Wearing my Devil's Advocate hat:

What if the idea of using microbes to eat coal and expel methane turns out to be feasible in a large scale?

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/429682/coal-eating-microbes-might-c...

Think of it: No mountaintop removal mining, no strip mining out West, no impoundments of coal tailings breaking free and killing off river life...no mercury and other heavy metals in the flue gas or tailings...

That, combined with the new driverless cars which will (according to the article I posted a few DBs ago):

- eliminate the need for drivers licenses and drivers Ed
- eliminate the need for liability and collision insurance
- eliminate nearly all traffic accident-related deaths and injuries and hospital visits
- Nearly eliminate the need for traffic cops and traffic court and traffic injury attorneys
- allow cars to be lighter and cheaper, but also somehow more palacial inside
- probably cure cancer and win the war on drugs and terrorism too....

The rider of the majik white horse of technology will surely ride over the hill in the nick of time!

Let's look at the efficiency of this process versus best case use of fuel for transportation:

GTL has net energy of 0.60 conversion according to Robert Rapier's investigations. Net kinetic energy of a car is at best 20% or 0.20 conversion for automobiles. So to use shale gas to move people in automobiles gives net return of 0.60 x 0.20 = 0.12 or 12% of the energy moves the car.

Taking shale gas and using it to make electricity in a combined cycle (gas turbine plus steam turbine) power plant gives 0.60 efficiency multiplied by 0.95 for transmission losses. Put this to use powering an electric train at motor/drive efficiency of 0.90 and the end result is 0.54 overall conversion. Now consider the US Dept of Energy's figures that show trains as being about twice as efficient as cars (figures average load factors of cars and trains both being near 50%) and the end result is electric trains provide 9 times the transportation per unit of energy compared to this process mentioned in the article.

Trying foolhardy pathways like mentioned in this article is good reason why I am a doomer. But, Wall Street analysts will promote this thing because many investors can not add two plus two and get four.

$1 in feed stock and $1 for plant and equipment per gallon and they make money. The plant is paid off in 5 years with a 40 year life span, the fuel is cleaner and made from domestic resources.

Your 'lesson' made my morning, Casey. Thanks for a much-needed grin!

Aye, fooked we all might be.

"...economy-breaking Frankenstorm."

Nah,, Sandy will increase GDP, create jobs, and improve profits at gas stations and stores. The Pres and the Fed couldn't get people to start spending again, but Sandy has. Disaster Capitalism at its best ;-/

I wonder if this coming Frankenstorm will end up being called Frankensquall as a slightly blustery non damaging wind passes in the night. Weather is hard to predict and all the hype may be a lot of hullabaloo, much like this coming election 'being so close!' as networks wrangle with the numbers like a monkey with dice to pin everybody to the wall with anticipation of a race probably already won by Obama if one simply ignores the GOP lier polls, like Rasmussen, ARG, Mason-dixon, PPP (public policy polling), and Gallop.

Ní dhéanfach an saol capall rás d'asal. Is possibly a better one. ;)

Snort! Good job, Casey! Reminds me of a bilingual joke (Hebrew - English) which is too rude to repeat here, but is based on the the fact that "dafook" is a perfectly good Hebrew word meaning "useless, dented, knocked" and Hebrew forms the reflexive (things you do to yourself, I did to myself) by putting the prefix "nid" in front, as opposed using a special pronoun the way English does.

No doubt you figured it out by now. The punch line is "Some people are just 'nidfook'".

Now we know why the Irish rule the world, its our lyrical and sooo flexible language, great craíc Casey.

I don't see any mention of EROEI in that report!

Wonder how much fossil fuel will be extracted at breakeven, simply to keep the numbers rosy. After all, using a barrel to get a barrel means two barrels were ultimately extracted. Rinse and repeat as needed.

When you think about it, the fact that US peak in 1970 isn't common knowledge is truly amazing...

Peak Oil (also known as Hubbert’s peak theory)

This quote is often used as a strawman argument against peak oil. In other words, if real life oil production doesn't follow a bell curve, then peak oil must be bogus.

Forbes Magazine has long been known as a source of conservative cornucopianism and AGW denial.

Trash. fit only for the round file.

At most winds should be cat 1, she won't really a hurricane by then by an exceptionally strong extratropical cyclone. The wind area is supposed to be very large, and the storm may stall inland and gradually weaken for a couple of days. I suspect the WTs will be fine. The real concerns are storm surge, flooding of the NYC subway system is supposed to be very pricey, one foot higher than Irene will supposedly do that. Jeff Masters gives a 30% chance of that. Strong wind for a couple of days on trees that haven't yet shed their leaves is supposed to cause a lot of problems for the grid.

1693, October 29, "Accomack Storm"

"There happened a most violent storme in Virginia, which stopped the course of the ancient channels, and made some where there never were any; So that betwixt the bounds of Virginia and Newcastle in Pensylvania, on the seaboard side, are many navigable rivers for sloops and small vessels."

Letter by a "Mr. Scarburgh" (Transactions of the Royal Society - 1694)

This is also known as the Great Storm of 1693. It cut the inlet at Fire Island in New York.

http://maps.csc.noaa.gov/hurricanes/# allows you to search for historical hurricane tracks passing within a radius of a location. The track of this storm is admittedly unusual, but it is similar to a tropical storm of September 28, 1943.

The most recent direct hit on New York City was a category 1 in late August 1893. The most destructive storms to hit Long Island were Gloria in 1985 and the unnamed storm of 1938.

The Atlantic coast from Cape Cod south has many barrier islands which have been remodeled by storms over the last centuries. I've read of research done by taking cores in the bays behind the islands to analyse and date layers of decayed vegatation interspersed with sand driven over the barrier islands by the storms. I'm not sure whether they can obtain objective data on frequency and intensity that shows an increase in the recent past.

700 yr Sedimentary Record of Intense Hurricane Landfalls
in Southern New England

Gotta wonder... What happens if the flooding gets into the subways of NYC. Tunnels? And is this the beginning of something bigger? What if the markets can't reopen soon, if the flooding persists? Will this be a trigger event?

They forgot Three Mile Island, which is helpfully located in the middle of the Susquehanna River.
In 1972 I was working for PP&L and was assigned to the Brunner Island coal plant, just south of TMI (which was then under construction) and both islands were overrun in the Hurricane Agnes flood. We were picking up glassware from the labs at TMI all over the place.
Sandy may produce as much rainfall as Agnes and then it will be off to the races!

Some 30k MW installed capacity is lying idle because of coal shortage. I think it's another example of how reality works and theory doesn't. In theory there's lot of coal under the ground but population pressures and a dysfunctional society (a result of population pressure) mean that much of it cannot be extracted easily.

The storm strengthened overnight, and is still strengthening. It's also moving faster, which I suppose is good news.

V.
Conclusion
The scenarios developed in this paper highlight that the extent to which persistent oil
scarcity could constrain global economic growth and current account imbalances depends
critically on a small number of key factors. If, as in our baseline, the trend growth rate of
oil output declined only modestly, and if the economy was adequately represented by a
standard production function in capital, labor and oil, world output would eventually
suffer, but the effect might not be dramatic. If the substitutability between oil and other
factors of production was increasing in the oil price, the effect would be even smaller. But
if the reductions in oil output were more in line with the more pessimistic studies in the
scientific literature, the effects could be extremely large. The same could be true if, as
claimed by several authors in the scientific literature, standard production functions miss
important aspects of the economic role of oil under conditions of scarcity. We discussed
three possibilities. First, if the economy attempted to substitute away from oil, it might
encounter a lower limit of oil use dictated by entropy. Second, the contribution of oil to
output could be much larger than its cost share, because oil is an essential precondition
for the continued viability of many modern technologies. Third, the income elasticity of
oil demand could be equal to one third as in some empirical studies, rather than one as in
our model. And if two or more of these aggravating factors were to occur in combination,
the effects could range from dramatic to downright implausible.

That must be the nearest the IMF have come to comtemplating the outside possibility of a "Mad Max" situation.

Looks like their scenarios suffer from being created by economists.

• They tend to have a proportionate view of things. Rather than seeing tipping points, changed attractors and the whole reality of systemic effects, they think they can run forward BAU models based on old rules of thumb. 1% here equals 2% there, so 2% here means 4% there. No positive feedback cycles. This alone means they get it wrong.
• They tend to think the market, and governments, are rational. Did they learn nothing from the GFC? The financial markets are not rational, well informed, measured; they are greedy, dumb, ill informed, and pretty much fraudulent most of the time. Why haven't they incorporated that practical demonstration of reality in their modelling? As for politicians ...
• They don't really cover the expected baseline, >2% decline YoY AND no substitution. Why spend half the time talking about versions of BAU that are exceptionally unlikely to happen? Well, the reason is, of course, the usual way you present scenarios when you want to promote one viewpoint - you make the most realistic seem the most extreme of the options. Natural tendency is then to ignore the outliers. Old trick.

I will be moderating a session at the 2012 ASPO-USA conference, on 11/30/12, featuring Michael Kumhof, one of the authors of the paper, and Mark Lewis, head of global commodities research at Deutsche Bank. I think that it will be a very interesting discussion.

www.aspousa.org

Incidentally, an excerpt from the paper by Kumhof, et al:

Finally, the simulations do not consider the possibility that some oil exporters might
withhold an increasing share of their stagnating or decreasing oil output for domestic use,
for example through fuel subsidies, in order to support energy intensive industries (e.g.
petrochemicals), and also to forestall domestic unrest. If this were to happen, the amount
of oil available to oil importers could shrink much faster than world oil output (Brown and
Foucher (2010)), with obvious negative consequences for growth in those regions.

Ron,
I've looked at the pdf that you cite at the bottom of your post. To me, the work, entitled 'Oil and the World Economy', seems to be a well meaning attempt to understand oil and the world economy. It suggests that

This points to important avenues for future research. Most importantly, we suggest that a multidisciplinary approach to modeling, which better represents the dependence of production technologies on physical processes, would be very useful.

and references Hubbert's work in a very respectful way.

I wonder though, were did you find the text in blockquote that you use to summarize the content? The author of that text has a very different take on the content of the pdf than I have. I take the paper to be an appeal to people in the real world to help economists out of a hole they have dug.

aardi – None of the above. You start with shooting tens of $millions of 3d seismic. 3d seis is essentially very dense seismic coverage. The mapping capability of today’s seis is light years ahead of 2d seis I started working 37 years ago. Oil/NG is trapped in certain geometric configurations of the rocks. Seis allows much greater details than just using the geology seen in wells themselves. Especially when there are very few wells in the area. Additionally in some areas it’s possible to see direct evidence of the presence of hydrocarbons, especially NG. This allows a much higher success rate. The interesting thing about the advent of 3d seis: it has probably caused more wells to not be drilled than drilled. In the good ole days when there was thin data to base drilling on we would take risks we don’t have to today.

The seis data is the basis for determining not only what blocks you lease but also how much you pay for the lease. Something else to be aware of: even if an exploratory well finds a large commercial field out there it might be plugged and abandoned. It takes a production platform to produce. It often makes more economic sense to plug early wells and redrill them later when the platform is installed. Several other “expendable wells” might be drilled after a discovery to confirm the volume in order to properly size the development program.

One more Rockman side story: the first field I was assigned to develop for Mobil Oil in 1975 in the offshore GOM. Mobil didn’t like drilling too many expendable holes and would lean more heavily on the seis mapping. Drilling off the exploration maps the first 5 wells off the production platform were DRY HOLES. Saving money by not drilling more expendable holes didn’t save money in the end.

BTW every offshore lease block on the planet is surrounded by mulitple lease blocks that have no production on them...and never will.

100mm! That's a half hour shower down here.

NAOM

Remember what we were told in 2004: "Exit polls are meaningless".

How American Elections Became a Criminal Enterprise
http://www.hermes-press.com/criminal_vote2.htm

There are a thousand ways to tilt the elections. The best is to have one candidate. Having two candidates is better showmanship. Under Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee, I've seen my country gutted.

A free press and media in the public service...
A multiplicity of parties or candidates with proportional voting/representation...

Meanwhile, the last of my young friends is leaving the country. He is an engineer in the field of power conversion and control. His last question to me involved power bus transfer pre-charge and switching into highly capacitive loads at some part of a Farad within electric vehicles at 600 Volts... and thus my strange capacitor rant last Drumbeat. The fundamentalists will not mourn the loss of his scientific knowledge. That makes three more young people with high potential that have gotten out of here this year.

America is like a diseased sex-worker with a gun. There isn't anything you really want from them, but they will make sure you pay. The best thing the rest of the world could do to protect itself is cease feeding this beast.

Proof that bias exists doesn't mean proof that the vote counting process is fixed. It could just be some artefact of rules that have been written to favor the side that has the power to write the rules. This is normal politics in the US and only illegal if the rules are written to disadvantage blacks rather than Democrats.

What the article needs to make its case is not just an artefact, but a correlation of that artefact with a particular type of vote counting machine. Instead it relies on handwaving arguments about rigging the count being the only possible explanation. Its not quite as weak an argument as "Low temperature fusion is the only possible explanation for the extra heat" but its in the same class.

Most Americans probably aren't worried if Republicans or Democrats hack their votes, because its just a continuation of gerrymandering by other means. However, they ought to be, because if an election is susceptible to hacking, it could be hacked by anarchists, or Teheran, not just by Republicans or Democrats.

A an article by the late Christopher Hitchens, who perhaps could best be described as a professional skeptic.

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2005/03/hitchens200503
Ohio's Odd Numbers, March, 2005
No conspiracy theorist, and no fan of John Kerry's, the author nevertheless found the Ohio polling results impossible to swallow: Given what happened in that key state on Election Day 2004, both democracy and common sense cry out for a court-ordered inspection of its new voting machines.

But what strikes my eye is this: in practically every case where lines were too long or machines too few the foul-up was in a Democratic county or precinct, and in practically every case where machines produced impossible or improbable outcomes it was the challenger who suffered and the actual or potential Democratic voters who were shortchanged, discouraged, or held up to ridicule as chronic undervoters or as sudden converts to fringe-party losers . . .

I am not any sort of statistician or technologist, and (like many Democrats in private) I did not think that John Kerry should have been president of any country at any time. But I have been reviewing books on history and politics all my life, making notes in the margin when I come across a wrong date, or any other factual blunder, or a missing point in the evidence. No book is ever free from this. But if all the mistakes and omissions occur in such a way as to be consistent, to support or attack only one position, then you give the author a lousy review. The Federal Election Commission, which has been a risible body for far too long, ought to make Ohio its business. The Diebold company, which also manufactures A.T.M.s, should not receive another dime until it can produce a voting system that is similarly reliable. And Americans should cease to be treated like serfs or extras when they present themselves to exercise their franchise.

It may be, as the Chinese saying goes, "An interesting election."

Of course, as Tom Brokaw said of the 2008 election, "The winner should demand an immediate recount."

Thoughts

The article is a pointer to the (not an academic) paper Choquette and Johnson (2012). My first thoughts on a quick read ...

1. Not written by a professional statistician
2. Not written by a programmer familiar with statistical/mathematical toolkits such as R, STATA, or Matlab.
3. When reading 'Tabular', understand 'Spreadsheet' (Excel, or OO Calc)
4. A competent programmer would have run all 50 states; the author states that data is available.
5. Why these states? Data selection criteria not listed or I missed it.
6. The conclusion is not stated in statistical language. How likely/unlikely is it that the results observed would have occurred without manipulation?
7. The author notes that precincts with higher tallies have higher population density; but rejects the premise that 'urban' precincts display a preference for Romney because 'urban' precincts also displayed a preference for Paul. (p30) Fallacious argument.
8. The previous point is probably the killer for this analysis.
9. Doesn't link to spreadsheet used to generate analysis.

To clarify: the sand is used as proppant for fracking.

The sand stampede that now stretches from central Wisconsin to southeastern Minnesota is being stoked by a national boom in oil and gas production that, federal officials said last week, could make the United States the world's leading oil producer. From North Dakota to Texas, energy companies are using a technique known as hydraulic fracturing -- or "fracking" -- to tap underground shale formations rich in petroleum and natural gas.

Western Wisconsin and southern Minnesota have vast deposits of high-grade sand that is vital to the fracking process, leading some to predict that the region could have a $1 billion mining industry before long.

Congratulations, Bob ! I know you're going to be very pleased with its performance.

Our Nyle has been operational for just under two weeks and during this time it has consumed an average of 1.65 kWh a day, about half of what we had used previously with electric resistance. However, the reduced runtime of our dehumidifier has basically cut our water heating costs to zero.

Between October 16th (the first full day of operation) and the 27th, we've used an average of 11.17 kWh/day for space heating, DHW, all major appliances and plug loads; this same period last year, we were 15.08 kWh/day. So, our total household consumption is down 26 per cent, year over year, even though the weather over this twelve day period was cooler (8.9°C versus 10.2°C) and therefore our space heating related usage higher (2.68 kWh/day versus 1.71).

Cheers,
Paul

Looking at some model runs I just have to think that the authorities don't believe some of the output.

Perhaps they are counting on a belief that their deity of choice will protect them... especially given the fact that they seem intent on sacrificing some of their constituents!

Best hopes that the models are wrong!

When a storm's pressure drops off the bottom of the scale of a barometer, it tells you that the people who make barometers for a living never expected to see such a storm.

I read on a swedish news site (svt.se) that Zone A will indeed be evacuated.

NRC Monitors Nuclear Plants in Hurricane’s Projected Path

Nuclear reactors in the mid-Atlantic and Northeast are being monitored for potential impacts by Hurricane Sandy, a Category 1 storm that may strike anywhere from Delaware to southern New England.

“Because of the size of it, we could see an impact to coastal and inland plants,” Neil Sheehan, a spokesman based in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said by phone. “We will station inspectors at the sites if we know they could be directly impacted.”

A sample of Representative Barlett's energy-issue voting record:

http://www.ontheissues.org/house/Roscoe_Bartlett_Energy_+_Oil.htm

Voted YES on opening Outer Continental Shelf to oil drilling.

Voted YES on barring EPA from regulating greenhouse gases.

Voted NO on enforcing limits on CO2 global warming pollution.

Voted NO on tax credits for renewable electricity, with PAYGO offsets.

Voted NO on tax incentives for energy production and conservation. (same vote, ~same issue as above)

Voted NO on tax incentives for renewable energy. (same vote, ~same issue as above)

Voted YES on investing in homegrown biofuel.

Voted NO on criminalizing oil cartels like OPEC.

Voted YES on removing oil & gas exploration subsidies.

Voted NO on keeping moratorium on drilling for oil offshore.

Voted YES on scheduling permitting for new oil refineries.

Voted YES on authorizing construction of new oil refineries.

Voted YES on passage of the Bush Administration national energy policy.

Voted YES on implementing Bush-Cheney national energy policy.

Voted NO on raising CAFE standards; incentives for alternative fuels.

Voted YES on prohibiting oil drilling & development in ANWR.

Voted NO on starting implementation of Kyoto Protocol.

But...many times there is more than one issue in a bill...for example, RB voted against a bill referenced by Nate Hagens in the link below...so he voted against a bill which had a feature to raise CAFE standards, because the bill Also stipulated support for ethanol subsidies...

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3339

Sooo...due the 'bundling' of different issues in a given bill, there is often more than meets the eye when looking at a person's voting record.

I did find it interesting that the one article claims he has fathered 10 children.

EDIT:

The more I dug, the less I liked...

Roscoe Bartlett doesn't support measure to allow family planning to provide for reasonable population control:

http://www.ontheissues.org/house/Roscoe_Bartlett.htm

He has voted numerous time on various bills declaring that life begins at fertilization/conception...such bills would, if enforced to the ultimate, make woman criminals who take the certain forms of birth control pills.

He also supported the 'Stop the War on Coal Act 2012'.

He also is quite the fervent War Hawk, to include voting 'nay' on a bill to end the military's ability to indefinitely hold prisoners in the 'War on terror' without charge.

I hope he is kicked to the curb.

Interest and related loan expenses are tax deductible for business purposes, but principal payments are not (this is true for all US businesses).

I fundamentally disagree.

It will be difficult, but quite doable - at least to the 80% renewable mark.

One example - Existing railroads can be expanded (put back second track torn up in 1960s) and electrified. Electrification - $50 to $80 billion. Expansion (depending on how much) - $80 to $200 billion. All investments last 40 to 100+ years.

Shift freight from truck to rail - trade 20 BTUs of refined diesel for 1 BTU of renewable electricity.

Paid for by reducing the $101 billion subsidy for cheap gasoline & diesel in the USA (2010 - more today).
http://oilfreetransport.blogspot.com/2012/06/old-conservative-small-c-pr...

Build out Urban Rail and TOD - I am working with one of the original planners (1962-64) of the Washington DC Metro on a Phase II. Ridership 2.5x to 3x today. Expansion should make on operating profit to break even.

http://oilfreedc.blogspot.com/

The USA is 5.75x larger than France.

France is building 1,500 km of new tram lines in almost every town of 100,000 & larger for 22 billion euros - 2010 to 2020. Many examples at

http://oilfreetransport.blogspot.com/

Paris is going to double their Metro - +200 km (125 miles), 2 million more daily riders - from 2013 to 2025 for 21 billion euros (Note: about 15% has slipped to "after 2025" but six tunnel boring machines are on order).

Take above, convert euros to $, multiply by 5.75 plus an adjustment factor since Americans are just not as good as French bureaucrats. Affordable IMO (see $101 billion/year).

Making bicycling safer & easier is affordable in almost every case.

I could go on.

Best Hopes,

Alan

Thanks for linking this. I had thought to, but realized that would likely be counterproductive, as they say.

Depressing? Not to worry. There's drugs for that. May make you suicidal, but that's the real cure, right? (c;

I fundamentally agree with Nicole Foss and disagree with Alan.

For starters, Alan explains how electrified rail can replace trucks. That transition would take decades, if possible, but he completely ignores Nicole's primary point, the grid. Alan does not even try to explain how the grid could be completely run with renewable energy. So it is really disingenuous to say you disagree with her without even attempting to explain why you disagree. From Nicole's article, bold hers:

The goal of modern power systems is to balance supply and demand in real time over a whole AC grid, which is effectively a single enormous machine operating in synchrony. North America, for instance, is served by only four grids - the east, the west, Texas and Quebec. System operators, who have little or no control over demand, rely on being able to control sources of supply in order to achieve the necessary balance and maintain the stability of the system.

If anyone will argue that Nicole's point is invalid they will have to address her point, not some other point of your choosing because you can make a much better argument there.

Ron P.

There is a fundamental misunderstanding of how renewable energy "replaces" fossil energy. It does so in a way that simply eliminates the need for the production of anything that can be easily understood as a "fuel" b/c most of the energy is sunlight and is directly consumed as heat.

For instance, buildings consume around a third of all of our energy, and depending on climate, 50-75% of this is for space heating and hot water. While converting sunlight to electrical energy is generally only about 12% efficient, doing so for direct conversion to heat is close to 60%, or five times the amount. But when I converted my home's water heater to a solar water heater and added south-facing windows and a solar air heater (and a great deal of insulation and caulk), I didn't need someone somewhere to "make" me some "renewable" fuel to reduce my fossil fuel consumption for these two requirements by 90%. The sun just comes and does the job.

People like Stoneleigh who make a critique of our transition to a sustainable economy still wearing the nonsensical economic eyeglasses of the past will of course cry failure, because no, it isn't possible. I've also reduced my driving "fuel" by 90% - again, not by creating vast amounts of renewable "fuel," but simply by moving from the suburbs to the city where I can bike, walk, and bus most of the time, and use the car only when I have to move something heavy. Has my quality of life plummeted by these 90% reductions? Absolutely not - it's much better than it was.

Try this - stop whining and learn how to do something useful.

Stephen Hren
www.earthonaut.net

While I absolutely respect Stoneleigh's comprehension of the US energy system and grid infrastructure, I think there are mitigating factors that improve our ability to move to renewables, primarily what wildly squandering energy gluttons Americans are. Compared to European countries with as high or higher standard of living (Austria, Denmark, France, Germany) we use almost twice the energy per capita, we have 40% more motor vehicles per capita (we have more cars than licensed drivers), and we live in 2.3 times more square feet per person than the average European.

For the first six months of 2012 Germany supplied 25% of their energy with renewables, half of which was wind and solar. If the US dropped its energy usage by half(entirely doable without a drop in standard of living) then there is a heck of a lot less renewable infrastructure that needs to be built out.

Over the last ten years our family of five has dropped our electricity usage by half (to half of the average American household use), our VMT by half, and our natural gas usage by 3/4ths. It actually wasn't all that hard. We kept the same house, same square footage, invested in some technology and made some behavior changes. (We also installed solar PV and now produce 3/4ths of the electricity we use each year.) We jettisoned our van, kept our Prius, walked and biked and took public transit a lot, and carpooled prodigiously. We did not buy cars for our teenagers, we kept the house between 61 and 65 degrees in the winter, and we learned to wear sweaters and slippers. (We also installed solar hot water, installed LEDs, dealt with vampire power loads, insulated and sealed our drafty house, and improved the efficiency of our heating system.) I would say overall our quality of life has improved while our energy consumption has dropped by more than 65%.

I am certainly not saying business as usual can continue. (And I entirely agree upgrading the US electrical grid is of extreme importance.) But over the next 3 to 7 years, of necessity Americans will move closer to jobs and goods/services, will take a lot more mass transit, will live in much less square footage, will have fewer cars, and will no longer have second refrigerators keeping a six-pack of soda cold. Teens will bike rather than drive themselves to school, the interstates will not be full of monster RV's in the summer, stores will stop blasting air conditioning out of open shop doors, and ceiling fans will again become a reasonable way to keep cool except for the hottest days. A carbon fee and dividend program would go a long way towards jump-starting this process, but it is all likely to happen nonetheless.

"Renewable Energy: The Vision And A Dose Of Reality", by Stoneleigh seems too pessimistic.

We don't need to rely on renewables to save society as we know it. There is quite a lot of fossil fuel left for a few decades and this can be augmented by nuclear energy.

In the developed world, the energy requirements can be reduced significantly through conservation and efficiency measures.

Only a part of society must be saved. The ratio of people consuming high energy per capita to people consuming low energy per capita can be decreased without jeopardizing society's ability to progress. This will also reduce energy demands proportionately.

The reengineering of economies can occur quite rapidly. The industrialization of Japan between 1870 and 1905, the industrialization of the USSR between 1920 and 1040, and the revival of German industry in the 1930s are all examples of rapid change.

That system now has an annual throughput of more than 7 billion metric tons of hard coal and lignite, about 4 billion metric tons of crude oil, and more than 3 trillion cubic meters of natural gas. And its infrastructure—coal mines, oil and gas fields, refineries, pipelines, trains, trucks, tankers, filling stations, power plants, transformers, transmission and distribution lines, and hundreds of millions of gasoline, kerosene, diesel, and fuel oil engines—constitutes the costliest and most extensive set of installations, networks, and machines that the world has ever built, one that has taken generations and tens of trillions of dollars to put in place.

As far as I can tell there isn't anything on the drawing board that has even the remotest chance of saving this system and quite frankly I'm not sure that is what we should be trying to do even if we could. Though if any humans do survive, being an archaeologist or an anthropologist 5000 years from now trying to make sense of this era in human history should be quite a fascinating endeavor.

Though living through the next hundred years or so might not be all that pleasant for the vast majority.

Oyster Creek and Hope Creek are GE BWRs. Salem 1 & 2 are Westinghouse PWRs. Oyster Creek is 23 feet above sea level, so it should be above any surge from Sandy.

Oldest US nuclear reactor: a 'disaster' in waiting?

I couldn't find any elevation data for the others.