Energy demand is expected to grow in coming decades. Jeroen van der Veer, 60, Royal Dutch Shell’s chief executive, recently offered his views on the energy challenge facing the world and the challenge posed by global warming. He spoke of the need for governments to set limits on carbon emissions. He also lifted the veil on Shell’s latest long-term energy scenarios, titled Scramble and Blueprints, which he will make public next week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Following are excerpts from the interview:
Q. What are the main findings of Shell’s two scenarios?
A. Scramble is where key actors, like governments, make it their primary focus to do a good job for their own country. So they look after their self-interest and try to optimize within their own boundaries what they try to do. Blueprints is basically all the international initiatives, like Kyoto, like Bali, or like a future Copenhagen. They start very slowly but before not too long they become relatively successful. This is a model of international cooperation.
Category: Current Events
Ubiquitous Packer Paraphernalia
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This photo was snapped at an early morning swim meet this weekend.
All Roads Still Lead to Lombardi
All you need to know about Green Bay is that Lambeau Field is on Lombardi Avenue.
Even the numerals in the Packers’ address, 1265 Lombardi Avenue, are significant — 12 for the franchise’s record number of N.F.L. championships, 6 when Curly Lambeau was the coach, 5 when Vince Lombardi was the coach. The 1996 team won the other title in Super Bowl XXXI with Mike Holmgren as the coach (he later defected to Seattle) and Brett Favre at quarterback (he is still the face of the franchise). But Lambeau and Lombardi remain its cornerstones.
Lambeau, a star tailback at Green Bay East High School who left Notre Dame after a year, organized the original Packers team at a meeting in the dingy Press-Gazette newspaper offices in 1919 when a local meatpacking company put up $500 for uniforms and pro football was a small-town sport.
Lombardi, a New Yorker originally out of Sheepshead Bay, St. Francis Prep and Fordham before coaching at St. Cecilia’s in Englewood, N.J., at Army under Red Blaik and the Giants’ offense for five seasons (including the 1956 championship team), gilded Green Bay with a major league mystique.
GPS Liability?
In early January accident, a California computer technician turned his rental car onto some train tracks in New York per the directions of his sat nav system. The car became stuck and he had to abandon it before an oncoming train hit it. There were no injuries, but there were significant delays in travel. “The rental car driver was issued a summons and is being held liable for the damage to the train and track.”
That leads a real live lawyer, Eric J. Sinrod, writing at c|net to examine the potential of a driver to point to the GPS manufacturer as being at fault. The article points out:
On Sears & Lands End: Retailer’s Profit Warning Signals a Persistent Slide
Sears Holdings Corp., the storied retailer that helped civilize the American frontier with its catalog sales and later defined the modern department store, is searching for a new compass.
The retailer yesterday warned results for its fiscal fourth quarter and year would fall well below its expectations, continuing a sharp slide in sales and profit. Even during the best two months of the year, sales at stores open at least a year fell 3.5% compared with a year ago, the company said. Shares tumbled 5% to a more than two-year low, down $4.79 to $91.38 on the Nasdaq. The stock is off 49% in the past year.
But its record in acquisitions has been dismal. In 2002, it paid $3 billion for mail-order firm Lands’ End, a business that has declined since the deal.
Lands End is based in nearby Dodgeville. The post Sears acquisition of Lands End is a story waiting to be told.
New Years Eve 2008 Panoramic Scenes
Hans Nyberg has compiled a great set of New Year’s Eve 2008 Panoramas, including one I shot in Quebec City. Thanks much to Hans for a great site and for rendering my scene.
Quebec City celebrated the beginning of their 400th anniversary celebrations that evening. Learn more, here. 2008 is the 400th anniversary of Champlain’s landing in Quebec.
Cyberwar Comes of Age
The digitized specter of cyberwar is haunting the boardrooms, barracks, and law offices of America. China’s audacious September 2007 infiltration of secure Pentagon networks and government servers in several other nations has powerfully demonstrated that cyberwar’s moment has arrived. Cybersecurity analysts have estimated that 120 different nations are working to evolve cyberwar capabilities. Most of today’s current cyberwar operations involve hackers probing civilian and military networks for vulnerabilities and restricted information, operations that focus less on disruption than recon and surveillance.
Pre Steroid Era Brewer Logo?
I saw a young man wearing a classic Brewers baseball cap earlier today. It occurred to me that this is the “pre steriod era” logo.
Everyone’s Poop
“Down the drain, off the brain” is how most people think about it, but human waste—or effluent, as the professionals call it—has a lot to tell us about how we live, what we eat, and who we are.
They say that shit runs downhill. This is commonly understood to mean that the world is an unfair place, except among those few people who actually work with the substance, for whom it is considered something of an article of faith. This is because municipal sewerage systems are powered almost entirely by gravity, which means that when working properly, they move millions of gallons of sewage a day across considerable distances with only a minimum expenditure of energy, a feat of efficiency virtually unparalleled in the annals of engineering. When sewage stops running downhill, as it inevitably does from time to time, very bad things indeed can happen, as they did on Pecan Springs Road, in the Austin neighborhood known as Windsor Park, one morning last September.
I was spending the day with an Austin Water Utility emergency-response crew when dispatch got a call from a woman reporting that two rooms of her house were flooded with sewage. Our crew consisted of a TV truck, piloted by a twenty-year line-maintenance veteran named David Eller, and a flusher truck, driven by another longtime utility employee, named Dale Crocker. At the house, Eller, who wears wraparound sunglasses and looks a little like the country singer Dwight Yoakam, unspooled a thick red cable from the back of his truck. On the end of the cable was a camera about the size of a roll of quarters, which Crocker shoved down into a PVC clean-out pipe near the curb in the front yard. The woman leaned on a walker in her driveway, looking worried.
Excellent Article.
Snowblower Zeitgeist, or the Best Urban Snowblower
I’ve manually moved snow for the past 14 years – my entire post UW time in Madison. Always thinking that the act was a bit of exercise until a neighbor mentioned his back difficulties and said “it’s not worth it”.
Last spring’s deluge, a particularly wet and heavy snowstorm, was the impetus to turn over the shovel, fire up my browser and shop for a snowblower.
My first stop was Ariens’ website. Ariens is a classic family owned Wisconsin based firm that manufactures snowblowers and lawn mowers.
Most serious snowblowers, defined as two stage models from the likes of Ariens, John Deere, Honda and Toro among many others are at least 24″ wide (Toro has a 22″ model). That width is a problem for small garages like mine.
Ariens offered a useful 20″ model that featured a multiple speed transmission – perfect for a variety of snow conditions and available at a reasonable price. Conveniently, their website offers online ordering which made it simple for me to enter a bit of information and a few days later the snowblower arrived at my home. Ariens customer service was great, as was their local dealer – Middleton Power Center.
About the snowblower zeitgeist. The owner of a working, somewhat powerful snowblower on a day like today (crunchy, heavy snow) quickly has the opportunity to converse with the neighbors. Typical conversations include:
- “Can I pay you to clear my driveway (no, if I have enough gas and time, I’ll be happy to)
- “My snowblower won’t start.”
- “I attempted to purchase a snowblower yesterday, but just before I said that I’ll take the last one, someone else grabbed it.”
- or, Chaplin moments when a neighbor is somberly pondering the large, heavy pile of snow recently deposited by the City plow in his driveway as I’m clearing another neighbor’s walks and driveway.
There you have it. Living in a cold climate subject to snow, we should never turn away from neighborhood social opportunities. Buy a (two-stage) snowblower.
I would be remiss if I did not point out the powerful prose at work marketing such machines. Arien’s description of their model 624E:
624E Compact
After 9 months of hibernation, this compact monster, has an appetite for the cold and crystallized.
When the white and fluffy flakes begin to fall; the corners of the 24” clearing width begin to salivate. The 120 volt electric start quickly awakens the 6HP Snow King® OHV Engine. You fear nothing! Snow fears this trusted Sno-Thro® midsized monster. Keep the snow afraid and out of your way.