Moonshine carries a much higher margin than fuel.

Yes. And given our future prospects, we are going to need a lot of booze to assuage the pain.

Food for humans in general will go up. Ethanol is a way to continue the subsidy for an automotible-dependent socienty and spread the payment of that subsidy to everyone, regardless of how much you drive or whether you even own a car. Everyone has got to eat.

Long term vs short term. Short term requires year on year growth, or the natives get restless. Long term ultimately requires recognizing physical realities. It is easier to apply a steep discount rate and say that technology and the Invisible Hand will save us than it is to accept the possibility that some of those limits are here now and that technology and the Invisible Hand may bite us in the hind end instead. If you're a vested interested, you don't want to hear about it; if you're a voter (whose productivity is going up but whose wages are not, and who may have done the irrational exuberance thing in the days of low interest rates) you don't want to hear about it; if you're a politician, you tell the voters what they want to hear. Reconciling the long and short terms will require pain and wrenching effort on the part of the people -- how would you go about doing it?

I'm curious as to the factors that make the successful communities successful and others fall apart. Certainly we can look at the Mennonite communities in Belize and Paraguay as examples of successful, even prosperous, insular, low-energy self-sufficient agrarian communities. Did anyone see the GlobeTrekker Episode where Justine Shapiro is backpacking through Belize and stumbles upon the Mennonite communities there? It's like a bit of the backwoods mid-west 50 years ago in the middle of Central America. They don't even speak Spanish but some archaic version of German.

very excellent! best of luck to you... at least you could make it a clickable link: http://almostselfsufficient.blogspot.com

new account,

Below is an extraction from a post I did at TOD Canada, in relation to their use of anaerobic digesters, which are also used in bio-butanol production.
(big disclaimer: again I want to express my debt to R.R., Robert Rapier for putting me on the bio-butanol path. It was his first post here on the subject and his i-r squared blog {linked below} that caused me to begin studying this option. Great contribution by R.R. to the whole biofuel discussion and before Dupont/BP announced their sudden interest in this fuel! Thanks again....

If we are going to to bio fuels, there is a more promising path:
Butanol, the 4 carbon alcohol that can be made from sugar beets, or any plant with sugar/starch content including cheap, easy to grow crops and other plant waste that can be raised easily in northern climes. Butanol uses a bacterium instead of yeast, the well known and long isolated Clostridium_acetobutylicum, used since WWI. It is processed by Anaerobic digestion using this bacterium in much the same that brewers use yeast.

It is bio-butanol’s advantage as a finished fuel that is most impressive.
Butanol can be mixed with gasoline without modification or run straight in the place of gasoline with no modification to infrastructure, and will mix with ethanol in the same way that gasoline can. DuPont Chemical Corp and BP have joined in a major partnership to develop and sell bio-butanol in the British market, hopefully to be followed by other markets.

http://www2.dupont.com/Biofuels/en_US/index.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Butanol

http://www.greencarcongress.com/biobutanol/index.html

http://www.butanol.com/

http://i-r-squared.blogspot.com/2006/05/bio-butanol.html

The bug that makes it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clostridium_acetobutylicum

http://www.epa.gov/biotech_rule/pubs/fra/fra003.htm

(Post script: Since I first began investigation of bio-butanol, I have had extensive discussions with a mirobiologist who assures me this alcohol is easy to produce, his view was "I can make this crap in a backyard shed."
The questions involve the amount of output that can be achieved as a percent of input crop, and of course, the same questions that are important in any bio-fuel-the amount of soil, water and fertilizer needed to produce the crop that will produce the fuel. As a finished product, butanol is a dream in a gasoline based society, and it has more flexibility on raw materials used to make it, but how would using waste crop, diary whey, etc (all of which can be used) affect output? The improvements in output of Butanol as a percent of the reaction (compared to acetone/ethanol, which is also produced in the reaction) is promising, and we must recall that there is a market for acetone and ethanol! Either way, since the Dupont/BP announcement, and other developments, the buzz about bio-butanol is beginning to pick up fast....as Vinod Khosla would say, it's gaining "trajectory" :-)

Roger Conner
Remember, we are only one cubic mile from freedom.

I see BP/Dupont claim they can go the cellulosic route with cornstalks
http://www.dupont.com/ag/news/releases/BP_DuPont_Fact_Sheet_Biobutanol.pdf
but butanol still has the EROEI lowering fermentation step. Perhaps there is no feasible non-aqueous (dry) and microbe-free path to biobutanol. No info either on whether spillages of clostridium culture are hazardous.

Behind all the bluster and fanciful rhetoric he basically advocates living in small towns where people can walk around. I think that is a huge part of the answer of the answer to PO.

"The car. The hated car. the filthy, polluting “chokin’ smokin’ automobile. The devil’s chariot. Guess what. It ain’t going anywhere. It just ain’t."

That is certainly true in California. The first list of transportation projects to be funded by a recent bond has been released. Several freeways are going to become wider so that more of us can drive further, faster. And our Governor has no love of rail or other transit. He has cut most of the funding for the California High-Speed Rail Authority.

There is no sign that anyone in power really "gets it" yet.

You can't present people with a society that requires 99% of them to own a vehicle, then try to convince them not to drive. Step one has to be eliminating the need to own a vehicle. Even one.
...
There is just no way that is going to happen in the timeframe we have left.

I'm confused. We don't have enough time to get people to stop driving so much, so when they run out of time, they'll just keep driving the same amount? This is a bit more serious than running out of time on the parking meter, isn't it?

No, we don't have to do anything to convince them not to drive, though I agree that we wouldn't be able to convince them if we tried. They'll get all the convincing they need when they can no longer afford it. That's always seemed to me to be JHK's point, though he reasonably would prefer that we get some alternatives ready for the day the 2x4 hits them on the head.

I have one car and could easily ditch it tomorrow. Today my family took the Chicago brown line train from my sister-in-law's to downtown Chicago, caught the Amtrak Wolverine to our local station (about 270 miles), and walked the 2 miles home from there. Our six year old made me carry his backpack. Then I hooked up my bike trailer and went downtown to get groceries. Maybe you should take Kunstler a little more seriously.

It took 6,000 years to find a replacement for the horse which tells me the age of the auto is just starting. The same can be said of suburbia. Suburbia was a creation of the railroad and in particular the electric railroad. The streetcar meant that downtown workers no longer needed to live downtown. It meant cheap land between towns could be developed into new communities. Those who could afford to move did move. The Model T meant that new developments no longer needed to be near the tracks. The post WWII boom in new real estate development was a result of millions of veterans gaining access to government backed financing. It was VA and FHA programs that created suburban sprawl not the car.
Some of you are too young to remember the cars of the 50s and 60s. Very few lasted more than 10 years and most with over 50,000 miles on them were considered junk. As a kid I read an article in one of those car magazines which predicted the 20 year car that German engineers were working on. I thought it was a joke. 40 years later and we now have millions of 20 year old cars still going strong. I see the probability of cars designed to last 50-75 years being sold in the next 10 years. If EEstor's ultracapacitor works as claimed then electric cars made of graphitic foam and sold on a 15 year payment plan possible. No need to turn food into fuel. Cars that last 50 years mean fewer cars need to be built each year just to keep the fleet the same size. Billions of cars need not be incompatible with a clean and sustainable environment. It just requires the political will to change a few rules of the game.

Hello GreenMan:

What's with the claim that Kunstler doesn't have workable solutions?

Just look at his Feb 5, 2007 column-
"The Agenda Restated":

http://www.kunstler.com/mags_diary20.html

You'll have to scroll down a bit.

He is basically advocating all the things necessary to re-localize the economy, in advance of the energy famine. If that isn't a solution, I don't know what is.

IMHO, Kunstler is a polemicist, bravely doing written battle against every land developer and road builder in the country. Like Hunter Thompson, he writes for effect, and you shouldn't take everything he says literally. The spirit of what he says is more important than the precise accuracy of what he says. Kunstler had the guts to come to Florida, to my hometown, and attack the development juggernaut that powers the number one industry in the state [although he failed to realize that the development industry here does rely one infinitely renewable resource, that being old Yankees].

Hi canbrit,

To your list, I'd add "Finding a way to catch, clean and move water to everyone who needs water." There's probably a lot more. I like your approach of making a list. Somehow it seems we could come up with a first step.

Kuntsler was my first intro to peak oil, back before hurricane Katrina. I saw him on Free Speech TV and bought his book. ( Then I found TOD and the rest is history) I cut him some slack because he brings so many people to the realization that we have a problem.

TOD is where they go from there. And I am glad is is presenting a more dignified face to the world now.

stlouisan

How ya' doing?
Let's take 'er from the top...
"Wow, you really don't understand, do you?"

Depends. I understand some things bettr than others, but not all things.

"All the efficiency improvements in the world won't put more oil in the ground."

True, but efficiency improvements can make what is there last longer. Even if we take the worst case scenario of ASPO will still see the world producing as much oil as it did in the 1980's on out to past the end of our lives. So, to repeat something well known by "peak aware" folks, the discussion is not about running out. It is about how to cope with peak and then decline and the slope of that decline.

""The car ain’t going anywhere. It just ain't" - ha ha. Sounds like a nice epitaph." Perhaps, but I have been hearing about the demise of the car since I was a child, and now, there are more on the roads of America and the world then there when I was a child, by far. We are still waiting for "car peak" and it hasn't happened yet.

"The car era will come to an end someday, whether we want it to or not. It's a simple matter of EROI. Ethanol, hydrogen, whatever: none return the same amount of high-grade energy as petroleum, relative to the amount of energy required to produce them. Again, if you have evidence to the contrary, please share." Indeed it will. Every era will end someday. But I am interested in a timeframe that has an effect on my life and any direct descendents. If history is any indication, looking too much further beyond than that is pointless, the situation will have so changed.

"It's a simple matter of EROI." Ah, I am very cautious on that one. The EROI is going down on fossil fuels as it goes up on alternatives. Who knows what the outcome will be, but I have often worried that we have worshiped a false energy god in the EROI of oil and gas....which as stated, is getting worse.

"Kunstler's "wailing" bothers you. Fine. A matter of personal taste, perhaps. But he's not keeping any lab geniuses from coming up with that miracle bio-butanol solution."

Kunstler's "wailing" does not bother me as bad as I may make it sound (I have to have something for "dramatic effect" just as Kunstler does!), and his turn of phrase can often be entertaining. My taste do not run to his style as a general rule, and I still feel (opinion perhaps, nothing more) than his writing has little to do with the issue of energy and much to do with his personal distaste for American suburbia and architecture. He is right on this one, there is much to grumble about, but this is not about energy.

"a return to widespread rail travel, for instance, and rebuilding local production and trade networks that rely less on gasoline. They're just not solutions you're interested in, because you seem to assume human life begins and ends with the automobile."

I would differ a bit, but perhaps that's the impression I mistakenly leave because I accept that the automobile is not going to go off into the sunset easily. As for me, I love trains. I wish my hometown still had train service. In the 1950's, it had train, bus and of course the auto. Now, only one remains to get to and from my hometown. Want to guess which one? Trains had a 50 year headstart on autos, but still the auto prevails. Sorry. That's just the way it is.

"To me, raising the alarm that massive disruptions are on the way seems a lot more useful than mumbling about how you're "interested in algae".

I have nothing against raising alarms, but one needs to know they are correct or they risk discrediting what they hope to promote. False alarms are very, very damaging. And aren't you interested in algae?

"But hey, I understand: fairy tales always help me sleep, too."
One man's fairy tale is another man's goal: I see the fairy tale of a world in which everyone is healthy and vibrant and able to peddle to work in thunderstorms and cold and never notice that the wealthy are still driving in warm cars powered by....? {algae?, the worlds remaining oil, natural gas, propane, electricity?}, but that they somehow no longer have the convenience because...? (someone told them it was a horrible sin, something the wealthy deserve and they don't? Because make no mistake, even in a fairy tale world, wealth has it's advantages doesn't it?)

And remember, after all is said and done, we are still talking about consumption of only one cubic mile of oil for the world per year. Astounding.

Roger Conner'
Remember, we are only one cubic mile from freedom

Syntec

I think Robert should, and has, spoken for himself on this issue:

http://i-r-squared.blogspot.com/2006/06/e3-biofuels-responsible-ethanol....

http://i-r-squared.blogspot.com/2006/05/bio-butanol.html

In the 4 posts linked at the top of this thread, Robert makes his argument against corn ethanol as it is currently proposed by most ethanol producers. However, in the first of the two blogs above at his own blog site, he does not dismiss ethanol IF it can be done “responsibly”, that is to say, with an improved EROEI. He then goes on to discuss the E3 Biofuels proposals, which use manure for methane to help drive the cycle, and takes advantage of all byproduct to assist in growing the grain to feed the cattle, in other words, a closed loop type system. (brief aside: if you could incorporate wind and solar, the EROEI could go even higher, making selected sites net energy positive to a considerably larger degree than now thought possible). Note that under those carefully managed conditions, Robert does not seem to rebuke the use of corn per se.

However, if one looks at Robert’s second blog linked above, the idea of butanol gains favor by being potentially even more net energy positive than ethanol, and here’s the great part, by providing a better end product than ethanol. The 4 carbon structure of butanol means that you do not give up heat content as compared to gasoline, and it’s ability to be run as a direct replacement, or mixed in any volume with gasoline (or for that matter, ethanol) without infrastructure modification (if it lives up to the promise it’s chemical structure provides) would make it a far more valuable finished product now than ethanol.

Then comes the natural thought progression: If corn in a closed loop becomes barely acceptable to make ethanol, and even more acceptable to make butanol, what about other crops as raw material, perhaps a more hardy plant that requires less in the way of water/fertilizer and can be grown in northern climate easily, or that is already in surplus and needing a market? Thus, we see sugar beets and diary whey as possible raw materials.

My take is that there are those who oppose the very concept of biofuel on environmental or philosophical grounds (i.e., that if we produce more vehicle fuel, we will only burn more vehicle fuel, until we exhaust the planet and end up competing with our food source, no matter how good the EROEI of biofuels gets. It is a strong argument, and history does in many ways support it).

There are others, and I think the words of Robert in his own blogs indicate this, who feel that biofuel is going to happen, and if it is, we should strive to make it as “responsible” i.e., as net positive on energy return as possible. I think Robert is essentially correct in this outlook, and Robert, if you happen to drop by for a read, correct me if I am wrong on my take. :-)

I, speaking for myself have come to the conclusion that biofuel per se is not unworkable, but we have hobbled ourselves greatly by choosing the wrong input crop (corn, already in great demand as foodstuff and demanding on the environment to grow), and the wrong output (ethanol, which loses too much in heat, requires too much expensive infrastructure change, is too corrosive and is inferior to other finished biofuel products like butanol and bio-Diesel (which is hobbled by the refusal of Americans to drive Diesels)

In a gasoline centered liquid fuel society, butanol sure has much to cause one to take a second look. :-)

Roger Conner Jr
Remember, we are only one cubic mile from freedom

Hi PG, i notice the regularity with which you & some other ed's link Engineer Poets fuelgas+charcoal case. Is that because you (&?) see its ideas as workable and sound? (in conjunction with host of other measures yada yada). I like it myself but don't have the expertise to be even reasonably sure.

In Oregon we have had land use planning for over 20 yrs. With the intent to limit LA type sprawl. Bending the rules by some led to greater tightening and finally a public revolt with measure 37.

Part of the problem imo was that the leaders decided that Oregon's economy needed to move away from a nat. resource(logging/farming) into high tech. So they encouraged Intel among others to build here and that put the pressure on in terms of vastly increasing population and resultant sprawl. I have lived here all my life and my opinion is that they slowed sprawl but didn't stop it. The ammount of farm ground covered here by factories, shopping centers, houses and apartment buildings is very sad. If you had seen it in the 60's it was very pretty.

Oregon was held up a a model for the nation with the bottle bill and its landuse laws. IMO it is all about population. The idea to increase jobs through "clean industry" undid what might have been OK land use laws with fewer people.

Yes we have light rail(MAX) and buses(Trimet) and tons of traffic. I read a quote "we need to get pople out of thier cars" by a state official years ago. I believe they kept roads congested in an effort to force ridership, my opinion.

We are seeing people moving to high density housing. Alot of people don't want the work involved in maintaining a yard anymore. Container gardening is on the rise and reflects this trend in my industry(ornamental nursery).

Hi ET,

"...a political party has to have some kind of positive message in order to be viable."

I don't know about parties, but it seems to me the positive message is: We have some money now and some time now to prepare for a decline in LTF and total energy. If we're ready, life will be much better than if we're not...

The greatest loss of top soil is from covering it up.

I wonder how much fuel usage and pollution can be accredited to NASCAR this past weekend.

Can you imagine telling the fans no more races.....

Alex McSporan once wrote about how we have to make the choice between Saruman (industrialization) or Sam (the shire). I disagreed with McSporan and wrote a rebuttal titled We're Orcs So Of Course We Chose Saruman. I still believe that statement today. We're red-toothed hominids, Don, and all the wishful thinking in the world will not change what we are. Yes we will burn the last 6 inches of topsoil in a vain attempt to keep our car culture. Yes we will let hundreds of millions starve elsewhere to keep our car culture. Yes we will choose fuel over food. In fact, we already have done and this is not even a debate.

As Dr. Albert Bartlett has said elsewhere, our greatest failing as a species is our inability to comprehend the exponential function. We are just beginning to reap the fruits of that ignorance now.

There is soil in China which has been used for thousands of years and yet, despite horrific erosion, China nearly feeds a population more than 3 times that of the United Sates on less arable land, if I am not mistaken.

They also use four times the world average of synthetic fertlizer to achieve that. And they are falling behind.