Blah... Blah...

Details of Stag

2009-10-30T14:51:00.001Z

A chronology of some of the world's recent air disasters

2009-07-16T11:01:00.001+01:00

Air disaster timeline

NYTimes: Filling a Photo Frame via a Cellular Network

2009-07-09T07:06:00.001+01:00

Isabella Products' Vizit photo frame lets you send pictures to it
over a cellular network....

http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/07/filling-a-photo-frame-via-a-celluar-network/index.html

Ireland - The drift into national bankruptcy looks increasingly unstoppable

2009-07-08T14:40:00.001+01:00

Instead of recognising bankers and developers as parasites on our national prosperity, the Government came to see them as its source. While everyone else in Ireland has come to see the past decade as an embarrassing episode of collective insanity to be put behind us as soon as possible, the Government still sees it as the high point of our nation’s history. Nama is effectively Fianna Fáil’s shrine to the bubble, and likely to be an expensive and enduring one.

Prepare to pay 10 per cent more in income tax for the next 10 years to pay for NAMA

Read On...

IMF - The Irish economy is in the midst of an unprecedented economic correction

2009-06-25T09:20:00.001+01:00

The stress exceeds that being faced currently by any other advanced economy and matches episodes of the most severe economic distress in post-World War II history. Banks face extensive losses and double-digit fiscal deficits over the next three years will imply a run up in public debt. The short-term dislocations come on top of a sharp decline in potential growth, implying a modest pace of recovery.

Read On...

NYTimes: Why Home Prices May Keep Falling

2009-06-08T00:38:00.001+01:00

From The New York Times:

ECONOMIC VIEW: Why Home Prices May Keep Falling

By ROBERT J. SHILLER

Despite the uptick last week in pending home sales and recent improvement in consumer confidence, we still appear to be in a continuing price decline....

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/business/economy/07view.html

A good intro to my maps on googlemaps

2009-06-03T22:53:00.001+01:00

http://earth.google.com/outreach/tutorial_mymaps.html

A Handy Mashup

2009-06-03T22:49:00.001+01:00

Track where your blog readers are coming from...

http://tins.rklau.com/2009/06/who-and-where-are-you.html

NYTimes: Let the Kid Be

2009-06-02T00:18:00.001+01:00

From The New York Times:i

THE WAY WE LIVE NOW: Let the Kid Be
By

House prices continue to fall as buyers hold out - The Irish Times - Thu, May 28, 2009

2009-05-28T07:05:00.001+01:00

The rate of the decline is speeding up, read on...

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2009/0528/1224247598562.html

McWilliams: houses prices are likely to fall another 50 per cent

2009-05-12T13:50:00.001+01:00

Take a long look at the chart below. Digest it. Maybe look again if you have to. This happened in the most sophisticated economy in the world. This is what happened to the price of development land in Japan. Prices roared upwards and then collapsed, ending up below where they started at the beginning at the boom. This is likely to happen here; development land is likely to settle back to 1996 prices. We haven’t seen the half of it yet.

Read On...

NYTimes: Data, Not Design, Is King in the Age of Google

2009-05-11T00:56:00.001+01:00

From The New York Times:

PING: Data, Not Design, Is King in the Age of Google
By MIGUEL HELFT

Google, a company driven by engineering, expects design decisions to
be backed up by data on customer preference. Is this shackling bold
design?...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/10/business/10ping.html

Priorities for Department of the Taoiseach

2009-03-25T15:39:00.001Z

Says a lot for the state of this country when the head of government and/or his office spends time on this...

1- RTÉ apologises for news item on Cowen nude portraits
2- Gardaí visit radio station in Cowen painting inquiry

A general election can't come quick enough!

Huff, puff and build your house

2009-03-24T10:17:00.001Z

I signed the deeds on July 7th and went straight to the library to learn everything I could about roofing, plumbing and electricity. Six weeks later the house was built. It cost, as I say, €6,000 (I could probably build it for €10,000 today). The walls were made of bales of oaten straw, laid like Lego blocks on to a thin band of concrete.

I squashed the bales down tight with bands of wire looped from the foundations and up over the wall plate, and then I built a roof on top. Everything wobbled a bit at first, but I kept tightening the wires until it firmed up, and then plastered the walls with lime and sand. Erecting the walls took five friends and me a day, and another four days for the roof. Then we left it all to settle for a while before I began plastering.

Building a basic house should be no more complex or expensive than this. Unfortunately, a lot of vested interests ensure that it is. Governments, banks and employers all benefit from having a society yoked under mortgages – it ensures control, compliance and vast profits through taxes and interest payments. Now might be a time to reconsider all this. A house should, and can, cost the price of a car – something you repay over a year or two, instead of your life.

Read On...

awe-inspiring desert storm

2009-03-13T11:29:00.001Z

The moment an awe-inspiring desert storm engulfed the Saudi capital

Crunching numbers

2009-03-13T11:26:00.001Z

From Celtic Tiger to Bob the Builder - this place is vaporising!

2009-03-02T14:26:00.001Z

[Morgan] Kelly expects the economy to contract by 20%. And his latest prediction - to which he attaches a 25% probability - is that Ireland will default, and that Anglo Irish Bank, the recently nationalised bank that has become a reviled symbol of rampant lending and corruption, has not only underestimated its loan losses but has a swelling book of derivatives contracts gone bad.

The result, he warns, could be bank losses at Anglo Irish and other banks that supersede the Irish government's promise to guarantee all liabilities in the banking sector. What would follow would be a run on the banks, inability of the government to finance its 12% budget deficit, and ultimately a bailout by the European union.

"That is the optimistic scenario," Kelly said, arguing that his worst fear is a collective economic failure of several countries in eastern Europe, along with Ireland and those on the southern periphery of the eurozone - Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal - that would be beyond the capacity of any government or group of governments to stem.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/01/ireland-economic-crisis

Low-Tech Fixes for High-Tech Problems

2009-02-23T14:52:00.001Z

Tips and tricks for fixing misbehaving gadgets with supplies as simple as paper and adhesive tape.

Read On...

Siftables - cookie-sized computers...

2009-02-19T09:54:00.003Z

...with motion sensing, neighbor detection, graphical display, and wireless communication. They act in concert to form a single interface: users physically manipulate them - piling, grouping, sorting - to interact with digital information and media. Siftables provides a new platform on which to implement tangible, visual and mobile applications.

The small plastic cubes are about one inch in size with screens, processors and infrared ports that communicate with one another in pre-programmed ways when placed next to one another.

Ireland could default on its national debt

2009-02-18T18:29:00.000Z

Credit ratings agency Moody's recently followed rival Standard & Poor's in warning it might downgrade Irish debt, amid fears that one of Europe's former success stories is falling into a deepening recession.

Read On...

Goodbody Stockbrokers - house prices will fall "AT LEAST" 40% from there peak

2009-02-17T09:54:00.003Z

A new report from Goodbody Stockbrokers has forecast that the Irish economy will shrink by 6% this year. Goodbody's economic forecast compares with the 4% falls for this year recently predicted by the Government and the Central Bank. They also go on to say house prices will fall "AT LEAST" 40% from there peak.

Based on the above let's take a house originally priced at €890,000 now reduced to €650,000, based on the Goodbody Stockbrokers forecast this house should be valued at €365,000

RTE Link

and

George Lee, Economics Editor, reports that previous indications showed the economy could contract by 4%

Ireland's Economic Meltdown

2009-02-04T13:43:00.001Z

Warning that house prices may fall by 80%

2009-01-13T14:37:00.001Z

UCD economist Morgan Kelly said he had been hailed as being extremely prescient as a result of his
warnings in relation to the property bubble, when in fact he and a
handful of other “amateurs” were merely stating what was obvious.

Link to original article

Brace yourself now for the Deckland Depression

2008-12-10T16:45:00.003Z

Ireland is about to experience its first middle-class recession. The big difference between this recession and previous ones is that this one will have a dramatically negative impact on the expectations of a generation whose world-view was almost unquestionably positive.

Commuter towns such as Naas, Arklow and Navan are likely to be hit hardest and the people who will lose their jobs and, eventually, their homes are the very ones who bought into the boom
most. They are the young working families, largely employed in white-collar jobs, who believed the hype and bought the new houses, complete with decking and barbeques, close to the top of the market. They are the Decklanders and Ireland is about to endure the great "Deckland Depression".

Read On...

Jeremy Clarkson Ireland - the last days of the Roman empire

2008-12-10T16:43:00.004Z

I was in Dublin last weekend, and had a very real sense I’d been invited to the last days of the Roman empire. As far as I could work out, everyone had a Rolls-Royce Phantom and a coat made from something that’s now extinct. And then there were the women. Wow. Not that long ago every girl on the Emerald Isle had a face the colour of straw and orange hair. Now it’s the other way around.

Everyone appeared to be drunk on naked hedonism. I’ve never seen so much jus being drizzled onto so many improbable things, none of which was potted herring. It was like Barcelona but with beer. And as I careered from bar to bar all I could think was: “Jesus. Can’t they see what’s coming?”

Ireland is tiny. Its population is smaller than New Zealand’s, so how could the Irish ever have generated the cash for so many trips to the hairdressers, so many lobsters and so many Rollers? And how, now, as they become the first country in Europe to go officially into recession, can they not see the financial meteorite coming? Why are they not all at home, singing mournful songs?

Read On...

Britain - in no position to laugh at Iceland

2008-12-05T14:55:00.002Z

Taxpayers are already facing a loss of almost £10 billion on their investment in Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds TSB and HBOS even before the Government hands over a penny. That is what their languishing share prices are saying.

The recession has barely begun and the banks are on their knees. Scores of billions of pounds of bad debts are yet to come, as companies and individuals default on loans.

Read On...

Saudi supertanker (seized by the Somali pirates) is found

2008-11-28T13:57:00.001Z

Latitude 4.595N, longitude 48.085E: the hijacked Sirius Star is located Read On...

Alone in the universe?

2008-11-25T16:34:00.001Z

A mile and a half (two and a half kilometers) underwater, a remote
control submersible's camera has captured an eerie surprise: an
alien-like, long-armed, and—strangest of all—"elbowed" squid.

Click here

Greatest Bubble in History: Warnings ignored in US and Ireland

2008-11-03T14:54:00.001Z

Figure 1 Heavy Reliance on Building Investment from a review of the Irish Economy published by the IMF in 2006. It observed that growth had become increasingly unbalanced in recent years, with heavy reliance on building investment, sharp increases in house prices, and rapid credit growth, especially to property-related sectors. At the same time, competitiveness had eroded, reflecting the combination of faster wage growth in Ireland compared to its trading partners, declining productivity growth, and the appreciation of the euro against the U.S. dollar. Directors observed that Ireland's small, highly open economy was also vulnerable to external shocks.

Greatest Bubble in History in Developed World: The Economist magazine said in June 2005, that never before had real house prices risen so fast, for so long, in so many countries. It asked: What if the housing boom now turns to bust? In Ireland, vacant housing units rose from 140,000 in 2002 to 230,000 in 2005 according to Davy Stockbrokers, 266,000 according to the April 2006 Census and an estimated 350,000 today, according to the Property Pin online forum.

Davy Stockbrokers said in 2005, that over 40% of houses built in Ireland in the previous two years were lying vacant as second homes, holiday homes or unlet investment properties. The Economist said in 2005 that rising property prices helped to prop up the world economy after the stockmarket bubble burst in 2000 and it estimated that the total value of residential property in developed economies rose by more than $30 trillion over the previous five years, to over $70 trillion, an increase equivalent to 100% of those countries' combined GDPs. The surge not only dwarfed any previous house-price boom, it was larger than the global stockmarket bubble in the late 1990s (an increase over five years of 80% of GDP) or America's stockmarket bubble in the late 1920s (55% of GDP). The Economist said that the rise looked like the biggest bubble in history.

Read On...

House prices should be equal to between 12 and 14 times earnings

2008-10-29T14:04:00.001Z

In the US, analysts claim that, in the long run, house prices should be equal to between 12 and 14 times earnings. This means that if a house is generating a rent of $10,000 a year, it must be worth between $120,000 and $140,000 a year.

Apply this test to Ireland. A quick search of Daft.ie will reveal, for example, that a three-bedroom house in Co Wicklow - advertised as an investment property - is on sale for €289,000.

The same website tells us that the average rent for a three-bed in Arklow is €850. So let us say that, in the best possible case, this place is rented for 11 profitable months a year - the final month’s rent goes on various costs. The implication from the American model is that the house is worth about €122,000.

The implication from this, compared to the advertised price of €289,000, is that the house is still wildly overvalued. The Irish calculation means that the house is trading at 31 times its annual yield. This clearly needs to fall dramatically by close to 60 per cent for it to make any financial sense to buy.

So one of the factors impinging on Ireland’s recovery is that we have to see house prices fall dramatically for any investor in their right mind to get back into the market. As long as estate agents, banks and builders are in denial about where prices need to go, we will not have a platform for any recovery.

Read On...

Exposed Bank of Ireland

2008-10-29T13:19:00.002Z

Bank of Ireland’s share price plunged to levels not seen since the early 1990s. While bank stocks in general have been trashed, Bank of Ireland has suffered more than most. By yesterday morning, the bank was trading at less than 10% of its February 2007 peak. By mid-morning, the stock had reached a paltry €1.50.

What we have is an institution [BOI] which has lost the confidence of the markets, a bank now ranked in the eyes of investors alongside, exposed banks, its reputation on the floor.

In the absence of a major re-capitalisation, Bank of Ireland may simply limp along providing a trickle of loan capital to customers, acting as a drag on a struggling economy and providing the prospect of a tasty meal for an overseas predator once international credit markets recover. So much for men with “safe pairs of hands”.

Read On...

Bigger clouds are on the horizon for Irish Banks!

2008-10-20T11:53:00.003+01:00

Ireland's banks and building societies are massively exposed to the
domestic property market: loans of more than €240bn have been extended to homeowners, property developers and construction companies. Last Tuesday, as he faced interrogation from the members of the Joint Committee on Economic and Regulatory Affairs, Pat Neary said that he was only really concerned about €15bn of those loans.

He told the deputies and senators that "speculative lending to construction and property development in Ireland amounts to €39.1bn, of which €24bn is supported by additional collateral or alternative sources of cashflow and realisable security. This leaves a balance of €15bn secured directly on the underlying property. There will undoubtedly be some losses on these exposures. However, any such losses would occur over a number of years and would be offset by profits on
performing loans over the same period." Neary, so it appeared, was worried, but not that worried.

Under closer examination by the committee members, however, his confidence was dented. He agreed that some of the "additional collateral" that he had referred to was made up of share portfolios (which would have plunged in value in recent months), other properties (which would also have fallen sharply in value) and properties with rental income. In good times, all of that
collateral might have seemed prudent and safe: in a recession, it could be worthless.

Neary also maintained that the banks' combined capital was in the region of €42bn, a figure that gave him plenty of confidence that they were more than adequately capitalised and still had plenty of reserves to weather the storm.

Read On...

Irelands, per capita gross domestic product is the 4th highest in the world

2008-10-14T11:50:00.002+01:00

Ireland's, whose per capita gross domestic product is the forth highest in the world (above Iceland), according to the United Nations 2007/2008 Human Development Index, will have to tighten their belts.

Panic buying in Iceland!

2008-10-14T11:12:00.001+01:00

After a four-year spending spree,
Icelanders are flooding the supermarkets one last time, stocking
up on food as the collapse of the banking system threatens to cut
the island off from imports.

Read on...

24 hours that brought Irish banks back from the brink

2008-10-13T09:46:00.002+01:00

The bankers' message was not that Anglo Irish Bank was about to
collapse; or that Irish Nationwide was on the brink, though both had
cash shortages to face on Tuesday and Wednesday. Instead, it was that they themselves were facing crisis.

"(They) made it clear to us that liquidity was drying up in the Irish
banking system and the maturity dates for the various loans they need to fund their business were shortening all the time and reaching dangerous levels of exposure in terms of time limits.

Read On...

How will our generation handle a Great Depression?

2008-10-09T14:30:00.003+01:00

The Mother Of All Bank Runs?

2008-10-07T17:56:00.001+01:00

When investors don't trust even venerable institutions like Morgan
Stanley and Goldman Sachs, you know that the financial crisis is as
severe as ever. When a nuclear option of a monster $700 billion rescue
plan is not even able to rally stock markets, you know this is a global
crisis of confidence in the financial system.

The
next step of this panic could be the mother of all bank runs, i.e. a
run on the trillion dollar-plus of the cross-border short-term
interbank liabilities of the U.S. banking and financial system, as
foreign banks start to worry about the safety of their liquid exposures
to U.S. financial institutions. A silent cross-border bank run has
already started, as foreign banks are worried about the solvency of
U.S. banks and are starting to reduce their exposure. And if this run
accelerates--as it may now--a total meltdown of the U.S. financial
system could occur.

Read Doctor Doom & idleworm

How long do foods last without refrigeration?

2008-09-23T13:53:00.000+01:00

According to Heinz,
opened ketchup does not need refrigeration and will retain its flavor
for upwards of a month. I found similar recommendations for mustard,
BBQ sauce, and other condiments. Opened jams, jellies, pickles, olives,
honey and so forth do not require refrigeration over the short-term.
All of the above items will last for 1.5 – 5 years when stored unopened
due to the seal keeping out mold spores and bacteria. Always check
canned food for contamination by looking for dents, cracks, or bulging.
If the seal appears broken in any way, carefully discard the food immediately.

Eggs may stay unrefrigerated for a time (fresh eggs longer than commercially-sold eggs). In a quote attributed to Alton Brown,
he states that unrefrigerated eggs age roughly a week’s worth of
refrigerated time in a day (depending on temperature, of course). Given
that eggs typically last 6 – 8 weeks in a refrigerator, that gives you
about a week to eat a fresh egg. A good check for egg freshness is to
see if it floats – if it does, the inner air pocket has expanded and
the egg should probably be discarded.

Read On...

Greenspan - 'once-in-a-century' financial crisis

2008-09-16T13:55:00.000+01:00

Former Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan said the United States is mired in a "once-in-a century" financial crisis. The former Federal Reserve chairman also predicted that the financial
crisis would see the failure of more major financial institutions.

Read On...

Nouriel Roubini - Americans Should Worry About Bank Deposits if Congress Doesn't Act

2008-09-16T13:38:00.001+01:00

There is already a "slow-motion run on retail banks" occurring nationwide.

That
"run" could accelerate as people realize the FDIC fund has about $50
billion to "insure" about $1 trillion in assets at the nation's
financial institutions, says Roubini. "They're going to run out of
money" unless Congress acts soon to recapitalize the FDIC.

Read On...

The vulnerable banking market

2008-09-15T14:09:00.002+01:00

The bail-out by the US government of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has stopped a systemic meltdown of the banking system both in the US and worldwide. But the banking crisis is far from over.

Read On...

Irish banks are bobbing in debt-infested waters

2008-09-15T14:07:00.002+01:00

AIB's exposure to residential property developers is around €15bn, Anglo's €7bn and Bank of Ireland's €9bn. For AIB and BOI, those loans are dwarfed by their mortgage business, but even
within the normally safe mortgage market, there is a new layer of loans that is untested in a recession. A proportion of those mortgage loans are for the "buy-to-let" market --
mortgages raised by investors who buy properties and then rent them
out, hoping that the rental income offsets the mortgage costs.

Read On...

US house prices are falling at an annual rate of more than 15%

2008-09-08T11:03:00.001+01:00

According to one widely-reported index, US house prices are falling at
an annual rate of more than 15% in major metropolitan areas, putting
many people in negative equity.

More...

Where am i?

2008-09-04T16:14:00.004+01:00

Click to find out

European money market faces similar problems as the U.S

2008-08-20T11:12:00.001+01:00

Bank Lending Survey of the Euro Area
underscores the current stress situation for banks and points to a
tighter credit environment for consumers and corporations alike.

Dr. Doom - Two years ago, Nouriel Roubini predicted the current economic crisis. Now he sees things becoming far worse.

2008-08-19T22:00:00.001+01:00

Published: August 15, 2008, New York Times Sunday Magazine

On Sept. 7, 2006, Nouriel Roubini, an economics professor at New York University, stood before an audience of economists at the International Monetary Fund
and announced that a crisis was brewing. In the coming months and
years, he warned, the United States was likely to face a
once-in-a-lifetime housing bust, an oil shock, sharply declining
consumer confidence and, ultimately, a deep recession. He laid out a
bleak sequence of events: homeowners defaulting on mortgages, trillions
of dollars of mortgage-backed securities unraveling worldwide and the
global financial system shuddering to a halt. These developments, he
went on, could cripple or destroy hedge funds, investment banks and
other major financial institutions like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Read on...

How to Travel by Cargo Ship

2008-08-07T10:04:00.000+01:00

Travel by Cargo Ship ...click here...

Where is Matt?

2008-07-01T14:21:00.001+01:00

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

Tailor-made biofuels

2008-06-24T14:25:00.001+01:00

Amyris was going into partnership with Crystalsev, a Brazilian firm, to
make car fuel out of cane sugar. Not ethanol (though Brazil already has
a thriving market for ethanol-powered cars), but a hydrocarbon that has
the characteristics of diesel fuel. Technically, it is not ordinary
diesel, either: in chemist-speak, it is an isoprenoid rather than a
mixture of alkanes and aromatics. But the driver will not notice the
difference.

Link to article

Two dead in Europe fuel protests

2008-06-11T13:04:00.002+01:00

A sign of things to come?

Spaniards are stockpiling fuel and food as hauliers blockade major cities in protest at rising diesel prices. Protesting drivers complain that the price of diesel has soared by more
than 20% this year, and are calling for the government to enforce a
minimum price for haulage, to prevent firms being undercut.

Read on...

Related Spanish hauliers on fuel strike

Food prices are rocketing all over Europe

2008-06-06T22:24:00.001+01:00

Anyone outraged by the cost of a trip to Tesco or Sainsbury's – or the
price of filling their car – should know that they are not alone: the
same bewilderment and anxiety is sweeping the Continent.

Bulgarian bus drivers are going on strike. Italian fishermen will soon
down tools. Lorry drivers have sealed off oil refineries across France.
Even the fishermen of Belgium, hitherto a relatively obscure force in
European politics, are due to mass in Brussels.

...read on...

An open letter to the leader of Opec's biggest oil producer

2008-05-27T17:42:00.001+01:00

There are several reasons for the high price of oil. Low prices at
the beginning of this decade discouraged oil companies from investing
in future capacity. There is a global shortage of skilled labour, steel
and equipment. The weak dollar means that the price of oil is higher
than it would have been if denominated in another currency. While your
government says that financial speculation is an important factor, the
Bank of England says it is not, so I don't know what to believe. The
major oil producers have also become major consumers; in some cases
their exports are falling even as their production has risen, because
they are consuming more of their own output.

But what you know
and I do not is the extent to which the price of oil might reflect an
absolute shortage of global reserves. You and your advisers are perhaps
the only people who know the answer to this question. Your published
reserves are, of course, a political artefact unconnected to geological
reality. The production quotas assigned to its members by Opec, the oil
exporters' cartel, reflect the size of their stated reserves, which
means that you have an incentive to exaggerate them. How else could we
explain the fact that, despite two decades of furious pumping, your
kingdom posts the same reserves as it did in 1988?

Read on...

U.S. gas: So cheap it hurts

2008-05-27T17:09:00.001+01:00

Relatively low taxes have kept pump prices far below most other developed nations, which some say is precisely why the current runup is so painful.

Read on at CNNMoney.com

World Oil Reserves

2008-05-26T17:28:00.001+01:00

Oil Reserves

Vast cracks appear in Arctic ice

2008-05-26T17:21:00.001+01:00

Dramatic evidence of the break-up of the Arctic ice-cap has emerged from research during an expedition by the Canadian military.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7418041.stm

Dr. Hirsch Discusses Peak Oil on CNBC

2008-05-23T14:20:00.001+01:00

Is the world about to be running on empty?

2008-05-23T14:07:00.001+01:00

In France, fishermen are blockading oil refineries. In Britain, lorry
drivers are planning a day of action. In the US, the car maker Ford is
to cut production of gas-guzzling sports utility vehicles and airlines
are jacking up ticket prices. Global concerns about fuel prices are
reaching fever pitch and the world's leading energy monitor has issued
a disturbing downward revision of the oil industry's ability to keep
pace with soaring demand.

Read on...

Crude Oil Prices 1861 - 2008

2008-05-13T14:25:00.004+01:00

click here!

population timebomb

2008-05-08T00:13:00.001+01:00

In ecological terms we are in "overshoot" of Earth's "carrying
capacity" for humans, our demand exceeding the planet's absorptive and
regenerative capacities.

To avert catastrophe, we need to reduce both factors in the equation: our numbers and per person consumption.

Link to article

Al Gore: New thinking on the climate crisis

2008-04-17T13:31:00.000+01:00

Hillary

2008-04-17T13:22:00.000+01:00

Creation of ethanol and biodiesel = 3rd world starvation

2008-04-16T09:55:00.002+01:00

I bet that you have missed the most telling statistic. At 2.1bn tonnes, the global grain harvest broke all records last year - it beat the previous year's by almost 5%. The crisis, in other words, has begun before world food supplies are hit by climate change. If hunger can strike now, what will happen if harvests decline?

There is plenty of food. It is just not reaching human stomachs. Of the 2.13bn tonnes likely to be consumed this year, only 1.01bn, according to the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organisation, will feed people. From this morning all sellers of transport fuel in the United Kingdom will be obliged to mix it with ethanol or biodiesel made from crops. The World Bank points out that "the grain required to fill the tank of a sports utility vehicle with ethanol ... could feed one person for a year". This year global stockpiles of cereals will decline by around 53m tonnes; this gives you a rough idea of the size of the hunger gap. The production of biofuels will consume almost 100m tonnes, which suggests that they are directly responsible for the current crisis.

Read On...

Have you planted any vegetables or fruit?

2008-04-14T10:04:00.002+01:00

The end of cheap food

The World's Growing Food-Price Crisis

Food price rises threaten global security - UN

Development ministers urge action on food prices

Australia's food bowl lies empty

Rice prices 'to keep on rising'

Food Price Crisis

How safe are plastic bottles?

2008-04-11T14:20:00.000+01:00

International Monetary Fund - one-in-four chance of a full-blown global recession

2008-04-10T11:58:00.001+01:00

The US mortgage crisis has spiralled into "the largest financial shock since the Great Depression". With the US sliding into a recession, there is mounting pessimism about the ability of the rest of the world to escape unscathed. The IMF shaved its forecast for growth in the global economy by half a percentage point, to 3.7% for this year, and by 0.6% - to 3.8% - for 2009.

Read On...

The (so called) mighty USA - world leader me arse

2008-02-21T00:20:00.001Z

First steps (without the walker)

2008-02-14T14:10:00.002Z

Worse to come for economy, warns Brown

2008-01-25T14:24:00.001Z

There is worse to come for the world economy and banks have been guilty of underpricing risk and undertaking too much off balance sheet activity, Gordon Brown said. Click on the Guardian for more info...

Petro dollar baby

2008-01-24T23:31:00.001Z

US Gov move fast to hold off full-blown recession

2008-01-24T23:10:00.001Z

Just how bad is this?

But when a government is willing to give regular payments of "$300 to $1,200 per household, and more for families with children, plus provide tax incentives for businesses to encourage spending" you can bet your ass things are VERY bad.

Now is the time to wonder, is the bank the best place to have your savings? Especially when bank employees can do this

Irish Auctioneers & Valuers Institute (IAVI) "The worst is over"

2008-01-23T14:07:00.001Z

The IAVI Property Survey 2007 states and I quote...

overall, I would say to people that the market is beginning to stabilise. The worst is over.

It goes onto to say... "The IAVI is predicting further average price falls of around 4.1% in Dublin in 2008, with falls of around 3% in the rest of the country." The full article is available here, I sense claims such as the above could come back and bite the IAVI hard as nobody can call the overall property market.

Wicklow council in court over illegal dumping accusations

2008-01-22T12:49:00.001Z

Wicklow County Council has been added as a defendant to a €30 million lawsuit, amid allegations that the local authority used one of the largest illegal dumps in the country.

The council is facing High Court proceedings in relation to the Whitestown landfill near Donard in west Wicklow. During a preliminary hearing last month, Mr Justice Clarke told agents for the council that it had a serious case to answer in relation to the illegal dump.

Read on...

Yikes does George know the game is up with respect to oil production?

2008-01-17T14:25:00.001Z

If they don't have a lot of additional oil to put on the market, it is hard to ask somebody to do something they may not be able to do.

Watch the ABC Interview with Mr. Bush in Riyadh Saudi Arabia

Read the article here

More Housing Doom

2008-01-17T14:10:00.001Z

Many experts are now predicting that home prices will dip 30% by the end of 2008. That means that nearly 20 million homeowners (USA) will be “upside-down”, that is, they will owe more on their mortgage than the current value of the house.

Read on...

Presentation for the Sceptical Peak Oil Observer

2008-01-07T12:42:00.001Z

This presentation was given to the Dail Joint Committee On Communications, Marine and Natural Resources almost 4 years ago

Click here for the presentation

Brown warns of a bleak year - yikes!

2008-01-02T22:49:00.001Z

In a strong warning, which sets the backdrop for a campaign to revive his premiership, Brown tells Britain to prepare for 'global financial turbulence' in 2008. He says that '2008 will be the decisive year of this decade.

Read full article

Oil rose nearly 58% last year but we haven't peaked...

2008-01-02T22:33:00.001Z

... ouch!! The time is nigh, the time is nigh

US oil hits $100 record

and

Barrelling to $100

Asteroid could hit Mars next month

2007-12-31T21:43:00.001Z

An asteroid hurtling towards Mars has a one in 75 chance of chance of scoring a direct hit on the red planet next month, NASA experts said in a statement Friday.

The US space agency's Near Earth Object Program (NEOP) revealed that the asteroid's exact course was difficult to predict, but said it could slam into Mars on January 30, leaving a crater measuring an estimated 1 kilometer across.

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Asteroid_could_hit_Mars_next_month_NASA_999.html

The size of Earth

2007-12-31T21:40:00.001Z

Earth compared to the largest known star

How fast is a F1 car?

2007-12-18T13:57:00.001Z

Timber...

2007-12-13T22:46:00.001Z

worlds remaining forests

What's a CIA Torture Jet & 4 Tons of Cocaine got in common?

2007-12-13T22:34:00.001Z

This Florida based Gulfstream II jet aircraft # N987SA crash landed on September 24, 2007 after it ran out of fuel over Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula it had a cargo of several tons of Cocaine on board now documents have turned up on both sides of the Atlantic that link this Cocaine Smuggling Gulfstream II jet aircraft # N987SA that crashed in Mexico to the CIA who used it on at least 3 rendition flights from Europe and the USA to Guantanamo's infamous torture chambers between 2003 to 2005.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/12/12/19210/608/933/420107

Oil reserves over-inflated by 300bn barrels

2007-11-08T14:27:00.001Z

Glup! Click Me...

oil crash movie

2007-11-06T13:47:00.001Z

go and see it

a crude awakening

nationwide from the 9th of november

...read on...

The Story of a Man With Astonishing Mental Abilities

2007-11-05T23:14:00.001Z

This is the breathtaking story of Daniel Tammet. A twenty-something with extraordinary mental abilities, Daniel is one of the world’s few savants. He can do calculations to 100 decimal places in his head, and learn a language in a week. This documentary follows Daniel as he travels to America to meet the scientists.

read more | digg story

Peak or Plateau

2007-10-12T21:20:00.001+01:00

Will there be a sharp peak, or a long lasting plateau?

Read on...

Texas Government Commiting Crimes on Video Tape

2007-10-02T22:50:00.000+01:00

How can you be a trusted publicly elected spokesperson and then be caught on video tape committing a crime not get arrested?

How our financial system "really" works

2007-09-25T23:04:00.000+01:00

Train Runs Through Bangkok Market

2007-09-19T13:48:00.000+01:00

Train Runs Through Bangkok Market - Watch more free videos

UN Warns: You're Out Of Control And You're Drifting Into Another War

2007-09-19T13:42:00.001+01:00

The UN's chief nuclear weapons inspector yesterday warned against the use of force against Iran, in what UN officials said was an attempt to halt an "out of control" drift to war. His outspoken remarks, which drew a parallel between Iran and Iraq, appeared to take aim at the US and Britain

Drift into war with Iran out of control, says UN

Economist: Houses built on sand

2007-09-14T09:40:00.001+01:00

Research by David Miles and Vladimir Pillonca of Morgan Stanley concludes that there are likelier candidates than America for a housing bust. In a recent paper covering 13 European countries as well as America, they assess how much of the rise in property values in the past decade can be put down to bubble-like optimism about future price increases. The authors constructed a model in which housing demand is driven by rising real incomes, population growth and declines in real interest rates. They then estimated the downward effect on prices from increased homebuilding. They argued that what is left—the part of price rises that is unexplained—is without substance and vulnerable to a correction.

In six countries—Belgium, Britain, Denmark, Greece, Spain and Sweden—real house prices have risen much faster than the model predicts. But in the remaining five countries, the average “excess” increase in real house prices is 47%. Some of the paper's results challenge accepted wisdom. Ireland's housing boom, often seen as a spectacular bubble, is almost entirely explained away by rapid real-income growth, rising population and the drop in real interest rates. Nevertheless, Irish house prices are now falling, if modestly.

More here...

Wake up America... vote to impeach

2007-08-03T13:21:00.001+01:00

An alternative view to Ireland the 2nd Wealthiest Nation in the World

2007-08-01T14:21:00.001+01:00

According to Bank of Ireland’s Wealth of the Nation Report (Hat tip Finfacts), we are the second richest in the world after the Japanese. However, we sacrifice entertainment, fun practically everything to get ownership of an over valued piece of property especially when the Bull McCabe mentality kicks in.

Read on...

ABC - The incredible journey of oil

2007-07-31T23:35:00.001+01:00

http://abc.net.au/science/crude/

Are these the last days of the Oil Age?

2007-07-19T18:05:00.001+01:00

Oil ruled the 20th century; the shortage of oil will rule the 21st.
Last Tuesday the lead story in The Financial Times was the latest report
from the International Energy Agency. The FT quoted the IEA as saying:
“Oil looks extremely tight in five years’ time,” and that there are
“prospects of even tighter natural gas markets at the turn of the decade”.
For an international agency, that is inflammatory language. This steep rise
in the oil price over a four-year period has been caused by demand rising at
more than 2 per cent a year, while supplies had risen more slowly, by a
healthy 4.1 per cent in 2004, but by only 1.25 per cent in 2005 and 0.5 per
cent in 2006.

Read on...

600,000 barrels more oil a day required for 2008

2007-07-13T10:39:00.001+01:00

The IEA recently forecast that demand would rise by an
average of 2.2% a year until 2012, raising fresh concerns about whether
supply would be able to keep pace.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6897097.stm

Petrol consumption per day

2007-07-11T22:59:00.001+01:00

A good advert...

2007-07-09T13:13:00.001+01:00

House starts plunge by 60pc

2007-07-05T17:05:00.001+01:00

Figures show that builders registered plans to build only 3,000 new homes last
month - a 60pc drop on the record 7,900 recorded in June last year.

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/house-starts-plunge-by-60pc-955825.html

Blah... Blah...

Details of Stag

A chronology of some of the world's recent air disasters

NYTimes: Filling a Photo Frame via a Cellular Network

Ireland - The drift into national bankruptcy looks increasingly unstoppable

IMF - The Irish economy is in the midst of an unprecedented economic correction

NYTimes: Why Home Prices May Keep Falling

A good intro to my maps on googlemaps

A Handy Mashup

NYTimes: Let the Kid Be

House prices continue to fall as buyers hold out - The Irish Times - Thu, May 28, 2009

McWilliams: houses prices are likely to fall another 50 per cent

NYTimes: Data, Not Design, Is King in the Age of Google

Priorities for Department of the Taoiseach

Huff, puff and build your house

awe-inspiring desert storm

Crunching numbers

From Celtic Tiger to Bob the Builder - this place is vaporising!

Low-Tech Fixes for High-Tech Problems

Siftables - cookie-sized computers...

Ireland could default on its national debt

Goodbody Stockbrokers - house prices will fall "AT LEAST" 40% from there peak

Ireland's Economic Meltdown

Warning that house prices may fall by 80%

Brace yourself now for the Deckland Depression

Jeremy Clarkson Ireland - the last days of the Roman empire

Britain - in no position to laugh at Iceland

Saudi supertanker (seized by the Somali pirates) is found

Alone in the universe?

Greatest Bubble in History: Warnings ignored in US and Ireland

House prices should be equal to between 12 and 14 times earnings

Exposed Bank of Ireland

Bigger clouds are on the horizon for Irish Banks!

Irelands, per capita gross domestic product is the 4th highest in the world

Panic buying in Iceland!

24 hours that brought Irish banks back from the brink

How will our generation handle a Great Depression?

The Mother Of All Bank Runs?

How long do foods last without refrigeration?

Greenspan - 'once-in-a-century' financial crisis

Nouriel Roubini - Americans Should Worry About Bank Deposits if Congress Doesn't Act

The vulnerable banking market

Irish banks are bobbing in debt-infested waters

US house prices are falling at an annual rate of more than 15%

Where am i?

European money market faces similar problems as the U.S

Dr. Doom - Two years ago, Nouriel Roubini predicted the current economic crisis. Now he sees things becoming far worse.

How to Travel by Cargo Ship

Where is Matt?

Tailor-made biofuels

Two dead in Europe fuel protests

Food prices are rocketing all over Europe

An open letter to the leader of Opec's biggest oil producer

U.S. gas: So cheap it hurts

World Oil Reserves

Vast cracks appear in Arctic ice

Dr. Hirsch Discusses Peak Oil on CNBC

Is the world about to be running on empty?

Crude Oil Prices 1861 - 2008

population timebomb

Al Gore: New thinking on the climate crisis

Hillary

Creation of ethanol and biodiesel = 3rd world starvation

Have you planted any vegetables or fruit?

How safe are plastic bottles?

International Monetary Fund - one-in-four chance of a full-blown global recession

The (so called) mighty USA - world leader me arse

First steps (without the walker)

Worse to come for economy, warns Brown

Petro dollar baby

US Gov move fast to hold off full-blown recession

Irish Auctioneers & Valuers Institute (IAVI) "The worst is over"

Wicklow council in court over illegal dumping accusations

Yikes does George know the game is up with respect to oil production?

More Housing Doom

Presentation for the Sceptical Peak Oil Observer

More Peak Oil Articles

Brown warns of a bleak year - yikes!

Oil rose nearly 58% last year but we haven't peaked...

Asteroid could hit Mars next month