Daily Oil Blog

As singapore celebrated her national day, something negative has been lingering on the past several years and that’s the low birth rate of our island state.Our prime minister touched on this at the national day rally last nite in mandarin speech.As our demographics with a heavy local chinese populace  will affect our social economic structure, this will remain our island top concerns with many years to come.

According to a report from CNA

SINGAPORE: 39,490 babies were born in Singapore last year, but not all were born of Singaporean parents.

In fact, only 59 per cent of them have both a Singaporean mother and a Singaporean father. But if births where at one parent is a foreigner were included, then the figure goes up to 82 per cent.

Perhaps what is of great significance is that records of Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) show that Singapore men fathered 75 per cent of all babies born here, while Singapore women account for just 65 per cent.

Climbing the career ladder is one reason sociologists give for the low fertility rate among Singapore women, particularly among those with degrees.

Associate Professor Angelique Chan, assistant head of Department of Sociology at the National University of Singapore, said: “A woman puts a lot of effort, time, overtime, into her work in her early 20s, mid-late 20s, then she gets to be about 30 years old and then she is thinking about marriage but it’s hard for her to find someone (at that age). The older you get, the more entrenched you get in your lifestyle….and it gets harder to adapt to another person.”

If Singapore men are fathering more babies than Singapore women are giving birth to, then who is delivering the goods?

6,071 babies were born to Singapore fathers whose wives are Malaysians, Indonesians, Chinese nationals, or are from other countries in the region.

Some women from further afield have also been increasing Singapore’s birth rate.

Singapore’s Total Fertility Rate - which measures the average number of children a woman will have in her lifetime - currently stands at 1.29.

Among the Malay and Indian communities, their birth rates have fallen steadily from year 2000 to 2006.

While the birth rate among the Chinese community has crept up very slightly, it still remains the lowest of all the three races.

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After attending a week course on security, I’ve noticed people can be clueless about the meaning of security putting  them under defense against terrorism and house break  ins.Of course this form of security is important in the society but we need to broaden our meaning in security.

The fossil fuel decline is the greatest security threat of modern man yet few have really address this looming crisis despite the rising oil prices.Without fossil fuel , no security measures can be effective as our modern society crumbles along with in.The talk of finanical security runs hollow too as fiat currencies that the fossil economy holds up run over our monetary system that’s supporting it over the last century.

The meaning of security changes with time, 3 meal a day and a roof over our head was considered real security during the days of our serf peasant forefathers time.But now with the modern era, insurance coverage,retirement funds and other plentitude of goods and services becomes security of our daily life too.

Indeed man has come far and perhaps need to ask ourself what security in life really means instead of going along with the whims and fancies of changing world that’s going to give us a rude awakening in the post oil world.

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To go from high fossil consumption city to low fossil one takes lifestyle changes:

a)Buy energy efficient appliances eg..airconditioners and fridges that’s energy efficient if possible use fans instead of air con in your homes

b)To recycle paper-use double side paper for printing

c)Take shorter showers to conserve water

d)Use public transport to minimize carbon output and helps to cut one’s budget in high oil society

e)Recycle one’s clothes to give them away to salvation army as not to waste natural materials.

The above steps seems easy but actually take personal efforts of each of us living in a big city of more than 3 million.Eco city is a pipe dream if all of us do not take initiative to change our ways of high consumption.

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Living in Asia I came to look upon Japan as an economic model for the rest of the region here, indeed the japanese have outdone the rest of us in GDP per capita, high tech development , lower crime rate compared to most industrialised countries worldwide.

The export oriented success for Japan became the recipe for south korea and now China to follow.Consumer living became the norm for the japanese after her post war ascent to an economic power.However it changed the traditional family unit to a more individualistic western outlook in life as more educated japanese women joined the workforce delaying marriage and child bearing.

What’s startling about Japan is that the society is rapidly greying without the fertilty rate to replace the retiring workforce.There seems to be a lack of institutions in Japan compared to the west in allowing married women to work and the space for raising children.And many younger women is choosing not to married in pursuit of lifestyles unlike the ways of their mothers and grandmothers.

Demographics is destiny and with the land of the rising aged in Japan coinciding with the high cude oil of this century, the maintainence of japanese position as an economic powerhouse will posed many challenges like foreign immigration and a move towards a more sustainable economy.

But a rich country like Japan will have the luxury of time to ease the transition towards an older lower populated society but whether it will compromise her prominence in the world stage remains to be seen.

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IQ and the wealth of nations seems to be on my mind the last few days..to correlate IQ with race seems to have a tint of racism putting jews, asians and whites on the average top and others below the intellectual ladder.But does IQ matters now fossil decline has started?

During the last century fuelled by abundent oil economy..many information has been unlocked and pass on to the masses thru public education and hence test scores of students began to become increasingly important. From industrial to information economy knowledge that the people have and able to apply in the broad spectrum will determine the success of any nations.

Hence eugenics became a serious topic for academics and politicians alike.The pursuit of human perfection to control our destiny but is it just a fallacy to measure IQ if it can be measured at all?Test scores no doubt measured memory and understanding of various subjects the students went thru but life is larger than classroom textbased knowledge.

All the present knowledge is fuelled by cheap fossil energy , we’re talking about medicine, engineering and a legal and social economic structure promoted and backed by crude oil.What used is the IQ of a top brain surgeon without the medicine and tools needed to operate on the patient?And all the research of nanotechnology of whiz kids will be redundant without cutting edge lab facilities.

So the final question does IQ still matters in the psot oil world?Sure the world will still have smart people but the guage of measurement will be redefined as paradigm shifted in the usage of our energy.

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Down in boston USA, many experts around the world comprised of  scientists, thinkers and entrepreneurs summed up during the meeting at the American Asscociation for the Advancement of Science last friday to list 14 main challenges for our world:

1)Make Solar energy inexpensive

2)Provide energy form nuclear fusion

3)To try to capture C02 produced by fossil fuels & tackling global warming.

4)Manage the rate which human activity removal of nitrogen from the air, worsening global warming

5)Provide access to clean water

6)Improving urban infrastructure while preserving the environment

7)Utilising health info so that doctors can teack patients biological data.

8)Engineer better medicines

9)Reverse engineer the brain and find out how it works

10)Prevention of nuclear terror by finding ways to secure energy sources

11)Better security in cyberspace from identity thefts and viruses.

12)Enhance Virtual reality used to train experts and treatment of patients

13)Advanced learning by using the net

14)Engineer the tools  for scientific discovery

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by Allan Carlson, Ph.D.

My purpose this morning is to tell you about a remarkable band of thinkers and writers who cut against the grain of the 20th Century: the New Agrarians. I will underscore their broad themes, and then focus specifically on their views regarding education.

Who were the New Agrarians? They were more diverse than usually supposed. Best known are The Southern Agrarians, a group of twelve authors centered at Vanderbilt University during the late 1920’s and 1930’s and architects of the book, I’ll Take My Stand. Yet others came from the Northeast and the Middle East. While the majority were Protestant, a large minority were Roman Catholic; still others were Jewish and there were committed atheists in the group as well. Their work has been called, at different times, the “country life campaign,” “agrarianism,” “traditionalism,” “distributism,” “de-centralism,” “anti-urban,” and “anti-industrial.” In my analysis, I label them “The New Agrarians,” borrowing that phrase from one of their number, Herbart Agar. I do this to set them apart from the simpler Jeffersonianism found in the 19th Century and to emphasize their deliberate confrontation with modernism or modernity.

Their platform was, at once, socially conservative and economically radical. Broadly put, they were advocates for a unique brand of “radical conservatism.” What might this curious phrase mean?

To read more 

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Looking at the current US presidential elections heating up from the far east thru cable TV and internet, it almost feel that our world is getting to be one New World Order?

It seems like all the candidates from Clintons to Mccain are well prepared…or are they ?Economic downturn, terrorism ,Iraq war are the main issues bugging the hopefuls to the White House after Bush departure by end of the year.Fossil energy depletion will be the main concerns for the US administeration though not much coverage about it from the mainstream media.

Does the republicans and democrats know the long term effects of fossil decline has on US and the world economy?And most importantly the solutions for this if not will make our world a bigger and more foreign as it was a century back.

It’s like the public are too caught up about the election general issues and forgot the main issues.Even if they do remember and remind the presidential hopeful, can they grow oil in the ocean away from middle east turmoils?

World leaders are not scientists and of course will not relate the to same type of anxiety of intermediate and long term have nots of the non fossil world but if not now, then when.The rich elites may be sheltered from this energy apocaplypse but eventually it will reach them when the island that insulate itself ran out of oil.

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You know Israel has always fascinated me from their bible stories to the formation of the state of Israel in the middle of the last century.Though Israel lacked the Oil wealth as her arab neighbours possessed, her ingeniuity and determination turn her to one of the most successful democratic country in the middle east running a high tech economy with patents that seems higher than other countries in spite of her small populace.

With all the turmoil surrounding the mid east region and with Israel always caught up in that kind of conflict against terrorism within and outside her borders , the energy that’s needed to power up her economics and military grown ever more important if she was to survive Hamas, Hezbollah and international pressures from UN restricting her retaliation against her foes.

Fear not as young jewish minds are always looking for solutions for their energy problems.IT whiz 39 year old israeli named Shai Agassi who was the ex chief designer of products at German SAP AG wanted to build electric cars for Israel and to the world!Making monthly subsriptions like our utiity bills instead of going to gas stations seems like an idea that’s going to be more feasible as oil and gas prices goes up.

The plan for Agassi company was to tie up with Nissan and Renault for this project by supplying them lthiumn-ion batteries to power up their cars.So the Israeli side provides the software while the japanese and french the hardware.It will be a match made in heaven if it take off a big way in Israel powered up by non fossil energy.

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With the war on terror raging worldwide and the decline of european demographics, will faith revival replace liberalism that was so widespread wordwide in last century with abundent cheap energy?

One can see the rise of anti-islamic sentiments moving up hand in hand with islamist violence.Right wing christian movements in america seems to be getting their say in the public space like abortion rights as they fear what happens to their european counterparts will fall upon them if they lost their religion and cultures.

Oil is part of the equation in this whole picture and religions may turn out to be the final outcome ironically in the 21st century.How will this affect America and even our whole world remains to be seem?But Christian America is not such a foreign idea compared to Europeans who seems lost the whole plot as beautiful cathedrals in france may end up as museum relics of past identity of their forefathers.

Christian america may not be as willing partners for oil to make compromises regarding freedom of religious faiths to appease their islamic rich oil states .
Maybe the burden of the cross will be pick up by the Americans where Europeans left.

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