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DrumBeat: July 23, 2007
Posted by Leanan on July 23, 2007 - 9:23am
Go anywhere in America, among any class of people — from the Nascar morons to the Ivy League — and one expectation is pretty universal: that technology will only bring us more wonders and miracles, and it will certainly save-the-day where our energy problems are concerned. This would seem natural for people living in an age when a simple cassette SONY Walkman is superceded by an 80-gigabyte iPod in one generation. But what if this assumption is off? What if peak technology occurs roughly in the same wave as peak energy?Of course, another nearly universal expectation is that we will go through an orderly transition between the end of the oil fiesta and whatever comes next — implying, naturally, that some new sovereign energy resource is out there in destiny's green room, getting prepped up, waiting to be sent on-stage. The confusion about this, induced by strenuous wishing, is such that most people expect the next energy resource to consist of technology itself.
Oil falls to $77, OPEC wary of high oil prices
Oil fell towards $77 a barrel on Monday after OPEC expressed concern over near record prices and said it was prepared to pump more crude if needed.OPEC President and United Arab Emirates Energy Minister Mohammed al-Hamli said on Sunday that oil's strength was a worry but the world economy was still growing in spite of it.
$100 Oil May Be Months Away, Not Years, Say CIBC, Goldman
The $100-a-barrel oil that Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said would prevail by 2009 may be only a few months away.Jeffrey Currie, a London-based commodity analyst at the world's biggest securities firm, says $95 crude is likely this year unless OPEC unexpectedly increases production, and declining inventories are raising the chances for $100 oil. Jeff Rubin at CIBC World Markets predicts $100 a barrel as soon as next year.
Cheap natural gas about to be piped away
Colorado consumers’ long romance with cheap natural gas is about to end, thanks to an interloper by the name of REX.REX, the energy industry’s nickname for the $4.5 billion Rockies Express pipeline, will take some Rocky Mountain natural gas away from Colorado and deliver it to eager customers in the Midwest and East.
Consumers could see heating bills increase as early as this winter.
Ecuador tries novel balance of oil and environment
Under pressure to preserve the environment while at the same time ease the poverty of his people, Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa has come up with an unusual solution.Correa wants wealthy nations to pay Ecuador $350 million a year in exchange for leaving an estimated 1 billion barrels of oil under the ground in the pristine Yasuni rainforest.
How Big Is The Oil Supply Problem?
How big of a problem is the oil supply situation? The latest report from the International Energy Agency warns that the world will face an oil crunch in five years. IEA said that supply was falling faster than expected in major producing areas while consumption is accelerating thanks to strong economic growth in emerging countries.To listen to some commentators, the world faces an impending economic cataclysm over what we are told is a major reduction in the available supply of oil. To others, the currently high oil price is a response not so much to actual supply as it is an inefficiency (whether contrived or accidental) in getting oil and its by-products to retail market channels. And yet another theory is that today’s high oil price is a hidden “tax” on consumers to help pay for a long-term war effort in the Middle East (with its obvious benefits to the oil oligopoly).
British National Party: Politicians fret over wrong crisis as Peak Oil looms
In a stunning reversal of its previous dogmatic ‘business as usual’ stance, the International Energy Agency has belatedly accepted the reality of Peak Oil, and the huge impact the phenomenon is going to have on the entire world.The crucial and potentially devastating nature of the point at which humanity has used half of the world’s oil reserves - with the remaining half being overwhelmingly lower in quality, in smaller and harder to reach fields, and in less stable parts of the world – has been a BNP theme for more than five years.
Aramco resumes operations after fire
State oil company Saudi Aramco announced on Monday that operations from a fire damaged pier at their export oil terminal had resumed.Four people died and a further 12 were injured as a result of the fire on Thursday at the world’s largest offshore oil export terminal.
"The Ras Tanura North Pier is back in operation, but the two berths affected by the fire are currently not in service," Aramco said in a statement.
Bangladesh Energy: Poor Policy, Wrong Strategy
The gas sector is more than half a century old yet it does not have a exploration plan, depletion strategy, competent reservoir engineering unit. There is no agreed and authentic reservoir assessment to tell with any degree of confidence the proven, probable and possible reserve of natural gas. Some theoretician based on sketchy and motivated information creates panic off and on and misguide poor attitude and corrupt political leadership. Some opportunist business syndicate avail this confused state and fish in muddy water. This clique systematically destroyed the capacity of Petrobangla and other Petrobangla companies. Bright competent professionals wiling to serve the sector with vision, commitment and innovations were not encouraged, regular recruitment of fresh young guns were stopped. There were favoritism and parochial preference for promotion training and prized posting. Evil syndicates involved in theft and pilferage were patronized and favored. Consequently huge brain drain of competent professionals made the sector hollow. BAPEX was crippled deliberately to make the exploration and drilling segment almost barren, no initiative was taken to grow and nourish mining professionals.
Michael J. Economides: PDVSA's 'Operational Emergency'
There is something really funny that happens all the time after countries go though oil nationalizations or re-nationalizations as Venezuela is re-discovering the hard way. The path is simple. Oil is declared the national treasure that the often hated foreigners, headed by the United States, want. Controlling that oil becomes a symbol of national emancipation and assertiveness.Then reality sinks in. Oil in the ground might as well be on the moon. It takes very complicated technology to extract it. Pemex, the tightest of all national companies, has discovered it a long time ago. On the Mexican side of the Gulf of Mexico with even better reservoirs, well depths and sophistication do not come close to the ones on the US side.
Energy Summit to be held in Manitowoc
The Myths of Energy Summit will be held 8 a.m. Aug. 15 at the Holiday Inn.The Energy Summit will discuss the future of energy usage and how to help reduce energy use and costs.
The keynote speaker will be U.S. Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md., who will discuss the topic of Peak Oil and what it means to our future energy needs.
Other topics will include Aldo Leopold Legacy Center Zero Energy Building presented by Tom Kubala of Kubala Washatko Architects; The State of Electricity in Wisconsin presented by Wisconsin Public Service's President Charles Schrock; Bio-Mass-Wisconsin's Diamond in the Rough presented by Judy Ziewacz, Office of Energy Independence; Energy Efficiency — The Real Money Savor presented by Stephen Heins, Orion Energy Systems vice president of corporate communications.
Cameco Problems Halt Uranium Price Decline
News announcing the facility's closure for two months ‘is expected to place significant upward pressure on the spot price,’ according to NMR editor Treva Klingbiel. She estimated a ‘minimum loss of 2,000 tU of UF6 production’ during the shutdown....Soil within the perimeter walls of the plant was reportedly contaminated with uranium and production-related chemicals. Cameco’s conversion facility is located about 60 miles east of Toronto near the Port Hope (Ontario) harbor. Cameco Fuel Services, at 1 Eldorado Place, is about one-quarter mile from the shores of Lake Ontario.
As candidate's look to Iowa, ethanol becomes top issue
As Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton climbed onto a makeshift stage at the Iowa State Fairgrounds and embraced motor fuel from corn as a key to America's future, she completed a turnabout from being an ethanol opponent, a position she held only two years ago....Political observers view her about-face as a political necessity, saying Iowa's first-in-the-nation's caucuses -- in which residents of the country's biggest corn-producing state vote their choice for presidential nominee -- makes it politically risky to avoid kneeling at the altar of ethanol-from-corn.
For decades, college kids have used stolen milk crates as the basic building blocks of coffee tables and dorm room shelves.Now, a new breed of crate rustler is cashing in by swiping thousands of the containers from loading docks and selling them to shady recyclers.
The containers are chopped into bits and shipped to booming factories in China to be made into a variety of products, from pipes to flower pots.
...The crates are made of petroleum-based plastic that has increased in value along with gasoline prices. The material now sells for 22 cents a pound, compared to 7 cents a pound in 2005, said Patty Moore, a recycling consultant in Sonoma.
Claude Mandil: Industry Can Substantially Save Energy And Reduce CO2 Emissions
Have you noticed odd changes in the behaviour of your friends and family, such as shunning car purchases in lieu of public transportation and taking action to move to a smaller residence? Probably not. Generally, rising incomes translate into demand for bigger homes and more powerful and larger cars. This poses a problem, since it produces direct emissions from consumer use as well as indirect CO2 emissions.
China June crude oil output up 2.5 pct yr-on-yr at 15.72 mln tons
China's June crude oil output rose 2.5 pct year-on-year to 15.72 mln tons, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said.China produced 5.06 mln tons of gasoline, 10.69 mln tons of diesel and 1.0 mln tons of kerosene in June, up 12.9 pct, 11.2 pct and 26 pct respectively, the NBS said.
North Dakota: Gas crunch not likely to end soon
The fuel situation remains tight in North Dakota and the crunch isn't likely to end any time soon.
Western Slope's study on oil shale delayed
The long-awaited tome of fine print outlining the breadth and depth of future commercial oil shale development and its effect on the Western Slope’s water, economy and environment is experiencing more delays.The Bureau of Land Management told state officials the draft commercial oil shale programmatic environmental impact statement, or PEIS, is slated for release Aug. 7, Assistant Colorado Department of Natural Resources Director Mike King said Monday.
But that date will be pushed back, BLM Washington spokeswoman Heather Feeney said.
Gov. Brian Schweitzer's Big Idea - to build plants to turn coal into liquid fuel, thus reducing dependence on foreign oil while taking advantage of our coal resources before they are made obsolete by cleaner energy sources - is taking a big beating these days.The concept, the subject of much recent congressional debate, has a couple of main problems. One is that the huge incentives involved are seen by many as a reckless boondoggle for the coal industry. The second is the fear that carbon dioxide pollution from the process may not be controllable either economically or practically.
New Zealand: Ready and waiting for the oil boom
The arrival of oil and gas prospectors in the deep south has raised hopes of an energy boom for the Mainland.
UK: Government is failing on energy saving
The Government has been threatened with legal action for its failure to promote energy saving in millions of homes as required by an Act passed in 2000.
Taiwan opts for coal-fired power plants
Power demand rose to a record in Taiwan last week, and the country said it would favor plans for coal-fired stations when it awarded permits to build new capacity next year because coal plants are cheaper to run and easier to supply than plants fueled by gas.
Spain Takes Steps to Curb Energy Consumption
Spanish ministers have approved a batch of urgent measures to curb energy consumption and slow the growth of greenhouse gas emissions, ministers said on Friday.The central government will set an example by reducing energy consumption in its own buildings, with a goal of saving at least 9 percent by 2012 and 20 percent by 2016.
New insights on the Soviet Union's collapse
Crude oil prices last week were flirting with a record high. It's great news – for the Russians.Low oil prices contributed to the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. In Russia today, high oil and natural gas prices are, to a large degree, the reason for an economic boom.
Welcome to Richistan, USA: The American Dream of riches for all is turning into a nightmare of inequality - but a backlash is brewing
It was the same in the late 19th century when the original Gilded Age of conspicuous wealth and deep poverty was spawned by railways and the industrial age. At the same time government has helped by doling out corporate tax breaks. In the Fifties the proportion of federal income from company taxes was 33 per cent, by 2003 it was just 7.4 percent. Some 82 of America's largest companies paid no tax at all in at least one of the first three years of the administration of President George W Bush.
Russia and US to Square Off Over Energy Reserves
Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President George W. Bush spent most of their time at the “lobster summit” at Kennebunkport, Maine, discussing how to prevent the growing tensions between their two countries from getting out of hand.
Q&A: ConocoPhillips' chief talks about meeting the demand
What's different now, as we are in 2007, is we don't see necessarily the cycles of the past. It could happen, but we see the demand for energy continues to increase with the population and the development of economies. Our question is: 'Where is all the energy going to be coming from?' It makes all the sense in the world to us to encourage conservation and more efficient use of energy because if we use less, that's the same thing as adding supply. And if we use less energy, it certainly helps with respect to climate change and greenhouse gas emissions.
David Strahan: Climate criminals
Mountaineers are a special class of climate criminal. We clearly have a particular moral duty to protect the icy landscapes we enjoy, and most of us like to think of ourselves as environmentally responsible. But the reality is rather different. When it comes to flying, just like the hordes heading off to the beaches of Magaluf, we remain in stubborn denial about the damage our emissions cause, and carry on regardless.In a recent three page article for The Independent entitled ‘The Melting Mountains’, Joe Simpson bemoaned the destruction of classic routes in the Alps from melting ice and massive rockfalls, without a single mention of his own airmiles, still less the helicopter fuel used to haul him off the Dru. At a meeting of the Alpine Club last summer, one speaker regaled us with stories from a lifetime of expeditions and slides showing evidence of glacial retreat, without once making the connection.
The crisis presented by global warming demands a response that is simple, comprehensive and effective. A tax on carbon consumption is the only response in sight that both discourages the production of emissions that cause global warming, and finances the rapid transition to a post-carbon economy.
Climate change fears reach even Formula One racing
Talking about climate change at a Formula One race might at first glance seem like praising celibacy in a brothel.The world's top motor sport competition is for many the epitome of gas-guzzling wastefulness with powerful engines burning nearly a liter of fossil fuel per kilometer while a vast entourage of people and machines jets to races round the world.
But green winds of change are blowing through one of the world's most popular sports, and a growing number of team bosses say they want to make Formula One a high-tech pioneer and leader in fighting climate change rather than a whipping post.
Floods force many to face climate change reality
"It would be wrong to deny the possible impact of climate change on flooding because if we (waited for more) statistical proof it may be too late," said Wolfgang Grabs at the World Meteorological Organisation of the United Nations.
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How many of you have checked out the prospective YouTube videos for tonights "debate"? In among the rather (copious) marginal issue videos (e.g., "full disclosure" about Area 51) and the large block submitted via teacher's unions, there are some good ones about peak oil and alternative energy.
So... what is the probability that CNN will pick one of the PO/energy questions for airing? Anyone giving odds?
I posted a peak oil question!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oh0bt6TdVfk
www.baratunde.com
comedian, author, vigilante pundit
Concisely done, I hope it is picked. There was another one that was very clear about PO and well done. Plus, there were a couple of good ones on ethanol also.
I thought that the energy question videos were among the best executed out of the whole lot, and furthermore it is a topic that is actually policy-centric so candidates may find it answerable.
like yoda said, "there is another"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5-iKzACjqw
very well done
www.baratunde.com/blog
comedian, author, vigilante pundit
Unfortunately neither your video or the others on oil were selected by Mr. Cooper - or perhaps they didn't make through the first screening process at CNN for some reason. That's too bad; at least there was one direct question on nuclear power.
If any billionaires are in fact reading TOD, I suggest you call up Ted (or a friend that knows him) and Sergey&Larry (or a friend that knows them) and say that this question must be asked of the Democratic (oops, I mean, it's too late now--maybe for the Elephants?) candidates for President during this "historic" debate.
Of course, there are Doomers here who will reply why even try, it doesn't matter--there is no hope--which is ironic that they would actually care to chime in with a comment like that, you know? Reductio ad absurdum? But you see it around a lot. That's in part the spirit of the origin of the term, and incidentally, of the time. Sure, I like Schopenhauer too, but keep it to yourself. You know who you are... And the smart uber-Doomers don't drone on all day long, because they understand absurdity--they're smart. They keep to the facts and keep to themselves their bleak views of global thermonuclear war or whatever other doomer porn may satisfy their hearts' desire in the private confines of their own creatively pessimistic minds. The smart ones don't flog around "aghh screw everything", as I said, they stick to the facts, which are more than abundant (unlike something else we all know about...) There can never be enough Doomer Porn. =] I suggest slapping that on the masthead once these comment threads get to 1000 a day when oil is approaching $100... And we think we have it tough? When Drumbeat is 2000 comments a day in 2013 we will pray for the tranquil serenity of '07 comment threads. Question is: will Leanan be willing to do the Drumbeat for another six years?
Politics is a charade, but at least it could be a charade where for once they discuss the root of America: oil. And do it in scintillating in-depth sound bites (yes, an oxymoron, don't worry) trying to best each other for the reins of a republic (or empire depending on who you ask, or what you think) that is in disarray--a bloody foreign war/occupation, the military hemorrhaging young men and women, no end in sight--and all for what? Yes, oil. I hear the hecklers in the background now, as Billy Falafel O would say, shut up, we all know it's about oil. Yeah, yeah be quiet, of course we aren't stealing their oil, we're just "securing the region" with "full spectrum dominance"--check out the borders buddy. Look at your nearest world map. Go shake OPECs hand. Get back to me, I've gotta go golfing in Jackson Hole with Dick Cheney now...
Why even try? It doesn't matter.
There is no hope.
Hahah. Nice one. I usually don't respond with one-liners like this, but I'm tired and about to catch some shut-eye and I couldn't resist typing "Hahah" and then clicking "edit" to add this superfluous explanation in order to not feel guilty over merely typing the banal "Hahah" (which is far superior to the puerile "lol").
LOL
How dare you insult interweb speak!
"You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created."
Albert Einstein
You and I have exchanged private emails on this and other topics. I don't think there are many "doomers" who would tell you not to try but there are lots of us who would tell you not to get pissed off when they ignore you.
I wish you the best of luck in your crusade, mr f, so please be sure to keep me posted how it turns out. ;) You'll have to excuse me if I am not as enthusiastic for such activities as you are. I've run the political gauntlet numerous times before for other issues and am pretty aware of how it works.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Dr. Albert Bartlett
Into the Grey Zone
GreyZone,
Not so much a crusade, more like a pastime, like following baseball. I hear you on the political gauntlet ---> mincemeat clause... I don't mind being ignored, and I don't get pissed off when it happens either (at least not for very long!) I learn a lot reading here about the subjects at hand, and I enjoy blurting out whatever I think in response to TOD stimuli (that's what all this "blogging" is for, after all.)
Like I mentioned before, TOD is a fascinating microcosm of human nature. For that reason alone, if no other aside from the excellent statistical analysis and summaries--I believe it to be an invaluable resource.
Wow! 462 comments!!! Woohooo!!!!
I have had an epiphany.
We are all saved. Do not worry. Technobear, a very cuddly bear, will save everything!!
Wooohooo!!
Don't worry!!! Infinite World is POSSIBLE!!!!
Be HAPPY!!!!
There is enough for thousands of years!!! Don't forget ZERO POINT ENERGY!!!! See!!! We have plenty!!!!!
Gosh gee golly willickers!! I FEEL SO MUCH BETTER!!!
See, you gloomy woomy shoomy gosh bewillickering silly ole doomy doomers!! We are all just basking in the sweetness and light!!!
Oh, cornucopia, oh sweet nectar. Oh innumerate bliss of the unwashed masses. We need no scientific hoohaaaa!!! We can just throw ourselves down like children before the television, our chins on our hands, waiting to hear the absolute truth from the anointed ones who speak in quiet tones and tell us, "Look children, sweet technology!!!!!!"
Yes, I am convinced. It must have been your cogent arguments, your impressive intellect, perhaps your invariant application of rather smallish words grouped in what some call "childish attempts at satire" but which I call the SMARTEST DAMNED ARGUMENT EVER PUT FORTH!!
Yes, you, you my amazingly erudite friend, my brilliant child prodigy, my sweet, sweet stoker of the truth, stokin' stokin' ever stokin' that truth, purveyor of tasty cherries of knowledge (pronounced in honor of you, kah-nowledge), I finally bow to your ever potent, ever erect, ever pointed and superior ego.
Yes. I accept defeat.
Now. Where is my flying car?
We're backed up on the flying cars, but we're fully stocked on "ever potent, ever erect, ever pointed and superior ego[s]".
What scent would you like with that? I'm guessing nectar, but one never knows...
[Edit: Maybe because it is past my bedtime I forgot to mention that technobear will be out for the week sick. I hope you can understand that this is why the flying cars are giving us such immense problems. They simply don't want to fly without technobear...]
513 comments including this one.
What you didn't get the memo? July 23 is autobiography day here on TOD.
| The problem will solve itself.
| But not in a nice way.
Those memos are sneaky. I have doubts that anyone reads them at all (I've even seen some use them as dart targets.)
That reminds me, I have to finish The Life of Henry Brulard.
I'm not sure why the return to railroads that Kunstler advocates wouldn't be a form of "technology saving us" that he excoriates. I feel like some adjective is missing before what he calls "technology". Energy-intensive? But that just makes the argument tautological.
I think he means NEW technology. Technology that hasn't been discovered yet. Like oil that hasn't been produced yet, if technology hasn't been discovered yet, there's usually a good reason.
New as in unknown or new as in unimplemented?
I know a lot of people driving SUVs who are cognizant of the likelihood that gasoline prices will continue rising. However, they seem to think that they can simply get some 'technology' installed that will up their mileage and keep them breaking even. That or trade in for an SUV with the 'technology' already installed. I see very little critical thought in this area.
[sarcasm]
All you have to do is attach rare-earth magnets to the fuel line, it reconfigures the molecular structure of the fuel and gives it more energy.
[/sarcasm]
Sounds like a business plan to me! ;)
Remember to send the stuff fedex, so it's not mail fraud!Bob Ebersole
Actually there is a temporary way to keep it going. The 6 stroke diesel engine. part internal combustion part steam engine. very cleaver indeed...
http://www.autoweek.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060227/FREE/3022700...
Delusional, water injection has been around since at least WW2. I read your link. There were no diagrams but as far as I can tell Crower has done nothing that has not been done already. Of course, Crower used the usual disclaimer 'engine has not yet been run against load on a dyno.'
Using water injection on take off with a high performance radial engine will allow higher turbo boost pressures without the normally associated higher cylinder head temperatures. Water will also allow the engine to be run with more mag or distributor advance for more hp, and the water will allow higher compression ratios with lower grades of fuel because water is loathe to compress. The use of water injection was all but done away with by the end of WW2 because of the associated problems that water in the cylinders causes over time. I was on a flight crew in the Navy and we used the purple 115/145 octane aviation fuel without water injection to run our turbo charged 32 cylinder engines with power recovery turbines to power all the generators and alternators. I noticed that Crower said he wanted to switch from regular tap water to distilled water to prevent build up of (mostly calcium) in the engine. If he does that then he will be using some very corrosive stuff...distilled water. One reason the military got away from water injection was if an engine sits without running for a week with water residue in the cylinders then (depending on weather conditions and ambient air temps) the rings will stick in their grooves, the valves will stick in their guides, and the spark plugs will need changing because their electodes will rust...FUBAR. Sounds like Crower is bored and doesnt like to read about what has already been tried and discarded for good reason. Perhaps he should work on something to replace sleigh runners?
water injection has been around since at least WW2.
And its mentioned in the 1970's vitage 'how to extend your gas mileage' book(s) I have around here somewhere....
There are a number of serious problems with that concept engine, including:
It wouldn't be all that hard to separate the diesel and steam sections, even using the engine coolant (perhaps an oil of some sort) to heat a low-pressure boiler. But the gains would not be terribly impressive, and the difficulties of freezing and the like would make the engineering very difficult for the improvements you could eke out.
Maybe UTC's organic vapor turbine is a better model than steam.
This is a 6 stroke engine not a traditional water injected engine. In a water injected engine water is introduced along with the fuel for combustion thus moderating it's properties.
In the six stroke after the traditional exhaust stroke there is another injection stroke where water is introduced into the hot cylinder (with Crower by using the injectors that would have forced in the diesel).
This creates a steam expansion stroke which is followed by a steam exhaust stroke and then followed by the normal (fuel/air) intake stroke. Six strokes not four with the cam running at 1/3 engine speed instead of 1/2. (extra set of cam lobe ramps for the 2 add. cycles)
Crower has been grinding racing and mileage cams for years and so has the know how to do the engine and head mods. (He was nice enough to talk to me on the phone once when there was no body else to answer my cam question and that impressed me)
I have seen this arraingement touted before. I can't tell ,in theory, why it would not yield more heat energy based on nearly eliminating the loss from a conventional cooling system.
The 6-stroke engine will certainly convert more energy to work, but you have issues:
A better comparison is to a conventional bottoming-cycle steam engine (boiler heated by exhaust) or an organic vapor turbine. An OVT might be able to use the cooling jacket heat as well as the exhaust heat, and either could probably get more energy out than Crowther's system (which can only use the heat stored in the combustion chamber walls to make steam).
The high fuel price causing them to trade in their vehicle will be the same high fuel price that crushes their vehicle's resale value. They are in for a doulbe [unpleasant] surprise.
"I think he means NEW technology. Technology that hasn't been discovered yet . . ."
I'm not sure the distinction is really between new and old technology, although that model would work in most situations. I see two possible distinctions between types of technology that Kunstler refers to. One distinction is between technology that would require a lifestyle change, such as rail or bicycle, vs. technology that doesn't (continue to use cars but fueled by something else). The other distinction is between technology that obeys the laws of thermodynamics and "technology" that does not (which I think should actually be called "magic"). I don't mention the second one the be facetious, but because in the minds of alot of people, technology isn't bound by the laws of physics, mainly because they are only vaguely aware of these laws. It would be interesting to go around telling people that scientists are working on flying cars that will be powered by only a AAA battery and see how many people believe it would be possible.
Re: flying cars
Wait! Hang on there, fella'. Do you mean to tell me that flying cars running on AAA batteries are just a dream I had?
Excrement! I'm so disaaaaapoiiiiinted...
I gotta get me one of dem!
Yeee Haaaw!
Clarke's third law, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" may, it seems, have a corollary: "Any sufficiently foolish culture is unable to distinguish advanced technology from magic".
For to those who use but do not understand science and technology, technology is simply magic by another name. Peak oil is, at bottom, telling people the magic is going away.
They say every time a child stops believing, a fairy dies.
LOL :)
"You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created."
Albert Einstein
"if technology hasn't been discovered yet, there's usually a good reason"
That is actually the first non-sensical thing I've read from you. Or maybe, if it accurately represents Kunstler's idea, he should get the credit.
But if the whole issue is "technology got us into this mess...it causes more problems than it solves" etc. etc., then it really doesn't matter whether you're expecting new uninvented technology or vastly more widespread adoption of existing technology as a solution.
My personal take on it is that there is a difference between technology designed to solve a particular large-scale problem, rather than technology that's just evolved sporadically at the whim of the free market. The latter is rarely done with any sort of concern about the potential side-effects of widespread adoption, and is what has landed us in our current situation.
Technology didn't get us into this mess. Its the nature of humankind that did.
You can't blame the tool for a irresponsible operator.
Nor will technology get us out of this mess. Not with the same irresponsible operator at the controls.
Actually it's the laws of physics that got us into this mess. Anyone up for a debate about the logical impossibility of free will?
Not really. The law of physics in just what sets the limits of human consumption.
It's human nature that drives us to consume right to that limit.
Ah...so the laws of physics don't control human nature?
You lost me here. Why would the laws of physics control human nature?
Let me be more specific as you seem to have missed my point.
It is human nature to consume as much as possible. This is natural as it improves an individuals fitness, a tribes fitness, or a countries fitness etc. If I leave resources unutilized somebody else/another tribe/country can use these resources and surpass me/my country/tribe.
We use technology as a tool to utilize these resources. I can hunt more bison using a bow and arrow than I can with a sharp stick. Concentrated solar energy (oil) allows me to run a tractor and accomplish far more work than a horse and plow can. etc etc
But there are limits. We can't keep expanding the resources we use.
As far as I can tell you believe that tech will allow us to continue to utilize resources in a never ending exponential pattern. That somehow we are special and not subject to the same harsh reality that intercedes on every other population that "overshoots" its resourse base.
Even if we can transition off of fossil energy (very doubtful at this stage) we will only be able to expand until we reach some other fundamental limit. Only this time our population/resource demands are even greater and the height to fall even greater.
Think about the green revolution. We sure dodged a bullet on that one. We developed tech that allowed us to utilized even more resources and expand our population/resource demands to our current astronomical levels. But don't mistake past performance for future predictions. Even if aliens fly in and drop clean fusion in our laps and we solve the upcoming energy crisis our exponential pop/resouce demands will just keep doubling and doubling and doubling to we hit the next limit. There is no escaping the ramifications of exponential growth.
Tech can only help us utilize resources. But those resources have to be there in the first place. Maybe fusion or cheap solar would allow us a couple more doublings but that tech is too far away to make a difference at this point.
Edit: prehaps laws of physics is the wrong term to use. That term implies the fundamental limits of the universe which we are obviously far from ie we've yet to mine black holes for their energy.
Maybe somebody else can help me phrase this correctly.
What do you think humans are made of? Either our nature is controlled by the laws of physics or you believe in some sort of supernatural "vitalism" type theory...
Chaos theory and complexity are both subsets of the laws of physics, and allow for all types of emergent behavior (such as consciousness), as well as allow for many of the adaptive and self-organizing behavior of living things.
It is deterministic, yet unpredictable, and fascination of this process is enough to keep me watching and playing, even if my own "choice" and "free will", as most people understand the concepts, are illusions.
That's pretty much how I see it.
I also have a soft spot for Pinker's conclusion that our brains are physical incapable of truly comprehending what consciousness/free-will actually are - and if they were complex enough to understand them, then they wouldn't be able to understand how that additional complexity worked etc. etc.
Um...
1) Those "laws" are just theories; constructs of our minds. The ones we have at the moment work pretty darn well in most cases... but not all the time, of course. They aren't actually immutable laws of nature... we just like to think they are.
2) Logic is just a construct of the mind. Again, it is not a thing beyond us.
3) Oddly enough, anyone who actually believes in an omnipotent, omniscient God must logically concede no free will and therefore, presumably, no hell too...
Pick any one and start your debate ;-)
"You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created."
Albert Einstein
You know what I meant. Human nature is an artifact of evolution through natural selection, which is an artifact of the low-level forces that control the behaviour of energy and matter at the lowest levels.
So to say "human nature" is to blame for our current precidament is just as logical as to say the "laws of physics" are to blame. Proximate and ultimate causes, and all that.
NO, the technologists believe that after all their thousands upon thousands of mistakes, they will finally get it right and we will ALL have flying cars!!!
WOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Let's hope they get the FINAL SOLUTION before we are all dead!!
(Sarcasm brought to you by Sarcasm-R-Us)
Edit - as noted above, new technology, which just happens to solve the problem of powering itself.
This is one of Kunstler's most poorly expressed points, and in this sense weakest, though it is actually a fairly critical one.
Our machines run on energy, not on technology, a point which seems to confuse an awful lot of people. This faith in technology is beside the point, in Kunstler's view, since it is keeping the machinery running that is the problem of peak oil and decline, not technology per se.
The problem comes, as you point out, that it is possible to use or create technology that will function adequately within various energy constraints, an electrified railroad system being an excellent example.
But the lack of energy represented by world oil production falling 20 million barrels a day will not be made up by 'technology' - that we may be able to create fossil fueled machinery able to perform efficiently enough to compensate for that lack doesn't mean that we can then create machinery efficient enough to handle a 40 million barrel per day decline 10 or 20 years later - in other words, using technology to keep us running in place means we get nowhere in actually changing how we live. Which is Kunstler's main goal, regardless of whether the instrument of change is through peak oil or Y2k or the crumbling away of America's soul through the ugliness that surrounds us - in Kunstler's opinion, of course.
This fact is most likely the explanation of why the point is expressed so poorly - Kunstler wants change, and how it happens is less important. Any convincing argument is fine in his book(s) - including the idea that pirates will disrupt the flow of goods across the Pacific, thus starving Wal-mart of cheap goods, and forcing the Nascar morons (or whatever derogatory terms he uses) to return to the moral values of a better American past (and yes, he does tend to skip lightly over such fine American institutions as Jim Crow in his longing for those good old days).
"Which is Kunstler's main goal, regardless of whether the instrument of change is through peak oil or Y2k or the crumbling away of America's soul through the ugliness that surrounds us - in Kunstler's opinion, of course."
-- I think this is beyond dispute. The modern built-out environment is inherently alienating and dehumanizing if for no other reason than the level/type of sensory stimulation that is found there. To paraphrase K. in response to David Brooks:Just because people can exist in it and "Like it" doesn't make it good. I agree that K. wants to see this stuff go, any way possible, and I think this is a laudable goal.
Matt.
In otherwords, you have a better understanding of how people should live their lives, than themselves.
Congratulations, you just become a wannabe Autocratic dictator.
Now that we recognize that Freedoms in a power down scenario are a luxary and not a right, when do we get to move on to the more ugly decisions such as who do we pick to die and live? Since we can't support 6+ billion people on this planet, that means a culling must take place, and since you being the Autocratic genius you are, I would like to hear how you propose implementing a "Final Solution" to this glut of bodies we have.
Boy, this seems to be "technocornucopian backlash day" on TOD.
Someone sees that the status quo just might be untenable, and would like to see it change, and is therefore a wannabe Autocratic dictator.
"Since we can't support 6+ billion people on this planet,"
...true enough - we can't _sustainably_ support 6+ billion people on this planet...
" that means a culling must take place,"
Oh come off it. It simply means we need to back off and breed at less than replacement rate, one way or the other. The way things are going, it probably won't be voluntary and gentle. But it will be Mother Nature doing the culling - She doesn't really need our help.
And before you or some other technocornucopian claims that I'm advocating a terrible dieoff, or anticipating it with glee (yet another common bullshit rhetorical tactic of the technocornucopians)... I only see the possibility. I have just as much chance of dying off as anyone, and I'm not excited about the prospect.
"since you being the Autocratic genius you are..."
Boy, there has been a rash of really snotty blithering lately.
"...I would like to hear how you propose implementing a "Final Solution" to this glut of bodies we have."
Oh come on - that's enough. Just knock it off with this idiocy. But as long as we're all being snotty and sarcastic, I will say that you, sir, are acting like a demagoguing jerk. Are you willfully not understanding the points that folks are trying to make, or are you just dim-witted?
What is it with TOD today? If it's not Final Solutions, it's Holocaust Denial.
Hey guys, culling will take place! It is just that nature, anarchy and chaos will do the culling, not any dictator or anyone else for that matter.
Ron Patterson
Anarchy and chaos come in the form of dictators and others.
Dictators and similar armed strongmen are in many ways the opposite of anarchy and chaos. Many dictators come to and stay in power to end anarchy and chaos and replace it with oppression and order.
I would agree more with the statement that anarchy and chaos pave the way for dictatorship.
Anarchy, (from Greek: ἀναρχία anarchía, "without authority") refers to a human society without a government, or state. Three circumstances have been identified for this:
* societies where no state has ever existed;
* societies where an existing state has collapsed;
* societies, whether real or speculative, where the state has been consciously abolished.
Chaos (derived from the Greek Χάος, Chaos) typically refers to unpredictability, and is the antithetical concept of cosmos.
You will notice that [definitions from Wikipedia] that anarchy has no authority, and chaos has nothing to do with authority. This consistent mangling of the language creates problems in understanding.
Please learn the meaninig of word before you use them.
-
James Gervais
ImS--
Anarchy is the belief in order-- without external state control.
Anarchy is a big subject, and very misunderstood, and comes in many flavors--
from anarcho-individualism (Thoreau, Tolstoy), all the way to Syndicalism (which most deep contemporary political thinkers ( Chomsky and others) are exploring-
Anarchy is the Anthisis of Chaos, but the media propaganda of the State has convinced the sheeple that anarchy=chaos.
Anyway, negative views of anarchy are so imbedded in the popular story, that this will not convince anyone to do further reading--
We don't need to worry our pretty little heads about any ole "final solution." Miss MOTHER NATURE is husk, husk, husking her claws on a whetstone ready to do the heavy lifting.
You see, that old tired trope of the FINAL SOLUTION will simply be taken care of off stage, that is off the human stage. We will simply be the small time bit players, the spear carriers whom the "director" (Nature for those needing the Cliff Notes) bids fall in neat rows only to be carried off stage in the dark.
Yes, we do not need a dictator, a maniac, or a despot to do the dirty work of the technologist. No. All you need is the sweeping scythe of the Mistress of Unintended Consequences.
All you need it Hubris, of which the human race has no shortage.
I don't quite agree, but that is in part because it is possible to live better than most Americans seem to. For example, vacation time - free time is the very basis of freedom, which is an interesting commentary itself when contrasted to the fact that Americans seem to work 100 hours a year more than they did a generation ago in the 1970s.
Sometimes, I think Kunstler's hate of suburbia blinds him - not that his goal is not one worth pursuing, but if he approached it less fiercely, he would be less interesting, a paradox he is likely aware of, the way that any entertainer is aware of his audience. In a way, he needs to keep the outrage growing, which is where I have my problem with his basic approach - Geography of Nowhere is truly excellent work, but he seems to lose sight of the fact that a Victorian era city was equally a place worthy of disappearing - removing suburbia is not quite the same as offering an alternative. Sorry, 'small town living' doesn't do it for me as an answer, especially when my experience of small town USA comes from Virginia - and Kunstler's writing occasionally borders snugly on a certain nostalgia when 'they' knew their place in society. (Honestly - I think Kunstler reflects his age more than anything else - sort of like Ron Paul and gays - shame he can't get beyond it, though.)
ALSO, Kundstler is hinting at a deeper point, which though hard to prove, is likely true:
Progress in technology (and in the underlying science that supports it) is ITSELF reliant on cheap energy--specificially cheap oil--and will enter decline soon after oil does.
This IS IT: Look around you! Oil production peaked in 2005 (total fossil products in 2006) Technology will peak soon. After peak there will just be less and less of it coming out.
Why? The basic idea is not so hard: To have technology you must train people, feed them, give them time and laboratories to work in, all so that they can make and develop their discoveries. All of this takes money--ultimately--energy, and if the energy is not there it will stop happening.
That is why the time to start working on a soft landing for modern civilization was back in the 1970s, when there were still resources to put into the project. The American election of 1980 was the choice of Crash-and-Burn, which is the scenerio we are in now. The hard landing is sure. What we are arguing about in threads like this is the possibility of amelioration--damage limitation. Disaster per se will not be avoided.
Kundtsler harps on railroads because they can transport large masses for low inputs of energy, relative to any other mode of transportation besides water, which has geographical restrictions. Yes bicycles will do as well, but at the point that we are using bicycles for main freight traffic we will know that our civilization is already over.
The problem with new and unproven technologies is that it takes time to get the bugs out, and sometimes they simply fail outright. So to stake your survival on a technology that does not yet exist is to gamble wildly or desperately. The expected outcome of such a choice is failure and death.
Are there things that actually work? That are KNOWN to work? To the extent that we have a future at all, that is where we should put most of our attention.
"to stake your survival on a technology that does not yet exist is to gamble wildly or desperately"
The best phrase I saw on TOD in the last week, in a different (?) context: "desperate optimism".
Very well said.
Peak energy is peak technology. As we slide down the energy scale research will scale down as well.
The Limits of Human are defined by energy.
I wrote this, The Limits of Human, just over a year ago, discussing just this topic:
http://www.turpintime.com/ViewItem.aspx?ContentItem=632887503054221930
Jason
Are there things that "actually work"? Hellloooo? The rest of the developed world uses 1/2 the energy per capita of the average American. Mostly they ride trains and go easy on the air conditioning. It works! They are already preparing (in Europe especially) to cut their energy usage in half again.
The simple response to that is, "Okay, don't. Build frameworks which will work if the new technologies work out, but will still let us make do with today's."
Proven technologies include nuclear, wind turbines up to 5 megawatts, HVDC powerlines on the order of 1000 miles long, combined-cycle gas turbines up to 55% efficiency, carbon-foam lead-acid batteries, and more. SRI has a process to produce silicon for ~$14/kg (sodium reduction of Na2SiF6, proven in the 1980's), and the "string ribbon" continuous-casting process can turn it into silicon cells a mere 100 microns thick. Electric motorcycles are hitting the market. We can go a long, long way with these alone.
Proven technologies include...
You forgot electrifying our freight railroads
http://www.trains.com/ctr/objects/images/railroad_electrification_1970s.gif
And building lots of Urban Rail
http://www.lightrailnow.org/features/f_lrt_2007-04a.htm
And requiring German type levels of insulation and other energy efficiency in new construction.
You also forgot pumped storage.
Best Hopes,
Alan
BTW, Alan, I have to ask...what are your thoughts on the future of maglev, in the US and the world in general?
Watched a doco about it last night, seems an obvious replacement for cross-continental air and road freight and passegner routes.
Mag lev is too expensive and consumes too much electricity (at least the German version operating in Shanghai). Capital costs are a billion $ every few miles. Now way can we afford cross-country maglev ! China has mag lev for prestige, but not Japan, Germany or France.
I would like to see semi-High Speed Passenger (110 to 130 mph) Rail in the US mixed with 80 to 100 mph Express Freight rather than true HSR (but no freight) rail built in the EU & Japan.
Fly at 70 to 85 pax-mpg in next generation a/c for those that need speed.
Slower semi-HSR uses far less electricity than true HSR, and moving freight by rail instead of truck & air has major savings !
Bet
I understand they're aiming to be get the cost of the next project to under 25M USD/km, which is apparently cheaper than building airports and 8-lane highways...and the running costs are supposed to be considerably less too.
What do you mean by "too much electricity"? As in, it wouldn't be feasible to build enough generational capacity to support a network of maglev trains across the U.S.?
High Speed Rail, TGV. ICE, Shinkansen are supposed to use considerably less electricity and go almost as fast as mag lev.
the cost of the next project to under 25M USD/km
I take "Projected costs" for new "out-of-the box" technology with a pinch of salt and a shot of sarconol. Shanghai cost billions, between guideway (paid by the Chinese) and floating stock (paid by the Germans).
I have MANY better uses for funding that Mag Lev from NYC to Los Angeles. Lets spend $2 trillion on other non-oil transportation needs first and then we can talk about it.
http://www.lightrailnow.org/features/f_lrt_2007-04a.htm
Best Hopes for Reality Based Priorities,
Alan
Technology is the perfect example of a non-limited resource... the one thing that can save us when limited resources like oil decline.
What we will need of course is "appropriate" technology... plows and sails and things, but also many new things that the age of oil and its associated scientific projects have created and that we can adapt to a new lower energy reality.
Technology is IDEAS and INFORMATION and PEOPLE who are capable of using them to create objects and processes in the real world.
Peak oil may impact the process of technology development. It will certainly change the kinds of technologies that are relevant. But to imply that ideas and information and the ability to implement them are even remotely analogous to the decline in availability of energy resources is beyond silly.
I have no idea how we'll cope with peak oil but every scenario in which humanity is not completely annihilated involves the mastering of appropriate technology for the new post peak environment. Many of those technologies may well build in "high technology" that we've created in the oil age, such as genomics and materials sciences. That information can be stored and saved and used far into the future to develop the appropriate technologies for whatever world results from the decline of fossil fuels.
Peak technology is just an absurd idea.
Human beings are technology using animals... and ideas and knowledge can be difficult to destroy if appropriately distributed on storage systems and in human brains.
Technology won't peak.... it will adapt to whatever realities humans find themselves living in.
It takes energy for a brain to think a thought. Calories of energy, expended over time. First learning the old, then inventing the new. Those calories can be quantified and the total energy cost of ideas calculated. As energy peaks, so will the number of calories devoted to thinking. And thus the total amount of thinking. And thus, peak technology.
Peak technology is as absurd as addition.
It will not be the end of new ideas, but it will be a reduction in the volume of ideas.
A reasonable argument... but technology and information can be stored without caloric inputs on paper and by other means.
That means that the pace of development may slow, but we'll be living in a world with most of the 20th century science and technology knowledge still available for application in the new reality.... in the form of appropriate technology.
And therefore, also, in the volume of stupid ideas?
-
James Gervais
"And therefore, also, in the volume of stupid ideas?"
Hey! Did anyone here actually say Peak Technology is a bad thing?
You have found the silver lining. ;)
Perhaps in a nice version of the future all the people who watch TV today will be thinking and figuring things out in their free time. Perhaps instead of "did you see what that hot doctor on ER said" people will be saying "i've got this idea to enhance my wind mill, but what do you think?".
Open source software is becoming successful due to many people contributing a bit, maybe other aspects of technology development could work on similar principles. R+D might even be more democratic that way because no-one would contribute to a project they didn't like, and the information could be owned by everybody not one corporation
Technology is the practical application of science to industry, engineering and practical problems. Technology, culture, society and terms of trade are all intimately linked - right in the concept. There is nothing absurd about peak techology; it is the opposite that is questionable.
cfm in Gray, ME
this reminds me of the problem that many physicists including someone as smart as Einstein got into with the potential of a contracting universe... at the point it stopped expanding and started to collapse back in on itself for a while there was the nonsensical notion that time would start running backwards, when in reality there is nothing of the sort predicted by theory... entropy keeps marching onwards
same here... technology may indeed have grown so rapidly based on energy... but it will continue to go on in a low-energy environment... the collapse may lead to regression - which is why knowledge retention programs are essential... but once things stabilize the march forward will begin again at a pace consistent with available energy - it won't stop or go backwards per se
--
When no-one around you understands
start your own revolution
and cut out the middle man
which is why knowledge retention programs are essential...
Knowledge is not in the books, posted in this very thread yesterday.
Technology is "going backwards per se", TODAY!
New technologies can only be created to exploit the discovery of new energy sources.
How can it be otherwise?
Was the ICE invented BEFORE the modern discovery of oil?
This argument is ridiculous.
Well put, Oregon7. Hang on to these thoughts for a future Drumbeat, as I think the party is over and the lights are low on this one.
And just when you think it was all funny enough for one day, you figure out that in a thread that has at the very least a hundred comments about Kunstler and all his unspeakable deeds, Jim's own comment gets relegated to page 2. Which has an attendance of what, let's guess, 0.2% of the initial visitors?
You can't make these things up.
Kudo's, mate.
Something tells me that the fact that I see 426 comments now, at 10.23 PM, is trying to teach me stuff about stampeding herd behavior.
It's his pointy nose. (extended sarconal laugh)
Exactly.
The film runs backwards.
Why would coal not run out? It will.
Then what? The railroads crap out. Of course, there will be some real ding-a-lings touting ethanol powered locomotives or some such horsepucky.
What is the goal? Is it to actually try to live in balance with the solar budget or not? Those are the choices. There are no others.
CLANG CLANG CLANG went the trolley...until the electricity quit. Then we walked.
The railroads crap out. Of course, there will be some real ding-a-lings touting ethanol powered locomotives or some such horsepucky
Your comments are best described that way.
Hydroelectric, wind, solar, HV DC lines and pumped storage will be adequate to run any rail system that I can conceive of.
0.19% of today's USA electrical system runs the NYC subway system, DC, Chicago, Philly and every other heavy & light rail system in the country plus Amtrak's Northeast corridor.
BTW, I have been pushing electric rail, not ethanol rail.
And we will be bicycling, not walking, when going a couple of miles and there is not a tram going that way.
Alan
This is why Kunstler is a terrible spokesperson for peak oil. Peak technology is a completely ridiculous concept, like peak evolution, or peak "time".
I wish we could stop using this guy as a mouthpiece for peak oil. In such a serious situation, having a main proponent be from the lunatic fringe doesn't anyone any good.
I wonder how many people who listened to Jim's repeated warnings about the coming meltdown of suburbia, and moved out, consider him to be part of the "lunatic fringe?"
In effect, ExxonMobil, Saudi Aramco and Daniel Yergin, et al, have been encouraging Americans to continue buying debt financed SUV's and McMansions. I personally would consider this group--ExxonMobil, et al--to be the "lunatic fringe."
westexas, come on, you're more intellectually rigorous than to water down the point like that.
First of all, if we half get our act together, suburbia can in large part probably be saved with public transportation, telecommuting and electric technology. Second, just because someone occasionally has a good idea doesn't make his lunatic ideas any less completely non-credible.
I suggest you review this transcript of a joint interview with Matt Simmons & Jim Kunstler: http://www.energybulletin.net/19686.html
If you prefer to believe that "Sububia can in large part probably be saved," I wish you luck, but I would bet that Jim Kunstler's prescient warnings about the meltdown of suburbia continue to be proven correct.
There may actually be an advantage in the notion of lower density development, though the very low density of the "McMansions" is probably to be too low. Think of row houses or condos that are 2 or 3 stories high. That configuration would provide sufficient roof and wall area for solar systems which would provide most (if not all) the energy use within a typical household. On the other side of the puzzle, the very high density inner city development patterns, such as NYC or Hong Kong, are not likely to be easy to power with renewable energy systems located nearby. The problems of transport in suburbia is not unlike that of the energy supply to the high density inner cities. I think the high density cities are much more vulnerable to short term disruption than is the case for suburbia.
Almost every house in suburbia will need a new roof within the next 30 years. If all those roofs were covered with PV panels, the resulting production of electricity would be very great. Sanyo is making solar PV roof tiles, which would function as both roof covering and electric generation. In the U.S., the half-life of an automobile is about 8 years, thus, most of the automobile fleet will need replacement within about 15 years. There is a potential for a vast re-construction of the U.S., once the need to do so is proven to all concerned.
We need many more people like Matt Simmons & Jim Kunstler to do the convincing, since the politicians aren't going to stick their necks out or fall on their swords.
E. Swanson
It's difficult for me to understand how problems with overconsumption are solved by "vast re-construction."
nice
Maybe I should have used the words "retrofit", "redirect" or "in-fill construction. Those 4,000 ft^2 McMansions could be rebuilt as duplexes and triplexes. That's what's happened in some cities as the older areas went downhill.
E. Swanson
Black Dog, you said :
Since the sun shines only in clear skies and only for about half-the-day [and the solar panels are useful for only part of that] how can this possibly be true?
While PV or CPV using heating can provide electricity for some time periods, its variability makes it a chimera for normal household electrical supply.
-
James Gervais
its variability makes it a chimera for normal household electrical supply.
The 'norm' has been defined as 'flick a switch, get your power'. But the idea of power is to act as way to drive your tools, be they lights, fridges, machines to process your dirty clothing, pump your water.
PV just has you learn to exist within the context of a budget. Is it not 'the norm' to live within a budget?
Hi Eric,
Along the same lines, those of us who hang our clothes outside to dry appreciate the timing of this task is wholly dependent upon the cooperation of the weather. :)
Recently, I've been using the sun's rays to heat my laundry water with nothing more than a standard garden hose. An hour or so before I start my first load, I roll out the hose on the back patio. Even under less than ideal conditions, the water inside this hose can easily reach 40C or more. It takes my front loader approximately 45 minutes to do its thing, which, as it turns out, is plenty of time for the next batch of water to come up to temperature.
My fuel oil savings are admittedly modest (perhaps no more than 0.20 to 0.25 litres per load), but for roughly six months of the year I'll have the satisfaction of heating at least some of my water with the sun, at zero out-of-pocket expense no less (it appeals to the Scot in me).
Cheers,
Paul
"Prescient"? The only time he's been right is when he's jumped on bandwagons. As this "what bubble?" site laments: "By 2004, housing bubble discussions, as well as predictions of an imminent collapse in prices, were showing up throughout the media." No kudos to Kunstler.
In fact, let's look at a wide range of his predictions, such as those for 2005:
"2005 will be the year that the public gets panicky about the global energy predicament."
- Wrong. Witness the constant complaints here on TOD of the public "not getting it".
"The Iraq elections will be a fiasco. Few Iraqis will venture to go to the polls"
- Wrong. Voter turnout in the January election was 58%, which is higher than in any US election in the last 30 years. Voter turnout in the December election was 80%.
"US forces will withdraw from the Iraqi cities (and peacekeeping duties) to bases out in the desert"
- Wrong. 2005 saw aggressive (if not effective) action by the US's military in Iraq.
"China continues its policy of securing natural resource contracts (oil and metals) around the world."
- Right. Also a no-brainer.
"A slacking off in "consumer" spending in the US as Americans choke on credit payments will prompt China to search desperately for a group of new customers for manufactured goods. China will find some in Brazil but few elsewhere and ultimately won't be able to replace its shredding US customer base."
- Wrong. The Chinese economy has been growing at record rates, due in no small part to the lack of collapse in the US.
"China will orchestrate a movement among adjacent former Soviet republics to terminate American military base leases there."
- Mostly wrong. The US has been kicked out of one country (Uzbekistan), but no sign exists of a wider movement, much less a Chinese-orchestrated one.
"Speaking of the US economy (aka, the dual WalMart / Housing bubble), here's what I see: the fantastic apparatus of mortgage-and-credit creation wobbles as misfeasance in Fannie Mae combines with a falling dollar and loss of overseas customers for US debt to cause interest rates to rise substantially."
- Mostly right. Interest rates continued rising through much of 2005 - to nobody's surprise - as the Fed tried to head off inflation.
"A knockout punch comes in the form of up-ratcheting oil-and-gas prices, which thunder through the economy as price inflation. The housing bubble pops like a zeppelin and a giant sale of distressed properties begins, with house prices plummeting. (Prices on other things, especially food, shoot up.)"
- Wrong. Housing prices increased through the whole of 2005, and a common news story was how oil prices were not leading to price inflation.
"After a long cycle of dominance the Republicans begin to pay a price for their stupidity and greed."
- Right. And not a surprise to anyone.
"An economically hard-pressed public will become inflamed over White House efforts to go easy on illegal immigration.....what we are apt to see instead is the formation of several big movements on the lunatic fringe: hardcore isolationists, anti-immigrationists..."
- Wrong. The general public prefers a "softer" immigration reform approach (i.e., more like the White House's) than the one being pushed for by conservative lawmakers, and there has been no indication of substantial growth in the lunatic fringe.
"it is hard to imagine a rally in the face of $60 oil. I'm inclined to predict a gruesome journey down for the Dow Jones into the 4000 range by the end of the year."
- Wrong. His prediction was for the Dow to fall from 10,300 to ~4,500 in 6 months; in reality, it advanced to 10,950 at the end of the year.
Out of 10, 3 or 4 right (depending on how generous you are), three of which were common knowledge. In terms of accurately predicting hard things, his track record is almost perfect...ly wrong.
Part of the reason for this is he appears to be recycling his predictions from 1999, when the vehicle of collapse was going to be Y2K:
"Writing this in April of '99, I believe that we are in for a serious event. Systems will fail, crash, seize up, cease to function. Not all systems, maybe only a fraction, but enough, and enough interdependent systems to affect many other systems. Y2K is real. Y2K is going to rock our world."
Reading his old Y2K and new Peak Oil predictions, it simply seems as if he hates current consumer culture, and desperately wishes something would kill it. And so he keeps predicting that it will die, again and again, because he so very much wants it to.
Regardless of whether he's right or not that it's a terrible culture, that's a terrible basis for making accurate predictions. And it shows.
Perhaps the title of the 2004 DVD featuring Jim Kunstler on the impact of Peak Oil on suburbia was a little too subtle:
Kunstler is an excellent polemic author, and 'Geography to Nowhere' is an excellent introduction to understanding why America looks as it does today, with the passion of someone trying to find the source of a terrible disease.
But it isn't quite accurate to say he hates consumer culture - he hates American suburbia, in part as reflected through consumer culture. The distinction may be subtle, but it is real - he most certainly is not a Green.
I remember reading in the first two pages of The Long Emergency a crystal clear statement regarding this "concern". Either Pitt has never really read The Long Emergency, or he has, and he believes Kunstler is a liar. Clearly, it must be one. Take your pick.
Anyone who has actually read the book, and has their sensibility intact, will draw their own conclusions. Perhaps it is a worst case scenario, even though, again, it is stated in the very beginning of the book that the author is in the middle of the spectrum of "dieoff" and "techno-fix" crowd--leaning towards dieoff. So yeah, um, that means that the man's predictions aren't going to be pretty. Perhaps he feels comfortable being a Cassandra? The thing about Cassandra was, eventually she was right... And she knew it. I mean, someone that is a neo-Malthusian is going to end up making big predictions, and may well be wrong, like the rest have been... Lets note that all of these incorrect predictions have been going on since the 70s, and even earlier. In fact, they go all the way back to Malthus. Big Whoop. This has been during the period of upward slope on Hubbert's curve. Then again, I don't have to go into that, because we already know all about it. I will note we have not entered the downward slope yet.
Tilting at windmills indeed... I guess I'm guilty too. Sue me.
I use the same point about criticisms of crying wolf... people kinda miss one of the key results of the story... in the end there really was a wolf...
--
When no-one around you understands
start your own revolution
and cut out the middle man
JH Kunstler is no Cassandra. Cassandra tried to warn against avoidable fates (her curse was to be ignored). Kunstler is claiming that disaster is unavoidable, and there is no point in taking action to prevent the worst outcomes. Cassandra's warnings would have prevented disasters if she was believed; Kunstler's prophecies will be self-fulfilling if people believe them.
That is why I think Kunstler is no spokesman. He has no vision, nothing to suggest (aside from from the implied "Kill yourself now, beat the rush"). The students who compete in the Solar Decathlon have a vision, and it would run suburbia on the sun. My vision is to convert all our transport and fossil electric generation to biomass (if only to fill in the gaps in wind, etc). Kunstler has nothing besides his desire to see everything he hates fall down.
I am a "peaker", and I honestly think that the only way that TOD should refer to Kunstler is with the bold-face, 20-point disclaimer "This is how bad things could get if we wait too long to act."
Yup, and therein lies the point. But, I guess it is really hard for some happy-go-lucky folks to see.
As for the rest of what you wrote, just more ad hom stemming from whatever psychology you are equipped with (I wouldn't know since I don't know you and I'm not a shrink--although I'll venture into some possibilities in a second.) At least we're now getting somewhere... You viscerally don't like Kunstler, it seems, because he is too fatalistic in his "vision". You find a non-existent "vision", where you want a solar festival, wind-powered, sustainable biomass economy, etc. Ummm, look around? Fly around? Look down? Let me know about how your engineering buddies have been handling the way our society has been being "built" from the postwar period all the way smack up to today. Perhaps you should just stick to poetry? God knows, the world needs it.
And then it hits that the real exception you take is what role these "solutions" will play. JHK makes an argument, some say a very weak one, but one nonetheless, that all these "solutions" will play a role--but that we shouldn't childishly comfort ourselves with them since they aren't going to avert substantial amounts of pain (just combine the Hirsch Report with imminent PO and you don't need to be a doomsayer to see that there will be "problems".) To prepare for the "avoidable" we should have started mitigation back when the last round of doomsayers were being ridiculed in the seventies... Spreading a feel good "vision" only goes to perpetuate existing "reality". I think being realistic is the most admirable trait we should all strive for. People need, must, be honestly told that the future is not going to be easy. Sure, we can still be social and feel happy--but realism must take hold over fantasy (a tall order). Telling people everything is going to be "A-OK we've got it all under control over here" is in my view not a wise choice. Since it would only tend to demote the urgency with which we are going to need to attempt to mitigate the tides of a radically changing world in an alien economic environment--it seems that it may in fact be quite ill-advised. However, you, and others on this board endorse it... So, you must have a point, since I'm sure you are right that people don't want to hear about a doomerish future at all. To invoke the usual words used here at TOD: glazed eyes. Still, I reiterate, railing against someone because you don't like their "vision"--Pitt's cherry-picking and your haranguing really don't have much merit. I fear you guys are like the James Wood and Dale Peck of TOD, in this regard.
Wow, and you relegate all of a man, and his entire body of work, just like that! Sounds real sensible. Pro style. He's as bad as Falwell, just driven by one diabolical drive to see all that he hates DIE! All the more reason to take you seriously, right? Interestingly, your statement above probably indicates more about yourself than you would otherwise like to admit. (To spell it out for those who hate obliqueness, it seems that our good friend Engineer-Poet et al sure do "hate" something and want it to "fall down"...) Reflections wherever one looks.
Of course, you also misconstrue my Cassandra point, and contort it into a distortion of the meaning I intended it to have. You then just reiterate your same tired old point that Kunstler "wants everyone to kill themselves"... or if I didn't phrase it right that time how about he just wants everyone to have a self-fulfilling prophecy of doom so then the doom can happen! All of his books and every thought ever to occur in the man's head are just a cultish cover for this one strain of thought! That is just so disingenuous it really makes me hope that your engineering skills are better than your debating tactics--we will certainly need as much of the former as we can get for mitigation down Hubbert's descending slope. As to the latter, I'll leave that to the discretion of the few people still reading this sprawl-like (heh) thread.
Bait her up, cast her out, we'll see what I catch.
Thank you for proving that you don't know what "ad hominem" means (hint: a treatment on the claims and consequences, isn't).
Thank you for also admitting that you're just a troll. Say goodbye.
You say goodbye, I say Hello.
I'm not a troll. I have been reading this site for almost two years now. I am very interested in these issues. You may not like what I have to say, that is another matter. That does not make me a troll, it only indicates the faulty logic that is, it seems to be, your signature dish. Alas, your persistent ad homs only go to further my point. Let the comments speak for themselves... I never accused you of being a troll, just that you unreasonably flail around baseless wild accusations--and there you go proving my point again, calling me a name. Good job.
Allow me to quote you:
Trolling. If your position had any merit you'd just cite Kunstler to show me where I'm wrong. You haven't, probably because you can't.
Hello, Engineer-Poet.
I'll quote you instead, that's all that's needed.
Unfortunately, you provide no evidence--just persist in ad homs and baseless accusations that contradict the documentary record. I can't be responsible for your emotions, Engineer-Poet.
In your most recent pleasant note you write:
Don't you mean to say that if your position had any merit you'd cite some evidence? After all, you are the one making the wild unfounded claims--I am merely asking "are you right?" Others can determine what the resounding answer is to that question for themselves (not that anyone is even reading this anymore.)
Your first point, "taking no action"--I'm unaware this is his stated position (but what do I know, I'm just a "troll".)
You're second point (if it can even be considered such) the "no vision...Kill yourself now" line is just yet another of your own wild groundless accusations. If you feel so confident, you quote him--then we can probably argue semantics, but I am unaware he has ever advised anyone to commit suicide. If anything, this level of argumentation indicates a lot about your motives for continuing this farce. You care little about convincing anyone you are right--you are simply correct by fiat. I'm a "troll" and Kunstler wants genocide ASAP.
In continuation of this wonderfully perceptive thinking your third line is, of course, just a rehash of the first except it is more illuminating in its bluntness. You blithely state that your psychological position on this matter is, oddly, precisely the argument that you give for why you hate him--ie, he hates everything and wants it to fall down. You hate him, and want him to fall down. It seems you are comfortable in this vein of thinking. Take care and be well.
Or, alas, fire again.
Cherry pick all day long, Pitt.
Why don't you guys just link to the JHK wiki article over and over, or just go read the PO debunked archives? I guess that beating the horse is just too fun. Jesus, you'd think he was electrocuting kittens with the level of excitement you exhibit... Perhaps you lost some money in the markets like our dear friend BenjaminCole? At least you're in good company--intellectual giants like luisdias and the others to buttress your efforts of indignation. Whatever your rationale, keep up the debunking though Pitt, you do sometimes have something to add... Good work detective!
Here's to parsing, and cherry-picking takedowns! Yippee-Kiy-Yooo!
Hes not doing any more cherry picking than other people on this site are...
Yup. Argumentation is mostly cherry picking. Who has the best cherries? Time, and value judgments, will tell.
Who's cherries most accurately reflect the condition of the tree?
Wooptedo! I'm a giant!
A lilliputian giant of blathering dullness, that is.
Hbj: I think everyone can agree that suburban sprawl is more vulnerable to decreased oil supply (increased gasoline prices) than anything else (with the possible exception of the trucking industry). If suburban sprawl can be "saved" then everyone can relax, because the global economy won't even get its hair mussed. Time to buy some airline stock-LOL.
I'm coming to learn that there are a lot of people here who need to realize that the situation is a lot more complicated than "either-or".
Yes, as oil gets more expensive, surburbia becomes more problematic.
But yes, this is also a predictable problem that will not happen overnight, and if the debate can be elevated out of the intellectual gutter of posts like BrianT's, there may be some chance of mitigating at least some of the effects.
Translation:
You disagree with me, therefore your posts are in the intellectual gutter.
Wrong.
Disagreement is fine. I disagree with, but have complete respect for, the first part of BrianT's comment.
Statements like " If suburban sprawl can be "saved" then everyone can relax, because the global economy won't even get its hair mussed. Time to buy some airline stock-LOL." represent the intellectual gutter.
Get your mind out of the intellectual gutter, you're blocking my periscope!
Suburban sprawl is vulnerable as well to bird flu, absence of bees, melamine, you name it.
Thing is, we are far, far into overshoot, way past the point of diminishing returns to growth and well into the area of decreasing absolute returns on growth. Growth is killing us; shrinking is going to kill us. I'd really like to quantify that, help! [But how does one quantify the risks of bird flu due to swelling populations and congestion? What is the price of a hard limit?
We are fighting Gaia. I mention bird flu, because the increased numbers of birds and people make it more likely. Because our corporate and governmental systems make it more likely. The scale of our economy has swamped the ecosystems on which we depend.
cfm in Gray, ME
if we half get our act together, suburbia can in large part probably be saved with public transportation, telecommuting and electric technology
Some fraction of a reformed suburbia will likely survive with more than a "half our act together" effort. Much will not regardless.
One reason is the energy to support suburbia. More streetlights/capita (we could run quite a bit of rail off that possible conservation source, turning off the street lights in suburbia), plumbers, mail delivery, police, UPS delivery, etc. all require significantly more energy, i.e. oil, to service standard American suburbia than urban areas or new TOD (Transit Orientated Development). And much more pavement/person (and feet of water & sewer lines) to maintain in Suburbia.
In addition, suburban housing is generally quite poorly built and energy in-efficient (last Christmas in Phoenix a Real Estate article in local paper claimed market was STILL interested in "luxury extras" and no interest in higher energy effiency).
Suburbia was built on a herd mentality. People went to the hot areas outside town and bought the "in" floor plan, with minimal independent thought. (Remember avocado colored appliances ?) Once the herd starts leaving, in can turn into a stampede. Who will spend money on major repairs on an "investment" that is declining in value ? Especially if the neighbors aren't ?
Good public transportation cannot be cost effective in very low density areas.
IMVHO, Suburbia will decline because of
1) Direct energy costs (commuting, transportation to get essentials, HVAC)
2) Indirect energy costs (support infrastructure)
3) Needed repairs escalating in costs as market value declines
4) Herd mentality as empty homes appear and deteriorate over time nearby
Best Hopes for Urban Rail & TOD,
Alan
Alan
Avocado appliances! Do you prefer harvest gold?
I'm sure some suburbs will survive. The Clear Lake area near Houston has several huge employers very close-The Port of Houston and its refineries, the Barber's cut container port, and lest we forget, NASA.
But others will quickly deteriorate due to foreclosures and impossible commutes. The mortgage meltdown is the first domino in a domino effect that totally dooms the suburbs that have no real reason to exist.
In the Houston area we already had a real estate melt down that totally changed some suburbs in the 1984-1989 time frame. The houses are still there, but because the banks sold their houses inexpensively and the area demographics changed, the "neighborhoods" deteriorated permanently. My prediction is that the displaced inner city poor will be lured into those areas by cheap rents. In the Houston area I'm talking about Sugarland, Pearland, The Woodlands, Spring and Jersey Village.
Bob Ebersole
My prediction is that the displaced inner city poor will be lured into those areas by cheap rents
No doubt true. But there are simply not enough urban poor to keep Suburbia whole, even in altered form.
US population is roughly 25% Urban, 50% Suburban and 25% Rural. Add to this the 250% increase in average sq ft for new construction SFR (single family residence) since 1950.
I could see ten or a dozen Urban Poor moving into a 3,200 sq ft Clear Lake McMansion, splitting the utilities and car pooling to near by work and shopping. Since there is much more Suburbia than Urban Poor, they are unlikely to move to the more remote and isolated Woodlands.
Alan
Some foreclosed & vacant suburban houses will have their copper wiring and plumbing looted, rendering them all but worthless - they'll end up being sold to salvage operations to demolish for recycled building materials. A substantial amount of arson can be expected. Then there will be the squatters. . .
At some point when most of the houses in a suburban neighborhood are gone, the asphalt streets and driveways will be mined by people with pick axes and hand carts. Asphalt = America's tar sands.
The bottom line is that suburbia won't be kept whole. Large segments of the housing capacity in suburbia will simply be torn apart and taken away. It will be the few houses left that become the overcrowded slums.
Some foreclosed & vacant suburban houses will have their copper wiring and plumbing looted,
Already happens in building being built
Same thing is happening in the cities, pal.
Only first and moreso. And it ain't only confined to the interior.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,957494,00.html
So where are all of Alan's minions to live?
:-P
Either coat copper pipes in tar or use PVC pipes.
Alan
We've still got two mixing bowl sets from the late 70s, one in each color - so we're good to go regardless of which color of shag carpet we select!
;-)
A outer ring of poor slums is the common pattern in most of the world's cities -- certainly virtually all 3rd world cities.
Most suburban homes can house substantially more occupants than they presently do. One could easily imagine an extended family of a dozen or more immigrants (legal or illegal) plus a couple of renter friends all residing in a suburban house presently occupied by a 3-person family.
HEY!!! Watch it you guys!!! I've had both colors. 'Course I bought'em used. ;-)
Very interesting points.
Some things that might allow some suburbs to survive;
1) access to mass transit
2) closeness to or creation of a town center
3) farmer's markets and or community gardens
4) closeness to producing agriculture
I'm sure you all can come up with more. But I'm imagining that it won't work for all us suburbanites to either move into cities or out into the country, there are simply too many of us. Instead, I'm imagining that we will see the formation of thousands of compact small towns, some will already be municipalities, others will form around the intersection of two major roads where a minimal "commercial" infrastructure exists. I'm also imagining widely diverging success rates for these towns.
Quite a few "suburbs" and a great many "exurbs" were originally free-standing small towns located close to but only loosely associted with the nearby big city. Then the rail transport came, and then the roads, and then the farmers retired and sold out to developers and the farmland infilled with more housing developments.
Things will probably not unwind in a neat and symetrical mirror image. Nevertheless, those pieces of suburbia that were originally independent small towns probably have the best chance of continued survival, while the recent infill development is on the most uncertain ground.
I can tell you exactly what will allow suburbs to survive.
People want to live there.
==========
It is fun seeing all this pessimism concentrated in one place.
I am encouraged though. In the 1890s reputable scientist were predicting that if cities kept growing at the rate they saw then that the streets would be filled with horse manure and that there was no technology on the horizon that could prevent it. Also there would be a lack of fodder for the required horse power and civilization was sure to collapse.
How right they were.
Brilliant! Insightful! Why didn't I ever think of that?
Brilliant! Insightful! Why didn't I ever think of that?
Ignorance of history.
Combined with a desire to see it all end. What a combination!
People want to live there
So saith they MSM that controls the herd mentality.
A group of polls assembled by Laurance Aurbach show that about a third want to live in TOD today ! If that latent market demand was meet, the percentage would rise as the herd began to move there and the advantages became apparent.
The stragglers will get to live in neighborhoods full of neglected overgrown homes and very poor public services (schools, police, street repair. water & sewer service).
BTW, The post-WW II move to the suburbs was NOT meeting some massive latent demand, but the result of a series of gov't policies.
Early VA loans were available for new construction and very few older homes meet their "standards", In the 1950s, sidewalks were no longer required for VA loans and I have seen subdivisions where Phase I has sidewalks, Phase II did not.
Add gov't new highways and roads, integration (see white flight), gov't revenue splits so that older areas got bad schools and the then new suburbs good schools and on and on.
Just get gov't to reverse this bias (turn about is fair play) and people will NOT want to live in the suburbs.
Lets start by adding a "Peak Oil Risk" premium to gov't mortgages of 3/4% if a house is more than 5 miles from electrified mass transit, 1/2% if more than 2 miles and 1/4% if more than a half mile. Eminently justified (probably set too low).
Alan
I think you're missing something really important here Alan. A lot of suburban residential growth has occured because good, high paying jobs preceded them there. As rubber-tired distribution system displaced rail, light-industrial, bio-tech, and computer related businesses found that affordable office space, good freeway connections, and shorter commute times for their employees made locating in suburbs a no-brainer. At least in Puget Sound area you will find almost all of the dynamic new industries located either in suburban 'business parks' or on their own 'campuses'. The 'reverse commute' from homes in Seattle to jobs in suburbs has surpassed that of the traditional pattern on several major arterials.
Seattle has their first (they need more) Urban Rail line under construction, not yet open.
In an auto-centric society, suburban offices make sense.
I assume that Microsoft will survive post-Peak Oil and Boeing will shrink to just one plant with much reduced employment.
I strongly suspect that new job locations will have easy access to a Light Rail system (if Seattle builds a system), such as Portland will have when the Green Line is finished) and Microsoft will make efforts to bring Urban Rail to their campus.
The driving force will be to locate where it will be easy for workers to get to. Washington DC added a new station (New York Street) to an old line (Red) and IMMEDIATELY a half dozen office buildings started construction (including ATF HQ). As gasoline gets ever more expensive, access to Urban Rail will rise in importance.
New small Urban foci will probably evolve around steady employment (see Boeing & Microsoft). The old term was "company towns".
Best Hopes,
Alan
I wouldn't be so sure Microsoft would survive, at least in one piece - in general, monolithic slow-moving companies are at considerable risk in the rapidly changing world that declining oil supplies will almost surely generate.
Also, a considerable fraction of their income comes from shipping pre-installed OSes on new computers that are bought more or less as luxury items by the middle classes. A peak-oil triggered extended recession is sure to force a lot of people to cut back on purchases of anything that isn't truly essential.
OTOH, Boeing mightn't do so badly. There really are very few realistic replacements for long-haul overseas flights.
And of course Boeing has the military as a big customer, which won't be going away.
hbj (from up the thread):
http://www.energybulletin.net/19686.html
From the transcript of a joint interview with Matt Simmons & Jim Kunstler (I made some minor corrections to correctly identify Matt as a speaker):
Is there a point somewhere in that irrelevance?
Identify who has a better grasp of reality regarding the future of the 'burbs.
hbj (from up the thread):
To my mind JHK endeavors have been totally against the stream no matter where you drop him.
Try it yourself sometime.
"Peak technology is a completely ridiculous concept"
I may think Peak Technology does have some validity. Consider that Technological advancements tend to require increasing specialization and study in a given field. On the down slope of peak energy, I would not be surprised to see funding dry up. Consider that Cheap energy translates into more abundant free time which allows greater time for specialization. It becomes a question of whether a society will fund and support a small group of select academics and researchers to pursue higher level education and the search for the magic bullet.
I think I would agree that we are reaching a technological high water mark, even if the idea or wording is unpalatible.
EJ
Sure, if 'Technology' is I-Phones and other complicated products that are designed to both define and then fullfill a somewhat arbitrary 'need'. Even so much of the tech development in the food industry is aimed towards creating flavors and mouthfeels, concept foods (Wasn't Google PeanutButter and Jelly in One Jar advanced ENOUGH? Google that!), while nutritional disorders and addictions abound.
No, to fall prey to the old cliche', I would suggest that we're coming out of a period of relatively little 'need' (In the well-supplied industrial world), and so necessity has not been present enough to demand our brains to devise substantial, meaningful inventions, combinations and discoveries that would have to satisfy any survival requirements. It certainly seems that we may have some developing survival requirements heading in to disturb our TV-supported slumber, and so will soon have to get our thinkers going again, funded or not.
Bob Fiske
Hi Bob, totally agree. Let's hope for a wider return to ideals of quality, rather than the sub-mediocre trash that is produced by the majority today.
"You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created."
Albert Einstein
What if the magic bullet doesn't exist to be discovered? Yet again JHK sticks his neck out and challenges society on its assumptions. It's what you know for sure that ain't so .....
First you need a discoverable bullet; then you need to find and implement it in time, just like in the movies. Then the bullet has to solve more problems than it creates. Some bullet.
How many more combinations of materials and techniques are still possible and waiting to be discovered? Good question. Thanks Jim.
I think there is a consensus on The Oil Drum that no silver bullet exists. Where there is a lot of discussion is as to the effectiveness of a "many silver BBs" approach. For example, we could in a few decades go to a fleet of plug-in hybrid (or pure electric) cars. We know how to generate more electricity, and over thirty years or so we could build a lot of nuclear generating plants plus of course more wind and solar and tide and wave power.
Clearly, Alan Drake (whom I'm going to write in for president in 2008) sees his proposals as silver BBs.
Now some people say, "B.S., all those silver BBs won't help much." In my opinion they can and probably will help. I do not assert that technology will save us. Matt Savinar may turn out to be right; there is no way to know now, because the data are not there. I think we need to walk a fine line between the fallacy that the market (driving technological advances) will save us and the opposing fallacy that states that technological advances will diminish in number and importance.
The late great economist, Joseph Schumpeter, pointed out that technological advances tend to come in "swarms" separated by about sixty years. If Schumpeter is right, we're due for another swarm right about now.
In fact it's better than you says. On a purely "size of manufacturing base" level if you run the numbers, it's clearly possible to upgrade everyone in the US to hybrids whilst matching the rate of fuel decline up to about 8%. An 8% decline rate is at the high end of most credible estimates.
Now there are arguments to be made about whether we *will* actually do that, but the technology needed to halve our gasoline consumption in 9-13 years exists today: we don't need to invent anything, nor do we need to increase vehicle manufacturing rate above present levels. Simply retooling most of our vehicle factories to producing hybrids would allow us to survive incredibly high decline rates, and this is far from the limit of what we can actually achieve with new technologies that are currently being commercialized.
The OP was right, "peak technology" is a ludicrous idea, especially at the moment. Kunstler has already decided what he wants, now he's quite happy to make bizarre and illogical arguments to reach his desired conclusions.
Predictably, of course, you are a computer programmer. Oh, but look, now I just entered what "represent[s] the intellectual gutter." It's kind of comfortable in here. I may stay.
You slashdot geeks don't really understand how the world works because you're too smart at detailed oriented iterative functions (programming, whatever the hell hbj does, the rest of most of talented-yet-unrealistic slashdot, ad infinitum.) It doesn't surprise me that political ideologues can crop up to power with these types of psychologies at work. You so easily convince yourself. Real "power" is naturally cynical and self-interested. It taps into ideologues and uses them to faithfully spout their agendas. People do this to themselves. Those people are just completely retarded or ultra cynical (William Kristol, etc). Take your pick, it doesn't matter which. Which are you? Which are we? Does it matter?
Your assumptions do not take into account various economic factors that will be at work. In other words, you are in fact self-convinced pseudo-cornucopian techno-fixer ideologues. That has a nice ring to it :-D
We're deep in the gutter now, but we can still see the stars.
Where'd I put my iPhone?
My new motto:
"In the gutter, but free!"
;-)
No, obviously not, but then neither does Kunstler. He just assumes that his preferred outcome will happen and works backwards from there.
The point of those calculations is to show that it's physically possible to handle a 5% decline rate using only vehicle efficiency improvements. Obviously in a real 5% decline scenario there'll be a mix of solutions.
The rant about computer programmers sadly doesn't surprise me. You don't have any figures of your own, so you just attack the messenger. Get your own analyses which show why you are right, and then you'll be more impressive - not just to me but to the myriad people reading this discussion.
Really? I wasn't aware. I thought what happens here is that we discuss the present situation (which is quite dire, if you hadn't noticed) either in a free for all manner--the DrumBeats and general interest posts, or in a technical manner--the statistical posts (I like to stay out of these, and let the experts do their thing--aside from any ignorant questions I might have.) For the most part, I think I'm well educated enough in the sciences, and have studied math to the degree where statistically speaking it is clear there may be a rates-of-change-crunch ahead very soon which we are not prepared for.
I agree, we need to get better and stronger regulation on the auto industry ASAP. We need to reinvest in public transit, trains, electrification of transportation (especially for agriculture), and probably nuclear. Demand destruction will force us to conserve--we won't need ad campaigns for that or politicians waxing poetic for votes. On top of this, there are all the other silver BBs: solar, wind, thermal, biomass, and many others. But they will not kill the PO werewolf, IMHO. I agree with people that say PO will literally alter and radically change how many Americans live (more so than the growing gap and unfair economic divide has since, yes, the 1970s.)
As for getting my own analysis? I think I've got it, and I do not think it will be easy for the US economy, or the global economy, to weather imminent 5% declines (that is a mid-range projection you are using, btw). I'll just reference the last year's worth of TOD archives (and my gauche comments there within), and the cultural/political/geopolitical environment as the evidence for obstacles to implementing crash course mitigation easily if PO is within the decade and skews toward the upper range. As many like to mention here, Schlumberger estimates a scenario of 8%, which would be gruesome. On top of all this, if ELM develops any traction you can kiss those friendlier decline rates good-bye. (Let's not bring on the Doomers' Neocon wet dream of Iran, or other geopolitical pandemonium likely to crop up in the wake of global C+C energy decline.)
Aside from that I would state that we do not differ on numbers, only that I believe your belief that a 5% decline rate annually can be made up for forever by simply building millions of more cars is worse than naive, and probably dangerous... We differ because we see the present world unfolding in different ways, or we have contentious "projections" on the future. Note how that word has deep connotations to psychology, even if I'm not using it in that context.
If the debate on TOD isn't technical, it is usually psychological. Even when it is in fact technical, a lot of the time it is still just a lot of psychology ramming against itself--as many observe. Moreover, if it isn't psychological, than it is political, but then again, we all know what Aristotle said.
Of course, our identity positions in this argument necessitate this clichéd polarity that I say nothing works and you say everyone will be perfectly fine (which neither of us is really saying, I hope.) You assume your technical perch and squawk your math is divinely correct. I raggedly spin my owl vision at the bleakness of our prospects of going down Hubbert's curve, or shall I say cliff? Or perhaps undulating plateau? What is the social outcome with any of these "no-growth" scenarios? I'm not optimistic they are altogether going to make for an immediately better future, and I fear that is why it seems all political hope in this country has been lost over the last three decades (ie the "who cares?" mentality of the top). To drone on, the question of why we didn't start thirty years ago to prepare for a less energy-dependent/energy-intensive future is going to rear its ugly head soon, when people realize how fragile our complex systems may in fact be when deprived more and more energy every year, continually, into a population base created during over a century of ascending Hubbert's curve. I really do wish for middle-range depletion levels, an invigoration of political leadership, and a mitigation strategy that minimizes the amount of discord and hardship. As I like to say, time will tell, I hope you are right.
Hi Mike,
Your analysis sounds interesting. Could you please publish the details?
The Hirsch report looked at automobile efficiency as a mitigation wedge and it did not cover better than 2% decline rate.
Are you assuming a WWII style takeover of the auto industry that forces them to build only hybrids?
Jon Freise
Analyze Not Fantasize -D. Meadows
Uh-oh.
Be careful.
This guy sounds like an insider.
You don't need a WW2 style takeover to make the auto industry produce mostly hybrids (you don't really need 100% hybrid manufacture, because there'll be other factors at work like fleet re-arrangement or increased use of ride-sharing).
What you do need is economic incentive. Why would any auto-manufacturer still be producing 20mpg vehicles when their competitors are doing 40-50 and gas is very expensive?
The figures I referred to are about what is physically possible rather than economically possible, and can be calculated from various statistics available on the web, and correlated with Stuart Stanifords various analyses of vehicle efficiency. Google "auto efficiency wedge" to get his article.
Basically you want to simplify, to get a handle on orders of magnitude. Obviously the result won't be an accurate description of the future but it lets you get a feel for what is possible and what is not.
Start with an assumed decline rate - let's say 5%. With a 5% decline supply will halve in about 13 years. Let's simplify considerably and assume even distribution of resources, so for the US "all" that is needed is to halve US gasoline consumption (as most crude oil is used to make fuel) to keep prices either stable or rising slowly (they'll still rise in reality).
Current average fuel efficiency in the US is ~20mpg (rounded). Prius today gets between 40-60mpg depending on who you believe. Let's take 40 as it's the worst case, from a story on whether Prius' are all they're cracked up to be or not based on testimony from an annoyed customer. So in reality it's probably better than this (I don't have a Prius so can't say).
40 also has the nice property of being double 20. So we can simplify again - if we upgrade every vehicle in the fleet to a worst-case Prius or equivalent, then we can halve consumption. Of course you'd need to remove natural growth in VMT from that, but over the timespans we're talking about that isn't going to change the final conclusion so let's leave it for now.
How long would it take to replace every vehicle in the US with a 40mpg hybrid? We can see by comparing manufacturing rates. Currently if you count cars+light trucks from BTS stats, you get about 17 million vehicles sold per year in the US, about 8% of the total fleet of 225 million, which tallies with Stuarts own figures derived using a different mechanism. Let's simplify again and assume that vehicles sold == vehicles manufactured. This works out as being approximately a new vehicle built every 1.8 seconds.
To build 225 million new vehicles (we want to upgrade every single one to a prius or equivalent remember) in 13 years (the time taken for our supply to halve) works out as about 1.822 seconds - the same! So we can conclude we don't need any new manufacturing capacity to be able to do this, only retooling of existing capacity to build hybrid engines instead of pure-gas engines.
What other physical limits might we encounter. Two obvious ones are electricity and lithium supplies. EPRI has published a study which shows that the differential between daytime and nighttime production is so large that it'd be perfectly feasible to recharge hybrids from this at night. Now if you actually tried to *use* all that differential then some extra generation capacity would be needed to ensure pumped storage and friends are still supplied, but that's easily manageable.
Lithium Carbonate primarily comes from Bolivia and a few other South American countries. Making Bolivia the new Saudi Arabia doesn't sound great, but this analysis only looks at what is physically possible not politically wise. There are various calculations around how many hybrids could be produced if the entirety of these lithium deposits were used to produce hybrid LiIon batteries but they vary considerably. Even the worst case estimates however result in aroune 600 million hybrid cars - easily enough for the US vehicle fleet and probably also enough for Europes, but likely not enough for the entire world. Other estimates however imply the limit might be in the billions: more than enough. And of course it's highly unlikely that lithium based batteries will be in use forever, or that no more lithium deposits exist - it's one of the more common elements in the universe.
Now the guy who decided to insult my profession instead of doing maths above correctly points out that this ignores economic factors. Will people be able to afford buying hybrids which are today very expensive?
This is really hard to say. It depends on the strength of various economies, availability of credit, and the price of hybrids once mass manufacture and competition on a huge scale has brought down the price. It's worth noting though that the old vehicles will have some resale value - you can sell your old inefficient vehicle to somebody who needs a new car, cheap, but who doesn't drive much.
The other trick is that a 5% decline doesn't mean you can say anything about actual fuel prices. Unless industrialisation in China and India are brought to a halt, it seems very hard to predict what actual prices will be even given a decline, but you might be able to extrapolate that from the current run-up in prices given flat production.
Fortunately, we don't need to upgrade the entire vehicle fleet. There are no reasons why we cannot have wide-spread vehicle sharing during the initial ramp up (remember that a 3% decline gets progressively less nasty as the curve flattens out over time). The technology to do this effectively and on a large scale exists today.
So the basic conclusion I come to is that even if you assume several worst-case scenarios, it's physically possible to handle a 5% decline rate within the US with no new technology and no new manufacturing capacity whatsoever, simply through letting price signals tell auto manufactures to dump light trucks in favour of efficient hybrids.
Is a 5% decline rate likely? Hard to say. Depletion in existing fields seems to be meeting Andrew Goulds estimate of around 8%, but having a decline rate approach the decline rate of individual fields would be the absolute worst case scenario: it implies a complete inability to bring any new production online at all, which isn't correct. Between new fields and XTL we can probably bring quite a bit of new production capacity online. A more realistic decline rate seems to be around 3-5% per year, which is within societies proven ability to adapt (see Stuarts stories on what happened after the 70s/80s oil shocks for this).
EPRI has published a study which shows that the differential between daytime and nighttime production is so large that it'd be perfectly feasible to recharge hybrids from this at night
I think it would be very problematic to find the natural gas to continue operating existing natural gas power plants (we built very little but NG plants for a dozen years) a few hours/day (from memory average duty cycle is 23% for NG plants). Doubling generation from NG plants will run into a shortage of fuel,
Best Hopes for Urban Rail,
Alan
/me tips his hat at an excellent comment and agrees with the sentiment that adaption at less than 5% is probably do-able, but wonders if 'above ground factors', and an export crunch may influence the reduction in oil availability towards a quicker than 5% rate.
Hi Mike,
Thanks for the long response. Essentially, the whole US auto manufacturing industry must be retooled to produce 40 MPG vehicles to match a 5% decline rate. I agree.
I think the kinds of calculations that you have done help people understand what is meant by "needs a WWII level effort" or suffer the consequences.
It seems a shame that the Auto Industry is fighting tooth and nail to block legislation that would require 35 fleet MPG available for sale by 2020 when we really need the existing fleet converted to 40 MPG in the same time frame.
I will keep a link to this analysis. Do you have this written up somewhere that is likely to see updates?
I don't think you can compare upgrading some car factories to a WW2 style effort, the two just aren't in the same league. Hybrid manufacturing technology isn't especially complex, although like most auto manufacturing it takes a lot of time and skill to tune for the best results.
Yes it's a shame the auto industry is fighting legislation - on the other hand, as I said, I don't think you need any. Once decline actually starts economics should be more than enough.
No, I don't have it written up anywhere. Maybe I'll post it on my blog or something, or maybe it could make an article. I don't know.
Of course, you can still have an oversupply of guzzlers if the manufacturers do their usual trick of overproducing and then using discounts and cheap financing to move them. Then they are a liability for the next 10-15 years.
One way around that might be to tax the discounts and charge sales tax on the foregone interest. If the manufacturers are pushed to build to order instead of building up inventory of vehicles nobody wants and then dumping them, a large part of the problem will fix itself right there.
The technology to reduce oil consumption exists today.
It is a wonderful invention that was totally unexpected 50 years ago.
It is a fantastic device that allows people to travel at near the speed of light for about 10¢ an hour including vehicle.
Crazy talk you say?
It is called a modem. You are probably using one now.
"The end is nigh" sells better though. Just ask Earle Williams.
It is called a modem. You are probably using one now.
Yes, it is also very convenient to outsource value added IP jobs to cheap countries.
THAT is sure to reduce your consumption, zero budget, zero expenses...
EJ - me encanta tu "moniker". :)
I take your point. I think that co-opting the word "peak" to use with technology is a bad idea though, because "peak" oil really does have to do with an actual peak in supply, whereas the technology concept is really an issue of how much technological progress do we forego by having less energy.
Also,to take it a step further, technology is obviously not 100% corollated with energy. Highly related often, yes. But as someone else pointed out on this thread, technological achievement is as much about the brains of the innovators as about energy.
I'm an aerospace engineer and aerospace technology is an area that I have some expertise in. Aerospace technology has definitely peaked. We're now in a situation where we (the aerospace engineers) are forgetting more old technology than we are innovating new technology. Often times, when someone gets a bright new idea, all he has to do is spend a few hours in the library and he'll find a near identical idea published in "ACTA Astronautica" or some other obscure journal from the early 1960s. It's depressing to flip through some of the old NASA proposals that were published in the mid-1960s. Those old ideas printed on brittle, age yellowed paper are as bright and exciting as ever but were never implemented due to limited funding (collapse of the Apollo Program). Of course some areas of technology are advancing very rapidly, e.g. biotech. However many well funded technologies like microcomputers are starting to hit asymptotes due to physical limitations. Also some areas never got off the ground (controlled nuclear fusion) because they were too hard.
Peak technology is a real phenomena. I worry that Peak Oil coupled with Peak Technology could be a very nasty double whammy. First our society gets knocked into a long economic recession due to peak oil. After fifty years, there is a recovery as we convert over to energy alternatives. However trying to advance technologically beyond that point is hard because almost all of the research and development (R&D) resources were obliterated during the fifty year recession/depression. Trying to bootstrap technological R&D is then almost impossible because of the huge costs to get back to zero on a smaller economic base and the almost insurmountable argument that it's always cheaper to go to the library and lookup what people did a 100 years ago (we'll be stuck in the past). The ancient Romans fell into this very same trap when they couldn't advance beyond Hellenistic Greek technology.
I have 15 years in aerospace, and I agree. Could we build the Blackbird today, if we wanted to? My colleagues - some of whom did build it - say no.
USA recentle resurrected the antiballistic missile.
I dont know how well the Spartan and Sprint system worked in
the 70:s but it could be an intresting example of restaring production of a very extreme technological system.
I would not be especially worried if the microelectronics development levels out in a few years. We can spend generatons perfecting software and architectures to use the technology.
Magnus Redin said:
"I would not be especially worried if the microelectronics development levels out in a few years. We can spend generatons perfecting software and architectures to use the technology."
I agree. I suspect it is due to simple desperation that Intel and AMD are pushing these multi-core CPU chips with 64 bit capability. My machine at work supports 64 bits but I almost always boot it under a 32 bit operating system because there is almost nothing out there that uses 64 bits. Even when I compile my own source code to 64 bits the performance improvement is modest because the compiler's 64 bit capability is inadequate. Also, very little software out there is effective at running multi-threaded or parallel algorithms (DVD playing programs!?). It seems the modern CPU chips have greatly out paced the available software capability.
The new generation of machines today seem like quite a kludge. Computers with 2 CPUs with an operating system that requires 1 CPU of the 2 to run. A system that needs 2 GIG of RAM to run, 1 GIG being used by the operating system, Vista. Laptops with such large power consumption that they consider a run time of 2 hours to be good. Even worse, we are all being driven to purchase these systems as the older systems and software lose technical support. When a developing technology loses sight of efficiency it is probably peaking.
Spartan and Sprint used nuclear warheads. They were effective as ABMs but the Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) collateral damage made them almost useless. That's the main reaon why the US and the Soviet Union agreed to the ABM Treaty. Modern ABMs are non-nuclear. However destroying an ICBM-RV with a non-nuclear ABM is very hard and can be easily saturated with a mass attack. Putin's recent complaints about America's ABM development was for internal political consumption. Putin knows that the Russian ICBM capability could saturate any conceivable non-nuclear ABM system. However ABMs are a good idea if the intended defense is against a small number of Iranian or North Korean ICBMs.
The SR-71 Blackbird was developed in the late 1950s and first flew in 1962. It still holds the record for the fastest flying manned air-breathing aircraft (there are faster unmanned air breathing aircraft and the Space Shuttle is much faster). The SR-71 was extremely expensive to develop because of its revolutionary variable cycle engine, early stealth technology and extensive use of titanium in its structure (titanium is very expensive to machine).
I'm a rabid Blackbird fan but have to admit that there is no longer a real mission for Blackbirds. Satellites and low/high speed Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) have made the Blackbird obsolete. Rumor has it that there is a black program to develop scramjet powered UAVs. Such a UAV would cruise between Mach 6 and Mach 10 (scramjets do not perform well beyond Mach 10). The Blackbird's cruise Mach number was around 3.4 at about 110 thousand feet. For years people have talked about "Aurora" as a Blackbird replacment but that maybe nonsense or urban legend. I once heard a yarn that Aurora was real but discontinued because it was too expensive to fly.
I actually did a code fix of about a couple of lines for the Blackbird. Around 1987.
I got to do the job because the engineer it was assigned to was very busy and I knew 8080 code like the back of my hand.
BTW re: software. C code is ugly and very prone to pointer errors. It is a kludge designed by a committee of two. Context changes cause stack thrashes. Broken pointers cause "leaks".
There are better ways. (I like FORTH) but C had Bell labs and the rest is (bad) history. When we need to get more out of less silicon all the forgotten pathways of computer development will be rediscovered.
Also note that "object oriented" was developed in FORTH a decade before the C folks figured it out. Plus it was way more elegant than the C method.
M. Simmon said:
"I actually did a code fix of about a couple of lines for the Blackbird. Around 1987. I got to do the job because the engineer it was assigned to was very busy and I knew 8080 code like the back of my hand."
A zillion years ago in another life, I also wrote 8080 assembler code for a student project. Blackbirds were still flying in 1987 but I'm surprised they were using 8080s. It must have been for some embedded application, e.g. a electronic counter-measures module, etc. I suspect(?) the original engine countrol system was some sort of mechanical analog system (like the fluidic computer in an old fashioned automobile automatic transmission). The Blackbird was 1950s technology which still used vacuum tube electronics.
M. Simmon also said:
"C code is ugly and very prone to pointer errors. It is a kludge designed by a committee of two. Context changes cause stack thrashes. Broken pointers cause "leaks". There are better ways."
Sorry but I'm obligated to rise to C's defense.
C is a beautiful programming language. C has the perfect blend of power and simplicity (It's high level machine independent assembly language).
C's authors, Kernighan and Ritchie were computer programming geniuses (like most of the guys at Bell Labs working on Unix). Yes, very bad C can be written by incompetent programmers (C is not for amateurs). There are contests on the Internet for obfuscated C producing the most incomprehensible code. However well written C is highly readable. I should mention that an address pointer is your friend if used intelligently. I've written many large simulation codes in C. Something that I have discovered is if the C soure code is written such that the source code's logic and data structures are patterned after the physical process being simulated then the software starts "writing itself", i.e. I start the process as an innovator but eventually I find that I'm a participant with the code's own structure telling me how to proceed. I never experienced this in the years that wrote stuff in (shudder) Fortran or any other high level language. I'm convinced that this hidden power of C is one of the reasons why most large codes are still written in C.
Yes, +1 on C ;-)
Y'know, that's a hugely important point few realize.
Likewise, we couldn't launch a Saturn V today. We'd have to re-engineer a similar system from scratch.
Which could be done, and in some ways perhaps be improved upon. But the past knowledge investment into a huge and complex system which worked flawlessly is now irretrievable.
Since past achievements may still be convincingly emulated this would strike most people as a 'so what' deal.
But it reflects both Tainter's diminishing returns on investment in complexity and what I have previously described as complex specialized systems' acute vulnerability to discontinuities of any kind. This is as true of rainforest species as it is of aerospace programs.
Discontinuities are what will collapse this civilization, and I see it rarely discussed in these terms. Make yourself aware of everything which utterly relies on continuities and you'll have a good idea of what won't be around later....
I'm just saying...
"Discontinuities are what will collapse this civilization, and I see it rarely discussed in these terms. Make yourself aware of everything which utterly relies on continuities and you'll have a good idea of what won't be around later...."
Once we understand collapse WILL happen, this is the next level of discourse. HOW will it happen? Failure at vulnerable points followed by cascade failures.
Discontinuities are key. Thank you for bringing it up. This deserves its own thread.
I hope you will write it.
Collapse will look different in every location, depending on the luck of the draw. Some locations will have available resources and informed people to use them. Others will not. I like to think of the comparison of the isolated islanders living in the South Pacific region. They were/are almost stone age people, but suddenly WW2 happened and these secluded people were confronted with technology that they had never seen. They built facimile airplanes on mountain tops and prayed to them...the aircraft were gods to the natives. After tshtf some areas are going to revert to ancient practices and technologies, others will fair somewhat better.
How 'bout we talk Nate into writing it? I prefer keeping a low profile and being lazy this year. But I'd like to see it expanded upon, because it is one of the core realities many people don't 'get'.
Nate?
Article Mike Hearn needs to read:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/article575370.ece
If we look at food production, medicine, and transport times, you know all the stuff that really matters, then things have declining since about 1970. As an example, we may produce 2-to-3x as much food as in 1970 but only after pumping in 5-to-20x as much energy into food production.
Same thing for transport. There was a study done (google will turn it up) that explained it now takes longer, for example, to get from New York to Los Angeles than it did 30 years ago because technology has not solved so many problems that accompanied all the growth in the airline industry. Sure we have faster planes today but if you're the average Joe Six Pack you're not getting on your own private super jet.
I'd also say you would need to judge tech by what is available to the average person. Sure, a millionaire might have access to the latest super duper nano-tech thing a mah jigey to treat his illness but the rest of us are stuck with antibiotics, a circa 1945 technology. And since the bacteria are evolving faster than the anti-bacterial tech, you have to use way more to get the same effect.
Medical technology and knowledge has improved enourmously in 30 years.
The problem with resistant strains of bactera can be slowed down significantly by not being sloppy. Dont put antibiotics in cattlefeed, dont give a gram of antibiotics to people who have a cold, rotate the kinds used and dont give your best antibiotics for infections that probably are minor even if that sometimes hurts a patient. You essentially have to get form a right now optimization to a keep the population healthy over time optimization. On average everyboy wins even if it might hurt or even kill someone sometimes.
But now it might be too late.
Antibiotics.....
The thing is though medicine in the US is for profit. If you want antibiotics or narcotics and you ask your MD he'll write a script. If he doesn't you go get a new MD and his/her practice loses business. I had a patient on my vessel DEMAND I give him antibiotics for a runny nose. I explained why he did not need them and he went to the Company Man who questioned me intensly about my patient care. My medical director backs me up on stuff like that but americans have a Burger King culture about medicine.
I don't think antibiotics should ever be used without a culture and sensitivity unless it is an emergency like sepsis or meningitis.
matt
Oilrig medic,
I know this sounds cruel, but antibiotics and progress in sanitation and clean water are the major reason we have such an overpopulation problem. If we render the antibiotics ineffective through overuse, and the water supply dirty through collapse of our water and sewer systems, there will be a die-off for sure.
Bob Ebersole
I disagree, the countries with clean water that have access to antibiotics are not overpopulated. In areas where disease and famine kill regulary families are larger to buffer the death. If we bring the third world up to this standard, clean drinking water, childhood vaccinations and an antimalaria program....over a generation or so families will shrink to about two kids.
My opinion but I think some others on TOD have posted reliable links to this. Having two kids which recieve all the food and parenting and are able to attend school makes a more stable future than having ten that grow up in squalor fending for themselves.
matt
Bucky Fuller actually predicted this trend 70 years ago.
It takes people a long time to catch on.
10% never get the word.
I hope you have your resume ready. ;-)
Really how much of "Rocket Science" was available to Man before the advent of the "Oil Age"?
All of it? Correct!
So now you've presented a conundrum of sorts.
If the only thing preventing the Chinese from fully exploiting was metallurgical expertise then maybe we are not looking far enough into the past.
Terra Preta anyone?
Or maybe the http://www.theforgottentechnology.com/?
Yes, Kunstler wants change and PO can be seen as a way to obtain it. On the other hand, Kunstler is also pointing at the causes of PO as a crisis. If it wasn't for the way the industrialized world, and America in particular, depended on cheap oil, PO wouldn't be that big a deal.
From what I gather, Kunstler's objections to Suburbia and all predated his awareness of PO. This only makes his perspective that much more convincing because what he objects to is not only bad aesthetically, but economically as well.
So he may not be the best possible spokesperson because he doesn't sugar coat the issues. This makes people uncomfortable and they throw up defense mechanisms. But IMO it's more important to speak the truth so that people hear it than to try to spin it just right to make it more palatable.
-Don
Interesting. Nice points.
If cities are so much better why do people want to move to the suburbs?
See Cary Grant in "Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House". Human nature hasn't changed much in the 60 years since that movie was made.
Strongly disagree. While I'm not sure we are at peak tech, anymore than I'm sure that we're at peak oil, I do think there may be such a thing as peak technology. The End of Science, as Horgan terms it. Tainter gives the reason, and it's energy-related.
I don't know whether we are at peak technology, but there are some reasons to believe that we are not. Tainter, for example, seems to be unaware of the work of the great sociologist, William F. Ogburn. Ogburn's model for social change was in four steps:
1. Invention
2. Diffusion
3. Selective accumulation
4. Adaptation
Many of our current problems grow out of failure to adapt to a car-based culture; adaptation is always a problem when there are rapid changes in material culture.
However, Ogburn pointed out that as culture accumulates--as you get a bigger knowledge base--there become far more ways to combine different parts of a culture to get useful inventions. Say you've got a simple culture with 1,000 elements or traits: You can get some innovation but not much, because the number of combinations you can get out of 1,000 elements is relatively small. Now go to a culture with 10,000 traits: There are a heckuva lot more possible combinations, some of which may be useful. It is hard to count traits (depends to some extent on definition), but it would be hard to argue that the large number of elements of knowledge and material culture is not increasing now.
Thus as the base of knowledge grows (and it is definitely growing), the number of elements that can be combined into useful innovations (selective accumulation) increases too.
It is no accident that simple cultures tend to be very stable--even rigidly so. Complex and growing (in traits) cultures always have powerful forces for change in them, a chief one being inventions in material culture. Of course innovation can be destructive as well as constructive (consider weapons), but that is another issue.
All pretty much true, but it is a two-way street. Consider what happened, for example, when the library at Alexandria was burned. How many thousands of cultural elements were pruned away in that one moment?
The collapse of the ancient Greco-Roman civilization did not mean that humankind had yet experienced all-time, once-and-for-all "Peak Technology" -- but it was many centuries before we got back to that previous peak.
It is possible for cultures in decline to give up and forget things they previously knew. There are multiple examples of primative bands of island dwellers whose ancestors could obviously have only gotten there by boat, yet their descendants are clueless as to how to build a proper boat, let alone navigate it. We all know about the descendants of people like the ancient Maya, living amongst ruins of structures that they would now not have the first idea how to go about building.
Before we get too excited about "onward & upward", perhaps we would be wiser to be a little more concerned about just preserving what we have already achieved.
Very true. "Progress" seems like a one-way street to us, something that's "natural," "inevitable," etc., because that has been our experience. It's not. Knowledge can be lost.
Jared Diamond wrote about it, in an essay called Ten Thousand Years of Solitude.
Appropriate technology. After all, they only took short voyages and only in calm seas. Why would they need a better raft?
Technology, culture and society all intimately tied together and functioning at a similar level. Can't have a decentralized solar grid and 500' private yachts - let along the ghettos of the world.
cfm in Gray, ME
David Ehrenfeld too has written about this, in his appropriately named essay: Forgetting.
working link for posterity:
http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:4RcljOG-_vwJ:papergraders.com/Forge...
and it's energy-related.
Not only, it's complexity related too, the loss of knowledge as discussed in this thread stems more from the financial/social cost of retaining/rebuilding complex patterns than from the cost of bare energy used in doing so.
Kunstler is very valuable. He has a knack for wrapping a iron fist in velvet, making it possible for these ideas to be presented to misguided wealthy liberals.
Because maintaining a highly organized society with educational systems in place to support a population that can carry on understanding the work of earlier generations has nothing to do with energy inputs.... right?
Christ, it's a frightening moment when you realize that the scientists and doctors really aren't any wiser than the rest of us...
For some reason, this little snippet from http://thehousingbubbleblog.com/ caught my eye -
"It’s something Sand Springs Development President Dennis Cantwell sees every day.
‘Everybody I talk to is laying off somebody in (residential) construction and I think it’s resulting in a trickle-down effect,’ said Cantwell. ‘It’s not only construction; people no longer have the grass cut or pool cleaned, and they don’t need day care because they’re staying home with the kids now. It’s going to blow through the whole system. Some people aren’t even going out for dinner anymore.’"
'Some people aren't even going for dinner anymore'? As if this is a bad thing?
The same sense of personal incomprehension arises when Americans refer to life without credit, as if it is inconceivable to actually pay cash, and a punishment to live within your means.
Actually, there is a peak oil question hiding in this jarring little quote - does it seem as if American society, at least as presented in the mainstream, has become actively hostile to what was previously considered a good life?
We all know how it is for bicycle riders in the U.S., but the idea that only an economic crash could force people to eat dinner at home is absurd, a parody that would be outrageous if I presented it as a general statement.
Except that is what at least one person, responsible for Sand Springs, Florida 'development,' believes, after pointing out that people are now being forced to cut their own grass and clean their own pools. And possibly worse, in his eyes, 'they don’t need day care because they’re staying home with the kids now.'
Why do things I think desirable get associated with such negative connotations within the U.S.?
And if this is somehow constructed out of marketing, how can we change the focus so that eating a meal with family, after a day with your children, is seen as worthwhile?
Expat regarding..
"how can we change the focus so that eating a meal with family, after a day with your children, is seen as worthwhile?"
The focus will be changed for us,, soon enough. IMHO
hmmmm, dining service is the most common spread economy in all countries. If people stop eating in restaurants, you may believe it is "better", but in fact, it's creating unemplyment. Big time.
Look, mountaintop removal in West Virginia is also likely to be a fine source of employment and economic activity for a depressed area.
So what? There are other measures in life than merely money or jobs. For example, clean water comes to mind, which seems to be something in shorter supply after the mining operations move to the next area.
Don't worry. The "bad for the economy" line will always be used when people are unwilling to acknowledge that our current social/economic/political system could be improved upon immensely.
There will be many people fighting to keep the status quo...
"You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created."
Albert Einstein
does it seem as if American society, at least as presented in the mainstream, has become actively hostile to what was previously considered a good life?......
It may - I live in Socal and I do know that the job of the media people is to sell us drama/images based upon where we are at as a people. If the worm turns then the producers who are the first to respond and be successful will be the new gods of the moment. Just look at the movies of the 1930’s - gilded escapism (Fred Astaire) or somewhat maudlin drama about the prowess of the “little guy”
A new carney in the coal mine
In the real world, Mister Potter always wins.
Expat,
Certainly get the jest of what you are saying. But, at least in this article, they are referring to the economic impact of not eating out.
The economic impact of all of us changing our spending ways will be enormous.
Sure some of us jumped of this bandwagon a while ago, but the majority of Britney watching, Ipod carrying, Starbucks drinking CATTLE have not..and they are fueling this credit bubble with their un-ending appetite for more stuff.
But in the end, maybe you get the changes you want...those who make it through the next depression(?), will probably value bicycle riding and eating at home (from organic victory gardens)
Actually, I pretty much hate bicycle riding, and a lot of the social changes which are desirable in my view are unlikely in the U.S. at this point.
Actually, just the hope of returning to the principle of habeas corpus and punishing as criminals those who torture, violating their oath to uphold the Constitution, seem to be receding into the past in my more pessimistic moments.
Let's just say the future looks very, very ugly - and not in a die-off sense, which I don't quite believe in.
expat, this is one of the best expressions of the 'American Malaise' that I have read.
And.... those of us critical of US society, speaking for myself at least, do desire a better way and are not, as some complain, simply out to tear things down (see Asebius' rant on Jeff Vail down thread).
Yes, the comments were interesting - the Unabomber being connected to peak oil awareness was a connection a bit beyond me, as was his seeming definition of anarchists as bomb throwers.
I have no opinion of Vail and his seemingly suspicious associates, but these days, simply describing normal life in Germany sounds pretty extreme to a number of Americans. But then, describing what facts I glean from my reading of American sources about life in the U.S. sounds pretty extreme to a number of Germans.
Recognizing that his work is polemical, Moore's Sicko might give a good idea what I am talking about.
Expat, I live in Florida and we are stuck with a lot of ex-real estate people either in our state legislature or heavily lobbying our state legislature. In Florida, this mentality of (duh, people are not eating out anymore, duh) is common. The state has depended on continual growth for tax revenues for so long that now they dont have a clue about what to do when the construction slows to a crawl. Tourisim is the other big income generator for the state and that will is being pinched as gas continues to increase. The local paper, Daytona News Journal, reported that the recent NASCAR race was held in front of stands that were 3/4 full (or 1/4 empty if you prefer), that is a real stunner for a racing industry that has been used to continually raising ticket and concession prices for many years. Agriculture is the last 'big' industry in Florida and much of that has been destroyed for more suburbs. Once there were nothing but orange groves and ferneries from here to central Florida, now the land contains houses. Last month Florida was number two on the list of most repoed homes. Taxes are through the roof, insurance companies no longer want to insure houses in Florida, so the politicians down here are nearing panic mode. Today the News Journal ran a story about 'Number of Insured Mobile Homes Decreasing'...a quote from the story...'The year of construction is not a major concern. Anything that's a mobile home is considered debris.' and...'More than half of the states 100,000 mobile homes are no longer covered by insurance.' I have always known that to live in a mobile home is really asking for trouble but lots of people that retired and moved to Florida bought them because they were cheap. Now they are stuck with them. BTW, the Sunday paper ran an article stating that the two area boat manufacturers owned by Brunswick Corp (Boston Whaler and Sea Ray) are going to have major layoffs. It is not a pretty picture here and the real estate cum politicians are not competent legislators. I dont think they have a clue about what 'mitigating' (there is that word again) steps to take.
"Taxes are through the roof, ...."
Prediction: The trend for local governments to increase property, income and sales taxes will continue as growth stagnates. This will lead to tax revolts, especially when it comes to property taxes.
The tax revolts have already started...in the form of people moving out of the state. Last year was the first on record where more people moved out of Fl than into the state.
Thanks Leanan for doing a great job!
What you said.
The tax revolts have already started...in the form of people moving out of the state. Last year was the first on record where more people moved out of Fl than into the state.
Theft is never popular. When the thieves get too rapacious honest folks leave the area.
Politicians are under the mistaken impression that their job is to maximize the amount of theft.
It is why Twain called them "America's only native criminal class"
Mobile homes are to housing as paper clothing is to attire.
The Florida tourism office is missing an obvious pitch: "Hurry! See Florida now, while we're still above water!" I'll probably actually try to take a vaction there in the next few years for that very reason. (But NOT in hurricane season!)
IBM is a big employer in my area. When they went through that bad period and laid off thousands, the ripples hit restaurants (and no-tell motels) the hardest. It was unreal, how many closed.
The bad thing is that they can't afford to stay home with their kids.
It is seen as worthwhile. It's COOKING the dinner that is not seen as worthwhile. And cleaning up after.
The whole family goes out to dinner. Or they do "curbside takeway." (Call the restaurant on your cell, and they'll meet you at the curb with your order.)
There are also the hot new meal-assembling stores. You go there and put together a weeks' worth of meals, that you can put in the freezer. All the ingredients and recipes are prepared for you, so you don't have to do the cleanup or anything.
'The bad thing is that they can't afford to stay home with their kids.'
Which is an amazing comment about life in the U.S., isn't it? Either work, or have everything bought on debt repossessed or be evicted.
Strangely, Europeans find this sort of situation the proper area of government - from preventing predatory lending to ensuring full medical care during childhood to avoiding homelessness for families - and it actually seems to work.
Of course, Europeans still seem to feel that government occasionally needs to see a few hundred thousand citizens reminding those in power at whose sufferance they rule, but then, Europe has a really ugly past. Which just might explain its fairly civilized present.
It is rather fortunate that America was willing at great cost to civilize Europe.
However, The Euros have a problem. They can't sustain government promises by working 35 hours a week with 6 weeks of vacation.
Jean-François Revel:
“Strangely, it is always America that is described as degenerate and ‘fascist,’ while it is solely in Europe that actual dictatorships and totalitarian regimes spring up.”
Expat,
I think this article in yesterday's paper will be of interest to you - Fat: a middle-class issue
Essentially, it is all about how the British middle-classes, often, don't bring up their children properly. Both parents are too busy working - and eating out - to look after their kids and so the kids get fat.
Part of it is locational ethos. Here in WNC you have plenty of people who grow their own food, work on their own yards, enjoy the view from the front porch, cook their own meals, heat with firewood, and don't drive around like maniacs all day. Not everyone is into that type of natural, old-timey, back-to-the-land (or maybe back-to-the-woods or back-to-the-hills) lifestyle, of course, but those that are would not be considered to be oddball kooks by those that are living more mainstream lifestyles. Transport the same folks to SoCal or Miami and you bet they would be considered oddball kooks.
Kunstler is funny, Kunstler is entertainment. Kunstler is also Bullshit spread so thin and wide one has to duck tape our noses in its exposure.
But his rant about technology stagnancy and the now common thematic about how we stagnated "progress" for the past fifty years, is not beyond plausability. What strikes me as incredible is the amount of doom sheeps that group themselves to eat all this suckers grass tape.
These idiots claim that there has been no real innovation for the past years, contrasting to the heights that mankind reached in the begginings of industrial civilization. It's so friggin easy to debunk that I won't even google (probably a 19th century verb) anything for this:
1. There is nothing new under the sky.
The pretensiousness that "there's nothing new these days and we have become oh so numb, yesterday we used to be so intelligent" crap stuff comes from the ignorance that teaches them that the train was "invented" in such times, and so did the car, and every incredible machine that changed our lifestyle. What these morons fail to process is that these inventions were nothing more than adaptations of existing tools (chariots, etc) to new technologies and energy motors. Innovation is always about evolution, there is little revolution in History. And all these machines from the 19th century, like trains, are not at all like 19th century machines nowadays. We have TGV's and fast trams today. We have MagLevs. To say that a "Train" is 19th century tech is insane! A Train is not a Tech! A train is simply a Concept. An idea of mobility. Perhaps today not widely implemented. Perhaps tomorrow more implemented. It depends not of the number of the century but of contingencies.
2. There's an incredible evolution on the things under the sky.
These people like to point out how dependent of oil we "still" are, despite the number of years we have passed, thus we are stupid. And stagnant.
Not at all, I say. We simply didn't care much about that stuff. Or at least not enough to have changed it so far. The stuff we cared and were amazed at we developed quite fast: the computers, the internet, the blogging (yeah, the stuff that enabled Kunstler make that rant instantly available to us), the google, telecommunications, CGI, CAD, which makes construction and design so more easy, the iPhone... (okay, I'm stretching the point). We also developed PV panels quite fast, they are reaching parity prices these years but thirty years ago, their prices were almost only affordable by NASA. Nowadays it's competing with Coal. Wave Energy, Wind Energy, oh I could just go on. These ideas were not "innovative" in the sense that photovoltaic always existed in the form of plants, and wind turbines are very old. But we have developed them beyond its older numbers.
There's just so many things we've been working so hard to do, improve and develop that dismissing this as stupidity and stagnancy is pure and plain disrespect. Yeah, we may have not been in the right path for survival. We may have fucked up somewhere in the way to success. To say though that our innovation capacity has somehow "peaked" too is, I believe, trying to outsell too many "Peaks" to the informed world.
But thanks for the joke.
The point Kunstler makes, as I read it, is that technology and energy are not equivalent. The technology humans have developed has historically consumed energy. We have developed technologies that harvest energy, but we haven't developed any technologies that create energy.
He is arguing that we never will develop technologies that create energy and he contends that many people, from Nascar fans to MIT doctorates expect that technology will somehow replace the energy sources mined from the earth (oil, gas, coal, uranium). In essence, our energy source of the future is Technology! I believe many people actually believe this. I know many baby boomers who think this is what will happen.
I don't believe there is an incredible evolution on the things under the sky. I believe we are nearing the end of an anomoly known as the Industrial Revolution, made possible by our friends Oil, Gas, Coal, and Uranium.
Tom A-B
Deep down it always comes to this end. I wonder also if the wheel was an invention made possible by the wonder that oil is. Your problem is that the current dependency of oil is reaching your head as if it is some kind of god that enabled us the magic of our everyday lives. It is not but a piece of dark liquid. It was OUR use of it that enabled us to make the things we've made, not itself in itself.
And wohohooo. It was Technology that enabled us to USE oil. USE gas. USE coal. USE uranium. And it will be technology that will enable us to USE renewables. So what if people rightly think that is technology which enable them to have so much energy? It's not THAT wrong. So stop stupidifying people. The only thing they don't get it "right" is that the change is nowhere near the pace it should be if we are to get out of the oil train.
Hi Luis,
I believe the wheel was developed well ahead of the widespread use of fossil fuels, but I think your point is that we humans developed the wheel, not oil. I agree with you on that.
However, I do in fact think that oil is a god of sorts. I believe oil has enabled us to grow our population to 4-5 times what it would have been without fossil fuels. We will use some sort of technology to use "renewables", whether the technology is "new" (Photovoltaics) or "old" (manure).
There is a myth about technology, and it is laid out nicely in The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900. Many of the things we call "new" today are merely variants on old technology, repackaged and marketed as new.
Combine this idea with my contention that oil has allowed us to quadruple the carrying capacity of our planet. We don't have a choice as to whether or not we get off the oil train. It will happen. Pace of change will only have a bearing on how orderly the transition is.
By the way, I think we're all about equally as stupid or smart. I'm not out so stupidify anyone. We're all stuck in a tough, though fascinating spot.
Tom A-B
Why? You're trying to compare two alternative futures. If oil and gas had not been found, what's to say we would not simply be using electric cars and huge numbers of nuclear power plants now? I don't really understand this religious belief some have that oil is magical and if it did not exist, we'd never have been able to raise the population in the same way. I don't see much logical basis for that.
Two words: energy density.
A few more words: fossil-fuel derived fertilizers.
a few more words: global market vs local production
more words: war cost to secure energy sources
and even more: 80 % heat waste on ICE
Uranium has a far far higher energy density than any fossil fuel.
All fossil-fuel derived fertilizers can be made without oil (and don't even need that much of it to begin with).
For nitrogen fertilizer you need ammonia (NH3) you can get the nitrogen from the air and the hydrogen from gasifying biomass. It may not be cost effective now, but if natural gas becomes as scarce and expensive as predicted, it might be cost effective.
you can get the nitrogen from the air
Yes, yes, yes, this is what is done currently, it's called the Haber-Bosch process.
The oil is only a source of energy for the process and natural gas a source of methane (which can be replaced by cow's farts).
I expect we'll be doing the same thing with hydrogen generated from the water shift reaction from coal if natural gas gets too expensive...
Someday we might use nuclear or solar thermochemical hydrogen generation, but I cant see that being competitive for the next century. Fun to speculate about though.
Yeah, imagine running a nuclear power plant with circa 1925 or even circa 1875 technology.
What could possibly be wrong with this line of thinking?
What's real scary is when the Chimp makes a lot more sense then 75%+ of the posters. LOL.
in the land of heads in the sand, the one eyed man can kick a lot of ass.
Now that's an aphorism for the books - nice!
:-)
For some reason doc's whole barn ice maker that makes only a couple ice cubes comes to mind.
Dear Tom,
I'm glad you believe that. But my rant was against Kunstler, not you. And he doesn't believe that. Or if he does, he's an hypocrite.
Exactly. But that was my point. What you fail to realise is that there is NOT A SINGLE TECH that is blatantly and uniquely "new". It always evolved from something else. Many have even found out that an "invention" is ultimately a collection of things until then disconnected. Just that! So saying that there aren't new inventions, that's a tautologism. Not really saying something smart.
But this is not rigorous. You claim that we have quadrupled the carrying capacity. Yet, the only proof of that being true would be the doomsday that we don't want to encounter. More than that, people are always talking on how 6 billion people are gonna affect the planet. But you forget to point that only one billion of it is really putting an enormous pressure upon it. And that billion (western countries) is not growing in population, but rather the poor countries (the ones which aren't affecting the planet, mostly) are the ones growing. So, really, ten billion people are almost the same as six, in this scenario. Of course, I am not thinking about China. But China has solved the pop control problem. Thus, the situation is a little bit more complicated than that of saying "6 billion is too much".
Luis,
Good point about western countries. I'm not sure I have a counter argument.
Tom A-B
Although there is this:
Western countries provide food and aid to "developing" countries, allowing them to procreate more than would be sustainable without this food and aid. As oil becomes scarce western countries will not have a surplus to share and the carrying capacity in developing countries goes down.
Please comment.
Tom A-B
No. It's the other way around. Western countries suck the resources out of "undeveloping" countries. Terms of trade/technology vacuum low entropy from the periphery and deliver it to the core. Return is arms or a little food - where an economy before was better off, though not is a GDP sense. Mike Davis, Hornborg, Daly, et al. Think about it, where does the wealth of the west come from? Tankers bring it to us and we electronically credit dollars and mercenaries. Iraq, Nigeria, Sudan, SA. This whole sucking-of-entropy thing is what keeps the despised elite in power with our guns.
The western countries do NOT have a surplus. In many ways we are far more in overshoot than the slum dweller in Nairobi.
cfm in Gray, ME
BS.
For decades the American Midwest has been considered the "breadbasket of the world".
And we did it before we were a net importer of oil.
Well, I can't speak for Western countries in general, but Australia, even with the extreme drought conditions, produces far more food than it consumes. Pre-drought, we were exporting 80% of our wheat.
And of course the U.S. is still the world's largest single exporter of food.
Anyone got a list of western net food exporters? I'm guessing Canada must be on the list, maybe France and New Zealand?
Of course, it still may well be true that western nations as a group are a net importer from non-western nations.
But presumably western nations also export fertilizers, pesticides and farm equipment to non-western ones, which is almost certainly contributing to non-western population growth.
And it will be technology that will enable us to USE renewables.
Which renewables?
Will... can you name the technologies which "will"?
Did you notice that you were asked about NEW SOURCES of energy, not how technology "will" allow us to use them.
As you say: woo woo woo!
Are you being serious or just trolling around?
Check wikipedia, I'm not a dictionary to play around.
Are you being serious or just trolling around?
Are you really that retarded or are you trolling by pretending not to notice that I am talking of new sources of energy?
Not talking about "renewable" biofuels, refuted at length on TOD long before you came trolling.
Not talking about solar which, with current technologies, is unusable to the scale of fossil fuels, because of both expensive collection (PV & thermal) and regulation (storage).
Then, NAME new sources of energy and/or realistic technologies to use solar energy AT THE SAME SCALE we use fossil fuels!
The answer to your first question is both. He can't help it, and doesn't know any better.
Just wait. We just fed him. He smells blood and is on the way.
One of the most effective things that can be done is more insulation. Technology but usually low tech (ceramic based insulating paints are perhaps medium tech).
Germany is required VERY high levels of insulation in new construction (R-49 walls et al). Any tech to meet the goals.
In a very energy constrained world, spun fiberglass insulation may only be available at a significant premium, but other types will be available, some likely to be innovative applications of existing technology.
Trees will continue to grow post-Peak Oil, so building will likely slow but not stop entirely. And energy efficiency should be (my choice of verb) a major focus of economic activity.
I see the USA as being VERY far away from Peak Insulation.
Best Hopes for Energy Efficiency,
Alan
I pulled all of my incandescents and replaced them with fluorescents. I drove my car (oil) to the hardware store, got a roll of 4 mil plastic sheeting (oil) and sealed up all of my windows in late September. My neighbors in the fourplex were averaging $100/mo for gas + electric while my average was $60.
There is no silver bullet for our impending energy crunch. I think urban areas are pretty much hosed and they'll be acting like New Orleans was in 2005, minus the hurricane damage, but a thousand silver BBs will help in various ways as we unwind from our high energy, high consumption lifestyles.
Gotta get back to work ... trying to do enough consulting to fund that five acres and 300 square foot cottage ...
The First Peoples in the Pacific Northwest had a self-heating insulation scheme, where they heaped green plants into the dead space in their double-walled cabins every Autumn. The plants were great insulators, and they composted all Winter, slowly releasing heat. No reference pops up, but Google shows lots of people extracting heat from compost right now.
Now add to that "new" compost-insulation technique methane recovery and farming with the finished compost, and we might have ourselves another silver BB. But like with so many approaches that might actually work, this one is inherently small-scale and decentralized, so it's hard to get any momentum from the "free" market.
Do the math yourself. See how far out you can scale that proposal before it becomes actively harmful to the surrounding environment. When you get that number, get back to me, because you'll probably suddenly realize something.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Dr. Albert Bartlett
Into the Grey Zone
Yeah, if you throw straw on top of wet cow manure and sleep on it you will be plenty warm...Attracting a mate, thats another story...
Gee, guys, I didn't think it was looney enough to warrant those responses... Although maybe it explains why the First Peoples' population didn't grow faster!
Look, you garden, right? It's already composting right under your window, isn't it? Not nearly as bad-smelling as coliform bacteria, is it? So what's wrong with using the same airtight/watertight building techniques that were talked about here just last week to make a properly vented "compost wall?" It was a system that worked, even for primitive people. I don't get where your dismissiveness is coming from.
Can't agree with you here.
My pile is WAY out back.
And it smells alternately like musty, moldy grass/ammonia plant run amok.
And I use the 50/50 nirogenous to carboniferous all the books talk about.
Tried experimenting, the one or the other got worse.
My own experience: Composting leaves, turning occasionally to aerate, and adding water and organic nitrogen as nutrients. It is warm on the inside--though not hot, sad to say--but smells fine: toasty.
So smell need not be an issue. I would be more concerned with the question of whether adding this material between the inner and outer walls of your house would start the composting of the walls themselves. If your house is a wigwam--temporary structure designed to be rebuilt every few years--this is not a problem.
I've seen an article about a compost-pile water heater.
This suggests an emergency heater system, consisting of a compost pile in an insulated space with a concrete floor. It could keep you alive if heating fuel becomes unavailable.
There are plenty low tech insulation methods mentioned, but no one came up with the far simpler one, wear more clothes. Looking back at the sort of clothing people wore even just a generation ago, its no surprise we require more heating in our houses. Also we burn a lot of calories keeping warm.
Want to save energy and lose weight?
Sit in the cold and dark and shiver!!
There should be enough fiberglass to be salvaged from the abanonded suburban re-pos that will be torn down to retrofit quite a few urban houses.
I have an image in my head (which may not relate in any way with reality), of Viking/Native American longhouses. While it might seem a horrible fate to have to sleep near other people, I personally think that this would be better than death; I nominate local school gyms for this purpose, when oil gets to $1000/barrel. I assume that one big, well-insulated room with lots of heat-generating-other-people can be kept warm relatively easily.
Of course, this will not happen before TEOTWAWKI. Lifestyle change is inevitable. Nonetheless, competent governments should be able to keep their people alive, even in the event of a catastrophic decrease in the rate of oil production.
The ceilings in gyms are too high. Heat rises.
Hi Alan,
I wholeheartedly agree and would like to offer my own experience as an example of this. As mentioned in another thread, in the year prior to my purchase, the previous owners of my home consumed a staggering 5,700 litres of fuel oil for space heating and domestic hot water purposes, plus an additional 14,000 kWh of electricity. Through various improvements to my home's thermal shell, the installation of a new high efficiency boiler and indirect hot water tank, and with the addition of a small ductless heat pump, I've managed to reduce this to 830 litres/year.
At 0C/32F, I estimate my home's heat loss to be in the order of 2.2 kW. At -10C/14F, this number climbs to 3.9 kW (bear in mind this is a forty year old, 230 m2/2,500 ft2 Cape Code that is exposed to high winds off Halifax Harbour). With additional air sealing and insulation upgrades, I hope to further trim these losses by another 15 to 20 per cent.
If so interested, a PDF record of my heating oil consumption can be found here:
http://www.datafilehost.com/download.php?file=34931a7d
A PDF summary of my ductless heat pump savings (simulated and actual) are available here:
http://www.datafilehost.com/download.php?file=807d4076
This data is drawn from hourly temperature and operational records, a sample of which is accessible here:
http://www.datafilehost.com/download.php?file=5efafed4
By way of explanation, the first column indicates whether the heat pump is on or off (1=On, 0=Off); the second column is the outdoor air temperature; the following column is the estimated heat gain based on the heat pump's published performance curve; the fourth column is my home's estimated heat loss at this temperature; the fifth column is the net heat gain (loss) and the adjoining column is a running total of this gain/loss. Lastly, the far right column is a check flag that verifies the heat pump was, in fact, operational (although it may be turned on, this particular heat pump suspends operation at temperatures below -10C).
I should note that my ductless heat pump has a "heating season performance factor" or HSPF rating of 7.2 (zones 4 and 5) and the new minimum federal standard is 7.7. For those wanting to pull out all the stops, Fujitsu offers ductless heat pumps with SEER and HSPF ratings as high as 21 and 11.0 respectively (a unit with a HSPF of 11.0 would be 1.5 times more energy efficient than my own).
Source:
http://www.fujitsugeneral.com/PDF_06/halcyon06_brochure.pdf
Cheers,
Paul
Probably others will jump in ahead of me to point out that a technology that 'creates' energy would be a violation of laws of physics (as far as we know).
Others never tire of pointing out that there are huge amounts of energy to be 'harvested' in the form of solar flux and that embodied in radioactive substances. The debate then turns to our ability to develop the technology to harvest this energy on the scale of our use of fossil fuel energy, and in a time frame that would allow human civilization to segue painlessly from waning fossil fuels to ramping up 'alternatives.'
And don't forget, boys and girls...
Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the Universe!
;-)
So go out into the universe and gather it up!
We can us hydroelectric power! Just look around, two thirds of the Earth is covered in water!
pointy clown hat winking smiley face... @<;-)
Yes, by george, I think you've got it! And then we'll use the hydro power to electrolyze the water to get more hydrogen!
Silly doomers!
Bullcrap, I'm putting all my faith in quantum teleportation so we acn set up wormholes to Titan and beam down methane! And its cold, so it will solve global warming.
Bob Ebersole
Would be ideal for heating or cooling just open a very small portal to nearer the sun, if you want it cooler just open a portal to pluto and feel the cold breeze. Ideal for waste disposal too hehe.
You could argue that nuclear power (both fission and fusion) "creates" energy - by converting mass directly into energy (more technically, converting the energy inherent in the nuclear forces that hold together matter in its initial form into thermal energy that can be harnessed usefully).
However it's also worth pointing out that energy itself isn't the prize - its "useful work": i.e., the ability to do things that we need to do survive, and the ability to do things that we as humans otherwise value.
With the same (or even less) amount of energy, technology can certainly "create" useful work.
It is a nice straw man to bash on, isn't it?
Although the laws of physics as we know them prevent energy from being created, plenty of technologies have been developed that allow energy to be harvested and used, from waterwheels to thin-film photovoltaics. So your "distinction" is little more than a statement of confusion about energy.
Non sequitur.
Mining for energy sources does not "create" energy, so "creating" energy is not necessary to replace them. Instead, mining is a form of harvesting, and hence new methods of harvesting energy are the appropriate substitute.
Many new methods of harvesting energy have been developed recently - from effective tar sands extraction to highly-efficient wind and solar power mechanisms - meaning that it is not immediately clear that these new technologies will not replace technologies reliant on mining.
And I believe you're either incorrect, wholly misunderstanding what people say by being far too literal, or simply deeply confused. Nobody thinks we're going to literally pour a bucket of "technology" in our gas tanks. Many people may believe that a technology will replace either the gas or the tank itself.
It's crucial to understand the difference between the abstract notion of "technology" and a particular, concrete technology, though, and this piece of Kunstler's isn't terribly clear that way. He's a great speaker and writer, but an awful explainer - his approach is based almost solely on rhetoric, rather than well-formed and well-supported arguments, and so his writing sounds good but has very little content to it. (Reminds me of Rush Limbaugh, actually - persuasive speaker, laughable arguments.)
Seconded.
While I understand that there is a distinction between harvesting energy (possible, and happening all the time) and creating energy (not possible, and no, I haven't forgotten this part of my 11th grade physics lesson), I believe Kunstler contends that this is exactly what many people believe.
Even if I'm wrong about this, he's certainly arguing that many believe we can find a way to harvest energy via technology that yields more energy density than we're getting from oil.
I don't believe it's possible. I'm not deeply confused. At least I don't think I am...
Tom A-B
People believe that the capital of USA is New York. That UFO's exist. Come on! Just a few percentage just gives a damn to think about it. And they are right. We can't all worry about all the problems the world faces at the same time!
So its a straw man. Yeah, people are dumb. Ask what is the root of 2 to any man in the street. You won't get it.
And why would they be wrong? Have you seen the energy density of uranium? Of hydrogen (fusion - well, eventually at least)? The sun, for instance, is free for all. Its "density" is meaningless. Sometimes, sheer stupidity is more smart than some smartasses, like Kunstler.
Translation: you're completely confused. Don't worry, we are here to confuse you even more ;)!
Greets.
Sometimes, sheer stupidity is more smart than some smartasses, like luisdias.
He illustrates his own points quite poignantly, does he not? Greets indeed.
Nevertheless, there is an inordinate amount of attention placed on "new technology," much of which is rather transparently a bad idea:
Oil Sands -- not much net energy creation with a lot of environmental destruction
Kerogen Shales -- keep wishin'
Biofuels -- virtually all of them stink
Hybrid vehicles -- uses huge amounts of base metals to make something that is less efficient than a cheaper, simpler, diesel-powered automobile
Hydrogen -- a joke from the beginning
I could go on and on and on.
Yet, you can name a few proven techniques that would result in huge energy savings, some with hardly any effort at all:
better insulation in new construction
room heating rather than central heating
less airconditioning
smaller houses/apartments (1950s 1000 square feet)
more efficient refrigerators (could be 5x more efficient -- just as big and just as cold)
trains
cheap, 50hp cars that get 75mpg (Audi A2)
This is such obvious stuff, yet few people are interested. They just want to play with technology!
Better insultion = technology
Room heating = technology
More efficient refrigerators = technology
Trains = technology
Personally, I think the best solution to the energy efficiency of building temperature control is to simply appreciate different temperatures for different times of the year: it's the middle of winter here, but was a pleasant 17C (~62F) today, so I left the heating off all day until about 6PM. I was never the least bit uncomfortable, but I know most people (including my wife) would still prefer to have the thermostat stuck on 22C.
BTW, what forms of room heating are genuinely more efficient than central (gas) heating, assuming you live in a modest-sized house that doesn't have large unused sections?
"The point Kunstler makes, as I read it, is that technology and energy are not equivalent. The technology humans have developed has historically consumed energy. We have developed technologies that harvest energy, but we haven't developed any technologies that create energy."
Exactly. And as mentioned above, suburbia (as an arrangement lacking in sustainability in the long term) is a topic on whice he has written extensively.
Kunstler's comments about peak oil reflect what has been researched and documented by peak oil theorists on this site and others. However, it's also true that although he's a forceful, eloquent writer he frequently descends into rants. I happen to find this extremely entertaining, but I do not consider him a good introduction to peak oil. Too many are offended by his in-your-face style - even those quite well-versed in the concept.
On the other hand his comments are memorable in part because of his talent for fulmination.
Antonia Green
He only ends up fulminating himself.
luis luis, good to see you again.
Catch any carp in the LA River lately? Oops, I'm sorry, that's not you--I've mistaken you for someone else.
Anyway, take care.
WTF was that about?
I made a mistake. I edited it, and now I humbly apologize. Once my comment went up, all I could do was edit it to at least an inside joke that maybe a few other TOD cultists would get a chuckle out of. Can we leave it at that? (Warning: it's not a good joke. I never said I was a comedian!)
Concerning the link above "China June crude oil output up 2.5 pct yr-on-yr at 15.72 mln tons": We are seeing more and more of this "year on year" data instead of "this month verses last month". Of course this is valid in many ways because some months are naturally down because of routine maintenance or down because of weather. But it very often hides an actual decline, as it did in the case of Russia.
In the case of China, in June of 2006 they produced 2,336,000 barrels of oil per day, C+C according to the EIA. The article states that they had a year over year increase, from this figure, of 2.5%. A 2.5% increase over June of last year would put June 2007 production at 2,394,000 barrels per day. In April the EIA has China production at 2,546,000 barrels per day. So a 2.5% increase in production from June of last year would actually be a 152,000 bpd decrease from April 2007. (The EIA figures for May are not out yet.)
Of course this does not mean that when the EIA figures for June are finally published, that June production will actually be down that much form April. They could be down less or even down more or perhaps even up slightly. But I doubt that seriously. The point is, when you see "year over year" increase for a single month, or even for a group of months, (Russia), that when the actual data finally comes out we actually see a decrease, month to month, as we did for Russia in April.
Ron Patterson
Another top 10 net oil exporter showing declining oil exports:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/23/world/americas/23venez.html?_r=1&ref=a...
Political Clashes Shake Venezuela’s Strained Oil Industry
Darwinian,
I agree that China's production seems to be very close to flat now. I calculated at 0.7% increase for the first four months of 2007 versus the first four months of 2006. I also, like you, suspect that the comparison was chosen in such a way as to make the results look as good as possible.
I am not getting the same EIA figures as you, however. June 2006 oil production looks like 3,700,000 barrels per day, so a 2.5% increase would put production at 3,793,000 barrels per day for June 2007. April 2007 was at 3,749,000, so June 2007 would represent a 1.2% increase from April 2007.
Perhaps you were looking at production figures for Canada. I have made the same mistake.
You are absolutely right Gail, I just got into the wrong column on my Excel spreadsheet.
Sorry,
Ron Patterson
As reported at: http://www.energybulletin.net/32450.html :
"Chinese energy consumption grew along with the GDP with electricity production up 16 percent, crude imports up 11.2 percent, and coal imports up 47 percent during the first half of 2007, year-on-year." Preceded by:
"China's annual economic growth surged to an 11-year high of 11.9 percent in the second quarter."
In other words, China have totally failed so far to decouple economic growth from energy (esp. oil) consumption. This strongly suggests to me, the difficulty of doing so when you are actually making things - whether it be buildings or consumer goods. IMO, the (albeit comparatively slow) economic growth without greatly increased energy consumption we have seen in recent years in many Western countries, is due to the export of manufacturing and heavy industry with its attendant energy consumption, to China, India, etc.
So it is not surprising when the Chinese get angry when we in the West accuse them of excessive growth in energy use and greenhouse gas emission. We, after all, are the people who buy their goods, made with such apparently inevitable corollaries.
(Busy on Drumbeat today, isn't it!)
Excellent point. I also wondering ow much more efficient can say plastic making be? Most likely not much. You must use at least a pound (or kilo) of ingredients to make a pound (or kilo) of plastic.
Most countries that "cut" their emission have done so in many ways thanks to outsourcing to China.
It would be good if building would become even more energy efficient and more people would use public transit. That would constitute a real decrease in oil consumption.
It may be that plastic can't be made with much (or any) less oil than now but
a) that's quite indepedent of how many "emissions" are associated with manufacturing it, and
b) huge amounts of plastic are completely unnecessary, especially packaging - so there's easy cuts to be made by just not manufacturing it in the first place
"It would be good if building would become even more energy efficient". Google "straw bale building" - originated in Nebraska in 19th century, now beginning to revive in USA and Europe.
Leanan should be reprimanded for making this Kunstler nonsense the top story of the "Drumbeat".
Anyone new to peak oil and The Oil Drum site who reads that headline and snippet will navigate away quickly from this TOD as a "lunatic site" and miss a lot of vital information.
Let's think through a little beter how we do things around here.
Accurate predictions of the meltdown of suburbia = lunatic fringe.
Care to answer what does suburbia meltdown has to do with "Peak Tech"?!?
Thanks.
Because Joe Sixpack still believes that "Technology will save us". That is if he thinks there is actually any limit at so how much oil we can pull out of the ground. And I think you guys are really pissed because deep down you agree with Joe Sixpack.
Kunstler's message is simple:
Kunstler is one of the most effective spokesmen for peak oil and the stupidity of our current lifestyle. He is one person who is actually doing something besides arguing on lists like this. People on college campuses are actually listening to him and there is some evidence that this is having an effect.
Ron Patterson
No I'm not pissed at that at all. What you say is true: mere technology won't save us. I also don't believe in gods, so why should I believe in tech saving my butt? That's not the point. The point is, he takes Peak Oil and rants about all he thinks of that somehow can be connected to "civilization". Peak Everything. Intelligence and innovation are only his latest victims. And then he rambles the stupid people that gather around him and makes him feel like a freak. He calls the others morons just because they happen to live the best way they were taught, yet people like him would be the first to teach the others the "Righteous Way", and to lead us to the "Golden Path". I call him shenanigans. We are not as dumb as Kunstler thinks we all are, we are simply uninformed.
How isn't that surprising me? A preacher preaching. Well, I wish him good at that.
I agree with you on that one Luis. It's easy to call everyone else dumb. In truth, we're all living in a culture that is at odds with reality in many ways. The culuture is still working, but barely. Things are changing slowly as reality alters our course. The change may accelerate (I believe it will).
Kunstler is grating, but that's his M.O. He rails against his culture, which includes Nascar fans and technology worshipers. As I read it, he's saying our culture hasn't the foggiest idea of what's to come and that we're either going to figure it out soon and (perhaps) get through the bottleneck or we're going to avoid facing reality and suffer for it.
Tom A-B
Peak Tech---
We really haven't gone beyond the Standard Model in Physics from the 1970's--
(dark matter and some boundary black hole stuff, but nothing really new)--
We are wandering around in String Theory Wasteland, with (other than some interesting math) has produced nothing but toxic politicization of the issues, and a stifling of new ideas.
No new energy ideas for 30 years--
Bio has made advances-
Most everything is consumer products, and code written by adolescent children, no matter what their physical age--
Not impressed.
Right.
So Maybe the thinking will advance when the Physicists decide they can't just be satisfied driving the same old cars in to work everyday, like everyone else. Muon/Neutrino drive.. that's what I'm hoping for!
'After the game, the King and the Pawn go in the same box.'
Bob Fiske
(Muons would be Low Gear, Neutrinos are High Gear, and you link to Dark Matter for reverse)
I'm still waiting for that "Mr. Fusion"
You should try this "internet" thing I hear so much about.
(At this point, people usually crow triumphantly about how arpanet was actually started in the 60s, willfully ignoring the fact that our current internet is very different than arpanet, and technologies typically spend substantially time in the research phase before they're ready for wider use. If and when quantum computing and nanoassembly (for example) become viable technologies, it would be just as possible to insist that they were developed in the 1990s, and just as silly.)
If you look at things coarsely enough, the only new idea in the last few centuries was nuclear - even natural gas has been used for over a thousand years.
Of course, it would be pointlessly obtuse to lump efficient, economic, and mass-producible photovoltaics in with "using solar heat to dry clothes and produce salt".
Bio and computers have made enormous advances, and electrical/material/pharm engineering have done pretty well for themselves. Condensed matter physics has been much more exciting than particle physics recently - indeed, particle physics has been kind of a laggard.
So if you don't see substantial advances in our knowledge and technology over the last few decades, it's only because that's what you wanted to see.
Pit--
We agree, nothing really startling, except in Bio---
Solar has been around for quite a while, and mass produced solar is just a refinement--
I was out on the internet before Netscape 1 (we had Mosaic, but it was interesting). The rape and scrape corp whores s didn't show up for 3 years--
It was actually lonely for a while--
Computers are just a refinement also- no paradigm shift, just better and faster components using the same basic concept-
Part of my Gig is computers, and I am a former Apple employee, so I have some insight into this-
Not impressed
Nothing really startling.
Just
- Quantum Computers;
- Internet;
- Nanotechnology;
- Fiberoptics;
- LCDs;
- Telecommunication devices;
- GPS;
- Holographic devices;
- I could go on.
But nothing really really startling.
Like Time Travel. Or Warp Speed. I mean. Really.
Like Time Travel. Or Warp Speed. I mean. Really.
Yeah, really!
All those gimmicks don't bring an oil drop worth of energy, they CONSUME energy and often much more in their fabrication than in their usage.
You can't have it both ways you moronic troll, pretend here that flashy technology is new after having argued the opposite yourself:
These ideas were not "innovative" in the sense that photovoltaic always existed in the form of plants, and wind turbines are very old.
Plants are not photovoltaic. Plants are photosynthetic (though some bacteria harvest light energy by pumping protons, it's not the same as pumping electrons).
Photovoltaics are genuinely new (well, as of their first practical use mid-20th century) and they are up to an order of magnitude more efficient than plants. Whole industries have turned over due to smaller advances.
I really don't use "Quantum Computers" on a regular basis---
All the rest are refinements of decades old tech--
Plus, we have a society (both on the left and right) that is anti- science, and embracing religion and superstition (USA centric, agreed)--
Plus, education and critical thinking are absent from most lives, and conservative authoritarian rule is discouraging exploration and education--
Really, Not Impressed!
Peak technology, if it happens, would be in the FUTURE. Do you know what that means?
It means it hasn't arrived yet.
All your examples are on the upslope. Du-uh!
But go upthread and read the aerospace guys, if you want to know what peak technology looks like!
Source: National Science Foundation (NSF) 2006 statistics
Implications: The "Peak" in science & engineering as a percentage of civilian workforce happened (past history) in the 1970's. We are on the downslope.
Ahhhhhh, helllo. It clearly states "Annual GROWTH", do you know how to read?
I was educated in the USA. ;-)
(Click on chart to the right to enlarge.)
I call BS on this wave of the hand dismissive notion that we're all simply uninformed. Scientists have been beating the drums for decades about climate change, overpopulation, species decline, resource depletion - the list goes on an on - and people have ACTIVELY tuned them out and marginalized them...
This "uninformed" BS is just another aspect of the victimization culture where we're finally getting shoved back into the corner by Mother Nature ("...entering a period of consequences" - as it says in the quote by Churchill at the top of the page)and we're trying desperately to pass the buck with the lame excuse - "oh we didn't hear about that"
These warning have been out their for years but because scientists couldn't predict whether global temps were going to rise 3.5 degrees vs. 4.0 degrees or oil was going to peak in 2010 or 2020, well the entire premise of their work is disputed. The fundamentals of these concepts have been presented for decades yet we look at any opportunity to nitpick about minute details in order to dismiss any possibility of these events happening...
We've been warned plenty IMHO - we just don't WANT to pay attention...
"Uninformed" might not be quite the right word..."over-informed" would probably be closer to the truth: we are flooded on a daily basis with more or less useless information, and we don't inherently have good enough filters to distinguish the occasional bits of genuinely useful stuff. I consider myself a pretty well informed person, but I was completely oblivious to peak oil until a few months ago: but now I can look back and see that the information was there all along, and had reached me at various points in time, but had just never sunk in.
It's actually fairly amazing that our brains, given their evolutionary history, can deal at all with the amount of information that we're expected to in this day and age.
Wiz, when you enter a room and sweep it with your eyes everything in the room is 'taken in' by your brain but most of the data goes directly to the subconscious. The brain filters what it thinks is not important and shuttles it to storage. Once you became more 'aware' of PO and decided it was potentially important to your future (and reproduction) your brain assigned PO a higher priority and that is why you are more aware of it now.
It is not at all 'amazing' that our brains deal with the amount of info in this 'day and age.' If you were a human living in the time of the neanderthals your brain would have assigned a high priority to bringing home a deer (if you wanted to reproduce), and other unimportant data would have been shuttled to the subconscious except 'deer' and those things that could remove you from the gene pool...like 'saber toothed tiger.' There is absolutely no proof that todays humans are any more intelligent than those living 25,000 years ago or that our brains work differently from theirs. Some anthropoligists that have compared the size of early human brain pans to ours say that the early humans had brains about 10-20% larger than ours. There has been much speculation about why their brains were larger and one theory is that they used more memory for storage and passing on information to their children verbally, a custom that has been all but lost now.
Of course our brains are not significantly different to those of 25,000 years ago - but 25,000 years we didn't have to deal with anything like the quantity of "abstract" information we do now. Every day we wake up to a litany of news bulletins, advertisements, memos, emails, PA announcements, blogs, packaging labels, you name it: it's no real surprise that our brains, adapted as they are to remembering where the best berries grow and the biggest herds of beasts graze, filter out and forget almost all the information that comes at us.
I respectfully totally disagree. FAUX news channels and wide-bought pundits that were spread around your country joined forces with your own presidents in their denial of Global Warming, Peak Oil and whatever have you.
People still have a confidence on their leaders and information channels for information. Your's haven't been helpful at all.
So it's not "WE" who don't want to pay attention. It's someone in the status quo who doesn't give a damn to anything but to conserve his own status quo. The result being that any measure to conserve, lower emissions and the like is always downplayed as being "against economy". What a bunch of morons! But those morons are the ones who inform the people. So yes, the people is greatly disinformed by the stupid powers that be.
No he isn't.
As someone who isn't a dyed-in-the-wool Peaker - and hence has a little more perspective on what "normal" people think of all this - Kunstler gives the impression of being a raving lunatic who hates modern American culture and wants to see it torn to shreds. He will look like the lunatic fringe to anyone who doesn't already agree with you, and he will cause you to be tarred with the same brush.
You're judged by the company you keep.
That evidence being?
I arguably qualify as a dyed-in-the-wool Peaker (I still haven't seen anything to refute Deffeyes' call of peak in December 2005), and I think Kunstler comes across as exactly a raving lunatic. He has no positive vision of the future, no set of actions to take to avoid the disaster he says is coming. Instead, he revels in it.
This plays well with the self-hating ethos popular among the PoMo/PC/cultural Marxist academic set (which seems to be pushed largely by those identity-group-studies faculty who couldn't integrate dQ/T over a cycle to save their lives), but it seems to have little following among those in the hard sciences. It is singularly unattractive to this engineer.
I couldn't disagree more. If people are irritated by Kunstler's style, don't read him. He makes excellent points and always has. Even if I don't always agree.
Some of the responses above make no sense to me. A train is a concept?? No, it's a train. Regardless of what it runs on, it was BUILT with massive amounts of fossil fuels. And "...we might not be on the right path to survival." Well, that's the point, isn't it?
-edit- forgot to respond to the point that "PV is competing with Coal". Burning coal generates over 50% of the electricity in the US. PV is not even 1%. And there's a silicon shortage. Keep dreamin', though...
Simple observation: all of our wonderous technology exists because we have the energy to run it. When we no longer have that energy the technology will be useless. And anyone who can't see that one I would have to brand an "idiot".
When a Kunstler article appears here at TOD I always read the whole thing. Keep up the good work, Leanan!!
I find him extremely entertaining. But full of crap.
Well, yes. The "train" is a vehicle that has a track and wagons. That's it. You could make one out of timber, if you'd think it a good idea. You could electrify it, or even place a nuclear reactor inside it. What I mean is, it is an idea. A branch of solutions. It is also a concept that consumes a lot of oil. But much less than the car.
No it is not. The point was Peak Tech. And it falls down because everyone like him likes to think that developing tech equals to spend more energy. No. Develop tech equals understand it more. Study and research new ways, less expensive ways to make things happen. For instance, when you say:
you are completely unaware that silicon shortage is a thing of the past year, not this year. And that because of it, a way of using much much less silicon was created. The result is an even cheaper PV which used even less power in its construction! So what has changed?
One thing: Knowledge. That very same thing that Kunstler says is peaking.
And anyone who can't see that it is human knowledge that unlocks all these "miracles" and turns them into energy sources, well, figure it out.
Despite all the hoopla of new tech, I still can't actually buy PV panels for less than about $5/watt. And despite all the studies that claim that PV returns the manufacturing energy in just a few years or less, the cost of an installed system still exceeds the cost of the electricity it will produce in several decades. Yes, electricity prices will rise over that time, but so will the cost of manufacturing, they're both reflecting the costs of the real energy sources (coal, oil, NG, nuclear). (Note: wind turbines may be doing better at present.)
I've been harping on this point for the past 5 or 6 years and am continually reassured by the PV mavens that costs will be 'competitive' soon. If one finances a PV system at say 6% that delivers the equivalent of say 300 kwh/mo it will likely never pay for itself, given the interest and eventual incremental replacement and maintenance costs.
I'm still a proponent of r&d in these alternatives, but we need to come to the understanding that 'alternative' energy supply will likely be 2 or 3 times more expensive than what we are accustomed to. As long as this is realized, and realistic expectations are kept about how we need to reduce our energy usage, I think people can adapt.
Excellent point. There is a lot of hype about the technology potential. This is great for marketing but it places people into a state of complacency. Why worry, somebody will figure it out.
I heard people telling me that if there is a demand for cheap energy then the free market + technology will find a solution. I always ask back: where is my cheap flying space cruiser and time machine? There is definitely a demand for items like that, so how come they do not exists?
Demand does not drive inventions. Physic laws did not get discovered becasue there was a demand for products that use them. First physic laws where invented, then people though up a product that can use that law and finally they marketed that product.
If you believe that energy prices will climb over time, but will also manufacture, why don't you buy one like NOW?
Like, you will save an incredible amount of money?
Daah!
That was my point: buying PV now is, essentially, making use of artificially cheap oil for the purpose of having a useful energy source for a while later. That gives the buyer an economic advantage for 20 years or so, but will not save civilization in any permanent way. The panels (and batteries and electronics) will eventually wear out, and there will be no affordable way to replace them. From a system point of view, if we could choose the optimum use for the oil and coal and NG that's left, are PV panels the right investment? Of course, they are far better then war and SUVs. But even if we could magically shift the fossil fuel use to building PV panels, would that be sustainable?
Not in itself, but you're missing the big picture.
PV prices are high today because demand surged and industry is playing catch-up. For decades, PV wasn't big enough to justify its own silicon plants and lived off the leftovers from semiconductors; this forced it to deal with swings in supply from semi's boom/bust cycles. But this has changed. PV now has silicon coming from purified metallurgical supplies, sodium reduction of fertilizer byproducts, and non-silicon CdTe and CIGS cells. The only way these can fail to bring prices down is if demand continues to surge (which is arguably a good thing).
If we assume the use of sodium reduction of sodium fluorosilicate, the production energy of the silicon for a PV panel can be paid back in 2-3 months of operation. This means that a "solar breeder" could run on its own output and double its size on the order of 1-2 times a year. This is much faster payback than oil wells, and it is not going to get worse over time. If you think of the exponential growth potential, a gigawatt invested in PV for a year could start supplying a large fraction of total US electric demand in 5-7 years while continuing a rapid expansion. Energy supplies are not going to fall fast enough to overtake a 50+ GW/year growth in PV, so if we can get there we are sitting pretty.
What you mean is: "the cost including an opportunity cost to represent the loss of possible investment income of an installed system still exceeds the cost assuming fossil fuels stay as cheap and abundant as they are now of the electricity it will produce in several decades."
In other words, if you think PV is a bad deal, you think energy is going to stay dirt-cheap and the world economy is going to continue to grow robustly. Congratulations, you're a cornucopian!
I think he means that because the EROI of PV is low as the energy costs rise the PV costs will rise with them. The receding horizon effect as it is discussed here.
Stop being stupid! EROEI of solar panels is 10-20 to one.
No I did not include interest nor investment opportunity cost in my claim. Just the fact that the installed cost is so high. E.g., rough numbers: $20,000 system, produces 400 KWH/month. At $0.10/KWH, that's $40/month of energy produced, will "pay back" (in the simplest sense) in 500 months or about 40 years - longer than the life of the panels. I am assuming that for $20,000 one gets panels for about 2000-3000 watts of peak power, plus associated electronics (connecting to the grid is expensive!) and/or a large set of (short-lived) batteries.
And please don't tell me that it "pays" in (e.g.) California thanks to state and federal purchase subsidies and the utility paying several times more for the power generated during hot afternoons. All those things are market distortions that make it look worthwhile, just like the subsidies for ethanol.
I do agree that from an individual point of view it may be worthwhile since energy costs will rise later - see my comment above.
And yes I did imply that the EROI is low and that's the real problem.
Delete the batteries in your economic analysis. Not required !
Just grid connect and when the power goes out, let the power go to waste.
Batteries are a survivalist/UPS option. An extra feature that you have the OPTION to buy, if you want to.
Alan
They are also a resilience option. Different system entirely. I'll have a little power when the grid is down.
But that is an extra feature that rightfully costs more.
If one is comparing buying electricity from the grid versus making your own power, a sans battery set-up gives the same reliability. Batteries add a UPS feature.
The issue was costs of PV solar vs. grid power.
A massive increase in consumer lead-acid batteries is not a good thing IMO.
Alan
Fie on lead-acid, let's all go order some rugged nickel-iron alkaline batteries instead. I am thinking about 3 or 4 Kw-Hrs worth as part of a 12 volt lighting system.
When I had our solar water heater put up last fall, I inquired of my consultant about PV costs. He's been in the biz for decades, through the hard times of the 80s after the initial solar push of the late 70s. He thought then that $/watt for solar was about as low as it was going to get, since while costs continue coming down, demand is going up...way up. This was just as thin-film was getting notice, so perhaps he's changed his mind, I'll ask.
Hey, the silicon shortage is over, that's great, I didn't know that. Hooray. Full steam ahead on PVs.
So let's say PV is currently 1% of our electrical grid (it's certainly less). So we double the number of solar panels, batteries, etc. Now we're at 2%. So we double it again. Now we're at 4%.
But how long will this take?? And we not only need to cover for the decrease in fossil fuels, but in order to have growth we need MORE total energy available in the future. We run the world on fossil fuels. That's a sad fact.
Hey did I say that we will be saved by PV's?
Goddamit, do you take people to be that shallow everytime?
DO you only work on extremes?
Can't you bear to work out the greyness of reality?
Herman Daly splits apart "growth" and "development" in his book "Beyond Growth" and fairly convincingly - if not optimistically. The distinction is largely on throughput. An economy that improves while reducing throughput of resources and sinks is the kind of positive change our species can use more of. And economy that increases throughput is fatal. In practice, development=growth in the conventional sense. So no, we don't really understand better and reduce throughput.
The other point Daly harps on is scale. No matter what else, if the scale is too big, then the environment collapses. That, IMCO, is what we are facing - not so much peak oil, but cascading systems collapse of virtually every environmental function. We can't get enough oil, so we burn wood and milk. The fish are gone, the locusts come and then we suffer the plague - too many rats in a cage. The fungibility of commodities and the globalization of finance and technology is largely responsible.
Anyone remember Microsloth's ads about the bakers in the midwest with their new accounting software - 1 degree of separation. I saw those ads and called a buddy in the geek world - they are all prime candidates for rollup, aren't they, I asked. Ahh... yup. Monoculture.
A rat always knows when he's in with weasels...
cfm in Gray, ME
Sunspot;
1) PV is becoming COST COMPETITIVE with existing energy sources, and if you could count the externalities, it clearly comes out ahead. Noone is saying that PV is producing a parity with Coal.
'You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one..'
- John Lennon
2) 'All our wondrous Technology' is hopelessly broad. The wondrous technology in some cases IS producing energy (harvesting it anyway), and will be what gives the chance to create our next sets of tools. We may well see the most ridiculously energy-supported techs fall to a maintainable level, but your dire all-or-nothing prediction is silly.
"When we no longer have that energy the technology will be useless. And anyone who can't see that one I would have to brand an "idiot". "
'Only a Sith deals in absolutes..' Obi-wan Kenobi
Bob
I guess when all else fails they start to quote fictional characters from a guy who made the series that copied the old westerns but put it in a future setting.
Art is the lie that tells the truth. -Picasso
When is it Art? Just when it tells the truth.
So, who do you think talks in extremes? People you revere? Kaisers, Kunstlers or Krakpots?
Bob
(Appropriately, Kunstler means 'Artist' in German)
I noticed the thread on Kunstler brought out the Kunstler in everyone. Please lets stop the Kunsterization of TOD.
ok so you simply don't understand.
let me explain, the star wars quote is in reference to morality and not hard science. while in morality there is no black and white only shades of Grey, in science there is black and white. applying this quote to the realm of science is like saying that a object will not fall to the towards the center of a gravity well when in a gravity well when dropped.
"When we no longer have that energy the technology will be useless. And anyone who can't see that one I would have to brand an "idiot". "
Is that Hard Science, True Kaiser, or just a hard head?
The Star Wars quote is in reference to Human Behavior, while your inaccurate idolization of Science is distinctly moralistic the way you're wielding it.
A person who views the world as pure absolutes and not intricate balances is no more attuned of science than he is to morality. Neither is black and white, neither is just A versus B, or good versus evil.. Those amputated judgments are best left to the Authoritarians and Ideologues.
If people are irritated by Kunstler's style, don't read him.
We all would prefer a Carl Sagan, or our own Thomas Huxley, for the peak oil awareness movement, but we've ended up with a depiliated Anne Coulter instead. Deal with it. It doesn't matter anyhow.
If you are going to be a jackass with terse flamebait at least get your spelling right, Jesus. Shameful.
Ahahahaha! Brilliant comment!
About as brilliant as the one above this one, which is to say...
Straw-bale construction is a technology. Straw-bale walls can be up to R-50, and it will be useful no matter how little energy we have. Indeed, it will free up energy for other uses. ThermaSAVE panels are another technology which eliminates future energy needs. Domestic cogeneration multiplies the available energy from heating fuel.
There is an enormous amount we could do, we just have to get a clue and do it.
Yes and yes.
There is an enormous amount we could do.
But we aren't doing it. We didn't do it 30 years ago under Carter (when we really should have been getting started in earnest) and we aren't doing it now (when its pretty darn close if not already too late to get started).
Why? Because that "clue" you refer to is a lot harder to come by than most techno-optimists think.
The difference this time around is that there's a business case for doing it, and when it catches on it will take the whole market.
I don't think you could do any better than Leanan, somehow she finds all this stuff really quickly.
Praise her for a fantastic job day after day.
Don't reprimand her, explain and discuss (ahead of time) what you would like to see if you think there are kaisans.
Xeroid.
I'm assuming she makes good use of Google News Alerts, corresponds, and probably reads a ton of stuff too (obviously).
Thanks for your great work Leanan!
Tom A-B
Let's think through a little beter how we do things around here.
The Internet is a wonderful thing. If you don't like how Leanan is doing the job...feel free to start your own service and do a better job.
And when you are doing a better job of running things, I'm sure all of us will move to your place on the net - because it'll be better.
Anyone new to peak oil and The Oil Drum site who reads that headline
Any THINKING person who is 'new' to peak oil has megabytes of reading to do to become educated. This is why books and edited sites are popular - because someone has applied filters to megabytes of data.
Rather than spending time diss'n Leanan's choices - go set up your own site on the net and SHOW how her choices are wrong.
"go set up your own site on the net and SHOW how her choices are wrong."
No, if I don't like something Leanan does, I comment about it, I don't start my own blog. What a ridiculous remark.
Yes, Leanan does incredible work here, and I benefit from it every day. I just don't think leading with the illogical rantings of one of our looniest proponents is the best way to go.
No, if I don't like something Leanan does, I comment about it, I don't start my own blog.
I said nothing about 'starting a blog'. I said start your own site. TOD is more 'than a blog'.
What a ridiculous remark.
Perhaps you think it is ridiculous because your answer is 'blog' - which TOD is not.
So you wanna complain how things can be done better, based on what you think in your head, yet you can not be bothered to SHOW why your idea, in your head, is better that what is being done by the staff of TOD.
Three separate top posts with the theme Kunstler sucks.
Are 3 separate top posts an example of you think things should be?
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2807#comment-216631
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2807#comment-216634
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2807#comment-216642
"So you wanna complain how things can be done better, based on what you think in your head, yet you can not be bothered to SHOW why your idea, in your head, is better that what is being done by the staff of TOD."
I'd respond to that, if it were comprehensible.
"Are 3 separate top posts an example of you think things should be?"
Anything by Stuart Staniford or Khebab or Euan.
Far from it, Leanan should be commended for posting a link to a story that has, clearly, generated debate on what is certainly a critical question: to what degree can technology save us from the problems of peak oil?
On that note, it is worth injecting Tainter's argument on diminishing marginal returns (perhaps a more sophisticated and accurate way of expressing what JHK was trying to say): We will continue to see technological breakthroughs, but we will see diminishing marginal returns on investments in such breakthroughs. See, e.g., Tainter's work on patent applications per employed scientist/researcher...
Jeff, thanks for pointing that out. It made me realize that, concerning technology, Tainter and Kuntsler are saying exactly the same thing, only in different ways.
I have worked with technology all my life as a computer field service engineer. I have been preached to about Moore's law for years. That is the observation, not law, that says computer technology doubles every two years, (or every 18 months, depending on who is quoating the law.) But the last few years it has not done that. It has improved but just takes a longer time to double. Eventually, the law of diminishing returns always kicks in.
What great leaps have the airline industry taken since the first Boeing 707 was delivered in 1958. That was half century ago next year. The same thing can be said about automobiles and a host of other things.
We live in a world of limits. Simply because the electronics industry has not yet reached its limit does not mean it does not exist. Everything has its limit. But before it reaches its limit it reaches its peak. And just as the airline industry reached its peak in 1958, it is quite likely that most high tech industries are currently at or near their peak. From here on out the law of diminishing returns kick in.
Kunstler and Tainter are both right. Well, in my opinion anyway. Some of those Kunstler haters out there probably have a different opinion.
Ron Patterson
No one's arguing the merits here. What I'm arguing is the method of bringing the message.
You can be as right as rain, but if you don't know how to communicate your ideas in a way that people will see as credible (as Matt Simmons does, I would argue), you hurt rather than help the message.
The method in bringing the message really doesn't matter - as long as the debate is there and something gets done. I personally can credit Kunstler for my introduction to peak oil in 2005 - saw his book, The Long Emergency, at the bookstore and bought it. That led me to the Oil Drum.
Most of us can sift through style and get to substance. Try it sometime. There's more substance to Kunstler than meets the eye.
"The method in bringing the message really doesn't matter"
One almost couldn't imagine a more ignorant statement.
Go copywrite at Ogilvy & Mather if you're so goddamned concerned about methodology.
One almost couldn't imagine a more ignorant statement.
If anyone here is the ignoramus it is you for stating such a platitude.
I can imagine many "more ignorant statement[s]" quite easily... In fact, every day I open up the WSJ op-ed pages I am subsumed by them. They far eclipse anything written by any peak oil "proponent", or dare I say, even the comments written on this website of questionable veracity which only display insipid intent (I'm even including yours in this account, to be charitable...)
Ignorant and Arrogant to say the least. An old Chinese Proverb for you:
Not saying that truth isn't important, but delivery is perhaps just as if not sometimes more important. This is why lying lawyers, can trounce the truth to win a case, or why some comedians are funnier than others, or why some politicians/public speakers are able to win hearts over to some of the most dumbfounded ideas on the planet.
Delivery is EXTREMELY important, and Kunstler's style generally cause more bristles and knee jerk rejections, than critical thought, or curiousity.
Yeah sure, and that's why he's so popular, and well-read and listened to.
You bunch of empty ethics czars can't see beyond your own toes.
It is clear that you have missed my point entirely when I say that "The method in bringing the message really doesn't matter."
We are all speaking to the same truth - the fact that peak oil virtually is upon us. We are all different messengers with varying methods of delivery. If I can use an analogy: When it comes to messages in music, for example, that message is conveyed in different styles or genre such as hard rock, popular, new wave or classical. Some of us like hard rock and some receive the message through hip hop or Coast 103.5 easy listening. Kunstler gets the message across in "hard rock" format. For those who like that, they tune in and keep listening. For those who don't, they simply change the channel and get the same basic message on a different station.
In that sense, the method of delivery really does not matter as long as the basic message gets through to those in tune with the given method of delivery.
And he is doing a fantastic in delivering the message. He has written a very fine book, helped in making an outstanding documentary, speaks on college campuses and other open forums, and his blog is read by perhaps more people than any other blog on peak oil.
Whatever works, works! It is astonishing that people fail to see the fantastic job Kunstler, and others like Matt Simmons, are doing in getting the message out.
Kunstler is doing a fantastic job of getting the message out. Hbj, whoever he/she is, is doing what? Perhaps there is a bit of jealously here?
Ron Patterson
Kunstler is doing a lousy job if people see him as a nutjob and by extension assume if he's a principal spokesman for it, that Peak oil itself must be a nutjob theory. Which it isn't, obviously. But the way he and some of you argue, I can't blame them for thinking so.
We've been over this a million times - there are any number of stories here where posters have related that they can't even get people in their own family to take them the least bit seriously regarding peak oil / peak energy. So who the f**k cares who or what Kunstler is offending or whether they think he's a nutjob or that peak oil is a ridiculous "belief"... The vast majority in this country think science is a bunch of hocus pocus and if I remember correctly a large percentage don't even realize evolution has been proven or that the earth isn't 6000 years old. These people are NEVER going to be convinced - even when the oil is $500 per barrel and they have useless cars sitting in their front yards with For Sale signs in the window - they'll still think it's some big oil conspiracy...
I think Kunstler makes hbj uncomfortable and so he projects that discomfort onto other people. Kunstler would be a fool to change his style and delivery to suit hbj because no one would listen to him. It would also be fool hardy to try and censor him or shut him up, if one could, unless hpj or someone else (luisdias) is prepared to step up and take his place and do a better job.
Just like technology has limits, so do people.
-Don
Different styles for different audiences. Which book has sold more copies, "Twilight in the Desert" or "The Long Emergency"?
>You can be as right as rain, but if you don't know how to communicate your ideas in a way that people will see as credible (as Matt Simmons does, I would argue), you hurt rather than help the message.
What do you think would happen to civilization, if everyone learned about declining energy resources and took it seriously. Do you believe that everyone would hold hands and work together to build a better future for humanity? (aka Corncopian view)
JK's creditability is near rock bottom, since he's been on a collapsing soapbox since Y2K, or perhaps even earlier. His lack of creditablity is a good thing. Today, violence, poverty, hunger and disease are already on the rise do to a very small restriction on energy supplies. A worldwide exceptance of PO can only lead to further chaos as those with remaining energy reserves, alter their exporting habits to preserve them and those utterly dependant on energy mobilize their miltary power in order to force access to energy resource.
Peak oil and declining energy resources needs less publicity because more exposure can only hasten a severe crisis. If we are lucky a severe credit crunch could buy the world extra time as a contraction in wealth would lead to a world wide reduction in consumption of energy. But if publicity of PO takes off, it will out-shadow a credit crunch and hasten a global crisis that would be far worse than any economic crisis.
In all likelyhood further acceptance of PO will lead gov'ts on wild goose chases looking for alterative liquid fuel sources (ie Ethanol) and which will only hasten our demise as a few companies cash in on gov't subsidizes and public funds to enrich themselves and do nothing to address declining energy resources (ie a dog chasing its tail in hopes of catching something to eat, while expending its energy wastefully).
People aren't going to just pick up and change anything. Most people have specialized careers that are utterly dependant on cheap energy. You can't turn a airline pilot or software programmer into a farmer or an construction worker building mass transit. People have spent decades building careers in order to put food on the table, and paying off the mortgage. You can't seriously believe that they will give it up, go back to school to re-educate themselves, or choose jobs in manual labor, all the while paying off debt on Credit-card, the SUV's and the home in the suburbs. You think people will just pack up an abandon a home that they spent twenty years working to pay off a mortgage?
In the past people were much more self-sufficient. Prior to WW2 the majority of the population lived on rural farms and could grow their own food, mend there own clothes, build a barn, fix a tractor, raise livestock, make homemade butter and cheese and so on. Today virtually everyone specializes in doing a single thing, making a part for a widget, selling a widget, marketing a widget, transporting a widget, repairing a widget, and so on. It takes more than a decade to become learn enough skills to be self-sustainable and today much of the knowledge of the old ways has disappeared because those methods have been active for many generations (ie they'll have no one to turn to, even if they desired). Furthermore most college degrees are based upon careers that are based upon cheap and abundant energy. There are no universities teaching self sufficient rural farming these days, nor can everyone become a doctor. And if you believe we can just pile everyone in to massive cities, what exactly are all these people going to do for work without cheap energy to build, transport, sell, and repair energy dependant widgets? You think moving everyone into cities will improve things, by making them ever more dependant on systems for food, water, heating, cooling, and gov't hand-outs?
Finally declining energy resources aren't our only problems which will bring about a severe crisis. For instance we have water shortages all over the globe, crop blights and developing diseases that are drug resistant and are evolving into very contaigious forms.
If you believe that wide exceptance will change anything for the good, you might as well believe what comes out of Daniel Yergin's mouth.
If you want to save something, save yourself and don't bother wasting your time trying to publicize PO on the believe that your doing something good. In all likelyhood, you'll be "dead" wrong. I believe that the whole push for publicity is simply a prayer\begging to get some else to take care of their problems, rather than assume personal responsibility for their own health and wealthfare. Good luck with that religion. JK is a strong believer in that faith.
You're right. Fuck it all. Where's my rifle and chicken wings? Ya'll stay away from me and my tribe or I'll shoot you! Why try to do anything? It's all just bullshit. Just make sure to take care of yourself, and maybe a few other people who might be useful... Like perhaps some relatives? Or your dog? (Or, yeah, if you're a "cat person", your goddamn cat.)
I've got faith in you, TechGuy. I take your side! You sound like you've got it all figured out.
Because you've certainly got "creditablity"...
Ron,
Whilst the huge success of the Boeing 707 is undeniable, I
must point out that the World's first commercial jet airliner was the De Havilland Comet which first flew in 1949, and entered commercial service with BOAC in May 1952.
The Comet was conceived from the outset as an airliner,
unlike the 707 which was developed from a bomber.
The large hidden subsidies enjoyed by US companies like
Boeing as a result of their military development contracts,
are a source of some irritation to the European Airbus consortium when being criticised for receiving government
grants.
There never was a truly level playing field!.
Which aspect of computer technology is being examined re:Moore's law?
Nvidia and the general purpose Graphical processor units (GPGPUs) are doubling processor speed every 12 months This is faster than Moore's law.
Intel will have 80 core processors in 2009.
Samsung and Flash memory are doubling every 12 months as well
===Tech for energy and efficiency and transportation
Recent announcement of Ceravision's 50% efficient light bulbs
LEDs and OLED lighting and better compact florescents will enabling large savings of the 20% of electricity spent on lighting.
Superconducting motors are being rolled out in 2010 which would reduce energy losses.
Superconducting power grid is being piloted which would greatly reduce energy losses.
Electric cars and plug in hybrids will be deployed
Networked cruise control can enable platooning of vehicles
Autonomous cruise control is starting to be offered
A detailed powerpoint proposal for electrical guideways an effort roughly equal to the building of the national highway system
===========
http://advancednano.blogspot.com
If it has generated debate, that's obviously great.
But anyone who reads the headline and thinks he's arguing the technological progress will "peak" will just tune him out as a loonie, as I have, despite all his genuine contributions.
Peak oil is a tough enough sell. We don't need to have one of our principal spokepeople saying things that are nuts even to a 5 year old. Or if he does, we don't need to be leading TOD stories with it.
Hello hbj
I gotta disagree. The "problem" is much bigger than listing one article at the top of the Drumbeat. Kuntslerism in fact constitutes a large portion of opinion here the TOD, and I am not just talking about the Drumbeat culture. For example, look at Peak Oil, Carrying Capacity and Overshoot: Population, the Elephant in the Room. Don't forget that Matt Simmons who has largely set the terms of the debate here at the Oil Drum has said that Kuntsler may well turn out to be an optimist. Also notice that Kuntsler is still listed as one of the "Defcon One" authors in the Peak Oil Primer section here at TOD.
Despite Kuntsler's rhetoric, like it or not, he will continue to be an important part of the debate.
Yosemite,
I agree with you. I also think he may turn out to be more prescient than his current tone might lead one to expect.
My opinion here is limited to the idea that given the visibility and credibility (so far) of The Oil Drum as a resource about peak oil, the editors of TOD have a responsibility to think about how what they print will be received by the as yet uninformed visitor. Certainly, print Kunstler. But don't put him front and center with the implied full endorsement such placement brings in the blog world.
I'm a serious peaker, and I can't help but take TOD less seriously as a resource if it thinks "peak technology" rantings by Kunstler merit lead billing.
If you don't believe that peak energy will lead to a peak in the amount of science being done, then I think you need to read more deeply in the literature.
Try "A Prosperous Way Down: Principles and Policies" by H.T. Odum if you want to see the argument formalized with mathematics.
The relationship between knowledge and energy has been understood for a long time. I discovered Odum's work via The Oil Drum, so I rate it more serious a resource for finding that, not less serious. Good luck with your personal search for understanding. It takes time.
Jon Freise
Analyze Not Fantasize -D. Meadows
Of course, most people who are new to peak oil and The Oil Drum read just about any headline here and conclude that TOD is a lunatic site. We've discussed this many times in the past, and it is most likely a flaw in the people navigating away, not The Oil Drum. Just as a decade ago most people did the same thing about climate change. I bet most people in the late 90s would have done the same for websites talking about an imminent tech stock market crash.
I am constantly amazed at the people's reactions to Kunstler's essays. I can't decide if this shows a lack of historical perspective, a lack of understanding of the concept of something peaking, or just plain denial. Just as peak oil doesn't mean that the day after peak all oil will evaporate from the planet, peak technology wouldn't mean that there will never be another technological advance.
I think what Kunstler is talking about this time is the idea that technology will produce a replacement for oil so we can carry on as we are now. That is, cheap energy that will allow continuing increase in auto and McMansion sales, that will allow the vehicle mass and horsepower arms race to continue unabated, that will allow us to continue increasing commute distances without a slowdown. Many, many people think that we are just waiting for a technological advance in enzyme production to allow cellulosic ethanol to save the day and a technological advance to make solar electrical power too cheap to meter.
Many, many people think that we are just waiting for a technological advance in enzyme production to allow cellulosic ethanol to save the day...
In my fair city the very big and very prestigious U. is celebrating its latest grant success. They are going to construct a $100 million dollar building to house an alternative energy (cellulosic) effort.
The good professors (who sponsored the proposal) surely know that cellulosic ethanol is predicated on biomass... and that biomass accumulates at three to six percent solar efficiency.
They surely know that automobiles convert fuel to motive power at 10% efficiency.
Which means... they understand the arithmetic which suggests that ten percent of 3-to-6 percent is a very, very, small number.
So... who is loonier: Kunstler? railing about technological blinders or this particular University's PhD's who are wearing them?
More to the point... where is the real debate? On the MSM, cellulosic ethanol is a done deal. The math is irrelevant.
Khosla is laughing at us.
If it were nonsense, it wouldn't have elicited so many comments. If you want to censor the news, go ahead. Kunstler will still be out there. As far as being a lunatic... the cornucopian mindset can extend to technocornucopia too.
As Dirty Harry said, 'do you feel lucky, punk?'. Is there another magic bullet in the chamber, or not? Reality doesn't care.
Hello Petrosaurus,
Succint and well said. Here in my Asphalt Wonderland, our deluded leaders practice the most extreme technocornucopia: they believe that building golf courses in the blazing desert, then pouring mind-boggling amounts of petrofertilizers and depleting water across the monoculture expanse, is the best guarantee of our future survival.
The worshippers at Stonehenge used materials that withstood the elemental forces of Nature for a long time.
Here in Phx/Vegas: our greatest faith is embodied by worshipping at/in the multi-varied techno-altars of massive evaporation of billions of gallons. Millions of people, gathered around pools, fountains, carwashes, outside misting systems, and yes, even golf courses, watch the irreplaceable lifeblood of our existence waft away upon the scorching winds. "Behold", they exclaim to all, "for this evanescence is good. Now let's go shopping at the fabulous Mirage."
The multitudes countlessly tithe this sacred church by crapping into the very source of their ultimate worship.
The Sistine Chapel ceiling should be repainted showing a human taking a huge dump into the open mouth of God.
Rant off/
EDIT: for those that doubt the concept of God = water, I will be happy to drive you 50 miles into the middle of nowhere in our desert heat. IMO, I believe you will grasp the equivalency well before high noon on your walk back.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
You need to be bitchslapped. Hard.
Yet, no one talks about the dangers of oil. They all prefer to bang in the japanese nuclear accident, because, oh, its nuclear:
This, despite the fact that no one died, and three workers were sent to hospital.
Luis: Dangers of oil? It is my understanding that more than 4 people die each year on North American roads.
Four people died and a further 12 were injured ....
Yet, no one talks about the dangers of oil.
Is that the metric - how many people die or are maimed?
Because if that is the metric, human life, I'd like to see what source you are using to validate this metric.
Good point, Brian T.
How many people are maimed every day on the roads, eric blair? And please, divide that number to the maiming figures of Chernobyl accident, if you can find them. There's your Chernobyl everyday.
I prefer to point to the use of Depleted Uranium (A substance that would not exist 'cept for man's desire to obtain the non-depleted part) then the use of that over in Iraq as part of a weapon system.
Thus I've combined deaths due to oil AND fission!
Now....back to the question -
Because if that is the metric, human life, I'd like to see what source you are using to validate this metric.
As almost all readers of TOD are human, human death and suffering is probably regarded as a most appropriate metric. Are you suggesting we use a non-human metric (perhaps alien, ehh Centauri?)
Did you notice, you are not talking about the dangers of oil?
No one died... that day.
The big difference between, say, a refinery explosion that kills some people and a nuclear accident is that nuclear accidents are forever, and can affect people far from the accident. See "Chernobyl".
It is disingenuous in the extreme, in my opinion, to compare the safety of petroleum and nuclear on the basis of simple immediate deaths from accidents.
It is disingenuous in the extreme, in my opinion, to compare the safety of petroleum and nuclear on the basis of simple immediate deaths from accidents.
Yet that is exactly the metric the fission crowd uses.
I've yet to see one of 'em decide on an economic value on a life and the quality thereof. We know these models exist - the insurance industry uses 'em all the time. They have to have some value to be making a comparison - I'd like to see 'em "show their work" is all.
So, are you implying that the people killed in refinery accidents are not dead forever? Should we all sign up at the nearest BP facility and hope for the worst? Actually, radioactivity has the property of decay, so that after a millenia, the residue is about as active as dirt.
I agree, it is disingenuous to just focus on the near term mortality of fossil versus nuclear energy. In the long view, considering the billions of tons of chemicals released by combustion and the centuries-long burden of CO2-based climate change, we are really overlooking a great benefit of nuclear power. Additionally, splitting those atoms today means that we are actually reducing the eventual natural radiation background in the future, not that background raditation is a bad thing, mind you.
But if the differences are extreme enough, it certainly means SOMETHING. The fact is that the fossil fuel industry costs at least 100 times the number of lives as the nuclear energy industry, despite only generating 5 (or whatever) times the power surely is a major point in favour of nuclear. And while it's true that there are long term costs associated with nuclear (dangers that extend potentially thousands of years into the future), fossil fuels are not immune from this either (e.g. mercury contaminations from coal mining).
A Letter to the Oil Drum EditorsDoes the Oil Drum encourage extremism?
Yesterday I raised this issue flippantly...
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2803#comment-216359
..but after sleeping on it, I think it needs to be taken seriously.
Question: What is the link between The Oil Drum and the Unabomber?
Answer: Not nearly as tenuous as you might think.
TOD Contributor, Jeff Vail, has written a book entitled, "A Theory of Power" which is available on Amazon. Here's the kicker: the book sports the official endorsement of John Zerzan, extreme anarchist and friend and confidant of the Unabomber.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zerzan
Jeff's book on amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Theory-Power-Jeff-Vail/dp/0595330304/
Zerzan's views are quite similar to the Unabomber's. They both absolutely detest civilization and technology. Zerzan believes that technology should be destroyed and can be quite wishy-washy as to whether the Unabomber was justified in his mail-bomb campaign of murder against scientists and others.
Some of Zerzan's work can be found here at Insurgent Desire
http://www.insurgentdesire.org.uk/
Back to Jeff Vail...
Take another look at his recent piece, Mexico: A Nation-State Dissolves?
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2752
It is clearly an anarchist piece. It's really about the collapse of nation-states in general, with Mexico used as an example.
Here is an example quotation:
Black shirts and brown shirts on the march.
Note the typical preoccupation that anarchists (the extreme left) have with the extreme right. But the whole piece must be reread to see the breadth of anarchist influence.
Check out Jeff Vail's predictions for 2007:
http://www.jeffvail.net/2006/12/2007-trending.html
I'm all for free speech but we face very troubling times. Obviously violent forces lurk at the edge of our society that want to see it fail and that may attempt to help it fail.
Why does The Oil Drum flirt with views similar to the Unabomber's? Why does it dabble in political extremism associated with murder and violence against society, with terrorism?
Is tearing our world apart really the option we choose for our future?
Asebius
Asebius, you are absolutely full of it, crap that is! The Oil Drum is an open forum, a place where ideas are exchanged. Every flavor of opinion is discussed here, pro and con. Almost every possible solution to the peak oil problem has been discussed here, along with opinions of people like me who believes there are no solutions.
But that is what people on open forums do, they discuss things and far more often than not they disagree, at least on some points discussed.
To compare this open forum, where every manner of things are discussed concerning the decline of the energy supply, with the unibomber is absurd! It is just downright f***ing stupid!
Ron Patterson
We are long past the dreamy days where we fantasize that ideas can be spouted without ramifications.
That anarchists exist is fine by me. Let them rail from the margins and remain non-violent.
Extreme anarchism is not an option for the future. TOD should not be giving it air time.
A lot of us here are more concerned about extreme government taking over than we are about extreme anarchism.
You sound just like someone who would love to use peak oil to close down free speech and to give all power to the politicians.
give all power to the politicians.
Its gotta be the right politicians. Them others would do bad things with 'em - you know 'em The Wrong ones.
For the record, my centrist credentials are well-established here.
I need a term for the politics of some of the contributors and many of the commenters.
Peak oil anarchism? Anarcho-depletionism?
Asebius: It is my understanding that political anarchism in the USA in 2007 is pretty well extinct. There is violent crime to get money for bling or drugs but there is no existing political anarchism currently. You might as well worry about hordes of sasquatches attacking from the redwood forests.
Actually, even political socialism in the USA in 2007 is pretty well extinct. As Dmitri Orlov said, in the US we have The Capitalist Party, and The OTHER Capitalist Party.
I am not an old hand at this, but have been watching TOD for many months. I see some comments which I think are off the wall, and they are usually followed by comments like those of Asebius. Like the well respected Ron says above, this is an open forum. Neither TOD or the vast majority of contributors here seem in the least interested in anything radical. And, it seems like most are nowhere as concerned about the near-term as I am. I think long term, we will see fewer of the optional amenities, but we will probably see panic when the MSM first gets the word out that PO is a reality. I think that we will see dire circumstances for many, eventually, but the true crisis will come when the average guy can't fathom that we are going to initially see a 3% shortfall, and by their actions, which I see as wasteful hoarding and the like, will create panic, 'cause nobody will be able to resist getting some for themselves, at any price. And, in the case of gasoline, their hoard will start to degrade almost immediately.
Price won't matter, since everybody will put their own hoard on their already bloated credit cards, and away we go, down that almighty drain, for as many reasons as we can dream up.
For those who remember the half-day panic after 9/11 I think that this will ring true. I had to get some diesel for a contractor on the afternoon of 9/11 and people were lined up around the block such that a scheduled delivery was cancelled because the tanker couldn't get to the tanks. Of course, the panic was gone by the next morning, but it left me with a taste of what was coming.
Woodychuck
I don't know about other people, but I didn't panic until I heard that Bush was being flown to Offut AFB, HQ of SAC (or whatever they call it now). You bet I turned a whiter shade of pale and then hightailed it to the nearest gas station!
And a nasty snitch you are.
Asebius,
The Unabomber was arrested years before TOD was put on the net.
As far as encouraging anarchy or libertarianism, I don't think the site has any political agenda except energy.
Jeff Vail's piece covered the breakdown of national goverment's ambitions, and introduced a fascinating concept, rhizomes, as a way that people have coped with lack of government and the breakdown of societal institutions.
Are you suggesting censorship on the basis of ideology? generally, if people have an agenda it gets pretty well criticised around this group.
Air and sunlight are the best disinfectants for pathogens. Bob Ebersole
I don't believe in censorship. But I do believe in marginalizing extreme political views.
Are we going to bring in Holocaust deniers and invite them to share their views on population control?
Asebius: Who died and gave you the conehead to wear?
Asebius, you seem to be having a really bad day.
How do you get from simply looking at current trends and extrapolating a possible outcome, to advocating that outcome, to Holocaust denial?
You are not really making much sense, though evidently you feel strongly about something or other.
You, sir, are a censor. May you burn in the hell where you've chosen to burn ideas you do not like.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Dr. Albert Bartlett
Into the Grey Zone
Does the Oil Drum encourage extremism?
No it does not. There was a post many moons ago calling for open armed rebellion VS the state.
That post was shouted down.
Observations that 'sure looks like their is gonna be gunplay and overturned states' do not.
Why does The Oil Drum flirt with views similar to the Unabomber's?
Encouraging extreme positions much?
Look, its a GOOD thing that ideas that are 'extreme' are discussed. That way the government spooks who monitor have something to do with their time. *waves to the spooks* *waits for phone to ring to let me know they care*
*is disappointed the phone doesn't ring, because I'm not important to 'em*
Last time I checked - Ted's VIEWS didn't get him in trouble - Ted's ACTIONS got him in trouble.
Is tearing our world apart really the option we choose for our future?
Do you want to explain how:
Iraq
the military Industrial Congressional Complex
health care in-affordability
Corrupt governments
Corrupt corporations
Does not look like 'a tearing apart of the world' already?
Moving an economic model of continued energy growth to one of sustainability or even collapse will also look like "tearing our world apart" to almost everyone.
What course of action to YOU think *WE* (humanity) to take that won't look like a 'tearing apart of the world' to the majority?
Eric,
You forgot to mention the evil international banking syndicates and fractional banking systems. The love of money is the root of all evil
EJ
Damn. I knew I missed a villain or two.
Always somebody up in my face, tearing apart the world.
Hard to keep track of who's on the payroll of whom.
Not sure what your point is with this rambling.
Since when does predicting something mean advocating it?
In fact, predicting something based on current trends and past history is just about the most effective way of avoiding that (presumably undesirable) outcome.
Oh, BTW, the Unabomber made some good points. Saying so doesn't mean I approve, condone, advocate, etc. violence, nor that I agree with all of his conclusions. But he made some good points.
Sleep on it some more.
Are you the most politically naive person in the room, or what?
These guys want the state gone. They relish the thought of it's collapse. They advocate dismantling it.
Let's call it what it is: extremism and utterly divorced from reality. And possibly dangerous to human life.
Asebius, sometimes bad things happen whether we want them to or not.
(is Monday "troll day" now? Sheesh...)
You think it's bad now. Next Monday we'll be on a full moon. :-(
Asebius, I've read a lot of your comments over the past few months and I've generally agreed with them. I've come to the party late today and don't have time to investigate what started all of this, but I would like to say something about your comment:
The legitimacy of the "state" -- I'm not sure whether you are referring to the United States or just nation states in general -- is wholly dependent upon its serving the people for whom it is supposed to work. Some of us feel that our government no longer works for us.
If that is a concern to someone, I would suggest an easy fix: Restore public confidence in government by addressing our most pressing problems -- energy, education, job-training, climate change, health care and the twin deficits -- and stop pissing away our future on unwinnable foreign military adventures and tax cuts for the rich.
The ball is in "their" court. Always has been.
Yet all our state sponsored extremism utterly divorced from reality is not -- in "reality" -- more dangerous to human life?!
This just proves you are the most politically naive person in teh world.
Must be the club of iron missing the 'y' that you've just beaten yourself over the head with.
What?!
The Unabomber made some good points? No he didn't.
Asebius may be annoying with the ridiculous outlined yellow text, asinine meandering, and wild Nashian-Alex Jonesesque conspiratorial imagination--but saying the Unabomber "made some good points" is really just plain stupid.
I thought I should point that out.
Industrial Society and Its Future is the work of mad man. He was beyond all doubt clinically insane.
By saying stuff like that you are in essence invalidating any other excuse for a debate you enter into here at TOD. Jeeeez, now that Teddy K. was a golden flying star, well now sgage, it is so clear you also must be right about other arguments you enter into... Sigh.
Damnit, that's it, I'm changing my signature to "One can't win." *chuckle*
"The Unabomber made some good points? No he didn't."
Did so! Did so! :-)
"By saying stuff like that you are in essence invalidating any other excuse for a debate you enter into here at TOD."
What utter bullshit. Some parts of the Unabomber's critique of Industrial Civilization were right on, and lots of people have recognized it. Have you read it? Is there NOTHING in it that you find yourself saying "yeah, he has a point"? Have you never found ANYTHING wrong with modern industrial capitalist society? I'll bet you haven't even looked at it.
Just because he flipped out and resorted to violence does not mean there was nothing at all to his ramblings.
"Jeeeez, now that Teddy K. was a golden flying star,"
Just what is it with you people today? I didn't say he was a golden flying star. I said he made a few valid points. Bit of a difference. There has been a rash today of wacko exaggeration and misrepresentation.
"well now sgage, it is so clear you also must be right about other arguments you enter into... Sigh."
What kind of childish nonsense is this? It's all or nothing with you people, black and white, for us or against us, the messenger = the message. What are you, Republican or something? We're trying to discuss a complex world here, not playing some goofy team sport or making "debating" points.
At least you didn't accuse me of being a Holocaust Denier.
Sigh.
Agreed. WTF is going on today?
Hard to say. Could be simple button pushing or a lack of the adults stepping in and saying 'taking an extreme position to create discussion has a fine rhetorical tradition - but you all need a time out today.'
/puts on antimony-plated Ferrous chapeau
Could be HARRP, could be paid trolls, or some plot by the illumanti. Perhaps the PeakOil.com forum kicked a puppy or tossed people out.
/takes off antimony-plated Ferrous chapeau
I'm surprised no one has mentioned it yet:
This must be the work of HOTHGOR! AM-I-RITE?
I thought you were Hothgor...isn't anyone who suggests that Peak Oil might not be all that bad after all automatically Hothgor? (I've managed to avoid it myself so far).
Damdifino, but it does seem to be a real phenomenon.
Must... learn... not... to... feed... trolls...
My comment stands. I am not a Republican (although sometimes interacting with outrageous liberals makes me want to be one. *sarcasm alert*)
I'm sorry that my prior sarcasm rubbed you the wrong way, I apologize--but I'm sure you have thick skin like the rest of us... I was just trying to state that when you tacitly endorse the intellectual output of Ted Kaczynski, that sort of puts a hamper on other endorsements you may make...
"You people"?
I think I'm probably on your side. I only comment when I feel a need to respond to someone else's comment, or if I think I may have something of bearing to say (heh, not often!)...
I understand where you are coming from with the comment I responded too--my beef is that you in fact are not correct in this case (even if you may be in others) because the context in which Industrial Society and Its Future was written.
In fact, oddly enough, the reason I responded the way I did (aside from the guy being a psychopathic killer) is simply because that body of "work" is so abhorrently anti-liberal, that I felt a slightly mocking tone was justified.
Industrial Society and Its Future. Maybe you need to go back and read it, I'm familiar with its stench.
Your logical point, yes, does stand. The atheist I am, however, inclines me to not accept it for moral reasons.
"I am not a Republican (although sometimes interacting with outrageous liberals makes me want to be one."
Me too. What are we to do? :-)
"when you tacitly endorse the intellectual output of Ted Kaczynski"
All I said was that he made some good points. I didn't endorse the corpus of his intellectual output. Have you read his thing (Manifesto, whatever). There are some fairly lucid critiques in there :-)
"you in fact are not correct in this case (even if you may be in others) because the context in which Industrial Society and Its Future was written."
OK, you read it. I guess that's where we disagree - I was simply referring to individual points, not the whole package. That's been today's theme, apparently - including babies with the bathwater, as it were.
I, too, am familiar with the whole thing, including its stench at times. That's what's strange about it - some cogent critique, leading to wacko conclusions (and, as we know, actions).
All I said was "he made some points", and I stand by that :-) I don't think that means anything more than that. Certainly not a ringing endorsement of the Unabomber and his tactics, and if anyone took it that way, well, you now stand corrected :-)
Your fellow atheist,
- sgage
And there was peace for a few moments. =]
This has been a wonderful day on TOD :-)
All best,
- sgage
Now, now, don't take it too far! Heh.
There is a Chomsky-ish thread that runs through much of TOD, no doubt due in part to the founder of TOD's own beliefs. Mr. Vail apparently shares in that outlook.
However, I think it would be unfair to go as far as to say these (and others at the TOD) are unabomber material... be careful of the guilty-by-association fallacy. There are PO websites that do harbor that type of personality, but from reading TOD since its earlier days it seems that those people get weeded out of here eventually. Self-loathing and dystopian fantasies (i.e., "doomer porn") are not the same as actually proposing harming others.
say what? Now I am buddies with Chomsky too! Excellent.
I'll have to give him a call. Perhaps we can have a scotch and toast the end of the world.
ROTFLMAO.
I think you may have to schedule a few months in advance, so I'd check in with the Executive Branch to see when TEOTWAWKI is going to take place. That way you know it's 100% foolproof (no pun intended.)
Perhaps I am wrong, but I thought that a couple of times before TOD contributors have held up Chomsky for his views. (E.g., Prof. Chomsky's blurb is on the Amazon site as an endorsement for Mr. Vail's book, Mr. Cohen recommending Chomsky reading material...) - not that you personally know Noam Chomsky or not.
If you are insulted by an error of mine (in describing your beliefs) I apologize.
Chomsky is a self-described "Anarcho Syndicalist"--whatever the hell that means (someone ask Asebius, he may know...)
He is certainly an "idealist", not to mention unrealistic--but, isn't that in fact the point? If Chomsky had Henry Kissinger's outlook, what is the point?
I don't think the man has really ever changed his political outlook since he was 6 years old... You can call that a fault or a strength depending on how you look at it. He is clearly an idealist though... Anyone who wants to listen to a younger Chomsky talk about classical liberalism and anarchism (warning, direct link to mp3):
http://www.chomsky.info/audionvideo/19700216.mp3
This was close to forty years ago, I doubt his opinions have changed at all. In fact, I'm sure they haven't.
The lecture is indicative of how idealistic he is--that a rational technologically advanced society can run on the principles he spells out is very shaky, or shady, indeed...
This is what I find so amazing... For the most part Chomsky does a great job analyzing power politics, and is correct in a lot of his criticism. On the other hand Richard Perle is obviously a lying bigot... Yet Perle has the realistic realpolitik vision of man (hence he wields power) while Chomsky ages away in an academia ivory tower spreading his gospel to people who already agree with him. I think some people call it preaching to choir, but somebody has got to keep them tuned up--even if to no ultimate avail, in the end.
For completeness, you really should have pointed out my post questioning if we should create collapse, not just wait for it:
The Logic of Collapse
I agree with your assessment that many of my views are considered "extreme" by many. I stand by them. I certainly do consider myself an anarchist, just not in the black T-shirt and molotov cocktail genre. To me, anarchism is anything but the desire for an absence of order, or for a destruction of order. Rather, it is a questioning of the wisdom of pursuing hierarchal versus networked order. High, but temporary, energy surplus tends to lead to excessive development of hierarchal structure, so in that sense Peak Oil and my structuralist take on anarchistm fit hand in glove.
For what it's worth, some people think I'm a government mole--after all, I am still employed as an intelligence analyst working to protect our nation's energy infrastructure from "terrorists" like John Zerzan and his ilk. Or maybe I am a mole trying to get the government to realize that the only way to stop terrorism is to eliminate the hierarchal dependency that leads to us pissing other people off when we 'twist their arm' to get what we need and they have. Or maybe I'm just self-interested and realize that they offer really good health benefits. I'm so confused :)
Maybe you should read more about my extremist views on things like gardening, community, and simplicity:
Creating a Hamlet Economy
Creating Resiliency and Stability in Horticulture
Vernacular Zen
Elegant Technology
You may want to investigate how John Zerzan came to officially endorse your book on Amazon.
As you point out, your views would generally be regarded as extreme and you adopt the anarchist label in full knowledge of its historical and recent connotations.
Funny thing is, other TOD contributors hold similar views.
How is it that extreme views are so over-represented in TOD head articles?
Instead of energy analysis by the truly qualified, we get heavy doses of barely disguised political commentary by people with truly far-out politics.
The brown shirts are coming! The nation-state is doomed! The nation-state will collapse! Anarchist utopia is at hand after the great struggle that looms!
Jeff, I'm glad people like you exist. You are very interesting.
That you and others get a ready and frequent platform on The Oil Drum is freakin' ridiculous.
...unless this site is other than it purports to be.
What is your problem? You seem to be seeing things that aren't there, and getting way too excited.
Here's something to consider: If you write a book, and someone endorses your book, that does not mean you are automatically in agreement with everything else that that person advocates.
"Instead of energy analysis by the truly qualified, we get heavy doses of barely disguised political commentary by people with truly far-out politics."
Yes, e.g., yours. This is a discussion site, with lots and lots of _extremely_ qualified energy analysis, and lot and lots of commentary of all kinds.
"The brown shirts are coming! The nation-state is doomed! The nation-state will collapse! Anarchist utopia is at hand after the great struggle that looms!"
Surely you exaggerate.
"...unless this site is other than it purports to be."
Actually, you've figured it out. You have stumbled across a nest of violent, nihilistic (here comes the A-word...) Anarchists! OMG!
Will Asebius' caretakers please see to it that he gets back on his medication(s) at once? Or at least get him to put his tinfoil hat back on until he calms down?
Read Jeff's piece on Mexico again. 'Nuff said about that.
Jeff's was an analysis, plain and simple, regarding the status of Mexico as an effective nation-state. I saw no advocacy, just a documentation of problems and a thought experiment for where it could go.
Go write a refutation that is credible and documented like Jeff's was, and then we can talk.
Until then, stop telling me what I and the others here "believe."
Why not take Jeff's lead and admit you are an anarchist? :-)
Frank, open discussion, I say.
But I will submit a piece arguing that nation states have a much better chance of handling future energy constraints than various forms of anarchy.
I will make my politics explicit. Would that others would do the same.
Again, Asebius,
I think you're conflating the following:
a) what may or may not theoretically "work better"
b) what may or may not be most likely to happen
c) what various people think might happen
d) what various people advocate in order to prepare for c)
e) what various people actually _want_ to happen
Try to understand the distinctions.
Sgage is dead on above. Well done.
Your attitude stinks Asebius. I am tired of it.
I am no anarchist--if anything I am left of center other than on civil liberties. But I don't have to defend myself to you or anyone. If you don't like what we write here, leave. Don't come back.
I have gotten requests for your removal to the ed's box because you are detracting from the environment.
Ergo, if you stay with this attitude, you will leave us little choice but to remove you. You have been nothing but disruptive and polemic this entire thread, and it's getting quite old.
Consider yourself warned.
Ahh... you don't like militant centrism!?
Unfortunately, at times your site represents views that are profoundly unproductive for our energy future. To get that across even a little, I needed to be pretty forceful before the usual relentless group-think took over. I take peak oil seriously and believe you could be playing with fire.
If you do so unknowingly, I apologize for mischaracterizing your own views. My critique of Vail stands and is correct although, of course, he sees himself as harmless. They always do.
Ideas matter, Prof. How well do you know your 20th century? My view is that extremism should not be censored but labeled as such and marginalized without pretending it's cute to project one's fantasies on our collective life.
But I will relent. Today is precisely (to the day) one year since I became a TOD member. I'm grateful for pieces by Staniford, Mearns, HeadingOut, Jerome and a few others. Thanks.
"militant centrism"?
I think you mean lowbrow, paranoid McCarthyism...
Damn, and I thought I liked marking my territory! You just love to piss on everything, don't you?
Well, that's all the liquid I've got left in me for tonight--you should feel privileged that you got the last splash from yours truly.
A decentralized, local, solar grid would be the anarchist alternative to a hierarchical, centralized grid. If anarchists were rich enough....
Nature [and resilent systems in general] are anarchist.
cfm, anarchist in Gray, ME
but that would only be anarchy from a global top down level - the people living in that society would be anything but anarchists. I suppose to define anarchy, one first has to mention scale.
Please... I'm an anarchist, I don't want to be a nihilist.
-
James Gervais
Asebius,
You seem to be bringing up a lot of outrage at Jeff's ideas which to YOUR PERSPECTIVE seem to push the limits of commonly held societal norms. You said "We are long past the dreamy days where we fantasize that ideas can be spouted without ramifications."
I agree in that being a "Centrist" is probably the worst thing we can do with P.O. now upon us. You feel the center needs defending and that the fringe is the source of harm or disorder. Jeff (and many others I believe from following TheOilDrum since its' inception) believe that what is desperately needed today "is a questioning of the wisdom of pursuing hierarchical versus networked order". Meaning the CENTER is leading us to Peak Oil hell. The center drives most of the SUV's and by narrow majorities elected George W. to office twice.
There is a classic dynamic in action here between new ideas and futurists (who are always labeled by society as mad, insane, etc.) and those who are fighting to preserve the status quo and hold to historical values and principles. These folks are often called conservatives.
Disruptive change is unsettling to the large portion of society since they can to see/fathom/understand the new ideas or events occurring. The outsiders are demonized and all sorts of bizarre conspiracy theories are formed (Jeff linked to Unabomber !?!?! your really reaching here. Do you think there are hidden codes in the Bible too?).
Robert Pirsig's follow-up novel to "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", "Lilla" does a good job of describing how society revolts against new ideas which will replace the old establishment.
For what it is worth. I don;t consider myself a radical, and think the reason TheOilDrum has gathered such a strong following is that there is an open discussion of some very disruptive ideas. Some here also see Kunstler as being too outspoken and on the fringe. I think both Jeff and Jim K.'s visions of possible futures for the USA are equally plausible. A strong union doesn't always stand. The Greeks are not a world power today and I suspect a millenia from now that the USA will not be either.
Odysseus,
That was, IMO, very well stated.
I sent him a manuscript, he wrote back with a letter, and that was provided to the publisher as promotional material for the book. It's a perfect example of the great, dark conspiracy that surrounds me.
It isn't just The Oil Drum. I have discussed rhizome, anarchist theory, and Tainter's thoughts on diminishing marginal returns in briefings to the Assistant Secretary of Defense, the Assistant Secretary of the Interior, the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. They're all closet anarchists, too :)
Seriously, have you read my book (available free online), or the "hamlet economy" post that I linked to above?
Thanks for making your connection with Zerzan explicit. The TOD link with extreme anarchism was valid.
I find it difficult to believe that those officials believe that nation states including the US are heading to collapse as you maintain.
For the record, I don't think there is any special conspiracy. Just the usual pushing of extreme views on an unsuspecting public and the usual hijacking of current issues to advance radical agendas. Happens all the time. Observe the current US government and media, criticized here daily.
How exactly is The Oil Drum different?
I have skimmed your book. It's a utopian pipe-dream, in my view. Dangerous like many others and similarly premised on some horrible collapse of the current order as your Mexico piece makes clear.
But I will save a detailed critique for later.
But I will save a detailed critique for later.
I'm sure all of us just can't wait. Please get to work right away and report back ASAP...
Asebius, you are the great last hope for humanity--please keep up your impeccable research, never forgetting to edify all of us here who read TOD with your hard-headed analysis of, um, something?
Simple: researching energy and energy use leads to the conclusion that our current society is not sustainable. (Just like researching the patterns of sun, moon and stars leads to the conclusion that the earth is not the center of the universe). NOT mentioning that conclusion would be politically motivated.
An excellent response, jeffvail, and worthy of my own favorite, self-described "socialist anarchist," Noam Chomsky.
The "Vernacular Zen" article is 100% right on.
"Why does The Oil Drum flirt with views similar to the Unabomber's?"
Cause flirting is fun, especially with Danger!
Anarchists and Atheists don't worry me much. Yes, some of them get militant, which quickly becomes counterproductive (although decent economic-activity markers) and more importantly, tiresome. The reason militant Anarchists and Atheists don't worry me much is that they will never form a very large group, by their very nature and inclination. Look who's gunning for this Fwiggin war! True Believers at both ends! Upright religious folks, family-values people (so they tell themselves and anyone who'll buy a $1000 plate, or strap some munitions to their chests)
Nothing to fear but fear itself, brother. Should you be more worried about a bedraggled bum with a wild look in his eye, or a clean cut young man who comports himself nicely? (Like the kid who bought the guns was described by the gun store near Virginia Tech)
As the old Thurber fable goes, 'There's no safety in numbers, or anything else'
It all comes down to character, and being able to judge it.
Bob Fiske
Asebius,
You make some compelling points. Remember that for all of the articles published here, we have the opportunity to make our comments. The Editors are not censoring the comments to sway the discussion.
I would suggest that if you have a body of work equivalent to that of Mr. Vail and if it were relevant to our discussion, the Editors would most likely welcome the chance to post your works and offer up discussion. I would have a problem if you had work of merit and offered to share it and the editors refused to post it because they believed that the discussion would strongly counter their secret agenda. If you do and they do, please let us know.
EJ
Asebius,
I'm all for free speech but...
I love the but. Are you making the "yelling FIRE in a crowded theater" argument? Or is this the "free speech is good, unless people say something I disagree with" argument?
Frankly, people like Jeff Vail and John Robb are seeing the future, though perhaps "through the lens darkly". If you don't like what they say, just wait. You'll like the future they predict even less.
KEEPER: Stop! Who would cross the Bridge of Death must answer me these questions three, 'ere the other side he see.
LAUNCELOT: Ask me the questions, bridge-keeper. I'm not afraid.
KEEPER: What is your name?
LAUNCELOT: My name is Sir Launcelot of Camelot.
KEEPER: What is your quest?
LAUNCELOT: To seek the Holy Grail.
KEEPER: What is your favorite color?
LAUNCELOT: Blue.
KEEPER: Right. Off you go.
LAUNCELOT: Oh, thank you. Thank you very much.
ASEBIUS: That's easy!
KEEPER: Stop! Who approaches the Bridge of Death must answer me these questions three, 'ere the other side he see.
ASEBIUS: Ask me the questions, bridge-keeper. I'm not afraid.
KEEPER: What is your name?
ASEBIUS: Asebius of TOD.
KEEPER: What is your quest?
ASEBIUS: To keep TOD centrist.
KEEPER: Are you for or against free speech?
ASEBIUS: I'm all for free speech, but ... Auuuuuuuugh!
Getting in the long line of other supports of LMAO, That was very funny and so much of a change of pace that I vote you to be Comedian IN Cheif for the rest of the month. Or year. BOWS.
Not often we get over 300 posts on a monday, I knew it was something at noon , login, 200 plus for a drumbeat, I thought the world had ended while I slept in.
:)
"You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created."
Albert Einstein
Asebius, sounds like Jeff got some of his ideas from John Robb at Global Guerrillas...see link...
http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/
Robbs site follows old and new techniques of insurgencies and counter insurgencies. Fourth generation warfare (4GW) is described as the sort of open source insurgency that we are currently fighting in Iraq and Afganistan. 4GW is a system of insurgency that attempts to turn the states strengths against it, like 9-11 for example, the insurgents use the states aircraft and destroy the states property. The aims of the insurgencies are to cause systems disruptions. The disruptions can be anything from taking down a power grid to destroying communications and taking down the economy, to destroying oil and gas infrastructure, etc. These insurgencies are labled 'open source' because they are small cells that contract some work to other cells, for instance, one cell might pay another to construct and deliver IEDs but the members of each cell know little of each other. It is simply a business arrangement. The ultimate goal of the insurgencies is to hollow out the state and steal its resources without having to provide the services to the people that the state does (or should).
Robb is more interested in the military aspects of insurgencies than PO. He recently wrote a book and has lectured at various military gatherings and academys. I dont think the majority of visitors to TOD are interested in military/guerrilla warfare except as it might impact what happens to the oilfields in Iraq, Nigeria and now possibly Mexico and how those insurgent operations might effect the ELM.
And here I was worried about peak oil, climate change, impending economic collapse, and the looming police state, and wouldn't you know, I missed the real danger - ANARCHISTS!
Some people have not grasped the implications that these changes will have for the world we live in, and maybe think that everything will be pretty much the same - only with a little less oil, money, freedoms, and it might be a bit warmer too. Read a little history of past civilizations, and throw out the American Exceptionalism crap. People who've been wrapped in the flag their whole lives may feel threatened by discussions that do not consider the nation to be the center of the universe. I suppose it's a shock to realize that some don't care much about such constructs as "nation", and that others may go so far as to think they're counterproductive, but I do not see any hidden agenda here. I do appreciate the healthy discussion of what the world of the future MAY look like, as it is possible I will last long enough to live in it.
Embrace change, as it is coming anyway. Think about all the things you identify yourself with, the things that make you "who you are", and be very critical about each and every one of them. Because in the end you'll have to decide which ones are real, and which ones can really be changed. If you identify yourself by the nation you live in, who will you be if it changed? Mine already has.
I'm hardly worried about anarchists - the fact that I really hesitate to post this comment for fear of who may read it and what the consequences may be says enough.
For my part, I've got a decent background in history. Believe me, it's no shock.
Anarchists generally want to dismantle civilization. They've been around for a long time. It's no shock to me that such extreme views would crop up in the comments.
But, that at least a couple TOD contributors and perhaps even some of the editors hold that position ... that's a shock.
That would place this site on the fringe of the fringe.
Asebius,
I think you're trying to say something informative and useful here, but you've been conflating all sorts of things today.
Thinking that there might just be some teensy weensy flaws in industrial capitalist society as we know it that just might not be particularly helpful going forward does not mean wanting to "dismantle civilization".
Thinking the civilization might be in trouble does not mean _wanting_ it to collapse.
Wondering what we might do if "civilization" (whatever that means) DOES "collapse" (whatever that means) does not mean wanting it to collapse.
Wanting some change is not wanting collapse. Is the status quo perfect? Has there never been change, even within the rubric of "civilization"?
In fact, if "collapse of civilization" is ultimately averted, it will most likely be because some portion of what the "doomers", "anarchists" or what-have-you are saying is taken to heart, in time.
And yes, I did say "if". That is in no way any indication of my desires in the matter - please try to understand that. You seem to ascribe motivations to people based on what they see coming down the pike, and that's not fair.
And, if CoC is averted, everyone will say it was just the normal course of "progress". But that's OK. :-)
Actually, there are "some" here who do want "civilization" to collapse. "Some" who think that it is "civilization" that is the problem. Suppose that makes "us" fringe anarchists or something. Okay, label attached, can we get on to the ideas now?
The reason for all the "" in my post was to simply draw attention to the fact that most people don't even know what they mean by, um, "civilization", etc.
And whether or not it would be a good thing for it to "collapse" :-) or not, I simply wanted to make the distinction between what people think might happen, and what they want to happen.
It wasn't about labels, and it was all about ideas.
Okay?
My godz, people are touchy today.
And you still don't know "what side" ;-) I'm on!
sorry sgage - my excessive use of quotations was not aimed at you. Indeed, I had not really even noticed your use of them. I was trying to amplify your point, but from a different perspective. Oh well, guess I failed. Will keep on trying.
Mr. Asebius,
Thats the 4th time (that I saw) you made reference to TOD staff holding the 'position' of anarchists, (which embarrassingly I had to google to find out what it really meant). You even mentioned me by name once. Normally I wouldnt respond to someone unless their post was intelligent or funny or both, but you hit a nerve, which has broader implications than my feelings.
This thread is an absolute testament to the power of diminishing returns. Instead of spending my time researching the paper Im writing on "Multicriteria Analysis and a Framework for Alternative Energy Supply" for David Pimentals book (Im now overdue), and preparing my wednesday TOD post on Energy and Time, Im pulled via mild suggestive slander into a nutty thread about anarchy. If you had any idea how much work the people on this site put into keeping the doors open for people to come here and freely discuss the energy problems, (which do not just begin and end with how much production is in Saudi Arabia), you would be blown away - PG, and Super G have been particularly selfless.
This site has tried (and so far done a pretty good job) of raising the giant issues we face against the multi-headed chimera that is peak oil - we don't have answers, but are trying to connect as many dots as possible, because that is all we really can do - raise awareness and empirically attempt to block off dead ends (seems that abiotic oil was quickly discovered to be a dead end here).
Regarding anarchy, I think it would be the WORST thing to root for and I am actually COMPLETELY opposed to it. In my opinion we need more government, stronger government, and better government. All historical examples in Jared Diamonds "Collapse" that pulled out of their straits had strong central top down authority. We really do need Platos 'enlightened dictator', but that is of course wishful thinking -Mayor Bloomberg would be my opinion of the best of the current bunch (by far) that fit the bill. Its true I am very concerned about the market giving proper signals given that it does not have accurate information (OPEC reserves for one) and its participants are not rational actors (read this thread, for proof). While the market is great for some allocations, it is not so for energy, and I believe that we should (and will eventually) have government authority over energy supplies - they are just too important. (I can see it now - your next post will be that Im a communist and so are TOD editors!).
We are not intelligent enough (or rather, our links to our emotional systems compromise our access to our rational minds) to individually mitigate strong oil depletion - we need (the sooner the better) government policies disincentivizing oil consumption and consumption in general.
On a side note, I am willing to debate/discuss any of the ideas/comments on this site - but in my opinion (and perhaps the other staff feels differently), it is patently unfair to debate someone who is posting under a pseudonym - if one has to post under their real name, they will be more careful about what they say, and might not post at all when they are low on meds, or having marital problems, etc.
I dont know your agenda, but whatever it is, I hope it doesnt continue to disrupt civil, empirically based conversation here. I won't respond to you further in this thread.
If you had any idea how much
work the people on this site put into keeping the doors open for people to come here and freely discuss the energy problems, you would be blown away - PG, and Super G have been particularly selfless.Just felt the 'how hard they work' needed repeating.
Asebius is not serious. As a running game, I keep a list of usernames that I find useful to reference now and again...
There are the fools who sidetrack discussion and aside from occaisonally sparking some illuminating fire, tend to just want to have ream after ream of, what I like to call, "fabrication contention". As long as people keep on responding, Asebius wants to see more and more of his mastabatory conspiracy theories blanketed across the screens of TOD readers. Asebius made his or her debut on this list (my list of side-tracking ninnies) months ago.
Then there are the "moderates", they are the "unlisted list", people that are well behaved and don't comment much but have good things to add here and there (I would smugly count myself among this crowd).
And finally there are the "these people are very interesting" crowd (sometimes there is some crossover, these thinks aren't always fixed binary states--for instance asebius may well have at some point said something interesting in the past--who knows?--even if he is on my "oh no this is gonna be ugly!" list...)
Of course, there are a lot of shades of gray when it comes to why people do what they do. Qualifying actions in comparison to others is even more challenging. Social interaction is complicated, I'll leave it at that. (Some people are rather averse to it, I might add...)
All I can say, is that today, Asebius should be ashamed of his banzai behavioral antics here at TOD. What a louse.
mr f,
thanks for that - that makes more sense.
What saddens me about this episode is I realized for the first time today how tenuous this site is - we are trying to do the right thing, but how many unwarranted or irrelevant personal attacks will we (we being the 17 contributors and editors that continue to volunteer time and energy) be able to tolerate once energy events result in more social pain and eventually cause some random angry eloquent guy with internet access make us question if its all worth it, etc... the tragedy of the TOD commons.
"the tragedy of the TOD commons."
That is a good way of putting it. The tragedy of the commons effect seems to strike all open fora from time to time. Hopefully we (speaking to myself especially) can keep cool. I do have a weakness for troll-feeding - must try harder.
What saddens me about this episode is I realized for the first time today how tenuous this site is - we are trying to do the right thing,
Part of the reasons the 'drumbeats' were created - so the stuff remotely tied to an energy topic gets posted here.
The economy of energy, the use of force to obtain or deny others from getting energy, food, economic arguments of how the marketrinos react in the lab VS the 'real world', et la.
Better to have the blow up today happen here (with the occasional post like Prof. Goose telling the kids to sit down, shut up, or the station wagon will get turned right around!) VS the research pieces.
tolerate once energy events result in more social pain
The staff will know because there will start to be more sock-puppets and 'on message' coming from outfits like:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/7/17/9137/01266
If things get out of hand enough to want change, but not enough to say 'Bu Bye' - 2 different serving IPs, one NAT with dynamic redirect such that the sandboxed kids go to one site, the non sandboxxed to the 'normal main site'. Differences between the 2 - written off as a coding error.
That way people who wanna kick sand at each other get to do that all day till they get bored and go away...
I've been posting to the usenet group sci.environment for more than 10 years now and in recent years, the trolls have taken to flooding the group with mindless rants, then running away when faced with a serious challenge. Most of the posts are now focused on climate change, so any other issues are also buried. Today's Drum Beat has an amazing number of posts, most of which get down to "I'm right, you're wrong" rants.
I'm afraid that there are many more trolls than folks actually interested in the issues and these guys might even be paid to post. The only solution is to use the power available to the moderators to cull the obvious trolls, although this brings up the charge of censorship.
E. Swanson
No need to pay anyone. Idiots more than abound.
Open source idiocy is free.
No sense beating around the bush. I'm not shocked by much anymore, but severely irritated by your efforts at censorship and thinly veiled attempts to suppress discussion on ideas that do not conform to your political views. If you disagree with what has been posted, you're free to disagree publicly, but instead you object to the discussion happening at all. And what, you figured this concept would get a warm reception on TOD?
If you're outside your comfort zone, do something else.
Asebius: I'm calling you out- you are an ANARCHIST. Actually, you're a pretty damn good one. Singlehandedly, you've managed to monopolize the whole Drumbeat by hammering away on this one word. Disorder and chaos is your only goal and you have succeeded admirably. Congrats. You belong here. You are the fringe of the fringe of the fringe.
Guernica
You too need to be bitchslapped. Very hard.
Check out Unrestricted Warfare if you want a better link between Nestles' pumping the ground water, Casella burning trash, chicken farms in Thailand, hedge funds and financial asset striping and "your" government. The people that run those operations own the government. *Legitimacy* is becoming a real issue - inequality is a powderkeg.
I can make a very good, logical, case for tearing apart the world *now*: it's a simple as noting that preserving the business-as-usual system will make the crash much, much, much worse in another decade. But logical as that may be, it doesn't carry any weight; it's all I can do to plant my own vegetables, know that doing so will, of course, some day prove me to be a terrorist and justify the taking of my vegetables by the local authorities. [If I'm lucky, I'll be sent to the sugar cane plantation.]
The violence is intrinsic to our concept of society. Derrick Jensen, etc...
cfm in Gray, ME
Just as there is inequality in the distribution of wealth. There will be inequality in the distribution of energy. Not just between countries, but within America. The joke about there still being plenty of $20 a gallon gasoline around will not be a joke. If you think the income and wealth gap in this country is huge, wait til you see the energy gap. We will be entering a new feudalism where those with tens of millions of dollars up to the billionaires (NOT including the peon middle class conservatives who 'believe' they 'belong' in the upper tier) will live in a totally seperate world from the underclass most of whom will starve.(including the above mentioned middle classers) The overclass will not experience an energy crisis. All of their needs will be met. The needs of the underclass will not be recognized. If anything the underclass will be seen as 'excess population'; a problem to be dealt with. It will be the 'excess population' that is destroying the planet. The needs of the 'excess population' that are putting a strain on the environment. And you know what? They'll be right.
That narrative clashes directly with America cultural roots, if a persons culture is threatened then they will resist very hard despite the class power dynamics.
The narrative is a direct extrapolation of current American happenings. As for what happened to the old American culture, perhaps this is how it died.
It is indeed a direct extrapolation. The Reagan Revolution was, above all, a national repudiation of the idea that we are "all in this together." This was America proclaiming loudly that if the "good people" could no longer pass laws that were blatantly disciminatory, then we would give them the money and resources needed to create their own little sanitized worlds, free of "the other."
There was only one thing wrong with that calculus: We really are "all in this together." How much would it take to transform a gated community into a community under seige? What good is an armored Mercedes against an improvised explosive device?
There are still a few places around the country where one can find some elements of the old traditional, regional cultures. For example, here in WNC and throughout the Southern Highlands there is a real renaissance going in in traditional handmade folk arts & crafts. Mountain music never really went away. One can still find good country home cooking here, and quite a few people still grow their own food and cook their own meals.
These little regional pockets of cultural preservation are the functional equivalent of regional centers of natural biodiversity.
The needs of the 'excess population' that are putting a strain on the environment.
http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/agenda21.htm
Couldn't find the link I wanted - but this one will do.
http://infowars.com/articles/science/population_enviro_mentalists_call_f...
'Cuz it has lotza links to back up AJ's POV.
I figured it would happen soon. Didn't figure they were so far along in researching and promoting the elimination of the 'excess population'.
http://www.seashepherd.org/editorials/editorial_070504_1.html
(By the way, I'm all for the elimination of snakes and lizards in excess of 25 feet.) ;)
Didn't figure they were so far along in researching and promoting the elimination of the 'excess population'.
Yea, that's what the 'Fight the New World Order' crowd have been hanging their hat on for years. Secret bunkers, plans for bio-warfare, on and on and on. Hell, one of 'em talks about tunnels 4.5 miles under the earth. Tosses in how its 'for the aliens' and that would avoid the tech+heat+pressure issues - cept he also claims humans are in these same tunnels. (snicker)
If one wants to look through the world with the 'A new order where the rabble will be dead' lenses - written history is filled with such claims.
And the other part of the whole 'kill off the rabble' plan - exactly how are the 'non rabble' gonna have the material and food made and brought to 'em?
Well, certainly it won't be possible to kill off ALL the rabble. There will be plenty left around to serve as a peasantry. And for those pretentious ones who consider themselves "Upper Middle Class", there IS a shortage of butlers and house servants. I'm sure they would do nicely. It's all about KNOWING YOUR PLACE in the new world order.
It's all about KNOWING YOUR PLACE in the new world order.
That's the 'pinned down by your neck under the heel of a jack-booted thug' place right?
That would be reserved for those who don't seem to know their place. The Chinese bill the family for the bullet used to execute the family member that 'forgets their place'. Appears quite effective.
Hilarious article from The Onion today:
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/earthquake_sets_japan_back_to_2147?...
"TOKYO—Japanese government officials confirmed Monday that the damage wrought on Japan's national infrastructure by the July 16th earthquake—particularly on the country's protective force field, quantum teleportation system, zero-point fusion energy broadcasting grid, and psychodynamic communications network—was severe enough to set the technologically advanced island nation back approximately 300 years to a primitive mid-22nd-century state of existence."
Oh how exciting the future will be!
That is classic... obviously written by someone who's been there.
Obviously the PM didn't get the memo from Kunstler saying technology couldn't save mankind from oil depletion....
http://www.rbcnews.com/free/20070723190004.shtml
Russian oil output increases 3%. Looks like most of the growth is exported. Internal consumption growth seems to be much less then output growth or export growth:
I know there is a lot of feeling about Export Land Model. Don't blame me, I am just a messenger.
Put numbers into excel to get absolute values:
Oil output have increases by 7m tonnes.
Exports increased by 5.4m tones (5.8 increase outside of CIS and .4 decrease to CIS).
Internal consumption increased by 1.6m tones.
Percent-wise export increased by 4.3%.
Internal consumption increased by 1.5%.
Note that the Russians are talking about recent (1/07 to 6/07) crude oil production, but when they talk about oil exports, they are talking about year to date comparisons 1/07-6/07 versus 1/06 to 6/06.
What we need, and what the article did not provide, are oil export numbers since October, 2006. I suspect that these numbers show overall declining oil exports. I would think that a rate of increase in foreign car sales of 50% per year in Russia might have some kind of impact on domestic consumption.
What's there to note? Both are comparing same data ranges. Jan-Jun 07 vs Jan-Jun 06, for both production and export.
I agree that I also would've though that internal consumption will grow faster then that. Maybe new cars and other technologies are finally displacing old and inefficient machines? I do not know... I really have no idea, just guessing.
I'm afraid that you are still misreading what they said.
They said oil production was up from January, 2007 to June, 2007.
Did they say that exports were up from January 2007 to June, 2007? No.
They switched horses on you. They said that year to date exports, 1/07 to 6/07 were up over 1/06 to 6/06. They did not say one word about June, 2007 exports versus January, 2007 exports.
I suspect, but I do not know for sure, that the June, 2007 exports compared to January, 2007 is topic that they prefer not to talk about.