'When I see children enduring hardship, I internalize that by imagining my own children in that situation '.....

" share my passion for making the world a better place.'

good for u robert. i have always sensed you heart was is the right place even though i sometimes disagree with you.

re green jobs my wife just took an administrator job [ better $] so my unemployment/po prep/gardening can be continue!!! a very green job!

I really respect the drive and vision people have about changing the nature of business systems to protect the environment and create a sustainable future but until people attack the root of the problem we are simply digging a deeper grave. Human population growth.

Thomas Malthus said almost two hundred years ago:
"The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race."

Consider the case of the International Planned Parenthood movement in Mexico. They made a valiant effort to establish clinics in the 60's and 70's and the conservative politicians in league with the Catholic Church pulled it out by the root and basically told the population to be "fruitful and multiply", which they most certainly did. Now we wonder about a nation that encourages illegal immigration to relieve some of the misery that their population overshoot has brought on themselves.

How do we get population growth under control without becoming a fascist state? If we don't address this then the three sisters, Famine, Pestilence and War will.

"When I see children enduring hardship, I internalize that by imagining my own children in that situation (this is why I avoid the news, as well as any discussions of “Die-Off”). Sometimes I wish I didn’t feel this way as it is often depressing, but this is the way my brain is wired."

Robert, this is indeed tough. No human is meant to face the trauma of overshoot and collapse or the calamities of peak oil, mass extinction, and climate chaos. Concerning these things, there's a good documentary you may want to check out:

What a Way To Go: Life At the End of Empire

Trailer

Very interesting project Robert. I worked on a project many years ago combining wood waste and polyethylene waste. It is a viable product and I used a lot of it in building Soup Shop, but that industry has reached some limitations both economically and functionally.

I am very curious as to Fastening (it always seems to come down to fastening in fabrication) the end product as both plastic and metal are weldable, and if the product is formable at any stage of the process?

I understand your motivations. Whenever I spend time with my children I can't help but project into the future they will live in. I don't have any kind of clear image but one thing is for certain, it will not be as carefree and abundant as my own.

The good news I am a bit of a hero in town with them and their friends as they all say Soup Shop is the best place to eat (not really saying much).

I also find I have little tolerance for people who don't care about the future.

Thank you for your work and let me know if there is an opening for a good Chef;-}

Humans already appropriate ~40% of global primary productivity to their own "needs," nearly halving the amount available for the maintenence of ecosystems. Growing food for fuel in a world where hunger exists is patently immoral. Some would say that biomass conversions are viable, since they produce fuel from "waste" materials humans don't eat. But these biomass materials should be rotting into the soil, maintaining soil health while sequestering carbon as humus. Large scale celluosic biofuel production will diminish soil texture and fertility while increasing the amount of primary productivity the ecocidal ape appropriates, allowing the species to further inflate its population beyond the carrying capacity of the biosphere. As human population swells and fossil fuel production diminishes, biofuel conversion technology will doom remaining forests. How "green" is that?

The Ocean Planet currently supports 6.7 billion apes, nearly all of them Anthropus ecocidus, and this species' population is growing exponentially despite the "demographic transition" that has taken place in some "developed" (i.e., heavily fossil fuels dependent) nations. All the bandaid remedies, "green" and otherwise, recommended for dealing with peak petroleum production and for mitigation of climatic warming, presume a "business as usual" (industry and machine transport) model for the future. It should be plain to see that "business as usual" is what got the ape into the mess it's in in the first place. Instead of promoting "green" industry, we should be working towards the end of industry, the drastic reduction (preferably via a consensual decrease in birthrate rather that thru war and famine) of the cannibal apes's inflated census number, and an end to the prevasive human assault on the biosphere.

Depending on the "quality of life" or "standard of living" one is willing to tolerate, the carrying capacity (K) of the biosphere for apes is somewhere between .5 and 2 billion. Only by means of the crafty ape trick of extracting and oxidizing fossil carbon has Anthropus ecocidus managed to inflate its population approximately an order of magnitude beyond K. Fortunately fossil carbon supplies are finite; the fossil fueling of ape population growth and poisoning of the atmosphere and surface ocean with oxidized carbon, will come to an end. Regretting the end of this unsustainable madness and working to forestall it, strikes me as being desperately counterproductive. It would be nice if the cannibal ape could decimate its population by peaceful means and forge an ecologically viable way of life, but does history offer any hope that this outcome will ensue? Species persist on average about a million years. Anthropus ecocidus has been around between 1/8 and 1/4 of that time. It's own cleverness has doomed it to persistence considerably short of the mean. Why should that fact matter to any given individual? Don't fret the prospect of human extinction. The biosphere will recover and biodiversity become reestablished within about 10 million years.

robert I became familiar with this fish, the Menhaden on this podcast. It's demise is the end of the atlantic fisheries. But it also digests cellulose, apparently quite well. Just wondering if you or your community were aware of it. Good luck to you

Robert,
If you put a fragrant wood into your autoclave like pine or juniper, does it retain its fragrance after acetylation?
--
a fan of terpenoids

When I look at the challenges of sustainability and environmental limitations, I see that the fundamental problem is the growth imperative, as addressed in Jeff Vail's recent piece. I think renewable energy is a fantastic thing, but even if it is technically possible to make great strides in energy production and efficiency, it seems we are just running on the treadmill if we can't address the growth imperative. How does the growing renewable energy industry tie into the effort to transition from a growth economy to a steady-state economy?

I believe taking the world view with all its misery and stupidity will ultimately lead to paralysis, depression and burn out. That is one reason my former incarnation was "practical". The emotional response is what professionals have to fight. Doctors, I suspect, have learned that it accomplishes little. Progress is made by tackling the situation one case at a time right where you are. Do not worry too much about about the big picture since one person can not change it anyway. If you take the world view, you will burn out in the end.

The world view is one the many errors of EROEI that is keeping the United States from doing the right thing about oil. EROEI takes the world view that all oil is the same, that price is not relevant and it is permissible to compare unlike and unlike.

But from an American point of view all oil is not alike. There is domestic extraction and then there is imported oil which is the larger share. Imported oil does not have the same EROEI that the American extracted oil does. Why? Because its energy value must be paid for when it is imported. This is what the producer receives as his share of the oil's value. What do Americans receive as the gain in the transaction? They get the economic value of the energy since clearly no energy is added after it comes off the ship. Refining, distribution and consumption are all clearly energy users. Therefore imported oil must have a negative EROEI from an American point of view.

In contrast American extracted oil probably does have the EROEI often cited if it is compared to other similar oil. It is a logic error of the first order to count things twice. Since the energy value clearly went to the foreign extractor as his share we can not count it again after we Americans purchase it. From the world point of view it makes no difference where oil is extracted or consumed, but from the American point of view it does. When the United States buys foreign oil the dollars expended represent economic gain from energy consumption since there was no energy gain on the imported oil. Thus the economic gain is being used to by oil and the energy gain from extraction goes to the foreign seller.

This is a vicious circle where the economy is being drained of economic gain to pay for new energy imports. High oil tax countries well understand this. Together with globalization (another fantasy post Peak Oil), the fantasy of nation building in Iraq and wars for oil security plus the maintaining of 1 million military overseas, the American economy is crumbling under the load. The Fed is creating funny money to make up for the energy loss which causes world inflation since the dollar in international currency. Oil prices rise and the thing repeats.

A valid analysis would put logic first. Numbers are a servant of logic and not the other way around. EROEI of oil is probably negative from an American point of view since over half of our oil is imported and must be paid for out of economic gain since there is no energy gain at all once foreign oil arrives here. The smaller American extracted oil probably does have the high EROEI because the United States collects both the energy gain when it is extracted and the economic gain when it is consumed.

My point is that taking the world view can lead to bad decisions. Logic is the boss of numbers and not the other way around. When EROEI compares unlike and unlike and when price is deemed irrelevant, the result is bad policy such as the condemnation of ethanol production.

Robert,

I would very much like to speak with you in detail on these things, as it's become a burning issue for us in the last week or so.

Neal

RR - thanks for the post on this topic!

I appreciate very much your willingness to talk about your personal motivation and efforts.

I feel like our lives and our ideas are shaped by these very powerful personal motivations, especially the "Generative" motivation that involves parenting and providing for the next generation.

Folks who have children and folks who do not can all be very much involved in this generative part of human life. I guess that every one has an impact on the next generation whether thoughtful or intentional or not.

I identify strongly with the motivations and thoughts you've expressed. I hope that your next venture is rewarding at many levels.

I'll bet you will get to be a part of some very positive developments on the sustainable energy scene!

Hi Robert

JPods needs help also. We have plenty of equity but no cash yet. So if anyone is willing to work for equity, we have plenty. We are also looking for industrial partners that can sell their products to change the lifeblood of our economy from oil to ingenuity.

Here is a summary:

Market niche: High repetitive, congested transport.
Mission: Increase energy efficiency from 4% to 70%.
Time to Market: Raising capital for first deployment at the Mall of America.
Machanism: Network of "Horizontal-Elevators", integrate computer networks with roller coaster mechanics. Modernize the success of Morgantown

Details available at www.jpods.com. My phone and email are listed under Contacts.

After my first child was born, it became almost an obsession to make a better future for the generations that follow. When I see children enduring hardship, I internalize that by imagining my own children in that situation (this is why I avoid the news, as well as any discussions of “Die-Off”). Sometimes I wish I didn’t feel this way as it is often depressing, but this is the way my brain is wired.

Robert you are being very pessimistic, things are not that bad really. Basic human needs are water, food, clothing and shelter. 99% of humanity had worked for these all through history till 20th century and even today 90% of world's population work for only that. These needs are little and resources in world are large enough to provide for that.

In short average human's food requirements are 2000 calories per day when taking average for entire population including all ages and sex. For a balanced diet for that every human on average needs just 100 kg grains (wheat, rice, pulses etc), 100 kg fruits, 100 kg milk, 25 kg meat (birds, fish, goat, beef etc), 25 kg vegetable, 12.5 kg oil, 12.5 kg spices, 12.5 kg dry fruits/butter, 12.5 kg sugar. Some of these like meat, milk, oil, spices, dry fruits and butter requires more land than others so on average each person needs as much land as is needed to grow 320 kg grains.

Traditionally, that is before green revolution world's average grain yield was 400 kg per acre per year, that was when no chemicals were put in soil and bio diversity was retained by growing a variety of each of the crops even the low productive ones too. With introduction of green revolution plus two crops per year instead of one plus increase in agricultural productivity till 1980s results in as much as 6400 kg grains production per acre per year. In some parts of world like europe and usa the production is even 8000 kg grains per acre per year but lets take a world average 6400 kg per acre per year.

Ofcourse that come at an energy cost (energy input being more than energy output) and environmental costs due to excess use of fertilizers so we can't continue with this kind of food production for long. But it not mean that we have to go back to 400 kg per acre productivity. We can very well settle down in between which I calculate as 1600 kg per acre. That is twice per crop output than traditional agriculture and two crops per year instead of one.

In absence of that cheap flow of energy we can recycle animal and human wastes as fertilizers so there is in reality no shortage of fertilizers. To pump extra water from ground using fertilizers we can burn crop residues to get energy which grow equal in mass and energy to the grain output. We already have a very good structure of dams and canals already in place so that can last for some time to come.

With rate of 1600 kg per acre per year each human needs only 800 sq meters of fertile land. World currently have about 10,000 sq meters of fertile land per human. So, even taking in consideration that some countries are heavily populated than others and we have to keep aside some land for wild life we still have enough land and water to sustain the current human population.

Hello R-squared,

For your kids this Easter:

http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Easter-Berlin-Easter-celebrations/photo//0...
--------------------------
Although I am not an engineer, my postPeak hope is that human-powered SpiderWebRiding Networks can be an efficient, easily built, and cheaply maintained 'silver bb'.

Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?

I hope my kids have a green future too. They have about ten years till they are grown up. Unfortunately the crash shouldhappenin the meantime. at least they will become teenies without these funny illusions about a hitech future.

When my children came along I changed radically. Instead of thinking about 'me' I began to think about 'we'. Intellectually I remained the same, deeply sceptical about our current economic/social paradigm, but emotionally I became an optimist, because I just could accept in my heart what my head was telling me, that the 'system' was highly unstable and heading for 'collapse' in the not too distant future.

In Western societies the model of development we adhere to is clearly unsustainable in the longer term, already we are banging our heads against a ceiling, economic growth is literally destroying the environment that sustains us, this is a bizarre road to choose to go down. It seems to defy logic and intelligence, pursue a course leading inexorably towards disaster.

The intellectual "filters" through which people perceive and "understand" the world are literacy, numeracy and ecolacy. As the late eminent ecologist Professor Garret Hardin wrote, "The three filters operate through these particular questions: Literacy: What are the words? Numeracy: What are the numbers? Ecolacy: And then what?"

My impression is that most of the proponents of "green-technology-will-save-us-ism" are of two kinds (1) engineers and other specialists in scientific disciplines heavily grounded in mathematics, (2) lay people that are not trained in the sciences, believe in the fundamental concept of progress, and likewise believe that trend is destiny. I respect the derived benefits of quantification and implementation, however I have great concern that the proponents of "green-technology-will-save-us-ism", of either kind, lack fundamental knowledge in ecology -- human and biological sans human -- and are therefore incapable of positing and answering the very important question -- "And then what."

Others may be thinking this but have refrained from saying it; the implication seems to be that an engineer earns a higher place in green heaven than a lowly vegetable gardener. In other words reinforce the current hierarchy by creating new but still centralised systems of high flows of energy and materials. The insurance clerk facing layoff either keeps his job (we think) or goes to work full time for the new high powered green business. Maybe the system needs to change whereby the employee could work a couple of days then do home gardening or relax for the rest of the week.

Let's take the case of Choren's Sundiesel product. It appears to require large high tech facilities with dedicated transport infrastructure. Why can't we make Sundiesel in the next suburb? If it's not a universal solution then maybe we need some other kind of product that helps more people. So I ask whether some of these high powered green jobs are the way to go.

Its not a "green job" as such, but ASPO USA is looking for an Executive Director, to live in the Denver area. They may be fairly far along on this process - the posting has been out for a month or two.

Job Title: Executive Director

ASPO-USA seeks a qualified individual as a full-time Executive Director to take a young, influential non-profit, with rising national recognition, to the next level. The Executive Director will start with a largely volunteer group and grow it into a staffed organization conducting education/outreach programs about America’s energy challenge. It is expected that within a year the Executive Director will become the recognized public voice for ASPO-USA. Further, it is hoped that eventually the Executive Director will become one of the leading voices nationally on the subjects of peak oil and gas in particular and on our broader energy challenges in general.

I was at a dinner party yesterday with a group of highly educated, liberal, balanced, kindly, well-read, wealthy, green-orientated professionals; people who've done amazingly well out of our system. We began talking about some of the challenges we currently face as a society.

I didn't mention Peak Oil as previously this has led to much sighing and rolling of eyes!

Instead I touched on the subject of the possible financial/economic meltdown we are perhaps facing in the Western world and how incredibly unstable and unsustainable the system had become and some of the consequences for our lives of a partial collapse of Capitalism. In short the biggest economic bubble in all human history is bursting.

What shocked me was how unaware my friends were of the scale, depth and consequences of such a scenario unfolding in the coming months and years ahead. It really is comparable to Peak Oil. One almost feels guilty about having all this 'secret' knowledge which is in striking contrast to most other people. I'm starting to feel that the movie the Matrix is actually true!

The move to ethanol is independent of whether or not it has bad EROIE.

The industry is subsidized and forced by government policy regardless of whether or not it may be supported by a free market society. It is more akin to movements in a fascist or socialist regime, not a free market oreinted democracy.

A new ethanol credit exchange has been set up to allow companies to meet ethanol requirements by trading ethanol credits:

http://www.ogj.com/display_article/323554/7/ONART/none/GenIn/1/API-launc...

A podcast about ethanol's affect on food prices:

http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/2008/Update69.htm

Robert,

I enjoyed your post. A single coal-fired powerplant puts out a huge number of metric tons of CO2. Could you provide an estimate of how much CO2 sequestration your company's approach can provide, in intuitive units? Please account for the energy input from the acetylation reaction (acetic anhydride?).

Thanks!

JCate

Green jobs has preoccupied me as a general question.

I meet/see many young ppl who are idealistic, what can they do, they want to make a difference, etc.

Encouraging them to free darfur, free tibet or support kosovo independence and so on, is ridiculous, they will become minor pawns surfing the Zeitgeist.

If they go into humanitarian work, principally at NGOs, they either become blinded and cynical (some are so before they ‘enlist’), or become disgusted and quit, which does no one any good. International careers (I live in Geneva, Switz.) such as at Red Cross, Global Funds (Bill Gates), or even more politically oriented are possible for the keen and well educated, but can one really recommend that? I do sometimes.. I am also wary of Greenpeace, WWF, etc. They have their own narrow agendas and are suspect in many ways - I mention these only because that is the kind of thing that young people bring up.

Finally - I advise them to involve themselves locally (possible in Switz.), study a topic or an issue that interests them without clear return, or, if they can hack it, go into politics. This last often surprises them - they consider that all the pol. parties are dodos or besides the point, and there MUST be something to be done outside of that sphere. I try to explain, and tell them, that within the present arrangements they can accomplish a lot (hopefully), but they should look at where the power actually is, etc..

I find it hard. My generation has nothing much to offer except apologies. I only offer those when it seems appropriate or energizing.

Of course, they all want to earn to have a family, two children, and double, at least, the housing space people had here in 65, as well as at least one car, or maybe just a 'mobility' vehicle (temp rental), foreign vacations, Nespresso machines. There are exception: these tend to be politically, anarchists, neo-nazis, communists, others from the fringes. I mention the politics, because here that is very important.

So if we can’t even offer young, strong, idealistic, caring ppl a reasonable way to work to the future, then what?

I have a few questions about Accoya that I could not answer from reviewing the materials at the web site(s). It sounds really intriguing for wood steamed in vinegar.

First, where can I get some to try it? Will it be available to the little guy through regular lumber yards? I live in Seattle, WA, USA.

I'm interested in using it to make raised beds for growing food, compost containment, worm bins and garden furniture.

Second, I often dispose of woodworking sawdust / scraps by composting or on rare occasions in my old-fashioned fireplace. Can Accoya shavings be composted or burned?

Hello Robert,

I happened to come across your comment, "There is no green heaven, but a brown hell awaits if we don't start to come up with some solutions. I saw glimpses of it in India, and believe me, you don't want to fall that far."

If it doesn't take too much effort, could you elaborate on that? As a citizen of that country (although working and living in Singapore for the last decade), I am curious to know.

Robert

I have being reading and enjoying yours and others posts on oil drum for more then a year now. What a great resource!

I have been thinking of making same career move, but did not know where to start.

I have education background in oil and gas processing equipment, but worked as a product design engineering lead for more then a decade now.(no one needed plant engineers in the nineties…). RAZR is just one of my product designs.

I would be more then willing to jump into something new and exiting in the field of alternative energy and fuels.

I work for Motorola and live in IL. Having family with kids, I would like to stay where I am. Consulting is also an option.

Is there anything in IL you could recommend?

All the best and good luck with your ventures!