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DrumBeat: January 4, 2007
Posted by threadbot on January 4, 2007 - 10:05am
Texas: Lawmakers vow help with gas, electricity costs
"Last summer was very difficult for many Texans. The combination of record heat and record-high electricity prices pushed many families to the brink," said Tim Morstad, advocacy director for AARP-Texas. "We feel that this legislative session there will be increased opportunity to make some reforms to the deregulated electric markets.""Every member I talk to is getting calls from their constituents," said House Regulated Industries Chairman Phil King, R-Weatherford. "We want to do something about it."
Ukraine survives despite gas price hike. (Interesting how different this story is from the British one the other day. I guess businesses are doing fine, the people...not so much. ;-)
John Michael Greer: Principles for sustainable tech
Beyond its practical uses, however, the slide rule has more than a little to teach about what sustainable technology looks like. It is quite literally pre-industrial technology – the basic principle was worked out in 1622 by Rev. William Oughtred, though it took many years of evolution after that to produce the handy ten-inch device with multiple scales that played so important a role in 19th and 20th century science and engineering. Set a slide rule side by side with an electronic calculator and certain points stand out.
Belarus slaps export duty on Russia oil
MINSK: Belarus imposed export duty on Russian oil crossing its territory yesterday - with a potential impact on oil markets - as President Alexander Lukashenko hit back at Moscow in an energy row.
Oil-Thirsty China Strives For Persian Petroleum
Iran is endowed with abundant crude oil and natural gas reserves, and perhaps being equipped with nuclear weapons is only a tool to protect its most in-demand asset. Shall we trust Tehran?
Nigeria: Agip's Plan to Help Hostages Escape Fails
Renewable energy -- wind power, biomass, solar cells, hydro generation and the like -- is the mantra of energy independence advocates. But such energy resources are projected to grow at just 1.5 percent per year through 2030, according to the federal Energy Information Administration.Demand for energy is expected to grow at the same rate. At best, renewable energy sources are a wash when it comes to becoming energy self-sufficient. Twenty-five years from now, the U.S. energy portfolio will look much like it does today, with fossil fuels providing 86 percent of our energy needs.
Our consumption of oil, given the threats it poses to our national security, its impact on our economy and most importantly on our environment, evidences one of the sad shortcomings of our governance and public discourse. Not a single nuclear energy plant has been built in this country since the 1970's.
While McMansion bans have been proposed in many cities—and have succeeded in a few—what Portland and Vancouver, and to some extent Seattle, are doing is more difficult and more interesting. They’re inventing mechanisms that say yes to small instead of no to big.Recently Portland and Vancouver established zoning and design guidelines to encourage the development of smaller houses, as long as they meet exacting design criteria. A new program in Vancouver that falls under the mayor’s overall policy of “eco-density” encourages the reconfiguration of lots in certain single-family districts. In Portland a new set of ordinances and guidelines seeks to promote “skinny houses,” intended to fit lots less than 36 feet wide.
Poor harvests and biofuel demand trigger wheat shortages and fuel big Irish bread price rises
Poor harvests in Australia, the Ukraine, Argentina and North America have dramatically increased the cost of wheat. Prices have surged to ten year highs as world wheat stockpiles have fallen to their lowest levels in 25 years and a drought in Australia has threatened to cut its harvest in half.
4 families 'Go Green': Here's how these homeowners got a little more eco-friendly.
Australia: Bike sales outstrip cars
BICYCLE sales outpaced car and truck sales in 2006, as more Australians turned to pedal-power to cut petrol bills.
California Cow Power: Poop Pays
Cow power can make money for dairies and make them energy self-sufficient as well as provide electricity to the grid. But - there's always a but - the Byzantine regulatory structure that favors entrenched utilities is frustrating the widespread adoption of bovine biogas.
Eco-friendly trains to connect north and south Taiwan
TAICHUNG, Taiwan: The sleek, bulbous-nosed new bullet trains here look like they are designed to whisk passengers across wide-open spaces; but on this congested island, they represent the start of a 300-kilometer-per- hour commuter train system.
Wal-Mart readies large-scale move into solar power
...one person who saw the proposal said that if completed, it could amount to a significantly large installation--on the order of 100 megawatts of power over the next five years.
Price drop hits ConocoPhillips
Oil giant says refining and marketing margins were significantly lower, but production levels should hold steady.
To prevent massive pollution and slow its growing contribution to global warming, China will need to make advanced coal technology work on an unprecedented scale.
2006 saw wave energy get hearing
LINCOLN CITY — Move over solar and make way wind, because wave power is on the horizon and international energy companies along with local governments are lining up to cash in when the market crests. |
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Ukraine: Possible Energy Solution In Coal Beds
In the wake of Ukraine's announced plans to reduce its dependence on imported natural gas by using more coal for power generation, Ukraine's own enormous reserves of methane have been touted as a better alternative. The problem is finding a way to harness it.
New oil sands drilling system unveiled: Small and fast unit ideal for oil sands exploration
Second Annual Indiana Energy Conference
The purpose of the Indiana Energy Conference is to bring people together to raise awareness and discuss our culture's systemic dependence on oil, and how the forthcoming reduction in global oil extraction will affect our community. This is the most critical discussion of our time.
A Country Less Dependent on Oil Is Free to Make Other New Year’s Resolutions
Well, another New Year’s Day has come and gone. A string of holiday meals and sitting on the couch have, no doubt, started another wave of resolutions to get some exercise and go on a diet. But after seeing gas prices pass $3 a gallon last year, hearing all the talk about global warming and having a bad feeling about all the bluster coming from the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a great many folks wish the economy would go on a diet, too, and stop using so much energy.
Intelligent Growth: A Vision for a New Low-Energy Economy
I think that we need to distinguish between two fundamentally distinct kinds of growth. There is the suicidal growth that our mainstream culture is so hell-bent on pursuing, predicated on the limitless extraction of our Earth's wild resources and the continual disabling of her ability to absorb pollution, stabilize soils, regulate the world's climate and operate a whole gamut of "ecosystem services." The alternative is "intelligent growth," which recognizes that we must move towards a global steady-state economy in which the living standards in the south would grow while those of the north decline until both converge on a steady and equitable per capita share of whatever benefits the Earth can spare us.
Tom Whipple - The Peak Oil Crisis: 2006 in Review
The most notable event affecting the advent of peak oil during 2006 was, most likely, the great summer price spike. Oil started the year around $62 a barrel, steadily increased to just below $80 and then fell to close out the year about where it started. Now there are a number of observations that can be made about this spike.
Australia warming faster than world
The seriousness of Australia’s environmental problems was underlined Wednesday with the release of data showing that the country appears to be experiencing the effects of global warming more deeply than other parts of the world.
Gas from Norway Could Reduce Dependency on Russia
Western Europe's dependence on Russia's natural gas reserves has been a constant source of worry. A new facility being built in Norway to liquify the precious energy source could provide some relief from Russian dependency.
Fuelling a Food Crisis: The impact of peak oil on food security
DWINDLING oil stocks and EU trade and energy policies threaten food price hikes – and could cause the UK to be vulnerable to food shortages for the first time since the Second World War, according to a new report by Green Party Euro-MP Caroline Lucas.
It is no exaggeration to say that we are facing the largest human crisis since at least the nuclear arms race. Of course, instead of building up nuclear warheads, we are building up carbon dioxide....But the global warming crisis is linked with another that will influence solutions: resource depletion on a small planet. How we react to such crises will determine whether the Earth will be able to support large numbers of our species.
College officials began looking into alternative fuel sources when oil and natural gas prices started to rise. Also, concern about a “peak oil situation where oil isn’t going to last much longer” factored into the decision to invest in the new boiler, Augustin said.
Once the domain of hippies, whose off-the-grid escape doubled as an anti-establishment rebuke, renewable energy is now a pillar of California politics. In recent months alone, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed the California Solar Initiative, which aims to help bring solar power to a million rooftops, as well as a landmark greenhouse-gas reduction law.
Himalaya's receding glaciers suffer neglect
NEW DELHI – Billions of people in China and the Indian subcontinent rely on South Asia's Himalayan glaciers - the world's largest store of fresh water outside the polar ice caps. The massive ice floes feed seven of the world's greatest Asian rivers in one of the world's most densely populated regions.Yet as global climate change slowly melts glaciers from Africa to the Andes, scientists say the glaciers in the Himalayas are retreating at a rate of about 33 to 49 feet each year - faster than in any other part of the world.
..."The power grid in Uttarkashi is constantly breaking down and that's because of the rise in sediment in the water being used at the hydro-power projects," says Joseph Thsetan Gergan from the WADIA Institute of Himalayan Glaciology, a part of the Indian Department of Science and Technology. "When the power breaks down, the people blame the Geological Survey of India or the Central Water Commission for not doing its work properly, but that's like thinking of digging a well when your house is already on fire."
Natural resources juggernaut Gazprom has scored yet another victory in its gas pricing war, gaining 50 percent of the Belarusian pipeline network. The deal demonstrates Gazprom's ruthlessness in securing power over neighboring former Soviet satellite states and raises questions about how reliable the Russian company is as an energy supplier to western Europe.
Québec Sees the Energy Tide Turn
Canada is America, but it is not the United States. Many of my countrymen take the attitude that there is but one voice in English-speaking North America, and that we somehow have a right to the adjoining boreal territory and its resources.This raises the question, then: What of French-speaking Canada?
Spinoff Spectra's shares debut higher
HOUSTON - Spectra Energy, a spinoff of power producer Duke Energy, was making a successful debut Wednesday on the New York Stock Exchange as one of the three largest natural gas transmission companies in North America.
Climate 'benefits' for UK farming
A project that highlights the economic opportunities, as well as the environmental threats, from climate change has been launched for farmers.
Scientists say 2007 may be warmest yet
LONDON - A resurgent El Nino and persistently high levels of greenhouse gases are likely to make 2007 the world's hottest year ever recorded, British climate scientists said Thursday.
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Economic News Update:
Retailers post disappointing Dec. sales
http://futures.fxstreet.com/Futures/news/afx/singleNew.asp?menu=economic...
US weekly jobless claims up 10,000 to 329,000
http://futures.fxstreet.com/Futures/news/afx/singleNew.asp?menu=economic...
Crude prices dropping mostly from lower demand forecast in the US?
Yes, but it may not be due entirely to the weather. The lead story over at http://www.marketwatch.com right now is
Copper, commodities sell-off may signal slowdown
Being at the heart of a major retail operation (that speaks to retailers across the USA), I would have to agree with this assessment.
There are a lot of indicators pointing to a major slowdown in retail this year.
Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei dead?
http://pajamasmedia.com/2007/01/supreme_leader_ayatollah_ali_k.php
New prospect for US: glut of ethanol plants
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0105/p01s04-wmgn.html
Oh good god man, your buying into the MSM spin on this one. Oh noez, our sales were up only 2.3% this year, some pencil pushing number crunching junkie on the 5th floor said it should have been 2.5%, were doooooomed. You didn't even read the part where retailers only post numbers on items sold during the holidays, and ignore gift cards until they are redeemed. As more people buy gift cards, sales are going to continue to 'disapoint', as you cant have growth in both markets at the same time.
And as for the jobless claims, I'm actually amused at how you chose to spin it. Any time the numbers come out better then expected, you dismiss it as unsustainable, but a 10,000 jump is herald as the beginning of the end. Get real man, a 10,000 increase means nothing, considering how volatile the job data is every week.
Of course it is not doom. But it IS a slowdown, particularly when you dig in a bit deeper and discover that there was very substantial discounting going on to reach even the 2.5% increase, which will be reflected as much lower profit margins. Gift cards....hmmm that one is a double edged sword, don't you see it? It's another form of cash: people use them as they see fit and abstain from "double-buying". Example: someone gives you a sweater that you didn't need, so you toss it in the closet and eventually you buy that trinket you really desired, yourself. Result: double sale. But if you get "cash" you go out and exchange it for the trinket. Result: single sale. That is why retailers are not super-thrilled with gift cards...Net-net it was a flat Xmas and even Bush knew it during his press conference ("...I encourage you to go out and shop some more..").
Jobless claims..10.000 is noise.
Hoth: These are nominal dollar amounts. With money supply growth estimated from 4-11%, these are actual retail sales declines.
Last I saw, M3 reconstructed (nov06) is at 11%.
The government CPI data through November shows a 2.6% inflation rate for 2006. We can argue whether that is understated versus reconstructed M3 or not but even taking this extremely low inflation number we see that inflation exceeded increases in sales, hence the disappointment - the year was a net loser for merchants.
Since you conveniently "forgot" to factor in CPI, you get to trumpet an apparent growth rate. In reality the data taken as a whole indicates a flat economy, or one even potentially contracting slightly. Once again, we catch Hothgor massaging the data to his own ends.
The Economist's All Items index as of the December 2nd issue had risen 35.4% y/y. As of the week of 12/22, the same index is showing at 34.8% y/y. The food index was 27.2% on 12/2, and 25.4% the week of 12/22.
Now tell me there is low inflation.
The CPI is garbage with its hedonic adjustments, substitutions, and core rate crap.
Which brings us to the Austrian (and correct IMHO) definition of inflation as an increase in the money supply, ie credit. Its truly that simple.
...in which case the inflation rate for the US in the 12mo. period ended Sep.30 2006 was exactly 10% - that is how much total credit (debt) increased, as per the Fed.
Hothgor, no one is buying into anything. Two articles were posted for us to review. That was all. Stop with the rants, we don't need them.
Yes, we all know why she posted these two economic articles of the 50 released today. The others didn't fit the doomer agenda. Here is proof of the 2007 Recession for the idiots that didn't click the link...
And (real) inflation adjusted sales:
And for the idiots that tried to discuss inflation ... forgeddaboutit ... not worth the effort.
And for those who know nothing about money supply:
I think you should refrain of calling people names, Freddy. It makes you a uninteresting troll.
"It is no exaggeration to say that we are facing the largest human crisis since at least the nuclear arms race."
So when, exactly, did the threat from nuclear arms fade away?
The threat from all-out thermonuclear warfare faded to almost nothing with the end of the Cold War. That was a real threat--worse than Peak Oil and global warming combined--and we got past it.
So Russia and the U.S. have a bunch of H-bombs, big deal; neither country is about to use them. Pakistan and various countries have a few little atomic bombs they can (and probably someday will) use on their neighbors, but this limited nuclear warfare is infinitesimally small potatoes compared to what thermonuclear ping pong between the old Soviet Union and the U.S. would have been.
See "Dr. Strangelove" again; they don't make films that good anymore.
I'm only about 5 years younger than you, so I remember well the 'duck-and
Damn .... have some sort of problem on this end, and my post got cut off again. Will try later.
Well do I remember August 1961 when the Berlin Wall went up and U.S. troops were mobilized and put on highest alert status. I was working at Sharpe General Depot then, and it was a zoo: Bumper to bumper convoys of trucks for seventy-two hours shipping out everything to military bases to reduce the threat to supplies stored at the General Depot--a prime Soviet target itself and not far from some big SAC bases that were targeted by multiple ICBMs and also the Soviet bomber force.
Then came Oct. 1962 and the Cuban missle crisis, when the passenger planes were filled with panicked Americans shipping their children off to Mexico; for days you could not get a ticket, because the planes were all full, and many Californians loaded up the car and drove down to Baja.
Ah, the Good Old Days--how soon people forget.
Ah, I think my posting problem has gone away.
As I was saying, I am about 5 years younger than you and so remember the 'duck-and-cover' peak Cold War era quite well.
The biggest fear of many people was getting nuked by the Ruskies, and it wasn't an irrational fear either. Given that the US and the Soviet Union had many thousands of nuclear warheads on hair-trigger alert angrily pointed at each other for roughly 40 years, I consider it a miracle that something didn't pop at some time. Well, it almost did. Perhaps the Cuban Missile Crisis sufficiently scared the crap out of the leaders of both countries for them to cool it a bit.
However, I am not as sanguine as you are about the reduced threat of a nuclear exchange. As the number of nuclear players increases, I think the chances of something going bad increases greatly. The threat is still there. If you recall, it has been reported that certain elements of the Bush regime wanted to use nuclear bunker busters on Iran's underground uranium enrichment facilities until the idea was shot down by the Pentagon brass.
Then of course we have the threat from plain old screw-ups. If I recall correctly, sometime in the 1980s Norway tested a missile in the arctic and duly notified the Russians that such a test was to be performed in such and such a place on such and such a date. Well, due to a bureaucratic snafu, the message never got through to the Soviet equivalent of NORAD. When the test was conducted, the entire Soviet air defense system lit up like a Christmas tree, and it's entire missile system was put on highest alert. If the misunderstanding had not been straightened out in time, who knows what would have happened.
MAD does indeed work, but it also poses an inherently high danger of something happening through error. Parachuting out of a plane with only one chute is really not all that dangerous. But if you do it everyday of the year, the odds will almost certainly catch up with you and one day you'll be splattered like a bug. I think the same thing is true with a MAD deterence. Sooner or later......
What worries me also is that there are certain people in power in various countries who are not afraid of a 'limited' nuclear exhange. I view a limited nuclear exchange the same as a 'limited' cafeteria food fight. There is no such thing. It starts off with a single stringbeam being tossed from one table to another, and in a matter of seconds there are whole plates of food flying across the room and the entire place is a mess.
Dr. Strangelove ... great movie!
"Duck and cover!" Ah, these young whippersnappers don't know what they have missed . . . memories of fourth grade. . .
1. When the siren sounds draw blinds and get away from windows to avoid broken glass.
2. Curl up into a tight foetal position under desk or table and close eyes very tight (to avoid being blinded by the flash).
3. When the flash comes, bend over as far as you can and kiss your sweet little tuchis goodbye.
Yeah, young people seem to think there are things to worry about these days . . . .
Well, now we have new forms of brinksmanship.
And "Failsafe"
Wow! Oil just broke below the 1.5 Yergin level ($57). How low can it go?
Will Yergin be right in 2007 about $38 oil?
I think it all depends on whether a recession materializes or not.
I think it all depends on whether Winter materializes or not.
NY's December snowless for first time in 129 years
Leanan: I can top that. Toronto, land of the polar bear and musk ox, was snowless in Dec and early Jan (okay, once I used a broom on the sidewalk). Amazing. I would guess it helps the rentals of Al Gore's movie.
Not a scrap of ice in the canals, even the smallest, and not a flake of snow on the ground in St. Petersburg. In forest hollows you can still find a patch or two ...
Aha! Just as I thought: Global warming is a Russian plot to benefit their own cold country. You wanted warm-water ports, and now you have them . . . .:-)
Murmansk and Archangel were wide open all last winter and will be this year as well.
Here in the Soutwest of Sweden temperatures have been above or high above average since early summer. An almost mediterranian summer that went on well into what would normally be fall, followed by a mild, windy and very rainy fall with no winter still in sight as I write this. Floods and storms just to make the point clear to even the most dumb-witted. I can tell you that 2006 is the year that the reality of global warming really made the mainstream here in Sweden.
How quickly people forget :) ...it reached $55 in November.
I continue to be intrigued by the relationship between Brent and the dollar that I posted on before.
EVERY DAY, since August 15th 2006, the dollar-adjusted 100 day moving average of the Brent front contract has dropped by a consistent amount. Never up, only down. This was during a time that the oil prices generally declined, but still fluctuated up and down (E.g.down to $55, back up to $63). The current down slope has held since November 22nd at between .10 and .13 per day. Before that, a consistent downslope manifested since Aug 15th.
Without speculating as to the cause - be it manipulation or emergent subtle complex market interactions or whatever, we can currently predict (as long as the trend holds) the daily closing Brent front contract price using the following formula:
Bc = Brent Closing Price
Dc = Todays Dollar Index (From the Federal Reserve data published at 5pm)
Bm = 100 Day Moving Average of Bc * Dc
Bc = (Bm - sum(Last 99 days of Bc*Dc)/100 - 0.12)/Dc (using a daily drop of .12
For today, assuming the dollar index to stay the same as yesterday (0.81687) this predicts Brent to close at $56.34. (i.e. Bc * Dc = 46.0)
Note that the predicted Brent value is extremely sensitive to the assumed drop in the moving average (range .10 thru .13 observed), giving a Brent closing price ranging from $55.11 (drop of .13) to $58.79 (drop of .10). So no one is going to make money on this day trading :-)
The intriguing thing is of course that Brent closes as 12pm EST and the dollar index only becomes available at 5pm EST.
I will update later today with the actual values
Brent came in at exactly $56.34. We have to wait for 5 pm EST to find out what the dollar index for the day will be.
Dear Francois...what you are discovering is that a)oil is benchmark priced in dollars b)the trend is your friend (until it reverses) c)the longer the average the slower it changes and d) there are lots of arbitrageurs out there that keep the dollar price of oil equivalent across any currency.
Regards.
I appreciate the feedback. I have considered these observations myself in the last few weeks:
a. Oil is benchmarked priced in dollars. This is true. If you want to discover the "real" price of oil, you need to factor out dollar fluctuations against major currencies such as the Euro and Yen. This is what I am doing by using the Feds Major CUrrency Dollar Index (MCDI). You are then left with a price that (sort of) reflects the global "value" of oil.
b. The trend is your friend - No argument. But this one is different in my opinion as it is maintaining an almost straigt line (.9972 regression) over many weeks (, Jun to Aug, 15 Aug to 21 Nov, 22Nov to now). In other words, the 100 day MA is made up of straight segments punctuated by sharp turns that happen within a week or so. What drives Brent MA on a linear trend for weeks, and then all of a sudden changes direction and goes off in another linear trend for weeks / months? Surely if the daily prices are set by market action, you would expect some meandering of a 100 day moving average over the course of 6 weeks?
The source data is available if you want to send me your email address.
Dear Francois,
A 100 day MA of anything is almost by definition linear for long periods of time. Try doing the same analysis using a 10 day MA and you will see what I mean.
I am going to do more work on this before posting again.
Thanks for your comments
Oil is priced nominally in dollars---and any other currency if you make the conversion.
The MCDI is a ratio of dollars to a combination of other things.
They are also currencies. They are no more nor less real than dollars.
When you convert from oil in dollars to oil in MCDIs you are looking at the price of oil in some-average-of-major-currencies-other-than-dollars.
That's it.
Currencies are two-way ratios of one arbitrary thing against another equally arbitrary thing.
didnt brent used to trade below wti (say about 2000)? and if so what has happened fundamentally to change the relationship between wti and brent ? anybody know ?
I suspect a change in about 600 seconds.
Regarding the 1.5 Yergin level.
Just a reminder that Yergin, in an article published on 11/1/04, was predicting that oil prices on 11/1/05 would be at $38, because rising production would force prices down to equalize supply and demand. Oil prices crossed the $60 mark, even before the hurricanes hit.
What we have actually seen is rising oil prices, in order to equalize supply and demand, because of falling crude + condensate production.
Hello Beechdriver,
I don't think Yergin will be gloating if his price is eventually reached, but untold millions of unemployed, carless, and homeless First World detritovores are engaging in machete' dances and necktie parties in their search for food and shelter, or Martial Law is declared. My guess is he will be hiding out.
On the brighter side, if ASPO's Depletion Protocols become universal--I could see the resultant conservation and biosolar shift easily driving prices down to much less than $38 because demand would be greatly reduced and employment would be high, violence minimal, and birthrates sustainable. But PO + GW Outreach would really have to saturate the public and the leadership for this to happen. Time will tell.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Bob,
Do you really think that the "Mad Max"-type scenario you sketch above is a distinct possibility even if the world depletion rate is on the order of, say, 2-3 percent per year, which is what WesTexas has been forcasting? How would you envision this coming about? Your reasoning on this topic would interest me, since I have long vacillated with regard to whether to embrace "doomerism" myself.
I obviously can't speak for Bob, but here's how i see it: There are a number of loose cannons rolling around the deck of state that can't be lashed down regardless of how many people the skipper throws at the effort. One or more of them are going to either seriously cripple or destroy the ship.
In the present instance, we can all see the cannons (peak resources, fiat currency, illegal immigration, off-shoring, debt, GW, population overshoot, etc., etc.). Most people believe that these cannons can be at least herded to a safe part of the ship and then controlled, if not lashed down. A few of use believe that is unrealistic and that the ship is going down. We have headed for the lifeboats.
I have come to believe that fictional stories offer a better mechanism to come to grips with the future than quantitative and qualitative analysis. My rationale for this is it allows the reader to speculate and argue against what is portrayed. And, this arguement is important because it forces the reader to come up with plausable alternatives.
One current book is by Jim Rawles, "Patroits: Surviving the Coming Collapse. There is probably a lot more on milita tactics than many might want but the premise is plausable. A link to the publisher is on his site http://www.survivalblog.com
Another available on line is: http://www.giltweasel.com/stuff/LightsOut-Current.pdf
This is a long read of 611 pages. In this case the premise is the aftermath of an EMP. Again, there is a lot on weapons and tactics that might turn some off but it does indicate how things might fall apart.
To me, the biggest obstical is giving up the illusion of societal permanence. Good luck.
Todd: a Realist
I agree 100% with you that the best way to understand extremely complex situations is through fiction rather than through nonfiction. If you want to understand war, Tolstoy's "War and Peace" will tell you far more useful stuff and get you closer to reality than does all of Clauswitz.
There have been hundreds of science fiction novels based on the premise that TSHTF. Typically, these are based on a theme, "If this trend goes on, then . . . ." because long ago science fiction writers realized that exponential growth cannot go on indefinitely, and when it comes to an end, that end is likely to be very nasty.
If anybody shows interest, maybe I'll post a list of my ten favorite apocalyptic SF novels; it will be hard to get the list down to ten.
Science fiction is a literature of ideas--a far more serious genre, IMO than mainstream literature is nowadays, which seems to be mainly navel gazing punctuated by bitching and moaning.
Don,
I don't know who else is but I certainly am.
Todd
Two novels by Doris Lessing
Briefing For A Descent Into Hell
The Four Gated City
O.K., here goes from memory only, alphabetized by author:
1. Asimov, Isaac, "Pebble in the Sky." Set in a far distant future after all-out atomic warfare on earth.
2. and 3. Brunner, John
"Stand on Zanzibar" population
"The Sheep Look Up" environment
4. L. Sprague deCamp, "Lest Darkness Fall"
Our Hero reverses the decline and fall of the Roman Empire.
5. and 6. Heinlein, R.A.
"Farmer in the Sky" population
"Farnham's Freehold" thermonuclear warfare
7. George R. Stewart, "Earth Abides"
disease (the most upbeat apocalyptic
novel I know of.)
8. H.G. Wells . . . several of his classic novels, maybe pick "Island of Dr. Moreau" as the best of several good ones
9. and 10. Jack Williamson
"The Humanoids" and "With Folded Hands" robots
Hello PhilRelig,
http://www.scidev.net/content/news/eng/climates-history-changing-impact-...
I think the increasing GW fragility of our food and water supplies, postPeak combined with the energetic inability to distribute it where it is needed in a timely fashion, is what will setoff a mad-max kind of scenario in some areas. Three or four consequitive bad years of harvests postPeak--all bets are off for those areas hardest hit by floods or drought, pests, and disease. No idea when this will occur and where, but Zimbabwe, Somalia, and other impoverished countries must be awful close to complete breakdown in the normal social order.
But martial law, although undesired and draconian, can do much to keep things from getting totally out of hand. People need a minimal amount of social order even as they starve: consider the social rules of the cannibals in the Andean plane crash in the early 80s. See also the starving poor in North Korea. The favored prisoners of WWII concentration camps eagerly helped send thousands to the gas chambers just to get enough food to live for one more day:
http://dieoff.com/page226.htm
Heart-breaking article--I believe the author committed suicide from grief and guilt a few years later.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Ghawar and Cantarell are the two largest producing fields in the world. They are both very high quality carbonate reservoirs, where the remaining oil is in rapidly thinning oil columns, between rising water legs and expanding gas caps. I have described the near certain decline/crash of these two fields as two warning beacons burning brightly in the night sky--warning of the onset of Peak Oil and of the onset of an oil export crisis.
(Pemex has admitted to the Cantarell decline/crash. Saudi Aramco has been mum regarding Ghawar, while insiders started furiously selling stocks, as Aramco announced the first of the "voluntary" production cuts.)
In both cases, the operators have done everything that they could think of to postpone the decline in production.
Following is a link to a presentation by journalist and energy analyst David Shields at Berkeley, in February, 2006, regarding Pemex and the Cantarell Field.
There is an image of Shields presenting the actual Cantarell production profile, together with the more optimistic production profile that Pemex was publicly using, compared to the more pessimistic internal projection. In other words, Pemex was misrepresenting what they expected that their largest field would produce in the future. Shields was on NPR a couple of days ago. He thinks that the Cantarell decline is just now hitting with full force. He expects overall Pemex production to drop by at least 800,000 bpd from 2006 to 2007.
Let's see.
Are Mexico and Saudi Arabia both declining, as predicted by the HL models? Yes.
Is Mexico's largest field declining or crashing? Yes.
Has Mexico tried to hide the predicted severity of the decline in their largest field? Yes.
Is Ghawar producing (at best) one third water, after being redeveloped with horizontal wells? Yes.
Is Ghawar at the same stage of depletion at which an analogue field crashed? Yes.
Are Saudi Arabia and Mexico top net oil exporters? Yes.
Nope. Nothing to worry about here. Go about your business. Proceed with buying the SUV to drive to and from your large suburban mortgage.
http://socrates.berkeley.edu:7001/Events/spring2006/02-09-06-shields/ind...
The latest EIA data show that Total US Petroleum Imports remain on the low side, at 11.1 mbpd (four week running average), which is the lowest late December number since 2003.
If I am right about Ghawar and Cantarell both declining or crashing, it won't take long to see confirmation of it.
Of course we are about to move into turnaround season, so imports will definitely fall over the next 2-3 months. Then they will pick back up starting in May, just like they did last year when we set new import records in the summer.
And Ghawar and Cantarell are being refilled from deep abiotic sources of oil.
Continue with your business. Nothing to worry about.
I might mention in my business news reading for the day I found a blurb related to my small CNQ position which mentions sharply lower Canadian NG exports to the USA for 2007. The analyst quoted even replied he was shocked that this story was not registering with traders (the NG trade seems to be a joke centered on the weather in Connecticut and Manhattan of the moment).
Total imports cumulative 362 day average:
difference: -1.9%, possibly due to Katrina effects (needed more imports in late 2005).
We need close to 5% more petroleum imports every year, to meet rising demand and to offset our declining domestic production.
The bulk of the net decline in 2006 imports occurred in late 2006, just as the "voluntary" cuts in Saudi production--and exports--were accelerating. And it appears that the Cantarell decline is just now beginning to hit with full force.
Here in the US, 99% of the population--perhaps even 90% of the people on TOD--probably assumes that the US can continue to increase, essentially forever, its total petroleum imports by close to 5% per year, while all of the current data point to declining net exports.
Dream on while you still can, because reality is going to wake us up, and it ain't going to be pretty.
"Nope. Nothing to worry about here. Go about your business. Proceed with buying the SUV to drive to and from your large suburban mortgage."
Caution, if you eschew consumerism you just might be accused of being a "Fossil Fuel Flagellant". That new term is from a laughable commentary written by the editor of the editorial section of my local newspaper. He takes a couple of suggestions by average citizens and tries to mischaracterize the peak oil and global warming debate as symptomatic of mass hysteria.
Incidently, Vincent Carroll has proven himself time and time again to be an adherent of the endless growth cult. The gentleman doth protest too much, methinks.
Thanks for this. I have been searching for an appropriate term to describe myself. Flaggelant. I like it. And, if I am asked to state my religion at some future time, I will enter "flaggelant".
A significant part of the Colorado economy and experience, for that matter, is snow. Maybe when it is all gone and the ski areas have closed down, which has already occurred in places like New Hampshire, people will look back at the flaggelants as saints, not subjects of derision.
The irony is that the record dumps of snow of late may have more to do with global warming than we realize. Climatologists speculate that we may be getting Spring weather patterns in December, a mixed blessing. And I wonder if we will have a repeat of last April where we received no snow and I was riding my bike in the mountains in shirt sleeves.
When it is warm in January and I hear people say what a nice day it is, I want to puke.
For me the pleasure of nature largely outshine the so called pleasures of society. And those pleasures are being taken away. Bring out the whip. For me and Mr. Carroll
TStreet, Allenspark, Colorado
I feel the same way.
Francois. Paonia, CO
Me too!
manmax, Geneva, Switzerland
I try to think that they will regret it (the snow, the cold, the season in short) more than I, in the end, but i'm not so sure...
There is also an ecological issue with warmer winters that affects us greatly here in the Midwest, USA. Without numerous good, hard freezes in the wintertime, many insect and animal pests will survive in greater numbers come spring. With increased insect populations and then increased drought in the summertime, crops and other plants are heavily damaged from the greater pest populations.
I also know that the more mild winters has allowed fire ants, armadillos and Africanized bees to increase their ranges further northward...none of which I care to see invade the KC Metro area.
and many plants get severely stressed by not enough cold (yes, many plants need a certain amount of cold to survive). This means they are more prone to diseases etc...
Tuesday, January 9th, Fort Lewis College will host Steve Andrews of ASPO. If you live around the area I highly recommend attending. The lecture hall is tiny, I think 100 - 150 total.
Durango...
^/\swco
but isn't it better to be a fossil fuel flagellant than a suburban flatulant ?
I sympathize with your attempts to explain reality to those who have never learned to deal with it. I also fear that these attempts will fall on death ears, yet again. I believe SUV sales are up, even if that will last only for a little while. :-(
http://www.ameinfo.com/financial_markets/Saudi_Arabia
The start of the huge fall is in febrary 2006.
Haven't the SA oil production cuts begun in novembre 2006?
Their first announced "voluntary" cuts in production were in the first quarter of 2006.
I think the currency game is overwhelming all other variables. Looking right now and in the last two days, the dollar is up and ALL asset classes have retreated. I've read a few articles regarding the movements the dollar makes in the first 5 days predicts the dollar move in two thirds of the cases. Never heard this before this year, but then again, I never read as much as I have recently. The contrarian in me felt the dollar would mini rally, but I think it loses steam as the year ends. When the housing restarts this year, the dominos begin to fall.
Jeez, usually three different people post this link a minute after 10:30am ET, so I haven't bothered lately.
Summary of Weekly Petroleum Data for the Week Ending December 29, 2006
"Oil prices back above $57 a barrel after bigger crude inventory decline than forecast," according to CNN.
Ummm...It's still showing 12/22!!
You must be looking at a cached version.
Though it may not be your PC that's caching it. It could be somewhere else on the Internet.
Is this a misprint?
Oil falls below 57 usd on mild US weather, large rise in US fuel stocks
http://futures.fxstreet.com/Futures/news/afx/singleNew.asp?menu=economic...
No, it went up, then back down.
If this is the "big build in crude stocks after the reopening of a major import terminal," I wonder what will happen in future weeks?
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/01/04/ap/business/mainD8ME9PTO0.shtml
SINGAPORE, Jan. 4, 2007
By DERRICK HO Associated Press Writer
Dante, who was voted "most valuable poster" at PeakOil.com, and deservedly so, had this to say about this week's inventory report:
He also points out this story from Dow Jones Newswires.
Needless to say, I agree with Dante. Note that total crude + product inventories are down by 65 million barrels from early October. As Dante's comment implied, imagine what would have happened if we had a normal winter.
Has any attempt been made anywhere to quantify the ameliorating effects of the recent spate of mild winters on the supply/demand balance for oil? For natural gas? For coal?
Would we already be over the brink and into a serious crisis if we still had winters of the sort that were the norm 50 years ago?
The graph at the bottom of
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/oog/info/ngs/ngs.html
is a good starting point (note effects of hot spell last summer). Several partial analysis have been done on the effects of recent warm winters and natural gas supply.
Basically, we would be on the edge if we had two cold winters (say lowest 10%) in a row. Three cold winters and times would be very tough for industrial users of NG and electrical generation. Still enough for home heating though.
Best Hopes,
Alan
You know, every time I read someting wrote by this mister Phil Flynn, it is always proven wrong some time later.. but this time, it is a major failure!
An "interesting" item from the Housing Bubble Blog:
Hasn't someone, for months, been relentlessly encouraging people to downsize and to get out of the 'burbs? Of course, the problem is that we are all going to be left holding the bag to some extent. However, I do think that if you try to live off half of your current income, you will at least be better prepared for what may be a triple play: Peak Oil/Peak Oil Exports/Peak Debt Implosion.
WTF is going on with Wal Mart? They appear to be putting their money where there mouth is. Yesterday, it was CFLs; today it is PVs. Several months ago, it was organics. And they say they want to provide sustainable products. While this could be perceived as clever marketing, is it really necessary to do all this to appeal to their core audience, who could probably couldn't care less about what Wal Mart is doing on the energy and environmental front. After all, it's always been about low, low prices.
Heretofore, I have not been a Wal Mart shopper. But I don't see anyone else taking the lead like Wal Mart is. It seems like these actions might represent a value change that goes beyond economics and business success. Or is there someone up there who has the vision to see that the future success of the company depends upon these kinds of changes.
I am not much of a shopper, in general, but the next time I need some CFLs, perhaps I should visit Wal Mart to help them meet their 100 million bulb goal.
What do others think? Are we just being played or should we reward Wal Mart with our dollars.
I'm still not happy with how the Wal Mart phenomenon has crushed most of the small towns throughout America. But if there is to be a silver lining from all this, perhaps it needs to be embraced. Or should I, we, hold out for things like better health care and higher wages, both here and abroad.
I suspect they are trying to deflect the flak they are taking. Their expansion plans are being zoned away and they need to appeal to all the Wal Mart bashers (like me) and our preferences (CFL, PV, organic etc etc). They grew from the PR of "Made in America" until it was no longer possible to stock their shelves.
Here is an excellent article in NYT regarding Wal-Mart's goal to sell 100MM CFL.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/02/business/02bulb.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
"More than a year ago, Mr. Scott, the company’s chief executive, began reaching out to some of environmental groups, telling them that Wal-Mart, long regarded as an environmental offender, wanted to become a leader on issues like fuel efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions.
Mr. Scott viewed such a move as a way to use Wal-Mart’s influence to improve the environment, cut costs and, of course, burnish the company’s bruised image. In September 2005, Mr. Scott and Andy Ruben, Wal-Mart’s vice president for strategy and sustainability, drove 6,000 feet to the Mount Washington Observatory in New Hampshire with Steve Hamburg, an environmental studies professor at Brown University, and Fred Krupp, the president of the advocacy group Environmental Defense.
At the summit, where scientists measure climate change 24 hours a day, the men discussed global warming, acid rain, the hole in the ozone layer and what Wal-Mart could do about them.
“You need to look at what is being sold on the shelf,” Mr. Hamburg recalled telling Mr. Scott over a dinner of turkey and mashed potatoes. He began talking excitedly about compact fluorescent bulbs. “Very few products,” he said, “are such a clear winner” for consumers and the environment.
Soon after returning from the trip, Wal-Mart publicly embraced the bulbs with the zealotry of a convert. In meetings with suppliers, buyers for the chain laid out their plans: lower prices, expanding the shelf space dedicated to them and heavily promoting the technology."
The fact that they bothered to spend a day with Fred Krupp, the president of the advocacy group Environmental Defense and the fact that Wal-Mart has created an executive level position titled “vice president for strategy and sustainability” indicates to me that they are serious about the effort, if not actually sincere.
There was some discussion of this the day that article was published. Both of Wal-mart and of PCFs.
100 mio CFL's x $8 avg. each = $800 mio revenue.
FY 2006 total revenue: $312 billion.
CFL revenue = 0.25% of total. Sounds like marketing greenwash to me.
Now, if they turned around and sold them at 50% off, that WOULD be something to applaud and loudly.
A CFL can easily save 50kWh a year. That is roughly $5+ in annual savings for the buyer. Over the 5 year lifetime of the bulb that is $25 in savings. Not a bad deal for either Walmart or the customer.
Or... you are smart and get the same CLF subsidized by your utility for 33 cents, like I do! That saves another $7.67 and the utility has to build one less coal fired power plant.
Believe the article was about installing PVs at their stores, not selling it, but in any event, it's all good.
Oops... my mistake. Oh, well, Costco and Home Depot are selling PV and so do hundreds, if not thousands of small shops across the country.
As for PV on malls: absolutely! Our closest mall has a production capacity of over 500kW peak, which should be well over their own AC power needs in summer. If I add up all the roof area of the malls we go to regularly, I see peak capacity potential of 10MW or more. That is not small potatoes by a longshot. Instead all there is on those roofs is tarpaper smoldering in the sun for summer days without end.
I wouldn't want to dissappoint you but... the Wall Street Journal reports that Wal-Mart
"using a new computerized scheduling system, will start moving many of its 1.3 million workers from predictable shifts to a system based on the number of customers in stores at any given time.
The move promises greater productivity and customer satisfaction for the huge retailer but could be a major headache for employees."
There will be no shifts per se, a worker is to report for work as scheduled, but at any time can be told to go home if slack is noted in customers. A part time worker is also expected to be "on call" It will also be be used for whenever a worker gets dangerously close to 40 hrs, or full time benny level.
1st serious mistake one can make in life: drop out of high school.
2nd serious mistake one can make in life: become a retail employee.
3rd serious mistake one can make in life: become a Walmart employee.
Everything is downhill from there...
Seriously, who cares? The people who have made these mistakes can either decide to undo them by going back to getting some kind of education or will have to live with the hardships of these jobs. It would be far more important to put some serious federal and state efforts into educating more kids fit for colleges and universities AND THEN GIVING THEM A CHANCE TO ACTUALLY GO TO COLLEGE!
Mistakes of the past can't be undone but that does not mean one has to make the same ones every year until the nation has turned into a bunch of part-time Walmart morons.
Infinite Possibilities,
Though I would like to believe that all of the young people who pass through my class are capable of pursuing a college education, the fact is, most are highly unsuited. If not for the general slackening of standards over the past fifty years, we would not see nearly so many pass through the hallowed halls. Truth be told, the education students receive is either trade schooling (I.E. engineering, nursing, teaching) or it is general education that must be refined through further trade schooling (I.E. law, medicine, etc.). For many of these students who end up in a cubicle farm shuffling boneheaded forms designed for humans with slightly more intelligence than an amped up chimp, the sheepskin is nothing more than a hoop they must jump through. It does not in anyway provide skills above and beyond what they already had, but that sheepskin is like a magic wand that raises their wages even though their job is beyond dumb, it is less than a cog. This fiction known as the college degree (except for the trades mentioned above) is merely another crappy consumer product put out by an increasingly hypocritical and self-serving educational industry.
The trades I mention can only support so many people. Once the number of engineers rises beyond a certain level, you reach saturation. Engineering income starts falling, engineers from other countries quit coming to the US on special visas, and soon the greeter at Wal Mart is wearing a pocket protector. The idea that if only every poor person somehow got a college degree we would all be just fine is specious at best. Who would work the aisles of Mal Wart? Who would harvest your food, serve you your McFatAss burgers? Who would tell you you look GREAT in that GAP product just like the thirty million other brainwashed doofi wandering the streets wearing GAP?
One need only watch your local television station and count the ads touting community colleges, mail-order colleges, and state colleges to realize the depth of our hypocrisy. Education is no longer about creating thinking adults, it is about creating education consumers who know, should they manage to achieve a critical mass of thinking skills despite their community college degree, that the job they embark on required in no way any of the purported skills they learned while taking out loans and wasting their lives. All they know is that the United States, egged on by the miserably cheap and evil neo-cons, refuses to acknowledge the worth of all professions and essentially uses Hilterian eugenics thinking to justify paying people sub-standard wages. In effect, "if you would only make the right choice and go to college, you would leave those sub-humans behind and could join us in hating our fellow Americans."
When the peak comes and goes and the cubicle farms spew their mooing herds onto the streets bereft of any visible talent, what will be the neo-con's solution? I suspect they will once again turn to Hitler, Pol Pot, or Mao Tsetung for advice. Halliburton camps anyone?
I'm sure there will hordes of unemployed engineers begging to help out with camp design.
And here's the "infinite growth" implicit in the system, laid bare. Nobody wants to pick fruit or flip burgers their whole lives, but somebody's gotta do it. Either a perma-class of serfs, or the pyramid scheme we call capitalism, where, in theory anyway, you work hard, pay your dues, and you (or your kids or grandkids) will one day be sipping the wine instead of picking the grapes.
It reminds of Robert Kiyosaki, author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and others like him, who say working is for dopes. Smart people invest, they don't work. Kiyosaki goes so far as to say we should teach this to kids in public school - financial literacy.
Of course, if everyone did what he says and invested instead of working, who would be teaching in those schools? Who would be mowing the lawn on the fancy golf courses for all those non-working investors? Who'd be maintaining the golf carts, manufacturing the clubs, sewing the ugly pants, waiting tables in the clubhouse, picking the lettuce in the club sandwiches?
Thanks for putting into words the frustration I've felt since graduating from college with an engineering degree seven years ago. Jobs nowadays are for dummies. There's very little that is stimulating about work. It's all stuff I could have done after getting out of middle school. When I want to challenge my mind and body I make furniture and cabinets. Now that's interesting (but, alas, it doesn't come with a nice paycheck and benefits).
Interesting to hear a teacher's perspective. What a racket!
Tom A-B
Cherenkov,
"The slacking of standards in high schools" is a purely political phenomenon. It has been tried in Germany "to help the socially under-privileged from nothern states" pass in higher numbers to university. The result was that the now also under-educated socially under-privileged from the northern states got their asses kicked by the Bavarian students and those from Baden-Wuerttemberg and that the top universities (including the ones in the north!) simply set their admission standards higher, leading to very tense political talks between the states about common standards. Guess what: sanity and the more strict southern states won most parts of that argument. And righteously so.
Students from Singapore, France, England simply laugh about US education guidelines and a cursory look into one of your college level calculus books surprised me: half the material I had seen in 11th and 12th grade in high school.
If you find that a student really can't deal with this kind of material, spare them the time and agony to fail it and teach them something useful, like gardening. In the end, what is a 50% high school dropout statistics good for? To destroy these student's self-esteem methodically?
But those who can learn, should, no, have to be sent through a rigorous education system. Learning these basics never comes nearly as easy and as cheap as in high school. Everyone who has been there knows that. In my personal experience, I could have done the first two classes on calculus two years earlier and I could have managed the material of the first two semesters in math in high school. I know dozens of other students who could have done the same. Same for physics. Same for chemistry. Same for biology. I am not a genius. I didn't have to be. And those who can't manage the material when they are 16, will not likely manage it when they are 20 or 22, either.
"For many of these students who end up in a cubicle farm shuffling boneheaded forms designed for humans with slightly more intelligence than an amped up chimp, the sheepskin is nothing more than a hoop they must jump through."
This might be true. But it is only true because we make it true. It is not a general necessity of life. The incredible number of artistic and self-supporting people in the US proves that. To educate students with such a result in mind without an attempt to achieve social transformation through edication is nothing short of criminal. The well documented cases of guidance counsellors who keep telling their students to shoot low when looking for college and university admissions is appaling. My teachers kept telling me that I always have to try, even if I fail. Actually... they didn't have to tell me that much, I kept trying all by myself.
"Once the number of engineers rises beyond a certain level, you reach saturation. Engineering income starts falling, engineers from other countries quit coming to the US on special visas, and soon the greeter at Wal Mart is wearing a pocket protector."
Guess where I and the 40 percent of my colleagues who worked at the national lab that got me my first visa came from? The US keeps importing engineers and scientists because it does not make enough, not because they are cheaper. I read this morning that 52% of the CEOs in silicon valley are foreign born. That is telling. Four of my six bosses in the US were foreign born. They came from France, Germany, Italy and India. My colleagues come from all over the place.
"Who would work the aisles of Mal Wart? Who would harvest your food, serve you your McFatAss burgers?"
Actually... a lot of them are Mexicans, albeit I eat a lot at Chinese restaurants and all of the people there are either Chinese or Mexican.
I saw an interview with a CA farmer once about attempts to use unemployed Americans for the harvest. He said most of them ran away after the first day because all of their muscles and joints hurt. They had ruined a lot of the veggies and left a lot on the fields. Needless to say, the man brought the Mexicans back who do a marvelous job for him every year. He can't afford to have his farm ruined by useless high school dropouts.
"One need only watch your local television station and count the ads touting community colleges, mail-order colleges, and state colleges to realize the depth of our hypocrisy."
Reading the class schedule of my local college always makes me wheep/laugh. Education you get at mail-order schools is generally useless. My company employs hardly anything but PhDs and university educated engineers, our techs are all self-taught. We can take a halfway smart looking Asian person with no previous experience and teach them more about the practical side of electronics assembly, testing and debugging in a few years than four year graduates from Berkeley or MIT will know (unless they wrote their thesis on electronics assembly, of course).
The truth is: either knowledge is deeply theoretical and then it takes four to ten years of hard core university environment to get it or it can be taught on the fly to everyone who is willing to learn. In practice I find that Asians, Mexicans and many other immigrants who are willing to do physical work are generally eager to learn, while the high school kids from the US I encounter in retail are just bored beyond belief and can not imagine that there is a whole different world out there beyond their stacks of jeans. And if I had to accuse some institution for that, I would point straight at the high schools.
I didn't expect a debate on the merits of education.
What I do see is that WalMart is entering a new corporate strategy. After being hauled through the manure for the last 12-18 months in the national media, it seems to have found that Legal can't solve this one with new zoning variances. All the negative attention must be affecting bottom line, along with declining income in their customer base. So they are coming out green in attempt to stem this loss and perhaps pickup market share among more affluent folks. With a couple product introductions, and the addition of solar panels on the roof as the ultimate "green" sign blazing off the hiway, it changes the debate. And it saves them money. A friendly green store to the middle class, low, low prices for the "less fortunate" A win-win.
In all other regards, it remains predatory, esp to it's workers.
If Walmart believes they have bad business because they have bad publicity, they are deranged. If they have bad business, it is probably because they have exhausted the credit card limit of the lower middle class who bought their cheap Chinese plastic crap. If they want the money of people with higher credit limit and probably stroger taste muscle, they will have to change some of their merchandise. See Costco... it works for them. On the other hand, I hear that they never thought it was necessary to alienate their workers... :-)
Where I live there are no Walmarts... simply because they know that they can't take Costco's clients. When we buy crap, we buy crap with a little bit of taste.
On the other hand... I still don't mind Walmart producing a few green MWs because of an idiotic marketing decision.
Yes, I agree. Wal-Mart is trying for a more affluent customer base, because their core customers are being hammered by higher fuel prices. Not only are they buying less, they are driving out to Wal-Mart less, because they can't afford the gas to get out the typical Wallyworld boondocks location.
As a sort of collapse/entropy note, you realize that 'Guess where I and the 40 percent of my colleagues who worked at the national lab that got me my first visa came from? The US keeps importing engineers and scientists because it does not make enough, not because they are cheaper. I read this morning that 52% of the CEOs in silicon valley are foreign born. That is telling. Four of my six bosses in the US were foreign born. They came from France, Germany, Italy and India. My colleagues come from all over the place.' could be reasonably read as a sign that the U.S. is simply no longer able to support its own needs without using other sources? I can assure you, that the number of American engineers working outside of the U.S. is much, much smaller.
IMHO, the "GI bill" was the best idea of any US administration, ever. It should have been replaced by a "citizen bill" a long time ago saying:
1. Everyone who lives within the borders of the US gets universal healthcare.
2. Everyone who lives within the borders of the US gets free tuition for any qualifying four-year college or university which accepts him as a student.
These two things are the highway for social transformation to a highly educated and wealthy citizenry.
Pure econ POV: Great job at increasing efficiency.
Reality POV: That is Bullshit!
Such a system is disgusting. In fact it is depraved.
This is almost as bad as the casually hired labour each morning if you were first in line during the Thirties.
WalMart Employees are normally low waged, on the edge of economic survival, possibly holding two jobs. They may have kids, child care issues. They will probably have the costs of driving to work. Only to be then told to clear off and come back tomorrow or later that day. Or be 'on call'. As an Oil Services Manager, I know exactly what being on call can do to your family life. But big difference is: I get paid for it.
Wal Mart will also increase the Carbon Footprint of its employees by increasing non-productive driving going to failed shifts and having to return home and then return later.
A nice way of externalising costs. No doubt some 'suit' will get a big fat raise for thinking this one up. Could they not at least automate a text message system to stop them turning up and burning fuel and car miles?
What is missing from modern neo- conservative capitalism is any measure of what could be called a social contract with employees, the communities they live in, social arrangements, families.
Chances are, these employees wont even have the luxury of voting with their feet. Looking at the job creation and destruction of the last few years where to go? Taco Bell? McDonalds?
I suppose the employees will still be expected to smile and say have a nice day.
I dont suppose the 'consumers' - (ugh I hate that perjorative term) will consider staying away from Wal Mart?
Ultimately, we get the society we all deserve.
No doubt it will come here soon. ASDA is owned by Wal Mart...
Could it be that neo-con is short for neo-confidence [game] rather than neo-conservative? :-)
Nah, that's how we hire illegal immigrants.
Of course, Wal-Mart was busted and fined for that already, so I guess this is the next best thing.
For One; I have to wonder if the economic benefits of things like economizing the trucking, LED signage and Solar Panels was so counter-intuitive to the preexisting 'culture' within WalMart that we're just witnessing their revelation that this is actually good business, and they don't really have to worry about being teased by the other megacorps for being 'Hippies'..
Two; I do try to buy local, and for a number of well-represented reasons have avoided shadowing their doorway almost to a fault.. the lesser side of my purchasing rulebook says that 'If it's a good product that you NEED, and you find it worth the asking price, there's no shame in buying it.' I'd still get it from a locally owned shop first, though, as available..
I pop into a Walmart every couple of months, as I would a Kmart or Woolworths and just see what's there. Did this once in Dec.. didn't see anything I wanted/needed, and left emptyhanded. (And Made all but one Xmas gift this year)
It's just part of the general trend of mass retailers to sell EVERYTHING. Amazon sells everything plus the kitchen sink online now and people seem to buy it. Costco has gone the same way. They have PV for a while now, and kitchen cabinets and curtains and RV water filters and tires and what not. It does not matter to these companies what they stock. As long as it gets more people into their stores or online, their bottom lines will grow. PV, by the way, seems like a good business proposition.
Personally I really don't care who sells products that are meant to conserve or actually produce renewable energy - as long as people buy them! Renewables and related equipment are not a religious celebration of the green life style. They are real-world, down-to-earth, as dirt-cheap-as-possible trading goods.
PV at Walmart, in that regard, could be seen as a paradigm shift where PV will move from the geeky early-adopter mythology into the mainstream. "If Walmart sells PV", the average Joe will think, "how bad can they be?". The average Joe is right about that.
:-)
Regarding the article about renewables and EIA projections: I'm truly astonished that anyone believes any projections coming from the EIA. The EIA considers collection of current and historical data to be their mission. Projections are a minor side item for them, and they put no energy into doing it well: they just project data (and old data at that) in a linear way.
It is far worse than that: the general public simply assumes that everything they could buy yesterday will be there for them to buy tomorrow, at a cheaper price, of course. It's the way it ALWAYS has been and therefor ALWAYS will be. That is how the human mind interprets reality before it turns on the frontal lobe. But many people did not use their light switches, yet, to illuminate the PO problem. They will, eventually, when reality forces them to. But that hasn't happened, yet.
As for the EIA: they mention forecasting as one of four product groups. In their own words that indicates they truly believe they are doing a good job.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/aboutEIA/products.html
An even cursory look on their forecast presentations shows that they are not meeting their self-advertisement standards by a longshot.
At this point, Greer starts to come into clearer view - someone who really needs to read a lot more speculative fact/fiction to realize what is currently possible or imaginable, and not what faded into trivial status a half generation ago.
For example, the entire budding field of biological computing should appeal to someone writing something titled The Archdruid Report. As a short link, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_computing. It is quite possible to imagine immensely complex computional system using no industrial base at all at this time - imaginable, though certainly not realized. However, such biologically based based systems may not be sustainable enough, if a standard of lasting over geological scales is applied.
To use a calculator as an example to compare and contrast between pre- and past industrial technologies (calculators are a fine example of the magic and wonder of technology, ca. 1976), from the perspective of a deindustrialized future, tends to lead to the conclusions of its premises - industrial products which would no longer function or be produced in a deindustrial future.
But I can give a much more frightening example of just how far we have already entered this process of deindutrialization. For example, in the 1930s, the 'United States ability to produce armor, given the special manufacturing and testing procedures, meant the steel mills could only produce 19,000 tons of armor per year.' ( http://www.battleship.org/html/Articles/IowaClass/Armor.htm )
We are now so incapable of being able to armor battleships, we can no longer even repair a single turret on a single battleship - which is why the U.S. Navy had to retire the Iowa - http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/ships/battleships/iowa/bb61-ia.html
Of course, somehow, losing the skill to make or repair a battleship or a calculator seems like pretty silly examples, though much of what he writes is quite enjoyable to read and consider.
My mistake was in thinking he actaully read broadly before speculating on the future, instead of being fairly reductionist - computing require IC microchips, thus when IC microchip manufacturing is no longer possible, end of computing. Unless you discover, after making a slide rule a central metaphorical feature of one a future based story, that a plastic slide rule as a symbol of decline is pretty silly. Or you read about other alternatives, some in the demonstration stage, of computional methods which have nothing to do with integrated circuits.
Give him full credit for realising it, though, even if he probably orignally intended the slide rule as a symbol of failed hope, instead of being what it actually is - something his future would be able to manufacture en masse, sustainably.
Learning is hard - prediction even worse. For example, today oil seems at $56, because the world seems to be much warmer this year, so we are burning less for heating. So much for my predictive skills.
Not for Greer, I suspect. His viewpoint is a variation of Tainter's: that complexity has an energy cost, and it's only the cheap oil fiesta that allows us to maintain it.
Entropy is something I believe in - all complex systems, however defined, will lose complexity over time.
I actually find Greer's thinking quite good - I just wish he had a broader scope, somehow.
This is why comparing him to Le Guin (whose own flaws become obvious in her lesser work) can be fruitful. Reading 'Always Coming Home' would likely be interesting, even if it has a number of Le Guin flaws (heavy handed symbolism, for example) mixed in with its fascinating insights, lovely writing, and daring attempt to create an entire culture's art - including music and food recipes.
His heart and his writing tends to be in the right place, it is just somehow frustrating to see how limited his specific views to support his thinking are.
It makes his writing more easily dismissed, at least for me - and this bothers me more than it should. He seems so close, somehow.
To be "a stong believer in entropy" is an oxymoron. Entropy is a scientific term that requires knowledge of thermodynamics, not religious belief. One can believe in it about as much as one can believe in gravity and the smashing action of a ten pound hammer. Entropy is a physics term with the action of a ten pound hammer and one should know how to use it properly before swinging it with all might.
One can calculate the entropy stream our planet receives from the sun daily on the back of an envelope: we know both the temperature of the incomming light at approx. 5600K, the temperature of the cold temperature bath which is at some 300K and we know the total amount of energy by multiplying the area of the day side of the planet with the solar constant and average atmospheric transparency. The rest is trivial math. What is not so trivial is to actually understand that the planet is not a closed system and therefor it does not lose complexity all the time, far from it, actually.
So if we calculate that entropy (it is a huge number on human, yet a very small number on astronomical scales!) and compare it with the entropy we get from burning oil and gas and coal and nuclear fuel in our reactors, we will inevitably notice that there is no real problem here at all from a truly scientific perspective and that all this talk about "entropy destroying order" (which is doesn't) is just a fancy way of saying: "Mummy, I am afraid that the world will end tomorrow!".
I am not saying that people's fears are not important, but to a physicist framing them in popularised thermodynamic terms makes for one thing only: a bad joke reminescent of the use of the word "entropy" by creationists to "disprove the theory of evolution".
I would strongly urge everyone not to use "entropy" as an argument for anything, unless they have actually calculated the numerical value of the entropy involved in the physical process they are discussing. In most cases trivialised entropy arguments go nowhere except to show that one does not have any real science knowledge and in those cases where they are actually of importance, the true energy flows and the temperatures of the temperature baths involved are often very hard to measure or calculate from first principles. Good practical example: try building a reliable, simple and precise calorimeter - I promise you will make big bucks in the physical test and measurement market.
I have been in physics and related engineering fields professionally for over 20 years. Not once in my carreer did I feel the urge or had the technical need to make an honest technical argument based on entropy and I have made probably thousands based on energy and momentum conservation, causality and symmetry. Entropy is something that should be left to those who need it most often: chemists, process engineers, thermodynamic engine designers, solid state physicists, cosmologists and the likes.
Ironically, your description of the "trivial" calculation of "the entropy stream our planet receives from the sun," leads me to fall out of my chair laughing, my degree of disorder increasing as I nearly let go a "stream of entropy." Thanks for your wonderfully humorous misuse of science. It has greatly brightened my day.
More ironically, in the time it took you to write your polemic, you could have done the whole calculation yourself. Twice.
If you had been a physicist, that is.
Isn't it great how reality always fools the fool? Twice.
It isn't a misuse, but I don't like the terminology.
More precisely, the photons coming in at 5600K have capability to do useful order-increasing work on Earth.
That's because the photons leaving earth at 300K have more entropy than the incoming ones---filling more distinct quantum states in a noise-like manner---despite the near perfect equality of energy inflow and outflow.
The fact that plants have been around for geological time is sufficient evidence.
Entropy doesn't really 'flow'---the molecular and atomic dynamics of even deterministic systems are chaotic hence nearly all reactions of large particle systems end up increasing disorder.
I should, of course, have talked of "entropy increase" where the radiation gets converted from short to long wavelengths. My point was that the total amount of entropy generated can be "simply" calculated from the incoming and the outgoing radiation spectra without having to know all the details inbetween. Unless there would be a major change in Earth's entropy (it could be warming up as we speak), all incoming energy has to go out, of course, so the equations are really just about the radiation's temperature, which is reasonably well defined. This is how I like to talk about entropy. It is much more useful as a precise numeric quantity than as a hand-waving concept.
I am now going back up the thread, reversing entropy while adding to it, if only metaphorically.
The 'belief' in entropy is meant somewhat ironically - there are people who believe in collapse, which is respectable as an analytical framework, and then there are people such as myself, who believe that everything collapses in the long term.
It is just an attempt to balance two related, but distinct, perspectives.
I think he and Ms. LeGuin have entirely different purposes in writing. He is trying to communicate a complex idea to a wider audience. Simplification, even over-simplification, is the point.
What I like about Ursula K. LeGuin is her deep knowledge of anthropology. My father and I knew her father, the great anthropologist Kroeber, and sometimes I'd run into her in Berkeley. A most remarkable woman and great science fiction writer.
Wish she would stay away from fantasy, however. Her classic works of science fiction are as good as any that have ever been published. Her poems are really something, too.
I read five books by Mrs. LeGuin and she left me with a deep, deep sorrow. Much about her writing fascinates me, yet, her constant lapses of physical as well as emotional logic make me sad. The worlds she describes keep violating their own rules and the people she describes keep violating their own characters.
Mrs. LeGuin could have been high up there in the world of phantastic literature, if she just had the capacity to keep up with her own imagination. I do not believe she does. Like many authors she manages to conjure up something that looks great on the surface but has little self-consistency. But in the end I always found something lacking on both the science side and the human side.
Not even Stanislaw Lem managed to write phantastic literature with an artistically perfected human touch, but at least he hardly ever got his own facts wrong.
If I feel a need to learn something about the tragic side of human affairs, I will probably go for Nabokov or Solzhenitzyn. Or T. H. White if I really, really, really need it put in a phantastic setting. "The Once and Future King" has a lot to say about innocence, knowledge, depression, love, fear, jealousy and... politics.
Where are the lapses in logic in "The Left Hand of Darkness"?
LeGuin is a writer who knows exactly what she is doing.
I always thought that the idea that a totalitarian regime would send the aliens from Area 51 to the Gulag rather than getting at the source of their knowledge and power (and if by no other way than torture and vivisection) very humorous. It never made sense to me. Not even if the aliens look like them and are disguised as one of their own. The concept of "first contact" in the book is a farce. A people who can travel to another star system and mindread can do better than that. A lot better. Or at least one would hope so. Or at least one would hope they would screw it up right! I have seen better botched first contacts in books by the Strugatskys.
As a story about vanity and totalitarianism and how they interact... maybe. But I can get that from Solzhenicyn much, much better.
A review I just looked at claims the novel to explore "a society where gender is of no importance". Then why, oh why, is everyone in the book emotionally equivalent to a thirteen year old who can't get the girl he has a hard one for? Or should I say a gay thirteen year old who can't even explain the fact that they have a hard one for the same gender, yet feels rage and jealousy running through their veins at the same time?
I suppose that happens because Mrs. LeGuin, despite trying hard, does not have the insights of a really great author into the human condition. I can learn more about people by reading Stanislaw Lem's "Mortal Engines". He eliminated gender problems (mostly) by picking robots. But at least Lem's robots tend to write love poetry to the robotress which is far more honest (by being absurdly silly, if you know what I mean) than Mrs. LeGuins gender change parody. And I say that despite the fact that Lem did not manage to paint a single female character EVER that did not end up being a caricature of a woman in a world of emotionally disoriented men. His robots, though, and his males, are full of testosterone with iron bands of frontal lobe steel wrapped around it to stop them from exploding.
In the end, I was bored by the book.
Sorry to hear you were bored by that one. I wasn't.
How did you like "The Dispossessed"?
I didn't read that one. I have to admit that in general I liked both LeGuin's universe and some of her characters but I was always disenchanted in the end because of obvious weaknesses in both. It's always like she is up to something really great with a book and then gives it away with a trivial mistake. I found these episodes very anticlimactic.
I got introduced to the Strugatskys at age eleven with "Far Rainbow". It was the wrong book and I was way too young. One can read some of Lem at age 13 and enjoy him, but I don't think "Far Rainbow" makes for a great introduction to SciFi for kids (I had read half the works of Jules Verne by then, of course). I read the book again a couple of years ago, almost a quarter century after I saw it for the first time and I liked it much better, despite it not being a master work, by any measures and not even close to most everything else the brothers have written.
Maybe it is the opposite problem with LeGuin... I might have read her too late, after having seen almost all of Lem and much of the Strugatskys. I guess my taste and quality criteria for SciFi had been too settled already.
As far as phantastic literature goes, one of the last and best things I have ever read (although it is on the far, far border of what I would still call phantasy) is Christoph Ransmayr's "Die Letzte Welt" ("The last world") in which he reflects on Ovid's "Metamorphosis" by telling the story of the Roman Cotta who is looking for the poet Ovid who has been banished to the Black Sea. Cotta's journey to the end of the Roman world becomes an exploration of Ovid's Metamorphosis itself. The language of the original is absolutely stunning, although I am afraid you would have to be able to read the book in its original German. I doubt it can be adequately translated.
To answer a couple of your points about 'The Left Hand Of Darkness' -
Maybe, just maybe, because the societies the 'alien envoy' lands in don't really much believe or care about his alienness? Sort of like how Germans don't care much about female body hair, while Americans are very, very concerned about?
As for sex - it is very important on Winter, it is just each cycle, you are either male or female, and between cycles, sex isn't a real concern.
To be honest, I think you miss some of the point of her writing - in the late 1960s, many of her ideas were radical. Today, they seem somewhat commonplace.
However, while I truly enjoy The Dispossessed,' it is like a constructed chess match. If you are interested in technical frameworks, as compared to the human condition, Le Guin is probably not very satisfying. And she can be didactic.
On the other hand, if you like 'phantastic' literature, 'The Lathe of Heaven' is pretty good in its modest way.
The Left Hand of Darkness is one of my favorites. But I've often thought that it was very much a product of its time, and might not speak to later generations as deeply. Ditto James Tiptree, Jr.
I think LeGuin's fantasy, like the Earthsea books, might actually hold up better in the long run. Earthsea is basically a coming of age story, and thus of more universal interest.
Though I didn't care for that last one.
I think all great literature is a product of its time--specific example, Tolstoy, "War and Peace."
Who cares about the Napoleonic Wars now but a few history buffs? But the truths about war and about people and about human happiness are DUETS, Deep Universal Eternal Truths.
No, LeGuin is not another Tolstoy, but IMO she is a first-class writer.
"The Dispossessed" and "The Left Hand of Darkness" are my two favorite LeGuin novels and indeed are near the top of my list of best fifty science fiction novels.
I have to agree... although great literature always contains a core of truth which can be seperated from the aging historical frame of reference. I happen to love G.B. Shaw and feel that he isn't being played enough on the stage. One of the reasons that he isn't being played is that much of his work makes references to British politics of his time, to British Puritanism and to British Bigotism. And while much of that, of course, could be handily translated into a terrific self-mirror of modern American society, I doubt people would pay money to see their own caricatures portrayed by a century old author. Shaw, in the US, obviously falls victim to the economic censor. Except for his beloved piece "Pygmalion", which American's usually think is based on the movie classic "My Fair Lady". Of course, Shaw had to ruin the happy end...
:-)
Actually, I think the book holds up pretty well in many ways (crossing the ice is solid adventure writing with a level of poetry not often found in such stories), just that the 'radical' idea of a society where gender plays no essential role no longer seems so hypothetical or strange as when she imagined it.
Personally, I thought the fourth Earthsea book was Le Guin at her didactic worse, not the last one - though that collection of stories wasn't that strong, either.
I think another thing people miss about Le Guin is how explicitly political her writing was in the early 1970s - some of her stories set in an essentially impoverished and totalitarian (even 'The Lathe Of Heaven' shares this) U.S. would be considered incredibly doomerish, even by TOD standards.
Of course, that we are sliding into much of what she imagined then isn't really all that surprising - anybody with open eyes and a working mind could see where the path the U.S. is still following would lead.
Not really sure why you feel a need to diss Greer. I suspect he is much more widely-read than you imply. I do not think the slide rule parable is at all silly.
"Give him full credit for realising it, though, even if he probably orignally intended the slide rule as a symbol of failed hope, instead of being what it actually is - something his future would be able to manufacture en masse, sustainably."
What do you know of his probable origninal intentions? My reading of the article was that he clearly and specifically meant to present slide rule technology as an illustration of something his future _would_ be able to manufacture en masse, sustainably, etc. In fact, that's what the article is about! Did you even read the article in your rush to trumpeting your bio-computer nano-nonsense?
In any case, the fact is that "biological computing" is way far from being anywhere near generally applicable, and is way way far from being independent of an industrial infrastructure. Just because it has the word "biological" in it does not make it non-industrial.
When IC chip manufacture is impossible, so will be all this other pie in the sky high tech nano-stuff.
- sgage
I agree. Well, maybe not en masse, but it could certainly be made. He's holding up the sliderule as the sort of technology we should be pursuing.
Someone described it as trying to decide what to bring with you when fleeing a burning house. Of course, you'd love to bring your valuable antique furniture and your grandmother's china. But you can't bring it all; you have to decide what to save.
"Someone described it as trying to decide what to bring with you when fleeing a burning house."
And surely, with my guitar in one hand, with my other I would grab my late father's slide rule, the one he used to get through MIT back in the 40's. :-)
- sgage
Does anybody think we could at least save discrete transitor technology in a de-industrial future?
How about vacuum tubes?
How about vacuum tubes that don't use tungsten?
The energy cost of not using computers is so high that we will continue to use them.
99% of the energy cost of using computers is in running Windows instead of a smaller, cheaper, faster, Linux operating system.
This is a nonproblem.
Hi wkwillis-
Your reply seems to suggest that we can use remnant technology indefinitly; I'm not sure we're on the same page. Just because the cost of not using computers is unbearable doesn't ensure such won't come to pass.
I understand this thread to be referring to a hypothesized future in which energy is so expensive and scarce, that industry on the scale we now have would be impossible, and that most manufacturing would be local with locally available skills, resources, energy, and technology base.
Since computers/disks/display devices are not the most durable of items, they will have to be continually manufactured into the future if we are to continue using them, never mind the energy consumption of the hardware, let alone Linux vs Windows.
My question is very simple: In this hypothesized de-industrial future in which economies are mainly local with sparse, low-volume trade, could we realistically expect to re-create even basic electronic technology the way, say, a blacksmith in Boston ca 1800 might fabricate a horse-shoe?
If we can't even fabricate a transitor from local/regional resources, where are we going to get a computer? I'm afraid we might have to kiss all of our beloved electronics technology goodbye somewhere on the back-side of Hubbert's Peak.
Can I ask you a question?
The computer and screen you are using to read this : Where was it made?
And how did it get from where it was made to where you are now?
I would be careful with that question. He might know the answers. You, on the other hand, seem to be somewhat ignorant about them. So he can tell you what the workarounds for production and transportation problems would be. Could you?
Well, If , like mine it comes from SE Asia, then the unit costs have fallen and cheap fuel and bulk load transports have made export to the UK cheap enough to allow me to buy one.
However, in future times, the shipping costs are likely to go up, manufacturing and material costs also and then , if you have an indigenous industry you are ok. If your industry was stripped out early on in the globalisation process then growing a new one may not be that easy.
Certainly, I suggest that mass-market consumer electronics will be as vulnerable to future energy and materials shocks as any other product.
The main cost driver for that monitor continues to be the display, which requires a manufacturing process for thin glass plates of excellent surface flatness without the use of optical grinding and polishing and TFT (thin film transistor) technology which delivers flawless function of millions of switching elements over the full area of the screen. Energy costs for making these parts are small compared to investment in precision machining and chemical processing technology.
Let's assume the total energy cost of the product is 20% of its sales price and energy costs double. This would increase the total cost by 20%. Let's say energy costs explode five times. Still, this product only doubles in price. I can still afford it. What I couldn't afford any longer, is driving an SUV, if I had one.
Container freight cost is a couple thousand dollars per container from anywhere to anywhere. Let's say that increases five fold. Now it is ten thousand dollars. I can pack 10 tons of monitors in one container, which is approx. 2000 screens. The total transportation cost increase per screen is now $10000/2000 = $5. I can afford that... what I can't afford any longer is to heat my home in winter with oil.
Industrial products are a non-problem. They do not depend on cheap oil. Personal transportation and heating do.
Packaging a single bipolar power transistor costs about as much (25 cents) as making a couple hundred thousand gates on a modern CMOS process. That is the equivalent of an HP-41 calculator. On a modern process such a chip would run that calculator at a million operations per second off a solar cell. A vaccum tube computer with that kind of performace would (if it could be built at all), require its own power plant and have the size of a football field.
Nope. We are not going back. Not even close.
Another obfuscating reply from InfinitePossibilites: "Packaging a single bipolar power transistor costs about as much (25 cents) as making a couple hundred thousand gates on a modern CMOS process..."
He is replying to some unspecified thesis I'm not advancing.
If you can't fabricate even a discrete transistor, (or something even simpler - a vacuum tube) you have zero prospect of fabricating an IC. Do you dispute this?
The current "modern process" that is behind all our electronic technology is at the top of a very complex energy/economic foodchain. The thesis in this thread is that our complex technological/economic system would cease functioning if the energy subsidy where to be removed; as seems inevitable somewhere on the backside of Hubbert's Peak.
If we're "not going back", we need a plan.
"He is replying to some unspecified thesis I'm not advancing."
You were asking if we could do bipolar transistors rather than CMOS, right? The answer is no. They are way more expensive in terms of cost per part and energy than CMOS. Vacuum tubes are more expensive than bipolar transistors by another factor of hundred, at least. But let me know where I can buy tubes for my next amplifier project for 0.001cents per piece. That's about the price of a CMOS gate on a typical digital chip. Or 1 cents per transistor die. Or even one dollar. The usual offers for simple triodes and pentodes are around $5-$50 a piece...
So if your premise is that we have to do everything with the least amount of energy, CMOS is the answer. And if you think that bipolar transistors are somehow "easier" to manufacture than CMOS or that vacuum tubes are magically "easier" to manufacture than bipolar transistors, I can only conclude that you know very little about the manufacturing processes for either.
You asked a question. I gave you the same answer any EE or physicist who worked in his life with tubes, bipolars and CMOS would have given you. That you don't like it, IMHO, is only a function of willful ignorance on your side, not one of reality.
"If you can't fabricate even a discrete transistor, (or something even simpler - a vacuum tube) you have zero prospect of fabricating an IC. Do you dispute this?"
If you can make a great vacuum tube, you have all the ingredients necessary to make an IC: electricity, ultrahigh vacuum technology, rare elements and the chemistry necessary to process them, precision machining, process control etc..
But good luck with your next vacuum tube fab project. Let me know how much energy it takes to manufacture tungsten filaments and oxide cathodes and getter materials and to get the air out of that sucker and melt the glass body shut. You will be surprised.
:-)
"If we're "not going back", we need a plan."
The usual plan is to go to high school, then university, learn the laws of nature and their technological application and then to come up with proper engineering solutions to do the same thing (or something better), cheaper. But don't worry... while you are afraid of the future, other people are gladly executing that plan. Even people who have failed the plan can do their share by driving a Prius rather than an SUV... saves way more energy than not buying an mp3 player.
In a future where you could manufacture only slide rules, you would actually have to teach people how to use them. The basic ability to understand the concepts of a slide rule together with the manufacturing technology to make them would already enable these people to build giant solar power plants that would exceed the power output of all of our power plants by an order of magnitude. Moving solar mirrors plus Stirling engines plus electric generators are ALL early 19th century technology. They just haven't been used on a large scale, yet, that's all.
All end-of-day fantasies share a simple common feature: they have to ignore reality to be exciting. Reality is much less funny. I bet with you that not one in twenty kids in high school can explain to you how a slide rule works and not one in a hundred could sketch the innards of a pocket calculator chip for you.
I could have done both when I was sixteen. But then... I was a geek in school who happened to have good teachers.
'All end-of-day fantasies share a simple common feature: they have to ignore reality to be exciting.'
But I also grew up having a good school with good teachers - and the parents of other students were people responsible for making sure that the technology worked - of course, that technology just happened to be things like nuclear tipped Tomahawk cruise missiles. Your end of day fantasies were 9 to 5 jobs for a number of people I grew up among.
I wouldn't be quite so quick to dismiss the reality we still live in, though it seems as if the idea of building bombs to keep the peace was not as stupid as it always seemed to me.
But war is another subject, and one I try to avoid here. However, literally trillions of dollars have been spent either creating or preventing (your choice) those end of day fantasies. Somehow, all that money and technology does seem boring - or too horrible to look at it. The best that can be said, is that for all of 51 years, people have not used nuclear weapons - how much longer do you realistically think they won't be used? Any answer is reasonable, as long as it includes the reality of what the world currently possesses to use within minutes, hours, days, and weeks.
I am not dismissing the reality we live in. Instead I am saying that the future is never a scaled version of the past. The solution to computers requiring too much electricity is not the slide-rule but a power optimized version of the Linux operating system running on new multi-processors and whatever will come beyond that. To server operators getting power consumption down is today's 9-5 job!
And all it would take to get my office computer's power consumption down would be a bios which would allow the machine to wake up on network traffic from the backup-server. The only reason it has to run off-hours is because it's an old machine which can't do that and backup is vital to my job. For that we waste some 500kWh a year... yet, I do not dare to ask my IT for a new machine. I know the company policy...
You see, I am a realist. I know where the real problem lies and I know how to solve it. I do not need to dream of giant wooden slide rules.
The solution to nuclear terrorism (which will happen), is not all-out thermo-nuclear war, just like the solution to conventional terrorism is obviously not conventional war. I thought we just learned that lesson, didn't we?
The solution to fears about nuclear terrorism is decentralisation of important services and backup. The main (and intended) damage in the US will be the knee-jerk-reaction where the population will be fleeing every urban center there is, including the on of Lake Wobegone.
The responsible governments of this world have all the means necessary to make sure that a terrorist nuclear attack will not lead to an escallation and MAD can be extended to a universal shield against any nation players with self-destructive tendencies. The world can do this the easy way... or the hard way, if necessary with a few hundred million dead. Even the hard way will not resurrect the slide-rule (of which I have a small collection, by the way).
The best things that can be said about nuclear weapons is that America has used them on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and that they did not kill that many more people than a well executed fire raid on Tokio did. It matters what you hit, how you hit it and how many lives you want to take. Nukes simply make it easier, cheaper and faster. To the dead... it is all the same.
Hmmmm.... Since the beginning of the 'age of computers' the computing equipment has been getting more and more efficient, and the overall energy devoted to computers and related equipment has probably grown exponentially. Same trend in the automotive industry; more efficient cars, much greater overall use of energy. I've heard engineer types wax eloquent about how much more efficient we could do things, from brushing our teeth to rocketing across the planet at 400 mph. I have yet to hear of an overall human endeavor like this, where increased efficiencies of the given technology have led to an overall decrease in energy use. Jevon's Paradox. (maybe Jevon's mistake was that he just wasn't enough of a realist :-)
Your claim that computing equipment has been getting more energy efficient is based on a misconception. The power consumption of desktop computers did not decrease over time as an even cursory look at the giant heat sinks and fans of modern CPUs and a comparison with the now tiny looking heatsink of a 486 would tell you. Where we used to have 200W power supplies, we now have 400W and 500W switchers. Please inform yourself.
Like I said... my office computer wastes 99% of its CPU cycles waiting for me to do something. I could eliminate approx. 70% of that by powering the machine down while I am not at work, except that we do not have a backup solution which would allow such a thing. And if I had a notebook computer instead of a desktop (a perfectly sensible solution), I could save roughly 80% of the energy of that machine alone. I could eliminate the server I am running if we had a virtualized server farm. But that, of course, would require a major IT update, something my company can or will not afford.
Needless to say... all our computers at home are notebooks. On average they use less energy than a single lightbulb.
You are talking about:
1. A very short-term perspective of perhaps 20-25 years of 'Personal' computing.
2. Compare earlier computers on a basis of computing power with later computers. We do vastly more computing now with vastly less energy. Bigger power supplies notwithstanding, the amount of energy per flop or however you want to measure it, has gone way down.
Read (or re-read) Al Bartlett on exponential growth. The kinds of efficiencies you talk about, if they ever happen, will quickly be swamped by the growth of the overall energy use. Withdrawal will be painful and I don't think it will help if everyone buys a Prius.
That was precisely Stuart's position in two recent articles in TOD (near top for year in # of posts).
My contra-position is that any LONG term reaction to Peak Oil must include Urban Rail and a reshaped urban form that Urban Rail can cause.
Best Hopes,
Alan
And you avoid the automotive issue. The same paradox holds true for many other energy-using endeavors. The more efficient the individual unit becomes, the more overall energy is used.
'The solution to computers requiring too much electricity is not the slide-rule but a power optimized version of the Linux operating system running on new multi-processors and whatever will come beyond that.'
I use openSuSE10 (10.0 seems a good balance between performance and software bloat with an older system), and its power management is considerably inferior to that of W2k - and yes, I did happen to install the new motherboard/processor by myself, and conf files are easy, not hard. But the Linux configuration is not more power efficent than the old M$ one - the motherboard/drives are not correctly recognized as being ACPI compliant.
Try not to be too theoretical or abstract, and do realize that you are essentially at the top of the pyramid, and nowhere near its base - some of the people here are reasonably trying to point out that your viewpoints are not always reasonable - life is that way. Replacing infrastructure comes with its own costs, and is not a given, especially in a society which needs to import much of what it 'needs' - a Tesla may be interesting, but the odds are. a Japanese or possibly Korean company maufactures the batteries. And being that Porsche is the world's most profitable auto manufacturer, if there is a decent market for electric sports cars, no one doubts that Porsche won't be able to make money in it, and again, odds are, they won't use anything manufactured in America.
Americans believe America is a reflection of the entire world, instead of being just a part of it.
Like I said... "an OPTIMIZED version...". I am not a great believer in dinosaurs like MS Vista. It's time for it to go the way of the Dodo. Which, for me, it will. Windows XP was my last Windows. At work we have Windows 2000 and are happy... no need to upgrade.
"some of the people here are reasonably trying to point out that your viewpoints are not always reasonable"
Some of the people here might also have noticed that I like to go for effect and the jugular. I tend to put out stong language but that does not mean the basic opinnion behind it is not sound. I did explain three times in this thread alone WHY my computer wastes 500kWh a year. It is for a simple and rather silly reason which has more to do with the comfort of the IT department than any technical problems. I could also have mentioned that my company could produce 100+kW peak of solar energy with PV on their hot tar roofs... If we put it all together, the buildings I work in could easily become zero-energy or energy positive. I bet with you that the same is true for almost every other company in this particular area.
And that is my continuous message: we are wasting a lot of energy because we like to be comfortable instead of actively conserving. We could do a lot better if we had to. Once PO hits, we will have to do better and it is obvious that our comfort levels have accumulated so many hidden energy reserves that we can shrink our demand two to three fold before we hit really hard reality. By the time that happens renewables can be grown to the point where they can prevent a really hard landing.
I think there is something in common between the Sliderule thing, and what Alan is talking about down below when he discusses the 1897ish rail cars and how they are made, and how UNDERSTANDABLE they are.
The Rail car technology could be understood by the vast majority of the population at the time. Open a automobile's hood and NO one understands what they see. Not EVEN most of the mechanics if they don't plug the computer into it to tell them what is wrong.
The Slide rule's principles of use are much easier to understand than the mechanics/electronics in a $5 hand calculator(bio/nano or not).
I see that the LARGER issue is that the luxury of "Not understanding" how the majority of the appliances we use everyday work, will not be a luxury that we will have in the future.
Back in all of man's history most of the tools and things that were used everyday could be understood by a LARGE percentage of the population using them.
Today, hardly ANYTHING used everyday is understood by even a small percentage of the people using them.
Cars, TV's Calculators, and that stupid Cell Phone.
The need to understand/repair(by the Average person) the things we use everyday will become THE driving force in the future I have a strong feeling.
Peace
John
This is the heart of the valid argument - who can keep running what they have now?
Surprisingly, at least where I live, most of the farm machinery is able to be maintained by someone using their own tools - of course, a number of those people actually worked in factories, but still.
A society which seems focussed on creature comforts will probably face challenges which another society, concerned about longer term issues, won't.
For example, chainsaws weren't on your list - maybe because the U.S. likely imports most, if not all, of its chainsaws now?
Or hand tools - German roofing carpenters are still required to learn how to peg roofs together, for example.
I could go on - you picked things which actually play no role in keeping people fed, warm, or sheltered - that fact alone says something, actually.
That America faces real challenges, and potential collapse, is something I believe in - it is just that I don't think America is the world.
Believe it or not, I am not trying to diss an author - but to reveal a dirty secret, my academic background is based on literature - programming is just a hobby which helps my work, and though not mathematically illiterate, I find technology just part of being human, and generally, one that is over-valued by those who benefit from technology without understanding it (or those that hate it passionately, while drinking clean water and expecting an ambulance to arrive to bring them to a hospital if they fall ill). Greer probably shares the belief that technology is at best a minor part of living as a person, at least in part.
As a side note - I do actually believe in what was called the 'intentional fallacy' in various classes - I do think authors have intent, though it may not be clear. If my education had been more successful, then your comment 'What do you know of his probable origninal intentions?' would be a source of laughable amusement, as a good critic cares nothing for an author's intent, as the critic's opinion is much more worthy of attention.
I did not think his slide rule parable was silly, it was just uninformed - as he admits in his latest writing. The point actually hinges on the plastic - since his age is no longer manufacturing plastic, the plastic slide rule, intended as a gift which may be used to help bring back the age which created the 'solar engines,' seems like a poignant note, along with the fact that the original gifting was intended to keep a young man from being killed as a soldier - and the second time it is given as a gift is because the slide rule was among the dead man's effects, as I recall. He does such a good job illustrating how new family forms develop, but picks such a weak hinge. This is the major reason his writing is so disappointing - he tends to use fairly easily dismissed examples, though his broader perspective is useful. And as you notice from the example of 2150, where the study of Old English is becoming mainly a religiously supported activity, there seems to be little need for slide rules - society seems to have become roughly as literate as 1850, though without any evidence of the technology of 1850.
It just occurs to me upon rereading your comments - you have read the entire series, right? Not as an accusation, but as a simple question.
My point about biological (or amorphous, though a lot of the literature seems to be German) computing is that there are more ways to handle computation than IC chips - the slide rule being a 3 century old example. You may want to look into the history of computation - check the machinery used to calculate tides (or artillery trajectories) ca. 1910.
And even in Greer's future, with war being a feature, I am pretty sure that calculating artillery trajectories will remain a human activity, the same way that forging swords remained a human activity even after Rome fell - some complexity the human race seems to hold on to more tightly than others, even as other things collapse. Honestly, I would also expect calculating the tides another skill which will be practiced, but that is a touch more open to debate.
Handling mathematics does not require an industrial infrastructure - it simply requires people interested in doing it.
And this is not high tech nano stuff, at least what I am referring to. To give an idea - check out how plants are often genetically modified - 'Gene Transfer Into Intact Sugarcane Cells Using Microprojectile Bombardment' was one of several article titles - my memories, from when I used to be a Science subscriber, is that plant genetic modifications were done pretty easily - in other words, you just blasted the genes into the plant cell, and used the plants in which it worked. No nano technology or IC circuits, ca. late 1980s. Just trial and error, using cheap labor (students are virtually slave labor), a microscope and scalpel, and a bit of knowledge.
But now we are back to my disappointment of how so many people see their world through a Hollywood filter, or one without much comprehension of how much technology actually operates. For all my criticism at times of people like Infinite Possibilities, he at least actually seems to have grown up and experienced how an industrial society functions, something which seems rare for Americans under the age of 40.
As a side note - my wife actually knew someone who used to manufacture cutting edge IC chip engraving machinery in a small town in Germany in his house/workshop, ca 1992 - his electricity was provided by burning wood shipping pallets (easier than cutting forest wood a kilometer from his house), and his materials tended to be highly pure, not exotic - but that image doesn't fit into what Americans expect of high technology. Of course, America isn't really famous for manufacturing high technology for the world markets anymore either, not that Americans believe that.
It may not require a specifically industrial infrastructure, but it requires some level of society complexity. Specialization, as Samsara points out.
The average number of geniuses in society has not gone up much since the beginning of written history. Only the number of morons who are not required to break their backs on someone else's field has gone down significantly. Modern times have not benefited the knowledgable nearly as much as they did benefit the fools. That, in my books, is actually a good thing.
I don't quite agree, though this thread is likely getting fractured. It just requires humans who find advantage in it - and like weapon making seems to be the sort of skill which is rarely lost (suppressed is another facet), I don't think useful arithmetic is likely to be lost either - navigation (land or sea), time or season keeping, and yes, keeping track of amounts, is unlikely to fade away - gambling remains a reliable human interest, even among small groups, and figuring odds leads to higher winnings. That some groups of people, at some times, may lose such skills, is certainly reasonable. That such skills imply a certain sized social grouping, I would also agree.
Arithmetic is neither a hidden secret nor a limited resource, however. And those who practice it are likely to have advantages over those who don't - that comes close to being a universal conclusion of human history in general, on any continent, and any time frame which can be considered historical - roughly 3000+ BC onwards. (Though I don't believe in social darwinism, this example could be a fine illustration of it in a neutral and non-racist manner - it applies to a broad number of societies and continents.)
I agree, and I think that it implies some societal complexity.
Arithmetic is not a human universal. There are societies where there are only three numbers: 1, 2, and "plenty." For the very idea of arithmetic to arise, there needs to be a certain amount of social complexity. (I suspect that the development of literacy and numeracy both have a lot to do with taxation.)
If you look at those who did practice the dark art of arthmetic in the past, they were specialists. Priests, astromers, tradesmen, government tax collectors. People who didn't have to grow their own food, haul their own water, cart their own waste. As Tainter implies, the less energy a society has access to, the less complexity - specialization - it can afford.
St. Augustine
This continues to go in circles in a way - if a group of humans falls beneath a given number, it is unlikely that the skills needed by humans living in larger numbers will be developed or retained. I agree.
But in terms of European/Near Eastern history, or Indian history, or Chinese history, or seemingly Central/South American history, once developed, arithmetic was retained, because the necessary social complexity was always retained by the populations which never fell below that minimum level.
I don't really see the future being much different - I don't believe (in any practical sense - nuclear war or asteriodal impact withstanding) that populations are likely to crash so profoundly that knowledge which has been in continuous use for 4 or 5 thousand years in places like Mesopotamia or Egypt or Greece, or China, or India, etc. will disappear due to a lack of social complexity.
That .001 of the population understands multiplication or division is another point entirely. The population of Rome fell from millions to tens of thousands over a few centuries - nonetheless, a few of its citizens still understood math - at least enough to teach students to keep such knowledge alive - in this case, either for commerce or religion. Of course, in other parts of the world, arithmetic was developing in fascinating and useful directions, but even collapsed Rome could still find a few people who understood math well enough to be able to use it for social or practical purposes.
I think it's possible, and so does Greer. In particular, Greer argues that catabolic collapse can lead to a drop in population and in complexity to way below the level that existed before the complex society arrived or arose. The mechanism being degradation of the environment caused by our attempts to avoid collapse. It's a variation of Hoyle:
Even if a complete catabolic collapse doesn't happen...how much mathematics will we retain? Counting, addition, subtraction, muliplication and division, are the kind of thing you use every day and would be relatively easy to retain. Analytic geometry or calculus? I dunno.
Leanan,
Until yesterday I was skeptical of your "slow squeeze" and catabolic collapse scenario. Then I started drawing concept maps of Peak Oil and economics, and the slow squeeze just jumped off the paper and grabbed me.
I am still not a doomer. (But I can offer no refutation to the catabolic collapse scenario.)
I think I see the same result in a "business as usual"/market reaction to post-Peak Oil.
When I factor in 20:1 energy efficiency gains (from non-oil sources), this starts to give the economy "leverage" in dealing with post-Peak Oil.
The economy (and urban form) would begin to reform around the high efficiency alternative IF it is available.
Thus a relatively small but comphrensive sector of the economy could help leverage us to a better future than just slow catabolic collapse.
This is a major part of my world view that I have written little about.
Best Hopes,
Alan
The future is open, of course, but somehow, even with all the environmental degradation surrounding Damascus or Rome, those cities have managed to retain the level of complexity we are talking about.
On the other hand, various societies on the two American continents have risen and fallen without much in the way of legacy.
I think a lot of people assume what is under discussion is a democratic society with a middle class expanding into an essentially virgin territory. That is the true historical anomaly - and assuming it will continue is clearly based on some fairly precarious assumptions.
My arguments are in no way based on trying to retain the American Dream in any shape.
They are based, to a certain extent at least, on historical analogies. And I still notice that no one has refuted the point about a number of post Roman collapse societies still being able to forge weapons of superior utility to those of Rome at its imperial peak. Arguably, those societies weren't capable of much else but that, and that they were feeding off the bones of what came before them - but still, where you invest your social and economic capital isn't same as saying there isn't any.
Any society or group which will not be able to at least compete in terms at some level of social complexity will be subsumed or destroyed by those that can - in other words, there are more ways to retain complexity than simple creation - plundering and scavenging come to mind.
Vultures don't need predators, the assumed top of the food chain, to survive - vultures merely require enough dying animals, with or without predation, to feed.
There have been stable and long running (thousands of years) human societies with an incredibly small tip to an incredibly broad pyramid - there is no reason to think that such a society will not reappear in any plausible post environmental degradation world.
Hello TODers,
From Leanan's toplink: I am glad to see Australian bicycle sales increasing and the corresponding commuting usage. I wonder if wheelbarrow and other garden tool sales are spiking up too?
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Interestingly enough, here in Scotland it was mentioned on the news that a school set up to teach carpentry and joinery in Malawi is hampered by not having near enough power...
A local businesman set up a collection point for hand tools to be turned into him. He has spent some time refurbishing each tool (they look as good as new). And he had collected a hell of a lot of tools. These tools discarded here in favour of power tools will soon ship to Malawi.
A sign of things to come?
The Tennessee Valley Authority, the largest public power system in the US, is being sued by North Carolina for the damage that coal-burning powerplants do to the health of its citizens.
Hello Squalish,
If people understand the 'Tragedy of the Commons' then the TVA should win a countersuit for people demanding so much coal-powered electricity to waste.
The people should be willing to pay for the complete external ecological costs of coal-mining and landscape restoration, power-distribution, and full pollution recycling and carbon-sequestration. If I was the judge involved I would force the consumers to pay quadruple the current electric rate with the increased funds used by the TVA to clean up its act. People need to start paying for what in the past was essentially a free lunch.
The resultant enforced conservation, although painful, is far better than wrecking the ecosystem, mindless riots and machete' dances, and Dr. Duncan's Olduvai Gorge. Unfortunately, I think it is more likely we will imitate China postPeak-- non-smokers inhaling the pollution equivalent of five cigarette packs a days--until the system crashes.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Durability, Independence, Replicability, and Transparency
As it applies to Rail
I am quite familar with the 1923/24 built Perley Thomas streetcars that are today operating on the Canal Streetcar Line (the Canal Streetcars, built 2003/4, drowned) and were operating on the St. Charles Streetcar Line 24 hours/day, 364 days (every day but Mardi Gras) before Katrina.
I also witnessed the rebuilding of the 1897 Ford, Davis & Bacon workcar a few years ago after a small controller fire.
Durability of rail - No doubt. The under construction Swiss rail tunnels have a design life of 100 years (with very heavy service) before major work is required. The also under construction Greenbush commuter rail line south of Boston should have minimal maintenance for at least 50 years and probably closer to 100 except for the switches and the dozen road crossings.
Pushed to the limit, and with good maintenance, most rolling stock can reach 70 years of ordinary use. Perhaps 100 years, much cost of maintaining obsolete technology beens scrapage in the 30 to 50 year range usually.
Independence - Rail requires the fabrication of steel, including some quality control. The 1923/24 gears have 1/4" (6.5 mm) "lash" or play (modern gears have a few thousands of an inch). "Peak Streetcar" 1897-1916 was built with coal, mules and sweat.
Rivets are an essentially lost art today. High skill, low tech.
A certain degree of social organization is required to build & maintain rail.
Motive power can be steam, electricity (started ~1880s) or diesel (bio or FF). Again, copper & steel are required and more skill than technology.
In Cambodia, people make bamboo rail cars that run on abandoned rail lines. Similar in Phillipines on rarely used line. Motive power small gas motor in both cases.
Replicability - Basically covered above. If you can maintain, you can build with material inputs.
Transparency - It takes an "engineering eye" but, having been in the pit underneath the Perley Thomas & 1897 Ford, Davis & Bacon workcar, I could identify and understand the functions. Understanding the 1920s electric controls require some knowledge of Ohm's Law and the electrical properties of materials. Never saw the 1897 controls taken apart.
"Modern" rail lines started about 1830. Electrification about 1890. Skill and social organization are needed to maintain & build rail lines, but the technology is relatively basic.
In a post-industrial civilization, the need to "run the railroad" might be the defining core of social organization.
Best Hopes,
Alan
Hello Alan Drake,
Well said, very valid points IMO. Kunstler's writes tongue-in-cheek that the American railroad system would be an embarassment to someone from Bolivia. With GM & Ford heading down the tubes--they should lobbying our leaders to build RR & mass-trans before all their skilled machinists and techs are gone. Even a very crude railroad has big efficiencies over oxen carts. Keep up the good fight!
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
I think Kunstler refers to Bulgary but whatever - Bolivia - Bulgary - what's a few thousand miles between friends? :-)
Actually when working in Australia in 1980s with one of the iron ore mines, I was told that they once swapped some iron ore with Romania in exchange for Romanain built hopper cars (iron-ore carrying rail cars). These turned out to have all been hand crafted such that spare parts were not interchangable between them. Talking about skilled machinists - there is a big difference between building one of a kind and thousands all the same.
Greer:
"...Beyond its practical uses, however, the slide rule has more than a little to teach about what sustainable technology looks like. It is quite literally pre-industrial technology..."
As much as I love my slide rules (gotta have those log-log scales for arbitrary powers/roots...), let us not forget the humble Japanese abacus; indespensible for precision and for plain ol' addition/subtraction. I also think the abacus is a good first entree for young learners, too many of whom would be thrwarted early by the inability of the slide-rule to add/subt, and too unsophisticated for the more advanced capabilites. Slide-rules have NEVER seen widespread general use; the all-time world-wide production run is estimated at only 40 million units.
While I agree with Greer that slide-rules are sustainble technology that could and should flourish in a de-industrial future, I also think he underestimates the difficulty of fabricating them. It is more than mere craft to engrave several thousand hash-marks to less than 1/1000th of an inch precision; can you think of how you might do it from scratch?
"the all-time world-wide production run is estimated at only 40 million units."
The source, IIRC, is Scientific American magazine, May 2006.
I would make an oversized sliderule (say 3x to 5x old model). I would roll out markers from a wheel. Wheel would be marked by halves repeated several times (64 marks ?, perhaps 128). For other scales, other means to make marks on wheel.
Skill & precision required more than technology.
I am reminded of James Watt writing how pleased he was with the blacksmith how fit a cylinder into a bore with clearances closer that the "thickness of a worn half penny".
With a less competent blacksmith, the Industrial Revolution might have gotten off to a late start :-)
Best Hopes for Skilled Craftspeople,
Alan
If in our de-industrialized future, we are to have slide rules that are not custom one-offs, someone will have to come up with a linear engraving machine. I think it would need to be based on a screw at least as long and precise as the desired slide rule. An alternative, or later developement, might involve some basic photolithography onto brass or aluminum with photosensitive resists and acid bath.
We'll need a clever, skilled machinist. We'll need to feed him/her, and his apprentice.
What I really want to see are DIY semiconductors.
The same way that people made highly accurate precision timepieces as far back as the 18th Century: through painstaking craftsmanship and various tricks of the trade. When working with metal, a skiled craftsman could probably hold a tolerance of a few thousanths of an inch without any special instruements. Besides, slide rules really don't have to be all that accurate anyway.
Of course such a handmade slide rule is going to be very expensive. Come to think of it, the factory-made ones weren't exactly cheap, either. I recall that when I was a freshman in engineering school in 1963, we each had to buy a K&E LOG-LOG DECITRIG slide rule, which cost $35 and was quite a bit of change at the time (probably something like at least $120 in today's dollars).
I take some pride in being part of a dying breed of engineers who know how to use a slide rule (though I haven't used mine in anger in several decades).
Now making large pieces of armor plate is a whole other story because it requires quite a bit of expensive industrial infrastructure. Battleship armor was typically face-hardened alloy steel that had to be both hard and tough. Producing it required large facilities where plates would be heated for weeks while being buried under a layer of carbon.
The manufacture of large naval guns also required highly specialized facilities, such as heated 'soaking pits' almost 100 ft deep, and lathes capable of precisely turning a 65-ft long gun barrel weighing many tons. No need to worry ..... as there is not likely going to be much of a need for really thick armor plate or 16-inch naval guns anytime soon.
Nevertheless, I find it fascinating to examine various obsolete technologies that not many people can do anymore. During hard times some of these might come back, albeit slowly as new practioners learn my making mistakes.
The EIA must be officially endorsing Powerdown if 86% of energy use in year 2030 will be fossil based. If some posters are right oil production by then could be a third of today's.
http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/woalert_read.php?id=9140&lang=eng
Anyone hear about the outbreak at San Quentin? Me Either....
http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/woalert_read.php?id=9140&lang=eng
Anyone hear about the outbreak at San Quentin? Me Either....
http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/woalert_read.php?id=9140&lang=eng
Anyone hear about the outbreak at San Quentin? Me Either....
http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/woalert_read.php?id=9140&lang=eng
Anyone hear about the outbreak at San Quentin? Me Either....
This is still a half-baked idea, but I recently realized that I may have come up with a helpful way of viewing and perhaps even predicting an aspect of the problems we are beginning to have with oil. Now, somebody else must have had this idea before, perhaps a TOD story has already explored what I'm about to describe (I neither recall nor can find such a story), but the premise is straight-forward: Graph separate production curves based on the grade of oil.
So rather than a single curve for all liquids, or C+C, or C+C+NGL, you would have a curve for light sweet crude, then several curves for the less and less desirable forms of oil. The graph might be most useful if you arranged the graph with each curve representing the production of all grades of oil better than grade X, and included a Hubbert curve fitted to the known data for each.
I think that this would be a useful graph for several reasons. First and foremost, peaks in production for the best grades of oil are likely already evident. This would be a very powerful way to convince people new to the subject that there is a real problem. Second, by connecting the peaks for each curve, one could obtain a predictive curve for when a given grade of oil will peak.
Two problems are obvious. First is getting the data. Second is ordering grades of oil in terms of desirability. I would just use price per unit volume, but that may or may not be a good idea.
I will continue looking into generating or finding a graph of what I'm imagining, but I'm pretty ineffectual at this sort of thing, so I'm putting this idea out there so that somebody can point out that this has already been done, offer some suggestions in finding the data necessary, or would like to take up the project for themselves.
Hello TODers,
I would like the govt. to use the power of eminent domain to start setting up biosolar test areas. A good place to start would be the big island of Hawaii. No tourists allowed anymore, and all housing is to be eco-tech and PV powered, all food, clothing grown locally, no cars, but railbikes and bicycles instead, windturbines, tidal power, and so on.
Those that insist on being detritovores can leave for Waikiki, only those committed to the paradigm shift can stay. The knowledge gained from such an effort would be used to more efficiently convert the next area because we would have a much better idea of what works and what doesn't. If there are too many people already for the area to be sustainable--let the people vote for who stays and who goes-- far better than machete' dances. Everyone would be thus incentivized to learn biosolar skills & culture as fast as possible.
The Navy would have no problem keeping tourist boats and fishing fleets off at a safe distance to allow the close to shore fishing to rebound to sustainable levels. If the people want to wear grass skirts again or even go naked--more power to 'em, I say. I think it would be fascinating to see a bunch of people trying to live at a very low detritus level but maximizing biosolar powerup with minimmal violence.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
You obviously don't have much understanding of the local politics of Hawaii.
Hello Leanan,
Granted. In fact, I have never even been to Hawaii. I also know that politics is not for me: I am not the least bit interested in political power, running for office, hitting the campaign trail, etc. I wasn't even interested in high school politics-- I saw it as mostly a popularity contest, therefore a waste of time.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Bob,
You have seriously gone way to far. You are talking about a dictatorship. I would spend the rest of my days searching for you and...
Todd; a realist.
Well, I'd talk to you at the least but I don't think we'd have much to talk about. I'd suggest you start with the Asphalt Paradise you live in.
Hello Todd & Jokuhl,
Thxs for responding to my brief posting. I didn't have much time to fully explain out my essay earlier as I was constrained for time--I just wanted to post my wild & crazy idea before I forgot it, and to get my fellow TODers to start considering the concept.
Also, TOD protocol is to self-limit the length of one's posting too. I have found this out the hard way in the past by having my posting deleted or setting off a flame war for length. Anyhow--for what it is worth, here goes... I hope TOD doesn't delete it for length.
Up to Now: Eminent Domain Supports Infinite Growth
-------------------------------------------------------
Eminent Domain has been a done deal by TPTB since time eternal either by tribal triumph, economic power, military or political takeover, legislative accrual and/or judicial ruling. All to support trading enlargement, better access to resources, more elbow room or control for the more powerful, globalization, etc, etc......basic Maximum Power Principle [MPP] concepts run amok to result in our 'Tragedy of the Commons'.
In ancient tribal times: perhaps the early Homo Sapiens as TPTB drove the Neanderthal and/or the Cro-Magnon to extinction. If Homo Sapiens were the first adopters of advanced tools, fire, and group tactics; ie, the first extrasomatic detritovores: the use of firebrands, spears and the atlatle, and bows and arrows in coordinated thrusts would be an overwhelming advantage against the natural biosolars. The path was then clear for detritovore dominance, infinite growth, and the Overshoot.
I am not an anthropological historian so don't take the above as scientific fact, but some kind of dominance contest played itself out back then that still continues to this day. Afterall, it is the dominant theme of our approx. six million year history.
Another brief example: our kindred biosolar brothers; the primates, unfortunately now number just 200,000-- we add that many detritovores daily! The adaptive detritus power of the minority has completely overrun the biosolar power of the earlier majority. PLEASE REMEMER THIS PREVIOUS SENTENCE as I will build upon this later in the essay.
More recently in our sordid history: the European conquest of Africa, the Americas, and so on...has just been more MPP for the eminent powers' domain and dominion. Remember the US creed of Manifest Destiny: "From Sea to Shining Sea"? We crushed the indigenous people worldwide in our quest for the Bible of Infinite Growth and the MPP Holy Grail. It still continues today with the deforestation of Borneo and Brazil, the plunging drills and pipeline raping of Nigeria and Ecuador for FFs, the Digging of the Ancient Dead in Athabasca, and so on... driving the last natives to desperation and despair.
Even today the MPP detritovore battle for eminent domain of FFs, and other resources continues. Trading blood for oil in Iraq, Sri Lankan war started over control of a water sluicegate, Operation Taking out the Rubbish in Zimbabwe, Gazprom vs Europe, Ukrainian & AUS halting of grain exports... and so on is just more MPP at work. Profits is the operative word, not a Gifting Society.
Someone with more wealth can easily buyout, through a variety of methods, a poorer party. Richard Rainwater had no problem buying his survival farm, probably with pocket cash. You, Todd, probably bought your ranch with a mortgage, inheritance money, or hard-earned cash [BTW, good for you!]. Walmart and other Corps use cash, financing instruments, and lobbying for preferential MPP laws. It is still a MPP battle, although mostly non-violent, for control by legal domain.
Even the recent Supreme Court decision on eminent domain reaffirms and enhances infinite growth & MPP:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._New_London
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Choices for the Paradigm Shift of PO + GW
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Being a fast-crash doomer [realist] in outlook, but constantly striving to avert the worst by utilizing my imagination, then informing others:
I believe you are familiar with my earlier numerous postings on the Humanimal Ecosystem, Foundation, the Rise of Earthmarines, the '3 Days of the Condor' Scenario, Cascadian & Vermont Secession, Southwestern and Mexican Migrations, and the Porridge Principle of Metered Decline, among others. They are all in the TOD and Yahoo group archives if you wish to refresh your memory.
My basic thrust is to help develop goals, strategies, tactics, methods, tools, and so on, to maximize Detritus Powerdown and Biosolar Powerup to optimize the squeeze through the Dieoff Bottleneck. Hopefully with as little violence as possible, and the most amount of other species too.
I have no inkling of which ideas have merit, but most will fall to the wayside. In a worst case fast-crash: none of my ideas or the excellent suggestions of other TODers will ever see fruition. Time will tell, but I believe that Peakoil Outreach is our best tool for modifying detritovores' values and behaviors faster than the Hubbert geologic decline.
Consider my more recent postings on 150 million wheelbarrows vs 150 million rifles as a societal choice for our Paradigm Shift here in the US. I think this is a mentally clear choice of biosolar vs detritovore, and a equally clear visualization of possible postPeak violence levels. Now recall my postings advocating for the growth of large biosolar habitats vs our present patchwork of very small stand-alone and isolated survival farms. IMO, MPP is super-concentrated in rifles, but is entirely an inappropriate answer to our FF decline.
If Outreach starts being successful then ever-growing numbers of detritovores will seek the biosolar alternative before FF prices impel such behavior. Todd, bless your soul, is one of these pioneers, but is hopelessly outnumbered and MPP-outpowered by the surrounding detritovores who will consume everything in their path in ignorance. The rise of Earthmarines to help protect the biosolars is essential, but raging mobs and/or Blackwater Security warlord mercenary militias will take a frightful and violent toll. I think this scenario is a sub-optimal choice as my thinking evolves over time.
Instead, an adaptive strategic mechanism needs to evolve that will minimize violence by smoothing the path for these pioneers and allow them to cluster into large habitats. This has the consequential advantage of allowing other species maximum contiguous space for survivability, sustainability, and migratory room to respond to GW.
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Govt. Eminent Domain for Biosolars
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Now recall my previous key sentence:
"The adaptive detritus power of the minority has completely overrun the biosolar power of the earlier majority."
I don't think this will change even as we go postPeak, if Outreach doesn't spread. Detritus MPP says to me that TPTB will just continue to further concentrate wealth, resources, power, etc, in an ever more wasteful fashion until we ultimately collapse, ala Tainter and/or Catton. Maximum Overshoot, mayhem and violence, mind-boggling amounts of pollution and eco-devastation. I hope we can do better than that if Outreach can truly saturate the globe.
Just as a parent will carefully protect and nuture a helpless offspring--A PO + GW aware society should want to do the same to protect and nuture an infant Biosolar societal offspring. If we know we are going to run out of FFs, it only makes common sense to start birthing in carefully chosen geographic areas new, adaptive, indigenous, biosolar societies. Learn what works, and what doesn't so that eventually this biosolar minority can peacefully spread until it becomes the new planetary majority. IMO, sure beats machete' dancing!
If the Hubbert decline rate and tail is slow enough, combined with a successful Outreach: there could be sufficient energy to combine the best modern tech with the best pre-FFs modes of living to create very energy-efficient, healthful lifestyles with an abundance of other species. In short, we all give up some detritus MPP so as to really jumpstart leveraging Biosolar MPP [Which is huge as long as the sun shines down upon us]. I just hope we still have enough time to get the ASPO Depletion Protocols and GW prevention plans into gear [Dr. Hatfield, Dr. Richard Duncan, Jay Hanson, Lovelock, Darwinian, Reg Morrison, and others far more qualified than me don't think we do]. But I think it maybe the best way to possibly optimize the Paradigm Shift and minimize violence levels.
Why start with the Big Island of Hawaii?
We have got fifty states-- we have got to get started somewhere! Hawaii has a mild climate, and the big island offers low pop. density, and isolation-distance from the mainland to reduce detritovore infiltration and easy Navy defensibility.
If Outreach is successful: people on the mainland won't even want to spend the money to burn the FFs to visit, but would be willing to see their tax dollars make this the first Biosolar outpost on the planet--IMO, a far better expenditure than trying to get back to the moon, or continue fighting in Iraq!
The Hawaiians, now Outreach aware, don't want to make their Overshoot worse, or go down like the Easter Islanders-- they would be eager to accept the help to make the Paradigm Shift as biosolar pioneers. Those that are too old or sick could move to another island or relocate to the mainland with the usual detritus lifestyle. Having Jay Hanson in Kona would also be a big plus to help the people understand what they need to accomplish to be biosolar successful.
In short: I think it could be a good initial win-win for the US, and other countries would soon imitate us.
So using Eminent Domain & Outreach in combo is the quickest and least painful way to go from infinite growth to biosolar sustainability that I have imagined so far. Nobody is physically hurt, you get to choose your lifestyle, and the early pioneers get incentivized to Detritus Powerdown and Biosolar Powerup. If that means working only 4 hours a day as a hi-tech hunter-gatherer, then kicking back on the beach with a brew and a bamboo fishing pole-- that sounds darn good to me.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Bob,
Sorry, but you didn't change my mind. It's still dicatorial. Further, you appear to have trust and faith in the benignness of TPTB. I don't. You might want to read Mike Ruppert's Crossing the Rubicon or even Gerry Spence's 1989 book, With Justice for None. I believe that an action such as you propose would lead to Civil WarII.
Todd; a Realist
Incidentally, Bill Moyers' essay in Alternet entitled Saving Our Democracy is also applicable when considering how things work:
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/32750
Bob;
This is a little closer to home.. You ever checked it out? My Wife and I visited in '02.. I liked some of the goals, but as with most Non-profits, it can get hung up for long stretches on basic funding and human-resources. Any experience with this group?
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http://www.arcosanti.org/project/background/history/main.html
In 1970, the Cosanti Foundation began building Arcosanti, an experimental town in the high desert of Arizona, 70 miles north of metropolitan Phoenix. When complete, Arcosanti will house 5000 people, demonstrating ways to improve urban conditions and lessen our destructive impact on the earth. Its large, compact structures and large-scale solar greenhouses will occupy only 25 acres of a 4060 acre land preserve, keeping the natural countryside in close proximity to urban dwellers.
Bob Fiske
ps, I like your ideas for experimentation, but you have a tendency to put them in a 'forced governmental policy' kind of framework, (eminent domain..) which you can imagine meets with some serious resistance to a people who are always on the 'razor's edge' (ha!) between libertarianism and totalitarianism. Can you think of less forceful systems that might be created to try these experiments?
'The ocean is the king of the rivers and streams but lies below them, just as the Leader follows behind the people..he does not compete, so does not meet competition' Tao te Ching
Respectfully, RRF
Hello Jokuhl,
Yep, I have toured Arcosanti years ago, but not involved in any way with it. I just don't think they have enough water and high quality topsoil to make a go of it. The surrounding boomtowns and the Asphalt Wonderland are sucking the small river and acquifers dry, and GW is predicted to make this even worse over time. My guess is that the inhabitants will never reach the energy efficiency levels of the Anasazi or other ancient native desert-dwellers before they abandon Arcosanti. The summer desert is absolutely unforgiving if you don't have water and/or shade; you are simply toast.
Az has drastic elevation changes with corresponding climate zones: from above-the-treeline tundra, to near rain forest, to scorching sand dunes. If the population could be radically reduced-- IMO, the best strategy would be a migrating tribe that moved with the seasons and additionally short-term moderated temperature/weather changes by altitudinal variation.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
New Orleans Ahead of Curve on Energy Efficiency
I was amazed that they thought 36' wide homes are some new frontier on liveable density. The predominant type of housing in New Orleans is a shotgun, single or duplex double. 15' wide is common for a single shotgun lot.
http://www.prcno.org/arch.html
http://www.neworleansonline.com/neworleans/architecture/archtypes.html
Best Hopes for the Rest of the US learning the high livability, low energy lessons from New Orleans,
Alan
Yeah! In Chicago, 25' wide lots, and 20' wide houses, are the standard.
36' seems outrageously wide!