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DrumBeat: May 23, 2008
Posted by Gail the Actuary on May 23, 2008 - 9:17am
Wall Street Journal: If $4 Gas Is Bad, Just Wait
Judging from the futures markets, shock at the gas pump is bound to get worse. Maybe much worse. [...]
If oil hits $200 a barrel, which is the upper end of Goldman Sach's prediction for prices over the next six months to two years, the gasoline picture changes quite dramatically. At $200 a barrel, crude alone would cost $4.76 a gallon. Add on the costs of refining and distributing as well as taxes, and pump prices could rise to a range of $6 to $7 a gallon.
Oil Industry, Lawmakers Aim To Lift Bans on Drilling
Mounting concerns about global energy supply are fueling a drive by the oil industry and some U.S. lawmakers to end longstanding bans on domestic drilling put in place to protect environmentally sensitive areas.
Colorado water law could prove too tough for in-situ uranium mining
The Colorado Uranium Mining & Water Protection Act may have serious implications for future Colorado in-situ leach uranium projects, as it implements what may be the toughest U.S. water quality regulatory regime for uranium mining.
A newly signed uranium water monitoring law may ultimately prove too punitive for Colorado uranium in-situ leach miners, depending on the subsequent state regulations used to implement the law.
Stuart Sanderson, Colorado Mining Association President, said, "If we place unrealistic requirements on the uranium industry that is re-emerging in Colorado and the United States, we will find ourselves as dangerously reliant on foreign sources of uranium as we are dependent on foreign oil."
US renewable energy consumption slips on lower hydro output: EIA
US consumption of renewable energy fell 1% in 2007 to 6,830 trillion Btu from 2006, largely because of a sharp drop in hydro-electric generation last year, the US Energy Information Administration said.
In releasing preliminary numbers on Wednesday, the agency said the decline in renewable consumption came as both total and non-renewable energy consumption increased by 2%.
Jet fuel costs rise faster than crude
Jet fuel prices are rising much faster than crude oil prices, threatening the profitability of the airline industry, as demand for middle distillates, a category that includes jet fuel but also diesel and heating oil, surges, writes Javier Blas in London .
NGSA: No natural gas shortage in the US
Fordham said that while gas production from the Gulf of Mexico has been dropping in recent years, producers have met consumer demand by developing new gas finds in unconventional shale fields in Texas and in Marcellus shale field, which stretches from New York to West Virginia. NGSA also expects US LNG imports to strengthen in future years, although competition from world demand will continue to limit imports in the near term.
Chris Skrebowski on BBC News: 'We're in the foothills of peak oil' (audio)
The next peak will be when the producer countries' exports start falling. Because their growth rates are differentially much higher than those in the West.
So in effect they are pre-empting more and more of their own oil for their own use, so then we will get another upward kick to the price when that starts to come in.
Finally then we will get the peak oil where we simply cannot produce any more of any grade, any quality, anywhere. And that will give the final kick-up.
Producers say $200 oil is possible as prices hit record three days running
Libya's leading oil official, Shokri Ghanem, told Bloomberg TV: "It is out of our hands. $200 a barrel is not logical but even $135 is not logical, so yes oil could reach $200 a barrel. Why not?"
Oil supplies: Running on empty?
"The high-priced energy environment is being driven by the fact that demand has outstripped supply," President George Bush's Energy Secretary, Samuel Bodman, told the US Congress yesterday. "We have sopped up all the available spare oil production capacity in the system ... and there is no silver bullet that will immediately solve our energy challenges or drastically reduce costs at the gas pump."
High prices won't stop the world going on growing
So will the surge in the oil price have similar consequences this time? It is a tough judgement because we don't know how high oil will go, but it looks likely that this oil shock will have a less damaging impact than in the 1970s. However, since the price is unlikely to fall back as far, it will have a more lasting impact on our way of life.
Second horizontal development well commences in Khurbet East Field
Gulfsands Petroleum announced that the Company has commenced the drilling of the second horizontal development well within the Khurbet East Field ("KHE-6H"). The KHE-6H well will be completed and suspended as an oil producer for connection through the Early Production Facility ("EPF"), scheduled to commence operation by the fourth quarter of 2008.
The KHE-6H well is designed to be drilled and completed as a horizontal producer within the Cretaceous Massive Reservoir ("Massive Reservoir") in the Khurbet East Field. The Company estimates that approximately 50 days are required for the drilling, evaluation and completion of the KHE-6H well.
US, Japan agree to joint methane hydrate study
Japan has decided to pursue joint research and development on methane hydrate with the US, aiming to commercialize it as an energy source by 2018.
By sharing their findings, Japan and the US aim to accelerate research and development efforts and establish a global standard for production technology. The two governments already have begun working-level talks, and are expected to reach a final agreement by this summer.
Timchenko Says Putin Link Hyped
The owner of Swiss-based oil trader Gunvor has denied that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's help was key to turning his firm into a global player in an open letter called "Gunvor, Putin and me: the truth about a Russian oil trader."
BP faces cold war in Russian venture
Relations between BP and its billionaire partners in the Russian joint venture TNK-BP appear to be worsening, amid a warning from the operation's chief executive Robert Dudley that recent legal action will be damaging to all shareholders.
It emerged yesterday that an obscure Moscow-based investment firm, whose legal action in a Siberian court is preventing 147 senior BP staff from working for the venture, is demanding about $400m (£200m) from BP.
Maersk drills longest well at Al Shaheen
DOHA: Maersk Oil has finished drilling the longest hole in the world with a length of 40,320 feet (12.3km) at Al Shaheen Field, offshore Qatar, beating the 20-year old record of the Russian Kola Peninsula exploratory well.
With a horizontal section of 35,770ft (10.9km) Maersk Oil’s BD-04A well also extended the company’s previously held world record for the longest horizontal well by 9,000ft (3km). The entire horizontal reservoir section was placed within a reservoir target which is only 20ft thick.
Govt in a bind over oil prices
With crude oil spiking to $135/barrel on Thursday, and showing no sign of cooling anytime soon, indications are that the government is considering the hard option of raising the petrol price by up to Rs 2 a litre but leaveing diesel unchanged. This, along with a reduction in excise and customs levies, form the key elements of a rescue package being worked out for the state-run oil marketing firms.
Power generation to rise by 2,200MW in one year
LAHORE: In order to bridge the gap between electricity generation and consumption, the federal government has approved several power projects to be executed on fast track basis while additional 2,200 megawatts will be added to the national grid within one year. . . . . . WAPDA General Manager (Technical Services) Dr Izhar-ul-Haq briefed the delegation about the hydropower and water sectors, saying Pakistan had the potential to generate more than 54,000MW low-cost hydropower.
The delegation was told that per capita water availability in the country dropped to an alarming level of 1,070 cubic metres in 2007. It was further told that the country had already lost storage capacity equivalent to 5.13 million acre feet due to silting in the reservoirs of Tarbela, Mangla and Chashma.
Decision on Asia Energy's offer after coal policy finalisation
Dhaka: The UK-based Asia Energy had made an investment offer of $2 billion to develop open-cast coal mine and set up a power plant at Phulbari coal field. The country has a known reserve of 2.7 billion metric tons of coal.
Washington - The hardy sweet sorghum plant could be the miracle crop that provides cheap animal feed and fuel without straining the world's food supply or harming the environment, said scientists working on a pilot farming project in India.
Johannesburg - Chairman of Eskom Valli Moosa has strongly denied the suggestion that Eskom management has been pre-occupied with the profitability of the utility at the expense of providing adequate supply of electricity to the country. . . . . Moosa also said Eskom's board disagrees with the Nersa's conclusion that "there appears to be a conflict between Eskom's business objectives and its reason for existence: to supply electricity"
NOAA's Climate Center Predicts This Season's Hurricane Activity
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Center announced that projected climate conditions point to a near normal or above normal hurricane season in the Atlantic Basin this year. The prediction was issued at a news conference called to urge residents in vulnerable areas to be fully prepared for the onset of hurricane season, which begins June 1, 2008.
Palin, lawmakers to revisit energy relief
Gov. Sarah Palin will call the Legislature into a special session this summer meant to provide Alaskans some relief from the soaring cost of energy.
Palin backs TransCanada pipeline plan
Gov. Sarah Palin is calling for TransCanada to get the state license and $500 million subsidy to pursue building a natural gas pipeline from the North Slope. . . . . TransCanada is proposing to build a line from the North Slope to Alberta, where it would connect to the North American pipeline network.
Russia's monthly oil output shrinks
Russia's oil and gas condensate production inched down 0.7 percent to 39.7m tonnes in April 2008 compared to the same month a year earlier, the Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat) reported today. Oil output shrank 3.6 percent in April compared to March.
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From my oil trader friend:
I posted a note previously about the "Two Year Rule," i.e., the Lower 48 decline was quite low for the first two years, primarily because of the final Texas peak. Texas itself showed a similar pattern. If we round off to the nearest 0.1 mbpd, Texas peaked at 3.5 mbpd, followed by two years at 3.4 mbpd, versus a long term decline of about -4%/year.
In any case, 2008 could be to the world, and to world net oil exports, as 1973 was to the Lower 48 and as 1975 was to Texas, i.e., the onset of the sharper decline period.
Rembrandt showed the start of a renewed downward slope in total net oil exports. With the recent news from Russia, Mexico, etc., it's plausible that the net export decline is continuing, and our model and recent case histories show that the net export decline rate should accelerate with time.
Russian production is down. OPEC shipments are down. But the only reason oil prices are going up is speculation. Yeah, right.
And the drop in the dollar. And because we are not drilling everywhere, and because the Petrosarus' are not doing their jobs.
2 arguments against the speculation position I heard on CNBC: the fact that trading volume is high and the fact that we're in a contango situation.
Can anyone please explain how high trading volume and contango both undermine the speculation argument?
WT,
I found one of the articles and something else too about increasing OPEC production but together it is interesting enough.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/feedarticle/7530772
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601072&sid=a8Ly_081LZpQ&refer=e...
That makes 1.24 million less barrels exported in April over March. It seems that they pumped in 4 weeks of April 31.7 million and exported 23.786 million barrels so they used themselves 7.914 million barrels. In May they will have pumped probably 700,000 barrels more but exports not mentioned for May in first article.
April opec
Production 31.7
Export 23.786
Internal use 7.914
May opec
Production 32.4
Export ???
Internal use ???
So what do other countries get from these 700,000 barrels? Why were exports so down in April? Will they keep the 700,000 barrels for themselves? It seems a bit of a yoyo in production. Priduction up and down but nobody really tracks the long term over last year or the import/export side consistently in the press. This is like reading house prices up 5% this month over last month but down 30% yoy but the press doesn't mention it.
Saudi Arabia's total liquids production in 2005 was 11.1 mbpd (EIA). I estimate that if we they wanted--and more importantly, were able--in 2008 to match their 2005 net export level, they would have to produce an average of about 11.7 mbpd in 2008.
Or, you can put it this way. If they maintained about 11 mbpd forever, with no decline, and if they maintained their 2006 rate of increase in consumption, they would cease exporting oil around 2036.
Because of a rapid increase in consumption, the US hit zero net oil exports more than 20 years before our production peaked.
the US hit zero net oil exports more than 20 years before our production peaked
See Interstate Highways, the creation of modern Suburbia, the universal destruction of our downtowns and inner cities, etc.
Best Hopes for A Reversal,
Alan
By the way, while russian output felt 0.7 percent, the inner consumption grew 5.7 per sent, following strong economy growth and car''s increase. It means that export felt at least 6.4 persent.
No it doesn't.
The 0.7% is a percent of a different quantity than the 5.7%.
You can't just add 'em up.
If we say the US imports 13 million barrels/day at $130/barrel then there is roughly $1.7 billion leaving the country every day or 12 billion/week going to the oil exporters from the US alone or maybe twice that worldwide. It seems clear they do not want to recycle all this into bonds and looking at the huge amounts of building works going on in the ME energy use there will only continue to increase so reducing exports so increasing prices...
Mexico Pemex Jan-Apr Crude Output 2.88M B/D, Down 9% On Year (probably paywalled)
April Pemex production release is here (PDF)
Mexico production and export numbers.
C+C production down 80,000 barrels per day, March to April.
All Liquids down 78,000 barrels per day, March to April.
Exports down 189,000 barrels per day, March to April.
Exports down 240,000 barrels per day, April 2007 verses April 2008.
Ron Patterson
More from Dow Jones Newswires (may be paywalled)
Analysis of Mexico's Battle Over Oil
Mexico's Joe Sixpacks and their wives are preparing to fight to retain their resources from looting by neoliberal interests led by the US Empire.
Even if there isn't a neocon conspiracy against Mexico and its oil, the people of Mexico should act as though there is one based on their past history with the US and the current disaster perpetrated by the US on Iraq. The burden of proof is on us to show that we have something to offer most Mexicans besides sweatshops.
Yet nowhere in any major American media is there any discussion of the idea that the United States must justify its demands to the rest of the world based on rational self-interest. There are occasional reports of the negative effects of the World Bank/IMF cabal on various countries (the list is endless), and less often reports on the negative effects of NAFTA on Mexico. What we are not allowed to do is put these stories together the way that people overseas increasingly do:
What's good for America is bad for everyone else.
What's good for everyone else is bad for America.
These ideas are so alien to our eyes that we make no demand to our leaders that they articulate an alternative. Even the most liberal Presidential candidate who is electable must phrase the problem in terms of misunderstanding on the part of the foreigners.
The most absurd and dangerous form this has taken is when democratic governments like Turkey have given into the popular will and refused to aid the US invasion of Iraq, while other democratic governments like Denmark defied the popular will by joining Bush's crusade. Bush's propaganda ministry (state & corporate wings) invariably talked of the defiant actions as coming from the "government", while the compliant actions were by the "nation" or "people". In other words, only evil big government says no to America. The people everywhere are always on our side, only muzzled by socialist tyranny. We've been living under this formula for generations, and we've used it to ruin Vietnam and Iraq to the tune of millions dead.
So now if Mexicans line up against US oil companies, will we pretend again that the majority are just brainless (and thus cartoon-killable) clones of renascent Communism, and the corrupt business minority are somehow "the people of Mexico"? Because we are known to go war to save the people from Communism.
Even if there isn't a neocon conspiracy against Mexico and its oil, the people of Mexico should act as though there is one based on their past history with the US and the current disaster perpetrated by the US on Iraq.
If the 'mexicans suk - stop 'em from coming in' crowd is right, there is evidence that citizens are being told exactly that by some elements.
To the article on Pemex should be added the discussion of Bush's plans for Iraq's oil as shown by Schwartz, which displays a continuum in the Empire's overall strategy.
What an incredibly biased article by the author Laura Carlsen. As far as PO though, she doesn't seem to appreciate the need to lessen the slope on the downside of oil production.
Like the ELM, the UK and Indonesia, Mexico was consuming about half of their production at peak, so they are in the "red zone," unlikely to be a net exporter beyond 2014, and their year over year change in net oil exports should look something like the ELM, UK and Indonesia net export year over year changes:
As I have noted on the other threads, it appears that all three of our closest sources of exported oil--Canada (slight decline), Venezuela and Mexico--showed net export declines in 2007.
Hey WT, oil is fungible, right? Proximity doesn't matter, right? I am joking of course. I do not see oil as fungible, especially when national protection of natural resources kicks into high gear in the not too distant future.
Once the sides are drawn up over the last of the Petro Battles, proximity to the resource will be key to survival.
Exactly. That's why I moved to Calgary.
Actually, lack of proximity to the resource is key to survival when it comes to a shootout at the Last Gas Pump. I certainly would prefer to be somewhere else, living a low profile life without much need for the resource in question, when they start applying violence to the problem of who gets the last drop.
Good point--real damn difficult to determine that geo-located 'sweetspot' where you can still get access to vital resources by foot, riding animal, or bicycle, but still far enough away where you hope your Eco-Tech Bunkers isn't decimated.
*clap* *clap*
Add to that the ability to 'reach out' and 'touch someone' from a long way away via deer hunting rifles/.50 cal FMJ - kinda hard for the isolated to make it if things get shooting bad.
Hi early,
I agree, probly best to "make other arangements" as JHK says. Get used to doing without ff, or very little. New ways of living are on the horizon, hell, they're just around the corner. Got to get it out of our brains, this "life via oil". It's over. That doesn't mean life is over, just our modus operendi. Good call.
Jeff
Yes, don't wait until you absolutely HAVE to do without to start doing without. Get ahead of the curve and start learning how to do without now, so you have time to practice and make non-fatal, correctable mistakes.
When I said "proximity to the resource will be key to survival" I was referring to a particular country not an individual.
And the actual numbers for Cantarell in April are here:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=auA2G9v81BqM&refer=news
Last month was 1.17 million, so this is the first month where it is below half the peak production rate. And it looks like it won't be long at all before the world loses one of its 1mbpd fields.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=a9btF8JdrlxI&refer=us
I posted a note yesterday about my chat with a car buyer at Carmax. She was stunned at the rapid decline in sales prices at auctions for trucks and SUV's.
Not much of a surprise is it. I'm hoping the price of small 2nd hand compacts will increase later this year. I'll sell mine and hold out for an ev. I have a solar setup but need a battery bank.
In 3 years time, sky-high gas prices will have revoked the driving privileges of many millions of our fellow Americans. They will not be happy campers. To cruise past them in a shiny new EV would be like eating a bowl of ice cream in front of a group of semi-starving people.
Also, road work costs may rise exponentially due to skyrocketing oil and natural gas prices. Who is going to pay for the upkeep of our country's thousands of miles of roads? There's reason to believe that the U.S. Government is heading towards a financial tipping point in around 2010. It won't be funding much of anything. Local governments are not faring much better.
Without regular maintenance, how long before roads deteriorate to the point of becoming undrivable? Do the new EVs come with four-wheel drive? ;)
yes I'm aware of these valid points. While I think it wont be as bad here in Australia as the USA my form of EV/battery bank may be a fleet of push bikes or a 4wd ute (pickup only much lighter) home EV conversion. I'll keep it in the shed till the population dies down :P
Didn't realize you were in Australia. I think you'll be better off in this respect than will many parts of the U.S. The brutal northern winters here really take a toll on roads. Water finds a way into the cracks, freezes & expands. The following spring: potholes galore! :)
Inflationary trends in fear and scaremongering, Deflationary trends in reasoning and solutions. I really don't expect that to change.
Got that right Scotty, you doomer you. Instead of the 'free' market bringing up new and exciting technologies, we're treated to lots of innovative obfuscation.
The Secretary of Transition
Everybody talks about "free market". WTF is that. I've never seen one. Give me an example, somebody pleez.
Jeff
I think I heard once that one exists inside Milton Freedman's head, but I've never actually seen it.
I'm stunned that the decline is so slow. The vast majority of the population are still in denial. Or maybe they figure it's all over anyway, so we may as well go out with a bang.
I don't think it's denial. My sister has an SUV and a work college has some ridiculous motor bike that has almost 3x the consumption of my car. Having informed them as best I can, given their lack of interest, though my sister is a peak oil believer. They still manage to justify the use. "Oh well, it's nice to be able to drive all the local kids to a soccer game", "I just love riding it, I wont give it up even if gas goes to $10. I'll just ride it a bit less." I think it's apathy. A common response to stress and/or depression.
It sure sounds like denial. As soon as the money is gone, the ability to borrow is gone so will the ability to deny the obvious, your vehicle is uneconomical, impractical and unnecessary. Unfortunately for them, selling the vehicle into a down market will further erode their net worth.
You hear this kind of posturing a lot - it usually goes like this: I will still drive this H2 even if gas is $10 a gallon. While that might fly if the person is very wealthy (talkin' about wealth, as opposed to the maxxed out credit kind), but for the average American, its just bluster.
Their car/bike is a small portion of their net worth, which might soon be zero anyway (my sisters attitude). $10 a gallon is nothing. I'd pay that not to have to walk 6 kids 3 miles to a soccer game and back. The motor bike thing I just don't get anyway. I assume its look at my big *&^)*, and further down the line it will be even more impressive. Wow look at that guy flaunting his wasteful behavior. The price is going to have to get a lot higher to get ppl to think about the true value of energy.
I'm assuming by your bike comment, that you don't ride. Even the most piggish bike should manage to eke out 30 mpg. I have a BMW R1150GS, which is considered a 'large' displacement bike, at 1150cc. I regularly get mileage in the high 40s and 50 mpg. That's even beating on it like a rented mule. I used to have a Kawasaki 250cc that could do 70 mpg. Scooters, which are flying out of showroom doors these days, can get 70-100 mpg.
Motorcycles outside the US easily outnumber cars. They are are allowed to use HOV lanes, take up less space, are exempt from London's congestion charge, and get better mileage.
(We're also having more fun than you are, too. :-)
All I know is its some kind of motorised wheelchair. I admit I was talking it up a little, but by his own admission his family sedan uses less and it moves more than just his huge ass. Not the lightest guy in the world /understatement>.
Ditto, here. People are buying pickups and SUVs (and some of these things literally block the sun when they go buy), and new big vehicles are all over. A neighbor went driving by with one yesterday with a look of new-car-pride as he studied his array of gauges...everyone seems to be reliving the 70s, and prices will go down. I'm really surprised that 9% of Ford's output is still SUVs and large pickups...
In Japan they've already coined a phrase for the desirability (and stylishness) of living car free. Coming to your metropolis soon.
The future will be vegetarian and publicly transported...
Forgot the link...
http://www.autoblog.com/2008/05/23/is-japan-facing-a-post-car-society/
Japan is lucky in that their population is very concentrated. This should make mass transit systems a lot easier to work.
In Japan you can go almost anywhere in the entire country via convenient public transit, even small towns, so the population density is only part of the story...
(I used to live in Tokyo too BTW.)
IMO Japan is the best model we have for post Peak Oil survival. We should pay close attention to what they do and copy any new ideas ASAP.
The best one I learned from Japan and am using is small electric space heaters. The Japanese have movable room panels and heat only a small place where they are at the moment.
I use several small heaters situated around the house. They only cost $10 (on sale this spring). I don't use room panels, but turn the little heaters on and off as I move from place to place. I have one warming me now as I type this.
They work just fine and save heating the whole house. You have to put on warm clothes though.
I know you're an oil drum whipping boy, but i would like to congratulate you on your wise choice.
Conciliator
In my house I put in a thing called "extra heat" that lets you release the hot air from the dryer in the winter into the house, and then you can close it during the summer so it's vented outside. I'm also starting to use a clothes line (I got a 4 line retractable setup in my backyard) for the summer when it's not raining. So I figure I've practically eliminated waste from drying clothes most of the time.
And the moisture? Strikes me as a way to rot out a persons home.
In the winter the humidity is actually desired, depending how much laundry you do. My dryer has a 3way duct. In-house, under-house, outside. In the winter, I use in-house to drive up the humidity a bit, then switch to under-house.
Yes, I live here in Japan-- I like not needing a car. As for heating, yes, the space heater thing is one idea, also having everyone in a family sleeping in the same room with one small heater in the winter. The rest of the house is freezing, of course, but it saves money. Other things I like here: bike parking lots outside every store and train station, lots of train lines, and in many buildings you take your shoes off (saves cleaning bills later) when you go in. People work pretty hard, physically. No CLOTHESDRYERS, for example, is quite a chore if you have a big family. Most people have no dishwasher. Most families have only one car. But I like living here.
IIRC, before they had the electric space heaters they used small charcoal burners. Since charcoal is a renewable resource (in small quantities, anyway), that's something to think about. Note, though, that the Japanese pretty much evolved their houses and the way they lived in them around these little charcoal heaters. Just like we've built our houses and the way we live in them around central heating. Take away the central heating, and it is not so easy to just drop in something else to take its place.
Well, I guess you're really due to be really surprised, then. The article says "full-size pickups" fell to 9%. That says nothing of SUVs. Without looking at the data, my recollection is that Suv's and pick-ups make up something around 50% of total sales. So we've a long way to go before either Ford, or their customers, really grok what is going on around them. Orwell was so precient to identify Ford as the alter-God in "1984".
Minor correction - Ford is only in Huxley's "Brave New World". I think you muddled your dystopian-future novels.
Demand destruction...crunch...
The Federal Highway Administration said today that U.S. motorists cut their driving by 4.3 percent in March, the biggest monthly drop ever.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601093&sid=a.s1mC9pfR1A&refer=home
Going to be rough for the outer suburbs, where maybe 80% of the miles driven is the daily commute.
car pool
bus
train
bike
move
Retiring
fired
Chinese emperor's common sense advice in a dire famine:
"Exchange children, then eat!"
Telecommute. Arguably the only thing cheaper is riding a bike.
Except that the people who can telecommute are usually associated with service industries (ie: they are not making material goods).
So how do their job prospects look when the neighbors stop buying stuff? Not just stuff at WalMart but stuff from New York Life, Blue Cross adnd State Farm...
We're talking about different stages of collapse. Most people don't understand the extent to which computers are essential for our economy. Computer technicians can work remotely most of the time. When the computers no longer need technicians, we will be in an advanced stage of collapse. And when we're in that stage of collapse, you'll be walking to your work in the fields, so transportation costs won't be an issue.
As far as things that are produced are concerned, you should study the history of the Luddites, cottage industry, and the centralization of production. Much production can be decentralized, in particular the kind of production we will need in the more doomerish possible futures.
Very few of the proposed solutions I see involve decentralization. Decentralization is really the other hand of localization. There is no inherent reason that power production, for example, should be centralized, other than that it is more efficient that way for giant corporations in a cheap oil world. As Kunstler points out in "The Long Emergency", every stream in New England used to be used to generate electricity on a small scale. Today, none of them do. Most people will accept that food production needs to be decentralized. However, weaving was once decentralized, as was milling and many other "industrial" operations. In a world of decentralized production, most production will be done in the home. Centralizing the workforce may be a brief aberration in the economic history of the world.
Shargash... I agree with everything you said. But the work you spoke of: the cottage industries, food production, weaving, etc... aren't telecommuting work.
My point is telecommuters won't be supporting businesses that don't exist. When Banana Republic goes away... so does their commerce website, their intranet, their HR database, their PeopleSoft stuff, their finance apps, ... the works.
Computer work is utterly dependent on successful consumer goods businesses.
"Computer work is utterly dependent on successful consumer goods businesses"
Did you think about that for more than half a second?
Banks need IT. Goverment departments need IT. Hardware retailers, supermarkets stocking essential goods, transport and logistics companies, mining companies, chemical manufacturers, they all need IT.
I work for a conglomerate that has fertiliser, coal, grain shipping, natural gas, insurance, big box retail, auto supply, hardware and supermarket divisions, and every division needs IT.
Hello?
It's like saying only homewares retailers use telephones.
Yes, and India has a motherlode of 20+ something computer specialists that will underbid any and all American IT candidates for that work. And, they can "telecommute". And, they can provide 24/7 support.
I've worked in IT for >15 years in manufacturing, warehousing, and healthcare and one thing I've learned is that no one needs IT. Most of the things that these companies do with computers were not ever done before it became easy to do it (especially things like long term quality tracking). Banks existed for hundreds (thousands?) of years using ledgers. Scheduling, inventory, ordering, and stock levels were all calculated and maintained without computers. Even now there are small retailers that don't use computers at all.
When the economy gets weak, cutting IT is at the top of the list because it's a cost center and you really don't need much of it. Cancel all upgrades and keep one smart guy to fix what goes wrong (Usually just by rebooting and maintaining backups)and there you go.
--
JimFive
All true, but the flip side of that is that all stuff is going to be relatively more expensive, and thus people will be able to afford less stuff. Our lives are going to get seriously de-cluttered and simplified, whether we want them to be or not.
One of the biggest things about what is about to unfold is a systematic recalculation of economies of scale. One could write entire books on the implications of that.
Or walk, like I'm doing now. (Small town, 1.7 mi each way, feasible and good exercise)
How long do you think it will be before mass transit is over run? Or maybe if we lose enough jobs they won't need it.
Get serious. What country do you live in? I live only 7 miles from my downtown, and bus and train are not available. For those in 'outer suburbs', this is true for the vast majority of metro areas. Biking is fine for me, but for those in the exurbs, perhaps 50 miles from work, not a possibility. Carpooling is the only one of those that is viable for most Americans, and too many of them will have the steering wheel pried, in the words of Chuck Heston, from their cold, dead hands.
One scenario is that folks living that far out might need to bike or walk to a rendez-vous point. Then they carpool or if they are lucky take a shuttle bus, to a second rendez-vous point closer in. At that point, people switch cars so that people at the same or nearby workplaces ride in together, or the rendez-vous point is an urban mass transit station.
Or, if that is too inconvenient, I guess they could rather just sit at home, unemployed.
Bike, lol. Do you really expect a 40 year old businessman to bike 80 miles everyday?
No, but 15 or 20 miles to the nearest mass transit node might not be out of the question.
Biking in suburbia would be extremely dangerous.
My little brother works for Carmax in Arizona. I told him re your post yesterday. He said that he recently offered $11k for the same truck model. It's a huge shift. In LA, people are on waiting lists for Toyota Priuses. They're flying off the lots.
My step father was on the waiting list for Smart cars in the AZ. He wouldn't have gotten one until at least until 2009, I think he was ~200 or so. He took himself off for a number of reasons, which is probably a good idea. The Smart car is too expensive and has too many amenities for it's price (e.g., it has an automatic trunk latch, what do you need that for? Just reach behind and open the truck, it's right behind your head), and it doesn't get a decent fuel economy for such a small car. I think it's about 35 mpg actually, but the EPA rating is 40 for non-diesel version.
The price of fuel is near the top of everyone's concerns now - there's simply no ignoring it anymore. They've all been whistling past the graveyard, but at this point it's getting hard to pretend they don't hear the howling and the footsteps behind them. I really feel that unless there is a dramatic reduction in gas prices very soon (which would of course be temporary anyway), we'll see some major impacts in many ways.
I have to laugh when I read the drool that drips from the slack jaws of these corporate managers. I know very well that they've taken good care of themselves, so you cannot call them dumb, but the sheer incompetence they demonstrate in the roles they're actually supposed to be performing is amazing. Like nobody at a company the size of Ford could have noticed what is happening?
They just assume that the way things have been is the way they will always be. "Planning" consists of extrapolating a trend line forward into the future.
Oh, I know. Can't tell you how many times I've sat in meetings thinking "You're a moron - nice cufflinks."
Hey WNC - I think it might even be more than an assumption. Especially for the corporate executive type, the never ending growth scenario is built in to the very fiber of their being. If they question that, they question their very existence. And corporate executives are not exactly the first one's we would expect to go introspective.
WNC, my wife and I were commenting on this subject last night. Nissan is developing a purely electric vehicle due out in 2010. An article yesterday stated Toyota is building a 195 million dollar plant to produce specialized batteries for hybrids, and electric vehicles. Both of us remember the gas hog cars of the 70's and how Japan's auto industry walked right in the market with economy cars that people bought in droves. So what we couldn't figure out was why this country's auto industry seems completely unable to meet the expectations of the near term future. Why does Japan continually beat our manufacturers to market with leading edge design?
Different cultural outlook shaped by living in an island nation wholly dependent on petroleum imports and having been devastated in losing a war based upon trying to imperialize their way out of that dependency.
Japanese Edo Period
Japan is the most technologically advanced country on the planet. The USA is basically a financial economy at this point, as is the UK.
...I have a friend who works at Ford and I told him a few years ago that Toyota would buy Ford sometime in the next decade for 'cents on the dollar'...
The culture is one of supplying what the market wants and up until very recently Americans have wanted large fuel hungry SUVs. I don't see as the Ford Executives where doing anything other than meeting the current demand. I do believe that change is in the air and we may be suprised how quickly Ford, GM, Chevy can change their production lines. These folk always have a few bright sparks working for them that have an eye on 'alternate trends'. Remember how fast the production lines swapped to tanks in WW2?...
What we need is dramatic, innovative leadership. Low weight, high safethy PHEVs and all electics. Check out the Aptera for one glimpse of genius.
Nick.
Read 'The Decline and Fall of the American Auto Industry' by Brock Yates. It was written in the early 80's but still rings true today replace 'Full sized cars' with SUVs and you see just how little they have changed. Cultural differences; where they live, how they move up the corporate ladder, etc are the main points I think.
Patrick
I don't know. One possibility is that US automakers are too emotionally involved in their product, maybe more so than the Japanese. I suspect that the Japanese are happy to make whatever sells, whether or not it puses any nostalgia or ego buttons. Another possibility is that the Japanese have always been more focused on global marketing. Most of the rest of the world can't afford the large cars that Americans could, so while the big 3 was making cars for the US wide open spaces, the Japanese were making cars for the rest of the world. Corporate cultures don't change quickly.
The success of the Japenese is in fact emotional involvement.
They are emotionally involved in perfection. If any here has driven a Toyota (of any marque over the last decade) will know.
They just dont break down and they run forever.
For the post war Japenese, there simply was no option. Either make stuff that others really want - or starve. It helped that during the EDO period, Japenese society was controlled, and craftsmenship was honoured. After the second world war they learnt quickly.
BTW: One of the most honoured architects of the Japenese Industrial renaissance was DEEMING
An American....
Two of his principles of Quality management?
DRIVE OUT FEAR IN THE WORK PLACE
DRIVE OUT SLOGANS
I think you meant W. Edwards Deming, not Deeming. I once took a week-long seminar with Deming. It was a transformative experience. Unfortunately, much of his teachings are lost on Americans.
I don't get it? If instead of using oil, we simply plug in our cars to the electric grid, what's going to happen? Especially as the grid itself seems to be already suffering with today's usage, without even considering the additional generating capacity required.
It would seem that denial comes in many forms.
The grid in America has a peak capacity of around 1,000GW. There are only problems at peak.
It is quite possible to alter pricing so that charging would largely occur off-peak.
http://www.knowledgeproblem.com/archives/001247.html
METERING AND PRICING ACTIVATE ELECTRICITY DEMAND IN CALIFORNIA - Knowledge Problem
If you use new V2G technology car batteries could actually feed power back to the grid during peak demand times, so actually helping to stabilise the grid.
http://technology.newscientist.com/article/dn13000-electric-cars-could-a...
Electric cars could act as batteries for the energy grid - tech - 04 December 2007 - New Scientist Tech
Ev's are far more efficient than Internal combustion engines so that it would only take a small proportion of the energy oil expends pushing cars, so that if all cars were EV then you would be using of the order of 75GW of power.
That position would not of course happen for many years.
It is usually a good idea to familiarise yourself with the basics of an argument rather than seeking to dismiss it out of hand.
"It is usually a good idea to familiarise yourself with the basics of an argument rather than seeking to dismiss it out of hand"
You mean so I can join you in a technical argument about how many fairies can fit on the head of a pin. No thank you. Technical detail cannot be used to decide the wisdom of doing something. Simply knowing when to stop would probably have outweighed all the advantages of technological advancement to date.
Business as usual is a bad idea, whether by using oil or electricity. What we need for the future is a new way of living, not the same old same with a technology upgrade. Technology should be a measure of last resort, an admittance of failure.
Better to simply think about getting rid of cars. If this strikes you as being crazy, then you don't understand the problem. The guy driving the Prius is in denial just as much as the guy driving the SUV.
Yeah, why the heck should you bother finding out anything at all about subjects you wish to comment on?
Even assuming you are correct in what must surely be fairly characterised as your prejudices, since you take no trouble to investigate and determine how soundly based they are, preferring to make sweeping generalisations, then you are assuming no utility at all in whatever future happens for being able to run some vehicles without petrol.
Your comments make no sense even if one excludes anything which could remotely be called BAU.
They appear to be both wilfully ill-informed and based on unverifiable and disconnected assumptions.
And then ignoring the result if it indicates anything other than BAU.
Bill Ford declared 2005 "The Year of the Car". Since then Ford has introduced the Fusion, the new Mustang and the new Taurus. To release several new models in and around the 2005 timeframe that means that planning at Ford began several years before that.
In short, I don't think it's fair to say that Ford didn't see this coming. It's just that even though they have tried, they've failed to capture much of the car market. Ford has such a poor reputation for quality that consumers would rather buy a Honda or Toyota if they are going to buy a sedan and Ford has not been able to change that mindset.
Ford is simply doing what any company would do, trying to gain market share in new markets (sedans) while milking their core market (trucks and SUVs). They've just simply failed to execute and are now in dire straights.
I would have thought that for an automaker, every year would be "the year of the car". That right there might tell you something.
Ford made some good gains in quality a decade or two ago. Remember "Quality is Job 1"? When did you last hear that? Must have gone by the wayside.
I was very deep into TQM/CQI, Demming, etc. fifteen years ago. I hear almost nothing about it now. It is not as if we got perfect and didn't need it any more. I suspect it is not a matter of being tried and found wanting, but rather of being found difficult and left untried.
exactly.
Demming was just tooo difficult for the workplace machismo of Anglo US Business Management 1986- present day.
It stopped about the time that wars with unions were 'won' by manageriement.
I suspect that the idea of eating in the same refrectory as workers, wearing overalls instead of thousand buck suits and suddenly being able to 'earn' 500 times that of a floor hand were just too much.
Next nearest to the collaborative style of Japenese Industry?
West Germany. Unions and Management collaborate. They do good motors too. So do the Swedes.
American vehicles are hog-whimpering crocks. One possible exception: The Abrahams MBT - But even that is dubious:
A war game event put 20 Abrahams up against 20 lightly armed but fast 'Mad Max vehicles' crewed by personnel with anti-tank missiles.
Mad Max 20 , Abrahams 0.
I will try and dig out the ref next week.
I suppose, patriotism and thinking 'your the best' has its place, but having observed management in large corporations up real close over 20 years, I cannot help but think that 'group thought' and managerial cloning has been a real killer.
Gone are the loners, mavericks, eccentrics and healthy cynics.
All replaced by identi-kit management types and cloned suits.
Ha Ha. In the 80's I worked for an oil service company. We were taken over by a large American Service Company Whose shall remain nameless, but its very angry boss had a very small pecker.
Day 2 , they issued a dress code. It banned facial hair (didnt state if this was sexually inclusive).
Day 3? We were all growing Full Sets. And wearing blue ties, not red.
I have no doubt that such nonsensical behaviour is still going on, or worse, promotion based on religion etc.
The Japenese will still eat your lunch though. They build stuff that works.
I recommend reading this assessment of the military equipment in the first gulf war. Here's what they had to say about the M1:
It's a great tank as long as your supply lines are intact. I'd guess that goes for most of the equipment the U.S. forces use now.
A bit of related humor:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pcePHasv5w
To better protect their crews the tanks in Iraq are getting the TUSK (Tank Urban Survival Kit) upgrade adding reactive armor panels for the side and rear of the tank. A slat armor panel protecting the engine exhaust outlet. A 1.5 ton belly armor kit as well as additional considerably adds to the weight of the tank. The added weight is going to reduce gas mileage and time between refueling. In addition this weight will put added stress on the engines and other systems, increasing maintenance needs and down time.
this is so true WNC Observer
This is what IEA just figured they have been doing for those all years and sure such high-school methods are all fine - so long the predicted growth comes online. ...
....but their predictions started to fail recently in tandem with the platau-years of 2005-2008, big time. Now they will sit for 1/2 year and browse through TOD and other forums for clues,Simmons, ELM, Megaprojects comes to mind.They will discontinue their Cera-membership, and more.
In November they will release "their" findings :-)
Welcome to the Pleasure dome.
Meanwhile, over at GM, Chevy will be reporting that sales of their pickup trucks will be dropping "like a rock".
For many years, the cost of a new vehicle was dominated by the cost of depreciation on that vehicle. That the new car buyer paid little attention to the cost of fuel was the obvious result. Over time, those new cars then were traded and re-sold down the line. For the used car buyer, the cost of fuel was always a major concern and the recent run up in gasoline prices have made the cost of fuel per mile the main concern for many buyers. Thus, the re-sale value of a gas guzzler is now much less that it might otherwise have been.
Those facts have likely been reflected in lease rates and those who would have leased a new car may suddenly find that leasing has become much more expensive. Add to that the problems in the financial markets which have resulted in much tighter lending requirements and we see the decline in sales of new gas guzzlers. I expect that this will continue. The car companies do know how to build vehicles which achieve higher real gas mileage (they do so in Europe and Asia), it's just that they won't be big SUV's and PU's, especially the 4x4 variety. The problem for the car companies is that they aren't going to earn the large profit per vehicle which they have enjoyed with the truck based vehicles.
Yesterday, I drove to the next town to pick up a book at the library. I had waited for a couple of days to combine several goals instead of making 2 trips. As I drove along the 4 lane in my 1800cc econobox at the 55 speed limit, I was passed by a shiny black Rolls Royce, the sort of vehicle that makes a Hummer look like an economy car....
E. Swanson
For many years, Detroit has claimed that consumers don't want small cars. I think they fundamentally missed the point however - consumers don't want their small cars. Anyone in the market for a fuel efficient car would be much more likely to get a Honda or a Toyota rather than a Ford or GM.
And since they have a poor reputation in that market, they are in a very hard spot. Yes, they have models in Europe that would be suitable, but they seem reluctant to bring them over here.
A fundamental difference is that a Jap car is one you can park under a tree and winch the engine up to hang it on a branch and work on it. Can't do that with a compact Detroit car.
No, American consumers don't want small cars - that is really true. Under the circumstances of very cheap fuel that have existed anyway. What about greatly overextended "consumers" with stagnant wages, unable to refinance, facing rising food and health care costs, etc.?
Is it too much to expect executive pulling major 6 and 7 figures to look out a little bit and think about what might happen in the future? (answer: yes - anything you expect from such people would be too much).
At this point many people will just not be in a position to buy cars period, but it should have been seen some time ago.
In Switzerland, the average weight of a new car bought in 1996 was 1300 kgs. (incl. 75 kgs for a driver.) For 2007, that number is 1500 kgs. It is a straight line, you can draw it with a ruler.
2007 consumption is down 2.5% (new cars, gasoline) vs. 2006, down to 7.4 liters / 100 kms.
Since 2000, average consumption has decreased by 11%, which is really not too bad. Average weight has increased 10%.
If cars had stayed at their 1996 weight, the average new 2007 car would have consumed 4.9 liters / 100 kms.
- probably quite similar in Sweden and other rich EU.
For people who really want to flaunt their bad taste and lack of environmental concern, Hummers comes in a *strech* version.
I sat in one once and it made me feel *bad* and *evil* - sort of like Darth Vader :)
Hummer Stretch
Well, you could convert it into a bus and then charge people to ride.
You *might* actually make money on the thing...
That's pretty much the whole point of a Hummer limo. They're a good deal more comfortable than a standard limo and cheaper than a party bus. At the prom at the school where my wife teaches, there were 3 hummer limos, one standard limo and a party bus. Besides, it probably gets around 8 or 9 MPG (most Hummer based limos use the original engine) which isn't that bad with 10 people in it. In fact, may be more fuel efficient than a small car with 2 people in it.
You're probably right - I never thought about it that way.
Now you've gone and spoiled all my fun about feeling evil :(
None of this will change the fact, though, that all of these stretch lemo things are hopelessly tacky, and always will be.
Our family owns and my sons operate a small car service busienss in SouthEast Florida. My wife and I are separately employed - thank goodness.
Let me tell you...
We got rid of our "standard" Lincoln 120" 8-9 passenger stretch limo two years ago because - in the parlance of the times - there was demand destruction then. We concentrate of sedans now although we have an SUV near retirement and a 14 passenger Chevy van. People who own these super stretch limos are hurting big time.
Big shakeout coming in this industry which is largely smaller operators. It's especially bad in South East Flordia due to the lack of tri-county permitting cooperation so a lot of jobs are 50+ mile dead head returns - to stay legal. We have seeb a reduction in business travel due to layoffs and budget cutbacks.
We are in better shape than most, but Holy Smokes.
Pete
These are of course a common sight in Hollywood...
Wow. I just checked SF Bay area Craig's list. A year ago when I bought my (second) Prius, there were many to choose from.
Today, there aren't any in the 200 ads I looked at.
Lots of SUVs, trucks and luxury cars with an occasional compact.
I figured people around here weren't hurting due to gas prices because there are so many big vehicles on the road; now I'm thinking all those big cars are on the road because they can't sell them.
Hah! Tell me about it.
This peak-oil aware guy procrastinated on downsizing out of my small SUV (trust me, I needed it at the time)and thought I could pick up a little tin-can car cheap.
No joy there.
So now I'm looking to buy new.
Can't rationalize the hybrid premium, got a budget. (retired)
Honda Fit, Toyota Yaris maybe.
And no, American name-plate cars do not seem competitive in this class.
I saw a report that an ebay auction for a 1991 metro sold for $19 ABOVE the original sticker this month.....
Those who don't think the Big 2.5 are changing at a previously unseen pace just aren't watching close enough. Chrysler is dying right into the hands of Nissan-Renault (who are more aggressive on electric cars than anyone else), Ford is completely re-vamping their product mix in a 3-4 year span (which is drastic considering 5 year development cycles), and GM is pushing through their entrenched corporate culture, led by old Bob Lutz, to launch an electric car in 3 years time. The only company seemingly out of the 'peak oil' loop is Chrysler, due to Cerberus running the show now. GM makes $5000 profit on an SUV, and less than $1000 on a small sedan, why do people think they were and still are pushing large vehicles? They're a business pure and simple. Can they change fast enough? I don't know, but at this point I expect Ford and GM to pull through mostly intact. Mulally isn't stupid, he brought the CF aircraft to Boeing, & GM has acknowledged "demand exceeding supply" and they'd rather keep selling low margin cars than none at all.
Oil's Perfect Storm May Blow Over
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/05/22/ccoil1...
I don't know whether others are noticing this, but there seems to be an interesting shift in perspective occurring in the peak oil debate. As the establishment appears to be grudgingly moving towards acceptance of the validity of the peak oil issue, I'm noticing that an increasingly cynical and jaded public is correspondingly regarding PO as yet another 'scam' (along with climate change) to exact higher taxes and divert attention away from unrestrained monetary expansion.
The rapidly rising oil price is considered by many to be yet another manifestation of uncontrolled market liquidity. We've had booms in stock markets and housing, and now it's commodities as liquidity constantly seeks a new home. Oil is just another parking place for leveraged speculators to make a play in an era of zero (or even negative) real interest rates, and peak oil is merely a convenient justification for the rapid price rises we are witnessing.
There's some irony isn't there in peak oil moving from anti-establishment conspiracy to establishment conspiracy? And I wonder whether TOD editors need to prepare themselves for a coming era in which the PO argument has to be defended against conspiracy claims rather than merely articulated to a public largely ignorant of the nuances involved?
It is a conspiracy, but it is a conspiracy of one, and the conspirator is Mother Nature.
It's amazing to me how so many commentators who can see through the lies of 9/11 and Iraq can't "see" Peak Oil. Alex Jones thinks PO is a scam, and energy/food shortages are preplanned to control us, and so do other influential alternative radio hosts on networks such as RBN, WTPRN, etc. Alan Watt is another one who shares this viewpoint. It certainly creates doubt in the public's mind when there is this type inconsistency
Stephen Alten's book The Shell Game, which spells out in fiction format what Mike Ruppert spelled out in Crossing the Rubicon, helped a little bit because he makes a clear connection between 9/11, Iraq, Peak Oil, and future wars.
winterland---
(and a great venue it was!)
Human beings base reality on story and myth, thinking heuristically, with critical thinking being a liability for genetic fitness in the past.
That is why 911 caught on so quickly, it has myth and story, and critical thinking gets in the way (I'm not denying complicity from a elite in the US, just this is not a surprise historically, and is being used as a tool to cripple further other needed action).
Anyway, PO just gets in the way of heuristic thinking and spoils the story line. It demands ideologues to face reality.
winterland---
(and a great venue it was!)
My second home
It's amazing to me how so many commentators who can see through the lies of 9/11 and Iraq can't "see" Peak Oil. Alex Jones thinks PO is a scam, and energy/food shortages are preplanned to control us
History is full of governments and corporations jacking around 'the common man'. History also has some of the people in power noting that food and energy can be used for control.
Alex and others are looking at the data via their informed biases.
The only way to shut down the Alex's of the world would be a true open accounting/record/data system. Same with the people who whine about 'conspiracy theories'. The 'patriot radio' crowd has some people who support things like the 'read the bills' movement - a step in the open direction. Toss in a 'keep psycopaths out of leadership' movement - as long as I am a-wishing!
Want to drive back the moldering rot? Sunlight.
(Tar also does a fine job of killing mold - feathers are just a nice accessory BTW.)
It's amazing to me how so many commentators who can see through the lies of 9/11 and Iraq can't "see" Peak Oil.
Yes that has surprised me as well. But if you think about it, these ‘conspiracists’ are simply deeply and inalterably Anti-Government. I should say, anti-US Gvmt. All I can think of are violently anti-Big-Pharma and ‘standard medecine’ (to some degree, and until they need it, of course.) I guess most of them believe that the MMR vaccine causes autism. A belief in UFOs and a Gvmt cover up there is also very common. They tend to reject bits and pieces of standard Science, when it is ‘standard’ and promulgated by instituted bodies (Defense Dpt, AMA, etc.) This serves them well for 9/11 and Iraq, and badly for chemtrails and abiotic oil (surprisingly many sophisticated conspiracists believe in it.)
On the whole, Nature is not a force they pay much attention to; their forces are human (Bilderbergers, Bush cabal, human created diseases, etc.) or outside the scope of conventional science (alien, occult, astral, mysterious, etc.)
Although the isolationist Right (of which I think Alex Jones and the Patriot movement are a part) has been far more courageous and energetic in denouncing the major abuses of the Bush administration than the Left, these guys labor under a fundamental delusion that they can hardly articulate. They worship private property, but they can't accept that every competitive private property system is a game of Monopoly that is always won by the same kinds of scumbags across space and time: feudal landlords, plantation owners, robber barons, and today's corporate elite. When that happens, the "yeoman farmer" types start looking for a scapegoat outside the property system.
Recall the situation of the ordinary German in 1930; he'd been brought up under the Kaiser to believe that his version of conservative, class-based society would protect him as long as he remained culturally conservative and hard-working. He wanted to believe in private property, but not its capitalist outcome. Hitler came along with a story of a cosmic struggle between patriotic businessmen (Krupp, Farben, smokestack/weapons industry) and "bad" businessmen (bankers, foreign owners, media, boutique owners, Jews, Jews, Jews). The Nazis' myths about World War I supercharged this story.
What's amazing is that this story was sold in Japan without any Jews to blame, that it was sold by Reagan's movement without 30% unemployment, that it sounds a lot like every extreme conservative movement that's ever won an election. What makes the new American version distinctive is that instead of saying the "good" capitalist society has patriotic capitalists at its apex, we've reverted to a decentralized fantasy where good yeoman farmers are the entire power structure; differences in wealth are assumed trivial compared to shared race and outlook. It's Iron Age tribalism with a patriarchy of heads of households imposing the ultimate in small-town bigotry. Margaret Atwood nailed it in "The Handmaiden's Tale".
Which ironically could make this a powerful ideology in a post-collapse world.
Thanks. Good analysis.
Spot on! The True Blue Libertarian (little or Big L) cannot accept that their's is a utopian fantasy. Trouble is, the fantasy plays right into the hands of those like the fascist neocons.
For the libertarian private property idea to stick means there are gonna have to be laws. And enforcement of the laws.
Next time you interact with the LPers - ask where their efforts are NOW to watch the courts and make sure they are clean.
The fictional Lost Utopia is an essential part of fascist ideology. The worse things get, the more people wish for their imaginary Shangra-la where everything was fine until the dirty foreigners (Jews, Mexicans, Arabs) showed up.
Historically speaking, manorial systems come and go. They are not at all inevitable. Yeoman farmers have gained (and lost, and gained, and lost...) the upper hand over nobles on many occasions.
When the Barons squeezed King John at Runneymede, it was because they made a tactical alliance with the peasantry, for example.
The question is, does the concentration of wealth ever cease its long-term trend without some kind of revolution or external intervention?
Recall the democratic revolution of Athens happened after extreme concentration of wealth in the agricultural economy. Aristotle's "The Politics" talks about many revolutions in Greek city-states where peace was restored, for a while, by forced redistribution of wealth via reorganization of clans; literally poor families and rich families were broken up and remixed. I assume this is because in ancient societies the legal owner of property was the family, not the individual.
It alarms me because, we must recall, the normal economic state outside the industrialized world is peonage, what we call serfdom or sharecropping. The similarities between 1900 Mississippi and 1900 China and 1980 El Salvador are so large and appalling that I have to call mankind a dead end if we don't have the energy resources to industrialize again. People deserve better than this, and I'd rather launch a thousand revolutions than accept it as our fate.
Sometimes it doesn't even take a revolution. The Jews in the Mishnaic era lived quite stably without a manorial system.
There is good reason to be anti Big Pharma, and it has everything to do with the abuse of statistics and conventional science/medicine for profit. Don't write that off as some nutty conspiracy theory.
Oh I don't. Not at all. And know *exactly* how some scams are done.
Again there is chaff and wheat. Complaining, contesting, denouncing, vilifying, ..all are good.
this thread is old so I will stop now.
To 'get' the situation we are in and asses the 'solutions' requires some knowledge of biology, thermodynamics, history, geology, chemistry, physics and geography. It then requires some critical thinking to put all the bits together. Don't dismiss peoples ability to dismiss reality and try to fit the world around their preconceptions.
When a bunch of religious fundamentalists where willing to give up their lives for their believes the immediate reaction wasn't to reassess what it is we believe, it was to cling even more tightly to our version of reality. The same way that the economic problems will be blamed on the current administrations (am thinking UK&US) and a different bunch of clueless self serving politicians will tell us lies until the whole system goes round and round like some spooky fairground ride.
"There's one guy holding up both puppets"
People like Alex Jones are nutcases who are either fully given to the paranoid mindset or seeking to profit from others' paranoia. That same paranoid mindset is far more inclined to view Peak Oil as an oil producer conspiracy than as a natural event.
it seems that some people on this board think 9/11 never happened. This gets wierder.
One person in my clan-in-law was murdered in the attack.
People like Alex Jones are nutcases
Hrmmmm, is that your clinical evaluation?
seeking to profit from others' paranoia
Now now - you keep talking like that and the 'this place runs down capitalists' crowd will drop on your head like a sack of hammers.
That same paranoid mindset is far more inclined to view Peak Oil as an oil producer conspiracy than as a natural event.
And again - if there was a culture of open records/data and keeping the psychopaths outta power - than there would be no demonstrated history of corporations screwing over consumers.
Go to screwloosechange.blogspot.com. They've been tracking his rantings. The guy is a nut.
Agreed, the conspiracy theory of state power controlling oil output is easier to accept than the scientific evidence that supports peak oil. The first is easy to fix, the second is perhaps not fixable.
First of all, 9/11 truthers' evidence is circumstantial at best, I don't believe in it because it is too complicated to pull off. Secondly, PO is based on scientific data and touted by some of the best scientific minds out there. In addition, Alex Jones is out to make money off of scaring people with his crank ideas like abiotic oil and the sun's output causing global warming, both of which have been discounted by mainstream scientists the world over. Don't try to compare peak oil science with the junk that men like Alex Jones put out. I for one am glad that he doesn't believe in Peak Oil since I believe that it gives more credence to our case. There's no profit in a sitution that will destroy the monetary system of the world, but there is a profit potential in frightening people with hocus pocus and getting them to believe in the new world order.
I think there is a broad spectrum of belief->disbelief about what happened on 9/11. You mention that the non-believers are relying on circumstantial evidence, and this is probably true for the most part. The problem is that in the way the investigation was (not) carried out, all we are left with is circumstantial evidence. By far the largest mass-murder in our history was not investigated with the same vigor as a typical crime scene in your own neighborhood with regard to witness testimony, evidence collection, etc., and we'll never get that chance again.
I simply do not believe we have been told everything - I'm not making up crazy conspiracy theories about who was really responsible but I find it shocking that people are accepting what we've been told when there are plenty of contradictions and conflicts of interest.
I can't accept the near-total lack of video footage at the Pentagon, the miraculously-intact hijacker passport at ground zero and the bizarre video footage of WTC-7s unprecedented collapse without wishing that a proper investigation had been carried out.
Wouldn't this be the campaign of genocide waged by our government & military against the Native Americans?
Well, OK. I should have replaced "the" with "this century's" and added a "so far" in there for good measure.
I share your perception. I think this has been in preparation since a few years. The main reason for this IMO is the concealment of the truth. It is a side-effect of the fact that everybody wants growth which needs consumers to be in either an "anxiety to be relieved"-mode or in a "happy consumer"-mode. Both require said consumer to be confident for the future. Saying "conspiracy" means the problems are anybody others fault and can thus be resolved.
In France the strike among fishermen is worsening despite some money spraying by our government. The strike spreads slowly towards farmers and truckers but also across the borders towards Belgium, Spain and Portugal (I will provide some links later below). The main trigger was the price of diesel. One of the fishermen interviewed by a radio station said that he expected the french minister of economy "to summon the oil industry to a meeting together with refiners and distributors because of a collusion with the speculators which unduly props the prices up" (approximate translation, but this was exactly what he meant to say). Regularily the consumers here wave the sky rocketing profits by Total to say how bad those industries are and how artificial this situation is.
If the price increase continues, the lack of preparation among the general population will make the PO theory the worse and those who propagate it will certainly not be very welcome.
I think Matt Savinar has already anticipated such a thing.
.....And Berlusconi has just nominated a Minister (sec. of state) of .. Garbage.
The only thing to notice there is that it took them so darned long to do that.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22541976/
What do you expect - most people are at least savvy enough to know that the institutions of authority are totally corrupt. You cannot lie to people constantly and then expect trust. On a national level our culture consists of screwing each other over ("Greed is Good"), so naturally they assume that's what is happening. And it is - just because oil supplies are getting tight does not mean that those in a position of power are not reaping great benefits from it. When evaluating how people will react, consider how they have been trained.
It's not hard at all to believe that some "peak oil scam" profiteering is happening. Just because peak oil is real doesn't mean you couldn't make money by publicizing the idea to affect the psychology of the oil futures market to drive up prices and profit from an appropriate position! It is hard not to believe that at least some of this isn't occurring with the recent research promoted by Goldman Sachs predicting $200/bl. If you could make money by saying something, you'd say it, even if it happened to be true!
The thing is that, assuming the peak is near, oil is way too cheap. Anyone who points this out is doing a public service. If (and I don't believe this is really true) you could talk prices up, that too would be a public service. If, in addition, you invested based on what you've been telling people, I would call that "putting your money where your mouth is." All-in-all, I consider the behavior laudable.
What would not be laudable would be to (a) know oil prices were going up, (b) invest based on that knowledge, and then (c) keep the knowledge to yourself.
Just to bear out my point, here's a thread that was started on a popular UK housing forum three hours after I posted my original comment above:
60% Of Oil Price Down To Speculation
Here's what the OP has to say:
Oceans turning acidic
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/05/22/scioce...
Thanks for that one Davemart.
I have been following this for a while now.
This threatens the very foundations of life on this planet but I wouldn't worry about it as it is probably just a conspirecy like AGW.
Disclaimer - The last part of this comment was typed just as the cynicanol was entering my blood stream.
This is why all the schemes for geoengingeering like pumping SO2 into the atmosphere are really bad ideas. The CO2 is the problem. We have to reduce it, or the carrying capacity of the earth (for current life forms) will be dramatically reduced.
Arctic wind to ammonia production seems to be the only sensible geoengineering plan around. Set up lots of wind turbines, make ammonia which is itself a clean fuel, and it is stored cryogenically so you have the means to make ice at the same time.
Have you entertained using the stranded wind to process bio-mass and get dimethyl ether?
http://www.google.com/search?q=dimethyl+ether+diesel
I'm so glad I don't have kids. I've only got the next two or three decades to worry about. I don't know how those of you that do have kids and grandkids can bear the thought of what we know they will be facing.
For those that survive I think life will hold as much pleasure as it always has. Perhaps more than I get out of this insane world we have made for ourselves. Having a child motivates me to increase her and my own chances of survival. I don't know why you would bother without one.
I was trying to say something appropriate but could not really figure it out. You said it just right. I love my kids and see no sense in life just living for myself. I guess they grow on you.
"... they grow on you"
They sure do.
Kids that were raised on the Internet seem to have a much better ability to form groups and share things than my generation.
My older son has lived in the Caribean and travelled in the US and Europe. Now, he is going to Japan to work on an organic farm. I suggested that he visit Thailand and Australia while he's over there and learn a bit of Mandarin as well.
We need more *world* citizens if we are going to survive as a species.
I'm not a "survivalist", just trying to figure out how to cope through whatever time I've got left.
Doc: If you wouldn't bother without your kid, my advice would be to get a few more-this one won't necessarily be around forever to take care of you.
I don't expect to be around for too long. My stored meds are going to expire at some stage. Perhaps getting into herbal medicine is the best post peak plan around. People will even trade you their food for that.
NPR ran an incredible story yesterday about the cultural impact of China being a nation full of only children. It was really an eye opener about the social costs of actually doing something about population control at a dedicated national level.
It's interesting that Italy has this "inverted pyramid" of population distribution problem without even having tried.
I can't stand NPR. They're almost as bad as Fox. Question for NPR: What will be the 'cultural impact' and 'social costs' of population overshoot?
As usual, they are propagating bullsh*t. By proclaiming the horrors of China's population policies, NPR manages to frame population control as backwards. As if the short-term costs associated with limiting population growth are greater than the benefits of not going into overshoot. In this day and age, communicating this message is irresponsible and despicable.
If they haven't already, NPR should interview Albert Bartlett:
when the policy was introduced the Chinese population was starting to stabalise naturally. The communists jumped the gun and caused all the problems, ie a scewed sex ratio and a population lopsised with older people.
This is perhaps the dumbest train of thought you have ever submitted here, and that is saying something.
Why. The Chinese government fixed something which was starting to fix itself. China was entering what is called demographic transition. Also in Chinese history scewed sex ratios have caused big trouble. Some centuries ago an imbalance in one province caused a massive rebellion. The Chinese might be in for something similer.
You might want to bother to actually read or listen to the story before you criticize it so vocally. It makes you sound bitter :-) I never heard the part where they "proclaimed the horrors of China's population policies". Maybe this was it..
Or this...
Or maybe it was this conclusion...
FreeFallin,
You're correct, I hadn't seen this latest story. But all earlier coverage bemoaned the negatives of the one-birth policy. And I have yet to see (doesn't mean it doesn't exist), a single instance of NPR mentioning the tremendous achievements of the one-child policy - namely, preventing 300 Million births. ;)
China Demographic Crisis: Too Many Boys, Elderly (& apparently not enough sweat shop workers)
Gamers Find Gaps in China's Anti-Addiction Efforts
A 'Village' for Chinese Orphans
NPR is definitely not "Democracy Now!" but it is also far from being Fox News. I think the fact is that you and I both have views that fall far outside of the main stream. Expecting a MSM outlet like NPR to deliver anything too far outside of the realm of American comfort is expecting too much. Al Bartlett argues that exponential growth is unsustainable. Derrick Jensen argues that anything more advanced than stone-age technology is unsustainable. I lean towards Jensen's point of view but I don't expect to hear that Amy Goodman has decided quit broadcasting so she could move to the forest and live in a cabin like Ted Kacynski.
My children will live in a world that is very different from that of my parents. They will face hard times and much uncertainty, but life and the future is unpredictable. I believe that there will be love and joy too, at least the possibility of it. I don't know if we would have had children knowing what we do now, but they are here and loved, and even if there are too many people in the world I believe that those who can contribute in a worthwhile way will be needed. Our job is to try to give them skills appropriate for the world they will inhabit - no easy task, as my crystal ball is unreliable.
I believe that we are experiencing the collapse of the western industrial society, and that this process will take generations to unfold. There should be time for a worthwhile life in there somewhere. It's not for me to judge what is worthwhile.
We adopted late in life, but are trying to raise ours with an awareness their impact on the world, teaching them how to grow food, work with their hands, etc.
As Dr. Moody says above - there will still be opportunities for pleasure in life. Indeed, in some ways I believe the post peak world will be better from the life enjoyment perspective. The growth-worship that has dominated the last two centuries has stunted our life joy but putting a valuation only on one aspect of life - the material. Perhaps, as the material is deemphasized, other aspects of life will become important to us again.
I have three adult children and one grandchild and wish I had more. When the going gets tough the thing to do is invest energy in reproduction. This strategy is a tried & true adaptation. Plants that are stressed often flower; they're going to die anyway so why not make one last ditch effort to pass on their genes? People do the same thing: there are always baby booms that follow wars or natural disasters. There's nothing to worry about besides one's own personal non-entity, which is inevitable anyway. Our children & grandchildren can fend for themselves after we're gone, just as our parents left us to do. The future is always dangerous, Peak Oil or no. It's exciting also. Launching children & grandchildren into it is the only really meaningful thing we can do. It's what our phenotype is designed to do. Relative reproductive success is the only currency selection trades in. Spawn on! my fellow apes.
Frankly, I think that planet earth, and the human species, can carry on just fine without the continuation of my - or any other individual person's - strands of DNA. It is populations that survive and evolve or go extinct, not individuals. Right now, the human population is blowing its long term chances big time, and that is bad news for all of those strands of DNA.
Of course they can. The thing is tho, that each of us has an unbroken string of ancestors going back 4 bys, not a single one of which failed to pass on it's DNA. You are going to break that string by failing to reproduce. It doesn't matter to the planet or the biosphere or the species one bit. So if it doesn't matter to you personally, it doesn't matter period.
We call the extinction of the individual "death," and the death of the population or species "extinction." That's correct..
I tend to agree, but it's not something that's my place to worry about or regret. All species eventually go extinct just as all individuals die. When I die the universe ceases to exist, so far as I'm concerned. Wasting time worrying about what happens to the species after one is dead is crazy. Perhaps not quite so crazy to worry about what happens to one's offspring after one is dead, but still a waste of time. Whatever's gonna happen will happen.
"When I die the universe ceases to exist, so far as I'm concerned. "
As far as I'm concerned, I am immortal. Or perhaps "eternal" is a better word.
What I mean is, I can't remember a single time when I wasn't around.
:-)
Death is simply returning to where you were before you born.
How can that happen if your mother is already dead, or even if she's still living?
In my view, my material existence will continue for ever if in an atomized fashion. What puzzles me is what happens to my energy, as it cannot just disappear--become a zero.
It increases the entropy of the universe?
"What puzzles me is what happens to my energy, as it cannot just disappear--become a zero."
Of course it just doesn't disappear - it becomes food for the worms, and of course, eventually heat. Entropy.
Or, if you're cremated, is oxidized into various new chemicals, and leftover ashes.
Unless by "energy" you mean "consciousness", in which case who the f*** knows! Not me!
sgage and others--Isn't the unconscious energized also? Isn't Mind considered the energetic driver of the material Body? Does our energy "leak" away to ground like a battery. Can our Mind energy be increased as believed and practiced by Oriental Mystics? Clearly there is "life" after death as the Body's constituents live on, but what of the Mind?
Metaphysics can be fun as long as they're not fought over.
Your quote: "Metaphysics can be fun as long as they're not fought over."
Yep, the loser of the battle then wins the 1st place opportunity to find the post-death true answer to the Metaphysical Question.
Please don't confuse me with someone who claims to have an answer. :-)
And I still don't know what you mean by "energy".
Google Prana or Chi
"For growing old is only going back to where you're from"
Wonder if anyone will get the reference. Doubt it :-)
You state this with quite some certainty. And yet, it seems to me that to have come to this conclusion would require you to have also come to a conclusion about what the "I" is. Does none of you live on in your children? In those you have lived with and loved? Or is the I truly just your physical existence? And at that, your physical existence in a particular configuration (e.g., alive)?
The "I" is the neural module that happens to be appropriating the most blood flow at any given moment. Hence, there are many "I"s. There's the "I" that comes up when "I'm" horny vs the one that takes over when "I'm" sleepy, hungry, scared, angry... Once the integrity of the central nervous system (CNS) that processes all these I's becomes severely compromised, they cease to exist. All they consist of, after all, is patterns of neurons firing. None of these various I's live on in my offspring, altho the kids have inherited genetic & epigenetic programming that leads to the development of CNSs that process I's similar to the ones that comprise the aggregate me. These f1 I's, in turn, cease to exist when the CNSs that process them become compromised by death or severe pathology. There may be more to it all than this, i.e., some metaphysical component - but for the rational I to believe that it would require evidence.
Interesting. It would seem (and feel free to correct me, because this is, after all, your belief) that you see the central nervous system as some sort of lense or collection point at/through which the "I" is expressed.
The expression of this "I" (or as you suggest, multiple "I"s)is, according to your examples, the function, result or possibly just the expression of some or other emotive state (horny, sleepy, etc.) Is it too much to assume that these states are some how related to perception? Or do these emotive states arise spontaneously?
Nonetheless. This does lead me to wonder several things; does the "I" as it moves from emotive state to emotive state have some sort of continuity? If so (and that would seem necessary to the longer term perception of the self), then how are these single events integrated into the self perception? Does that suggest that there is some hyper-self that narrates these various pieces into a whole. If not, how (in your view of course) is the sense of continuity of self to be explained?
I'm not certain at all if there is "more to it all than this." I do know that I experience the self differently than you do. (But that's neither here nor there.) What is clear to me, though, is that your explanation, while descriptive, is based on not evidence based. Indeed, I have to wonder where this "rational I" comes from that is suddenly manifested in your last sentence.
As for the metaphysical potentials of the "I" - I'm not sure that I wouldn't include emotive states in that category. But depending on how you intended to use the word, one would almost have to delve into metaphysics, unless you know of some way to measure, test, or otherwise asses the "I." On the other hand, we all experience the "I" on a regular basis, and that would seem to make it rather a mundane experiential component of life, rather than anything beyond that.
What does this have to do with peak-oil? I think we may all be unaware or forgetful of just how much the perception of self is mediated by our social setting (think identification with one's automobile as expressive of our personality). And to the extent that the social setting is going to go through conniptions (to borrow a word from another generation) we can also expect the sense of self to change - and that may make it much more likely that our children and grand children take it all in stride when we perceive catastrophe. Or not.
No. The "I" is merely the subjective feeling generated by the electrochemical activity of the CNS. It is a nominal or conceptual, rather than a phenomenal or real "thing." The "I" doesn't exist in any sense decoupled from the physiology of the CNS. It's superstitious & silly to think of the "I" as being somehow focused or channeled thru the CNS, as if it could somehow exist independently from the brain's functioning.
Usually neural components that process cognition & emotion are stimulated by perception, but they can be stimulated by memory or association, or during dreaming, too.
In most individuals there seems to be some integrative function that generates a feeling of continuity. This function apparently breaks down in the Multiple Personality Disordered. Rather than consider this function as being a "hyper-self," I see it as being more of a "housekeeping" subroutine of normal neural functioning. Understanding of the specifics has likely progressed since I studied Biological Psychology.
The evidence comes from the literature of cognitive neuropsychology, neurophysiology, brain imaging tech., etc.
How the brain works is pertinent to everything. The thread began with a poster expressing fear for our childrens' & grandchildrens' future. It proceeded thru discussion of death & extinction to what "happens" to the sense of self after death (& before the ontogeny of the CNS). As many expect a massive reduction of human population as a consequence of Peak Oil, in my opinion this topic is appropriate to this venue. Others may disagree.
Aww jeez,
I came to the oil drum to get away from the endless debates I had in cognitive science, evolutionary psychology, and theory of mind in university and here they come popping up again... :(
For the record I am a confirmed monist ('materialist' just doesn't sound right to me), to put it simply, I recognize my behaviour as the jostling about of atoms bounded by my genetic inheritance.
I dabbled in spiritualism at one time, coincidentally at the same time that my roommate was tending to some mysterious plants that cropped up in our basement. I read every book by Carlos Castaneda et al, and I have a soft spot for spiritualism and pantheism, but I can't reconcile those beliefs with the reality I'm presented with sans psychotropics.
ANYways, I'm in no mood to continue down THAT garden path, just wanted to throw my support in with the monist camp.
darwin's dog - thanks for the clarifications.
Ok, that helps me understand your viewpoint. Did you consider, though, that you have created a bit of an endless loop. If the "I" is merely a subjective feeling, who is the subject?
I have no problems with that. In fact, I would include memory and dreaming as perception, perhaps not of the physical, but of the cognitive.
Perhaps it was a Freudian slip, or just a manner of speaking, but if evidence comes from literature, you do recognize that evidence for the standard christian "soul" is also in the literature, right? Just a different literature. But if what you really meant was that it was in the science, I guess I'll just have to trust that you're wider read than I am. I certainly have not ever seen anything more than conjecture about the identity of the self in anything I've read aimed at a "layman" audience from scientists in those fields. Indeed, mostly what I've read is some rather imaginative leaps from the chemical-electrical background to what most would consider metaphysics. Perhaps you could recommend some reading?
WOW, either that was a major misreading of what I wrote (in which case I am certainly partly responsible) or you are attempting to be coy.
Spawn on! my fellow apes.
This is why I wish there were a way to universally sterilize the population. Its the only way to prevent sentient beings from being born into this disaster without their consent.
So you would exchange forcing sentient beings into this word without their consent with disallowing their entry into this world without their consent? I fail to see how the latter imposition of will onto others is in any way the superior option.
Agreed. There's a large portion of this planet's population that believes in reincarnation. (I'm one of those believers too.) Understood in a compassionate light, the concept of karma implies that everyone CHOOSES to be incarnated. That includes your parent's, life conditions, body, and time. In that light, we all chose to live in these "interesting times". There's lots of creative options out there for all of us. We get to CHOOSE how to respond to PO, both individually and collectively as communities, nations, as one species on one finite planet. For better or for worse we get to influence how this all plays out. In a way it can be seen as an exciting adventure or terrible horror show. We get to choose our perspective.
So the infant born with severe developmental disabilities chose those handicaps? Sounds like the ultimate "blame the victim" rap to me.
I happen to have a daughter with severe developmental disabilities. She's the greatest teacher about life I have ever known. The lessons often aren't easy but what is truly of value in life is not affected by her disabilities or by being "different". She's not being "punished" by the disabilities, nor am I (although at times it feels it ;-)) Similarly, we are not being "punished" as a society by Peak Oil or global warming. Life is an intricate school house customized for teaching us the lesson we NEED not the lesson we thought we signed up for. I think us humans need to get off our collective arses and learn to really work together for as Benjamin Franklin said "We had better hang together for if we don't we certainly will all be hung separately." Survivalists looking out for themselves won't get us through the big SHTF crisis.
Fookin ell,
we are getting all maudlin and philosophical tonight are we not?
A young , male engineer is walking along a country lane (yes, must be lost) and he passes a wall and on the wall sits a little green frog wearing a tiara.
The frog pipes up: ' I am not a frog, I am actually a princess. Pick me up and kiss me and I will kiss you'.
The young engineer smiles and puts the frog in his shirt pocket.
He forgets about the frog for a while then , remembering the frog, he takes it out again.
The frog princess exclaims , 'look , I am a Frog Princess. Kiss me and I will turn into a real Princess and we can make mad passionate love!'.
The young engineer smiles and puts the frog in his shirt pocket.
A day or so later, the young engineer takes the frog out of his shirt pocket.
The Frog Princess says: 'LOOK I really am a PRINCESS. Kiss me and I will do anything for you. Anything. I will be your Girlfriend. Forever. My dad is a king and you can have half his kingdom. I will be your Girlfriend - forever'.
The young engineer says.
I am too busy on my computers for a girlfriend, but a TALKING FROG !
...Thats really cool!'.
thank you whew
Well, beyond telling my 3 year old (who's too young to understand) that his parents' and grandparents' generations have screwed his generation royally (because we could, as best as I can tell), I think the best thing I can do at this point is to get my son trained in areas the he will need by the time he's 20, including:
-survival/wilderness skills
-agriculture skills (grow your own...food!)
-perhaps come fundamental construction skills, in case he needs to build a teepee or small hut for shelter.
Honestly, I'm talking stuff that's at the core of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. He may not need it, but better to have those skills just in case.
Absolutely. We are going on a few week long survival courses. Kids love it, as do I. Far better than going to some rip off ride park where you walk away feeling like you IQ just dropped 10% and your wallet whimpering in its pocket.
May I suggest trapping. Good EROEI. I've been trapping these dam Indian minor birds that have invaded my country. Haven't been game (pun intended) enough to eat one yet.
Aren't some of the happiest people in the world the poorest too?
Apparently, income and happiness are not related. The countries with the happiest people are Sweden (rich) and Nigeria (poor).
What about Nigerians living in Sweden and Swedes living in Nigeria?
...and both have very strong family structures.
Do we? Family structures has been a lot stronger and the percentage of single housholds in towns and cities is large but perhaps it is even larger in other countries? On the other hand we might have a large percentage of people living togeather due to liking each other and not from economical necessity or peer preassure.
I know to little about other countries to know if we in Sweden have social skills to brag about. I mostly know about things that could be improved. :-/
As expected, we see the typical response to this question, which in my experience normally focuses around the pronoun "I". I think the question this poster was asking was not what makes you feel good/needed/loved now, but what life the children will have after you are gone and how does thinking about that and envisioning it in a realistic way make you feel.
Wait until they start getting uranium out of the ocean.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/38223.html
Does anyone know the estimated size of offshore oil reserves in Florida? I can't seem to find any figures for that. I'm curious to know how it compares with other offshore reserves, eg Atlantic/Pacific coasts.
Going from memory here, so please, correct me if I'm wrong. From what I recall, the oil reserves in offshore Florida were considered to be insignificant, it was the NG that was thought to be more develop-able (is that a word?)
Well, the cheapest gas I could find this morning (Mendocino Co.) was $4.05. Across the street at Chevron, diesel was $5.05.
Last night my cheap station in Seaside, CA was selling regular for 4.099--the first time they've gone over four bucks. Gearing up to put on the Memorial Day weekend squeeze...
Up another 4 cents tonight.
Interesting front page article on planet Yergin - looks like they are moving to planet Earth!!
http://www.cera.com/aspx/cda/public1/news/pressReleases/pressReleaseDeta...
One would think that someone in the MSM would sooner or later start asking CERA and Yergin some hard questions about their track record regarding oil price predictions. Speaking hypothetically, what if a MSM reporter had started asking Yergin and CERA some hard questions? I wonder how Yergin and CERA would respond?
"No one could possibly have [known | foreseen] that _________________."
Or if you are a bit smarter, in advance you say "I cannot foresee the circumstances where /I would stand against/ I would stand for the leadership of/we would invade/they/it...
It just gets easier with practise:-)
My guess is that you'll be disappointed, and that the MSM aren't going to save us. For example, I'm trying to think of anyone ever asking Bush hard questions about his controversial decisions, or his track record. Certainly people probe him politely, but a lot of his blatant falsehoods have gone unchallenged. I guess it's not profitable.
Read any quote by a money manager and it always starts as : Joe Blow, who helps manage 14 billion dollars at XYZ, says:blah, blah,blah. There is never any evidence of a successful track record presented-the implication/BS presented is that the sheer size of the funds under management means the guy must know something, which is actually not correct.
My point is that Yergin is the rule, not the exception-because of his hustling Yergin is the world's premier energy analyst, so he must know something.
Absolutely. This is getting off topic, but a good example of the lack of a examination of a track record is severance packages for executives that basically run their companies into the ground. The classic case of this is HP: Carli Fiorina received $21 million when she was shown the door in 2005 for missing her profit estimates by 23% and spying on the board. She completed transforming what was once a premier engineering firm in the U.S. into just another company selling rebranded TVs made in Taiwan. From what I understand there was dancing in the cubicles at HP when she left and the stock rose 11%. Has her track record hurt her at all? No. Last month her name was floated as a possible candidate for VP candidate to run with McCain.
Yep, they were interviewing an oil industry "expert" last night on Marketplace (American Public Media) and guess who it was (drumroll)? Dan Yergin!
Well... If Yergin became a Peakist, That would REALLY mean we're in deep...
In reality, they are admitting that it is getting harder to find oil, and it requires more expensive equipment to get at it. Hence, the easy oil isn't around so much... Hence, Peak Oil.
Well, there is that too. Maybe they should have stopped watching so many of The Beverly Hillbillies re-runs and actually went out into the oil fields. They would have soon discovered that you can no longer just shoot a gun into the ground and have oil come bubbling out. It actually has taken some difficult, expensive effort for some time - and has been getting more so. This isn't something that has just changed.
So, they're saying bullets are cheaper than rigs? :)
If I was Yergin:
1. I would secretly go bigtime on shorting CERA stock [plus others].
2. Alert the MSM & papparazzi that I will be making an important announcement.
3. Then go to Home Depot to be followed and subsequently filmed by a huge crush of photographers and cameramen: loading up a wheelbarrow full of NPK and seeds, while wearing farming coveralls.
4. Watch DOW plummet 5,000 points a short time later!
5. Profit immensely while laughing all the way!
This article is about growing infrastructure costs. Excerpt:
It doesn't talk about oil prices per se, or about other drivers of costs.
Yes agreed, but it's another example of the "law of receding horizons"
Marco.
This is a terrible time to be moving to planet Earth. The neighborhood is going to hell, with all these boarded-up houses and abandoned SUVs and pesky food rioters.
Did we have another Daniel Yergin day?
Here is video from August last year predicting $65 oil for this year.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7KPWF6Tvkc
Huge Hidden Biomass Deep Beneath the Oceans
http://environment.newscientist.com/article/dn13960-huge-hidden-biomass-...
Does this mean that there are possibly other reserves of hydrocarbon in places where we have not previously looked?
Presumably the biomass decays, and could become trapped in suitable formations.
I'd bet they're Archaeans not Bacteria.
It really depends on if you prefer the 2 or 3 domain system. The author of the original article (R. John Parkes) refers to them as Bacteria in his earlier papers (ca. 1994) and as prokaryotes in his later work.
"Prokaryote" is a term descriptive of cellular organization. It does NOT refer to a clade, and is not a systematic or taxonomic descriptor. Since the Eukarya is reticulate I don't really care if it's considered a third domain or not. The fact remains that the node separating the Archaea from the Bacteria is the deepest node on the Terran phylogram.
Try saying that ten times fast.
My reaction exactly!
But it fits pwerfectly to the tune of "I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General"
Sorry, couldn't resist injecting a little humor.
I'm finding myself in a bit of a funk this week.
See, it's one thing to hear and understand at a theoretical level the predictions of peak oil from grandfatherly geologists, but it's quite another to see those predictions come true, because the predictions of the post peak world (i.e. the rest of my life) are not about dates and flows, they are about discomfort and and a retreat from an unsustainable way of life.
I'm skipping this years anime convention partly because I'm getting too damn old for that sort of thing, and partly the aching I feel in my heart when I look at the crowds of teens and think of the future we've left them.
Funny, I was at the big anime convention at a hotel in downtown Houston in January 2005, after I had begun reading Peak Oil stuff online religiously, and I was thinking the same thing about the kids there. Except in my case with perhaps a bit too much relish.
Haven't gone to any conventions since then.
You can't have an ongoing accumulation of hydrocarbons unless you have a source for the materials and energy. On the surface it's air, water, and sunshine. Deep under the ocean bottom those bacteria can only utilize the meager supplies of energy available via previously deposited materials, or those slowly seeping up from below (combining them chemically with those slowly seeping up from above). Thus they're not storing up goodies for us.
Not to mention beyond the source of hydrocarbons, you need a reservoir and a cap rock. Oceanic crust is fractured basalt and ophiolite complexes. Fractured crystalline rocks have minimal porosity, hence there is no significant storage capacity for a potential reservoir, and there's no cap rock to hold the hydrocarbons in place. Remember: oil reservoir formation is not "normal" behavior. Most organic matter degrades before it accumulates, and most of what does accumulate degrades at depth but then isn't trapped.
In yesterday's Drumbeat, karlof1 wrote:
And, voila, 9 Airlines Face Threat of a Credit Downgrade.
One thing Baggaley misses is the "severe financial damage" from fewer people being able to afford to fly for economic reasons not directly related to the cost of airline tickets.
The lack of money, and any reason, to buy new airplanes - and new cars - when there is little money, plenty of cheap used ones to be had, and declining demand for their use, is why I think that new-tech vehicles will not play any significant role in what's coming in the short-medium term. We'll use the planes we got (sparingly) and the cars we got (sparingly), and the existing minivans will turn into jitneys. If we're lucky, we'll keep manufacturing bicycles.
BTW, although the basic concept of a bicycle has remained the same for more than a century, I've noticed significant improvements in details even in the last 20 years. Some of the more important ones: aluminum frames, direct-pull brakes, shock absorbers, 7- and 8-speed in-hub gears. And then there's the quantum leap to electrically assisted bicycles. Several times more e-bikes were made in China last year than cars.
So high prices are hurting. Well if you are in the US the road to salvation is near.
Read this and the rest you can find closer than you think.
http://www.kiwiev.com/index.htm
Get cracking :-)
Enjoy
I think there will be a lot of EV conversions of compacts and subcompacts, but it will take a while. Not a DIY project for your average motorist. Amateur mechanics with a fair amount of experience and skill can probably do it, but there are not that many of those. Could be a good employment opportunity for some people.
Yes, I'm hoping EV conversion experience will be an employment opportunity in the future
http://www.evalbum.com/752
http://www.evalbum.com/1640
bought the first one, now converting one myself
Its hard to say whether it's exactly the right thing to do, but I'm not going to sit around doing nothing.
Carbon - Coventry, UK
I'm planning on doing EV conversions as a business later this year. I have a Honda CRX that I'm in the middle of converting. (It's been suspended temporarily as I'm building my off-grid home in July, so I need the cash for that instead.)
~Durandal (http://www.wtdwtshtf.com)
I'd do a conversion but I refuse to use lead acid batteries. Might as well wait 2 years for a better EV with new technology batteries and power management engineered by nissan or mitsubishi. Such as this one:
http://www.autobloggreen.com/2008/04/09/japanese-mitsubishi-imiev-videos...
Hi Homebrew
What is your reason for refusing to use lead acid batteries?
http://cryptogon.com/?p=2613 for comments on the topic. A good read.
oil is back up $133.05-another big correction doesn't happen.
"Because Americans in particular have been absolutely recalcitrant and incapable of looking at collapse, they are being and will continue to be increasingly blindsided by it."
http://carolynbaker.net/site/content/view/504/
"Unfortunately, the illusion is in the happy story that incremental changes will fix a fundamentally broken system. Now that the decay and rot at the center of the American banking and housing sector has been revealed, non-U.S. investors are refusing to fall for "the big con" that "everything's fine now, just go back to buying billions in bogus AAA bonds." Spendthrift Americans are going bankrupt or tightening their belts for the first time in years or even decades as they sense that the incremental adjustments are no longer working.
As nothing fundamental has actually changed, the real crises finally hit home. Weight gain and lack of exercise has led to diabetes, heart disease and a host of other ailments; peak oil is creating price increases and even spot shortages, and the financial house of cards is tottering despite hundreds of billions wasted trying to prop it up.
Despite the clear need for immediate, fundamental change, we continue pursuing the illusion that minor tweaks and modifications will 'do the trick" and we'll be saved from disaster."
http://www.oftwominds.com/blogmay08/incremental-change.html
"Like me, you are probably witnessing the barrage of blame in your community and nationally if you are paying attention to mainstream news. Dmitry Orlov has given us a treasure-trove of information about human behavior in the throes of collapse chaos. What is and will be different from the collapse of the Soviet Union for Americans, however, is the level of violence that is likely to proliferate as collapse accelerates. Russians were never intoxicated with affluence and entitlement as Americans are. Their history has been replete with suffering; ours marinated in privilege reinforced by gun culture and firearm fetishes.-CB
Why has such immense effort been put into debunking the PO issue!
"
Letting the richest five, ten or even 50 percent continue to drive around, watch their flat screens and eat their fill, while the rest abandon their cars, leave their homes and congregate at homeless shelters and food pantries is not acceptable. As long as we have something resembling representative democracy is this country, this is not going to happen – at least for long. We have become too complex and too specialized a civilization."
-Tom Whipple
http://www.energybulletin.net/44675.html
Aye, there's the rub. IMO, what the US has is more "government by bread & circuses" than representative democracy. As long as the bread and circuses are provided, the gap between the rich and poor won't be an issue. When the B&C can no longer be provided, rest assured that TPTB will do their best to make sure America's anger is directed at the right targets -- Muslims, the Chinese, the Russians, Venezuela -- but not at rich in America.
here in los angeles we have two 24/7 newsradio stations that are owned by the same company. yesterday evening one, kfwb 980, had a lead in that said "$12 - $15 gasoline around the corner?" and then played a clip from robert hirsch who stated that oil production has peaked and prices are going to rise continuously.
the news reader then closed the brief segment by repeating that production has peaked.
the fact this very uncheerful news is being passed to the already worried consumer is quite significant. i think we are about to enter a "special period" and that an end game is in play. one that's going to be very unpleasant.
And as usual, people in the media are very sloppy with their "facts". The problem with saying that oil has "peaked" is that when the all liquids figure for 2008 is > than that for 2007, then various pundits will say Peak Oil is all a hoax.
Speculators' Role in Oil Surge: More Than Meets the Eye
Talk of Contango .....
http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker
And again, the comments on that item are a hoot to read.
Kids, let's explore what is REALLY happening with the USD and the price of a barrel of oil.
1.) The price of a barrel of oil on the commodities market is denominated in US Dollars (USD) and each time the Fed lowers the interest rate, they release more money into the market, thereby reducing the value of each dollar in circulation. This declining value of the dollar contributes to about a $30/bbl premium.
2.) Wall Street investment banks, hedge funds, and wealthy investors are using oil futures contracts as a hedge against the falling value of the USD, and they are making a killing off the backs of the middle class around the world in the process. This speculation is bidding the price of oil up on a daily basis, and is adding about a $30 to $40/bbl premium.
3.) The US Federal government is watching from the sidelines and doing NOTHING about it because the commodities market is unregulated, and Wall Street is investing their low interest money into oil and other commodities. Through this, the banks and investment firms are making back the money they lost on the housing bubble, which was also unregulated. In other words, the oil bubble is being allowed as a "giveback" to the banks and investment companies that lost their butts on bad mortgage loans, and while the US government did not directly step in and bail out the banks, they are allowing them to take money from the commodities markets, thereby making US consumers bail out the banks through higher prices for energy and food.
4.) The only way to fix this is for the Federal Government to first and foremost tell the truth to the American public (good luck - politicians are serial liars), secondly to raise the margins and require anyone who takes out an oil contract to put more money up front, plus take physical delivery of the product when their contract expires, and thirdly, to raise interest rates and prop up the market value of the USD. If they do all of these, we will see oil prices return to the fundamentals of supply and demand, which would be about $60/bbl USD.
Wrong.
Alan
http://english.pravda.ru/world/americas/105255-0/
Eric, I really don't know why you posted this since it has absolutely nothing to do with energy or oil. However I can state that it is a pack of lies. The author compares Roosevelt's work programs to the GULAG:
I knew many people who worked for the WPA, (Works Progress Administration). They used to joke about how little work they actually did but most had fond memories. They jokingly said WPA stood for "We Piddle Around". But they did make money, and there were practically no taxes levied whatsoever on their earnings.
I had an eighth grade school teacher who worked for the CCC, (Civilian Conservation Corps). They worked in camps and were fed well. He used to tell about how they would just boil their clothes instead of washing them. All the white stuff turned yellow. He had many fond memories of the CCC. There were no deaths due to hard work or malnutrition as in the GULAG. I do no blame Wikipedia for removing the article. As I said, it is nothing but a pack of lies.
Ron Patterson
Eric, I really don't know why you posted this since it has absolutely nothing to do with energy or oil.
Huh. A regular topic in the drumbeats is a depression. Lo and behold, a claim that a whole bunch of people died from starvation (7 million)
But now that you are the thread police - better go stop the 'is there a soul' thread!
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4036#comment-348777
(Go get 'em tiger!)
Not getting enough to eat sounds to *ME* like the biggest energy shortage a person can have.
Now, if one wants to believe official government data, Cuba claims that during the 'special period' no one died of starvation either.
I believe Pravada.ru has equal credibility in news as the onion.
Any geologist here care to have a crack at what this is all about?
"Sand Fountain in Saudi Arabia"
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8631039552406621945&hl=en
"Suddently, a 9-meter fountain (geyser) apparead, in the Al-Ahsae City, Eastern Saudi Arabia.
Immediately, Armaco geological teams and scientists hurry to deal with this strange phenomenon, but they did not succeed in explaining what happened."
The video was dated February 02, 2007. Anyway, I looked around and did not find any sort of description from an on-the-scene point of view. I came across a reference to an earlier video from December 2006. There should be some sort of analysis if this was really a unique event. Where's the air samples and the photographs of the "sand" at the base of the "geyser"? We know that Saudi ARAMCO is pumping lots of sea-water into their fields. It's likely that there was a break in a high pressure water pipe near the roadway. The Saudis' may be keeping quiet as this is being promoted as a "Miracle of Allah" on Muslum web sites...
E. Swanson
Sand geysers accompanied the New Madrid quakes in the early 19th century. I wonder if there was some subterranean shifting related to a combination of oil extraction and water injection. Disclaimer: I am not a geologist.
The sand was coming up dry, so I would imagine it was more likely a gas leak than anything wet.
S A N D W O R M S
Bless the maker and his water ...
Ah...praise the Spice!!
Maybe they won't have to import sand from Texas anymore :-))
http://www.tdn.com/articles/2008/04/29/area_news/doc4816651072f727675597...
Longshoremen should finish unloading 6,700 tons of sand contaminated with depleted uranium and lead Tuesday afternoon, said Chad Hyslop, spokesman for the disposal company American Ecology.
(Naw the sand is shipped to the USA. Good thing too, as DU is valuable and should be kept if one believes the pro-nukers.)
What will happen when our governments won't be able to pay anymore to help people coping with high fuel prices, if they ever will be ?
In France, most fishermen are on a strike since more than a week now. Wednesday, the trade-unions received a third offer in 9 months from the government. They tried once again to calm down the desperate reactions by their affiliates but haven't yet succeeded to calm down the masses. People claim that they haven't received anything but offers. The fact that the french prime-minister said that the european commission had authorised these aids prompting the same european commission to deny immediatly didn't help.
Their actions are quite visible, ranging from free distribution of fish robbed from supermarkets, to blockades of oil ports and depots on both the atlantic and the mediterranean coast of France. Some blockades of major refineries have been removed by the police (without violence) but others are reforming elsewhere. In protests on past wednesday in Paris, four policemen were wounded.
More worrysome, some farmers and truckers are joining the protests. The conflict is bound to cross borders since Belgian, Portugese and Spanish Fishermen ask their governments for compensations and are calling for strikes or protests.
I believe this time all this will settle calmly, but what about next time ?
Sorry for all those links in French, the link about the oil depot blockades is in English.
Well, I thought this sort of turmoil quite probable with Sarkozy's election. It seems neither of the main French political parties can satisfy the French populace.
The large subsidies for fishing is one of the dumbest policies that ever has been implemented. It resulted in governments paying for destruction of resources, ecological systems and destruction of functioning free markets including a loss of culture.
I am quite happy if France wont pay for prologing a decade long disaster.
Hello TODers,
http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5i_ZU8YcHHhgCHYjj1_Ds04VhnAxw
---------------------
Canadian fertilizer sellers appeal for government help in ensuring security
---------------------
Makes postPeak sense to me. I would suggest converting the soon-to-be-bankrupt bank branches into the local farming/permaculture input dispensaries. The vaults are already there. Picture a gardener getting his I-NPK custom blended to match his topsoil profile and various crops, then dispensed through the drive-thru blowtube in a short ejection stream of small packets. Filling his wheelbarrow, of course--not a pickup truck.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Don't forget the armed family members to escort you as you push the I-NPK and seed packets home!
The American Express Machete'--> don't leave home without it!
My daily reading of TOD is never complete until I read about I-NPK and humans being dumber that yeast... :)
Gee, maybe we should save some of that oil in case we have to fight a war or two in the next... forever.
Hello Cynus,
Yep, I think most people have no idea how bad things will get unless we have a speedy paradigm shift.
Recall my earlier posting of the photo of the nearly-destitute African workers sleeping in their wheelbarrows so they wouldn't be stolen. Also, in hyper-inflation Weimar Germany: a thief just dumped the piles of worthless currency, he didn't want his valuable wheelbarrow theft attempt slowed down by the weight of the useless money.
I've got a great video for you:
"The Limits of Science"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQaF4YXCXsc
It's principally about the scientific method but I think you might get a kick out of the references to wheelbarrows.
Hello Mlr,
Terrific videolink--thxs so much-- hope everyone can watch it.
I feel compelled to note that this is a comedy sketch from Mr. Show with Bob and David... and not an attack on science... although it is spot on in describing the role of wizards.
PEMEX:
Apr/08 all liq prod at 3137, -12.9% from Apr/07. Offshore 2240 -14%.That's -150m bl/da in 2 mos!
I'm estimating their 2007 net export decline rate at about -16%/year, and it should accelerate from there.
Exports down 190m bl/da for 1 mos at 1439.That's -14.3% YOY Apr. (1679 Apr/07).
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hybrid23-2008may23,0,5437081.story
zoowie!
remember when nobody would buy hybrids? that was only 3-5 years ago.
Just got my Prius yesterday... Sweet. Helps on my 60 mile roundtrip daily commute, methinks I can do it on about a gallon of gas. (Will be dumping my 10 year old, 20mpg V6 car shortly too, make it someone else's problem)...
Does anyone have thoughts on Toyota Prius vs Honda Civic hybrids? TIA.
Being a Prius owner, I'm biased. But the Prius was specificaly desined to be a hybrid, not the Honda. That said, I do have a lot of respect for Honda; their Insight hybrid interested me greatly, but was impractical for my needs, so in 2004 I waited 6 months for delivery of my Prius. I await Honda's next attempt at a hybrid or EV designed to be one, as much as I await Toyota's. If I were to buy one today, I would get the "Touring" Prius version with all the goodies except the rearview camera, which to me promotes lazyness and unsafe driving behavior.
Karlof1,
The fact is, though, that the shape of the Prius makes it very difficult/impossible to see low things behind you in the mirror. Without the camera, backing up is a hazard.
--
JimFive
Actually, I don't find it so, likely because I'm always looking all over the place whenever I'm reversing, the product of having ridden motorcycles well over 140,000 miles without getting plastered by a car. All autos have blind spots; do you advocate cameras for them too?
I back into parking spaces about 90% of the time I park. I haven't run over any "low things" yet (knock on wood!).
As a Prius owner I have a few thoughts.
I'm not sure which hybrids you are referencing but that certainly was not the case with the Prius. I wanted to buy one in the spring of 2004, the first model year for the current body style. At that time there were waiting lists anywhere from 3 months to 1 year with some dealers pulling fast ones allowing customers to buy their way to the front of the list for a few thousand dollars. I gave up until the spring of 2006 but there were still waiting lists at all the local dealers. I ended getting one in two months at that time.
Since then Toyota has increased production significantly and was able to keep up with demand until recently.
When I was shopping for the Prius in 2006 I looked at the HCH. I actually liked the styling better than the Prius, the interior was nice although not as roomy and they get about the same mileage as the Prius. Only 1-2 mpg lower in real world driving. The deal killer for me was the tiny trunk with no folding rear seats. I only have one vehicle and need that vehicle to be as versatile as possible. The hatchback Prius wins hands down. It is even big enough for a 6' 1" (185cm) person to sleep in the back with the rear seats folded down.
I've been very happy with the car coming up on two years. I haven't been back to the dealer for any reason and am averaging 56.1 mpg over the life of the vehicle in a flat, warm weather climate on mostly a 12 mile suburban commute with a few vacations into the mountains.
I disagree. The visibility out the back isn't much different than any other auto I've owned. While I have the backup camera in mine it wouldn't be a show stopper if it didn't.
I found the Prius blindspot to be much larger than what I'm used to driving, (a Saturn SL at the time). Looking back through the rear-window felt much more like driving a minivan than a car. That being said, I wasn't advocating for a required camera, but if/when I buy a Prius it will probably have one.
--
JimFive
The passenger seat in the 2007(? might have been 2006) Civic was very uncomfortable.
--
JimFive
Pruis owner since 2003. It's approaching 100,000 miles with no major problems. No comparison. Get a Prius c-dude. Plus the newer ones are hatchbacks...more versatile.
Hey Cdude;
At the risk of piling on. We looked at both cars thorougly. The Prius without a doubt. Prius is a bottom up parallel hybrid with an engine specifically designed to take advantage of the 300 ft/lbs of motor/gen torque. Engine off time is significant. No starter, alternator, clutch or AT transmission friction surfaces. Hot coolant (morning start-up) return to cyl. head from thermal tank effective 3 days. The hatchback versatility flat rocks for carrying large items. (I could go on but I'll spare you) Lifetime avg. 53mpg for 3 years running in hilly/cold North Cascades. Absolutely no regrets. Sorry Honda no contest.
Will it be your only vehicle?
I ask because the Prius has a hatch and a rear seat which fully folds.
The rear seat in the Civic hybrid does not fold and the trunk itself is 15% smaller than the standard Civic.
The real world efficiency of the two vehicles is within 5%.
Yes, it would be my only vehicle. Normally, I don't use a car during the week. It would mainly be used for getting away to the mountains on weekends and holidays.
Hello TODers,
For your postPeak consideration:
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/62763
----------------------------
Fertilizer and the looming global food crisis
Few people are aware that beneath the worries over rice which pervade media these days is a looming disaster which could make the rice crisis seem puny in comparison...
--------------------------------
Recall my Ft. Knox posting again. Have you hugged your bag of NPK today?
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Hey Bob,
Email me at peakguy at rogers dot com.
Sorry, PeakTo,
I rarely email--prefer to keep things public for all.
Folks, just a reminder or two...
1. TOD is on twitter now with our RSS feed: http://twitter.com/theoildrum. If you are a tweeter, erm twitterer, erm, give us a follow...and tweet your friends about our posts now and again.
2. If you have a blog, or are a member of a messageboard, or play at a link farm like metafilter or anything else, the more you plant links to our stuff, the more eyes it gets...it's that simple. Every little bit helps.
3. Tell your friends.
We're all doing this for free, and we really do need and appreciate your support. That and "doing good" is what keeps us all going.
Thanks muchly.
Italy Plans to Resume Building Atomic Plants
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/23/world/europe/23nukes.html?th&emc=th
I's a good job that Berlusconi is a neocon fascist ****ard, otherwise Italy might be the next axis of EEEEVOLLL and start producing those noookular bobmbs!!
Marco
With the way the US economy is going I would think that this would be a SUPER business opportunity. Think big, become a Bill Gates of EVC !!!!! :-)
Where the oil money goes
http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/?rn=3906861&cl=7946408&ch=4...
There are some very funny lines in that video, like "Why is it when oil prices are so high, profits are so huge?" Also, I question some of the numbers in report. Nobody pumps oil for $1/bbl any more. And the $70/bbl figure for offshore oil is more than 2 years old and (I think) was for shallow-water wells.
I am not a doomer because I think the problems are insolubale. I'm a doomer because people are clueless gits.
"I am not a doomer because I think the problems are insolubale. I'm a doomer because people are clueless gits."
Ditto :)
I am not a doomer because I think the problems are insolubale. I'm a doomer because people are clueless gits.
Yup.
I was wondering, has anyone done any research on the part that weather plays on high gas prices? I know that here in the mid atlantic we have had one of the most gorgeous May's that I can remember, and gas prices have risen in tandem. So I'm wondering if a part of the recent rise in crude has to do with the fact that people are getting out and enojoying themselves this spring?
IMO, American gasoline consumption is a minimal factor in oil prices. Diesel consumption is driving oil prices. Gasoline is a "waste" byproduct of diesel production, which is why diesel is so much more expensive than gasoline and why the US is importing so much gasoline from the rest of the world rather than refining it domestically. There is something of a glut of gasoline, which is keeping gasoline prices artifically low.
That having been said, American gasoline consumption IS the major factor in gasoline prices (as opposed to oil prices). We are entering the peak driving season, and it is the peak season because the weather is nicer. I have been expecting gasoline prices to rise starting in May. Basically, gasoline has more or less uncoupled from oil, except that oil represents something of a floor on gasoline prices.
When a barrel of oil is refined, you get more gasoline than diesel by 2:1. Hardly a "waste" product in the scheme of things.
Annual Energy Outlook 2008 (Early Release) (at http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/prices.html) states:
"EIA raised the reference case path for world oil prices....The real world crude oil price (which for the purposes of AEO2008 is defined as the price of light, low-sulfur crude oil delivered in Cushing, Oklahoma, in 2006 dollars) declines gradually from current levels to $57 per barrel in 2016 ($68 per barrel in nominal dollars), as expanded investment in exploration and development brings new supplies to world markets. After 2016, real prices begin to rise (Figure 1), as demand continues to grow and higher cost supplies are brought to market. In 2030, the average real price of crude oil is $70 per barrel in 2006 dollars, or about $113 per barrel in nominal dollars."
Your tax dollars at work. Read it and weep....
Well, at least they graph the price in the units of BTU(x10^6)/$ so we can compare energy sources...
What is the kicker is the expected price of electricity. Their projection (of falling prices over the next couple of years, then a plateau) would kill any hopes of (private) alternative electricity generation, assuming their projection comes to pass, would it not?
jeez, are these folks for real ? I mean are the nation of USA advised by folks from outer space, worse than Cera. This is crime against humanity, in the open as I regard it,just in the vicinity of treason.
Its even the best crude that will drop to $57 per barrel in 2016.
Hate to sound like a conspiracy nut, but the chances that everyone at EIA is that ignorant are slim and none-should be interesting as it seems like IEA is expanding the gap between themselves and these "pranksters".
The answer to urban traffic congestion? Cars
Besides offering all the logical arguments as why this sort of thinking borders on insane, can anyone take on Mr O'Toole directly and dispute the facts of this article. I would certainly appreciated seeing an educated response in the comments section on The Globe and Mail's website. This is Canada's most respected daily.
Thanks
IMO it doesn't matter if the thinking is insane or not-cars are not leaving the urban environment for the foreseeable future. Do the math-how high do gas prices have to go to price out someone driving 5000 miles per annum in a 50 mpg car?
$15 a gallon is nothing to that driver.
It will be a significant factor if the only way you can safely drive anywhere is in a heavily steel-armored, tracked vehicle. These vehicles get very poor mpg.
I would expect flaming molotov cocktails, thrown bricks, big boulders dropped from overpasses, and tire spikes to be a significant impediment to most movement once law enforcement is non-existent.
If the people in South Africa burn their trains now, taking 90% of the normal cars out of action will be even easier when postPeak Overshoot collapse kicks into high gear.
I think Alan's RR & TOD ideas, plus SpiderWebRiding and Strategic Reserves of bicycles and wheelbarrows is the better alternative.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
I remember seeing on some Discovery Channel techno-wankfest program (World's Most Crazy Awesomest Tanks, if I recall) that the M1 tank takes 8 gallons of jet fuel just to start. I'm not saying anybody's going to be cruising around in one of those, but could you imagine $120 for turning the key? Not to mention it's no doubt fantastic 'gallons per mile' rating.
The M1 uses diesel, not jet fuel. The confusion might be because they use a gas turbine engine. That being said, I have no idea how much fuel it takes to get them started, but once, they're started, they're pretty fuel efficient...for a tank. They're also a lot of fun to ride around in.
I don't know about the reliability of this source*, but they claim the efficiency is 3 gallons per mile. It seems to be a bit dated, but they seem to be calling for a move TO diesel. Anyways, I don't doubt that you are far more knowledgeable in this instance, having ridden in one, I just felt the need to pass along the painful memory of watching that mindless show.... I ceded the control of the teevee remote to my brother at the time.
* http://www.g2mil.com/abramsdiesel.htm
Or 1,800 miles/year in a 30 mpg car (my case).
Alan
By the looks of it, the G&M commentators are already ripping the article into shreds.
andrews, in the next day's Globe, there was a short article in which O'Toole stated that the report issued by his think tank was badly misinterpreted to arrive at these conclusions.
Neill Reynolds, the author, is a self-professed Libertarian, which as far as I can discern means that he is a muddle-headed cornucopian would be slave-owner and narcissistic psychopath. He has recently published several of these idiocies.
Ken Deffeyes was just on Bloomberg talking about Peak Oil (Bloomberg anchor actually used the phrase). No link yet. Immediately before US Energy Sec. Sam Bodman was interviewed and although he didn't use the phrase Peak Oil he confirmed that the current price was due to insufficient supply and not to expect any major price drop in the near future.
Sam Bodman admitted in an interview with CNN's Richard Quest a few months ago that the world was facing an "energy crisis". Dick Quest recently got himself arrested in New York's Central Park in a compromising position (to say the least!) so it's maybe not a good idea to push Sam Bodman too far ;-)
Here's how the New York Post kindly put it.
KINKY NEWS NETWORK
My question, "Who has given the green light to let the cat out of the PO bag?"
Politicians, MSM, etc. starting to drag it all out.
We need to be asking why they are doing this now.
It's getting hard to ignore.
Please remember that the MSM is entertainment geared toward selling advertising. I would think it likely that few in that industry are truly interested in peak oil. They are interested in selling advertising and will say, show, talk about whatever will pull in viewers. More viewers equals more advertising dollars. I would not be surprised if next week there is a new top story. Indeed, I would be surprised if there wasn't.
shaman-
Good point-----
"News" is just entertainment to capture Joe Sixpacks attention, and then sell him and the little lady diapers, beer and cars.
The more they watch, the less they know.
Pabulum as a medium for consumption and profit.
Surplus value is the thing that makes capitalism work---
and they need Joe sixicpack to be exploited for his labor, and washed to consume.
"Please remember that the MSM is entertainment geared toward selling advertising"
That does not explain why it happened all at once. It was just as good a story 3 months ago as it is today.
No kidding, I've been asking that for a couple weeks now. It's as if somebody gave the media the green light right after Bushes speech. Blackswans are circling...
Well, notice how it coincides with an organized symphony of calls to drill ANWR, extract oil from Colorado shale, etc. The oil companies are looking at this as an opportunity and not missing a beat. Got to get 'er done in congress before the populace figures out what's going on.
Google Inc., Chevron Corp. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. build Mirrors in Desert to Beat Coal With Solar Thermal
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=a_TUtlIwV7Fw&s=polyh...
Hello TODers,
Please analyze with your postPeak mindset of how bad this can get once depleting FFs start applying the Big Hurt. I would imagine that all the global govt. intelligence agencies plus all the military strategic thinktanks, that read TOD daily, are quite busy nowadays figuring out their planned responses [Hi Guys and Gals!].
http://westernfarmpress.com/news/fertilizer-prices-0526/
----------------------------
Rising fertilizer prices causing quite a stink
...Hardly a week goes by that I am not contacted by a curious reporter asking how long is this going to continue and where’s the ceiling? They seem to get a bit frustrated when I tell them there’s no light at the end of the tunnel.
Market experts do not see fertilizer prices decreasing in the foreseeable future.....
-----------------------------
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Mr. Totoneila Sir,
After word got out that we had a wind driven ammonia production system in the works (no, not ready for prime time yet) my phone began to ring from farmers around Iowa. They'd call information, find my mom, and talk her into giving out my cell phone number. I don't know how many tried and failed but I was getting one a week there for a while.
PK isn't on the radar for them yet but N ... the minute after solid state ammonia synthesis is ready we're going to see SUVs being melted down - steel goes to rails, glass recycled into ammonia synthesis tubes.
-SCT
Hello SCT,
I hope you can be a huge success with your ideas! Venture Capitalists--how about funding to help leapfrog this tech along?
Hello TODers,
Facinating analysis: Don't expect to get any cash, or a loan, unless you have hoarded some valuable asset that you can show to your banker as collateral:
http://www.istockanalyst.com/article/viewarticle+articleid_1934378~zonei...
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Reasons for High Gas Prices
...Another rumor is that major corporate oil users like airlines are starting to hoard a collection of long dated oil future contracts in order to put some predictability into their financial projections by stabilizing their future costs of fuel.
[KEY PARAGRAPH] In fact, when you think about it, why wouldn’t a lender to an airline now require the company to lock in its fuel costs over the term of the loan by buying long dated futures? That seems to be the only rational way for a bank to feel secure in lending money to an airline today. There may not be enough long dated oil and distillate contracts to make all the banks happy.
So now various sorts of folks are buying oil for purposes other than to use it. Besides you and me, the innocents, filling up our cars and trucks, it’s also now the institution trying to invest like Yale (”be diversified across asset classes”), the private citizen afraid of inflation, corporate users of oil looking for cost predictability and various oil importing countries looking to enhance national security. Add that all up and you get a LOT of demand...
-----------------------------------------------
For the peons like us: I recommend I-NPK, seeds, and other irreplaceable 'real value assets' to hoard because I don't think your banker is especially eager to trade cash for highly flammable jerry cans of gasoline and diesel. Instead, use a Hell's Angels' gas-station for your personal fuel hoard and price arbitrage.
Or maybe some retail banks will think ahead by moving their operations into gas-stations and NPK warehouses for their depositors' convenience.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
I hope the TopTODers can further extrapolate this thinking out further:
Sell your profitable fertilizer stock to get cash for buying and hoarding NPK and other real value assets for later postPeak trading and/or to use as collateral...
versus
...buying more fertilizer stock as their profits skyrocket.
Where does depleting FFs make the supply and demand points cross?
If governments nationalize their fertilizer companies [see my recent Brazil posting] are the stockholders/bondholders at that time just totally screwed?
Sorry, I am not expert enough to figure this out.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Bob,
You haven't mentioned current prices lately. Just curious what is being paid per pound for small amounts of NPK up there in the good ole USA.
Here in Panama I can still buy 5 pounds of 12/24/12 for $1.80, with 5 pounds of pure urea going for $2.80. I live in an agricultural area with lots of both supply and demand.
Should I be...hoarding?
Hello Panama,
Sorry, I am not a financial advisor, just an unemployed, landless, former electronic tech renting a bedroom in an Aphalt Wonderland, with no real meaningful gardening experience.
Just speculatively pointing out possible trends as I google them, plus potential silver BBs, but other TODers have already posted that they bought some additional NPK.
I am not a financial advisor either, but the local Feed 'n Seed sells 50 lb bags of 19-19-19 for about $18 and change last I checked.
Georgia, US
Meanwhile, the MSM continues to slowly awake from its long slumber. Today at CNNMoney.com:
Is $130 Oil a Bubble?
Eye-opening quote (for non-TODers):
If the market for oil futures was manipulated by speculators, then as the price of oil dropped back from a sky high 135, it wouldn't have stopped at 130 and then pulled back up to 131. So anyone still harping on speculation should let it go. At the same time, and as much as I understand Peak oil, I couldn't help hoping the orange price for oil put up by CNBC would plummet this morning. Much to my chagrin the price stabilized and started to rise again. Ouch!!!
The price of gas jumped 20 cents overnight. From $3.99 yesterday to $4.19 today. That's after a 20 cent jump only a couple of days ago.
Hi all, I was wondering if many people have seen Penn and Tellers Bullsh*t on the energy crisis.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXHRi9ziPWA
Am a big fan of P&T, but they didn't seem to engage very well on this. Basically hybrids are bad because they have to carry the extra weight of an electric drive train and batteries, and the batteries are toxic materials which will run out. However nuclear power is fine because of improved safety and Yucca mountain will sort all the waste, even though its toxic and finite.
I am getting really annoyed that GW and PO are becoming more fronts on the culture wars, its far more important than that. Or is that the only thing that motivates us? Is it the us vs them mentality where winning becomes more important than being right.
I love P&T but, having listened to Penn's radio show off and on for a few years, I've come to the conclusion that he has libertarian disease. If I want a good laugh, I'll watch them. If I'm looking for solutions to social, ecological, or economic problems, not so much.
The NewsHour has a report on right now about gas prices with a behavioral research Dan Arieli and a transportation research, Steven Reisch. There was a couple of interesting points that the guys made:
1) Why America hasn't changed its driving habits appreciably? Boiling frog syndrome. When gas goes to "$10/gallon at some point" (!) it might, maybe.
2) If Americans had been paying the European level of taxes on gasoline all this time, they might not be in such a mess because they could have invested that into alternative energy and other forms of transportation. "As it is there is a great transfer of wealth, speculators, off-shore..."
You can listen to it here.
If you are looking for a good book to help you understand the underlying connections between energy, biological creatures such as ourselves and the economy, I really want to recommend The Entropy Law and the Economic Process by Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen. It was published in 1971, but it feels very current....
For example, sometimes people here are talking about why people with college degrees and people without them seem to have different reactions to peak oil. G-R has a whole passage on the role of the "elites" in society, and says "only in the late twilight of the human species, when human society will very likely disintegrate into small packs of humans, will the social factors which produce the circulation of elites fade away, too" (p.311). The question is...is now the late twilight? Or is it only a false alarm...ha ha.
OK, here's another excellent sentence from this book (actually, G-R is quoting Thoday, a British geneticist (b. 1916): "The fit are those who fit their existing environments AND whose descendants will fit future environments". (p.356)
And last, "Confronted, in the distant future, with the impending exhaustion of mineral resources, mankind...will retrace its steps. The thought ignores that, evolution being irrevocable, steps cannot be retraced in history." (p. 304)
Shall we just hope that he might be wrong? Yet the book has an eerie, prescient quality, haunting almost. I couldn't put it down. I couldn't accept some of what he predicts completely, yet couldn't dismiss it either. Evolution may be irrevocable, but we are still capable of making new adaptations which may include old energy pathways, for instance.
Anybody care to comment? Or if you've read this book, did you like it too?
After giving it a bit of thought, I have concluded that natural selection does still apply to humans. We are selected for clear skin, straight teeth, and good storytelling ability. It's a form of sexual selection like it is for tail-eyespots in the peacock.
Selection for "intelligence", not so much, except as it applies to storytelling ability.
And I believe that will always be the case.
double post. please delete.
For those who couldn't find the Skrewbowski interview on BBC from 22nd of May, here's a link to the PM program for the day:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/genres/news/aod.shtml?radio4/pm_thu
And direct link to the Real Audio file in question:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/shows/rpms/radio4/pm_thu.ram
The oil discussion (ref: Gordon Brown talk) starts at c. 5:10 mark and the Skrebowski interview start with an introduction at c. 9:30 mark.