That exploration - a detailed overflight of much of the country by American surveyors in middecade - showed Afghanistan to be far richer in oil, natural gas, iron, copper and coal than anyone had imagined. Aynak, in particular, was judged a world-class copper deposit, not just huge but of unusually rich quality, and the government chose it as the first major mineral concession to be auctioned to developers.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Guardian.co.uk: How do I know China wrecked the Copenhagen deal? I was in the room
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/22/copenhagen-climate-change-mark-lynas
All this raises the question: what is China's game? Why did China, in the words of a UK-based analyst who also spent hours in heads of state meetings, "not only reject targets for itself, but also refuse to allow any other country to take on binding targets?" The analyst, who has attended climate conferences for more than 15 years, concludes that China wants to weaken the climate regulation regime now "in order to avoid the risk that it might be called on to be more ambitious in a few years' time".
This does not mean China is not serious about global warming. It is strong in both the wind and solar industries. But China's growth, and growing global political and economic dominance, is based largely on cheap coal. China knows it is becoming an uncontested superpower; indeed its newfound muscular confidence was on striking display in Copenhagen. Its coal-based economy doubles every decade, and its power increases commensurately. Its leadership will not alter this magic formula unless they absolutely have to.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs : Another brief chat with Randall Stephenson
He says he has no idea what I'm talking about and I said, Dude, I'm talking about the fact that over the past eight quarters you've reduced your capital expenditure even while we've been sending you loads of new data subscribers. Last quarter you spent $4 billion on capex, which was $1.6 billion less than you were spending two years ago, at the end of 2007. Meanwhile your data revenues in the most recent quarter were $3.6 billion, up from $2.0 billion at the end of 2007. In other words, you took in $1.6 billion more on data plans, mostly thanks to iPhone, and then you boned us by slashing your capex. What the fuck, dude?
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