Asia Times Online :: China Business News - China aims to diversify oil sources

Asia Times Online :: China Business News - China aims to diversify oil sources: "To turn Africa into China's largest source of oil imports is key to China's new energy strategy. 'Our country has already taken Africa into its strategic consideration, regarding the continent as an independent oil source,'' said Xia Yishan, a researcher with China Institute of International Studies, in an interview with the Chinese media.

Xia said Beijing maintains friendly relations with African countries, which are in favor of Chinese investment in the continent to explore and produce oil for China. He expects that in a few years Africa will replace Russia and Central Asia to become China's second-largest source of foreign oil, with African oil accounting for 30% of the country's total oil imports.

However, Li Xiangyang said that despite aggressive diversification efforts, the Middle East would remain dominant in China's oil imports for the foreseeable future. Although Angola replaced Saudi Arabia as China's largest oil supplier in 2002, the Middle East as a whole is still China's largest oil supplier, he said. Diversification would reduce China's reliance on the Middle East, but it does not mean the region no longer dominates China's oil imports.

'It is hard to change the dominance of the Middle East' in China's oil imports, Li Xiangyang said. "

Asia Times Online :: China Business News - China aims to diversify oil sources

Asia Times Online :: China Business News - China aims to diversify oil sources: "In 2006, China produced 183.68 million tons of crude oil, up 1.7% from the previous year. Its net oil imports amounted to 162.87 million tons, up 19.6%. The total net imports included 138.84 million tons of crude oil, up 16.9%, and 24.03 million tons of oil products, up 37.9%, according to the Ministry of Commerce.

Thus last year China 's dependence on imported oil rose to 47% of annual demand, or an increase of 4.1% over the previous year.

Industry analysts have predicted that in 2007, China's crude-oil output will grow by less than 2%, while the country's demand for both crude and oil products will rise about 6%. That means its dependency on imported oil will further increase this year. "

Accelerating-Intelligence News: Single Article View

Accelerating-Intelligence News: Single Article View: "The next generation of threats
Boston Globe, February 24, 2007
Advances in genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics threaten destruction even more horrific than that of atomic devices or climate change, say commentators, citing warnings by Ray Kurzweil and Bill Joy that the government's release of the reconstructed genome of the 1918 pandemic flu virus was 'extremely foolish.' "

Foreign Affairs - The New New World Order - Daniel W. Drezner

Foreign Affairs - The New New World Order - Daniel W. Drezner: "Another difficulty is that rewriting the rules of existing institutions is a thorny undertaking. Power is a zero-sum game, and so any attempt to boost the standing of China, India, and other rising states within international organizations will cost other countries some of their influence in those forums. These prospective losers can be expected to stall or sabotage attempts at reform. Although European countries are still significant, their economic and demographic growth does not match that of either the emerging powers or the United States. Having been endowed with privileged positions in many key postwar institutions, European countries stand to lose the most in a redistribution of power favoring countries on the Pacific Rim. And since they effectively hold vetoes in many organizations, they can resist U.S.-led changes. The Europeans argue that they still count thanks to the EU, which lets them command a 25-member voting bloc in many institutions. But if the EU moves toward a common policy on foreign affairs and security, it will be worth asking why Brussels deserves 25 voices when the 50 states comprising the United States get only one."

Foreign Affairs - The New New World Order - Daniel W. Drezner

Foreign Affairs - The New New World Order - Daniel W. Drezner: "Global institutions cease to be appropriate when the allocation of decision-making authority within them no longer corresponds to the distribution of power -- and that is precisely the situation today. The UN Security Council is one obvious example; the G-7 is an even more egregious one. The G-7 states took it upon themselves to manage global macroeconomic imbalances in the 1970s. They were moderately successful at the job during the 1980s, when they accounted for half of the world's economic activity. Today, however, even when they meet with Russia (as the G-8), they cannot be effective without including in their deliberations the economic heavyweight that is China."

Foreign Affairs - The New New World Order - Daniel W. Drezner

Foreign Affairs - The New New World Order - Daniel W. Drezner: "Global institutions cease to be appropriate when the allocation of decision-making authority within them no longer corresponds to the distribution of power -- and that is precisely the situation today. The UN Security Council is one obvious example; the G-7 is an even more egregious one. The G-7 states took it upon themselves to manage global macroeconomic imbalances in the 1970s. They were moderately successful at the job during the 1980s, when they accounted for half of the world's economic activity. Today, however, even when they meet with Russia (as the G-8), they cannot be effective without including in their deliberations the economic heavyweight that is China."

Foreign Affairs - The New New World Order - Daniel W. Drezner

Foreign Affairs - The New New World Order - Daniel W. Drezner: "Throughout the twentieth century, the list of the world's great powers was predictably short: the United States, the Soviet Union, Japan, and northwestern Europe. The twenty-first century will be different. China and India are emerging as economic and political heavyweights: China holds over a trillion dollars in hard currency reserves, India's high-tech sector is growing by leaps and bounds, and both countries, already recognized nuclear powers, are developing blue-water navies. The National Intelligence Council, a U.S. government think tank, projects that by 2025, China and India will have the world's second- and fourth-largest economies, respectively. Such growth is opening the way for a multipolar era in world politics.
This tectonic shift will pose a challenge to the U.S.-dominated global institutions that have been in place since the 1940s. At the behest of Washington, these multilateral regimes have promoted trade liberalization, open capital markets, and nuclear nonproliferation, ensuring relative peace and prosperity for six decades -- and untold benefits for the United States. But unless rising powers such as China and India are incorporated into this framework, the future of these international regimes will be uncomfortably uncertain."

KurzweilAI.net

KurzweilAI.net

The Problems in Modeling Nature, With Its Unruly Natural Tendencies

New York Times, February 20, 2007

A new book by Orrin H. Pilkey, a coastal geologist and emeritus professor at Duke, argues that nature is too complex and depends on too many processes that are poorly understood or little monitored to be modeled using computer programs.

Future Studies:

University of Hawaii - Jim Dator

Futures Organizations:

World Trends Research
World Future Society
Global Future Forum
Foundation for the Future
Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies
Institute for the Future
The Futures Group International
Institute for Alternative Futures

Does evolution select for faster evolvers?: "Does evolution select for faster evolvers? Discussion at PhysOrgForum
It's a mystery why the speed and complexity of evolution appear to increase with time. For example, the fossil record indicates that single-celled life first appeared about 3.5 billion years ago, and it then took about 2.5 billion more years for multi-cellular life to evolve. That leaves just a billion years or so for the evolution of the diverse menagerie of plants, mammals, insects, birds and other species that populate the earth."

Polls: Wealth is a top priority for today's youth - CNN.com: "Polls: Wealth is a top priority for today's youth"

Green Car Congress: World Economic Forum: Global Risks Are Outpacing Ability to Mitigate Them: "The core risks fall into five primary categories:

*

Economic
o Oil price shock/energy supply interruptions
o US current account deficit/fall in US$
o Chinese economic hard landing
o Fiscal crises caused by demographic shift
o Blow up in asset prices/excessive indebtedness
*

Environmental
o Climate change
o Loss of freshwater services
o Natural catastrophe: Tropical storms
o Natural catastrophe: Earthquakes
o Natural catastrophe: Inland flooding
*

Geopolitical
o International terrorism
o Proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD)
o Interstate and civil wars
o Failed and failing states
o Transnational crime and corruption
o Retrenchment from globalization
o Middle East instability
*

Societal
o Pandemics
o Infectious diseases"

Green Car Congress: World Economic Forum: Global Risks Are Outpacing Ability to Mitigate Them: "World Economic Forum: Global Risks Are Outpacing Ability to Mitigate Them
15 January 2007
Wef
Likelihood of core global risks vs. projected economic loss. Click to enlarge.

The World Economic Forum—the organization that convenes the annual Davos meeting of global leaders—has released the Global Risks 2007 report. The report, published in cooperation with Citigroup, Marsh & McLennan Companies, Swiss Re and the Wharton School Risk Center, highlights a growing disconnect between the power of global risks to cause major systemic disruption and our ability to mitigate them.

Many of the 23 core global risks explored in the report have worsened over the last 12 months, despite growing awareness of their potential impacts, according to the report. In addition to specific risk mitigation measures, institutional innovations may be needed to create effective responses to a complex risk landscape."

BBC NEWS | South Asia | Indian economy 'to overtake UK': "India could overtake Britain and have the world's fifth largest economy within a decade as the country's growth accelerates, a new report says.

If trends continue, India's economy may then surpass the US and be second only to China's by mid-century, the report by investment bank Goldman Sachs says."

WorldChanging: Tools, Models and Ideas for Building a Bright Green Future: All Politics is Global: An Interview with Simon Rosenberg

WorldChanging: Tools, Models and Ideas for Building a Bright Green Future: All Politics is Global: An Interview with Simon Rosenberg: "The past few years have seen an interesting trend around global action on non-political issues like AIDS, climate change, and other transnational issues, what outgoing UN Secretary General Kofi Annan called ‘problems without passports’. "

The Korea Herald : The Nation's No.1 English Newspaper

The Korea Herald : The Nation's No.1 English Newspaper: "The economies of the world's two most populous countries, India and China, have been growing in recent years at nearly 9 percent and 10 percent, respectively. A decade after the 1997-98 financial crisis, East Asia as a whole has returned to its torrid pace of development. "

The Korea Herald : The Nation's No.1 English Newspaper

The Korea Herald : The Nation's No.1 English Newspaper: "In another hemisphere, anti-American populists have been elected in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, and are busy centralizing power and reversing the trend of the 1990s toward openness and economic integration. Around the world, authoritarian regimes are learning repression from one another. What political scientist Samuel Huntington labeled the 'third wave' of democratization began in the 1970s with Spain and Portugal, spread through Latin America and Asia, and culminated in the collapse of communism. But this wave has clearly crested. Not wanting to see another democratic upsurge like Ukraine's 2004 Orange Revolution, Russia, Egypt, Syria and Venezuela have all passed laws closing off international funding for pro-democracy groups.
Underlying these worrisome trends is a huge decline in the prestige of the American model, which since the Iraq war has come to be symbolized less by the Statue of Liberty than by the hooded prisoner at Abu Ghraib. "

Worldmapper: The world as you've never seen it before

Worldmapper: The world as you've never seen it before: "Worldmapper is a collection of world maps, where territories are re-sized on each map according to the subject of interest.
366 maps and PDF posters will be finished by February 2007. Use the menu above or click on a thumbnail image below to view a map"

KurzweilAI.net

KurzweilAI.net

KurzweilAI.net, Jan. 31, 2007

It's a mystery why the speed and complexity of evolution appear to increase with time. For example, the fossil record indicates that single-celled life first appeared about 3.5 billion years ago, and it then took about 2.5 billion more years for multi-cellular life to evolve. That leaves just a billion years or so for the evolution of the diverse menagerie of plants, mammals, insects, birds and other species that populate the earth.

New studies by Rice University scientists suggest a possible answer: the speed of evolution has increased over time because bacteria and viruses constantly exchange transposable chunks of DNA between species, thus making it possible for life forms to evolve faster than they would if they relied only on sexual selection or random genetic mutations.

"We have developed the first exact solution of a mathematical model of evolution that accounts for this cross-species genetic exchange," said Michael Deem, the John W. Cox Professor in Biochemical and Genetic Engineering and professor of physics and astronomy.

"Life clearly evolved to store genetic information in a modular form, and to accept useful modules of genetic information from other species," Deem said.

This process is analagous to the increased speed and complexity of human knowledge, as articulated in Ray Kurzweil's law of accelerating returns, which "applies to all of technology, indeed to any true evolutionary process,"

PINR - U.S. Energy Policy Begins to Shift

PINR - U.S. Energy Policy Begins to Shift: "Regardless of the long-term effects of global warming, continued reliance on non-renewable energy sources from geopolitically unstable areas is a policy fraught with risk. The recent example that Russia set by cutting gas supplies to Belarus represents merely the beginning of power that states rich in oil and gas supplies can have over the major energy consumers. The security of oil in the Middle East is at the center of U.S. foreign policy and will remain this way as long as the United States relies on foreign oil.

Whether action is taken as an immediate geopolitical necessity to secure energy and other natural resources, such as water and arable land, or because of a moral imperative on behalf of future generations, global warming stands to be a major political issue of the 21st century. "

The Blog | RJ Eskow: Homo Futurus: How Radically Should We Remake Ourselves - Or Our Children? | The Huffington Post

The Blog | RJ Eskow: Homo Futurus: How Radically Should We Remake Ourselves - Or Our Children? | The Huffington Post: "Should parents have the right to choose their baby's gender? How about its sexual preference? Intelligence? Physical appearance? And are these left/right questions?

Futurists see a conflict forming over our dominion over the human body, and over the choices we make about our biological future - and that of our children. Some call it a clash between 'bioliberals' and 'bioconservatives,' and frame it as a debate over individual rights.
When it comes to transforming one's own body they may be right, but it gets thornier when children are involved."