Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed's Blog, page 4
July 10, 2013
EXCLUSIVE: Ex NASA chief climate scientist James Hansen warns fossil fuel addiction could trigger runaway global warming
My latest report in The Guardian is based on a startling new peer-reviewed scientific paper by James Hansen (et. al), widely recognised as the 'founding father' of climate science. I also interviewed him on the findings of his paper. It's a very sobering read. The upshot is that if we don't reign in our fossil fuel addiction now, then we're on course to trigger a runaway greenhouse effect that will lead to an inhabitable planet for future generations, for centuries to come.
See below.
James Hansen: Fossil fuel addiction could trigger runaway global warming
Without full decarbonisation by 2030, our global emissions pathway guarantees new era of catastrophic climate change
The world is currently on course to exploit all its remaining fossil fuel resources, a prospect that would produce a "different, practically uninhabitable planet" by triggering a "low-end runaway greenhouse effect." This is the conclusion of a new scientific paper by Prof James Hansen, the former head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the world's best known climate scientist.
See below.
James Hansen: Fossil fuel addiction could trigger runaway global warming
Without full decarbonisation by 2030, our global emissions pathway guarantees new era of catastrophic climate change
The world is currently on course to exploit all its remaining fossil fuel resources, a prospect that would produce a "different, practically uninhabitable planet" by triggering a "low-end runaway greenhouse effect." This is the conclusion of a new scientific paper by Prof James Hansen, the former head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the world's best known climate scientist.
Article round up - Obama climate plan, nuclear energy crunch and Egyptian unrest
It's been a manic couple of weeks which is why I haven't had a chance to update this blog. So here I am!
Toward the end of last month, I wrote critically about Obama's new climate plan. A lot of big names in the environment movement - including Bill McKibben and Dr Grist - praised the Obama plan and welcomed it as an important step forward. To some extent they were right, but what they missed completely - or certainly didn't say loud and clear - was that Obama's plan would do nothing to stop our current trajectory toward climate catastrophe well within this century. So I laid out the facts here, highlighting Obama's insistence on promoting fracking and nuclear energy.
[image error]
At the beginning of July, I put an exclusive based on a new scientific paper claiming that we're heading of a global nuclear energy crunch due to uranium mining production shortages and price spikes that could lead to electricity blackouts for countries heavily invested in nuclear power. Check that out here. I plan to follow that up soon with more on the pros and cons of nuclear energy.
Then the Egyptian coup happened, toppling Morsi, and bringing in a new Army-run regime that swiftly went on to commit a massacre against Muslim Brotherhood protesters. Unfortunately, the structural dynamics fueling civil unrest in Egypt (and other countries in the region) are little understood, so I weighed in with a deeper analysis of how peak oil, climate crisis, urban poverty and IMF mismanagement conspired to keep people on the streets - and will do so for the foreseeable future unless there is a prospect of dramatic and radical social transformation. Read that here.
Toward the end of last month, I wrote critically about Obama's new climate plan. A lot of big names in the environment movement - including Bill McKibben and Dr Grist - praised the Obama plan and welcomed it as an important step forward. To some extent they were right, but what they missed completely - or certainly didn't say loud and clear - was that Obama's plan would do nothing to stop our current trajectory toward climate catastrophe well within this century. So I laid out the facts here, highlighting Obama's insistence on promoting fracking and nuclear energy.
[image error]
At the beginning of July, I put an exclusive based on a new scientific paper claiming that we're heading of a global nuclear energy crunch due to uranium mining production shortages and price spikes that could lead to electricity blackouts for countries heavily invested in nuclear power. Check that out here. I plan to follow that up soon with more on the pros and cons of nuclear energy.
Then the Egyptian coup happened, toppling Morsi, and bringing in a new Army-run regime that swiftly went on to commit a massacre against Muslim Brotherhood protesters. Unfortunately, the structural dynamics fueling civil unrest in Egypt (and other countries in the region) are little understood, so I weighed in with a deeper analysis of how peak oil, climate crisis, urban poverty and IMF mismanagement conspired to keep people on the streets - and will do so for the foreseeable future unless there is a prospect of dramatic and radical social transformation. Read that here.
June 22, 2013
EXCLUSIVE: Oil industry, US govt, inflating shale gas reserve estimates fueling unsustainable economic bubble that could crash in five years
My latest Guardian report dissects the US Energy Information Administration's (EIA) latest estimates of global oil supplies, particularly shale gas, based on three little known reports published in the last few months and exclusive interviews with independent, former government, and current government experts.
Shale gas won't stop peak oil, but could create an economic crisis
Overinflated industry claims could pull the rug out from optimistic growth forecasts within just five years
A new report out last week from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) has doubled estimates of "technically recoverable" oil and gasresources available globally. The report says that shale-based resources potentially increase the world's total oil supplies by 11 per cent.
Acknowledging fault-lines in its new study, contracted to energy consulting firm Advanced Resources International Inc. (ARI), the EIA said:
The report estimates shale resources outside the US by extrapolation based on "the geology and resource recovery rates of similar shale formations in the United States." Hence, the EIA concedes that "the extent to which global technically recoverable shale resources will prove to be economically recoverable is not yet clear."
Two years ago, following the publication of the EIA April 2011 report aNew York Times investigation obtained internal EIA communications showing how senior officials, including industry consultants and federal energy experts privately voiced scepticism about shale gas prospects.
One internal EIA document said oil companies had exaggerated "the appearance of shale gas well profitability" by highlighting performance only from the best wells, and using overly optimistic models for productivity projections over decades. The NYT reported that the EIA often "relies on research from outside consultants with ties to the industry."
The latest EIA shale gas estimates, contracted to ARI, is no exception. ARI, according to the NYT's 2011 article, has "major clients in the oil and gas industry" and the company's president, Vello Kuuskraa, is "a stockholder and board member of Southwestern Energy, an energy company heavily involved in drilling for gas in the Fayetteville shale formation in Arkansas."
Independent studies published over the last few months cast even more serious doubt over the viability of the shale gas boom.
A report released in March by the Berlin-based Energy Watch Group (EWG), a group of European scientists, undertook a comprehensive assessment of the availability and production rates for global oil and gas production, concluding that:
Crude oil production was "already in slight decline since about 2008." This is consistent with the EWG's earlier finding that global conventional oil production had peaked in 2006 - as subsequently corroborated by theInternational Energy Agency (IEA) in 2010.
The new report predicts that far from growing inexorably, "light tight oil production in the USA will peak between 2015 and 2017, followed by a steep decline", while shale gas production will most likely peak in 2015. Shale gas prospects outside the US are incomparable to gains made so far there "since geological, geographical, and industrial conditions are much less favourable."
Consequently, global gas prices are likely to increase rather than follow the initial US trend. In the meantime, conventional oil production will continue declining, dropping as much as 40 per cent by 2030. The upshot is that the US "will not become a net oil exporter."
The EGW report follows two other reports published earlier this year also challenging the conventional wisdom.
A Post-Carbon Institute study authored by geologist David Hughes, who worked for 32 years as a research manager at the Geological Survey of Canada, analysed US production data for 65,000 wells from 31 shale plays using a database widely used in industry and government. While acknowledging that shale has dramatically reversed "the long-standing decline of US oil and gas production", this can only:
Despite accounting for nearly 40 per cent of US natural gas production, shale gas production has "been on a plateau since December 2011 - 80 per cent of shale gas production comes from five plays", some of which are already in decline.
The report thus concludes:
Report author Hughes said that the main problem was the exclusion of price and rate of supply: "Price is critically important but not considered in these estimates." He added: "Only a small portion [of total estimated resources], likely less than 5-10 per cent will be recoverable at a low price...
Another report was put out by the Energy Policy Forum, and authored by former Wall Street analyst Deborah Rogers - now an adviser to the US Department of the Interior's Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative. Rogers warns that the interplay of geological constraints and financial exuberance are creating an unsustainable bubble. Her report shows that shale oil and gas reserves have been:
Deliberate overproduction drove gas prices down so that Wall Street could maximise profits "from mergers & acquisitions and other transactional fees", as well as from share prices. Meanwhile, the industry must still service high levels of debt due to excessive borrowing justified by overinflated projections:
Seeking to prevent outright collapse, the report argues, the US is ramping up gas exports so it can exploit the difference between low domestic and high international prices "to shore up ailing balance sheets invested in shale assets."
Rogers, who testified last month before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, also expressed scepticism about the EIA's latest assessment:
She added that "there is definitely a bubble." Though it would not have an impact as devastating as the banking crisis, she said:
The impact of this would be greater centralisation, with smaller companies and their assets being absorbed by the oil majors through mergers and acquisitions. Rogers said:
Shale gas won't stop peak oil, but could create an economic crisis
Overinflated industry claims could pull the rug out from optimistic growth forecasts within just five years
A new report out last week from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) has doubled estimates of "technically recoverable" oil and gasresources available globally. The report says that shale-based resources potentially increase the world's total oil supplies by 11 per cent.
Acknowledging fault-lines in its new study, contracted to energy consulting firm Advanced Resources International Inc. (ARI), the EIA said:
"These shale oil and shale gas resource estimates are highly uncertain and will remain so until they are extensively tested with production wells."
The report estimates shale resources outside the US by extrapolation based on "the geology and resource recovery rates of similar shale formations in the United States." Hence, the EIA concedes that "the extent to which global technically recoverable shale resources will prove to be economically recoverable is not yet clear."
Two years ago, following the publication of the EIA April 2011 report aNew York Times investigation obtained internal EIA communications showing how senior officials, including industry consultants and federal energy experts privately voiced scepticism about shale gas prospects.
One internal EIA document said oil companies had exaggerated "the appearance of shale gas well profitability" by highlighting performance only from the best wells, and using overly optimistic models for productivity projections over decades. The NYT reported that the EIA often "relies on research from outside consultants with ties to the industry."
The latest EIA shale gas estimates, contracted to ARI, is no exception. ARI, according to the NYT's 2011 article, has "major clients in the oil and gas industry" and the company's president, Vello Kuuskraa, is "a stockholder and board member of Southwestern Energy, an energy company heavily involved in drilling for gas in the Fayetteville shale formation in Arkansas."
Independent studies published over the last few months cast even more serious doubt over the viability of the shale gas boom.
A report released in March by the Berlin-based Energy Watch Group (EWG), a group of European scientists, undertook a comprehensive assessment of the availability and production rates for global oil and gas production, concluding that:
"... world oil production has not increased anymore but has entered a plateau since about 2005."
Crude oil production was "already in slight decline since about 2008." This is consistent with the EWG's earlier finding that global conventional oil production had peaked in 2006 - as subsequently corroborated by theInternational Energy Agency (IEA) in 2010.
The new report predicts that far from growing inexorably, "light tight oil production in the USA will peak between 2015 and 2017, followed by a steep decline", while shale gas production will most likely peak in 2015. Shale gas prospects outside the US are incomparable to gains made so far there "since geological, geographical, and industrial conditions are much less favourable."
Consequently, global gas prices are likely to increase rather than follow the initial US trend. In the meantime, conventional oil production will continue declining, dropping as much as 40 per cent by 2030. The upshot is that the US "will not become a net oil exporter."
The EGW report follows two other reports published earlier this year also challenging the conventional wisdom.
A Post-Carbon Institute study authored by geologist David Hughes, who worked for 32 years as a research manager at the Geological Survey of Canada, analysed US production data for 65,000 wells from 31 shale plays using a database widely used in industry and government. While acknowledging that shale has dramatically reversed "the long-standing decline of US oil and gas production", this can only:
"... provide a temporary reprieve from having to deal with the real problems: fossil fuels are finite, and production of new fossil fuel resources tends to be increasingly expensive and environmentally damaging."
Despite accounting for nearly 40 per cent of US natural gas production, shale gas production has "been on a plateau since December 2011 - 80 per cent of shale gas production comes from five plays", some of which are already in decline.
"The very high decline rates of shale gas wells require continuous inputs of capital - estimated at $42 billion per year to drill more than 7,000 wells - in order to maintain production. In comparison, the value of shale gas produced in 2012 was just $32.5 billion."
The report thus concludes:
"Notwithstanding the fact that in theory some of these resources have very large in situ volumes, the likely rate at which they can be converted to supply and their cost of acquisition will not allow them to quell higher energy costs and potential supply shortfalls."
Report author Hughes said that the main problem was the exclusion of price and rate of supply: "Price is critically important but not considered in these estimates." He added: "Only a small portion [of total estimated resources], likely less than 5-10 per cent will be recoverable at a low price...
"Shale gas can continue to grow but only at higher prices and that growth will require an ever escalating drilling treadmill with associated collateral financial and environmental costs – and its long term sustainability is highly questionable."
Another report was put out by the Energy Policy Forum, and authored by former Wall Street analyst Deborah Rogers - now an adviser to the US Department of the Interior's Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative. Rogers warns that the interplay of geological constraints and financial exuberance are creating an unsustainable bubble. Her report shows that shale oil and gas reserves have been:
"... overestimated by a minimum of 100% and by as much as 400-500% by operators according to actual well production data filed in various states... Shale oil wells are following the same steep decline rates and poor recovery efficiency observed in shale gas wells."
Deliberate overproduction drove gas prices down so that Wall Street could maximise profits "from mergers & acquisitions and other transactional fees", as well as from share prices. Meanwhile, the industry must still service high levels of debt due to excessive borrowing justified by overinflated projections:
"... leases were bundled and flipped on unproved shale fields in much the same way as mortgage-backed securities had been bundled and sold on questionable underlying mortgage assets prior to the economic downturn of 2007."
Seeking to prevent outright collapse, the report argues, the US is ramping up gas exports so it can exploit the difference between low domestic and high international prices "to shore up ailing balance sheets invested in shale assets."
Rogers, who testified last month before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, also expressed scepticism about the EIA's latest assessment:
"The EIA actually does retrospective assessments of their forecasting and their track record is dismal... They admit that they overestimated natural gas production 66 per cent of the time and crude 59.6 per cent of the time in their March 2013 assessment for 2012."
She added that "there is definitely a bubble." Though it would not have an impact as devastating as the banking crisis, she said:
"The oil majors do have losses, but the smaller independents are being shaken out. Chesapeake and others are struggling, like Devon, Continental, Kodiak and Range. Without exception, they all have had a significant deterioration in negative free cash since 2010. This is obviously not sustainable."
The impact of this would be greater centralisation, with smaller companies and their assets being absorbed by the oil majors through mergers and acquisitions. Rogers said:
"What is most troubling to me is that there appears to be a complacency setting in about transitioning to a more sustainable energy economy. Shales should be used as a bridge. But we are hearing far too much euphoric talk about 100-200 years of natural gas. Therefore no need to worry, it can be business as usual. This is highly problematic in my opinion. We must globally transition away from hydrocarbons."
EXCLUSIVE: Oil industry, US govt, inflating shale gas reserve estimates fueling unsustainable economic bubble that could crash in five years
My latest Guardian report dissects the US Energy Information Administration's (EIA) latest estimates of global oil supplies, particularly shale gas, based on three little known reports published in the last few months and exclusive interviews with independent, former government, and current government experts.
Shale gas won't stop peak oil, but could create an economic crisis
Overinflated industry claims could pull the rug out from optimistic growth forecasts within just five years
A new report out last week from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) has doubled estimates of "technically recoverable" oil and gasresources available globally. The report says that shale-based resources potentially increase the world's total oil supplies by 11 per cent.
Acknowledging fault-lines in its new study, contracted to energy consulting firm Advanced Resources International Inc. (ARI), the EIA said:
The report estimates shale resources outside the US by extrapolation based on "the geology and resource recovery rates of similar shale formations in the United States." Hence, the EIA concedes that "the extent to which global technically recoverable shale resources will prove to be economically recoverable is not yet clear."
Two years ago, following the publication of the EIA April 2011 report aNew York Times investigation obtained internal EIA communications showing how senior officials, including industry consultants and federal energy experts privately voiced scepticism about shale gas prospects.
One internal EIA document said oil companies had exaggerated "the appearance of shale gas well profitability" by highlighting performance only from the best wells, and using overly optimistic models for productivity projections over decades. The NYT reported that the EIA often "relies on research from outside consultants with ties to the industry."
The latest EIA shale gas estimates, contracted to ARI, is no exception. ARI, according to the NYT's 2011 article, has "major clients in the oil and gas industry" and the company's president, Vello Kuuskraa, is "a stockholder and board member of Southwestern Energy, an energy company heavily involved in drilling for gas in the Fayetteville shale formation in Arkansas."
Independent studies published over the last few months cast even more serious doubt over the viability of the shale gas boom.
A report released in March by the Berlin-based Energy Watch Group (EWG), a group of European scientists, undertook a comprehensive assessment of the availability and production rates for global oil and gas production, concluding that:
Crude oil production was "already in slight decline since about 2008." This is consistent with the EWG's earlier finding that global conventional oil production had peaked in 2006 - as subsequently corroborated by theInternational Energy Agency (IEA) in 2010.
The new report predicts that far from growing inexorably, "light tight oil production in the USA will peak between 2015 and 2017, followed by a steep decline", while shale gas production will most likely peak in 2015. Shale gas prospects outside the US are incomparable to gains made so far there "since geological, geographical, and industrial conditions are much less favourable."
Consequently, global gas prices are likely to increase rather than follow the initial US trend. In the meantime, conventional oil production will continue declining, dropping as much as 40 per cent by 2030. The upshot is that the US "will not become a net oil exporter."
The EGW report follows two other reports published earlier this year also challenging the conventional wisdom.
A Post-Carbon Institute study authored by geologist David Hughes, who worked for 32 years as a research manager at the Geological Survey of Canada, analysed US production data for 65,000 wells from 31 shale plays using a database widely used in industry and government. While acknowledging that shale has dramatically reversed "the long-standing decline of US oil and gas production", this can only:
Despite accounting for nearly 40 per cent of US natural gas production, shale gas production has "been on a plateau since December 2011 - 80 per cent of shale gas production comes from five plays", some of which are already in decline.
The report thus concludes:
Report author Hughes said that the main problem was the exclusion of price and rate of supply: "Price is critically important but not considered in these estimates." He added: "Only a small portion [of total estimated resources], likely less than 5-10 per cent will be recoverable at a low price...
Another report was put out by the Energy Policy Forum, and authored by former Wall Street analyst Deborah Rogers - now an adviser to the US Department of the Interior's Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative. Rogers warns that the interplay of geological constraints and financial exuberance are creating an unsustainable bubble. Her report shows that shale oil and gas reserves have been:
Deliberate overproduction drove gas prices down so that Wall Street could maximise profits "from mergers & acquisitions and other transactional fees", as well as from share prices. Meanwhile, the industry must still service high levels of debt due to excessive borrowing justified by overinflated projections:
Seeking to prevent outright collapse, the report argues, the US is ramping up gas exports so it can exploit the difference between low domestic and high international prices "to shore up ailing balance sheets invested in shale assets."
Rogers, who testified last month before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, also expressed scepticism about the EIA's latest assessment:
She added that "there is definitely a bubble." Though it would not have an impact as devastating as the banking crisis, she said:
The impact of this would be greater centralisation, with smaller companies and their assets being absorbed by the oil majors through mergers and acquisitions. Rogers said:
Shale gas won't stop peak oil, but could create an economic crisis
Overinflated industry claims could pull the rug out from optimistic growth forecasts within just five years
A new report out last week from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) has doubled estimates of "technically recoverable" oil and gasresources available globally. The report says that shale-based resources potentially increase the world's total oil supplies by 11 per cent.
Acknowledging fault-lines in its new study, contracted to energy consulting firm Advanced Resources International Inc. (ARI), the EIA said:
"These shale oil and shale gas resource estimates are highly uncertain and will remain so until they are extensively tested with production wells."
The report estimates shale resources outside the US by extrapolation based on "the geology and resource recovery rates of similar shale formations in the United States." Hence, the EIA concedes that "the extent to which global technically recoverable shale resources will prove to be economically recoverable is not yet clear."
Two years ago, following the publication of the EIA April 2011 report aNew York Times investigation obtained internal EIA communications showing how senior officials, including industry consultants and federal energy experts privately voiced scepticism about shale gas prospects.
One internal EIA document said oil companies had exaggerated "the appearance of shale gas well profitability" by highlighting performance only from the best wells, and using overly optimistic models for productivity projections over decades. The NYT reported that the EIA often "relies on research from outside consultants with ties to the industry."
The latest EIA shale gas estimates, contracted to ARI, is no exception. ARI, according to the NYT's 2011 article, has "major clients in the oil and gas industry" and the company's president, Vello Kuuskraa, is "a stockholder and board member of Southwestern Energy, an energy company heavily involved in drilling for gas in the Fayetteville shale formation in Arkansas."
Independent studies published over the last few months cast even more serious doubt over the viability of the shale gas boom.
A report released in March by the Berlin-based Energy Watch Group (EWG), a group of European scientists, undertook a comprehensive assessment of the availability and production rates for global oil and gas production, concluding that:
"... world oil production has not increased anymore but has entered a plateau since about 2005."
Crude oil production was "already in slight decline since about 2008." This is consistent with the EWG's earlier finding that global conventional oil production had peaked in 2006 - as subsequently corroborated by theInternational Energy Agency (IEA) in 2010.
The new report predicts that far from growing inexorably, "light tight oil production in the USA will peak between 2015 and 2017, followed by a steep decline", while shale gas production will most likely peak in 2015. Shale gas prospects outside the US are incomparable to gains made so far there "since geological, geographical, and industrial conditions are much less favourable."
Consequently, global gas prices are likely to increase rather than follow the initial US trend. In the meantime, conventional oil production will continue declining, dropping as much as 40 per cent by 2030. The upshot is that the US "will not become a net oil exporter."
The EGW report follows two other reports published earlier this year also challenging the conventional wisdom.
A Post-Carbon Institute study authored by geologist David Hughes, who worked for 32 years as a research manager at the Geological Survey of Canada, analysed US production data for 65,000 wells from 31 shale plays using a database widely used in industry and government. While acknowledging that shale has dramatically reversed "the long-standing decline of US oil and gas production", this can only:
"... provide a temporary reprieve from having to deal with the real problems: fossil fuels are finite, and production of new fossil fuel resources tends to be increasingly expensive and environmentally damaging."
Despite accounting for nearly 40 per cent of US natural gas production, shale gas production has "been on a plateau since December 2011 - 80 per cent of shale gas production comes from five plays", some of which are already in decline.
"The very high decline rates of shale gas wells require continuous inputs of capital - estimated at $42 billion per year to drill more than 7,000 wells - in order to maintain production. In comparison, the value of shale gas produced in 2012 was just $32.5 billion."
The report thus concludes:
"Notwithstanding the fact that in theory some of these resources have very large in situ volumes, the likely rate at which they can be converted to supply and their cost of acquisition will not allow them to quell higher energy costs and potential supply shortfalls."
Report author Hughes said that the main problem was the exclusion of price and rate of supply: "Price is critically important but not considered in these estimates." He added: "Only a small portion [of total estimated resources], likely less than 5-10 per cent will be recoverable at a low price...
"Shale gas can continue to grow but only at higher prices and that growth will require an ever escalating drilling treadmill with associated collateral financial and environmental costs – and its long term sustainability is highly questionable."
Another report was put out by the Energy Policy Forum, and authored by former Wall Street analyst Deborah Rogers - now an adviser to the US Department of the Interior's Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative. Rogers warns that the interplay of geological constraints and financial exuberance are creating an unsustainable bubble. Her report shows that shale oil and gas reserves have been:
"... overestimated by a minimum of 100% and by as much as 400-500% by operators according to actual well production data filed in various states... Shale oil wells are following the same steep decline rates and poor recovery efficiency observed in shale gas wells."
Deliberate overproduction drove gas prices down so that Wall Street could maximise profits "from mergers & acquisitions and other transactional fees", as well as from share prices. Meanwhile, the industry must still service high levels of debt due to excessive borrowing justified by overinflated projections:
"... leases were bundled and flipped on unproved shale fields in much the same way as mortgage-backed securities had been bundled and sold on questionable underlying mortgage assets prior to the economic downturn of 2007."
Seeking to prevent outright collapse, the report argues, the US is ramping up gas exports so it can exploit the difference between low domestic and high international prices "to shore up ailing balance sheets invested in shale assets."
Rogers, who testified last month before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, also expressed scepticism about the EIA's latest assessment:
"The EIA actually does retrospective assessments of their forecasting and their track record is dismal... They admit that they overestimated natural gas production 66 per cent of the time and crude 59.6 per cent of the time in their March 2013 assessment for 2012."
She added that "there is definitely a bubble." Though it would not have an impact as devastating as the banking crisis, she said:
"The oil majors do have losses, but the smaller independents are being shaken out. Chesapeake and others are struggling, like Devon, Continental, Kodiak and Range. Without exception, they all have had a significant deterioration in negative free cash since 2010. This is obviously not sustainable."
The impact of this would be greater centralisation, with smaller companies and their assets being absorbed by the oil majors through mergers and acquisitions. Rogers said:
"What is most troubling to me is that there appears to be a complacency setting in about transitioning to a more sustainable energy economy. Shales should be used as a bridge. But we are hearing far too much euphoric talk about 100-200 years of natural gas. Therefore no need to worry, it can be business as usual. This is highly problematic in my opinion. We must globally transition away from hydrocarbons."
June 14, 2013
EXCLUSIVE: Edward Snowden's employer, NSA Prism contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, ran Pentagon war games on civil unrest due to climate, energy, economic shocks
Photo taken by U.S. Airforce Tech. Sgt. Brian E. Christiansen, North Carolina National Guard at Vigilant Guard training exercise Ft. Richardson, Alaska — April 2010
As questions are being asked about the NSA's global surveillance programmes exposed by whistleblower and former CIA IT analyst Edward Snowden, new evidence has emerged that the NSA's Prism and other domestic spying operations are linked to decades of Pentagon planning for the eruption of domestic dissent against government authority triggered by a range of potential environmental, energy or economic disasters.
In my exclusive article for the Guardian today, I report on how Snowden's employer, giant US defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton - where Snowden accessed the NSA's IT systems including the Prism surveillance programme - has for more than a decade run US Army war games on extraordinary emergencies that might afflict the US, both at home and abroad, but particularly at home. Since 2010, these war games have focused increasingly on the potential for massive disruptive shocks in the US homeland, and their potential to galvanise widespread dissent, if not "insurgency" against US authorities.
This revelation fits into a trendline of Pentagon planning over the last decade which has highlighted the danger of extraordinary emergencies which might provoke political dissent and civil unrest - as well as an escalating targeting of peaceful protest groups and environmental activists by the intelligence community on behalf of corporate interests.
Booz Allen Hamilton's involvement in both administering the NSA domestic spying operations against US citizens as well running the Pentagon's Unified Quest programme of war games designed to help US military leaders "envision the future" - consisting of heightened complex threats to domestic order - raises urgent questions about the unconstitutional shift toward the militarisation of the US state.
This also, of course, provides hard evidence that the NSA surveillance programmes are less about terrorism, than they are about tracking and pre-empting, to quote one US Army document, the rise of "anti-government ideologies." The chorus of punditry that has attempted to defend the surveillance programmes ignores such evidence.
Please help counter such disinformation by spreading the word on this exclusive.
Excerpt:
Also in 2010, the Pentagon ran war games to explore the implications of "large scale economic breakdown" in the US impacting on food supplies and other essential services, as well as how to maintain "domestic order amid civil unrest."
Speaking about the group's conclusions at giant US defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton's conference facility in Virginia, Lt Col. Mark Elfendahl - then chief of the Joint and Army Concepts Division - highlighted homeland operations as a way to legitimise the US military budget:
"An increased focus on domestic activities might be a way of justifying whatever Army force structure the country can still afford."
Two months earlier, Elfendahl explained in a DoD roundtable that future planning was needed:
"Because technology is changing so rapidly, because there's so much uncertainty in the world, both economically and politically, and because the threats are so adaptive and networked, because they live within the populations in many cases."
The 2010 exercises were part of the US Army's annual Unified Questprogramme which more recently, based on expert input from across the Pentagon, has explored the prospect that "ecological disasters and a weak economy" (as the "recovery won't take root until 2020") will fuel migration to urban areas, ramping up social tensions in the US homeland as well as within and between "resource-starved nations."
NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden was a computer systems administrator for Booz Allen Hamilton, where he directly handled the NSA's IT systems, including the Prism surveillance system. According toBooz Allen's 2011 Annual Report, the corporation has overseen Unified Quest "for more than a decade" to help "military and civilian leaders envision the future."
The latest war games, the report reveals, focused on "detailed, realistic scenarios with hypothetical 'roads to crisis'", including "homeland operations" resulting from "a high-magnitude natural disaster" among other scenarios, in the context of:
"... converging global trends [which] may change the current security landscape and future operating environment... At the end of the two-day event, senior leaders were better prepared to understand new required capabilities and force design requirements to make homeland operations more effective."
Read the full article at the Guardian here.
EXCLUSIVE: Edward Snowden's employer, NSA Prism contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, ran Pentagon war games on civil unrest due to climate, energy, economic shocks
Photo taken by U.S. Airforce Tech. Sgt. Brian E. Christiansen, North Carolina National Guard at Vigilant Guard training exercise Ft. Richardson, Alaska — April 2010
As questions are being asked about the NSA's global surveillance programmes exposed by whistleblower and former CIA IT analyst Edward Snowden, new evidence has emerged that the NSA's Prism and other domestic spying operations are linked to decades of Pentagon planning for the eruption of domestic dissent against government authority triggered by a range of potential environmental, energy or economic disasters.
In my exclusive article for the Guardian today, I report on how Snowden's employer, giant US defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton - where Snowden accessed the NSA's IT systems including the Prism surveillance programme - has for more than a decade run US Army war games on extraordinary emergencies that might afflict the US, both at home and abroad, but particularly at home. Since 2010, these war games have focused increasingly on the potential for massive disruptive shocks in the US homeland, and their potential to galvanise widespread dissent, if not "insurgency" against US authorities.
This revelation fits into a trendline of Pentagon planning over the last decade which has highlighted the danger of extraordinary emergencies which might provoke political dissent and civil unrest - as well as an escalating targeting of peaceful protest groups and environmental activists by the intelligence community on behalf of corporate interests.
Booz Allen Hamilton's involvement in both administering the NSA domestic spying operations against US citizens as well running the Pentagon's Unified Quest programme of war games designed to help US military leaders "envision the future" - consisting of heightened complex threats to domestic order - raises urgent questions about the unconstitutional shift toward the militarisation of the US state.
This also, of course, provides hard evidence that the NSA surveillance programmes are less about terrorism, than they are about tracking and pre-empting, to quote one US Army document, the rise of "anti-government ideologies." The chorus of punditry that has attempted to defend the surveillance programmes ignores such evidence.
Please help counter such disinformation by spreading the word on this exclusive.
Excerpt:
Also in 2010, the Pentagon ran war games to explore the implications of "large scale economic breakdown" in the US impacting on food supplies and other essential services, as well as how to maintain "domestic order amid civil unrest."
Speaking about the group's conclusions at giant US defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton's conference facility in Virginia, Lt Col. Mark Elfendahl - then chief of the Joint and Army Concepts Division - highlighted homeland operations as a way to legitimise the US military budget:
"An increased focus on domestic activities might be a way of justifying whatever Army force structure the country can still afford."
Two months earlier, Elfendahl explained in a DoD roundtable that future planning was needed:
"Because technology is changing so rapidly, because there's so much uncertainty in the world, both economically and politically, and because the threats are so adaptive and networked, because they live within the populations in many cases."
The 2010 exercises were part of the US Army's annual Unified Questprogramme which more recently, based on expert input from across the Pentagon, has explored the prospect that "ecological disasters and a weak economy" (as the "recovery won't take root until 2020") will fuel migration to urban areas, ramping up social tensions in the US homeland as well as within and between "resource-starved nations."
NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden was a computer systems administrator for Booz Allen Hamilton, where he directly handled the NSA's IT systems, including the Prism surveillance system. According toBooz Allen's 2011 Annual Report, the corporation has overseen Unified Quest "for more than a decade" to help "military and civilian leaders envision the future."
The latest war games, the report reveals, focused on "detailed, realistic scenarios with hypothetical 'roads to crisis'", including "homeland operations" resulting from "a high-magnitude natural disaster" among other scenarios, in the context of:
"... converging global trends [which] may change the current security landscape and future operating environment... At the end of the two-day event, senior leaders were better prepared to understand new required capabilities and force design requirements to make homeland operations more effective."
Read the full article at the Guardian here.
June 7, 2013
Peak Soil: Industrial Civilisation is on the Verge of Eating Itself
To celebrate the official launch today of the Guardian's new team of environment bloggers, here's my latest post on why the party's well and truly over. I report on the latest research, much emerging in just the last week - across issues encompassing land, oil, bees and climate change - which points to an impending global food apocalypse well within the next 10 years, if we don't, as a civilisation, change course now.
It's an important piece which draws together quite a bit of solid science, so... if you're human, and eat food, you need to read this, and share it.
Thank you!
Peak soil: industrial civilisation is on the verge of eating itself
New research on land, oil, bees and climate change points to imminent global food crisis without urgent action
A new report says that the world will need to more than double foodproduction over the next 40 years to feed an expanding global population. But as the world's food needs are rapidly increasing, the planet's capacity to produce food confronts increasing constraints from overlapping crises that, if left unchecked, could lead to billions facing hunger.
Read the rest here.
It's an important piece which draws together quite a bit of solid science, so... if you're human, and eat food, you need to read this, and share it.
Thank you!
Peak soil: industrial civilisation is on the verge of eating itself
New research on land, oil, bees and climate change points to imminent global food crisis without urgent action
A new report says that the world will need to more than double foodproduction over the next 40 years to feed an expanding global population. But as the world's food needs are rapidly increasing, the planet's capacity to produce food confronts increasing constraints from overlapping crises that, if left unchecked, could lead to billions facing hunger.
Read the rest here.
Guardian officially launches new international team of environment bloggers - and I'm one of them
Today, the Guardian officially launched its new international team of environment bloggers - including yours truly. Hooray!
Editor of the Guardian Environment online, Adam Vaughan, announced the launch with a post titled 'Meet the world's best new environment bloggers' featured on the Guardian's front page.
I'm of course really chuffed to be part of such a cracking team - made up of leading journalists reporting from the cutting edge of environmental shenanigans from every continent. And of course, somewhat flattered to be declared by the Guardian to be among the "world's best new environment bloggers." Awww shucks.
While other mainstream news outlets like the New York Times are busy slashing their environment desks, it's pretty cool that the Guardian is leading the pack, quite uniquely, in aggressively expanding their digital environmental journalism.
So it really is important for you to support this initiative by reading and sharing our work! You can follow the Guardian's new environment blog team via this twitter list here, as well as by keeping an eye on the Guardian's new environment blog network homepage here.
Thanks for all your support.
Editor of the Guardian Environment online, Adam Vaughan, announced the launch with a post titled 'Meet the world's best new environment bloggers' featured on the Guardian's front page.
I'm of course really chuffed to be part of such a cracking team - made up of leading journalists reporting from the cutting edge of environmental shenanigans from every continent. And of course, somewhat flattered to be declared by the Guardian to be among the "world's best new environment bloggers." Awww shucks.
While other mainstream news outlets like the New York Times are busy slashing their environment desks, it's pretty cool that the Guardian is leading the pack, quite uniquely, in aggressively expanding their digital environmental journalism.
So it really is important for you to support this initiative by reading and sharing our work! You can follow the Guardian's new environment blog team via this twitter list here, as well as by keeping an eye on the Guardian's new environment blog network homepage here.
Thanks for all your support.
June 5, 2013
Shock UK Ministry of Defence report warns of energy, environmental crises to destabilise UK: "imminent peak oil", food, water shortages, and "sustained recession" through to 2040 will create "internal unrest" from UK to China
For my latest Guardian post, I unearthed a shocking UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) report published to a completely media blackout in January this year, warning of a whole range of global crisis impacts that the government formally and officially denies.
Here you go:
Rising energy prices will challenge western way of life – MoD report
South-east Asian economies' growing demand for energy and resources could lead to long periods of recession in the UK
A little-known Ministry of Defence (MoD) report published earlier this year warns that converging global trends will dramatically affect UK economic prosperity through to 2040.
The report says that depletion of cheap conventional "easy oil", along with shortages of food and water due to climate change and population growth, will sustain rocketing energy prices. Long-term price spikes are likely to lead to a long recession in Western economies, fuelling internal unrest and the rise of nationalist movements.
The report departs significantly from the conservative and relatively optimistic scenarios officially adopted by the British government, as exemplified in the coalition's new Energy Security Strategy published in November last year by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc).
Peak "easy oil"
The report predicts that "the imminent passing of the point of peak 'easy oil' will mean that hydrocarbon-based energy prices will rise significantly out to 2040." Other factors affecting energy prices include "increasing demand for fossil fuels" due to South Asia's "industrial rise" and greater "volatility in supply" in the Middle East.
Contradicting the British government's official position on peak oil - which accepts the International Energy Agency's (IEA) latest that oil prices will reach "$125/barrel in real terms (over $215/barrel in nominal terms)" - the MoD report projects an exponential escalation in prices, such that "the increasing price of oil... is likely to reach $500 a barrel by 2040" - almost double conventional projections.
This price rise will, however, "drive the development of alternative fuel sources" including tar sands, shale gas, coal, nuclear and renewables.
Rising demand for "resources and energy" from China and India will spur a "'scramble' for commodities and resources" as less developed countries' "resource requirements may go unfulfilled." There will also be a greater chance of clashes over access to "Middle East resources", the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean.
Climate crisis
Climate change will significantly compound these challenges, including a wide range of impacts such as "rising sea levels... increased incidents of seasonal floods, heat-waves, storms, and unpredictable farm yields."
If sea levels rise quicker than anticipated, "millions of people across South Asia (principally in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and the Maldives) will be displaced, with no opportunity to return to their homes."
Irregularities in the pattern of monsoon rains are likely to undermine South Asia's "agricultural and domestic water needs", while higher temperatures will "increase the range of vector-borne diseases such as malaria", such that it becomes "prevalent all-year-round."
Water stress
Water may become a "destabilising factor", with water stress and scarcity affecting some "2.5 billion people", and acting as a limiter to economic growth in some South Asian economies, including China by 2030.
Water will be a "defence and security issue" through to 2040, and increasing water demand is also likely to "heighten tensions over shared resources such as the Brahma-Putra Himalayan region and the River Indus", between China, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Food shortages
The sustainability of food production in such conditions "will also be a key issue for the region, with much of the population dependent on rice crops as a staple." The report warns that a "rapid loss of some arable land is likely to promote local, then national migration", which may contribute to unrest.
As agriculture is the single largest contributor to GDP and employment in the region, the report observes that the decline in agricultural output driven by higher temperatures, erratic weather, lower yields, soil erosion and increased pests and weeds, will primarily affect nearly all those who are "close to, or below, the poverty line."
Demographic time bomb?
Although China and India will incorporate "some measures of sustainable development", those measures will be limited by the fact that "economic growth will remain the imperative throughout the period."
Despite their confidence in being able to meet these emerging climate and energy challenges, the sheer scale of the latter - "especially with regard to food and water availability and the sensitivity of the monsoon cycle, may challenge such confidence."
Under present trends, South Asia will contain "nearly 40% of the world's population" within the next 30 years. China and India will therefore face "increasing demands" from their "burgeoning populations" requiring "strong levels of sustained economic growth over the period to maintain internal stability."
Inadequate "social and educational policies" and persistent "inequality and corruption" could turn this demographic dividend into "a 'demographic time bomb.'"
In fact, the report predicts that due to "rising inequality", ethnic tensions, strict controls on freedom of speech, and increased access to global communications, "China is likely to experience increased incidents internal of unrest."
End of growth due to resource price spikes?
But the West faces other parallel challenges:
Consequently, the report argues that the "western 'way of life'" - associated with "a wide variety of consumer choice and relatively cheap energy" - will be "increasingly challenged as lifestyles follow GDP levels and 'normalise' across the globe."
Within the US and UK, the bulk of the populations will be affected by:
"Internal unrest"
This could occur even as growth continues in South Asia, with global GDP per capita overall levelling off to "equilibrate", culminating in "the stalling and subsequent decline of many western economies." This will result in:
Corporate stakeholders
The report, titled Regional Survey: South Asia out to 2040, was published by the MoD's Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre (DCDC) as part of its Strategic Trends Programme in January. The DCDC is an MoD think tank within the Defence Academy site at Shrivenham.
The report utilised the input of a range of government agencies and departments, including the MoD's Strategy Unit, the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, the Cabinet Office, and the Foreign Office - as well as two private institutions, Standard Chartered Bank and Now & Next. Decc is notably missing from the list of contributors.
Standard Chartered has a chequered history replete with scandals and "ethical lapses". Two years ago, an Ecologist investigation alleged that a coal power plant project in India financed by Standard Chartered among others, had "displaced poor communities and will lead to the destruction of forests."
The project was slated to receive carbon credits under the UN's controversial Clean Development Mechanism. Standard Chartered is now heavily invested in South Asia.
Now and Next is the website of a future trend analysis publication, What's Next, which includes among its clients General Electric, KPMG, McDonalds, and Shell.
Privatisation of power
Although the document sets out reasons to believe the UK is well-positioned to "adapt" to these converging trends, and perhaps even benefit from them, the overall vision heralds the recognition that of a rapidly shifting global landscape.
The report concedes that the "'relative' decline of the West is likely to lead to a new power framework where alliances are constantly reassessed and negotiated." This will also see "the declining influence of existing international institutions such as NATO and the UN Security Council."
In this context, the report predicts an accelerating coalescence between nation states and global capital, noting that:
The report echoes themes highlighted in a previous MoD global trends study, which warned in 2010:
If anything, this year's DCDC study reveals not just the latest strategic thinking informing British security policy behind the scenes, but also the undoubtedly grim consequences of continuing business as usual.
Dr. Nafeez Ahmed is executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development and author of A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: And How to Save It among other books. Follow him on Twitter@nafeezahmed
Here you go:
Rising energy prices will challenge western way of life – MoD report
South-east Asian economies' growing demand for energy and resources could lead to long periods of recession in the UK
A little-known Ministry of Defence (MoD) report published earlier this year warns that converging global trends will dramatically affect UK economic prosperity through to 2040.
The report says that depletion of cheap conventional "easy oil", along with shortages of food and water due to climate change and population growth, will sustain rocketing energy prices. Long-term price spikes are likely to lead to a long recession in Western economies, fuelling internal unrest and the rise of nationalist movements.
The report departs significantly from the conservative and relatively optimistic scenarios officially adopted by the British government, as exemplified in the coalition's new Energy Security Strategy published in November last year by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc).
Peak "easy oil"
The report predicts that "the imminent passing of the point of peak 'easy oil' will mean that hydrocarbon-based energy prices will rise significantly out to 2040." Other factors affecting energy prices include "increasing demand for fossil fuels" due to South Asia's "industrial rise" and greater "volatility in supply" in the Middle East.
Contradicting the British government's official position on peak oil - which accepts the International Energy Agency's (IEA) latest that oil prices will reach "$125/barrel in real terms (over $215/barrel in nominal terms)" - the MoD report projects an exponential escalation in prices, such that "the increasing price of oil... is likely to reach $500 a barrel by 2040" - almost double conventional projections.
This price rise will, however, "drive the development of alternative fuel sources" including tar sands, shale gas, coal, nuclear and renewables.
Rising demand for "resources and energy" from China and India will spur a "'scramble' for commodities and resources" as less developed countries' "resource requirements may go unfulfilled." There will also be a greater chance of clashes over access to "Middle East resources", the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean.
Climate crisis
Climate change will significantly compound these challenges, including a wide range of impacts such as "rising sea levels... increased incidents of seasonal floods, heat-waves, storms, and unpredictable farm yields."
If sea levels rise quicker than anticipated, "millions of people across South Asia (principally in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and the Maldives) will be displaced, with no opportunity to return to their homes."
Irregularities in the pattern of monsoon rains are likely to undermine South Asia's "agricultural and domestic water needs", while higher temperatures will "increase the range of vector-borne diseases such as malaria", such that it becomes "prevalent all-year-round."
Water stress
Water may become a "destabilising factor", with water stress and scarcity affecting some "2.5 billion people", and acting as a limiter to economic growth in some South Asian economies, including China by 2030.
Water will be a "defence and security issue" through to 2040, and increasing water demand is also likely to "heighten tensions over shared resources such as the Brahma-Putra Himalayan region and the River Indus", between China, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Food shortages
The sustainability of food production in such conditions "will also be a key issue for the region, with much of the population dependent on rice crops as a staple." The report warns that a "rapid loss of some arable land is likely to promote local, then national migration", which may contribute to unrest.
As agriculture is the single largest contributor to GDP and employment in the region, the report observes that the decline in agricultural output driven by higher temperatures, erratic weather, lower yields, soil erosion and increased pests and weeds, will primarily affect nearly all those who are "close to, or below, the poverty line."
Demographic time bomb?
Although China and India will incorporate "some measures of sustainable development", those measures will be limited by the fact that "economic growth will remain the imperative throughout the period."
Despite their confidence in being able to meet these emerging climate and energy challenges, the sheer scale of the latter - "especially with regard to food and water availability and the sensitivity of the monsoon cycle, may challenge such confidence."
Under present trends, South Asia will contain "nearly 40% of the world's population" within the next 30 years. China and India will therefore face "increasing demands" from their "burgeoning populations" requiring "strong levels of sustained economic growth over the period to maintain internal stability."
Inadequate "social and educational policies" and persistent "inequality and corruption" could turn this demographic dividend into "a 'demographic time bomb.'"
In fact, the report predicts that due to "rising inequality", ethnic tensions, strict controls on freedom of speech, and increased access to global communications, "China is likely to experience increased incidents internal of unrest."
End of growth due to resource price spikes?
But the West faces other parallel challenges:
"The growth of South Asian economies will impact on most western nations, where the way of life for the majority of the populaces may be challenged by rising energy and resource prices, coupled with a relative decline in the value of their national economies...
The economic and industrial rise of China and India will increase the cost and reduce the availability of UK energy supplies. As a resource-importing nation, and with relatively modest fossil fuel reserves, the UK will be affected by increased resource and commodity costs. The UK will increasingly need to compete with China and India in order to secure enduring access to energy."
Consequently, the report argues that the "western 'way of life'" - associated with "a wide variety of consumer choice and relatively cheap energy" - will be "increasingly challenged as lifestyles follow GDP levels and 'normalise' across the globe."
Within the US and UK, the bulk of the populations will be affected by:
"... rising energy and resource prices, and the declining availability of finance to sustain discretionary spending. In such a context, this could lead to periods of sustained recession in the West, causing increasingly protectionist policies to be adopted."
"Internal unrest"
This could occur even as growth continues in South Asia, with global GDP per capita overall levelling off to "equilibrate", culminating in "the stalling and subsequent decline of many western economies." This will result in:
"long periods of recession and rising disaffection within the UK population... This could subsequently lead to increased incidents of internal unrest, a rise of nationalistic groups and a demand for protectionist economic and defence policies."
Corporate stakeholders
The report, titled Regional Survey: South Asia out to 2040, was published by the MoD's Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre (DCDC) as part of its Strategic Trends Programme in January. The DCDC is an MoD think tank within the Defence Academy site at Shrivenham.
The report utilised the input of a range of government agencies and departments, including the MoD's Strategy Unit, the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, the Cabinet Office, and the Foreign Office - as well as two private institutions, Standard Chartered Bank and Now & Next. Decc is notably missing from the list of contributors.
Standard Chartered has a chequered history replete with scandals and "ethical lapses". Two years ago, an Ecologist investigation alleged that a coal power plant project in India financed by Standard Chartered among others, had "displaced poor communities and will lead to the destruction of forests."
The project was slated to receive carbon credits under the UN's controversial Clean Development Mechanism. Standard Chartered is now heavily invested in South Asia.
Now and Next is the website of a future trend analysis publication, What's Next, which includes among its clients General Electric, KPMG, McDonalds, and Shell.
Privatisation of power
Although the document sets out reasons to believe the UK is well-positioned to "adapt" to these converging trends, and perhaps even benefit from them, the overall vision heralds the recognition that of a rapidly shifting global landscape.
The report concedes that the "'relative' decline of the West is likely to lead to a new power framework where alliances are constantly reassessed and negotiated." This will also see "the declining influence of existing international institutions such as NATO and the UN Security Council."
In this context, the report predicts an accelerating coalescence between nation states and global capital, noting that:
"The line between government, and private industry protection of intellectual property of key technologies for security and wealth creation, may become increasingly blurred... [as] blueprints, patents and formulas will be increasingly seen as the foundations of wealth generation."
The report echoes themes highlighted in a previous MoD global trends study, which warned in 2010:
"Pressure on resources, climate change, population increases and the changing distribution of power are likely to result in increased instability and likelihood of armed conflict."
If anything, this year's DCDC study reveals not just the latest strategic thinking informing British security policy behind the scenes, but also the undoubtedly grim consequences of continuing business as usual.
Dr. Nafeez Ahmed is executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development and author of A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: And How to Save It among other books. Follow him on Twitter@nafeezahmed
June 1, 2013
MI5 Woolwich Failure Due to Geopolitical Alliance with Islamist Extremists: banned group Al Muhajiroun fostered by govt strategy to support al-Qaeda abroad to feed oil addiction
My extended, 2,000 word, feature on the counterproductive British geostrategy over the last decade which has bound us with al-Qaeda affiliated terrorists, from the Balkans to Syria, and beyond....
Published in Asia Times
The brutal murder of an off-duty British soldier in broad
daylight in the southeast London district of Woolwich raises new questions
about the government's national security strategy, at home and abroad. Officials
have highlighted the danger of 'self-radicalising' cells inspired by internet
extremism, but this ignores overwhelming evidence that major UK terror plots have
been incubated by the banned al-Qaeda linked group formerly known as Al
Muhajiroun.
Equally, it is no surprise that the attackers surfaced on
MI5's radar. While Al Muhajiroun's emir, Syrian cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed -
currently self-exiled to Tripoli in northern Lebanon - has previously claimed
"public immunity" due to murky connections with British intelligence,
compelling evidence suggests such connections might still be operational in the
context of foreign policy imperatives linked to oil and gas interests.
The Security Services
and the Woolwich Suspect
Despite being proscribed, Al Muhajiroun has continued to
function with impunity in new incarnations, most recently under the banner of Izhar Ud-Deen-il-Haq - run under the
tutelage of Bakri's London-based deputy, British-born Anjem Choudary.
Indeed, almost every major terrorist attack and plot in the
UK has in some way been linked to Choudary's extremist network. The Woolwich
attack was no exception. Anjem
Choudary himself admitted to knowing one of the attackers, Michael
"Mujahid" Adebolajo, as someone who "attended our meetings and
my lectures." Adebolajo was a regular at Al Muhajiroun's Woolwich high
street dawah (propagation) stall, was
"tutored" by Omar Bakri himself, and had attended the group's
meetings between
2005 and 2011.
According to intelligence sources, both attackers were known
to "MI5
and MI6" and had appeared on "intelligence watch lists"; and
Adebolajo had "featured in several
counter-terrorist investigations" as a "peripheral figure" for
the "last eight years" - suggesting his terrorist activities began
precisely when he joined Al Muhajiroun. In particular, credible reports suggest
he was high
on MI5's priority for the last three years, with family and friends confirming
that he was repeatedly harassed by the agency to become an informant - as late
as six months ago.
In this context, the oft-touted 'lone wolf' hypothesis is baseless.
For instance, while the recently convicted Birmingham eleven had access to al-Qaeda's
Inspire magazine and Anwar
al-Awlaki's video speeches, they had also attended al-Qaeda terrorist training
camps in Pakistan. This could only happen through an established UK-based Islamist
network with foreign connections.
Al Muhajiroun is the only organisation which fits the
profile. One
in five terrorist convictions in the UK for more than a decade were for
people who were either members of or had links to Al Muhajiroun. Last year, four Al Muhajiroun members were
convicted at Woolwich Crown Court of planning to bomb the London Stock Exchange.
Inspired by Awlaki's teachings, the plotters had also been taught by Choudary's
longtime Al Muhajiroun colleague, ex-terror convict Abu
Izzadeen. But this is just the tip of the iceberg.
MI6's UK Terror
Network
In 1996, Omar Bakri founded Al Muhajiroun with Anjem Choudary.
According to John
Loftus, a former US Army Intelligence Officer and Justice Department prosecutor,
three senior Al Muhajiroun figures at the time - Bakri, Abu Hamza, and Haroon
Rashid Aswat - had been recruited by MI6 that year to facilitate Islamist activities in the
Balkans. The objective was geopolitical expansion - destabilising former
Soviet republics, sidelining Russia and paving the way for the Trans-Balkan
oil pipeline protected by incoming NATO 'peacekeeping' bases.
"This is about America's energy security", said
then US energy secretary Bill
Richardson:
On 10th February 1998, Bakri and Choudary issued and signed
a "fatwa" - a religious ruling - titled "Muslims
in Britain Declare War Against the US and British governments", which
warned that the governments of "non-Muslim countries" must "stay
away from Iraq, Palestine, Pakistan,
Arabia, etc. or face a full scale war of Jihad which will be the responsibility
of every Muslim around the world to participate in" - "including the
Muslims in the USA and in Britain" who should "confront by all means
whether verbally, financially, politically or militarily the US and British
aggression."
The same year, Bakri was one of a select few to receive
a fax from Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan outlining four objectives for a
jihad against the US, including hijacking civilian planes.
"Public
Immunity"
In 2000, Bakri admitted to training British Muslims to fight
as jihadists in Palestine, Kashmir, Chechnya or South Lebanon. Recruits were
"learning firearms and explosives use, surveillance and other skills"
and "would be expected to join a jihad being waged in one country or another." That
year, he boasted: "The British government knows who we are. MI5
has interrogated us many times. I think now we have something called public
immunity. There is nothing left. You can label us ... put us behind bars,
but it's not going to work."
Labour Party MP Andrew
Dismore told Parliament the following year about a month after 9/11 that
Bakri's private security firm, Sakina Security Services, "sends
people overseas for jihad training with live arms and ammunition",
including training camps "in Pakistan and Afghanistan", and even at
"many different sites in the United Kingdom." Hundreds of Britons were
being funnelled through such training only to return to the UK advocating that Whitehall
and Downing Street be attacked as "legitimate targets." Though Sakina
was raided by police and shut down, Bakri and Hamza were not even arrested, let
alone charged or prosecuted.
It later emerged that the FBI had flagged up the unusual
presence of Al Muhajiroun activists at Arizona flight schools in the US in
the summer preceding 9/11, many of whom had terrorist connections, including
one described as a close bin Laden associate.
The London Bombings
In 2003, two Al Muhajiroun members carried out a suicide
bombing in Tel Aviv, Israel. That year, authorities began tracking an
al-Qaeda ringleader in Britain, Mohammed Quayyum Khan. By 2004, the
surveillance operation uncovered the notorious fertiliser
bomb plot, prepared by a cell of eighteen people, most of whom were Al
Muhajiroun members who had studied under Bakri and Choudary. Quayyum
Khan, like the latter, remains free.
The 7/7 bombers, also Al Muhajiroun members, were connected
to both terror plots - Mohamed Sidique Khan had been friends with the Tel Aviv
bombers, and had even travelled
to Israel weeks before their suicide attack. Khan went on to learn to make
explosives in a terrorist training camp set up by Al
Muhajiroun's British and American members in northern Pakistan.
A year before 7/7, Bakri warned of a "well-organised
group" linked to al-Qaeda "on the verge of launching a big
operation" against London. Then just months before the 7/7 bombings, The Times
picked up Bakri telling his followers in internet lectures: "I believe the
whole
of Britain has become Dar
al-Harb (land of war). The kuffar [non-believer] has no sanctity
for their own life or property." Muslims are "obliged" to "join
the jihad... wherever you are", and suicide bombings are permitted because
"Al-Qaeda... have the emir."
Entrapment Gone Crazy
The strange reluctance to prosecute Al Muhajiroun activists despite
their support for al-Qaeda terrorism seems inexplicable. But has Britain's
support for al-Qaeda affiliated extremists abroad granted their Islamist allies
at home "public immunity"? In early 2005, shortly before the London
bombings, the Wall Street Journal's Pulitizer Prize winning journalist Ron
Suskind interviewed Bakri after he was told by an MI5 official that the cleric:
Suskind recounts
in his book, The
Way of the World, that when asked why, Bakri told him:
Suskind
observed:
Why would MI5 and MI6 retain the services of someone as
dangerous as Bakri given the overwhelming evidence of his centrality to the
path to violent radicalisation? On the one hand, it would seem that through Al
Muhajiroun, MI5 is spawning many of the plots it lays claim to successfully foiling
- as the FBI
is also doing. On the other, the strategy aligns conveniently with narrow geopolitical
interests rooted in Britain's unflinching subservience to wider US strategy in
the Muslim world.
The Not-So-New Great
Game
Little has changed since the Great Game in the Balkans.
According to Alastair
Crooke, a former MI6 officer and Middle East advisor to EU foreign policy
chief Javier Solana, the Saudis are mobilising Islamist extremists to service mutual
US-Saudi interests:
This region-wide
strategy involves sponsorship of Salafi jihadists in Syria, Libya, Egypt,
Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq. Praising Obama's appropriation of this policy, John
Hannah - former national security advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney - rejoiced
that the idea was to "weaken the Iranian mullahs; undermine the Assad
regime; support a successful transition in Egypt; facilitate Qaddafi’s
departure; reintegrate Iraq into the Arab fold; and encourage a negotiated
solution in Yemen."
The strategy's endgame? Petro-politics, once again, is
centre-stage, with the US-UK seeking to dominate
regional oil and gas pipeline routes designed, in the words of Saudi expert
John
Bradley “to disrupt and emasculate the awakenings
that threaten absolute monarchism” in the Persian Gulf petro-states.
The seeds of this clandestine alliance with Islamists go
back more than six years, when Seymour
Hersh reported that the Bush administration had
In April 2007, the Lebanese Daily Star reported
that the United States had earmarked $60 million to reinforce
Interior Ministry forces and Sunni organisations identified as
"jihadists." Did Omar Bakri benefit from this? Having settled in
Lebanon, Bakri told one journalist at the time, "Today, angry Lebanese
Sunnis ask
me to organize their jihad against the Shi'ites... Al-Qaeda
in Lebanon... are the only ones who can defeat Hezbollah."
And last year, Bakri boasted, "I’m involved
with training the mujahideen [fighters] in camps on the Syrian
borders and also on the Palestine side." The trainees included four
British Islamists "with professional backgrounds" who would go on to
join the war in Syria. Bakri also claimed to have trained "many
fighters", including people from Germany and France, since arriving in
Lebanon.
That Bakri appears to be benefiting from the US strategy to
support Islamist extremists in the region is particularly worrying given the
British government's acknowledgement
that a "substantial number" of Britons are fighting in Syria, who
"will seek to carry out attacks against Western interests... or in Western
states."
With the arms embargo lifted after David Cameron's pledge to
support
Syria's rebels - some of whom are al-Qaeda
affiliated Islamists with links to extremists at home - the question must
be asked whether Britain's security services remain compromised by
short-sighted geopolitical interests rooted in our chronic dependency on fossil
fuels.
Unfortunately the British government's
latest proposals to deal with violent radicalisation - internet censorship,
a lower threshold for banning 'extremist' groups - deal not with the failures
of state policy, but with the symptoms of those failures. Perhaps governments
have tacitly accepted that terrorism, after all, is the price of business as
usual.
Dr. Nafeez
Mosaddeq Ahmed is an international security expert who writes for The
Guardian at his Earth
Insight blog. The author of The
London Bombings: An Independent Inquiry (2006). His work was used by
the Coroner's Inquiry into 7/7 and the 9/11 Commission.
Published in Asia Times
The brutal murder of an off-duty British soldier in broad
daylight in the southeast London district of Woolwich raises new questions
about the government's national security strategy, at home and abroad. Officials
have highlighted the danger of 'self-radicalising' cells inspired by internet
extremism, but this ignores overwhelming evidence that major UK terror plots have
been incubated by the banned al-Qaeda linked group formerly known as Al
Muhajiroun.
Equally, it is no surprise that the attackers surfaced on
MI5's radar. While Al Muhajiroun's emir, Syrian cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed -
currently self-exiled to Tripoli in northern Lebanon - has previously claimed
"public immunity" due to murky connections with British intelligence,
compelling evidence suggests such connections might still be operational in the
context of foreign policy imperatives linked to oil and gas interests.
The Security Services
and the Woolwich Suspect
Despite being proscribed, Al Muhajiroun has continued to
function with impunity in new incarnations, most recently under the banner of Izhar Ud-Deen-il-Haq - run under the
tutelage of Bakri's London-based deputy, British-born Anjem Choudary.
Indeed, almost every major terrorist attack and plot in the
UK has in some way been linked to Choudary's extremist network. The Woolwich
attack was no exception. Anjem
Choudary himself admitted to knowing one of the attackers, Michael
"Mujahid" Adebolajo, as someone who "attended our meetings and
my lectures." Adebolajo was a regular at Al Muhajiroun's Woolwich high
street dawah (propagation) stall, was
"tutored" by Omar Bakri himself, and had attended the group's
meetings between
2005 and 2011.
According to intelligence sources, both attackers were known
to "MI5
and MI6" and had appeared on "intelligence watch lists"; and
Adebolajo had "featured in several
counter-terrorist investigations" as a "peripheral figure" for
the "last eight years" - suggesting his terrorist activities began
precisely when he joined Al Muhajiroun. In particular, credible reports suggest
he was high
on MI5's priority for the last three years, with family and friends confirming
that he was repeatedly harassed by the agency to become an informant - as late
as six months ago.
In this context, the oft-touted 'lone wolf' hypothesis is baseless.
For instance, while the recently convicted Birmingham eleven had access to al-Qaeda's
Inspire magazine and Anwar
al-Awlaki's video speeches, they had also attended al-Qaeda terrorist training
camps in Pakistan. This could only happen through an established UK-based Islamist
network with foreign connections.
Al Muhajiroun is the only organisation which fits the
profile. One
in five terrorist convictions in the UK for more than a decade were for
people who were either members of or had links to Al Muhajiroun. Last year, four Al Muhajiroun members were
convicted at Woolwich Crown Court of planning to bomb the London Stock Exchange.
Inspired by Awlaki's teachings, the plotters had also been taught by Choudary's
longtime Al Muhajiroun colleague, ex-terror convict Abu
Izzadeen. But this is just the tip of the iceberg.
MI6's UK Terror
Network
In 1996, Omar Bakri founded Al Muhajiroun with Anjem Choudary.
According to John
Loftus, a former US Army Intelligence Officer and Justice Department prosecutor,
three senior Al Muhajiroun figures at the time - Bakri, Abu Hamza, and Haroon
Rashid Aswat - had been recruited by MI6 that year to facilitate Islamist activities in the
Balkans. The objective was geopolitical expansion - destabilising former
Soviet republics, sidelining Russia and paving the way for the Trans-Balkan
oil pipeline protected by incoming NATO 'peacekeeping' bases.
"This is about America's energy security", said
then US energy secretary Bill
Richardson:
"It's also about preventing strategic inroads by those who
don't share our values. We're trying to move these newly independent countries
toward the west. We would like to see them reliant on western commercial and
political interests rather than going another way. We've made a substantial
political investment in the Caspian, and it's very important to us that both
the pipeline map and the politics come out right."
On 10th February 1998, Bakri and Choudary issued and signed
a "fatwa" - a religious ruling - titled "Muslims
in Britain Declare War Against the US and British governments", which
warned that the governments of "non-Muslim countries" must "stay
away from Iraq, Palestine, Pakistan,
Arabia, etc. or face a full scale war of Jihad which will be the responsibility
of every Muslim around the world to participate in" - "including the
Muslims in the USA and in Britain" who should "confront by all means
whether verbally, financially, politically or militarily the US and British
aggression."
The same year, Bakri was one of a select few to receive
a fax from Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan outlining four objectives for a
jihad against the US, including hijacking civilian planes.
"Public
Immunity"
In 2000, Bakri admitted to training British Muslims to fight
as jihadists in Palestine, Kashmir, Chechnya or South Lebanon. Recruits were
"learning firearms and explosives use, surveillance and other skills"
and "would be expected to join a jihad being waged in one country or another." That
year, he boasted: "The British government knows who we are. MI5
has interrogated us many times. I think now we have something called public
immunity. There is nothing left. You can label us ... put us behind bars,
but it's not going to work."
Labour Party MP Andrew
Dismore told Parliament the following year about a month after 9/11 that
Bakri's private security firm, Sakina Security Services, "sends
people overseas for jihad training with live arms and ammunition",
including training camps "in Pakistan and Afghanistan", and even at
"many different sites in the United Kingdom." Hundreds of Britons were
being funnelled through such training only to return to the UK advocating that Whitehall
and Downing Street be attacked as "legitimate targets." Though Sakina
was raided by police and shut down, Bakri and Hamza were not even arrested, let
alone charged or prosecuted.
It later emerged that the FBI had flagged up the unusual
presence of Al Muhajiroun activists at Arizona flight schools in the US in
the summer preceding 9/11, many of whom had terrorist connections, including
one described as a close bin Laden associate.
The London Bombings
In 2003, two Al Muhajiroun members carried out a suicide
bombing in Tel Aviv, Israel. That year, authorities began tracking an
al-Qaeda ringleader in Britain, Mohammed Quayyum Khan. By 2004, the
surveillance operation uncovered the notorious fertiliser
bomb plot, prepared by a cell of eighteen people, most of whom were Al
Muhajiroun members who had studied under Bakri and Choudary. Quayyum
Khan, like the latter, remains free.
The 7/7 bombers, also Al Muhajiroun members, were connected
to both terror plots - Mohamed Sidique Khan had been friends with the Tel Aviv
bombers, and had even travelled
to Israel weeks before their suicide attack. Khan went on to learn to make
explosives in a terrorist training camp set up by Al
Muhajiroun's British and American members in northern Pakistan.
A year before 7/7, Bakri warned of a "well-organised
group" linked to al-Qaeda "on the verge of launching a big
operation" against London. Then just months before the 7/7 bombings, The Times
picked up Bakri telling his followers in internet lectures: "I believe the
whole
of Britain has become Dar
al-Harb (land of war). The kuffar [non-believer] has no sanctity
for their own life or property." Muslims are "obliged" to "join
the jihad... wherever you are", and suicide bombings are permitted because
"Al-Qaeda... have the emir."
Entrapment Gone Crazy
The strange reluctance to prosecute Al Muhajiroun activists despite
their support for al-Qaeda terrorism seems inexplicable. But has Britain's
support for al-Qaeda affiliated extremists abroad granted their Islamist allies
at home "public immunity"? In early 2005, shortly before the London
bombings, the Wall Street Journal's Pulitizer Prize winning journalist Ron
Suskind interviewed Bakri after he was told by an MI5 official that the cleric:
"had helped MI5 on several of its investigations."
Suskind recounts
in his book, The
Way of the World, that when asked why, Bakri told him:
"Because I like
it here. My family's here. I like the health benefits." Bakri reiterated
this in an interview in early 2007 after his move to Tripoli, Lebanon,
claiming, "We were able to control the Muslim youth... The radical preacher
that allows a venting of a point of view is preventing violence."
Suskind
observed:
"Bakri enjoyed his notoriety and was willing to pay for it with
information he passed to the police... It's a fabric of subtle interlocking
needs: the [British authorities] need be in a backchannel conversation with
someone working the steam valve of Muslim anger; Bakri needs health insurance."
Why would MI5 and MI6 retain the services of someone as
dangerous as Bakri given the overwhelming evidence of his centrality to the
path to violent radicalisation? On the one hand, it would seem that through Al
Muhajiroun, MI5 is spawning many of the plots it lays claim to successfully foiling
- as the FBI
is also doing. On the other, the strategy aligns conveniently with narrow geopolitical
interests rooted in Britain's unflinching subservience to wider US strategy in
the Muslim world.
The Not-So-New Great
Game
Little has changed since the Great Game in the Balkans.
According to Alastair
Crooke, a former MI6 officer and Middle East advisor to EU foreign policy
chief Javier Solana, the Saudis are mobilising Islamist extremists to service mutual
US-Saudi interests:
"US officials speculated as to what might be done to
block this vital corridor [from Iran to Syria], but it was Prince Bandar of
Saudi Arabia who surprised them by saying that the solution was to harness
Islamic forces. The Americans were intrigued, but could not deal with such
people. Leave that to me, Bandar retorted."
This region-wide
strategy involves sponsorship of Salafi jihadists in Syria, Libya, Egypt,
Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq. Praising Obama's appropriation of this policy, John
Hannah - former national security advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney - rejoiced
that the idea was to "weaken the Iranian mullahs; undermine the Assad
regime; support a successful transition in Egypt; facilitate Qaddafi’s
departure; reintegrate Iraq into the Arab fold; and encourage a negotiated
solution in Yemen."
The strategy's endgame? Petro-politics, once again, is
centre-stage, with the US-UK seeking to dominate
regional oil and gas pipeline routes designed, in the words of Saudi expert
John
Bradley “to disrupt and emasculate the awakenings
that threaten absolute monarchism” in the Persian Gulf petro-states.
The seeds of this clandestine alliance with Islamists go
back more than six years, when Seymour
Hersh reported that the Bush administration had
"cooperated with Saudi
Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations" intended
to weaken the Shi'ite Hezbollah in Lebanon. "The US has also taken part in
clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria," wrote Hersh,
"a byproduct of which is "the bolstering of Sunni extremist
groups" hostile to the United States and "sympathetic to
al-Qaeda." He also noted that “the Saudi government, with Washington’s
approval, would provide funds and logistical aid to weaken the government of
President Bashir Assad, of Syria."
In April 2007, the Lebanese Daily Star reported
that the United States had earmarked $60 million to reinforce
Interior Ministry forces and Sunni organisations identified as
"jihadists." Did Omar Bakri benefit from this? Having settled in
Lebanon, Bakri told one journalist at the time, "Today, angry Lebanese
Sunnis ask
me to organize their jihad against the Shi'ites... Al-Qaeda
in Lebanon... are the only ones who can defeat Hezbollah."
And last year, Bakri boasted, "I’m involved
with training the mujahideen [fighters] in camps on the Syrian
borders and also on the Palestine side." The trainees included four
British Islamists "with professional backgrounds" who would go on to
join the war in Syria. Bakri also claimed to have trained "many
fighters", including people from Germany and France, since arriving in
Lebanon.
That Bakri appears to be benefiting from the US strategy to
support Islamist extremists in the region is particularly worrying given the
British government's acknowledgement
that a "substantial number" of Britons are fighting in Syria, who
"will seek to carry out attacks against Western interests... or in Western
states."
With the arms embargo lifted after David Cameron's pledge to
support
Syria's rebels - some of whom are al-Qaeda
affiliated Islamists with links to extremists at home - the question must
be asked whether Britain's security services remain compromised by
short-sighted geopolitical interests rooted in our chronic dependency on fossil
fuels.
Unfortunately the British government's
latest proposals to deal with violent radicalisation - internet censorship,
a lower threshold for banning 'extremist' groups - deal not with the failures
of state policy, but with the symptoms of those failures. Perhaps governments
have tacitly accepted that terrorism, after all, is the price of business as
usual.
Dr. Nafeez
Mosaddeq Ahmed is an international security expert who writes for The
Guardian at his Earth
Insight blog. The author of The
London Bombings: An Independent Inquiry (2006). His work was used by
the Coroner's Inquiry into 7/7 and the 9/11 Commission.
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