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Drumbeat: July 4, 2010
Posted by Leanan on July 4, 2010 - 10:18am
Saudi King: Halt To Oil Exploration To Save Wealth
RIYADH (Zawya Dow Jones)--Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah has ordered a halt to oil exploration operations to save the hydrocarbon wealth in the world's top crude exporting nation for future generations, the official Saudi Press Agency, or SPA, reported late Saturday."I was heading a cabinet meeting and told them to pray to God the Almighty to give it a long life," King Abdullah told Saudi scholars studying in Washington, according to SPA.
"I told them that I have ordered a halt to all oil explorations so part of this wealth is left for our sons and successors God willing," he said.
A senior oil ministry official, who declined to be named, told Zawya Dow Jones the king's order wasn't an outright ban but rather meant future exploration activities should be carried out wisely.
As Oil Industry Fights a Tax, It Reaps Billions From Subsidies
When the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform set off the worst oil spill at sea in American history, it was flying the flag of the Marshall Islands. Registering there allowed the rig’s owner to significantly reduce its American taxes.The owner, Transocean, moved its corporate headquarters from Houston to the Cayman Islands in 1999 and then to Switzerland in 2008, maneuvers that also helped it avoid taxes.
At the same time, BP was reaping sizable tax benefits from leasing the rig. According to a letter sent in June to the Senate Finance Committee, the company used a tax break for the oil industry to write off 70 percent of the rent for Deepwater Horizon — a deduction of more than $225,000 a day since the lease began.
With federal officials now considering a new tax on petroleum production to pay for the cleanup, the industry is fighting the measure, warning that it will lead to job losses and higher gasoline prices, as well as an increased dependence on foreign oil.
But an examination of the American tax code indicates that oil production is among the most heavily subsidized businesses, with tax breaks available at virtually every stage of the exploration and extraction process.
Preserving Its Piece of the Pie
Worried about its share of the natural gas supply, the Dow Chemical Company suggests ways for others to use less.
Explosion hits Turkish-Iraqi pipeline
ANKARA - An explosion ripped through a pipeline carrying oil from Iraq to southern Turkey on Saturday, sparking a fire, the Anatolia news agency reported.The blast, whose origin remains unknown, hit a section of the pipeline near Midyat town in the southeastern province of Mardin, the agency said.
The pipeline has in the past been targeted by Kurdish insurgents active in the region.
Lukashenko attacks Russia, says trade pact ready
(Reuters) - Belarus's combative leader Alexander Lukashenko said on Saturday his government had ratified all documents to set up a trade pact sought by Russia while accusing Moscow of "lies" in the latest gas dispute.Lukashenko, a former top ally of the Kremlin on Russia's western flank who has since become one of Moscow's harshest critics, has dramatically raised the stakes during the latest dispute over gas pricing with Moscow last month.
British aid group says workers beaten in South Sudan
(Reuters) - A British aid group accused South Sudanese soldiers of arresting and beating four of their members in a politically-sensitive area of the oil-producing region, but the army denied any use of violence.
U.S. Rushes to Complete Only Some Iraq Projects
FALLUJA, Iraq — After two devastating battles between American forces and Sunni insurgents in 2004, this city needed almost everything — new roads, clean water, electricity, health care.The American reconstruction authorities decided, however, that the first big rebuilding project to win hearts and minds would be a citywide sewage treatment system.
Now, after more than six years of work, $104 million spent, and without having connected a single house, American reconstruction officials have decided to leave the troubled system only partly finished, infuriating many city residents.
The plant is just one of many projects that the United States has decided to scale back on — or in some cases abandon — as American troops who provide security for reconstruction sites prepare to leave in large numbers.
India - No question of fuel price roll back: Pranab
Asked by reporters whether the government would consider rolling back the fuel hike, Mukherjee said: 'There is no question of a roll back.'The Left parties and the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance have separately called for a Bharat Bandh Monday to protest the fuel price hike.
Tests start on 'super skimmer' for Gulf oil spill
NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - A supertanker adapted to scoop up oil from the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico began tests on Saturday amid a report that some major investors expect the energy giant to replace its top executives.The vessel named "A Whale" and dubbed a "super skimmer" is operating just north of the blown out well as part of a two-day test watched by the U.S. Coastguard, said Bob Grantham, spokesman for TMT Shipping Offshore, which owns the ship.
For now, government and BP working together to assess oil spill damage
In recent weeks, the Obama administration has sought to distance itself from BP in handling the Gulf of Mexico oil spill -- with one notable exception: When it comes to assessing how badly the spill has harmed the gulf, the two sides are working hand in hand.
BP launches search for new investors - papers
(Reuters) - Oil major BP Plc is seeking a strategic investor to secure its independence in the face of any takeover attempts as it struggles with a devastating oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, newspapers said on Sunday.Britain's Sunday Times said the company's advisers were trying to drum up interest among rival oil groups and sovereign wealth funds to take a stake of between 5 and 10 percent in the company at a cost of up to 6 billion pounds ($9.1 billion).
BP could get backing from Mideast firms - report
(Reuters) - Troubled oil giant BP could get a reprieve from Middle East financial institutions looking to make a strategic investment in the company, a UAE-based newspaper reported on Sunday, citing informed sources.Proposals from the region have already been submitted to BP advisers in London, sources told Abu Dhabi newspaper The National and could involve Middle Eastern investors purchasing key assets from BP, which has been hammered following a devastating oil spill in the U.S.
Federal judge tries to streamline oil spill suits
HOUSTON -- A federal judge in New Orleans is trying to streamline the legal process for more than 30 lawsuits arising from the oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico.An order filed this week from U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier temporarily consolidates the lawsuits for pretrial purposes.
Let’s pull the plug on the Jones Act
Who would have thought the Gulf oil spill would make a 90-year-old law newsworthy? The Merchant Marine Act of 1920, also known as the Jones Act, was meant to save the merchant marine industry by requiring ships that plied American waters to be built in the United States and manned by American crews. After the oil started gushing, lawmakers started demanding that the government waive the law to speed international assistance for the cleanup. What the White House can't waive, however, is the ongoing damage caused by the Jones Act. The policies it embodies are a remnant of a worldview that contributed to economic collapse and the Great Depression.
BP has now begun reimbursing businesses that rely on the gulf for their revenue. Since May, it has paid just under a third of the more than 90,000 claims it has received, with the checks totaling more than $144 million.About 80 percent of the payments have gone to self-employed workers — including shrimpers, charter boat captains and beachfront condo owners — who can clearly show that the spill has affected their ability to make a profit. Fewer large businesses have been compensated because their claims are more complex and take longer to process.
In search of oil-cleanup jobs, Floridians go west
PANAMA CITY -- Mark Einstein came to this tourist town prepared. He packed 15 shirts, six shorts, six pants -- and a certificate showing he knew how to handle hazardous waste.``I thought I could get a job working on the oil spill,'' said the 23-year-old electrician from St. Petersburg. He spoke in front of a BP gas station, where a sign on the marquee assured potential customers it was ``Independently Owned.''
``If there's not work in Panama City, then maybe in Destin,'' he said. ``If not in Destin, then maybe somewhere else. I'll go all the way to Pensacola.''
Pension funds must be more vocal if they are to be good stewards of our cash
The custodians of our retirement cash need to actively hold companies such as BP to account.
Estimates vary, but the general consensus is that the world’s peak is now, plus or minus about five years, i.e. something between 2005 and 2015. The most optimistic forecast is around 2020, but these are estimates from the oil producing nations and the oil companies, who don’t want to see any panic which would bother their bottom lines.Since around 1965, we have been using more oil each year than we have discovered. If one compares it to a bank account, we have been taking more out than we have been putting in. If we look at oil as a bank account, we’re heading for inevitable bankruptcy.
Peak oil is the period when the world’s production of oil is at its highest. After peak oil, it will decline steadily, year after year, until it is no longer economical to produce oil.
Green Developments, and Tension Aplenty
In his new book, Peter Calthorpe, the renowned Berkeley-based urban designer, sounds many a familiar environmentalist note. Paying explicit homage to Buckminster Fuller, he talks of “whole systems design” and “climate responsive buildings,” and issues dire warnings about global warming and peak oil and the dangers of our car-based lifestyle. He rejects “bigger is better” consumerism and advocates nothing less than a “new configuration for the American Dream.”Yet while his message in “Urbanism in the Age of Climate Change,” to be published in September by Island Press, might seem tailor-made for the environmentally conscious Bay Area, the real-world developments that Mr. Calthorpe has championed here have hardly met with a warm embrace.
That’s because his version of green development favors megaprojects that create the density needed for efficient mass transit. But these huge developments are anathema to many environmentalists and community activists — and the divisions reflect a growing split among people usually thought to be on the same side.
I know the synopsis makes the series sound like kevlar-jockstrap survivalist military fiction, but it isn’t. It’s not about a single character who goes on a post-apocalyptic road trip and has few problems finding gasoline in abandoned vehicles or canned food in fully-stocked yet forgotten bunkers. The main character can’t swing a .50 cal sniper rifle to his shoulder and steady it faster than you can lift and point a TV remote either.I wrote this series with the intent to make its fiction as realistic as possible. I did this by taking the perspective of a slow economic collapse during the early stage of a growing civil war. The time-line in the story is based on my careful study of world history ranging from the dissolution of the Roman Empire to the breakup of modern Yugoslavia. I based my character interactions on years of professional experience in the human service field.
Could a new “Manhattan Project” produce radically new energy sources?
But there are dozens of potential new energy sources, from algae-fuel to satellite-based solar power generators (see here for research about some of these). If we throw vast sums at every likely candidate, what breakthroughs might result? If we start soon, perhaps a substitute for oil can be developed and implemented in time.Perhaps, but probably not. The Manhattan and Apollo projects were narrowly focused engineering projects, for which the underlying science was already well-developed — and the potential well-understood. With the possible exception of the Polywell, nothing else fits that description at this time.
More nuclear power stations needed - energy agency
The International Energy Agency says the world needs to build 30 nuclear power stations each year until 2050 if there is to be any chance of curbing growth in greenhouse gas emissions.Along with this, the agency says 35 coal fired power stations per year need to be fitted with the capacity to store carbon dioxide emissions underground.
Fire breaks out at Sizewell B nuclear power plant
A fire at the nuclear power station Sizewell B on the Suffolk coast was made safe by firefighters after six-and-a-half hours.The fire broke out just before 2100 BST in the building housing a charcoal absorber which is used to filter out gases.
It was brought under control by 0330 BST after the charcoal absorber was flooded.
Could Halayeb's Manganese Wealth Trigger A Sudan-Egypt Conflict?
"Halayeb," a mineral-rich disputed border triangle between Sudan and Egypt, "is Sudanese and will revert to Sudan," President Omar Hassan Al Bashir asserted this week in what observers interpreted as stirring the pot of already very strained ties between Khartoum and Cairo.
Rolling back oil and gas regulations would be a mistake for Colorado
My view on the oil and gas rules comes from the five years I spent in the oil and gas business, and the responsibility I feel we share to protect the natural resources that draw people to our state. If elected governor, I will work to make sure that we strike the right balance.In general, the state rules include the best practices of the oil and gas industry. Both of my opponents want to rewrite the rules, but that would be a mistake. I would not throw out or roll back rules regulating oil and gas extraction in our state. Looking back would only reduce the predictability businesses need to operate successfully and undermine protections for our health and environment.
Consensus over science, cost of warming elusive
Richmond, Va. -- Whether they represent cities, suburbs or the countryside, just about every politician wants to be regarded as a friend of the Earth.They paddle down scenic rivers to promote clean water, climb mountaintops for photo opportunities and man the trenches with historians in preserved former battlefields.
But the political river forks on the issue of climate change.
Cuccinelli leads challenge to EPA finding on warming
Complicating the debate over the need for action on climate change is a challenge to the science.Days after taking office, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli filed a legal challenge to the Environmental Protection Agency's finding that global warming poses a threat to people. A dozen other states have since joined the lawsuit.
Sen. Mark Udall: The EPA is not on a mission to force a bureaucratic assault on free enterprise
The truth is that I am well aware of the global economic recession, brought on, as many economists believe, by a lack of regulation on Wall Street and financial institutions run amok. I am also painfully aware that unemployment and financial hardship have hit Coloradans hard.But the EPA is not on a mission to force a bureaucratic assault on free enterprise. In fact, the EPA was required by a Supreme Court ruling to investigate the health impacts of greenhouse gas emissions. The EPA found as a matter of scientific analysis that these emissions are harmful. They are not only bad for the air and human health; they are also costly to our economy.
Biologist Warns Of Danger From Rising Sea Levels
In his new book, Flooded Earth, Peter D. Ward argues that even if humans stopped all carbon dioxide emissions today, the oceans will still rise up to 3 feet by 2050, wreaking havoc on many coastal cities and their infrastructure. In the worst case scenario, Ward tells host Guy Raz, the world may see water levels rise as much as 65 feet by 2300 causing massive human migration and a spread of tropical diseases.
Oceans facing 'irreversible' deterioration, report says
WASHINGTON — A sobering new report warns that oceans face a "fundamental and irreversible ecological transformation" not seen in millions of years as greenhouse gases and climate change affect temperature, acidity, sea and oxygen levels, the food chain and possibly major currents that could alter global weather.
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Link up top: Saudi King: Halt To Oil Exploration To Save Wealth
I think the implications of this are staggering. This is the first crack in the facade of Saudi's claim of massive oil reserves and their claim to be able to pump over 12 million barrels per day for decades. They realize that their old giant fields are on their last legs so they know they must soon make an excuse for falling production. And that excuse, "We are saving it for future generations."
Of course they still claim 260 billion barrels of "already discovered" oil. But it is only a tiny step from, "stop looking for more oil because future generations of Saudi citizens will need it." to "stop pumping so much oil because future generations of Saudi citizens will need it."
Ron P.
Exactly. It is very disheartening to hear that we need to "pray to God the Almighty" so that available reserves will last for some time, after drilling has ended.
This appears to be a phase transition to conserve energy resources by oil producers that Bhaktari and others warned about.
That phrase caught my eye too CM. It sure doesn't sound like the usual super confident rhetoric we get from the Saudi's regarding their oil. It's almost like he's saying two things: 1. We aren't searching anymore because we've exhausted the most promising sites, and 2. Pray to God the Almighty that the old fields we have hold out longer than we think they probably will, because we have so many folks in our country to care for in the middle of a desert.
I think it's a wakeup call for Saudi Arabians. They have very large oil resources, but they are far from infinite, and it's just about the only resource they have. It won't last forever, in fact it won't last for the lifetime of the children being born there now at the rate they are going.
Fifty years ago Saudi Arabia was a desert kingdom with a population of about 4 million. Today it is a desert kingdom with a population of close to 30 million - a 650% increase. Their oil production has not increased significantly since the mid-1970's, so the result has been a sharp decline in per-capita oil production for the last three decades or so, and a consequent decline in per-capita income. If their population continues to increase at a high rate and their oil production starts to decline sharply, the consequences will be unpleasant for their citizens.
They should have realized this decades ago, but better late than never. They need to get their population growth under control, conserve oil for future generations, and start planning for the day when they can't export any oil at all.
Actually, so should the rest of the world. When Saudi Arabia stops exporting oil it's going to be bad for the oil importing countries.
Maybe it`s a wake up call for Americans too---on top of the Gulf spill disaster. Maybe people who predicted that "peak oil" would become a widely known phenomenon this year were correct. But I tend to think that 2011 will be probably closer to the point where that happens.
It isn't. Abdullah said about the same more than two years ago. Has that gone unnoticed here?
I haven't gone back through the TOD archives but I remember a discussion about this.
Keep in mind though KSA drilling actually increased after this statement, although mainly to develop (or perhaps better said rework) existing oil fields.
KSA energy infrastructure spending will, for now, continue on a massive scale, as projects are clearly being developed to adjust to changing quality of oil, better utilization of natural gas, and also, to accomadate the rapidily growing internal energy demands.
I was just about to go search for the same thing. I knew this almost exact phrasology had occurred from KSA in the past. I think it's just another little bit that is slipping out from folks that know more than we do about the state of global oil reserves. Little bit from the UK, little bit from POTUS, little bit from KSA.
Is this by design to "ease" the world into the PO realization or is this just coincidence on the parts of various powerful people around the world?
In either case, it's time to brush off the ELM from westexas and see where we're at.
The discussion on TOD can be found here: DrumBeat: April 13, 2008
I don't think there is any design in any of these news releases. You will see more and more of them as we approach the decline of world supply. It is just natural that it happen this way.
I too would love to see just how much crude oil is being exported. Wish the guy who had the web site "Net Oil Exports" had kept it up. He dropped it about a year and a half ago. He showed then that net oil exports peaked in late 2006.
Ron P.
There was design in destroying mass transit in favor of cars, design in the ecological destruction of many countries to get cheap oil, design in deposing an Iranian President in 1953, design in invading Iraq, particularly the second time (unless one accepts the fantasy that those oil maps didn't include the reserves magically identified since), but there's no design in the slow drumbeat of acknowledgments coming out of the US military, government, etc., etc? Petrodollars?
In 2007 we were all waiting for that first public statement by someone from the inside and were all a' flutter when al Husseini made his statements in October of that year.
M'thinks there is definitely a design.
Cheers
I suggest that announcing "no new exploration" is most likely a message to the international community.
He's already said "no new development" under the same excuse. What I think he's doing it firing a shot across the bows of those who think OPEC is going to continue to ramp up production into the future (ie the IEA). The message is, no new production boosts. I think the other shoe will be a public pronouncement, probably around the time of some IEA prediction, that their assumptions are wrong, and that the west needs to start taking its consumption seriously (something he's already said before).
In short, its a policy shift that's been happening for a time, away from swing producer and the large development spends that go with it - and towards fulfilling domestic needs first and prolonging production life through high export prices. Its part of the changing of the game rules for a post peak world.
Yep, the difference is 2008 he stated he didn't want discovered fields produced, this statement says stop exploration. You'd think exploration for them is relatively low cost and after discovery no compulsion to produce. You'd think exploration would really help to define their resource base and give a clear idea of what long term production would look like.
This is a big statement for EIA and their new discovery projections.
So what else is new?
"My grandfather rode a camel, my father rode a camel, I drive a Mercedes, my son drives a Land Rover, his son will drive a Land Rover, but his son will ride a camel."
Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashid_bin_Saeed_Al_Maktoum
This fellow died in 1990 so we maybe into his grandson's time (Land Rover) and the next generation will ride the camel.
The American saying is "Shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations". It's derived from an old Lancaster saying, "there's nobbut three generations atween a clog and clog." The Japanese version is, "Kimonos to kimonos", the Chinese is, "Rice paddy to rice paddy", and in India, it's "peasant shoes to peasant shoes".
So, the Saudi version will be "Camels to camels". Except that there are too many of them now to all ride camels, so it might be "Camels to sandals".
There is only one hope for the Saudis in thier own country-a technomiracle on the renewables front.
Of course there might also be a slim chance they can go nuclear at the French level, but given the lack of skilled manpower needed to build them and the political minefields that associated with nuclear power in the Middle East.......
Otherwise they are buzzard food over the long term.
Maybe most of them might be able to emigrate to some place it rains,but it doesn't seem likely that a world in the grip of petroleum withdrawal and having a very hard time feeding itself will have much time or sympathy for the former pushers.
No, the only hope for the Saudis is a modern education system that will give their children the skills to produce new products they can sell to the world after their oil runs out. Their current system teaches them a lot about Islam and not much about modern technology or business.
What are the chances the Saudi politicians and religious leaders will introduce a modern education system to replace their religious-based one? Not good, I'm afraid.
Maybe the Saudi's will start making you take immigrants with your oil shipments. Want oil? Take some people.
I'm Canadian. We've probably got more oil than the Saudis, and we're selling more to the Americans than we're consuming ourselves, so we don't need the oil. However, the government thinks we could probably use more immigrants, so sure, send them over.
For more details see: Government of Canada will welcome more economic immigrants in 2010 .
RMG,
I suppose you are right about the possibility of the Saudis setting up a modern educational system and in essence doing away with two prevalent elements of thier society-a culuture of liesure at the top and another of ignorance at the bottom.
But the odds of the technomiracle arriving on schedule seem a lot better to me
Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum is wrong because the younger generation doesn't have the skills of their ancestors for surviving in the desert. Also, now the population is much larger and resources needed for survival (ground water) have been mostly used up.
I think he should have said:
"My grandfather rode a camel, my father rode a camel, I drive a Mercedes, my son drives a Land Rover, his son will drive a Land Rover, but his son will probably starve to death or die violently."
“There has been a paradigm shift in the energy world whereby oil producers are no longer inclined to rapidly exhaust their resource for the sake of accelerating the misuse of a precious and finite commodity. This sentiment prevails inside and outside of OPEC countries but has yet to be appreciated among the major energy consuming countries of the world.”
Sadad Al-Husseini , Saudi Aramco (2007)
That statement rings hollow because rapidly exhausting their resources is exactly what they are doing. They are, or at least they were, doing infield drilling in Ghawar and elsewhere as if there were no tomorrow. They claimed, in Nov. 2006, that their old fields were declining by 8 percent per year but with all that new drilling they had mitigated the decline back to almost 2 percent.
Saudi Arabia’s Strategic Energy Initiative
Now I ask you, does that sound like they are no longer incline to rapidly exhaust their resources? Sounds to me like they are drilling like mad to keep production up.
Ron P.
I tend to agree with the “warning shot” theory, because Aramco’s current actions certainly do not align with the idea of reducing exploration. Within the past couple of years Aramco has awarded massive exploration deals in the hundreds of millions US (see here for just one example, http://www.arabianbusiness.com/576678?tmpl=print&page= ), and the work is being carried out today. The financial commitment of this exploration work is extremely high even by the standards of top-tier western OilCo’s or well-heeled NOC’s. And it’s very interesting that the vast majority of the exploration is happening offshore (Red Sea & Arabian Sea), not onshore where it seems one would commit exploration capital if one believed that large deposits of easy-to-access oil were still to be had. Some of this offshore exploration is occurring over very challenging areas from a seismic and operational standpoint, and it’s clear that Aramco is targeting deepwater deposits based on where they’re exploring. There is also a clear urgency suggested by the pace and scope of their current exploration activity. Either they plan to increase capacity in a big way, or they’re trying to offset big declines elsewhere.
I think they are trying to tell those of us in the West that we shouldn’t count on unlimited future increases in their capacity to satisfy our thirst for their oil. It’s much more politically palatable to tell us that by telling us that they’re “saving” oil for future generations. I’m afraid that long before KSA gets too far down the backside of the depletion curve, their own underemployed and rapidly expanding population will overthrow the ruling class. So the guys in charge now have a very fine line to walk between keeping the West happy, keeping the revenue coming in to satisfy their own underclass, but not pumping their fields so fast as to hasten the day of apparent decline and the end of their reign.
The Arabian peninsula will never run out of solar energy resources.
They can develop that capacity to export electricity, power the homes of their pampered princes and their not-so-pampered subjects (even in Saudi, the lower class does not live easy), and desalinate enough water to recharge their acquifers and feed themselves.
It's an endeavor that would taker harder work from more people with more education than they have at their disposal. But it is doable.
Right! What an opportunity, everything all together there to make it happen. The sunniest place in the world, right up against the red sea, with ideal terrain for solar to hydro storage.
The biggest solar power factory in the world. Making everything that takes lots of energy, and shipping it worldwide., not to forget HVDC to europe. Bingo!
Now of course we will hear that tired old argument "solar takes more oil than it's worth" . Ok, last I heard, KSA has got some oil. And after you make it happen, it lasts sort of forever.
The other side of the red sea works also. As does the gulf of California, but the people around that place are still living in cloud kookoo land. Or, sunny kookoo land, if you wanta be literal.
It might be doable, but they haven't had much success so far. Solar power in the desert is more problematic than it seems. It uses more water than you would think. They use water to wash the dust off the solar panels. Saudi has also had trouble with their frequent sandstorms damaging the panels.
Well, I have worked on solar thermal for about 30 years. We never used ANY water. We cleaned our mirrors with an air broom, like a super energetic feather duster. And we dumped the heat to atmosphere with a normal air heat exchanger
Solar PV is another kettle of worms entirely, a surface phenomenon- especially triple junction concentrated PV. Thermal engines are less finicky and are happy to take high temps.
And the undoubted fact that we, and they, haven't done it is is not to say it cannot be done. Ask the Germans, who have been talking about powering Europe with the Sahara for two decades or more. If there were show stoppers somewhere, they have had tons of motive and time to find them.
Sand storms? sure, just turn the mirrors downwind. There are such storms in our deserts too, where the solar thermal power plants are.
Anyhow, all this is just normal engineering stuff. The stopper is not tech, but politics and money.
They've got enough money that they can attract the people with the education to develop solar resources. I recently saw plans at the Science Museum in London for a solar powered city in Dubai. don't underestimate the power of hard cash
Actually, I think this is the second crack as a while back the Saudi's said they were not to be counted on to be a future "swing producer" because of their growing internal needs so the world had better count on others to take care of this.
Nice weather in Riyadh, SA... Climate is like Phoenix, but hotter and less rainfall. Should be able to support 30 million on all that desert sand. I'll sell them a gallon of water for a barrel of unleaded :) It may be pouring on my 4th of July, but i know all my veggies are getting a d
Nice weather in Riyadh, SA... Climate is like Phoenix, but hotter and less rainfall.
I LOL'd.
what about the political situation, whether as hot weather?
Hopefully it will not
Seriously I do remember reading one Saudi prince saying he would rather have lots of water than oil in his country. I do not remember his name or where I read it, but I think a lot of desert dwellers long for rain. But they have built their culture on a sere plain, traders and nomads, it must not have been easy. Perhaps the religion reflects the austere physical conditions they have faced? Perhaps when they face a post peak world they will be more ready than most?
Pi, Saudi has about six to seven times the population it did when it was a primarily a Bedouin and merchant state. And all those Bedouins are now dead. The desert and the few oasis can support only a tiny fraction of the current population. The residents of Saudi Arabia will in no way be ready for a post peak world. It will be one of the worst places in the world to be in a post peak world.
Ron P.
You may be right, but what`s the harm of trying to be hopeful in the face of adversity? There may be lots of people on the planet more prepared than we realize just because their cultures have preserved ancient messages that will help the people to understand on some level what to do. For example, see the NY Times today----some hit Bollywood movies this year are based on the ancient myths of India. Is that a coincidence that these messages come along just now? You`d be surprised maybe what cultures contain in the way of myths, legends, fairy tales, etc. that help people to make lemons when they`re given lemonade.
Pi, my point was that Saudi has about six or seven times more people now than the desert can support. The only farming they can do is date farming around the oasis'. The desert can support only so many camels and goats. The rest of the people would simply starve.
So even if their culture was preserved it would not help. The desert sands can only support so many people. But as I said, all the Bedouins are dead. But no problem, they still know how to raise camels in the desert. I doubt if that will help very much.
Ron P.
The but political reality of SA is that only a small percentage of the resident population are SA nationals.
The remainder are migrant workers from all over, especially poor Muslim nations, who live in camps and actually do most of the work that the SA's are too rich to do themselves. When the economy gets tight, large numbers will be summarily repatriated. Of course, that is not a sustainable set-up either, but the true population of SA is not as large as first appears.
edit - slight exaggeration - 25% are immigrants.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_immigrant_population
The problem is not that the Saudis are too rich to do the menial work in their economy - they are getting less rich all the time as their population grows - it is that they are too proud to do it. If it were not for the guest workers, their economy would grind to a halt.
The problem is not the guest workers, it is the Saudis themselves. If the guest workers left, nobody would be willing to do the menial jobs. They need to lose the attitude and develop a work ethic. Nose to the wheel and shoulder to the grindstone, etc, etc.
When you have 30 million people, not all of them can ride around on camels.
What can the Saudis invest oil revenues in that will appreciate faster than oil in the ground?
Their best economic strategy appears to be to leave the oil in the reserves and satisfy any need for additional revenues through higher prices.
I was struck by the implications of this statement as well. You don't halt oil exploration to save the oil wealth for future generations, you halt or cut back on oil drilling. If you really wanted to save oil for future generations, you would explore and catalog the discoveries, but not tap into the newer fields. The only logical reason to stop oil exploration in a region is beacuse there isn't anymore oil to find.
That is it exactly. I have a model called Dispersive Discovery that has as one of its main premises the fact that the search rate accelerates over time. This is a very safe assumption as we all realize that technology keeps on advancing and so we can search both physically and virtually through advanced seismic techniques, visualization, and simulations. This acceleration in discovery search rate could in fact be faster than the acceleration in the extraction rate, which apart from the amount of manpower we put into it is limited by purely physical constraints.
So discovery advances both physically and virtually while extraction only proceeds physically, which implies that extraction becomes the rate-limiting step. This is all self-consistent and a comprehensive model of what I think is actually happening and we are seeing it play out (if what the Saudis are saying is true). They have given up on exploration and are relying on the rate-limiting step.
refs:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3287
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2712
You would not explore and catalog further reserves if you doubted your ability to keep the results secret from other country's intelligence organizations. In that case, it is better that unknowns remain unknown.
Which is another reason to use models of the aggregate. A good model helps to effectively remove missing or incomplete data. If SA only contributes to 20% of the world's output then the approximation of global oil dscoveries becomes more valid than if the contribution was larger.In the latter case, you would have to model a larger chunk so the relative error would be larger.
Yes, and there are a couple of factors involved in this:
1) Seismic became extensively used to locate new fields after WWII. Big oil fields tend to jump out at you on seismic, and naturally you drill the biggest prospects first (Ghawar was found in 1948). This led to the large number of big discoveries in the 1950's, 60's and 70's. Improvements in seismic technology enable you to find smaller fields, but unfortunately there's much less oil in smaller fields.
2) As you go deeper, you are more likely to find gas rather than oil because subsurface heat cracks the oil in the reservoirs to gas. Below a certain depth in any region, you are not going to find any oil at all, only gas.
So the Saudis have probably found all the big oil fields in the kingdom, and what they are going to find in future is smaller oil fields and gas fields. The smaller oil fields are not going to help production much, and will be expensive to produce, so they may as well quit looking now. The gas fields will be mostly useful for their own consumption, but that doesn't generate foreign exchange for them.
and from the article,
i think many are discounting the very existance of condensate reserves in ksa and ghawar field in particular. not much is published about condensate reserves from the deeper permian khuff and older rocks. the areal extent of khuff gas is huge, possibly as large or larger than the areal extent of oil in the cretaceous.
I am a little confused here Elwood. Help me out. I thought condensate came primarily natural gas wells or from associated gas that comes up with oil. It condenses out of natural gas as it cools and the pressure is reduced. I was not aware that there was any such thing as condensate reserves other than what is associated with their natural gas fields and associated gas.
Saudi is really hurting for natural gas. They now have huge power plants and desal plants that have resorted to burning oil because of their natural gas shortage.
Saudi Arabia Natural Gas. (EIA)
Ron P.
condensate is what condenses and is stored at stock tank (atmospheric) conditions from what was in the gaseous state in a natural gas reservoir.
ng reservoirs with higher condensate yields are refered to as gas/condensate. the components of condensate are primarily in the c2 - c10 range. condensate at atmospheric conditions would also contain small amounts of methane and possibly n2,co2 and h2s. the separation process is never complete and doesn't result in pure anything.
the liquid components(ngl's) separated from crude oil as associated gas require further processing to recover c2 -ethane, c3 -propane, etc. small amounts of these components and even methane will end up in the crude oil stock tank.
similarly, ngl's separated as gas from a condensate would need further processing.
separating gas from oil or condensate is done in multiple stages at sequentially lower pressures. gas removed from each stage will be richer(greater liquid content) than its next upstream stage.
Thanks Elwood. That helps a lot. But do you really think a country starved for natural gas really has that much condensate?
Ghawar came on line in 1951 and requires hundreds, perhaps thousands of water injection wells just to keep the pressure up. How much gas could possibly be left in Ghawar?
No doubt Saudi has condensate and will produce condensate as long as they produce natural gas. But they are not getting nearly enough natural gas for their own domestic use. I think that is because their old fields are not producing much gas anymore. Of course they still get some, that's why they have GOSPs. But they could not be generating nearly as much natural gas as they did forty years ago.
Ron P.
Saudi Arabia is oil prone rather than gas prone. Their gas/condensate reserves are a nice increment to their crude oil reserves, but I don't think it changes the overall picture much. Their condensate has already been factored into their oil reserve calculations.
Once their supergiant oil fields go into steep decline, their overall production will decline. Suspending exploration will move forward the date that the overall decline becomes steep.
condensate reserves are a big question. natural gas supply is problematic. not only does the ksa need gas for electrical generation, but efficient recovery of condensate requires the cycling (injection) of dry gas.
possible solutions - inject nitrogen or co2 for condensate recovery or import gas from some of their nice neighbors.
You had me up to that point Elwood. The recovery of condensate does not require that the dry gas be reinjected. Condensate is simply longer chains of hydrocarbons that condense out of the natural gas.
Dry gas is often reinjected just to keep the pressure up and has nothing to do with the recovery of condensate other than the fact as more oil is recovered more gas and condensate will be recovered also. But some of the gas recovered will be the same gas injected, therefore be condensate poorer because much has already been removed.
Now I could be wrong and an oilman may correct me here. If so then I need a good explanation as how reinjection of dry gas helps to recover condensate.
Ron P.
that's easy => retrograde condensation.
pressure drop will "normally" move in the direction of vaporization, but in high temperature reservoirs and depending on the overall composition, pressure drop can result in condensation. condensation within the reservoir is not good, condensate will be left behind. the reference linked below states that the reservoir temperature at ghawar(khuff) is 270 deg. F.
also wellbore effects can result in localized condensation which reduces the permeability to gas.
many gas condensate reservoirs have a condensate gradient, with greater condensate content at greater depth.
the permian khuff at ghawar is apparently a different animal, with the condensate gradient inverted. in other words, the gas composition is such that condensate yield is lower at greater depth. acid gas content, h2s and co2, also increases with depth.
http://www.onepetro.org/mslib/servlet/onepetropreview?id=00049270&soc=SPE
ghawar would seem to be a perfect candidate for condensate recovery by gas injection - downdip.
don't ask rockman about this, he knows steering, not reservoir engineering(he is an aggie).
What he is talking about is a retrograde gas/condensate reservoir. They are relatively rare but have unusual phase behavior. If you reduce the pressure on the reservoir by producing the gas, the gaseous condensate will condense to liquid inside the reservoir and you lose it permanently. This is a bad experience for a producer that is not expecting this to happen.
The solution is to build a gas cycling plant. You produce the wet gas, fractionate off the liquids, sell the liquids, and reinject the dry gas back into the reservoir. If you do this long enough, you will change the composition of the gas to the point where the liquids will not condense under reservoir conditions, and you can produce the remainder of the gas in a normal fashion.
The thing about these reservoirs is that there is more gas than liquids in them, but you have to produce the liquids first, and then produce the recycled gas.
There are some huge retrograde gas/condensate reservoirs elsewhere in the world, e.g. in the Former Soviet Union, but I don't know about Saudi Arabia. Just as a wild guess, I would say there are not a lot of them in SA.
And, if you have all these liquids being recovered, maybe you don't want to sell them. Maybe you want to inject them into a nearby oil field to improve oil recovery rates as part of an EOR project. You can retrieve the injected NGLs after all the oil has been produced. Decisions, decisions, decisions.
that may be true, depending on your definition of "rare", they (retrograde condensate reservoirs) could also be called "relatively common".
most any gas/condensate reservoir will exhibit retrograde "behavior" - declining condensate yield with depletion. and as you mentioned, the reservoir content changes. as the yield drops, the reservoir composition moves in the direction of richer gas. this only exacerbates the problem and retrograde behavior increases.
it all depends on the velocity of the "wet" gas moving through the reservoir. if the velocity is such that temperature falls, on pore volume scale, condensation will occur. this is most pronounced in the vicinity of the wellbore.
now about ghawar in particular. one reference gives the condensate yield for the discovery (khuff) reservoir in the hawiyah area as 163 bc/mmscf. interestingly this is almost exactly the yield for an example given in a pe text. for that case, calculated yield declined from 161 bc/mmcf to as low as 55 bc/mmcf.
what does that prove ? well nothing, i dont have the composition of the fluids recovered from the hawiyah discovery and niether do you. but the possibility is there for retrograde condensation or more broadly retrograde "behavior". further, we dont know if khuff is water driven.
i dont have a high degree of optimisim that a cycling project will happen. take a look at south pars/north dome field offshore iran/quatar.south pars/north dome also produces from the permian khuff. as far as i know, the uber-capitalists exploiting south pars/north dome are not cycling, they may be and probably should be. one impediment is that imaginary line separating iran and quatar.
i am not saying a cycling project will happen at ghawar, only that it is posssible. on the other hand, i think the saudi's are smart enough to connect the dots. we at least know that the saudi's are evaluating the optimum depletion plan for the khuff at ghawar.
incidenatlly, for whatever it is worth,wiki claims that the oil equivalent content of south pars/north dome exceeds ghawar's.
also, there is this from the wiki article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Pars_/_North_Dome_Gas-Condensate_field
at one time, i know gas cycling was considered for the purpose of recovering condensate and ngl's, without dry gas sales. that idea apparently never got off the ground, with lng sales being the mode of exploitation.
Re: Cuccinelli leads challenge to EPA finding on warming
Cuccinelli said :
A guy that wants to "keep the Earth clean" has seven (that's a big 7) kids. Here we see his basic ignorance of our environmental problem. His kids will have 1/7th as much of the planet for them to live on as did he. And, he spouts the old notion that being free to do as one wishes will somehow produce a "clean Earth", even though thousands of years of previous experience shows us that such activities produce lots of pollution and environmental degredation without some sort of regulation to prevent the repeated occurrence of situations often described as the "Tragedy of the Commons".
I would like to know how folks like him have missed the basics of the environmental problem. Worse yet, there are millions of Americans who have been led to think the same as he.
E. Swanson
Re: Saudi King: Halt To Oil Exploration To Save Wealth, up top:
So this is this going to be the line the Saudis take as their production peaks and enters decline: We have lots of oil but we're saving it for future generations.
And Re: As Oil Industry Fights a Tax, It Reaps Billions From Subsidies, up top:
Those who oppose subsidies for alternative fuels such as ethanol and biodiesel are wrong. Oil companies have myriad subsidies and tricks like locating offshore to avoid tax that home grown alternative fuels can not take advantage of.
Most of them are hidden in the tax code invisible to the public. Some are not such as wars for oil security and environmental pollution that they do not fully pay for.
Until subsides for oil are reduced/eliminated it is unreasonable to condemn ethanol/biodiesel subsides since unsubsidized alternates have a hard time competing with oil and its many subsidies without subsidies of their own.
In any case, the blenders credit ethanol subsidy is collected by mostly oil companies who use it to shelter income from any taxes that they did not manage to avoid otherwise. Farmers and ethanol companies are indirect beneficiaries of the blenders credit.
X, I agree with you and Obama that oil subsidies should stop.
Obama Calls for End of Oil Subsidies in 2011 Budget
And from the link up top: As Oil Industry Fights a Tax, It Reaps Billions From Subsidies
So actually the tax they do pay dwarfs the subsidies they receive. Can the same be said about ethanol? I don't think so. And the fact that the vast majority of oil produced in the world is produced without subsidies proves that it is a profitable enterprise without subsidies. In fact the major source of income for many countries is royalties and taxes from the oil produced on their land. That cannot be said for ethanol.
However that is not the point. The point is we are using more and more arable land to produce fuel for transportation and using less and less to produce food. The population of the world continues to grow and, if more and more land is devoted to fuel production, the food supply will continue to fall. And that is the point of contention, well for me anyway it is.
Ron P.
Ron,
You may find a bit of solace in this from article at CNN.
Why America needs to free itself from oil
By Jonathan Powers, Special to CNN
July 4, 2010 9:37 a.m. EDT
http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/07/04/powers.oil.independence/index.html...
I think it is a step forward that someone from MSM even allowed this POV to be put out there.
Cheers, and a Happy 4th to all!
This will restart the concerns expressed by "Peak oil" advocates that we are ever closer to that tipping point. Why would the Saudis be looking to halt further exploration if they were confident that they had plentiful reserves?
This is also a reason, along with the consequences of the recent BP disaster in the Gulf, for the US and other major economies to start looking seriously at alternative fuels for major transport infrastructure.
While worth a read M Powers stops half way. He doesn't even mention the main cause for all that dependency on oil: a society that has been made totally dependent on (cheap) gasoline.
Explaining how to change this might be more difficult than demanding to end some dependency on foreign oil.
I think you are correct. He has an opportunity when he mentions "Clean, American power," but fails to dive in. Still, I think his article is pretty bold for CNN and it is meant to be an opinion article suitable for the 4th of July. I agree with his sentiments.
It does, however, set the need for a follow up article. There is no way we can "get off foreign dependence" of our oil appetite immediately, but we could sure as heck start cutting down the percentage (more trains, electric trains, wind, hydro, solar, nuclear, more efficiencies in current petroleum-based systems, etc.)
Anyways, I liked his passage below and wanted to pull it out for folks.
I still propose this idea, quite radical. The US Government will ban the sale of all new cars starting in 2 years (or 3 or 4). New trucks (not pickup trucks or SUVs), ambulances, buses, etc. are still OK to sell and buy. Used cars can be bought and sold. Given this condition, local and state govt officials would have to come up with lots of ways to adjust for this car-poor future. Medical care, food, education....it will all have to be re-thought. Of course there would be a lot of grumbling and complaining but I bet it would be better than a complete collapse in the economy, followed by emergencies that couldn`t be addressed.
The govt could even say it`s all for climate change reasons....hey, I think a lot of younger people would be FOR this idea. They are going to live on the planet longer than the older ones who might resist more out of fear.
Fred, actually I find no solace whatsoever in that article.
I would dearly love to end our dependence on oil, however oil is absolutely necessary, not just for well being but for the well being of almost everyone in the world. All our food is grown with heavy dependence on oil. Oil powered vehicles plant, cultivate and harvest that food. Oil provides pesticides and fertilizer to grow that food and oil provides transportation to deliver that food.
And that is just oil for food. Oil is used for thousands of other things which there is currently no substitute that can provided in the quality and quantity needed. The world contains almost 7 billion people. Those numbers alone dictate that oil is necessary to keep them all alive.
The point of view you wish MSM would step forward and allow is that there are easy substitutes for oil if only we would step forward and develop them. I believe that point of view is sorrowfully wrong. In my opinion there is nothing that can replace oil in the quantities and qualities necessary to keep almost 7 billion people alive.
Ron P.
It is unbelievably easy to change that. To wit:
Our 100% organic, no-till, first year urban garden.
Cheers
well, that changes everything.
In fact, it does.
Try opening your mind. Think about the implications of refuting what had been stated. If what he said is not true, then....?
Or you can be uselessly sarcastic. Up to you.
Cheers
The picture says most of it. Enough food there to feed a family for how ? long. I am a fairly experienced gardener, with a good vegetable garden, completely organic I assure you. My current ambition/obsession is "a third of a third" - I'd like to supply the equivalent of a third of all the food needs of my partner and I (just 2 people) for a third of the year. I'm far from it.
It's like the current state of alternative energy, just too big a gap between dream and reality.
My brother is a long time professional organic grower, selling locally through community distribution. He still uses a tractor, has plastic growing tunnels, needs gas to distribute the vegetables to market.
True sustainable self-dependence would be brutal. You'd certainly have no time to contribute on here.
That picture was early on. Only some lettuce ready (and not in the picture). The garden is much fuller now, of course. And, that's just a corner of the garden. However, I am not claiming one small lot is enough, but three/four certainly is. The picture was just a sample, which you obviously had figured out for yourself... thus... what was the point of your retort?
I don't have: Soil input costs. Fertilizer costs. Eventually no water costs. (Should have done that first, actually.) Etc. Also, organic alone does *not* = sustainable, thus is a bit like people now talking about maintaining car culture: sort of irrelevant. Oh, and tell your friend to plant some food forests. HUGE impact.
You and I are thinking along different paradigms. You're talking about organic BAU, I'm talking organic permaculture, nation of farmers.
VERY doable, and our best shot at reducing carbon emissions in the short and medium terms.
Cheers
Good for you! HAve you tried growing lettuce in pots? This year I`m doing that, and I mixed in lots of fertilizer (produced by rabbits we keep) into the soil. Fantastic results. Really saves money and time.
I tried growing a few stalks of wheat as a test. Amazingly easy, but boring to harvest and separate the wheat from the chaff.
Raspberry plants---rabbits like to eat raspberry plants that expand too much into the rest of the garden. Raspberries are easy to grow. You can use the edge of a fence where there`s some leftover space.
Asparagus----so difficult! I read they were easy, but only one or two shoots came up. A disappointment.
Asparagus takes a while to get going;it will probably produce better after another year or two, don't give up too soon.Look up the proper management practices on a govt supported agricultural website, you will get good advice there, not new age malarkey.
Mac, I have a complete set of the Storey Publishing bulletins from the late 70's. Good stuff. I don't know if these are still available, but Storey publishing prints a book titled "Basic Country Skills" that is very informative.
Rabbit manure is great. I read a recent article the supported the anecdotal evidence that chicken manure is best of all, though. Have you considered a rabbi tractor so you can move the hutch over wherever you want to fertilize?
No lettuce in pots. Would like to know your results.
Also want to grow grains. The wife has some buckwheat on hand. Hope to give that a try. Fukuoka had neighbors help with the threshing.
Raspberries: All for 'em. We have six currant bushes (hacked out of one huge one a vet wanted to get rid of) and three of four blueberries are still viable after we thought we had lost them all.
Have started an apple guild. Just the apple tree and some comfrey so far.
Comfrey: have ten Bock 14 (sterile) planted and two packs of seeds waiting.
Our first compost try turned out amazing. Nine weeks to the earthiest-smelling compost I've ever experienced. Hope we can repeat that. Latest batch a week in.
Cheers
No rabbit tractor. The rabbits (just3) live in stationary cages but they use manure boxes---they prefer them to just messing up their cages. I feed them grass, weeds, branches, leaves, anything green. I remove the manure from the boxes.
I would like to get chickens one day but they eat bugs and grains......I would have to buy grain to give them but feeding the rabbits is free except for three months in winter when I do buy pellets. I don`t think there are enough bugs here to satisfy even one chicken.
The lettuce never seems to die even in frost (not a hard frost here). But it goes to seed and then I have to replant it. But before that happens I`ve picked off many a leaf for a salad or a sandwich. The leaves grow and regrow.....extremely convenient! I think by moving the pots closer to a building you can keep them warmer in the winter. The best thing is no weeding needed. And watering is a snap. In a hot place, maybe a shady spot or semi-shady spot would be good. Again, the pots allow one to have more control. And bugs can`t get to the pots so easily as they can into furrows.
The key to asparagus is buying good fresh crowns and proper preparation. I get my crowns online from Nourse Nurseries. I see crowns for sale at stores that are all dried out and weak. The major outlets don’t care for their nursery stock properly - they put them in racks in a heated dry store - so unless you buy them the day they arrive, beware. Get them in very early spring. Plant them as soon as the ground is ready to work and not muddy. As to planting dig trenches about 12 to 16 inches deep and work good composted organic material into the bottom of the trenches. Try to choose an area with good drainage, and lime to sweeten the soil if needed to a PH about 6.0-6.5. Try to do this a few weeks before planting. Plant the crowns on the bottom of the trench and build up the soil gradually as they grow eventually filling the trench. Don’t harvest anything for a couple of years. I waited about three on my rows, I like being conservative. The main reason you plant them so deep is weeding. I run a rototiller over my rows late winter when the ground is workable to dig up all the weeds that gained a foot hold during the previous summer. Many of these weeds are seedlings from the asparagus - you get them even with the all male varieties as there is an occasional female plant. On a smaller plot weeding is easier. On my plot which is three 75 ft. rows it is a little more difficult to get all of the weeds. Weeding is my least favorite chore, especially getting the perennial varieties.
Same where I work. Where they get the gall to refer to it as "organic" is beyond me. It's just farming, but the pretense of superiority is laughable. As long as it's local, who cares what chic label is put on it?
You should. Local does not = sustainable.
My garden is organic, but not to be chic. It is organic because I can actually build soil health this way, whereas you cannot with chemical inputs. Over time, my soil will get *better,* not worse.
Cheers
I think most people don't understand how hard to is to produce enough calories to feed a family. All the lettuce in the world isn't going to do it. There's a reason it's diet food. Most garden vegetables don't have many calories at all. They're good for nutrients and variety, but the calories come from grains and things like potatoes, taro, or manioc.
I tied some ropes from my roof eaves down into the yard on which to grow some pole beans. I am getting ~200 calories/day from 20 sq ft of garden space and that is with 1/3 of the plants not producing beans yet.
Has a bonus they shade my house. This is my third year -- it is my first garden idea to really succeed.
Have you considered doing a fruit tree espellier given your small space?
Cheers
i know this sounds edm hokey, but have you considered using sections of chain link fence suspended from the eaves ?
too hokey for me, I suppose in five years nobody will give a damn, you could grow all sorts of stuff on that, might be hard to harvest, I use an A-frame ladder in between the house and the beans. Picked two pounds of Kentucky Wonder today.
got it. chain link too hokey and ropes not.
I find the opposite to be true, but I don't follow typical practices. We have something like 40+ different types or varieties of plants in our garden, all co-planted, all organic and in a space not bigger than about 35 x 40. And there is room to spare in the space being cultivated.
A few of the ways around the caloric thing are:
maximize space, including verticle space; espelliers
Food forest; nuts for protein; up to seven niches in any given verticle column
co-planting, such as Three Sisters, getting three foods all from the same space
No till: don't disturb soil biota
Compost/Fish tea
Etc.
Most important, particularly with regard to the "hard" part, PERENNIALS. This is the key to maximizing yield while reducing inputs, effort and time. If you simply do not need to re-plant 4/5 of your food production each year, you can manage that much more acreage, all without tractors, etc.
Our garden will be primarily perennials within two years, if not by next spring.
Cheers
Food forests are fine given one caveat: wildlife makes the harvest undependable. In my forested part of my property I have some large black walnuts and hickories. For the best nuts you have to try to get them before the squirrels do. My favorite shellbark, one with large thin shelled tasty nuts, is hit first by the squirrels with devastating effect (funny how they can tell which nuts have the worms in them without opening them). They choose the best first before they resort to eating the bitternuts and acorns. Deer are also a competitor for forest products. This is why I planted my grafted select pecans and hazelnuts separate from my forest. I do plant nut and fruit trees in the forest - pecans, hickories, serviceberries, paw paws, and butternuts, I just don’t count on them being there in any appreciable size harvest.
There are always challenges. Find where the squirrels hide 'em and thank them for their kind assistance.
;)
One possible solution is... unemployment! Have someone hang out to shoo away the critters for food.
Or, grow more than you need.
Or....
lol
Cheers
I should also thank the squirrels for de-shelling the nuts since the shells are found at the base of the tree.
Definitely! Good ground cover, and conveniently located, too!
It's hard but doable. Our new garden this year has been tough since we started from scratch. Fenced 115' x 65' mostly with scrounged and recycled fencing. Virgin soil is tough too, rocks and weeds. It takes a couple of years to get the labor/soil ratio down. Put in solar drip irrigation, also from scrounged and salvaged stuff (featured in this thread: http://campfire.theoildrum.com/node/6626#comment-662396 ). With a few minor changes it is working well. Yesterday it pumped to overflowing the 275 gal tank. Lots of bugs, so we have been using insecticidal soap, some sevin spray and a tobacco solution I'm trying. The old two finger, "search and destroy" method also works.
All of that said, I canned 24 quarts of pickles, 10 pints of peppers, 10 pints of squash, 10 pints of green beans and some relish this week. We also put by 16-1/2 pints of blackberry jam and 9 pints of raspberry jam. All of this is for 2 people and trade. Our new garden partners have been harvesting and putting by lots of stuff too, and we have been giving squash, cucumbers, blackberries, green onions, herbs, more away to any who'll pick and weed. I was worried that we would run out of jars and lids, then remembered the jars that I inherited from my mother (stashed in the root cellar). Dug them out; over a hundred fifty quart and pint jars and boxes of lids. A real treasure.
70 tomato plants producing soon, as well as corn, onions and potatos, hot peppers, mellons, okra, more beans, etc. The asparagus beds are preped and resting for next winter's planting. The compost piles are composting (it took passing a "garden law" to convince my cityfied partners that ALL organic matter goes to the compost pile, not the trash can).
All of this has been done by 3 people, in three months, starting with about a 5th of an acre of raw land, an assemblage of junk, a borrowed tiller (less than 5 gals of fuel), some seeds/plants, very little chemical fertilizer, and lots of hard work. Only I had any experience in veg gardening. By season's end we'll have grown and canned tens of gallons of of various crops, dried beans and peppers, stored onions and potatoes, started some fall crops and have a great start for next year.
Doable?
I'm jealous as all get out of everything, but especially this: "Dug them out; over a hundred fifty quart and pint jars and boxes of lids. A real treasure."
Da-yum.
Beautiful. I'll work on you wrt the tilling. Got to draw down the carbon, not release more! And your soil will build more quickly if you don't, also.
:)
Cheers
Some of the old jars had mouse nests in them. A little bleach and hot water will fix that. I doubt I'll fill them all this year but nice to know I don't need to buy canning jars.
Yeah, tilling's a bitch. This was old pasture, good soil but needs some ammending and loose stuff. A few yards of compost and wood chips mixed in will make things easier for next year. It's a big garden and I'm thinking long term.
My best call was the water system. It looks like we're back to drought again. No water, no food.
Water is where I've been the most afield. I have the stuff for the basic structure - barrels, spouts, gutters - but haven't set it up yet.
Water first. (Oops. Do as I say, not as I do!)
Cheers
Worms and composting turned to compost tea are great fertilizers, and all you need, really. A little goes a long way. There are unsustainable inputs, so you have to consider whether they help you produced enough food energy and sequester enough carbon to make it worthwhile. Given we're talking sustainable, thus indefinite, thus looong time scales, I'd guess the answer is an easy "yes."
Very Doable. In fact, I'd guestimate - and it is only that, so no flames, people - that one person could easily manage 1 - 2 acres of mature permaculturally-designed homestead. That's really hard under typical arrangements and methods.
Cheers
Cool garden! I'm currently an apartment dweller, but hope to get back to the land in a few years. But I do frequent farmers markets when they are in season.
I'm curious about why your rows are arcs rather than the traditional lines? Is it functional or aesthetic?
Have you tested your soil for contaminants? Between leaded gasoline and lead paint, many old yards have contaminated soil.
Plants don't eat much lead. Spinach maybe. Wash roots, don't eat the dirt yourself. Turn over soil. Mix in organic matter. No worry about lead.
Hey SBill,
The arcs do three things (everything at least two functions), provide more space (curves over straight lines), follow the contours of the land and aid in managing and retaining water, and are aesthetically pleasing to everyone who has cared to comment. I didn't care about the latter much, but the neighbors do. That's a sector I have, so have to deal with it.
We did test our soil and it came back excellent. High in all nutrients and low lead.
Lead can be an issue. Goghoner is a little simplistic, but, in general, correct. Lead will accumulate in leaves, so leafy veggies are a concern. Each plant has it's own degree of uptake, so you will need to research what to plant if you end up with higher lead in your soils. However, G is right that good soil amendments help sequester the lead in the soil, i.e. make it inert by binding it. And, making the problem the solution, you can research plants that will preferentially accumulate (hyper-accumulate) lead and use them to "clean" your soil. It's called phytoremediation, in case you've not heard of the process. You can also use mushrooms, mycoremediation.
Also, the fruit of plants do not accumulate lead, so a simple solution is to use only fruiting plants rather than leafy plants.
Cheers
Organic gardens that I have seen still use oil for a lot of things--irrigation, transport of soil amendments to the garden, transport of seed to the property, transportation of the food from the garden, manufacture of things like plastic sheeting and plastic hoses, and quite often tractors and other equipment.
I have also seen electric fences around the outside, to keep wildlife out. Whatever fence is around the garden above was likely made using oil, and transported to the site using oil.
2 thousand calories per day per adult ...every day ... 365 days a year.
not even close to enough photosynthesis going on there.
the world runs on SEEDS ((grains and legumes)
Gail, that describes the place I work to the "T." In addition, we have two large greenhouses with oil furnaces in them for starting seedlings and retailing plants.
I really enjoy working at the place because it's small, local, and low-tech (although I'm the 'tractor guy'). The "organic" certification bit is a joke in my book, but small and local are virtues in themselves. Soon, "organic" will price itself right out of existence and we'll be back to farming whatever way works.
At home, I have over 5,000 square feet of gardens. I enjoy my tiller, my pesticides, and my piles of cow manure. But that's just me. We grow about 90% of our own food here--not in preparation for peak oil, but because we like it.
Without my tillers, weed eaters, brush cutters, chainsaws, small tractor, and pesticides and herbicides maintaining my large plot would be impossible. Right now it is the Japanese beetles that are causing havoc. Without Sevin my vineyard and hazelnut bushes would be gone (don't even bring up traps - you get bags of beetles and the plants still get destroyed). I got along fine without these in my small garden in Chicago. On my large property in South Central Illinois forget it - especially turning old cow pasture into a functioning farmette. The weed bank in the soil must be decades old. Goldenrod, lambs-quarters, ragweed, ox eyed daisy, and maretail turn up everywhere. I’ve become a believer in a judicious use of roundup. You can't mulch everything, at least not immediately. I have my certification in pesticides from past employment at a grain elevator. That job was a real eye opener.
I know I'll get some criticism. So what.
"Without my tillers, weed eaters, brush cutters, chainsaws, small tractor, and pesticides and herbicides maintaining my large plot would be impossible."
Yeah, I have all of this stuff too. I work every day to cut my reliance on these things. Solar irrigation, looking at goats, donkeys (on the way) and a cow or two, to do my mowing and fertilizing. I let more brush grow than I used to and may use fire later to reclaim overgrown sections as needed. Working on growing/making my own pesticides. My birthday wish this year is for a new electric chainsaw to run off of the solar system.
As things wind down, I expect that many of us will have more time to devote to manual labor, as in actually picking the bugs off the veggies with your fingers. When they are competing for your food and you have little choice, it doesn't seem so bad. They also make good fertilizer.
If there is criticism, it's due to the attitude of "who gives a s@#t, I'm not interested in learning more effective ways to do things." Everyone starts somewhere, so if your attitude were one of interest, but skeptical, that would be fine.
In fairness, without knowing a lot more detail, it's hard to critique, let alone criticize. Some changes simply aren't doable under whatever given circumstance. But, assuming you have some wiggle room, I hope you are at least hearing what is being shared and being open-minded about it.
There is a lot of info out there. I've posted several examples of people doing it organically and/or sustainably and doing it well. If you think those are B.S., well, there's nothing I can do about that.
I guarantee you this: the same space that vexes you now would only be that much easier - and cheaper - to run applying the principles and ethics I've posted.
Cheers
Unless I missed something, you’ve shown me nothing I haven’t seen nor done before, a city lot planted with veggies. In my ward in Chicago we often planted vacant lots with gardens with cooperation from the alderman (he liked the photo ops). Won awards for my gardens and planted others for friends. I was the guy you sought out when you needed information, a plant, propagation help, or just some muscle. I have a large gardening library that is dog eared from use (except for the bite marks from the kittens). I’ve canned for years; got two pressure canners and a large hot bath unit. So you’re not talking to a novice.
I do take notice when someone claims they can grow all their own food on a small plot. Really? I know some people that come close - not me, I’m still on training wheels - and they are not “farming” a city lot.
What you didn’t show me was someone who was able to grow ALL (or a great percentage) of their own food using the so called “permaculture“(Holmgren’s book made nice kindling last winter) methods - with a minimum of labor (I have a client whose property is next to Rodale’s in Pennsylvania and he tells me of the hordes of volunteers working that place) and without power tools, commercial fertilizers, hormones (B1 as an example), herbicides and pesticides. Check some of the blogs of people who have tried really tried to self sufficiently farm. It is very difficult and a labor of love.
Pesticides and herbicides are the big taboo to the “organic” crowd. As far as pesticides and herbicides I use the very minimum I need. Haven’t needed them for my peaches, blackberries, asparagus, blueberries, elderberries, watermelons, or most of my veggies. If a plant is too vulnerable and is not too important, I get rid of it. If I don’t need herbicides or the plant or crop doesn’t suffer too much from infestation, I don’t use them. But on plants that are too valuable and susceptible to insects I use pesticides. Apples must be sprayed, especially when my neighbor practices no hygiene in his orchard.. Try picking the Japanese beetles off of 75 plus grapevines. My Hazelnuts can get defoliated in no time by the same critter - a foreign species with no native predator. If your don’t get ahead of it it’s worse than blood in the water for sharks. I’ve tried stuff like Neem oil, but by the time it works the damage is done (it is great on mildew, saved a whole harvest of squash last year - won‘t ever plant that variety again). Herbicides are especially needed for persistent perennial weeds. I’ve pulled some only to have a piece of root remain and come back again. Try hand pulling weeds over a five acre area. You must control them all in the vicinity or risk the wind spreading them back again. Herbicides are also the only effective way to maintain pasture.
Yes, once the soil is amended and the weed bank is drawn down, it does get easier.. But it is a lot easier and quicker working organic material into the soil with machinery when you are first establishing your beds. Some beds I till every year - garlic and sweet potatoes for instance. I’d also bet my soil has more mychorrhizal activity than yours as I have inoculated it and planted mushroom mycelium. I have mushrooms sprouting all over the place. This doesn’t happen on “dead soil”. I also introduced more varieties of night crawlers. They appear to be doing alright and love newspaper mulch.
bruce, there are some people for whom long experience means nothing. It sounds like you know what you're doing, though.
Farming comes with no attached adjectives or dogmas. There are a lot of tools out there. Use what you need, or whatever works in your conditions. Mulch? Compost? Fertilizers? Pesticides? Mechanical methods? Row covers? Shovels? Tillers?
Use it all.
While the gov't disagrees, I don't consider them organic. But more to the point, they aren't sustainable. A permaculture-based garden should end up both organic and sustainable. And a lot less work than MikeB and others seem to want to condemn themselves to.
We do need to be realistic, however. We live in a FF world. Nobody can claim zero FFs were part of the making of their garden, but that's also just being pedantic. What is important is to realize that, given good planning and time, any garden can reach the point of self-sufficiency and long-term sustainability while also ultimately being a carbon sink.
That is, while one may use a vehicle to bring in plants, compost materials, etc., once those are in place and set up in a sustainable system, the following decades can be completely without outside inputs. If one is very lucky, at least for now, one might find such a sustainable garden to get one's inputs from, thus keeping the loops closed and maintaining ultimate sustainability via sharing the surplus.
Cheers
When I was growing a small garden (large by Chicago standards, and the flat roof on my three flat was also used) I held the same views you did. Before I made the plunge to “buy the farm” I read all the pertinent books, (one straw revolution is the most useless) everyone one of them. I was going to change the face of small scale farming and show them all how it was done. Then came the reality of managing a large garden located on a ten acre parcel. It all comes down to scalability and time. Larger plots are much harder to manage. A few days of rain, a few busy days where I can’t get into the field, and I’m playing a severe game of catch up. I’ve got varieties of weeds and insects I never knew existed, much blown in by the wind from adjacent fields and ditches. Today it is in the 90’s, and out in my field it is a blast furnace. Want to work out in that? So you do your work early morning - moisture from dew and bugs makes it a real pain - and later in the day when the sun is going down. This timeframe makes every hour precious. This is where powered tools (could also include draft animals - I have Amish neighbors) are worth their weight in gold.
I find it amazing the arrogance of those who are in the urban gardening movement concerning those of us who live in the country and manage larger plots. What do you think we have no experience and cannot learn from it? Were just plain stupid? You think all they do out here is ride in their air conditioned tractors (sadly many do) and only tend their row crops? I found decades of experience worth listening to out here, and when I didn’t I usually suffered. Many out here sorely depend on their extra crops to make ends meet. I can go to my local town square this time of the year and always find a pickup truck parked selling their crops.
Don’t get me wrong, I admire the amount of gardening that can get done n an urban setting. Did it myself and was very successful at it. But many of the techniques are not scalable. Yes, it does get easier over time as the soil gets more enriched (you somehow assume I don’t add organic material - I got a few acres of pasture to draw from) and I can reduce the need for chemicals and powered implements. But I see no way, and believe me I tried, of getting to that point without them short of a very large labor force. I would be a lot further along had I used more traditional method right from the get go. Live and learn.
Nicely stated, and true.
Anyone who tells you farming is "no work" is an idiot. They probably don't enjoy work, period.
One straw revolution is for faux philosophers, not farmers.
Wow. You are sure wedded to your ways.
I fully understand that even something that works, even spectacularly, is not for everyone. I love massage. Some people hate it. Insane, really, but true. The health benefits are many. But the physical is not the only issue, and medical conditions can be a factor.
The problem with OSR is not the book. Fukuoka's work has been replicated.
And what crazy juice are you drinking that makes you imply anybody has ever said gardening/farming is no work? For *one* garden Mollison showed you, it was verdant and productive, yet required only ten hours a year.
I don't understand your harshness. Don't want to try it, don't. People have demonstrated what can be done. Up to you. Me? I like the idea of less work for the same yield. Don't understand why you wouldn't.
Cheers
What "ways"? I follow no ideology. I use what works.
Then you didn't read the book. It's called "Do Nothing Farming." It's horse hockey.
Why ten acres? How many people? To what purpose?
Life, eh? Gonna get worse. Using perennials suited to the climate, particularly natives, would help with that, no?
See above.
I haven't said don't use tools. I've said we need to work toward sustainability, long-term.
What has being in the city or the country got to do with it? And we aren't talking about being stupid, we're talking about continuing your education, if anything.
But have stopped listening, or what?
Who told you to use the same techniques? It's obvious, but worth saying: no two places are the same; design for your space.
I'm not sure I did, but if so, it was in response to you saying you use insecticides and chemical fertilizers, and not saying you were composting and mulching.
I have not nearly enough knowledge of your experiences there, the many other sectors involved, etc., to have any idea what is possible where you are with the resources you have. I don't even know what your goals are. But, I do know this: long term, organic farming has the better yields.
Also, it is very, very important to keep in mind when discussing these issues with me that I am thinking generations, not years. Still, reaching sustainable levels need not take generations, or decades.
And scale is important. Ten acres? Too much for one person. This gets to redesigning how we arrange ourselves within the environment. Do you need ten acres? Maybe some of that work can be let go? Maybe you sublet? Maybe.... whatever.
But I reiterate, whatever you *are* doing, if it's not being designed with permaculture principles/sustainability in mind, there's a pretty fair chance it is possible to further reduce your work load and increase your yields and costs.
This isn't magical thinking. It is process and transition does, and should, take time. Succession takes time. Nobody said you have to be sustainable tomorrow, next week or in five years. We plan for long term sustainability.
Cheers
Ten acres was available, and I was lucky it there was for survivability purposes. It's a rare property that I was lucky to find. A large portion of the land is pasture. I've been concentrating on getting it in prime condition for either livestock, goats and or hair sheep, or hay production. I have friends in Chicago who will pay a good price for goat meat. Good quality hay is very marketable. My neighbor has a square bailer that he will let me use. My land has a nice size woodlot. It has six species of oak, five of hickory, sugar maple, sassafras, ash, honeylocust, osage orage, poplar, redbud, paw paw, persimmon, and lots of black walnut. Like I said rare. I know, I know, co2 production, but I don't have the resources for solar and a geothermal heat pump so I use what I have.
I'm sorry if I was not clear, but what I was referring to was weed growth. get distracted or busy for a little while and bam! A whole lot of work. This is where herbicides are a good tool on perennial weeds that are very stubborn. Ever try hand pulling poison ivy? Unless you are immune to urishol I would not recommend it.. Actually it's going to get better. As the property is being improved I can concentrate on other things. I’ve done mush rebuilding on the house. My neighbors are impressed with how the property looks. I don't get your comment about perennials. Explain, I'm missing something. I have planted native perennials such as ramps, ginseng, goldenseal, and others on my property. I have a large sunchoke patch that could probably feed someone for a month (not that I'd want to)
My statement sucked a little - oops. Let me say - everything. I have a source of knowledge that many don't, the acquired experience of a community who have gardened and farmed for years. I respect life experience, and discovered while working at the elevator these people have a wealth of knowledge and practicality that is worth listening to. Not that others are unknowing, but in my case, trying to set up self sufficiency in the long term very worth listening to.
I think the word sustainability is overused, I prefer to use the term survivability. To get to my goal of a working small farm I will use every tool available in my budget, that is conclusion I have reached. I really screwed up when I first bought my property with the mindset I could manage my property with the mindset you proclaim would save me labor. I tried the techniques I used in Chicago and failed (at least in my garden, I made great progress in managing my forest and clearing all the brush - by hand!). Had I bought a small tractor, or a used one in good condition I would be much farther along. The problem with using the term sustainable is that it is largely dependent on everyone elses' actions. If everyone else wastes energy and resources what power do I have to change the situation? Not much. I learned very early on from one of my political science professors that revolutions create revolutionaries, not the other way around. When people are ready they will listen, but history shows that is only when the tipping point is reached. In this case it will be too late. What matters to me is survivability - can I feed myself and the people I care for. I know what my garden in Chicago using the latest methods produced and it was evident that that situation was no. Can I do it where I'm at? I'm not certain, but it is a much better probability, especially in a community such as mine that is cohesive and still have memories of the old ways. Moreover, many of my neighbors, and a good friend, keep mules and workhorses as a hobby (they enter in competitions) I’m close to biggest concentration of
Amish in the state. My neighbors in Chicago would steal from me in a minute. I’d really hate to think about Detroit.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I get the impression I'm dealing a convert, a true believer. I am very skeptical of such people, especially since I probably read all the same books they did and found the claims of their methods, while good, not reaching their claimed results. I feel I'm being sold.
Totally agree. I've planted a lot of gardens for myself and friends and they all present different solutions. Some things, such as organic matter and good hygeine are universal.
My mistake. Even if you are very selective in what you grow it is almost impossible to not use some sort of chemical. I don't grow sweet corn for two reasons: first, my neighbors are really good at it, second, I don't like the cost of fertilizers. Unless you have perfect soil (Champaign county, Illinois) you're probably going to need amendments other than compost.
I guess we both don't have much knowledge of each others' experience, but I believe this discussion started with your picture of your corner garden as proof of your gardening techniques, and your response to another poster (who taught agriculture) who stressed it took a couple of acres for self sufficiency. I think anyone who thinks that a yard garden is going to change the situation is deluding themselves. Kind of like sending a few dollars to a charity and feeling better. Yes, good horticultural techniques give consistent yields. Not a new idea, "Traditional American Farming Techniques" originally published in 1916 has some of the same time tested principles. Moreover, the whole idea that permaculture techniques are going to change everything is ludicrous. It does not scale up. It does not necessarily reduce workloads because it's application is not universal. There are many unaccounted inputs. It's as my one philosophy professor said "you climb the ladder to get where you are going and then you throw it away and say "what ladder?"" It does sell books though.
By the way do I need ten acres located in God's country? Yes. I always needed it, it's only now that the opportunity presented itself. You can be the "fool for the city".
Let me add another thing. I’m am one of the few people (we are a vanishing breed) who is capable of pulling this thing off. I’m a union cabinetmaker/carpenter, can wire a house (rewired six in Chicago to strict code, and rewired two factories), build and set up a computer, do all the plumbing, weld, rebuild engines and all mechanical on just about anything, do minor machine work, just about anything the average farmer could do.
Thanks for your efforts and thoughts.
How did I miss that statement. Decades? No more inputs? And have good yields. Never seen that claimed of a system by anyone. Source?
{picture of garden}
We farm a plot that's at least ten times that size.
When you want a larder full of food in the fall, you realize pesticides and rototillers are your friends.
A small portion of the people who get started early and live in places with favorable climates and adequate open land will succed in growing enough food to survive;if bau agriculture collapses, the rest will starve or die violent deaths.
But a few thousand square feet of intensively cultivated gardens might make the difference in individual cases.
Fortunately the last thing left standing , except the cops and military, will be bau ag, as the oil age winds down.
I don't look forward to kissing thier backsides;if I'm still around I might just poison the last load of food they try to confiscate for thier own use off of my place leaving ME to starve, if things go mad max.
It has taken me awhile to come around to this view, but I hold it now, regrettable as it is. I'd wager none of us in our lifetimes will see the "end" of Big Ag.
My favorite analogy is from the physiology of hypovolemic shock. When the body detects a loss of blood volume, it "compensates" by diverting blood from unessential sectors to essential ones. So the extremities go cold and numb while the blood is shunted to the organs and the brain.
WTSHTF, gasoline and diesel will be requisitioned to continue commercial agriculture, period.
Though you might not be able to buy fresh CA strawberries in January in New England.
Tainter does say that more and more resources go to produce food in an economic collapse. That is why there is a collapse. The complexity of other things can`t be maintained or preserved because there are not enough resources for that. But people have to eat so they still buy food and support food producing industries.
Sure. Typically, population is maxing and soils are depleting. The latter we can avoid without too terribly much trouble. Also, the farmers are stretched as, just as now, only they are growing the food.
If we can do 40% of veggies in backyard gardens with mom-n-pop-style gardening, we can sure as heck do a lot better with the much more effective techniques out there.
Cheers
When PO really hits and things start to go into the sh*tter, I predict there are going to be some very frustrated greenies.
I would trade all the backyard gardening skills on earth for a few million more dollars to work with. When a crisis hits, the survivors are statistically ALWAYS more of the rich & powerful than the best suited & prepared for it.
The best way end big ag is to become a nation of farmers. No customers, no big ag. Michigan is close to passing a cottage food law allows small gardeners and farmers to do their thing without all the government regulation. I suggest the other 49 do the same.
Cheers
Or you just take the Japanese approach. They wanted to keep their farming done by families, so they simply passed a law that made it "illegal for a corporation to engage in agriculture". Seems pretty simple to me, IF the political will is there. US probably missed this opportunity shortly after WW2.
Problem is, it's less efficient than corporate farming, that's why corporate farming took over where allowed.
Of course, take away the oil and corporate farming (in its current guise) becomes impossible, that's why most farms were family operated before the oil age.
"Problem is, it's less efficient than corporate farming, that's why corporate farming took over where allowed."
I'm sill not convinced of this. As you said, take away the "phantom inputs", mainly from fossil fuels and I think we may achieve some energy parity.
Compare the embodied energy in a can of green beans from the store to a jar of beans I put by myself:
Sore bought beans: Steel can, not reused, thrown away and trucked to a landfill. Beans grown far from where consumed using chemical fertilizers, plastic mulch, energy intensive irrigation, processed in a factory, stored in a facility, trucked many miles to the store (with its big lights, refers, computers, employees, air conditioning, etc.). People drive to the store to buys a few things (including the can of beans), then drive home to cook and eat the beans.
My beans:
Grown on my house for shade in summer, no fertilizer, minimal tilling with shovel. Picked fresh and canned within hours on my stove with jars that will be (have been) reused for years (requiring one small steel lid to be disposed of). Into the root cellar behind the pantry, cool and dark, to await consumption. This process did require a trip to the store for seeds and lids, likely combined with a trip to work or somesuch, and a little salt.
My beans taste better and are surely more nutritious.
Arrrrgghhh! Why didn't I think of that? Thanx.
Corporate Agriculture, smaller family farms, whatever. I don't think any of that will be as relevant as raw wealth in terms of keeping your head above water in the future.
I *told* you vertical is one of the zones!
;)
We may be visiting Western Michigan soon. It would be a treat to pop down and check out your operation.
Cheers
No, it's not vertical that I don't do, as I grow my cucumbers and beans in this manner, (my bean trellis is on wheels to help with rotation),it was the placement in order to cool your house. My house in Chicago was planted with Boston ivy to help cool it.
You are correct. Higher yields, more nutrition, and there is no way in heck a sustainable system with every input an output, every input having more than one support, every element having more than one function - nature - is less efficient than Big Ag.
People are just counting the wrong numbers.
Cheers
I don't need a tiller. What a waste of time and energy. The garden you see is grown on untilled soil that has not been gardened for at least a decade, thus is somewhat compacted and heavily clay.
No-till gardening is more productive long-term because you are adding to the soil quality each year and not destroying the biotic communities in the soil every time you turn it. You're taking two steps forward and 2 steps back, which is why you will forever be adding hat cow dung. I love manure, don't get me wrong. But I won't need it year after year. No-till is a far better friend than a tiller.
Saves time, freeing you up for leisure, other work
saves human energy
saves FF energy
maintains soil health
releases less carbon, even sequesters it (AGW solution)
more productive
Pesticides kill soil and all life, not just the bugs you don't like, thus leaving a mess of an ecosystem. You can do as well with companion planting and alternative pest controls. i would also encourage the use of compost tea sprays. Two birds, one stone.
To each his own, but you seem awfully proud of killing and resuscitating your garden and working harder than you need to!
;)
Cheers
"pesticides kill soil and all life."
Propagandistic nonsense. You talk as if one pours toxic chemicals into a garden and kills everything. One does not. One sprays the bugs on the potato plants, the bugs die.
You act as if one is "condemned" to work. One farms because one likes the work. Pesticides and tools REDUCE work!
Your "no till" method works on tiny plots. You want food, you plow or till. All that organic matter you pile on is just being stolen from somewhere else. You're simply piling one acre on top of the other. All farming is unsustainable. So enjoy life while you have it.
Permaculture is a scam. All talk, no food.
Because? (You'll need to eviscerate the multi-decade longitudinal studies that prove you wrong in order to respond. I've already posted one. Try reading it.)
Excuse me while I tell my garden to disappear...
*POOF!*
Damn, you were right!
Cheers
Where are all these "permaculture" gardens supplying the stores with abundant food?
They don't exist. Your little garden is charming, but I betcha don't have a larder full of food come winter.
They aren't all permaculture, but lots of small, local, mostly organic or transition (but I agree this isn't necessarily the be all and end all) gardens and farms are supplying massive amounts to stores, farmers markets, restaurants, CSAs...here in the Twin Cities and increasingly around the country.
Where do you live that you don't realize this? Why are you so very bitter about these issues?
On the larger point, I think it is actually true that there will be some form of large ag for a while (unless massive climate change alters nearly all ag practices.)
And this of course means that making basic calories--grains, legumes and seeds--need not be a primary concern for urban gardeners/farmers.
What urban (and many rural) communities are faced with is not a shortage of basic food calories--these are all to available cheaply at any store.
What most urban communities have little or (very often) NO access to is good fresh fruits and vegetables.
Lack of nutrients from these sources is literally killing people every day. I just talked to a pastor at a church that also runs a nursing home for people in a chronically impoverished neighborhood. The average age in the home was under 55. Most had diabetes and other diseases that stem from lack of nutrition and exercise. Growing a garden goes a long way toward solving both of these problems.
In the midwest, it would be kind of foolish to try to do everything in the cities. There are still millions of acres of very fertile land that should be used to grow lots of things, but certainly staple crops among them.
People seem to be projecting a doomstead mentality onto urban living, and it just doesn't apply.
It may be that when things really go south, every last soul in every single city will just up and die right then and there or be cannibalized by neighbors shortly before they in turn get eaten by the guy on the next block till there's just one fat and happy bloated cannibal eater left.
But in the mean time, many of us are working very hard to improve the resiliency of life in an increasingly tough situation. I know the conversation started about whether you can grow all your own food, but really this is a very silly question in this situation. We need to start growing as much as we possibly can using all the best techniques we can. Meanwhile, it is very unlikely that all other ag and trade is going to stop and that all calories from grains, legumes, etc will become instantly unavailable to all of us. And if that does happen, it will be a sign that we are all in such deep trouble, it won't matter how much we can grow for ourselves.
Can we please dislodge ourselves from childish black-and-white arguments about whether someone is going to raise every last calorie from their back yard tomorrow and for all time. It's a silly, survivalist (in the narrow, hyper-individualistic sense) argument unworthy of TOD, IMVHO.
Great thread on a very sustainability linked topic, if a little off topic from oil drilling. well not really. It's so amazing that so many experienced knowledgeable people comment on subthreads of subthreads.
Thinking about food independence, even accepting the partial view here that it is possible to grow enough calories in ones backyard as it were, I realize that a big part of the equation is storage. Especially in the so-called temperate zone where 5 months of the year nothing much is harvestable. I recall growing up in UK after WW2. Sugar was rationed because it came from the tropics. Only local vegetables were available - non of this air freight like we have now. Maybe apples from New Zealand, they could survive the slow sea voyage. Very little fresh vegetables & fruit at the end of winter. Roots keep well, think of storing your carrots & potatoes. Dried beans are great, and as pointed out beans can be grown in little space. Good protein source too.
Meat ? Noone talked about that, but actually given the surplus of land in N America that makes a lot of sense, its not that labor intensive.
Canning & preserving is good for those desserts & relishes & treats but hard on a scale to keep a family through the winter.
I still maintain that horticulture to feed a family is a really hard graft without significant carbon fuel inputs.
Ron, I understand where you are coming from and mostly agree with you.
My point was more along the lines that we have here a MSM outlet on the 4th of July exposing the POV that we need to get off oil, period.
To me, that's further along from even a few months ago when all we would hear is how we need to give up foreign oil and become energy independent by drill baby drill.
As for:
As you probably know I work with PV, however it would be a gross mischaracterization of my personal views to say that I believe in easy substitutes for oil or the possibility of maintenance of BAU.
My view is that BAU is not sustainable with any source of energy, not with renewables not with fossil fuels or even any combination of the above. I believe that we need a fundamentally new low energy usage paradigm a quasi anti BAU if you will. I wish I could tell you what it might look like, I'm afraid we will all have to wait for it to emerge from the ashes of what we have now.
BTW I think that all of the energy sources I mentioned will play a role even fossil fuels but how and how much of them we use will be completely different. If we can transition somewhat successfuly I certainly expect renewables to be playing a much larger role than now.
I was filling up yesterday at a huge filling station. The place was packed and had many vehicles in line. Amongst the throngs were two families with speed boats in tow, being filled up right along with the big trucks pulling them. The station had a market, and in front was a diesel delivery truck (ice cream) that had a huge AC unit running on top of the cab. You could hear the beeping and dinging of fuel pumps along with the cajoling of family members as they either laughed or argued. People were coming out with all sorts of crap to eat for the holiday, like chips & dip, cookies, candy, etc. and I wondered how many more 4th of July's this annual oil feast would take place.
Yeah...just amazing place, the developed world, once you become peak oil aware! What did I read here? "The scales will fall from our eyes...." someone wrote a while ago. I think that will happen progressively. TODers are just a little bit earlier than others. Heck, I only became PO aware 6 years ago. Until then huge trucks, ice cream, gasoline stations, etc. were just normal and I`d never think to question their permanence.
As to your question of how many more 4th of July`s will be BAU???
Hmmmmm...maybe 4? `Cause we`re getting a lot of "austerity" talk now among govts. The stock markets are poised to crash again. I guess it`s the double dip depression. Britain said some govt agencies would see 40% cuts in budget. That depression means the credit crisis will get a lot worse next year, and at some point after that unemployment will get much much worse. And then the really salient point is when they can`t bring you enough oil for the party.....because there won`t be any more ooomph left in the economy to get that oil up and around. I`d say it takes about 4 years. ACtually, govts are starting to prepare people for this a bit. Like China recently said it would close a lot of steel plants to fight climate change. And Saudi A. says, it will save its oil.
Agree with your post regarding the direction the economy is going. I was thinking the 4 yrs you suggest is about right, but also what a short period of time. Sure is going to be a rude awakening for people truly unaware or purposely in denial of peak oil.
In our community they shot off fireworks Sat. night over the local lake and we watched them from our back deck. It was 20 min. long so people got real excited for a rural community. But a strange thing happened afterwards. It was like that episode 'Landreau' from the original Star Trek series, in which it's a very strict society about what people can say and do is then thrown into chaos for one hour every certain period of time, in which they all engage in mass hysteria.
What happened here was not much different. Police sirens started going off all over the place, couples started having heated arguments, one couple got so out of hand the police converged and took them away, then some guy drove his car into a power pole and the power went out. It really seemed like Landreau for about half an hour, then it started to go back to normal.
Later my wife and I were speculating that a lot of people have been stressed out this past year with the dismal economy, trying to pay bills like their mortgage, etc. that the great fireworks display got them all revved up and they forgot their problems for a little bit, but when it was over they all came back down and the pain returned all at once.
But that's in a world with oil, with three buck gasoline here in CA. A world with ice cream truck deliveries and personal power boats. What about a world in oil decline with 4 or 5 buck or higher a gallon fuel, or rationing and a much deeper recession or depression? Anyway, it just showed us how scary the future could get as this situation deteriorates. My advice to peak oilers is, stay out of the fray when the mass hysteria hits full tilt. It will certainly be dangerous.
And maybe that's the advantage a peak oil aware person has, that we should know not to take a deteriorating economy personal, that gradual collapse is expected, so when things get bad we can maybe keep it in an intellectual perspective and simply observe vs. getting emotionally out of hand with everyone else. In a landscape of mass hysteria there would be a certain sense of satisfaction from being able to observe dispassionately like a scientist observing animal behavior with a disconnected interest.
My sentiments exactly. I've often told my partner and friends that when TSHTF I'd rather be in a rural setting with a garden and neighbors who know how to hunt than a large city with thousands upon thousands of people who have the potential to become a very angry and upset mob. I foresee most of the large metro areas becoming mosh pits, with exoduses from places like Phoenix making it even worse.
Can't you just imagine the welcoming that hundreds of thousands of intra-nation migrants will receive as they descend upon city landscapes already struggling with shortages of all kinds and frayed nerves.
I used to joke about having front row seats (all of us) for what is unfolding. The more it unravels, the less I even want to attend.
Let's all party like there's no tomorrow.
I just don't understand how we can miss the most important fossil fuel available to the nation, NG. It can't replace 100% of oil, but it can replace about 70%. I think T. Boone is right on, NG is clean, it's abundant and it's ours. Alternate fuels are decades away. NG is available here and now.
Between our own oil production and ng, as well as an extension of our rail system, we can limit the pain of the decline in living standards. Peak oil is here, so it's time to implement a Marshall plan operation to move to an ng based economy. At the same time, it can create millions of new jobs here in the US in building out the ng and rail infastructure.
Where is this 70% at? The weekly build in storage for next winters heating season is falling behind last years level each of the last 9 weeks. We are currently using and storing all we produce + imports.
Perhaps production may increase if the price rises but that is ifie too. IMO the current price is based on a lot of opinion similar to yours.
NG is clean
False. Cleaner than coal, yes. But you seem to have missed the whole the-arctic-sea-ice-is-melting-we've-obviously-pushed-the-climate-too-far side of the equation.
Cheers
The real reason for all these subsidies on energy production is that energy self-sufficiency has been a stated goal of every President since Nixon.
Unfortunately it's not an achievable goal, and the only way politicians have been able to continue the American way of life (i.e. consuming more and more while producing less and less), is to subsidize everything that might promote production.
A more realistic approach might have been to acknowledge that US domestic production is terminal decline, and tax consumption rather than subsidize production. After all, 40 years is a very long time to deny reality and the consequences are becoming obvious.
Keeping reality from intruding on the voters' delusions has required borrowing a lot of money from other countries without worrying about having to pay it back some day, and encouraging consumers to borrow as much money as possible while encouraging banks to believe consumers will pay it back even though they don't have the financial resources.
As someone pointed out (in a recent article about Illinois), these aren't tax and spend politicians, they are borrow and spend politicians.
"Unfortunately it's not an achievable goal"
hmmm, maybe not as goal but what about as a consequence?
Continued reliance on importing energy depends on the fantasy that we can continue those imports without exports. Exports of what?
"So this is this going to be the line the Saudis take as their production peaks and enters decline: We have lots of oil but we're saving it for future generations."
Are they not entitled to save some of it for future generations? Of course, the west will blame the Saudis for hoarding oil for themselves and nobody will concede to the reality of geology even IF the saudis make an unequivocal peak oil admission.
Mos, they are entitled to do anything they wish. You completely miss the point that we are talking about. Vast reserves are claimed by Saudi and other OPEC nations. Six million barrels per day of production capacity, over and above what they are producing is claimed by OPEC. All governments, outside the Middle East, believe these numbers. (All Middle Eastern nations are well of this exaggeration)
All Western energy policies are based upon that extra production capacity as well as those vast stated reserves. They believe that OPEC will just increase production as needed. OPEC claims that they have 79% of all the oil reserves in the world.OPEC's Share of Oil Reserves, 2008 They are lying! And the world will be shocked to the core if that lie is ever revealed.
What we are commenting on here Mos, is how Saudi, and those other Middle Eastern OPEC nations, are going to get around being exposed as liars. These statements by the King lay the groundwork for them to explain why they will be letting us down and not producing the oil that they had led us to believe they would all these years.
They will say it is because they wish to save it for future generations. Bull Crap! It is because their tired old fields are on their last legs and they just do not have all that oil.
Ron P.
Valero and Tesoro poke stick in California's eye:
Workers Advocate for California’s Green Economy
See: http://newamericamedia.org/2010/07/workers-advocate-for-californias-gree...
Cheers,
Paul
Just a reminder...
The Laytonville (CA) Discussion Group will be meeting this Tuesday, July 6th, at 11:30AM at Harwood Park in Laytonville. Everyone is welcome. Bring a brown bag lunch and figure we'll talk for about 2 hours.
Todd
-Richard Henry Lee
- John Adams
Happy Fourth! Let's try to live up to the high hopes that Mr. Adams & Co. had for us.
I'm assuming neither Mr Lee nor Mr Adams ever owned slaves. I confess to being confused as to the meaning of 'freedom' and 'deliverance' when so wantonly self-applied to a nation which was not to ban slavery for another 80 years or so........and indeed one in which a major civil war had to be fought to achieve universal 'freedom'.
Blacks weren't generally recognized as fully human beings in the slave era;and the people who wrote the founding documents were often quietly opposed to slavery.
They could not at that time have held positions of leadsershipo had they advocated abolition, or indeed any positions at all , other than on the margins.
Your comment indicates a lack of appreciation for the realities of the days and times of the American Revolution.
A couple of hundred years from now, equally uninformed folks will not undrestand why Obama bailed out the automobile industry or the banks-simple political necessity/expediency.
Some hope for the human race ;]
Watch til the very end, where a statement germane to your first comment appears.
Uninformed eh? The English parliament passed the first abolition act in 1807. When exactly was slavery abolished in the US - do remind me.
Also see the comments below.
Actually, Richard Henry Lee inherited slaves from his father, but he rented them out to other people because he was opposed to slavery himself. John Adams never owned any slaves himself, and was personally opposed to slavery, but argued against the emancipation of slaves because it would have caused political dissension.
Of course, a lot of the other Founding Fathers owned slaves, and Washington and Jefferson owned hundreds of them.
It is somewhat disconcerting that slavery had already been abolished in England by a court ruling. The English Parliament had never passed a law allowing slavery, and in 1772 a judge ruled that meant that any slaves who didn't want to be slaves could just walk away from their masters. Which they did, some tens of thousands of them.
Similar rules applied in France, and that caused problems for Thomas Jefferson when he wanted to return to the United States with his favorite slave, Sally Hemings. He had to promise that he would free all her children before she agreed to return with him (she was pregnant at the time), which he eventually did. Jefferson is known from DNA evidence and Hemings family anecdotes to have fathered numerous children by Sally (probably six or seven), although the mere suggestion of that happening causes some Southern historians to have screaming fits.
DNA denialists?
For all the empty rhetoric about reducing the deficits to control debt, look at the debt clock.
http://zfacts.com/p/461.html
It was only a few weeks ago that the debt passed 13 trillion. Well it's already over 13.2t.
Already a 1/5 of the way to 14t! When I hear jibberish about getting the spending under control I don't believe it for a second. How? Who? When?