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<font size="+2"><i><b>December 25, 2022</b></i></font><br>
<i><br>
</i><i>[ old info from 2016 talks of weather today -- one minute
video ]</i><br>
<b>How Climate Change Impacts Reindeer and Other Tundra Life</b><br>
greenmanbucket<br>
Dec 24, 2022<br>
I spoke to Ross Brown of Environment Canada in 2016<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcYpB84-S_c">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcYpB84-S_c</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<br>
<i>[ plant trees anywhere with guidance from a wild botanist and
obsessive video blogger ]</i><br>
<b>Tony Santoro's Guide to Illegal Tree-Planting</b><br>
Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't<br>
331K subscribers<br>
670,275 views Nov 6, 2019<br>
Note: Ratio for decomposed woodchips for soil mix should've read
1/2, not 1/4. Apologies. GFY. <br>
<br>
Counteract the Bleakness of the Modern Urban Environment of rampant
homelessness and over-priced housing by propagating and planting
trees in neglected urban spaces. Tony Santoro shows you how with
help from the Department of Unauthorized Forestry. Get mulch donated
by da tree companies nice, collect seed from suitable trees for your
area, get donated gallon tree pots from local nurseries... The best
way to learn this shit is by doing it. Got questions? Post em in the
contents. <br>
<br>
Enjoy this content? Consider donating to the CPBBD Propaganda
Ministry @ <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.patreon.com/crimepaysbutbotanydoesnt">www.patreon.com/crimepaysbutbotanydoesnt</a><br>
or venmo "societyishell".<br>
Send comments, hate mail, horrible nudes to crimepaysbutbotanydoesnt
at gee male dot com<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvtqKMxZ95s">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvtqKMxZ95s</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<i>[ some details on opinion manipulation ]</i><br>
<b>Climate misinformation spreads on Musk’s Twitter</b><br>
- -<br>
Now, as Twitter’s CEO, he’s overseeing one of the world’s most
popular social media platforms that’s rife with climate change
misinformation.<br>
And it appears to be getting worse.<br>
<br>
Since Musk’s purchase of Twitter two months ago, some prominent
climate deniers have returned to the platform after being banned for
pushing misinformation about the Covid-19 pandemic. There also are
signs that scientists have left Twitter after their posts depicting
global warming research were swarmed by critics.<br>
Among the changes potentially driven by Musk’s effort to tear down
barriers that once prohibited figures like former President Donald
Trump from spreading election lies are a rise in the popularity of
tweets that claim climate change is a scam. Some recent posts have
earned 40,000 likes.<br>
<br>
Marc Morano, who runs a blog that routinely attacks climate science,
said that since Musk bought Twitter the appearance of his name in
climate search results “appear to be juiced by the new algorithms.”<br>
<br>
“My Twitter account and many others opposing the ‘consensus’ climate
view have all increased visibility dramatically since Musk took over
Twitter,” he said in an interview. “Whatever Musk is altering, I
hope he keeps it up.”<br>
<br>
Indeed, the number of tweets rejecting climate science have never
been higher than in 2022, according to research by the University of
London conducted on behalf of The Times newspaper. There have been
more than 850,000 climate denial tweets or retweets so far this
year. There were 650,000 such messages in 2021 and 220,000 in 2020,
the analysis found.<br>
<br>
Musk has said he will sell the blue check marks that Twitter uses to
verify account holders to anyone who pays $8 a month. Users who pay
the fee will see their posts “rocket to the top of replies, mentions
and search,” according to Twitter. That could also mean that
scientists who refuse to pay the monthly fee could see their posts
lose visibility.<br>
<br>
Climate misinformation has long been present on Twitter. But the
proposed blue check mark policy could make the social media platform
a larger clearinghouse for climate denialism, experts say.<br>
<br>
Tweets that misinform the public about climate change can increase
interactions on Twitter by generating controversy, said Michelle
Amazeen, director of the Communication Research Center at Boston
University and an expert on climate disinformation and social media.<br>
<br>
“Twitter wasn’t designed to provide accurate info. Twitter is
designed to maximize people’s attention and engagement. And how do
you do that? You surface sensational, emotionally evocative content
rather than surface deliberative rational information,” she said.
“That’s not sexy, it’s all about the architecture.”<br>
<br>
Earlier this week, a search for “climate” on Twitter resulted in
“#ClimateScam” as the top term on the platform. Tweets using that
hashtag were a miasma of climate disinformation, cherry-picked
statistics and conspiracy theories. On another day, the top result
was “climate lockdown,” a reference to the Great Reset conspiracy
theory that claims a group of global elites is planning to shut down
economic activity around the world to cut carbon emissions
(Climatewire, Dec. 6).<br>
<br>
Twitter appears to now boost the accounts of serial climate
misinformers, including Steve Milloy, a former Trump EPA transition
official; Patrick Moore, former head of the CO2 Coalition; and
Morano, who runs a climate denial blog. In recent Twitter searches,
their accounts appeared in top results with climate scientists,
media outlets and NOAA.<br>
<br>
Milloy and Moore did not respond to requests for comment.<br>
<br>
Some prominent Twitter users who convey climate misinformation and
were banned from the platform for other reasons have returned under
Musk’s ownership. Tony Heller, who was removed for spreading
Covid-19 misinformation, has recently tweeted inaccuracies about
global warming. More prominently, the Canadian author Jordan
Peterson, who was removed for tweeting transphobic messages, was
allowed back on Twitter under Musk and now frequently pushes climate
disinformation to his 3.5 million followers. He recently retweeted
Heller using the term #climatescam.<br>
<br>
“Delusional green policies kill. Literally. Now,” Peterson wrote
recently.<br>
<br>
‘Radically different’<br>
Prominent climate scientists say they are experiencing an increase
of “climate denier bots” — which they identify as having a Twitter
handle followed by a name and a bunch of numbers — that respond to
their posts. It seems to be an effort to disrupt online climate
discourse, said climate scientist Michael Mann, director of the Penn
Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media at the University
of Pennsylvania.<br>
<br>
“Twitter was a primary medium for dissemination of the facts
surrounding the climate crisis,” Mann said in an email. “By
infecting the online discourse w/ massive troll and bot armies, it
becomes very difficult to communicate these facts, which is
precisely what polluters and petro-state bad actors like Russia and
Saudi Arabia want.”<br>
<br>
Katharine Hayhoe, a climatologist and chief scientist at the Nature
Conservancy, also experienced a swarm of bots in recent weeks. She
has been testing tweets and running experiments to check engagement
and found a dramatic increase in troll and bot activity on climate
tweets, she said. A few days ago, she received 3,000 replies from
critics — or trolls — in one 24-hour period.<br>
<br>
“I’m not totally sure what is happening, but there is something
radically different going on the last month that has increased troll
and bot activity on climate tweets by 15-30x according to my data,”
Hayhoe tweeted recently.<br>
<br>
She also created a master list of hundreds of climate scientists on
Twitter. Its membership has shrunk by about 4 percent since the Musk
takeover, she noted.<br>
<br>
Even though Musk runs a company that has created the exact type of
clean energy jobs that Biden wants to increase under the Inflation
Reduction Act, he has elevated voices that routinely attack
renewable energy and climate science. Some also attack the electric
vehicle tax credits and grants that have been a key to Tesla’s
growth.<br>
<br>
In recent weeks, Musk’s team has provided internal company
communications, or “Twitter Files,” to a select group of opinion
writers. The communications show that Twitter officials discussed
how to handle tweets related to Hunter Biden ahead of the 2020
election. One of the writers who received the documents was Michael
Shellenberger, who has promoted increased fossil fuel consumption
and attacked clean energy and climate science in congressional
hearings as a Republican-invited witness.<br>
<br>
In a recent hearing, Shellenberger said an expansion of electric
vehicles “risks undermining American industries and helping China.”<br>
<br>
<b>‘Climate is a scam’</b><br>
A few weeks after Musk bought Twitter on Oct. 27 for $44 billion,
the company eliminated a policy that cracked down on Covid-19
misinformation. Some scientists, including Mann, said the policy
also limited inaccurate climate narratives.<br>
<br>
“That was a clear message that it’s open season on twitter for the
promotion of anti-science, and clearly we’ve seen an escalation in
climate denial rhetoric,” Mann said of the policy’s withdrawal.<br>
<br>
Scientists concluded decades ago that humans are warming the planet
at an unprecedented pace through the burning of fossil fuels. A
movement to dilute those findings has been funded in part by energy
companies and linked to conservative politics in the U.S. and other
countries. Twitter is a key platform for spreading that type of
false information.<br>
<br>
In April, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its
sixth assessment report and found that effective communication of
climate science has been significantly damaged by the spread of
false claims on social media.<br>
<br>
“Accurate transference of the climate science has been undermined
significantly by climate change countermovements, in both legacy and
new/social media environments through misinformation,” the report
stated.<br>
<br>
That same month, Twitter banned paid ads that promote climate
denial.<br>
<br>
“We believe that climate denialism shouldn’t be monetized on
Twitter, and that misrepresentative ads shouldn’t detract from
important conversations about the climate crisis,” company officials
wrote in a blog post.<br>
<br>
It’s unclear if that policy is still in place. Musk has fired more
than half of the company’s employees, including its communications
department. The two authors of the blog no longer work for the
company.<br>
<br>
Musk could not be reached for comment.<br>
<br>
Since July, months before Musk bought Twitter, there was an uptick
in content referring to “#ClimateScam,” “climate scam,” or “climate
is a scam,” totaling more than 500,000 mentions, according to a
report released last month by Climate Action Against Disinformation,
an international coalition of environmental groups. The messages
originated from about 150,000 accounts and spiked around the time
that global climate talks began in Egypt last month, the report
found.<br>
<br>
Researchers found one account, @climate_fact, that was responsible
for more than 50,000 tweets. Every few minutes, it retweeted posts
that use “#climatescam,” “#greatreset” and other phrases. It’s
unclear who runs the account or where they are located<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.eenews.net/articles/climate-misinformation-spreads-on-musks-twitter/">https://www.eenews.net/articles/climate-misinformation-spreads-on-musks-twitter/</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<i>[ check the weather and suspect the climate changes ]</i><br>
<b>WMO releases ‘tell-tale signs’ of extreme weather conditions
around the world</b><br>
23 December 2022<br>
From extreme floods to heat and drought, weather and climate-related
disasters have affected millions and cost billions this year, the
World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Friday, describing
the “tell-tale signs and impacts” of intensified climate change.<br>
<br>
The clear need to do much more to cut greenhouse gas emissions was
again underscored throughout events in 2022, said the UN weather
agency, advocating for strengthened climate change adaptation,
including universal access to early warnings.<br>
<br>
“This year we have faced several dramatic weather disasters which
claimed far too many lives and livelihoods and undermined health,
food, energy and water security and infrastructure”, said WMO chief
Petteri Taalas...<br>
<br>
<b>On warmest track</b><br>
While Global temperature figures for 2022 will be released in
mid-January, the past eight years are on track to be the eight
warmest on record, according to WMO.<br>
<br>
While the persistence of a cooling La Niña event, now in its third
year, means that 2022 will not be the warmest year on record, its
cooling impact will be short-lived and not reverse the long-term
warming trend caused by record levels of heat-trapping greenhouse
gases in our atmosphere.<br>
<br>
Moreover, this will be the tenth successive year that temperatures
have reached at least 1°C above pre-industrial levels – likely to
breach the 1.5°C limit of the Paris Agreement.<br>
<br>
<b>Early warnings</b><br>
Early warnings, increasing investment in the basic global observing
system and building resilience to extreme weather and climate will
be among WMO priorities in 2023 – the year that the WMO community
celebrates its 150th anniversary.<br>
<br>
“There is a need to enhance preparedness for such extreme events and
to ensure that we meet the UN target of Early Warnings for All in
the next five years”, said the top WMO official.<br>
<br>
WMO will also promote a new way of monitoring the sinks and sources
of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide by using the
ground-based Global Atmosphere Watch, satellite and assimilation
modelling, which allows better understanding of how key greenhouse
gases behave in the atmosphere.<br>
<b><br>
</b><b>Climate Indicators</b><br>
Greenhouse gases are just one climate indicator used to observe
levels.<br>
<br>
Sea levels, which have doubled since 1993; ocean heat content; and
acidification are also at recorded highs.<br>
<br>
The past two and a half years alone account for 10 per cent of
overall sea level rise since satellite measurements started nearly
30 years ago, said WMO’s provisional State of the Global Climate in
2022 report.<br>
<br>
And 2022 took an exceptionally heavy toll on glaciers in the
European Alps, with initial indications of record-shattering melt.<br>
<br>
The Greenland ice sheet lost mass for the 26th consecutive year and
it rained –rather than snowed – on the summit for the first time in
September.<br>
<br>
<b>National heat tolls</b><br>
Although 2022 did not break global temperature records, it topped
many national heat records throughout the world.<br>
<br>
India and Pakistan experienced soaring heat in March and April.
China had the most extensive and long-lasting heatwave since
national records began and the second-driest summer on record. <br>
<br>
And parts of the northern hemisphere were exceptionally hot and dry.<br>
<br>
A large area centred around the central-northern part of Argentina,
as well as in southern Bolivia, central Chile, and most of Paraguay
and Uruguay, experienced record-breaking temperatures during two
consecutive heatwaves in late November and early December 2022. <br>
<br>
“Record breaking heatwaves have been observed in China, Europe,
North and South America”, the WMO chief added. “The long-lasting
drought in the Horn of Africa threatens a humanitarian catastrophe<br>
<br>
And while large parts of Europe sweltered in repeated episodes of
extreme heat, the United Kingdom hit a new national record in July,
when the temperature topped more than 40°C for the very first time.<br>
<b><br>
</b><b>Record breaking rain</b><br>
In East Africa, rainfall has been below average throughout four
consecutive wet seasons – the longest in 40 years – triggering a
major humanitarian crisis affecting millions of people, devastating
agriculture, and killing livestock, especially in Ethiopia, Kenya
and Somalia.<br>
<br>
Record breaking rain in July and August led to extensive flooding in
Pakistan, which caused at least 1,700 deaths, displaced 7.9 million
and affected 33 million people.<br>
<br>
“One third of Pakistan was flooded, with major economic losses and
human casualties”, reminded Mr. Taalas.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/12/1131992">https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/12/1131992</a><br>
<br>
<p><br>
</p>
<br>
<i>[ Manipulating information -- ] </i> <br>
<b>The right-wing groups behind renewable energy misinformation</b><br>
A conversation with journalist Michael Thomas.<br>
David Roberts <br>
Dec 23 <br>
<br>
It's easy to find stories in the media these days about communities
blocking solar, wind, and other clean energy projects. This has
prompted an enormous amount of discourse about NIMBYs and the
challenges of permitting projects. What's often left out of the
discourse — and almost always left out of those stories — is how
such community groups receive organizational help and money from
billionaire-funded right-wingers.<br>
<br>
Across the country and the internet, there are hundreds of
conservative think tanks, groups, and individuals working to stir up
community opposition to renewable energy with misinformation and
lies. With virtually no public scrutiny, they have secured
state-level policies restricting renewable energy siting in dozens
of states.<br>
<br>
Michael Thomas<br>
Independent journalist Michael Thomas set about to learn more about
these right-wing groups. He joined anti-renewable-energy Facebook
groups, combed through the tax filings of various right-wing think
tanks, and tried to trace funding sources. He published the results
in his own newsletter, Distilled.<br>
<br>
I'm excited to talk to him about what he found: the groups involved,
the tactics they use, the policies they've helped pass, and the best
way to fight back.<br>
<br>
You're currently a free subscriber to Volts. For the full
experience, upgrade your subscription.<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.volts.wtf/p/the-right-wing-groups-behind-renewable?utm_source=podcast-email%2Csubstack&publication_id=193024&post_id=91559751&utm_medium=email#details">https://www.volts.wtf/p/the-right-wing-groups-behind-renewable?utm_source=podcast-email%2Csubstack&publication_id=193024&post_id=91559751&utm_medium=email#details</a><br>
<p>- -<br>
</p>
<br>
<i>[ More about misinformation ]</i><br>
<b>'I Agree' - the biggest lie on the internet? | All Hail The
Algorithm</b><br>
Al Jazeera English<br>
95,250 views Jul 31, 2019 #Aljazeeraenglish #Algorithms
#AllHailTheAlgorithm<br>
‘Read Me’ Or Just Tap ‘I Agree’<br>
There’s a huge group of people at work behind our screens. They’re
called behaviour architects, persuasive designers or user-experience
specialists and the power they have is massive. <br>
<br>
That urge to keep swiping through your twitter feed? That’s design.
<br>
The way we all click ‘I Agree’ to the terms and conditions? That’s
design. <br>
Swiping right or left on Tinder? Well, that’s design too.<br>
<br>
We live in an online world of someone else’s making and most of us
never even give it a second thought. And actually, that’s design as
well.<br>
<br>
Join Ali Rae in this episode of ‘All Hail The Algorithm’ - a 5 part
series exploring the impact of these invisible codes on our everyday
lives.<br>
<br>
In this episode Ali speaks with Woody Hartzog, author of ‘Privacy’s
Blueprint: The Battle to Control the Design of New Technologies; Aza
Raskin, creator of infinite-scroll and co-founder of The Center for
Humane Technology; Natasha Dow Schüll, cultural anthropologist and
author of ‘Addiction by Design’.<br>
<br>
Subscribe to our channel <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://bit.ly/AJSubscribe">http://bit.ly/AJSubscribe</a><br>
Follow us on Twitter <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://twitter.com/AJEnglish">https://twitter.com/AJEnglish</a><br>
Find us on Facebook <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera">https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera</a><br>
Check our website: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www.aljazeera.com/">http://www.aljazeera.com/</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrZQs25hA18">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrZQs25hA18</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<i>[The news archive - looking back at similarities... wait is this
happening again? weaponizing oil markets ]</i><br>
<font size="+2"><i><b>December 25, 2014</b></i></font> <br>
December 25, 2014: The New York Times reports:<br>
<blockquote><b>Oil’s Swift Fall Raises Fortunes of U.S. Abroad</b><br>
<br>
By Andrew Higgins<br>
Dec. 24, 2014<br>
<br>
BRUSSELS — A plunge in oil prices has sent tremors through the
global political and economic order, setting off an abrupt shift
in fortunes that has bolstered the interests of the United States
and pushed several big oil-exporting nations — particularly those
hostile to the West, like Russia, Iran and Venezuela — to the
brink of financial crisis.<br>
<br>
The nearly 50 percent decline in oil prices since June has had the
most conspicuous impact on the Russian economy and President
Vladimir V. Putin. The former finance minister Aleksei L. Kudrin,
a longtime friend of Mr. Putin’s, warned this week of a
“full-blown economic crisis” and called for better relations with
Europe and the United States.<br>
<br>
But the ripple effects are spreading much more broadly than that.
The price plunge may also influence Iran’s deliberations over
whether to agree to a deal on its nuclear program with the West;
force the oil-rich nations of the Middle East to reassess their
role in managing global supply; and give a boost to the economies
of the biggest oil-consuming nations, notably the United States
and China.<br>
<br>
It might even have been a late factor in Cuba’s decision to seal a
rapprochement with Washington.<br>
<br>
After a precipitous drop, to less than $60 a barrel from around
$115 a barrel in June, oil prices settled at a low level this
week. Their fall, even if partly reversed, was so sharp and so
quick as to unsettle plans and assumptions in many governments.
That includes Mr. Putin’s apparent hope that Russia could weather
Western sanctions over its intervention in Ukraine without serious
economic harm, and Venezuela’s aspirations for continuing the
free-spending policies of former President Hugo Chávez.<br>
<br>
The price drop, said Edward N. Luttwak, a longtime Pentagon
adviser and author of several books on geopolitical and economic
strategy, “is knocking down America’s principal opponents without
us even trying.” For Iran, which is estimated to be losing $1
billion a month because of the fall, it is as if Congress had
passed the much tougher sanctions that the White House lobbied
against, he said.<br>
<br>
Iran has been hit so hard that its government, looking for ways to
fill a widening hole in its budget, is offering young men the
option of buying their way out of an obligatory two years of
military service. “We are on the eve of a major crisis,” an
Iranian economist, Hossein Raghfar, told the Etemaad newspaper on
Sunday. “The government needs money badly.”<br>
<br>
Venezuela, which has the world’s largest estimated oil reserves
and has used them to position itself as a foil to American
“imperialism,” received 95 percent of its export earnings from
petroleum before prices fell. It is now having trouble paying for
social projects at home and for a foreign policy rooted in
oil-financed largess, including shipments of reduced-price
petroleum to Cuba and elsewhere.<br>
<br>
Amid worries on bond markets that Venezuela might default on its
loans, President Nicolás Maduro, who was elected last year after
the death of Mr. Chávez, has said the country will continue to pay
its debts. But inflation in Venezuela is over 60 percent, there
are shortages of many basic goods, and many experts believe the
economy is in recession.<br>
<br>
But the biggest casualty so far has probably been Russia, where
energy revenue accounts for more than half of the government’s
budget. Mr. Putin built up strong support by seeming to banish the
economic turmoil that had afflicted the rule of his predecessor,
Boris N. Yeltsin. Yet Russia was back on its heels last week, with
the ruble going into such a steep dive that panicked Russians
thronged shops to spend what they had.<br>
<br>
“We’ve seen this movie before,” said Strobe Talbott, who was
President Bill Clinton’s senior Russia adviser in the aftermath of
the Soviet Union’s 1991 collapse and is now president of the
Brookings Institution in Washington.<br>
<br>
Russia’s troubles have rippled around the world, slashing bookings
at ski resorts in Austria and spending on London real estate;
spreading panic in neighboring Belarus, a close Russian ally; and
even threatening to upend Russia’s Kontinental Hockey League,
which pays players in rubles.<br>
<br>
“It is a big boost for the U.S. when three out of four of our
active antagonists are seriously weakened, when their room for
maneuver is seriously reduced,” Mr. Luttwak said, referring to
Russia, Iran and Venezuela.<br>
<br>
The only major United States antagonist not hurt by the drop in
oil prices is North Korea, which imports all of its petroleum.<br>
<br>
David L. Goldwyn, who was the State Department’s international
energy coordinator during President Obama’s first term, warned
that an implosion of Venezuela’s economy could hurt the Caribbean
and Latin America in ways that the United States would not
welcome.<br>
<br>
But “on balance, it’s positive for the U.S.,” he said of the low
price of oil, because American consumers save money, and “it harms
Russia and puts pressure on Iran.”<br>
<br>
Even some of the indirect consequences of the price slump, like
last week’s break in the half-century diplomatic logjam between
Washington and Havana, have generally worked in the United States’
favor. Fearful that Venezuela, its main benefactor, might cut off
supplies of cash and cheap oil, Cuba sealed a historic deal that
has in turn lifted a shadow over the United States’ standing in
much of Latin America.<br>
<br>
Another casualty of the price collapse has been Belarus, a former
Soviet territory long reviled by American officials as Europe’s
last dictatorship. It produces no significant amount of crude oil
itself but has nonetheless taken a big hit. This is because its
economy depends heavily on the export of petroleum products that
Belarus produces using crude oil supplied, at a steep discount, by
Russia.<br>
<br>
Marwan Muasher, a former foreign minister of Jordan who is now a
vice president at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,
predicted another domino effect in Syria as Russia and Iran find
it difficult to sustain their economic, military and diplomatic
support for President Bashar al-Assad.<br>
<br>
Others speculate that Persian Gulf oil producers, though still
wealthy, might trim their financial support for radical Islamist
rebel groups in Syria.<br>
<br>
Mr. Muasher said the drop in oil prices could also prod Middle
East oil producers toward political and economic change by
challenging so-called rentier systems in which governments derive
much of their income from rents paid by foreigners for resources.
“Whatever the case, it is clear that the effect of the new oil
price levels will not be limited to the economic sphere,” he wrote
in a Carnegie report.<br>
<br>
Hard-hit anti-American oil producers have blamed foreign
machinations for their woes, suggesting that Washington, in
cahoots with Saudi Arabia, has deliberately driven down prices.<br>
<br>
This view is particularly strong in Russia, where former K.G.B.
agents close to Mr. Putin have long believed that Washington
engineered the collapse of the Soviet Union by getting Saudi
Arabia to increase oil output, driving down prices and thus
starving Moscow of revenue.<br>
<br>
In many ways, the recent price fall really is the United States’
work, flowing to a large extent from a surge in American oil
production through the development of alternative sources like
shale.<br>
<br>
By offsetting declines in conventional oil production, increases
in shale oil output have allowed overall American crude oil
production to rise to an average of about nine million barrels a
day from five million a day in 2008, according to the United
States Energy Information Administration. That four-million-barrel
increase is more than either Iraq or Iran, the second- and
third-largest OPEC producers after Saudi Arabia, produces each
day, and it has put strong downward pressure on world prices.<br>
<br>
The geopolitical shakeout set off by the oil market has not gone
entirely America’s way. Russia’s troubles have so far shown no
sign of pushing Mr. Putin toward a more conciliatory position on
Ukraine, and some analysts believe they could make Moscow even
more pugnacious and prone to lashing out.<br>
<br>
The Bank of England’s Financial Policy Committee, which monitors
possible systemic threats, warned in minutes released this week
that “sustained lower oil price also had the potential to
reinforce certain geopolitical risks.” It voiced alarm, too, over
an increased risk of deflation in the eurozone, the 18-nation area
that uses Europe’s common currency.<br>
<br>
The price drop could also encourage more freewheeling use of oil
products like gasoline, undermining what appears to be a growing
consensus among nations that carbon emissions must be reeled in to
offset the most dire effects of global warming.<br>
<br>
While authoritarian oil producers like Russia are clearly
suffering, China is enjoying a huge windfall thanks to the price
drop. It imports nearly 60 percent of the oil it needs to power
its economy.<br>
<br>
China became the world’s largest importer of oil in 2013,
surpassing the United States, and so stands to benefit from
plummeting prices. Bank of America Merrill Lynch estimated last
month that every 10 percent decline in the price of oil could
increase China’s economic growth by 0.15 percent.<br>
<br>
Strong growth in China would lift demand for oil and help reduce
the current agonies of OPEC, which pumps around a third of the
world’s oil but, largely as a result of increased American
production, has lost much of its ability to dictate prices by
controlling output.<br>
<br>
In an interview with the Middle East Economic Survey this week,
the Saudi energy minister, Ali al-Naimi, indicated a fundamental
rethinking by OPEC, saying that it needed to focus on keeping its
market share rather than trying to raise prices by slashing
production. “We have entered a scary time for the oil market,” he
said.<br>
</blockquote>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/25/world/europe/oils-swift-fall-raises-fortunes-of-us-abroad.html">http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/25/world/europe/oils-swift-fall-raises-fortunes-of-us-abroad.html</a><br>
<br>
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