A Dismal Public Affair

This morning I was honored to participate in a panel discussion on what the near future holds with an illustrious panel: Richard Heinberg, Nicole Foss, James Howard Kunstler and Noam Chomsky. And it turned out really dismal, if you ask me! The overall message seems to have been that it doesn't matter what any of us say, because so few people are able to take in such bad news without becoming despondent, so we might as well just let Chomsky ramble on like he always does, as a sort of case in point. And of course the moderator just had get up Kunstler's nose with the usual "so this is all doom and gloom, isn't it?" sort of comment. The one funny bit is where Chomsky calls Daniel Yergin "a very serious analyst" right after Kunstler says that he is the oil industry's prostitute.

Do you want some good news? Here it is: Russia's GLONASS satellite navigation system is fully operational, finally, so we no longer have to rely solely on the Pentagon's GPS to tell us where we are. In fact, the two systems work and play well together.