It's Not 'Star Wars'

Energy's Future: Robert Hefner says natural gas offers a bridge to a squeaky-clean 'hydrogen economy.'

By Fareed Zakaria

Newsweek

Oct. 1, 2007 issue - Before Robert A. Hefner came along, many people assumed natural gas was limited in its quantity and uses. But since its founding in 1959, Hefner's company GHK alone has discovered more than 3 trillion cubic feet of natural gas around the world. The company also pioneered the technology now used by all major companies in the United States to reach deep, high-pressure wells. Hefner recently spoke with NEWSWEEK's Fareed Zakaria about why he thinks natural gas needs to be central to any strategy to transition beyond fossil fuels. Excerpts:

ZAKARIA: Natural gas is plentiful and clean, but when you add up the costs of exploration, storage and delivery, it's also expensive.
HEFNER: When the pollution costs of coal are included, like health costs and acid rain, the cost of natural-gas-generated electricity is actually less than coal. For transport, it costs less than gasoline. Over 5 million vehicles around the world run on natural gas.

How would you factor external costs into the price of coal? Do you want a tax on "bad energy" and a subsidy for the good stuff?
Coal and oil have become by far America's largest energy problems. Together, they produce about 80 percent of our CO2 emissions, and our addiction to foreign oil creates very large problems and risks. So I believe we should phase in taxes on coal and oil and oil products—say, over the next five years, so everyone has the chance to adapt. Our principal energy solutions are natural gas, solar, wind and efficiency; policy should encourage their use. One more thought on policy: as we phase in consumption taxes on coal and oil, we should recycle the revenue to eliminate payroll taxes and lower income and capital taxes. Philosophically, I believe it is much better to tax consumption that is creating great costs and risks to society than to tax labor and capital that we want to grow and flourish.

Could you use the grid that pipes gas into people's homes to deliver natural gas as fuel for cars?
America has a very undervalued asset in the million-mile pipeline grid that delivers natural gas to towns and cities, and directly to over 60 million American homes. You can put a small compressor appliance in your garage and fuel your automobile every night from the natural gas that is already connected to your house. Natural gas is also an excellent fuel to generate electricity. Prior to the Fuel Use Act in 1978 that prohibited the use of natural gas for power generation, Oklahoma generated over 80 percent of its electricity with natural gas. Today about 85 percent of Singapore's electricity is generated by natural gas, and they are headed toward 100 percent.

Why aren't we moving faster toward a natural-gas economy?
Two reasons. First, natural gas has never had a political lobby, so there's never been policy to foster the development of natural gas. For most of the last 100 years natural gas has been an underappreciated byproduct of the oil industry. Also, oil companies have deliberately underestimated supplies. In the 1970s, Big Oil convinced Congress that we were running out of natural gas. Exxon testified that the United States had about 300 trillion cubic feet of natural-gas supplies remaining, and it wouldn't be long before schools and offices that relied on natural gas would be closed.

What are the actual numbers?
At the time the Fuel Use Act was being debated, my estimates were that the U.S. had 1,500 to 2,000 trillion cubic feet of natural gas remaining. My estimates were called irresponsible, but the big oil companies were wrong. We have produced 585 trillion subsequent to that time, and today most estimators believe that we have at least 1,500 to 2,000 trillion remaining. At today's rate of consumption, that leaves [America] a 70- to 100-year supply.

What does the future of energy look like? Can we move to an entirely natural-gas-generated economy?
Fifty years from now we will have developed a new energy infrastructure that is many times more efficient, largely through natural gas, solar and wind-powered electric generation, hydrogen fuel cells in the transportation sector and massive increases in end-use efficiency. We will then be entering the hydrogen economy as a result of a transition that began with natural gas.

The hydrogen economy?
An economy powered by hydrogen gas released from seawater by electrical current, produced by solar or wind generation. Although this process of electrolysis has been known and used for over 100 years, it is not commercial for our economy today. We have already powered automobiles, boats, airplanes and towns on hydrogen, so we know we can do it. And it's 100 percent clean. It is not as if it is some "Star Wars" technology. Somewhere in the second half of this century, civilization will have finally achieved an energy system that can power its economic growth on an environmentally stabilized Earth. The hydrogen economy should be civilization's energy endgame.

this article is from newsweek by fareed Zakaria

The story of Cat Stevens' conversion to Islam

He marked the seventies with his unforgettable melodies and topped the charts for more than a decade, Cat Stevens stopped abruptly an exceptional musical career to the deep regret of millions of fans worldwide.


Cat Stevens who changed his name to Youssef Islam didn’t stop singing out of lack of inspiration but rather due to the fact that, he at last, found his own path by converting to Islam. This is the story with his new faith.

He says” I was born to a Christian family which revered money and did the same, I felt in admiration for singers to the extent that I made of them my supreme god , then decided to become one of them. I ended up by becoming one of the biggest Pop stars, and media made of me an icon, bigger than life itself and will live forever.”

Stevens further added” When day I felt sick and was admitted to hospital, there I had enough time to contemplate and think about things. My conclusion was that we are only a body, and all and all I was only working to satisfy my biological needs. The illness was a god send I opened up my eyes. Once I left the hospital I made inquiries through readings and concluded that Man was a combination of a body and soul.”

“My quest for truth continued in parallel with my artistic career , till the day when a friend of mine who came back from a trip in the East and told that he found serenity inside a mosque which he didn’t in a church, which led me to shift my interest to that religion and bought a translated Koran. At last I found answers to my questions: Who I am?, where I come from ? and what is my goal in Life?. Through my several readings of this holy book, I concluded that there is only one god with whom we can communicate directly without any interference.”

This how Cat Stevens converted to Islam .

Agencies
from echoroukonline

Belly dancer will shake to ... Led Zeppelin?

Chester — Sarah and the Kashmir Dancers will perform with Swan Song, a Led Zepplin/Bad Company tribute band, on Friday, Sept. 28, at Bodles Opera House in Chester.

Many of Led Zeppelin songs have a Middle Eastern influence and rhythms. Hossam Ramzy, an Egyptian and percussionist, accompanied Led Zeppelin on some of their albums.

Sarah Bell of Sarah and the Kashmir Dancers is director of the Caravan Dancers. She teaches dance classes and performs in Orange, Dutchess, and Westchester counties. She has taught and given lectures on the history of Middle Eastern Dance and Culture at Orange Community College, Dutchess Community College, Marist College, Ulster Community College, Ulster Boces, and Vassar College.

Doors will open at 6:30 p.m. Admission is $15. Food and a cash bar will be available. The show starts at 8:30 p.m.

For more information call 469-4595 or visit www.bodles.com.

Thinking Like an Arab by by Alan Caruba

Thinking Like an Arab by by Alan Caruba: "Thinking Like an Arab"

14 terrorism suspects at Guantánamo get right to ask for lawyers

Fourteen so-called "high value" terrorism suspects at the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, have been offered the right to ask for attorneys, the Defense Department said Friday.

"Like all other detainees at Guantánamo, the high-value detainees have the opportunity to contest" their status as "enemy combatants," said Commander J. D. Gordon, a Defense Department spokesman.

The prisoners include Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks. Neither he nor the others had access to lawyers while they were being held in secret CIA prisons for various lengths of time, nor since they were transferred from CIA custody to Guantánamo a year ago.

Each had what the government called personal representatives when their cases were brought before review boards in a series of hearings since March to determine if they could be classified as enemy combatants. Each was later given that classification, which the Bush administration says allowed it to hold them indefinitely and prosecute them at military tribunals.

When the Pentagon first opened the prison at Guantánamo Bay in 2002, terrorism suspects were held there incommunicado. Their names were not released and they were not allowed attorneys. But a series of court challenges has forced the Pentagon to change rules, including allowing them to have lawyers, starting two years ago.

Saudi Asks Israel to Abandon Barrier as a Gesture to Arabs

By HELENE COOPER

Published: September 27, 2007

Israel should stop work on a security barrier in and along the West Bank and halt settlement activity there as a good-will gesture to assure Arab states that it is serious about comprehensive peace talks, Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister said yesterday.

The minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, stopped short of making his demand a condition for Arab attendance at a planned Middle East peace conference. And he said that in recent days, he had become encouraged about the prospects for the conference, which the United States is to sponsor in November. But he would not promise that Saudi Arabia would attend, a major Israeli objective.

His comments, after a meeting between Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and top officials from the gulf Arab states on the outskirts of the United Nations General Assembly here, forecast the tough road ahead for the Bush administration in trying to forge a comprehensive Middle East peace in the last months of President Bush’s term.

Saudi Arabia and America’s other Arab allies have insisted that the conference tackle the so-called final status issues that have bedeviled negotiators since 1979. They include the status of Jerusalem, the fate of Palestinian refugees who fled their homes or were forced out, the dismantling of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, and the borders of an eventual Palestinian state.

Bush administration officials say that they are also pushing Israel hard to put the big issues on the table, but acknowledge that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel needs something in return: Arab, and especially Saudi, diplomatic recognition of Israel.

During a briefing for reporters yesterday, Prince Saud raised another potentially sticky issue for the Bush administration as it seeks progress on a peace proposal: the Islamic group Hamas, which the United States and Israel view as a terrorist organization but which controls Gaza, home to 1.4 million Palestinians.

After Hamas’s violent takeover of Gaza, the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, kicked Hamas out of the national unity government that Hamas formed in February with Mr. Abbas’s Fatah party. The ejection was applauded by the United States and Israel, which have refused to deal with Hamas.

But Prince Saud said that for any peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians to work, Hamas must be brought into another national unity government with Fatah. He said that if the international community had accepted the Palestinian national unity government in February, when Saudi Arabia brokered an accord establishing the government, Hamas might have eventually renounced violence against Israel. He called that “water under the bridge now,” but added that Saudi Arabia still wanted to establish another national unity government between Hamas and Fatah.

“You have to,” he said. “Peace can not be made by one man or by half a people.”

But compromise on Hamas is not likely from the Bush administration, which has characterized the battle against the group as a fight between moderates and extremists.

The Middle East peace conference has dominated the behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing in meetings on the outskirts of the General Assembly. President Bush, by publicly announcing the peace conference two months ago, gave high-level attention to an issue that critics said his administration had ignored for six years.

But now, some analysts say, that attention has raised expectations, putting the administration in the position of having to produce something tangible.

“Failure is not an option,” Ms. Rice told Arab officials at a meeting this week, quoting a line from “Apollo 13,” one of her favorite movies.

Prince Saud repeated that line at his briefing with reporters. He also said that the conference would be pointless if Syria did not attend. Ms. Rice said earlier that the United States planned to invite Syria.

“You know the old saying,” Prince Saud joked, “that there can be no war without Egypt and no peace without Syria.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/27/world/middleeast/27diplo.html?ref=world