape | Aug 12 2005 13:08 utc | 25