Drumbeat: June 27, 2011
Posted by Leanan on June 27, 2011 - 9:35am
Opec calls for IEA oil release halt
Opec has slammed the decision by the International Energy Agency to flood the market with 60 million barrels of oil, saying it should be “stopped immediately”.The oil cartel warned that growth in the global economy is set to slow down later this year resulting in a dive in demand for oil.
Member countries of the IEA voted last week to release 60 million barrels of oil onto the market in an attempt to ease price pressure. Today the body said European countries would be releasing mostly refined products with the US tapping its crude reserves.
Opec Secretary-General, Abdullah al-Badri, today criticised the move and the amount of oil which was being released.
Iranian oil minister acknowledges OPEC strains, says they are solvable
VIENNA — Iran’s oil minister is acknowledging strains within OPEC after its last meeting broke up in disarray but says the organization can solve them internally.
Traders were dumping oil before IEA release of reserves
Traders were dumping oil even before last week's release of strategic reserves by the International Energy Agency (IEA), new figures suggest.
Australian LNG: Frantic investment spurred by Asian demand
The frantic pace of investment in the Australian gas industry by many of the world’s biggest energy groups has been spurred by rising energy demand in Asia, led by China, Japan and South Korea.
Ozark oil pipeline apportioned 92 pct for July
(Reuters) - July shipments on the Ozark crude oil pipeline from Cushing, Oklahoma, to Wood River, Illinois, will be apportioned at 92 percent due to over-nomination by shippers, Enbridge said Monday.
Nigeria: 3 killed in sect attack on customs office
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria — Suspected members of a radical Muslim sect attacked a customs office Monday in northeast Nigeria, killing at least three people in a brazen daylight assault highlighting the continuing insecurity of the oil-rich nation.
Towards And End To Crude Oil Price Speculation ?
As of the present we have a menacing but periodic slump in the upsurge of commodity prices, signalled by a slump in oil prices. This of course leads the bigger hedge fund strategists to predict a "V", betting on previous performance and drawing on the now conventional wisdom that oil is a scarce resource.Global economy optimists however say that "Malthusian illiteracy" lurks behind remaining adherents of Peak Oil theory - which basically says conventional oil production will stagnate and fall but demand will go on growing. Since the sole interest of global economy consumers and their minders in Big Government is the oil price, the most important fundamental, for them, should be the massive and constant or fundamental manipulation of its price.
How America Beats China by 2025
Remember, we are talking about the year 2025 here. Somewhere between now and then, the price of oil will surpass $200 a barrel, perhaps even $300, at which point the heavy infrastructure costs for switching from crude to natty will seem cheap.But the point is, America will get through the crude oil crisis and have natural gas waiting for it on the other side, with enough abundance to support the U.S. economy (perhaps with further help from our Canadian friends). That is long-term energy security. What kind of energy security does China have?
Hunter Lovins Sees Business Benefits of Climate Change Adaptation
"If we want out of the recession, we know how to do it," Lovins said. "Those wild-eyed environmentalists over at Goldman Sachs have shown that companies that are leaders in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) policy have 25 percent higher stock value. The Economist Intelligence Unit has shown that ESG leaders have the fastest-growing stock value."
Facing wildfire, Los Alamos officials scramble to protect hazardous material
SANTA FE, N.M. — Officials in Los Alamos National Laboratory were scrambling Monday to make sure that radioactive and hazardous material were protected from a wind-driven fire that had forced the installation to close.
Gas prices, jobs market take a bite out of consumer spending
WASHINGTON — For the first time in a year, Americans have stopped spending more.Consumer spending failed to budge from April to May, evidence that high gas prices and unemployment are squeezing household budgets. When adjusted for inflation, spending actually dropped 0.1 percent last month, the Commerce Department reported Monday.
Michael Klare: What will replace oil?
A 30-year war for energy preeminence? You wouldn't wish it even on a desperate planet. But that's where we're headed and there's no turning back.From 1618 to 1648, Europe was engulfed in a series of intensely brutal conflicts known collectively as the Thirty Years' War. It was, in part, a struggle between an imperial system of governance and the emerging nation-state. Indeed, many historians believe that the modern international system of nation-states was crystallized in the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648, which finally ended the fighting.
Think of us today as embarking on a new Thirty Years' War. It may not result in as much bloodshed as that of the 1600s, though bloodshed there will be, but it will prove no less momentous for the future of the planet.
By the by, many observers were amused by last week's cute trick of releasing sixty million barrels of oil from the world's strategic reserves at the rate of two million-a-day in an effort to pretend that the world doesn't have a basic oil production problem. It is, of course, at the bottom of the world's financial disarray, because if you can't increase energy inputs that feed an industrial economy you don't get growth and then the whole idea of compound interest falls apart because it is predicated on a perpetual increase in wealth. Hence, debt collapses in on itself. The world is caught up in an epochal contraction now, and it manifests in situations like the Greek emergency. But soon it will be a universal emergency.
The Limits to Growth Revisited
Writing this book has been a fascinating work. Re-examining the story of LTG opens up a whole new world that urban legends and propaganda had tried to bury under a layer of lies and misinterpretations. We all have heard of the "mistakes" that the authors of LTG, or their sponsors, the Club of Rome, are said to have made. But LTG was not "wrong": nowhere in the 1972 book you find the mistakes that are commonly attributed to it. LTG never predicted catastrophes to occur soon, never estimated that some specific mineral resources should run out by some specific date, it never contained prophecies of doom. In other words, LTG was not, and never was, "Chicken Little with a computer."
Europe will release mostly oil industry refined products stocks while the US will tap government crude reserves as part of the International Energy Agency’s co-ordinated action to prevent high energy prices from stunting economic recovery.
The President, the media, and oil supply
Alaska illustrates that increased drilling and the opening of new areas for oil exploration and development do not necessarily translate into increased production.
Yergin Says IEA Oil Release an Economic Stimulus, ‘Tax Cut’
The International Energy Agency’s planned release of oil from reserves is being used as an economic stimulus measure that will serve as a “tax cut” for consumers if it’s successful in driving down prices, according to a report today from IHS-Cambridge Energy Research Associates.The release from emergency stockpiles of 60 million barrels of oil, or 2 million barrels a day for 30 days beginning next week, follows a disruption in supplies from Libya and could boost both consumer spending power and confidence, according to IHS-CERA’s Daniel Yergin and James Burkhard.
Kurt Cobb: Strategic petroleum reserves: The world's last 'swing producer' tries to save the economy
World governments have collectively poured trillions of dollars of stimulative spending into the world economy since the crash of 2008. And, they've shoveled trillions more into failed financial institutions. In addition, several of the world's central banks have lowered short-term interest rates so low that the next move would have to be negative. Still, the world economy remains weak despite unprecedented measures to stimulate growth.And so, global leaders are now implementing another stimulative measure that they hope will prevent the economy from teetering over into recession once again: lowering oil prices through the coordinated release of 60 million barrels of oil into the market from government-run strategic petroleum reserves. The move seemed to have the desired effect as oil prices fell more than 5 percent after the announcement.
Gas shortage: Saudi Arabia new dilemma
After decades of rapid economic growth based on oil, Saudi Arabia’s policymakers now face a dilemma. Most efforts to diversify the economy have focused on leveraging cheap gas, but that strategy has begun to founder in recent years under the pressures of higher development costs, supply shortages and domestic wastefulness.The kingdom is trying to map a new course, but decision makers are divided on how to proceed. The debate over modifying gas prices in Saudi Arabia has been ongoing for some time, but this year the conversation uncharacteristically spilled into the open, led by Saudi Aramco and backed by the oil ministry.
Death for Riyadh killers sought
JEDDAH: The trial of 85 militants accused of involvement in three terrorist attacks in Riyadh in 2003 began at a special criminal court here Sunday. The public prosecutor, who read out charges against the militants, demanded the death sentence for the ten defendants who appeared Sunday.
Saudi crude oil gift to arrive in Yemen over six shipments
SANAA (KUNA) -- A grant by Saudi Arabia of three million barrels of crude oil will be sent to Yemen over six shipments, Aden oil refineries company said Sunday.
Kingdom must curb its energy appetite: Banker
ALKHOBAR: The Kingdom needs to curb its energy appetite and redouble its efforts to use alternative energy streams, a leading investment banker told oil-industry professionals in Alkhobar.
India IOC buys extra Saudi oil for July, Essar seeks
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Saudi Aramco will supply an additional one million barrels of oil to Indian Oil Corp for July while Indian private firm Essar Oil has requested similar volumes, trade sources with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters on Wednesday.Essar's request has not yet been confirmed as the refiner is seeking volumes for loading in the first half of July, said two of the sources. Indian refiner MRPL bought about 600,000 barrels of extra Saudi oil for July earlier.
Aramco imports more gasoline for July
State oil giant Saudi Aramco bought another three cargoes of gasoline this week, traders said, bringing the total already secured for delivery in July to six."Aramco is buying a cargo every other day, virtually," a Gulf-based trading source said. "The total for July will be much more than six."
Iran ready to meet Pakistan power needs
“Given the great need of Pakistan for electricity, Iran could export its surplus electricity to the country,” IRIB quoted Namjou as saying during a meeting with Pakistan's Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources Asim Hussain in the Iranian capital, Tehran, on Monday.He went on to say that Iran is prepared to increase its electricity exports to Pakistan by 1,000 megawatts by the next three years.
Mexico's gasoline imports near record in May
MEXICO CITY (MarketWatch) -- Mexico's state-owned oil monopoly Petroleos Mexicanos , or Pemex, said Friday that gasoline imports were near a record high in May, and diesel-fuel imports reached their peak as the country continues to offset revenue from crude exports by buying fuel abroad.
Water, fuel, power crises plague Yemen amid unrest
SANAA (Xinhua) -- Crises ranging from acute water and fuel shortages, day-and-night power outages to price hikes are deepening in Yemen as unrest continues in the country, alarming political vacuum and insecurity."There has been no water supply here for weeks and we used to buy water recently. The price of water is triply inflated," said Suad al-Salahi, a woman who lives in al-Hasaba district in Sanaa.
In Rebuilding Iraq’s Oil Industry, U.S. Subcontractors Hold Sway
MOSCOW — When Iraq auctioned rights to rebuild and expand its oil industry two years ago, the Russian company Lukoil won a hefty portion — a field holding about 10 percent of Iraq’s known oil reserves.It seemed a geopolitical victory for Lukoil. And because only one of the 11 fields that the Iraqis auctioned off went to an American oil company — Exxon Mobil — it also seemed as if few petroleum benefits would flow to the country that took the lead role in the war, the United States.
The auction’s outcome helped defuse criticism in the Arab world that the United States had invaded Iraq for its oil. “No one, even the United States, can steal the oil,” the Iraqi government spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, said at the time. But American companies can, apparently, drill for the oil.
Rosneft in talks with China on East Siberian joint deposits
Russia's oil giant Rosneft is in talks with China on joint development of deposits in East Siberia, Rosneft First Vice President Pavel Fedorov said on Monday."We are considering the purchase of joint assets and the sellers have already offered us nine licenses," he said.
The danger of miscalculation in the forgotten war over Nagorno-Karabakh
Since the beginning of the year, events have rocked places that seemed locked in time. One outcome has been utterly unpredictable oil prices -- $114 a barrel one month, and the low $90s for a barrel of crude that we see now. Shorn mainly of the Arab Spring, oil prices would be somewhere in the $60-$80 range per barrel, according to market watchers such as ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson and Saudi Prince Al Waleed bin Talal. Traders say the Middle East trouble poses risks to the world oil supply, especially if another big oil producer goes off the market, such as Saudi Arabia.
OPEC talks to EU against tense backdrop
(Reuters) - Iran's OPEC president stuck to its uncompromising stance as it headed into talks with the EU on Monday, saying there was no need to add extra oil to the market and the IEA emergency stocks release was an act of meddling.OPEC president Iran fired a warning shot at the start of producer-consumer talks on Monday, sticking to its view there was no need to add extra oil to the market and the IEA emergency stocks release was an act of meddling.
UK, China announce $2.1b in deals
Britain and China unveiled deals worth 1.4 billion pounds ($2.14 billion) during a visit by Chinese premier Wen Jiabao, including a new agreement between energy group BG Group and Bank of China to help BG expand there.
Gaddafi issued with arrest warrant
Claims of murder and persecution have been leveled at Muammar Gaddafi as an arrest warrant was issued for the leader of oil-rich Libya.
Europe Stifles Drivers in Favor of Alternatives
ZURICH — While American cities are synchronizing green lights to improve traffic flow and offering apps to help drivers find parking, many European cities are doing the opposite: creating environments openly hostile to cars. The methods vary, but the mission is clear — to make car use expensive and just plain miserable enough to tilt drivers toward more environmentally friendly modes of transportation.Cities including Vienna to Munich and Copenhagen have closed vast swaths of streets to car traffic. Barcelona and Paris have had car lanes eroded by popular bike-sharing programs. Drivers in London and Stockholm pay hefty congestion charges just for entering the heart of the city. And over the past two years, dozens of German cities have joined a national network of “environmental zones” where only cars with low carbon dioxide emissions may enter.
Oil Falls on Outlook for Slowing Demand; IEA May Release More Stockpiles
Oil fell in New York on concern economic expansion in the U.S. and China is slowing and as the International Energy Agency said it’s prepared to release further crude from stockpiles.Futures dropped as much as 1.5 percent before a report today that may show U.S. consumer spending climbed at the slowest pace in almost a year and manufacturing cooled. China’s factory output may expand at the slowest pace in 11 months in June, a preliminary purchasing managers’ index showed. In Europe, Greek lawmakers will vote on a five-year austerity plan. Failure to pass the plan may lead to the euro area’s first sovereign default.
Price of gas drops 11 cents in the last two weeks
NEW YORK — U.S. average retail gasoline prices fell over the past two weeks and could ease a bit more in coming weeks due in part to the release of crude oil from the U.S. strategic energy reserve, according to the latest nationwide Lundberg survey.The national average price for self-serve regular unleaded gas was $3.6283 a gallon on June 24, a decline of about 11 cents in the past two weeks, according to the survey of about 2,500 gas stations.
A year ago, the price was $2.6613.
Gas Stations Shut in U.A.E.’s Sharjah by ENOC on Subsidized Fuel Shortage
Emirates National Oil Co., a Dubai- based refiner and gasoline retailer, shut filling points in the neighboring sheikhdom of Sharjah after running short of fuel at service stations across much of the United Arab Emirates.At least four stations in Sharjah run by ENOC, as the refiner is known, were barricaded yesterday to prevent customers from entering. Other gasoline retailers in the emirate were open and serving customers. A spokesman for ENOC didn’t answer a telephone call to his office seeking comment today.
Iran to maintain opposition to OPEC quota increase
TEHRAN (AFP) – Iran will continue to oppose pressure from consumer nations for an increase in oil cartel OPEC's output quota, its caretaker oil minister said on Sunday."In accordance with the supply and demand situation, Iran will oppose raising OPEC's oil production quota ceiling at the next meeting (on December 14)," Mohammad Aliabadi told the Mehr news agency.
Iran Oil Minister Accuses IEA of Breaching Its Principles
VIENNA -(Dow Jones)- Iran's oil minister Monday accused the International Energy Agency of breaching the principles on which it was founded by intervening in what he sees as well supplied oil markets.Speaking to reporters ahead of an energy summit with the European Union, Mohammad Aliabadi, who is also the president of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, said: "There is no additional need for supply on the market."
China eyes Canada oil, US's energy nest egg
CALGARY, Alberta — In the northern reaches of Alberta lies a vast reserve of oil that the U.S. views as a pillar of its future energy needs.China, with a growing appetite for oil that may one day surpass that of the U.S., is ready to spend the dollars for a big piece of it.
The oil sands of this Canadian province are so big that they will be able to serve both of the world's largest economies as production expands in the coming years. But that will mean building at least two pipelines, one south to the Texas Gulf Coast and another west toward the Pacific, and that in turn means fresh environmental battles on top of those already raging over the costly and energy-intensive method of extracting oil from sand.
A cocktail of electricity sources for China
China is investing heavily in several energy sectors as part of a plan to increase its electricity generating capacity to 1.6 terawatts by 2020.
Fuel hike unlikely to address concerns over OMC credit profile
NEW DELHI: The government decision to hike diesel, domestic cooking gas and kerosene prices and cut customs and excise duty will not be adequate to alleviate concerns over the credit profile of state-owned retailers, credit ratings agency ICRA said on Monday.Icra senior vice president & co-head, corporate ratings, K Ravichandran said "concerns remain" on the government compensating retailers for losses incurred on selling auto and cooking fuel below cost.
Investec: oil markets need major investment, not IEA interference
We are surprised at how much attention the International Energy Agency's (IEA) decision has been getting - the release of 60 million barrels is around 70% of one day’s global consumption.The release will take place over 30 days, so it will have a short-term impact on inventories which are around ‘normal’ levels, and therefore we could see a contra-seasonal build in inventories over the next few weeks.
Amid US gas boom, split over 'fracking'
WASHINGTON (AFP) – The United States is seeing a natural gas boom thanks to discoveries of abundant shale gas, but also a groundswell of opposition from critics who say the environmental risks from drilling are too great.At the heart of the issue is a drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," of underground rock formations by injecting chemicals and water to release trapped gas.
Behind Veneer, Doubt on Future of Natural Gas
In its annual forecasting reports, the United States Energy Information Administration, a division of the Energy Department, has steadily increased its estimates of domestic supplies of natural gas, and investors and the oil and gas industry have repeated them widely to make their case about a prosperous future.But not everyone in the Energy Information Administration agrees. In scores of internal e-mails and documents, officials within the Energy Information Administration, or E.I.A., voice skepticism about the shale gas industry.
Gushers highlight potential of Pa. gas field
ALLENTOWN, Pa. – Two unexpected gushers in northeastern Pennsylvania are helping to illustrate the enormous potential of the Marcellus Shale natural gas field.Each of the Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. wells in Susquehanna County is capable of producing 30 million cubic feet per day — believed to be a record for the Marcellus and enough gas to supply nearly 1,000 homes for a year. The landowners attached to the wells, who leased the well access, numbering fewer than 25, are splitting hundreds of thousands of dollars in monthly royalties.
North Sea Oil, Gas Producers See Tax Exemption on New Fields, Times Says
U.K. Treasury officials are in talks with North Sea oil and gas producers to try to avoid having a new windfall tax lead the producers to abandon plans for new fields, the London-based Times reported without saying where it got the information.
Tripoli Running Out of Gas Amid Sanctions
Libyans in the capital are getting on their bikes to avoid the hundred-meter lines and weeklong waits at gas pumps -- evidence that the rebellion against Muammar Qaddafi, backed by NATO warplanes and international sanctions, is applying a squeeze on the territory that remains under his control.
Yemeni Protesters Demand Saleh’s Ouster
Anti-government demonstrations swept Yemen yesterday as hundreds of thousands of protesters in at least 15 provinces sought the immediate resignation of President Ali Abdullah Saleh and formation of a transitional government.“No to the ruling family,” people chanted in the capital Sana’a, calling for the expulsion of Saleh, his son Ahmed and nephew Ammar. “Relatives of Saleh and rest of the regime are hijacking power,” the people said.
U.S. Tells China at Honolulu Talks It Wants Stability in South China Sea
The U.S. told China that tensions must be reduced in the South China Sea when the countries held the inaugural U.S.-China Asia-Pacific Consultations in Honolulu.
A U.S. role in the South China Sea
PHILIPPINE Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario was in Washington last week for a rather specific purpose: to seek U.S. support in his country’s growing territorial dispute with China in the South China Sea. Mr. del Rosario told us he was seeking a “clarification” of the mutual defense treaty between the Philippines and the United States; he would like a U.S. statement suggesting it applies to a gas-rich seabed the Philippines and China are contesting. His government also would like help in beefing up its navy, perhaps through the lease of patrol boats.
Concern at Nebraska Reactors as Floodwaters Rise
BROWNVILLE, Neb. — Like inhabitants of a city preparing for a siege, operators of the nuclear reactor here have spent days working to defend it against the swollen Missouri River at its doorstep. On Sunday, eight days after the river rose high enough to require the operators to declare a low-level emergency, a swarm of plant officials got to show off their preparations to the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Yamaguchi governor not to extend permit for local nuclear plant project
YAMAGUCHI — Yamaguchi Gov Sekinari Nii said Monday he will not extend a license for Chugoku Electric Power Co to reclaim land off the western Japan prefecture in a move that will seriously set back the utility’s new nuclear power plant project.As a reason for his decision, the governor pointed to the dim prospects for “the building of a nuclear plant, which is the aim of the reclamation work,” because the national government is rethinking its energy policy following the disaster at Tokyo Electric Power Co’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
Radiation discovered in Fukushima residents
(CNN) -- Japanese researchers have found radiation in all 15 people tested last month from the area near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.Cesium was found in the participants, ranging from 4 to 77 years old, through two rounds of testing conducted by Nanao Kamada at the Research Institute for Radiation Biology and Medicine of Hiroshima University.
Electric Carmaker Think Files For Bankruptcy – Again
It looks like the end of a long and winding road for Think, the pioneering Norwegian electric carmaker.On Wednesday, the Oslo-based company filed for bankruptcy protection in Norway and a court-appointed trustee assumed control of Think’s business, according to Debra Salem, a spokeswoman for its U.S. subsidiary.
Hydrogen fuel: backseat to electric vehicles?
Obama Administration programs push electric vehicles (EVs), although the jury is out on consumer uptake. It's worth asking: what happened to hydrogen-powered cars, purportedly the cleanest possible alternative?
Morocco is key testing ground for Desertec solar-farm project
A planned €400 billion renewable energy network to criss-cross the Mediterranean is to have its first test in Morocco.
GCC shows the way on sharing power
East of Desertec's planned site for cross-border renewable energy, the groundwork is already in place for sharing clean power between nations.
China powers on in green energy
The world's second-largest economy is already a major supplier of wind turbines and solar power generators for the world market, but its manufacturing growth has been so swift that excess output is becoming a problem.
Can one idea be energy's holy grail?
(CNN) -- Michel Laberge quit his job to invent a "glorified jackhammer" that he hoped would save the planet. That was 10 years ago.Now, investors are betting more than $30 million on that jackhammer idea, which may yield a holy grail of energy -- a safe, clean and unlimited power source called hot fusion.
Laberge is trying to do something that no one has ever done: create a controlled "net gain" fusion reaction that creates more energy than is required to produce it. It's the same process that powers our sun. If it works, it could solve huge problems like climate change, the energy crunch and reliance on foreign oil.
Why US engages in petrodollar warfare
TWO events this week could not have been better timed as I read the book “Petrodollar Warfare.”One, Barrack Obama’s announcement that he would be withdrawing the bulk of the US soldiers from Afghanistan by this time next year and secondly, the ongoing Greek debt crisis that is causing sleepless nights for Eurozone’s finance ministers and putting the single currency under a lot of stress.
This book has as its central thesis that US is waging war and has done so across the world since the early 1970s, to protect oil sources.
North Korea soldiers malnourished: report
SYDNEY (AFP) – North Korea is struggling to feed its army, according to new footage obtained from within the secretive state which shows a soldier complaining his unit is weak from a lack of nutrition.
55 million years of climate change
Professor Valdes concludes that state-of-the-art climate models may be systematically underestimating the potential for sudden climate change.
Emissions from Energy Use in the Water Sector Are Poorly Understood
ScienceDaily — Greater understanding is needed of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from energy use in the water sector if it is to meet sustainability goals, according to researchers at the University of East Anglia.In a study published online June 26 in Nature Climate Change, Prof Declan Conway and Sabrina Rothausen argue that greater focus on the energy requirements of the water sector will be a crucial part of the policy response to the huge challenges it faces in the coming decades.
City dwellers produce as much CO2 as countryside people do: study
(PhysOrg.com) -- Most previous studies have indicated that people in cities have a smaller carbon footprint than people who live in the country. By using more complex methods of analysis than in the past, scientists at Aalto University in Finland have discovered that people's carbon emissions are practically the same in the city and in the rural areas. More than anything else, CO2 emissions that cause climate change are dependent upon how much goods and services people consume, not where they live.
Insurance industry facing a climate of fear
Floods, hurricanes, droughts - will climate change mean more wild weather ahead? That's a risk the insurance industry is taking very seriously.
A new way of thinking as sea levels rise
But earlier this month, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency published the first manual on how not to hold it back, arguing that costly seawalls and dikes eventually fail because sea-level rise is unstoppable. The federal Global Change Research Program estimates that the sea level will rise 14 to 17 inches in the next century around Hampton Roads.The analysis, “Rolling Easements,” published on the EPA’s Web site, hopes “to get people on the path of not expecting to hold back the sea” as the warming climate is expected to melt ice around the globe, EPA researcher James G. Titus said.
Contact
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License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Re: Why US engages in petrodollar warfare. up top:
Petrodollar warfare and the accompanying wars for oil security are a perpetual subsidy for oil. Americans do not pay the real cost for gasoline at the pump.
They pay the real cost in a weak economy and the waste of resources and lives in perpetual war. It may look on the surface they are gaining something since the cheap gasoline party continues, but long term it's a losing war.
The hidden oil subsidies make it nearly impossible to develop or expand alternatives such as ethanol. When a small alternative like ethanol is somewhat successful with the help of subsidies to offset oil's, it is disparaged as an outrageous waste of tax payer money in a fiscal deficit situation largely caused by wars for oil security.
Yet oil's mostly hidden subsidies continue unabated. Politicians, pundits and even some economists use it as a shining example of the free market.
Alternatives to oil are doomed as long as this continues. Americans become ever more dependent on a depleting resource in the hands of others and the only way to get it is by coercion or force.
You were starting to make sense until you wrote "ethanol".
This is X's main slogan- you will get this message at least once a week, wrapped in various wrappings.
Writing Ethanol doesn't mean he's wrong.
Do you propose to force farmers to grow food and sell it for less than the cost of production? Or do you propose to tax me to buy food from them at breakeven to give away overseas?
Pre-ethanol, other governments were crabbing that cheap US corn was driving their farmers out of business. Now having soaked up the surplus with ethanol, various posters are unhappy about the higher prices that resulted from higher demand. So, what should the price of corn be?
Also, unless there are some new varieties now, wheat doesn't grow well on land wet enough for corn. Oats does, but I haven't heard of great oats shortages. And the midwest is too cold for rice.
Toynbee's theory of civilization decay:
The Parallels between this description and the current political structure are unmistakable. Especially when you recognize that the Republicrats and Demicans both fully support the "Dominant Minority" and thus have become the "Universal State".
In opposition is the "Internal Proletariat" (the social conservatives) and the "External Proletariat" (an unorganized collection of opposition to the status quo groups ranging from liberal to libertarian).
The inability of Government to seriously address PO and AGW are signs of decay.
What does not fit are any signs of "transcendence", I guess things have not got bad enough yet.
Toynbee must be blind in more ways than one. What the hell does "loss of control over the environment" mean.
His explanations like so many others are superfluous to the ultimate cause of collapse which is overpopulation.
Everything we did and do including politically, is in response to pressures we place on resources including fisheries, minerals, land, the environment (our habitat) and energy supplies.
When humans settled down to breed the die was cast. We were saved by energy discoveries, engineering and by the opening of the new world.
So we can can get as intellectually "deep" as we desire but always the initial problem begins with overpopulation. Failure to recognize that fact has of course led us to where we are now.
Completely simplistic to the point of being irrelevant and an unhealthy obsession for some. Though, I will say, population hand wringing probably does save from deeper cultural introspection. But, in the long run, gets us nowhere.
A depiction of the issue
The richest 10% account for 60% of all private consumption
The richest 20% account for 77% of all private consumption
The richest 30% account for 85% of all private consumptio n.
And the remaining 70% -- ALL the people on the planet who are
either poor or of modest means -- consume only 15%.
It would be accurate to say that the behavioral trajectory of the more-affluent strata of humanity is clearly in the direction of overshoot, and if that behavior were to be replicated without limit, across all of humanity, then overshoot and catastrophic collapse would quickly, and inevitably, supervene. As it stands now, catastrophic global collapse is not inevitable. "Overshoot"is an accurate description of where we're heading, but it is not on account of our numbers; i.e. it is not baked in the cake. It is on account of the resource allocation decisions, industrial protocols and use habits -- of the more-affluent, as individuals and as nations.
Unfortunately, said "behavioral trajectory" of the more- affluent IS being replicated across portions of humanity in the developing world -- the emerging middle class in India,
China and elsewhere. We (the U.S., and the West generally) set a supremely bad example, and they are following us. But we still have time to change.
The most urgent single thing is clearly for this behavioral trajectory to be stopped. Peak oil and the collapse of Ponzi-economics should come in handy in this regard. The question is what's next.
And so it is with population and "carrying capacity". Unless the particulars and assumptions (including, most notably, level of consumption) are first defined, the numbers are completely meaningless. If everyone lived like the average sub-Saharan African, on a buck a day? Then the number would be X billion. If everyone lived like Bill Gates? Then the number would be 1/10000th of X billion.
But even settling on some mid-range estimate for lifestyle, it remains a very difficult question, and scholars of much greater learning than me have come up with a wild variety of answers -- the "wild variety" reflecting the difficulty of the analysis, the large number of variables, and the wide range of plausible estimates for those variables. In this case, method and assumptions are EVERYTHING. To get a sense of this, I suggest chapter 10 of Joel Cohen's book "How Many People Can The Earth Support"; the chapter is titled "Eight Estimates of Human Carrying Capacity". The chapter that follows that is very good too.
It is a (somewhat) interesting academic question, but of little practical value for us right here right now. And the obsession of some is unhealthy in many regards as it takes focus off of realistically fixable problems. We --the human race -- have the population we have, and we'll have to deal with it, as best we can. We can do things to lower fertility in Africa, but that is the most we can do on the population front; other than that, it is largely out of our hands. The rest of the world's population growth is in dramatic decline that started in the 60s, with some going negative and the rest will follow. All studies indicate this trend will continue and is speeding up. Max population numbers continually get lower as time goes on and data comes it. The best estimates now suggest a peak near mid-century, probably under 9 billion, and long decline after that. The theoretical question of "how many the earth can support" is of less importance than dealing with the realities that confront us.
"We --the human race -- have the population we have, and we'll have to deal with it, as best we can. "
Oh, population will be dealt with, but not by "us", whoever that is. Your whole post posits a "we" that can "deal" with anything. You are mistaken.
It's not just a matter of standard of living. A lot of people living on a dollar a day or whatever are living on crumbs from the system. When the system fails, all fall down.
9 billion people on earth is an absurd number of people at any kind of "standard of living". And your vaunted decrease in population growth is directly connected to increases of standard of living. Why don't people get that?
How many can the earth support is of utmost importance. What is your angle? Whistling past the graveyard?
Arraya I hate to be the bearer of bad news but we do not dictate human behavior. We can pass laws against murder, rape, robbery and such with the threat of prison or even death but we have little hope of dictating the innate behavior that brought about our overshoot. Anyway it is way too late to do anything about that even if we could.
Overshoot is what happens when any species a finds a temporary resource of food or energy that enables its population to expand beyond what would be possible without that new resource. That species will naturally expand to the limits that this new resource allows. And when this temporary resource disappears there will be a natural die-off back to the original carrying capacity they had before the windfall.
That is the way all species behave including Homo sapiens. "We" do not control the behavioral trajectory of any wild species. And I am using "we", I think, in the manner you apparently intended. That is some some group, governing body, or mass movement that decides what behavior "we" should have. If you think about it for a moment you will, hopefully, see just how foolish that concept of "we" really is.
I have said this many times before in my over five and one half years on this list and I will say it again. In the grand scheme of things we are but observers. We really don't control anything outside ourselves and our families. The best we can hope to do is make plans and take such action as to enhance our chances of being among the survivors.
Ron P.
How does China's "One Child Policy" fit into the above explanation ?
Best Hopes for Planning Ahead,
Alan
Have you researched it? It's quite interesting.
120 males to 100 female ratio. The can has been successfully kicked down the road. It's a social experiment the likes of which will probably never get to be analyzed.
http://www.china-mike.com/chinese-culture/society/one-child-policy/
http://factsanddetails.com/china.php?itemid=128&catid=4&subcatid=15
http://geography.about.com/od/populationgeography/a/onechild.htm
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2009/10/28/f-rfa-germain.html
http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2010/0924_china_one_child_policy_wang....
http://www.china-mike.com/chinese-culture/society/china-population-growt...
Only women can have children. It appears that there is a next generation drop in population built in, even if fertility rates increase somewhat.
Today, a couple, both single children, can have two children "legally". Many chose to have just one though, the new cultural norm.
Overall, "one child" only dropped fertility to slightly less than 1.5 children/woman.
Another important factor was increasing the time between generations.
Alan
If we had a one world government with dictatorial powers, like China does, we might get the population growth down to China's rate, .5 percent per year. Would you like to be part of that plan?
China's population is still growing. However Mao, back in the early 60s managed to get the growth rate to go negative. He simply starved them to death. China growth rate. Now there was a man with a plan.
Ron P.
If a one world government could bring the population way down without dieoff, that would seem preferable to the current "plan" or result which is mass dieoff, probably a bit worse that Mao's starvation program. Not that we really have that option or as you say "we" really don't have any options, apparently.
Actually, I think the only way the world could possibly respond in an effective manner to the current problems would be a one world government. Our problems are simply too big for a multiplicity of separate governments which don't have the welfare of the world in mind. However, while one world government is necessary, it is not sufficient.
But really, probably the only hope for the part of the planet that is not human, is that we dieoff quickly starting soon. But pretty much everything else will be destroyed or seriously degrade first.
I guess it's a matter of taste, but if I have to be part of a chaotic dieoff, or a planned dieoff, even a 'humane' one where losses are mainly by attrition, I'll go for the chaotic one any day.
I'd rather die a gory death, than live as a segment of a global human centipad.
live as a segment of a global human centipad.
Hate to tell ya this, but you already are as shown by your ability to log into the Internet and post to TOD.
Is a centipad like a 100 iPads?
Kinda - search google images for a graphic representation.
Rubbish. The opposite is true. Mao's (or rather the Communist Party's) reforms resulted in dramatically improved nutrition and health across the whole population, resulting in a dramatic increase in life expectancy -- from 39 before the revolution to 65 in the late 1970s! This is clearly documented; there is no doubt. During the same period, the fertility rate dropped off a cliff, from over 5 down to 2.5 or so. The fertility rate has declined further since then; the one-child policy made a SMALL contribution to that decline, AFTER the major drop had already occurred. Fertility in China is now well below replacement.
Mao did not "manage to get the growth rate to go negative". POPULATION growth intensified because of the huge drop-off of mortality, due to the greately improved conditions (diet/nutrition, basic medicine, hygiene, etc.). FERTILITY however dropped off -- not surprising, since that is what happens when general conditions improve. It takes a LONG time for the demographic transition to work through its stages, and for fertility decline to finally have an effect on population growth. It is happening, but it takes time.
[Ron P. = Ron Patterson? Ah yes! "Mao got the growth rate to go down by starving them all!" Right. I would expect such ignorance from Ron Patterson.]
I was speaking of the Great Chinese Famine during Mao's Great Leap Forward. I just assumed that everyone would have known what I was referring to since I posted a link showing the huge downward spike in population in the early 60s. My mistake. [edit]
Great Chinese Famine
Ron P.
Interestingly, the population growth rate decrease started before the policy. Though, it's hard to discern, it does not appear to have made that big of difference - maybe shaved a little off of the trajectory. Anyway, they are now approaching negative replacement rate.
You could easily ask why are "some not expanding to their limits", which no policy at all.
If the average fertility rate per woman drops much below two, then that is below the replacement rate. Population rise however has a lot of 'momentum', see the ongoing effect of baby boomers if there are a lot of them. Thus many populations continue to rise for a good while after current fertility rates drop below two. Migration also can make a difference.
Arraya I hate to be the bearer of bad news but we do not dictate human behavior.
Being that we can rationalize any behavior as human "natural" this silly argument that falls apart everyplace you look. Sure, genocide is natural as is a lot of other aberrant behavior. The question is, is it healthy, in any way shape or form. It's natural behavior the same way gambling all your money away in Vegas is. In a dopamine hijacking way. The growth and profit necessity creates, through mass communications, a constant culturally-induced striving for perennially unsatisfiable desires that often conflict with basic bio-cultural needs. The result is the hominid at the end of the evolutionary sequence if not corrected. It's essentially an atavistic endeavor of culturally encourage mass irrationality posing as free choice. That really satisfy very few human needs. Actually many studies over the past decades or so point to increasing mental illnesses.
Now the cultural orgiastic commodity frenzy they we are collectively encouraging around the world is, only one side of the equation. There is also nonstop waste driven by a myriad of other practices and our highly flawed value system. I'll be back to post on that later.
Because we can rationalize certain human behavior does not mean that there is no such a thing as innate human behavior. That is generally referred to as "human nature" and you cannot control human nature. That is not an argument, that is just common sense.
Ron P.
If the reproductive nature of the human is amendable and it clearly is, I don't understand what you cannot control. Just because it is not being controlled perfectly today doesn't mean humans will not control it in the future. I cannot think of one human nature that is not amendable by cultural change.
You simply do not understand. Of course people can control their reproduction if they so desire. People are basically selfish and if they think not having more babies is in their self interest they will not have babies. And many who do have babies that do not want them can, if the desire and can get away with it, commit infanticide. That is happening today in many parts of the world.
People do pretty much what they want to do if they can afford it. And often do it even if they cannot afford it. You can do pretty much what you desire but you cannot dictate to India what they should do. Their human nature will dictate what they do and your human nature will dictate what you do. But basic human nature is unchangeable because it is in your genes.
Ron P.
There is human nature and then there are beliefs and behaviors. Beliefs and behaviors change and are probably primarily a function of self interest which, in itself is a complex subject. Most of us cannot be much of an influence but others can and make decisions which have a big impact on most of us. The congress, for example, right now, has the power in its hands to pretty much f**k up most of the world's financial well being. I know this will impact me directly big time and a lot of others.
You have power. You have influenced my views in this area and also in the area of speculation. If you had a bigger platform, you could influence others. I pretty much think that most of us cannot have much of an impact given the human trajectory. And while I accept the basic idea that human nature is genetic, there are a wide variety of beliefs, behaviors, practices, societies, and cultures within that basic framework.
While most individuals may have limited ability to alter the behavior of other individuals, bodies such as governments, corporations, perhaps some NGOs, and the advertisement industry (and other media) certainly can play a large role in influencing how people behave.
Direct advertisements and other media representations of high prestige western life styles, for example, high amounts of meat eating, are likely having a large impact on the increase in this activity among elites around the world.
One could conceive of a situation where those media forces are redirected toward valorizing lower impact ways of living, but it would certainly be difficult for one person to bring about such an effect.
Of course, Ron himself has participated in individual and collective action that has in fact changed how one topic is covered in the media--peak oil. So his own actions and successes speak against his thesis here.
Something I like about humans, is their big brains. These big brains coupled with self-awareness is kind of a dual-edged sword, in many ways, it's what makes us so dangerous. Anyway, kind of like a 2 year old that wants to eat candy for breakfast until he throws up and refuses to nap until exhaustion, so goes the maturation of human society. Eventually, the kid learns that eating candy for breakfast is not good for him, even if there are some evolutionary drivers that cause that desire.
The awareness that social survival is intimately connected to personal survival is going to be a tough leap for this immature species, and it's not all certain that it will happen, but it is a choice we could make. Isn't that the core of a biological being, adaptations for survive? Strangely, we have a inherent desire for being healthy - individually and socially - even if some evolutionary baggage drives us in the opposite direction.
Ron, Went to a social gathering the other day with a demographic of primarily 20-40 year olds. The number of small children was staggering.
After some conversation, it was obvious that there was no understanding whatsoever of "limits". We will not stop the madness by ourselves. It will have to be stopped by the limits themselves. And I personally do not think it will be pretty, ala Greece.
When I see educated people of that age group with tons of children, I despair, given that I was quite conscious of the population issue when I was the same age. It seems like the problem is rather more obvious now than it was 40 years ago. The difference is that these children will live until the age when they will directly suffer by the fact of their birth now. They are being condemned to live in an era of great turmoil and hardship and may not come out alive the other end.
Yes, I am starting to realize just how difficult the future will be. It is an enormous gaping maw of suffering as far as the eye can see, the Fukushima situation shows that. Thousands of those people, an area of 200km (about 400,000) will get early cancers. Thousands hae fled and are living meagre lifestyles because their homes are gone to radiation.
I have told my two kids how difficult the future looks---I think they believe me. One is a teenager, one is in elementary school.
Yet kids naturally retain optimism and they look forward to all sorts of things, so they tend to brush off my words of doom.
You can do pretty much what you desire but you cannot dictate to India what they should do.
Of course, you can. That's what the UN is for. That is how we ditched our cows and switched to fertilizers. That is how we ditched the British built railways and switched to road.
Here's a potpourri of more or less relevant stuff, varying
greatly in quality and nature.
I think the best single item is the Eckersley piece
(oxfordjournals.org), mid-way down, followed by the
chartist.org item - "The Mass Psychology of Capitalism"
- near the bottom.
Pardon me if some of the links are now bad.
http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/cgi-bin/blogs/voices.php/2007/06/01/a_com...
06/01/07
A Commentary on Robert S. McElvaine's 'The Great Depression'
[...snip...]
"Elevated levels of consumption are almost always attended by
an increase in 'individualism' and a decline in a sense of
community. The Great Depression reversed this trend in America
dramatically, and for me, that is perhaps the most riveting
feature of McElvaine's book as he writes, 'the most
significant fact about the Depression era may well be that it
was the only time in the twentieth century during which there
was a major break in the modern trends towards social
disintegration and egoism... The economic collapse that
started in 1929 obliged people who had begun to accept the new
values of unlimited consumption and extreme individualism to
take another look at these beliefs in comparison with the more
traditional, community-oriented values that had existed in
earlier times.'"
--------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.physorg.com/news134820414.html
Money makes the heart grow less fond... but more hardworking
[...snip...]
"[P]articipants' personal performance improved, and
interpersonal relationships and sensitivity towards others
declined, when they were reminded of money."
[...snip...]
"all participants who were reminded of money demonstrated
behaviors consistent with decreased interpersonal skills and
increased personal performance. Specifically, those
participants who were exposed to money spent less time helping
a person who needed it, sat farther away from another person
and preferred solitary activities. In addition, they showed
preferences for working alone and asked for help less
frequently."
--------------------------------------------------------------
http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2006/12/price-of-money-selfishne...
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
The price of money - selfishness
"A series of experiments have shown that merely thinking about
or looking at money changes the way people behave, causing
them to be more selfish and self-sufficient."
[...snip...]
"[P]articipants left with more money after a Monopoly game helped
pick up fewer pencils dropped by a passer-by; participants primed
with money-related sentences gave less money to charity; and
participants sat in front of a money-themed computer screen-saver
chose to sit further away from a another participant they were due
to chat with."
--------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-human/mg19926714.100?DCMP=NLC-...
Why the world is a happier place
27 August 2008
From New Scientist Print Edition
Nora Schultz
"THE economy is plummeting, the planet could burn to a crisp,
and war has just broken out - again. Believe it or not though,
people around the globe are happier today on average than they
were 25 years ago. The secret seems to be a combination of
rising economic prosperity, democracy and social
liberalisation.
Every few years the World Values Survey (WVS), headed by Ron
Inglehart, quizzes about 1400 people in each of 52 countries
on how happy they are. Last month it pooled 25 years of data
and found that since 1981, happiness has risen in 45
countries.
The results challenge earlier studies that happiness levels do
not rise along with the economy - something that had led many
to conclude that money can't buy happiness. However, these
studies often looked at countries that were rich already. The
WVS team's analysis shows that ECONOMIC GROWTH ONLY
BOOSTS HAPPINESS NOTICEABLY IN COUNTRIES WITH PER-
CAPITA GDP LESS THAN $12,000." [emphasis added -
Alan2102]
--------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.physorg.com/printnews.php?newsid=134845529
"Happiness and life satisfaction rise steeply as one moves
from subsistence-level poverty to a modest level of economic
security and then levels off... Among the richest societies,
further increases in income are only weakly linked with higher
levels of subjective well-being."
--------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.newint.org/issue137/greedy.htm
new internationalist 137 - July 1984
Why we want more and more
Why are we greedy?
"`Care clings to wealth: a thirst for more grows as our fortunes
grow.' Nearly two thousand years after Horace wrote these lines
social psychologist Erich Fromm observed greed is a bottomless pit
which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need
without ever reaching satisfaction'. But while both writers point
to the craving for material possessions as a timeless weakness
there is a profound difference between them. The Roman poet was
condemning a vice on a par with the other classic `sins' such as
pride and sloth. The contemporary social critic is commenting on
an all-pervasive mentality."
--------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2007/11/the-consumer-pa.html
Scientists Find that Low Self-Esteem & Materialism Go Hand in Hand
Daily Galaxy
November 13, 2007
"Researchers have found that low self-esteem and materialism are
not just a correlation, but also a causal relationship where low
self esteem increases materialism, and materialism can also create
low self-esteem. The also found that as self esteem increases,
materialism decreases."
--------------------------------------------------------------
http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/35/2/252
IJE Advance Access originally published online on November 22, 2005
International Journal of Epidemiology 2006 35(2):252-258;
doi:10.1093/ije/dyi235
Is modern Western culture a health hazard?
Richard Eckersley
National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health,
The Australian National University, ACT 0200, Australia.
[...snip...]
"The cultures of societies are underestimated determinants of
their population health and well-being. This is as true of
modern Western culture, including its defining qualities of
materialism and individualism, as it is of other cultures.
This paper draws on evidence from a range of disciplines to
argue that materialism and individualism are detrimental to
health and well-being through their impacts on psychosocial
factors such as personal control and social support."
[...snip...]
"Marmot and Wilkinson,7 in noting the relationship between
income inequality and social affiliation, suggest there is a
`culture of inequality' that is more aggressive, less
connected, more violent and less trusting."
[...snip...]
"The psychological and sociological literatures suggest
powerful effects of culture on psychological well-being. Take
materialism, by which I mean attaching importance or priority
to money and possessions (and so broadly equate here with
consumerism), and which underpins consumption-based economies.
Many psychological studies have shown that materialism is
associated, not with happiness, but with dissatisfaction,
depression, anxiety, anger, isolation, and alienation.13,20
Human needs for security and safety, competence and
self-worth, connectedness to others, and autonomy and
authenticity are relatively unsatisfied when materialistic
values predominate."
[...snip...]
"Modern Western culture undermines, even reverses, universal
values and time-tested wisdom.12,13 The result is not so much
a collapse of personal morality, but a loss of moral clarity:
a heightened moral ambivalence and ambiguity, a tension or
dissonance between our professed values and lifestyles, and a
deepening cynicism about social institutions. Without
appropriate cultural reinforcement, we find it harder to do
what we believe to be `good'; it takes more effort. And,
conversely, it becomes easier to justify or rationalize bad
behaviour. There are positive (reinforcing) feedbacks in the
process: anti-social values weaken personal and social ties,
which, in turn, reduce the `hold' of a moral code on
individuals because these ties give the code its `leverage';
they are a source of `moral fibre'."
--------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.sploid.com/news/2006/02/buying_crap_mak.php
February 10, 2006 at 03:31 PM
Buying crap makes you sad!
"Depressing new research proves what many Americans have
learned the hard way: Buying more stuff doesn't make you
happier. Instead, it often has the opposite effect."
[...snip...]
"In her book "Born to Buy" (www2.bc.edu/~schorj/btb.htm),
Boston College professor Juliet Schor studied "consumerist"
children and found them far more likely to suffer from low
self-esteem, depression, anxiety and even constant headaches
and stomachaches."
--------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/02/08/news/snmat.php
Materialism is bad for you, studies say
By Carey Goldberg The Boston Globe
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2006
"Using statistics and psychological tests, researchers are
nailing down what clerics and philosophers have preached for
millennia: Materialism is bad for the soul. Only, in the new
formulation, materialism is bad for your emotional well-being.
In recent years, researchers have reported an ever-growing
list of downsides to getting and spending - damage to
relationships and self-esteem, a heightened risk of depression
and anxiety, less time for what the research indicates truly
makes people happy, like family, friendship and engaging work.
And maybe even headaches."
--------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.alternet.org/drugs/147580/are_our_bosses_becoming_meaner
Are Our Bosses Becoming Meaner?
The staggering gap between CEO and worker pay has left
America's workplaces still more nasty, brutish, and short.
July 17, 2010
[...snip...]
"We already know, from psychological research, a great deal
about power. We know, for instance, that environments where
some hold far more power than others can "cause even normal
people without any apparent prior psychological problems to
become brutal and abusive towards those with low power."
In other words, as Desai, Brief, and George note in their
Boston presentation, "exaggerated power asymmetry" can make
people with power mean to people without."
--------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2002/08/27/what-do-we-really-want/
What Do We Really Want?
The richer we are, the more miserable we become.
By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 27th August 2002
[...snip...]
"It is impossible not to notice that, in some of the poorest
parts of the world, most people, most of the time, appear to
be happier than we are. In southern Ethiopia, for example, the
poorest half of the poorest nation on earth, the streets and
fields crackle with laughter. In homes constructed from
packing cases and palm leaves, people engage more freely,
smile more often, express more affection than we do, behind
our double glazing, surrounded by remote controls."
--------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.chartist.org.uk/articles/econsoc/sept02lee.html
The Mass Psychology of Capitalism
[...snip...]
"[T]he indicators of disintegration and social pathology are
everywhere. Rates of clinical depression have increased
considerably since 1950. In America a survey of over 18,000 adults
found that a person born between 1945 and 1955 was between three
and ten times more likely to suffer a major depression before the
age of 34 than a person born between 1905 and 1914. Another
American study involving 19,000 people found that 20% of the total
US population suffer from a mental illness (as defined by the
psychiatric bible The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders) during any given 12 months and that 32% will suffer at
some point during their lifetime. Rates of suicide have increased
since 1950 - they have trebled in the UK since 1970. Crimes
against the person have risen in the UK from 6,000 in 1950, to
239,000 in 1996. Alcohol and substance misuse have increased
exponentially."
--------------------------------------------------------------
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleonexia
Pleonexia, sometimes called pleonexy, originates from the Greek
language ã?î??î??à and is a philsophical concept employed both in
the New Testament and in writings by Plato and Aristotle. It
roughly corresponds to greed, covetousness, or avarice, and is
strictly defined as "the insatiable desire to have what rightfully
belongs to others", suggesting what Ritenbaugh describes as
"ruthless self-seeking and an arrogant assumption that others and
things exist for one's own benefit".[1]
This post is way too long and deals with too many unrelated subjects. You are trying to overwhelm the debate with sheer volume. Such posts as this, in my opinion, should not be allowed on this list. Ron P.
That wasn't a post; it was another drumbeat.
It was not long, it deals with several RELATED subjects, and it deals with them in a way that reveals truths that you don't want to face.
Thanks for the handy and nicely cited and linked series of well researched articles that all show that our hyper-consumer lifestyles are not improving our lives. Once food security and a few other areas are established, further wealth mostly makes people worry more about money and less about others.
That people here claim to read multiple difficult books on these subjects but can't be bothered to peruse a few passages that happen to go against their preconceptions speaks volumes.
I happened to agree with most of them, and there were far too many. My God, man(woman), there are 200 posts a day on TOD any more. One or two carefully chose would have sufficed.
Craig
I understand what overshoot is. The is another complex study when it comes to humans and there unique interaction with the environment
But first, mature industrialized countries population growth rates took a dramatic reverse in the late 60s, with some going negative in the past decade or so. While their per-capita consumption was skyrocketing. Why didn't they "expand to their limits" - the ones with the most resources, or access to. So the exact opposite is happening of what you are describing.
Rapid population increase in the 19th and 20th centuries was in a sense allowed because "increased energy", but that phrase conceals as much as it reveals. Rapid population increase was the result of declining death rates without the accompaniment of declining birth rates. Both of those declines occur with general development, but the first occurs first (leading to population increase), and the second lags behind.
Hence it look for a while like increased energy was causing a disastrous,uncontrollable population explosion, when in reality what is happening is a death-rate-decline "explosion", followed over decades (or half-centuries) by a fertility-decline "explosion", of which (thankfully) we're now in the midst.
Statistics over the last century clearly demonstrate that reproduction does not increase with more resources. Something close to the opposite of that appears to be true. Large family sizes (high fertility) are characteristic of low-resource (poor) and rural populations. As development unfolds and general SES improves, as well as with urbanization, fertility (reproduction) declines. Of course, it takes a LONG time for fertility changes to change population numbers. Demographics is a science of centuries and
half-centuries.
Actually, the oil growth explosion really took off around the 50s and 60s, long after the population explosion happened. Like I said, it was the 60s when mature economies started their reversal. The oil growth explosion can be linked directly to feeding cars.
You make very good and valid observations, and I admire the extent of your knowledge.
Urbanization, leading to lower infant mortality rates is exactly what has happened. Urbanization which you dismiss as not being energy related is false.
Of course it takes much energy to create and maintain the cities and suburbs we enjoy today, much of that energy is embedded within. The embedded energy has allowed for rampant consumerism and wanton waste. Cities are where the employment is. There will be tremendous migration as employment falls in line with declining energy supplies.
You are in denial if you think increasing energy supplies had nothing to do with population increases.
http://www.china-mike.com/chinese-culture/society/one-child-policy/
Take note of the second graph.
http://www.china-mike.com/chinese-culture/society/china-population-growt...
I think we have passed the point of no return and for all effects and purposes now in dieoff. Like on Easter Island, they would have had no idea when they passed the tipping point, everything would have appeared to be completely normal when that important tree was felled but in fact they had entered the dieoff stage.
We are not exactly like St Matthew's Island reindeer but it's similar.
http://dieoff.org/page80.htm
Our population is still growing because we are living off the fat of an oversupply of energy, which delivered plentiful food, education, living conditions, employment and medical advances. It did not deliver wisdom.
Sorry, that data does not support that. China had it's population explosion when there were using like no oil. It's growth rate peaked before widespread use. China's oil consumption was positively minuscule right on through the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, even 90s. As Matt Simmons pointed out, they were burning only about a half-million barrels per day in 1970 -- about 1% of global production at that time -- and that was smack in the middle of a huge population run-up in China! In the face of numbers like those, it is very difficult to claim that oil had or has anything to do with population growth or maintenance. Apparently, oil had almost nothing to do with China's big population explosion.
The fertility rate one? That proves my point, the the fertility rate drop started 15 years before the policy. It did most of it's dropping before. Though, I did not know that about the "soft sell" they had started in the 70s. Though, the transition started before that, along with many other regions. I'm pretty sure, if memory serves, that India mirrored closely in their curves.
Well, we are a million miles from easter Island. It's a silly assertion. We could get there, with really bad decisions and very poor resource management over the course of a few decades. Peak oil should put an emergency break on the trajectory, though.
He said energy not oil. And China's population explosion had everything to do with energy and oil energy. China had tractors on their collective farms during the greatest part of their population explosion. And they have always used massive amounts of (energy produced) chemical fertilizer. Even today China still uses two and one half times the fertilizer per acre as does the US. Fertilizer use by country
China's growth rate peaked in 1970 when they were using massive amounts of oil for tractors and fertilizer, right about when the world growth rate peaked. Population Growth Rate-World and China
Fossil fuels, primarily coal and oil, had everything to do with China's population explosion. It is sheer ignorance of history to claim anything different.
Ron P.
Good God, man. Get a grip and maybe a little nuance to your thought. To say energy is permissive to EVERYTHING, is a no brainer. But to say it is the causal mechanism of the population explosion of the 19th and 20th century doesn't square with the data. Your thinking like an economist, not a scientists - where you explain ALL phenomena to fit your world view. If you don't update your thinking to the newest data your nothing more than an artifact
Arraya, you are simply unbelievable. It does square with the data. In fact nothing else squares with the data. Fossil fuels fueled the industrial revolution. Without fossil fuels there would have been no industrial revolution. Without fossil fuels here would have been no medical revolution. And for absolutely sure without fossil fuels there would have been no green revolution.
I could post at least 100 links saying the exact same thing. This was just the first one I came across. Energy from fossil fuels, beginning about mid 18th century, was the causal mechanism of the industrial revolution and the subsequent population explosion. No contrary causal claim squares with the overwhelming data that supports this primary cause.
Ron P.
Coal production in China exploded well after the One Child Policy began in 1979.
Sure it did, just like everything else has exploded in China since they began their effort to grow at 8 to 10 percent per year. That does not change the fact that coal and oil were responsible for their population explosion, primarily, in this century. Where do you think they would have gotten their food without massive use of modern farm equipment such as tractors. And what would their production per acre have been without the use of massive amounts of fossil fuel produced fertilizer?
That is the point! Also I have this point to make from my link above.
To deny that all this was made possible by fossil fuels is just... (expletive deleted) ;-)
Ron P.
I would say that China's decision to embrace a high energy lifestyle
not rising population caused the rise in Chinese FF consumption.
The rising lifestyle expectations are by far the most dangerous force on earth.
I particularly find objectionable the claim that rising living standards( higher energy lifestyle) reduces population growth rates
which in turn reduces FF energy consumption.
It's simply not correct and is an outrageous cornucopian lie.
Malthus was wrong about a lot of things (but not about everything).
I would agree with you. But the debate is what
causedenabled the population to explode to start with, really taking off in earnest about 1900.Ron P.
The disintegration of Chinese society followed the First Opium War (1839-42) and the Second Opium War (1856-60). This, among other things, allowed the British to flood the Chinese markets with opium produced on their plantation in India.
This was followed by other imperial predations on the part of Britain, Russia, Japan, Germany, and the United States, ultimately leading to total collapse of China around 1911.
Ah, the wonders of the global market!
Total collapse?
Nonsense. It was the birth of China as a modern country.
1911 was the end of the Manchu dynasty and was followed by a 15 year struggle between warlords and the Kuomingtang under Sun Yatsen. A year after Sun died the country except Manchuria(1926) was largely unified. China is an enormous country and a 15 year restoration of order isn't excessive--the Taiping rebellion lasted from 1850-1864(at the estimated cost of 20 million lives).
His brother-in-law Chiang Kai-shek purged the Communists and Soviet advisors from China in 1927, causing the Chinese Civil War.
The end of the Manchu dynasty really marks the end of the destruction of the old order of society in China. China under Sun Yatsen and Chiang Kai-shek was not modern. There was only a small layer of modernized elites imposed on the shambles that had been made of the general population. Furthermore, any progress in the early years of the 20th century was distrupted by the Japanese invasion and World War II.
Only after the takeover by the Communists was the reeducation of the hundreds of millions of common folk begun. Communism is, after all, a modern Western political theory. Furthermore, it took a while to liquidate the remnants of the old order and the more recent collaborators with the imperial powers.
This process of constructing a modern China lasted from 1949 through about 1990, when we can say that China was finally reborn as a modern country.
This to me is the crucial question (or would be if we hadn't already doomed ourselves by triggering runaway GW).
Can people reach some minimum levels of food security, access to basic health care and education...levels that prompt a marked decrease in fertility rates but don't break the available energy bank--and not go on to excessive consumption of everything?
I think this is where the role of media comes into play. If people have access to TV, movies and the web and what they constantly see on these media are images of people at much higher consumption levels and this is seen as prestigious living rather than disgusting waste of precious resources, I think it becomes very difficult for people not to go beyond that minimal level where needs are met and happiness per level of resource use is maximized.
I'm sure others here are convinced that we are all driven by genetics to consume at the highest possible level no matter what media messages tell us. I am not as convinced.
Uh, yeah, what did fossil fuels have to do with public health measures and sanitation?
Did I say anything different than this? And, yes, as I said before energy has a permissive effect on EVERY ACTION. Nuance, nuance is your friend. Oh, btw where in the quote does it say fossil fuels caused the population explosion.
Generally speaking, medicine's "miracle drugs" and treatments have not been major factors in improving the public health. In a few cases they've made a nice contribution, but overall not much. A great read on this subject is Ivan Illich's book Medical Nemesis, available free online. The first 20-30 pages of that book are an eye-opener, as Illich lays waste the myth of medical effectiveness. . The big health gains were much more a result of public health initiatives (such as water filitration technologies(you know things that are not going to "save us") and better nutrition, than modern medicines.
The evidence does not appear to support this claim.
Compare the population growth rate in your link with this graph of primary energy use (PDF, p.10). You'll note that Chinese energy consumption grew very slowly in the 1960s, exactly when your link shows population growth was at its highest. Energy consumption only started increasing quickly in ~1969, growing quickly through 1980, whereas population growth fell sharply from 1971 through 1980. (Note that cross-checking the 1980-2000 graph with World Bank data indicates these are not per-capita measures.)
Based on these datasets, there appears to be a poor correlation between population growth and energy consumption growth in China.
Errr... I think you miss the point. The Chinese, in the 1960s, plowed, planted, and harvested with oil powered farm equipment. Do you really believe their population could have gotten this far without fossil fuels? Could they have grown at the fantastic rate they were growing in the 1960s if they had no fossil fuel generated fertilizer, or pesticides, or tractors or combines or....
The point is not that their population did or did not expand in lock step with petrol consumption increase. That is entirely beside the point. No one is making such a silly claim. It is that fossil fuels are what got them to this point! And without the aid of fossil fuels they could have gotten no further.
The world today has almost 7 billion people. Without fossil fuels, coal, oil and natural gas, our numbers would still be around 1 billion. Okay that is debatable. I will grant you 2 billion, but no more. (Actually 2 billion with no fossil fuels is really absurd but I will grant that just because...)
I believe it is truly absurd to make the claim that if coal had not come on the scent in the 18th century, and oil and gas a century or so later, that we would be at 7 billion today. I mean... get real! Do you for one minute believe that?
Fossil fuels generated enabled us to provide employment for billions more and enabled us to provide food for billions more, so the population naturally expanded to billions more. That is it in a nutshell.
But if you, or anyone else for that matter, actually believe we would have been at 7 billion if one lump of coal had never been dug out of the ground, or one barrel of gas or one cubic foot of natural gas had never came into this world... I just would love to hear that story.
Ron P.
"And China's population explosion had everything to do with energy and oil energy."
Energy perhaps, but certainly NOT oil. Where's the data on this "massive" energy utilization in China in the 50s, 60s and 70s? Where was the "massive" energy coming from? It certainly was not oil, nor hydro, nor natural gas. Coal, perhaps? What, exactly? Please provide links to statistical facts.
"China's growth rate peaked in 1970 when they were using massive amounts of oil for tractors and fertilizer"
Rubbish. They were using very little oil in 1970; about ONE percent of global production. This is documented fact. Their utilization of oil crept up during the 70s and 80s, accelerated somewhat in the 90s, and then really took off over the last decade. The growth in oil utilization has correlated with the dropping rate of population growth. (And no, I am not saying that that correlation is a CAUSAL one. Just noting the fact in passing.)
Errr... their tractors ran on water perhaps?
As I explained to to you earlier, no one is claiming that there is a lock step in population increase with fossil fuel increase. The amount of fossil fuel does not matter. The point is that fossil fuel got them to that point and fossil fuel continued to fuel their population explosion until this very day.
To make the claim that China could have gotten to their current population of 1.34 billion people without the aid of fossil fuel is absurd! Coal powered their cities and oil powered their farms. And the farms provided the food for their population explosion. That is the long and the short of it.
Good Lord, what are you people thinking? Fossil fuel, primarily oil, powered the green revolution. And the green revolution feeds far more people in China than it does anywhere else in the world. It is that simple people. How can anyone possibly argue that the green revolution was not made possible with fossil fuels, primarily oil and natural gas?
Ron P.
their tractors ran on water perhaps?
That and grass and hay. Or rice or noodles and vegetables.
From memory, mechanized agriculture was not the norm in the China of the 1960s. even today -
There is still a relative lack of agricultural machinery, particularly advanced machinery. For the most part the Chinese peasant or farmer depends on simple, nonmechanized farming implements
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China...
Alan
I am really surprised that you remember China from the 1960s. What part of China are you from? Anyway China, under Mao, made great strides in equipping China with mechanized farm equipment. And China today is fully mechanized, everything is run with mechanized farm equipment. Hardly a horse or mule is to be found in the entire country. A few water buffalos still remain however, farming the rice paddies.
History of Tractors in China
During the days of Mao, especially in the 60s, there was great competition among the collective farms to have the most tractors per collective. And fertilizer use was way higher than in the US and is today about 2.5 times higher than in the US. I posted a link earlier showing this fact.
The idea that Chinese farms are backward using few tractors or modern day farm equipment is simply a mistake, a terrible mistake that no thinking person should make. You think they could be so modern in their cities yet so backward on their farms? Not a chance.
However things are getting bad in China. Agriculture in China
Water tables are dropping and the Yellow River does not reach the sea except for the wettest months of the year. China is drying up. However:
Get that? China produces more agricultural products than any other country in the world. That despite having less arable land than the US. Arable land by country
China is only fourth in arable land but first in production. And you think they do that without the aid of mechanized farming? Not a chance. And as I said before they use 2.5 times as much fertilizer per acre than the US. That helps.
Ron P.
http://www.unapcaem.org/Activities%20Files/A09105thTC/PPT/cn-doc.pdf
There is evidence for still limited agricultural mechanization in China.
Alan
Many people have claimed that, a couple of them on this very thread. Either claimed it or clearly implied it, pointing to statistics with the intent of showing a direct causal relation.
What?! It most certainly does matter! It is the only thing that matters. Otherwise this conversation is stupid and moot. Quantity is THE issue.
I agree. But the question is: how much? A thousand barrels, a million barrels, a billion barrels? It is the QUANTITY that has implications for the foreseeable sustainability of the systems that we are discussing, not merely whether or not some was used. Quantity is THE issue.
Nice straw man. Keep working on that!
Read my lips: quantity is THE issue.
Yep. Modest amounts of oil are needed to run farm machinery, and for many other operations. As of 1970, China was sustaining a population of over 800 million on ONE percent of global oil production. Yes, a whopping ONE percent, for over 1/5th of the total population of the planet! Not only sustaining them, but sustaining them in much better condition than in all history.
I don't question that oil and other fossil fuels are very useful and even indispensable -- in rather small amounts, relative to contemporary usage standards. The Chinese experience just mentioned implies that only 5% of global oil production would be necessary to sustain everyone. It is only fair to ask: where is the other 95% going?
Dangerous, subversive thoughts, that's what! Perhaps what disturbs you is that some of us actually ARE thinking.
What makes you think we won't continue to make bad decisions? Where is there any hope whatsoever that decision making will improve to the extent that we can have any positive impact?
Personally, I think it is almost certain that we will continue to make bad decisions.
But, ironically, this site, where most seem to agree with that gloomy assessment, is one of the bright examples of a mechanism that could help move us toward better decisions.
A mostly civil discussion among a wide range of mostly knowledgeable and intelligent posters has arguably helped shift the discussion of a very important topic from being almost completely ignored to being regularly covered in the main stream media, and has helped spark movements like the transition town movement.
That does not mean that national or even state or city level policies are being crafted in ways that most here would find adequate to our current predicament. But I would humbly opine that it's not nothing.
arraya wrote:
I agree with Darwinian. You are ignoring the impact of the 19th century industrial revolution. The big factor then was the improvement in transportation, with the invention of the steam engine. That made railroads and steam ships possible. In China, the railroads used coal until very recently, so their transport system would not show much use of oil. And, the invention of fertilizer made it possible for China to overcome their historical tendency to experience mass starvation and major social disruption on a regular basis, allowing them to reliably produce enough food for their massive population. The rest is history...
E. Swanson
Good points. But we should keep in mind that population had started to rise in China (and many other places) before the industrial revolution came into play.
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/specia...
Dohboi, the population of China at the beginning of the industrial revolution, about 1750, was 200 million, up from about 100 million in 1100 at the height of the Song dynasty. Similar growth could be found in other parts of the world, especially the new world as new lands were opened up.
Basically what has been happening, and what was responsible for most all human population growth before the industrial revolution, is that Homo sapiens have been taking over territory occupied by other species. We have pushed into every niche of the world and pushed the species that previously occupied that niche.
Look at the chart here: World Population Chart You will notice that things really took off about 500 BC. I guess that was when we developed widespread use of iron plows and iron weapons to chop down trees and kill off the animals. But notice when things really took off. That began around 1750, the beginning of coal use and the industrial revolution.
Iron tools were around long before 500 B.C. but because iron was so precious they did not see widespread use as plows among the surfs and peasants. I recently read a story of a Greek game, the hammer throw, where the prize was the hammer, a ball of iron. Actually it was an iron meteorite or so the author speculated.
Ron P.
According to this chart, China's population, A.D. 0 - 2050 the population fell from 100 million to about 50 million following the peak during the Song dynasty.
I suspect at least part of that was exposure to new foods as global trade routes opened up.
A lot of the foods we associate with various national cuisines are not native to those countries. Tomatoes are a New World food, even though we think of tomato sauce as quintessentially Italian. The hot peppers of Szechuan cooking are also American - traditional recipes used black pepper, not hot red peppers. The potato's introduction to Ireland allowed population to rise higher than had been previously possible. Not sure what staples went to Asia, but there were probably some.
Yes, all those things are likely true. The point is the availability of more food, for any species, enables the population to grow, it does not cause it, or as you put it, it allowed it. The cause lies in the nature of the animal.
Ron P.
If it's the nature of the animal, then it's a nature that can be overcome.
Diamond describes one of his "societies that succeeded" as being intensely curious about new plants. They always asked what an unfamiliar plant was good for, and often brought seeds or cuttings back. But they did not allow the population to rise, despite these new resources. Zero population growth is a central value of their culture.
I read Diamond's Collapse some time ago.
Could you refresh my memory on what culture you are talking about ?
BTW, Thomas Jefferson was intensely interested in new plants and said that there was no greater boon than introducing a new useful plant.
Best Hopes for Keeping Out Invasive Species,
Alan
Did Diamond describe one of the many societies that did not "overcome". The Easter Islanders, the Mayans, the ancient Romans, the Hittite Empire, the Neo-Assyrian Empire, the Indus Valley Civilization, the Mauryan and Gupta states, the Angkor civilization of the Khmer Empire, the Han and Tang Dynasty of China, the Anasazi, the Izapa, the Munhumutapa Empire or the Olmec?
Diamond stated that civilizations "choose" to collapse. I think that is pure baloney and I believe Diamond himself does not believe that. Why would any civilization choose to collapse? He did not mean that at all and he just used a very bad choice of words.
Zero population growth is a choice of many species when resources are scarce. Even black rats will eat their own young when resources are scarce, giving them zero population growth. But that is a selfish act. There is not enough food for the young and the mother has no milk for them anyway. So she just eats them, leaving more food for herself.
Zero population growth is not all that rare in the animal world. In fact it is the rule. But when food is abundant then the population, of both man and beast, explodes.
Ron P.
Also, over the centuries, even though we didn't understand genetics, the tendency to plant the best seeds gradually lead to cultivated crops delivering far more human food per plant (or acre). Some parts of the world over the centuries accumulated massive irrigation and terracing infrastructure. These, as well as the spreading around of new foodtypes all contributed to a higher quasi-sustainable level of population.
Yes, of course, people need food to live. But, you need to read a little about population and demographics, outside the narrow world of dieoff.com and similar sources. There is more written about these things than just the "overpopulation" hand wringing circuit. Much more. Associated with massively increased food production, and production of other necessities, and improvements in hygiene and medical care, etc. -- on this earth, in the 20th century -- was a DRAMATIC DECLINE IN FERTILITY. That's a FACT. It cannot be denied. And it runs directly in the face of what Malthus said would happen. He said than when resources increased and conditions improved, then everyone would screw like bunnies and fertility and population would explode, so as to eat up all the surplus until the great dieoff, like your reindeer. Well, IT DID NOT HAPPEN. Something close to the opposite happened: people STOPPED screwing like bunnies; fertility DECLINED, precipitously; population grew and continues to grow, (as it must for a time, due to demographic momentum), but less every year with a projected turning point in about 30 years. (That's how demographics works, btw: over decades, many decades.)The trajectory is DOWN, DOWN, DOWN. Serious books are now being written about baby busts and UNDERpopulation. (Not that I buy that; but just saying.) Sorry to scream, but these are facts. Fundamental facts. You should be aware of them. If you're not, then you don't know enough to be pontificating about population and etc.
Malthusians badly, badly need to come up to speed with events of the last 40 years. I'm not saying that everything is hunky dory, or that it is smooth sailing from here on out. OF COURSE NOT. We have huge problems. Primarily our economic system is about to become dysfunction. But Malthus proved to be about as wrong as anyone can be. Malthus actually thought the world was overpopulated in 1800, why else would somebody be poor or starving - if they were not surplus population?
Fertility didn't decline until 1960, why are you bringing Malthus into it? We "screwed like bunnies" to seven billion strong and rising to a stated nine billion.
You have already described what took place, urbanization and the decline in infant mortality. That can be reversed.
http://www.shmoop.com/great-depression/statistics.html
Scroll down to fertility rates during the great depression. Notice before and after, call it a dieoff or "family planning". Prosperity after the war again brought about a surge in fertility.
I've said it before, the infant mortality rate and survival into early adulthood meant parents could both delay child production and reduce child bearing. There is nothing sinister it's simply a matter of perception and perceptions of course can and will change.
Just Google infant mortality rates and fertility rates. Those countries with the highest infant mortality also have the highest fertility rates. You are not going to change that with pills and condoms. It will take education, employment, prosperity and of course energy.
You guys who think the US represents the entire world bug me. Study Europe after WW2. Extreme hardship on the continent, collapse of empire economy in Britain.... Sure, N. America had a party.
"Those countries with the highest infant mortality also have the highest fertility rates. You are not going to change that with pills and condoms. It will take education, employment, prosperity and of course energy."
You do realize that you are basically agreeing with arraya here?
When people have the basic medical care and minimal secure food to reliably keep one or two children alive, that is how many kids they have. But demographic inertia keeps the population growing beyond that point.
To me, one of the saddest places where overpopulation can in fact be closely tied to increased production of oil is MENA.
Across the region, populations have far exceeded the carrying capacities of the countries and the region because of the boon of oil money. Now that oil money is running out, and there will either be mass migration, mass (and eternal) food relief, mass starvation, or (most likely) some messy combination of the above.
Population did explode in the 20th century. A population in overshoot follows a Gaussian distribution, aka a bell curve. Population increases exponentially until reaching the inflection point on the rising edge where the rate of increase slows. The population reaches a peak and then declines. Fertility decreases at the inflection point on the rising edge. It is happening. Your belief that demographics is not limited by the availability of resources in the real world is incorrect.
You seem to be making a lot of sweeping assumptions about why population is declining or has leveled off in some countries. Why has fertility in Russia increased recently after declining for about 20 years? Why is population decreasing in Ukraine even though their economy is a mess? Could the U.S. have continued to consume resources at a rate proportional to the population if the population had continued to increase at the rate in the early 20th century? How do you know that the fertility in the U.S. declined due to a high level of resource consumption? Maybe a physical limit was reached such that the only way to maintain the high level of consumption was to reduce the number of children. The choice could have been to increase fertility and decrease standard of living or decrease fertility and increase standard of living which would be a choice linked to the availability of resources. After all, correlation does not prove causation, especially when the correlation is weak.
The only thing Malthus got wrong was the timing because humans began exploiting accumulated but finite resources which had mostly not been used before. He underestimated the amount of vital resources and the technical ability to exploit them, but not their finiteness. You seem to have an ideological objection to his ideas. You have made several references to "overpopulation hand wringing" while you wave your magic wand proclaiming that humans are choosing to limit their population without pressure from resource constraints. The population curve would be Gaussian in both cases.
Don't forget that birth control technology improved rapidly during this time, and that ready access to birth control makes a big difference in the fertility rate. Imagine if, as a world, we made IUDs and implantable hormonal devices (longer term solutions that do not require much in the way of compliance) to everyone worldwide. Many women currently having babies would no longer do so.
By and large, humanity loves to copulate, which until recently meant they would procreate. Malthus saw that people would have children even in the face of resource constraints, our ability to choose to avoid having children is a very recent phenomenon.
I just saw Bandit's claim that birth control won't solve the problem. It won't address population growth among people for whom children are a net gain because they become useful cheap labor at an early age, these people will still rationally choose to have children (although they could probably be cheaply incentivized to avoid having children). But it's impossible to deny that many people would like to avoid having children but can't because they have no ready access to birth control.
Well, there's the technological side of doing it... and there are cultural pressures on this subject too. The two may not agree.
Actually, I'm disturbed by the tone of the theme running thru today's thread. It feels like the mindless chatter that one hears from senile citizens who complain of pet overpopulation and how to solve it... worse yet, it feels like the clap that some 20th Century Nazies spouted on the promotion for the "Final Solution."
Heck, just give everyone profilactics and let them have fun. It's what Nature dictates.
it feels like the clap that some 20th Century Nazies spouted on the promotion for the "Final Solution."
Keep in mind that the Eugenics notion had roots in America and the founder of Planned Parenthood also wrote in a 'positive way' on the topic.
Asinine, I think you got me out of context.
I said in countries with high fertility rates and high infant mortality rates, pills and condoms wouldn't work. I think even you should understand why. Those countries also have low average life spans.
As I said it would require copious amounts of energy and education to reverse the trend, all things being equal but there are still famines, disease including AIDS and war.
So the fertility of, e.g. Germany, decreased much below replacement level in the late 1960's and stays there (since 50 years!) because the Germans are at the "inflection point" and have no resources to increase their population further?? Come on, thats a little to simplistic... Germany will sone start a dramatic population decline, with or without "collapse".
At most, our energy intensive, environmentally damaging and HUGELY inefficient agricultural system only uses 8% of oil supply, at most - including transport. That could easily be whittled down to half that pretty quickly with better practices.
I think the "nuance thing" that is overlooked when ratioing the agricultural oil to gross oil is that the modest 8% oil that you mention allowed 1/3 more land to become available for cropping. That was, and remains today, a huge game changer for overall production volume.
Before tractors (and Haber process nitrogen), a great deal of land was set aside for supporting draft animals. Draft animal energy supported cereal crops, draft animal manure supported more intensive horticulture (think: fruits & vegetables).
If we return to animal power, we're going to require a lot of pasture land. That will not be a bad thing. Animals and manure rebuild depleted soils, which are a big problem.
And grass lands for pasture can have native varieties that have very deep roots (up to 95% of biomass being below ground). These could play a major role in naturally sequestering CO2.
If we return to animal power, we're going to require a lot of pasture land. That will not be a bad thing.
Now, run the numbers for providing that animal power in cities.
At present human populations.
I find it completely incredible that anyone might think we could or would ever return to animal power, eliminating mecanization in agriculture. The only way you'll ever get that to happen will be with force, and good luck with that. (I have grown up on a farm which transitioned from animal power to mechanical in the 1950's. I also have a clear perspective on the availability of alternative means of energy, which such proponents CLEARLY lack.)
And yet there are people in the Transition Movement who've argued for exactly that.
eliminating mecanization in agriculture. The only way you'll ever get that to happen will be with force, and good luck with that.
Naw, it can happen with a large CME that makes the present EQ into nothing better than scrap metal.
That is simply not so. Some countries did drop in growth rate but and there were various reasons for that. Russia's growth rate recently went negative because of the collapse. Italy went near zero, but never negative in the 80s but recently their population growth rate has jumped. Population Growth Rates In none of these cases did their per-capita consumption skyrocket. You just made that up!
Ron P.
You do not understand population demographics, well, you are stuck in an understanding that has been passed, at least 3 to 4 decades ago.. Time moves on, data comes in - peoples understanding changes. It happens all the time. I did not make that up, the US's per-capita consumption doubled since 1945, but obviously it varies.
Arraya,The population in the developed world slowed because of the development of the birth control pill and education which empowered women.Also "Prosperity is the best condom" .In the less developed world they continued to breed like rabbits.How did we come to 7 billion?Did not fall out of the sky?Ron's argument is correct.Most of the new billions came from the less developed world.
Aside from Africa, the less developed world has NOT "continued to breed like rabbits." The opposite is true. Their fertility has fallen off a cliff -- China, India and elsewhere. They've done a fantastic job of reducing their fertility, which will eventually have an impact on population, though it will take some more decades. Meanwhile, conditions have improved and mortality rate has fallen off; hence population numbers are still high and growing, slowly (and at a decelerating rate).
The only place where fertility is still very high, and where population will continue to explode for a long time (in part because of that high fertility), is sub-Saharan Africa.
You are posting things that are totally unrelated to the debate in a vain attempt to cover up your mistake. You said:
That is just not so and you did just make it up. You bring up the US per capita consumption in 1945 when the us population growth rate was still climbing and it continued to climb until 1960. And though the rate of increase has decline our population, along with the world population, is still growing. The world population is still increasing by by over 80,000,000 people per year.
We are deep, deep into overshoot and it is getting worse by over 80 million people each year. And of course many other animals must disappear to make room for that extra 80 million each year, many of them going extinct.
Ron P.
LOL... Just because you refuse to acknowledge data does not make it not exist. You are wrong, dead wrong in fact.
Yes, that is well understood, demographic momentum takes a long time to shift. And it will top off at under 9 billion and decline after that regardless of resourced availability something neo-malthusian luddites refuse to acknowledge. Actually the most recent data suggests it is happening even faster. Of course, we could have a grid collapse turned machete mosh-pit next tuesday.
Your school of thought is in deep deep overshoot and dying off. Actually, this thought process started 200 years ago and peaked in the 70s and has been in decline since, with a minor resurgence due to PO acknowledgment and some false correlations.
Data? HERE'S SOME. It population really leveling off? Doesn't look that way, does it?
Think of it this way. At present, the US is adding (approximately) the population equivalent of one new Atlanta every year or one San Francisco Bay Area every 2 years...
E. Swanson
E, your link didn't work for me.
The thing that is mind bending is that just as the actual world population is increasing at seventy some million a year, the rate if increase is steadily declining.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_population_increase_history.svg
But, as you say, if you look at the staggering numbers of the former stat, the sloping graph of the latter doesn't seem too comforting.
Another useful (or troubling) visualization is www.breathingearth.net
As I mentioned above, MENA seems to be in particular peril of having a sudden Malthusian-type starvation driven population crash. Oil has peaked in most of these countries, exports are vanishing as local uses increase. I rather doubt that the new regimes that arise from the Arab Spring are going to have any good ways to produce food in the desert or spin sand into oil, but who knows?
That link works only if one has Java Script engaged. I usually don't, since it results in too many distracting adds, so I tend to be aware of sites which don't work without it. That might be your problem. The option to disable Java is one of the reasons I like using Firefox...
E. Swanson
Yes, but this is not the only limitation. Also, one has to be logged in into her/his google/gmail account, otherwise has no access to public docs. When logged in, googling "gambia population" shows the graph as the first link, if not, then it's missing. But I made screenshot of the graph, so here it is:
:)
Thanks.
I know, with seven billion people, rivers and lakes drying up, water tables falling by meters per year, thousands of species going extinct, rain forest disappearing, top soil washing and blowing away, fisheries disappearing and we are still not in overshoot.
And I am the one that has got it wrong? Go figure. But the most incorrect statement ever made on TOD by any poster ever is this one:
Right! Fossil fuels had nothing to do with the industrial revolution, medical revolution and the green revolution. And these things had nothing to do with the population explosion. To claim otherwise does not square with the data.
I have had my laugh for the day, now it is time to stop wasting my time with someone so obviously out of touch with what is really happening in the real world.
Bye now.
Ron P.
Clearly population has many drivers, but if you look at a graph of population over a long time with linear axis (as opposed to log), then it looks like a simple step function. That step just happens to correlate with our discovery and widespread use fossil fuels. To claim that this is not the actual cause is absurd, and the purpose of such claims is that then you get to pretend that the next part of the curve won't look like that of fossil fuel depletion. More palatable perhaps, but just wishful thinking.
Yes, human population has many drivers, so it's complicated and should not be reduced to simplistic thinking from any side. The historical data with the correlation you claim proves causation can be juxtaposed with current population growth rate maps like the following:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Population_growth_rate_world.PNG
Where the highest level users of energy (OECD, etc) correspond to the lowest levels of population growth, while some of the lowest users of energy (much of sub-saharan Africa) show the highest levels of population growth.
To paraphrase you, then, "To claim that [low energy use] is not the actual cause [of high population growth] is absurd..."
As you say, it is complicated, and let's not pretend that any one graph or map, mine or yours, represents the last word on the matter or renders some position absurd.
(Note that MENA is one area with both lots of available energy, historically anyway, and a high birth rate. With oil having peaked in most of those countries, they will be in particular trouble going forward, imho.)
Recent graphs show the long term decline in the global death rate stalling out:
http://www.indexmundi.com/world/death_rate.html
While the birth rate continues to drop:
http://www.indexmundi.com/world/birth_rate.html
The former rate is not predicted to go any lower, and should start rising soon for purely demographic (and possibly other less pleasant) reasons:
Years CDR Years CDR
1950–1955 19.5 2000–2005 8.6
1955–1960 17.3 2005–2010 8.5
1960–1965 15.5 2010–2015 8.3
1965–1970 13.2 2015–2020 8.3
1970–1975 11.4 2020–2025 8.3
1975–1980 10.7 2025–2030 8.5
1980–1985 10.3 2030–2035 8.8
1985–1990 9.7 2035–2040 9.2
1990–1995 9.4 2040–2045 9.6
1995–2000 8.9 2045–2050 10
Note that the birth rate dropped from about 20 births per thousand to about 19 per thousand just in the last year. If the rate continues to drop by about one per thousand per year (or accelerates as urbanization continues and women's rights spread) and that meets a slight rise in the death rate, we could have zero population growth within a decade or so.
Of course, the rise in the death rate could rise dramatically at any point if war, famine or pestilence break out, all of which seem more likely every year as the human world gets more and more pinched between falling resource availability and an increasingly chaotic climate.
And we're close to peak fossil fuels and getting into the lower return stuff now, so this is more-or-less what we should expect. I don't pretend to know the details of what will happen, from war, famine or pestilence or merely death rate exceeding birth, but if you were to look at a linear plot of population some few thousand years hence I'll bet it looks like an impulse, and corresponds exactly to fossil fuel use. Probably more to fossil fuel net energy return really.
Hard to tell what all it says about population and energy from this abstract, but it looks like this recent scholarly article may have something interesting to add to the conversation. Does anyone have access to the full article?
http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1525/bio.2011.61.1.7
"We demonstrate a positive scaling relationship between per capita energy use and per capita gross domestic product (GDP) both across nations and within nations over time. Other indicators of socioeconomic status and ecological impactare correlated with energy use and GDP. We estimate global energy consumption for alternative future scenarios of population growth and standards of living. Large amounts of energy will be required to fuel economic growth, increase standards of living, and lift developing nations out of poverty."
The full article appears to be freely available at
http://www.bioone.org/doi/pdf/10.1525/bio.2011.61.1.7
I've downloaded it and am printing it now. The author mentions that Charles Hall, Charles Fowler and Joseph Tainter were reviewers. It looks very interesting.
Fossil fuels don't directly cause population growth. In fact, in countries that use high levels of fossil fuel energy, population growth has declined as people pursue other life style choices beyond having more children.
Various technologies increase the available calories, and an increase in available calories is what drives population growth. For example, the introduction of the potato to the northern European plain increased calories per hectare. This was followed by population growth.
So population growth follows things which bring more hectares under cultivation and which increase yield per hectare.
Coal did play a role. It made possible iron steamships which allowed large numbers of Europeans to colonize several new agricultural provinces around the globe, including the US, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, southern Africa, Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia, and New Zealand, etc. Although most of these had been colonized as early as 1800, a lot more migration occured in the last half of the 19th century after steamship navigation became common.
Coal also reduced markedly the cost of producing iron agricultural implements. All of the traditional tools were made cheaper and a large number of new implements were invented in the latter 19th century.
I think that oil played a lesser role. Note that countries like Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, China, Philipines which have very high populations and together account for a large fraction of world population have been very modest users of oil. Similarly, various parts of Africa and South America which have had fast growing populations are also modest users of oil.
Once cheap transportation and cheap agricultural implements flooded the world, the Malthusian ceiling on population was lifted a great deal. However, it takes time for the population to rise for a lot of practical reasons. Therefore, rising population is a lagging indicator for agricultural productivity.
The reason that the population "spike" appears to coincide with oil consumption is due to this delay, not because population is a direct, coincident result of oil consumption.
Note that I said fossil fuels, not just oil.
Egg-Zactly!
The transition from high mortality to low (with birth rate following), as well as the big population increase, took place between about 1800 and 1950. Most of it was over before oil-based technologies were in wide use as well had little to nothing to do with coal technologies. It takes time for the momentum shift.
The first event of the demographic transition is mortality decline, which causes the population to shoot up for many decades. It takes that long for the fertility (birth rate) decline portion of the transition to catch up with the mortality decline, and finally have an impact on population.
The massive explosion in oil use is directly related to the automobile population explosion - that started in the 40s and 50s.
To the extent that it was the supported technology for increasing yields, yes, which is not saying much. And today, is way too high at 8% of overall usage. Nat gas is not really an issue now. I suppose there was malthusians screaming "technology is not going to save us" in the 40s as the green revolution got going.
Malthus actually thought that people starving was a sign of overpopulation and God was teaching them a moral lesson. Which, you clearly showed the opposite, that productive capacity was there before population. Which is the case today. People are not starving because of lack of materials or technological ability, but lack of money.
Which is why he said stuff like this:
Then you have the other view
David Schwartzman Eco-socialism or Ecocatastrophe
Starvation in urban settings is due to lack of money. However, urban starvation is less common than rural starvation. Food aid is more readily available and easily distributed in urban settings than rural. Governments are more interested in placating urban populations who can organize and threaten political stability.
A large fraction of the population is still rural in many areas of the world where there is rapid population growth. In many cases the rural population is engaged in subsistance agriculture or if it specializes in a particular crop, it barters with other farmers in the area rather than buying foodstuffs that have been transported a long ways.
Therefore, for these rural populations, crop failure due to bad weather, insects, disease, etc. poses a direct threat of starvation. Since they are not participants in the cash economy they cannot buy food. Often they are in locations that are far from good transportation and food distribution by aid agencies is problematic. If they are not in some politically strategic region they will generally be left to starve.
It's hard to make a claim that people with money would starve, regardless of where they live. Yes, they may chose to live somewhere else. But, the point was people don't starve due to the world being able to feed them. It's not a lack of material issue
A worthwhile addition is that "People don't reproduce excessively due to availability of food". See Europe v.s. SubSahara Africa.
Fossil fuels had a LOT to do with the industrial revolution, and the green revolution. They had much less to do with the medical revolution. They also had little (though not nothing) to do with the public health and hygiene programs that were likely most responsible for the bulk of the population explosion of the last two centuries. The big reductions in mortality (that had such a huge impact on population) occurred on what was by today's standards a tiny shoestring of a fossil fuel budget.
Yes, fossil fuels had and have SOMETHING to do with population, just like GDP levels have SOMETHING to do with well-being. The problem is not that there is no relation at all; the problem is that the relation is poor. It seems that a modest amount of fossil fuel is necessary to allow the development and programs that give rise to population growth by way of reduced mortality; that same development also gives rise to reduced fertility -- so it is a self-limiting phenomenon with respect to population. In other words, a small amount of fossil fuel is necessary to propel the demographic transition, all the way through (which takes a century or two to complete).
Viewing it as a direct and stepwise relationship -- more fossil fuel = more population, or vice versa -- is out of touch with the reality of the mechanisms. It is also out of touch with glaring empirical realities such as that the sub-Saharan African population is exploding, while they have easily the LOWEST consumption of fossil fuels of anyone, anywhere.
Mutually felt! Your ignorance and cluelessness have always been good for a few laughs, Ron, and your posts on this thread are no exception.
Sub Saharan Africa does not have a wall around it, it's not under a dome. There is humanitarian aid, food aid, economic aid and trade.
Populations are growing without the usual famines. Google famines if you like. Famines will return without the mechanisms of globalization to prevent them.
Presently the horn of Africa is experiencing the worst drought for fifty or sixty years and has starvation looming but famine will be prevented (I hope) with aid. The world is a lot more connected now, surpluses due to the exploitation of fossil fuels enables aid to be delivered, usually in time.
Food is what keeps them alive, food for minerals, gemstones and oil. They may not use a lot of energy because their infrastructure doesn't support it but energy not required can be traded.
If certain countries in Africa were placed under a dome their populations would drop quickly, simply because their energy needs would be restricted to below population sustaining requirements.
This is a common Western conceit -- the idea that only our great generosity can, and does, "keep them alive". It is false, however. Aid is a pittance, and is only a small fraction of the wealth that the West EXTRACTS from Africa. Per capita aid per year seldom goes above $100; more typically $20-50:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Aid_recipients._$_per_capita,_2007.PNG
.... and most of even that paltry amount does not actually find its way down to the needy in the backwaters.
The idea that their energy use is concealed because it is imported in other forms (e.g. food) is ridiculous on its face. Look at the per capita incomes or GNPs. Half a billion people living on two bucks per day are not consuming, and can not consume, any substantial amount of oil or anything else.
You all would get a clearer understanding of this if you read the Book "What is the What?" by Dave Eggers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_the_What:_The_Autobiography_of_Vale...
G7 population growth rates
G7 fertility rates
G7 per capita energy consumption
The period of fastest growth in energy consumption and the period of fastest decrease in population growth both appear to be the 1960s.
The problem is that those decreasing populations increased their energy and resource usage. China is doing both on a massive scale as we speak way out of proportion to their population increase. When people start massively decreasing their resource and energy usage, I will begin to have some hope. And you have neglected to mention all the extinctions occurring in the non human world. Everything will be fine until it isn't. Yes, in general, higher living standards and education standards are correlate with decreased population growth rates but are we better off if resource and energy usage increases more proportionately.
Nothing you said changes the fact that we live in a finite world bumping against near infinite resource demands. Something has to give and it will be massive dieoff as Darwinian says.
Hey, you gotta keep the economy from collapsing. Even if it means giving everybody with a pulse credit for anxiety based purchases and needless cyclical consumption. I mean, what would we do if we could not ship pointless plastic products around the world to wind up in landfills in a few months. Oh, the humanity!
Yup, another product of 'stimulated' orgiastic consumption, poorly designed living systems and hugely inefficient and damaging industrial practices.
Everything is falling apart now - but the things that are falling apart are causing the problems.
Yeah, infinite resource demands, is the demands to keep the whole thing from collapsing - which ironically is causing all the problems and leading to collapse. Why do you think they are pumping trillions of dollars into the economy - DEMAND? Because there is not enough DEMAND. They have to create infinite demand because the whole thing will collapse if they don't. It is a runaway train economic system driven by mad-men. Keep growing or fall apart. No doubt, it won't be an easy dismount from this crazy train, but the sooner it happens the better. The insanity is going crazy to find more energy to keep this madness going.
Population growth does increase with more resources - to a point, but then goes down and can even go negative with more development.
Like the Australian Jewel Beetle http://www.news.com.au/national/beetles-bottle-up-sex-drive/story-e6frfk... , people seem to be distracted by shiny artificial objects in their environment. But given time, evolutionary pressures should select for less affected individuals.
( look at who are the successful breeders in developed countries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy )
I hate to break it to you - but the horse has kind of left the barn on awareness. Which, surely, will speed up with the ponzi-collapse coming. Information travels mighty quick these days. Now, we could, if we really tried produce a significant die off, but it would take several decades of really really bad decisions and behavior. The collapse of our economic system, that is a different matter. The faster that happens the better. So we can stop irrationally wasting precious resources. It's collapse, has very little to do with the earths ability to take care of human needs- more the inability to increase trajectories of key resources for the system's needs - there is a difference. It's tough paradox to wrap your head around, but true.
Arraya, after reading that I don't understand where the disagreement lies if there is any. Everything you say there fits in with my lay perceptions.
That's it in a nutshell, but to a greater extent a commentary on our specie which simply observes huge population increases vs. doing anything in advance to avert dieoffs.
I suppose being an observer, i.e. knowing what we are doing will have eventual dire consequences for large portions of the population is an improvement on yeast that never see it coming. So we are smarter than yeast - hey how about that! It's only a microscopic improvement, even though we are much larger and supposedly smarter by comparison, but it's something.
I think what it proves is procreation is a stronger drive than our intellect.
Yes that is my quote, all mine, not plagiarized from anyone. But it has been said before, much better, by another.
Damn! Wish I had said that. ;-)
Ron P.
Re. all of above
FERMI’S PARADOX RESOLVED
Enrico Fermi asked a famous question- “Life in the galaxy must be common, but we have heard nothing and seen nothing at all from other intelligent life forms. Where is everybody?”.
The answer is now obvious.
A planet forms in a life-permitting zone around its star.
Life soon appears, and spends a few hundred million years taking carbon out of the atmosphere and storing it in the form of gas, oil, and coal
Intelligent live evolves
It discovers fossil fuels, and, in the ensuing orgy, burns up several hundred million years of stored carbon in an eyeblink of time.
The planet cannot take the shock, goes into runaway, ending as a venus - far too hot for life.
End of life. No recovery. Once done, done for good.
We don’t hear or see intelligent life because, while it arose many times, it immediately self-destructed in a carbon-fueled frenzy, and so, during our brief time of ability to listen, we have almost no chance of hearing anyone. And we never will, since we ourselves are in the final stages of that same process of self-destruction, as is obvious to anyone who cares to look around.
Life is self-limiting. An inescapable law of the universe.
.
Other geologies would result in very little oil, natural gas and coal being stored. Or perhaps a predecessor species depleted them a dozen million years before
I can easily imagine a situation where a technology based civilization arose being powered by renewable energy. Likely slower, but I would argue slower is better.
Solar, wind, hydro, biomass, geothermal and perhaps wave energy for an earth sized planet with a quarter to a half billion humanoids could support a stable and advanced civilization if they avoid the "Curse of Fossil Fuels".
Best Hopes for our Long Term Future w/o Fossil Fuels,
Alan
Or, perhaps we are egocentric and mistakenly conflate technical cleverness with intelligence. The cosmos may be teeming with intelligent creatures that are wise enough that they can live happy and rewarding lives without ever having to build radio telescopes.
We may even share our own planet with some of them (I'm being quite generous with the term share here).
No, technical cleverness is one of the best things we have going for us. It's economic thinking controlling technical cleverness that makes us retarded. Two different worlds.
Wimbi;
Like much of the theorizing I've heard about life away from Earth, I think this one you mentioned brings a lot of Projection into it. Looking out of our little fishbowl bubble, it seems a lot of what we are trying to see is overlayed with a big reflection of ourselves, until the others have to be Aggressive, Carbon-based, Technological, Communicative, etc..
The degree to which some other life-form/ecosystem might be radically different from our own leaves me with little wonder that we might not be able to sense their presence.. not that I'm convinced that they even exist.
Thanks for the robust response to my little gambit. Fermi went on to say something like --The best basis for assumptions re intelligent life is the one we have right here and now. What we have looks like it should be common. We know how to communicate and would try. So, given all that, we can rationally assume that things like us have been around and have tried communication. We don't hear any. So, something is amiss, What is it?
My little exercise on that question-too obvious to have any claim to originality- should at least generate a little debate. Any debate on the mess we are in is good, So, so far, so good.
So, we are doomed. Do I believe it? No,of course not. Why? Because like all of you good folks, I see too many ways to avoid it. But they are all politically impossible. Dam! We ARE doomed! But -but -then, -- are we really that stupid? What is the evidence? Oh, so yes, we ARE that stupid, and so-- we are doomed.
Now, back to work on solar gadgets. (?)
'Back to work on Solar..'
I'm right there with you. Got some Hot Air boxes to build.
One day, I hope you opt to make contact or offer your info so I can trade notes with you. My creations are no great shakes, but they work and I'm excited about them. Always glad to see other Mainers with a similar drive.
My email is at my User Page.
Bob
Presumably your unsourced statistics for private consumption is a piece of the total consumption that includes government, industrial, commercial and agricultural consumption. It is sad in the extreme when you suggest the solution to resource depletion is for 30% of the most affluent of the human population to reduce their personal consumption to 18% of present. That is a postponement, not a solution. If you reduce their personal consumption, perhaps their birth rate will increase negating any savings. Carefully consider why human population remained below 1 billion prior to circa 1800 for all of our existence but has increased to 7 billion over the last two centuries and is still increasing. What allowed the population to increase so dramatically when prior it had not been possible to reach such an amount? After you find the answers, consider what resources are needed to sustain those critical things. Are the remaining 70% living in a sustainable way relative to their consumption of vital resources? Your ideas about reducing consumption are incapable of preventing population overshoot and the depletion of vital resources.
Oh, I have. Have you, or did you just stop at dieoff.com, read overshoot and leave it at that. Actually, I carefully considered all the health/population demographics changes from the neolithic revolution on. Lot's of false correlations and misconception out there.
Well, as you do know, we live on a finite planet and resources have indeed been depleting since the beginning. What's "sad in the extreme" is when we extract resources, process and ship them around the world for profit, just to stick back in the ground again within a few months with little or no use. And this is encouraged! All, while screaming "resource shortfall! Billions must die!" It's almost comedic if it wasn't so sad. The way we manage resources should be looked at like genital mutation of 11 years olds. You could say "it's sad in the extreme" that you don't realize that.
Yes, in the end, the world we be no more. It will be gone someday and I am ok with that. That is not really the point. I tend to be very selfish and don't want to see completely unnecessary and in no way beneficial to anybody - massive social train wreck, with no lessons learned. I mean, the collapse of our economic system is coming, can't get around that. Anything based on such incompetency, you should expect no less. And that will get rid of our main problem and produce another. How we conduct ourselves afterward, however, is a choice. There is plenty to go around.
You could remove those 70% and it would do little to effect anything. That's kind of the point. How do you think the market would respond to a 70% die off in a short time?
I have not presented any "ideas on reducing consumption". You seem to have some sort of internal dialog going. Probably based on fear of having something taken away. I presented facts on consumption not ideas on reducing it. You may want to investigate your feelings on those facts a little deeper.
In a phrase: public health. That was the main thing. Clean water, sewerage systems, clean food, rudimentary medical care and vaccination, etc.
Fortunately, precious few! The resources that are needed for the core and truly crucial programs are scant. Most of the rest is just waste.
Reducing consumption has nothing to do with preventing "population overshoot" (by which one assumes you mean population growth). Reducing consumption has everything to do with preventing consumption overshoot -- which is the only overshoot that need concern us. The population we have is the population we have; it is here for the duration, until declining fertility finally wins out over declining mortality. There's nothing we can do about it directly, and only little we can do about it indirectly that has not already been done.
What we CAN change, that has not already been changed, are consumption patterns -- the consumption patterns that are bankrupting the planet.
Sitting for hours can shave years off life
It's kind of interesting how this first came to the attention of researchers. Back in the '50s, they found that bus drivers were more likely to die than conductors.
For the reasons outlined above, I try to do a lot of work standing at my drafting table, and I bought a cushioned pad, like the ones that cashiers frequently use, to make it easier to stand.
Is that 'cushioned pad' petroleum based? /SARC
This is a good idea. I feel bad after working at my desk for more than 3 hours straight. Who knew your body was saying that this is bad to do?
Well here's an interesting/relevant anecdote:
When Ármin Vámbéry was traveling through central Asia in the 1860s (disguised as a pilgrim mullah named Reshid), he asked one of the local women about their nomadic way of life. According to his book, she said: "We shall, I am certain, never be so indolent as you Mollahs, and remain sitting for days and days in one place! Man must keep moving; for, behold, sun, moon, stars, water, beast, bird, fish, all are in movement; it is but the dead and the earth that remain in their place!"
Then, he reports, she had to go chase a wolf away from her herds. She succeeded, though the wolf did manage to escape with a sheep's tail.
- Resid the Undergrad
I have trouble believing the above statement. Is the author saying that there are no significant benefits to exercising?? Or is he saying that sitting still is so bad, that no amount of exercise can compensate?
I believe it's the second. Sitting is like smoking. Smoking and jogging is better than smoking and not jogging, but you would be better off stopping both.
The other good thing is it is my experience (21 years ago) that running will help you to quit smoking. If I had not taken up running,it is a virtual certainty that I would have never quit smoking.
On the other hand, I know plenty of smoking runners. Several of them claim that the first cigarette after a 10 mile run is better than the one after sex.
Been there, done that. But you have to want to quit. Now, during sex and running, that takes a real smoker.
Not all that surprising.
How old has a paraplegic ever lived to be?
Irrelevant. A better question is... what is the average lifespan of a paraplegic as versus non-paraplegic? However, you would then have to tease out all additional influences that might skew the data.
The problem with the initial question is that you can't prove a trend with only one point of data. Its like saying "My grandma lived to 100 and she smoked every day, so smoking must be good for you." Replace smoking with any habit of your choice and you see the problem.
I've read a similar story some years ago and looked into it and it turns out there's very little evidence that sitting at all is good for you.
On the other hand, I have a bad posture I was born with. Posture is not just your back but also how you stand with your legs and hips, and some people, me included, cannot stand for long without an aching back.
But I figure; living to 90 instead of 85 won't do much difference. It's very rare that people have good lives past year 80, unless they are usually very rich and can afford luxurious private healthcare made for the top 0.5 % with all the rare minerals and vitamins, as well as their own chef and cleaner so they don't have to make the effort.
But if one is one of those rare cases, where even as relatively poor you live long, and well into your old age your body is still functioning reasonably well and your mind is alert, then it might make a slight difference at best.
Nontheless, it's quite fascinating how ignorant we still are of our own bodies despite moon landings and advanced nanotechnology.
Europe stifles drivers in favour of alternatives
Remember the IEA published a 170 page report in 2005 "Saving oil in a hurry". Here are some extracts on how many Kb/d can be saved by various measures - in comparison to Australia's crude oil decline
26/06/2011
Save, baby, save - in a hurry
http://crudeoilpeak.info/save-baby-save-in-a-hurry
It shows something of the US auto addicted mindset that the headline reads
"Europe stifles drivers..." as opposed to "Europe re-opens cities to
people instead of cars ..."
Fortunately this was pointed out in the comments on this article along with
the usual blather about the sacred American right to drive anywhere and everywhere
while being subsidized 90% for that divine right...
Yep, Europe got high speed trains, world class urban transit, bicycle infrastructure and kept their walkable cities. The US got right turn on red.
Amazing how they spin it as "irking drivers," as if it's an imposition from an elite when in fact it's the citizenry imposing these policies, in Zurich's case using referenda. I certainly would like to "irk" the drivers using my town as their gateway for their commute.
Yes, the article was laced with value laden words, planting the idea that these moves were negative. No doubt, there will be those who are unhappy with these new policies. This will be considered an imposition. But the whole auto dominated framework of American cities is an imposition on those of us who would like to see a much less auto dominated town or city.
Even in those towns where the government has attempted to make the situation more pedestrian friendly. Crosswalks with big signs telling autos to sop for pedestrians are popping up throughout Colorado. That is a good thing, but you often have to get in people's face for them to stop. Hesitate, and they will drive right in front of you.
Instead of dealing the auto problem directly, we will try to make things better by still having lots of autos totally dominating cities and towns but we will mitigate the situation with electric vehicles.
'Crosswalks with big signs telling autos to sop for pedestrians are popping up throughout Colorado.'
This is the setup in Portland Maine, along with buttons you press to get the favor of a Walk-Light inserted someplace in the next couple Light-cycles, if you're lucky, and quick.
My shorthand for this is 'Why do I have to BEG to cross this street?' I'm going to lobby city hall to redesign the Traffic Light setup to include an automatic walk into the cycle, and trend away from this 'voluntary/imperative stop for peds. The confusion it creates just adds to everyone's stress on the roads.
I've always called those pedestrian buttons "impotence buttons" because they only remind you of your inability to even cross the street, and they do nothing. I've found a couple that work very well, one in Boston right across from the Christian Science church in the Back Bay, but most are useless. Such is the lot of a pedestrian in America.
It was a big sigh of relief when I was back in NYC last month, with a guaranteed WALK sign in every cycle, on every block.
So much better.. fair play!
I like the "all red" part of the cycle New Orleans has downtown. If one moves quickly, they can cross two crosswalks at once.
Best Hopes for Pedestrian Equality,
Aan
In my little home town they avoided the cost of storm sewers by just putting shallow drainage ditches across each of the intersections after the crosswalk, and a STOP sign in front of each one. This was quite effective in getting the cars to stop for crosswalks. It was, in fact, a very pedestrian-friendly feature.
Of course, some people never stop for STOP signs, so they had to run these a couple of times before they caught on that STOP really meant STOP. One idiot on a motorcycle decided to go through one of these stop signs at well over the speed limit, hit the dip, launched himself into the air, hit the dip on the other side of the intersection, lost it completely, and crashed into a parked car. Naturally he sued the town for his injuries.
Fortunately this was in Canada rather than the US, so after careful consideration the judge just told him he was an idiot and ordered him to pay the town's legal costs for his lawsuit.
Now you're talkin'. How about big steel spikes that come up from beneath the pavement? Or watch towers with armed guards. Urban combat is so much fun.
Another, even cheaper, approach, if the storm sewers are already underground, is to simply remove all lines, signs and signals.
That's a pretty interesting test of an intersection - I wouldn't want to try that in downtown San Francisco!
The linked article goes on to say this approach has been used in Paris (around the Arc de Triomphe), Mexico, Germany, England ad even West Palm Beach.
When I was studying Traffic Flow Theory (yes, that is a real subject as part of a civil engineering undergrad) we looked at this, and our professor was dubious about it, much preferring ropundabouts, traffic lights etc. The reasons - two of them;
1. it was impossible to derive a mathematical model to predict the flow!
2. The engineer and/or city could get sued for "not controlling the traffic"
This doesn't mean it can't be modelled - but it is only from observation of a chaotic system - you couldn't "design and control" the flow like you can with signals etc.
Beside, what employment would there be for traffic engineers, and signal manufacturers if every intersection used this approach? Can you imagine how awful a city would be without zillions of lights, lines and signals, and where people can walk around without fear of traffic? Who would want to go to such a place?
Let's take a trip to Venice
From my experience it would seem it's due to the different attitudes of people. they are far more mature there in Europe then here in the states. way too many 'only my needs are important' libertarians here in the states for that to work sadly.
I recall crossing the road to get to the Arc de Triomphe. Just walk out holding your hand up as a stop signal to the cars. They stop. When we get power cuts here and the traffic lights go out the traffic flows freely. When the lights go back on, we get traffic holdups. For a real grid lock put the Transitos on the job. They'll block any traffic flow with their attempts to get traffic moving. Another way to control traffic is to put cobblestones at junctions, people really want to slow down on those but they are hard on bicyclists.
NAOM
The recent solution in New Orleans is bricks on a narrow path through the cobblestones for bicycles.
Best Hopes for Solutions,
Alan
I love to tell the story about the difference between crossing the street in most German cities vs. doing so in Naples, Italy.
In German cities (20 years ago) it was all about "Ordnung über Alles". With typical Teutonic efficiency, many stop lights had extra settings compared to our red-green-yellow:
(You can see why they need the flashing green before yellow.)
Needless to say, with all those eyes focused on traffic signals, pedestrians better watch their own signals and NEVER EVER cross when it's not your turn.
Naples is different.
Italians joke that Europe stops somewhere between Rome and Napels. And a colleague who grew up in Calcutta says it is the one European city that makes him feel at home.
In Naples there is no assumption that traffic lights, stop signs or even one way signs can be counted on. They're more like "guidelines". With cars and Vespas constantly switching lanes and driving in the street, on the sidewalk and squeezing into impossible narrow spaces it's all about knowing what's going on around you -- kind of like skating fast at a busy ice rink.
Whereas I was always a little concerned about crossing a street in Germany, I quickly learned that in Naples you can cross anywhere, anytime. Simply puff out your chest and signal your intention to cross by stepping out into the street. As you walk across, the cars and light trucks and Vespas will simply part around you and rejoin on the other side -- kind of like Moses parting the Red Sea.
It feels pretty empowering once you get the hang of it.
Gee, you could almost make a movie out of that!
Great story Jon, parting the red sea indeed. so what do you think are the chances of that being adopted in the US? The personal injury lawyers would think its Christmas!
Speaking of which, I don;t know how well this system would work on snow/ice covered streets in winter - would be more like curling than skating!
OK. So just remember to take your broom with you in the winter. ;-)
Seriously, that's an odd 'sport' you Canucks have there. On this side of the border, 'curling' in winter usually has words like 'up with someone' attached. Must be the hot blooded nature of our southern climes. LOL
Good question.
A couple of years back my brother and I were crossing a street in lower Manhattan, we had the walk light and stepped into the intersection only to have a car come zipping around the corner. Unfortunately for the driver he came to a stop in the middle of the crosswalk because of other traffic. Without missing a beat of our stride and without a word to each other both my brother and I kicked the middle of the driver's door real hard. It was late November and we were wearing boots and put a deep dent in the door. We must have had a 'Don't mess with us', look on our faces because the driver didn't even try to protest and drove away as soon as he could. No, I'm not saying that was a smart thing to do but I'll bet that driver stopped for at least the next pedestrian or two...
When he was working in downtown Chicago, my brother was impressed at how good the locals were at enforcing the "stop for pedestrians" rule. As he pointed out, "A lot of these guys are carrying guns, so it's best to give them the right of way."
He was particularly impressed by one big black guy in a three-piece suit carrying an umbrella. A car didn't yield to him at a crosswalk, so as it passed, he put his umbrella tip into the side of the car and left a groove in the paint that went from the headlight to the taillight. The car screeched to a halt, but the driver, observing that it was a big black guy in a three-piece suit who had damaged his car, and realizing he was a small white guy in downtown Chicago, just hit the throttle and got the heck out of there.
Rocky - Great lead in for another "Don't mess with Texas" tale. Back in the 80's I was drilling wells for a Yankee idiot that loved to speed around the countryside in his Jag. I rode with him the first time and never again. On one property we had a very long and well compacted lease road that ran by the rancher's house. He had told me a couple of times about John driving way too fast past his cattle, dogs and kids. I passed the warning on but as usual John ignored me. One day he drove up to the field office saying he had heard an odd "clunk" as he was driving (speeding, actually) off that same lease. One front headlight was smashed...could see where the bullet exited the side of the light frame. John was upset and said that SOB tied to kill him. Told John I knew folks that hunted with that rancher. He hit what he was aiming at and that if we wanted John dead he would be dead. And he and that Jag would be buried in a caliche pit to never be seen again. Oddly, John never went back on that lease.
And not that the rancher was an angel either. He had done a short prison stint for beating the hell out of another guy when he was drunk. I tended to avoid him also.
Jokuhl,
I don’t remember now where I found the clue, but I took a little trip last week, via Google maps and Bing maps, to Lund, Sweden. Lund is a university town about 10 to 12 miles northeast of Malmo, with roughly the same population as Portland, ME. If you take a look around, using the satellite views on either Google or Bing, it appears that there are very few cars in the city, and even fewer surface parking lots. I didn't notice any big parking garages either. In fact, unless they are all hiding in underground parking, there just aren’t many cars in the whole city. As a rough guess, I'd say that there are perhaps one third the number of cars as in Portland, ME.
Another little idea that I picked up somewhere over the last week or so is that there should NOT be any parking garages near downtown transit hubs. All the available land area near these transit hubs should be used for buildings that people are commuting to and from, such as office buildings, shopping areas, restaurants, etc., and definitely not for parking garages.
Unfortunately, Portland, ME, has at least four big parking garages within two blocks of Monument Square and the Metro Pulse on Elm Street. In fact, Metro Pulse, the downtown bus hub, is in the ground floor of a parking garage, which just invites people to drive to the same place they could easily get to by bus. So if and when Portland is ready to start reducing the number of parking spots in the city, they should start by replacing these parking garages with office towers or other destination buildings.
You're totally right.
We have a city that would be so walkable and bikable and our trolley system used to be pervasive.. and now, just painful amounts of great city space are taken up by massive parking structures..
It's like my thoughts when looking at Las Vegas. When I see these things, it's like I'm looking at Lingering Ghosts that don't know they're dead yet..
.. and yet the following still seems alive to me.
http://s831.photobucket.com/albums/zz240/Ingto83/?action=view¤t=Tr...
The Energy Bulletin has a link to the three recent excellent articles by Ian Urbina, with the NYT, covering various aspects of the shale gas plays:
http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2011-06-27/leaked-docs-throw-doubt...
He was on CNBC this morning, and I thought that he did a very good job. He said he was primarily trying to highlight a discussion, within the industry, that had been heretofore largely hidden (with the exception of course of ASPO-USA, the Energy Bulletin & The Oil Drum). He specifically highlighted the fact that many publicly held companies were drilling wells that did not make a lot of sense on a per well basis, but they added crucially important* proven and proven undeveloped reserves, especially in terms of barrels of oil equivalent--which is the same point that the "Rock" and Art Berman, et al have been making.
*Crucially important of course to stock prices
Speaking of natural gas (emphasis added). . .
http://www.albawaba.com/finding-solution-gas-shortage-380347
Gas shortage: Saudi Arabia new dilemma
At Saudi Arabia's current (2005 to 2010) rate of increase in their ratio of oil consumption to oil production, they would approach zero net oil exports in 14 years, and although the MSM seems to remain oblivious so far, Saudi Arabia has shown year over year declines in net oil exports for five straight years (BP).
I would like to see someone here do an analysis of the estimates put forth by the gas industry that says we have a hundred years of gas in reserves. This has been a major PR thrust by the industry with full page ads on the WSJ touting the vast reserves in shale gas. 100 years sounds like a nice round number, easy to remember by Joe and Jane six pack. For example, what is the recovery rate used to come up with this number? That obviously makes a big difference and I have not seen the number anywhere.
Or maybe this has already been published on TOD and I missed it.
As the "Rock" has said, much depends on the price assumptions. On CNBC, Ian Urbina referenced industry emails pointing out that at current natural gas prices, the majority of shale gas wells in many areas are non-economic.
A couple of years ago I looked at these numbers.
Those ads always refer to "North America" reserves, though it's clear its aimed at US consumption (as if the US owns Canada and Mexico). Exxon uses a similar strategy in it's ads on the Candian oil sands.
If you take the proven reserve numbers for Mexico, the US and Canada and add the likely reserves values (as yet undiscovered at any price) and then divide by US consumption, you get something like 100 years. This assumes no growth in consumption rates and that everything that is needed to have that gas show up falls into place. Other factors are ignored like growth rate of consumption (e.g., replacement of MW generated using coal with MW generated using natural gas. That can change the usage pattern in a big way). Exponential exhaustion factors have a way of shortening the "number of years" very quickly.
As pointed out elsewhere, it fundamentally does not take into consideration cost/price
Art has talked about this a few times:
Here is one post by Art that covers the concept that the core areas are only about 10% of the total field size.
"Shale Gas—Abundance or Mirage? Why The Marcellus Shale Will Disappoint Expectations"
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7075
"EIA Annual Energy Outlook 2011: Don't Worry, Be Happy"
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7285
One last note, a friend supplied a copy of the World Energy Outlook 2009 and the IEA did some work on Shale gas production cost in the Barnett in that report. They found that the cost of drilling & completion in the core areas was around $4.00 per mmBtu (no corporate overhead costs, debt, etc included) but the prices rose very quickly outside of the core areas because ultimate recovery fell off. The fringe areas would have costs over $12 per mmBtu, which is basically higher than the highest gas cost that has ever been paid. The net energy is well below 10:1 at those costs. Society would need a major contraction to essential uses to afford that kind of cost per mmBtu. (these are just drilling costs, the nat gas must also be transported, stored and distributed).
ts - Folks have already given some good answers. But still like the simplist answer: any estimate, be it XX TCF uf NG or 100 years of supplies, those number are absolutely meaningless if it doesn't include the price assumptions. That's why, IMHO, it's a waste of time to analyze such claims. Without the facts there nothing to debate.
Minor correction: Should read: ". . . and although the MSM seems to remain oblivious so far, Saudi Arabia has shown year over year declines in net oil exports for four of the past five years (BP)."
But of course, all five years have been well below their 2005 annual rate of 9.1 mbpd (2010 was 7.2 mbpd, down from 7.3 mbpd in 2009).
The Shale Gas Empire strikes back (emphasis added):
http://www.star-telegram.com/2011/06/27/3183534/chesapeake-ceo-calls-new...
Chesapeake CEO calls New York Times article 'inaccurate and misleading'
If memory serves, Art Berman's analysis indicated that the average commercial life of a Barnett Shale well would be about 7 to 8 years.
Incidentally, I wonder if there is any significance to the fact that McClendon did not say that the wells would be commercially productive for 30-50 years, or even longer?
wt - dang it...now I have to defend McClendon...sorta. Hell yeah...those wells will be producing for 30 -50 years...maybe longer. I did a little drilling in the New Albany Shale in western KY. The NAS is reported to be the first NG play in the US. NG were supplied for street lights from the NAS in the late 1800's. I found one well that was still producing after 60 years.
Now the rest of the story: That old well was still producing...netting about $10/day. There a huge difference in the life times of various SG plays depending on whether there's liquid produced with the NG or not. Almost all SG play are pressure depletion drive. In the NAS as the pressure is reduced the flow rates drop. But NG absorbed on the organic molecules in the shale are slowly, very slowly, released. This is dry gas and will flow out the well head as long as there is a few psi differential. The problem develops if there is any water or NGL produced. This puts a back pressure on the reservoir and kills the flow. Often the cost to pump off this fluid is uneconomical.
Half truths and incomplete statement are THE tools of a CEO: yes...the wells may last 30+ years. And how much will that last 20+ years be worth? Very little. And that's not MHO...that over 100 years of production history.
And yes..." Initial production rates and expected lifetime output for most shale-gas wells "have been steadily improving,". That's because instead of drilling wells with 1,000' laterals with 2-3 frac stages costing $3 million) they are now drilling 5,000'+ laterals with 12 to 15 frac stages cost $7 - 10 million. So he didn't say anything that wasn't true. But he also didn't give a clear and concise picture of the economics of his drilling program either. As I recall he lost over $2 billion in his Chesapeake stock holding when NG prices collapsed back in '08. As any good CEO would do he's now trying to recover that market cap. As I was told long ago by a stock promoter: he's selling the sizzle...not the steak. So don't confuse folks with facts about the steak.
Since I love to suggest work for other people to do, following is a copy of an email I sent to Art Berman, Ian Urbina (NYT) and Jack Smith (Fort Worth Star Telegram):
Would you be interested in doing some research on this lease?
From the linked article (American Oil & Gas Reporter):
wt - Here's a little flesh for the bones. Haven't had time to do a full analysis but this is what I've gotten off DrillingInfo:
I found 101 wells drilled by Chesapeake on a "DFW" lease. No longer producing = 21 wells. Average URR :0.428 bcf. Still producing through April 2011 = 80 wells. Average URR to date: 1.350 bcf. Average production rate for latest month: 686 mcf/day.
I don't have time to analyze all the decline rates but looked at the still producing well with the best recovery: 42-439-33205(A2HR) Cum: 1.343 bcf. A very solid decline rate of 49.5%. If a 50% DR is representative then the 80 wells currently producing should be down to around 340 mcf/day in 12 months and 170 mcf in 24 months. Or pretty much down to stripper level. Just a rough projection but I would say the average URR of the current producing wells will be less than 1.8 bcf. Assuming a 25% royalty, $4/mcf and normal production expenses I'll guess a net income of about $4.4 million tops. Not sure what the typical well cost but I'll guess these wells will barely recover their initial drilling investment alone. And if they paid that much for the leass I suspect they'll never recover the full investment.
BTW: the last well Chesapeake drilled on the DFW lease was Oct 2009. I'm guessing they figured out they had a dog on their hands at that time thanks to the lower NG prices. Might not have been too bad a play...at $13/mcf. But that didn't happen, did it?
Thank you very much. Pretty much what I suspected. I wonder if these were some of the wells that Mr. McClendon insisted would produce for 30-50 years, perhaps longer? Of course, as discussed up the thread, there is that pesky question of production versus commercial production.
Note that the lease cost per well, assuming 101 wells, was about $1.8 million per well. Also interesting that such a high percentage has also already been P&A.
BTW, I don't know what kind of proration units they are now using in the Barnett, but with an average of about one well per 180 acres, wouldn't the lease be pretty much developed?
Some Cornucopian Happy talk regarding shale gas follows. They show total US shale gas production going from about 2.2 TCF per year in 2010 to 14 TCF per year in 2040 (current US dry gas consumption is about 24 TCF per year):
http://fuelfix.com/blog/2011/06/27/barnett-shale-still-has-lots-of-life/
Barnett Shale Still Has Lots of Life
2.2 TCF to 14 TCF in 30 years would be a net increase of about 6%/year (doubling every 12 years).
wt - Yep...180 acre units would account for the entire lease. Those 21 non-producing wells were 2 years old or less. I'm guessing they could have keep them producing longer had they gone to compression but CHK was so crippled by the lower NG prices they couldn't come up with the capex. At least the increased URR indicates they did improved their techniques as they went along. But when you add the lease costs in it seems to be a money loser.
And that's been one of the complaints coming out of Wall Street: operators brag about their wells coming on at 900 bopd and only costing $X. But they don't amortize the lease costs into that well cost. I saw one acreage position being offered for a little over $1 billion. Gonna take a lot of grease to make that money back as well as the drilling costs.
BTW: latest Eagle Ford rig count: 178. Folks are familiar with academic rule: "Publish or perish". We have a similar rule for public oil company: "Add reserves or watch your stock dissolve."
It would be interesting to see a lease production chart. If you could put the numbers together, I can do a chart. Any idea of average drilling & completion cost per well?
wt - Tomorrow I'll send you a spread sheet wih all the data and then you can chart your little heart out.
To be more precise, I'll recruit my daughter to do a chart. . .
BTW, Art Berman is working on an updated post on shale gas.
McClendon was on Cramer's show on CNBC. The usual hand waving defense from the shale gas proponents. He claims that they are probably underestimating reserves.
The article on Desertec claims US$9 billion to produce 2000MW of solar capacity. Hopefully this is to be completed by 2020. At 8 hours a day of sun X 365 days a year, this investment of $9b will produce 5.84 TWh of power per year.
Considering that the growth in total energy use in 2020 will be about 3500 TWh, this plant that will take 8 years to build will be just 1/600th of the growth needed in 2020. To replace all energy growth with renewables in the year 2020, will require $5.4T at this rate, just for the year 2020, then $5.508T in 2021 then....
Well it is clear the big screen tvs will be turned off in 2020. lol. That way people can actually do something healthy like planting a garden instead of sitting around watching tv all day long.
Why is it that people so rarely qualify these statements with a "barring unforeseen circumstances" or a "if current trends continue" instead of just stating them as if they are facts?
I have always found long term projections to be a bit like gambling and thought that ten year and five year business plans are a bit of a crap shoot. If company A, selling smart phones says "We are going to sell x number of phones next year at an average price if y dollars and make z million dollars profit." but, company B comes out with a new "better" phone at half the price grabbing huge market share away from company A, company A's forecasts turn out to be rubbish. It's not like stuff like that does not happen.
Who forecasted that the price of sugar would rise to where it is now, causing Brazillian operations to shift more sugar cane processing towards sugar instead of ethanol, ending up with Brazil importing ethanolfrom the US? The implicit assumption in forecasts like this is that growth will coninue BAU. Everybody who thinks that this is a given raise hands. Didn't think so.
I for one, think that by 2020 Peak Oil is going to be "in the rear view mirror" by 2020 and we will be feeling the effects of the energy decline. I expect that by 2019 the forcasts will be that the decline in total energy use in 2020 will be about 3500 TWh. Anybody wanna bet?
Alan from the islands
Sorry, "if current trends continue" and we replaced all energy use growth with renewables only, then the above numbers stand.
I am firmly in the camp that they are impossible and we will be in reduction of energy use plus economic collapse by then. Or we will be burning every tonne of coal, wood, gas and biomass we can get our hands on (and too hell with the climate).
By continueing growth as is happening in Asia with massive populations, the rate of growth of both coal and gas is likely to accelerate until we get collapsing economies. As peak oil becomes clearly visable in the rear view mirror, CTL and GTL will become very important and ramp up quickly. Of course this means we will reach peak coal and peak gas in much shorter time frames than any current predictions.
The treasurer of Australia was on the radio yesterday explaining how the proposed carbon tax will lead to an expansion of coal mining using "clean coal technologies".
The common man would probably not do much of the damage as the businesses. If the businesses collapse beyond the point of recovery, we might actually be better off - without burning all the coal and wood. Though, I wonder what happens to all the critters.
Here is the "Act of God" assumption once again. It seems to show up at least once every week, no matter what.
I see you guys still aren't taking the news about Hugo very seriously.
Report: Hugo Chávez in Critical Condition In Cuban Hospital
But if he does go down, It will be another Libya type event. There is no clear successor to power there (on purpose).
"it will be another Libya type event."
I'm not so sure. Chavez (who has numerous faults and shortcomings) is far from the nearly universally hated figure that Gaddafi is in Libya. And it's worth noting that he is the elected President. If he dies there will be a succession struggle, but one that will likely take place in the realm of politics and voting, not tanks and rockets.
Unless the US attempts to destabilize the situation as they have done at least once in the past there and many times in many other countries over the decades.
Well, yeah, that'd do it.
The rumors around here is that it was a minor face lift to get rid of crow's feet. I doubt that there would be a major crisis if Chavez did pass away, my bet is that there would be a great rush towards elections.
The revolution in Venezuela is becoming mature, and little chance of going back to its client state status of its past.
The people have tasted political action and will, and it probably cannot be put back into the box.
Venezuela is still a typical corrupt, and violent country on many levels, like its neighbors, but with enough time they have a chance of success.
World leaders are human just like the rest of us. Which means - gasp - they can get diseases and die, and - gasp - medicine can't make them live forever.
There are 7 billion humans on this planet. Every last one of them has to die at some point.
Stories of this person here or that person there dying do not impress me anymore. They used to, but that was before I learned about overshoot and peak oil and net energy decline.
yes but , not now!
:)
forbin
While flipping channels, I spent a few minutes on "Question Time" in the UK Parliament. I was surprised to hear a question about rail electrification in Wales.
A little Googling shows that electrifying the Great Western rail line from London to to Cardiff is planned, with extensions to Swansea and "the Valley lines" under review. Today, "only" 20,000 or 70,000 commuters use "the old slow rail lines".
But the most interesting comment came from a primer for electrification.
... there was a serious image problem if Wales and Albania remained the only countries without Europe’s standard technology for main lines and commuter railways.
http://www.walesonline.co.uk/business-in-wales/business-news/2011/03/09/...
Best Hopes for more Oil Free Transportation,
Alan
http://www.walesonline.co.uk/business-in-wales/business-news/2011/03/09/...
Tomgram: Michael Klare, The Energy Landscape of 2041
He got a lot of it right, but in the end he could not bring himself to consider the possibility that our access to plentiful energy would come to an end. So he envisions instead that after a prolonged period of conflict we'll return to an industrial society with plentiful energy, just from renewable sources instead. Just because you see and understand most of the issues doesn't mean you are willing to draw the conclusion.
"When these three decades are over, as with the Treaty of Westphalia, the planet is likely to have in place the foundations of a new system for organizing itself -- this time around energy needs."
What ??? What does he mean here by "the planet" ???? The "Planet" is going to organize itself around "energy needs" ????
"there is no way the existing energy system can satisfy the world’s future requirements"
What??? What does he mean here by "the world's" ??? The "World" has plenty of energy for its future requirements.
Is Michael stoned? Or does he just float on a cloud so high above the carnage he confuses this cute little human construct we call civilization with "the world."
The 30 Years' War ... yeah, that sounds like a realistic comparison to the current situation. The 30 Years' War, with a dab of pudding on the side, and a cherry on top.
Go back to sleep all you happy little michaels out there.... shhhhhhh, hush little michael don't you cry, Nature gonna give you a poke in the eye ;)
The Thiry Years War reduced the population of Germany by about 1/3 to 1/3. A new global conflict is likely to do the same, or even more given nuclear and biological weapons.
So optimistically, figure a 2080 population of maybe 1 billion. That will reduce energy requirements considerably.
I think you meant 25 to 30%?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War
On the one hand, the area that is now Germany was the main area of fighting throughout the war. Not all countries involved suffered such high casualty rates.
On the other hand, as you say, we have much more...efficient ways of wiping out large populations and from a distance.
On top of that, the world was resource rich at that time, but this will be a scrabble over ever diminishing pieces of the ever shrinking pie.
War isn't going to save the world from overpopulation, but Global Warming might.
The eruption of a volcano near Bali (Mt. Tambora) in 1815 probably caused the deaths of 200000 people in Europe the next year.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer
The problem is that you can't depend on natural disasters to happen when you need them.
More effective and predictable would be an epidemic of highly infectious disease that would render most human females infertile.
"The problem is that you can't depend on natural disasters to happen when you need them."
Perhaps, but this could be just what the doctor ordered.
Ongoing volcanic eruptions from the Nabro caldera
http://bigthink.com/ideas/38987
Too small --- A VEI 8 is needed.
Where is the mad scientist threatening to blow yellowstone when you need one! :P
Seriously, you cannot bet on natural disasters. Mainly they are unpredictable.
of course you can bet on natural disasters - anyone who is in the "disaster relief" business (e.g. sandbag makers) is doing just that, and there's probably a bookmaket in Britain that will give you odds on the disaster of your choice
You can't rely on natural disasters, is, I think, a more accurate statement.
Actually, Yellowstone may be a good source of geothermal energy.
Does anyone know of the potential energy that could be obtained by drilling the Yellowstone caldera?
I have often wondered about this. It must be a huge amount of energy.
Are there any serious risks involved?
What could possibly go wrong?
Sudan seeks to tap 'blue gold' with new dam projects
A feddan is 1.038 acres
Floating Storage: Have you seen it?
Floating storage, that is tankers sitting offshore with crude oil and other oil products have virtually disappeared as 2011 progresses. While the debate goes on as to why the SPR is to be opened in August, there is a very simple answer: US oil imports are down sharply and the floating storage that rescued the US in the summer of 2010 is nowhere to be seen.
Ironically, the move by the IEA to release oil from storage in August may have the reverse effect on oil imports right now. By knocking down near term oil prices, the futures prices for delivery later in 2011 are now higher than the futures prices for delivery in the next month. This has the effect of allowing some to profit by storing oil, paying tanker storage fees, and selling it later. [There is one important exception - Please note that forward deals for LLS, Louisiana Light Sweet, the kind of oil to be released from the SPR, actually is selling for less for August delivery than currently].
Also, the rates on tanker rentals now are extremely low due to the loss of about 1.25 million bpd in OPEC exports since the start of February, making storage much less expensive as compared tone year ago.
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20110627-704563.html
The law of unintended effects may be at work here. We also don't know if OPEC will reduce exports in response to the IEA stocks releases, which seems likely. So don’t be too quick to judge the effect of the SPR release on oil prices before the release actually happens.
Connecticut state workers rejected a deal agreed to by their unions and the Democratic governor. I don't know the details, but from what I've seen, the deal they rejected was less onerous than many that have been accepted elsewhere. They seemed to be angry over what they perceived as unfairness. $1.6 billion of a $2 billion budget gap was supposed to be filled by state employee givebacks...before negotiations began. After the billions given away to rich bankers, that seemed unjust.
Meanwhile, Washington state has abandoned tourism marketing. Some states are seeking to fill budget gaps by increasing tourism marketing. Washington is the only state to do away with it altogether.
Yes, sad to say. Due to the fact that it was a major contract reopener involving retirement benefits, 80% of the union had to vote yes. As it was, only 57% voted yes. Still a majority, but I would have expected more, considering the economic times.
Clueless in Connecticut.
Jon.
Chris Martenson posted this link on his blog about a week ago but I just now caught it. An "Advanced search" showed that it had not been posted on TOD so I decided it was worthy and decided to do it.
Systemic Collapse
Pretty good rant, I thought anyway. Is "collapse" happening right now but starting so slow that we really don't recognize it? And is it speeding up now? Are we like the boiling frog?
Ron P.
Or is it possible the collapse is being held back by bail-outs, stimulus packages (US, Euro & China), QE's and SPR releases? However, all of those measures have their limits. Bail outs will probably no longer be tolerated. Stimulus packages are limited by the capability to borrow ever more trillions, yet retaining the ability to at least pay the interest on the debt. QE's devalue fiat currency. The SPR only has so much oil.
Westexas posted something a week or so ago I thought caught the essence of the dilemma being faced, by stating we face defaults or inflation. The above set of stimulus type actions work to hold off on defaults, but risk inflation, and to put a finer point on it, hyper-inflation. Up to now people still have confidence in currencies, but as debt burdens reach too high, QE's get resurrected in the future (which I'm sure they will) and the SPR gets widdled down, markets will react and currency valuations will drop precipitously with the final crescendo of the Titanic Empire going down exhibiting itself as hyper-inflation.
Without a currency in place, the system will collapse. Efforts to replace dollars for something else will happen, but the permanent damage will be too much for such a massively integrated civilization to withstand. As someone recently put it, the whole thing will need to reboot, but it will never be the same ol' BAU we all use to know.
I think we're way past boiling frogs......
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgLnFEiJ-GE&feature=related
Contrary to the popular analogy about the boiling frog, if you place a frog in a pot of water and gradually increase the heat toward the boiling point, the frog will not continue to just sit there. There will come a moment when the frog's jumping reflexes will be triggered. The frog will try to jump out. Unfortunately it is at this critical moment that the frog notices that there is a lid on the pot, and no amount of jumping will do any good!
It seems very difficult to draw a clear line between "decline" and "collapse". Modern industrial civilization began it's gradual decline sometime in the late 1970's, as measured by energy per capita. Hardly anyone noticed and that is not too surprising. It is like the the frog in the pot of water noticing that it is just beginning to get a little warmer. Certainly nothing to panic about. As we move closer to the inevitable collapse, the rate of change is accelerating, making it much easier for people (or frogs) to detect that something is wrong. It is starting to get uncomfortably hot. We have already begun jumping, so to speak. This jumping is expressed in our reflexive attempts to keep the system from going critical, i.e. bailouts, quantitative easing, releases from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, etc. These can have only a temporary delaying effect on collapse.
Joseph Tainter says that "a collapse occurs when a society RAPIDLY loses an established level of complexity." For the frog, the collapse begins when the heat of the boiling water causes the internal pressure in his bowels to rise beyond the level at which they can be contained within his abdomen. At this point the frog explodes. For modern industrial civilization collapse will be a similarly sudden, and lethal event. Collapse will be unambiguous.
That's a apt analogy, Loren.
Ron,
That rant originated at Nature Bats Last.
Thanks, your link don't work so here is one that does work.
Nature bats Last
Ron P.
Thanks Ron.
Did you check out Orlov's slide show in his latest post? I like slide #5:
I think the old USSR was lucky to collapse while the rest of the global economy was still functioning - same with Argentina, etc. As the western ponzi collapses all over europe, asia and north america who will be there cushion the blow?
I hope we bring home the troops before it's too late.
Very interesting article from the Economist today.
Economic jihad
Iran as IMF darling is not something you read every day. It's also interesting to note that this approach is the exact opposite of Saudi Arabia's. Hmmm ... I wonder which approach has a better runout? ;-)
And here's a quick fact check from the just-updated JODI databrowser for gasoline consumption in Iran:
Demand in the first four months of 2011 is definitely down to levels last seen in 2005. (Of course there have been ups and downs before but I don't mind attributing the current downtrend to increased prices. I'm a big believer in the power of the price signal.)
Compare that with the situation in Saudi:
Lots of interesting geopolitical considerations here.
Jon
Prompted me to look at databrowser for population
http://mazamascience.com/Population/IDB/
Both countries (KSA (28M, Iran 76M) see growing population although the much smaller KSA is growing more rapidly than Iran. Iran saw a change in rate of population growth after 1990: a very large drop in fertility rate to below replacement level by 2008. (World Bank says this could change and lose what they see as an advantage.) Since the year 2000, the KSA population grew 19% and Iran 11%. Iran has a somewhat broader economy, agriculture, manufacture etc.(more useful for the future?)
From the World Bank 'Country Brief'
Also, Iran has an increasing amount of dual-fuel cars on the road. Their government must have noticed westexas ELM.
The IMF is a tool of the Anglo-American banking elite. The last thing they want is a healthy and strong Iran, which is the only country in the M.E. willing and able to challenge Israel. What else is our continued involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, than an attempt to control Iran?
This whole article stinks.
Before all is said and done, I'm convinced something big is going to happen in the M.E. regarding Israel, and the West, particularly America, will have to decide if it's going to risk it's future to defend it against millions of pissed off Arabs.
What a messed up world we live in.
I wonder whether the authors of this article would like to live under Iran's political system.
When using EIA data, it looks like Iran is heading towards oil export extinction:
6/6/2011
Iran needs $60 bn from foreign banks to stop 1 mb/d oil production drop by 2015. Anyone interested?
http://crudeoilpeak.info/iran-needs-60-bn-from-foreign-banks-to-stop-1-m...
China will be happy to invest and buy oil at $20 per barrel. And so would any investor with nuclear tipped ICBMs to protect their investment.
Hey, does anyone have experience with building energy simulators? Or solar gain simulators?
The DOE has a freeware simulator, but it looks like it takes some time to become proficient.
http://www.doe2.com/
Any other suggestions?
I am interested in creating a cost per btu analysis for different insulation / solar / heat pump / lighting choices. It seems like the tools exist and it may not take an experienced user much time at all to generate these kinds of results.
Looking at the problem this way lets us examine the cost vs the expected trend in natural gas production prices. Some quick estimates for insulation show it can cost in the $0.50 - $2.5 per million btu in savings.
Retscreen will allow you to create a user-defined energy efficiency measure.
http://www.retscreen.net
http://www.rense.com/general94/newst.htm
Wires underwater.
I liked the article from the Omaha Times? that said 'There's No Danger, the plant is just in some unique peril'
Maybe they actually meant that the staff was all wearing Stylish, Vintage Clothing? (To avoid Fashion Risks, presumably. "Fashion", of course is 20 years ahead of me, and always will be!)
Yeah, and they're also reporting that floodwater is seeping into the turbine building. That's OK because "plant officials said the seepage was expected and posed no safety risk because the building contains no nuclear material"
Also - Omaha Public Power District spokesman Jeff Hanson said pumps were handling the problem at the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Station and that “everything is secure and safe.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/27/fort-calhoun-nuclear-flood-nebr...
Yeah, no nuclear material... Lots of wiring and other stuff that doesn't like water. How stupid do they think we are? As stupid the average American!
There was once a thousand year flood in the corn
And another Nuclear disaster was born
Though it wouldn't have been
Had the engineers known that their damn rubber was torn
Video taken today after collapse of berm.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxcV0F-H0Vo
I like the one comment; Homer Simpson could have done better!
I notice that the nuke pushers have been rather silent lately... Remember, they've got an overstuffed spent fuel pool there. And they've already had had two power outages, one fire and one failure of backup pumps on the spent fuel pool cooling. Anyone who says nuke power in this country is safe is a blooming idiot!
This guy in Japan has every right to be making his sarcastic comments:
http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/2011/06/fort-calhoun-nuke-plant-flood-water-h...
Take a look at the pictures in his link!
Arnold Gunderson, nuclear physicist: 'Nuclear Reactors and Sandbags are words that should never be used in the same sentence.'
What could possibly go wrong?!
Before Collapse
After Collapse
Oh wait, we have a situation...
No worries, I'm sure they can bring in lots of fuel by helicopter... what's that you say? The diesel generators are seized up because they are underwater. Right now there thousands of pro nuclear supporters heading down river towards the plant, they are bringing manual bilge pumps and are prepared to keep the water out of critical areas and to supply water to where it is needed as coolant, come hell or high water.
Why would they need the fuel?
Wasn't there a concern about external power and the public response of the staff on site is they had external power and therefore were OK?
To run the emergency pumps, in distributed deployment, for removing water from the "dry" to the "flood" side of the perimeter-following water-filled barrier. There is no power distribution system for these pumps.
If they have the external power that was not to be worried about - again - no need for fuel.
Unless the prime movers for the pumps are not motors but engines.
And don't forget, on two separate occasions, they've lost external power at this plant during this flood. Once with a fire and once with water getting to the main transformers. The first time, the backup pumps also were disabled, but they got them fixed in a few hours before the spent fuel pond warmed up much.
This place is running on the ragged edge of disaster.
Yeah, that is my general impression too - not a disaster just yet, but they're way down the list of backup plans now.
Nukes are safe except when ...
FM - "What could possibly go wrong?!" As most safety men will tell the usual problem is that this question often is not seriously answered. Just yesterday I was on a drill rig that had a minor mishap. A piece of heavy handling equipment was secured with a small metal pin. Pin broke and the equipment slammed into a tank holding drilling mud additives. Left a 3" gash in the tank. In the world of rig accidents not a big thing. I asked the tool pusher where that pin came from. He didn't know. The original pin (that met specs) was lost and they found this scrap piece of metal to replace it. No idea what the specs were. And what could go wrong? Well, the pin could snap and, if a hand were stnading in front of that tank he would have been badly injured or even crippled.
No one apparently asked what could go wrong with that replacement pin. This is the foolish that makes it difficult for me to sleep some nights.
Just another "normal accident". The story about the Fort Calhoun Nuke Plant berm failure is that a worker driving a BobCat ripped the temporary berm, which then collapsed, with the result being the flooding...
E. Swanson
With the whole berm being 1 compartment so the whole thing collapsed instead of just 1 section.
NAOM
It is precisely my first hand knowledge of the fact that such foolishness is part of human nature and that when push comes to shove some pencil pusher behind some desk can override some carefully thought out safety procedures, that I consider the statement by pro nuclear advocates that, 'Nuclear is safe', to be a bogus one. I don't so much doubt the engineering, I don't trust human nature.
Many many moons ago I was on a rig as a commercial diver and we received a box of regulators we had ordered. Someone had substituted a cheaper type that we knew to be inadequate to the task at hand. Our dive supervisor took the entire box and tossed it overboard. Then got on the horn and chewed someone out big time. The correct regs were on the next chopper. Not too many people that I know nowadays who have the brass balls to pull a stunt like that off anymore.
FM - Not that my balls are that big or brassy but a year ago I had to run off a subcontractor over safety. The detalis aren't important but the rep was fired over the incident. A friendly acquantance of mine for over 20 years. I felt really bad. OTOH I would really like to finish my career with my record of no fatal accidents intact. Currently I'm very thankful my owner puts peoples' well being above money. Doesn't quit fit the profile of a cold hearted ultrarich, eh? Maybe his growing up not rich in S La. left its mark on him that money can't remove.
'Nuclear is safe', to be a bogus one. I don't so much doubt the engineering, I don't trust human nature.
Ding!
We have a winner.
When a chemical plant fails, the energy of the chemical reaction happens VS the mass of the chemicals and then you have a mess to clean up.
Because of the high energy density of a fission reaction (Which is typically pimped by the pro nukers as 'one gram of Uranium powers X for Y time) means the harm keeps happening due to the energy release in addition to effects like having the waste storage area becoming exposed to the biosphere.
The reactor at Ft. Collins could be unharmed - but having the outside storage pool be spread to the floodwaters will be "a unique peril".
If they make it through this, they damn well better upgrade their physical and procedural flooding defenses. These types of floods are only going to become bigger and more frequent with climate change. Seems like the enviros have been warning for a while about the impacts of climate change on energy infrastructure, maybe we should have been paying more attention...
But since climate change isn't a happening. No, sir. Its just a bunch of nefarious scientists getting together to pull off a bug fraud!
With that sort of mentality being oh so prevalent, how do you get people to plan for it?
Here's another version of the video, which appeared in an AP story. The YouTube version might not stay up very long...
E. Swanson
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/06/24/253299/masters-driven-by-global...
"2010 Was The Most Extreme Weather Year Globally Since 1816″
"The pace of extreme weather events has remained remarkably high during 2011, giving rise to the question–is the “Global Weirding” of 2010 and 2011 the new normal? Has human-caused climate change destabilized the climate, bringing these extreme, unprecedented weather events? Any one of the extreme weather events of 2010 or 2011 could have occurred naturally sometime during the past 1,000 years. But it is highly improbable that the remarkable extreme weather events of 2010 and 2011 could have all happened in such a short period of time without some powerful climate-altering force at work."
In "1816", the great buffalo herds roamed the plains (and farted a lot). We fixed that weather maker with buffalo hunters. Maybe we could send out the hunters to the plains again. This time to hunt the big box store semi-trucks.
Last week was my annual handyman trip to my mother's place south of Omaha. While driving from and to Denver, I was taken by the sheer number of semi-trucks using I-80. I would guess the fraction of vehicles that were semis was at least 1 in 10, perhaps higher. This section of I-80 appears to be basically a flexibly-scheduled but energy-inefficient rail line. Given the relative damage done to road surfaces by a semi with a 60,000 pound load compared to any sort of personal vehicle, public moneys being spent on the roadway are essentially a pure subsidy for commercial transport -- the damage caused by the non-commercial vehicles is an insignificant part of the total.
Didn't see all that many big-box specific trucks, but there were a lot of C. R. England rigs.
Something I found today
from the Farm Bureau's "Funding Infrastructure Projects" pdf.
Damage = $150 billion/yr
Repairs = $65 billion ($35 from taxes).
There are two causes of road maintenance, weather and trucks & buses. Weather is the smaller in most cases. Because damage is proportional to 4th power of axle weight, cars do no appreciable direct damage. However, cars should pay something towards weather damage.
So allocate all car & motorcycle gas taxes to their share of weather damage. That means $30 billion annual subsidy for actual repairs and $115 billion for actual damage.
Best Hopes for fewer truck miles,
Alan
No doubt the next politician who proposes taking funds from Amtrak will also propose ending the taking of funds from general revenue for road maintenance and, of course, push for raising the fuel tax or other taxes on trucks to pay the full costs of repairs. Otherwise, we might be committing a faux pas by subsidizing truck traffic over rail traffic. Can't have that because that would be inefficient, expensive, and more destructive of the environment.
Actually, one in ten is probably a low estimate. Rural Interstates can reach 40 percent or high truck traffic. When I took a highway design course in the early 1970s the chart for percent of truck traffic for Interstate design stopped at 15 percent. Times have changed.
That would be 1816 as in the Year with no summer.
"The Year Without a Summer (also known as the Poverty Year, Year There Was No Summer, and Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death[1]) was 1816, in which severe summer climate abnormalities caused average global temperatures to decrease by about 0.4–0.7 °C (0.7–1.3 °F),[2] resulting in major food shortages across the Northern Hemisphere.[3][4] It is believed that the anomaly was caused by a combination of a historic low in solar activity with a volcanic winter event, the latter caused by a succession of major volcanic eruptions capped off by the Mount Tambora eruption of 1815, the largest known eruption in over 1,300 years." Wikipedia
As Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Adm. Gary Roughead mentioned at the 'Active in the Arctic Seminar' June 16, 2011
http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=64474
http://www.navy.mil/navydata/people/cno/Roughead/Speech/110616%20Arctic%...
From DOD Report to Congress on Arctic Operations 5/2011: http://www.defense.gov/pubs/pdfs/Tab_A_Arctic_Report_Public.pdf
So is he angling for armed icebreakers or an expansion of the nuclear submarine fleet?
Nah, just trying to keep congress from mandating continued use of fossil fuels and an end to energy conservation by the military. Question is, which of us is more cynical.
Excuse and delete the above empty post.
I found this tidbit in the following article: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/23/us-usa-oil-obama-idUSTRE75M44D...
The Freudian slip there is OPEC members evidently only consider oil price as high as it was in 08 ($147) to be detrimental to the world economy. Are they deaf, dumb & blind? Do they fail to see stimulus packages, QE's and this latest SPR release as desperate efforts to get the tepid economy moving again in the face of already high oil prices? If the economy fails to achieve a certain level of growth loans cannot be repaid. Hello!
I like how the Chamber of Commerce and OPEC are on the same side of this debate.
http://www.politico.com/politico44/perm/0611/the_price_is_wrong_b2c8fe20...
Way to help the USA, Chamber.
I have been thinking about this for a while, but I don't have a news link to backup my idea.
In the oil services industry (oil patch), there was a huge downturn in the 1980's when oil prices dropped. Some companies died, and others merged to eventually become the big players we know today. This caused a significant delay in the evolution of technology in the industry. Luckily, in the 1990's, computers came along and sped up the renaissance of engineering development. Now, however, just like any other mature organization, these companies are lumbering giants, slow to progress. And when a young and talented company springs up, they are absorbed by the larger companies. Where the young and nimble ideas get strung out threw the bureaucracy of the giant firm. Lately, the only efficiency gains have come through globalizing the engineering efforts using the internet, and massive databases. If anybody is looking to Houston to continue the trend of modernization of the 'oil patch', they might be in for a surprise.
Note: I work for one of the above companies, and I can see the deterioration of drive to develop next generation equipment. It's all about streamlining and outsourcing.
The real problem is not so much the hardware as the ideas, or, more likely, the lack of follow-through on ideas.
I think the reason ideas are not being translated into new techniques and new hardware is a shortage of money, not the bureaucracy in big companies.
In the oil companies a shortage of profits (don't laugh -- over the last thirty years oil industry profit margins have been tiny compared to the profits of most other businesses) has reduced to almost nothing the amount of investment in research and development. In turn the oil companies have pushed as much risk as possible onto contractors, who have cut innovation to the bone, concentrating solely on surviving. About twenty years ago the then-president of the world's largest geophysical contractor was quoted as saying the company only needed one real geophysicist. I don't know if he really said that, but his actions reflected that attitude.
The service companies have produced what little innovation there has been by buying out the "young and talented" companies which might be young and talented but also usually have no money.
The whole industry has developed a culture of contracting the lowest bidder with a turnkey contract. Everything to be done must be done exactly as contracted, and profit margins are so low that there is no wiggle room. No funds -- either in the oil companies or the service companies -- are allotted for innovation, and operations are so closely controlled financially there is no opportunity for doing research or development "on the side".
Almost all real innovation is done with funds allocated for some other purpose. If the objectives and methods are known in enough detail to put into a budget scrutinized by bean counters, can it possibly be innovative? Forty years ago this kind of research happened even in the largest oil companies (the concept of "seismic stratigraphy" was developed in this way at Exxon), but today it rarely happens in any public company, and not often in closely held companies.
One of the results is that talented young people are not going into the oil industry. My local (Houston suburban) school district recently published profiles of the valedictorians and salutorians from their four high schools. Not one of them is planning to go anywhere near the oil industry. Their planned professions were five doctors, two engineers (not in the oil industry), and one orthodontist.
If none of the best and brightest students from the Houston area are going into the oil industry it is hardly surprising there is not much innovation.
Wanted: Pain at the Pump
Mark Thoma points to research that finds that "performance standards – such as CAFE standards – may be more inefficient than previously thought." Taxes appear to work much better.
MIT Sloan economist on “Pain at the Pump”, by Christopher Knittel , MIT Sloan:
http://mitsloanexperts.wordpress.com/2011/06/24/christopher-knittel-mit-...
Thoma comments:
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2011/06/wanted-pain-at-...
He is in good company...
The current CEO of GM, Dan Akerson, recently made a picth for $1/gal gas tax!
http://www.automotivedigest.com/content/displayArticle.aspx?a=80260
Bill Ford, and his current CEO, Alan Mullaly, have been asking for gas tax increases since at least 2004. They say they would be much more effective than the CAFE standards - I am inclined to agree.
But, most Americans have a blind spot for gas tax. They would rather see people die from lack of universal health care (or fighting wars in the ME) than pay $1 more for gas.
Their choice, I guess, but certainly not mine.
Combining Medicaid and Medicare, federal and state governments already spend as much per capita on healthcare as other nations do. The difference is other nations get universal coverage for it, and the US gets this horrifically expensive patchwork-coverage public-private leviathan.
Edited to remove excessive quoting. Please don't quote that much of an article (for both bandwidth and copyright reasons). Paraphrase in your own words if you feel a brief excerpt isn't enough.
The above sentence doesn't make any sence at all. How can traders who never had any physical oil in the first place be dumping oil?
And then we have this:
But how does this affect oil prices? It doesn't matter how many long or short positions are floating around or are being traded on any given day or week or month or year, there is always an equal number of contracts betting opposite direction. If you buy a long contract you're betting that the price is going up, but the guy who sold you the contract is betting that the price will drop. Conversely, if you buy a short contract you're betting that the price is going down, but the guy who sold you the contract is betting that the price will rise.
Fewer contracts traded simply means that less money is being won/lost in the given time frame.
Frugal - Unfortunately the press and others will continue using poor vocabulary and constantly confuse folks. As you point out the IEA apparent didn't mean traders were dumping oil but dumping oil future contracts. I think. They do the same when they confuse changes in contracted futures prices with the price of oil. In the last week the price of oil I sell hasn't changed one penny from a month ago and for good reason: I haven't sold oil in the last week. And much of the oil that was sold received a price set long before the news of the SPR release. In 3 weeks I'll be selling most of my oil. We'll see what prices are then. But given that the SPR release will be offered at a price a little above what I had been selling for I'm not expecting a much lower price (if lower at all) than what I last sold for.
Shale Gas EROEI: Preliminary Estimate Suggests 70 Or Greater
That does not mesh well with other estimates. I think he is underestimating fuel use by trying to guess at CO2 intensity. It also depends on the shale gas well as some perform much better than others.
Using life cycle analysis (LCA) and energy input output (EIO) studies from the green institute, I found that the amount of energy in each dollar of CapEx spent by the US petroleum producing industry in 2002 was 0.024 GJ/$(2002). 1 mmBTU is about 1 GJ. So if the cost to drill & produce is $2/mmBTU then you can do a rough conversion to EROeI by 1 GJ (out)/ $2 * 0.024 GJ/$ (in) = 20.8 or 20:1 EROeI, or about 5% of the total energy produced was consumed in the drilling & production. Since most shale gas production costs are higher than that, EROeI is likely lower.
Lets do a few more. Suppose we take the values from the WEO report I talked about above. If the costs are $8(2002) (always inflation adjust to 2002 because that is when the LCA was done) then the EROeI would be 1GJ/$8*0.024GJ = 5.2 or about 5:1. (pretty close to the value needed to collapse society). How about $12 per mmBTU? 1GJ/$12*0.024GJ/$ = 3.5 so 3.5:1 EROeI (say good by industrial civilization because that is likely not high enough to even maintain the gas distribution grid much less power industry & commerce). What this means is that most of the gas in the outlying Barnett will never be drilled unless society is being powered by something besides natural gas.
A few important points when doing these calculations: Don't include royalties, land costs, or company profits because those should not add the the energy inputs (which leads to some upside down effects: a company may not drill a high EROeI well because the royalties are too high for it to be profitable. Something the Canadians know about). Labor and HQ overhead is included.
The WEO does include land costs and royalties as well as profits so those numbers would be somewhat smaller for just the costs to drill, complete & produce the well. But we can see the end of production from here, cost wise, because as EROeI falls it contracts the economy, which contracts demand for gas, which causes the production peak. This cycle repeats over and over and we slide down the back side of the hubbert curve.
Rockman often points out that price is essential to understanding how much gas is left. EROeI is essential to understanding how much society can afford to pay for 1 GJ of gas. Where the two cross, that is the true ultimate.
And to add to Jon's great analysis: the oil patch doesn't give a crap about energy returns or how much energy it takes to produce a unit of new energy. We invest $'s to make $'s. That's what drives drilling. We decide what gets drilled...not the WEO, the USGS or anyone else. Even if the profit comes from gains in stock equity of public oil vs. absolute profits from drilling the SG plays the controlling factor is still $'s. If folks try to analyze oil patch activity based on any other criteria they will just be confused and unable to foresee the future IMHO.
The trick is price is so squishy. US gas prices are down but production is up. Why? Because of shale having better productivity? leases that will be lost if not drilled? JV willing to pay for drilling? Hedging? And that is just the production side. The demand side has that many variables. No wonder the oil patch wants fast payback.
It is interesting to see what is going on in Canada right now. With US gas production up and prices down, they are backing away from more marginal well prospects and it is starting to show up in the initial well productivity data.
Figure A2.1 in the following appdx.
NEB 2011 Market Report Appdx (PDF)
The chart shows that initial conventional well productivity dropped from 1.2 MMcf/d in 2000, down to 0.5 MMcf/d in 2006 (about the height of the drilling peak) as the industry was willing to chase more marginal prospects. It has rebounded to 0.8 MMcf/d in 2010 but with far fewer wells drilled.
The same thing is happening on the demand side. The most marginal customers are being cut out.
read more
19% increase in disconnections in California
I think this will be a model of how peak oil & gas happen world wide. Like a tide coming in, prices will ebb up and down, but inching upwards. That will allow more marginal wells to be drilled, but not enough to keep raising production. Every ebb will result in a pull back to better wells or existing wells with sunk costs. Each rise will trim a little bit more off the customer base.
When the Fed heating assistance gets cut, I think we will see another dip in NG prices, or utility bankruptcies if they cannot disconnect (and higher rates if they do disconnect leaving a smaller customer base to pay for the distribution network).
European solar incentive cuts initiate global PV market shift
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2011/06/radioactive-...
"Radioactive caesium and iodine have been discovered in the urine of 15 residents in Iitate and Kawamata"
"If they found it (iodine)in the urine, almost all of it will have been through the thyroid,"
"But he expressed surprise that iodine was found, as it should have decayed by a factor of 50 by early May."
Because it is still spewing, I should guess.
_____________________________
Japan Atomic Energy Agency:
http://www.jaea.go.jp/
Use Google Translate to translate the site:
http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout...
-Or- hit the "English" button at the top of the Japanese site and see a special site made just for you English types.
China told to reduce food production or face 'dire' water levels
China, the magical country where electric trains can carry you swiftly away from widespread blackouts.
They should just plug the grid into the train since there would not be any more worry about running out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublethink
Water use in China and the Middle East is an environmental Ponzi scheme
Ethanol subsidies' demise spells trouble for Minnesota town:
http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/ethanol-fight062711/ethanol-fight0...
Why is is that those in favor of nuke power just can't seem to tell the truth? Is it something genetic?
Proponents change story about nuclear longevity
I wonder how many of the Nuclear Power Boosters are still driving around in their 1971 Ford Fairlanes and Ford Pintos, hoping to keep them going until 2031.....
Rust never sleeps.
2031? Lets go for 2071! After all "the units were built with no inherent life span, and can run for up to a century". /sarc
Groups warned of deterioration at Palisades nuke plant
" insisting that the units were built with no inherent life span,"
What! ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code assumes a 20 year useful life. That can be extended with proper attention to creep and fatigue. And the reactor designers added even better safety margins as no one really knew what the long term effects of neutron embrittlement were going to be. Since they should know by now, that margin could be "mined" for more lifetime through the standard Fitness for Service programs using the appropriate API procedure. I've done this twice in the last four years for parts of a chemical plant. There are companies that make a living from this process.
http://www.fitness4service.com
http://www.equityeng.com/stress-analysis.php
None of this means the blooming plant is immortal. It's not like driving your 1968 muscle car on a fine weekend. At the very least a GE BWR with a Mark 1 containment should be shut down at the end of the original license. We know those are not fault tolerant.
Ft. Calhoun nuclear workers carrying in fuel cans by hand in order to keep pumps running
This is accepted practice at a nuke plant? Jeeze, where are we? I feel like I'm reading about a Rube-Goldberg operation in some little undeveloped country!
I feel safer already.
This link posted this morning at The ArchdruidReport:
What you'll find is if something is deemed too valuable to burn, it is fully protected at whatever cost, which I'm sure will be the case with the drums of radioactive waste.
I'm (not) impressed by the idea of storing a lot of nuke fuels in the middle of dry woodlands.. Statistics will come down on such ideas.
Frankly I thought the US had wildfire-free and actual scrub-less deserts.
New Mexico fires threaten Los Alamos nuclear weapons lab – again
Maybe I was naive, but I didn't worry about that stuff when I lived there in 79 to 84. Most of it is pretty low level stuff, wear a glove once, then throw it into the radioactive discard pile. The lab, sits in the transition zone from Ponderosa to Juniper, with the vegetaion getting sparser the further east you go. Supposedly the stuff sits in the middle of a paved lot.
I'd be far more worried about the effects of ordinary smoke.
I was lucky, I lived 90miles south when the 2000 fire happened, and the winds never blew the smoke my way. From the sat photos I've seen Taos has been downwind. There were some voluntary? evacuation orders then for the areas just north of Santa Fe (30miles of non flammable desert would stop any fire). It sounds like this fire got bigger-faster. But shouldn't the fuel loads be rather diminished, in that climate it takes a lot longer than 11 years for trees to reach any nontrivial size.
Greek austerity protests turn violent
No 'summer of love' here. One wonders
ifwhen these more violent protests will spread to other EU states, ala MENA.38 years of nuke profit up in smoke?
One accident wipes out 38 years of profits from all their plants? Nice cheap power, huh?
I hope that makes other utilities look long and hard at the costs of nukes.
I doubt they'll change their minds. Think about it, how likely that any of the original decision makers are still around the company? The all got theirs and are long gone. The costs were pushed off into the future. Just like we're still doing with current nuke power and like we're doing to our kids and beyond with Climate Change. "I got mine! Who cares about you?"
Yes, that is the problem. But I don't think it is totally a problem of evil-mind sets at work.
Young people just naturally want to do what they can do---they look forward to marriage, having kids, etc.
I have tried to tell my kids to expect mucho trouble in the economy and environment from here but they insist on looking forward to when they can date, shop, have fun jobs in the city.
It is a kind of innocence, or ignorance.
It's their time and they are entitled to make of it what they can. Yes, it will be tough, but it is what they have. I have not told my kids all that I suspect they may have to deal with, but that is partly because the details and timing are unknowable, and because even if their lives are not easy that does not mean they will be devoid of meaning, nor that they cannot find love and happiness. They still know plenty of what I'm expecting. The future is not ours.
Nicely put.
Nukes are gravy trains for contractors and management, and the end cost is just an imaginary figure, and pushed into the future.
Why should they?
Did the CEO get paid? How about the shareholders (up until the loss of the share price)?
Now, if you want change....how about making the management, workers and shareholders responsible? If you took a cut of the action, you bear the expense of the action also.....(and how would THAT tea taste for a "lets get rid of regulation" party?)
... and yet, someone else has to get rid of Tepco's accumulated ugly-stuffs for longterm future safe-storage. The new-bornes of today have to pick up this task/bill, I guess."Welcome to the pleasure-dome"
This Finnish facility Onkalo nuke waste repository will handle the longterm storage from only 5 Finnish nuke stations.Building-time to first stage deposits : 16 years thereafter a continuous expanding program.... Go figure !
I guess the Los Alamos folks- included the yes-we-can-man - could wish for an instant "Onkalo" today.
Nuclear insurance just got that much more expensive. LOL
Hey but lets hear the complaints about wind, solar, and storage and those tragic bird deaths real quick from the other side.
I just finished watching "Blind Spot" via netflix online.
Documentary, circa 2008, with the 'holy trinity' of peak oil, food, and us.
Liked it. Was not too heavy on graphs and data, but a good way to share the concepts.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1285158/
Quite a cast of characters:
Richard Heinberg
Lester Brown
Ted Caplow
William R. Catton
Roscoe Bartlett
Albert Bartlett
Joseph Tainter
David Pimentel
Max Wolff
Matt Savinar
Terry Tamminen
Jason Bradford
Bill McKibben
James Hansen
Elke Weber
Back to that old drumbeat question:
Are we smarter than yeast?
NO.
RBOB up two days in a row. If this keeps up, I may start wondering about the efficacy of the announced SPR release.
It may have to do with the phasing out of ethanol subsidies?
Rgds
WeekendPeak
ts - what's "RBOB"?
This change came about from the 2005 energy bill, which removed the previous requirement for blending in a minimum of 2% oxygen. The emissions control systems on modern cars are good enough that this is not needed.
The oil cos can still blend in oxygenates, like ethanol, but the idea of the RBOB standard is that this is "pure" gasoline before any adulteration (ethanol blending) .
Some companies will even try and tell you that even nitrogen in the fuel is a good thing, but, like oxygen, you can't burn it so you are not getting any mpg from it!
Rock,
Here's some analysis from the EIA
The relationship between retail gasoline prices and NYMEX RBOB futures prices
And here's the current RBOB chart
Current average US retail gasoline price is $3.56, so RBOB suggests US gasoline prices are about to start rising again if RBOB holds or rises further.
Mucho thanks tow. So essentially RBOB is just another betting parlor no different than a casino in Vegas. The house (and brokers) always will make a profit. For everyone on else it's a net break even. Makes me wonder if some big outfit like FedEx took a big bet on gasoline futures and bought a big volume low. i recall years ago when SW Airline bought a big chunk of jet fuel in the futures market and were able to discount heavily against the other airlines.
China Is Beating Out The US And Russia For Central Asian Energy Riches
Who cares?
These are far from the US or Europe.
These are mere scraps of energy.
Central Asia has 41 Gb of oil(1.5 years of world consumption), 224 Tcf of natural gas(2 years), 32 Gt coal(5 years) and ~660 k tons of uranium(11 years).
http://www.eia.gov/international/reserves.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_uranium_reserves
http://tinyurl.com/26h3ayt
While this heat-to-electricity via new alloy is interesting:
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-06-source-green-electricity.html
The real "win" for the techofixers is:
The team's research was recently published in the first issue of the new scientific journal Advanced Energy Materials.
http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/PressRelease/pressReleaseId-87117.html
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/%28ISSN%291614-6840
So go forth technofixers and followers of Nickel based fusion....report back to us the new utopia as told to Mankind via Wiley!
A similar idea, but using much older technology is to generate power off of a wood stove using a thermoelectric effect.
http://www.hi-z.com/papers.php
It might be nice for recharging batteries during a cloudy spell. I have seen little fans run using this effect to move the stove heat around. Add in some coils for heating hot water and a cooking surface and you have a neat little auxillary power system providing all the modern luxuries (in small quantity) from the same cut wood.
They even admit that is is no better saying that "under optimal conditions it gives efficiency comparable to the best thermoelectrics"
The best thermoelectrics, such as that from you Hi-Z site, convert heat to electricity at 4.5% efficiency, with Th at 230C and Tc at 30C. Power "density" is 0.5W/sq.cm, or 5kW per sq.m - about 50 times that of a solar PV panel!
These things have been used in the past for simple solar thermal systems. Not nearly as efficient as steam, ORC, etc BUT much simpler, and if they were cheap enough (they are not, presently) you could design some fairly low tech systems to use them.
The thermo electrics have been proposed for use on car exhausts, but there is little marginal benefit there. However, where you have an engine that runs all the time, like that on a refridgerated truck/container, it probably would be worthwhile.
The induced magnetism property of this material may turn out to be more useful - most magnets lose strength with heat, this does the reverse.
I like the thermo electric ideas because it lets you use the high temperature to do some real work before turning into the low level waste heat needed for space heating.
The simplicity of thermo electric is also nice. It makes me think about ways the future will be different from the past. It will be possible to do some very sophisticated design, but using inexpensive materials. Highly reflective plastic film is another good example. It makes a great solar cooker and was totally impossible in the past. I saw a wood stove in a mansion with an attached hot water tank. Tricky with cast iron and lead solder. But very easy with tubular stainless steel. It will be an interesting world.
You can't beat the simplicity of the thermos, but it is too bad they are just not very efficient. Their materials aren't that cheap either, and if you do use cheap materials, like copper and zinc, then your thermocouple is not very efficient.
At larger scales -10's of kW, the Organic Rankine Cycle systems are better, and get about 8-15% efficiency from 100C to 200C. But at smaller scale, and with no moving parts, working fluids, etc, the thermo just can;t be beat.
That is why they have been used by telephone companies, pipelines etc to provide power at remote locations.
Agreed about using them on a space heating loop - this is true for using any low entropy fuel, or even hot water from solar.
There are many old ideas/methods that are worth revisiting, and can be improved with modern knowledge/materials, though some of them are good as the are. That is, of course, the whole point of the Low Tech Magazine, and this article about Dutch style windmills is an excellent example of what "an army of ecogeeks" could do with an old idea, without going ridiculously high tech.
It will indeed be an interesting world - lots of innovation to be done, but not all in the name of greater tech and complexity - I am a fan of innovating to to reduce tech and complexity, though there is not much money in that.
I went up to our camp in the woods yesterday and had my first experience with a real Ditch Scythe!
Wow, that was fun.. those blackberries never stood a chance! I love my PV's and my IC's, but I'm also about as happy as I can be sitting in a Canoe or on XC-Skis, or working hard with a good old tool that requires a bit of strength, balance and Zen.
I sat down in Mom's little 12x16' cabin and designed a Murphy Bunk for the place, and worked on the Solar Shower, the Humanure Compost, and the Solar-Assisted Wood-drying shed.(Glass Roof) I brought out a bunch of Pallettes and Salvaged Lobstertrap Rope so I can start lashing together an elevated Tree-village/Ropes Course for my daughter and me.. and for Leslie if she can figure out the password!
Aluminized mylar is pretty amazing stuff. Very high reflectivity IIRC better than 97%. One outfit CoolEarth Solar is trying to use it to make cheap concentrated PV.
Use an ohmmeter or a continuity checker or something to make sure the metalized side is facing the sun. There is a huge difference between the metalized surface direct reflectivity and that same reflection passed through the plastic.
If that don't work, scrape each side with a sharp knife. The coated side will be obvious.
NAOM
It seems to me, they show promise for incrementally increasing the efficiency of a lot of thermal power systems. Take for example a Prius, the engine is reputedly 34% efficient, that means you have 66% waste heat. If you can convert 4% of this 66% to electricity that improves your efficiency by another 2.7%. So your net engine efficiency improves from 34% to 36.7%. Not huge, but it would add a nominal 4mpg. [I suspect it would be better than that, because it would allow the vehicle to use the more efficent electric mode more often (no ICE internal loses in electric mode)].
So lots of smallish incremental performance improvements might be possible. And when you have systems that commit thermodynamic crime (burn fuel to generate low grade heat), such as furnaces and water heaters, at least you can get some high quality electricty out as part of the bargain. Clearly nothing that will save the technological civilization. But a useful step towards greater efficiency.
While I'm not worried about the baggage retrieval system they've got at Heathrow
http://www.lyricsdepot.com/monty-python/im-so-worried.html
An old topic of China has new worry:
http://www.businessinsider.com/navy-chinese-microchips-weapons-could-hav...
(and if you hunt around on the Internet this exact threat was claimed to be happening 5+ years ago And the Wired picture is just a simple 3 state latch - not sure how you backdoor that )
And a report of an evacuation zone about Ft. Calhoun
http://revolutionarypolitics.tv/video/viewVideo.php?video_id=15496
If that is true, does Ft. Calhoun get its own front page post once the zone gets to 50 miles?
Leanan,
Could we go back to daily postings of the Drumbeat? As a sufferer of late adult onset migraines, I find that these time delayed postings cause internal mental stress and headaches.
Just my complaint for the day.
Thank you in advance.
Sincerely,
Ignorant
Don't read them, then.
Sitting at the computer is bad for you, anyway!
There are other things you could be reading and doing. See the posts on sitting at your computer. Not that I am in a position to throw the first stone. That advice is for me as well.
So true.. I need to go over and sit at the sewing machine!
From Scientific American: Storm Warnings: Extreme Weather Is a Product of Climate Change
NOAA State of the Climate: Global Analysis for May 2011, published online June 2011
Yeah it's easy to tell nowadays that the skies are angry. Even thunderstorms, they appear out of nowhere and the lightning is fiercer. It's definitely different than when I was a kid.
Of course, to the average American Bible thumper, this must be in my imagination. And if it is real, it's a sign of the rapture, so I will be left behind on this scorched planet while they ascend to "heaven" where they can exist forever, and ever, and ever, with no escape.
Well if any of you are reading, take it from me: I'd rather die on this cooked planet than exist in your heaven. Goodbye and good riddance.
Japan ‘discovers’ tons of radioactive water have been leaking into ground at Fukushima
Duh...
Salem Unit 2 nuclear reactor shuts down after cooling pump failure
Now that people are looking, these plants don't seem so "reliable", do they? I think it's going to be a lot more difficult to hide their deficiencies now.
Dr Willie Soon: a Career Fueled by Koch, Big Oil and Coal
I remember this image from when I was a kid. It came up immediately in a Google search. Minamata Japan
http://www.chemgapedia.de/vsengine/media/vsc/en/ch/16/uc/images/minamata...
http://www.chemgapedia.de/vsengine/vlu/vsc/en/ch/16/uc/vlus/mecury.vlu/P...
Minimata footage -disturbing- :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihFkyPv1jtU
Corporations behave as psychopaths.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/28/us-usa-shell-companies-idUSTRE...
"A corporation is a legal person created by state statute that can be used as a fall guy, a servant, a good friend or a decoy," the company's website boasts. "A person you control... yet cannot be held accountable for its actions. Imagine the possibilities!"
Mad as hatters
The "skeptics" sure made a stink hole about the so-called "Climategate" affair.
But where hides their outrage now over this "Skeptic Cesspool of Payoffs" from Them that don't like Planet Earth too much?
Does this Skeptic Stinkbomb not offend their skeptical senses pray tell?
Because of this I'm growing highly skeptical about the skeptics and their so-called skepticism.
+5 No chance of saying that better myself.
Wars steadily increase for over a century, fed by more borders and cheaper conflict
More people ... more tribes ... more borders
Maybe, this is an unanticipated by-product of the 'Fossil Fuel' Age. It fuels the MIC.
Hmmm. I seem to remember reading the opposite, at least about American wars. Dollars per (enemy) death has been going up dramatically. In the past most enemies were dispatched via a lead ball, or bayonent. Now we have fancy weapons with fire rates of a thousand bullets per second, and bullets are not cheap. GPS quided bombs may be great because of high accuracy, but a single bomb costs many thousands of dollars!
Asian 'megapest' is chomping up US orchards
Interesting!
Sounds like they might be wasting a potential source of energy...
If 9 billion humans are going to be living on this planet in the near future, the sooner we kill BAU and start giving incentives to more people like James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau for out of the box thinking the better chances a few of us will have to make it through the coming bottle neck.
I can't find the quote right now, but someone once said if you have a problem with too much of something, find a use for it. In other words if life gives you a lot of lemons make lemonade.
Edit: I looked into MFCs a bit more.
Sounds like my kind of emergency power backup! Even if civilization collapses there should be enough stuff lying around to make things like this pretty easily.
Yeah, these asian stinkbugs are chomping on my Cucurbitaceae, some of my heirloom tomatoes as well. They seem to attack at night and insecticidal soap doesn't do much. If I get out there early I can pick them of by hand, but they usually hide during the day, and they stink, besides. Sevin seems to help some but I hate to use it.
The only good bug is a dead bug. Kill 'em! Kill 'em all!
...and sorry, Fred. I couldn't find any stinkbug recipes :-/
Oooh, like I needed to see more of those little #$%^@%
Why oh why did we have to get those things - couldn't it have been Giant Burmese Pythons or something? A plague of dragons maybe? But stinkbugs? Seriously?
Here in Florida where I live, we got those too... last year's cold spell was supposed to have killed most of them off, well, they're back with a vengeance!
If they only come out at night, then add solar lights to your victory garden.
...And, motion detection for a spray, a fan, and...
The linked article up top says that our native birds, bats and mantises do eat them, I wouldn't want to deprive them of a meal.
Now here is the ironic part! They could actually smell and taste good.
Perhaps they smell and taste good if they are baked into a cake >;^)
Hey, skunk smell glands are used in perfume making... when skunk smell glands are mixed in with other smells the smell particles create a wonderful smell.
..when these are emitted by the stink bug through its abdomen it is not only a very effective defense mechanism, but the source of its common nickname.
Funny,, that was my nickname when I was a kid, and for the same reason :-0
Interestingly I've never smelled a stinkbug. The black ones were very common in New Mexico. When scared they form a tripod, head down like an ostrich, and butt up. I guess the smell compound makes them unappetizing.
Try Bacillus thuringiensis powder.
Not a worm - won't work as well.
I'd suggest the use of the insect killing nematodes. They come in 2 basic version:
Dead Red Bug
Dead Bug Glows Blue at night
I read that they are attracted to UV light. Maybe I'll try a bug zapper.
Check if the wires are at the front or the back. In some places they are put at the back to stop bits of exploded fly being blasted across the kitchen and into your food. This makes them very much less effective at zapping the flies though. If the zapper has the wires at the back see if it can be modified by moving them to the front or opening it at the back.
NAOM
Bait plants should help - and if you don't like nematodes you can place a "moat" about the garden with a 12 inch plastic incline of greater than 45 degrees.
Why a moat? It will help keep spiders inside - 50%ish or more spiders per acre.
A relative of the local squash bug. Same body shape anyway, the local bugs do not have the triangle markings.
They are real bugs, as in they pierce the leaf or stem and drink the sap. The insect must eat the Sevin for it to kill the bug, so Sevin doesn't work on real bugs since they don't eat the leaf. You have to use a nerve agent. Malathion or Ortho MAX (the esfenvalerate version) will kill them. Given the way they cluster it would seem a pheromone trap would work, but I haven't seen one.
Spray under the leaves to kill the nymphs.
I'm actually considering Nylar (insect growth regulator). It won't kill adult bugs, just prevent their offspring from becoming adults. My main concern is to preserve my pollenators, but if I don't do something there won't be much to pollenate.
I have one of those tennis racket bug zappers and I'm headed out to do battle with the evildoers this morning. Off to war!
Last year I had a favorite bug. I called him my Orange protector. He/she was an orange colored dragonfly. Whenever I was watering he would sit on top of the bamboo tie up for my tomatoe plant. Hoping my watering would scare up some nice morsels. I've seen him around this year, but he hasn't fixated on the tomatoe plant like last year.
Seriously the bug that seems ubiquitous this year is the black widow. Squash them whenever I can. But they usually get under cover the instant you see them. Don't know how a place that has so few bugs can support so many spiders?
WHY?!
BTW, this Croatian one, is a beauty!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Latrodectus_tredecimguttatus_female.jpg
Turning Off the Egyptian Gas Spigot: Implications for Israel
TOD context:
Egypt's Natural Gas Trends and Potential Impacts
Why is there a need for closer co-operation between China and the IEA?
So, if Greece falls into total civil unrest, they will not need as much oil for a while.
...
Can I have it?
We could gather an army and go take it. My memory is a little bit dizzy but I also think they have quite good alcohol.
LOL.
That reminds me of the bumpersticker:
"Come the rapture, can I have your car?"
Air conditioned tents cost $20 Billion per year.
http://www.npr.org/2011/06/25/137414737/among-the-costs-of-war-20b-in-ai...
Be sure to tell all those pro-MIC Republican Presidential candidates running around Iowa how much energy and money this wastes...
E. Swanson
Two questions I would like to see asked of every presidential candidate, Republican or Democrat:
"Could you please state the second law of thermodynamics and explain how it impacts ecosystems and consequently the economy?"
"Please briefly define what an exponential function is and tell us if you think that collectively, humans are any smarter than yeast"
Local TV: Water has leaked into building containing radioactive material at Ft. Calhoun nuke plant — “That water we treat as radioactive waste”
Video Link:
http://www.action3news.com/category/170799/video-landing-page?autoStart=...
Shouldn't be long now before we have a little rad waste floating down the Mississippi -- then the pumps fail and we have a little waste problem that is hard to access. Where are all the Pro-Nuke folks to chide us for worrying about safety?
Don't worry, the GOM is a big ocean, it will get diluted when it gets there...
G R E A T ! Radioactive water meets BP oil at the mouth of the Mississippi River. Electric green pond scum. Evolution happens. In 25 years, we have a new generation of politicians! Rinse and repeat.
Craig
Cthulhu for President!
"Where are all the Pro-Nuke folks to chide us for worrying about safety"
Just because there are currently 4 nuclear facilities in emergency mode in the US? We mustn't let irrational fears throw doubt upon 100% safe nuclear power generation. The authorities are showing exemplary behaviour in actually bothering to do something about the emergencies and nobody has died from being hit on the head by an atomic particle or anything. So stop worrying about safety, it's fine.
And the economy, that's fine too and Chicken Little is recovering well after the unfortunate atmospheric incident, so everything's just great.
nice satire.
Oh, Ok! everything is just fine then, nothing to worry about. Unless the radioactive waste tries to leak back out into the river or something. And that, as we know, is impossible because the NRC chairman is telling us the plant is safe.
Tonight according to zFacts.com, the National debt crosses the $14.85 threshold. In 34 days, the $15 trillion level will be reached. According to the same source, over $12.3 trillion was created under Republican Administrations. I sure hope responsible politicians understand who created the debt and who should accordingly pay for the debt, as the debt weighs on the dollar and the dollar weighs on the high cost of oil.
Naw... they released 30 million bbl of oil from the SNR. That drove down the price of oil, which a few idiots thought meant that the dollar value rose. No problems. Nothing to see here. These are not the debts you were looking for. Move along.
Craig
14th Amendment: Democratic Senators See Debt Ceiling As Unconstitutional
Because the government borrows based on its full faith, Congress doesn't have the authority to undermine that confidence by reneging on its obligation to its lenders, the ruling declared.
"To say that the Congress may withdraw or ignore that pledge is to assume that the Constitution contemplates a vain promise; a pledge having no other sanction than the pleasure and convenience of the pledgor," reads the opinion, delivered by Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes. "This Court has given no sanction to such a conception of the obligations of our government."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/28/14th-amendment-debt-ceiling-unc...
This latest trillion borrowed is zinging by in a shorter period of time than I can remember any of the previous ones. We're down to mere months now to zip through another trillion. Zing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Just put it on my credit card!
I remember an asian waiter sarcastically saying to me once, "Ah, Gold Card - you must be very rich man!" I suppose the govt. will find out even their gold card can get cancelled.
The US credit rating has never been anything other than AAA, ever, and when it skids down to AA there will be a thunderous sound heard on the floor of the NY stock exchange and around the world as people's wealth zings out the door. It won't completely crash, but it might feel like it for a week or so if you own stocks. And that downgrade is coming. There have already been warnings. Warnings are always followed by action. Greece's credit rating is now down to CCC, and the only thing lower is kaput.
Surely - seriously - no-one with a rational brain takes any of this seriously, do they? The fact is - 60m barrels is what - 20 hours of world consumption, if that? It hardly amounts to a "flooding of the market" - these people are w*nkers of the highest order (in fact all diplomacy is 95% wankery - but we all know that without saying it).