I suspect that by the end of the year, given what most of us expect over the summer months and into the Fall, that TOD may very well rank in the top 500 on technorati. BTW, Happy Mothers Day!!

It's good to know that Mr. Vail is going to be here for the long haul. His take on things are always interesting and are bound to generate lots of useful discussion here--at least, among non-curmudgeons unlike myself! =]

I duly welcome Jeff Vail and also wish to send out my gratitude to all TOD contributors and editors--you guys really have dedication, curiosity and honesty that rivals anywhere else on the web.

... and I can't help but wonder how many mothers read TOD?

This feels like an approprite place to repeat a heart-felt THANK YOU to the editors, contributors and readers of what I consider to be the most important and prescient blog on the internets.
I've been mostly good about reddit and digg--I assume I should continue the excercise? In other words chronic submitters aren't causing the "blacklisting" as you term it?
Jeff Vail--great! This place improves with age! And about this summer--I have had the same strong feeling for months.

I had a little trouble loading TOD pages earlier today.

Slashdotted, perhaps?

| _{The problem will solve itself.}
|  _{But not in a nice way.}

Congratulation to the whole TOD staff ! and to american mothers too !

Sure the summer may be hot. BTW, does anyone have news from Freddy Hutter? he doesn't seem to have updated his site recently. Looking for another formula replacing "Global extraction is growing on pace"....?

Talking of 'Things of note' and having 'funny feelings'; this was included in the Oil Market Report for April by the IEA (dated 11 May). I made it bold in the 'call on Opec' sentence.

"April world oil output rose by 55 kb/d to 85.5 mb/d, with OPEC supply levelling off near 30.3 mb/d. Non-OPEC growth in 2007 is trimmed to 1.0 mb/d, plus 0.2 mb/d of OPEC NGLs, which leaves the 2.3 mb/d rise in the ‘call on OPEC’ by 4Q running well ahead of expected OPEC capacity additions. This implies lower spare capacity later in the year."

Of course, I have long since stopped giving much regard to what they actually say in this report, it is always revised, usually downwards, a month, two or three later. But it is interesting that they included this sentence. My guess is that there are some worried people, peering at lots of spreadsheets, in Paris.

Congratulations to TOD on this milestone. It doesn't seem that long since i saw a 3 million visits post - this site is definitely gaining popularity at the moment, keep up the good work.

I've been reading most of the article posted here, but i often feel i don't have anything to say, which wouldn't lower the quality of the thread.

Happy Mother's Day to all da Mom's out there and hoping all the sons and daughters are doing their duty to make it a nice and relaxing day for them.

A special shout out to the biggest "Mother" of them all...Moma Gaia...may she be kind to us and teach us thoughtful and nurturing lessons. I'm sure there will be some tough love coming our way here in the near future.

Angels Dancing on the Head of a Pin

I love this site. Because it is so relevant and yet can be so stupid. Me, BS Physics MS Geology Ph.D Xray Crystallography. Professional life; Securities Analyst, Venture Capitalist. It's a great background to watch these threads. Three gallons of oil per pig per day. That's a good one. But even stupider as was debate over solar cells as a net cooler of the earth. If there is an effect the net effect is less than 0.001 of a degree. Angels on a pin head. There is a real problem coming, but please let's try to analyze solutions...

I'm getting the word out on MySpace. Thank you for developing what is in my opinion the most important site on the web!

____________________
MySpace.com/ziontherapy

I dont know when Congress will accept the importance of
peak inspite of the site reaching the top 2000

THE MONEY, THE TECHNOLOGY, THE MARKET
ARE WE VOTING AGAINST WHAT WE ARE FOR?

Despite protestations that the U.S. dollar is a garbage currency, no one as yet is turning them down or using them for toilet paper (well, at least no one I know! :-).
The biggest complaint right now seems to be in having to give up too many dollars to buy fuel. We know of course, being aware of the thoughts of the intelligentsia, that oil and fuel is, when one compares it to inflation over the last 30 years, still relatively cheap
But that does not keep the protests of pain at bay, witness two of the links in today's Oil Drum:

http://www.opinion250.com/blog/view/5835/3/gas+prices+'tremendous'+impact+on+local+truckers

http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20070513/lead/lead8.html

Once again, we see that people who must consume fuel to make a living are being squeezed hard by the rising prices.

Of course, huge improvements in fuel economy for commercial vehicles has been proposed and in design for several years:

http://www1.eaton.com/hybrid_vehicle/
If all goes well, the company plans to make this a standard replacement vehicle in its weight class of 30,000 medium-duty trucks.
http://www1.eaton.com/hybrid_vehicle/facts.html

Eaton and FedEx, partnered with the group Environmental Defense, have already put some 20 of these trucks on the road, and see big potential:
“For example, if 10,000 hybrid electric vehicles were on the road rather than current standard vehicles, substantial reductions in emissions and fuel use would occur annually:
• Smog-causing emissions of nitrogen oxides would be reduced by 1,700 tons annually—the equivalent of taking passenger cars off New York City roads for 25 days.
• Carbon dioxide emissions would be reduced by 83,000 tons annually—the equivalent to planting 2 million trees.
• Diesel fuel usage would be reduced by 7.2 million gallons, which requires 1 million barrels of crude oil to produce.

Now in having given the link I have just given, I have little doubt that I will send those who see no potential solution as workable into a tirade. “It’s a drop in the bucket!”, “it’s a silver bb!”, that won’t end America’s dependence on oil!”, and for the neo-primitive deep greens, “it allows Western society to believe it can survive!”

Of course, all of the above is true. FedEx and the hybrid hauler will certainly not save the world. But what it does do is put pressure on the competition. If you are in business competing against FedEx, can you afford to not seriously consider options that will reduce your fuel costs? And, if you are one of the municipalities or truckers listed earlier in the links in today's Oil Drum, can you afford not to start doing some hard research on what methods might be out there to reduce fuel consumption?

As Vinod Khosla says,
“A Crisis is a termble thing to waste”:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/05/11/tech/main2790059.shtml

He may be wrong on some things, but on this he is correct.

The march on solar panels continues,

“The adoption of mass-production efficiencies have already pushed prices down for solar panels. The price for a watt of solar power, adjusted for inflation, went from $21.83 in 1980 to $2.70 in 2005, according to Applied Materials.”

But the fear of an oil price crash still hangs out there:
“Historically, alternative energy has flourished during energy crises, only to sharply contract when fossil-fuel prices drop and stabilize.”

What we can work to achieve is “confluence”. That is the point at which technology, knowledge of methods and productive capacity is so well distributed throughout the modern economies that it is almost impossible to disrupt, AND the acceptance of new methods and technologies become well accepted on the basis of efficiency, cleanliness and security that even if prices drop, and the market for renewable and alternative technology is able to hold, survive and grow.

What we must prepare for is that the propaganda by the vested interests will only get more heated, more misleading, and outright virulent. The slander campaigns against any and all alternatives have already began, but supposedly the fossil fuel industry does not yet feel a truly serious threat. As they do, alternatives will be accused of outrageous misdeeds, technology long proven will be accused of being totally “pie in the sky” and every possible barrier will be thrown up to attempt to kill other options before they can get to the above mentioned stage of confluence.

The reason I am discussing this here at TOD is because the audience here is growing fast, as indicated by today's article by Prof. Goose, “Things of Note”, to quote, “TOD will surpass 5 million unique visits and 12.5 million page views”.

What this means is that TOD is becoming a valuable piece of real estate from the point of being a “public square” from which to declare technology either a possible path to the future or at least a possible contributor, or as junk. Newcomers will not be able to easily separate the wheat from the chaff. Of course, there are those who declare any attempt to salvage a culture of the type we have known in the Western world for almost a century as a garbage culture, and thus, any technology born of that culture is to be dismissed as destructive, essentially not to be done, and even more so to be stopped if it works. This would be the most radical of the deep green or neo-primitive ideologues.
Newcomers and outsiders in most cases are not anti Western-anti technolgy-anti capitalist. That is a VERY, VERY narrow edge of American political/social/philosophical thought.

Bill Clinton once said “be careful voting against what your for, and for what your against.” What he meant by this was the easy way in which a skilled adversary can turn the words of supporters against the cause they say they endorse and defend, and cause enough confusion so that the supporters are, often unwittingly, supporting the position of the adversary.

MAKE NO MISTAKE, the fossil fuel industry is a skilled adversary. The constant attack on any alternative other than already established ones (oil/gas/nuclear/coal) will use any ammunition that can be used against the alternatives. Wind is accused of causing massive power disruptions, solar is accused of gobbling up natural resources and being completely unreliable, plug hydrids will crash the grid at supper time, and cause power plants to belch out hugely greater volumes of greenhouse gas, on and on and on...

Please, before you accept every charge made against the alternatives at face value, PLEASE investigate, learn, and see if the charges hold any truth. PLEASE.

In closing allow me to give just one example, far out on the edge of technology.
This an interesting link found along with the solar links above.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/03/15/tech/main2573153_page2.shtml
"It's the way that makes the most sense, and we have to start somewhere," he says. "If you look at it, no one has said what I'm doing doesn't work."

Now, there is a long history here at TOD, so much so that it has become almost a tradition. If someone mentions renewable hydrogen, they are immediately beset by a full force of people who will go much further than just saying such plans and designs may be over optimistic (of that I plead guilty, I am hoping for the best!), or they underestimate the cost or the complexity of making it work (again, I plead guilty of that as a common error, because IF I accept the worst case scenarios of $200 plus per barrel, then many extremely expensive options become possible. And the newest renewable hydrogen systems would be expensive, they are prototypes.

No, the attackers of the new technology declare it COMPLETELY impossible, from a thermodynamic perspective, a physics perspective. They do not stop at saying it is too expensive, or that it may be technically difficult, they go the extra mile, and declare the very physics undoable.

And yet, it is being done! Not only in the U.S., but in even more cases in Europe, and by firms, respected firms such as Honda Motor Corp. and others in other parts of the world.

Now, most of the people here are very astute, some are extremely good technicians.
Many much, MUCH better than I am.

This is often the case on various technologies. Why is there such a priority placed on attempting to prove that any alternative to oil and gas is impossible?

Again, for those who have been coming here a long time, it is not greatly important. We dismiss it out of hand. There are always doubters. There were still newspaper columns declaring it impossible for a human to fly on a controlled heavier than air craft well after the Wright Brothers had done it weeks before.

All this has been in good fun, but think for a moment: There are people with very good energy conservation and alternative energy producing ideas who have to go before bankers, investors, and venture capitalists, as well as city councils and state governments. Many of the people thye present their ideas to are NOT well versed in the technology of energy (some have complained that as sharp as he is, this is why Vinod Khosla and other capitalists were so easily pulled into the ethanol trade.)
Please consider how continued diatribes declaring alternatives impossible undercut the very people who are trying to help break the fossil fuel monopoly.

Every attempt made to destroy confidence in potentially valid and valuable alternative energy options is a huge favor to the fossil fuel industry. As the audience here grows, we must be more aware of the message sent from such a valuable virtual “public forum”. IF an idea seems to be truly destructive, or an outright fraud, then BY ALL MEANS, people in the know should post and say so, and bring facts to the table to attempt to prove their position (i.e., Robert Rapier and others on ethanol)

All we can count on is that for every post that declares technology completely impossible, they should attempt to support their position with outside sourcing and other information. And if others here know that it can be done, they should post and say so and say how and why.

We are not at this moment arguing whether any level of technical improvement is aesthetically or philosophical desirable. If someone believes that there should be NO TECHNICAL ADVANCE allowed, that is what they have the right to say. Whether for example solar energy is “desirable” from a philosophical viewpoint is different from whether it is technically possible.
Remember, if one argues against the alternatives, it can be viewed as an argument in favor of the status quo, because the fossil fuel industry worldwide is not going to stop producing oil and gas for “philosophical” reasons, at least not voluntarily.

Do not help the fossil fuel vested interests undercut and slander potential alternatives.
And they will. And they will do it in such a coy and clever fashion, they will have many voicing their arguments for them without even knowing where the argument came from in the first place.

“Do not vote against what your for, and for what your against.”

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

Congrats on teh accomplishment and welcome to Jeff.

|Sig|


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