OFM get a 100 cc bike, we have lots of em in India. One of the best selling models gives the equivalent of 170mpg. Pricetag of a $1000.

Oldfarmermac -
As a hill-farmer on only 160 acres I can't justify the outlay on an alternative-fuelled heavy haulage vehicle, which I guess will be operated at community scale or greater to get sensible usage-hours per year. For light transport, the electric trike looks good to me for small loads.

That said, sustainable forestry is likely the best source of fuel for haulage vehicles in areas where non-farmland is available. Yet it is worth noting that wood is way sub-optimal as a fuel - its tar content, dust etc impose serious ongoing maintainance and reliability problems.

The top end alternative - that may well become available on a community scale - is the conversion of wood to syngas to methanol - which you'll maybe know has unique merits as a clean-burning fuel for SI engines.

It seems to me that the practical compromise option is to convert wood to charcoal and bag that as the source of clean syngas (mostly CO) for heavy road transport. An old friend who worked in E. Africa pre-WWII used it as standard transport up country, and told me that it was very reliable if the charcoal was well cooked - i.e. cleaned of the wood's tar content. The far greater energy density of charcoal than wood makes it look a far better option for effective haulage. Ditto using cordwood in a charcoal kiln, thereby avoiding (manual?) logging down to dimensions suitable for a vehicle's wood-gasifyer.

Best of luck with your vehicle - we need such practical innovations urgently.

Regards,

Backstop

And if it's a pain to take your bike on transit, there are decent folding bikes available.

I think you are right about these guys looking in and curling back in denial, but I have the feeling that what makes them like they are - which, in my opinion, is a more than a little bit evil - is that they looked in, saw that BAU didn't work, and opted to try to support it anyway. Then they had the guts to sell this as "environmentalism".

Nuclear is the answer? More intensive agriculture (sounds like factory farming)? I bet these guys think geoengineering is a good idea too. I don't trust them, because I think they are more concerned for maintaining their own lifestyle than they are concerned about the environment. These people have become the dominant voice of "environmentalism" over the past 5-10 years, starting with people like Bjorn Lomborg.

In my opinion environmentalism died the day "global warming" became a catchphrase and more imporant than habitat and species loss. Let's be honest here; if we've paved and flattened everything, and killed off the animals and plants, then who does global warming matter to? US - human beings. Global warming was the death of environmentalism as a movement that cared for nature and the birth of "environmentalism" as a empty shell of an ideology that could be used to sell products like hybrid cars (not that hybrid cars are bad in relation to their regular alternatives, but to buy a hybrid car for the environment is to dodge the issue of car culture as poisoning the environment). The "environment" no longer means a world with other non-domestic species and wild places, and with that gone, it sure doesn't seem to mean much.

What happened to environmentalism is that the other side won. A lot of this is due to the environmentalists themselves laying down their arms when they saw that their own lifestyle depended on BAU. They saw they couldn't get the dream of wealth and power and still be "green", and so a lot of them defected. You see a lot of people like Patrick Moore who just changed sides. I think the realization of the scope of the challenge has also widened, and most of the environmental groups don't know how do deal with it. Fisheries is one example - there are "red lists" and the problems are known, but the scale of the change necessary to change things in not trivial - large areas need to be marked off from any form of exploitation, rivers have to be cleaned up of pollution emanating from far from their mouths, dams have to be taken down. It's one thing to take down a dam on a river in the middle of nowhere, but what about the dams on the Colorado? Even just getting reasonable fishing quotas is nearly impossible.

Not to nitpick but Gingrich was never a Senator. He was a Representative from Georgia for 20 years, the last four he was Speaker of the House.

Ron P.

Gosh, sometimes the guy looks old, but I had no idea... ;)

Not to nitpick but...1884?

I wasn't trying to convince anyone of anything, just expressing my feeling about this type of grandstanding.

Calling someone a jerk is not an "ad hominem" - merely juvenile name-calling, or venting if you well. Saying someone is a jerk and _therefore_ his argument must be wrong is the "ad hominem" fallacy.

Yes, I know a lot about evolution, having taught it at the college level for some time.

Evolution (in the biological sense) does not "simply mean change" - it means change as shaped by natural selection. Two steps - variation arises in a population via mutation, recombination, what-have-you. Then these variations are tested against the real world. Since the real world is always changing, it's nice for a population to maintain a certain amount of genetic variability - you never know what might come in handy down the road...

(I will be away for a couple of days and won't be able to respond further.)

You may enjoy this post from last week as well:

Ilargi: Haven't we been here before?

It's the sort of question you would expect a child to ask in one of those Grimm Brothers fairy tales, a child that walks so far into the woods that it gets lost, and takes another wrong turn and then another, and the forest feels denser and darker all the time, and it doesn't even run around in circles to return to its trail of breadcrumbs, or it doesn't know, because they've all been eaten by the animals. And then night falls slowly.

That's how I increasingly picture our financial situation. We march forward full of faith and feigned innocence into uncharted territory, telling ourselves we will and must find a way out of this mess, boosted by the high priests of our economic belief systems, the media, economists and politicians.

The children in the fairy tales always escape from the dark in the end, but we're not those children. Getting lost in the woods because you ignore the warnings is in general not an act of bravery, but one of stupidity.

Lost in the dark, indeed...

So, maybe this is an:

Oxygen-mask principle: People in transition should organize their own localities before reorganizing any other level. Only when there are surpluses locally—in water, food, even time and skills—does one look outward. If higher levels of authority are needed to ensure local provisioning, then one organizes at those levels. Otherwise, one looks first inward, drawing on local capacities to provide for local infrastructure and needs.

In the era of cheap and easy energy, it may have made sense for local economies to be tightly interdependent with national and global economies. Without cheap energy, it makes more sense, from a resilience perspective, to secure the basics. The sense making of the petroleum era was narrowly economic (if GDP or trade increased, it was good); the sense making of the postpetroleum era is the predictability and security of basic needs (it is good to know clean water and healthy food are reliably available).


There are some who will protest that an oxygen-mask or subsistence principle is protectionist. Wendell Berry says “that is exactly what it is. It is a protectionism that is just and sound, because it protects local producers and is the best assurance of adequate supplies to local consumers.” He then makes a crucial distinction. A just protectionism is “the best guarantee of giveable or marketable surpluses. This kind of protection is not ‘isolationism.’”

I agree; personal adaptation is the key. Adapt at a local level, starting with you and your family at home, and later expanding to include friends and neighbors in your adaptation and preparation plans. If you can, growing food at home is a good start. Be careful and picky when choosing people and do it gradually. Disclose information about your plans on a need to know basis.

Ron,

I really don't think you understand my position.

I think I do. Your writing is clear, you post enough for a good sampling. I share much of your position; although not all, or why bother conversing.

I fall in Greer's long descent camp, punctuated with Foss on the downside and who-knows-what-to-call-it (a Homer-Dixon period?) on occasional upsides. I subscribe to Gramsci’s notion of “pessimism of the intellect; optimism of the will.” And conducting lots of small experiments seems useful for dealing with the future (easy to get burned following only forecasts/extrapolations). That's my position, hardly unique on TOD.

And about six billion more than the earth can support without fossil fuels.

Suggests one billion is "sustainable indefinitely... ." So an interesting question is over what time span does the descent occur? The answer to that probably separates us into different camps, and affects how we imagine we'll respond, no?

BTW, I just found that globally we were at one billion sometime between 1800 and 1850, more recently than I'd thought. Of course, remaining resource capital was vastly higher then. Today we might claim greater scientific capital of all sorts; helpful only if we use it well.

-Ray

I always distrust any statement that starts 'throughout history.'

I very much doubt that this claim is based on a thorough study of every culture and every period. Short of that, such a claim is just a justification of ones own assumptions by randomly projecting them throughout time and culture, universalizing them.

All traditional cultures I know of have a wide range of strict taboos on using various 'resources.'

A central part of modernity has been the process of disparaging any such taboos.

Totally nuts. Ethanol is ethanol. Some think that the burning of cane fields in Brazil makes cane ethanol more polluting than corn ethanol. In any case the amount of pollution created in the world is not reduced by this nonsense.

Ethanol use in the U.S. is maxed out due to falling gasoline consumption, the blend ceiling and distribution obstacles. Of course some just hate ethanol. That may change as gasoline prices rise.

So for now export is the only option for producers and Brazil is the largest market. Cane ethanol production may appear energy efficient because much of the energy that goes into harvest is human sweat.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c74FAzzvj3o

Brazilian agriculture is on a tear. This video shows soybean, fruit, ethanol, cayman, and cattle production in Brazil.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hFvFYty5Aw&feature=related

If this three stooges meets I love lucy muddle in the importation and exportation of ethanol doesn't suffice to illustrate my philosophical argument for small government well enough for the average reader to get it, I suppose I should give up.

There would be no mic if there were no big government.

There would be no multinational too big to fail banks if there were no big government.

There would be no drug war if there were no big government.

We need a carbon tax-which could be implemented by a smaller government.

We need a banking system composed of banks small enough that the failure of the three or four biggest ones would create no problem.

We need civil liberties rather than a drug based judical / legal/ prison/ cop based industry.

People are allowed to kill themselves with beer and liquor, cigarettes and fast cars, sickening fast foods, prescription mood altering drugs by the drug store full legally dispensed by a medical/ insurance/ regulatory bureaucracy industry made possible by-big government.

Why shouldn't they be able to smoke pot or snort heroin if they have no better sense?

If heroin were legal, it would cost less than beer in a free market.Nobody would get robbed or burgled by an addict, he could work out his habit easier and faster washing dishes.

OF course I understand that small government is not a panacea, but nearly everybody seems to have lost sight of the basic principles of common sense.Nobody will ever look after your affairs so well as you do, personally, if you have good sense.

Our biggest single problem is overpopulation, and we are all going to die anyway.If we had good sense , we would stand aside and allow the darwinian process to do its work in a more gradual fashion , rather than all at once. This would not be sufficient to prevent collapse a of course, but nevertheless it would help the more intelligent ones of us to focus on reality.

This last may be interpreted as sarcasm if the reader so desires.

What do you think the odds are on reinstating the tariff? I'd guess it's impossible to predict, but what is your take--that with the credit over, the tariff will be reinstated as a nod to the industry?

Shipping ethanol from Brazil, on the other side of the Americas is cheaper than ethanol from the west coast USA? I find that amazing!

NAOM

We were comparing Baghdad with New Orleans, as cities with rich and deep cultures and character to them, and what are the odds that such a place can regrow its inherent 'nature' after it has been so deeply hit.

Of course, noone really knows the answer. (Except perhaps some posters here, who might Know that they Know.. whether or not it's so.. ) But I love a good city with a deep soul.. and culture is sometimes like bamboo, and is very hard to wipe out the deep roots and lifeforce.

Oil wells commonly have pump-off controllers which shut off the pump for periods which are determined by a timer. Rather than having the pump running all the time and wasting energy, they shut it off and allow oil to accumulate in the wellbore, and then start it up and allow the accumulated oil to be pumped out. They adjust the timers to optimize this process based on the characteristics and depletion of the well.

So, when you see a well sitting idle, it may not actually be idle. It's just resting until it starts up again.

If it was a high production well, they wouldn't need a pump-off controller, but high production wells are rather rare in the US nowadays.

ban - Not so much economic limits but limited ability to apply efforts to smaller cash flow projects. But there is another major factor supporting your "not-so-mega project development: public companies near manic obsession with adding reserves to their books. And I don't say that for dramatic effect: I've seen such extreme levels of anxiety in pubcos first hand. Some folks may think it's based on a desire by management to bump their bonuses up. In most cases it's a matter of not getting run off. For every hour I've spent in meetings discussing profit margins I've spent 5 hours discussing how to up the booked reserve count. And often with little or no concern over profitability.

I'll say it again very clearly: even if every resource well just returned the capex spent to put it into production the pubcos would still be drilling as fast as possible IMHO. The profit is there but it's realized in the stock price movement and not the cash flow. Which isn't to say the current plays aren't generating profitable cash flows but that the activity isn't proportional to the rate of return. But it can lead to what appears to be extreme illogical situations. I'll mention it again if you haven't seen it: as a consultant I once drilled four horizontal wells that actually decreased this pubco's net present value and knew that it would do so. But Wall Street didn't care about that metric. What got them excited was that I increased companywide production rate by 400%. And as a reward WS ran our stock up over 300% almost overnight. Management was happy, employees were happy, the WS brokers who collected their fees were very happy, and I was very happy since I got a nice bonus for intentionally drilling wells that lost money for the company.

That's been the basis for so many debates over the viability of the resource plays. On a purely rate of return basis many don't see them as significant long term contributors. But on the other side of the argument is the rig count and flattening of the US oil decline rate. To a fair degree both sides of the argument are correct. And both incorrect to a degree. Petrohawk shareholders could care less how small the ROR will be of their Eagleford wells they drilled: they cashed out for $12 billion. OTOH the new owners have to continue drilling to offset the high decline rates of their new wells. How does one confidently project the gains from projects when their economic viability hinges on such dynamics? ROR metrics appear to diminish their potential yet the effort for pubcos to satisfy WS won't be denied either. Not quite as bad as a true Ponzi scheme but it does share some of the traits. It works adequately...until it stops working. And when will that happen? There's the real question IMHO. And I personally have no freaking idea.

No, I fully realize that there are many smaller fields being found around the world that are not megaprojects. What I was responding to was this quote you placed in your post by al-Husseini:

The oil drilling is mainly to “replace capacity declines that result from ongoing production” and “will not add new capacity, except for the Manifa drilling,” al-Husseini said.

You assumed that al-Husseini was talking about opening new smaller fields, or mini projects if you will. You are wrong, he was not, he was referring to new infield drilling in very old fields, getting their decline rate from an average of 8 percent to almost 2 percent as explained in the link I posted. Read it!

I am not fretting about anything I am just explaining that you got al-Husseini's meaning all wrong. New drilling, except for Manifa, will not add new capacity. Manifa is the only new field he is talking about. He was not referring to new capacity from any other new field.

Ron P.

Yes. I have been tracking many of these efforts.

IMHO, the easiest way to reduce domestic oil consumption in MENA is reduce the oil burned to generate electricity.

Higher prices + education @ efficiency > less electrical demand is the fastest, simplest and most economic way to do this.

Best Hopes for Efficiency Everywhere,

Alan

The reason consumption is going up in many MENA countries is because of their very low gasoline and diesel and electricity prices. Their population is growing and demanding to move into the middle class. Their governments are keeping them happy by giving them subsidized electricity and transportation fuel.

Gasoline prices in Saudi Arabia are about 91 cents a gallon. In Venezuela it is 12 cents a gallon.

Gas prices around the world Click to get the full list. Here are the bottom 5.

Saudi Arabia 	Riyadh 	        $0.91
Kuwait 	        Kuwait City 	$0.78
Egypt 	        Cairo 	        $0.65
Nigeria 	Lagos 	        $0.38
Venezuela 	Caracas 	$0.12

Ron P.

We shall see what happens in future years, but here is what happened from 2002 to 2010. Normalized oil consumption for China, India, top 33 net oil exporters and the US (BP, 2002 = 100):

As previously noted, if we extrapolate the 2005 to 2010 rates of changes for key production & consumption variables for China, India and the top 33 net oil exporters, the 2010 to 2020 ANE decline rate will accelerate to about 5%/year, versus 2.8%/year from 2005 to 2010. This assumes basically flat production among the oil exporting countries.

A slight production decline of about 1%/year, among the oil exporting countries, would cause the ANE decline rate to accelerate to about 8%/year from 2010 to 2020 (other rates of change stay the same).

Note that a key variable is China's domestic production, which may be hitting a peak/plateau. The US production peak caused our rate of increase in net imports to accelerate from 1970 to 1977.

If demand destruction in US can cause US imports to drop then same thing can cause exports to stay stable in MENA countries.

There is a big difference between demand destruction in the US with its implication of each individual driving less or driving a smaller vehicle; and demand destruction the the developing world with its implication of no work - no electricity - no water. The per capita consumption in the the Middle East as a whole is still quite low compared to the US and the societal benefit provided by oil consumption proportionally higher.

I am quite confident that internal consumption in the Middle East and North Africa will continue its upward trajectory.

From the Energy Export databrowser:

Has reserve growth been that large and spread over that long a period of time?

Tricky question...one usually best avoided lest TPTB become enraged.
.
Having said that, I will explain why. For starters, you should understand that the backdating of reserves (ala Colin and Co) is a process designed to hide the answer to that question.

For example, Sem and Ellerman (1999) published a paper which determined that by that point in time, 25% of total production from the North Sea was originating from reserve growth. That estimate comes only some 25 years after North Sea production began perhaps? So....given the larger size, and older nature, of the fields onshore scattered across the rest of the world, I would say you might be on to something.

That is a cool chart.

To answer your question, I think you would need a chart for each discovery period separately to get a clear picture. Also, where the discoveries were, rate of water-cuts, number of wells, etc...

It looks like a lot of the 50's and 60's fields came from the middle east and from the "other" category, which appears to be the area of greatest expected decline going forward based on this "2004 model."

http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/gene/peakoil/

Rock,

At times that chart looks like a Rorschach ink blob. You might read anything into it.

I agree "The most important take away from the chart IMHO is how little of the current oil production is coming from newer fields." But if you concentrate on green and below, from 1975 on, it seems the old bumpy plateau will ride off into the future. I was really surprised to see the amount of production still coming from prior to 1930's wells. First guess would have been they were less a quarter. And 1950's oil, such a wider swath 2005 on.

The other big take away is the major decline in all colors in the late 70's. Has to be more than just the US peak, the chart data I assume is worldwide. I'd think this is introduction of EOR techniques, and it has bumped up all classes of wells.

Rockman, you are right.

Cantarell provides a good example of what happens when you step up production on an oil field without doing anything that improves the recovery factor. Unlike carbon dioxide, nitrogen is immiscible in oil, so it doesn't thin it and allow it to flow easier. Pemex was injecting half the nitrogen produced in the world into the Cantarell field to repressurize the reservoir, but all that did was to produce the same amount of oil more rapidly. As a result, when production crashed, it crashed hard.

As someone said, it was like shaking up a can of beer to get the beer out faster, and then using a funnel and a hose to drink it. Some people like that kind of thing, but I don't go to their kind of parties.

It is quite true that very little of the current production is coming from new fields. Most of it is coming from fields that are much older, most of them in the Middle East. When those fields go into decline, world production will go into decline, and that may already be occurring. We don't have enough data on the Middle Eastern fields to be sure.

And, as you said, URR is not really meaningful. The extreme example of that is the oil sands of Canada and Venezuela. The URR of the oil sands is astronomical, but in the global context that means nothing. Venezuelan production is declining because of political problems and bad economics, and Canadian production is rising very slowly because there simply aren't enough skilled oil workers in the oil sands areas to build the massive facilities that are need to produce it. Notwithstanding URR, you can't expect to see high flow rates out of these resources comparable to the big Middle Eastern fields.

Thanks Rock.

there should be little expectation this latest batch of reservoirs will be the future "heritage fields" of the next generations.

That seems to be the nub of it. Those 'old' early fields were different in kind than later discoveries. Hence the long discussions (speculations) about Ghawar in KSA that I read on TOD when I first looked in nearly 5 years ago. Those 'old fields' look as though collectively they will continue to produce large quantities for many years unless and until some of the real giants suffer a sudden end, water cut or whatever? Despite this there have been and are significant declines that have barely been replaced by discoveries so far. We look as though we have discovered at last the zenith (PO!) of global oil production?
best
phil

Thank you for continuing to remind us sober ? but maybe ? senile gray haired old farts that we are hanging around herein this forum like a bunch of little girls hovered around a campfire listening to ghost stories.

The Oil Journey is a half-hour intro level introduction, so I'd say No given the knowledge base here. I watched it a couple days ago and was distracted by the inaccurate transcription of the audio to the subtitling (M. King Hubbert, for example, becomes "Mary Ann", "relocalize" is "relo collides", and "depression and exercise" are noted for their benefits in coping). I was also surprised that after seemingly cozy, sepia-tinted family photos and stories were used to illustrate the narrator's American dream success story from 1890 onward---and corresponding increasing energy usage--that there was a disclaimer at the end that those warm and fuzzy family stories, were, ah, fictional. I'll mail Asher my feedback because I do wish them well, and visit The Energy Bulletin frequently.

This is a good point. I learned about peak oil and alot of other things in 2008. Coincidentally, I've only been working sporadically which has given me time to inform myself and digest what's going on.

Really I'm "peak oiled out." These types of videos don't do much for me. Although the real descent and fireworks have yet to begin, we have alot of idea of what to expect. The trends are clear to see for any thinking person. Ongoing energy decline and economic depression. Political and financial instability with engineered biflation/stagflation. Resources wars. Authoritarian and military responses. A stabilization and decline in the human population. Massive and unprecedented social change.

I'm preparing for the above scenarios, and no amount of new info is going to change my mind now. I'm at the acceptance stage basically. Whatever happens, it will be interesting, and hopefully most of us will at least get to decide how we live and die.

... comments on TOD of many who recount their frustrated efforts to communicate the PO message to folks who have trouble taking in the technologies supporting the discussion

(quote is from ROCKMAN's post above)

I think the real shocker to most of us has been the growing realization of how mentally limited most of our species mates are.
I had always expected much better of mankind.
But then again, I grew up in the George Jetson 1960's era when it was clear that we were soaring to the moon and beyond.
Maybe the newer generations have a lesser expectation for our species and its mental abilities.

The real speculators are the people who fill up their cars. Every time they fill up, buy a car etc they take a short position on the price of oil. The reason why the price of oil is so high is that noone is really willing to give up their lifestyle, their short position on the price of oil.

I had a pretty good idea what it was because paleontologist had identified about 25 different species of dinosaurs in the river valley near where I grew up (there are specimens of them in museums all over the world), and I had read the scientific reports.

I had already read enough of the Bible (albeit not the Apocrypha) to know that there wasn't anything in it similar to what I had found. What I wanted to know was if my Sunday school teachers could come up with some kind of convincing explanation of it, and the fact they told me to shut up indicated that they couldn't.

Things have changed since then, and the region now has the Royal Tyrrell Museum, which has one of the largest collections of complete dinosaur skeletons in the world. Some of the people in the area still think the Earth is only 6000 years old, though. It's tough to hold a rational conversation with them, under the circumstances.

Not to mention other obvious questions, such as: What did the lions and tigers (and all the other carnivores) eat during the 40 days on the Ark? How much food was taken on board for all the plant eaters? What about fresh water storage? If the entire Earth were flooded, what did any of these critters eat after The Flood, given that all the plants would have been killed by The Flood? Of course, who shoveled all the poop overboard everyday?

Or, just maybe, all those critters were actually just DNA stored on a spacecraft for the 40 light year jump from Planet X to Earth as the local star began to die. That scenario is slightly more plausible than the Biblical story of The Flood..

E. Swanson

My mother, being a wise woman, didn't believe in advancing children beyond their age level on the grounds that even though they were smart enough, they weren't mature enough for the higher level grades. There were some non-academic skills to learn such as when it was time to fight, and when it was time to run from a fight, and it wasn't good to be the smallest kid in the class when push came to shove.

In retrospect, what I needed is a more rounded education, with some languages, guitar playing, economics, business skills, and other stuff that kids don't usually get in school.

With a little more challenge I might have learned some work habits, which was the greatest shortcoming I had when I hit university. In high school I never had to do any work, and I could just sop up the course material up by osmosis. That didn't work in university where I was expected to do some serious research to pass the courses.

And realistically I should have started on languages and musical instruments when I was much younger. Kung fu would have been useful in high school, too.

All but about 16,000 miles of rail track in the USA are single track.

Some massive double tracking projects have been built. Double tracking Abo Canyon left just two short sections of single track between Chicago and Los Angeles.

And even with these two sections, BNSF can now run 130 trains/day (up from actual 80 trains/day).

http://www.bnsf.com/employees/communications/bnsf-news/2011/june/2011-06...

One of the two single track sections will be double tracked in 2012. the other is a major river bridge.

Best Hopes for More Double Tracking,

Alan

"The consequences of not using fossil fuels are still significantly worse than the consequences of using fossil fuels."

An unprovable conjecture.

At this point, there is no easy way forward, even if we could somehow bring some speck of sanity into political discussions.

But GW can get pretty darn bad--read Mark Lynas's 'Six Degrees' for a quick primer.

Humans lived millions of years without using ff. Humans have never experienced the climate chaos that is coming down the pike in the very near future.

Fatih Birol is taking about six degrees by the end of the century. Even half that, by most estimates, would end much of civilization as we know it.

Thank you OFM for pointing out that the conservation of the commons is the deepest and most honourable kind of conservatism.

Today's "conservatives" with their absolute, hardline denial of the very concept of the commons, are not conservatives at all but wild-eyed and incredibly destructive radicals...

The idea, seventy years ago, was that an attack on Pearl was too crazy for the Japanese to do it. Too provacative. Too, expensive in terms of scarce fuel (which it was). Plus we thought too highly of our defensive capabilities. So it was not considered as a credible response.
Now Iran blocking Hormuz would lead to some sort of military response, so we naturally assume, they wouldn't consider actually doing it. Since they "won't call our bluff", we are free to back them into the proverbial corner.......

Michael's wrote that once "progress" united the disparate "us" (he was talking about the USA and material progress). We now know material progress "worked" while we had cheap and abundant fossil fuels to extract. After that no longer worked, we'd give hope a try. After that... was too far off to worry. That later time is now coming. [ Michael, D. & W. Anderson (1987) "Now that 'Progress' no longer unites us." New Options. 33:1-2. ]

Hope keeps showing up in human affairs. When that happens you have to ask what adaptive role it plays/played. Hope might smooth out the psychological effects of a bumpy plateau/descent; keep us functioning in the face of unnerving change.

(There was an old saying, something like, "Prepare for the worst, hope for the best, take what comes.")

-Ray

Thanks.

My Baghdadi friend is trained as a biologist, and I asked him about the thinking around rebuilding soils that have become desertified. He said in Baghdad, there had been a law requiring every household to have a Date Palm and an Olive Tree planted in their yards, and that there was work looking at how the 300 varieties of Date Palms in Iraq worked with their varying and very broad (Nature's horiz. drilling?) root systems, being so effective at holding the ground together.. but alas, current political thinking has grown towards 'building a wall' to hold back the migrating desert..

"The relentless math:

Population 1960: 27.8 million
Population 2008: 81.7 million
Current population growth rate: 2% per annum (a 35-year doubling rate)
Population in 2046 after another doubling: 164 million

Rainfall average over whole country: ~ 2 inches per year
Highest rainfall region: Alexandria, 7.9 inches per year
Arable land (almost entirely in the Nile Valley): 3%
Arable land per capita: 0.04 Ha (400 m2)
Arable land per capita in 2043: 0.02 Ha
Food imports: 40% of requirements
Grain imports: 60% of requirements

Net oil exports: Began falling in 1997, went negative in 2007
Oil production peaked in 1996
Cost of oil rising steeply
Cost of oil and food tightly linked

The future of Egypt will be shaped by these few biophysical facts"

It isn't policy, it's political vandalism of the pipeline due to the lack of a strong police state. Egypt’s natural gas pipeline to Israel and Jordan has been bombed ten times this year.

Import half their food...

Thats bad, but imagine how fragile Saudi Arabia is - they have made a POLICY DECISION to import ALL their food from 2012 on. Its not only oil that passes through the Straits of Hormuz, but food. Talk about life out on a limb!

I'm not quite sure of the physics, though I'm sure that resistance is involved. Experience has shown me that cells toward the middle of a series don't seem to get as fully charged as the ones toward the ends, especially the positive end. The busses, cables and connections are the same. This is consistent with the fact that the batteries on the ends use a bit more water. I've found that regular equalization and occasionally moving the batteries around in the series helps them age at the same rate. A battery series is only as good as it's weakest cell.

My last set was twenty 6-volt L-16s: five strings (in parallel) of four batteries; sixty cells total (vs. twelve now). What a nightmare. The set lasted less than ten years due to some cells failing. I was able to salvage about half of the L-16s for a friend's smaller setup. Still doing well after 14 years. I always recommend using large 2 volt cells (like forklift batteries) for larger battery sets. Big and heavy (mine are 230# each, 28 inches tall) but much simpler and easier to care for. Best hopes for many more years of service!