World oil production has been on a plateau for the last several years. Is that a temporary leveling off, a geologically imposed peak before long-term decline, or something called "peak oil lite"? The theory of peak oil lite is that human-based reasons, not geological reasons, are creating at least a temporary peak in oil production.

The thing is, it's pretty hard to tell peak oil lite from geological peak oil. When the world nears or reaches geological peak oil, it unleashes human forces that keep production down.

For example, Iran and Venezuela have both said recently that they think OPEC should commit to reducing output at their meeting on September 9, since oil prices are going down. Yes, they're saying that the price of oil is too low!

Because oil production is so tight elsewhere, OPEC has real power to jack prices back up. OPEC's power to raise oil prices is strongest at the time of regional or world peak oil.

CELEBRATING UN-PRESIDENT’S DAY: WHY I WILL NOT VOTE FOR A PRESIDENT IN 2008

By Carolyn Baker (Subscribe to Carolyn's daily news digest here.)

Thanks to the Ohio Republic's Harold Thomas, for re-posting this vital philosophical DECENTRALIST statement created in Vermont two decades ago.

Credit goes to Greg Guma, who posted these last week (we re-posted them yesterday, as part of Greg's larger THINKING OUTSIDE THE EMPIRE BOX blog) - Greg tells me he was there at the 1977 meeting.

Veteran Vermont politico Greg Guma gives some thought to an independent Vemont here at his blog last week.

It is nice to return from a three week blog "fast" to see more and more thoughtful and committed Vermonters considering the notion of Vermont independence.

Good to be back - it promises to be an interesting autumn.

Leave peeping,

Rob

Sometimes things happen quickly in Vermont! Yesterday I reported on the Health Department apparently violating its own rules when they adjusted the measurement of radiation at the perimeter of Vermont Yankee. Today, the Administrative Rules Committee (see section 817 in the link) met and took up the question on their agenda.

The Rules Committee is made up of four House members and four Senate members, and they have the authority to hold hearings on existing or proposed rules, on their own initiative. I'm told that they decided this morning to schedule a public hearing on the Health Department's rule on radiation from Yankee and how it has evolved. No date for the hearing has been set yet.

It's been reported that the Vermont Health Department just released a consultant's report on 2007 radiation emissions from Vermont Yankee and that they have adopted a new way of counting the dose of radiation. What I don't think has been reported, before today, is that the Health Department is violating its own rules in doing so.

The Vermont Health Department rules say that annual gamma radiation doses at the plant boundary may not exceed 20 millirem per year. A millirem is 0.001 rem, a measure of ionizing radiation's effect on human health.

The Health Department's consultants, Oak Ridge Associated Universities, reported that 8 radiation dosimeters at the edge of Vermont Yankee's boundary measured radiation last year in excess of the 20-millirem limit. However, the consultants also recommended reducing the amount of radiation measured by what critics have called a fudge factor. The new way of measuring radiation reduces the measurements by 40%, and suddenly Vermont Yankee is in compliance with the radiation rules.

The catch is, the Health Department's own rules don't seem to allow the fudge factor. The Health Department has taken the stance that 1 Röntgen now equals 0.6 rem. The Röntgen is the unit measured by the dosimeters. The Health Department's rules say, however, that 1 rem is defined as 1 Röntgen.

One equals one. Simple enough. But the Health Department now says that 1 equals 0.6.

Thomas Weiss broke the news that the Health Department's own regulations rule out changing the dose calculation on WGDR, Plainfield this morning, and I've followed up on it by calling the Health Department for comments.

Bill Irwin, responsible for radiological health at the Vermont Department of Health, disagrees that definition in the rules means what it says it means. He cites another section of the rules, which allows the Department to use "applicable recommendations
contained in the reports of the National Council on Radiation Protection and
Measurements and the National Bureau of Standards handbooks as standards and bases
for calculations."

In other words, when the rules define a rem, it's not a legally binding definition, but rather guidance to the reader. According to Irwin, it just "provides something approximate for the purpose of reading this regulation."

That's not the way I've seen definitions used in law before.

It's possible that the rules are internally inconsistent, but it looks to me as though Vermont Yankee is subject to the definition that 1 rem is 1 Röntgen. If you want to get down in the weeds and judge for yourself, click "Read more."

Thanks to Seven Days, Vermont's liveliest alternative weekly newspaper, for giving Bill McKibben (arguably Vermont's most prominent intellectual) a platform to hold forth on Vermont independence this week. in his "Independence Fray" article.

I could spend time quibbling with some of Bill's observations here. To name but three:

1. His selective re-telling of the winter 2007 SVR/LOS brouhaha and Mr. Odum/GMD's role in it...(no comment - time to move on.)

Read the fascinating results of a brand-new Zogby Poll on secession here, sponsored by our colleagues at the Middlebury Institute.

Perhaps Americans are finally beginning to realize that the U.S. Empire is in deep trouble, and that the best way forward is peaceable decentralization and the dissolution of the United States as Empire.

As we've suggested here for more than three years:

From my media colleague Peter Phillips, who oversees the annual Project Censored project with his journalism students at Sonoma State University.

While I am not in agreement with his solution of impeachment (we're less than four months away from Election Day - time to let go the "impeachment" chimera), his article serves as a sobering reminder of the consequence of U.S. occupation for Iraqi civilians more than five years later.

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JULY 20, 2008 - Gubernatorial Debate Questions - and Candidate's Closing Statements.

Download a complete transcript of the debate below.

Listen to the entire debate here.

View video clips below.