DrumBeat: April 7, 2008
Posted by Leanan on April 7, 2008 - 9:01am
Gasoline Demand to Drop for First Time Since 1991
(Bloomberg) -- The U.S. will use less gasoline this summer than last year, the first drop for that season since 1991, said Guy Caruso, administrator of the Energy Information Administration.Demand is expected to fall by 85,000 barrels a day, Caruso told reporters today at a Washington conference. In 1991, summer gasoline use fell 1.4 percent following a 9-month recession during George H.W. Bush's presidency.
Canada is in the middle of a quiet oil boom
Ft. McMurray, Alberta - With oil prices hovering near a hundred dollars a barrel, there’s a major oil boom underway. It’s not happening in the sweltering heat of Texas or the dry desert of Saudi Arabia, but on the frozen Canadian tundra where oil producers are developing a new source of fossil fuel.
Misfortune hit Wilkes Barre hard twice in recent history. The first time was one day in 1959 when coal miners working a vein under the Susquehanna River made an error in judgment and poked a hole up through the river bed, flooding miles of interconnected mineshafts under half the county. For days after that, workers threw in every kind of material at hand to close up the hole in the river bottom -- gravel, boulders, parts of old buildings, whole trucks -- but nothing availed until the mines drank up all the river water they could hold. That was the end of the anthracite industry in Wilkes Barre. More than 30,000 miners lost their paychecks forever.
Bike-sharing services roll into the U.S.
City commuters weary of stuffy journeys aboard buses and subways now have a better way to get to work, buy groceries and meet for a Saturday matinee. The bike-sharing programs that have transformed Europeans into two-wheeled travelers are now en route to the U.S.
Regional nuclear conflict would create near-global ozone hole
A limited nuclear weapons exchange between Pakistan and India using their current arsenals could create a near-global ozone hole, triggering human health problems and wreaking environmental havoc for at least a decade, according to a study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Oil jumps nearly $3 on Europe refinery trouble
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil rose nearly $3 on Monday to past $109 a barrel as a fire at a European refinery stirred fresh fuel supply concerns.Finnish refiner Neste Oil said repairs and maintenance on a diesel unit at its 200,000-barrel-per-day (bpd) Porvoo refinery would stretch through May following a fire on Friday.
The news pushed prices for London gas oil, a fuel closely related to diesel and heating oil, to a record $1,005 a tonne and led U.S. heating oil and crude prices sharply higher on the New York Mercantile Exchange, dealers said.
Gasoline prices add to record gains
NEW YORK - Gas prices rose further into record territory Monday, pulled higher by resurgent oil futures and a growing belief that gasoline supplies are falling as the summer driving season approaches.
Trees block solar panels, and a feud ends in U.S. court
SUNNYVALE, California: Call it an eco-parable: one Prius-driving couple take pride in their eight redwoods, the first of them planted over a decade ago. Their electric-car-driving neighbors take pride in their rooftop solar panels, installed five years after the first trees were planted.Trees - redwoods, live oaks or blossoming fruit trees - are usually considered sturdy citizens of the sun-swept peninsula south of San Francisco, not criminal elements. But under a 1978 state law protecting homeowners' investment in rooftop solar panels, trees that impede solar panels' access to the sun can be deemed a nuisance and their owners fined up to $1,000 a day. The Solar Shade Act was an obscure curiosity until late last year, when a dispute over the eight redwoods (a k a Tree No. 1, Tree No. 2, Tree No. 3, etc.) ended up in Santa Clara County criminal court.
Mexico's oil crisis stirs a political drama
MEXICO CITY: A bitter debate over what to do about the ailing state oil monopoly has dominated national politics in Mexico in recent weeks, tapping strong emotions on both sides and resurrecting the political fortunes of the leftist leader who narrowly lost the 2006 presidential election.
Shell chief favours cross-border cooperation over competition to cut CO2
BRUSSELS (Thomson Financial) - Royal Dutch Shell Plc.'s chief executive Jeroen van der Veer said the group favours a scenario to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions which promotes cross-border cooperation rather than countries rushing to secure energy resources for themselves.
Global Warming gets the cold freeze: Global warming hoax exposed by record global cold
The recent Global Warming hysteria is in reality a geopolitical push by leading global elite circles to find a way to get the broader populations to willingly accept drastic cuts in their living standards, something that were it demanded without clear reason by politicians, would spark strikes and protest. The UN’s latest IPCC report on Global Warming calls for diverting a huge 12% of global GDP to “prevent the harmful effects of climate change.” The UN report, for example, estimated that its recommendations to reduce certain manmade emissions would cost about $2,750 per family per year in the price of energy....Cheney and his close Houston friend, Matt Simmons, propagated the myth of Peak Oil to lull populations into accepting the inevitability of $100 a barrel or even higher oil prices. In the meantime, the relative strength of the Big Oil and the related US military establishment grew with higher oil prices.
Energy Secretary says pump price may hit $3.50/gallon
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Energy Secretary Sam Bodman said on Monday he is concerned that average U.S. gasoline pump prices could hit $3.50 a gallon this summer, and said he is "optimistic" that OPEC will come to the rescue of U.S. drivers...."I have repeatedly asked that there be an increase," Bodman said. "They have so far chosen not to do it. I remain optimistic."
Anadarko Bids Adios To Venezuela
Anadarko is happily handing over its Venezuelan operations to PetroFalcon at a fire-sale price. The seller has been wanting to divest for awhile as Hugo Chavez's bully tactics and nationalizing sticky fingers make operations in his territory very risky business.
Apache: CAPS All-Star ResearchLover defies what's lately become accepted Wisdom, declaring, "Great company, love that they recover from waning oil fields, adding value. But I think (unfortunately) peak oil isn't here yet and the market will realize this in short order."
Mr van Kersen also warned against the impact of rising costs – up 24 per cent in the past year as higher fuel, spare parts and labour costs impacted.That theme was taken up by veteran industry analyst, Peter Strachan who said "peak oil" posed a major threat to the industry. Mr Strachan said oil-reliant mechanisation would stem any future growth in gold production volumes.
OPEC exports down 100,000 bpd 4 wks to Mar 23
LONDON (Reuters) - OPEC seaborne oil exports, excluding Angola and Ecuador, fell 100,000 barrels per day (bpd) in the four weeks to March 23, mostly on slippage from Gulf producers, data released by Lloyd's Marine Intelligence Unit showed on Monday.LMIU said shipments from 11 OPEC producers, including Iraq, fell to an average of 22.104 million bpd in the peroid, versus 22.201 in the previous four weeks to Feb. 25.
Market may kill BP gas terminal
Although BP lost the legal battle to build a liquefied natural gas terminal on the Delaware River, the more than two-year delay -- rather than its loss to Delaware in the U.S. Supreme Court -- could kill BP's project.The London-based petroleum giant says it is still considering several alternative sites along the river outside Delaware waters, but industry experts and BP itself say radical changes in energy markets over the past two years make the project a greater financial risk.
The current global energy squeeze and approvals for other Atlantic Coast LNG terminals could determine BP's fate long before the next court fight or debate over risks to the public.
Shell mulls floating LNG unit off Australia
PERTH (Reuters) - Anglo-Dutch oil major Royal Dutch Shell is considering using floating liquefied natural gas (LNG) production technology for a gas field off Western Australia, a company executive said on Monday.
Increased Energy Prices Slowing Global Economy
As the price of energy grows, the connections become stressed and frayed. A world with more expensive energy is a less connected world. When you stop throwing cheap energy at an economy, its total growth slows down and the real growth becomes more isolated and selective.
Record high gas prices force towns to adapt
What towns expected for fuel costs were not record highs, and as the budget year winds down those budget lines are overspent. The new fiscal year begins in July and some towns may have to postpone construction projects until then to avoid a deficit."It does not bode well for the municipalities," said Bennington Town Manager Stuart Hurd. "When you're in the hole, you cut projects. We find ways to do less, we find other ways to conserve."
ONGC To Acquire 40% Interest In Venezuelan Oil Block For $450 Million
India's state-run Oil & Natural Gas Corporation Ltd. (ONGC) is to acquire a 40 percent participating interest in the San Christobal oilfield in Venezuela for about $450 million, according to a government official.
Petrobras to Spend $15 Billion to Double Oil Output
(Bloomberg) -- Petroleo Brasileiro SA, Brazil's state-controlled oil company, will invest $15 billion on overseas oil projects, aiming to double its crude oil production to capture growing demand in Asia and South America.
Lula urges Brazil oil rig output despite costs
RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva backed on Monday national production of oil platforms to create jobs in Brazil even if it will cost state-run oil company Petrobras more than to lease them abroad.
Indonesia plays down oil price hike impact
"Should the subsidies rise, the hike could be financed from the increase of oil price itself. And should it is not sufficient, the hike would be financed from the cut of 10 percent of the ministries budget," Mulyani told a joint press conference after a cabinet meeting at the State Palace here.
Power to the workers: South Africa's largest black empowerment deal
South Africa's largest black empowerment deal to date has received a broad welcome. The Sasol transaction has set a new benchmark for future arrangements.
Canada: China's shopping spree
It has taken over three years, but a growing string of transactions suggests that China, in its quest to buy mining resources anywhere and everywhere, is back in town.
India: Existing vehicles not ready for 10% blending
The Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) is conducting a study with the oil marketing companies to study the impact on existing vehicles.These vehicles are not capable of running on 10 per cent ethanol-blended petrol as ethanol releases more heat and can corrode vehicle engines, experts say.
Chile plans to dam Patagonia wilderness
One of Patagonia's least-known waterways, the Pascua runs through an uninhabited area in southern Chile. It takes meltwater from the Patagonian Ice Field, the largest expanse of permanent ice outside Antarctica and Greenland, for 38 tumultuous miles through steep granite valleys to one of the many fjords that serrate the southern coastline."This valley is pristine and intact," said Sanger, 50, a campaigner at the Berkeley environmental group International Rivers. "Yet if the power companies get their way, this valley will be irreversibly damaged."
Connecticut's Clean Energy Policy Creating Demand
The aggressive policy in Connecticut, combined with similar requirements in neighboring states, is sparking an unprecedented demand for renewable power in the region. The idea is to prod alternative sources of electricity to spring up as all consumers pay more for the extra benefits of clean generation.But even with a rush of proposals and widespread political support, there is a growing debate over whether the fledgling and disparate alternative energy industry can meet the rising requirements. Even at this year's level, some say it's a struggle.
Striking a balance on climate warnings
Are doom and gloom assessments on climate change helpful or harmful?
A silver bullet for global warming
"There is a silver bullet," he told the group gathered at the InterContinental. "No more coal."In a coastal impact study that he co-authored with Kristina Kershner, Mazria notes that buildings account for 48 percent of energy consumption and building operations are responsible for 43 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Add to this the facts that 76 percent of all electricity produced at U.S. power plants goes to buildings and that coal is a major source of inexpensive energy at these plants, and you can see the dilemma.
So, Mazria argues, make buildings more energy efficient and there won't be a need for additional coal-fired power plants.
A Manhattan or Apollo Project for Energy? What Nonsense
As handy metaphors for all-out government concentration on a clearly identified technological goal, Manhattan and Apollo are winners. But care should be taken in extrapolating their success to today’s energy problems. The big difference is that Manhattan had one customer, the U.S. Army, and Apollo also had only one, NASA (with a pork-happy Congress cheering it on). The goals were clear: Beat the Nazis to the bomb and the Soviets to the moon. Financed with blank checks, run by chiefs appropriately referred to as “czars,” and unimpeded by diverse political and economic interests, the two projects decisively proceeded to their successful conclusions.In contrast, our energy and climate-change problems originate more in political, economic, and cultural entanglements than in technological deficiencies.
Philippines: The rice shortage and the folly of blaming the Catholic Church
Bring up the topic of an unmanageable population, a worrisome rice shortage, and other issues related to demography and soon some voice starts raving against the Catholic Church and its position against artificial means of contraception. We deftly play the blame game in this country. Someone must be blamed; some head must roll! That is of course much easier than taking to the couch to find out for ourselves what the matter might be with our collective psyche.
Unscientific assumptions in economic theory are undermining efforts to solve environmental problemsThe 19th-century creators of neoclassical economics—the theory that now serves as the basis for coordinating activities in the global market system—are credited with transforming their field into a scientific discipline. But what is not widely known is that these now legendary economists — William Stanley Jevons, Leon Walras, Maria Edgeworth and Vilfredo Pareto — developed their theories by adapting equations from 19th-century physics that eventually became obsolete. Unfortunately, it is clear that neoclassical economics has also become outdated. The theory is based on unscientific assumptions that are hindering the implementation of viable economic solutions for global warming and other menacing environmental problems.
(see also Brother, Can You Spare Me a Planet?)
Rising populations. Skyrocketing commodity prices. Strains on natural resources. Is this our Malthusian moment?Is the ghost of Thomas Robert Malthus stalking the global economy? Sad to say, it sure seems like it.
Malthus was a key figure in the 18th and early 19th century in developing modern mainstream economics. (And Darwin hit on the idea of natural selection after reading Malthus' Essay on Population.) But Malthus is best remembered for his grim argument that there is a tendency from "the wretched inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego" to "the beggars of Teshoo Loomboo" for population growth to outstrip resources.
Peak Oil: Russia's oil production is coming down
MOSCOW: Oil production in Russia, the second largest oil exporter in the world, is coming down drastically, says a new study.Studies on Russian oil production by Aram Mäkivierikko say that the country has not been able to increase its oil production for three months in a row now. The production have been hanging slightly below the maximum of 9,93 Mbpd that was reached last year in October.
The report said if their oil production is stagnating, the impact is therefore going to be significant. Output has declined by between 0.5% to 1.5% for most major Russian producers, including the state-controlled Rosneft. Only LUKOIL and Tatneft managed to increase their output by 0.1% and 0.6% respectively.
China to give crude tax rebate to help refiners
BEIJING (Reuters) - China has agreed to grant a hefty tax rebate on crude imports to help oil firms limit heavy refining losses, instead of increasing fuel prices that would stoke inflation, a government source said on Monday.Under the scheme proposed by oil firms and endorsed by the State Council last month, Beijing is set to cut the 17 percent value-added tax on crude imports by three-quarters, said the official source familiar with the policy.
Oil climbs more, OPEC sees no shortage
"The biggest surprises could be on the supply side. Non-OPEC supply is just not going up this year," Paul Horsnell, oil analyst at Barclays Capital in London.
Cost of gas up 5 cents in the last two weeks
CAMARILLO, Calif. - A survey says the national average price for gasoline rose 5 cents over the last two weeks.The average price of self-serve regular gasoline on Friday was $3.32 a gallon, mid-grade was $3.44 and premium was $3.55. That's according to the Lundberg Survey of 7,000 stations nationwide released Sunday.
China to cap power consumption of copiers amid energy saving drive
BEIJING (Xinhua) -- China will soon promulgate energy consumption standards for copy machines to save electricity as a national power strain looms large.Up to 10 percent of the current duplicators, which failed to meet the new standards, would be forced out of the market, said senior engineer Chen Haihong of the China National Institute of Standardization.
Iran joined militias in battle for Basra
IRANIAN forces were involved in the recent battle for Basra, General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, is expected to tell Congress this week.Military and intelligence sources believe Iranians were operating at a tactical command level with the Shi’ite militias fighting Iraqi security forces; some were directing operations on the ground, they think.
Trinidad & Tobago: Sweet in we mouth
n July of last year I wrote a series of articles linking Peak Oil (the increase in demand over foreseeable supply of petroleum) to our Government's revenue, tourism, food prices and availability, and in general the impact of the Government's fiscal policy on inflation and the Central Bank's open market response to this profligate spending.
Londoners could pay $50 a day to drive in city
LONDON - As New York commuters brace for possible charges for driving into the midtown area, they can at least be thankful they don't live in London, where Mayor Ken Livingstone has staked his re-election hopes on boosting the "congestion tax" to as much as $50 a day.
Forest destruction for palm oil continues in Indonesia: Greenpeace
JAKARTA, Indonesia: Indonesia's peat land forests are still being cut down to make way for palm oil plantations despite government pledges to stop the destruction, the environmental group Greenpeace said Monday.Indonesia is the biggest global emitter of greenhouse gases, blamed for global warming, through deforestation and third behind the United States and China in terms of total man-made emissions.
Web site restores ‘abortion’ as search term
BALTIMORE - A prominent public health school has restored the word "abortion" as an acceptable search term on a reproductive health Web site funded by a federal agency that restricts references to abortions.The move by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health follows criticism from some health advocates and librarians that the restriction amounted to censorship.
The restriction on the POPLINE Web site — "population information online" — had been put in place after inquiries by the United States Agency for International Development, which funds the site, according to a statement from Dr. Michael J. Klag, the dean of the Bloomberg school.
Government failing to fund UK's nuclear clean-up, say MPs
The Government is failing to provide adequate funding for the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), the body responsible for cleaning up Britain’s nuclear waste, a report published today by the House of Commons Business and Enterprise Committee says.
Volt plug-in hybrid is 'No. 1 priority,' GM says
DETROIT - General Motors Corp showed off its progress in developing the highly anticipated Chevrolet Volt and detailed its road map for bringing the rechargeable car to the market by 2010, an ambitious timeline challenged by some rivals."We are moving with incredible speed," Frank Weber, GM's vehicle line executive in charge of the Volt, told reporters. "This project is not concept work. This program is not theory. It is reality."
New Flyer: A Clean Way to Play Extreme Peak Oil Scenarios
When the supply of oil cannot grow to meet increasing demand, the price must increase to keep demand in check. However, the fastest growing consumers of oil are countries where the government subsidizes oil as an attempt to avoid civil unrest or political discontent. That means that demand destruction in developed markets must make up the difference for markets where demand destruction will not occur due to the lack of price signals.
UK: Paper-bag trade protest at Government's supermarket curbs
Britain’s paper-bag industry is protesting against government plans to extend its proposed action against single-use carrier bags to include those made of paper, as well as plastic.
Climate change increases cataract blindness risk: experts
SYDNEY (AFP) - Climate change will increase the risk of people losing their sight through cataracts because of higher levels of ultraviolet rays, an expert said Monday.
Asia will bear brunt of climate change-linked deaths: WHO
MANILA (AFP) - More than half the annual estimated 150,000 deaths linked to climate change will come from the Asia-Pacific region, officials at the World Health Organisation said Monday.Most of the fatalities will be the result of a greater incidence of diseases such as malaria, diarrhoea and malnutrition, as well as and flooding due to changing weather patterns.
Shigeru Omi, WHO director for the Western Pacific region based in Manila, said "the impact of climate change will be felt more in developing countries," which have fewer resources to deal with it.
Earth in crisis, warns NASA's top climate scientist
WILMINGTON, Delaware (AFP) - Global warming has plunged the planet into a crisis and the fossil fuel industries are trying to hide the extent of the problem from the public, NASA's top climate scientist says."We've already reached the dangerous level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere," James Hansen, 67, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, told AFP here.
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http://www.house.gov/smbiz/democrats/PressReleases/2008/pr-04-03-08-cred...
Today, witnesses told the House Committee on Small Business that as traditional sources of capital diminish—including SBA loans—their credit card use is on the rise.
Re the timesonline article Iran joined militias in battle for Basra.
They "believe" Iranians were operating at a tactical command level with the Shi’ite militias fighting Iraqi security forces; some were directing operations on the ground, they "think".
HOW ABOUT PROOF!!!?
Appearantly Iran is being set up. Are we supposed to fall for this BS? AGAIN?!?!
Scott Ritter
http://www.rutlandherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080404/NEWS04/...
Paul Craig Roberts
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19684.htm
So don't believe the LIARS.
The Bush administration is desperate to distract the masses from the economic disaster unfolding so Maliki is forced into confrontation with al Sadr. The Iranians know what time it is so they're there, pulling the combatants apart, and now General Betrayus will live up to his nickname, again trying to force another neocon fantasy war on us.
This makes me want to call Congressmen ... again ... and inquire about impeachment.
I'm pretty pessimistic when it comes to Iran. Always was. Now, PO is bad enough as it is, without unleashing WWIII. If this next war is on, I can see no other outcome than the one our Chimp envisions, i.e. the nukes come out.
The scary thing is that it will not only distract from the coming depression, which can be blamed on a new war, it will be explained as a reason for high energy costs. "We are in trouble; it's all someone elses fault!" While the mess in Irag and the consequent meddling of Iran in Iraq was created by neocon LIES in the first place.
If they attack Iran it bowls over global oil production in such a fashion as to cover their tracks an it permits for the neocon putsch to be firmed ahead of the installation of a Democratic Congress next January, one which will promptly hand them over to The Hague for war crimes trials in order to restore some of our national honor.
And people here are so blinded by the Meat Stick Media they'll lap it up. Tell me again why I get out of bed and try to do something about this every day?
"one which will promptly hand them over to The Hague for war crimes trials "
Love your sense of humor, SCT!
If 'the oil exporting countries' were to say 'Turn 'em over or no more oil' - the speed at which a handover would happen would challenge light as being one of the fastest things in the universe.
That wasn't snark, it was a heartfelt hope. We're a pariah nation that no one is willing to step up to ... yet. Maybe we're the first and biggest cat to inhabit the Monbiot Feline Combat Containment System?
And I'm not snark'n either. People are handed over to 'international justice' is at ends of wars or an attempt quiet the others who set up the court. I can not think of a government that is still a continuance of the old government who hands over high placed members for a trial. A total lack of imported oil *MIGHT* be enough - my faith in my fellow man to toss others under the bus for their own benefit is the only way I see your hope happening.
If one wants to have heartfelt hope (or perhaps chaos) - imagine a 'national reconsilation commission' like South Africa for whatever your pet issue is. Banking, corruption - whatever. Fill out your from by April 16th, confess your crime and name your co-conspirators. Publish 'em to the Internet - as the light of the public would be a great disinfectant. If your co-conspirators opted to NOT fill out the forms, they are subject to whatever the punishment might be.
Think of the make work program for government paper pushers!
SCT, thanks. More people should hope, but first and foremost act to bring about change. Do call your congressman(calls from my side of the Atlantic will not work).
Some US general said "war is a racket", I think. A war with Iran would be the best way to funnel perhaps the last major revenues likely to be collected by the IRS into the pockets of Cheney's supporters (military suppliers etc.) WHILE providing the rationale for controlling dissenters AND the resulting gas shortages will also keep everyone focused on basic suvival, not paying attention to WHO is escaping on planes bound for, for example, Paraguay.....
You see, they've thought it all out, the neocons. And it matters not a whit whether anyone has guessed their plans, because they are in control.
But, you know, war lords flourish when it's a zero sum game. If available energy is increasing, then fine, leaders are happy to share the good fortune bountifully among the populace. But if the energy available is going to stagnate or decrease then the window SLAMS shut and people who are a bit stronger, richer and more powerful make sure that they remain that way, even if it takes lies, robbing, whatever.
There were war lords here in Japan until 1863 when the Meiji Revolution did away with them. I believe that the energy profile of Japan (as well as the world) changed at that time and it was no longer a zero sum game, suddenly there was coal, oil, etc. ("Oh, OKAY, great! Let's SHARE!")
But in the US way before Bush was--ahem---"elected" in 2000, the reversion to the zero sum game energy profile was clear, just even by the slowing marginal rate of oil production. Bush is a war lord, masquerading as a democratic leader. He is a war lord in every sense. He is being run by others who are profiting from his policies. He doesn't hate war, regret war, or even dislike it. (Maybe in his heart of hearts he might feel sorry for the people killed, but he is weak enough to separate these feelings from his policies).
He is a war lord. There might be more such "leaders" on the horizon, as time passes, only the scale will be smaller and smaller. Fighting between continents, then within continents, then within countries, then just between two groups on different sides of a hill......
"war is a racket"
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm
By US Marine Corp Major General Smedley Butler
The other bit of history that is not mentioned often
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/Coup.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot
(This tid-bit is RIPE for a prankster to fake a copy and call it authentic. I'm surprised it hasn't happened.)
There were war lords here in Japan until 1863 when the Meiji Revolution did away with them. I believe that the energy profile of Japan (as well as the world) changed at that time and it was no longer a zero sum game, suddenly there was coal, oil, etc. ("Oh, OKAY, great! Let's SHARE!")
Please post more on the history of Japan as viewed through the energy lens.
not paying attention to WHO is escaping on planes bound for, for example, Paraguay.....
Humans are nasty vengeful kritters. I would not be shocked to hear that the jungle of Paraguay was nuked due to trees being a source of wood for the next set of weapons - sticks.
"There were war lords here in Japan until 1863 when the Meiji Revolution did away with them."
Source please? Are you referring to the samurai class? That is what Meiji brought to an end. But they were a landed aristocracy, not war lords.
Aren't all landed aristocracies warlords - grabbing land by arms, then passing it on to their children with the military skills to pose as a protection racket for the tenants? When those skills are lost, the decayed descendants must either lose their land to reform movements (Europe/Japan), or hire death squads from the army/police/School of the Americas franchise, thus becoming warlords once again.
It is no coincidence that the affluent families of the US sent so many of their boys to military academies.
If you like. But it seems to me that it so trivializes the distinctions that you would end up with only two forms of governance - democracy or warlord-ism. That lacks in subtlety from my perspective.
I'd be perfectly amenable to just calling it "thievery", because that's what it is, regardless of who does it.
Land---exactly----that was the source of energy. Whether it's horses eating the grass or people eating the crops, the energy from the land was the only energy. Control the land and you control the energy--the food, horses (military). The amount of land wasn't increasing (hence the limitation on energy available). People fought constantly to control the land here. (Of course, without modern WMD and tanks, bombs, missiles, whatever, I guess the fighting was pretty much different from what is going on now in wars.) But the Meiji govt realized, after contact with outside world (esp. England I believe) , that coal-powered ships, trains etc could put an end to this feudalistic world view, and its lifestyle. And things did change.
Bush is more a symptom of peak oil----in a world of increasing scarcity, some groups will want to grab what they can get simply because they believe (perhaps correctly????? I hate to think of it like that!) that otherwie someone else will beat them to it.
Sorry I have no links in particular to recommend! Just look up various general historical terms and I think you'll find something.
And didn't the next 80+ years in Japan bring forth the most barbaric lethal culture the world has ever seen [exceeding the nazis, mongols, ruskies, chinese, US, British etc..]? What would that bio-weapons factory in Hiroshima be doing had it not been toasted in 45??
What would that bio-weapons factory in Hiroshima be doing had it not been toasted in 45??
Train US citizens in the facility?
12 aircraft carriers @ $4.5 billion ea + 12 sunburn missles @ $1 million ea = sum 0
Even the nut case Neocon's have to understand that a move against Iran will take Persian Gulf oil off line and kick the global ecomony into the dumpster... make that a giant trash compactor.
Likewise I would guess that during DC's recent talks with the Saudis, such subjects were maybe considered? If so, what would the Saudis positions be? I really can't see them giving a "thumbs up" to a nuke holocaust, even if they do hate those creepy Persian Shiites. The Saudis could derail such plans with promises of dialing back exports as a threat.
Besides, there's oil in Greenland. We should preemtively strke al Qaide in Greenland, grab the oil, and pack up our tents in the middle east.
Even the nut case Neocon's have to understand that a move against Iran will take Persian Gulf oil off line and kick the global ecomony into the dumpster
Wack-job conspiracy radio yakkers who claim to be 'plugged into' the 'global elite' have commented more than once that part of the 'global elite' (I'm sure they ain't the ppl I hang with) have pushback over the Iran attack plans because they worry over their comfortable little empires.
The true nut case versions have hard-core-religious beliefs at their core - so no amount of pointing at economy or oil will change their mind because they are siding with God(s). And really, if ya gotta pick a side the God(s) of various mythos create things like worlds or cosmoses or humans from dust/dirt, et la. Oil/money really's got nothing on an actual God (as portrayed in writing).
Now - Wasn't Iran supposed to have been attacked already? (or Houston nuked in 2005. Or .....)
"Energy Secretary Sam Bodman said on Monday he is concerned that average U.S. gasoline pump prices could hit $3.50 a gallon this summer, and said he is "optimistic" that OPEC will come to the rescue of U.S. drivers."
Yeah, and I'm optimistic Nicole Kidman is going to dump that guy she married and go out with me instead...
SubKommander Dred
Apologies if this has already been posted here, I don't remember seeing it:
Insight: Opec’s power shortages fuel oil prices
Is basically a description of Westtexas' export land model
Note the linked article about Russia. In any case, this was my (January, 2006) original post on the concept, building on prior work by several people:
http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/1/27/14471/5832
Hubbert Linearization Analysis of the Top Three Net Oil Exporters
I later slightly modified the ELM, and I underestimated the contribution from frontier basins in Russia, but I suspect that frontier basins in Russia are to Russia as Alaska is to the US--they both help, but IMO they are no panacea.
This article was also the start of the Khebab/Brown collaborations. Based on Khebab's HL work on Russia--cutting off the data set in the mid-Eighties--in the comment section I noted that Russia could show increasing production for another year or two before declining.
Everyone has to make their own decisions, but in my opinion it is way past time to consider some variation of the ELP concept (and numerous people have independently outlined their own versions of the same basic idea).
Spot on, Westexas. Every tree you bark up has a coon. What’s your next signal?
Cold Camel
Like Matt Simmons and others, I would have preferred to have wrong. BTW, not that I am comparing myself to Matt; I am just a bit player in this drama. At ASPO-USA, I told Matt that we were building our export work on his prior work, and he said, "Thanks, but I would have preferred to be wrong."
Interesting October, 2007 article on Financial Sense on the prospect for $1,000 oil within 10 years: http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/editorials/lalani/2007/1028.html
Westexas,
We all wish you were wrong, but wishes don’t change reality. Now you have a history of predictions. As each domino falls, you are more able to see the next one. I find it quite useful to compare what you see in your crystal ball to what I see. What’s next?
I see the langoliers (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112040/) eating the world poor. Impacts on the rich will be delayed. We will have the opportunity to watch and learn from the third world. World trade will dissolve as rich countries refuse to subsidize the poor.
The same will happen domestically as government, energy and agriculture subsume increasing shares of the national wealth. Those with marginal incomes in all economic sectors will suffer first. But none of us are standing above the high tide line. No sangfroid here.
Cold Camel
"World trade will dissolve as rich countries refuse to subsidize the poor."
Actually, it's the other way round as poor countries' resources subsidized/created the rich countries. It sould be observed that formerly opulent countries, Egypt for example, are now quite poor. Two currently rich countries, UK and Japan, will perish without trade. A few places can convert to autarky, the continental sized countries primarilly, but only after substantial changes are wrought. As a historian, I will be the first to admit the future is unpredictible in its specifics and add that the best way to know the future is to study the past. I will say that those who prosper during and after the coming Great Decline will build the basis for the new low-energy paradigm, not try to maintain BAU.
Karlof,
Your argument is correct regarding current world trade in dollars. I had not resolved whether I meant rich financially or in resources, but after considering your input, I clearly consider resources to be the measure if importance. Japan is resource poor and will be hurt by a lack of trade more than their trading partners of the future. I would modify my statement to:
“World trade will dissolve as resource rich countries refuse to subsidize resource poor countries.”
Thank you for the input. I think we are both in agreement.
Cheers.
Cold Camel
Here's what worries me about the public reaction to declines:
Russia declines before Saudi - our leaders tell us that our oil lackeys have outlasted the bad guys - let's party!
Saudi declines before Russia - our leaders tell us that our way of life is threatened - Cold War II!
Our only chance is that Russia and Saudi decline at exactly the same time, with no perturbations, leaving us with no illusions. But the Saudis are willing to move, store or misquote production to keep creating occasional production spikes to feed the propaganda mill.
True, OPEC's power shortages fuel oil prices (increases)...but the story is much more complex than that...and it reinforces WTs reasoning that ELM, once started, quickly gains momentum. Some big players in oil exports are using their $s in ever increasing amounts to fund social programs at home. Maintaining TPTB in ivory towers, by way of bread and circus, has become an above ground factor that is costing oil importers dearly. Throwing fuel on the fire is the US Fed action of continuing the devaluation of the $ by interest rate cuts. In turn, this causes oil exporters to import inflation which is causing continuing price increases of oil priced in dollars...A viscious spiral.
...snip...'Joel Bowman "reporting from the Persian Gulf" here at The Daily Reckoning writes, "I found it interesting to note that the Saudis, perhaps the most expansive central planners in terms of intervening in individual's lives, now spend US$55 of every barrel of oil sold just to provide welfare for their citizens. This is a country with the largest reserves of the hottest export around and it requires a price seen less than two years ago just to balance the books! The only thing outpacing the rise in crude price, it would seem, is the over-reaching arm of the planners."...snip...
'And it will soon get really bad for Mexicans, as if it wasn't bad enough as it is, as Petroleos Mexicanos (PEMEX), Mexico's state-owned oil conglomerate, has admitted to a 6.4% decline in oil production during just the first two months of 2008'...snip...
'In short, apparently these countries need the price of oil to stay high to pay for their welfare expenses as he notes that "the margin between profit and just covering their expanding welfare buttocks is getting rather thin", which means that they will necessarily be raising oil prices again pretty soon, as inflation in prices is making these government welfare costs go up, which means that oil will be going up in price.'...snip...
'Currently, consumer prices in Venezuela are rising at 25% a year, Iran about 8% and Nigeria probably 15%.' [Saudia Arabia 7%]
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/JD08Dj07.html
Is that 6.4% decline verified? Asian Times can be a bit frothy ...
As Will Rogers was fond of saying...'All I know is what I read in the newspapers'
I agree that ATOL can be a bit over the top, but the overall thrust of the article is that more bread and circus by oil exporters and inflation imported via US $s is causing ever greater oil costs priced in $s. The accuracy of the Mexican export decline rate, while very important, is not so important in the context of what I posted. Mexico does not have much of a history of providing lots of social handouts to its citizenry.
And for arguments' sake, we know Cantarel, the 2nd largest accumulation of oil deposits in the world, is crashing. It is not just declining, it is CRASHING.
Mexico--like Export Land (final peak to zero net exports in 9 years), Indonesia (final peak to zero net exports in 8 years) and the UK (final peak to zero net exports in 7 years)--consumed about half of their production at their peak in 2004, so I expect 2014 to be the outside limit for Mexico to approach zero net oil exports.
What puzzles me regarding ELM is that; Take Mexico as an example, they know with a 100% certainty that they will ”run out of export” within very few years … under all circumstances .. Choices to be determined –
A- CONTINNUE EXPORT until break even … short term benefits (export revenue today, sort of BAU) followed by long term disadvantages (huge import expenditures alternatively social havoc, but another day ..)
B- STOP EXPORT as of next year … short term disadvantages (we have to start to think of SOMETHING today already ) but longtime advantages is: there is still cheap/available national energy to do whatever SOMETHING is decided … (b is my choice)
Those two alternatives constitute the horn in the side of democracy !
Will you have chocolate today or tomorrow ?
As I previously described, the UK taxed energy consumption, Indonesia subsidized energy consumption. The UK has a high per capita income, Indonesia, low per capita income. Result? UK to zero in 7 years, Indonesia in 8 years. IMO, virtually all oil exporters fall between the UK and Indonesia in terms of energy policies and per capita income.
There is a third alternative and is the only kink in a straight free market application of ELM -
C - INTENTIONALLY DESTROY INTERNAL CONSUMPTION TO ALLOW EXPORTS TO CONTINUE LONGER. This is only conceivable if 1) we are talking global peak, not just local (in the later, imports can substitute for declining local production), and 2) the "national" elites have a stronger tie to the global elite than they do to their national compatriots or there desire to maintain power is stronger than those same ties AND they have the capability and will to repress the inevitable social disorder that results from their decision.
As an example, look at Norway, which has among the highest gasoline taxes, if not the absolute highest.
And our middle case has Norway approaching zero net oil exports by 2025. They were the #3 largest net oil exporter in 2005.
Saudi Arabia has room. It's subsidised prices mean Saudi has a per capita oil consumtion higher than the US. It's economic madness. If they hit zero exports soon it will be their own fault. They need oil exports to pay for imports of food amongst other things. Fun times ahead in the kingdom.
Based on the most recent Pemex releases, I find that exports to the US have declined from 1.84 m/b/d to 1.25 m/b/d in two years. The decline going forward is over 200,000 b/d on a yoy basis. Given that the US exports 400,000 b/d of refined products to Mexico, I think that with rising domestic oil consumption, Mexico will reach zero net exports in about four years or 2011-12. Cantarell's declining production can not be replaced barrel for barrel. Some observers also think that the nitrogen injection will have a negative impact on future Cantarell production.
I hope that Clinton/Obama void NAFTA the day that either is elected so that Mexico and Canada can sell their oil to China instead of the US. As long as TSIGTHTF it might as well hit the day after a democrat is sworn into office.
Yes, and they are banking you hoping such things. Watch the birdie....
What political observers and national polls aren't reporting is the fact that the majority of Americans vote based on "narrow self interest". The McCain candidacy is already tapping into Americans slavish devotion to "low taxes". We all want National Health Care, intelligent energy policies, global warming solutions, and world peace, we just don't like the idea of having to pay for it.
Until the majority of Americans share in the pain we will continue to support (in the privacy of the voting booth of course) the "politics of ME". I have a hard time finding anyone who will openly admit to voting for George W. Bush anymore but let's not forget that he was elected by a popular majority.
Americans are highly taxed, and get the least for it, because they're supporting the biggest baddest military on the planet, ever.
We Americans should have lower taxes, and can, by becoming isolationist, having the military we need for defense rather than offense, and putting tax money into healthcare, education, etc.
Europe and Japan, conversely, have universal healthcare etc but actually have the US paying for much of their defense.
Highly taxed compared to???
http://www.worldwide-tax.com/
I'm sure it's not you fleam, but often the same people who complain about U.S. tax rates are the ones who believe we'd solve the budget deficit by canceling foreign aid and other equally foolish beliefs.
There is a difference between taxes and spending.
Do not forget that the US of A is borrowing a whole lotta greenbacks to keep the balls in the air.
The various military conflicts would be over if the adventure was funded via taxation and not borrowing.
The US has a myriad of taxes. Income tax is but a small portion. A neighbor of mine back in the day and his wife compared taxes in Sweden and the US. When all the hidden and not-so-hidden taxes were computed, it turned out it was about equal, but the Swedes got free health care, extensive vacations, long maternity leaves, better schools...
You really think the US is taxed in the low range?
Guess again.
Cheers
Really? That's news to me.
Steal a little and they throw you in jail;
Steal a lot and they make you king. - Bob Dylan
WT - What does Export Land Mean?
It's a simple mathematical model (slightly modified from Version 1.0). I assumed a country producing 2 mbpd, and consuming one mbpd, which peaks and then declines at -5%/year, with a 2.5%year rate of increase in consumption. Result: net exports go to zero in nine years, and only about 10% of post-peak oil production would be exported.
The UK and Indonesia both consumed about half of production at their final peaks. UK went to zero net exports in seven years, Indonesia in eight years.
ELM graph in this article: http://graphoilogy.blogspot.com/2008/01/quantitative-assessment-of-futur...
Yes it has been verified and that verification has been reported here on TOD. When the monthly PEMEX data comes out it is always reported here on TOD within a couple of hours at most. (URL below) The drop is year over year. Mexico oil Production, C+C:
Jan 07 3,143,000 bp/d
Feb 07 3,148,000
Jan 08 2,957,000
Feb 08 2,929,000
Averaging the two months of each year, that is an average year over year drop of 203,000 barrels per day or 6.44 percent.
http://www.pemex.com/files/dcpe/petro/eprohidro_ing.pdf
Ron Patterson
Ron, thanks for the stats.
Yes, thanks for stats on this - I'm no longer watching Drum Beat daily so I'm missing stuff :-(
http://uk.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idUKL0758847220080407
UPDATE 2-Kazakhstan may impose oil duty from 2008
Mon Apr 7, 2008 2:17pm BST
By Raushan Nurshayeva
One factor not taken into account by climate change modelers until quite recently, if at all, is the impact of increased UV radiation on global primary productivity. A modest UV induced reduction in photosynthesis worldwide, due to depleted stratospheric O3, diminishes the biospheres ability to sequester carbon from the atmosphere as biomass. This is another + feedback that accelerates the pace of global warming. Failing to take it into account is one reason why warming is occuring at a pace greater than the "worst case" scenario in many climate models. Global warming & Peak Oil are interrelated issues that need to be considered in a unitary fashion.
Global warming & Peak Oil are interrelated issues that need to be considered in a unitary fashion.
I agree , but I think dealing with PO in the right way WILL deal with GW to some considerable extent, at least to the extent it's not too late. Dealing with PO in the wrong way, which IMO, is anything that doesn't involve radical retrenchment on many fronts, will aggravate GW or ensure we cross some line we don't want to cross.
And it's not just PO and GW -- it's soil depletion, mineral depletion, water, forest cover -- AND -- population. Even if we all live like Ethiopian peasants, if there are too many of us, the earth won't put up with us. (No disrespect to the peasant, who has done for less damage than the industrialized world.)
But the energy issue seems to be the one that is being forced upon us first. (The immediate food crisis is largely a result of the energy crisis.) Coal, nuclear, biofuels, and even some of the renewables are all attempts to avoid or postpone retrenchment.
I don't think acting on GW will impact on peak oil, because any oil the US or the West in general doesn't consume will be taken up by China and India. We have to wean ourselves of oil and leave GW to a global solution.
So efforts to eliminate CFCs (which seemed to be working a few years ago) could actually have bought us more time - but not much. Keep an eye on that ozone hole, but wear shades.
With primary production, some ecosystems such as desert and grasslands are failing to respond to the increased CO2 as predicted, ie the scale of increase in primary production is not occurring despite higher CO2 levels. A primary hypothesis involves the inability to further process or access nitrogen. I wonder what role UV radiation might be playing here.
That's because C is very seldom the limiting nutrient element. P often is in freshwater ecosystems. Fe can limit marine systems. High soil pH can tie up micronutrients rendering them limiting. CO2 fertilization doesn't increase productivity so long as some other vital element is in short supply. The idea that increasing atmospheric CO2 doesn't matter because it just stimulates plant growth & consequent C sequestration as biomass is wrong headed thinking.
It doesn't appear to be a question of nutrient limitation in the classical sense. What is being observed is termed progressive nitrogen limitation, where soil microbial metabolism is not responding as previous to break down larger N molecules for assimilation by plants. What is being observed is a shift from microbial to fungal metabolism, which changes the way and area that nutrients are made available. Also, increased biomass from elevated CO2 is being observed mostly from invasive annuals, not the native flora or perennials on a site.
Apropos of your comment, there is a new post up at Real Climate:
Target CO2
Rising prices of food are cutting the amount of food made available by charities. Efforts to clear rain forests for biofuel crops might bring further ecological damage.
http://www.owensoundsuntimes.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=965741
India depends on imports for 70% of its oil needs.
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/20080407/new-delhi-india-spend-billion-o...
India's Food Crisis http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7327858.stm
Controversy about the WFP's New Deal for Agriculture and Food in Africa: http://allafrica.com/stories/200804070333.html
Food prices rising rapidly in Russia and Eastern Europe: http://www.kommersant.com/p-12307/r_528/Food_price_growth/
American poor hit hard by rising food prices: http://www.wyomingnews.com/articles/2008/04/07/featured_story/01top_04-0...
Phillipine grain traders won't buy rice for fear of being hit with "hoarding" raps: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view/20080407-1288...
The situation in Pakistan: http://thepost.com.pk/EditorialNews.aspx?dtlid=153985&catid=10
Sharon, as I noted down the thread, I think that we are entering the geometric progression phase as increasingly desperate food & energy importers bid against each other for declining food & energy exports. Your upcoming "FELM" article could be a very important article, should be posted on TOD, IMO.
How long will it be before the US government puts restrictions on food exports?
From Bloomberg:
Without food exports, does America have anything left to export besides airliners?
Sure! The weapons used to kill others. Disney Films. And other things, I'm sure.
Green paper
We could export architectural drawing for McMansions, and plans for large suburban developments, centered on golf courses.
We've already been exporting those things to China for years WT...
"China's chichi suburbs
American-style sprawl all the rage in Beijing"
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/04/24/INGAACD3E01.DTL
Guns, ammo, guns, huge cars with terrible mileage, guns, ammo, planes, planes with guns and ammo, worthless green paper, huge cars with terrible mileage AND guns and ammo.
O yes, and Harley Davidsons. Doubt it'll balance the trade deficit however.
You forget porn.
'Harley Ain't the Only One: Overall Bike Sales Down Last Year'
'I've never cared much for sales figures or spreadsheets, but one recent statistic deserves attention: the fact that 2007 was the first time motorcycle sales haven't grown in 14 years.
According to a recent LA Times story, especially hard-hit are small-displacement dirtbikes and, as previously reported, Harley-Davidson. According to the Times article, the U.S. Department of Commerce estimates a 2.2% sales drop, and some manufacturers are estimating a slide of up to 10%.
Bloomberg has reported that Yamaha is experiencing its first profit drop in eight years (taking its biggest stock hit in 26 years), and Honda reports a third-quarter dip of 14.4%. While a few bright spots include Ducati, KTM, Victory, and overall scooter sales, the bleaker bigger picture begs the question: how will this affect the future of motorcycling?
I'm guessing the end of a 14 year growth streak doesn't concern dyed-in-the-wool enthusiasts much, since they're less trend-sensitive than mainstream consumers. As Cycle World publisher Larry Little is quoted in the Times article, "Once you throw a leg over a bike, it's something you don't want to miss. In fact, when you have to put up with political debates and wonder what the economy's going to do, it's something you need more."...snip...
http://motorcycles.about.com/b/2008/02/14/harley-aint-the-only-one-overa...
Nearly 40 percent of Egypt's 76 million people live below or near the poverty line of $2 a day. They spend $1 a day on food. What happens when food prices double?
http://www.cnbc.com/id/23994316/for/cnbc
Expect massive urban starvation and riots in third world nations.
Put yourself in Egypt today. Place yourself in your present social position. What actions should you take? (Since this is a PO exercise, you can’t leave the country, nor expect foreign relief)
Clearly, the government should do everything to feed the poor (re: Ancient Rome). Farmers should continue to produce as much as possible. However, eventually the government will collapse as the poor starve.
If you lived in Egypt, what actions should you take today, assuming tomorrow will come?
Any eyes on the ground in Egypt?
Cold Camel
Coincidentally, my newspaper (nrc.nl) had an article on bread riots in Egypt today.
Some notable things taken from the article:
In Egypt the word for bread is "ais", which is the same word they use for life
Egypt is the worlds largest bread consumer
Egypt is the second largest grain importer in the world
50 million Egyptians (2/3rd of the population) rely on subsidized bread
Food product and fuel subsidies cost the Egyptian government 14 billion US $ in 2007
Everyone is allowed to buy the subsidized bread; it is bought also as feed for chickens, goats and sheep
In the past few weeks media have reported 8 death in fights over bread.
Cheers.
EDIT: Your source mentions the strike, of 20.000 textile workers. Wages have been frozen for....25, twenty five, years. The strike is a result of general unrest, likely by way of escalating food prices.
Egypt is a prime example of overpopulation. In a recent artice the contributer said that he was born in Egypt in 1951 when the popultion was 20 million. For most of its history the population of Egypt hovered around 4 million. Egyptians are breeding like there's no tomorrow. At one time it's population was growing by a million a year. Considering that most of those people are crammed in to the Nile delta, an area the size of Holland, the situation is potentally catastrophic. Someone should hand out condoms.
Egypt cut it's own throat by building the Aswan High Dam. The Soviets wouldn't bankroll a pyramid, so Nasser opted for the dam instead. The agricultural productivity of the floodplain & delta depended on the annual spate. Eliminating it only ensured that Egyptian agriculture would become dependent on fertilizer imports. Now the delta is eroding into the Med. Alan will hate me all the more for pointing this out, but so be it...
Here's a followup on your post, PaulusP.
Reuters: In Egypt, long queues for bread that's almost free
While grain prices are rising, it is worthwhile to remember:
a) They are still quite low on a historical basis. To reach the average of the last 100 years, they would have to at least double from here. It would be best to be emotionally prepared to see food prices go back to their 100 year averages.
b) The total amount of grain available is not much changed. Even in Egypt, they are feeding subsidized bread to goats and chickens.
The long-term solution is to feed less grain to animals, and for humans to eat more directly. However, this does not address the question of how grain is distributed. Situations that have grown up around extraordinarily low food prices will have to change in response to higher prices. In a similar way, people starved in Ireland while food was shipped to England.
It's STILL too cheap! We need to hit that $4/gal mark in order to make the next mental roadblock for consumers. Nearly all my coworkers are discussing getting a smaller vehicle, but only 1/4 of them are making good on it when it comes time that their lease ends. Of course, the car I drive is 23 years old and gets anywhere from 40mpg to 50mpg, and they look at me like I'm crazy for driving an old car. I laugh because my insurance is cheap, my gasoline bill is cheap, and my car payment is ZERO! When weather permits, I ride my motorcycle instead, which gets 80mpg.
Public transportation would be the best option, however it is not an option in the exurbs where I live. (I bought the place before becoming peak oil aware, and at the time of the purchase, my commute was a mere 15 minutes as I worked close to home.)
Best Hopes for well planned public transportation,
Durandal (http://www.wtdwtshtf.com)
Ali Belshi was nearly in a panic about gas prices this morning on CNN. He said what was alarming was not just the rise, but how quickly prices were rising.
What I found interesting this morning is that oil was up about two bucks, while the dollar is rising against the Euro.
IMO, we are entering the geometric progression phase in food & energy prices, with prices being set at the margin as increasingly desperate importers bid against each other for declining food & energy exports. At their current rate of increase in the past six months, oil prices would double every 18 months. Absolutely key point: As we move up the food chain, from a poor African consumer at the bottom to a Bill Gates at the top, food & energy prices as a percentage of income decline, thus requiring an accelerating price increase in order to cause forced conservation--while net oil exports are showing an accelerating decline rate.
The question is, at what point does the international market system break down, and countries start trying to seize food & energy resources (following the Bush/Cheney example in the Persian Gulf)?
We need to hit that $4/gal mark in order to make the next mental roadblock for consumers.
$3.50 I've found gets people discussing the topic.
$5 and the minimum wage will be the next rhetorical points. "So - you just worked an hour for a gallon of gas - was it worth it?"
How's that plan working for you now, Bob?
Bob Lutz is a putz. I think he lives in a fantasy dreamland...
Which is why when it came time to replace the General Lee at Chrysler, the rallying cry was "anyone but Lutz!".
I fear GM, Ford and Chrysler are to cars as RCA, Philco and Westinghouse are to TVs. Some days I think it might be best just to nail the coffin shut.
Cheers,
Paul
Actually, Bob Lutz is just telling it like it is. It is not carmakers' job to moralize about energy consumption via their model lineup. They sell what people buy. If they don't, they go out of business. That's especially true of GM.
With that said, GM, Ford etc. in particular have been stuck in what amounts to a luxury niche because of their high labor costs. They need big ticket/big profit margin items to pay their bills. Their luxury niche is basically the Big American Iron SUV/pickup gas-guzzler niche. They don't have the option of making a loss on every car like Toyota's Prius. Maybe there will be a big ticket/big profit super-high mileage luxury niche in the future, but not today, and even so GM and Ford are not likely to dominate that niche.
"They sell what people buy. If they don't, they go out of business."
And out of business they will go. It's like the 1970's all over again. What a bunch of f***ing morons.
Large corporations, including the big auto companies, make markets as much as they sell to them. The whole notion of the "free market" as though it was duelling hardware stores on Main St. USA, and let the best man win, is a joke.
There is no free market. Get over it.
It was clever of the Car companies to increase the sales of SUV's by making them immune to CAFE standards and eligible for tax breaks, that was a stroke of marketing genius.
If there's any rhetorical points left, I'd guess it'd be the min or hourly wage of a person. That trade-an hour at work before deductions vs a gallon, will be real.
Other than that, there's not many to envision, esp with basic food rising, cushioning the shock. Look at it now-10 gal for $33, or 10 gal for $35. Not the big rise, esp when the ubiquitous super slurp thrown in.
Well, I live about 200 miles north of San Francisco and gas prices
"in town" at our sole gas station were $3.75, $3.85 and $3.95 so we're not far from the magic $4/gallon. I'm sure prices are higher further north.
Todd
87 octane regular unleaded was $3.95 here yesterday & the rumor is the gas station might close down soon. The next nearest public gas station is 25 miles farther, but 10 cents cheaper. So the locals have been buying there to save 10cents--go figure. You'd have to buy almost 40 gallons to save the cost of driving there. But of course most locals do their shopping over there anyway, so it isn't extra cost.
A couple of weeks ago I read that prices on Maui were $4.35 per gallon. Maybe the Hawaiians can shed some light in this area?
Greg
I'm in CA, not HI, but it looks like nobody is charging $4.00/gallon in Hawaii yet. See:
http://www.hawaiigasprices.com/
http://www.honolulugasprices.com/
for consumer reports of fuel prices in Hawaii.
We've been paying $4 or more for diesel in Washington, DC for several weeks.
Elsewhere they've got hydrocrackers and diesel is more plentiful. Here we favor gasoline and the lack of investment in that area now hurts, with diesel running $0.50 ahead of gasoline constantly.
$3.65 at Aloha Petroleum station here in Kailua (across the mountains from Honolulu) several days ago. Outer islands generally higher. Then again, it's impossible to drive more than a hundred miles roundtrip to anywhere on this island, and on oahu there's a good bus system.
Last I heard, I think most of our oil came from indonesia... if true, I wonder how long that'll last... (someone correct me if I'm wrong on that).
Here in Alberta I just paid $1.114 per litre that is $4.21 a gallon, I have seen it as high as $1.14 per litre. and the $'s are close to par.
I paid $3.49 in beautiful, downtown, Castine Maine today.
$3.39 today, half a tank away from the historic site of Little House on the Prairie.
Durandal - my hat's off to you! I've got an 82-MPG bike and if I were back in the SF Bay Area my primary transpo would be a bicycle.
And I agree, public transpo would be the best, but there's just no way that's going to happen out here in exurbia.
India Oil Production and Consumption--
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cabs/India/images/india-oil_prod_and_consump.gif
Hi everyone,
I have a friend who is a disbeliever in Peak Oil, but who I think is open to being convinced of the opposite point of view. He asked me to look into the following claim regarding the idea that huge, secret oil reserves exist in Gull Island, Alaska. I would greatly appreciate feedback from the TOD community, which I will forward to my friend for his consideration:
The Energy Non-Crisis, by Lindsay Williams, about how the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) controlled US government decided in the 1960’s to use oil as the means to control the population of the US and world. THERE IS NO ENERGY CRISIS. Williams witnessed the discovery of the Gull Island oil field in the early 1970’s off the coast of Alaska. By all indications there is a 200 year supply. According to an oil official, another field, about as large as Gull Island, was later discovered.
Part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbakN7SLdbk
Part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGGjbDjnNzw&feature=related
Part 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q39ic04vhNo&feature=related
Part 4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKCyCYz_aHY&feature=related
Part 5 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TYmSGwAumk&feature=related
Part 6 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbwMOvV6ctg&feature=related
Part 7 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5HGHsy3H_0&feature=related
Part 8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CC61X78-OI0&feature=related
In general, at this point I suggest that Peak Oilers try to unload highly energy dependent assets on the true believers in the Yerginite Community.
WT - Do you mean selling my SUV? Now you're scaring me!
Quite likely your friend is a listener of Alex Jones, who I believe has his heart in the right place, but sometimes doesn't get all of his ducks in a row before deciding that something is a conpsiracy. Given that Peak Oil is denied by major governments and the big oil companies, one would think that Alex would automatically think that Peak Oil is real, however he believes that Peak Oil is a myth perpetuated by oil companies in an attempt to draw more money out of us and to allow population control via starvation of the masses.
Alex is a champion of civil rights in many ways, but there's a lot of stuff I don't agree with him on.
At any rate, even if the US is sitting on a huge amount of oil and pretending it is not there, I'm all for it. Let's consume everyone else's oil before we consume ours! However, I doubt that we have enough oil either discovered or undiscovered left to make any material impact beyond what we're currently producing.
I, too, think Alex Jones has his heart in the right place, but he really thinks environmentalism, Malthusianism, and Peak Oil awareness are evil plots, set up by the Illuminati, etc. I love his show, and think he's a valuable whistle-blower, but he's sure not clued in on a lot of things.
Alex Jones thinks environmentalism, Malthusianism, and Peak Oil awareness are evil plots
History is filled with events, big events, that were told one way - and seem to be something else.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homophily and going with patterns that have worked in the past is what he's doing.
We know there is price fixing in the energy market - so why is THIS time different?
In Black Swan land, this is known as the narrative fallacy.
A bunch of clever turkeys; 2.5 year old Tom (& Jones) turkeys come together to spin a comforting story for themselves.
A self-confirming conspiracy theory if you will. It says that mankind plans only to do good things for us turkeys. Man treated us well last Thanksgiving, and the one before that. So why should this time be any different?
After all, doesn't history always always repeat itself?
Yes, they shot all of the people who worked on those projects so they would not tell anyone about these discoveries so our secret corporate masters would be able to control us. Next they shot all of their wives and children just in case they overheard them talking. Then all of their friends for good measure. Now they are going to shoot all of the people who made those videos and everyone who watched them. Yahhh! Don't shoot me...
Hi Phil,
Without sounding too flippant, why not let your friend believe what he wants to believe? I've gone down this road many times before and I've concluded it's just not worth it -- help those who are open and genuinely receptive to your efforts and let those who are closed minded continue to self-indulge in their delusions. Be it peak oil, climate change, self-abusive behaviour... it's all the same.
Cheers,
Paul
Unfortunately, I've reached the same level of response. I mention the subject of peak oil, or peak metals, or what-have-you; if they dismiss it I then go off on a different subject of conversation. I think if I pursued it I would only irritate the person. Why bother?
"Why bother?"
Because you care about that person's well being?
Why, as an American, should I bother trying to convince other Americans that AGW isn't the primary reason to invest in alternative energy? Because, I care about this country (and the world, for that matter), and even if someone doesn't want to hear bad news, if you care about them you have to do your best to get them to understand the problems they face.
"Because you care about that person's well being?"
Then plan to help them when they're going to need it and will believe you. There's only so much time in a day. I'd rather spend my time preparing for bad weather than trying to convince people who will eventually figure it out and end up coming to me anyway.
However, my money goes to the climate campaigners.
Freeyourmind,
1. Sometimes to force one's view on someone is enough to shut them down to that view.
2. I've had a few friends sit me down one time for a 3&1/2 hour discussion trying to "enlighten" me that we have NO peak oil problem. It didn't convince me because they could never produce the type of math that Deffeyes did in his book... nor could they refute it. But their caring (in the other direction) didn't work on me.
3. My term "why bother" was a reference to the 'irritating them' part of my previous sentence on that post, NOT any caring part that you refer to. I appologize for not being more careful and specific in communicating that. My fault there.
Fair enough.
Note that I wasn't trying to accuse you of not caring about others, I just felt it necesarry to point out that sometimes you have to try to agitate someone if their well being depends on you getting your point across. Tough love, so to speak.
It does irritate many people to hear about peak oil, that their jobs may go, etc. But I find that as the evidence for peak oil keeps building, people want to hear more, even though they are still not HAPPY about it. Really, I've seen BIG changes in some people I know well recently vis a vis peak oil attitudes. The airlines going under was a factor, Bear Sterns, the dollar, etc. It all adds up. A smart person will sooner or later listen.
Hello Phil,
I too have had encounters with people who have presented me with the claims of Mr. Williams. After reading his book and watching his videos, I have addressed some of these claims in a short article entitled, What About Alaska? on my blog, Peak Oil: A Creationist Perspective.
I would be inclined to conclude that at $108/oil, noone who had this 'secret stash' would still be hanging on to it. It would have been another 'miracle megafield discovery' announced probably before we'd even hit the $90's.
Just a guess, of course, but you have to take some consideration of the kind of Short- vs. Long-term discipline this business community is really able (EDIT: I say 'able', when the language would probably be 'can afford'..) to engage in.
Sell, baby!
Bob
Also, why even bother with a strategic reserve when we have all that "secret" oil?
When one reads a statement link "By all indications there is a 200 year supply.", one should immediately be alarmed. At what rate of consumption, and using what assumptions about growth in use? It is equivalent to the phrase "at current rates of consumption", which I always take to mean "I'm spewing bullshit", as it describes a situation that has never existed. Given that, of what possible use could the rest of the analysis be?
And for only $20 per month (paid annually in advance) you can subscribe to Lindsay Williams "Pipeline". Yes "Lindsey's exciting new "Pipeline" gives members 24/7 access to Lindsey and what is happening nationally and around the world. Lindsey's Pipeline gives you insider information you won't get through the national media." *
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Or not...
* This is not made up.
Perhaps you should give an oil version of the Drake Equation
Something along the lines of:
Length of time "way of life" is preserved = (number of new fields discovered X size of discovery X maximum estimated production) / (rate of increase in consumption X length of time to develop field X cost of extraction per barrel)
In other words, new discoveries will extend the "way of life" figure, but it will be reduced as the length of time to develop them, the cost to extract or the overall consumption increase.
Bear with me - I only just thought it up!
AKH
And arguably, it could be that the odds of intelligent life "lucking into" a petrochemical bonanza is already implicitly a large part of the Drake equation.
Even if an intelligent species on Rigel-4 had thumbs and an oxygen atmosphere, but no coal/oil/gas, would they go straight from burning wood to fission/fusion power?
If it quacks like a Drake....
Sure they would, it would just take longer.
"it would just take longer."
And that length of time is a term in the Drake eq.
As far as we know, our wacky brand of what we are pleased to call "intelligence" is unique. Another term in the Drake eq. is how long it can last before self-immolation.
What is wrong with us? We are supposed to be smart, you know, "homo sapiens". Where is our vaunted ability to visualize the future? And learning stuff from past experiences...
It's as though the 20th Century never happened. Nothing learned, whatsoever. We act first, and then later we dress it up with rationalizations.
That ain't gonna cut it, "going forward".
I resemble that !
Charcoal can, and did, smelt copper and create steel.
The Mediterranean world had no fossil fuels (As far as known till mid-1900s). Assume Roman Empire that focuses more strongly on engineering & metallurgy (and with more trees and ample whales/organic lubricants (special tree etc.) They smelt copper, discover electricity, build hydroelectric generation (water wheels at first) and evolve into a hydroelectric driven civilization that values metals and also evolves ceramics and organic sourced plastics. Methane from sewage could also be used as well as charcoal.
The pace of advance would likely be significantly slower (likely a good thing#) without FF, but doable in a way that can be extrapolated from the Roman Empire or Imperial China. A stable, medium density and sustainable population density is likely required. Something like 4 million of ancient Egypt, replicated x 4 or x 6.
I could see a smallish (say 50 - 200 MW) liquid salt nuclear reactor appealing more to such a civilization. Geothermal, wind and solar could also be developed.
Best Hopes for non-FF Technology,
Alan
# Could limited or no access to fossil fuels be a prerequisite for a sustainable technological civilization ?
If they had wood to burn they'd have fossil fuels. An oxidative atmosphere requires Time to develop.
A certain geology is also required. And much of the deposits we use today were formed during exceptional periods, such as the Carboniferous Period
There are no fossil fuels in Iceland or Florida today, and quite limited or difficult to access quantities elsewhere. Fossil fuels with high EROEI and accessible with primitive technology exist in a fairly small % of the land area.
It is easy to hypothesize a habitable world where there are few or no accessible fossil fuels. Tupi like offshore fields could exist, but without advanced technology, they cannot be accessed.
As an aside, the mere existence of fossil fuels is not enough to use them. See another Drake and how late in the Industrial Revolution oil was developed.
And the oil fields of Algeria and Libya were accessible with 1930s technology. How might WW II have changed if these fields had been discovered and developed ?
Alan
yes.
Not incidentally, this one, for any future generations of anything in the next hundred million years. Maybe the Drake equation also inherently includes the odds of being preceded by semi-intelligent detritovores who burn it all....
Fortunately, the Drake equation is only about the odds of high-tech civilizations. Best hopes for there being lots of low-tech intelligences evolved in the universe to appreciate it long-term like the dolphins have.
If only Scientific American were not the tool of a class that only exists because of these economic misperceptions. These wise people are piously sawing away at the branch they sit on: an economy fully integrated into biophysical systems (=sustainable) wouldn't produce the surplus to support very many scientists.
Yeah, I'm inclined to agree.
IME, most scientists and engineers, even peak oil aware ones, haven't really thought about that, or if they have, they're in denial about the implications.
A really depressing thought.
What do we need all that high tech life extending health care for, if the older people are just going to be fed into the euthanasia machines? After all, about half of the money spent on medical care is spent on people in their last 6 months of living. (NOTE: I just finished reading "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich"...)
E. Swanson
"What do we need all that high tech life extending health care for(?)"
good ?.
imo, high tech medicine needs consumers . medicare(as well as private health insurance) are steady customers, easy to fleese.
What's your point? Don't attack Russia? (I don't follow).
Sorry, I hit the "Send" button too soon. The Final Solution in the Third Reich developed a cheap and efficient system to remove excess, unwanted populations of humans. Those who weren't useful as slave laborers were sent to the gas chambers. Many millions of women, children and old folks were snuffed out that way. Others were worked or allowed to starve to death.
One is tempted to think of such a future as being the result after Peak Oil's effects begin to impact worldwide food availability. The simple minded logic would be something like this: "They are going to starve, so why not kill them now and use the food saved to keep "more desirable" members of society alive?" Not that the humanitarian in me agrees with such thinking. Who would decide the split between those to live and those to die? The really sad lesson from Germany in WW II is that ordinary people will do vile, monstrous things when times get rough.
E. Swanson
Swanson, you are letting your imagination run away in the wrong direction. First of all, you get the Third Reich's motives all wrong. It was not excess population they wished to get rid of, it was Jews and Jews only they wished to dispose of. They had no excess population, they needed every warm body to help in the war effort.
Then you run off in another wild direction. You assume a totalitarian NAZI like regime in most countries. That is extremely unlikely to happen. Also Hitler needed a devil and that devil was the Jews. (The US is the devil to the Islamic world but that is another story.) Every mass movement must have a hated devil to destroy. In starving world who would that devil be? In every country they would probably find one but it would be the rabble masses who would descend upon this devil, not the government. And if the government was strong enough, even that probably would not happen. Witness North Korea.
In North Korea the people are simply allowed to starve. Zimbabwe is another example. It is far easier and more convenient just to let people starve rather than round them up and kill them. Disappearing resources, especially food, is what you should fear, not totalitarian governments.
Ron Patterson
"It was not excess population they wished to get rid of, it was Jews and Jews only they wished to dispose of." Wrong.
Gypsies. Communists. Homosexuals...
And then they're were those like my father's best friend who, like thousands of other socialists/social democrats, was used to de-mine fields on the eastern front.
The U.S. is not a devil to the Islamic world. There are elements in the Islamic world who see the U.S. as satanic. Some of us see Satan openly at work in some countries, including the US, where she operates openly through 'people' like Pat Robertson.
Satan, the great enemy of god in Christian writings, is rendered as "Shaitan" or that which is trivial as opposed to spiritual under the Muslim interpretation. If you got a Muslim to define why the U.S. is the "Great Satan" you could easily get a group of Christians nodding in approval over the complaints, so long as the source was not known.
Interesting how all of you leave Slavs off the list. I guess Slavs are still considered subhuman in the bloody hypocrite west. Hitler EXPLICITLY targeted Jews, Slavs and Gypsies. Any attempt to remove Slavs from the list is Holocaust denier level of revisionism.
Dissident;
Thanks for the addition. You can see from the lists above, including Darwinian's list of one, just how particular the emphases have been in our many different educations. Consider, please, that Slavs aren't being 'denied' inclusion in the list by these posters, but that many of us were not originally given that information.
That said, there is no doubt that Western Euro's and Americans have carried some long-standing and unfortunate stereotypes of Slavic People (and Gays, Jews, Catholics, Dissidents, Intellectuals, etc..)
Just keep offering real information with some patience and trust. That's the stuff that has the best chance of being heard.
Bob
'Re-Education' doesn't have to be about thought-control..
I grew up, next to a Polish couple that made it out just by the skin of their teeth. They never really wanted to talk about it. There was trauma there, but never spoken.They were the nicest, kindest people I have ever dealt with. They took a 90 lbs asthmatic kid under their wing and taught me how to raise chickens, how to prune apple trees, the absolute proper way to stake up rasberries. Hilling up potatoes was a very specific science. All with laughter and joy. I can still remember the collections of odd things that might be needed in the barn. we could sit out there for hours and just sharpen things, he had a nice, sit down, grindstone and on fridays I'd go over and just sit and spin it, then I got to stay for supper. Jars and jars and jars of different sized nails. Tip my hat to them now, they never would have understood cyberspace, but they are one of the primary reasons I am where I am and I live like I live.
Interesting how all of you leave Slavs off the list.
Sorry , I apologize for that oversight.
list is Holocaust denier
How dare you use the word holocaust to describe the whole NAzi thing! The Armeanian's got the word 1st.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/fisk/robert-fisk-the-forgotten-holocau...
Mostly Jews, but also homosexuals, gypsies, those considered mentally or physically disabled, atheists, communists, etc.
It was not excess population they wished to get rid of, it was Jews and Jews only they wished to dispose of.
Yea, all them crafty Gays, political opponents, gypsies, outspoken journalists and Communists all dressing up as Jews so Ron can get history right.
In starving world who would that devil be?
Depends. Bankers have been a popular option in the past - and with the economies doing poorly - someone might be able to hang the dead bird 'round the necks of the money-class. Yet Again. Other 'external' markers like skin color have been a popular option. Vilifying a political system you claim is different than yours (and therefore a threat) is also a popular historical option.
It is far easier and more convenient just to let people starve rather than round them up and kill them. Disappearing resources, especially food, is what you should fear, not totalitarian governments.
Not to mention the hungry do not have excess energy to fight. Plenty of religions talk about storing food and why this should be done.
The Nazis drew on both German interest in anti-Semitism and eugenics. The latter was meant to be the "scientific" cover. It included encouragement for euthanasia. It appears to me that in the early days of the Nazi rise to power, eugenics and euthanasia were emphasized, while the propaganda machine slowly twisted the definition of "useless" population (elderly, retarded, etc) to refer to people who were simply undesirable. Until 1939, the plan for Jewish Germans was merely expulsion.
That's important, because the individual right to euthanasia, like any right, can be hijacked by an extremist movement for malign purposes. Logically, an ideal population for use by a militarist movement would have a broad demographic pyramid; as few old (non-military) people as possible, as many teenagers and young adults as possible, and as many males as possible. So euthanasia was not contradictory to awarding medals to German women for having lots of babies.
I wasn't interested in Hitler's aims, only his methods. Yes, Hitler did target the Jewish population. His minions also killed other "undesirables" as well, such as the soldiers from the Slavic nations. As for your counter examples, sure, starvation is one aspect of population reduction. But, in a developed nation with functioning media, starvation of large numbers of the population would be hard to hide and governments seem determined to keep up an image of well being for all. When scenes of starving bodies appear on TV and in the news, other FWO people begin to wonder if they are next and the government's control would slip away (or become authoritarian).
Of course, we should all be worried about disappearing resources, but few individuals living in urban or suburban areas of developed nations have much opportunity to impact the larger resource problems. There are many doomers who post around TOD that seem to think everything would be all right if only the city populations were to go back to the land. I don't think that will work out, especially for the fast developing nations of India and China, where the migrating tide of population has filled the cities to the brim. I don't see any way that most of them could go back to the land.
I don't assume totalitarian rule to be the only future. History does seem to show that result in many previous situations. Don't forget that the U.S. Republic is a rather new experiment and has not been severely tested since the Civil War. As a result of that war, the South became a conquered "nation" and suffered economically for many decades afterwards. Perhaps you are from the North (or Western U.S.) and did not experience the feelings of animosity the conquered against the lords of the North as I did while growing up. Other results might be a breakup of the U.S. in which the states again become independent or some areas with similar cultural or economic interests join together as nations. Or, even smaller units, such as county size feudal dukedoms might be the result.
E. Swanson
But, in a developed nation with functioning media
Well, the US certainly doesn't qualify then. :)
And o yes, the US is also already an authoritarian regime. And for historical parallels, Hitlers control of his regime only slipped in the last few months or even weeks of the war. The mere fact that only after the SOB killed himself peace was possible should make it quite clear that you are seriously underestimating the measure of control a totalitarian regime can have. And both Stalinist Russia, Late-cold war era Eastern Germany and current North Korea are far more restrictive totalitarian states than Nazi Germany.
There are many doomers who post around TOD that seem to think everything would be all right if only the city populations were to go back to the land.
Pol Pot anyone? Sorry, it's been tried before. And we have cities from almost the very beginning of the neolithic era, which would seem to indicate that agricultural production and the existence of cities go hand in hand.
As a result of that war, the South became a conquered "nation" and suffered economically for many decades afterwards. Perhaps you are from the North (or Western U.S.) and did not experience the feelings of animosity the conquered against the lords of the North as I did while growing up.
As a historian (be it an autodidact) I would consider your POV on this a well established and solidly documented fact. It is the domination of the north and continuing politicization that is preventing this from being taught.
First of all, it was NOT cheap and efficient. The process of extermination required massive efforts of manpower, transport capacity (especially railway capacity, which competed directly with cargo capacity bound for the Russian front), and industrial materials.
Also the slave labor system was massively inefficient, with slaves being consumed instead of being used. In fact this was a standing conflict within the death-and-labor-camp system; industrialists and bureaucrats complained bitterly about the SS not providing enough food and other basic services to keep slaves alive longer than 3 to 6 months on average. These were skilled workers, and the racial and superiority ideologies of the SS and the Nazi leadership made any efficient slave capacity a complete fantasy.
As a result, atual productivity was horribly low, which of course resulted in more painful torture inflicted upon the slave laborers by the SS.
Secondly, there was no 'excess', it was a CATEGORIZATION extermination effort. As mentioned by others, it most certainly not only jews but certain categories of people that were considered 'unwanted' that had been scheduled for extermination. These included Jews, Gypsies, Mentally retarded, Homosexuals, Pedophiles and criminals in general, political prisoners (especially communists), Russian prisoners-of-war and Poles. This list is not complete.
The biggest proof that there was no excess was in fact the open policy of providing considerable positive support to large families that were considered of pure 'Aryan' race and later the positive eugenic project of trying to stimulate breeding specifically within the SS.
Scientists and engineers existed before the discovery of oil or the invention of economic theory. In fact neither of these would have been possible without them. You might of course think this is a bad thing, but I'm not sure if that alone supports your argument. Surely it is equally likely that more scientists would be necessary in such an economy to add value to the smaller resource base.
Yes, they did, but for the most part, there were far fewer of them. Basically, only the nobility went to college.
And before oil, it was expansion/colonialism that supported technological complexity. That is not something we can go back to, unless we expand into space. Which I don't see happening at this point.
They may be necessary, but we won't be able to afford them. Tainter discusses this at length. Societies facing collapse pour their resources into R&D...until they can't afford it any more.
If things collapse that far there are going to be a lot fewer of everybody. Even people who think they are personally insulated from a collapse by having their own farm will have short brutal lives. Remember, no advanced medical care of any kind, no vaccines, no cancer treatment, not even any oxygen supplies; deficiency diseases reappear; worst case plagues return because nobody is doing public health to avoid them.
Please don't get carried away with the "short brutal" characterization of Hobbes - he knew not of what he spoke.
When it comes to advanced medical care, etc., perhaps you'd also like to start by subtracting all of the diseases (and other medical conditions) that are the result of our modern lives? And then, maybe, you can subtract out all those "conditions" that have been "medicalized" since the rise of modern medicine, but were just a part of life prior to that. I've no doubt that some vaccines are useful, and certainly the sulfa drugs (I'm more ambivalent about antibiotics). I have argued here before that much of the life extension claimed by modern medicine is really owed to better hygiene. And we could go on.
What makes you think you get to keep the better hygiene? And if the increased cancer rates are truly caused by pollution, we get to keep that too.
TJ - what we'll see is what's happening in the US now, in Appalacia, the barrios of Los Angeles and south of Phoenix, ghettoes black and white and brown all over the US. There's a video out, Doctors Without Borders or some group like that, going into a poor-white area of the US and people lining up to get teeth pulled, eyeglasses, tumors removed, etc mainly they wanted their medical problems fixed so they could work, or at least try to get jobs. This is right in the middle of the US. A huge portion of the US's population has no health insurance, and all kinds of things that are treated early on in countries with nationalized, preventive health care programs, become chronic conditions in the US.
We'll just see this spreading, even as our tent cities expand, as there are more ragged hitch-hikers on our roads, etc.
This video?
http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?id=3898008n
And before expansion/colonialism, it was totalitarian agriculture and the monocultured farming of high-energy grains that gave some members of society time to sit around and figure out how, for example, to bake limestone to make plaster.
Education was provided for the laity by church schools in medieval times. Orders such as the Franciscans taught the able, so not just the nobility. Of course the nobility on average were the most thoroughly educated as they could pay for it and had the time to do it. Other cultures with state-sponsored education have existed in the past.
However, education in the developed world is now provided by the state. Your argument presupposes that in any new economy which incorporates the changes alluded to in the article, democracy and education will disappear. I'm not so sure that that's a given.
It also depends on what you determine to be science and engineering. If all of civilisation collapsed so that we were reduced to our hunter gatherer roots, one could argue that there could be a much higher proportion of engineers. Tying a rock to a stick as a hunting aid would be engineering by definition. If farming still exists, noticing that breeding two larger cows rather than at random results generally in bigger offspring would be a form of genetic engineering. Your argument presents a narrow definition on what a scientist or engineer is.
The original post seems to stem from what I see as a general fear and distrust of science. Why pick on scientists and engineers, surely they should be applauded for at least pointing out the truth rather than sneeringly derided as being harbingers of their own doom! Why would they be so specifically obsolete in such a new economy rather than any other group? Imagine someone posting something like this about a climate change article:
If only Scientific American were not the tool of a class that only exists because of the climate the earth has enjoyed in the past. These wise people are piously sawing away at the branch they sit on: a rise in temperature of 4 degrees wouldn't allow a civilisation to support very many scientists.
Several posters on this forum seem to relish the thought of those meddling scientists being destroyed in a collapse as though this will solve all the worlds problems. Unfortunately, everyone has played their part, most are happy to take the benefits of science (some of which will last forever, regarless of civilisation e.g. the extinction of smallpox) while decrying it's existence.
That was an outgrowth of the industrial revolution. Marvin Harris wrote a lot about it. The problem was what to do with all the kids in the cities. On the farm, they were kept busy working. In the cities, they behaved much as young people do today, hanging out on the street and scaring customers away from businesses. Public school (and truancy laws) were basically to get the kids off the street and keep them out of trouble.
I think it will simply become too expensive. Not right away, but eventually. It wasn't that long ago that many people did not finish school for that reason. They were needed on the farm, or went to work in the family business at a young age because their parents and siblings needed their economic support.
Become too expensive? It has already become too expensive in Volusia County, Florida. State budget shortfall for 2008? $2.5 Billion out of a $64 Billion budget. Schools were whacked first...Volusia County is closing SEVEN schools. The budget shortfall for 2009 will be larger and many more schools will be closed.
I love science. I wish every other worldview could be extirpated from the human heart. Then we could start doing something fun with this life instead of permanently wrestling in the dark with our ontogenetic fears and fantasies. However the majority of scientists and engineers I know - I know a lot of them - remain, morally speaking, children, unable to grasp the mountain of superstition required to coax society to erect the Ivory Tower they live their lives comfortably in. I wish there were somehow a route to widespread scientific understanding that didn't go through the institutionalization of social inequities and divisions that the scientists themselves (who profit from them) know to be false. But I don't see this route historically anywhere. I'm not anti-science at all. I'm just a pessimistic realist.
"I wish every other worldview could be extirpated from the human heart. "
Yikes. Careful what you wish for..
Yet I can see that you find paradoxes in many 'Scientific' folk you know too, and seem to be wrestling with that particular worldview's practical shortcomings as well.. (While it is certainly not only 'One' viewpoint..) ANY worldview had better have some fudge-room in it, some negative feedback and a sense of humor about itself.
'The TAO that can be spoken is not the Eternal TAO. And That which IS the Eternal TAO cannot be spoken.' ie, Our perceptions and our languages are likely to be badly inadequate at describing the fullness of the Universe, so we'd better not get too dead-set on any of our notions being exactly 'Reality'..
Bob
I have had similar experience when talking to "scientist" friends. They mostly brush aside the study of their core beliefs as irrelevant. It is part of the reason I did not pursue a science-based career when I finished university, but went back to study in another direction...
Well at that time 95% of people were farmers. So, why single out engineers?
Must like any collapse, there may be less official scientists/engineers, but they will still be there. And there will be more farmer/engineers, doctor/scientists - multi-role people.
Like many other commentators have said it's need vs. want. You want to be in a profession that is somewhat in need. Scientists and engineers fall into that category much more than many, many other professions - I would think.
Although, many scientists are funded by government grants - so you are probably right to some degree - they will shrink in numbers for sure.
When I grow up, I think I'd like to be a farmer/engineer :)
Because I am one. :-)
I am not suggesting that becoming a lawyer or accountant is a better option. The original post was about science and technology, so I just followed along with that.
I don't think a solar-powered economy can support very much complexity. Scientific, political, financial, or otherwise. That's one reason usury was considered such a terrible sin in the ancient world. It was money earned without actually producing anything, and the steady-state economies of the time simply could not afford to support very many of that kind of "parasite."
IOW...yes, I think we will be returning to the days when 99% of the population were farmers. Maybe not right away, maybe not in our lifetimes, but eventually.
Heh, well I guess you'll have to become the farmer/engineer.
And imo (although not to the scale required) wind and solar can allow us to not go back to the pre-industrial age - where everyone is a not a tea-totaling dirt farmer like Auntie Em.
And actually be curious how some improvements in ceramics, tools, organics fertilizers and whatnot would improve the pre-industrial farmer. If we are going back to that age, then why don't we talk about it?
I'm not a farmer, so it's out of my league, but this is something I'm curious about. Effectively an organic farmer that uses all homemade tools, and pots. Consider this the "no fossil fuel" extreme; what would that consist of? What does the contemporary blacksmith consist of?
I can only guess that the answers are scary.
My dad is an agronomist, and I come from a long line of peasant farmers, so I have a head start. ;-)
It's theoretically possible, and it's what I'm hoping for. But I don't think it's likely. In the short and medium-term, yes. In the long term, probably not.
I think the best way to predict the future is to look at the past. That tells us what can be supported on a solar budget. Nanosolar is not on the list.
But surely we have an advantage over civilizations past, in the knowledge accumulated with our fossil-fueled complexity? I'm not so sure. Looking at the past, we know that knowledge, even very useful knowledge, can be lost.
We have, but it's not like there's widespread agreement on what the future holds. I'm in the "catabolic collapse" camp. Others think we'll switch to nuclear or solar or wind, and continue the happy motoring. Still others think society will collapse quickly into nuclear war or Mad Max chaos.
In the pre-industrial age, many of the materials we take for granted were so expensive ordinary people could not afford them. Glass has been made for 5,000 years or more, but until relatively recently, it was for the wealthy only. The ancient Egyptians used it to make temple windows and jewelry for the elite. The Bible talks about how precious gold, rubies, and glass are, which sounds very odd to modern ears. In British castles, the glass windows would be removed when the lord was away.
Similarly, SCA blacksmiths are often asked why they don't use wood for their blacksmithing. Turns out, it takes a truly ridiculous amount of wood to forge a sword. The energy cost is why only the nobility could afford such weapons.
Now, we throw away glass and metal as trash.
Energy Bulletin archived some articles on "Sustainable Edo" awhile back. The first one is here. I think that might be a good model to shoot for.
"In the pre-industrial age, many of the materials we take for granted were so expensive ordinary people could not afford them. "
Not just in the pre-industrial age were common items prohibitively expensive. My grandfather was a carpenter during the 30's and he told me the following story:
"We were working on a job and we had to stop work because we had no nails. We heard about a barn that was being taken down within a few miles of the job. The crew went to the barn and took the barn down free of charge so we could harvest the nails. The carpenters removed the boards and the apprentices spent their day straigtening nails."
Armand Hammer, the American Industrialist and CEO of Occidental Petroleum, forged an enduring relationship with the former Soviet Union because he was able to satisfy a scarcity in the USSR. That scarcity was Pencils.
Scarcity of resources will be the driver of societies in the future and dogma (AKA as Bullshit)will be delegated to the trashheap of history.
In the coming dieoff/killoff, I expect the "banksters" to take the brunt of popular anger, not the engineers. Every farmer is an engineer to some degree, every poor person who figures out how to make their shoes last longer or how to make their own shoes. Every person who figures out how to trap pigeons or get their clothes clean without electricity, is the blood-brother of the engineer.
I'd expect to see a huge amount of anger against the "bankster" class or type, not anyone who at least traditionally has worked with their hands.
Hell I keep having nagging thoughts of learning to make shoes, myself. I'm willing to bet a large portion of the viewership of "Dirty Jobs" with Mike Rowe is us technically-minded folks.
"I'd expect to see a huge amount of anger against the "bankster" class or type, not anyone who at least traditionally has worked with their hands."
"Bankster" - I like that! Must remember to use it in conversation!
Seriously, I agree with your take on this...
Two words "Command Economy"
Leanan,
I am wondering what the rough outlines and time frame of your "catabolic collapse" scenario looks like? Would you consider a population reduction of say, 50%, by the year 2070 to be catabolic collapse?
I used to think along the same lines as you, until I forced myself to realistically consider: (a) the obvious implications of the predicted oil decline and (b) how the other concurrent ecological catastrophes will impact the global food/water supply.
If the these numbers (below) are even remotely correct, I don't think catabolic collapse is in the cards. Because our dysfunctional political systems will not have a snowball's chance in Hell of supporting 7+ Billion eaters with less than half of current oil production (which will certainly be the case by 2050). They couldn't even manage New Orleans.
"The magnitude of the coming decline in oil availability is truly alarming"
I'd probably call that a fast crash. Unless it was achieved "voluntarily" (a worldwide one-child policy, say).
I think climate change is probably more of a worry than oil when it comes to dieoff. Presumably, most nations will do what they're doing in India and other countries: prioritize agriculture, even if means shutting down factories and power to homes and offices. People may have to move to where the farms are, rather than dine on 1,500 mile salads. But there's a lot of oil use that could be cut back before agriculture, and I expect it will be, even with the current crop of bozos in charge.
If climate change goes non-linear, though, all bets are off. And the organic subsistence farmer will suffer just as much as big agribusiness.
Minor correction to the excerpt. Ten year or less net export crashes (peak to zero) occur when consumption at final peak is around 50% of production, e.g., the ELM, Indonesia, the UK. Mexico is a top 10 net oil exporter that consumed about 50% of production at peak, and I expect them to approach zero net exports no later than 2014.
Our middle case for the top five is that they collectively approach zero net exports around 2031.
And actually be curious how some improvements in ceramics, tools, organics fertilizers and whatnot would improve the pre-industrial farmer. If we are going back to that age, then why don't we talk about it?
Its been mentioned. Over the 2 years it does come up. But much is a future event - so its hard to verify.
If you want the farming topic discussed - figure out a write up for the front page.
If you have an interest in such
http://www.nationalgrange.org/
http://www.acresusa.com/magazines/magazine.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture
http://www.rodale.com
4 examples.
Someone living a lower power life.
http://www.thepeacock.com/
Eventually, I can see us returning to the pre-agriculture, hunter/gatherer model. There's nothing quite like a good old-fashioned ice age to knock a civilization back to its humble roots. This may not be as far off as we like to think... although probably (hopefully!) not in our lifetimes.
It's possible. Greer argues that after a catabolic collapse, societies are left at a level of complexity lower that it was before the complex society arose or arrived. (In the case of the US, I guess that would put us below the Native Americans, some of whom were hunter-gatherers.)
The reason? The environment ends up so degraded that it no longer supports the level of complexity that it used to. I could see that happening to us - in spades.
I've seen Earth described as "basically an ice planet, with intermittent warm spells." The recent pattern - from a geological perspective - has been roughly 100,000 years of glacial age, followed by 10,000 or so years of temperate climate, followed by another 40,000 year glacial age and another 12,000 year reprieve, etc.
The most recent glacial period ended about ten thousand years ago. By some accounts, we are due for the next round, despite - or perhaps facilitated by - the current global warming trend.
Just food for thought.
I think you've said a mouthful here, which may not be well-understood by most. Any chance you'd care to do a short keypost sometime on it? I think it's a helluva trenchant observation.
This is important stuff, which - as may be apparent - I agree with.
"True philosophy must start from the most immediate and comprehensive fact of consciousness: 'I am life that wants to live, in the midst of life that wants to live'." Albert Schweitzer
Schweitzer asserted that western society was doomed to failure because of the abandonment of the ethical principle of "reverence for life".
Greed and competition for resources will become the story of the "dominant culture" as we proceed to collapse all other forms of "life that wants to live".
I have entered the final 1/4 of my life so I have little to lose...but the prospect of this overwhelming march to extinction saddens me even more than the loss of my own child.
And before oil, it was expansion/colonialism that supported technological complexity. That is not something we can go back to, unless we expand into space. Which I don't see happening at this point.
Depends. The environment impact of mining, ease of harvesting energy in space(if the put solar collectors in space people are partially correct) it just might make sense for man to gather energy in space, fix it into metals/products, leave the waste out of the earth biosphere, then send the products back to earth.
If we don't have the economic future to support a lot of people in space, we're going to have to rely on robots for anything up there. Now this does solve a lot of mass problems. Get a self-replicating robot up there to assault some poor asteroid and start making more. The tough part is getting the goodies down to earth. Low-energy robots probably won't build propulsion systems from scratch. They could build a space elevator system if they could get their claws on enough carbon atoms. They better build a solar power satellite on the top of that elevator, though, or nothing else is going to happen.
I imagine a Foundation-style crisis where the Earth must suffer from generations of low-energy conditions while the satellites slowly build up their numbers until they can actually make a difference. Hope they don't wise up and bomb us into oblivion instead.
Obviously it's by definition impossible to know oneself that one is in denial. I tend to hope that scientific and technological developments will be sufficiently useful to outweigh their resource cost (assuming that structured society as a whole remains viable enough to actually make decisions at that sort of regional/national level). [The area that where I disagree with people like theantidoomer is that only a small proportion of initially promising ideas ever pan out, so I tend to support changes in lifestyle now that reduce energy usage as that's guaranteed to help cope with an energy shortage, rather than assume we'll hit on the right ideas early enough in the near future for us to not have to change anything.]
But my main point is that I approach this from a decision theory perspective: from an amateur look at the data the world might go back to supporting farming and little beyond that, but I don't spend much time thinking about that because I don't have the resources to make any meaningful preparations for that case. I can't afford to buy a small farm or even a house with large grounds. I don't have the room to stockpile large amounts of goods. So given that I'm not 100% certain that's going to happen (when decision theory would say that I should do what little I can to prepare for that case), I'm concentrating on what preparations I can make for a severe reduction in available energy, balancing it against trying to do some work in the possibility that peak oil is not happening very soon/other energy sources will come online soon. (This includes thinking very, very seriously about whether I should change career in the very near future.) But I'm hedging my bets about what'll happen in the near future, and in particular I'm not immediately discounting that it might reward behaviour that works now for a significant further time.
One of the drumbeat responses that I read when I first started reading the oildrum (which I should have bookmarked but didn't, and which I can't find with google) was from a guy who had thought in 197x that America was going to power into alternative energy to avoid being vulnerable to the middle east and tried to build up a business along those lines, and basically got no-where for many years. He then thought 9/11 would lead to something similar and acted accordingly. He was reaching mid 50s now and realised that he'd basically missed out on all the economic increases over the years and was looking at a bleak retirement. That strongly impressed on me that the world often manages to defy even carefully thought out, informed analysis and that putting all my energy into one prediction of the future would be a risky move.
I don't actually think we'll be back to subsistence farming in my lifetime. It's possible, but I think a slower collapse is far more likely.
Where the long view enters into it is what technologies to try and support/save. John Michael Greer calls it "triage." Complexity has an energy cost. We can't save all our technology on a lower energy budget. What should we try to save?
For example, I'm inclined to say "no" to nuclear. Thermodynamics are tempting, but it could be messy, if when the time comes to decommission the plants, we no longer have the knowledge or materials to do it right.
OTOH, I'd put birth control high on the "yes" list. One thing comes through clearly when you study sustainable societies (and there have been some): zero population is your number #1 priority.
Leanan - I was struck by your comment: "sustainable societies (and there have been some): zero population is your number #1 priority".
IMO what you assert is correct. According to Jared Diamond in his "Guns Germs and Steeel" as you trace competing and evolving modes of civilizations there were two which competed. The agricultural model and the hunter gatherer model:
"A final factor in the transition became decisive at geographical boundaries between hunter- gatherers and food producers. The much denser populations of food producers (agricultural communities) enabled them to displace or kill hunter-gatherers by their sheer numbers, not to mention the other advantages associated with agriculture."
The Hunter gatherer (sustainable model) depended on a local land base for survival and were careful not to tip that landbase into collapse.
The agrarian societies (non-sustainable model)depended on an ever expanding land base. This is currently the world model we live in. Although there were cases (rare) of long-term agricultural societies that practiced birth control the bigger story is Malthusian population growth overwhelming the land base.
Just as it is impossible to return a cake to flour and sugar we are not going to go to be able to revert back to (sustainable) hunter gatherer existence and the notion of returning to small agricultural communities is Utopian fantasy. Our populations would overwhelm our land bases, besides the fact that few of us understand how to live that way.
I don't think that looking at the evidence and concluding that civilization is destined to collapse as a result of environmental decay is necessarily pessimistic. Technology and the wonders of invention will be the thin reed that optimists will cling to.
The correct term is realistic...
"Just as it is impossible to return a cake to flour and sugar we are not going to go to be able to revert back to (sustainable) hunter gatherer existence and the notion of returning to small agricultural communities is Utopian fantasy. Our populations would overwhelm our land bases, besides the fact that few of us understand how to live that way."
Assuming a declining human population on the downslope of fossil fuel consumption, which given the structure of the current population is most probable in any case, 'we' could very well evolve into some mix of hunter-gatherers and small agricultural communities. Why not? There is nothing irrevocable about any transformation in our living arrangements. The Second Law may well apply to transformation of cake ingredients, but it will not stop 'us' adopting any mode of economic and social organization 'we' may find propitious somewhere along the future path of time's arrow.
"...'we' could very well evolve into some mix of hunter-gatherers and small agricultural communities. Why not?"
Alright let's look at historical models of collapsing environments where people were competing for scarce Resources. Rwanda- They murdered each other for the sake of a few calories.
Small agricultural groups are already spreading but over time they may tend to become more para-military as societal constraints disolve. Will starving groups of the dis-possessed allow other more prosperous groups to have their cake? I doubt it.
I'm glad I won't have to be a part of this Utopian evolution. Instead I'll be a part of the non-musical group called the "grateful dead".
Leanan - "Triage" is right. I'm experiencing this in my life - I bought an old POS van thinking I'd be able to fix it up to do swapmeeting with, Well, I've found out the local swap's hardly worth going to, but that's another matter. What I am finding out is, there's all this stuff on this thing to go wrong! Power steering, brakes, water pump, the thermostat no one seems to have the right one of, etc. Not to mention windows, mirrors, etc that need replacing. It's an Albatross.
Meanwhile, my little motorcycle has no liquid cooling to worry about, power steering is wide handlebars, brake system is slightly more complicated than a Lava Lamp, the windows amount to my cheep goggles, get a new pair if the old ones are lost or messed up, etc and it all goes to the tune of 82 MPG and about $160 a year to keep registered, and insured.
Hence the van sits, for lack of a money spigot to get it going, and the bike is being used for all kinds of running around, from laundry runs to picking up 6 large cans of coffee on sale yesterday. It's a very simple machine. And I'd go to a "messengered-out" bicycle, an even simpler machine, if I could and I may yet.
He was reaching mid 50s now and realised that he'd basically missed out on all the economic increases over the years and was looking at a bleak retirement. That strongly impressed on me that the world often manages to defy even carefully thought out, informed analysis and that putting all my energy into one prediction of the future would be a risky move.
Yup. Plenty of people have bet and bet wrong. Nothing new.
None of us know if The Chimp vision is right, if the vision of 'the space aliens show up and give man fusion power' is right, or ......
All any of us can do is be aware of possible paths, possible options, then choose things that will give a person the most options.
Examples - growing own food/cooking can act as a hobby. Same with soapmaking. OR bike repair.
Why this defeatism?
You are basically assuming that society will collapse pretty much to the agrarian state we had say up to the beginning of 19th century.
Even if we accept this possibility (and I don't for a number of reasons) there will be a very long transitioning period in which all society resources will be mobilized in transitioning away from fossil fuels. So your and their jobs will be safe and more prosperous for many more decades.
The assertion that those efforts will fail is yours only, personally I see so much waste and alternatives around that IMO the transitioning period does not even need involve any material hardships*... which does not mean it this will not happen of course, especially for the poorest people.
* For the record I don't count ditching out your SUV for a Honda Civic or using the bus to go to work as a "hardship". Lack of food and medicine would qualify - but realistically these take just a fraction of the energy we consume today, and could be done with even less than that.
Nah, I think even that is unsustainable. It was powered by expansion/colonialism. Like I said earlier - I think the Edo period in Japan is the best-case scenario, long-term.
I did not say otherwise. Though I think the "prosperous" part may prove to be incorrect. Even at best, we're all going to be a lot poorer.
Nah, I think even that is unsustainable.
Sounds like you have a serious case of doom fever to me. You completely negate any effect of technological progress in the past 200 years. I most certainly don't adhere to the 'technology will save us' church, but your position is as diametrically opposite and extreme. You are basically saying nothing we invented or came up with in the past 200 years will make any difference. That's an aburd anti-technology stance.
I think it could make a difference. I just doubt our ability maintain it in the long term.
People assume that knowledge once gained is never lost. That's not the case. Egyptians and Mayans cannot read the writing of their ancestors. The Inca can't read the quipu any more, and their knack for breeding llamas with wool as fine as cashmere is gone. The Tasmanians forgot how to fish, even though fish hooks and fish bones in the fossil record prove they used to. Even very useful knowledge can be lost.
Does that mean they can't read at all?
So they lost the capability to do what exactly? Pamper to thieves?
So did their quality of life go down or did they change tactics, or was the interpretation flawed
Was that stuff useful anymore? I'm under the impression writing systems you mention were very specialised, nice to know but not much use to the "99% farmers" who actually produced the goods.
The knowledge of how to make concrete was lost for over a millennium after the fall of the Roman empire. It wasn't rediscovered until 1756.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete#History
Not necessarily. But they lost the knowledge of how to read the glyphs that their ancestors wrote.
This is important, because people often claim we won't forget the knowledge of our ancestors, because we're literate. Literacy certainly helps when it comes to maintaining cultural knowledge, but it's far from foolproof.
I don't understand what you're saying. Pre-contact, they bred llamas with incredibly fine wool because it's useful. It was the "thieves" that caused this knowledge to be lost, at least in part. The Europeans paid for wool by the pound, meaning coarse wool was more valuable than fine. Even though almost everyone who has ever worn wool prefers fine.
Yes, I would say their quality of life went down. They lost a lot of technology that was extremely useful. (Such as sewing, and the clothing you can make with sewing, and the ability to make fire, and stone and bone tools and weapons their ancestors used to use.)
Yes, that is probably the reason they lost the knowledge. It's also the reason we may lose our knowledge. In our current society, you are at a severe disadvantage if you cannot read. But if we were thrown back to subsistence farming (or working on someone else's plantation)? Would you really need to read? Would it be worth losing hours of labor from your children every day to send them to school so they could learn to read?
And, in a darker view...would it be in the interests of TPTB to have an educated populace? One reason no one can read the quipu any more is that the Spaniards tried to destroy the knowledge. They didn't like the idea of a method of communication they didn't understand. Similarly, blacks slaves in the US were intentionally kept illiterate, because that made them easier to control.
They lost some capability no doubt, but how useful was it?
I'm really not sure what you're saying, did they lose the breeding lines that produced the wool, did they stop breeding for that because it was no longer desirable in changed circumstances, did they lose the ability to husband animals, did they encounter the law of diminishing returns, ending up with Vicuña. Can it be truly said that South Americans can't breed llamas with fine wool?
Without some sort of Demographic proof it would be hard to argue that those things weren't simply abandoned for other techniques that were more "effective". Perhaps I'm conflating Capabilities and techniques.
I would contest that you need to lose hours of labour from your children in order for them to lean to read, they can pick it up just as the pick up spoken language (just ask John Holt). It would all depend on how useful literacy was.
Based on that contention I'd have to ask what they do with the children during the 12 years of compulsory schooling they "receive" now. Suppression will obviously play a part, but I think that the chance of knowledge being lost is inversely proportional to the usefulness that can derived from it's application.
Ok Crusty,
Solve Egypt's problem.
Solve Zimbabwe's problem.
Solve Haiti's problem.
Solve any one of the above.
Use only domestic resources and capital.
Use any technology you want that exists today.
Be a hero.
By solve, the majority of the citizens must remain happy until death comes naturally due to old age every year until 2050.
I really hope you succeed. No sangfroid here.
Cold Camel
The difference is that at least he would try if he had the chance
(and I'm sorry for talking for him or her)
Nah, I think even that is unsustainable. It was powered by expansion/colonialism. Like I said earlier - I think the Edo period in Japan is the best-case scenario, long-term.
Was it you who recommended Everyday Things in Premodern Japan: The Hidden Legacy of Material Culture by Susan B. Hanley? The thesis more or less is that preindustrial Japan had a low-GDP/low-technology society with a high QOL, considering.
It wasn't me, but that sounds like an interesting book.
I think you should be more careful with historical analogues. Personally I don't see a problem for the industrial civilization to be running on nuclear/renewable sources albeit in a much scaled down version. Even now, without any serious mitigation programs in place yet, these are providing 13% of our energy; which on a per capita basis would bring us back to the end of the 19th century... and as far as I know people were not eating each other back then.
Destruction of the environment is a whole different topic, which IMO is the real danger in the long term. By comparison PO will be just a slight inconvenience.
And I think you should pay more attention to them.
Humans (and probably all mammals, at least) are prone to "optimism bias." We are hard-wired to think we have far more power and control over our fates than we actually have. The best way to make up for that is to look at how it's gone in similar situations in the past.
Of course, blinded by optimism bias as we are, we tend to think, "But it won't happen this time. We're special. It won't happen to us. This time it's different."
Try to resist. We aren't special. In all likelihood, it will happen to us.
I think optimism is a necessary prerequisite for progress.
During the times of the Wright brothers all evidence was showing that air-crafts heavier than air can't fly - yet they flew. Same goes for Ford - during his time there were only 10 or 15 years of oil left for his cars to go around.
Optimism does not mean you will succeed. But it means you will try. We can argue what to try or not to try, but your insistence that the outcome is predetermined is leading us to a dead end.
.......thank you levinK, when I read your words it is EXACTLY how I feel.
Um, not to rain on any parades - and I do not generally comment one way or another on either of your posts - but in the Wright bros' day it was clear that heavier than air craft could fly if the power-to-weight problem was solved. It was generally considered to be just a matter of time, and a question of who would do it first. People had watched large birds flying around for years, and Otto Lilienthal, if memory serves, was hang-gliding around in the early 1890's. Henry Ford had no reason to believe that no more oil would ever be discovered, and it would have been a rather extraordinary thing for him to suppose.
A certain optimism, if by optimism you mean focus and determination, probably is necessary for fast innovation. But optimism in and of itself is just a pleasant state of mind, and it some situations it can be soporific and counterproductive. It is no substitute for clear thinking, particularly when the real world presents tight constraints on what is possible.
There are some quite intelligent folks posting here about some pretty sophisticated analysis of just such real-world constraints. The fact that some misrepresent this as pessimism is a shame, because good analysis of what faces us is where basis for real hope can be found if it's there to be found.
But greenish you are the guy that says the plane will not fly except this time you are saying we can't do fusion power, or we can't revolutionize energy storage. These among other things are theoretically possible and will likely be discovered in our future.
Only if you believe life without happy motoring is a "dead end."
I also think that "happy motoring", American style, is highly unlikely to survive.
However extending this to the point that industrial civilization is not going to survive either is a bit of an extreme, don't you think? I lived most of my life in an industrial country, without having a car or ever needing one. I knew people who never got into a plane or drove a car and still lived decently, never starved, had good education, healthcare etc. - with their direct and indirect fossil fuel usage being just a fraction of what we've grown accustomed to.
It's hard to me to believe that we will get so low as to allow such basics to disappear, and frankly I don't see any convincing reason why will we. Yes we'll have to give up some of our conveniences, but this may end up being not such a bad thing in the end.
Not at all.
Most of human history did not involve industrial civilization. It takes a lot of energy to maintain civilization, even at lower than industrial complexity. It's not sustainable. And I think sustainability should be our #1 priority, not maintaining industry.
It doesn't mean we should immediately start honing our hunter-gatherer skills. But it does mean we should give some thought to a possible future where people will be poorer, less-educated, and less able to deal with technology than we are today.
"Most of human history did not involve industrial civilization"
All human history evolved around using tools/inventions to change and exploit the environment for human needs, aka technology. There is nothing qualitatively new in the emergence of the industrial civilization.
"It takes a lot of energy to maintain civilization, even at lower than industrial complexity."
That's what I'm trying to explain - this is simply not true. Most of what we use today is pure waste aimed to satisfy our wants, not needs. The basics are very low energy intensive (or can be easily reorganized to lower energy use in the timeframe we are talking about) and can be maintained with existing technologies essentially forever. Spare a nuclear war it is hard to envision how we can forget these technologies, given how essential their utility is.
Which brings me to my only real concern about the situation we are in - if we let the greed and desire to keep the status quo get in the way we may end up with resource wars. But in no way this is a predetermined result either, it simply depends on our ability to think and plan rationally.
"and as far as I know people were not eating each other back then."
Ah, but there were far, far fewer people to be hungry, or to be eaten, back then. Sets up an interesting dynamic for the future...
Seems threads lately are all about defeatism. LevinK I completely agree with you there's so much that can be done to maintain a fairly high standard of living. Of course it will all end one day, a meteor will hit the earth, the oceans will boil, but baring a rogue meteor (which is impossible to plan for) I don't see anything close to a major collapse, immediate or long term, on the horizon. What does scare me is defeatism being spread across the masses until the doomers create their own self fulfilling prophecy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-fulfilling_prophecy
Antidoomer,
Solve Egypt, Zimbabwe, or Haiti.
Or pick another struggling third world country.
Use only domestic resources and capital.
Use any technology you want that exists today.
Be a hero.
The majority must die naturally of old age through 2050.
I really hope you succeed. No sangfroid here.
Cold Camel
Take Zimbabwe off your list and you may have an argument.
Zimbabwe is neither grossly overpopulated not otherwise resource starved. It has a total idiot, Mugabe and his band of thugs in charge. Get rid of them, and there may yet be hope for Zimbabwe.
The required technology, is probably something in 30 caliber, although most revolutions as per your point require some external support to prevail.
R W Reactionary
My point precisely! If we can't solve Zimbabwe, which has such a clearly non-peak oil problem, then how do we confront peak oil?
If random third world countries were dramatically reducing their fossil fuel usage while increasing quality of life, I would be much more positive about the future. Instead it appears that more nations are tilting towards collapse.
What would you do if you lived in Zimbabwe?
Cold Camel
If I lived in Zimbabwe? [As you noted] those most likely to be able to do something about the current situation in Zimbabwe don't live in Zimbabwe. Insurgencies are rarely if ever completely home grown. Invasions by definition cross borders. However, the current state of Zimbabwe is also not the result of a closed system.
Sometimes it is necessary to give war a chance. The good news is if a neighboring country invades, I don't believe the current regime is sufficiently competent to put up much of a fight. The bad news is that any new regime would be luck of the draw, but it would be difficult not to do better than Mugabe.
What many people don't realize today that the US in say 1905 was also a very industrial/materialist society. In many of its basic materialist attributes, it was not much different than US society today. The difference has been one of evolving technology.
People today think of late-19th century US living as some sort of "back to the land" fantasy, but it was nothing of the sort. That's one reason why, if you try to actually live like people did in the late 19th century, you find that ... it involves a huge amount of work! Just like living in the US today. It was very consumerist: you had your horses and wagons, your huge farmhouses (some of the houses built then rival the biggest bankers' houses built today), enormous natural resource consumption (notably wood), and all sorts of other materialist pleasures. Just look at the clothes they wore!
On the most basic level, if you really want to live a "sustainable", relatively non-enervating, agrarian lifestyle, consider:
a) no horses or livestock. Imagine the labor needed to maintain horses, cows, pigs, goats and chickens. You need to build and maintain a barn, collect hay, maintain tackle, etc. It was a lot like cars today.
b) little teeny houses. Just look at the colossal houses they had back then. Wow! The labor involved in building, paying for, maintaining, cleaning and decorating this palace of consumption was a lot like ... doing the same for a McMansion today.
c) a mostly vegetarian diet. Keeping cows, pigs etc for milk and meat is hard labor. You've heard the stories about "getting up at 4am to milk the cows." Solution: no cows.
Back in the 1840s, a guy named Henry David Thoreau was so appalled at the gross consumerism and accompanying endless labor of the prevailing lifestyle of his peers that he demonstrated an alternative system. His solution?
The HD Thoreau solution:
a) no horses or other livestock
b) little teeny house you can build in a jiffy
c) vegetarian diet, supplemented with a little wild game (fish, deer) perhaps
He even wrote a book about it.
Henry David Thoreau did indeed live that way for a while, however he did not continue to live that way for the rest of his life. He did seem to have a more ecological mindset than many people have today though.
All this resistance to a little physical labor - you guys are sad. Chickens? You gotta do a good bit of work feeding, watering, coddling, etc when they're tiny, but that is more like caring for a batch of new kittens than "work". Once that is past then all they need is a snug building with some boxes on the wall so they lay eggs. Food and water, morning and night, and the only work is backing the spreader up once a month to clean the place. Don't forget the oyster shell so they have strong eggs and if they're not out on the ground you have to provide some sort of grit for their gizzards - no teeth, so that is how grain gets ground.
Now that clean up business is miserable - lots of ammonia in the air, stupid birds blasting out of the building in a massive dust cloud every five minutes when one notices the human with the pitchfork and decides to raise the alarm, but other than that it's all soup and eggs from what I recall.
Why this defeatism?
What defeatism?
We all end up dead.
Propose a path that actually solves the issues that 'the defeatists' are concerned over.
but realistically these take just a fraction of the energy we consume today, and could be done with even less than that.
Doing with less? Looks like you are a defeatocrat too!
(Oh and try to do it without fake numbers)
There are apparently a few scientists and engineers on this blog who are in the denial about the implications of a great many things.
The collapse of a finely-tuned biological system, such as a human being, the passage from what we call "life" to what we call "death", is astonishingly rapid. One moment the system functions, the heart beats, the lungs breathe, the brain experiences consciousness. The next, there's a heart-attack, and the system shuts down. No consciousness, no breathing, no flow of energy and nutrients to the trillions of living cells of the body that are all still individually alive and functioning.
Civilization is not a finely-tuned system. Again, our ancestors needed 3 to 5 hours per day of human work to sustain themselves individually and as a group, living within the solar budget.
The current civilization requires 8 to 12 hours per day per person, on top of 300 to 500 hours of human-equivalent work per person from fossil fuels.
Civilization is like a 900-year-old man, and through technology and massive energy subsidy it is being forced to perform as a 21-year-old.
The massive energy subsidy is required to keep the forces of entropy from ripping our system apart. It supplies:
* water
* food
* hygiene (disease prevention)
* medicine (disease treatment)
* shelter from the elements
* transport
* substitutes for integrated socialization (porn, iPods, Xboxes, television, movies, Internet), and
* forced artificial social cohesion (through government and law)
We cannot return to a "simpler" system through catabolic collapse, any more than when a corn plant starts to experience the collapse of death it can return to being a prehistoric fern, or to being algae, in order to survive.
When the system collapses, you will be astonished and horrified at how quickly it happens, and I will beat myself up for not having been able to explain this better.
Such is life, and the collapse thereof.
Pre-industrial "society" supported numerous Rulers, Priests and associated hangers-on that were basically if not totally useless, Scientists/Engineers can actually produce something.
Not really so numerous. The elite-to-peasant ratio was pretty small, until expansion/colonialism started. Then there started to be a merchant class. Still, societal inequity was pretty small by our standards.
an economy fully integrated into biophysical systems (=sustainable) wouldn't produce the surplus to support very many scientists.
OR a whole lotta other workclasses. Like government administrators. Or bloggers.
Oh, I think we should go after the mass media's talking heads, advertisers, marketers, manipulators, and talentless hacks before we go attacking the bloggers.
That economist must be wearing naked shorts:
http://www.businessjive.com/
Occasionally, I have mentioned the indisiousness of the naked shorting/failure to deliver problem and pointed to the one main organization trying to do something about it, http://investorprotectioncoalition.org/index.html The problem is huge and to the point that it's best to own stocks and bonds traded anywhere but the USA.
Sound advice.
I assume that if the BD is willing, there are no margin calls in those failed IOUs, naked shorts.
Au, Ag, Pd, Pt, backyard gas-oil tank....
I just didn't need to see that crack spread :p
Interesting energy trading hand signals:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/04/07/opinion/20080407_TRADING_G...
They appear to have removed the signals for "f'd" and "scr'wed".
Paul Krugman's commentary today, Grains Gone Wild , is about our food situation. I think he's done a good job of laying out the problem.
E. Swanson
Except he left out UG99. It spread this year to Iran. Here's a map of world wheat production:
And this is the amount of production by region:
Both from the Illinois World Food and Sustainable Agriculture Program.
From this article at Science News.
Sorry ... what is UG99 ??
The concern is over a type of fungus that attacks wheat.
The article at Science News is a good start. Then just Google UG99. There is lots on line about it now. It's a new wheat stem rust that basically wipes out wheat fields unless you spray lots of fungicide.
I should have gone into a bit more detail in the post above. It was found in Uganda in 1999 and is spreading through east Africa. It apparently just turned up in Iran and is spreading quickly there as well. Here's a Reuters article on UG99 in Iran. In another article at New Scientist, the father of the green revolution, Norman Borlaug, says "This thing has immense potential for social and human destruction." New Scientist titled their article "Billions at risk from wheat super-blight."
Now, look at the map above and see how many countries near Iran produce wheat. Are any of those relatively poor countries that may not be able to afford lots of fungicide? In particular, the jet stream, at least, blows from west to east in this area. I can't find a good prevailing surface wind map for the region. Are there any important wheat growing regions generally to the east of Iran?
The New Scientist article includes this graphic:
So add those up and you get new form of wheat rust for which we haven't found resistant wheat + billions of wind-blown spores per hectare + spreading from East Africa to the middle east and then ? + very low wheat stocks = higher (possibly *much* higher) wheat prices = another problem the developing world didn't need to deal with right now.
[Edit] Actually, just type UG99 in the handy-dandy TOD search box at the upper right of this page. It's been covered a number of times on TOD already.
kjmclark thanks for this scary eye-opner. This is serious stuff and its just coming on top of everything else.
Actually one of the the articles you linked to had this information:
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/8112190676ab183b80e80199f8...
Now in Iran, the wheat killer is poised to threaten countries to the east such as Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. FAO said these countries, all major wheat producers, should be on high alert.
India and Pakistan produce 100 million tonnes per year between them.
That's enough wheat to feed 500 million people at 2000 calories per day. If yields drop by 20%, you need to find food for 100 million people.
China also produces 100 million tonnes per year, and is likely to be infected a year or two after India.
UG99 is stem rust:
You should have juxtaposed the Malthus story with the abortion story to really boost the irony level.
WTI just passed $109 and still climbing rapidly. New record set in next few days? $115/120 within next couple of weeks?
This statement certainly won't help lower prices I guess
Israel would destroy Iran if attacked: minister
Gee, sounds like an admission to owning a large number of nuclear bombs to me. But oh yeah, if you officially admit that, then you have a credible deterrent that renders "buffer zones" and "living space" irrelevant, and that screws your US/UK-style real estate bubble economy.
Never mind.
The Samson Option
All they need is one sub left standing after an exchange and they're in a position to exact a terrible price for any intrusion. No one attacks Israel without losing their five largest cities in return ...
Gee, sounds like an admission to owning a large number of nuclear bombs to me.
If such were to happen - then the nation-state would have US sanctions due to laws/treaties surrounding 'the peaceful atom
' program of the past.
"Rising populations. Skyrocketing commodity prices. Strains on natural resources. Is this our Malthusian moment?"
It sparked my interest seeing this headline in Business Week. What materialised by the end of the article was the unsinkable, unstoppable faith in the "techno fix". The writer refutes the Club of Rome because of their failure to accurately predict the collapse. Then he asserts that we have little to fear because the economy will adjust to new realities and develop new and better systems to replace the old.
What is really frightening is reading journalists who live in bubbles of intellectual fantasy while the Earths life-systems are in steep decline. Like a stopped clock that is right twice a day this time the Club of Rome may be right.
The one thing there is no shortage of is: Denial
I think this is the mandate of "Balanced Journalism", whereby point-counterpoint must be adhered to. It's what taught in Journalism courses and dictated by media Editors.
Net informative result: a wash...
MSNBC: Ahmad Chalabi: Iraq's master manipulator
Excerpts of Aram Roston's book, ‘The Man Who Pushed America to War’
hmmmm....... WTF???
This was described in "Power of Nightmares" I think. Chalabi and other Iraqi exiles were in Washington schmoozing Neo-cons, selling them the idea of regime change in Iraq. They seem to have brought the idea of WMD to the table. The Neo-cons latched on to the idea as a way to introduce their democracy concept to the ME (domino effect), and also boot out French, Russian companies in Iraq and give contracts to US corps - which Neocons were involved with. Of course, Chalabi and friends would become new rulers in Iraq. A win-win situation all round.
Quite a few small players have discovered that the USA can be a powerful ally when fed the right disinformation. E.g. in Afghanistan warlords can take out rivals, by feeding the US information about "Taliban" activity. One air strike later, and hey presto, no more rival.
scapegoat for the Bush administration?
Only if we ignore the role of Cheney-associated organizations like the American Enterprise Institute in creating an American stage for Chalabi to perform on in the 1990s - the strongest piece of undeniable evidence that the Administration's intent was war no matter what, which gets us into the impeachment and war crimes stuff. If you can't make that case, then it becomes impossible to prove that any government or leader is guilty of aggression.
Good morning. I have a question regarding France's nuclear power generation infrastructure.
I learned here on this site that France has many nuclear power generation plants distributed around their country to supply their population with electricity.
Since they have so many of these operating, how do they expect to fuel them on a ongoing basis? In other words, is there enough Uranium or nuclear fuel available (Whatever they use to fuel them - I'm no expert in this field) to power these reactors over the long run?
If oil is necessary to power heavy equipment to mine it, process it, transport it and handle it, will that create a problem in the long run? If the U.S. or other countries build more nuke plants going forward, will this make these issues worse? Is there enough nuclear fuel available and oil to obtain this fuel and process it to power all reactors?
Thanks and I'll gladly look forward to any links to articles on this subject. I'm just trying to educate myself further on this subject.
Take care.
Greg
Have you gone through the recent discussion on Nuclear? http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/3795
There are enough comments there now (Nearly 400!), that I'm sure the 'fuel supply' arguments are fairly well addressed. I guess I'll go over and check. Don't know if you'll actually get an answer, however. The proponents claim from 40 to 1000 years of fuel available. The opponents aren't convinced. I'm opposed on other grounds.. don't have any way to know who's right on this one.
Bob
that I'm sure the 'fuel supply' arguments are fairly well addressed.
Fuel - there are 2 ways of going - taking atoms and mak'n 'em bigger or mak'n 'em smaller. Many possible paths to do both. Plenty of physical atoms to smash or mash. So yea - plenty of fuel - just like there is plenty of oil.
But when simple things like sleeping guards are not addressed as part of the process of execution of the path/plan:
http://www.google.com/search?q=sleeping+wackenhut+guards+nuclear+plant
Why should these plans/paths be trusted to actually be done correctly when the simple things, done in the interest of safety, are not occurring?
How do you actually do this Eric and what should it be good for ?
In my school we didn't learn about that .And what happens when you change size of those atoms?
then you say this...
can you please put this "plenty" into some context?
can you please put this "plenty" into some context?
The physical stock may exist but the effort to get it is not worth the effort.
Good for you, you are in line with reality.
Your “taking atoms and mak'n 'em bigger or mak'n 'em smaller”, I took this for being fission and fusion which is slightly more difficult than your-way … particularly the latter.
Grand scal fusion in my mind can only take place where it is done today , inside stars. You know 100 million degree centigrades .... et.al
Paal,
Making them bigger is nuclear fusion - the energy of the sun, the only sustainable long term guaranteed source of energy for the Earth.
Making them smaller is nuclear fission - splitting uranium atoms, as seen in nuclear power stations.
What happens when you make the atoms smaller or bigger? ... a small amount of mass is converted to lots of energy by Einstein's famous E=MC2 formula.
But, as Eric rightly points out, the physical stock, of Uranium for instance, may exist but the effort to get it is not worth the effort.
SanDiegoObserver has good questions, Uranium is just like oil (or indeed any other minedone-time-use commodity) and there will be limits to the rate of supply AT A PROFIT - but, like oil, who knows what the limit is? - there will be above ground as well as geologic constraints.
Very soon fossil carbon will be unaffordable for energy use and most of the alternative sources of energy will produce electricty. So, how do you make all the components of, say, an adequate number of electric cars (>600,000,000 and counting) just using electricity AT A PROFIT - again, nobody knows if it is possible, but most probably it isn't since the big three US car makers are struggling to make a profit from the much cheaper current vehicles.
Thx xeroid for you elaboration.
Actually I was aiming at Eric’s seemingly cornucopian take on things, but as we see he was just in the theoretical corner.
But this explanation “taking atoms and mak'n 'em bigger or mak'n 'em smaller” is in my view not correct, neither for fission nor fusion. When fission takes place the Uranium splits into (as far as I know you understand) two different and new atoms. The U-atom is not getting smaller as such - likewise for fusion two seperate atoms turns into one new, plus energy.
The term smaller/bigger atoms can be used/ observed in changing the heat surrounding them, when electrons are skipping into higher or lower orbitals.
Actually I was aiming at Eric’s seemingly cornucopian take on things,
I was attempting to capture the 'flavor' of the 'lets all build nukes!' crowd.
Their position is fuel is unlimited, just like oil firms have said there is no oil supply issues.
You don't have to convince me.
But you know, more people have smashed their thumbs with hammers than have smashed their thumbs with fuel rods, so Fission's safety can hardly be questioned..
Thank you for the replies. I read your comments, now for the links / articles. I appreciate it.
Have a great day.
Greg
This seems like a good time to trot out the old back-of-the-napkin drawing I've been tinkering with ...
My quibble with nuke power is all that crud on the right hand side of the diagram. Nuke advocates always seem to overlook it in a discussion, but we have areas of the US west that are still hot 50 years after their "project" ended, and probably some that have been forgotten about, maybe due to secrecy at first but now just stupidity. Remember Hazel O'Leary? She tried to shine some light into the corners, but sort of got shuffled offstage not too long after. Not speculatin', just sayin' ...
The bottom line is, that humans don't even have a 50 year attention span, let alone 1,000 years. And we'll never clean up more than a tiny fraction of any nuke plants we build. France will probably be an interesting (dangerous) place 200 years hence.
Storage onsite, where the site is frequently not very far away from major metro areas, is definitely not a good idea. Mega-catastrophe waiting to happen. Unfortunately, we're already stuck with the legacy of a lot of unwise siting decisions, and part of that legacy means shipping dangerous stuff (which is attractive to terrorists, btw) cross-country to a more remote location (which nobody wants in their back yard).
All theoretically solvable, yes, but the theoretical solutions are not being implemented in the real world and in real time.
Here is some more content from Scientific American short article The Economist has no Clothes:
Wow! Scientific American acknowledges ecological economics and limits to growth. I am sure that they are primarily motivated by concern about global warming, and if pressed would still say that the United States economy ought to grow, but that they are willing to slow down growth for the sake of limiting ecological damage. Still any sign of sanity by a mainstream media publication is welcome, particularly when that publication is a preeminent bastion of technological optimism.
I can feel the early signs of a paradigm change rumbling under our feet.
From the economic front...
Foreclosures come to McMansion country
The flight to save Detroit
I'm very pessimistic about the US auto industry. Auto sales fell off a cliff last month. Ford & GM were both down over 10% YOY, and it is only going to get worse. I don't think either of them (nor Chrysler, for that matter) can survive if that keeps up. And I think it will.
The first one to file for Chapter 11 will probably get a lot of government assistance. I don't know if the second or third will. That might produce some incentive to file early to "beat the rush", assuming things don't turn around.
And yet small car sales are up 12% with the likes of the Toyota Yaris above 70% and the Honda Fit above 50%. This is exactly what happened in the 70's oil crunch and Detroit wasn't ready for it then either.
I hope that none of them get bailed out.. I'm sick of irresponsible companies getting bailed out, providing a burden on taxpayers, and then failing once again. (Steel companies, airlines, car companies..)
Steel companies
Alas, the argument of the Steel industry (No 1st world nation lacks the ability to make its own steel) is true.
So they're trying to make the situation better using plane loads of "...bankers, consultants, and lawyers..."
Oh, that's really hilarious. The same crew that drove the bus off the cliff when it came to all the financial shenanigans lately - and now they're coming to the rescue ?
I share your pessimism - I'd say their involvement alone pretty much guarantees one of the Big 3 doesn't make it thru 2008...
Reminds me of that song, Lawyers, Guns and Money by Warren Zevon 8^)
"Daddy get me outta this"
Great song!
Our car industry is up against the wall like the British car industry in the 1970s. They tried merger, government takeover, reprivatization, and eventually the one that really stuck, foreign selloff. Maybe all the earlier tricks were just a way to train a generation of Britons to accept the inevitable. So we will see at least some of them employed here.
What remains of the UK industry:
Ford & GM: still healthy, I guess, but operating as a branch of their clever German divisions.
Land Rover & Jaguar: eaten by Tata.
Morris/Rover/MG: the assembly line for their last sedan was packed off to China.
Rolls & Bentley: split in a custody battle between VW and BMW.
Lotus: tiny, cultlike.
So which of these fates should we expect to see for our Big Three? Note that Morris, Austin, MG, Rover & Jaguar were once all British Leyland nameplates, so spinoffs are a possibility.
Some assemble lines are now in Russia:
from http://www.autofrancorusse.fr/AFR01en.html
The GAZ Group has acquired the production equipment and licence for the Chrysler Sebring
and Dodge Stratus from Daimler Chrysler. Production of these models at the manufacturer's
own factory should stop at the end of 2006. Production in Russia under a brand yet to be
determined will be carried out at the GAZ factory in Nijni Novgorod on the Volga. Until
recently the factory produced locally designed cars. GAZ is planning to produce up to 65,000
cars per year, with an investment of 125 million euros.
Saturn may be the one US nameplate that might actually be attractive for a foreign company to snatch up. It was set up by GM to be relatively "stand-alone" and less integrated with the rest of the company than the other brands. Chrysler proved to be too much of a mouthful for Daimler to digest, but Saturn would be more of a bite-sized morsel. Buying Saturn would be a feasible way for a foreign company (Tata? Some Chinese company?) to establish a quick presence in the US market. Now I'm starting to wonder if an eventual spin-off/sell-off of Saturn wasn't GM's real and ulterior motive all along in setting it up the way they did.
Hello Leanan,
Thxs for the link on empty McMansions. Recall my earlier post on converting them into bat shelters and the potential guano harvesting bucks attainable. When considered with the catastrophic Bat-Dieoff occurring now in the US: it should be declared a National Emergency, and Every-Foreclosed-Home quickly converted for optimal bat protection with the design help of Highly Paid bat biologists.
The lofty and spacious multi-room cathedral ceilings, combined with the sleek granite countertops and/or marble-flooring for easy guano harvesting, is the perfect suburban habitat for the vital critters.
The yards, streets, and swimming pools in these abandoned neighborhoods can be easily flooded with sewage by directed network control, thus providing a huge growth medium for bugs that the bats can easily eat.
I believe that the ERoEI for this guano system, precisely because it can be localized nearly everywhere, will be much higher than people swinging pickaxes and hefting wheelbarrows 3300 ft underground in Saskatchewan, or in the blazing sun in Morocco.
How much energy does it require to move I-NPK from far-inland Canada to far-inland Australia, Argentina, or Africa? O-NPK, from all possible sources, but especially bats [to prevent their extinction], needs to move prominently onto the MSM big screen TV. My feeble two cents.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Additional note:
The guano income earned could easily pay for continued termite treatment for these converted-McMansions; to prevent rapid loss of insulation protection and eventual structural collapse--A Win-Win!
Much better than having bats dying from it getting too cold or too hot. Overall Goal: We need them to reproduce at record rates!
Just in case I've not said this before, you're my hero, Mr. Totoneila Sir ...
A thought:
I wonder of all those *%#$*&%#*%$ "bug zappers" that everyone has put outside on their decks or patios has had anything to do with the bat population decline? They have to be making a dent in the bat food supply.
The real irony is that they apparently don't really do all that much to make the surroundings bug-free, because they lure in at least as many bugs as they kill. Of course, they also kill at least as many beneficial insects as they do genuine pests. In other words, they are a complete waste of energy and money.
Thus, I am wondering if a national ban on the stupid things would be good, both for the bat population and to save energy?
"Jingle Mail" for $1,000,000+ McMansions
I wonder if there is anybody on that plane to Detroit to suggest to them that they start building small, energy-efficient cars? Or maybe diversify into urban mass transit and passenger rail?
I think that soon what's left of the US auto manufacturers will merge into one. Shortly after that it will become irrelevant.
Or maybe one or two of them will be bought out and merged into oblivion by a foreign company. (Although I admit I am hard pressed to think of somebody for whom that would be a good deal. It would have to be at a fire sale price.)
Whichever are left will probably eventually just get out of the passenger car business altogether and specialize in trucks, vans, and heavy equipment. They are already pretty far along that path anyway. It has been well established at this point that they just are not capable of doing what it takes to compete against the Japanese & Koreans (let alone Chinese and Indians!) when it comes to making small, affordable, energy-efficient passenger cars (and they'll be totally hopeless when it comes to electric vehicles), so they might as well go ahead and abandon that market and cut their losses.
Consulting: If you are not part of the solution, there is good money to be made in prolonging the problem.
Those who can, do.
Those who can't, teach.
Those who can't teach, consult.
Good Morning,
I noticed something while at the gas station today, let me first tell you that I live on a small island in the bahama, Great Exuma. We only have 2 gas stations on the island, too many people and too many cars.
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&lr=lang_en&hl=en&msa=0&ll=23.5137...
Gasoline is now $5.42 per US gallon (we only get one grade) and Diesel is $5.55.
I watched as four people put $10 worth of gas into there cars, 1.8 gallons each.
I think that in a little while longer the cars here will just be left on the side of the road where they run out of gas.
I would think these would sell well in India and China .... maybe Cuba ...
Maybe eventullly the US
http://www.gekgo.com/3-wheel_gas_scooter_%20trikes.html
I am thinking about getting a dealership
I'm in love....
It strikes me though, due to toppling issues that the two wheels should be at the rear, near center of mass/ peoples bellies.
For trikes, having two wheels in front is MUCH better for both braking and steering as you are doubling the contact with the road. Now what we need is FWD trikes.
Hello Triphop,
Already available--Check out Piaggio's sweet ride:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/blogs/automotive_news/4252304.html
this reply was for triphop
yes U R right , I knew there was something -- agree on the beaking/steering issue
but they come "my way" too ..
http://kernelys.free.fr/IMG/jpg/K-AirTrike-00.jpg althoug most of this way are the motorbike-kind.
A couple more to check out:
http://www.aptera.com
http://www.flytheroad.com
Pete
My favorite- http://www.zeromotorcycles.com/
Yes, the two wheels up front are MUCH more stable than having the single wheel up front. This also gives you the ability to use a scooter/motorcyle drive train which saves mucho bucks.
When offroading took off thirty or so years ago the standard configuration was a single wheel up front with two in the back. In order to make the damn thing turn you had to lean to the outside of the curve!
Manufacturers changed over to the present four wheeler configuration after many accidents.
I have looked longingly at the Tango for many months.
Deleted, story on Maricopa, AZ posted yesterday.
I'm among the dwindling number of people with ink stained fingers who still subscribes to newspapers, including the NYT.
Ouch. Median value $212,000 in that exurb in 2007, now foreclosures stand without anyone interested at $99,000.
Salmon disappearance could bring fishing ban
Why? They don't know. Scientists suspect "unusual weather conditions." Environmentalists and fishermen blame the diversion of water to farms in southern California.
This was predicted several years ago, and though the scientific consensus is still out, I think it will point to the yet unexplained absence of coastal wind in 2005. In a normal year, these winds begin blowing in early summer, and continue throughout the season along the coast. That year, the winds didn't begin till mid-late August, and consequently, coastal upwelling of deep sea nutrients was delayed and reduced. Without the nutrients, coastal productivity, on which the salmon runs depend, collapsed. The year classes of chinook most affected as juveniles are showing up today. Some of the bite of single year disasters are covered in that salmon species have multiyear age structures-with chinnok, some are 4 or 5 year. It's part of evolution's redundancies that must be addressed when substituting hatchery runs for wild ones.
Too many humans and not enough food. No one prints that but for semi-hysterical web sites, eh?
The Spring Ocean Salmon Season is already cancelled from Oregon to Mexico. There will soon be several public hearings about the Fall Seasons for Ocean and Rivers. Drought and subsequent water diversions to agribusiness are the main, intertwined culprits. Two critical books on the subject are Common Fates and Empty Oceans. Last Monday I asked my charter buddy Captain Steve for his take. He said the whole salmon fishery should be closed from Alaska to Mexico until it can be shown by fisheries scientists that stocks have rebounded to viable levels, while at the same time addressing the water, pollution, habitat resoration, and other related issues that must also be solved. Such a shut down will of course exert greater pressure on other fisheries, an issue I talked with a DFW employee about as she inspected my catch of ling cod. Another problem is the genetically engineered and farmed Atlantic Salmon, which many of us here in the Northwest refuse to buy. There will be some limited catch to allow for native treaty rights.
Everywhere you look, Overshoot is very visible, and the LTG people still get smeared.
But this makes little sense for the present problem. How do agribusiness's diversions, in the central valley of CA allow for a population crash in spring-summer 08 salmon numbers along the entire west coast?
While do not disputing that regional drought is impacting fisheries, it does not seem to be the culprit for the precipitous decline just now noted. However, collapse of juvenile food sources due to insufficient nutrients would manifest itself in the returning spawners this year all along the coast.
In this instance, I think the enviros and fisherman are just jumping on the ag diversion bandwagon and failing to look at the problem. It may be a convenient scapegoat, but not correct in this instance. With regard to ag diversion and fisheries, the documented effect in CA concerns the relatively unknown Delta smelt, as opposed to the larger long fin smelt, being caught in the pumps to transport spring flows to higher elevation, later gravity feed, storage reservoirs. Here the problem is not in basin water quality or quantity. For this problem, reservoir filling has been cut way back, and some farmers are looking at 50% water reductions. Which is certain to create an even more volatile situation.
Hi Doug--The populations in question were returning 07 adults. Please view the Ocean Sport Coho and Chinnok Landings by Area slides at the bottom of this page as well as the others, http://www.dfw.state.or.us/MRP/salmon/2-16-2008.html
As this page documents, http://www.dfw.state.or.us/MRP/salmon/updatesnew.asp there've been numerous recent attempts to preserve some sort of season as a result of the very large population crashes that started in 91-92 as documented in the above link. These are both just for Oregon. As you can see, this is just the most recent population crash. The 1990s crash prompted the writing of Common Fate, http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780870713910-3 and spurred determined efforts to save the salmon here in Oregon. As documented in the book, there are several reasons for salmon population crashes, the most destructive being spawning/birth habitat degredation in the fresh water environment.
This is a good item discussing this issue, http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/030708EA.shtml
The Bison formed the basis for numerous cultures; it was deliberately destroyed in order to destroy the cultures. The salmon also formed the basis for numerous cultures, though not to the extent of the Bison; most of the salmon have been destroyed and so have most of the cultures. What does this say about oil and fossil fuels in general? We can see the destruction coming and develop a different culture not based of oil and fossil fuels.
My mistake on the run mentioned being last fall, not those fish yet to return. I was speaking the other night to a fish bio in CA and got ahead of myself. The collapse itself, and the CNN article, center on the Sacramento River Chinook. Tying this collapse to the issue of ag diversions and drought is, I believe, erroneous.
The chinook and sockeye, which as a fisherman you are probably aware, are the 2 long distance spawners of North American salmon (pre inclusion of steelhead in that genus). Longterm, it's my belief that these 2 species are toast, at least in the US. This is primarily from the dams, and our methods of mitigating the loss of access to and from spawning grounds in an energy starved world. I can see no way we can do without the hydro generation, esp in the Columbia system.
I am quite familiar with the freshwater spawning requirements of salmon, having worked on many facets of habitat assessment decades ago, including that of chinook and sockeye prior to the last native redfish to return to Redfish Lake, ID. Sedimentation in salmonid spawning grounds, in the past primarily from logging and ag activities, but now also a large degree from sub and exurban expansion, is a primary killer. In freshwater, habitat remains the key.
In marine environments, overexploitation of stocks has been the biggest factor in fisheries collapse. I personally now see climate change as coming to usurp that position. Although only speculation, I suspect the earlier failure of coastal winds are tied to that, and hence, the California chinook becomes an early statistic.
I am forced to conclude that those responsible with managing common-pool resources like fisheries and wild game stocks are utterly incompetent. We simply don't seem to be able to get our act together in a manner that enables us to manage any of these stocks for maximum sustainable yield.
I remember living in Indiana back in the 70s. The countryside used to be just crawling with Bobwhite Quail. Then we had a couple of very severe winters, and the Quail population plumeted disasterously. Common sense would suggest that hunter's bag limits be tightened up and seasons shortened considerably for a few years to allow the Quail population to recover. But did they? Oh, no, can't think of doing anything like that! So Quail became much less common, at least for the remainder of the time I was up there.
It would be one thing if this were an isolated incident, but it is not. We keep seeing variations on the same theme, over and over and over and over again. Today it's the Pacific Salmon. One is forced to conclude that the management principal being followed is NOT maximum sustainable yield but minimum sustainable yield - or maybe even just keeping species on the brink of extinction.
STUPID! STUPID! STUPID!
"those responsible with managing common-pool resources like fisheries and wild game stocks are utterly incompetent."
WNC, you're way off base here. Fish and Game mangers are driven by politics, pure and simple. Your F & G commission controls the department, and those who sit are political appointees. I recall when Jack Ward Thomas was made head of USFS, the cheers from foresters and biologists alike that finally, one of them had made it into the top slot. He was cut down in nothing flat, replaced by another pol. Its you and your neighbor's vote that has been lacking.
To use your quail as another example, it is a species that responded to an earlier agricultural era, complete with cover and excess ag food. In comes the Earl as head of USDA, we rip out the fencerows and poof no more cover. That's what knocked them-habitat loss. With Pacific Salmon, its us again, not the managers, who are forced to become near alchemists in certain situations. The dams knocked the salmon, but who would consider removing even one of the mainstem Columbia dams. We've made our choice-we want electricity and the easy life it affords.
As life gets easier, we find more time and more individuals to value native wildlife and fisheries. So what do we do? We move to the country, to the exurban environment where we erect a concrete foundation surrounded by a climate controlled structure and imported shrubberies. Complete with flush toilets, electricity and a winding gravel drive, convincing ourselves we are in balance with the drive providing grit for the songbirds.
For what it's worth, Robert Zubrin was interviewed over at Daily Kos about ethanol/methanol replacing gasoline.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/4/6/12235/79208/83/491122
Excerpt:
Sure. Almost every OPEC nation is a food importer. By diverting all our excess food capacity to alcohol production, we could not only do in OPEC the cartel, we could do in the OPEC nations themselves as governments around the world collapse amid food riots.
Fiendishly clever plot, I'd say; definitely worthy of a Cheyney, though a bit subtle for Dubya, I'm afraid.
It ain't worth much, except as an indication that the principle impediment to the continuation of civilization is ignorant stupidity.
I have a question for everyone here:
In light of where we stand today, this Summer looks like it may be the tipping point.
We have: an emerging food crisis worldwide,an energy situation that showing itself to be much more than a short term problem (FELM & ELM), tensions building with Iran, the Olympics casting a spotlight China, an economic crisis that will get seriously worse, the coming election where the neocons are "scheduled" to leave office, etc.
My question is this- Is there any chance we make it into the fall with the perception of BAU still intact? With or without an attack on Iran or some false flag operation, I think that by the fall (or earlier), the global population comes to the crushing realization that the party is in fact over.
How do you guys see things playing out?
I just hope the party continues until May, when I'm finalizing my investment portfolio: buying my steel storage railcar, stocking it with fertilizer, seeds, food, TP, etc and locking it and burying it.
I think it's more likely than not.
I agree. Back when I was in the stock market, as a broker, the saying was that "Insider traders are nearly always right, and always early." In other words they saw their companies pitfalls coming as well as boom times coming, but they always anticipated them to happen well before the actual event.
I perceive the same thing happening with the economy. We all know it is going to collapse but I think we all anticipate it happening well before the actual event. I see the economy declining but very gradually, for a couple of years. 2010, that is when I see Business As Usual going down the proverbial drain.
But still, I do not see total collapse for several more years. 2017, that is my guess. That is when the world economy will enter the great depression with total chaos reigning in half the world's countries.
Okay, I am going to put my crystal ball up now. ;-)
Ron Patterson
The only thing I know for sure is nobody knows what the future will be.
Live for today, enjoy what you have, but have a plan B already thought out.
If you're going to panic, panic early. Above all, do different - eg: if others are distress selling that is the time to buy.
On a short term basis tomorrow is much like today - on a geologic timescale things are very different - it's the bit in between that makes our current situation so interesting and possibly dangerous - but then, all life is dangerous and I am sure that so far I have had a better life than any creature that I am descended from.
On the other hand, after investing a lot of time reading TOD, I also know a whole lot of things that I am now sure with a high degree of confidence can't be which is actually of more importance to maximising my quality of life in the medium term.
sadly when you have special needs children you cannot live for today - you have to plan for the future
My guess: 2015 for the year things finally go to hell in a big way. Seven years left for the techno fairy to come down and save us. Techo fairy? Yoo hoo, techno fairy? Technoooo fairy!!!!!!
the election campaign season will necessitate the perpetuation of a BAU mindset as candidates will feel they risk too much moving outside the mainstream in their world view
Most people on the planet never got to "the party." For those 3 billion or so, life will remain as tenuous as it is now. For the 2.5 billion just ariving at "the party," their stay will be short, one generation at most. For the remaining billion already at "the party," some are leaving early, either by choice or by circumstance, with the current trickle becoming larger with time. As this implies, BAU will be continued as long as possible because that's how elites maintain there power and position. Indeed, the only way BAU will be ended by humans is through political revolution. How soon Nature ends BAU is hard to determine as there are too many variables. If us Near-Term Peakists are correct, I would say BAU dies by 2020. Like most, I think the timing is a moot point, beyond control, and focus on what I can control, like my preparations.
I don't think I see it like that.
Tipping points happen fast. I think the only thing holding up BAU is the BELIEF that BAU leads to a better life. I think that as the problems we're facing now converge and become impossible for MSM to ignore, people's beliefs (whether they are at the party or trying to get there) will be shattered as they realize their is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
Nothing spreads faster than fear and I think that once it really hits (people get laid off & finally put the pieces together) it feeds on itself until things are forever different.
I guess I am mostly really worried about the neocons trying to cling to power through actions against Iran or a false flag operation that really accelerates the curtains being pulled back.
If BAU lasts until 2020, I'd be SHOCKED! Who is going to be exporting all the needed oil by then? Food? How can all the retiring boomers counting on a stable currency, increasing home equity and medicare/SS be supported? How can the 90% of Americans, already over their heads in debt carry on for 12 more years of increasing food/energy/goods with decreasing/nonexistant earnings?
I think 2012 by the LATEST. Also, the timing DOES matter. As soon as the masses start preparing it is effectively too late (giant upsurge in prices/declining supply).
I think irrational faith in BAU will continue far longer than many here expect.
Leanan -
The US financial meltdown, the no longer deniable fact that the US occupation of Iraq is an obvious and irreversible failure, the rapidly evaporating dollar, and other bad news on a whole variety of fronts leads me to worry very much that in the desperate thrashings of its last days, the Bush Regime will convince a significant fraction of the American public that Iran is the cause of much of our troubles and that in the interest of national security it must be attacked. The resultant chaos will temporarily obscure the real source of our problems, at least to a good chunk of the American public, and thus perpetuate the fatal fantasy.
In my view, the only way that McCain could become president is if we are in a full state of war come election time, and the only plausible way for us to be in a state of war is to either attack Iran directly or to have Israel attack Iran for us and to have us then 'defend' Israel in the mess that is sure to follow.
The Bush Regime is entering its 'Fürher-Bunker' phase, and soon the Fat Lady wll be singing Gotterdamerung. Will we ever see the third week of January 2009?
in my experience of America, approaching ten years now, I'd say never underestimate the power of the approach: don't vote for the black guy
i think there are many ways McCain wins this... most of them not good
I think BAU will begin a rapid death when a major, long lasting supply reducing event next occurs, probably somewhere in the Middle East.
Leanan "I think irrational faith in BAU will continue far longer than many here expect." I agree. In the absence of Thermal Nuclear Warfare I would almost guarantee BAU. One of the methods that the SS utilized to manage panic while implementing The Final Solution was to encourage the victims to remain in denial at every stage:
We're relocating you to a Ghetto. We're moving you to a Resettlement Center. Take off your clothes and take a shower.
Denial makes victims very compliant.
Agreed. Most people exist a such a low level of intellectual energy they are satisfied by the mental pablum fed by the media. A good example is the Canadian perception of the economic and mortgage crisis in the USA. People up here look at the crisis as an opportunity to buy real estate down there. They also make no connection between the growing recession and the fact that most of our economy is based on trade with the US. I bring this up at the lunch table at work and I just get blank stares.
Most people won't wake up until they get their layoff or foreclosure notice. In one way it benefits us by allowing us more time to prepare, but on the other hand their rage and panic will be something to flee and hide from.
I agree with Leanan that the perception of BAU will persist, but as for the tipping point - I'd say that occurred the night Jimmy Carter gave his 'sweater' speech. Had Americans collectively 'gotten' it at that point, we might've made some changes to ward off the confluence of catastrophes about to beset us in JHK's 'Long Emergency'. But instead, we awoke to 'morning in America' and went metaphorically back to sleep. So that's when the teeter totted, in one respect. But I agree, TtheD, with what you see converging this summer. It's just that I'd call that the moment when we crack our heads on the ground, for the other kid having jumped off the other end. Of course, William Catton is of the opinon that we 'tipped' w/respect to global K prior to the Civil War. He's on the web live on Thursday (see Gail's post).
IEA Chief Energy Economist Birol Says Oil Prices to Stay High
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20602099&sid=aY4mcIZc1ozo&refer=e...
``The current drivers of demand are different'' while higher oil prices no longer represent ``an incentive'' to produce more oil, Fatih Birol said at a seminar in Brussels today.
Nothing new here - we already know about it - it's ELM, perhaps he reads TOD?
Unfortunately he's still just talking 'plain vanilla' ELM - but it's surprising how quickly the IEA is changing it's tune and they always put a positive spin on things! - Oh dear!
>>Nothing new here - we already know about it - it's ELM, perhaps he reads TOD?<<
Admitting ELM? For sure.
Still no concession on production limits: PO.
Crack spread.
Question: Is there a quick and easy formula for calculating the crack spread? That is, with WTI crude at $108 and RBOB gas at $2.77, what's the refiner's margin per barrel? Likewise, what would it be with WTI at $102 and RBOB at $2.65, etc?
thanks,
Lou
I'm not a refinery expert, but each barrel is 42 gallons, but there is a refinery gain, so the total refined product is more than 42 gallons. Also, gasoline is not the only product. And, the crack spread varies depending on the price and quality of the crude that the refinery is processing-- light/sweet versus heavy/sour.
In any case, US refiners needed to see lower crude oil prices and/or higher product prices, because their profit margins have been quite low.
Lou ..
Doing this from memory and I'm probably wrong ..
but there was/is a 'paper refinery' trade ..
1 Long Crude vs short 2 HO & short 1 Gasoline ..
Triff ..
A hundred barrels of oil produces a hundred and six barrels of stuff on average due to the various "fluffing" methods applied to long chain hydrocarbons to make them more palatable.
Hello TODers,
Regarding Leanan's toplink on the refinery shutdown causing oil prices to leap: I would like to remind readers that this also helps lever sulfur prices upward at the same time because the refinery extraction of this Element is reduced too. It takes sulfur to purify water, make I-NPK, process metals..the list is virtually endless.
Also recall from the USGS link that mining sulfur-containing ores, then converting to useable forms, is more energy intensive than the refinery extraction process. Thus, a double-whammy effect: the less FFs we have requires ever more energy sunk into sulphur mining.
One final note: you don't need sulfur or sulfuric acid to prepare guano, but currently over 60% of all sulphur is used to prepare I-NPK if we wish to continue eating.
Have you kissed a bat today? :)
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Re: Global Warming gets the cold freeze - by F. William Engdahl
F. William Engdahl
So we can all stop reading TOD now!
The continuing irony is that Engdahl, Limbaugh, ExxonMobil, Saudi Aramco, CERA, Huber, Lynch, et al are the ones who are--in effect--encouraging Americans to continue with the auto centric way of life, and in many cases, to continue going into debt to maintain their current lifestyles.
If you believe Simmons, one would think that you would be more likely to implement ELP recommendations.
I'm sure that Engdahl enjoys being in the company of Rush Limbaugh.
"Engdahl now believes in the Russian hypothesis that oil is not a "fossil fuel"
engdahl also, implicitly, claims that petrologists belive that oil comes from dinosaurs. jousting after windmills.
Missed the Bodman session at the EIA conference, but attended two others.
The Peak Oil session seemed to be the most crowded by far (and in a ballroom). Matt Simmons was interesting, and CERA is still sticking to their 2030 peak.
The forecast that shocked me was the EIA forecast that was part of the same Peak Oil panel. Glen Sweetnam of the EIA was saying only between 4% and 7% of the oil originally in place had been pumped (based on original oil in place of 16 to 21 trillion barrels). Based on his calculations, it looked like ramping up production for a very long time should be no problem. (Nansen Saleri only used a range of 12 to 16 trillion barrels of OOIP in the WSJ editorial The World Has Plenty of Oil.) He also assumed recovery percentages would be ramping up. I want to wait until the presentation is posted to the internet, so I can look at the numbers more closely, before I write anything up on this. It is supposed to be posted in a few days.
EIA computed a range of forecasts, but my impression was that most of them vastly outdid CERA. Glen read off a whole list of people who had been involved in this calculation, so it is not just one EIA analyst who is off.
They have to be talking about proven + possible for both conventional and nonconventional OOIP--basically USGS numbers.
Regarding conventional production, not to be too redundant, but there is that lingering problem of explaining the Texas & North Sea declines--private companies, best available technology, with virtually no restrictions on drilling. And assuming that the Ghawar complex is in decline, every oil field in the world that has ever produced one mbpd or more of crude oil is in decline--while net oil exports from the top five net oil exporters probably declined at about 900,000 bpd per year in the two years after 2005.
Hello TODers,
I was musing on J.D. Rockefeller's early attempt at a sulphur monopoly, to add to his oil monopoly [See bottom of yesterday's DB]. Gotta admit he was far-seeing--He clearly saw the incredible power and wealth that would accrue if he could grasp both.
Too bad he didn't try building guano shelters as part of this sulphur strategy; it appears guano can be quite high in sulfur PPM [plus many other benefits too]:
http://www.nutri-tech.com.au/products/dryminerals/nutri-phos-guano.htm
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sulphur 240 ppm
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Does anyone know what percentages of the early guano mining was used for direct topsoil application and how much was funneled directly into chem-industrial use? How do these other listed Elemental PPMs compare to some of the ores being mined today, then heap-leached with sulfuric acid?
Sadly, I am not an expert engineer to figure guano chem-mining + energy vs conventional ore-mining + energy. But obviously, powdered guano gives you a big upfront energy savings as compared to the energy required to powder mining ore boulders. Too bad we are not going bat-crazy.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Hello TODers,
http://www.fnarena.com/index2.cfm?type=dsp_newsitem&n=27B22523-1871-E587...
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A perfect storm for copper?
..Both Macquarie and Credit Suisse note that sulphuric acid is also in global short supply...
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It may be too late for PHEVs and the Chevy Volt. May I suggest a small scooter, a bicycle, or a pedaling railbike?
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
My apologies if this article has been posted elsewhere (I have not had a chance to read all of the posts related today)
Yet another article displaying the likely peaking of FF's
Global Coal Shortage
And on a side note, it's great to have you back Leanan, I hope you had an enjoyable break.
"Increasingly desperate importers bidding for declining food & energy exports."
In 2005, it looks like total US coal production was 25.1 trillion BTU's, with imports of 1.6 trillion and exports of 2.0 trillion BTU's, and consumption of 24.9 trillion. I'm surprised how low the net export rate is, about 0.6 trillion BTU's.
It would appear that energy exports are beginning to dry up across the board.
Tapis oil is now over $115 at $115.05/barrel! That's amazing.
http://www.upstreamonline.com/market_data/?id=markets_crude