Of course, we are getting decidedly mixed messages from the Saudis. The oil minister is talked about proven + probable + possible of hundreds and hundreds of billions of barrels, approaching a trillion.

In any case, the data are not yet conclusive, but we can say that the successor swing producer, Saudi Arabia, is showing the same post-peak characteristics as the prior swing producer, Texas, at about the same stage of depletion (based on HL), to-wit:

Higher Oil Prices + Increased Drilling = Lower Oil Production

I've never understood the rationale either for oil prices going up following a refinery fire. If we carried the reasoning out to its logical conclusion, and if 100% of all refineries shut down worldwide, would oil prices then be several hundred dollars per barrel?

In any case, as I said previously, I think that refiners are in a situation similar to the airlines. They have to respectively weigh the rising cost of crude and jet fuel against the volume of refined product and tickets that their customers can and will buy--given rising prices for refined products and tickets.

As I said in September, IMO, this suggests declining refinery utilization in importing countries, ultimately leading to less efficient refineries shutting down. Yet another example of the conventional wisdom, i.e., we have too few refineries, being dead wrong.

If this is true, it's one hell of a story. Would you be willing to post your sources here?

This is and excerpt from “Six Degrees” a recent publication on global warming by Mark Lynas

Page 286
States Of Denial
Energy realities are not the only reason why our response to global warming has hitherto been so halfhearted. Our evolutionary psychology preconditions us not to respond to threats that can be postponed until later.
We are good at mobilizing for immediate battles, less good at heading of challenges that still lie far in the future.
Hence the most appropriate term to describe individual and societal responses so far is probably denial..........................

Denial is complex, involving a variety of defensive responses from the familiar “climate change is a myth” to the more understandable (but ultimately no more useful) “but I need my car for my job”.

It is of course, no coincidence that the same people who are deeply wedded to high fossil-fuel use – oilmen for example, are the one most likely to deny the reality of climate change...........................
there is nothing more difficult as trying to get a person to understand something when their salery depends on not understanding...............

According to psychologists, denial is a way for people to resolve the dissonance caused by new information that may challenge deeply held views or cherished patterns of behaviour.
Motorists therefore, may not be willing to absorb information, that challenges their perceived need to use their cars............................

Given that resolving dissonance is difficult and that denying it is dishonest, many people choose another way out of the dilemma: displacement.
In short, they blame someone else...............................it may mean singling someone else whose behaviour is worse – the hybrid driver pointing to the Hummer driver for example.

For policy makers, displacement might mean blaming entire countries: The Byrd-Hagel resolution in the U.S. Senate refused to countenance any change to American lifestyles unless developing countries also cut back on their emissions....................

Climate change (and in Bandits opinion peak oil) is a “tragedy of the commons” problem, where behaviour that makes sense at an individual level ultimately proves disastrous to society when repeated by everyone.
The concept's originator Garrett Hardin, gives the example of cattle herders using shared pastures to illustrate the problem.
Each herder stands to gain individually by adding another cow to the common; he gets more beef and milk but if all herders act the same way, the result is overgrazing and the destruction of the shared resource.

Psychological denial is integral to the process, Hardin writes: “The individual benefits as an individual to deny the truth, even though society as a whole, of which he is a part, suffers”.........................

Perhaps the most pervasive and enduring form of denial is what the Swiss researchers call “the faith in some form of managerial fix” in particular in the belief that the white knights of technology will come riding to the rescue.
Like other forms of denial, the faith in a “techno-fix” evades the need for any serious behavioural change..................................

In a wider sense, one could argue that the whole economic system of modern Western society is founded on denial........................
End book excerpt.

In my opinion the large amount of thread hogging on TOD is by many people still in denial or forever in denial.
They explain their dreams as going down “kicking and screaming” or “doing something” or “not, not doing anything”.
Until it is accepted that we will have to suffer and I mean really suffer, on a collective and especially an individual level, we will continue to read on TOD how we can continue our lifestyle if only we electrify everything and change to new forms of energy and power generation.

Richard Heinberg got it right, we have to power down. We have to power down now, nothing else will suffice.
That would mean suffering though.

I suspect that bits and pieces could be refurbished, and sold at a deep discount to new, but the systems are optimized for very specific processes.And, absent petrochemicals, what chemical processing will we be doing ? And in what volume ?

Bio sources of ethylene, for example, exist and I could see one polyethylene plant operating on that source long term but world production of polyethylene will decline post-Peak Oil,

Alan

Iranian state television is claiming that the blast was accidental and probably cause by explosives that we left over from a historical exhibition on the Iran/Iraq war.

hmmmmm....

And so the statement that is/will be seen more
often:

"No one could have predicted this outcome."

Comfortably Numb/Pink Floyd:

Come on now
I hear you're feeling down.
Well I can ease your pain,
Get you on your feet again.

Relax.
I need some information first.
Just the basic facts,
Can you show me where it hurts?

There is no pain, you are receding.
A distant ship's smoke on the horizon.
You are only coming through in waves.
Your lips move but I can't hear what you say

Our MSM-Masters would rather have us focus our very brief attention spans on the Masters Tournament and other diversions. Recall the Shrub's advice to go shopping instead of requiring us to go into full-on Peak Outreach contemplation and discussion of the geo-strategic resource reasons behind the 9/11 attack. Pres. Carter's Sweater Speech makes more sense to me.

Instead we get "the surge is working" and "troops out in 16 months". And what if the Chinese or Russians DO send in "advisors" when we pull out to help stabilize things? Are we sending in an army to kick them out when they divert supplies?

That puts it in a nutshell as to why, although the present massive presence in Irag is not sustainable financially, it will not be possible to pull all troops out of Iraq, no matter who is President.

BTW, great analysis.

If you were to start from a Toynbee-esque civilizational perspective you might go in yet another direction. The Islamic civilization is farther along the civilizational trajectory, having already passed through it's universal state and entered into decay. From this view, you could not expect any internal transformation of Islam akin to the reformation or any other of the development oriented changes that Western Europe went through. Rather, what we would expect is continued internecine bickering and the progressive weakening of core Islamic values and institutions This would be punctuated by occasional efforts to restore the glory of the civilization by segments that grab hold of one portion of the whole and promote it as the key to revitalization. Such efforts are doomed to failure, however, as they are symptomatic of the very trait which defines civilizations that are no longer growing - "the idolization of an ephemeral self."

We (meaning the U.S. and Western civilization more generally) are still in the Universal State phase of civilization. That Universal State is an attempt to exert control over and prevent decay. It too is doomed to failure (although some Universal States go on for centuries) and our adventure in Iraq is just one example of the sorts of things that will weaken and eventually destroy that Universal State.

AFAIK, no one has put out an Edison base LED that can put out 700 or more lumens. The reason is heat dissipation (which kills LEDs).

That sounds as though a larger, flat LED would be more practical - it would give more opportunities for creative lighting anyway.
Thanks for the links, Alan.

I offer my experience.

I live entirely in an LED environment, having replaced all my incandescents bulbs and fluorescent fixtures with LED equivalents. The amount of light I have is the same as what I had before. The power consumption is about 15% of what I used before, low enough that I easily run on batteries charged by solar power during the day for my lighting at night.

The keys to doing this are 1) having a 12-volt DC electrical system available, 2) having a different attitude toward lighting, and 3) not trying to illuminate a 4,000 sqft McMansion with light I will never use.

My first secret is that I live in an RV (fifth-wheel trailer in my case). It has a basic 12-volt wiring system throughout, and all my LED lights run on that 12-volts DC system. So the conversion to LEDs was rather simple. In a "stick-home" with 120VAC system, it is necessary to convert the AC into the DC that the LEDs require (though some LED products can operate attached to an AC line by clipping out only that part of the current when the polarity is right. The problem is they flicker at 60 cycles per second.)

There are a number of low-voltage converters (120VAC to 12VDC) available on the market. Many of the lawn lighting systems use such converters. It is possible place such a converter into a strategic cupboard and to extend the wiring from that unit throughout a house to make the power available where you need it. The good thing about LEDs is that they typically require only milliamps of current, not amps, so smaller wire can be used. For isolated local applications, I also use a very small converter plugged into a wall socket.

The second secret is attitude. I want my light where I need it. Low-level ambient light around the room is okay, but I use light to see to read, or to build small electronic toys. My wife uses light to sew and to cook and do the dishes. We use a light over the dining table to eat. There is no need to have a bright 300watt bulb lighting the far corner of the living room. The intensity of the light from a bulb falls off as the inverse of the distance squared, so the closer the source is to where you need it, the better. Put your lighting fixtures close to where you need them. I also like to use linear light rather than point light. We have lightstrips around the mirror of our vanity rather than six large, bright incandescent bulbs with their six points of light. They spread the light out and make the area much more useful.

The third secret is space. It helps that I live in 320 square feet of living space. Of course, it also helps that I have the Cleveland National Forest (or wherever we happened to be camped) just out my front door as my yard. Don't live in more space than you need. Don't try to light space that you do not need.

Now one of the questions was the brightness of the LEDs compared to CFLs or incandescents. Products are available that produce as many lumens of good "white" light as a CFL where you need them using only one-third the power. You also don't have to be concerned with the bit of UV from a fluorescent or the bit of mercury in the CFL when it dies. And the LED will last 20 times longer than a CFL. When you compare the LED to incandescents, you use 15% of the power for 100 times the lifetime.

Another question was cost. Yes, good LEDs are expensive (unfortunately, most of the really cheap ones are dim and failure prone). but the payback comes from long life and much less power consumption. At this point, good 12-volt DC LED lights retail for about $10 for 50 lumens (using about 0.7 watts of power), and you can add more LEDs to build lamps with 300 or more lumens (4.2 watts for $60).

And by the way, incandescent lights create 7 times the heat as LEDs for the same amount of light. Unless you are heating your home by turning on the lights, you may need to run the air conditioner to remove that extra heat. Use the rule of thumb that it takes twice the energy to remove the heat as to generate it.

I believe the future of lighting is in the LEDs (unless it turns out to be a wood fire). It should be what you go for now.

Sam Penny
the Prudent RVer

Funny you should mention this. Cree has recently started shipping modules that give off 650 lumens. They are designed for cases where you have recessing lighting in the ceiling that normally would take a BR30 bulb.

http://www.creells.com/downloads/CREE_LLS_LR6.pdf
http://www.creells.com/products.htm

This is only 650 lumens of course, not *quite* 700. The CRI is 92. Nominal input power is 12 watts, dimmable to 20%.

The thing that makes this work is that there is room in the ceiling can for the required heat sink.

The vast majority of CFLs have a CRI of 82

I wonder about that. My rough eyeball estimate of the off brand Made in China 4 packs at Home Depot would be in the CRI low to mid-70s.

No spec sheets, just eyeball. And these are the "majority" of CFLs sold IMHO.

No data, just "feel".

Best Hopes for higher CRI :-)

Alan

A pretty solid deconstruction, Paul! :-)

Food is more important than fuel, any solution has to keep that in mind.

I agree that food is more important than fuel. The thing is, tho, that the world simply cannot feed the current massively inflated human population without stupendous (fossil) fuel inputs. Not by a long shot. Some will argue that organic agriculture or other "sustainable" practices can feed 6.7 billion people. Some will argue, too, that petroleum has an abiogenic origin and that humans aren't to blame for climatic warming. The arguments are based on some very unlikely premises and simply aren't convincing. Nitrogenous fertilizers & diesel fuel are crucial for modern agriculture and food distribution. What energy source(s) do we replace the petroleum necessary for their production with? Do we have the time & capital to make the transition to alternative energy sources? Will all alt energy sources combined come anywhere near to replacing petroleum? Is a massive human dieoff - a dieoff so big that it conjures the spectre of extinction - inevitable? These are truly exciting times we live in!

Not if our MSM doesn't grow a spine. I watched NBC news last night, they had an extensive segment on the world food situation (at present no forecasts). They even read off a bunch of causes. No mention of food to fuel however, keeping ADM happy is more important than the truth! Well with some high profile Indians and some others screaming about it, they shouldn't be able to keep if off the public radar screen for much longer? Or am I being hopelessly naive.

Re: Food is more important than fuel.

Then it should be priced higher than fuel, right? I fail to see the logic that fuel prices can or should go higher but food prices should stay low even though fuel is a cost of food production. This makes no sense and will result in even greater food shortages.

The obvious solution is that food prices must rise faster than oil prices so that food, being more important, takes over grain demand from fuel. Many will shriek in horror, but how else can the situation be solved?

American farmers are not going to sell their corn for animal feed when in it is more profitable and energy efficient to turn it into ethanol. Poor third world farmers can not hire help or increase fertilizer usage if food prices are held so low that there is not enough profit to do so.

Matt Simmons points out that crude is a bargain at 15 cents a cup. Is not corn at 5 cents a cup an even bigger bargain? It's a similar situation in wheat, rice, soybeans or whatever. It is cheap oil that has artificially held down food prices for decades since the beginning of the oil age.

And it is coming to an end. The solution is to redeploy non food producers back into agriculture. This takes money as the new food workers must be paid. Where is the money to come from?

Of course in must come from much higher food prices. The price of food must reach a level that makes bio-fuels uneconomic.

This will be a very high price because bio-fuels can be used to increase food production. It is already happening when farmers use biodiesel to run tractors, combines and put ethanol in their pickup trucks and such. I do it myself on my farm. It is not as simple as it first appears because bio-fuel can increase food production when used in farm machinery.

Robert, thanks for enlightening TOD readers -- two years ago I bought the book second-hand via Amazon, apparently the only extant copy for sale in the universe at the time (my edition was published in 1952, not 1953). It's a brilliant work that should be compulsory reading for all. I think CGD chose the title to be on the safe side -- certainly nobody can give him the 'Club of Rome' treatment, at least not for the next 999945 years!

Political correctness was certainly not one of his vices.

At present the most efficient way for a man to survive in Britain is to be almost half-witted, completely irresponsible and spending a lot of time in prison, where his health is far better looked after than outside; on coming out with restored health he is ready to beget many further children quite promiscuously, and these "problem children" are then beautifully cared for by the various charitable societies and agencies, until such time as they have grown old enough to carry on the good work for themselves. It is this parasitic type that is at present most favoured in our country; if nothing is done, a point will come where the parasite will kill its host by exhaustion and then of course itself perish miserably and contemptibly through having no one to support it.

-- (page 69)

Great to learn it's available on line.

very funny!!!!

Well, he got my mother to finally come to the table for a serious discussion about her retirement holdings which Albert never did.

:)

This has always bothered me too. Perhaps at some point declining fertility rates will allow our population to fall to -- or below -- replacement levels worldwide, but given that the median age of the population as a whole is something in the range of 27-years, that would seem unlikely for many years to come, barring any unusual (i.e., catastrophic) events. In the absence of such extraordinary forces, I can't imagine how world population levels could decline at a rate equal to or greater than our available resources.

Please tell me I'm wrong, but it would seem those who advocate a reduction in world population have few tools by which to accomplish this goal beyond war, disease and famine.

Cheers,
Paul

Then, how exactly is it determined, and by whom, what the marginal 'utility value' of one more added person is?

The Bush family and others in the government?

The business of the government is business. And if you are bad for the business An official with the Internal Revenue Service has admitted that legal opponents of former President Bill Clinton were singled out for tax audits, according to court documents made public this week. "What do you expect when you sue the president?" - senior IRS official Paul Breslan