Notes From the Oil Production Downslope: Hit Me Baby, One More Time

I teach a class at the Yestermorrow Design/Build School in Warren, VT. This allows me to meet interesting people from all over the country and hear their stories. The latest installment in the ongoing decline in oil production comes from a student whose day job is doing bodywork on luxury vehicles in the New York borough of Queens.

On the mortgage crisis front, banks are now receiving “jingle mail.” This is when a homeowner realizes that his or her mortgage is a larger number than the declining value of the home covered by the mortgage. Why keep paying a $500,000 mortgage on a $450,000 (and falling) house? The homeowner locks the door,mails the keys to the bank, and walks away. In some cases, the frustrated homeowner vandalizes the house before departure.

On the oil crisis front, gas-guzzlers are taking hits. Literally. My student reports that he is seeing SUVs vandalized by their owners. Unable to keep forking over $100 at the gas station and unable to sell their dinosaurs for the balance on their car loans, people are going for the insurance money.

The nighttime application of a sledgehammer to the bodywork, windows, and interior generally does the job, although some augment this with spray paint. This led to an embarrassing bust in one case, where the owner neglected to remove his keys from the ignition, covering them with a telltale coat of paint.

In other cases, owners of these non-salable money pits have gotten into fender benders and then augmented the legitimate damage with blunt instruments. Some people ask the body shop if they can declare the vehicle “totaled.” The body shop people have to repeatedly explain that this question is answered by the insurance company claims adjuster.

This is the first scattering of gravel that presages the landslide. Right now the phenomenon is limited to people who bought far too much car for their gas budget. The line of unaffordability will sweep down from the wheeled Zeppelins to less gargantuan vehicles and more prosperous owners. Next will come the abandonment of those too-far-to-commute outer suburban houses. The inexorable trend will be towards lower fuel use, which means lower vehicle mass per passenger and less mobility in general. The battered SUVs of Queens are harbingers of the new reality.

Admiral Canute lectures the Iranian tide

In the escalating war of words between Iran and the U.S., the Iranian government threatened to shut down oil shipments through the Persian Gulf if attacked. Iranian General Mohammed Ali Jafari said, “It is natural that when a country is attacked it uses all of its capabilities against the enemy, and definitely our control of the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz would be one of our actions.”

Since 40% of the world oil supply comes through the Gulf, this is no small thing. We would no longer be complaining about $4 gasoline because there wouldn’t be any to buy.

In response, Vice-Admiral Kevin Cosgriff, commander of the U.S. Fifth Fleet said, “They will not close it... They will not be allowed to close it.”

There are two problems with Vice-Admiral Cosgriff’s statement, and they are named Kowsar and Noor.

The Kowsar and Noor are Iranian knockoffs of Chinese tactical cruise missiles. The Kowsar has a relatively short range and a small explosive payload, but Hezbollah managed to cripple an Israeli warship with one during their recent dustup in Lebanon. The Noor is a bigger issue. Based on the Chinese C-802 anti-ship cruise missile, it has a range of 200 kilometers, enough to cut off the Straight of Hormuz and a good portion of the Gulf of Oman. Iran reportedly bought 60 of the C-802s from China and deployed them at Qeshm, in the narrows of the Straight. Then it started making its own.

These Noor/C-802 missiles are nearly impossible to stop. They travel close to Mach 1 at less than 30 feet off the water, dropping to half that altitude as they close on the target. The missile starts swerving back and forth on the final approach to dodge anti-missile fire, and then dives for the ship’s waterline. The guidance package is difficult to jam with electronic countermeasures. They are supposed to have a 98% hit ratio.

What this means is that if the Iranians get even one missile launched, somebody loses a tanker. If the U.S. fleet is within 200 km of the Iranian coast (or an Iranian ship or helicopter), we end up with a crippled aircraft carrier, or perhaps the first sinking of a major ship in modern U.S. naval history. Of course, in the event of a conflict our forces would be trying to find and destroy all these missiles. The problem is that we can never know if we have gotten them all. Just one would ruin your day. If the Iranians declared a missile barrier across the Straight of Hormuz, no tanker company would test it.

A shooting war between Iran and the U.S. would be the height of idiocy for both sides. The U.S. would face increased attacks in Iraq from angry Shia militias and skyrocketing oil prices, as well as the further overstretching of a beyond overstretched military (and budget). The Iranians would face total international isolation if they shut off the Persian Gulf. For them it would be the nuclear option.

Nevertheless, as both countries rattle sabers and trade angry talk, it is good to remember this: They could do what they say they might do, and we couldn’t stop them.

A quotation for Independence Day

From The Great Thoughts, edited by George Seldes:

“There is nothing more common than to confound the terms of the American Revolution with those of the late American war. The American war is over but this is far from being the case with the American Revolution. On the contrary, nothing but the first act of the great drama is closed.”

Benjamin Rush (1747-1833), Physician, Signer of the Declaration of Independence

(Address, “To the People of the United States,” 1789)

Vermont politics moves slightly towards world average

What I’m about to relate is microscopic in its significance compared to the violence and destruction that goes on elsewhere in the world. Somehow, the fact that here in Vermont we are living such a sheltered life makes this kind of petty idiocy all the more discouraging.

Montpelier, Vermont’s capital, had its Independence Day parade today, on the 3rd. I stood on State Street watching the floats, bands, and politicians go by. At one point our governor, Jim Douglas, walked by with a crowd of supporters in matching t-shirts. About thirty seconds later a scrawny guy in a Santa Claus outfit trotted by in the opposite direction and was almost immediately tackled by several men in Douglas t-shirts. They were obviously angry and set about twisting his arms behind him, crunching his face into the sidewalk, standing on his legs, and generally making life uncomfortable for him.

There was a general cry of “What did he do?’ and “Why are you beating up Santa?” The answer came back, “He assaulted the governor.” Whoa. Whackjob in Santa suit punches governor during parade. Surreal and disturbing.

I left them to their one-sided wrestling match and walked up the street a little ways. I saw a couple talking about something, and the looks on their faces told me that their subject was the incident. “What happened with Santa and Douglas?” I asked. “Squirted him in the face with a can of whipped cream. Totally covered him. Funny as hell.”

(Update, for what it's worth: It was actually a pie. See the WCAX article in the comments.)

I turned back to where the scrum had just occurred, but Santa and the Douglas guys had disappeared. (I later heard that the police had arrested and cuffed the prankster.)

I stood there for a long moment trying to reconcile a face full of Reddi-Whip with the angry bone crunching I had just witnessed. Ok, it was a childish prank, and certainly not the most brilliant move ever made, but the response was unnecessary and out of proportion. Santa was no longer anywhere near the governor. Aside from his dignity, the governor was uninjured. He was farther up the street, waving and smiling. The Douglas boyos, under the pretense of a citizen’s arrest, had bypassed the legal system and administered some extra-judicial punishment.

If you are tempted to say, “Well, the moron had it coming,” remember the symmetry of the law. If a few self-appointed enforcers are allowed to beat him up, then they can do the same to you for some other real or imagined insult. It’s the way they do politics in Zimbabwe.

The prankster’s motivation remains a mystery to me (Update: See the comment - Vt. Yankee decommissioning), although when I related the story to friends, the majority expressed dismay that they had missed the squirting. More than one person said that pie would have been more traditional and appropriate. Ultimately, the act was inarticulate and useless.

The motivation of the Douglas crowd was more obvious. The governor (and candidate for reelection) had suffered an injury to his dignity. Dignity is the control of one’s perception by other people, and image control is the key to political success. As Drew Westen wrote about in his excellent book “The Political Brain”, people first react emotionally to any kind of attack on their preferred candidate, and then follow up with irrationality. In this case, also with violence.

Prank protest and thug response. I hope this isn’t a trend.

Symington plus Pollina equals VIRV

In a recent post I called the 2008 Vermont gubernatorial election for the Republican incumbent, Jim Douglas. I did so because former Speaker of the House Gaye Symington’s entry into the race will split the left of center vote. I did not accuse either the Democrat, Symington, or Progressive contender Anthony Pollina of being a spoiler, but with both of them in the race I consider the election spoiled.

I have been thinking about the problem since then and wishing that our legislature had passed an Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) bill. IRV is a voting process whereby each voter ranks the candidates in order of preference. In the event that there is no candidate with a majority of the votes, those who voted for the candidate with the least votes get their second choice votes distributed according to their preference among the remaining candidates. And so it goes until there is a clear winner. This allows voters to express their preference for a dark horse candidate without helping out a candidate they don’t like. IRV is used in Burlington, Vermont, as well a cities, states, and countries around the world.

But we don’t have IRV. If Symington and Pollina agree on it, we could have VIRV, or Virtual Instant Runoff Voting. I am operating on the assumption that most Democrats supporting Symington would prefer Pollina to Douglas and that most Progressives supporting Pollina would prefer Symington to Douglas.

What if both Pollina and Symington announced that, in the event that neither of them had a measurable lead over Douglas in late October, the one with lower poll numbers would drop out and ask his or her followers to vote for the other?

Let’s say a poll is conducted on October 20. Douglas has 43%, Candidate X (either Symington or Pollina – I’m being deliberately nonspecific) has 38% and Candidate Y has 19%. We can safely assume that Candidate Y is not going to pull 19-plus percentage points in the last two weeks of the campaign. Candidate Y has had a fair chance to compete and express political points during the campaign season, but pragmatically speaking is out of the race. What would be the point in carrying on? VIRV would merely do what IRV would have done, had our legislature been so wise as to pass it.

There are details the two campaigns would have to work out. Which poll(s) would be used? How much of a gap in the numbers would there have to be in order to trigger VIRV? If Symington and Pollina are effectively tied in the late October polls, what then?

As I noted in my previous essay on the subject, in the long run the Democrats and the Progressives need to shed some ideological fixations and cooperate. We need statewide IRV to have any pretense of democracy in a three party state. In the meantime, Pollina and Symington can agree to approximate it to serve the will of the people.