 | Avoiding Harmful Solutions (to Our Climate and Energy Problems) | The Oil Drum | Oil Closes above $93 today...in the next month, CLZ07/CLF08 will... |  |
DrumBeat: October 29, 2007
Posted by Leanan on October 29, 2007 - 8:54am
Crude Oil Climbs to Record $93.80 as Mexico Cuts Gulf Output
Crude oil for December delivery rose $1.59, or 1.7 percent, to $93.45 a barrel at the 2:30 p.m. close of floor trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Futures climbed to $93.80, the highest since trading began in 1983.Brent crude oil for December settlement rose $1.53, or 1.7 percent, to $90.22 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange. Brent reached $90.49, the highest since trading began in 1988.
The oil market "may be only one or two events away from" $100-plus oil, Daniel Yergin, chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, said in remarks prepared for a conference today at Georgetown University.
"Golden age" of oil refining margins to end
The global "golden age" of record refining profits is likely to be over by the end of the decade thanks to more capacity from new plants and higher costs due to record crude prices, industry analysts say.Signs the boom is faltering have already emerged. ConocoPhillips suspended production at its German refinery for a month in August due to low margins, an unusually long shutdown in the peak summer driving season.
China diesel squeeze persists as oil tops $93
China's worst diesel rationing in four years may last several more weeks as record oil prices choke output from independent refineries and the top suppliers show no rush to top up imports, industry officials said on Monday.
Tokyo Electric to Pay Record Price for Fuel Oil From Nippon Oil
Tokyo Electric Power Co., Oji Paper Co. and other Japanese fuel oil users will pay Nippon Oil Corp. record prices in the three months to December.
Enbridge to Further Expand N.D. Pipeline
The $150 million expansion will increase total system capacity from 110,000 barrels per day to 161,000 barrels per day. The project will add 40,000 barrels per day of capacity from the western end of the system to Minot, N.D., and 51,000 barrels per day of capacity from Minot to Clearbrook, Minn. Enbridge expects the expansion to come into service by late 2009.
Flying J Shuts Unit at California Refinery After Power Failure
Flying J Inc., a closely held operator of refineries in Utah and California, shut a hydrocracking unit after losing an electrical transformer.
Russia to open oil futures exchange
Russia’s Ministry of Economic Development and Trade is setting up a domestic oil futures exchange, which will trade not only the best-known Russian crude, Urals, but also the new export blend REBCO.
PetroChina to Raise $8.9 Billion in China Share Sale
PetroChina Co., the nation's largest oil producer, will raise 66.8 billion yuan ($8.9 billion) in the world's biggest share sale this year to expand refineries and increase output at oilfields.
Supreme Court to review Exxon Valdez case
The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to decide whether Exxon Mobil Corp. should pay $2.5 billion in punitive damages in connection with the huge Exxon Valdez oil spill that fouled more than 1,200 miles of Alaskan coastline in 1989.The high court stepped into the long-running battle over the damages that Exxon Mobil owes in the spillage of 11 million gallons of oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound, the worst oil spill in U.S. history.
A breakthrough in the India-US nuclear deal
India’s nuclear deal with the US might be saved. After weeks of bad news, with the Indian government failing to get its Communist-led parliamentary allies on side, the ground is at last shifting and it looks as if the Bharatiya Janata Party, India’s main opposition which has been objecting to the deal, might save the day.
The Last Days of the PetroDollar
The world's economy runs on oil, and as long as all the oil producing nations demanded dollars for their crude then American dollars were in reality backed by oil. In other words, it was Bretton Woods II....Being able to print the world's reserve currency at no cost also means that interest rates are kept at an artificially low level because foreigners need our dollars more than we need their savings. It also means that massive trade deficits are not an important issue because we can always print more dollars to pay for the goods that other nations produce.
Mexico Pemex Halts One-Fifth of Crude Output on Storm
State oil monopoly Petroleos Mexicanos, the third-largest supplier to the U.S., shut down output of 200,000 barrels at noon New York time yesterday and was planning to idle wells that produce a further 400,000 barrels by midnight in Mexico, Carlos Ramirez, a company spokesman in Mexico City, said late yesterday. The wells would be shut until at least Oct. 30, Ramirez said, without elaborating. Mexico pumps about 3.1 million barrels of crude a day."We stopped production because there's no way to move the crude," he said.
Oil barons turn to hi-tech solutions
Rising energy costs and uncertain reserves are prompting the oil industry to look to technology to increase output from existing fields and find new sources.The industry is gearing up for higher prices and is trying out new technological methods to extract the maximum from each well.
Most fields yield only 35 per cent of their oil, but Saudi Aramco has raised that to 50 per cent using technological innovation and is aiming for 70 per cent by 2027.
James Mound's Weekend Commodities Review
The market suckered in a lot of shorts, me included, and then rocketed back to fresh highs amid growing geopolitical concerns. While the concept of peak oil (the end of the growth cycle of this limited life natural resource) is well supported, it does not necessarily support the current extremes. The market is in a short covering frenzy, overextended beyond what any normal relative strength scale would measure and setting up for a serious bull suck-in and shakeout.
UK: Energy questions that will need to be answered
Environmentalist Jeremy Leggett, who wrote a book about oil depletion called Half Gone, says that the British government and our energy industry is in “institutionalised denial”.It’s chilling (and will get chillier) and we can’t say we weren’t warned, but both answers and action seem as elusive as ever.
“Hydrogen is a very promising fuel for the future,” says Greg Naterer, a UOIT professor and researcher.Dr. Naterer has much reason to be optimistic. He is the lead researcher on a multi-million dollar project that is hoping to solve at least part of the world’s energy crisis.
Deffeyes has updated his web site: Feedback Loops
Jeff Vail posted on www.theoildrum.com/node/3017 a list of feedback loops that would diminish oil availability after the oil peak. Vail's piece is thoughtful. I highly recommend reading it, preferably before reading my comments about it.Vail identifies five feedbacks from a diminished oil supply that would make the problem even worse. I'll take the risk of stating them briefly...
Peak Oil And Famine: Four Billion Deaths
At some point in the early years of the 21st century, there will be a clash of two giant forces: overpopulation and oil depletion. That much has been known for a long time. It is also well known that population must eventually decline in order to match the decline in oil production. A further problem, however, is that it will be impossible to get those two giant forces into equilibrium in any gentle fashion, because of a matter that is rarely considered: that in every year that has gone by — and every year that will arrive — the population of the earth is automatically adjusted so that it is almost exactly equal to its carrying capacity. We are always barely surviving. Population growth is soaring, whereas oil production is plunging. If, at the start of any year, the world’s population is greater than its carrying capacity, only simple arithmetic is needed to see that the difference between the two numbers means that mortality will be above the normal by the end of that year. In fact, over the course of the 21st century there will be about 4 billion deaths (probably about 3.6, to be more precise) above normal.
Strategic Implications of the Surge in Oil Prices
The enrichment of the oil-producing states and the growing dependence on Arab oil will strengthen those states politically, particularly in the eyes of oil importers, including those in Asia whose role in global affairs is growing. Moreover, some companies may prefer not to do business with Israel or invest in Israeli companies in order not to harm ties with Arab states and Iran. At the same time, political use of the oil weapons is not likely in the foreseeable future given the lack of solidarity in the Arab world and the state of relations between the oil-producing states and the West.
We cannot allow institutions like the World Bank to impose ill-conceived carbon-based energy reforms on developing nations.
Great Lakes key front in water wars
While the West burns and the Southeast bakes, there is little to suggest a large-scale, climatological catastrophe playing out any time soon in the Midwest. In fact, farmers in Iowa and Minnesota had trouble last week harvesting their corn and soybean crops because there had been too much rain.But potentially huge battles over water are looming in the Great Lakes region as cities, towns and states near and far fight for access to the world's largest body of fresh surface water, all of it residing in the five Great Lakes.
Massachussetts: Water levels fall; drought fears on rise
The lawn is scorched, the saplings are shriveled, and the local ponds and streams are lower than usual.It's not as bad as Malibu, Calif., Atlanta, or the Great Lakes, but Massachusetts is suffering from drought.
Oil leaps to record over $93 on Mexico, dollar
Oil leapt to a record high for a third day on Monday, surpassing $93 as Mexico briefly halted one-fifth of its production and the dollar struck new lows.U.S. crude, which hit a high of $93.20 a barrel earlier, was up $1.02 cents at $92.88 by 8:07 a.m. EST. London Brent, which hit a record high $90, was up 89 cents at $89.58.
Oil price likely to hit high of 1979
Crude oil prices appear increasingly likely to hit their real terms record, that was reached during the second oil crisis in 1979, as nominal prices soar above Dollars 90 a barrel.
Could Crude Oil $100 Cause the Next Credit Crunch?
The Financial Sector is still coming to terms with the US Subprime Mortgages induced credit crunch, could again be in the line of fire of a new credit crunch caused by crude oil surging to $100, triggering a similar collapse of hedge funds and put the banking sector under renewed pressure as the crude oil credit crunch contagion spreads.
China to reach peak oil production as early as 2015
China will see domestic oil production peak as early as 2015 with an annual output of 190 million tons, while gas production is expected to peak sometime around 2035 with an annual output of 120 billion cubic meters, a leading energy scholar said at an industry forum held in Beijing over the weekend.
Middle East can leave oily old cycle in the past
A new power is taking its place in the world economy. After the disruptive emergence of China and India as key players with a decisive role in shaping global economic events, the Middle East is joining the race to challenge the dominance of the industrial West.
Iran Adapts to Economic Pressure
Confronted by mounting U.S. and U.N. pressure, Iran has been steadily shifting its trade from West to East and, with the benefit of record high oil prices, is likely to be able to withstand the new U.S. sanctions, according to U.S., European and Iranian analysts.
California gears up for car emissions fight
California plans to sue the Environmental Protection Agency this week for delaying a decision over whether to let the state aggressively reduce car and truck tailpipe emissions. The lawsuit's outcome could affect not only the California law aimed at cutting greenhouse gases but also the ability of other states to take similar actions.
GM to set up research center in Shanghai
General Motors Corp. said Monday it will set up a $250 million alternative-fuel research center in Shanghai amid efforts by global automakers to produce commercially viable alternatives to gasoline engines.
'Wall of money' set to flow into Asian renewable energy
Green investors, pension funds and private equity managers have a "wall of money" poised to flow into renewable energy ventures in Asia where demand for energy is growing exponentially, say observers. Investable opportunities may remain frustratingly elusive but the sector could soon explode into life.
The Philippines: 170 scientists urge halt to oil exploration
Marine scientists from all over the Philippines have called on the government to stop the oil exploration initiated by the Department of Energy in Tañon Strait because of threats it poses on whales, dolphins, fish and other marine creatures, people’s livelihood, and potentially irreplaceable and invaluable natural heritage.
Climate Change's Uncertainty Principle
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its first report in 1990 predicted that temperatures would warm by 0.5 degree Fahrenheit (0.3 degree Celsius) per decade if no efforts were made to restrain greenhouse gas emissions. But the panel of scientists and other experts was wrong: By 2001, the group estimated that average temperatures would increase by 2.7 to 8.1 degrees F (1.5 to 4.5 degrees C) in the 21st century, and they raised the lower end to 3.6 degrees F (2 degrees C) this year in their most recent report. In essence, neither this international team of experts nor any other can say with any certainty just how bad global warming may get.
Cement Industry Is at Center of Climate Change Debate
But making cement means making pollution, in the form of carbon dioxide emissions. Cement plants account for 5 percent of global emissions of carbon dioxide, the main cause of global warming. Cement has no viable recycling potential; each new road, each new building needs new cement.Now, green incentives may be increasing pollution. The European Union subsidizes Western companies that buy outmoded cement plants in poor countries and refit them with green technology. But the greenest technologies can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by only about 20 percent.
Now with 50 percent less truth
WHEN THE top public health official of the United States addressed the Senate last Tuesday on the health impact of global warming in this country, the senators - and the public - had a right to expect Julie Gerberding's full, unvarnished thoughts on this important issue. That's not what they got. In another case of the White House censoring what the public learns about climate change, the administration cut her testimony in half.
Contact
- Content: editors at theoildrum dot com
- Tech support: support at theoildrum dot com
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
While reading the new comments in the other day's thread I wondered what the US$ was currently doing so I went over to the Bloomberg Benchmark Currency page and about had a heart-attack.
The US dollar is way below parity with the Canadian dollar now.
The last few hours show a little uptick in the generally dismal trend of the dollar index. FIIK what it means.
| The problem will solve itself.
| But not in a nice way.
This is the sound of the other shoe dropping, courtesy of "Helicopter Ben's" 1/2% drop in interest rates.
Given the US negative balance of trade, our interest rates actually needed to be RAISED just to maintain the value of the US$. Obviously, the decision was made to go the other way, so this is the inevitable consequence.
You ain't seen nothin, yet. . .
The fed can raise or lower the short term rate as they wish. All other bond rates are set by the market. If demand for a specific bond (2 yr, 3yr, 10 yr, 30year paper)declines the yield rises. Foreign central banks and investors are growing tired IMHO of the suckers game they have been playing for the past 6 years as the US$ index declined by 50%.
When foreign investors stop buying US federal and corporate debt the interest rates for these bonds will rise for everything except the short term interbank rates the US Fed controls.
If the Chinese and oil producers decide they no longer want to carry the US consumer and their increasingly worthless currency interest rates will go through the roof.
Yup, but they are going to do it anyway, because the market is awash with people that don't understand economics. When investors see the Fed drop rates the immediate go on a buying spree in equities, because it worked in the past twenty five years. This gives the false preception that everything is just fine.
Well that isn't entirely correct. The Fed and the US treasury dept. can directly purchase gov't bonds (Repos) and have been doing a fine job purchasing the treasures sold off by Japan and China. The Treasury dept. has also begun to opening the door to purchase Commericial paper via MLEC. The Fed has also opened the door to accepting MBS too.
http://www.pimco.com/TopNav/Home/Default.htm (All Treasury rates are far below the official overnight rate of 4.75%)
Well this is probably untrue because of the Fed and Treasury can use Repos to keep the yields of gov't bonds low. But it would cause costs for imports to soar. I don't either the Fed or Treasury is concerned about the damage rising imports will cause. In fact, Paulson has been hard at work trying to get the Chinese to revalue their currency. Its seems obvious to me that that are deliberately engineering a lower dollar, on the false premise that this is the time to correct trade imbalances. It may take a couple of years before Washington figures out that they killed the US by trying to fix trade imbalances. Its almost certainly going to cause a global depression. If the US dollar goes under (loses its AAA bond rating) it will likely be the end of the United states some years later. We will likely see the beginning of the "Divided States of America" as foriegners will be unwilling to accept US currency and individual states will print local currencies. Sooner or later, Americans (and foriegners) will loose all faith and interest in Washington. When that happens its likely that states will assume more control over their own interests and we end up with a figure head federal gov't (like the British Monarchy) that is virtually powerless.
Paulson, Bernanke and the Goldman mafia tell the sheeple one thing
Then there is the part they tell their own people
http://www.irvinehousingblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/california-v...
Crude just hit $94/gallon according to this article in the Sydney Morning Herald.....
http://www.smh.com.au/news/business/crude-oil-leaps-to-us94/2007/10/30/1...
Ishtar
The Fed's telegraphing another % rate cut this week.
The race is on. Housing destroying $'s faster than the Fed can create them.
Arkansaw of Samuel L Clemens
The Federal Reserve nearly always tends to follow the market.
http://www.theoildrum.com/files/fedfollows.gif
I had quite a bit of a surprise on saturday evening at 10.40 pm when I came home. My wife was watching the news on our national TV program "France 3", (edition du soir 27/10/2007). It may be the lest watched news edition from the MSM but it still is MSM.
There was the presentator chating with Jerome Bonaldi, a french journalist, who has written a book called "life without (almost) any oil" (la vie (presque) sans pétrole). There they sat, talking without any passion about TEOTWAWKI. Really. Without any inflections, precautions or other circonvolutions. Bonaldi said that, after interviewing some scientists economists geologists et all, he thought oil was headed for 380$, that people couldn't afford it any more and that our society would morph completely. It's the end of the era of plenty he said. I've read his book, he is not a doomer. He thinks we will revert to transport by horse for many and suppress international trade. We will see an economy of recycling. He sees a break down of society into small components.
I think he reads TOD since he used the "human slave analogy" to represent our dependance on oil. So Jerome Bonaldi, if you read this, know that there are now at least 3 Jeromes reading this blog.
Jerome KOK
Bourg en Bresse
Interesting!
But TOD can't take credit for the "energy slave" analogy. Other have used it, and probably Pierre Chomat deserves the most credit for popularizing it (ergamine).
Thanks !
You have an amazing amount of culture.
Leanan,
Sorry for going off-thread. How can I open the drumbeat a second time and find new posts. I currently use the "find" function on my browser and search for [new. Is there an easier way?
Thanks,
CAS
No, I'm afraid not. That's how we all do it.
It's better than it was. Up until recently, posting a message nuked all the new flags. Now it doesn't.
Hello all,
After the presentation on Australia, etc., have been thinking hard about the general consequences of PO for Europe and particularly France.
Notice that there are other French people here and wondered if they are aware of any studies (TOD or other) on the subject and if they would care to discuss it.
Ciao,
François
Hello FB
I have thought a bit about that, and i believe that Europe will manage it without a die-off catastrophe. But it will be different in different countrys. For example France and Sweden(my country) should manage better than other european countrys due to our nuclear and hydro electrical produktion.
And we have not as USA partly destroyed our old infrastructure of many small towns with a hinterland of farming.
We made it during WWII, with all difficulties then, why should we not manage now?
The only Q-mark for me is the huge immigration population now.
population of europe pre-industrialization and pre-green revolution.
~78 million
current population of europe
728 million
overshoot ~700 million.
What was life like in pre-industrial Europe. Here is what it was like in a typical French city:
That is what it was like before the days of fossil fuels, before the industrial revolution or the green revolution. We will eventually return to the same agricultural production and industrial production that was present in France in those days. But it will take a long time because there will be very few farm animals and the skills required to live in those days have disappeared.
Think about it. People could get so hungry that they eat next years seed. But no doubt they will eat the cows and horses. There will be no breeding stock left. Hell, there are hardley any horses left right now.
Ron Patterson
thats why i put overshoot in the 700 million range.
it is not unreasonable to assume that even if europe drops down to 78 million half of those people die while trying to re-learn old skills and failing.
If overshoot for Europe is about 700 million above the sustainable level of ~77 million, the population crash will be well below 77 million.
What was the Native American population before Columbus landed in North America?
I'll try to say this as many times as necessary:
Population overshoots always follow the pulse waveform of the most common oscillation in Nature, the relaxaction oscillator. This means a more gradual rise followed by a steeper fall, a sort of a sawtooth wave. The fall will dip below the original population level, and take some time to reach the equilibrium level that was present before.
That's right, it's not a bell curve. It's the the same curve as the voltage/time one every EE student learns is present in a laser pulser or a camera flash.
Bell curves are pretty, and in statistics, are natural. They are not natural in the growth/crash relaxation oscillator that we and other types of yeast live by though.
Relaxation oscillator I mean.
I laughed when I first heard the name, engineering types learn it ideally when they're learning about something called the RC time constant.
I learned about the sawtooth waveform in my dated electronic technician background, although I don't recall the term "Relaxation oscillator".
Google had lots of hits and a quick check or the Wiki link uses terminology I am familiar with.
I didn't see an explanation in the Google
returns of the term's genesis, though.
Flaws
in EM Theory
this is why i think the living will envy the dead when TSHTF.
This is correct. Most of Europe is vastly overpopulated and in serious overshoot
Hi François and Swede,
I would somewhat disagree with our resistance to PO because of hydro and nuclear, at least in France. I am not able to generalise about Sweden, you are neighbours with norway which could help a lot not talking about a sound social organisationn, which is really not the case in France
On a micro level, I happen to witness some facts about our economy in France which shows an increasing misery among people belonging to the under middle class. This fact is totally unaccounted for and I can witness that the government is actively suppressing the figures which should show this increase.
On a macro level, I recall that we are part of the global economy. All our industry majors owe their growth to their international business structures (not exports). It is true that a part of our economy is fueled by nuclear (80% of our electricity) but this is already completely factored into the economy.
Our economy is tanking from all parts, our social security is on the verge of collapsus, some hospitals are on the brink of bankruptcy. Every aspect of our administration is witnessing increasing difficulties to meet targets for normal operation. Violence is now widespread and daily in some of our suburbs (but well hidden by our politicians). Our infrastructure of telecommuncations is not decent any more. I could go on about our dams and even some aspects of the security in our nuclear reactors (these energy forms are really too dependant on a working hydrocarbon economy, think about transport, cement, income and international security). Take out a fraction of hydrocarbons and/or a % of growth and the whole system will collapse as a house or cards.
I think that the Euro will explode like the dollar, along with the european union. We will revert to strong regionalism (which isn't really dead). I only hope that we will avoid too strong antagonisms but this is mere hope.
In Sweden there is some boom euphoria along with some climate change scare, a weak peak oil debate and the usual tabloid churn. Most of the economical indicators are moving in good directions. (Is falling housing prices good or bad? Seem ok as long as they dont fall below the new build cost in the growing regions. )
One explenation for this is that a large part of the Swedish industry is specialized in investment goods needed by booming or retooling economies. Another one is very good government finances. Or the effects of lower unemployment from lowering overall taxation and especially poor peoples taxes and provinding unpopular incintive changes by cutting subsides for groups that should be able to work more. Or that our economy is fairly oil efficient.
We are doing tax cuts that would have made Reagan or a Bush proud but they are aimed at getting the poorest people back into the working economy and thus also ease bottlenecks. It feels like living in a very intresting experiment that is doing great. Our economy were dragging along an anvil and now we have decided to drop it. From my observation it is not "trickle down" changed, its the other way around and rich people has to invest and do business to reap benefits from the change. This feels culturally right for me and I am sure I soon will live in a healthier society.
We got violence problems, lack of maintainance problems, school quality problems, government efficiency problems and so on but things are being done to correct them. The lead time from finding a problem and doing something substantial about it is most often several years but the systems do react. From the fringe of our government system where I work I see efforts to make it work more efficient. These efforts are probably helped a lot by the change of government a year ago but I do of course have the winning sides viewpoint.
If what is broken is a technical system with a cash flow and there are no regulations slowing down the corrections of the problem I have seen substantial things starting being done within months rather then years. The perfect example is reactions to electricity grid failures. Btw, this example is from before the change of ruling parties a year ago. Manny plants in the governmnet garden were healthy but it helps to get rid of weeds. Thus I am extremely happy that my party has decided to prioritize simpler planning and environmental regulations and faster legal processes to be able to handle climate change and so on.
I think the following years can be extremely good for my country if large parts of the world dont decide to go apocalypse crazy and burn thru resources in conflicts over oil, water or prestige and thus destroy large parts of the world trade. We only have to quickly use the proven good ideas all around, in manny areas increase the physically productive economy with 10-20% and we will be ok with research level ideas delivering icing on the cake.
Quickly as in cutting lead times to something like 1/4 and breaking the habit of detailed government subsidies and replace them with broad and fast market responses. Such as not favoring biofuels, or wind or solar or nuclear power but pulling the brake blocks and see what starts moving in response to the changes taking place. And not favoring a single solution for energy production is part of my parties program since three days ago. Boy am I happy seeing this process from the inside and even helping it along by a tiny bit.
I dont think the dollar has exploded or that the euro will explode. Things can go to hell but having the larger part of the economy shrinking while the new parts start to grow is not hell. I hope will will get strong regions competing in a constructive way. I would like a stronger Swedish defence but not that we would try to compete my maximizing arms production above all else, the bulk of the investments should be in directly productive areas.
I better get back to another hour of work instead of ToD reading and rambling. If the menial thins are not done there will be no paycheck or people listening to the few bright thoughts I have among the rambling. ;-)
We heard all this crap before from the Reaganites. "Making the poor productive" is always a Trojan Horse for neo-Victorianism, whether it comes from Reagan, Thatcher, Bush(es), Clinton(s), Sarkozy, or whatever fascists the neocons have installed in Poland and the Czech Republic. And the end result is always Rio de Janeiro, and was always intended to be.
Which is why there is going to be one more war everywhere in the world before a final collapse.
yup. only this time there won't be a altruistic relief organization from some rich first world country coming in to help these poor souls.
[quote] On a micro level, I happen to witness some facts about our economy in France which shows an increasing misery among people belonging to the under middle class. This fact is totally unaccounted for and I can witness that the government is actively suppressing the figures which should show this increase.[/quote]
I'm seeing the same thing here in the US. At first I thought it was confined to New York City, but then I moved to a small town for work. It is a small town I'd lived in ten years earlier, so it was easy to see how it had changed over that time. The change paralleled that in NYC. Fewer comfortably middle class people, but an obvious division between a smaller group of very prosperous people and the majority who are poor and struggling. Working class areas seem more run down, while wealthy areas seem shockingly prosperous.
What does sweden use for heating and hot water? Just Electricity and full renewable biomass or solar. Why is the EU so dependant on Russian oil and gas imports?
It should also be interesting when the Muslims population (growing numbers) starts demanding that the Christians (declining numbers) convert to Islam. It should also be equally interesting to see how Europe deals with its Socialism and Centralized controlled economy (aka the road to Totalitarianism) Currently Europe's socialism is unsustainably supported by manufacturing exports (aka Trade surpluses)
FWIW: I believe that Europe will either ripped apart by religous civil war cast by the Moslim population, or fall into one or more totalitarian gov't(s). When the shelves go bare and the trains stop running. I have absolutely no doubt that Europeans will show their darker side went things go sour.
Where did the first two world wars originate? What would have happen to Western Europe if the US did not intervene in the second WW? What would had happened if the US didn't begin the Marshal plan and pulled all of its troops out of Europe right after the war ended? (hint: Europeans all would be speaking in Russian).
Its very likely the US will soon begin to close its bases in Europe as America is no longer able to finance them. Whether Europe replaces US servicemen with there own troops is up in the air, but the present of US troops certainly prevented a build in in arms and helped maintain a peace between individual European nations as virtually all of the Europeam nations were focused on the Soviet Threat. The Iron Curtain is no more, and without a US presence, individual European nations will once again will be free to explore political and idealogical ideas that have been long been suppresed.
To believe that individual European nations have have fought wars among themselves for thousands of years, have somehow pacified themselves seems egregious. Germans still see themselves as Germans and the French still see themselves as French, not Europeans. If the French think the Germans are getting a better deal over a EU policy, or the Germans see French taking advantage of an EU policy, it won't take too long before the EU reverts back into individual nations. Marriages occur during the good times and divorces become numberous during the bad times.
You could argue WWII began in China when Japan attacked.
As you implied, the Soviets would have eventually won the war. It just would have taken longer.
This is my major pet peeve about what Americans are taught about World War II. It's always said the U.S. joined the war and defeated the Germans. The Soviets had already turned the tide against Germany before the U.S. had any significant involvement. The U.S. didn't win the war in Europe. What the U.S. did is ensure the West had a piece of the spoils, limiting the Soviets to only eastern Europe.
The whole Eastern Front is routine glossed over in our accounts of the war.
Without the food, trucks (90% of Red Army trucks came from the USA), weapons of all types, supplies, etc. plus tying down 1 million on the home front against the air war plus millions more in Africa & Italy and defending the Western Wall, the Germans would have won on the Eastern Front, as they did during WW I.
Some part of the USSR would likely have remained, but Germany and Italy would be on the Black Sea and likely the Caspian as well.
Alan
edited
Certainly the Russians did the bulk of the fighting against the Nazis and caused the collapse of the german army. As an American I do not dispute this fact. However, there is a significant chance that Russia would have fallen had the US not provided critical resources to the Russians during the war. The US supplied Russia with fuel, planes, food, ammunition, machine tools, and other essential supplies. In addition, the US forced the Nazis to deploy troops in western Europe that could have been used on the eastern front. If the Russians lost, it would be hard to believe the US and the remaining allies would have been able to defeat Nazi Germany. Althought, since the US was developing atomic weapons, its likely the the US probably would have deployed them in Europe. I can't say with certainty that the US would have been successful with a nuclear campaign in Europe had Russia fallen to the Nazis. Its probable that the Nazis could have moved factories and large populations out of the range of US bombers, deep into eastern Europe, and its unlikely that the US could produce nuclear warheads fast enough for a huge strategic advantage that would probably be required.
But to my point, this has nothing to do whatsoever about the Future of Europe.
TOD Europe tries to forecast some items for europe with Euan Mears, Rembrandt, Luis de Susa, et al.
you can also try some ASPO France documents. On oleocene.org there are some discussions about the french situation. But our think tanks like "l'institut Montaigne", "l'institut pour la croissance" are deniers. Our greens have tried some work on the peak of oil production but lack the hard projections about the consequences which are already ongoing IMHO. Most of the philosophers, economists and scientists who are aware about the problem don't see any difference about the situation here with the rest of the industrial world becaue of the globalisation of the economy. I agree and will seek out a local solution to the problem.
L'Institut pour la Croissance?
You'd almost expect them to be cornucopian, wouldn't you? :)
LOL, indeed.
But in the beginning they were to seek a path to "une croissance autrement" (another way to growth), but J. Atalli found no way to devise a path without a growth in energy consumption ...
For those who are thinking that the US will fall into civil war, here is an indication of which side you need to be on.
http://www.magicvalley.com/articles/2007/10/28/news/top_story/123529.txt
Oklahoma is looking better and better if the manufacturers start relocating en mass.
It may be better to be a live jackal than a dead lion, but it is better still to be a live lion. And usually easier. - Heinlein
To Ride, Shoot Straight and Speak the Truth - Col Cooper
Unless the Dust Bowl reforms.
Alan
Thanks neuroil. It sounds like a good book.
This is starting to sound like the concensus opinion of more and more PO-Aware Intelligentsia. Good.
The sooner people start taking responsibility for their needs locally, the better off they'll be as the Global Village turns into Fractured Fairy Tales.
"Fractured Fairy Tales" - definitely.
10 Calories of Oil(FF) for every Calorie of FOOD.
Something ugly has to happen BEFORE we recover into those utopian little recycling fairy tales.
I don't see the recycling part as a utopian fairy tale.
I see it as a last-resort form of economy that we will be forced to endure until our population tumbles enough that we again have "sufficient or excess" resources.
And looking at history and ecology in general, it's pretty clear that "something ugly" will in fact be the mechanism for the population reduction part of the equation.
Neither do I...although many may consider it more like MINING when we get to this point.
eg. Old landfills - Michael Moore'ian
It's the big cliff in between I fear...not the stablization after.
Yes – and then we have approx. 20 000 man-hours (20 man-years) of “hard labor” contained inside a barrel of crude, whereas 80% of the heat-energy contained in gas/diesel is wasted on the freeways, to no avail.
This tells that the average American is surrounded with some “500 energy slaves 24/7/365” (25 b/y/person) … and yes I know some of this is transformed into plastics ….
I can’t help to think what “we” will think in some years from now – when we actually must take the time to contemplate these correlations …
In 1999 you could buy 20.000 man-hours worth of energy for a mere $10 – quite cheap, I would say !
Finally - if there is any sort of “intelligent design” – I’d guess that definition is up for redefinition by now…
You could never get anywhere close to the entire useful energy contained in a barrel of oil. Realistically, you only got about 12% of it.
still thats allot if that were the case about 2,400 man hours of labor. Times that by about the 85 millon barrel's of oil we use daily.
For starters the ICE efficiency may be as high as 37% at the optimum operating point this is real and mechanical work like farm or lumber labor - hard to do ... (and it is around as long as it is around...)
And if memory serves Siemens is nearby 60% effective for their newest generation of steam plants (still in the laboratory I guess). And as you know an electric-motor is 90% effective ...
But never forget the heat wasted – it may heat your home. b‘cos something have to at northern latitudes, and add a Sterling-engine to extract el-power winters day ... and its "100%" effective...(oil that is)
And finally this was put this way to shelve “something precious” where it belongs … in the philosophical corner of your mind. You know this Party Guy, philosophy , don’t you?
They don't tell you what 'optimal' conditions there are, and they ignore the fact that different engines have 'optimal' conditions. In the most likely scenario, the 'optimal' engine conditions must operate at:
1 atmosphere of pressure
Room temperature
Optimal tuning
Optimal lubrication distribution
Extremely slow acceleration
Maintaining the most efficient speed 'around 35 mph'
0 wind, and hence 0 drag coefficient 'its driving on a giant treadmill'
Now, how often do these conditions manifest themselves in scary place we call the 'real world'. Oh thats right, they don't. This fancy 37% figure is under optimal laboratory conditions. In the real world, people speed. They don't always change their oil every 3000 miles. They don't spend 4 hours tuning up their car before going driving. They don't accelerate extremely slowly, and yes, air DOES cause drag wherever you drive too, etc etc.
In the real world, real driver efficiencies hover around 12%, and thats generally pushing it. That figure is just some fat pig that you put lipstick on.
But you are right, electric motors are 90% efficient. If the world switched from gas powered vehicles to all electric, we would cut our oil consumption by 60%. Thats just an inconvenient fact to most doomers however.
So go ahead world, build your light rails and 're-centralize' our cities. Waste enormous resources doing so instead of adapting our existing infrastructure to suit the situation we now find ourselves in. Doomed is right.
Doomed to fail from the start.
PartyGuy, you are completely misrepresenting the situation.
To begin with, most cars are designed to travel at highway speeds while going up hill fully loaded. That means that they can travel 80 mph under most circumstances. The best mileage for a gasoline powered car is achieved at full power, but the speed at full power in high gear is going to be way above 80 mph for most cars. The best mpg is achieved at the lowest speed at which high gear can be used (or at which an A/T goes into lockup). That speed is around 45-50 mph, which is an acceptable speed for most roads. Thus, we had the 55 mph speed limit after the 1973 OPEC Embargo. Vehicles which have been designed for extreme fuel economy can produce more than 100 mpg at highway speeds. Specially built motorcycles have gone more than 400 mpg, and that was using gasoline!
It's true that electric motors are efficient, but the electric supply situation is not so great. Oil is no longer used to fun steam electric power plants, but natural gas and coal are. Even the best combined cycle gasification systems only achieve a 60% efficiency, and there are losses in wires and batteries to be considered as well.
The part of society that is doomed are the gas guzzling SUV'ers, once the Peak in Oil production becomes obvious. All you party guys are going to have to learn to live in the real world for a change.
E. Swanson
Not to mention depleation won't stand still and the resources used for the switch over would make it happen faster too.
WRONG WRONG WRONG
highway speeds of 55 mph are still high enough for drag. There are no cars in america that get 100mpg, even in europe i would be hesitant to put the number of cars that get >100 mpg at 55mph at greater than 0.1%.
best efficiencies are with chainsaw motors attached to aeroframes at 10-20 mph.
But you dont want to go at 20 mph, i can bike that fast.
Not 55, but around 45 with present vehicles.
I know how to do much better and I didn't use a 2 cycle "chain saw" motor. I built a motorcycle based machine that did 235 mph back in 1983. It had a 100 cc Honda motor, with the gearing on the chain drive cut so that the motor was turning about 5,000 at 55 mph. The motor was designed to produce about 10 hp at 11,000 rpm, much too high for good efficiency.
Other builders achieved over 400 mpg using LARGER motors, which were initially geared to run slower from the factory, then optimized to an even lower speed. It takes only a couple of HP to push one of these low drag vehicles along at 55 mph.
http://www.craigvetter.com/pages/470MPG/470MPG%20Main.html
http://www.suzukicycles.org/high_milage_suzuki.shtml
E. Swanson
"But you dont want to go at 20 mph, i can bike that fast."
Hey, with body work around me in a driving Kentucky sleet/freezing rain, I will still take the car with the chainsaw engine....:-)
RC
I think a lot of this has been discussed before. Your comment on the electric grid being incapable of supplying us with the power we need is grossly wrong, so much so that I question who might have paid you to dare make such an outlandish statement. The DoE did a study last year that proved that we could use ONLY our base load power generation thats left over at NIGHT and have enough energy to charge cars/trucks/suvs to cover 84% of all the VMT in a given day.
That would take away 8.2 million bpd of demand in the USA alone, and not require another power plant to be built. But you don't NEED a car to be purely electric. You just need one that gets about 45 miles on pure electric power to cut our consumption by 2/3rds 'average miles per day per car is 30' coupled with a small ICE that can even run on biofuels to provide back up means of transportation. The Volt is an excellent demonstration of this concept 'though I doubt it will ever be built'.
When people start talking about how much energy it would take to make our new cars in this manner, and how it cant be done because of X battery weight problem or Y perceived electric problem, I immediately tune them out as ill-informed morons. Harsh, perhaps, but sadly true.
The weight gain from batters for this 45 mile range car is more than made up for by cutting the gas tank in 1/4th, replacing our V8 behemoths with V2 engines and removing brake pads 'use regenerative braking' and other unnecessary contraptions that the auto industry currently uses to squeeze money out of us. And the only power problems we have are PEAK demand. Solar can compensate enough for that soon enough.
Wake up people!
Recharging will not be confined to base load times. A good % will recharge during the 6 PM peak/secondary peak, as soon as they get home in the evening thye will start recharging. And Sundays after church, etc.
Alan
Not one hundred percent contained to off peak, but maybe load shedding devices or load adjusted prices will be implemented to shift the bulk of the recharge load to more optimal periods.
As you know, this would not be a new technology. One of my cousins had a device installed on her air conditioner more than 10 years ago that allowed the local utility to turn if off for short periods in exchange for somewhat lower rates. She ultimately concluded that it wasn't worth it for a few bucks a month. For more significant savings I suspect the result would be different.
Some people will sign up for that, if offered.
One extra trip after work that results in a S L O W trip back due to drained battery (and shorter battery life) will result in people opting out.
Alan
They do within a hybrid car.
And with addition of a larger accumulator and a trivial ammount of electronics we get a plug in hybrid.
And plugged in it can preheat the engine block in cold coutries.
Thats converting SuperCritical Steam into mechanical energy, but the total conversion from the energy content of the fuel to steam is far below 60% efficient. The exhaust temperature of the exhaust gases is considerable high when it exits the chimmey. Further more. SuperCritical plants can only be fired using Fossil fuels. Nuclear is not an option since its far too dangerous to operated a Nuclear power plant using supercritical steam.
There is also the other issue that Europe needs to import virtually all of its energy, and the remaining coal left in Europe is rapidly being consumed. As I recall, Europe is importing a lot of coal from Africa. Even the Uranium used for its Nuclear plants is imported.
From the calculations I did on a bicycling experiment, it appears we only get about 20% of calories we burn in our legs converted to work.
thx Folsomman – good and valid point … because then actually the 20.000 man-hours stand as THE REAL number in terms of calories/kwhs (Hey Party Guy updated info for you here..), all waste included and/or excluded just as for an ICE at an 20% efficiency –
“What comes around goes around”
You can't switch back and forth between calories and "man-hours". They're not the same. Feel free to compare barrels of oil with bushels of corn though.
...never mind
I'm in here at TOD to learn something and update myself on importante issues - as to how to understand this world. This is going nowhere.Hint: read some Sokrates and Aristotle and more...
It appears you've learned to be as condescending as many other TODers. Hopefully that was one of your "importante issues" to understand.
The thing Speek, is that I'm fed up playing the "Find one error"-game. I'm fed up people just "jumping into the middle of a thread” and start commenting on a erroneous basis – because my point here is of philosophical value, nothing else.
I am of the perception that we should start to conserve energy (use it wisely and scale down) on behalf of ourselves but also for future generations -yesterday … because I truly believe there will be havoc if Peak Oil is upon us these days, with so few paying attention … That’s my stance – what’s yours ?
Yes, that's my stance too, but exaggerating the numbers - by an order of magnitude(!) isn't necessary, is it? It may be irritating to be led off point, but people have been harping on the "20,000 man-hours per barrel of oil" thing here lately, and it's way off and needs to be put to rest.
There is no need to exaggerate the value of oil to our civilization.
Always be skeptical of the numbers and try and do the math for yourself as a check ... you don't have to be totally accurate, just get a feel for it ... my approximation is:
a US gallon Gasoline = 115,000 Btu
1000 Btu = 0.293 kWh
therefore a US gallon = 115 x 0.293 kWh = 33 kwh
At best, in an 8 hour working day you could get 100w continuous useful work from a man, ~0.8 kWh?
As a check, a normal man should consume ~ 2,500 kilocalories per day? (1 kilowatt hour = 859.6 kilocalories, so about a third converted to useful work seems reasonable?)
Therefore a US gallon contains the same amount of useful energy as 33/0.8 = 41 days or ~330 hours of human (slave?) labor!
In a barrel there would be 42 x 330 ~ 13,800 hours of manual labor.
Let's just say it's huge amount and is unlikely to last for any meaningful length of time!
Xeroid.
xeroid - thank you for your effort and math's here, and it definitely shows that ONE barrel of oil is correct as an order of magnitude – compared to 20.000 man-hours ..
As I stated above, the barrel could also be burnt in-house – to serve as a mean of a heating source – in conjunction with a Stirling-generator to produce el-power. Done this way the barrel will yield very well to our overall needs. And we would not have “to rush for the woods with and man-driven axe” to get hold of the same. (For 100’s of years – given an other take on how we spend our oil today …)
You are comparing total heat energy existent in a gallon of gas with the useful work of a human being. That just means you've missed PartyGuy's entire point.
As you see – I respond to xeroids good reply, which BTW nails your reply in a fine manner – This was not a reply to PG nor you speek but you simply don’t understand this Speek – it is beyond your reach of understanding ,so to "speek" .
You like to leave your mark all-over-the-place, don’t you – and you truly like to have the last word in all situations, being right or wrong … it dosn’t matter for you.
If I’m not right, feel free to correct me “speek”, please - I believe there is a diagnosis for such behaviors in the splendid field of psychology …
Are you sure you used the right "calories" when doing that calculation? Food calories are not the same as thermal calories. The way food calorie content is measured is also misleading. They actually burn the food in a calorometer and thereby measure the energy of the indigestable parts of the food. I would propose that your conclusion is an order of magnitude too high and 2% is the energy efficiency of humans.
according to this they are the same thing.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=define%3A+calorie
it's just a name for a unit of energy.
Yes, but the food calorie is actually a Kilocalorie (1,000 calories). I think that's what he was talking about.
It seems you, me, and about six other people know this.
No wonder were all fat!
Indeed. "Dietary" calories are actually kcals or as some put it, Calories.
How many ppl have actually used a calorimeter? In college chem you'll use one of those and a colorimeter too, and know what the difference is and how they both work lol!
** raises hand ** I've used both, thank you.
... calorimeter, calorometer, whatever it takes ... :)
moving up food chains the number is 10%, from plant to herbavore only 10% gets moved up.
same with the super predator, the human
Party guy, when you go into the woods with a chainsaw and some gas, how much work can you accomplish compared to entering the woods with an axe, maul and spitter?
How many man-hours for comparable amounts of productivity?
SOP, I had an experience with this during the summer, when I was doing some wildlife work for the Oregon Dept of Forestry. I became trapped on a remote dead-end road when a giant, two-trunked red alder tree toppled during a storm. I was in a steep-sloped canyon, and by CB and portable didn't get very far. Took hours for me to contact someone. During that time, I hacked away at the tree with an axe that I carried for just such emergencies. The problem was, for me to have any chance of clearing the road, I needed to cut the tree four times--twice for each trunk to make logs small enough for me to move off the road. Took me nearly an hour of hard labor to complete the first cut. By then, I was worn out, covered in sweat and ready just collapse in the car, and I'm in decent shape. Finally, help arrived: Two men with one chainsaw. The tree was taken apart and out of the road in minutes. Amazing to watch after putting in so much effort to make a single cut with an axe.
-best,
graywulffe in CVO, OR
Graywulffe thanks for your real-life story, at least you know what’s at stake here … ;-)
I second the thanks from paal.
That makes for a great anecdotal example for a powerpoint slide on that point. GREAT real-life story worth of the old "OutDoor Life" 'this happened to me' series...
Graywulffe, I cut my own firewood, from forest tree to stacked split logs at home. Believe me, like you, I really really know the true value of oil. It is something that has to be experienced to be fully understood.
Sometimes it makes be angry to realise how we waste the utility of oil on (I won't dignify it by calling it transport) senseless and unnecessary movement from one place to another.
The thing is, at 10 times its current cost, fuel will still be cheap for use in my chainsaw and my micro-tractor. Even for moving goods with the car and trailer it would still be relatively cheap. But, for simply moving humans from A to B? I guess the days of mass travel may well be ending.
Triumvirate of collapse - Economy, Ecosystem, Energy
After years of using a bow saw to cut my firewood I bought a chainsaw a few years back.
What a difference!
I can buck up a winters firewood in hours instead of weeks.
I agree, fuel for it will always be cheap.
One day a few years back I rented a gas powered splitter but I'm sticking with my maul and wedges.
Can't be getting TOO lazy. :)
Thanks for sharing, great story to illustrate whats at stake.
However - surely the (hand) tool required here was a saw? In my experience cutting cross grain with an axe is always a struggle at best.
Thanks all for your comments.
To keep the story short, I left out many details. I had a bow saw with me, too, which I also employed. Problem was, the saw was too small, and could only be used to help with some of the axe-work. With a larger saw, I probably would have had that tree cleared by hand within that first hour. Good point!
-best,
graywulffe in CVO, OR
PartyGuy was just correcting some wrong numbers. Your question is irrelevant.
Well, J. Bonaldi doesn't think recycling for energy but a more sinister form of recycling like the third world from piles of waste. He thinks we will have to learn to use *much* less energy like most do here. We will have to revert to hard human labor and to reinvent lost skills. For instance he thinks we won't use herbicides any more but instead hire a specialized gardener. He sees a return of transport by boats and , moved by animal power (a lot of towing lanes still exist near the Saône river where I live) or carts and the same animal power. Driving will still exist but only very few people would be able to do so.
I also believe that the will have to undergo a real crisis before anything new comes about. Ugly things will happen. It is up to us to do everything we can to avert the worst.
specialized gardeners
Its all chemical now but twenty years ago soy beans would be "cultivated" by tractor when small, which got the weeds between the rows and loosened the soil. Once they got about waist high the "bean walkers" would begin their duties. A motley collection of teenagers and an equally motley collection of machetes and hoes would descend on the field at first light and they'd being their "rounds".
Early on in the process we'd be practically fingertip to fingertip as things were thick. Later patrols would see us each taking a dozen rows, hopping back and forth to deal deadly blows to the various intruders. Around 1983 this went chemical, too - we'd put Roundup in little spray bottles and walk along, shooting instead of hacking. Reloading the bottles with drinking water for spray bottle fights over lunch was a daily occurrence.
Some genius invented the "bean bar" - four seats with safety belts on a tube steel beam and a central pressurized tank with four hand nozzles that mounted on the front of a small tractor. If you had the Cadillac model there was an umbrella for each seat. The hard working, the tough, or the grown ups in the crew would claim the inboard seats; only a 6" bounce on a bump instead of the 18" the riders on the ends experienced.
Corn does not get the same treatment - it has always been a chemical thing in my memory - it was easy to whack all of the broadleaf weeds and leave the grass (and corn) alone. I'm not sure how they do that when its all manual.
This is the "old" machete - a heavy beast that was here when my parents purchased the farm in 1971. The "new" machete had a synthetic black handle and weighed maybe two thirds of what this one does. This was also a daily battle between my brother and I - early on the mass of this one made short work of tough weeds, but in relatively clean fields the lighter model made for easier carrying.
I sweated in the fields from sun up to sun down every chance I got from age eleven until I went off to college, walking beans, detasseling corn, picking rock, and baling hay. Cattle, hogs, and chickens all have quarters that require regular cleaning. When that work wasn't available I prayed for rain because it meant the funeral home and two nice older ladies would need their yards mowed. When winter came we'd pray for enough snow to close the school. Staying inside with video games? Nope, one could clear as much as $40 in a day shoveling sidewalks and driveways.
Sometimes I have to laugh at some people on here - not only does physical labor not kill you, it puts food on the table, it puts money in your pocket, it turns fat into muscle, and best of all it makes one absolutely intolerant of those who talk a lot and don't do much - an attitude this country desperately needs.
All true SCT,,too true.
However we used to hoe corn..but not if you had a horse drawn cultivator..it looked like a hambletonain buggy ..high wheels and levers to lower the cultivators into the row.
But I have hoed corn..and I didn't like it too much.
Grass in corn? Steals the nitrogen,,the closer it can get to the corn roots the more protected from the hoe it is.
Detasseling corn? Why? Never did that..tobacco ,yes. Picked tobacco worms off and suckered it as well.
Back then we didn't do soybeans..in the '40s. But I later saw people pulling a 'rotary hoe' with a tractor in bean fields.
My grandfather planted purple hull peas near corn so they would run up the stalks..and fix nitrogen as well.
All of the time we didn't go to school if potatoes needed digging or crops tended..no one said anything about that either.
For toys? Hog bladders. Can blow them up,make rude noises,hit each other over the head..put frogs in the girls washtubs..tie the girls up and burn your initials in their arms with kitchen matches..and well play that most famous of all games...Doctor!..but it was more talk than action.
And climbing an apple tree and eating green apples.
Good if you had a lot of girl cousins..which I did and one of them said her 'tattoo'never went away til she was in her 50s.
Yes good hard work and makes you more physically healthy as you age. Sustains your life actually.
AND learn to not care much for cityslickers..as you say about those who didn't do much.
Also we swam a lot..in cow ponds if need be but usually creeks which had clean water in them at that time. You could drink it.
I loved to ride the wagon pulled by two mules..my grandfather was the best mule trainer in the county..and when working he sometimes used a troika..a three mule team..never saw it before,after or since..I would drive that three mule team 'logging' off fields prior to planting.
Mules were smart animals. Very smart and could do a heck of a lot of work. With three mules and a good wife and some sons to help...a man could do most anything.But ifen he had poor dirt? Heaven help him. Our dirt is outstanding. I love to dig in it and run my hands in it..go in the woods where there never was a plow taken to it since God created it..and smell it. Rich,black and full of life. Mix it with some dried cow/bull manure and plant tomatoes over it..you won't
believe what it can produce..bugs just bounce off it..except for that ole tobacco/tomato worm,which once again its best to just pick off and mash. But if the plant is healthy..he can't damage it much..its those little white eggs she lays.
airdale
PS. I guess my grandfather was not desirous of wealth since he never broke a sweat that I saw,he took his time and consulted the 'signs' and we all had plenty to eat..and didn't work like dogs. But if someone made him real mad then he went into a killing rage(other folks,thieves,etc)..took a lot to get him mad though. But if you did the razor strop was coming down..he never stropped me though..his own kids he did as they needed it.
He drew blood too, or so my uncles said.
Seed corn requires detasseling - there are rows planted that are purely there to produce pollen and the ones producing seed must not self pollinate. I haven't done it for a while but back when they'd have two "male" rows which kept their tassels and then six "female" rows which got their tassels removed.
This was originally a walking in icy wet corn at 6:00 and then blazing heat by 10:00 job but they automated it, too - machines with 6' tall tires that can pass over the corn and a bar with seats & umbrellas for six out front. This came many years after the last time I did the job.
You pull the male sex organs out of corn plants from 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM and when you close your eyes at night all you see is a row of corn going off into the distance ...
I first came across the metaphor of the "energy slave" in a brilliant book by A.R. Ubbelohde ("Man and energy", published by Pelican books in 1963 (too early for a less sexist title...)).
Amongst other qualities, Ubbelohde (great name) had a solid background in thermodynamics, so, in addition to introducing the image of the energy slave, was very good on second law aspects of energy conversion. He was not greatly impressed by technologies that convert low entropy sources (e.g. sunlight) into unnecessarily high entropy forms of energy (e.g. hot water). Direct photoelectric conversion, photovoltaics, appealed to him much more (if you capture the waste heat of this conversion to heat some water, OK). He was already well ahead of the current buzz on net energy, which is limited to first law assessment of energy conversion technologies (which is, of course, a big improvement on forget-physical-reality energy economics).
I strongly recommend this book. Amazon has a few used copies in stock.
- Colin Moorcraft
I've bookmarked your post and will definitely get myself a copy. Thanks
This is a quick post from work.
Leanan i hope your safe i heard on the news this morning that there are arson set wildfires in hawaii now. Though correct me if i am wrong i am under the impression from your previous posts that you live there.
Hawaii's in drought?
Arkansaw of Samuel L Clemens
The windward (east) side is a pretty tropical rain forest and the leeward (west) side is relatively dry. The Hawaii pictures one sees on TV are generally the windward side terrain.
Thanks. I was born and raised in Hawaii, and my family is still there, but I am now in the northeast US.
Here's a story about the wildfires:
http://kgmb9.com/main/content/view/1245/40/
Yeah, we might be facing the opposite problem this winter.. even seeing the Mass Drought story, I'm hearing anecdotally (but not yet seeing on the news) that it's getting harder to buy firewood this fall. Not that our forests are thin in any sense yet, but that people are probably turning away from oil and gas as much as possible, and those that sell cordwood are starting to sell out. I know my mom is trying to keep the oil consumption way down.. we just picked up a couple more loads from our land up in the whites to keep her house warm this winter.. the pile's almost there.. but the local stacks of pallette wood are disappearing a lot faster than they did a couple years ago. Last night was the first Freeze in Portland! (That I've noticed anyway!)
Bob
Leanan--
I lived in Maui 10 years, and still have a house in Kula.
Where did you live?
I feel very comfortable in Hawaii. Very few people can live there longer than 2 year, from my observation. I lived in Micronesia (a place that will soon start disappearing from rising water), and Maui seems like a culture rich continent after that.
I'm on Oahu now, windward side. Pretty green here, but the islands are technically in a semi-drought I think. Every 2 months or so I drive to the Waipio Costco to get more bulk supplies, and the non-windward part of the island looks like a tinderbox to me.... that is, the areas where there aren't houses side-by-side, as they seem to be on most of the island.
I think that fire will not be the issue here that it is in California and other places. Less biomass in the dry areas than in actual forests... though the big isle could perhaps have some impressive ones.
No, the crisis here remains drastic population density, a different kind of fire.
Greenish I'm sure you're familiar with the grass and kiawe dry plains of the leeward side ...... from around Hanauma Bay area around to the Waipahu side of Pearl Harbor it's just dry, dry, dry for much of the year. A real tinderbox, I'm surprised there are not fires all the time, but for some reason it's really rare.
I actually think (hope?) that when the Depression becomes more evident, a ton of people are going to leave Hawaii. You live there, you know how brainwashed everyone is, that the Mainland is the land of milk and honey and cheaper to live and all that BS.
(I've been away for a couple of days, reading an amazing online journal by a fellow named "Panther" who's been kind of professionally homeless on Oahu for 10 years or so now. He's done things to make it harder for himself in spades, and still done quite well. Mainly now he's old and not willing/able/hireable for a job, and living on social security now..... you can find him by google-ing for "panther hawaiithreads" and following the clues, can't give you more.....
I still see hawaii as much more sustainable than N. Arizona, no one grows anything here. No fishing, and as someone put it today in the bead shop, "What could you eat around here, dirt?"
I may get a chance soon to treat you to one Diamond Head Chocolate Drink (if they still make the stuff) from Kaya's Store fairly soon, if I can swing it.....
Just a quick Link for Beggar;
http://taylordunnparts.com/electruck.php
These are serious work horses with a long track record. Several around here.
I talked to one guy with one and he said get the truck bed version and put a fabric canopy on it and you will never want to drive anything else.
Cool stuff Souperman! What were his experiences with the range? Did it live up to spec?
thanks, souperman2!
I'm just checking TOD real quick before I pedal off to downtown Minneapolis to do some work there this afternoon.
I'll bookmark the website and give it a close look this evening.
Thanks again!
From Deffeyes:
"I have a fantasy that Chevron's last employee will sell their last barrel of oil to buy back their last share of stock. Poof!" and "tickling the dragon's tail".
I love both quotes.
And Mexico cuts off oil production.. Two months before I thought they would.
Question:
In the Yahoo news piece above, the word "briefly"
is used. How do they know it's "briefly"?
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601072&sid=ajuw0_LUhWzU&refer=e...
Bloomberg-State-owned Petroleos Mexicanos, the third-largest supplier of crude to the U.S., halted about 600,000 barrels a day of output as a storm passed through the Gulf of Mexico, spokesman Carlos Ramirez said in Mexico City.
And has Mexico stopped the oil/gas leak from the
damaged platforms?
And has Mexico ever fully repaired Cantarell's Infrastructure from Dean?
Arkansaw of Samuel L Clemens
Keep in mind...when production declines in major exporter fields...all types of excuses will be applied except the obvious.
What I have a hard time understanding is how these recent storms and gale force winds have done more damage and killed more people than actual hurricanes that have come that way recently. Talk about great timing for a disaster...just when production is falling off.
Same here. The NOAA Sat maps just aren't catching it.
"an investigation of the tragedy, which occurred Tuesday during stormy weather that generated winds up to 80 mph (130 kph) and whipped up 25-foot (8-meter) waves.
Thus far, 63 workers have been rescued, Reyes Heroles said, telling senators, "For that reason the search will not be suspended until we are absolutely sure that the probability of finding anyone alive is very low."
Eighty-one workers and five rescue personnel abandoned a subcontractor's drilling rig known as the Usumacinta on Tuesday, after it hit the Kab 101 light-production platform and damaged a valve."
Arkansaw of Samuel L Clemens
My thought was that no hurricane equalled no preparation and they were caught with their pants down. Last time I hurt myself at the gym was on a very light set and I wasn't concentrating, because it was a very light set.
I'm sure the workers did not expect to die.
Remember, they stopped production because their export tanks are full due to no loading, and not for lack of oil.
This time!
I've become increasingly convinced that most of the published estimates of remaining oil supplies may be in error. And this error could be fairly large on the order of 20-50%. The reasoning is fairly simple. And the assumption is made we have hit technical limits.
Over the decades since oil has been discovered the technology to discover, map oil fields and extract the oil from the fields has increased greatly. Today it can be argued that we are probably fairly close to the extraction limit with modern multi-branched adaptive lateral well.
All technologies hit effective limits you could consider say the speed of airplanes which became fairly constant in the 1960's after undergoing rapid development. Or even farther back one can see that the evolution of flint arrowheads reached a zenith during the late stone age. This is a simple matter of technological innovation hitting the physical limits of the problem domain.
Despite these rapid advances in oil extraction technologies the rate of oil extraction shows a steady increase influenced only by major external economic/political factors
What this means is that extraction rates have built in the expectation of a steady increase in technical innovation that keeps extraction rates high as the oil supply dwindles.
If one considers how technology really effects a physical process however what happens is it adds either large leaps in capability or a steady increase up to the physical limit then the technical "boost" effectively stops. Back to the airplane one can see the speed of airplanes under go robust growth up through the 1960 then effectively flat line ever since.
This means that this assumption of continued technical progress in oil extraction capability is probably unfounded and the reality is that we have probably just recently hit the technical limits this decade because of physical constraints.
Given this viewpoint reviewing the current estimates of the remaining oil supplies and the post peak production profile one comes to a grim conclusion that measures that used past production to predict future production could be off by quite a bit on the production rate because of the ending of technical innovation.
Looking at one of the published grouping of projections.
I've attempted to get and idea of the size of this "technical effect".
A simple approach is to consider the HL analysis which uses
a production based heuristic to predict future production rates and overall URR. Since its a heuristic it will correctly predict the peak rate however one would expect it to under predict both the post peak decline rate and over predict the total URR by this technical effect.
In and attempt to get a handle on this effect I've considered that the low end HL estimate and the high end HL estimate probably differ by the size of the technical effect. The reasoning is fairly simple the low estimates in general result from considering earlier growth regions where the production was still growing but at a slower rate and advanced technology was in general not applied to enhance production. In short I think the lower HL estimates are probably fairly close to what one would see without rapid technical advances.
Using this approach one sees that the world would have probably reached peak production in the late 1990's which is actually when the price of oil collapsed. This price collapse makes sense if we where at peak geological supply.
Next this means that production growth since the 1990's was probably dominated by technical advances. Again this makes sense since major discoveries where well in the past and production increases have been dominated by Non-OPEC sources which generally means Western Oil companies that empty the latest technologies.
Finally one can see how HL underestimates the decline rate vs more dire estimates such as Bakhtiari who has done very well compared to reality to date. He includes economic/technical factors in his model. But even with this even the worst case models are probably still overestimating the production rates and remaining URR.
A rough integration of the graph trying to estimate the remaining URR and discounting the long tail in production at low rates less than 20mbd results in about 200GB-500GB of oil that would be extracted are rates greater than 50% of todays rates. This translates into roughly 5-15 years of fairly high production rates left using a quick collapse model that assumes technical innovation has pretty much halted. With for sure 5 or less years of production with 20% of todays rates.
I'm not a techie, so the only thing I can contribute to this is the obvious observation that EROI pretty much sets a stone ceiling for what is feasible as far as recovery goes. I would imagine that you run into similar types of phenomena for the other types of things you mention.
EROI is only important for the energy content of the oil. We'll keep pulling it out of the ground no matter what the cost, but there will come an inflection point where plastics and medicines are the final destination rather than fuel ...
It is difficult for me to imagine an industrial economy capable of extracting and utilizing plastics and meds from oil exclusive of using it for transportation.
Oil is so integral to modern industrial economy that it cannot be "removed" from the transportation sector without tremendous disruptions along the entire length of society.
In other words without oil, transportation fails, without transportation, industry fails.
Despite the future painted by visionaries such as Alan FBE, mankind would have had to shown restraint at the very beginning of the Industrial Revolution WRT fossil fuels for some other form of transportation to develop.
Based on how quickly things are falling apart plus the fact that we still haven't shown signs of the necessary restraint, it's far too late.
My opinion only, fire away.
We get Alan's rail electrification thing done and we'll have small packets of crude in tank cars pulled from the ground in Texas and dispatched to refineries, then the finished products will go by rail to those who actually make things of them. I agree that its going to be, uhh, disruptive to get to this point, but its the only somewhat happy outcome I can envision.
Hi Memmel (and any others that put up graphs predicting future world oil production),
I think it would be helpful for all of us living in oil importing countries (especially those of us who live in the EU in countries like France, Germany, Italy and Spain that import ~100% of their oil) if we could include a line on the graph which shows the current and projected consumption of the oil exporting countries, so that we can get some idea when world net exports will go to zero.
At that point many of us will probably need to be on our bikes and no more jetting off to the sun for vacations!
Xeroid.
Good question we have export land and also of course post peak feedback loops. I'm simply asserting that if we really are at "peak" oil extraction technology then we can expect basically no further growth in production rates from technical advances and also expect decline rates to be steeper from the previous faster extraction caused be technical advances.
If I'm right and the current peak in extraction rates is actually caused by a peak in technology and 50% URR is well in the past then we can expect extraction rates to effectively plummet over the coming years.
The thesis is so simple that I'm pretty certain I'm at least partially right and that the effect is not small therefore if you consider all other factors we can be fairly certain the exports will decline rapidly over the next 5 years.
In short post peak for oil importing nations will get difficult quickly since we just have to many factors pointing to a rapid decline in exports. On top of this nations like the US that don't have sufficient refining capacity to meet demand will probably experience a secondary export land crunch as regions such as Europe reduce finished product exports as oil supplies get tight.
I simply can see no way that things won't get tough fast. The potential declines in exports are so steep its difficult to even guess. The technical effect seems to indicate that post peak decline rates may be as steep as twice the pre-peak increases since technical advances seem to have doubled the extraction rate and you almost pay twice for this post peak since you extract twice as fast and decline twice as fast.
Thanks, memmel for continuing to emphasize and clarify your insight on why decline will be far more rapid than expected. While it seems to make sense to me, I do wish that those who are much more technically fluent, and perhaps in disagreement, would engage you on the point you are actually making. If they have, I seem to have missed it.
Good luck.
Memmel,
I'm sure you are correct to some extent from a geological point of view with regard to EOR - let's hope all the oil fields don't collapse as fast as Canterelle post their peaks.
Plus, I think there is another effect when extracting oil from under the sea - it is a very hostile, expensive to operate, place - so, the oil is ectracted as quickly as possible, then, as it becomes uneconomic at low flow rates, the wells are shut down for good ... while the expensive infrastructure is left to rot ... there is no chance of a 'nodding donkey' pumping oily brine for years and years.
Then, add in above ground effects such as hoarding ... oh dear!
Xeroid.
Lots of future Sealands to become available for the taking?
Yeah, sure — good luck keeping them provisioned in a resource-constrained economy. Maybe you can run an offshore bank on one ... watch out for pirates, arrrr!
I think he's not excluding the possibility that the pirates would be the first ones to take them over. In the olden days, pirates actually controlled their own ports, like Galveston. Presumably everything was imported.
Just because oil exists in the ground, that doesn't mean it will be produced
Just because it is produced, that doesn't mean it will be exported
Just because it is exported, that doesn't mean it will be imported into your country
Just because it is imported into your country, that doesn't mean it will be available to you
Every individual has their own oil depletion rate
Y'know, this could be expanded a bit and made into a very nice statement; it's good already. Lays out a lot of tacit assumptions most people don't even realize they're making. There are many more.
I like it.
Good Analysis !
But an "uncomfortable" reality :-(
Alan
Right! And like 19% of Americans think they are in the top 1% of earners, many people will blissfully think their access to oil/energy will be fine, I'm guessing.
"You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created."
Albert Einstein
Over the last few months I see you have taken a stance on this fast crash assessment.
I view you as a knowledgeable commenter.
You are at least partially right
Good observations, Memmel. Sort of Tainteresque/nonlinear; the analogy with airliner cruise speeds is a good example of the concept. I have mentally been factoring in stuff along these lines without expressing it to myself in these terms, thanks for doing so.
For the top five (about half of current world net exports), scroll down to Net Exports:
http://www.aspousa.org/proceedings/houston/presentations/
(Note that there are two slides per page on the PDF file)
I am presently circulating the draft of Version 2.0 of the written report.
From the story up top. Did someone mention something about refineries in importing countries beginning to start shutting down?
Pick a wholesale gasoline/diesel price number. $5, $10, $15, $20, . .
At each of these wholesale price levels, would importing countries be more or less likely to be refining the same amount of oil that they were refining at a gasoline/diesel price of $2.50 or so?
The limiting factor on the volume of oil that a refiner will process is whether or not they can sell the product at a profit. This is why I have been expecting to see declining refinery utilization numbers in importing countries, and probably rising utilization numbers in at least some exporting countries.
Is this like that wonderful economics analogy: "pushing on a string?"
I believe a refinery has shut here in France for maintenance or possibly for profit maintenance. It's getting harder to understand what is actually happening with oil. I noticed that Russia says it cannot supply Europe with more diesel (I guess they were asked to) and China also has a problem with diesel. Someone local recently said the price of diesel here in France has increased more than petrol. Saturday when I went to buy petrol there was none at the local supermarket, today in a different town they had no diesel (shortages or coincidence?). Yet prices are still below last years high and oil is now over $93/bl.
Looks like chaos is getting the upper hand and feeding through in perverse, complex ways. I also noticed I wasn't the only one filling up with extra jerry cans today.
WT,
I'd like to use a couple of your slides with attribution in a presentation, but the ones on the ASPO site are small enough that they do not copy well.
Is there any chance that you could make avialable the physical data behind the slides, or a larger copy of the slides?
Shoot me or Khebab an e-mail.
"All technologies hit effective limits you could consider say the speed of airplanes which became fairly constant in the 1960's after undergoing rapid development."
What? I mean, really - what?
I'm not sure what kinds of limits you think you are referring to here about limits on the speed of airplanes. Which airplanes? Maximum speed for all fixed wing craft? Maximum speed for production (non-experimental) fixed-wing craft? Maximum speed for commercial passenger aircraft?
Part of the reason you might think things are "fairly constant" is that we've figured out how to go about as fast as there's any real need to go, without going into space. It's not that we can't go faster. Rather, it's more like we've realized there's no real point to it, because there are so many other inefficiencies in our current use of aircraft. It makes more sense to focus on something other than speed right now - even if your primary goal is to get to your destination faster!
And that's a good illustration of one problem with your argument. Sure, SOME technologies might not seem to advance very quickly (or, more saliently, get adopted very quickly), but that's usually because the demand isn't there. Other technologies - or other attributes of the same technology - advance much more quickly because that's where the demand is.
And right now, most people don't care about airspeed. They care about getting there cheaper, or more safely, or more comfortably, or with more cargo, or with more people, or with fewer carbon emissions, or more quietly, or with shorter landing distances, or without waiting eons for baggage and parking and transit and those endless terminals and the $6 coffee and....
As long as energy was cheap, nobody cared if you had a way to extract $50/boe of energy from tides, or wind, or solar. Now there's a lot more interest - and suddenly those technologies are racing forward.
Don't doubt the economics here.
"Or even farther back one can see that the evolution of flint arrowheads reached a zenith during the late stone age."
Again, what particular time are you referring to? Because the "late stone age" ended when people got better lethal technologies, like bronze. "Stone Age Life" as commonly thought - i.e., nomadic hunter gatherer lifestyles - also ended when the neolithic agricultural revolution occurred, and settled communities stopped relying on hunting technology for food.
That is, the old technology reached a "zenith" just before it was (a) replaced by a qualitatively superior alternative, and (b) one of the major applications of the technology started to disappear. If either of those happen to oil, I'd say we come out ahead!
This is a simple matter of technological innovation hitting the physical limits of the problem domain."
No, it's a matter of people suddenly realizing that even if they've built some really gee-whiz wonderful hammers, their problems are looking a lot less like nails.
Not true. I know I would like to fly to Europe or Hawaii or Hong Kong at Concorde speeds - or faster. The Concorde first flew in 1969 - almost 40 years ago. It's been retired, and there is no replacement, let alone improvement.
I think it is true. Which is there more demand for, to be able to fly coast to coast in one less hour, or to be able to fly coast to coast for $100 less dollars.
Yeah, in theory there is demand for more speed if there was no cost to pay for it, but when it comes to speed vs. economy, the current jets are fast enough for most users.
If it was $100 to make 150 mph two day trip a 500 mph 6 hour trip instead, people would want it. But to make a 6 hour flight a 5 hour flight, it's not worth it.
Continued technology advances implies that you would be able to fly coast to coast in one hour for 100 dollars. You have no reason to claim that its a trade off choice on or the other.
Their is not intrinsic reason why you could not theoretically create a plane that could do both fly that fast and provide cheap tickets.
It probably means removing the human pilot etc and going with a computerized pilot to lower costs for example.
You simply justifying the fact that technology in air travel has stalled.
If your read this article.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Sonic_Cruiser
Fuel efficiency was paramount in other words energy costs are hobbling advances in commercial aircraft performance.
Or in general peak oil.
The Concorde took less than half the time of regular airliners to fly from Europe to the US. It was certainly worth the price to some people.
More tellingly...why did the price not drop? Isn't that what's supposed to happen with technology? Originally, airlines were only for the wealthy. (The "jet set.") Now they're for everyone. Why isn't the Concorde (or newer, better supersonic jets) for everyone now?
And it's not just planes. Train and car travel is also slower that it used to be...due to congestion.
There are limits to technology, and we are already experiencing them.
Dear Leanan,
Concorde was always as much, if not more, a 'political' project' than a 'rational' economic/commercial one.
It was seen as a way of symbolizing the desire of French and British governments to move closer together in a European context. After the politics came the prestige, and then the actual commercial potential of the plane.
It was vastly expensive to build, far higher than anyone thought. It was so costly that other countries refused to take part in the project, prefering to let France and Britain carry the growing tab.
Concorde always recieved a massive subsidy from the taxpayer for every passenger, which was ironic as the cost of ticket was still way out of most people's price range. However, without the subsidy, even the wealthy would have thought twice about using it. So, in purely economic terms Concorde was unviable and pretty much a disaster. Also it used a huge ammount of fuel in relation to the number of passengers that could be squeezed into it. The thing was alos incredibly noisy when flying subsonic. It used to fly over my parents house, so I know what I'm talking about. Other jets were purring kittens compared to Concorde! When it went supersonic the sonic boom, boom, boom; sounded like the clap of doom. It was so loud they were concerned the sound waves would damage historic buildings and consequently flying overland was ruled out at supersonic speeds.
It was also too small. I believe Boing or Pan Am had plans to build a bigger version of 'Concorde' but pulled back as the costs spiralled out of control. The Russians did actually build a 'copy' of Concorde, but once again this had nothing to do with commercial aviation and everything to do with politics.
But, it was a very pretty aircraft.
Which is pretty much how limits to technology always show up. Generally, they aren't physically impossible. They're just "more expensive than we thought."
Concorde always had "funny" economics. After the UK and French governments wrote off the development costs, British Airways and Air France were able to make an operating profit, despite there only being 14 airframes in service (and hence less likely to have economies of scale for maintenance, like with, well pretty much any other airliner).
One of the TV programmes made about Concorde to celebrate its end in service mentioned the ticket prices. Initially, London-New York cost around £2,500 (when First Class on a B747 cost around £1,500). As the clientele tended to be those people who had someone else do their bookings, some bright spark at British Airways did a quick survey of regular passengers to find out what they did and didn't like about flying on Concorde. Amongst the questions, one was "How much do you think the ticket price is?" The consensus was "around £5,000". Shortly afterwards, the fare was increased to £5,000, with very little loss in patronage. In other words, priced at what their market thought it was worth.
AKH
So, while your actual in-flight time from New York to Paris may only be an hour and a half, you will spend probably twice that amount of time at both the front end and the back end of that trip ..... getting to the airport, going through the surreal world of airport security, and then reversing the entire process on the other end. How much time does a Concorde flight really save you?
The Concorde was by and large a hugely wasteful symbol of prestige, mostly used by the 'beautiful people', such as the very attractive wife of the Domincan Republic's 'Baby Doc' Duvalier, who once chartered a Condorde for the sole use of herself and several of her close chums for a merry shopping spree in Paris and thence back. This in the country that has traditionally had the dubious distinction of having either the lowest or next to the lowest per-capita income in the Western Hemisphere. No, the Concorde, as it was used, was not a mark of progress, but rather of regress ..... a symbol of decadent folly worthy of the court of Louis XIV.
Good riddance.
Joule, 'Papa Doc' Duvalier was the dictator of Haiti not the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola; between the two countries is an impassable mountain range. Also, the DR has been a democracy for many years.
Leanan the Concorde was doomed as soon as a member of my family stepped on it.
My brother went on the inter-island Seaflite and sure enough, shortly afterward, one blew up (that scene in Hawaii Five-0 was REAL) and a number of years later, my dad goes on the Concorde (a thing I'd like to hear the explanation of since we were all pretty broke even Dad) and sure enough, a bit later, one blows up.
Myself, I just settle for making sailboats tip over lol.
The scary part is people like you don't see the limits.
You counter by saying we have planes that do Mach 2 and we have planes that have VTOL capabilities. I think the latest US fighter is close to bring both together in a single plane.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-22_Raptor
Where is my personal nuclear powered flying car that does Mach 2 ????
Forget about Mach 2 and nuclear where the hell is my flying car period ?
I see the limits. I just see different limits than you. I see real limits in the amount of carbon we can put in the atmosphere. And I think that, because humanity could easily weather Peak Oil with coal and tar sands and shale and gas, humanity is more than capable of turning Earth into Venus.
The Peak is not here today, and it won't be here within the next two years. When it comes, it will be driven by CHOICE, not geology: carbon taxes and emissions trading.
Peak Carbon is what we WANT. TODAY.
The numbers say otherwise. At this point, any statement to the contrary is nothing more than a statement of faith.
But it also seems like we're not quite ready to say "it was in 2006" without a little faith.
"Hey! Where's my cat?" -- Schrödinger
That oil peaked two years ago is a fact.
The question is whether or not a higher peak is forthcoming.
Example - The DOW peaked in 2000. This fact was indisputable for 7 years.
memmel, the FAA took a long look at letting the general public have flying cars and wisely decided that it would be an insane idea. Flying is a rigorous routine that requires complete attention to the process and surroundings at all times. No one can pilot an aircraft safely without a long period of intense training that instructs and imbeds in the pilot to be with the many dangers of flying. To make available 'flying cars' for everyone was technically possible long ago but to have done so would have caused a rain of metal from our skies that would have been a constant treat to ground infrastructure. Any moron can get a drivers license and judging from what I see on our highways its amazing that there are as few accidents as happen. Piloting an aircraft is an intense undertaking...it is not like driving an auto on a highway. There are old pilots and bold pilots, but there are no old bold pilots...and tring to navigate crowded skies with aging ground control systems and pilots eating big smacks and blabbing on their cell phones while combing their hair...well, lets just say the FAA made the correct call long ago. Some government regulation is a good thing, regardless of what the neocons say.
River,
You are correct but thats what applies to large commercial aircraft..yes very intense training since you are placing lives at risk other than your own.
BUT if you are interested in GA..or Light Sport or Ultralight
then you can do so quiet cheaply and with out a lot of that intense training..
In fact I hope to begin building my own Light Sport next year..in the barn or a new addon shed...I have a neighbor who has his own grass strip on his farm and he has flown from ultralights to currently a Cessna 150.
Without going into insturments and IFR its not too daunting.
No physicals since a valid drivers license handles that.
Now as for policy? Light Sports doesn't entail much. Ultralight even less. I go to a airfield not too far away populated with these folks..they are building their own,doing experimentals and having a lot of fun..the field is completely uncontrolled. Not even a radio except what someone brings. You 'clear' yourself. Sometimes one guy will keep track of who is in the pattern. No accidents have I heard of. Perhaps some dings and dents.
A serious ex pilot told me that he far prefers flying his ultralight than anything else.
airdale
Hi Airdale, good to see your posts again. My post above was addressing Memmels (probably sarconal) question about where was his flying car, which I took to mean transportation to get one back and forth to work and various other places. This would be a replacement for a regular auto/truck/motorcycle/bike/bus that would take him to a landing pad at his dentists office or to the market and home. Not the same thing as 'sport flying' on a sunny, nearly windless day in an ultralight or other sport aircraft. One can get to work and home in a ground only vehicle when the ceiling is 50 feet and the visibility is 1/4 mile or less, with freezing rain...Not so easy in a flying machine of any description unless it is equipped with lots of complex electronics and a qualified, competent and alert pilot flying IFR. Ultralights and other sport aircraft are a lot of fun but they are not safe in IFR or icing conditions so they are not an everyday replacement for ground transport. BTW, when I was living in Md. and working in DC I had a close friend that lost a new son-in-law to hang gliding in the Pa. mountains and the very next week his own son was killed flying an ultralight on a turf farm in Md. Anyone that is going to take up the hobby of flying sport aircraft should at minimum take instruction in a Cessna or similar light ac at least through solo...imho. Anyone out there interested in flying of any sort would benefit by reading Ernest K Ganns book 'Fate Is The Hunter'...It will give one an entirely new take on aviation and the industry from earliest 'air mail' days to commercial jet aviation...The book is the best ever about the subject and will make all passengers aware of just how easy it is to be killed even when the pilot is competent and doing everything by the book. Flying is inherently very dangerous and few people even know it.
What we call "ultralights" are not significantly different from what Wilber & Orville Wright would have called "airplanes".
The day may come when that's pretty much all that's left in the air. People should be able to continue to build ultralights and keep them going for quite a while. I guess that the day that it becomes impossible to cast a block for an alcohol-fueled engine is the day that humankind will be leaving the skies for good.
One could still do some crop dusting with ultralights, I suppose, and a little aerial photography and recon work. If we ever get down to the point of militias being it as far as local defense goes, even a couple of ultralights might be enough to establish air superiority, and all the tactical advantages that entails.
Memmel,
I understand your point, which was also made by Tainter in "The Collapse of Complex Societies". We are experiencing diminishing returns on technology and any form of increasing complexity. Research into renewables is expensive and has yet to give hope of offsetting declining hydrocarbons. Our government continues to balloon in size and expense without a concurrent increase in positive results. Health care, educational systems, transportation & infrastructure, even military force- all are showing signs of diminishing returns in spite of increasingly costly expenditures.
The low-hanging fruit has been picked.
Exactly. Memmel is right.
Take the years 1935-1975. Wow - huge progress in tech, a world war, all kinds'a stuff happened.
Now take 1975 - 2005...... yawn.
I realized this watching the 1975 movie The Cincinnati Kid, made in 1975, about a Depression-era poker player. I realized the date the poker game takes place could well be 1935, which means the people making the movie would be dealing with things only 30 years in the past - like me dealing with things in 1975, roughly.
Well, in 1975 things were BETTER than they are now, even though there was a recession going on! And nothing much has really happened, Da Same Da Buses go around Honolulu County (that's about the year they got the new buses and finally got rid of their old WWII era smokers) I got the same $10 for a strand of Niihau shells I can get now (if I were back there and able to pick the things, but there are less of them now) and adjusting everything for inflation, things were BETTER then and have been in a gradual slide downward since then...
And those guys making that movie in 1975 were writing about 30 years before, the Bad Old Times.....
Oh dear I need to drink more..... 1935-1975 is 40 YEARS not 30!
Wow, makes my comparison all the more powerful ..... 1965-2005, again 40 years is an even more striking example of decline, technical stasis, decrease in living standards, war and ennui, depression and p'tui......
The F-22 may be many things, but it's not VTOL (or even STOVL). The F-35B, on the other hand...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-35_Lightning_II#F-35B
... however, with deliveries expected around 2012, I'll believe it when I see it.
Since it is based on the same technology as the Yak-141 Forger (1970s), the argument that technology has reached a practical limit still holds.
AKH
I take it that you aren't technically educated as you are completely ignoring aerodynamics. The speed of sound sets a limit in that the aerodynamic drag increases sharply at higher speeds. Passenger aircraft fly below this speed at a high enough altitude such that the air is very thin. To fly higher and faster takes much more power and thus more fuel.
It is thought to be possible to build a machine which could take off and land like a typical aircraft, climb high into the atmosphere, then rocket into a sub-orbital trajectory to reach a distant point. Don't hold your breath on that one...
E. Swanson
Exactly so.
The sub-orbital route could I think avoid enough friction to be about equivalent in energy costs per human for 12k mile trips; but the real world imposes drastic limitations in terms of materials which can deal with the temperatures; as well as carrying oxidizer along. We'll be seeing NY-Tokyo scramjet passenger service "never".
When flying, skip the movie and stay plastered to the window. Even at Mach .88, it's a miracle and a godlike view which will soon be unavailable. And there's perhaps some responsibility to bear witness to what we're doing to the world.
Ethan, regarding Leanan's:
"Or even farther back one can see that the evolution of flint arrowheads reached a zenith during the late stone age."
And your reply:
"Again, what particular time are you referring to? Because the "late stone age" ended when people got better lethal technologies, like bronze. "Stone Age Life" as commonly thought - i.e., nomadic hunter gatherer lifestyles - also ended when the neolithic agricultural revolution occurred, and settled communities stopped relying on hunting technology for food."
As an amateur flintknapper, I feel qualified to assert than Leanan is correct. First, the evolution of stone tools did reach a zenith during the late stone age. Despite much more sophisticated understanding of the mechanics of fracture in brittle materials, contemporary flintknappers produce no stronger nor beautiful tools than did people 3000 years ago. Second, the discontinuation of stone tool manufacture was an economic decision. In most of Europe since 1)copper and tin were fairly common, and 2) less skill was required in production, the mass-production of cast bronze tools was less costly than knapped tools. On the other hand, ancient Egypt had much more stone than bronze, and so continued to use knapped tools well into the bronze age despite being a "settled community".
Technologies do indeed "mature".
PLAN, PLANt, PLANet
Errol in Miami
It seems astounding to me that the majority of people on the earth seem stuck on the idea that some type of invisible hand will guide us in the new energy crisis. The Neocons and self proclaimed free market capitalists rley on an invisible hand that will come up with a substitute for crude and condensate, the religeous fundementalists of either Christian or Muslim stripes rely on the grace of God and/or the mercy of Allah, the engineers and the technocrats have a faith in technology-and all of these versions of faith seem to rely on something or someone outside of ourselves with little or no effort on our part.
I guess I have my own assumptions, too. I firmly believe that praying for a crop of corn works much better with a hoe in my hand, and that there's a real effect from my attitude, I guess sort of a Dale Carnagie solution, that having a positive attitude that something can be done and working towards that goal on a daily basis will help. So I've resolved to spend at least 30 minutes a day working towards a solution. I figure a small realistic goal will be much more easy to acheive and further that Its important that this is a daily goal.
Yesterday, I went to the hardware store and fixed a couple of hooks on my screen doors so I can leave the doors open for better ventilation in nice weather. Today I'm going to prime a window that I'm fixing for the same purpose. Its called praying for corn with a hoe in my hand. Bob Ebersole
There you go.
Hand in Hand with Gary Player's "The more I practice the luckier I get".
Mexico has just halted production.
It will not come back.
Still have idiots on CNBC stating that crude should
be at $60 or less.
No mention of Mexico's many offshore problems.
600 000 bpd offline. Think that's not gonna hurt?
Arkansaw of Samuel L Clemens
You're joking right? "It will not come back" are you serious?
I'm sure it's got nothing to do with the weather. 0_o
I'm sorry, but why will Mexican oil production not come back from their temporary shut down?
Because Cantarell's been collapsing at 10 000 bp per week
for years
already.
And that was before Dean.
Dean's damage has not been fully repaired.
Latest Article, last month I believe, said 45% of Cantarell was up to speed.
Following WT on Mexico's Export Model and Calderon's announcement the other day that Mexico is out of the oil
bidness in five years.
Combine this with everyone in the production business erring on optimism every time.
I said Mexico would cut us off by New Year's just in their own self interest of Domestic Consumption.
Add Storm Related Production problems and what we'll get from Mexico from here on out will be purely start and stop
exporting.
From Mexico being our #2 Supplier in 06 to Start/Stop in
one year.
Arkansaw of Samuel L Clemens
0_0 oh boy.
Mcgowanmc, or Arkansaw or whatever your name is. You are exaggerating. There was virtually no damage from Dean.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idUKN2326265620070824
And Cantarell is in decline but it is in full production except for the latest incidents of a production platform tipping over and crashing into a drilling rig, and the shutdown due to bad weather. Pemex should be in full production in a day or so except for that one damaged platform. I have no idea how much oil will be off line nor for how long because of that one damaged platform. Just guessing I would estimate that this one platform produces from 100 to 200 kb/d. If anyone has any estimates of how long this platform will be down, or how much production is off line because of the accident, please post them.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7063288.stm
However I would guess it would be several weeks, or even several months, before the platform is repaired.
But Arkansaw, we need to stay credible on this list. Don't make statements that you cannot back up with a URL, statements like Cantarell being only 45% up to speed. You just made that crap up. And the idea that Mexico will stop exports by New Years is just way, way over the top. If you wish people to pay any attention to what you say you will stop making such outrageous statements as that.
Ron Patterson
Pemex could not say how much oil had leaked into the sea but the platform normally produces 3,500 barrels per day.
Reuters
25 Oct 2007 21:58:36 GMT
Thanks Charles. Obviously my guess was way, way off. I was thinking in terms of an Atlantis or a Thunder Horse. Not quite, this was a much smaller platform.
I should have known better. Platforms in shallow water are always much smaller than those in very deep water. In shallwo water where you just sit the platform on the ocean floor, you can afford to have a lot more of them, one for every well. But in very deep water one platform must support many wells, sometimes the entire field.
Ron Patterson
I second that! In one way or the other we are all guessing here. Some of us have more informed guesses than others and some of us don't know s@#t from Shinola, which is why I don't post much because I don't have any facts on hand to guesstimate production levels, consequences for peak oil etc.
Opinions are like a-holes - we all have one but let's keep this list credible by not being overly pessimistic or optimistic unless you have good hard facts to back that opinion up.
A lot of good ideas are floated here as well.
They rarely are backed by good hard facts.
My name is James McGowan.
I like Samuel Clemens and his reference to Arkansas'
correct pronunciation.
I saw the source of the 45%. Because I follow Cantarell
as much as the Ozzie Wheat Harvest. I wil update when URL is found.
Now. I've spent an inordinate amt of time in the last 24 hrs researching Cantarell.
I will share:
"And Cantarell is in decline but it is in full production except for the latest incidents of a production platform tipping over and crashing into a drilling rig, and the shutdown due to bad weather."
That's major. I wonder what Labor has to say about the huge death toll from life rafts being useless?
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article318.html
"Then on January 29th, crude oil surge by $3 per barrel on news that daily output at Mexico's biggest oil field tumbled by half a million barrels to 1.5 million bpd last year, according to the Mexican government. Mexico's overall oil output fell to just below three million barrels a day in December, down from almost 3.4 million barrels at the start of the year, the lowest rate of oil output since 2000.
Some experts predict that Cantarell's output will drop another 600,000 bpd by the end of this year. Petroleos Mexicanos (PEMEX) might try increase output by 200,000 barrels a day at other fields, leaving the country with a net decline of 400,000 bpd by year's end and daily exports of less than 1.4 million barrels. Mexico's oil reserves are expected to last only nine years and eight months at current rates of production."
1.5 minus 6 = 900 000 bpd now.
Or:
http://www.fcnp.com/550/peakoil.htm
" An energy consultant in Mexico City published parts of the study and later the Wall Street Journal got to examine the document. It seems there is only 825 feet between the gas cap over the oil and the water that is pushing into Cantarell from the bottom. This distance is closing at between 250 and 360 feet per year.
The more pessimistic of the study's scenarios have Cantarell's production dropping from 2 million b/d to 875 thousand barrels a day by the end of next year and 520 thousand barrels a day by the end of 2008.
PEMEX, while refusing to release the study comments the pessimistic scenarios will only happen if they do nothing and they are taking aggressive steps to mitigate the situation.
Outside experts are not so sure."
875 matches 900 well enough.
And if, like you said the damaged drilling platform was
pumping 200k, 600,000 barrels would be all that PEMEX would be able to take offline yesterday.
And then this, found at Cattle Network, which has also provided me with good info on the Ozzie Big Dry
and wheat fiasco:
http://www.cattlenetwork.com/content.asp?contentid=172259
Stormy weather has shut all three of Mexico's Gulf of Mexico oil export harbors and state-owned Petroleos Mexicano, or Pemex, said it has taken 600,000 barrels a day of production off line. Pemex said it will have to wait for the ports to open before it restarts production because it has run out of storage capacity.
While the lost production will likely be made up fairly quickly, it is bound to have an effect on U.S. inventory levels in coming weeks, which could further support prices. Crude is up 10% since Wednesday, when the DOE said in its weekly inventory report that stockpiles fell, contrary to analysts' expectations for a build."
And now you can tell me why, since Cantarell is producing 400,000 bpd less than it was a year ago, at least.
Why have these three ports run out of storage capacity?
And that "whatever your name is" comment was rude.
I can get nasty.
I don't think you want that, so play nice.
Sincerely,
James
Arkansaw of Samuel L Clemens
that would put a big economic depression at the very least durring the coldest part of the year. first quarter 2k8.
I cannot see ANY evidence that this production will be offline for more than a few days.
Do you have some????
It will impact short-term oil stocks possibly.
All I have to say about CNBC (multiple pregnant pauses aside) is at least they are talking about oil. It seems that the majority of other outlets don't have time for it...or?
Bob, the first challenge I see is the masses "realizing" that there is an "energy crisis"
ATM, they think it is speculators, those pesky 'evil' OPEC guys, or Greedy oil companies that are driving up oil prices.
Further, gasoline prices aren't really moving -yet-, and that makes the average 'consumer' more oblivious to the 'crisis'.
It is my fear that they won't get the time to expect the 'establishment' to fix the problem, as they will realize far too late. (still dealing with denial and anger when the TSHTF)
Let's hope there are truckloads of hoes available to be prayed upon.
I was chatting to a guy the other day in a Chinese restaurant (we were both waiting for your take outs). His theory was that high oil prices are due to President Bush being in cahoots with Big Oil. He was convinced that Hillary would be the next president and that "everything would be back to normal" after her election. He said he figured gasoline prices would get back to about $1.50 a gallon, like they were before Bush took over.
I think he's going to be disappointed.
This is why I think Hillary is a shoe-in.
People think (misguided) that she will bring change. But look at what we know. Bill Clinton, and Elder Bush travel together to speak.
It would appear she is to succeed GWB, but not for change but to bring status quo to the leadership.
At this point in the 1992 election cycle the media were sure Paul Tsongas would be the next president. In the 2000 cycle it was Howard Dean. Now it's Hillary. We Iowans get first crack at it Jan 5th. Such power for a state with a little over 1% of US population.
Then I guess that the candidate who will win is the one most in favor of ethanol subsidies?
Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. You get the prize.
Back in the first half of the 19th century, candidates would offer voters bribes of subsidized ethanol of a slightly different form. Glad to see that some cherished US political traditions are continuing into the present.
;-)
LOL!!!!
Yes indeed!!
There's a Mencken book online about how archaic American English can be compared to the British, the division was really in Shakespearean times and is very visible: Words like "chores", "caddy-corner", etc that we use every day really date back that far. It's a fascinating read.
Likkering up the voters is relatively new, by comparison!
A lot of us Iowans detest ethanol and the damage that big ag and its fertilizers are doing to the soil. (I'm physcist who has retired to be a small organic farmer. Other organic farmers generally feel similarly, and there are quite a few of us.) The Farm Bureau and big ag, however, are vocal, effective supporters of ethanol. I don't think ethanol is a significant issue, here, however.
In fact, Edwards won a lot of support in my area by calling for a moratorium on the construction of the odious hog confinement facilities and enforcement of federal clean water laws. But Iowans care about Iraq, health care, climate change. I wish I could add peak oil, but I don't see much of that, except for those on the ethanol or other "biofuel" bandwagons. There is a lot of support for wind and solar energy.
Exactly the top 1%/.01% LIKE the way the country is heading right now back to the olden days before government regulation circa 1700-1800's. Did you not see the article about the gwb apointed surprime court deciding to overturn and refund the fine exon mobel had to pay for their incompitance on the exon valdeze disaster?
the danger i see is that she resumes bill's dealings and adopts kkkarl rove's tactics. a democrat facist is not much better than a republican facist.
"I think he's going to be disappointed."
Damn straight! Then he's going to be pissed. But it will be a long time until he understands what's really causing the problem - maybe never. Maybe this is just the denial phase, but still, I expect it to last a while.
Hello PeakTO,
Your quote: "Let's hope there are truckloads of hoes available to be prayed upon."
I also hope we have the wisdom to build huge strategic reserves of wheelbarrows and bicycles to be 'prayed upon'.
Otherwise: those few that do have these items will be 'preyed upon' by those people that don't have them, as they finally get that old-time religion of vitals tools for survival.
http://www.uni-kiel.de/sino/ar/sk/12a_1970s.jpg
Never forget that the Chinese considered rickshaws and wheelbarrows as 'secret weapons' to efficiently leverage human effort. Add bicycles to the postPeak list, too.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
oilmanbob,
I'm not sure where the "invisible hand" sentiment comes from. I would assume it's a combination of Adam Smith's metaphor as well as the belief that God (or whichever higher power) will choose a new Moses (or other leader/power) to guide the Israelites (humanity) to the new Jewish nation (free us from our depedence on oil).
In my opinion, the only thing humanity will get, to use the Exodus analogy, are plagues.
In regard to the "invisible hand", I think Warren Buffett's "invisible foot" is more apt. The "invisible foot" trips up and slows down a forward-moving economy, or in our case society.
P.S. I've not read the Bible in a long, long time, so please forgive any inacuracies in my Exodus analogy.
I like calling it "the invisible fist" when I'm referring to economic woes.
Or even the Stark Fist of Removal
In regard to the "invisible hand"...
Doesn't it have an "invisible finger" ? :-D
"Its called praying for corn with a hoe in my hand. Bob Ebersole"
One wonders. Take the farmers who survive by what the weather brings..and if needed they might tend to be very religious in that they feel their lives depend so much upon the weather..which is an act of nature..hence possibly controlled by God.
Then compare that to a couch potato type incesnsed that the network has blacked out his favorite football game...
Who is the most likely to call upon God?
So the couch potato it would be understood does not have the same incentive as the farmer.
Here then comes the great divide between city and suburb dwellers vs those who depend greatly upon nature.
Each might be as apprehensive about certain events in their lives but which one is more important?
The divide is that one might see a guiding hand or their prayers might come true and and the other is only very slightly inconvienced...therefore the dividing line as regards 'faith' then its easy to see why modern life might so easily turn from a God and his religion.
airdale
Bob, Spengler has a new column on ATOL and he believes that an attack on Iran is a done deal. Spengler also takes a stab at what the cause/results of such an attack will be. Sort of interesting in a macabre way...You might want to change from a hoe to a shovel. I am considering digging a hole and pulling it in behind me.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IJ30Ak09.html
When you can't deal with the devil
By Spengler
'A year later than I expected, the drumroll has begun towards a Western attack on Iran's nuclear capability. Despite the best efforts of Western diplomacy, the "moderate" option in Iranian politics expired last week with President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's triumphal consolidation of power...snip...
'It never was to be. Iran has only two options: a sickening slide into economic decay and internal weakness as its oil-exporting capacity attenuates, or a regional adventure against the Sunni oligarchs of the Gulf oil-producing states. For the Iranian street, Ahmadinejad's constituency in the slums of Tehran and the Persian hinterland, this is the Shi'ite moment, the once-in-a-millennium opportunity to undo centuries of perceived oppression.
European diplomats woefully concede that Rafsanjani, who maintained close ties to Germany in particular, no longer offers a viable alternative. Arab commentators are watching with alarm developments in Iran, beginning with the dismissal of Iran's nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani.'...snip...
Iran is a failed state, a nation ruled by religious zealots. Anyone who thinks Iran is the "good guy" in all this is delusional. But by the same token, the US has been the biggest "bad guy" to hit the Middle East since the Crusades. There are no good guys in this fight; they are all deplorable. And that's the way we humans are - slipping down to the lowest common denominator of behavior, in this case, violence, to get our wishes.
The United States is currently evaluating Putin's threat that attacking Iran is attacking Russia. It is my "belief" that the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) is going to conclude that this is a credible threat. Let's just call this a guess of mine, ok? But I also believe that the CIA is going to conclude that it is not based on their assessment of his military capacity. As a consequence, the Bush administration will ignore the DIA assessment in favor of the CIA assessment, because it gives them what they want. When they do that, we are closing in on Westexas' analogy of Iran is to WWIII what Poland was to WWII. But hey, I could be wrong and the CIA will give Putin credibility too, but somehow I doubt it.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Dr. Albert Bartlett
Into the Grey Zone
Last night pbs had a show on about the ccd disorder that is happening with the bees. It was correct in that without them we will literally loose all the non-wind pollinated plants. though it was not to sure of the cause of the disorder. they did say they found what was supposed to be a virus that originated in Israel and was found in Australia among other places but they in general thought the virus was the straw that broke the camels back for the bees.
they figure colony collapse disorder is the result of years of having bee's pollinate large mono-crop feilds, exposure to pesticides, and mal-nutriention from feeding on the pollen of only a single plant. The virus was just what pushed them over the edge.
Thank you, TK. I saw it as well.
Excellent show. So very rare for US TV.
And I used the info to get into Ozzie Agriculture.
It seems that the Powers that Be in Ozzieland are doing everything in their power to project "Everything's fine."
Try finding out about the current Ozzie Wheat Harvest.
But it seems I've discovered a back door of sorts with the bees story:
"An abundance of Paterson’s Curse in the past few weeks has been a godsend for apiarists with the high protein pollen helping to build strong hives, but paddocks of the well-known purple flowers are going into stress and “dying way too fast” due to lack of moisture, warm days and wind.
Current conditions have had an adverse affect on canola crops toos, drying out plants and scattering flowers.
“We normally follow the canola, starting out at Narromine and Nyngan and moving hives over a period of weeks to the Dubbo district then on to Orange and Bathurst,’’ Mr Sunderland said. “This year unusually warm weather saw crops in various regions flowering around the same time. Then the damaging winds arrived and dried up the soil and the plants and blew all the petals away.
“Fingers are crossed for rain and honey producers are being very careful slashing costs down to nothing. Consumers are watching spending too and honey is now viewed as a luxury item by many families who are battling to cope with escalating supermarket bills.
“The cost of basic foodstuffs increases week by week and people are worried."
No flowers, no wheat either.
http://www.ararat.yourguide.com.au/news/national/general/beekeepers-figh...
It's gonna be a bombshell when it hits.
Arkansaw of Samuel L Clemens
I saw it too. When I saw the way we're trucking those poor little critters hither and yon, and all the junk we are spraying on them while they are in the fields, the thought occured to me: "Are we totally insane?"
If I were a bee, I think I'd be feeling sick too if I were treated that way.
Huge monoculture fields with thousands of hives being trucked thousands of miles between them is simply not sustainable.
A healthy polyculture served by a few hives of healthy bees that stay in one place is sustainable. This is the only real solution, and not just to this one problem.
CCD has been isolated to an Israeli viral infection that arrived in the U.S. due to importation of Australian bees.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070906140803.htm
80% of all bees are owned by the top 1% of bee keepers. They're generally crusty fifty something agrogypsies, starting in California and making their way to the northeast, following the curve of flowering plants that produce things humans like to eat.
So ... our pollination depends not just on insects but on the diesel to move them around the country
If you're interested in the crops in your area continuing you may want to look into building and placing a few mason bee nesting boards. It takes 20,000 honey bees to do an orchard ... that can be handled by 300 mason bees. This is a low impact (on your time) sort of thing that can have tremendous results. For the extra compulsive apis mellifera and supplies can be had from Dadant ...
As the show stated, and i stated above. the Israeli virus was just the straw that broke the bee's back.
bee's were already in a slaw decline before the virus hit due to. stress from being made to polinate large mono-crop feilds. the mal-nutrion that results from this. the repeated douseings of pesticides when in the feild and anti-biotics durring transport.
Malnutrition comes from certain crops - cranberries I recall as being less than desirable. Pesticide exposure is a concern but people who are hiring bees aren't applying the stuff when they're due to arrive. Transport stress is heat - a good hot day, a little bit of a traffic jam, and the bees start dying.
We're going to see a renaissance in local honey bee keeping as fuel costs make it prohibitively expensive to run hives all over the country. Honey prices should go up - a simple, locally produced sugar is a good thing when sugar cane grows far away. There will also be increased interest in mason bees, which are 70X as effective as honey bees for a certain subset of crops. The mason bee thing will be huge here, as they like apples and alfalfa, and those are about the only bulk grown crops around here that need insect pollination.
It was shocking to see that huge, 10,000 acre field of berries without a single hedgerow for wild bees. And how sad it is that if the problem is caused by a virus, that we have honeybees being transported thousands of miles spreading it all over the country.
As I said, I'm wondering if we've totally taken all leave of our senses.
Whom the Gods would destroy, they first make insane.
Yes, though as the guy who wrote the 'gaia's revenge' book discovered they linger for a long time in the enviroment while dispersing in the enviroment widely.
Also i do not think there is going to be a renaissance in local bee keeping, the vast majority of citys and towns outlaw bee-keeping within city limits for various reasons. I don't see them changing this anytime soon and it would be a little late to set up a beehive when chaos hits and they are too busy elsewhere.
I just checked my town's ordinance and there is nothing about bees in there. Most municipalities do have some regulations restricting "livestock" in particular and animals in general. I've heard of plenty of urban beekeepers, so I am wondering how common laws against beekeeping really are. My impression is that most of these laws are complaint-driven. Keep your beehives out of sight, and no-one need ever know that you even have them. Swarms would be the big problem. Your best bet would be to team up with an out-of-town beekeeper to call in whenever any of your hives swarm and the neighbors freak out. While you could capture the swarm yourself, you give the game away regarding what you are doing, and if you are in town there is a limit to how many hives you are going to be able to sustain on your property.
Beekeeping is another definite item on my ever-increasing "need to do" list.
Do some serious checking on mason bees - they require very little care and they're fantastic pollinators for some species of plants. Not as versatile as honey bees, but they're already in your area and just need a little work with a drill and a piece of wood for your home to become their favorite hangout.
I been keeping up somewhat with the local bee keepers here,,since this winter I plan to start on my Nucleus hive construction and will obtain my bees from the local folks.
So I checked his hives about a month ago when he was showing some preacher all about it..
I asked him about CCD and he said his bees were fine and hadn't heard of anyone in the region having it...He said up north of us there is problems with it.
So here we do not move bees around much..he only places a hive or two in a few locations..we don't grow crops that need bees to pollinate. If so the wild ones might be taking care of that. However this spring I saw very very few until the white clover in my yard and field took off and we had a lot of white clover coming up..then I saw bees all over it.
My thoughts is that the large amounts of pesticides sprayed here cause much of the wild hives to die yet not enough to kill those maintained by man.
We also had zero locust blooms,no fruit tree blooms and a lot of flowers that came in late. Also I think the tulip popular took a huge hit on no blooming.
The holly around my front door is usually covered up with honey bees but this spring ...none.
So the jury is out around here. Also no one noticed the large hive trucks coming thru this year like they used to as they traveled thru this area. That I took with a very large grain of salt,in fact didn't believe it at all.
So I looked in the hive,after smoking my clothes a bit..the bees were very docile, and the beekeeper had on a face veil..I had on nothing and the preacher stood waaaaay back.
I have never been stung by a bee except as a small child.
Wasps yes..but never a honey bee and I have stood in the middle of the swarming clouds of them..they move slowly when close to the ground and swarming. One year the spent the night in one of my pine trees about 5 feet off the ground..I watched them from about 1 foot from my face to the swarm as they gathered into a ball on the branch. Amazing critters.
airdale-a hint for those who might go near bees..don't wear black or brown clothing..anyone know why? Its rather obvious once you know.
Hello Airdale,
My guess on why not to wear black or brown clothing around bees is because it makes a person look too much like a bear.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Around here we know all about bears. (Well, everyone except the recently arrived flatlanders with more money than brains). I'm giving serious thought to getting set up for beekeeping, but I already know that is also going to require an investment in electric fencing; otherwise, my hives will become a favorite fast food stop along the bear highway that my yard sometimes becomes.
So when we finally get around to diesel rationing, someone will remember to give the beekeepers the top-priority stickers, right?
I think given all of the colony collapse issues coupled with fuel prices we're going to see a distinct interest in not having commuter bees any more. Those are family owned businesses and its apparently pretty rare for the children to want to follow in the father's footsteps.
I'm certainly going to do the mason bee houses because that is a simple, easy thing that fits the crops here in the area, and we'll see what I'm doing work wise before I get into keeping honeybees.
Weren't there also reports of factory farmers of bees where they were feeding bees soy protein and high fructose corn syrup to replace pollen and nectar? That certainly can't be helping CCD.
http://www.moneyweek.com/file/37042/out-of-africa.html
Out of Africa: natural resources & the promise of riches
25 billion barrels is less than the global year's consumption of 30 billion barrels.
So that only takes the mid-point of PO about 6 months away.
A lot of money involved though.
Increasingly, too.
TAD has a fourth degree black belt in grasping at straws. He discards the obvious junk like hydrinos, but anything else is fair game. Some of the things he picks up on are potential silver BBs while others depend on the whole world running as it does now while we frantically build the new "solution". Neither of those assumptions hold water - it'll be BAU until TSHTF, except for a select few d00mers amongst us :-)
I get this mental image of TAD.(partyguy too)
when the news gets to be too much he scans the nets frantically,knit brow, forehead sweating, sweat stain pits and back, a tear forming in his eye chanting "come on, come on" then he finds something, posts the link and sighs with relief, whewwwww!
Lol come on, as if you don't know any doomers who don't make the exact same thing, just opposite.
Actually it must be harder NOT to see the bad news. The latest on the dying of the planet and the crashing of the world as we know it, is all around, if we would but percieve.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/video/2007/10/19/VI20071019...
Since it is now becoming quite obvious, Bush is now touting the 'Health Benefits' of global warming. Come on people, when you've been so wrong, for so long, just admit it and start helping instead of hindering.
The doomers have an easier time of it, as reality supports their view, but I agree to this - we aren't going to get an Armageddon, but instead we'll see a series of insults to energy, environment, and economy, and we'll look back after the tumble and say "Whoa!" Those who imagine it'll come in an instant have their view, but I don't think reality will prove out along those lines.
Regarding Peter Goodchild's article linked above, "Peak Oil And Famine: Four Billion Deaths", I have to say I wish people would at the very least explain what they mean by "carrying capacity" when they start throwing it around. It's one of those terms that becomes slipperier and slipperier the more carefully you try to define it.
There is no way he can support his argument about there being a direct link between Peak Oil and carrying capacity:
Oh yeah? As others challenged me, "Prove it!"
This article is so loose and unsubstantiated it makes even my assertion-driven "Trends to 2100" effort look like a paragon of dispassionate scholarship. Which the latest update of its successor, World Energy to 2050 actually is ;-)
Glider: Yes. All these predictions of a great die-off are very light on details. If you just extrapolate from current conditions and assume 4 billion persons die from starvation, one assumes Africa is basically emptied of humans. Then what happens? Has China poured into Africa to take advantage of the situation?
I think you are completely out to lunch here Guider.
"There is no way he can support his argument about there being a direct link between Peak Oil and carrying capacity"
I think you could change the word "causes" to "allowed" or "enabled" here but the point remains and should be obvious to someone like you that "It is the latter (oil energy) that actually causes the former (Population growth)."
" Prove it!" is something geometry students say. Scientist say. "Disprove it."
What makes you think that without the energy and material inputs from oil the planet can support the current population?
Pass Go but do not collect $200.
In my heart of hearts I still agree with the qualitative position I set out in "Trends to 2100" - that fossil fuels have been the driver of population growth. There is a bit more to it than that, however.
Any scientist who says A causes B must set out a mechanism, or their assertion is worthless. Only if a mechanism is postulated can the disproof begin. You don't need to disprove unsupported assertions, you can safely just ignore them, at least from a scientific perspective - the Precautionary Principle says we should maybe pay some attention if the outcome is dire enough.
One idea I'm playing with is that energy growth has been an asymmetric function as far as population growth is concerned. Energy growth might drive population growth harder on the upslope than the loss of it reduces population on the downslope. This might happen because energy growth drives knowledge growth as well, and that's not lost (at least immediately) as one component of the energy mix fades away. The residual knowledge makes it easier to change practices and processes - like knowing how to build electric trains and trucks to transport grain, for example. I have no idea yet if this asymmetry is true, but it's an interesting idea.
The main piece of evidence that everyone points to is "10 calories of FF in a calorie of food". That evidence-byte tells us almost nothing about how much oil or natural gas is required to feed different regions with different agricultural systems.
For me the boojum is nitrogen fertilizer prices. If we wind up with 7.5 billion desperately poor in 2050, and natural gas has declined by 75%, how do that many people buy enough increasingly expensive fertilizer to maintains the yields they need fro survival? I'd be willing to bet that most of the replacement hydrogen sources (coal and electrolysis) will produce more expensive hydrogen than we get from methane right now.
My money is still riding on little Tommy Malthus, but I want to see a clear mechanism before I publish another article that projects an imminent die-off.
EXCELLENT - your request for a Clear Mechanism seems to be at the heart of debate for most of us in this community. The dividing line between the "doomers" or realists as they call themselves, and the rest of the PO-Aware who think the probabilities favor a less than apocalyptic effect from PO.
I think you can easily put together a general mechanism by first reviewin what you already know about the collapse of our past human societies, AND what you know about the effect of Peak Resources on other critters throughout the planet's history.
How has the population transition occurred more often or not for humans or other animals (and plants) when their primary source of energy and matter entered decline?
What was their Transition like and what was the following outcome? - i.e. extinction of the population or a new equilibrium for the surviving populations based on the remaining or new resources?
I like the Australian Red Claw Crayfish model (knowing full well their species went through hell before they came upon their current way of life...) :
1. Water and other resources decline dramatically...
2. Nature selects between aggressive and nonaggressive contestants
3. The Nonaggressive, more tolerant of the contestants consistently win in the mating game during The Transition in which the Population Shakedown occurs.
4. Nonaggressive and more tolerant contestants inherit the earth.
The (happy) ending... (but about the Exact Mechanisms of The Transition... all I can say is they appear to be uniformly UUUUgly...)
Hi.
I'm intrigued by your position, GliderGuider. For your criticism on how shallow his facts and connections for a wider perspective are almost identical to my own criticism to your piece on trends to 2100. Well, I can see that you did make some more maths than he did, but I am afraid that, considering a whole friggin world, with so many variables at hand and its implied error margins, everything could happen. That's why it is so difficult to predict the future.
Either way, what strikes me most is your obsession for a "mechanism" that somehow goes on to prove what you have already established as a foregone conclusion of your own, namely that PO along with some other things will bring massive malthusian consequences.
Forgive me, but just because you have a reasoning and intriguing questions, accompanied by a "clear mechanism" don't make them true.
But to clear any misconceptions about what I said in that particular thread, I am not against such amateur studies. I am against calling them science or "evidence" of what doom scenario you pick will eventually happen.
My advise is to work harder and harder on the hard-core statistics and data. You'll find that those data are more prone to resolve in non-linear data and you will find yourself in a big strain to keep a coherent picture of events. I'll give you some examples:
1. You take energy = population. Whilst this is not true, as even you point out, other things come to mention. The Sun and the wind are being used daily but unnacounted for. How many times I spread my clothes in the sun and wind to dry them up (and who's counting that energy?), my fruit basket comes from where but the rain and the sun and a small kinder-garten? I use no fertilizers. Who's counting that energy? It's a very very dense theme.
2. USA is probably very dependent on fertilizers, just by looking at Google Earth pictures of its terrain. But India and even China are not. Will GW have consequences in its monsoon and therefore hurting their agriculture? Who knows exactly? Many predictions are based on non-linear models, and if there is anything non-linear models can say to you is that predicting the future is hell. It's like predicting the weather.
3. Global energy production is easier to graph. But the feedback loops are very uncertain, and those are the keys to plot the downslope curve of energy. How will people (and by people I mean your Joe Sixpack) look at Sun Power when crude oil tops 200 dollars? I think they will look at it differently. How will the crude oil market react to a most-certain US recession in 2008? What will energy producers do? What will politicians speak?
Are these factors even plotable? Computer models conservatively well in constant situations, (for instance, an exponential growth) but when instability hits the system, they are no longer valuable, and chaos rules. By chaos I don't mean anarchy but unpredictability. (Will someone or something save us? I am not naive, but I am not also dumb enough to say that mankind won't do anything to counter its dwindling situation). This is a common feature on phenomenon computer modelling: it works until it doesn't.
Consider that we live in the most interesting of times: for the first time mankind faces multiple threats to its very existence and limits to its growth. This may plunge us down to a pessimistic consideration, or not. It is worth noting that if we never encountered such thing before, we also cannot predict what will happen.
So, I would say that your Scenario is as "fiction" as is Alan Drake's. We are nowhere near the "Foundation" psychossocial analyzers (?) of Isaac Asimov.
I strongly disagree. China and India are more heavily dependent on synthetic fertilizers every year.
You are correct. China uses four times the global average of synthetic fertilizers per hectare. And increasing.
But how can you say that their current population is dependent on it if they were grown in a traditional agricultural system?
Well no, not "everything" could happen. We are still bound by the Laws of Thermodynamics, which is one of the things that makes any prediction possible.
Do you know the difference between a hypothesis and a theory? Just because you feel the hypothesis [less energy leads to fewer people] is either objectively impossible or humanistically unworthy doesn't mean it shouldn't be proposed - if a testable theory can be presented to support it.
The effects of inflection points are impossible to determine mathematically, but their existence most emphatically is not. A function that eventually results in a division by zero is one such case. A Peak Oil analogy would be trying to determine "human activity per barrel of oil" as the oil supply drops to 0. At that point you are forced back on inference to continue the analysis. However that doesn't mean the exercise is pointless, only that the outcome becomes radically less predictable.
I'm not trying to be Hari Seldon, just to part the mists a little bit. The fact that you seem to feel that my suspicions about the future make my efforts somehow disreputable really doesn't make that much difference to me.
Well not really if one does really believe Quantum Mechanics runs the show. Anything CAN really happen, it's just a matter of probabilities. But I'm being an arse :)
I'm glad you frame your work as an hypothesis because it has been praised as "more evidence" that real shit will hit the fan in the site, because it "showed us" a pretty bad picture of events. Well, if it is an hypothesis, the only thing it presents is an intention of a theory, a work in progress, a thing yet to be tested. And if it is so, I commend you. It is very hard work you're getting into, so many variables and so many feedbacks and non-linear consequences to nit-pick.
In all seriousness, I think it would be the most exhausting of works Man has ever made, to reproduce the story of Isaac Asimov's Foundation.
Yes, I am with you. I think it would be very interesting to study when and where those inflection points (there are several) are going to happen, because that is where those tipping points can make non-linearity off the charts. And what could exactlyhappen in those tipping points? For one to study a 100 years chart it is unwise to think mankind is analogous to any yeast. Yeast don't react as fast as we do.
For example. When shit hits the fan, people may panic, but they can also get together and work it out. Why wouldn't they? And if you think they are absolutely not, how much of ideological pessimism subjectivity is not in the way of rational thought?
But the point is that the studies of non-linear events, as for instance the WTC planes simulations or GW models, they always identify those tipping points and say, "Ok, we don't know what is gonna happen after this". They could plot the model charts infinitely but they don't. They know its limits. A good study know its limits.
Yes I know, you don't sound like Seldon, you sound a lot more like Richard Duncan, simplifying your way to the stone age of mankind. That's the weakness of your work.
And it should? Are you that easy to convert? :D
Seriously. Not disreputable. I don't care about the messenger, if the message is solid. But preconceptions do make people tend to narrow down the conclusion of their works towards their own preconceptions. It's Morton's Devil in some way. I strongly advise you to read "The Mismeasure of Man", by Stephen Jay Gould for an history lesson of how preconceptions that were underestimated by the researchers themselves made them reach outrageous conclusions proven false by History.
In order for us to remain focused on 'disprove it' it would have to be a globally and scientifically acknowledged fact. Since it is not, the burden of proof rests solely on the die-off doomers.
Not necessarily. "Disprove it" usually comes up in the replication phase of the investigation. All you need is a theory that proposes a mechanism and a means of testing it. There's no need for it to be a "global scientifically acknowledged fact" - of which there are precious few.
If one wants to have a causal theory taken seriously though, one does need to propose a mechanism and the means of testing it. Given the size of the effect we're postulating, the proponents of die-off do need to say a bit more than, "It is intuitively obvious that..."
I'm a scientist, and I can assure you the onus is most certainly on me to prove my assertions, or at least provide strong evidence. Some things can't be proven like a mathmatical formula can, but the person proposing any theory must provide some evidence of it's accuracy. A scientific paper as light on proof as these assertions would be laughed out of the room.
What you have stated about the burden of proof is completely wrong.
Richard C
Richard, you make a good point. But before we can even discuss the question of upon whom the burden of proof lies, we must first decide what assertion is being made.
Are we saying that an abundance of cheap energy (fossil fuels) enabled the industrial revolution? Well, I could prove that but what would be the point of that? I think that is a foregone conclusion.
Are we saying that an abundance of cheap energy and the machinery produced by the industrial revolution was responsible for the agricultural revolution…or the green revolution ? I get the same conclusion as above.
Are we saying that when these fossil fuels disappear, primarily oil, that we can no longer power the industrial revolution, or the agricultural revolution? Well if that is the case then I would say that the burden of proof lies with him or her who claims that industry and agriculture can just keep on producing without fuel to power it.
And are we saying that without transportation, industry, fertilizer, pesticides, tractors, plows, harvesters, and food producing equipment, that enough food to feed the masses will just be produced anyway. Again, I think the burden of proof lies with those who claim that food, along with food distribution, and jobs to buy that food, can be produced without any of this lies with those making such an absurd claim.
But no, you say that if I claim that the disappearance of all this extrasomatic energy will cause the demise of those who depend upon this extrasomatic energy for survival, that it is up to me to prove it.
Well hell, if that be the case then I guess my case will just go unproven. Perhaps we can all live on grass and water, go naked and live under trees when the temperature drops to ten below.
Ron Patterson
I would point out that from the beginning of the 'green revolution' which was the fossil-fuel driven rise in food production, both fertility rates and birthrates have been dropping worldwide. If the increase in food production caused the increase in population, one would expect the opposite; that is, rising TFR and birthrates (or net birth/death increase). This is a strong case for disproving a cause-effect with more food causing more births per family.
It makes more sense, in the light of TFR and birthrate data to say that rising population causes an increase in food production. I don't think, however, that simplistic cause-effect models like this are very useful. In the final analysis, simply saying that an increase in food supply enabled an increase in population makes more sense in that it embodies all the complexities and feedbacks involved in the two data trends.
It's not just a matter of birthrates in the developed world.
It's also about increased life spans and massive relative overconsumption by the wealthy population.
And it is a matter of the rate of growth in the third world that is possible only because of the efficiency and relative excess wealth of the first world.
Both crude birthrates and total fertility rates have been dropping in virtually all countries worldwide since around 1950 when the UN began tracking census statistics. This is data that really surprised me when I looked it up at Earthtrends which is based on UN-gathered statistics. I previously had the same impressions about demographics that are echoed by many on the list over and over again. Look at the data, you might be surprised also.
Before 1950 demographic statistics are harder to come by (if anyone has a source for demographic data before 1950, I'd appreciate an email about it)
I don't care about birthrates of stablized developed countries at the peak of a huge growth wave while there are plenty of resources - I care about the carrying costs of their complex civilization when the resources begin declining. Without the oil, our growth wave ends.
ET, The green revolution dates from the late 1940s. World population growth rate peaked in the mid 60's. But the age of fossil fuels go back about 200 years. But you miss the point entirely. What counts in not birth or fertility rates but the rate of survival. Just a couple of hundred years ago a family had to have many children just to get a couple to survive to adults. That is the way with all animals. When the food supply increases the population increases.
Infant mortality and deaths related to malnutrition have continued to decrease over the last two hundred years as better medicine and more food became available.
That is absolutely hilarious.
Well hell, that was my argument all along. More food enables us to live. More food enables a much higher survival rate. Less food and the infant mortality rate increases. Less food and deaths due malnutrition increase. And yes, it is that simple!
Ron Patterson
Your green revolution didn't appear in my western country until the 60s and is only starting to make a dent in China and India now, so watch out when you say the "forties". It is somehow equal to say that solar PVs arrived Earth some 40 years ago.
Yes, but you are probably also missing the point: the industrial revolution didn't actually changed the rate of survival in the end, only in its development. I'll make myself clearer: people continued to breed even though their rate of survival increased because of a "lag" of judgement and behaviour. Some generations after and from a society with high mortality and high fertility you would end up with a society with low mortality and low fertility, and in the process you boomed yourself up to 8,9 billion people.
The real question is if those 8 or 9 billion people are sustainable or not.
Why is that? More people equals to more demand, therefore more production. You don't want to overproduce.
... and if that would mean lowering survival rate, people would counter it with more births. But again, there would be a lag, and world pop would gently decline until so.
But again, are we really "over-carried"? I mean, it is obvious to you, probably, but I ask again, why is it so clear that we are in over-population? I see the symptoms but I doubt their countings. I very doubt their maths.
Demand does not "cause" production in any physical sense, thus (probably) Ron's hilarity. Economically, it might be considered a "cause", but in reality it is a cause of motivation. Motivation to do something does not automatically make that something so. Physical constraints may prevent your motivation from having much effect.
Please. As if I didn't understand his hilarity. Yes I did understand his hilarity in the same sense that I understand the hilarity of a Bushist laughing out lound, like "come on! do you believe in E-vo-lu-tion? ahah!"
Point is, they didn't in recent history, and that is what recent history graphs show. So, in a rational sense, I really don't get his hilarity at all.
The graphs don't show causation because they can't, they only show a relationship. That you used the term "cause" to describe the meaning of the graphs causes hilarity in those who don't assume trends go on forever and for those who know that correlation is not causation.
But, you know all this - you are just being obtuse about it.
....
Mr. Speek. Please read and read again before writing.
It was ET, not me, who said (and I commend him) that:
for which Darwinian gets all histerical and says:
To which I repplied:
Where did you exactly *read* that I was defending correlation = causation? I was only pointing out what seemed pretty fair, that the causation could be read both ways, not just the doomerish preferential one, and it could, quite in fact, just be the such case.
The term "green revolution" was coined in 1968 but it began in the 1940s and I can give you about a hundred URL to prove it, including this one:
Do you have a URL that says otherwise? China, in those days, was a closed society. But in the 1950s, as the green revolution was gaining momentum, we exported millions of tons of grain to Africa and other parts of Asia.
Luis, that is nothing but mumbo-jumbo double talk. Judgement and behavior? You are just making crap up and you know it. We are animals Luis. All animals produce more offspring that can possibly survive. When there are times of plenty, far more animals survive, humans or otherwise.
More food means a higher survival rate. It is that simple whether you are talking about rats, mice, rabbits or people. It was more food and better medicine that changed the survival rate Luis. More food and better medicine! What brought about more food and better medicine was the industrial revolution and the agricultural revolution. And massive amounts of very cheap fossil fuel brought that about.
Ron Patterson
Keyword: began. How you think that the world just plugged into it instantaneously and at 100% is just beyond me though. I live in Portugal, E.U., and here it just began in the sixties. And we are not in the down part of the GDP world charts last time I checked.
And how much did that contribute to worldwide percentage? I'm curious.
I'm not making crap up. It just happens that I attended to my 9th grade school Geography class and it's what I call common knowledge.
This is a seen phenomenon in all worldwide countries that passed through industrial revolutions:
For a short period of time, yes, for a long period of time... no.
luisdias, your statement about how "green revolution" techniques "is only starting to make a dent in... India now" is totally off base.
According to this 2005 UN's FAO document on Indian fertilizer use:
"The history of the Indian fertilizer industry dates back to 1906, when the first fertilizer factory opened at Ranipet (Tamil Nadu). Since then, there have been major developments in terms of both the quantity and the types of fertilizers produced, the technologies used and the feedstocks employed. The fertilizer industry in India is in the core sector and second to steel in terms of investment.
Prior to 1960/61, India produced only straight nitrogenous fertilizers [ammonium sulphate (AS), urea, calcium ammonium nitrate (CAN), ammonium chloride and single superphosphate (SSP)]. The production of NP complex fertilizers commenced in 1960/61. Currently, India produces a large number of grades of NP / NPK complex fertilizer."
With respect to Total Fertilizer Consumption:
"Fertilizer consumption was less than 1 million tonnes before the mid-1960s. With the introduction of high-yielding variety (HYV) seeds, there was acceleration in the growth of fertilizer consumption. It reached 12.73 million tonnes in 1991/92 as against 0.78 million tonnes in 1965/66. After the decontrol of P and K fertilizers the growth in consumption slowed. The highest consumption was recorded in 1999/2000 (18.07 million tonnes of nutrients). Since then, the growth in consumption has been erratic. In 2003/04, total nutrient consumption was 16.8 million tonnes."
This is hardly a matter of "only starting to make a dent". Green Revolution techniques of high-yielding variety seeds, fertilizers, and pumped well water irrigation (in a lot of areas) has been going on strong since the 1970's and has done much transform India from a food deficient country to a self sufficient one.
How much longer they can continue to be so in the face of soil fertility degradation and vast falling water tables in rainfall deficient areas is something we'll just have to wait and see when and how that unfolds.
Yes it was and I apologize. I was thinking about genetically modified crops (GM) somehow, don't know how that happened.
Still, it didn't happen in the forties as someone over here would like it to. In India, more likely in its seventies. I find this quote of yours sufficiently telling:
Glider, I agree that the article played loose with terms and did not go into any details or explanations. However, I believe the article was spot on.
He should have used the term "fossil fuels" instead of "oil." If you would overlay a chart of the earth's population and a chart of fossil fuel use, they would track each other almost exactly. The population began to increase with the industrial revolution which the use of coal fueled. Then it really began to explode in the last century when oil came into widespread use.
It is an absolute truism that fossil fuels enabled the population explosion. Fossil fuels enabled industrialization and liquid petroleum enabled the agricultural revolution brought about by mechanized farming. And in the last half of the twentieth century it enabled the green revolution.
The industrial revolution provided a means for employment for the masses and the agricultural revolution along with the later green revolution provided massive amounts of food to feed these masses of people.
And....when theses fuels disappear, primarily oil, then the food will disappear.....along with the masses of people kept alive by all this food. And the burden of proof is upon those who say we can still employ billions of people without oil or feed billions of people without the mechanized agriculture we currently use, or heat millions of homes without fossil fuels. Imagine a Calgary winter with no heat.
Ron Patterson
Well said, Ron, as usual.
The burden of proof clearly lies on anyone who states that such a hugely overshot population can maintain itself without dieoff or ongoing energy and resource input of similar quality and quantity to what it evolved under.
The timing and extent of dieoff are arguable; whether there will be one really isn't.
How dare me to deny it, and *gasp*! Argue with it!
Well... I guess that if you say so, then it must be true.
Oh, hi there, didn't notice you, I was just enjoying Ron's lucidity.
I care not a jit whether you're convinced of anything by anyone.
I would guess he's referring to a study that came out a few years ago. It was featured in Scientific American, among other places. It calculated the carrying capacity of the earth based on the nitrogen cycle. Turned out to be about 2 billion.
i would like to point out that the 2 billion number is the absolute limit. at this point a population would see massive starvation as any little disruption in the food supply causes people(mainly the poor) to go without food and thus die.
a sustainable and well fed population would have to be about 1.5 billion to 1.75 billion.
Yes, IIRC, they suggested a global population of 1 billion might be more reasonable - if you want a factor of safety, and a decent standard of living.
Of course it's no fun eating only gurl.
It's really something many people here do not consider when talking about population levels sense they all want the max number. They don't realize that the closer you get to the max number the less each person has and the more constant suffering there is.
a world with only 1 billion people would be a much more livable world then one with near the max amount of 2 billion.
A Dismal but Sober View
When I realized the world was dying back in the 1970's(although not the extent and speed), I decided I wanted to spend my life observing and documenting the dying of the planet. Never, of course, expecting I might actually see the end in my lifetime. Now I am not so sure. The acceleration of global warming, coinciding with the depletion of energy resources, and the defense mechanisms of denial, fantasy and rationalization inherent in the psychological makeup of man, leads me to believe that mankind is incapable of effectively responding.(If we had been, we would have already done so.) The same scenario has been observed in many different species on the planet. Species fill their ecological nische until available resources are expended, then experience a die-off back to levels below that necessary for those remaining to survive. Man has exhausted the resources of the planet necessary to his own continued survival. The cupboards are now bare, and there is nothing left to refill them. The end is now upon us. Within the next decade the world as we know it will end. Already the poorer nations on the planet can no longer afford energy resources and are dark.(Night-time satellite views show large areas of the planet in total darkness.) Grain reserves have evaporated. Significant populations on the planet are already experiencing famine. With famine comes pandemics. Soon disease will traverse the planet carried by airliners to all corners of the globe. Disease may breed in the poorer starving nations, but will not remain there. I recently saw a story in the BBC, saying a large percentage of the people interviewed did not know food came from a farm.(How could we have fallen so far?) The skills necessary to survive without gas stations and grocery stores does not exist within a vast majority of the population. The misery to come is beyond imagining. I used to be certain that, due to my age, I would be spared the worst of it. Now I worry my parents will no longer be spared, that they may see this horrible end. We are beyond global survival, we are probably beyond community survival. Concentrate on your family, friends and yourselves. There is still time to educate the kids, at least provide them with a library(books not electronic) of necessary knowledge to aid their survival. Ask the simple questions. What do you do for toilet paper? How do you preserve food without a fridge? What about soap?. Think, what would you do if every grocery store closed and you could only go as far as you can walk or ride a bicycle? What if there was no electricity, natural gas or water running to your house? This is what is coming.
People will die because they do not know how to aquire food, aside from a grocery store. People will die because where they live is incapable of supporting the local population without a constant influx of food, water and energy. The logistical infrastructure will collapse. People will die. It does not take a statistical analysis to recognize these truths. It will be major cities, not the African bush that will experience this.
Even those of us who are growing a proportion of their own food will have to learn new skills, :- how to save seed, (no more F1 hybrids) how to live without artificial fertilizers, or pesticides, how to store it, how to cut our heating wood without our chainsaws, how to transport it by muscle power, and thats just for starters
Or learn to drive a backhoe, reinforce concrete, maintain a train or do engineering and move over to a region that is workforce constrained.
That might be on the card if things pan out that way, but I'm afraid it would be age constrained, and there are quite a few of us ancient (70) buggers still active and digging but unable to do rail maintenance. although presumably the conditions surrounding a collapse would knock us off somewhat quicker. which would solve one problem
Old codgers can still tell them where and how to maintain rail :-)
Best Hopes for Future Employment,
Alan
Thanks for that Alan, I'll be first in line
As George Carlin has astutely pointed out:
"The planet will be fine, the people are f@cked."
From the standpoint of the Law of Conservation of Mass:
* living things are literally built and made out of the food consumed
* humans, therefore, are also made out of the food they eat
* food comes ultimately from crops
* crops are grown out of the nutrients in the soil, depleting the soil of said nutrients
* nutrients in the soil are usually "naturally" replaced and replenished by the wastes and mortality of living things
* human wastes and human deaths are generally NOT re-tilled into the fields, instead they are sequestered in septic systems and cemeteries
* instead, the continually increasing injection of fossil-fuel-based fertilizers replenishes nutrients into the fields and continually increases crop yields
Increasing amounts of available food energy are necessary to support a population's increasing numbers and productivity.
It isn't only oil that enabled our population boom, but oil and natural gas have recently played the largest roles.
People are made out of food, food comes from the nutrients in the soil, the nutrient delivery is almost universally supplied and supported by fossil fuels (harvest, transport, packaging, storage, cooking).
Less fossil fuel support means less nutrient delivery means lower numbers and productivity of the population.
But due to oil's system-wide importance and dependence for other transportation fuel, plastics, drugs, lubricants, industrial chemicals, and pesticides, with the decline of the availability of oil, the population will also decline, but the decline won't be smooth. Because it isn't just nutrient delivery that is impacted, but a myriad of other critical system dependencies, population decline will be mercilessly and abruptly nonlinear. ("Crash".)
I think of the term "carrying capacity" to mean what a given area of land can support in terms of a human population, while understanding the cycle of food -> humans -> wastes and decay -> soil -> food -> humans. Quality of life, technology, and culture become part of the cycle when you consider other resources in addition to food.
The reason why $100 oil isn't as big a deal for Americans as you might think can be shown in a single graph:
That's from Dr. James Hamilton of www.econbrowser.com. The post from which this chart is taken is titled $90 a barrel: Is it time to start worrying about the oil price shock of 2007?
(He's peak oil aware BTW and is the same economist that made use of Stuart's work on Ghawar in an Atlantic Monthly piece Running Dry)
USA GDP has increased a lot more than median income in the period 1970-2007. The chart makes a good point but it is exaggerated.
Well, median income is a measure of consumer financial health. Important, of course, but there are other big players in the economy -- municipal, state and federal governments, corporations etc. All use oil.
Comparing GDP to oil expenditure gives a better read on overall impact on the society.
I have comment below, however, referencing an article at ft.com that uses G7 medium income as comparison.
Furthermore, GDP has been fantastically inflated by debt.
Whenever I borrow a dollar, not only do I spend it, but so does the guy I give it to, and then so on. The number of times this happens to the average dollar in a given measure of time is the velocity of money.
Seems obvious, but the entire study of economics before 1929 was based on the assumption that the velocity of money could be treated like a constant. Which was rather violently disproven by subsequent events.
If American consumers can borrow dollars too easily, not only does the GDP increase by multiples of the amount borrowed, but the velocity of money will increase as a result of greater (temporary) prosperity, which makes us less willing to hold onto our dollars. If we were borrowing the money to buy capital goods, then at least we would be increasing productivity, but that's mostly not what we're doing.
The real killer is that when you pay off a dollar of debt, you also reduce the GNP by a multiple of that dollar. That is what economists perversely call a recession: too many people trying to pay off their debts at the same time.
What would our GNP be now if our public and private sectors still operated at 1970s levels of debt?
I'd like to extend your thinking here: If GDP plummets due to recession/depression then the graph will again go through the roof.
Marco.
GDP, as it is currently defined, is becoming a less and less useful indicator of anything meaningful, particularly when used as the denominator of some ratio having an equally fuzzy numerator. (I sometimes think of such things as an 'apples-to-oranges ratio.)
Certainly oil prices as a percentage of GDP doesn't tell us all that much about the actual amount of pain caused by rising oil prices. What I think would be far more meaningful would be a ratio something to the effect of median household total annual energy expenditures (oil + gas + electricity) to median household after-tax income. I think something like that would be a far more telling 'Energy Pain Index'. Speaking for myself, my Energy Pain Index is probably at lease double what it was 20 years ago.
That would mean we would need to see $180 a barrel of oil before we see the same economic impact we felt in the 70s? My, my...Osama WAS right in wanted to see us reach $200 a barrel :P
http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/editorials/lalani/2007/1028.html
POST-PEAK PRICES
$1,000 a Barrel Oil / $20,000 a Pound Uranium
I think the graph presents problems as it is. When ever the percentage was 4 or higher, we were in high inflation or recession. The growth of the 1985-2000 period was when we had a low ration of 2.
Kunstler is outstanding today. I agree completely.:
http://www.kunstler.com/mags_diary22.html
Send: Kunstler is a great writer. Reading JHK, then reading the MSM definitely gives you that MATRIX red pill green pill feeling.
red pill/blue pill ...
I haven't seen the movie in a while.
I agree, it's a good article. I really do think that when the populace starts to realize that they've lost the comforts they've lived with all their lives and the future they thought they'd have, the anger and fury will be uncontrollable. And our society daily becomes more militarized. And the world is full of weapons.
By the way, I note that both you and JHK like to end wordz in z's. Is there some significance to this?
"the anger and fury will be uncontrollable"
That is one of the reasons I do not worry about climate change. I think the pain of The Transition will put an end to worries over climate change - it is a luxury worry for today that we will not be able to afford tomorrow.
I don't know what it is about the "z"-endings. For me I think it has to do with my inner "little charlie manson" and what he imagines Mother Nature sounds like when She is grumbling and mumbling in Her sleep (she's still hibernating).
I don't always agree with everything Kunstler writes, but he's entertaining. I'm pretty much on board with him today, though. My only question: do pythons fart?
Yes they do. Ask something the interweb doesn't know!
http://www.ball-pythons.net/forums/showthread.php?threadid=53304
whatever the answer, the burden of proof would be on those who claim they don't.
From the Financial Times:
Crude oil price likely to hit peak
We are going to find out in the next five years where the fat is in rich economies. Some sectors are VERY energy efficient - and some are not. We may have to survive with fewer luxury SUVs, but rail transport and the professional, financial, and information services will remain very profitable.
Some manufacturing or services will be too energy-intensive to compete, but there's lots more that will offer enough value added to thrive. Certainly, any activity that has a positive EROI, or that leverages other EROI-positive activities, will only get more profitable.
What we really need is a good carbon tax or cap-and-trade, to get producer costs in line with social and environmental costs.
crap and trade is what I see whenever that line comes up :-) Its a highly abusable shell game with lots of new niches in which the mortgage grifter types can make a new mess.
Carbon tax is also suspect. Again you get grifters fiddling with the definition of carbon, the sources of carbon, the ownership of carbon sinks, and pretty soon you've accomplished nothing ... except make work for grifters.
Consumption is the problem. Consumption in general and transportation consumption in particular. We tax the heck out of fuel consumption and the revenues get directed to remediation. This is the only thing that makes objective sense.
Of course, it doesn't make political sense and it won't - demand destruction, emphasis on the "destruction" part, will be what solves that problem.
A big problem with this theory is that it makes no allowance for how much more unevenly incomes are divided these days, at least in the USA (if not many other countries). I don't have the figures right before me now, but I seem to recall how in the 1950s the difference in pay between the lowest paid employees and the CEO of a big corporation was less than 50:1, and nowadays is more than 450:1 - which means that for the great unwashed of society, energy costs are taking a much bigger bite of one's income.
I disagree.
Greater income inequality definitely shows up in median income stats. It's average income that hides it.
The 'great unwashed' are richer now than they were in 1980, but they are definitely not as rich as they would be if they had been able to keep their share of the pie constant percentage-wise.
So, even the hoi polloi will not be bitten by $100 oil as much as they were back then. They are richer and they use less per capita. And that's why habits are so slow in changing.
If yer jonesin' to see real gas pains among the masses, you'll probably have to wait 'til $150. I don't think the middle class will feel it until $200. And it has to stay there for a few months, not just touch it.
But they will feel the job losses which are coming much sooner than $150 oil.
ASEBIUS' RULE #1
For whatever it's worth, those are roughly my numbers too.
I have a question about the content and comments on TOD, though the answer may be a distant concern.
The material here, the comments and opinions, are invaluable. At some time in the far future, may not be for a 1000 years, hopefully sooner, but scholars then will be trying to piece together what happened during this period in time. They will wonder how people coped, how they recognized and responded to this threat.
But because all of this here, and other sites, is nothing but electrons and magnetic configurations on a metal disk, it is highly unlikely that any harddives will work at all hundred years from now.
Is any of the material posted here printed out? Should it not be done and sent to the Library of Congress, for example, to be archived and preserved? What we are going through could be a great benefit of those who read about this in a 1000 years. We all love to learn what it was like in the Egyptian, Greek and Roman times. Should we not try to leave some legacy behind? Sure there are books written, but discussions like TOD, are invaluable because it’s actual people giving their thoughts.
Richard Wakefield
London, Ont.
No one is ahead of their time, just the rest of humanity is slow to catch on.
Some even call this the Dark Ages from that problem exactly. But to print out TOD... hmmm... how many hundreds of books would be needed?
It's an interesting Idea though.
Reminds me of the news story at the top of this page:
Now with 50 percent less truth
So what we need is to get the White House to edit The Oil Drum down to a reasonable size. After they're through with it, should fit in a small pamphlet explaining how we'll soon be enjoying $40/barrel oil again.
"...should fit into a small phamplet explaining how we'll soon be enjoying $40/barrel oil again."
HA,HA! ozonehole,
Made me LOL!
We are already wasting our forests ,cutting trees just so that paper can be printed.....jeezzz what ever happened to the paperless office?
No need to be storing archives on printed paper for many reasons but the main one being we don't know if anyone will give a rat's ass or be here or can even read or would want to.
The Reuters article on refining margins cited the high cost of crude as a depressing factor on refinery margins. Quite how the cost of feedstock can have this effect unless the product price is fixed or capacity utilization drops completely escapes me.
I can see how the percentage margin could and should drop, but as a per gallon/unit factor I fail to get the connection. What I can see happening is the primary producers of crude increasingly going to selling refined product and decreasing the availability of unprocessed crude thus insuring a high profitability for themselves. This appears to be the current plan in SA even into the plastics business.
It may get hard to be a refiner unless you have your own wells.
See my comment up the thread. I addressed the subject in this article:
Declining Net Oil Exports Versus “Near Record High” Crude Oil Inventories: What is going on? (September, 2007)
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2975
Thanks WT; I had to go out for while and missed it. My point is that the golden era of refining profits may shift to the oil exporting countries that export refined products. SA appears to be leading that charge/change. This may be the platinum era of refining profits.
When you go from a glut to a dearth the whole game changes.
Here is a simple graph showing U.S. imports of all petroleum products. The blue line is the four week moving average and the purple line is the one year moving average. It's been pretty flat for more than two years now. We're down just a little from last year at this time:
Yes, but compare it to a similar chart for China.
I believe we've exported much of our petroleum requirement with our transfer of many types of production to other countries.
I wonder if the Stock Market might not "Melt Up" if we enter hyperinflation. Stocks are still paper but they have a value based on something tangible (hopefully). So stocks might substitute for paper money as a store of wealth - especially as gold etc melts up. I believe there is historic precidence for this...
end of babble
It is already!
The only challenge with stocks versus commodities is when the confidence is gone. The paper becomes worthless...where people will still need the commodities to live/build.
The run up since August is the melt up you mention...afterall fundamentals have been so amazing (NOT!). :P
When confidence finally fails, the market will deflate like a balloon.
I disagree with the basis of your assumption - to wit, that the stocks represent something of value.
In the past your assumption was mostly true. Debt was taken on only for specific reasons and repaid as soon as possible. Viable companies tended not to be in debt or linger in debt for long periods. However, today, almost all companies in the world that are publicly traded are completely drowned in debt. Macy's doesn't own that store; they lease it. Macy's doesn't own the merchandise they are selling; they took out short term loans to buy the merchandise, which is why they have to turn it over or else. In short, Macy's owns very little aside from a whopping pile of debt that they turn over every 90 days while scraping some profit off the top. This is the model of almost all publicly traded companies today. Sure, there are exceptions but they are exceptions, not the rule. Thus, the stock of these companies is really worth no more than the profits that these companies can squeeze out of their debt. If the economy goes into recession, many of these companies will be bankrupt and the stock worthless.
Now, if you are talking about the stores, the factories, etc., then yes, there is value in those. But guess who owns those, by default? The bankers! So when the economy tanks, you, the stockholder are left holding worthless paper and they, the bankers, get left holding real assets.
Kind of nifty how this old debt shell game plays out, isn't it? ;)
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Dr. Albert Bartlett
Into the Grey Zone
"Now, if you are talking about the stores, the factories, etc., then yes, there is value in those. But guess who owns those, by default? The bankers! So when the economy tanks, you, the stockholder are left holding worthless paper and they, the bankers, get left holding real assets."
That has been the game all along. Early 20th century bankers knew it well.
"You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created."
Albert Einstein
That has been the game all along. Early 20th century bankers knew it well.
I would really recommend reading about 1913, The FED and Central Bank's Game.
America's Forgotten War Against the Central Banks
http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/editorials/dollardaze/2007/1020.html
http://p088.ezboard.com/fdownstreamventuresfrm5.showMessage?topicID=198....
Some companies actually have cash in the bank. I was watching a business program which said that Cisco Systems has $30B in cash in the bank. GM has about $35B in cash, and Microsoft has a LOT more cash on hand.
Though agreed the vast majority of them are essentually bankrupt, with the cash flow the only thing that keeps them afloat.
Richard Wakefield
London, Ont.
No one is ahead of their time, just the rest of humanity is slow to catch on.
And those few companies are exactly the sort of exceptions I already noted.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Dr. Albert Bartlett
Into the Grey Zone
I do remember during a crisis a few years back in either Argentina or Chile where precisely this happened. They were experiencing substantial inflation and it was illegal to convert money to other currencies. The stock market took off straight up in the midst of the crisis!!!
As long as the enterprises survive the currency crisis (and in this case they did), stocks represent a piece of real wealth. i.e. you own a certain percentage of a going concern.
You won't make money using this tactic. But you very well can limit losses considerably over people holding cash who can get wiped out.
If the US dollar gets really wonky, you will see more business transacted in the US in other currencies and gold. The authorities would try to stamp it out but could fail.
It's entirely possible for the FED, the federal government, and Treasury to go completely broke and still have a large and functioning economy in the US based on gold, foreign currencies, or even commodities traded on the nymex (priced in terms of each other). No need to deal in the actual goods, either. Shares of GLD or other commodity funds such as USO could act as money.
There is no ideology behind currencies. They spring up naturally and can be quite difficult to stamp out when a government is attempting to unify the money supply.
Hello TODers,
As most here already know: I have been pounding the Yahoo Finance POT stock message board trying to promote biosolar mission-critical investing. Since I started posting my Peak Outreach message that NPK is just as vital as fossil fuels, if not even more so for survival: the stock has rocketed from approx. $80 to approx. $125/share [but I have no idea how much my postings have driven this trend--maybe a feeble 2 cents?].
Copied below is the latest 'cut & paste' of my recent Yahoo POT postings for your consideration:
------------------------------------------
Biosolar mission-critical investing is the true fundamental driver of POT's stock value!
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
POT's value is directly correlated to postPeak effects and changing investor sentiment on how critical NPK is to civilization. Please read & study the following link:
http://energybulletin.net/34991.html
----------------------------
Agriculture in a post-oil economy
Soil science is a complicated subject. Roughly speaking, however, good soil contains both rock material and plant material (humus). The rock material includes 16 elements of importance: boron, calcium, carbon, chlorine, copper, hydrogen, iron, magnesium, manganese, molybdenum, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, potassium, sulfur, and zinc. (Actually the C, H, and O are mainly from air or water.) The plant material (humus) acts in 3 ways: (1) mechanically — it holds air and water; (2) chemically — it contains a large amount of C, H, and O, and a little (frequently too little) of the other 13 elements; and (3) biologically — it contains useful organisms.
Of the 16 elements, the most critical are phosphorus (P), potassium (K), and especially nitrogen (N); calcium and magnesium are probably next in importance. These elements might be abundant in the virgin soil before any cultivation is done, but wherever crops are harvested a certain amount of the 3 critical elements is being removed. The usual solution is to add fertilizer, which can be artificial or can come from such sources as rock dust.
As Donald P. Hopkins [10] explained in 1948, (a) organic matter is not an ideal substitute for (b) fertilizer (i.e. the 16 elements), nor is (b) fertilizer an ideal substitute for (a) organic matter. A few centuries ago, animal manure was high in N-P-K etc., but that is rarely the case today unless the manure itself originates in feed that was artificially fertilized. Nevertheless, in a survival situation, organic matter may be the only available source of the essential elements.
------------------------------
Next essay about China's need for NPK:
What China will do is buy POT w/USD Reserves!
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
China has an estimated one trillion USD$$$ that are rapidly losing value because of the stupid economic policies of our Govt and the FED's action of reducing rates.
If you understand my previous postings in this message board, plus the other postings on TOD, EB, LATOC, and the essential info on DIEOFF: then biosolar mission-critical investing, at every level, is absolutely essential as we go postPeak. Please buy a bicycle, wheelbarrow, garden tools, etc, on up the biosolar scale to including the purchase of more POT.
Once China and India, who both are highly reliant upon NPK imports, understand the basic need for the never-ending, never diminishing demand for NPK to keep their civilizations functioning: They will easily convert their huge USD reserves into buying biosolar mission-critical NPK companies such as POT & Mosiac, then demand fertilizer delivery based on ownership.
PostPeak paper money will largely have no value as inflation escalates, but certificates backed by the 'real-value' of delivered NPK will be priceless. Recall my earlier posting on POT dividends being issued as bags of NPK or tradeable fertilizer certificates. Don't expect China to watch their dollar reserves to become worthless: imagine what they will pay to buy as much of POT's stock as they can, then demand NPK delivery.
It is simply the old maxim that if you own a hen, then you also own the eggs she produces. If China spends $300 billion to buy almost every share of POT's 'hen', then China is entitled to almost every bag of NPK 'eggs'.
Consider the consequences to the United States if China's investors are more biosolar mission-critical oriented than most US investors. Time will tell.
An Additional Bit of Info:
Never forget that China's oil industry was willing to pay a premium to the existing market price to buy Unocal a few years back, but then, IMO, our Govt wrongfully intervened in the functioning of a true free market transaction.
Essentially, China wanted to buy the 'Unocal Hen' to collect the 'crude barrels of eggs'.
China's purchase of Unocal, if allowed, would have further promoted Peak Outreach at an earlier time, plus greatly encouraged the other oil companies to further explore, then extract their diminishing reserves, to provide the FF-energy we need to leverage biosolar paradigm shift. Is it too late now for this to occur?
If Chinese investors race to buy all the POT shares [the Hen]: will our Govt wrongly intervene to prevent them from collecting POT's NPK [eggs]? If the Canadian or US Govt. prevent the 'hen and eggs' ownership maxim from occuring, then global markets and trade will severely contract from this breakdown in fundamental stock ownership property rights.
---------------------------------------------------
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
If I'm going to be buying more pot, might be a good idea to stock up on rolling papers as well.
OK, sorry - you left yourself wide open for that one. Couldn't resist. I'll go now.
cheers,
Oz
Da Rat recommends corn-cob pipes.
New Peak Oil metaphore: It ain't the number of chickens you have, it's the number of eggs they lay.
No worries
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/68210?utm_source=embedded_video
$200 Million for Electric Cars?
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/oct2007/db20071027_8...
Would love to see some serious technical talks on why this will or will not be successful, and please refrain from insults. Thanks!
You just posted a NY Times article on the same story.
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3151#comment-255863
Once is enough, please.
Lots of luck!
I can think of no better way to go broke than to try to break into the automotive industry at this time. And the long history of such attempts is not encouraging.
Keep in mind that regardless of how high-tech the drive train of a novel car is, a large portion of the manufacture of such a car is still relatively low-tech metal bending, fiberglass moulding, and supplier-manufactured component acquisition and assembly. And that's where things usually turn to shite. The old cliche, 'the devil is in the details' is quite apropos for this sort of endeavor. Many conceptually brilliant designs have been brought low by silly and boring little problems that had nothing to do with the concept itself. Time is money, and if one has to spend huge gobs of time dealing with manufacturing problems, one is going to lose big time.
I wouldn't invest a nickel in any new automotive venture.
I have used about $10 worth of gas in the last MONTH. The gas was used in a very old, ratty, CHEAP truck (that's not even mine lol).
If I'm really crankin' on something and going into town once a week, I might use $25 worth of gas a month.
If I feel like it or have to, I have a mountain bike I could ride into town once a week, just stay overnight then ride back the next day. I do plan to use it to run around Chino Valley a bit once I get around to putting the "no mor flat" things in the tires.
In a scenario like this, boutique electric cars are not going to find droves of buyers.
Many of us have heard that statement before about the Prius. Now, I cannot find a current URL but a friend of mine is buying a Prius today and his salesman told him that Toyota just replaced the first battery pack for wear for a Seattle cabbie who had 327,000 miles on his car. If anyone else can find the URL for this new report, I'd appreciate it but Google isn't showing me anything yet. Also, this demonstrates the real life span of these hybrid batteries - extremely long. The only other issues I've heard of have been corroded connectors and those can be fixed without replacing the entire battery pack.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Dr. Albert Bartlett
Into the Grey Zone
Wow, 327,000 miles is pretty amazing. Most standard cars do not even run that long.
My wife's 2003 Prius has about 80,000 miles on it. We have had only one problem and that was with the auxillary battery going dead. It cost $70 to replace. She still gets about 46 mpg (lots of highway miles).
I really want one. I just can't justify it since i'm just now paying off my Corolla, but I get 30/40 in that, so not too shabby.
The Prius is a bitchin' car. It was sad handing mine off to the repo guy.
Prii (yes that's the plural lol) are justified where you do a LOT of driving, want to make a statement, or mostly, driving a hybrid will get you a place all by yourself in the car pool lane, preferred parking, etc.
Thus, there's the occasional newspaper delivery person, buyer/seller who goes to a lot of trade shows, celebrity or Early Adopter buying one, but mainly it's the carpool lane access, free parking (such as in the city of San Jose if you bought the car at a San Jose dealer) and such artificial perks that has caused that many people to buy them.
No, fleam, the plural of Prius would be Priuses. The name is Neither Latin nor Italian. The grammatical rule for creating plurals in Eglish is to add 's' or 'es'. The old forms from Latin, Saxon, etc. are appropriate because of their historical genesis. New words use the host language rule.
James Gervais
Wouldn't that be japanese?
94K on my 2002 Prius
47mpg small town driving
up to 50.5 on long trips
Despite Salon's article today ( http://salon.com/mwt/good_life/2007/10/29/prius/)
The Prius is a great car, very roomy, comfortable and with a fantastic turning radius.
From the Bloomberg article at the top of the list:
Whew! I was a bit worried about possible supply problems. Now I can sleep again… :oD
Notice how the explanation "rooted more in the cauldrons of geopolitics and the impact of financial markets, expectations and psychology" is much, much more convoluted than, say something like "supply and demand." Perhaps somebody's working extra hard to look the other way?
$93.80 = 2.47 Yergins
-best,
graywulffe in CVO, OR
Yeah, but now he's saying oil is going over $100. So, does that mean the price will crash?
Or is $100 the new yergin?
I think we should only speak of oil in terms of Yergins from now on.
3 Yergins is just around the corner at $114 US/bbl.
Allowing him to forget his inane $38 prediction would do the world an injustice. Especially with his anti-peakist smear campaign.
Time to smear back.
Or, maybe as WT suggests (tentatively) in the new polling-thread, Yergin's prediction suggests that oil's might be around $200 real soon now...
I can't shake the feeling that, perhaps, the idea of a significant supply constraint has hit a significant number of traders at this point, and this number is growing rapidly. Okay, so maybe I'm reading too much into $93 (especially in light of the dollar crash), but I wonder, how many others on this list have a similar feeling nagging at them, even distantly?
-best,
graywulffe in CVO, OR
Gray: The cornucopians have been adjusting their price and supply forecasts pretty quickly. At this point, a price forecast of $65 for 2008 marks one as an extreme "bear" (the same "bears" ridiculed such "bullish" forecasts 2 years ago). Almost all "experts" have now predicted that global oil supply will peak before 2025, a couple years ago this was ridiculed in the MSM.
The term cornucopian is a very useful one to have around here.
Generally, it's got next to no bearing on oil supply beliefs - indeed, many of the ultra-conrnucopians have no issue with declining oil supply predictions whatsoever - rather they believe that humanity will find a way to deal with it.
So this is just a plea to not start throwing the term around as some catch-all derogatory word for ignoramus.
--
Jaymax (cornucomer-doomopian)
Jay: Glad you cleared up all the confusion.
Re: "Climate Change's Uncertainty Principle" (article in today's Drum Beat)
"...in 1990 predicted temperatures would warm by 0.5 degree Fahrenheit..."
""...By 2001...estimated...increase by 2.7 to 8.1 degrees F..."
"...and they raised the lower end to 3.6 degrees F...this year in their most recent report."
"In essence, neither this international team of experts nor any other can say with any certainty just how bad global warming may get."
How true. But they seem to be quite certain that it's getting worse each time they look :-P
But they seem to be quite certain that it's getting worse each time they look :-P
That's what I've been thinking too. The only thing I'm fairly certain about is that the future is going to get more and more interesting.
Egypt to build nuclear plants
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071029/ap_on_re_mi_ea/egypt_nuclear_4;_ylt=...
The message seems to be that you can have nuclear power, but you won't be permitted to control the fuel cycle.
The message seems to be that you can have nuclear power, but you won't be permitted to control the fuel cycle.
Bingo!
http://www.courtfool.info/en_Raid%20on%20Nuclear%20Fuel%20Market.htm
And KSA's Prince Abdullah chides (warns?) Washington over duplicitous disparities in it's permissiveness of Nuke Power/Weapons in the Mediterranean.. (Iran & Eqypt vs. Israel)
Didn't find a link.. heard it on NPR tonight.
Bob
Reuters got distracted in what they covered around the visit..
http://uk.reuters.com/article/UKNews1/idUKL2919674820071029?sp=true
King Abdullah, not Prince Abdullah. Abdullah has been King since 2005 when King Fahd died. However he has been acting King since 1995 when King Fahd became incapacitated because of a stroke.
Ron Patterson
Grr, I thought I had corrected that before posting. I was busy bustling a 4yr old into the bath.
Still not seeing any mention of his actual comments, even at the NPR site.. It's all about the diplomatic Faux Pas that have ushered in the visit.
Bob
Hello TODers,
Are corporations losing faith in cold, hard cash now? I thought it was illegal to refuse US currency offered as the medium for exchange:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,139041-c,iphone/article.html
-----------------------------
Cash Isn't King: Apple Limits iPhone Purchases
The company is now accepting only credit or debit card payments for the devices so they can track who purchases the phone, according to one Apple Store employee.
-----------------------------
I repeat: isn't this illegal for APPLE?
If Apple can get away with this, then when the banking runs start here: I will refuse the cash offered by my bank and demand payment in something of real value such as seeds, bicycle tubes, guano, toilet paper, NPK fertilizer, etc.
I hope our banks are biosolar stockpiling for this eventuality, otherwise, I suspect the unruly crowds will be looking to withdraw 'real flesh' from the bankers.
Infinite crowd interest in adjusting bankers' ARMS?
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Financial Sense has been hitting PO pretty hard in the last week or so. Here's an excellent overview of the current situation given by Tony Allison (who obviously has been frequenting TOD):
Financial Sense: Something's Got to Give - $90 oil may one day seem like the good old days
Subsections:
The article sums up much of what we have recently discussed here at TOD and does a fine job.
Fascinating: A US destroyer, the Arleigh Burke, is chasing a pirate-hijacked Japanese ship that's loaded with benzene in Somali territorial waters:
U.S. destroyer pursuing hijacked ship in Somali waters, military says
I imagine pirated supertankers would get the same response. Probably an even more aggressive approach.
-best,
graywulffe in CVO, OR
[Sarcasm]Great Idea, all of the western countries will simple move all industrial manufacturing to the developing world (See China and India as examples) when Carbon restrictions are imposed.
[/Sarcasm]
If you do not impose restriction on all countries the point is mute since, companies that emit greenhouse gases will just relocate to the developing world, Especially when these countries don't bother with enviromental laws. This would in the end accerate greenhouse emissions since more of the world would emit greenhouse gases. Consider today: Companies are now setting up new factories in Pakstan, Burma, Vietnam, etc, because the labor is cheaper than China and China is begining to enact environmental laws. However, now that China is industrialized, it will continue to emitt greenhouse gases even if all production is moved else where. Now when the Factories go up in those other countries, total global greenhouse emissions will be even higher. The pollution disease spreads until no more developing nations exists or no more resources are available to exploit.
Further I might add, had developed nations imposed the same enviromental regulations on development nations it would not have drastically prevented these countries from developing. For instance, the developing countries do not have to pay R&D costs for enviromental friendly machinary as the develop world has already done it. They have the advantage of accessing western technology and lessons learned on how to do it cost effectively.
The US and the rest of the developed world should have enacted regulation decades ago, that prevented imports from factories that did not abide by their our environmental policies. Because we did not regulate overseas manufacturing, we have simple exported our dirty pollution overseas. Now Billion are exposed to industrial toxins on a level never seen in the west, and the and millions of square miles of land is tained with industrial poisions for millions of years. All for a few short decades of global economic growth.
From the Financial Times:
UN warns of food inflation effects
Here's a scary article: American Kids, Dumber Than Dirt.