Drumbeat: February 18, 2013
Posted by Leanan on February 18, 2013 - 11:21am
Governments Look for New Ways to Pay for Roads and Bridges
Governments are struggling with good news that has a fiscal downside. Cars are becoming more efficient, alternative fuels are on the rise and people are driving less. That is good for the environment, but bad for the revenues that go into building and maintaining roads, because it means that the money collected from gasoline taxes has been dwindling while costs climb.Fuel taxes provide some 40 percent of state highway revenues and 92 percent of the federal highway trust fund, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. But the funds, squeezed by fuel economy, are not keeping up with the nation’s infrastructure needs. Moreover, according to figures collected by the organization, only about a dozen states tie their tax to inflation, which means that the revenue loses ground every year. Seventeen states have not raised their gas taxes in at least 20 years; only six states and the District of Columbia have raised their gas taxes since 2008. The federal gas tax, currently 18.4 cents per gallon, has not been raised since 1997.
WTI Crude Drops a Second Day; Saudi Exports Fall to 15-Month Low
West Texas Intermediate oil fell for a second day, extending the biggest drop in two weeks, while Brent futures were little changed. Saudi Arabia’s crude shipments slid to a 15-month low in December.New York crude declined as much as 0.4 percent. Data from the Federal Reserve showed U.S. industrial production unexpectedly shrank in January. Saudi Arabia exported 7.06 million barrels of crude a day in December, the least since September 2011, according to the Joint Organisations Data Initiative. Christof Ruehl, chief economist at BP Plc, sees no scarcity of supply and expects Saudi Arabia to reduce exports further, he said today in an interview in London. Brent’s premium to WTI widened as the London-traded contract rose.
IEA Chief Economist Says High Oil Prices Harmful to Global Economy
The International Energy Agency's chief economist, Fatih Birol, said high Brent crude oil prices are posing big risks for the global economy."The current prices now they are a major problem for global economic recovery, especially for Europe, the weakest chain of the global economy for the time being," Mr. Birol told Dow Jones Newswires, speaking on the sidelines of a conference.
Iraq, Saudi cut December oil exports while Venezuela boosts shipments
Iraq and Saudi Arabia cut crude oil exports in December for a second month, while fellow Opec member Venezuela boosted shipments to their highest in more than four years, according to the Joint Organisations Data Initiative.Iraq, the biggest producer in the Opec after Saudi Arabia, curtailed exports by 10 per cent to 2.35 million barrels per day, data posted on the initiative's website showed. The Saudi kingdom shipped 7.06 million bpd in the month, down 1.3 per cent from November, according to the data.
Saudi Crude Exports for 2012 Reached Seven-Year High, Data Show
Saudi Arabia boosted its average crude oil exports last year to the highest level since 2005, while Iraq and Kuwait shipped the most in at least a decade, according to the Joint Organisations Data Initiative.Saudi Arabia, the largest producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, exported 7.41 million barrels a day on average in 2012, up 5.2 percent from 2011, according to Bloomberg calculations based on monthly data from the initiative. Last year’s shipments were the highest since the kingdom’s exports averaged 7.47 million a day in 2005, the data showed.
Platts proposes changes to Brent benchmark assessment
LONDON (Reuters) - Pricing agency Platts has proposed changes to the way it assesses the Brent oil market following calls from the industry for a sweeping reform to boost liquidity and transparency of one of the world's most important oil benchmarks.Platts said on Monday it would move to a full month-ahead assessment process for its North Sea Dated Brent, cash Brent (BFOE) and related markets in March 2015 from the current 25 days. From 2020 it proposed to move to a 45-day ahead structure.
32 days of higher gas prices comes at tough time
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) - Gas prices have risen for 32 days straight, according to AAA.That means that the average price for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline has increased more than 13% over that period to $3.73.
It's hitting wallets right in the middle of winter, when people are already looking at large home heating bills. And it comes just after many Americans have been hit with smaller paychecks, and are worried about looming budget cuts that could deliver an even deeper blow.
Hedge Funds Cut ICE Brent Crude Net-Longs From Two-Year High
Hedge funds and other money managers reduced bullish bets on Brent crude from their highest level in more than two years, the first cut in a month, according to data from ICE Futures Europe.
Ethiopian rebels warns Canadian firm against exploring oil in the country’s east
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — Ethiopian rebels are warning a Canadian oil company against oil exploration in the country’s east.The Ogaden National Liberation Front, or ONLF, said Monday the region is unsafe for the Africa Oil Corporation and said it should halt operations until the rebels make peace with the government.
Algeria In Amenas gas plant to restart partially before Feb.24
ALGIERS (Reuters) - Algeria's In Amenas gas plant is likely to resume partial output in the next six days, the head of state energy firm Sonatrach was quoted as saying on Monday, after repairs following a siege by Islamist militants.
Libya Parliament Chief Appeals for Calm Amid Dearth of Investors
Libya’s parliamentary chief and de- facto head of state said foreign companies’ reluctance to move in was a sign of growing chaos, as he implored all to work to stabilize the nation two years after the start of the uprising against Muammar Qaddafi.
Iran rejects global powers’ offer on gold trade
DUBAI — Iran has criticised a reported plan by major powers to demand the closure of a uranium enrichment plant in return for an easing of sanctions on Tehran’s trade in gold and other precious metals, Iranian media reported.
Indian pays for Iran oil in rupees, Turkey route halted-sources
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India is now paying Iran only in rupees for its oil after it lost another payment route in euros due to tougher sanctions from Feb. 6, sources at local refiners said, leaving Tehran struggling to use the tightly-restricted Indian currency.The rupee is only partly convertible, limiting its international acceptability, although Iran can use the currency to buy non-sanctioned goods and services from India.
Crowds cheer Hugo Chávez' surprise return to Venezuela
CARACAS -- Joyful supporters of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez crowded outside a military hospital in the capital Monday after the cancer-stricken leader's surprise return from Cuba where he had undergone a fourth operation more than two months ago.
Billionaire Miner Fights Rivals to Halt Digs on His Ranch
“In Australia, by law, you only own the top meter, everything underneath, that is owned by the people of Australia,” Peter Strachan, a resources analyst at Perth-based StockAnalysis, said in a phone interview. “If someone puts in a request to explore on your land, you have to deal with that and make sure you’re compensated for access.”
Total joins Chevron in complaint over Indonesia earnings rules
JAKARTA (Reuters) - French oil major Total has added its voice to complaints by U.S. leviathan Chevron that Indonesia's rules for overseas investors are hampering operations in the southeast Asian country.Indonesia's central bank brought in rules in 2011 to force exporters to channel earnings through local banks, but the issue has become more sensitive in recent months because of the fall in value of the rupiah and could threaten future investment by the two companies.
Thousands at climate rally in U.S. call on Obama to reject Keystone pipeline
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Thousands of protesters gathered on the Washington's National Mall on Sunday calling on U.S. President Barack Obama to reject the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline proposal and honor his inaugural pledge to act on climate change.
Obama Faces Risks in Pipeline Decision
President Obama faces a knotty decision in whether to approve the much-delayed Keystone oil pipeline: a choice between alienating environmental advocates who overwhelmingly supported his candidacy or causing a deep and perhaps lasting rift with Canada.
President Obama should reject the Keystone XL pipeline
On February 13, during an act of planned civil disobedience, we both were arrested at the White House. Along with 46 other citizens – authors and ranchers, reverends and farmers, union leaders and scientists – we had handcuffed ourselves to the White House fence to deliver a message to President Barack Obama: We cannot save our climate if you allow the United State to make bad choices like building a pipeline to carry Canada's carbon-intensive tar sands oil to the Gulf of Mexico, which could prove catastrophic for our land, water, and climate. It would only feed the expansion of strip mining the boreal forests and wetlands for tar sands crude.
The Keystone XL Pipeline, Terrorism and Our National Security
Alberta, north of our most distant mountain states is far enough away that we know generally little about its governance. Are these recent grants an augury of Alberta's future course? Perhaps the question that needs be asked now is: are we helping to fund a future danger on our northern border, and will the revenues generated by the Keystone Pipeline help to create a condition deeply adversarial to our national security?
The politics of emissions: Keystone is an easier target than U.S. coal-fired power plants
Canada’s oil sands are one of the most carbon-intensive sources of crude in the world, and for American climate activists, the Keystone XL pipeline represents a “line in the sand” on climate policy.But greenhouse gas produced by the oil sands is a fraction of the amount spewed by U.S. coal-fired power plants. In 2010, the oil sands produced 48 million tons of carbon-dioxide emissions. Coal-fired power plants in the state of Wisconsin alone produced 43 million tons.
BP to fund emergency support boat for North Sea
OIL giant BP is stepping in to bankroll a second boat to provide emergency tug cover for major incidents in the waters around the Northern Isles, it was announced today.
Rebuilding New York's economy: Is fracking the answer?
ALBANY — The problem is the years-long economic decline of New York’s Southern Tier, an area once known for its strength in manufacturing and agriculture.The solution, some contend, is developing the Marcellus Shale, a gas-rich, underground rock formation that touches parts of 29 counties in New York.
Faults may be active under Aomori plant
Significant portions of major geological faults running under Tohoku Electric Power Co.’s one-reactor Higashidori nuclear power plant in Aomori Prefecture are probably active, a Nuclear Regulation Authority panel said in a draft report Monday.
Nuclear waste: too hot to handle?
THERE are 437 nuclear power reactors in 31 countries around the world. The number of repositories for high-level radioactive waste? Zero. The typical lifespan of a nuclear power plant is 60 years. The waste from nuclear power is dangerous for up to one million years. Clearly, the waste problem is not going to go away any time soon.In fact, it is going to get a lot worse. The World Nuclear Association says that 45 countries without nuclear power are giving it serious consideration. Several others, including China, South Korea and India, are planning to massively expand their existing programmes. Meanwhile, dealing with the waste from nuclear energy can be put off for another day, decade or century.
Could Wind Power Cool New England’s Price Fever?
Jim Gordon, who has been working for a decade to start up the project known as Cape Wind, said in an e-mail that the price spike “highlights why offshore wind power can be an increasingly important component of the North East’s energy future.’’In a telephone interview, he added that offshore wind was particularly well suited to production when gas demand was at its peak.
Food crops should feed people, not motors
It is painfully obvious that in order to prevent the most extreme predictions of global climate change from becoming a reality we must reduce and ultimately end our use of petroleum for fuel. But how we do so makes a big difference. Biofuels, both conventional (corn ethanol, fuel from sugar cane, palm oil, soy biodiesel, grain sorghum) and advanced (so-called cellulosic biofuel: made from plant waste materials, wood chips, restaurant grease, and even municipal waste), were thought to generate somewhat less carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases than petroleum-based gasoline. By law, therefore – under a program called the Renewable Fuels Standard – gasoline producers in the United States must blend a certain amount of biofuel into their product, sold as either pure ethanol or blended fuels featuring different percentages of gas and biofuel.
How Did Japan Curb Pollution Without Sacrificing Growth?
Five decades ago, people were asking similar questions about Japan. Even as the world marveled at the country’s 10 percent annual growth, alarm was growing over air pollution in several cities. Emissions of nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide and sulfur dioxide tripled during the 1960s. Japan became known for pollution-related illnesses: Yokkaichi asthma, Minamata disease (mercury poisoning) — both named after the cities where they first appeared — and cadmium poisoning, known as itai-itai, or “ouch-ouch,” because of the excruciating bone pain it caused.Today, Japanese cities are among the world’s least polluted, according to the World Health Organization. Japan’s environmental record is hardly spotless, but the country rightly prides itself on blue skies, Prius taxis and mandatory recycling. What’s more, it managed to clean up without sacrificing growth by investing in pollution-control technologies and giving local governments leeway to tighten standards beyond national requirements.
Reducing Your Carbon Footprint
Many people believe that Hurricane Sandy made the consequences of climate change painfully clear, so it might be tempting to think that stricter emissions standards and renewable-energy investments could lead to a less stormy future. But while these high-level policy initiatives are important, changes on the home front matter, too.
Why Republicans Should Embrace The Reality Of Climate Change
We have reached the point where every rational person who believes in making decisions based on science and available data should, if not fully believe that human beings are warming the planet by releasing greenhouse gases, at least recognize that this is what the data seem to suggest and that it is what the vast majority of scientists who study weather believe is the case.
Reformed UN formula for making planet greener to get first test
OSLO (Reuters) - A new United Nations plan to involve all nations in marshalling science to fix environmental problems ranging from toxic chemicals to climate change will be put to the test from Monday at talks in Nairobi.
Report Points to Risk of Serious Gap in Weather Satellite Data
Had it not been for polar-orbiting satellites, NOAA’s forecasts of Hurricane Sandy’s track could have been hundreds of miles off, scientists say. Rather than indicating five days in advance that Sandy would make landfall on Oct. 29, left, the forecasting models would have shown the hurricane remaining at sea.
Arctic needs protection from resource rush as ice melts: UN body
LONDON (Reuters) - The Arctic needs to be better protected from a rush for natural resources as melting ice makes mineral and energy exploration easier, the United Nations' Environment Programme (UNEP) said.
The reality of rising seas and rivers leaves no choice. Sea barriers sufficed half a century ago; but they’re disruptive to the ecology and are built only so high, while the waters keep rising. American officials who now tout sea gates as the one-stop-shopping solution to protect Lower Manhattan should take notice. In lieu of flood control the new philosophy in the Netherlands is controlled flooding.
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Russian oil production takes huge hit in January.
Russian oil output down 1.7%, gas up 2.9% in Jan – Rosstat
Russia's federal state statistics service says Russian C+C was down 1.7% from January 2012 and down 2.9% from December 2012. Doing the math that puts Russian C+C production at 9,702 kb/d last month, down 169 kb/d from January 2012, down 289 kb/d from December and down 351 kb/d from their high of 10.053 mb/d in November.
The statistical service says January production was 98.3 percent of production in January 2012 and 97.1 percent of production for December 2012.
Russian Crude + Condensate production for the last 13 months in Kb/d. 2012 data is from JODI.
Was this just a one month anomaly or the beginning of a trend? We will know in a few months. However I expect Russian production will be down in 2013 from 2012 and that 2012 will prove to be the all time high for Russia.
Ron P.
Impressive, are there some similar changes (down or up) over a month in the last 3 or 4 years ?
The Russian ECI* data showed a decline from 2009 to 2011:
2009: 3.66
2010: 3.62
2011: 3.47
And their net exports have basically been flat since 2007:
2007: 7.2 mbpd
2008: 7.0
2009: 7.2
2010: 7.3
2011: 7.3
The ECI ratio fell from 2009 to 2011 because consumption grew faster than production.
*Export Capacity Index, ratio of total petroleum liquids production to liquids consumption, BP
Link to article on the ECI Ratio concept:
http://aspousa.org/2013/02/commentary-the-export-capacity-index/
The only other such drops shown by the EIA are during the Russian wildfires in the fall of 2011. JODI showed such a decline in January of 2012 when they switched sources of their data. JODI now uses the same source as this report, Russia's Federal State Statistics Service. Or at least I assume they do as their numbers now match theirs almost exact. I think before 2012 they used the data published at CDU TEK, a for profit data gathering firm in Russia.
Ron P.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-17/saudi-oil-output-falls-to-19-mo...
Meanwhile, 'Saudi Oil Output Falls to 19-Month Low as Exports Decline'
So the two biggest players are declining--is this a story in the making?
Wasn't Robert Hirsch calling for a 2013-2016 top on world oil production in last years ASPO ? IIRC he also mentioned that the decline rate will be ~3-4%. If this trend continues his prediction will be bang on target and on the pessimistic side too. All the shale in the world won't make up for the loss if Russia and Saudi Arabia start declining together.
Shale, don't be talking bout no shale oil, cause thaz what gonna mak us energy indeependenlike. Youz seen waz they be doin up there in that there Bakken?
(just a little monday morning humor)
Well pretty close, but not exactly what he said. He said, in 2012, that world oil production will go into decline in the next one to four years. That means the top could possibly be in 2012. Then he gave examples of two possible scenarios. The first was that if the decline is less than one percent then, he thinks, we will struggle through. Then he gave the worst case scenario, a decline of 3 or 4% and that would be catastrophic. He said "our belief is that we are going to hit something like this 3 or 4 percent decline in this one to four year period." He says all this in the first 4.5 minutes of his presentation here:
Robert Hirsch - The Impending World Oil Shortage: Learning from the Past
And I am in very strong agreement with him on his time-frame. The decline will begin in either 2013, 2014, 2015 or 2016. However I disagree with him concerning the percentage decline. I believe the first few years the decline will be in the nature of 1 percent, give or take 1/2 of a percent. Then, after two or three years, the decline will start to accelerate. How fast the decline accelerates will depend on both geological and political factors. But both will make the decline accelerate.
Ron P.
Ron – I wonder if we don’t make it more difficult to sell our story when we use such phrases such as “impending world oil shortage”. I think most of us understand the point Mr. Hirsch was trying to make. But lately the point has been made that supplies will continue to meet demand for the simple fact that as the price of oil rises (as it has in the last several years) there will be fewer buyers able to pay and thus for those that can pay there is no “shortage of oil”. Which is the stick that the cornucopians love to beat us with. There is no shortage of oil in the US. In fact, due to increased production and decreased demand we are importing less oil. That does not support the concept of the US “running out of oil”. Of course, such views ignore the damage high oil prices have done to our economy as well as the rest of the world. Likewise there is no economy in the world today that is not able to buy all the oil THEY CAN AFFORD TO PAY FOR.
Obviously as we slid further down the PO road there will eventually be less global oil production. If total global production drops to 50 mmbopd there will still be no shortage of oil for those who can pay the price at that time. Which is the exact condition we’re in today: there are many consumers who would buy oil if it were selling for $50/bbl. But there is no $50/bbl oil for sale. A day will come (as it did back in ’08) when oil will sell for $150/bbl (at least for a short time). And there will be ample supplies for those who can afford $150/bbl oil. Just as there are ample supplies today for those that can pay the current price.
There is no shortage of oil today. There is a shortage of “cheap oil”. In fact not just a shortage but a complete lack of it. So what does an “impending shortage” really mean? Does it mean there is no oil available to the highest bidder? That would imply zero oil exported. But what would that also say about US domestic production…zero domestic production? Difficult to imagine a day when US oil production drops to zero. Easier IMHO to imagine oil prices staying very high for an extended period of time and thus greatly reducing demand. A demand that the then current oil supply can satisfy.
Increasing price of gasoline may sell our story. It is clerly visible for everyone with a longe enough memory.
On the network news this afternoon the one interviewee, filling his tank, that the reporter dwelt on asserted with appropriate conviction that high prices were obviously just manipulation by greedy oil executives. No other viewpoints were presented except that of the station owner who simply stated that he had no idea why prices were going up.
Rockman, I agree with almost everything you say. However there are two points I would like to make.
First, I am not trying to sell my story. I am presenting my story for those interested in reading it. I like to do that and compare my story with all the other stories of those who post here. I also like comparing my story with those published daily in MSM and on the internet. If I didn't enjoy it I would not do it. And... it gives me something to do in my retirement.
I have stated many times in the past that we are but observers in the grand scheme of things. I have no illusions that I can really change things by converting anyone to my point of view. But I am almost compelled to talk about it to someone. And no one I know in person want's to hear a damn word of it. So I post here.
Second, we, you and I, seem to be talking about two different things. I am talking, in my posts above, about the peak of world oil production and not about any shortage of oil. You must know from my prior posts that I agree with you that there is never a shortage of oil at the current price. And if the supply of oil drops, the price will rise until there is no shortage anymore. However when people like Hirsch talk about an oil shortage they speak on purely economic terms, talking about what a drop in oil production will do to the world economy. And I don't fault them for that.
However I am talking about the peak in world oil production no matter what the cause. If the price of oil collapses the economy and oil production peaks because the price drops so low that oil companies cannot produce it at the price at the time, that is still the peak of oil production. Or if oil production peaks for geological reasons even as prices rise ever higher, that is still the peak. The peak of world oil production will still be the peak no matter what the cause.
And one final point. Why am I even concerned with all this if I freely admit there is nothing I can do to change it? Well when you are watching the collapse of civilization as we know it, it is just damn hard to take your eyes off it.
Ron P.
I have to agree with Ron P. However, Rockman is correct as well. I have been reading you all for years but post very little. Again, I see ENERGY as the force that runs the human body as well as the power that runs the world economy. Money is supposed to be a store of that trade-able energy.
Fiat money (i.e. the U.S. Dollar) is only as good as its Treasuries that back it. With over $16 trillion in U.S. Treasury debt... there's not much value is there?
I am not going to get into another debate about gold and silver being money as I have shown in a prior post 95%+ of Americans have no idea of the value of either precious metal. Hence, the Money Changers have won that battle.
Anyhow, getting back to energy, a modern society needs a certain amount of energy at relatively HIGH EROI to sustain itself. I also agree with Nate Hagens that Derivatives and the Financial Ponzi Scheme has destroyed the true EROI of oil & natural gas.
We are past the point of no return. The collapse as Ron P. has stated is well on its way. It doesn't matter if less people can afford higher oil prices... the whole society implodes from within.
The Collapse of the Suburban Economy as Kunstler has stated is HERE:
Store Closings by the end of 2013
Best Buy
Forecast store closings: 200 to 250
Sears Holding Corp.
Forecast store closings: Kmart 175 to 225, Sears 100 to 125
J.C. Penney
Forecast store closings: 300 to 350
Office Depot
Forecast store closings: 125 to 150
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The Falling EROI is the real damage. Of course peak oil and declining Net Oil Exports add insult to injury. However, when it takes more energy to grow an acre of commercial apples than you get from the apple... we are already screwed.
EROI of COMMERCIAL APPLE PRODUCTION = 0.25/1
EROI of COMMERCIAL POTATO PRODUCTION = 1.3/1
Rockman is also correct when he discusses POD, the Peak Oil Dynamic. It really dosen't matter the DATE of Peak Oil, but the on going implications of higher prices, peaking supply and the falling EROI.
Money Printing and the creation of the Derivatives Monster have only covered up the SYMPTOMS... but have actually made the situation worse.
Things are far worse than we realize.
For the sake of completeness,
The rise of the following store chains has had something to do with the decline of the chains you mentioned:
Wal Mart
Target
Kohl's
Bed, Bath, and Beyond
Lowes'
Home Depot
WalGreen's
Various 'Dollar Stores'
and, of course, numerous business on the Internet, headlined by Amazon.com.
Zooming back out to the Big Picture, I do not contest that the declining availability of 'cheap energy' is having a 'winding down' effect on the economy of the U.S.
Before I take off to the great outdoors in a minute, I offer my suggestion to all of the following book:
After Oil: SF Visions Of A Post-Petroleum World
I am about three-fourths through it and find the various short stories an interesting read...
I see that JMG has another book impending for sale which may be of interest to certain TOD denizens:
Not the Future We Ordered: The Psychology of Peak Oil and the Myth of Eternal Progress
Ulan... while I appreciate your offering of "Other Side of the Story", don't forget this little tidbit:
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. had the worst sales start to a month in seven years
“In case you haven’t seen a sales report these days, February MTD sales are a total disaster,” Jerry Murray, Wal- Mart’s vice president of finance and logistics, said in a Feb. 12 e-mail to other executives, referring to month-to-date sales. “The worst start to a month I have seen in my ~7 years with the company.”
Wal-Mart and discounters such as Family Dollar Stores Inc. are bracing for a rise in the payroll tax to take a bigger bite from the paychecks of shoppers already dealing with elevated unemployment. The world’s largest retailer’s struggles come after executives expected a strong start to February because of the Super Bowl, milder weather and paycheck cycles, according to the minutes of a Feb. 1 officers meeting Bloomberg obtained.
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The first BOX STORES to close are just the first in a line on closings that will continue. In a complex modern society as our, rising taxes come hand in hand with an ever-increasing amount of infrastructure and etc.
Don't worry, all those BOX STORES that you mentioned will have closings... it's just a matter of time.
Payroll tax hike and increased gas prices probably took away their customer's ability to spend more.
speculawyer... correct. I would imagine higher taxes and higher gas prices are directly related to the falling EROI.
Actually the payroll tax cut was only intended as temporary, so returning it to its prior rate really isn't a tax hike. But the same thing happened with bush jr's tax cuts which were also suppose to be temporary, and when they came due politicians in favor of those tax cuts claimed O was trying to raise taxes. Maybe its all semantics, but the idea of 'temporary' really should have some meaning.
Don't forget all the money now being spent on buying those suddenly expensive guns which many folks had put off, but now have decided to grab before they are made illegal. That money isn't going to appear on the books for Walmart, since they ran out of most of those back in December..
E. Swanson
Yeah, that is very depressing. All that money spent on something those people should hope they never have to use.
Whatever guns you have VS a large team of 'others' with things like .50 cal that can reach out and touch you from miles away - you will end up a corpse.
The use of mobile weapon platforms - be they drones or iRobots with guns - again, the individual with a gun will be on the short brown end of the stick.
WWII had plenty of literature on how to make improvised guns dropped into places like occupied France. Such documentation is on-line. So its not like projectile weapons are going to go away.
Another problem was that congress did not pass the new income tax law until early January. Because of this the IRS did not start accepting e-filed tax returns until January 30 this year. In previous years they would start taking returns in around Jan 13. This has delayed refunds around 2 weeks. Tax refunds are huge for Wal-Mart.
I keep thinking s going to htf at some point for the various reasons you've listed above. It's like a pressure cooker with a stuck valve. Stuck because of the fancy Bernanke fiscal footwork, but that only builds pressure to be released at a later point in time, like you say making the situation worse.
There are upcoming govt. cuts that will begin to take effect in March and more later, so the capability to stave off budget cuts may soon come to pass. While I agree with trying to work within budget constraints, the implications on the economy from huge reductions in expenditures is daunting. Seems almost certain it will lead to another recession, and with all the people still trying to put their lives back together after the 08/09 disaster, it could potentially get really bad, very quickly. Not collapse per se', but a very harsh step down.
Peak Earl... I totally agree with you. The falling EROI will continue to put the most stress on those who live in a higher EROI lifestyle (i.e, large cities & suburbs). I would imagine the recessions will get worse and the impacts will be felt hardest on those who live marginal occupations in cities and suburbs.
To me, the most efficient EROI living is in a modest home on a few acres in the country. This will afford the best protection as the EROI continues to decline.
For those who believe its not even safe to live in the country and grow some of your own food because thieves and bandits will steal it and kill you in a complete collapse... why go on living anyhow?
Yes SRSrocco2, besides in the event of collapse presumably precious fuel supplies will not be wasted on driving out in the country where there is a risk of getting stranded.
Probably a sidelight, but can anyone confirm if the sequestration cuts are actually reductions in future "planned" (planned, planned, there's no budget) spending over the next 10 years?
Or not.
Only in DC can a reduction in planned increased spending be counted as a spending cut. So, is it that spending levels will go up with sequestration, just not by as much?
Thanks,
Pete
Yes, the sequestration is a reduction in planned increases. And yes, only in DC...
I can't find the link to a story a few years ago. Someone calculated that all the paychecks in the USA would not cover the required revenue to keep all the big box stores open. I might fault the math but I was impressed with the magnitude of the situation. It would be interesting to see the net gain/loss in total numbers.
Ron - I agree with you. And my post wasn't about you or your message but Mr. Hirsch's post. "...when people like Hirsch talk about an oil shortage they speak on purely economic terms, talking about what a drop in oil production will do to the world economy. And I don't fault them for that." And that's exactly what I don't like about his using the phrase "impending world oil shortage. First, many more folks will just read that title than his report. And many cornucopians as well as a lot of J6P's will dimiss him and anything else he may add to the conversation. How about "Impending economic problems with energy production". IMHO throwing about a hot button worrd like shortage is just cheap theatrics. I know that sounds harsh but I say the same when the cornucopians do the same.
I think some of Hirsch's wording is a product of his age & experience. In the 1970s they had actual gas shortages due to price controls and rationing that created long lines. If Obama is a "socialist" then conservative Richard Nixon was a card-carrying Marxist.
However, unlike the 1970s where people of the USA actually still tried to cooperate with each other somewhat to solve problems, we now have an everyone-for-themselves world where there will be no gas lines. The gas stations will just crank up the prices until the lines go away. So Hirsch is using the wrong words because he comes from a different era.
Indeed! There is no shortage of oil. The real problem is higher oil prices. There is no point is talking about a 'shortage' because people have no ability to gauge if there is a 'shortage' or not. And there is not a a shortage at all nor will there be shortage effects like gas-lines. But what there has been and will continue to be is higher oil prices. And that can be just as devastating if not worse than a shortage. An actual shortage gets people to change their ways . . . but slowing rising oil prices creates a boiling frog situation. People just don't respond properly. They buy their SUVs and wonder why they just can't seem to make ends meet like they did back in the 90's.
"They buy their SUVs and wonder why they just can't seem to make ends meet like they did back in the 90's."
It's so much worse than that. This has happened at least twice personally...the person will buy a brand-new truck - then immediately proceed to start complaining how they can't go anywhere because gas is "too expensive."
The one guy uses this truck to travel about 100 miles (one way) to a lake where he keeps his powerboat. Doesn't tow the boat, it's kept at a marina - just to travel back and forth. The boat has a V8. Complains about how much it costs to travel back and forth.
They know - they just don't care, or rather it's more important to them to have the Truck/SUV than it is to have the gas to run it. They'd rather have the truck and have it eat every cent of their paycheck (or pension in the case of the guy above) than get a frugal vehicle.
And then when gas prices go up a bit, we have the inevitable "news" stories talking to some guy moaning how he has to cut back on his essentials in order to pay for gas. How many times does this person have to be warned? Apparently, people assume that all gas rises are just temporary and will never return. Boo hoo. Cry me a river as the vast majority of vehicles around here are either SUVs or trucks.
There is a generational shift in terms of SUVs, trucks and Auto Addiction.
I just took my daughter to visit Northeastern University in downtown Boston via Amtrak and had a couple of interesting "straws in the wind." First off, the Amtrak train was crammed with young college age riders including a fascinating 23 year old MIT graduate who now works for an Oil Services company. He was totally in agreement that we need to increase Green Transit and he would ride his bike to his job in New Jersey if it were safe. He also expects his to be the last generation to work in the Oil Services industry as oil will eventually run out. He is interested in other areas in which his skills in designing drilling equipment may be useful.
Secondly and perhaps more importantly, every single student who lauded their school experience mentioned "NOT NEEDING A CAR"! Also several of the University speakers also mentioned the advantage of living where you do not need a car. One of the students had to commute via car for one of her Coop engagements and hated it.
The age of the car as status symbol is ending...
I met an American family today. They were asking me about life, here in Mexico, and asked if I owned a car. The conversation went along these lines:-
Father: "Do you own a car here?"
NAOM: "No, just my bicycle. It's a lot quicker to get around town."
Son (maybe 8yo): "And a lot less expensive too."
Naom: ...stunned!
NAOM
A bit of a pet peeve of mine, but with a title such as "learning from the past", I think it is really a pity that Robert Hirsch relies again on this almost complete legend : "first oil schock = Arab embargo = geopolitical event and not resource constraints", again.
The first oil shock was, first and foremost, a direct consequence of US peak in late 1970.
The embargo was an almost complete non event in terms of barels taken out of the market, even if its declaration pushed the price up on the market.
Contrary to US peak as below graph clearly shows :
Moreover only towards a few countries (US and Holland) and from a few (not Iran in particular, and also not Irak).
Even Maugeri is basically on this line, see chaptere 9 below :
http://books.google.fr/books?id=JWmx5uKA6gIC&printsec=frontcover&hl=fr&s...
And the fact is that further to US peak, the majors needed higher oil prices to start GOM, Alaska, North Sea, and US diplomacy in fact pushed OPEC to increase price (reduce production), in particular James Akins in a 72 meeting in Algiers.
Moreover, something that seems to me is still not very much known at all, the "embargo"(that lasted 3 or 4 months anyway) was never effective from KSA to the US : tankers kept going from KSA, through Barhain to make it more discrete, towards the US army in Vietnam in particular.
Akins (US ambassador in Saudi Arabia at the time) is very clear about this in an interview in below doc (somewhere after 20:00, unfortunately dubbed) :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=fQJ-0jAr3LQ
Basically saying that voices started to be strong in order to "do something about it" from especially two senators, he asked the permission to tell them what was going on, he did, there was never any leak ...
The truth is that this "embargo"(almost complete myth) was very practical for everybody :
- for the US to "cover up" US 1970 peak towards its public opinion and western opinion in general
- for the OPEC Arab producers to show they were "doing something" for the Palestinians.
But the result is that the US peak message wasn't received at all, the image being "it was geopolitics".
Add to this the dropping of Bretton Woods in 1971 and the starting of debts piling up soon after throughout OECD, and it clearly appears as a turning point which for sure not much has been learnt from ...
need to link your graph to a larger version, the copy on DB is small and hard to read.
Nepa=National Environmental Policy Act. Link between US Peak oil and NEPA, if exists, unexplained.
Took this one as recent with the current uptick, but not suggesting there is any link between NEPA and US peak, in fact don't think there is any.
bigger one :
While the embargo did not decrease world oil production all that much, it did keep exports from rising. And US production did decline from 1 to 4 percent per year during the first six years after the peak.
Looking at this latest chart, it looks like the US did increase imports considerably during the early 70s. So I stand corrected. But still the decline in US production was not all that great, much less than the increase in imports.
So I am at a loss explain the shock.
Ron P.
The embargo didn't decrease world oil production *at all*, it slowed down world oil production growth a little bit if at all for 3 or 4 months.
Note that the first decrease in Saudi production happens after the "embargo".(forgot the reason)
US peak on the other hand clearly decreased world oil production.
Yet it doesn't appear as a label in any barrel price history chart, for instance, contrary to the "embargo", this is the point.
US production peaked in 1970. The in the following three years world Crude + Condensate production increased by 9.8 million barrels per day... according to the EIA anyway.
World C+C production in kb/d. The data is from the EIA. Their data only goes back to 1970.
Ron P.
Yes but "by definition" US peak decreased US part in world production, both in percentage but also in absolute volume.
Or US peak took all the barrels from the US import spike shown in previous graph out of the world market.
What should be compared is world production post US peak to an hypothetical world production with US at 1970 maximum or following the previous growth trendline. As the market was growing in volume anyway.
If we define the first oil schock by a sharp rise in barrel price (the way it is defined).
Then first the rise started from US peak (and in fact shortages in the US for heating fuel in particular as well) :
Maugeri page 108
adding :
And about the "fuel crisis" in the US prior to the embargo, for instance :
(many articles by looking for "fuel shortages" in the NYT archive in the August 70 to Sept 73 period)
And if we assume that the price was more or less defined by supply and demand (note that the spot markets have been set up around the same time).
Then we can evaluate the impact on number of barrels taken out of the market by US peak, using EIA data :
US prod Oct 1970 : 301,403 (thousands barrels)
US prod Sept 73 (start of the "embargo") : around 270,000 (Sept is a bad month, taking somekind of average through the embargo period)
So around 30,000 barrels month or 1 million barrels day (would be more 2 millions if comparing with previous upward trend), and if we consider US import spike is due to US peak, it is more around 3 millions barrels day.
From the embargo side, more difficult to say, about this Maugeri writes :
page 113
If we take the first total 340 millions barrels number over three months, it is 3,7 mbpd.
So not so clear! (and the reliability of this data is probably questionable, for instance the barrels that kept on going from KSA to the US not counted)
But still it seems to me fair to say that the "structural event" related to the first oil shock is much more US peak than the embargo, but not the one used as a name or label, and not forgetting that again, the need to raise the barrel price was the strategy of western oil majors and US diplomacy anyway.
Will try to look up what Yergin is saying about it in "the prize".
You wrote: "US peak on the other hand clearly decreased world oil production."
I responded with a chart showing just how wrong that statement was. I showed that in the following three years after the US peak, according to the EIA, world Crude + Condensate production increased by 9.8 million barrels per day. You responded:
"Yes but "by definition" US peak decreased US part in world production, both in percentage but also in absolute volume."
YvesT, when I am wrong, and I am often wrong, I simply state "I stand corrected." That is not really all that hard to do. Pity that you do not have the courage to do the same.
Ron P.
Ron, to try to be more precise, and I agree that I was wrong on one point (actual decrease from the countries implementing the embargo, this from Maugeri and Yergin numbers):
If we divide the producers by :
A) the US
B) the countries that implemented the Embargo (Arab OPEC countries or OAPEC, and in fact not all of them especially Iraq)
C) rest of the world producers.
First of all the first oil schock isn't defined in terms of volume but more in terms of barrel price jump (and the second one as well), and in fact on your chart world oil production doesn't decrease during the embargo either (the embargo ended beginning 74), but this occurs in a strong growing production and demand market so change in production growth is somehow as important as actual decrease.
My point is that :
1) US production decreased after US peak, so yes the volume of oil provided by the US to the world "market" decreased. (and the price rise started from there). Even if the US was already a net importer, the fact still stands (especially through the induced US import rise).
2) For group B, yes the embargo not only stopped the steep rise in their oil production of the time, but actually did decrease the volume coming from them. I admit I was wrong on this one even though the exact amount seems not that easy to determine from available information.
3) For the total world oil supply during the embargo, we should take into account the decrease induced by US peak, and the decrease induced by the embargo, it seems these two are in fact in the same ballpark (using 1970 US prod to define "missing" production from the US).
As to the overall price aspect, dropping of Bretton Woods and associated $ devaluation also had an effect in raising the price (prior to the embargo), and the tension to raise the price was there anyway before the embargo, this in a "win-win" situation considering oil majors and OPEC (or OAPEC countries more than anything else) : to be able to develop the more expensive plays for the majors (Alaska, GOM, North Sea), to increase revenues for OPAEC (and also the majors for the part opeared by them in these countries).
Quote from Yergin (before the Embargo) :
Yikes. Paraphrase in your own words, please. Eight pages of quotes is too much for a comment.
Ok, could have made it a bit shorter, but difficult, not going to redo it or paraphrase anyway, and I think quoting the available sources on this point is much better.
But anyway, if you consider that the fact that probably 99% of Americans aren't even aware that the US went through its oil production peak in 1970, that the "fuel crisis" started in the US much before the embargo, and that the labeling of the first oil schock by "Arab embargo" has a lot to do with this ignorance, fine.
Obviously a touchy point even for people well aware of the issue...
I'd say more of the ignorance is, well, just plain ignorance. We're not a nation that cares a lot about history, and 1970 is ancient history. The median age in the U.S. is 37. Which means half the nation were either not born yet or way too young to drive during the '70s oil crisis.
But seems to me the younger generation with the mess coming or already there, might want to look up a bit at what happened, and especially for the U.S., the fact that U.S. peak happened in 1970 is certainly a key valuable information (direction taken by Heinberg in his talks for instance), and especially under current propaganda regarding shale oil and the like.
Again the point is : the first oil shock was already a ressource constraints event, for a major part triggered by U.S. peak.
And not mentioning it when refering to the first oil schock in an ASPO conference is a bit strange.
Well I recall the period only too well. And I still recall the winter of 73, a very cold time when there was no way I could afford heating oil.
My take has always been that the 70's Arab Embargo was just that, a big decrease in world supply that shot the price up. And most of us back then thought the same too. A reduction in world oil supply was actually not to occur until much later. The old "Let them eat oil" bumper sticker immediately comes to mind.
English may not be your native tongue, but the graphs speak for themselves. Thanks for your comments.
Doug. Thanks to you, indeed English isn't my mother tongue (which is French), but this "common mindset equation" :
[first oil schock = Arab Embargo = geopolitics event, nothing to do with resource constraints.]
is also the default one in France, and I guess the case for most of the western world (or simply the whole thing).
And I still think putting the story or narative back to what really happened could help a bit in current situation.
I too agree on the 2015 +- a couple of years, with potential spoilers I've mentioned before that could trigger it at any time. The story of decline rate is going to be an interesting one...I assume at this point that you think the initial rate will be low because of increased investment, and if that's the case - I think that's happening now. I would posit that we're actually already in that phase and would point towards the shale and concentration on tar sands as saviors as evidence of that.
So we could have that "Super Straw" decline effect after a few years, but what seems more plausible at this point is self-reinforcing crash triggered by a financial collapse. I'm kind of surprised in a way that 2009 didn't trigger it, and maybe it came close, but simply still had some momentum to keep going. Any disruption large enough to cause the price of oil to drop and investors to pull out could start the process - oil prices down, investment down...when demand returns all slack is gone causing a superspike, destroys economies, price falls again...rinse and repeat. It could start on the superspike if, for instance, the US bombs Iran. But as that would take supply off for a long time that would seem to cause much deeper destruction in the economy and any rebound would be less strong. It's too chaotic to predict how, but it seems highly likely that there will be a precipitating event which will trigger a rapid step down rather than just continuing a slow grind. Punctuated equilibrium.
Wow, two words that have such far reaching meaning. I agree with that idea, and fully expect sometime this year another major step down. Hard to say how it will compare with 08/09, but my concern is a big drop in oil price will reduce non-conventional extraction and marginal priced exploration like deep water. That will reduce current and future oil supply and like you wrote, weaken any (subsequent) recovery. Essentially we are experiencing what you refer to as a 'punctuated equilibrium' in a step down process. Unfortunately for most people who think we are in full recovery mode, the next shift downward will be unexpectedly harsh. Those banking on a real estate recovery bidding up properties in more affluent areas or going all in on the stock market, will kick themselves for having taken that leap of economic recovery faith MSM has sold them, in part via the falsely based idea of impending US oil independence.
Like a boxer that has taken some hard blows softening him up, one has to wonder how many step downs will or can occur and still maintain a viable civilization until the boxer hits the matt. Maybe each step down is like a boxer taking a 10 count, with only 3 allowed per round before the fight or in this case BAU is forced to pronounce Roberto Duran style, 'no mas, no mas'. So maybe this next one will be the 2nd step down and we will pretend another recovery is possible, only to fail on the 3rd knockdown.
I have one technical question for the experts here like ROCKMAN...what happens to an oil field where decline is artificially managed by pumping C02 when it is left as it is. Does decline rate worsen ? Can oil fields be permanently damaged like that ?
Look up the Cantarell Field in Mexico. From Wikipedia, nitrogen injection was used starting in 2000, and the field peaked in 2003 at 2.1 mbd. It then collapsed down to about 0.4 mbd as of April 2012.
This doesn't really address your question, because it's not clear that any oil was stranded due to nitrogen injection, but it does demonstrate that, regardless of damage, enhanced recovery techniques can lead to dramatic collapses in production once the decline sets in.
The key word we all seem to agree on is DECLINE. I've got a bad feeling it's going to be a nasty ride to the bottom over the next two decades - my insight tells me that at first it'll be a slip here and there, some good news occasionally where the decline rate remains arrested at one to two percent but then the good news will run out and it'll change to something like a fifteen percent decline to where we're getting along (barely) with one barrel instead of the three we once did - and it only gets worse from there.
Actually, in his 2010 book (and in subsequent talks) he predicted a top ranging from 2-5 years. That means that his original outlook was from 2012 to 2015.
He later, quietly, revised that to 2013-2016. Maybe he will revise it another time this year starting from 2014-2018.
Nobody in the Peak Oil community asks any tough questions why some of these forecasters get it wrong time and again. Campbell, for example, the co-founder of ASPO, has been making several predictions that have all failed ranging several years.
This doesn't mean, say, that the cornucopians are right. But it does mean that skepticism and self-criticism isn't very wide-spread in many quarters of the PO community. And why wouldn't Hirsch keep revising his predictions? He never gets called out on it, generally.
Well, it depends on if their cuts are more than made up for by increasing output elsewhere.
Elsewhere is a word that covers "everywhere else on the planet". There will not be increasing production everywhere else on the planet. In fact the exact opposite is the case. Production will be increasing most in the US and somewhat in Canada. A very few other countries may increase production slightly. But most of "elsewhere" will see declining production like Russia and Saudi Arabia.
Ron P.
Increased exploitation of the the following area will not change the longer-term oil decline trend, but may mitigate the magnitude of the decline for a few years (perhaps ten years?):
Vz/Orinoco.
Admittedly at significant added environmental cost and also providing the elixir for TPTB to continue shooting up the vast majority of the populace with cornocopian go-go juice...more false prophet technological opiates for the masses. Rest assured that this oil won't come cheap.
...and we won't use any extra time on the clock (Vz oil AND the remainder of the 'NG boom') to scramble to plan for the inevitable final decline of World oil production.
No, I think you have it exactly backwards. The Orinoco bitumen could slightly mitigate the long term decline of world oil production, but it will do nothing in the short term.
Nothing is happening very fast in Venezuela. And the political situation there is very unstable. Companies are not fighting over themselves to get a piece of the Orinoco pie like they did in Iraq. They are very wary of investing too much money in such a volatile political climate.
It will be years before we see any significant increase in Venezuela oil production... if we ever do. It will not affect the peaking of world oil production at all.
Ron P.
But aren't the Chinese moving in and investing big time? Perhaps they have so much cash, they feel they can afford to take the risk. Or perhaps they are immune since they are a nominally socialist country.
I agree with your estimate here.
The World may see a 'bathtub' of sorts in the World oil production per year graph...the tail-off that may be finally starting from the recent plateau, then, after a mad scramble to 'bring democracy' to Vz and spend lots of capex and provide lots of experienced humans and equipment, we may see a brief upturn in World production due to Vz, maybe not to the level seen now but somewhat lower, and then a return to a decline, the slope of which I am not certain.
Perhaps the effect of a 'mad Vz scramble' on the World oil production graph will resemble the effect of Prudhoe Bay on the U.S. oil production graph.
No techno-salvation here...maybe Vz will enable a lessening of the slope of the decline compared to w/o Vz...at great financial and environmental and cornopcian-mindset-inducing costs...most people will sing a few years of 'happy daze are her again' instead of making the real needed mad scramble to deal with the inevitable decline.
The shame of it is, paid shills and the 'true believers' can point to a long litany of seemingly failed prediction of the bad confluence of too many humans and resource limitations (sources and sinks), starting with Malthus, going forward through the Club of Rome, the Ehrlichs, Kunstler et al, TOD and more.
There will be an increase in oil production from Venezuela eventually. Incompetent government can only slow it down for so long. Eventually they'll be thrown out of office by votes, thrown out by revolution/coup, thrown out by external invasion, etc. In this case, Chavez may even just literally die off.
As others pointed out, the Chinese or Russians may produce the oil. And unlike western IOCs that just resort to world courts when Chavez nationalizes their operations, I don't think the Putin or the Chinese will take such moves as lightly.
The Venezuelan oil is very valuable and the Jackals will find a way to produce it. It make take a while and some ugly things will happen but the black gold will not remain in the ground forever.
EXXON and Chevron are going to produce the oil?
I mean the economic hitmen in general. It could be them or it could be someone else. I just know that valuable oil so close to the most oil thirsty nation will not largely remain in the ground for the next 30 years.
As the oil situation grows more dire, there will be huge pressures to increase the production of that Venezuelan oil. The pressures can come from within or from the outside. But being a dictator that controls oil fields and does not produce them fast enough can be quite hazardous to your health. Ask Saddam and Ghadaffi.
A lot of excitement from this single data point but I wouldn't get too excited about this. I have been harvesting the daily production numbers for Russian Crude + Condensate from CDUTEK over the last two years and here is what I see:
If anything, the Russian site that advertizes itself as the "CENTRAL DISPATCHING DEPARTMENT OF FUEL AND ENERGY COMPLEX" shows a slight increase in recent production.
Now I'm not sure how much I trust the CDUTEK data. And I would assume that Rossstat knows what they are talking about. But one does wonder where the Rossstat data comes from. It seems it is one step further removed from the numbers coming from producers.
In other words, we should remain skeptical of this single, recent number.
Best Hopes for careful and dispassionate study of the data.
Jon
"we should remain skeptical of this single, recent number"
Agree. I'm surprised TODsters even comment on such a tiny spread. A bit like the daily stock market report... Who cares? Such charts are hardly indicators of future trends and at the end of the day, whatever day that is, *today's* charts aren't worth a toss.
Cheers, Matt
Jonathan, I too collected data from CDUTEK. I started in 2008 but quit the project last August. I grew frustrated with CDUTEK's data. They would often skip days, sometimes weeks, at a time and their data varied greatly from the data of all others. I think JODI used them also as prior to January 2012 the JODI and the CDU data was pretty close. Then in January 2012 JODI stopped using them and began using, I think, Russia's Federal State Statistics Service. I think this is where the EIA gets their data also because since January 2012 the JODI data and the EIA data tracks each other pretty close. But before that time they varied wildly.
But we have a difference in philosophy. I always use a non-zero based graph. I do so because that is the only way you can see a damn thing. A zero based graph makes the changes so small you cannot tell anything about what is going on. In this business a 1 percent change is very significant.
Here is Russian production gathered from CDUTEK with the daily averages averaged each month. The Data is thousand barrels per day of C+C. The last data point is August 2012. That was when I stopped gathering CDUTEK data. Tons per day has been converted to barrels per day by multiplying by 7.333.
As you can see, my graph in no way resembles yours. I can see actual changes in the data in mine but not in yours. And we both used the same source. And, I must add, I don't believe Russia produced that much oil because no one else had them even close to that.
Edit: Your chart does not include the small producers who produce about 170 tons per day and their production varies, according to CDUTEK by 6 or 7 tons per day over a period of less than a month. That's about 50,000 barrels per day which is significant.
Ron P.
Ron,
I agree that we have philosophical differences regarding these data. I am only interested in what I will call historical scale changes in production and consumption which is why I spend most of my energies focused on annual data. For me, any month-to-month changes or even annual changes of less than a few percent are just noise on top of the signal I am trying to understand. Annual averages and zero scaled plots act to visually filter out smaller variations so that I can stay focused on the historical trends that interest me the most.
Cheers,
Jon
J:
Your plots are only zero based in one dimension. If you think zero based is such an important concept you should also zero base it on the timeline. Go back to the year 0, which could be 2013 years ago or a couple of billion.....
Rgds
WeekendPeak
(yes, somewhat tongue in cheek - I think that there is a time and place for using zero as a starting point but that time and place are highly contextual)
There is an error in my last paragraph, my Edit" It should read:
Edit: Your chart does not include the small producers who produce about 170 thousand tons per day and their production varies, according to CDUTEK by 6 or 7 thousand tons per day over a period of less than a month. That's about 50,000 barrels per day which is significant.
CDU TEK
CDU TEK had Russia producing 10,500 bp/d the end of December and have them producing about 10,450 kb/d today. (Using 7.333 barrels per ton.) I don't think they are producing that much because no other reporting agency has them that high.
Ron P.
There was unusually harsh weather in Russia this winter which probably effected their crude oil production.
Snowpocalypse Russia: 'Snow tsunami' swallows streets, cars, buildings Russia Today, January 18, 2013.
From up-top: Governments Look for New Ways to Pay for Roads and Bridges
I think we here in the United States are missing out on not raising the federal gasoline tax. We should at the very least index it to inflation.
Best hopes for a higher US federal gasoline tax.
Unfortunately this will never happen. In today's political climate, anything that makes the dollar amount of a tax go up is forbidden. No matter that the percentage is going down due to inflation, it's always considered a tax increase and the GOP will never let that happen. So even making the tax rate flat is now considered an increase!
I think that may be changing. The article points out that even conservatives are reconsidering their position on taxes on this issue. It takes a village to raise a corporation, at least when it comes to paying for infrastructure. In any case, "taxes" may be verboten, but "usage fees" are fine.
I think raising the gas tax would be a good thing. Even if the money gets spent on other things...so what? Do we really want more highways and more personal car use? A hike in the gas tax is a step in the right direction.
Yeah, the anti-tax rhetoric is going to collide headlong into the everything-for-the-automobile mindset as crumbling infrastructure makes driving our precious cars difficult. On top of that our corporate-welfare state has never been shy about taking public money to support industry. It'll just be a matter of finding some palatable terminology and sending out the shills and talking heads. The public will accept it as long as the roads are smooth.
But in the end those measures will be temporary, as such games cannot trump the reality of resource limitations. In the end limits will trump desires.
Interstate 40 near Flagstaff, Arizona, USA was massively potholed in December and January from persistently cold, below average, weather. It was not like that in early December. Let truckers and Republicans drive over that mess for a while and they will be screaming for repairs providing an opportunity to gain support for increasing the federal gasoline tax.
No. They will just add this expense to deficit spending and then cry about how we need to cut everything else to reduce the deficit. Conservatives should welcome the idea of increasing the gas tax because the person receiving the benefit is paying for the product. Instead, they will pretend to care about government spending while pushing off the problem for future generations.
Leanan, I agree.
There are not too many businesses that haven't raised their prices since 1993 (I know the article lists 1997 as the date that the gas tax was last increased, but I think it should be listed as 1993 -- 20 years ago).
>>"It takes a village to raise a corporation. . . "<<
Every time I read through the thread and read that line, I get a big chuckle.
There is no reason to flow gas taxes through the Federal government. States can raise gas taxes and use the proceeds to maintain roads and bridges. The interstates should be converted to electronic tolling, with funds going to the states to maintain their respective sections.
Have to disagree, because whenever there is a source of revenue it always gets spread far and wide for every other conceivable need and once they get use to getting money that way it never goes down, only up as greed takes over. When we were in Florida the tolls were no small amount of money, and it was a hastle to keep stopping to pay them. Sure if you live locally you can slow down for an electronic pay, but it's still causes traffic congestion.
Fuel taxes work if they are sufficient to the task of maintaining and building roadway infrastructure. When it fails is when the amount of fuel tax fails to meet those needs. Do a simple calculation to figure out what is needed and raise the state tax. Forget the feds.
The other benefit of raising fuel taxes is it provides incentive to change to alternatives like hybrids and EV's, whereas tolls do not.
The real problem with this concept is that 99% of road damage and much of the congestion is caused by heavy vehicles. Such vehicles are already much more efficient in their use of fuel than the average light vehicle: a heavy truck with a payload of 50,000 pounds traveling six miles on a gallon of diesel is getting 150 ton-miles per gallon. A Toyota Prius traveling 45 miles on a gallon of gasoline is getting just over 20 ton-miles per gallon. But the heavy truck has five axles with probably 13,000 pounds on four of them, while the Prius has two axles with with 2,000 pounds on them. As road damage is roughly proportional to the fourth power of axle load, the heavy truck does over 7,000 times as much damage to roads as the Prius, but because it has much greater fuel efficiency it only pays 7.5 times as much in fuel taxes as the Prius.
The solution is therefore obvious: a substantial tax on heavy vehicles (over perhaps 3000 pounds per axle), proportional to miles * number of axles * (axle load)4. This would require in-vehicle data loggers on each such vehicle. But most such vehicles already have data loggers, so it is not a major imposition.
Such a tax would encourage transfer of heavy loads to rail or water transport, both of which are more fuel efficient than trucking, and encourage reduction of axle loads (as in Michigan), thus substantially reducing road damage.
A higher tax on diesel fuel only is another solution suggested from time to time, but this would increase overall fuel usage by discouraging diesel light vehicles, which use substantially less fuel than the same vehicles with gasoline engines. For example, a diesel Ford F-350 averages about 14.6mpg while the gasoline version gets about 9mpg (V10) to 12.6mpg(V8); the VW Passat gets 39.6mpg with a diesel engine, and 23.6 with a gasoline engine (all figures from http://www.fuelly.com).
Higher fuel taxes are desirable, but not for the red herring of road maintenance. They are needed to discourage carbon dioxide emissions, and to increase government revenues in general.
This is very wise policy. Thus, it will never be enacted. ;-)
The main reason it won't get enacted is because of corporate lobbyists for the transport biz. The ordinary passenger car drivers have no such lobby and thus will end up largely footing the bill for road repair which is largely caused by the transport biz.
Proof of the wisdom of that policy: In California the license fee on all trailers was eliminated about ten years ago. So the heaviest vehicles on the road pay no license fee whatever so my little 2500 pound car pays over $150/year, and it really hates bumpy roads!
The free world is great for those with money.
It might help if the US took a leaf out of the European book and went Metric with its pricing. By the litre, big changes are less noticeable.
$1 per litre is still $3.78 a gallon, and $4.00 per gallon is "only" $1.05 a litre. Who would complain at that?
If the Metric system is too "lefty", you could always do it by the quart, although the $1 a quart psychological barrier still remains. Far better to start of just over the whole unit threshold and let people ignore the cents side.
Metric? Sounds way too scientific.
Tell them it's "high-tech" or "scientific" fuel, and get them to pay a premium for buying it by the litre.
DoomInTheUK, lets skip the quart and go right to the liter. It would have to be a lot easier for visitors.
Ahh, you don't fool me with that metric stuff - when it's important you measure by the pint!
I've heard that some gas stations did that back in the '70s. Not to fool anyone, but because the gas pumps back then weren't built to deal with prices as high as they got. (I think it was going over a dollar a gallon that was the problem.)
Most of them taped a little sign on the pump that said to multiply by 2. That would probably be beyond the capability of most customers today.
Nuclear waste: too hot to handle?
I can understand the NIMBY objections to storing nuclear waste, but I've never understood why it can't be stored within a tectonic subduction zone. The only objection I've found so far is that it's illegal to dump it at sea, even from a drill ship. But tunnelling out to sea from on land is OK.
Surely if it's something you don't want to resurface for a couple of million years, then bury it a couple of thousand feet into the sea floor at the leading edge of a subduction zone and you'll never have to worry about guarding it or having signs all around the area.
Apparently there's a handy one just of the coast of Vancouver Island.
Considering the progress being made in this respect, I fear our offspring will be facing an "On-The-Beach-in-slow-motion" scenario as these sites are abandoned one-by-one. Whatever meteorlogical services exist in the future will publish warning maps similar to ozone polution or drought maps today. The local weather folks will include these alerts in their daily broadcast: "Radioactive particulate levels will be in the extreme range today for the Cincinnati area. Children should be kept indoors, and those venturing outside through Tuesday should don their protective gear... Update at 11."
There will be no such reports because this level of radiation can not be detected by human senses making it easy to ignore the problem. Cancer is caused by many things, and doctors will lie for their corporate sponsors.
You want to bury something in a massive earthquake risk zone? So after ten thousand years of being mangled by quakes the nuclear material will now have only descended perhaps tens of metres? Sounds a very bad idea to me. More from a Geologist point of view at http://geology.about.com/od/platetectonics/f/seadisposal.htm
Oh and we may need to keep this in mind as well Current Status And Recommended Future Studies Of Underground Supercriticality of Fissile Material (PDF)
I beleive the idea is more along the lines of the current long term storage caverns, but under the sea.
http://www.nwmo.ca/uploads_managed/MediaFiles/1287_baird-submissiononthe...
It seems they don't want to go for fast moving areas, the slower the better. Deep enough not to get scraped off during subduction. Given the right location it seems a far better bet to me than a cave in a hill that you have to protect for hundreds of generations.
In my opinion this issue is by far and away the most significant of our time. At least as important as climate change or peak oil. The quantity of this material is staggering, and it's toxicity to life (and longevity) equally so, and we have no idea what to do with it. Climate change and peak resources will ensure that the carrying capacity of the earth is much smaller in the future, but I do not believe it will be zero. But on our present trajectory ALL of that nuclear material will be disbursed though our environment, and there is enough of it to make all areas uninhabitable.
The reality is that there are no really good places to put it - all of it - and all of it must be sequestered from the majority of human populations. No place will be risk free, and wherever it gets put will no longer be safe for people to live. Some place(s) will have to be sacrificed.
That said, there are better or worse ways to do it, but there is no more urgent issue to deal with, including climate change and peak oil.
Too true. It's the side of nuclear power that scares me most.
We've spent £67Bn trying to decomission the Sellafield site and still no nearer an end. A recent report even announced (quietly) that they weren't even sure exactly what some of cooling ponds contained.
I agree that there are potential hazards wherever we put the stuff, but with a closing window of oppurtunity due to the pincer movements of PO; Climate and the Economy I fear that nothing will be decided before it's too late.
I agree completely. The window of opportunity is closing fast. If we don't deal with this before collapse hits hard for all of those reasons, we won't be able to do it at all. The cost of such a project will be incredible.
In effect, the disasters at Chernobyl and Fukushima are only variations on a theme of what will happen at every place this stuff is stored - disbursal into the local environment. That it exploded only changes the short term nature of of the beginning of the disbursal process.
All of the things I consider in terms of what I might do to deal with the other aspects of our predicament are trumped by this. The things I might learn and pass on concerning sustainable living - growing food, living on the real time flows of solar energy, being a good steward of the land, whatever - are of no use in a land contaminated by these substances. And as far as I can see, the place I live now (Eastern Pennsylvania) will be utterly contaminated.
Did you catch these hot glowing nuggets of news??
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/technology/Liquid+bombgrade+uranium+shipped...
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/16/us/washington-storage-tank-at-nuclear-...
At least they didn't agree a waste dump under Ennerdale this month
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jan/16/cumbria-tourism-chiefs-oppose-n...
[finally got the links right...]
What scares me is not that you say it, but that you get several agreements and no opposition.
We have a very clear idea of what to do with it. Simple burial. We could also just throw it into the sea in drums that hold long enough for some sediment to cover them.
Could you please explain to us why the spent nuclear fuel would suddenly get spread in a thin layer across the Earth? Do you think it is that mobile? That if some rods of spent nuclear fuel lies in the open, then it will suddenly just disperse across a wide area? Of course it won't! The material will just lie there, eventually being buried by material that blows or grows over it, and perhaps a little plume of some more mobile isotopes will travel a moderate distance away, being increasingly diluted. Some wanderer might go and pick some up and die, and eventually, people will learn to avoid that small area. If civilization collapses, the collapse itself is the problem. Not that we might die if we scavenge or play leapfrog in reactor buildings.
There are millions of good places to put it. For instance, it doesn't take many seconds for global oil production to vacate space enough to store all high level nuclear waste produced until now. And that oil is volatile but has been staying put for millions of years. This stuff is very inert in comparison and needs only 100,000 years to go back to being a lead and uranium mine.
That idea might be our undoing, since fear lead to inaction and nuclear is currently the only known source of energy that can save us from climate change, and is our best bet when it comes to mitigation of peak oil. There is no more exaggerated, no more over-researched problem, than that of storage of spent nuclear fuel. From a technical perspective, it was solved before the research into copper cylinders, optimal bedrock, bentonite clay and so on even begun.
I generally just ignore your absurd posts, but this one was a new low.
Well, I stand by it.
I actually agree here. Nuke waste is a solid. Like ceramics. It does not leak the way people often think. 2 billion years ago, nature acumulated enough uranium in some spots in Afrika to turn it to a natural reactor. The radioactive stuff leaked less than 10 meters from the site. Dumping it somewhere sedimentation will burry it will solve the problem. GOM maybe?
My vote goes for subduction zones. If we know of a subduction sone with sedimentation, it is even better.
And the concentration of that uranium ore compared to the waste from a NPP? When an unattended fuel pool leaks and the fuel burns, how far will it travel?
All nuclear reactors are located near a water source, river, lake or ocean, for cooling. If the radioactive waste is left on site, it will eventually get into the water which will mobilize it.
Throwing the left over fuel rods into the sea in drums would likely be a bad idea, as the sediment on the bottom builds very slowly in most locations, on the order of a centimeter per hundred years. Corrosion would open the barrels rather quickly as well, contaminating the water nearby. However, there are devices used in oceanography which penetrate deeply into the sediment and a similar approach to burying the waste would prevent possible contact with the water. Rather like bombing the bottom of the ocean, using long slender tubes with sharp points in front and fins behind, such a device would easily penetrate to deep in the sediment, isolating the waste for millions of years...
EDIT: Turns out, this isn't a new idea. HERE's more information
E. Swanson
As with on land, real estate investments is based on the three key concepts of location, location and location. I have seen underwater videos of a WWII figher plane with the cockpit half full with sediments. That spot was sedimenting at least a centimeter per year, likely faster. I also know of places with nutricent deficient water streaming over bare rock. Those places stay sediment free for ever (or untill conditions change).
If you want the "throw away and let sediment burry it" sollution, you want a high sedimentation area, such as the mouth of a river. Mississippi river delta in the GOM comes to mind.
That kind of sedimentation and that kind of river mouth are what they are because of an abundance of Biological Activity or at least the Potential for it, as the Mississippi delta goes these days.
That is the nursery of countless Ocean and Freshwater living systems. NOT the best pivotal place to plan a Toxic Waste 'sweep it under the rug' scheme.
We're only just beginning to recover the fish-bearing potential at the mouth of the great Penobscot River system in Maine, having been throttled by too many Dams along its run for the last century.
Here's a 'Living on Earth' Podcast that talks about it, if anyone's interested.
http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=11-P13-00038&segmentID=6
Yeah. Rivers are best left alone. The Mississippi is just one of many great example of how engeneering mess things up in a water system.
I am not sugesting we should dump nuke waste in the ocean. My vote goes for drilling a deep hole, dumping the stuff, and dropping concrete on top. Then build a dry cleaner or a porn movie store on top of it and forget the place was there in the first place.
jeppen, you're understating the difficulty just as they are overstating the risk.
1) Much of the waste is now stored in fuel ponds, which present real risks of contamination as Fukushima proved. A fire in a fuel pond is very, very serious. Even just a lack of cooling can lead to explosive conditions.
2) Wastes have the potential to contaminate water tables, streams, etc., unless securely stored. Currently no storage method is long-term enough for the life of the wastes. Yes, the worst of it would almost certainly remain localized, but water has a way of carrying things around.
3) If the goal is to keep containers of waste intact for thousands of years, then there are very, very few places that are safe. Yucca mountain was leaky and had seismic issues - and yet it IS one of the better sites out there.
To be honest, I don't consider the waste issue to be nearly as pressing as reactor failure, because experience so far is that waste issues lead to localized contamination while reactor failures lead to large scale contamination. But I am very pessimisstic about reactors; currently 2 catastrophic failures have occured (well, 4 if you count the individual reactors at Fukushima) and several severe failures as well (Three Mile Island is one example, a meltdown that did not result in a catastrophic nuclear release). This besides places like Monju that just don't work as planned and end up sucking up resources and producing nothing. Reactors take decades to decomission, and cooling must be maintained on reactors for every single second of their lifetime. They are a fussy, fragile, complicated, and expensive technology. In the context of a world where all sorts of disasters can occur, they present a major risk. Every single reactor holds to potential for catastrophic failure on the level of Chernobyl or Fukushima.
My biggest problem with your assertions, though is this:
Technically, there are any number of technologies we can use that don't require fossil fuels. Solar and wind are already developed enough that a large scale rollout, in concert with agressive energy saving, could replace all of our fossil fuel generation. If anything, solar and wind are better-proven technologies than nuclear, as the nuclear that can supposedly "save us" is mostly future tech like Thorium reactors and other Gen 4 tech that has never been built. That said, and for this I guess I can be called a doomer, nothing can save us from some level of climate change at this point. Even if we did suddenly decide to go all nuke or all renewable, it would still take many years to build out the resources. A WWII level, society-wide effort could perhaps get it done in 10 years or less, but so far I see no evidence that any country is willing to sacrifice on that level.
Beyond all of that, though, human civilization existed for thousands of years without electricity. It is the height of insanity that we currently think that we must have massive amounts of electricity or we are "doomed". We could, literally, turn out most of the lights and survive. Agriculture takes up a very small part of energy use, and most of those factories in China are not producing anything we need to survive. Yes, people would be poorer, but they will be anyway. When you say we need nuclear, or I say we need to build out renewables, to "save us from global warming", what we are really saying is that we need these things to save our current way of life from global warming. And our current way of life, even without global warming, is literally eating up all the fish in the sea and driving nearly every wild thing to extinction.
Adamx and Co,
Well, so far at least, I don't think this particular thread has reached the level where Leanan might feel the need to remove it. Yes, there have been harsh words, but on the off chance we can continue it without taking down this entire DrumBeat, I'll see if I can continue it in the spirit of a discussion rather than a flaming session.
As most of you know I leapt into the Oil Drum fray with an initial post on nuclear. I did my best to site chapter and verse of why I felt we might need to keep nuclear on the table. I sited sources, and responded to counterarguments in a respectful manner. Or at least I felt I did.
I know the subject touches raw nerves. It initially touched mine too. What caused me to change my mind is the same set of concerns which forced George Monbiot and Mark Lynas to do the same. In a nutshell, it appears to me Climate Change is MUCH worse than the IPCC has been estimating. The Arctic is melting MUCH faster than anyone in the scientific community anticipated. The weather is becoming much more violent, and chaotic, than same said community projected. We're at 0.8 degrees C increase, and TS has already HTF.
Though I can't quantify it (and I feel no one can), I think the energy imbalance we have loaded into the planet's atmosphere is just beginning to be felt, and all that load is going to express itself over time in a particularly nasty way in the very near future - decades, not centuries. In fact, I fear it will be years, not decades. And it'll just keep going and get worse.
I stated it before, and I'll state it again. I sincerely hope I'm wrong. But the weather that we have seen doesn't give me much hope I am. I know I am not alone in fearing the worst.
Which leads me back to that reconsideration of nuclear. I'm convinced we will need to geoengineer at some point - the point at what Stuart Staniford over at Early Warning has referred to as the point where we panic and repent.
When we hit that point, assuming it isn't already hopelessly beyond redemption (and it may well be), we'll take out the geoengineering ideas, because all the solar and all the windmills in the world won't be able to provide us with the excess energy we will need to tackle the situation.
I like wind and solar. Not all my neighbors do, but I do. At some point I'll probably pester Ghung for some details on panels. But I don't think we can generate the energy we will need for the Hail Mary pass I'm envisioning we will need.
The Hail Mary I prefer, the one I perceive to be the most bang for the buck with the least potential unintended consequences, is manually cooling the Arctic by generating artificial clouds. The idea has been out there a while, but I don't think the suggested vessels will do the trick. The Arctic is a nasty place, even sans ice in summer. Storms, convective weather systems, you name it.
My suggested solution? Modify a couple of tubes on some nuclear subs to essentially create a periscope device that will atomize sea water and blast it into the atmosphere to generate said clouds. Weather too bad? Seas too bad? Draw the periscopes back down and wait it out. Arctic cooling too fast? Stop creating the clouds.
Assuming such an insane idea actually helps increase albedo and starts a cooling process, acidification requires we actively draw CO2 out of the atmosphere. Bejesus, that is an awful thing to contemplate. The energies required are staggering.
Hence, nuclear power. Uranium is an insanely energy dense material. Dangerous, and we don't have the right technologies in place yet, but it is, none the less, an insanely energy dense energy source.
A transformation of our current energy systems to a combination of renewable and nuclear might give us a mix which just might do the trick. One without the other won't do it. We will need both.
Or so I perceive it. I know, I know! I'm assuming some serious doom scenario here, and if it doesn't materialize we may be able to go all renewable and be okay. There are 7 billion of us on this planet. We'd have to overbuild big time, and use stored hydro on a scale that we currently haven't contemplated, but assuming a few lucky technology breaks we could do it.
But if we get the doomsday scenario I fear, we will need nuclear.
Open to all criticisms, of course. I'll address the waste issue downthread.
Thank you for the thoughtful reply.
I think you've got a point, in the "panic and repent" scenario that Stuart proposes, we will need a LOT of energy to pull all that CO2 out of the atmosphere. The thing is, I am not so sure that it will go down smoothly. Society may not hold together well in the face of the "panic" part. In that situation, I fear that expanded nuclear capacity is likely to lead to problems. Building thousands of nuclear plants also threatens to create problems on a similar scale to what we see with fossil fuels. That is crux of the problem for me; if we follow the historic norm, then with thousands of reactors we will have tens of catastrophies. The waste problem, which as I said I consider less pressing, will nonetheless become that much more dire.
As I said above, I think nuclear is a fussy technology with complex requirements. Solar and wind are comparatively simple. Even discarding pumped storage and making do with batteries in every home (most homes in the US produce their own hot water, so a battery doesn't seem so far fetched), you can keep necessary lights on. The production side can be complex for both but not any more so than nuclear. A solar panel just needs to be set up, but nuclear require constant supervision.
To be honest, I am starting to be wary of any technofix. While solar and wind sound good, there is still a LOT of coal and natural gas left. It would require a level of panic I have never seen to resist the temptation to use them. What I suspect will happen is pretty much near worst case - fossil fuels used maximally followed by severe climate changes and a the decay of the current 'world civilization'. The potential for destabilization and strife is pretty high. Nuclear creates unique problems in an unstable environment, due to the potential for weapons building as well as the fragility of nuclear plants against attack. As it is, I expect some sort of nuclear exchange in the future.
Under those circumstances, I don't expect a major rollout of either renewable or nuclear technology, rather I expect a major rollout of the old standby, poverty. Perhaps we have the wisdom to "repent", and in this scenario we will carefully use nuclear and renewables to undo our old sins. But nothing I see suggests humans have that wisdom.
Perhaps I should put it this way; I would conditionally support the use of nuclear if it only went to pulling CO2 out of the air. But I am suspect any buildout of nuclear or renewables will be used to try to continue to support unnecessary power usage, lifestyles, and international power struggles. At least with renewables there are some limits on the damage that can be done (though a truly massive rollout could have unexpected effects and large-scale pumped storage would be very nasty). Part of the limiting factor is that renewables don't support profligate energy consumption well, which nuclear is very good at.
We have no way to deal with the waste stream - to keep it out of the environment for as long as is needed. We do not have the ability or materials to make any form of containment that can do that. Concrete and steel won't do it. So we talk about burying it in abduction zones - talk about desperate! And do you realize how many tons of this stuff there is?
To make more of this waste to try to hold off living within the real-time flows of energy that we do have access to is the ultimate in selfishness. We will create a planet covered with radioactive particles, distributed by wind, rain and erosion, and through the process of life. It will be toxic for thousands of years, regardless of the climate. There is no "away" - we have to make the best choice of where to put it while we still can, and stop making more.
Thank you Adamx. Please permit me to respond to Twilight. I think the response will cover part of your issues too.
Twilight, your points are entirely valid, I feel, if three assumptions are made. First, we can live within the existing natural energy streams we have access to now. Second, the waste stream from nuclear power has to be buried or otherwise sequestered. Third, radioactive particles, even in the tiniest quantities, are lethal. I'll take them one at a time.
First, existing and available energy sources. As our use of fossil fuels to date has indicated, and as a result of that use, our species has demonstrated we are not overly fond of living within the most basic energy streams, and we have also managed to bring on climate change, a potentially existential threat. Of those two effects, as I stated above, I fear the latter has progressed to the point where we will need to, as Adamx put it, "undo our sins." I hope I'm wrong. But if I'm right, the climate chaos we are heading into will not permit us to live within naturally existing energy systems - even if we wanted to. The environment in which we will find ourselves will be far too unstable for that to occur. In fact, as some have speculated, it may well be too unstable for anything other than some nasty microbes which have a tendency to spew highly toxic gases.
Second, the waste stream from nuclear power, could, at least in theory, be reprocessed to a very large degree. It is true we have not done this on an industrial scale, and attempts to do so to date have not been encouraging. However, the technologies we have attempted are already fifty years old, and there are many working on the technologies which might do the trick. I would have to look it up (I'm on my way to work at the moment, riding a commuter rail line), but I believe there is something like 300,000 tons of nuclear waste generated to date. That is a lot, but much of this material is incredibly dense. I read somewhere the entire thing would fit inside Giants stadium with room to spare. Please don't take me too literally on this at this point - I'll need to do the follow up on it. But my point is the material is more dense than gold. A ton of gold, as I recall, if formed into a cube, would measure about 15 inches on a side.
Third, the danger from radioactive particles might be as lethal as you propose, but I have not been able to find evidence of this yet. And I have looked. There are studies which detail DNA damage in cell cultures in laboratory environments. And this damage propagated across generations of these cells. However, when the same type of radioactive exposure is introduced into living animal systems the same effect is not as pronounced, if it exists at all. It appears to depend on the radiation dose, which would make sense. The most probable explanation is that cells have evolved elaborate mechanisms for the repair of DNA damage, which, again, would make sense. They would have too, or the cell would die. In the real world the more we learn about the living systems that have repopulated Chernobyl it appears life is at least somewhat adapted to radioactive environments. These animals live, eat, breath, and reproduce in this environment. They naturally seem to avoid the more heavily contaminated areas. They ingest radioactive material, and they go about their business. This was decidedly NOT what I was expecting to find. I expected badly mutated creatures. That has not happened. At least not yet.
Don't get me wrong. We are best NOT introducing this into our environments. But if it does get out there there seems to be some level of tolerance for it, assuming the level is not too intense.
Of course the ideas I've presented here have been presented before, and they have been very hastily put together here. I consider there to be very large difficulties with nuclear power, difficulties we have not mastered yet. But I think we have the potential to, so I think we should keep working it, preferably on small scales until we figure things out.
Now, if my doomsday scenario does not pan out, and we are afforded some time to adjust to peak oil, and the weather doesn't get too crazy on us, I think we might be able to move towards the type of energy regime you suggest, and correspondingly I feel the need for nuclear would be greatly dimished. But if all these worst case scenarios start to pan out, I think we'll want and need to have sufficient energy to keep from a rapid collapse, and nuclear should be something we think about in this regard.
Since I lean heavily towards at least a few of the nastier possibilities coming to fruition, I have kept researching nuclear.
I look forward to your responses. For now, I have to go to work ;)
I just noticed Eric's response. I'll be happy to reply to them. Please folks, let's try to keept this from getting out of hand. I will respond, thoughtfully and courteously, when I get off work.
1. We will live within the real time energy flows as our species has done for the vast majority of its existence. This is not a choice, it will happen regardless of the desperate measures we take and the damage we do in trying to avoid it. Even if we found some new stored energy source we could exploit it would only delay the inevitable. That people think this is a choice is in part an issue with the word "we". To those who feel no connection or obligation to those who come after us, "we" means us, now. As individuals we will not survive. As a species coming down from overshoot there will be many hard times for us and the next several generations. How much do we ask those of the future to give to help us preserve our comforts now for a bit longer?
2. I'm not much interested in what might, in theory, be done from a technical point of view. There are many things, even obvious ones, that might be done that would be very helpful in the transition, but they are not. The reality is that there are many reasons why these things will not happen, some of them are social and some are just other manifestations of what happens when the cost of available energy goes up and it's quantity goes down. Look around - what will we do when the crisis of resource limitations and climate change hit? It's has. This is what we will do.
3. Life is tenacious, it will try, it has no choice. Humans will too, and I have no doubt that in contaminated places some people will get old enough to have kids, and life will go on, sort of. I'd like for them to have more than that. There is some information out there about the health of people and creatures in the Chernobyl fallout areas, but of course such things are also subject to distortions from social factors such as who controls the funding, etc. Science is conducted by people who are part of a social system. So research away, but consider where your information comes from. Consider also the consequences of being wrong.
Do you know there are uranium mines that have had no measurable activity on the surface? We could actually put spent fuel pellets naked in well-selected bedrock and not have a problem. The extra barriers that are planned (copper canisters and bentonite clay) will make sure the stuff will stay put until the Earth is swallowed by our Sun going red giant.
How's that project going? Over the span of 40 years through the peak of energy and prosperity - and the stuff is sitting in pools of water all across the countryside in the places best suited for supporting human life.
How many tons can be disposed of this way, what will it cost, who will pay and how ling will it take?
This might indeed be the best way and location to do it, or one of a few such, but time is short and there is no serious attempt to do it. I don't believe there ever will be.
In the US. In my own Sweden, we ship it all to an intermediate repository after about a year of cool-off. It's a choice, and the US could choose differently.
This is also a choice. All of it can be disposed of very cheaply, and ratepayers have traditionally been paying in advance in most countries, as a fee on top of the nuclear power price. Sweden plans to let the SNF cool for some 30 years in intermediate storage before depositing it in the final repository.
Well, then let's focus on other worries.
Yes, I'm sure you would like to turn the light away from this topic.
Just because I don't think it will happen does not mean I don't think it is worth trying, and attempting to raise awareness of the problem is a step.
I'm actually all for the US getting a central intermediate repository and shipping stuff there.
However, as you guessed, I'm not that fond of the idea of being alarmist about anything nuclear. It generally does much more harm than good.
The waste sitting in the pools will eventually be reprocessed and used as fuel again.
Oh, that is good to hear. Can you point me toward any info on that project? Or did you forget the preface it with the words "I hope"?
The high level waste sitting in tanks at Hanford or Savannah River is the result of processing fuel in reactors to make plutonium for nuclear weapons. It can't be used to make more fuel. The spent fuel rods presently in storage from power production might be made into more fuel. I suspect that some of the foot dragging we've seen to date is the result of the hope that this fuel might some day be re-processed into fuel. The trouble with that plan is that the breeder reactors haven't worked out very well to date. Then too, there's the latest nightmare at Fukushima, Japan, which has increased public awareness against such plans...
E. Swanson
Speaking of the "high level waste sitting in tanks at Hanford":
In Washington, a 'Perfect Radioactive Storm'
http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/312-16/16090-in-washington-...
The good news is that sludge moves slowly:
Actually it now seems that copper canisters corrode much faster than previously thought.
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/world/swedens-planned-nuclear-waste-stor...
Those corrosion dispute is a rather silly in-fighting between academics in Sweden, and settled in favour of the original results that shows corrosion is low enough. (You likely won't agree, but the Swedish method is irresponsibly over-engineered, over-researched and many orders of magnitude too safe compared to what a reasonable cost-benefit analysis would give. But there will always, always, always be challenges due to the media logic and politics involved.)
Do you have a link to an actual cost-benefit analysis done by some responsible Swedes?
Not really, but I can point you to Swedish goals and calculations, and then you can make up your own mind. However, for some reason, right now my source of such information, the Swedish Nuclear Waste handling website, www.skb.se, is down, so it'll have to wait a bit.
My suggested solution? Modify a couple of tubes on some nuclear subs to essentially create a periscope device that will atomize sea water and blast it into the atmosphere to generate said clouds
1) Salt then enters the air at a greater rate then already exists.
2) You do understand that water vapor is a greenhouse gas, do you not?
There are 7 billion of us on this planet.
Total enegry used by Humans = Number of humans X amount of energy per Human
If total energy is to be reduced, some other part of the above "math" needs to change. Can you guess what the eaiser number to change will be?
"At some point I'll probably pester Ghung for some details on panels."
Pester away, Myst. It's one of the few things I know that make sense besides nega-watts. Question: why would I agree to an expansion of fission energy and its associated waste when the real goal is to maintain a culture of consumerism. It isn't just the nuclear waste I detest, it's that the primary objective is to maintain an energy paradigm that is wasteful, extractive and consumptive. It enables the dead end process of using up and throwing away so many of the other essentially finite resources we are running out of. When I see our culture become one bent on conservation rather than consumption, one bent on cleaning up our waste instead of producing more, I'll be more open to the idea that we need more of anything. We need to change our relationship to our energy sources, we need to change ourselves first. The idea of growth, the idea of extraction and maintaining our waste streams: these are the things that must be discarded. These things don't bring us joy. They're just masturbation.
+10,+10,+10,+10,+10,+10,+10,+10,+10,+10!!
yup. We don't have an energy problem, we have a perception problem. It's more about human brains than about CO2 and radioactive waste.
My solution for cooling the arctic: float ping-pong balls to replace the lost sea ice.
You'll need to cover about one million square kilometers. At 4 cm diameter, that's about 800 trillion ping-pong balls. The cheapest price I've found is $65/144 balls, so we're looking at $360 trillion.
That's retail on the internet. You could probably beat them down to about $100 trillion.
The loss of Arctic ice is only 1 problematic symptom of a much larger problem.
True, but you have to start somewhere.
And what is the larger problem: Inefficient use of energy? Burning fossil fuel? Standard of living too high? Capitalism/consumerism/work ethic/keeping up with the Joneses attitude? Too many people?
Another idea: The reverse pyramid.
The Greenland ice cap is 2 km high. Quarry the ice in big sheets like in a marble quarry and slide down ramps to the ocean to cover the surface with artificial ice floes.
Mining Greenland is an interesting idea.
There's already enough heat to melt the existing ice cover of the Arctic, so all you'd end up doing is hurrying the depletion of the Greenland ice cap with associated sea level rise, just to try and slow the loss of the Arctic sea ice.
Whatever scheme is dreamt up to try and arrest the Arctic ice loss needs also to be applied to Greenland - and probably large swathes of Canada and Northern Russia.
You mean like this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2taViFH_6_Y
And they would drift away. And they reduce evaporation. And fish, sea mamals and/or birds might try to eat them. Plus they will degrde far more rapdily than you think. They probably won't stay white either.
But, it is amusing to imagine.
http://www.expressen.se/nyheter/forrymda-gummiankor-i-vetenskapens-tjanst/
Google translated to english, with my corrections.
Yes, at least fairly serious. If civilization would fail so quickly we can't dry-cask the stuff, then we have a problem. Exactly how big, though, I do not know.
Currently, there are fairly simple storage methods that hold for orders of magnitudes longer than needed. Water carries things around, but also dilutes. Again, the ceramic fuel pellets and most of the isotopes they contain are not very easily dissolved.
Then you have unreasonable requirements on "safe". If you accept some risk of small local contamination, then there's an extreme abundance of places safe enough. And please remember we don't need many places either. Nuclear waste is very compact.
How catastrophic were they, really? This year, I read close to a million Chinese will die from bad air quality. During this single day, about 3000 people all over the world will die in traffic accidents. How many will die due to side effects of medicine this year? Or even die when installing or maintaining PV and wind? Why is radiation releases that are local and can be avoided by evacuation so extremely scary to people? I think evolution has not provided us with good abilities to gauge risk in a modern world. We tend to overestimate certain risks, so we have to do the math!
No - intermittency prevents that. Also, nuclear is far more environmentally friendly.
I don't agree. The uranium reserves can be expanded at will, and the once-through fuel cycle can serve us for a fairly long time.
Several countries have replaced about half or more of their electricity production with nuclear in two decades. This is the upside of nuclear - it does not really require a sacrifice but rather is a win-win. It simply requires streamlined red tape and a low political risk.
Plentiful electricity is good for us, and it's not just about Chinese toys. Electricity replace worse forms of energy and makes many processes more environmentally friendly. Also, we need it to work, in hospitals, in traffic and so on. Sure we could get by with a lot less, but OTOH, lots of people in other countries need more. And finally, politics is the art of the possible. Nuclear power is at least close to possible. Abandoning our way of life to avert climate disaster seems not possible at all. We need to way our way of life environmentally sound, since nothing else will fly.
Intermittency is not the problem that many people seem to think it is. It can largely be handled with an assortment of measures:
1) Efficiency & conservation - Negawatts. There is a lot of fat in the system that can be eliminated.
2) Energy source diversity. Wind, solar, geothermal, hydro, tidal . . . others cover for one source is low.
3) Demand Response - Some usage can be shifted somewhat easily if the environment conditions
4) Geographic diversity - The wind is always blowing somewhere. The sun is always shining somewhere.
5) Storage - batteries, pumped hydro, 'wind fuel', hydrogen, thermal mass, etc.
6) Overbuild - build more than you need to cover capacity factor
7) Fossil fuel - A small amount of peaker plants such as natural gas can cover the freakish random occurrences.
Negawatts actually increase the intermittency problem by making the intermittent sources a larger part of the total supply.
Only wind and solar are reasonably scalable, and of course, it does help some that those are not well correlated.
All the rest of your responses are fairly costly to utilize.
Oh? Got data? Switching to more efficient lighting reduces the cooling load in many locations. That reduces the daily peak in demand during summer, which might also be the period of peak yearly demand at southern latitudes.
As for relative costs, please do not forget to include the cost of burning fossil fuels, which pollute the atmosphere, both with short term smog forming chemicals and long term CO2 emissions, as well as the impacts from extraction. Until you are willing to include all those hidden costs which are external to the fuel cycle, you are blowing smoke...
E. Swanson
Do I really need data for what's obvious - namely that an increasing fraction of intermittent sources increase the problem of intermittency?
Yes, efficient lighting might reduce cooling load, or increase warming load.
I fully agree about external costs of fossil fuels. That's why I would like to see more nuclear power.
Negawatts reduces the scale of power we need to supply. Which means the cost per KWhour is less important than without.
Such a cavalier attitude toward stealing people's jobs, homes, lands and possessions so you can play with dangerous things. Nukes work so nicely when you externalize their costs upon others and switch on denial.
Could you please explain to us why the spent nuclear fuel would suddenly get spread in a thin layer across the Earth? Do you think it is that mobile?
http://www.american-buddha.com/planet.usweaponspoisoneuropeukatmos.htm
Some wanderer might go and pick some up and die, and eventually, people will learn to avoid that small area.
And why not cite WIPP http://www.wipp.energy.gov/picsprog/articles/wipp%20exhibit%20message%20... ? Your proposed plan has a casual disreguard for future human life. At least the WIPP study isn't so casual.
nuclear is currently the only known source of energy that can save us from climate change,
In your reply you start off with:
And yet misstatements of demonstrateable facts like "nuclear is currently the only known source of energy that can save us from climate change" you do not find "scary".
There can not be an honest discussion without the parties being honest.
http://www.ez2c.de/ml/solar_land_area/ shows back dots of PV coverage which would provide all the primary power humanity uses. So the statement about "only known source" just is not true.
For instance, it doesn't take many seconds for global oil production to vacate space enough to store all high level nuclear waste produced until now.
What is your adversion to actual math?
1st of all - "many seconds" - what is the numeric value of "many"?
A common trope of TOD is the cubic mile of oil is what is produced every year.
1 cubic mile = 147 197 952 000 cubic feet 31,536 000 seconds in a year. 4667 cubic foot a second.
Of course math doesn't matter when the idea that production of an oil well leaves vacant space to then "insert" waste. And for readers who sit and think about such an idea they'll come to understand that the storage is done in a way to keep apart spent fuel so that it does not undergo criticality. Taking spent fuel and putting it down a well hole is an open invitation for re-criticality. Not to mention world production != a local "empty" space to execute the proposed plan is a futher example of an argument without backing.
The ex-oilwell "plan" runs the risk of groundwater contamination.
You know it is pointless Eric.
By contrast I can show the rest of TOD readership how one cites sources VS handwaving. Changing a closed mind won't happen. But showing the results of a study like WIPP, DU from Iraq ending up in Brittian, and the map with the black dots should result in at least a few readers learning something new. And perhaps open their mind to possibilites they had not considered.
OK, well said. Thank you for taking the time to do it.
I can't access the american-buddha site due to company restrictions, but it seems it is about nuclear weapons. Then it is not relevant.
I have not proposed a plan. But yes, I do feel it is much more important to fight global warming and coal particulate deaths today than to worry about a few extra deaths after some imaginary apocalypse.
You have always painted me as dishonest, and the moderator here always let it fly. If I'd say stuff like that, I'd be banned. So I guess I can't do much about it, other than pointing out that what you do is not very charitable, nor polite.
Ok, so PV and wind can save us, in theory. However, nuclear can in practice. It is cheaper, it's non-intermittent, can produce heat even cheaper and has better environmental properties.
Funny.
Well, if we do a back-of-the-envelope: SNF produced per GW-year (9 TWh): Some 20 tonnes. TWh to date: Some 60,000. So, total SNF: 60,000*20/9 = 133,000 tonnes. Uranium is very dense, some 20 g/cm^3. OTOH, there is some cladding that you don't want to remove, so let's say 10 g/cm^2. Then the volume is some 133,000/10 = 13,000 cubic metres.
Your 4667 cubic foot a second is, converted to sane units, ~130 cubic metres a second. So the numeric value of "many" would be 13,000/130 = 100. So, 100 seconds, give or take. Ok?
This displays a lack of knowledge of reactor physics. It won't go critical, since it's spent! Ok, if you had a really good moderator (heavy-water), then you could get some additional fission out of it. However, it is kept apart to not get too hot due to decay of fission products. If it's too hot, any barriers might not work according to spec. Also, regarding re-criticality, please note that there have been several natural fission reactors in nature, and this is no problem unless we somehow dig out the fission products and spread them around intentionally.
Please note I'm not advocating putting SNF in old oil fields. I'm just pointing to the fact that the fuel is really, really compact, and that there are plenty geological configurations that far exceeds reasonable specs for a final repository.
This displays a lack of knowledge of reactor physics. It won't go critical, since it's spent!
Hey Twilight - this is exactly why responding to Jeppen matters. Not to change its mind but to inform others of how the handwaving and lack of math is a disservice to the reader.
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Radioactive_Waste_Management/Spent_Nuclear_...
The readers can decide for themselves - either spent rods "won't go critical - because they are spent" or they can achieve criticality and thus need special handling outside of the reactor.
Why not perhaps quote this from the same page:
"second hazard of spent fuel, in addition to high radiation levels, is the extremely remote possibility of an accidental “criticality,” or self-sustained fissioning and splitting of the atoms of uranium and plutonium."
My bold-facing. I.e, it simply doesn't happen!
Once again, you don't know what you are talking about. Yes, there are 90,000 cubic foot to put away. But you said the rate of extraction was 4667 cubic foot per second, so there are some 20 seconds worth.
Ah, you had time to retract your embarrasing calculation before I pointed it out. Good for you.
is the extremely remote possibility of an accidental “criticality,” or self-sustained fissioning and splitting of the atoms of uranium and plutonium
Thus refuting your claim about spent fuel rods:
It won't go critical, since it's spent!
The only reason the spent fuel rods don't go critical is because they are stored separated from each other. Not because "they are spent" as claimed.
Again, it is not refuting my claim, but supporting it.
There are several reasons spent fuel rods won't go critical. Absence of moderators, presence of neutron poisons/eaters and low fissile content (due to them being spent) are all good reasons.
jeppen wrote: "Ok, so PV and wind can save us, in theory. However, nuclear can in practice. It is cheaper, it's non-intermittent, can produce heat even cheaper and has better environmental properties."
You made my day, as I am in the S mode of S&M today. :-)
nuclear is cheaper: Nonsense, French officials admit that the last reactor generation produces for 10 cent/kWh, the UK will give the same amount of money for 40 years in case somebody builds their new reactors (today's Guardian).
http://bos.sagepub.com/content/69/1/18.full
According to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, see the paper, the reactors are something I would call economic zombies.
In contrast, onshore Wind provides electricity for 5-9 cent/kWh in Germany and Austria. :-))
it's non-intermittent: Correct, but you have to provide a good explanation why France needs almost 0.4 kW pump storage for 1 kW nuclear power ,63 GW vs. 23 GW. According to EDF the capacity factor of French nukes is only 80% and a large amount of the electricity is exported, 20% are still fossil. Could inflexible baseload be a real problem?
Or, how much wind/PV could I build with the same amount of storage, export and residual fossil capacity? :-)
has better environmental properties: According to German sources the energy return of a reactor is not better than good onshore wind, in best case a draw for you, but only if you provide save storage for spent fuel. :-)
building rate: Have you ever checked how much wind and PV is build per year (obviously not), with 3 GW wind = 1 nuclear reactor and 5 GW PV = 1 nuclear reactor around 27 green nukes come online per year, you are happy to find 10 new nuclear power plants per year, or worse, you are not even able to maintain the status quo of 400 reactors, a solution sounds different for me, maybe I have too high expectations. :-))
Please, please give me more such nice opportunities to fry you. Completely renewable, I promise :-)))
It is very true nuclear power can be arbitrarily expensive, depending on your choice of reactors and amount and type of red tape.
Yes, but it has increasing external costs and low value. All kWh is not made alike.
Yes, inflexible baseload is a problem that is almost as bad for 80% nuclear as it is for 20% wind. Denmark exports and imports some 30% of gross production. It could not have that high wind penetration without big neighbours to soak up their intermittent power. And no, 20% of French generation is NOT fossil. It has 10% hydro as well, so only 10% fossil!
Why do you say "obviously not"? I know fully well that wind/PV currently ramps faster than nuclear power. However, nuclear ramped faster in select countries in the 70-ies and 80-ies than the best wind/solar countries ramp their wind/solar today. And, more importantly, nuclear quickly ramped to 50% and beyond in those countries. You won't do that with intermittent power.
Hope I've been able to oblige.
However, nuclear ramped faster in select countries in the 70-ies and 80-ies than the best wind/solar countries ramp their wind/solar today. And, more importantly, nuclear quickly ramped to 50% and beyond in those countries. You won't do that with intermittent power.
How many fission and Hydrogen bombs can be made from a wind/solar operation?
How many can be made from the operation of Nuclear plants?
Commercial power Fission reactors have other purposes to them to prompt building than just the electrical power outputted.
One wishes Germany would build double the number of nukes instead of closing them down. You need the non-CO2 technology to cover your base load.
Ramping fossil fuel hard coal and gas plants up and down will be necessary until you overbuild renewables and discard over-produced renewable power instead of forcing the grid to take it.
From Electricity production from solar and wind in Germany in 2012
Germany: zero carbon and nuclear free by 2050 - what's not to like?
[ok, they're only targeting 80% renewables by 2050 but some people think (hope?) they'll hit 100%: Energiewende!]
A couple of points: “Of course math doesn't matter when the idea that production of an oil well leaves vacant space to then "insert" waste. And for readers who sit and think about such an idea they'll come to understand that the storage is done in a way to keep apart spent fuel so that it does not undergo criticality. Taking spent fuel and putting it down a well hole is an open invitation for re-criticality.”]
First, with the exception of solution mined salt caverns there are no “vacant spaces” down there. When oil/NG/water/anything else is produced the space that the substance had occupied is refilled instantly typically with salt water. Also, I’m not sure about the invitation for re-criticality. You obviously understand these dynamics better than me so: how is the material currently be keep from a critical concentration? I assume some concentration would have to be injected into a well that’s less than critical condition. If it were injected into a very porous sandstone reservoir at most 30% of the rock would be filled with the radioactive material. IOW the concentration would only be about 1/3 of that of the original injected fluid. If the material isn’t at a critical level at the surface it would seem to reach critical levels in a reservoir. Or is there a time factor that plays a role in criticality?
But I do see a variety of other downsides to getting rid of radioactive materials vis disposal wells.
Also, I’m not sure about the invitation for re-criticality. You obviously understand these dynamics better than me so: how is the material currently be keep from a critical concentration?
That is going to depend on the material. Criticality happens when the Neutrons naturally given off hit other fissionable material causing a chain reaction. Placing moderators in the way and spreading apart the material are how one avoids criticality. Water acts as a moderator - that's why loosing the water in the storage tank caused the issues in Fukushima and why the air plane into the cooling pond was mentioned in some 9/11 reporting.
In the case of injection into a well, you'd have the material mass around the injection site. Put enough of the material down the hole and criticality is a real concern. And even if you didn't get criticality at the time of injection, you could get it later.
Imagine super-critical steam mixed with oil vapors - where is that gonna go?
I don't get it. I point out eric blair doesn't know what he's talking about and my comments then disappear. Why? Am I getting flagged, perhaps? I try to be as polite I can in the face of impolite desinformation.
Anyway, again, a nuclear moderator does the opposite of what he thinks it does. It increases the likelihood of fission.
I misspoke on moderators - mea culpa.
Make your point without getting personal and your comments will not be removed. Criticize ideas, not the people who hold them.
And if your comments are removed, don't complain about it in the thread. E-mail me personally if you have questions about the moderating policy.
Ok, I will do that. I don't have questions so much as opinions.
And what would be nice is if you post actual facts rather than your opinions.
Here we go again.
Even if fission nuclear power were not incredibly expensive, risky, disseminating nuclear technology which can be diverted to arms use, and generating toxic wastes which lasts for thousands of years it will NOT solve the problem of non-renewable energy sources.
The Oil Drum itself has had excellent articles explaining "Peak Uranium" ie if our current gluttonous use of fossil fuels were replaced by uranium fueled nuclear fission Uranium would run out in 50 years or so. So it does not even solve the fundamental problem of nonrenewable energy! So what is the point?
We need sustainable solutions that will last centuries not a few decades.
Here are the links which I have provided to Jeppen before and yet this keeps cropping up like a
many headed hydra:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2379
The march towards "Peak Uranium" has been slowed even faster than demand destruction affected Peak Oil because of the Fukishima disaster which decreased Japan's use of uranium and Germany's plan and actual execution of a phase out of their nuclear fission power.
We need to plan for the next century...
Peak uranium is nonsense, simply because the price of uranium is so insignificant that a fully workable price hike will unlock vast additional reserves. I'm sure someone in the comments section mentioned this fact. If not, please have a look at this MIT report.
"Our analysis of uranium mining costs versus cumulative production in a world with ten times as many LWRs and each LWR operating for 100 years indicates a probable 50% increase in uranium costs. Such a modest increase in uranium costs would not significantly impact nuclear power economics"
Agreed, this is well-trodden ground. I'm going to ask that people give it a rest, and stick to the original question: does it make sense to dispose of nuclear waste in a subduction zone?
I kind of wonder what the EROI would be on that.
does it make sense to dispose of nuclear waste in a subduction zone?
Interactions between water and the waste make that a dubious plan. *IF* the waste reacts with the seawater that will introduce the waste into the biosphere.
Thus far none of the proponents have shown the chemistry and reaction temps to demonstrate how the idea is workable.
And yes, the energy invested on that idea should be included.
Perhaps I should have injected this point sooner. Think of time scales: the typical subduction rate is about 2"/year. So deposit radiactive materials in a subduction zone and wait 100 years. Now those nasties are buried less than 20' below the sea floor. Anyone feeling safer? LOL.
Lets see, 20 feet below the sea floor and 4 km below the surface. At least, the plutonium isn't handy to make more bombs. Yes, I feel safer already...
E. Swanson
I'd be leery of having radwaste shallowly stuck in a subduction zone. The movement is darn slow... geological.
An alternate notion, only marginally tongue-in-cheek: if the planet and its extant life systems is to survive in ANYthing like the form it has now, we will apparently need to leave most of the accessible fossil carbon in the ground, essentially forever. There are no laws or treaties which will last for thousands, or tens of thousands of years. How to keep subsequent civilizations from going back on the coal standard?
How about we build out and tweak nuclear reactors to maximize the most toxic isotopes and intentionally inject them into the most accessible fossil carbon deposits as an anthro-sequestration tool?
Yeah, I get it that this isn't "nice". I don't like it either, but it'd have less downside than a lot of the harebrained geoengineering proposals being floated.
I'm aware of the impracticality for several dozen reasons, so I'll offer this as commentary.
"From a technical perspective, it was solved before the research into copper cylinders, optimal bedrock, bentonite clay and so on even begun."
And therein lies the rub: the world has very nearly zero "technical problems" right now, because we'll never get to them through the mountain of policital and economic problems, regardless of wether one agrees with your other assertions or not...and I'm not talking about nuclear specifically, if it's not obivous. Paradise is right in front of us, and that's gonna be the ultimate punchline for the human race, I fear.
The stuff at Fukushima sure did a pretty good job of spreading itself around - let's face it, we're not gonna build nuclear. We're sooner or later gonna have problems with stability of the grid due to unpredictable supplies of affordable transport fuel. Sooner or later, the power is gonna go off often enough and in enough places to put a lot of newly dry spent fuel pools into the atmosphere, and that's what all our peers here are pissing in their pants about. We *saw* it happen, in a first-world country with abundant supplies of fuel and piles of nifty technological toys. We have no Gen IV/V/whatever plants built, and I *highly* doubt anyone is gonna finance any, leaving the first world with a healthy supply of existential risks waiting to boil away before our eyes.
Flame on, but notice I didn't necessarily disagree with anything you said. I simply disagree that the political realities here on earth are ever going to be compatible with nuclear in a declining world, and if we can't power down in time to fix our liquid fuel problems, we're *way* not gonna have the will to 'fix' nuclear. Just. Not. Going. To. Happen. We're not fixing PO, we're not fixing AGW, and so we get to sit on our thumbs with the rest of society and watch everything crumble. If we're lucky. We might as well be discussing cold fusion, it's as likely to happen as a huge buildout of traditional nuclear at this point, making this whole argument a thought experiment, if you ask me. Have you seen anything done with any of the other Fukushima-generation plants out there? There's one of the US's biggest spent fuel pools sitting in the desert 100mi north of me, upwind a lot of days. Just like Fukushima, sans tsunami risk. Have they done anything about it? Nope, just keeps sitting there getting bigger. Wonder how much diesel they keep on hand...gonna be real 'interesting' to see what happens when Phoenix depopulates.
Desert
Like desertrat, I think jeppen's ideas are within the realm of possibility*, but that does not make them enough likely to happen. The problem with jeppen's view is that it relies on people being rational, and as he himself points out, rationality can be put aside sometimes (as in allowing for far more deaths caused by coal pollution than for nuclear mishaps).
Given AGW and the price race for oil, a rational decision would be to scale nuclear, but as desertrat says, it is not happening now. The big question as I see it is whether sooner or later it will be forced by a "warlike mentality" (citing ROCKMAN on what is needed to increase oil output enough in the US), or whether the state of the world can decay so fast that huge projects like nuclear commissions (and decommissions like in Phoenix) are beyond reach.
* He always makes a good case with numbers, I don't any reason at all for calling him dishonest.
As was pointed out earlier this evening, Jeppen's 'Rationality' is happy to shrug off mass evacuations as just some expense to be added into the tally.. you get evacuated during DIRE EMERGENCIES, while with earthquakes, fires and floods, at least you get to come back again and rebuild or pick up some pieces usually.
Sometimes the 'rational, unemotional' argument is just that because someone has become too divorced from a necessary emotional connection, empathy with those who will be living with the results of his clean and insulated calculations.
There is also the matter of what figures have NOT gone into the formula that might upset the optimistic balance of the equation. I understand that Ukraine still must commit some 7 to 12 percent of its entire annual budget to continue to manage Chernobyl. Sorry, but I've linked sources for this several times, and can't take the time to do it again.. owing to my own budget issues.
There's something deeply troubling about the way Jeppen has conducted his arguments here, and I just can't put my finger on it.. the urge to call names grows out of such frustration, while I don't doubt he is frustrated as well, and has surely been admirable in some way with the restraint from OPEN namecalling, as others have succombed to. But these debates have certainly gone over the same ground enough times that I don't expect us to find anything new with a few more goes. It just serves to get mad at one another's sanctimonious tones.. but I'm honestly less troubled by anger than I am by heartlessness.
I think jeppen is not happy to shrug off evacuations during DIRE EMERGENCIES, but rather that he takes a rational view and "counts beans" as he likes to put it; weighs evacuations from nuclear mishaps against (many more) deaths from coal industry pollution.
And like the utilitarian philosopher Torbjörn Tännsjö (compatriot of me and jeppen) has said, the view that decisions based on rational calculations (bean counting) will necessarily benefit more oppression is actually wrong - we need to be coldly rational to make decisions that are the best from a macro perspective, and ignore the emotional reflexes.
I think it's a fool's errand to pretend to be able to extract emotion and work somehow 'outside' it. Everything we do is tied together, and that sort of masking simply puts the emotional aspect into the shadows, where the work it does can transform in bad ways.
It's an extension of our culture's fear of nature, which we tried to shun, tried to outrun with right angles and clean test tubes, only to discover that nature will work around all our little tricks, and trick us back, far worse.
Instead of trying to ignore, erase or outrun emotion, we have to understand it and know that we are always working within it, whether we like it or not.
Some economists and scientists recoil at the idea.. it can even make them mad! Imagine.
Ah the rational mind. I was having a discussion about being 'detached', 'rational' etc with my colleague. My quip was 'why are people so emotional about everything', his reply was 'why are you so emotional about being rational'. That shut me up, we all have baggages, even the 'rational' ones. Accept the world as it is.
I shall respectfully disagree.
Say you live in a little village under a huge snow covered mountain which is prone to massive avalanches.
If one is able to understand why the world is the way it is, it might still be possible to use that knowledge and steer things in a particular direction... by recognizing points of self organized criticality it might perhaps be possible to start a useful avalanche or two in the right places and thereby mitigate the overall potential damage to the village below.
Analogously, pushing emotional buttons at the right time and place might be one way to start some of those critical paradigm shifts for our global village.
The trick of course is to figure out which ones can be safely pushed so as not to bring down the entire side of the mountain on the village below.
Best hopes that those who have access to both the knowledge and the buttons have the best interests of the village at heart.
As for myself I absolutely refuse to accept the world as it is now.
Park City Avalanche Control
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXrh2wB6uTM
Cheers!
Fred
Sorry Fred, but you really cannot change the world. So if you are not going to accept it then I am at a loss as to what you will do.
As for me, I hate the world as it is. It tears me apart to see all the animals suffering, starving or just being killed off because of human actions. But I am powerless to stop it. Accept it? What choice have I? Please advise, I am holding my breath waiting for your answer. ;-)
Ron P.
LOL! Well Ron, ineffective though it may be, there's always tilting at windmills a la Don Quixote, right?
Seriously though, I don't pretend there is much chance that my non acceptance will lead to any solutions.
I guess I subscribe to the notion that appears in one of the quotes in the upper right hand corner of this site.
Which I can only paraphrase from memory at the moment: "Fighting when you know you will win doesn't bear much honor however fighting for a cause even when you are sure to lose, that is my way!"
In the end I'll probably get whacked at some point. But I sure as hell won't go quietly.
Case in point, just last night I turned down a lot of money for something that I thought was unethical even though it was legal. I'd rather continue being poor but be able to sleep soundly at night. I'm sure someone else will come along and take the moola and run with it. So, since the world won't have changed at all because of my choice, I guess at the end of the day you are probably right.
Putting the waste right at the leading edge of a subduction zone is a clever idea since, in theory, the waste gets sucked down under the tectonic plates during the subsequent plate movements and this disappears down to the already radioactive center of the earth.
However, I don't imagine the plan is so easy. We are not so good at doing things in the deep ocean other than going down for a short period to look around. How do you transport and install large amounts of heavy radioactive waste in a perfect spot that we have barely even visited because it is so hard to get there? As people have said, we now know more about Mars than we do about the deep ocean.
"How do you transport and install large amounts of heavy radioactive waste in a perfect spot that we have barely even visited because it is so hard to get there?"
Homing torpedo was one idea mentioned. Have a sonar beeper on the sea floor, and let the torpedo run straight down. The shallow crater it would make in the mud would soon fill up (If you chose the site correctly). When the waste container contained in the torpedo does eventually corrode through, the mud will tend to ion-exchange with the transuranics and they won't go far.
That was the theory. Personally I think Yucca Mountain is adequate.
Subduction zones are actually very messy things. What is getting subducted is usually several tens to hundreds of meters below the surface of the seafloor and everything above, usually the muds, oozes, turbidites, seamounts etc. gets scraped into an accretionary wedge. And as this wedge itself gets squeezed, the water it contains gets squeezed out resulting in cold seeps high in methane and sulfides and corrosive compounds. This is far from an ideal place to stick our nuclear waste. A better start would be if we just stopped generating it.
I'll second the idea of stop generating it, but sadly that doesn't seem to be on the cards.
My reading of the plan was not to put the waste anywhere near the sea floor, but several thousand feet below in stable rock. Akin to filling up an old oil field.
I agree it's not a good idea to be shallower than that, but the geology can be fairly stable at depth - if that's not an oxymoron for a subduction zone!
Per Leanan's request upstream, I'm going to give this a rest at this point. I have responses for folks, of course. If anyone has a specific request they'd like me to respond on this now just reply to this post, and I'll be happy to.
So far as the subduction idea goes, I think it'd be worth an experiment or two. Take something heavy (lead maybe?) with some sort of marker in/on it (really heavy cable? IDK), and see how difficult, and how much energy it would take, to plant it in such an area. Then let's watch it for a while. It might be good, it might be bad. We don't have any data on it yet.
I have no idea of the geology involved. Do these zones even move enough to notice in a decade or so? Is there some particularly active one that would be a good place to test? What would be the right depth to place the material? If we discover sticking a ton of lead into such a location is cost prohibitive on it's own, well, that tells us something too.
It's an interesting idea, though.
EDIT: Never mind. Rock answered upstream before I posted this. I'll shut up now. ;)
Now that's crazy talk >;-)
FM - Damn right! Next thing you know those fools will want us to cut back on fossil fuel consumption. It's a very slippery slope. Best to nip it in the bud as Deputy Fife would say.
Biologist Ernst Mayr was correct in his assessment of the human condition in that human “intelligence” is a lethal mutation. It is not difficult to reconstruct the manner in which we pried ourselves from the intact ecosystem that maintained us and simultaneously kept our numbers in check. It’s interesting to speculate on human mutagenesis and the time that was required by the ecosystem to provide the organizational raw materials for a successful escape. There has been a rapid slaughter of those not so fortunately equipped with the means of escaping the limiting ecological relationships.
Many tumors or relatively complex civilizations have arisen during recent history but were self-limiting in extent. The development of tools to record information and then the discovery of fossil fuels and additional complex tool engineering has meant aggressive growth and metastasis. The entire endeavor of human civilization is cancerous with its focus upon endless growth, consumption, and endless extension of lifespan. Sometimes cancers go into remission, but that doesn’t seem to be our fate and even if control were established now, it is no guarantee that we could sustainably maintain ourselves or not start growing again. Even if we were to stop growing, we would still possess the mutations and drives that facilitated our escape in the first place. Keynesian cancer growth factor is still liberally applied to remorseless tumors in efforts to induce expansion. We should also begin considering the LD (lethal dose) 50 for atmospheric CO2 and associated gases, for not only will these poisons wipe out a substantial portion of the cancer (civilization), they will likely wipe out an even greater percentage of organic life vulnerable because of slow adaptability. LD100 is another acronym for BAU.
Alien talk:
Alien 1: Looking down upon the earth.“See those tumors down there?”
Alien 2: “Yea, stone temples, crops, the rise of civilization, what about ‘em?”
Alien 1: “If they find the fossil fuels, you know it’s all over.”
Alien 2: “What do you mean all over?”
Alien 1: “They’ll grow uncontrollably, metastasize and destroy themselves.”
Alien 2: “Yes, that’s certain.”
Alien 1: “And they’ll never have the conversation we're having now.”
Alien 2: “Right.”
Alien 2: “But how did we (aliens) make it?”
Alien 1: “We didn't, we're just an expansionary cancer dreaming of escaping a body turned to waste.
"It is not difficult to reconstruct the manner in which we pried ourselves from the intact ecosystem that maintained us.."
It is difficult to understand why we take such pride in doing so :-0
Dopamine, loved your post. I agree with every word of it. Your alien dialogue was hilarious. But Ernst Mayr has written a lot of books. In which one of them did he say human “intelligence” is a lethal mutation?
Ron P.
Higher Intelligence and the Descent of Man
Thanks for the link Ghung. Mayr makes an excellent point. However his point is a contradiction:
True, higher intelligence, for various reasons, is not favored by natural selection among almost all species. However it was once very much favored by one species of great apes. It had to have been favored then or else higher intelligence would not have evolved.
And it did evolve you know.
Ron P.
"And it did evolve you know...
...perhaps ;-/
I think calling it a lethal mutation is wrong. Quite the opposite, we took over the planet. Name another multi-celluar species that occupies every continent on the planet and lives in pretty much every environment.
We've succeeded massive and have had a population explosion to prove it. But like all successful organisms of the past, we are subject to overshoot. And that is what is going to happen to us if we don't use that amazing intelligence properly. I agree that it is bound to happen. It has happened to civilizations in the past and it will happen in the future. The only question is how well we manage the inevitable over-shoot problem.
It doesn't have to be terrible. But I suspect it will be because we won't listen to the smart people that see the problem coming and suggest ways of dealing with it. Instead, we have religions and cultures that encourage people to reproduce will little forethought to the future.
Only the malignant species of humans has spread in every direction to consume all. We can be considered wildly successful, short-term, but lethal to the ecosystem and ourselves over a slightly longer term. I wish we were guided by intelligence, but we’re not. Our motivations come from old neuronal relationships deep within the brain. We have evolved to cooperatively and rapidly create tools to brandish against the natural world from which we have emerged. We also use the tools against each other, in the greatest explosion of growth and complexity since pre-metazoan life began. We were an apex predator that unfortunately and coincidentally had the necessary evolutionary groundwork to be shunted onto a cancerous path.
Knowing this will make little difference. Our entire approach to living on the planet and existing infrastructure is entirely unsustainable, incompatible with the ecosystem and probably not amenable to the massive behavioral and organizational changes that must be accomplished prior to collapse. It feels good to be a cancer until you begin starving and die along with the body that you have ravaged.
Knowing this could make all the difference. The problem is that we live in a demon-haunted world filled with ancient superstition and spurious ideology. If everyone understood and appreciated what you said then we would change our ways. But instead we have religions, cultures, political parties, ideologies, superstitions, and other bad mind-viruses that tell us to "Be fruitful and multiply." or "Allah will provide." or "Those dirty liberal tree-huggers just want to take away your freedom!"
So you may know it. Most people don't. And most of those people you tell will deny it or not want to hear it. Never underestimate the power of human denial.
I think humanity will eventually learn the lesson. But it will have to learn the lesson the hard way.
The point of the debate, I think, is that higher (technological) intelligence is going to be rare in the universe at any one time because highly intelligent species would be short-lived; they are too successful, initially, to survive their technological infancy. They'll generally do what we are clearly doing; utilize their intelligence to literally "eat themselves out of house and home", well before they gain the wisdom to not do so. Their basic drive to survive and reproduce themselves is more powerful than any need for restraint. Self-impositions of limits to growth aren't hard-wired. Any intelligent species that develops will be conflicted, collectively destructive, and short-lived; a flash in the pan, so to speak, as they circumvent and corrupt the natural order that produced them in the first place.
No fate but what we make.
Maybe we'll figure it out and change our ways. Maybe we'll suffer a huge collapse and then learn from it such that we adopt sustainable ways. I doubt we totally snuff ourselves out though. That would be pretty hard even if we tried. Perhaps a nuclear war would do it but even then I suspect there would be a few hardy survivors. (I'd certainly be among the dead or soon put myself in that category if that happened.)
We made it through the black plague, the flu epidemic of the early 1900s, countless famines, and two world wars. Perhaps it is time for mankind to get slapped down again. And hopefully we will learn from the experience and do better.
There are numerous members of homo sapiens that have wisdom; some of them post on this web site. I don't think the problem is a surfeit of wisdom but the ability to give those who have the wisdom the power to use that wisdom. Wisdom, in itself, is not sufficient; it must have the power of implementation.
We live in a world where the system dynamics prohibits the use of wisdom that would engender a kindler, gentler, less destructive use of our planet. It is the doctrine and practice of maximization of short term gain in the name of self interest that is the problem. We live in a culture where we are taught that rational self interest and maximization of our economic well being is the road to a better life for all. This theorem completely ignores the ecological impacts of our behavior and the fact that this so called rational behavior will lead to an irrational result, the extinction of most species, perhaps including homo sapiens.
The proliferation of the human species to an incomprehensible number of people is another factor overwhelming the ability of the wise to take action.
Even if one is wise, what difference does it make when all of one's neighbors are rapidly destroying the resources needed for long term survival? Some will choose to do the right thing anyway but to no avail as far as the future of the planet is concerned.
State imposed communism substituted short term gain for the nation, and did even worse. So now we are blundering around with a destructive system, but we haven't a clue what to replace it with.
The evolution of the collective whole can be different from the individuals. You have observed that a few members who "get it" may not to sufficient. Although sometimes a really good leader emerges. I watched a two hour show about South Africa last night. Whats amazing was how strong an attractor the state called "catastrophic civil war" was, and how a few wise people were able (barely) to avert falling into it. What we need is a leader who both "gets it", and is able to have sufficient influence that it matters.
tstreet, it sounds like all our problems will be solved if we listen to Bob Walkup /sarc
Yep!
Wow, I never knew that! I'm going to have to give it a try, hold on a minute........
Nope, did work. Guess it's just another silly proclamation from the church of growth, progress and technology.
Twilight, let us have Bob's engineers design a functioning fusion power plant.
While they are at it, have them design a real spaceship that goes ten times faster than the speed of light.
What things do you want designed?
Okay, engineer fairy who can do anything, I wish for millions of inexpensive 1 square meter PV panels with 95% conversion efficiency and secondary batteries that never wear out nor require maintenance.
Oooh, good pick. That would pretty much solve the world's energy needs.
But then again . . . that could end up being a disaster.
BlueTwilight, good one.
Where do you want the panels shipped? I'm sure Bob's engineers will get right on it.
I'd say we are overgeneralizing here. We have a sample size of one (maybe less, since we don't have the whole history of that one yet). We've barely sampled the space of "intelligent species", and have no real basis for thinking about how others may differ from us.
Now, I agree, that the evolutionary process should be similar, and the outcome ought to be broadly similar. But, then, our species is so heavily influenced by reining world-myths, (religions). If we had blundered into one that preserved nature, and still became globally dominant, who knows how it would have turned out. So even starting with the same genes/environment, the spread in outcomes could be quite large. No telling what different genes/environment might create.
While I'm only going along with the hypothesis here, I'd say, as a species, we've collectively been fairly consistant. Re: your comment, above, regarding enlightened leadership, leaders come, leaders go, but humanity doesn't seem to change much, even though our trappings and our capacity to wreck havoc on our environment do. One can
alwaysonly hope and try to set an example...There were (and are) religions like that. But by their very nature they fail at the survival of the fittest game. It is no mere accident that the largest Christian sect is the one that tells people using birth control or having an abortion is a sin. It is no accident that the fast-growing religion of Islam also forbids birth control and abortion. These are religions are mind-viruses that must have their hosts reproduce in order to reproduce themselves.
On the other hand, the Shakers, a religion that forbids sex . . . is pretty much extinct. It failed at the mind-virus evolution challenge.
I know you referred to 'preserved nature' but birth control is probably the biggest way to do that. But even the more nature-oriented religions just can't compete to the 'be fruitful and mulitply' religions.
Not to mention the mandatory-castration-sects, wich tends to be totally extinct. Within a generation often.
Eh, I'm going back to my Cheetos and NASCAR and pictures of scantily clad women. And tomorrow I'll check my investments to make sure they make a 7% return every year so I can retire and enjoy a life of golf and world travel.
Somebody else can clean up my mess!
Rather poorly so far!
http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/earth_overshoot_day/
Mayr brought the concept up in a debate or discussion with Carl Sagan, in the context of extraterrestrial intelligent species.
IMO, it is uncontrovertable that intelligence is a neutral dynamic that both Oil-Qaeda and good folk have.
The bottom line is that how intelligence is used determines how fatal it is or is not (The Peak of Intelligence).
Here is an idea . . . they could raise their gas taxes. Of course the country has been taken over with anti-tax and hate the government fever. You get what you pay for.
Edit: Never mind . . . someone already made the point above me.
A more effective option would be to simply let the roads crumble and bridges rust to pieces. Then the idea of a gas tax may become more palatable to American motorists.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shock_Doctrine
Then as a solution to the crumbling infrastructure problem you propose tax cuts for the rich and turning Social Security into a voucher program.
A really good read is JHK's new posting today, 'Scale Implosion'
http://kunstler.com/blog/2013/02/scale-implosion.html
Is retail dying in an era of contracting credit and expensive fuel?
http://investmentwatchblog.com/retail-apocalypse-why-are-major-retail-ch...
Will the Fed now print more furiously to revive comatose shoppers? We are not yet at the point where every unemployed person gets a $300 debit card for Christmas shopping, but we will get there soon enough.
There is a 'winner' in this situation:
Amazon.com et al
It's easier for many people to search the web for what you need and have it delivered to your door. in two days if you are an Amazon Premium subscriber. Avoid using gasoline, putting wear and tear on you vehicle, avoid that wasted time spent driving, looking for a parking space which will be too small, even for a small car, fighting crowds, dealing with low-motivation, low-help store staff, going to multiple stores looking for the right item, size, color, etc. Plus, one can read sometimes many hundreds of user reviews on items on line..soon enough one learns how to recognize and filter out the plants both for and against a product...
Some downsides: Creating a small army of slaves being worked to death at Amazon distribution center, more people put out of work from brick and mortar stores, less people stopping at restaurants while they are out at retail. But, maybe fewer car accidents, and less calories consumed and money spent at eateries.
Brick and mortar have faced competition from online stores for 15 years. I think this is more than that. I think we are witnessing the death of consumerism. People are spending less at Walmart because they have less money, not because they are spending it at amazon.com
Check this out. http://www.shadowstats.com/charts/retail-sales
Frankly, I don't see that the overall retail sales data shows the death of consumerism. After a long, slow climb up there may be a little recent downturn but not the death of consumerism. The stores that are dying has been crushed by Wal Mart and online sales. This has been going on for a long time and may now be accelerating.
The sector that is clearly dying, however, and almost dead is the department store sector. This is clearly a function of Wal Mart's ascendance.
However, it is possible that the increase in overall sales may have run out of steam. Further, the hollowing out of the middle class has not been abated by stimulus money or the trillions of dollars printed by the FED. And, therefore, I would expect that retail sales will probably be flat or trending down in the future.
Nothing will be done to help the consumer at this point and nothing will be done to further beef up government spending to provide more aggregate demand. There is still a belief that the fictional free market will find a way to rebound and take us soaring to new and better heights.
While I am an advocate of a steady state economy; I do not believe that the full impact of said economy should be borne by the low and middle classes. But that is the world we live in.
Yes, I do not see any evidence of the death of consumerism. Online shopping has been around awhile, but Amazon is shaking it up again. They've stopped fighting state sales taxes. Instead, they want to be able to deliver in two days just about anywhere. (Their Prime service.) That means they have to have lots of local warehouses, which means they have to pay state sales tax. They're betting people will pay for the convenience of Prime. When delivery is in two days, that really changes the equation. That means a lot of things that you would ordinarily go to the store for can be more easily bought online. Groceries, diapers, medication, hygiene products, etc.
I think this is a good change. They need to pay sales taxes. They've gotten away with that subsidy for far too long. Fighting by providing a better service is the way to compete fair and effectively. And having a delivery truck drive to 50 different houses with packages is more efficient that 50 different cars driving to the store.
But it's still part of an economic 'ecosystem'.
The people (like me) buying online instead of at the mall now are doing so with a type of cheap credit that didn't really take hold until the last couple decades. So more of those purchases are against a deep hole of debt, or at the least, a far shallower pool of savings.
The efficiency of the fewer road miles, less trips, and the centralized warehouses instead of the countless competing Brick-n-Mortar stores means fewer and fewer first and second order jobs.
It is a superficial efficiency gain, but is essentially a great downcycling. It's wringing out the sponge instead of figuring on a smaller sponge. But we still need a Moist sponge.
(That sounds like a good strong anthem to close on.. I'll leave it there)
Except for this.. a great number of the Professional level middle class families around me, after some discrete inquiry, are truly facing the cliff-edge like never before. There is less and less fat to gird between
successsurvival and failure. (Fat being a good moist sponge, of course.. to stick with my proud metaphor)Another thing to keep in mind...Amazon is not particularly profitable. Their profits are thin in good quarters, negative in bad quarters. They generate huge sales, but not huge profits. Investors love them, apparently believing they'll eventually turn sales into profits. Maybe they will (after they kill off the competition and raise prices), but right now, they're following the Lucy plan: losing money, but making it up on volume.
Maybe not profitable, but their data base is increasing in value.
I spent yesterday, and will spend most of today staring at a computer screen (devoid of TOD), to learn in great detail how to be a Home D3PO store associate.. and in case nothing else shows up, I'm really grateful to have something coming in now as my freelance has collapsed along with so many other jobs around here.. so in the light of all we talk about, it's more than a bit humbling to hit this next stairstep in the flow of things.
Anyway, it's February in Maine, and we're having our fourth or so little warm blast for the winter, so it's raining and 42 after supper, and my 4th grader puts on her sandals, NO socks, and drags me out onto the rainy porch to dance. Nothing she likes better than to dance when it rains! So between the slushy drifts of the blizzard from last weekend, she prompts me to 'pick an animal', and I do and she does her Ferret Dance, and then a Grizzly Bear dance, and I get to do a Barn Swallow dance, and then an Iceberg Whale dance..
Didn't take any oil.. No MSM, it probably didn't boost the economy any.. and it would have been far too easy to say 'No honey. It's RAINING outside, it's February, it's bedtime, and I'm too tired besides.' It was marvelous!
Now I can put together a healthy lunch and go to this big box - on the hillside - full of ticky tacky - and watch videos and answer multiple choice questions all day.
But I'm just trying to make sure I keep track of where my bread is really buttered.
Excellent, Jokuhl, thank you. These are the things that matter :)
If'n you don't mind - what kind of freelance work is it you done?
I've been a professional Videographer and Lighting technician (Technically called an Electric, Grip and Gaffer, depending..)
It's possible I could find more of this work.. but often enough, a lot of it is hard to stomach as well.. particularly from the perspective I've put myself into in life.
At least with the HD training, I'm studying more of the Real Electrician info, which from my improvisational background has been a bit of a spotty part of my toolset. There is something more solid and real in this than in the many facades and superficialities of Film/Video production.. but the hourly is truly horrible.. I'll have to make it up with volume. (Maybe that means 'turn up the radio, in this case!)
Bob the Builder
Does purchasing items online to be delivered to one's house increase fuel consumption compared to the consumers traveling to a store?
It seems to me that it would transfer fuel consumption from gasoline to diesel and from more fuel efficient vehicles to less efficient ones. The world crude oil supply is shifting toward heavy, sour grades which yield less diesel than light grades.
And don't forget economies of scale. A UPS/DHL/FedEx truck making a shortest-path-optimized delivery route to 100 houses is much more efficient than those 100 people going to the mall individually. I would say this makes the biggest difference.
That's a very difficult question to answer. If you're talking about one person ordering one thing, it might take more fuel to send a big delivery truck out to his house. If he lives in a city or subdivision, and the truck makes many deliveries on one trip, it might be different. (Delivery companies like UPS and Fedex train their drivers and use computers to develop routes to minimize fuel consumption; it's a huge expense for them. For example, UPS makes no left turns, because it takes longer than a right turn and therefore burns more fuel. They are also investing in green vehicles - electric, natural gas - at a higher rate than individuals.)
Also, that's assuming the consumer knows exactly what he wants, goes to the store, and buys it. In practice, many people shop around, going to several stores, or the same store several times, tracking the price before buying. Clearly, it's more efficient to do that online.
One drawback: local roads are not designed for the heavy traffic they've been getting since Amazon and eBay came on the scene. Truck traffic is a major design factor when it comes to building roads, and residential streets are now getting more trucks than they were designed for, because of online shopping's door to door service.
A USPS truck may travel less than 100 feet to deliver your package. Compared to several miles a person may go to shop.
I don't think it's a difficult question at all.
Not many shippers use the USPS, though.
And the flip side is, many people would drive the same distance anyway, whether they're shopping or not. This is often the case in rural areas. You go into town to do a bunch of stuff: shop, check your mail, go to the bank, etc. Sometimes you even pick up stuff for your neighbors. So buying something from Amazon might not reduce your mileage at all.
The latest innovation at UPS is working with the USPS. The UPS trucks and aircraft provide the longest portion of the shipping and the USPS handles the last few miles. Apparently the USPS contracts with UPS for "air mail" and other long haul shipping and, beginning, around Christmas, the connections between the two became tighter. I had lots of fun with parcels which were initially shipped by UPS, but which were delivered by USPS as I don't have mail delivery at my street address. The local mail carriers suddenly found themselves with parcels which had a non-existent street address. This latest plan works, that is, until the USPS goes broke with the high gas prices and 6 day a week delivery schedule really starts to hurt. There's a proposal to kill Saturday service at the USPS and that's only the beginning...
E. Swanson
A minor example of this sort of question: being frugal, I try to stretch a bit of money a longer way so what we don't use can be used for pro-earth initiatives.
In being conscious of price, I've noted that some consumables like toilet paper and paper towels are cheaper air-flown by amazon and delivered to my door than if I buy them at costco.
(Now of course, a hypothetical enlightened person shouldn't be using disposable paper towels at all, and should likewise be dealing with their hiney in some more sustainable way. And indeed I have made some such efforts, which is a different story. However, our rental tenants and my wife would take a dim view of my unilaterally instituting such a policy for the household, so I pick my battles).
It's impossible to know the actual relative embodied energy, but I've settled on paying a premium to pick up such paper products at costco during my every-8-weeks staples run, because it's shipped in on a container ship rather than via UPS 2nd day air on a jet, which is probably less carbon-intensive. However, damage is done either way. I just find that having our toilet paper specially jetted across the ocean and delivered to my door by a smiling functionary in a brown uniform in crosses a comfort line. It throws the incongruity of the entire cycle into starker relief: converting forests into a one-use bottom-wiping commodity which is then flushed using drinking-quality water, after being flown by jet to a tropical island.
One must assume that the Amazon phenomenon will go away. (The retailer, though the other one may too). But for now, its free shipping on many things makes living in Hawaii on an island with no agriculture affordable. That its business model is based on "future profit" does a nice full circle with human delusionality.
And speaking of full circle, this post recalls one of my 2007 drumbeat comments... http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2637#comment-198942
greenish, I am amazed at the price that toilet paper goes for these days. It seems that with it being a renewable resource that prices would be lower.
It is one thing you never want to run out of no matter the price.
Rainforest survival tip:
Take small bits from big leafed plants and rub them on your upper arm... wait... if you develop a rash on your arm, don't use that one on your more delicate parts >;-)
I have a suggestion:
Buy an add-on bidet like the one I bought from Amazon a few weeks ago.
Thirty ducks, only one moving part (the rotary knob controlling water on/off/flow rate), 5-minute installation, no electricity involved.
Our family toilet paper use has plummeted.
Additional water use is trivial; in fact, we probably use less water due to eliminating double-flushes.
Embedded energy, EROI, etc...fuggetaboutit...love the exceptionally clean undercarriage achieved quickly each and every time with little paper use. The water is cold...that is a feature, not a bug.
Why didn't I have one of these starting, oh, 45 years ago?
Well, that was a prompting to look if ever there was one. This option had not really been on my radar. But I see Amazon has several in the price range you mention. Can you tell which one you're so pleased with?
Cliffman,
It just is so blindingly obvious once I tried one...
I bough this one (Price currently $32.00):
http://www.amazon.com/Astor-Non-Electric-Mechanical-Toilet-Attachment/dp...
and then I bought this competitor's unit for a second bathroom ($39.95):
http://www.amazon.com/LUXE-Bidet-Vi-110-Non-Electric-Mechanical/dp/B005I...
The comparison: The Luxe is a little more expensive, but uses braided steel hoses vice plastic hoses (I don't know if that will make a bit of diff over the course of years, we shall see), and the LUXE spray at higher knob settings isn't as powerful as the Astor (that may be a plus...although the Astor speed/power of the water stream is acceptably mild at the lower know settings).
Other than that, they are both about the same.
Please avail yourself of the numerous reviews to make your own judgement.
Buy some nylon toilet seat bolts from Lowes or wherever, since you will need longer bolts to pass through the toiler seat, bidet mounting holes, and the porcelain toilet holes. I like the nylon bolts since they don't corrode, but be careful tightening them since the slots on the top of the bolt strip easily ...thread the bolts thru the seat with the seat off the rim, and you may have to tap the bolts thru the last inch or so gently with a hammer, then mount the seat over the bidet bracket over the porcelain rim (tighten mainly using the nuts underneath). Another tip: you may want to connect the new input water supply hose and three-way diver valve under the tank before you mount the bidet under the toilet seat, especially if access around the side of the toilet is tight.
My toilet paper use: No kidding 90% Less using the bidet compared to without.
Especially helpful for folks with IBS C,or D, or C/D
Its cheap, its simple, it works.
I know a guy who outfitted his nice house with four $400 (that's the /discount/ price he got) fancy Japanese toilets with the hot & cold bidet, fan, heated seat, etc...requiring electrical power, etc...that is waaaaay overkill in my book...I spent way less than 10% what he did (even less still counting his installation, including electrical service).
Good idea. I ordered the model Vi-110, thanks.
May I direct your attention towards Pteridium aquilinum, the best back-crack whiping material God ever created. And it is both degradable and renewable as well!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pteridium_aquilinum
You only need to live a bit further north for this to be around, though.
Several days ago in a previous drumbeat there was discussion about average household energy use. I've written up an account about how our family lowered our household energy costs by 80%.
http://karenlynnallen.blogspot.com/2013/02/one-familys-energy-evolution-...
Includes charts, photos, graphs!
I have to say that much of what we did was based on things I initially learned about or began to consider seriously from reading The Oil Drum. And while we made mistakes here and there on our energy evolution, I think we would've made many more without the info here. So thanks very much TOD and everyone who comments here!
Your family did a fantastic job! I encourage everyone to take a look. Congratulations!!
Todd
Todd, thanks. Our goal is zero carbon, so there's still room for improvement, but I can only persuade my husband to agree to about a project a year, especially since what we have left to do won't provide the big savings of the early projects.
If you measure your carbon impact more broadly,ot just utilities consumed at home and gasoline, but what about the products we use, the energy consumed by our jobs, and our portion of the societal support structure? Thats several times larger than our "domestic" use, and much tougher to bring down.
I try, by attempting to influence what others do as well. Including by investing in green energy projects that I will never see. I think we as individuals can get there, but our example probably counts for more than our direct reduction in consumption.
You're right, trying to get carbon emissions down to zero is a broad topic and includes more than just personal fossil fuel use. However, the post was already long and diffuse enough, so I limited the scope to how our family saved money because people seem to be more interested in that than in reducing their carbon. Since the energy-efficiency of our nation's housing stock actually does play a significant role in carbon emissions, getting people to see that energy efficiency can be achieved without undue discomfort or inconvenience *while saving them money* is half-way to achieving it.
In the end, I feel strongly that reducing personal fossil fuel consumption is vital. Before I can advocate for others to change, I have to do so myself. I have to walk the talk. How can I ask anybody else to bike or take transit if I'm not willing to? How can I beat the drum for my country to become more energy efficient if I haven't done so myself? Just like reducing our family energy consumption required mostly scores of small changes, some in behavior, some in technology, reducing societal carbon emissions will require millions of wide-ranging (but mostly small) technological and behavioral transformations. There is no one silver bullet. We need everyone to do what they can, when they can, and with as much creativity, courage, and tenacity as they can muster.
Hi,
I'm making a section of my educational website www.sheppardsoftware.com devoted to saving energy. One idea I had was to recommend renting an apartment versus living in a house. I can't find information on the relative energy costs or btu use. The theory is that on the average an apartment is cheaper to heat per square foot because it is not stand-alone. Anyone know?
So far, my other suggestions are:
live closer to work (obvious)
tax gasoline more (to reduce consumption, encourage high mpg cars)
buy energy efficient appliances, light bulbs, insulate more (obvious)
stop the ethanol subsidy
At current prices, switching to natural gas heat saves $$ and is less polluting.
In some places heat pump makes sense.
Encourage China, India to lower coal usage (good luck with that)
Eat less beef,pork.
To produce a year's supply of beef for a family requires over
260 gallons of fossil fuel, or approximately one gallon of gasoline per pound of grain-fed
beef. Most nutritionists say you only need to eat a fist sized portion of meat, if you must have it.
Any thoughts, more suggestions? I know many of these topics have been covered in the Oil Drum.
In addition to what you have above:
To reduce electricity consumption--deal with vampire loads, unplug unnecessary stuff, unplug second refrigerator (25% of US household reportedly have a second refrigerator), reduce air conditioning needs with whole house fan and ceiling fans.
To reduce heating costs--learn to program your programmable thermostat (supposedly only 40% of households actually do this); wear a sweater and try living at a cooler temperature, weatherstrip, seal the attic (can't just insulate; need to prevent air passage as well.) Dry clothes outside on a line.
To reduce transportation costs--live somewhere that's pleasant to walk and bike around and then bike and walk all trips under 2 miles. (Nationally this is 40% of all trips.) When you drive, go easy on the accelerator. Live within half a mile of some form of electrified transit.
Stuff you buy--buy vintage, buy used, buy from Craig's list. Don't buy food flown in from a different hemisphere. Buy from local artists and goods makers. (I try to do this especially for gifts.) Produce some of your own food (veggies, eggs, honey, etc.) Shop on foot, by bike or via transit. Give relatives and friends LED bulbs for holiday gifts. (I actually do this. My extended family laughs heartily.)
A few more- a citizens for low carbon group that would pledge to buy such things as
energy storage fridge - ice
energy storage freezer- salt ice
combined heat and power
external wall insulation - add-on outside
commuter EV
extra PV power from other members.
etc
and then pound on the manufacturers to offer such things.
BTW, I am very happy with my home made stirling-pellet stove that gives me both shop heat and electricity when, as usual this time and place, my PV can't seem to muster enough muscle to do its assigned duty. It's too bad the rest of you good people can't just go to the web and buy exactly the same thing I have cobbled together, but more better, of course.
Manufacturers should not be allowed to get away with not making such stuff.
wimbi, You promised us pictures.
So I did, and I got some, and I looked at 'em. They are really ugly! All that dirty water stain running off the top of the stove, Wires all over, some lethal, trash in the background. A MESS! Anybody who would do that sort of work can't be trusted to get anything right.
But I got a great new appalachian hill denizen helper yesterday. Today I should get him to clean up the trash, put all the switches in neat order on a plywood board, and get it all ready for another picture. Yep, I will do that. and what you will see will look like a couple of black gallon tin cans lying sideways on a hand made wood stove- with wires sticking out.
But can I in the real world? What with the wife wanting to give the mashed chicken house first priority?
I get you, wimbi. I've thought about posting a picture of my power center, show folks what an off grid system looks like (at least mine), but I fear I'll scare folks away. I'm always trying something new; wires patched in, communications cables hanging out. I'm currently re-doing my low-amp 24 volt distribution panel, so it's open. I have cables patched into one of my controllers testing how some of my new panels play with my older ones. On top of that, I've been expanding the system for 15 years, so my system doesn't look like one that's been planned and installed new. Everything works, is fully functional, though form follows function.
That said, I'll show you mine if you'll show me yours ;-) Let me brush off a few cobwebs...
OK, Ghung. I see you can handle the truth. it's a deal.
But at this mornings executive meeting, I whimpered about my long-impeded desire to do the pellet engine, my Business Son in Portland Or. argued that the bike transmission was 2 orders of magnitude more important than the pellet engine, and 4 orders of magnitude more important than the chicken house. My wife doesn't whimper or argue, she simply said the chicken house needed help.
My man is at the moment working on the chicken house.
Can some others of us also take a look? We're not all easily scared! I have more to build and then I'll share too.
Any and all drawings are also interesting. Is your Stirling reproduceable by any means or is it too exotic? I've got a somewhat decent machine shop and access to a CNC mill and lathe.
Maybe a couple of days will do it. Then I will show the thing itself and sketches of what's inside, all very simple standard stuff been around for many decades, no secrets. Any good machinist could make it, Even I could.
how do I stick a picture in a comment? copy and paste?? Or is it better to just give an address to photobucket or some such?
It didn't look this good 4 hours ago. Still a mess; I just need to re-route some data wires and fix a few minor code violations ;-/
Two stacked Trace 4024s (4Kw 120/240 VAC) feeding a standard 200 amp panel (partially visible far left).
One Outback FX2024 (below) feeding a standard 100 amp panel (left).
Top left are 3 Outback MX60s and the new FM80 (charge controllers, black boxes) wired into the Trace DC load center (white, far right) which has two 250 amp main DC breakers, 4 80 amp DC breakers for the charge controllers, and a 20 amp DC breaker for 24 volt auxiliary stuff (tracking arrays, this computer, etc.). The Outback inverter has its own 175 amp breaker installed in a 12x12 Carlon box to its right.
Beneath the charge controllers are the disconnect breakers from the arrays, below that, the generator control system (larger gray panel) with a transfer switch (wired for grid power we'll never use), generator control circuits, and AC breakers to the 3 inverter/chargers. We can charge the batterys from all three inverters using the generator, up to 250 amps at 24 volts nominal. We rarely charge at over 150 amps.
Left of the generator panel is the 24VDC aux panel with breakers for the trackers and this computer.
The battery (twelve 2200 amp-hr, 2 volt cells) are in a cabinet beneath (all of this stuff). The vent and fan can be seen running up the wall to the left of the charge controllers. I'm fixin' to reconfigure the battery layout/cabinet and improve venting, just to be safe since we're doubling our PV.
Barely visible, top left, is the Outback Hub-10 communications hub which allows all of the Outback stuff to "talk", hooked to a "mate" display/control next to my PCs in the living room. All parameters can be viewed remotely and graphically on an old laptop (logging data).
The Trace inverter/chargers are also monitored/programed via software (all software from Righthand Engineering). The bottom of the two Trace inverters has been in service since 2002, the other since 2004. I built much of our house with the older inverter. Zero failures (in any of this equipment) to date. Hoping to retire the Trace inverters next year; replace with another Outback (pure sinewave, more efficient, we no longer need the 240 VAC configuration).
Current combined AC capacity of the system is 10 Kw. Battery capacity is rated 52 KwH.
BTW: An off-grid system planned and installed today would be less complex/complicated/costly than what you see here. Ours evolved over many years.
A mess! Positively beautiful compared to the Mexican wiring I see daily ;) At what DoD is that 52kWh of batteries rated at?
NAOM
They're forklift batteries rated at 2180 amp hours at a 20 hour rate; higher at 100 hour rate. That would be full DoD. We get about half that to around 23 volts with light loads. Our inverters are set to begin shutting down at about 22.3 volts; gives us about 1100 amp hours, usable in testing. We never let them get that low; we'll turn stuff off or I'll run the generator first. Best to keep batteries well fed. The new PV is great because we can do a full charge in one good day without restricting our usage. Before, we had to go easy on the batteries during a couple of cloudy days. No big deal, but it shortens the battery life (hence, the generator). Weather reports are helpful in planning our use, which becomes habitual.
I have essential loads on the Outback, so we could go a long time on that one inverter. I've managed to prioritize loads and inverter shutdown voltages pretty well. Important lighting, the refrigerator and our small freezer, some electronics, would be the last to go if battery voltage dropped too far. The generator is set to autostart before that happens (good off-grid inverters have that feature) but again, we never let that happen. What matters is that my wife can always use her hair dryer ;-)
A good lesson for those planning systems, those components can be very clever and used very cleverly. That last point, most important ;)
NAOM
Energy use apartment vs home resolved: per square foot, homes use less energy. I was wrong.
The answer really depends on your definition of efficiency. With that said, the RECS data show that apartments do indeed consume less energy per unit than single-family homes. (Table CE1.1 through CE1.5). This is true in all parts of the country, and for units that are of equivalent size. However, on a per square foot basis, apartments consume more (you can find this in the same tables). In short, square footage rises faster than the rate of consumption.
Another way to look it this is to compare characteristics of single-family homes and apartments. We produce a long series of energy characteristics data where you can compare the rate of penetration of energy-efficient features, such as double/triple pane windows and Energy Star appliances.
-Chip
Chip Berry
Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RECS)
EIA - Consumption and Efficiency Statistics
202.586.5543
james.berry@eia.gov
"You can produce your own, custom estimates for any cross-section of cases using the microdata file. http://www.eia.gov/consumption/residential/data/2009/index.cfm?view=micr... For example, you could calculate the average consumption of all single and multi-family homes that are 1200-1700 square feet. We’ll be releasing a how-to guide for calculating custom estimates very shortly. "
Congratulations, Karen. Well done !
The money we spent on insulation and air sealing has certainly paid for itself many times over† and on days like today with temperatures hovering in the range of -6°C and with winds gusting as high as 90 kph, we're a lot more comfortable as well.
Regards,
Paul
† I calculate this year's savings for all measures at just under
$7,200.00$8,500.00 (5,700 litres of fuel oil at $1.142/litre + 6,000 kWh of electricity @ $0.1437/kWh + 15% HST).Edited for bad maths
The weather map had quite a deep low over NS this morning. How are you holding out?
Doing OK, thanks. Things were a-rock'n and a-roll'n during the overnight hours, but have calmed down considerably since then (currently, the winds are WNW at 39 kph, gusting to 54). I was worried that we might lose power due the combination of high winds, salt air and freezing rain but, thankfully, it held on.
See: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/story/2013/02/18/ns-storm-clos...
Cheers,
Paul
Interesting here, we were supposed to lose our week long plus sunny stretch, and at least for the bay area on the other side of the hill that seems to have been the case. Had to take in my deck solar reflectors, they wouldn't stay put, but at least it is full sun here -might even be the first 13KWhour day of the year for the PV. Tomorrow rain (we hope).
Yeah, in Northern climes insulation is extremely important. I remember helping my dad insulate the attic when growing up in Minnesota. But in California, just about every older home has ZERO insulation. It is easy to add into the attic but it is tough to deal with the walls unless you rip them open for remodeling or contract out to those services that drill holes into your walls, blow in the insulation and then repatch those holes.
But the insulation is now worth in places like California. Largely due to be people using so much more air conditioning. But it matters for heat in the winter too.
Prior to buying our house (way back in 1995) we had a home inspection where we found out the nitty-gritty about dry rot, condition of the roof, electrical wiring, etc. But there was no mention about the complete lack of insulation in the walls. Have no idea if that's changed, but it should.
Our loft had a measly 5 cm of insulation, which is quite shocking given our climate. Re-insulating has cut heat loss through the attic and exterior walls by 90 and 75 per cent respectively. We end-up tearing apart every wall on all three floors, which proved to be costly and disruptive undertaking, but it was the only way that we could do the job properly (although, if I were to tackle something like this again, I'd probably spray-foam).
Cheers,
Paul
Maybe stupid question: With only 5 cm of insulation I would assume that the dewpoint(?)is still within your wall, not the insolation? This does not cause problems?
Moisture is a major concern, especially in light of our maritime climate. We installed 1.25 cm of Styrofoam inside the wall cavity, followed by 9 cm of Fibreglass, a 6 mill vapour barrier, then another 3.8 cm of Styrofoam nailed on top of the studs. We carefully caulked all joints and Tuck taped the seams, then applied a latex-based vapour proof paint to the new drywall. We were advised that we should be OK provided that two-thirds of the insulation is on the outside (cold) side of the vapour barrier, which is, in fact, the case. We also try to keep the indoor humidity as low as possible so, for example, we have a HRV; we no longer cook with gas (now induction); we cover all pots and use the kitchen extractor as required; and we run our dehumidifier, which drives me insane given the amount of electricity it consumes.
I suspect that moisture did routinely condense inside the wall cavity prior to our retrofit, but that there was enough air leakage to allow it to dry-out before it caused any harm. We've taken away that escape route, so we're trying our best to prevent moisture from getting in there in the first place, which I'm guessing is a near impossible task with existing construction.
So, I'm hoping that we're not going to run into any long-term problems, but I can't guarantee it, and I can't guarantee that the future owners of our home will be as diligent about controlling moisture at the source. Fingers crossed.
Cheers,
Paul
Sorry I assumed an Austrian construction, bricks. With your vapour barrier and esp. with an HRV you have areally good chance to be on the save side. In our house the air is even slightly to dry in winter due to the HRV. :-)
Hi Paul,
Have you watched this lecture yet? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkfAcWpOYAA
"Distinguished Lecturer Series: Building Science - Adventures in Building Science"
He specifically talks about vapor barriers and moisture... if you understand and apply the physics you won't have to depend on crossing your fingers!
Enjoy!
Fred
Hi Fred,
It's a great video and I've viewed it a couple times now. It's Dr. Lstiburek's reference to the "continuity of the control layers" that troubles me; in other words, I think we're good on the theory, not so sure about the execution.
The "mirror, mirror" and John Straube line cracks me up every time, having communicated with Dr. Straube for a number of years through our association with the Greenbuilding List.
Cheers,
Paul
Paul,
I hear you! It looks so easy in a cross sectional 2D CAD drawing, eh? >;-)
Fred
Paul,
I envy you your heat pump and all your sealing. I bet even with your outside temp, your house is warmer than mine today. But no peeps around today except the cats to complain (at least right now!)
Just out of curiosity, do you have a heat exchange ventilator?
We do, indeed; it's a Venmar HEPA3000 (see: http://i362.photobucket.com/albums/oo69/HereinHalifax/105-0580_img_zps33...). This picture was taken whilst work was still under way on the basement; it has been since moved inside a utility closet.
I spend much of my day working in the den which is located on the north side of the house. As mentioned the other day, there are three exterior walls, a good amount of glass and no shelter from the prevailing winds, so it's tough to keep this one space comfortable whenever temperatures slide and the winds pick-up. Knowing this, I installed in-floor electric radiant heat when we renovated and I sometimes catch myself staring at this: http://i362.photobucket.com/albums/oo69/HereinHalifax/105-0582_img_zps1a... thinking how lovely it would be to bathe in its warm embrace, but having worked hard to whittle down our energy requirements, I can't bring myself to flip the switch.
Cheers,
Paul
Why Republicans Should Embrace The Reality Of Climate Change is an impressive op-ed, especially coming from Forbes. Now, if only The Wall Street Journal would follow suit.
I know Matt Herper personally. The WSJ had another friend of mine on staff, but WSJ reporters are firewalled from the editorial side.
In a last ditch effort to restart the nuclear program in the Britain the British government have just announced that they are willing to subsidise the industry for the next 40 years.
"The government is launching a last-ditch attempt to sign up energy companies to build new nuclear power stations by proposing to sign contracts guaranteeing subsidies for up to 40 years.
The Guardian has learned that ministers, intent on keeping the guaranteed wholesale cost of each unit of energy below the politically crucial figure of £100 per megawatt hour, are proposing to extend contracts from the 20 years originally envisaged to at least 30 and possibly as long as 40 years."
Link: Nuclear power: ministers offer reactor deal until 2050
Comment on article:
Governments Look for New Ways to Pay for Roads and Bridges
Here in Denmark we see that the revenues the government collects has dwindled due to the imagined recession - that is.. imagined in the government sector, experienced in the private sector.
However, the government has also stated very clearly that it will not adapt its own expenses - but just tax people increasingly. Just recently it gave a large portion of its workforce a raise in pay - while most of the rest of the country has gotten 0% - if not significant wage reductions.
Is this the way to a new french revolution where the people must make an uprising against a government that is completely disconnected from reality and that buffers itself from recession and poverty by extorting the people in the private sector?
It sure is a step towards that end..
The way its supposed to work is the government should maintain or increase spending (going into temporary deficit). Cutting back government, just means more people out of work -and their reduced spending means other private jobs go too, and on and on. Of course if they raise taxes during the recession that defeats the purpose. I suspect the EU mandates too stringent a limit on the deficit, which leads to an austerity downspiral.
Actually, mainly, where it goes wrong it that in the good times they should be running a surplus and updating/modernising systems to consume less - such that when you get to the bad times there is both resources available AND more efficiency in the basic systems of society. That kicks Greer in the .....
Of course, politicians prefer to build a monolithic 'big project' (usually with their name on) or give tax cuts to the value of the surplus.
It's too late to learn to swim once you are drowning.
True enough. Although a government with a sovereign currency may be able to run deficits forever, inflation substituting for a tax. Its not clear if this can work, as the currency/money thing is just a sophisticated confidence game. As long as no one blinks its fine, but if the notion that the currency is debased/worthless takes hold, then it fails.
I refer the honourable gentleman to the actions of Murphy and his law - as well as the practical examples currently visiting the PIIGS.
Question for Jeffery/Westexas...
Are you still working with Sam? I haven't seen anything posted by him for years it seems and you haven't mentioned him recently.
Todd
I think that he has been pretty busy with his job in recent months and years.
I posted a link up at the top of the thread to my long delayed intro to the Export Capacity Index concept.
Thanks. I read your new report on Resilience's site.
Todd
After running some numbers, I think that there is a 90% probability that the GNE/CNI* ratio will be between 2.0 and 2.5 in 2021, versus 5.3 in 2011 and versus 11.0 in 2002. An extrapolation of the 2005 to 2011 rate of decline in the ratio would put it at 2.2 in 2021.
Incidentally, someone has probably used the following term before, but in any case, it occurs to me that an apt description for what we have seen in US crude oil production since 1970 is an "Undulating Decline."
Unless and until US annual crude oil production exceeds the 9.6 mbpd rate that we saw in 1970, we have not reversed the decline, we have simply slowed the rate of decline, relative to the 1970 production rate.
My bet is that the current rebound in US crude oil production will prove to be a tertiary peak, analogous to the secondary peak that we saw in the 1976 to 1986 time frame, due to production from Prudhoe Bay coming on line:
http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/pdf/sec5_5.pdf
The (so far) absolute US crude oil production peak was 9.6 mbpd in 1970. The secondary peak was 8.9 mbpd in 1984. Annual 2012 production was about 6.4 mbpd. Current production is around 7.0 mpbd.
*GNE = Combined net exports from (2005) top 33 net exporters, BP + EIA data, total petroleum liquids
CNI = Chindia's Net Imports (China + India)
wt – Another angle at viewing the current situation as you’ve described it. While the recent increase in domestic oil production has helped our consumers it’s handy to keep it in perspective.
Peak US oil production – 9.64 million bopd in 1971. US oil consumption 1971 – 15 million bopd
Current US oil production – Closing in on 7 million bopd. Current consumption: 18+ million bopd
Thus the recent increase of US production by 2 million bopd has only satisfied about half of our increased consumption since we began the long decline trend you describe. So even if US oil consumption doesn’t increase from current levels it will take returning to production levels not seen in over 20 years just to offset our increased consumption. The situation has gotten better but we have a long way to go just to break even.
Oilsands tailings leaking into groundwater, Joe Oliver told in memo
The Most Influential Climate Science Paper Today Remains Unknown to Most People
Just six pages long, it is stoking a new moral urgency for climate action and forcing the financial world to reconsider the value of fossil fuel reserves.
By Katherine Bagley, InsideClimate News
Do you know if this paper is available free somewhere ?
($30 for one paper is a bit much ...)
A web search for "Greenhouse-gas emission targets for limiting global warming to 2" might turn it up. Note this is the form of a letter to Nature, although the six month delay before acceptance suggests a long peer review process.
try
http://www.iac.ethz.ch/people/knuttir/papers/meinshausen09nat.pdf
Don
The journal NATURE maintains a rather strong policy on release of their publications. They are in it for the money and papers written by authors outside the US seem willing to respect that policy, perhaps because publication in NATURE is considered very prestigious to researchers in the scientific community. That said, HERE's a link to a PDF of the paper I found thru Google. I would scan the download before opening it...
E. Swanson
And the urgency for action continues...new satellite data confirms the PIOMAS results
Arctic sea ice volume now one-fifth its 1979 level
http://classic.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/article.html
Antibiotics search to focus on sea bed
Here's an update on a story from the previous Drum Beat:
Bulgaria PM Pledges Power Price Cut to Stop Protests
Notice that the text of the report as linked has changed since I first saw it on the NYT site. The latest is a much longer version with more detail.
OK then, lets hear that call for increased taxes on fossil fuels again. Oh wait...
E. Swanson
Emails show US regulators, Conn. nuclear plant grappling with 1st shutdown over hot water
... calls to mind the metaphor of the slowly cooked frog.
News Headline from 2050: Nuclear Plant Operators Request Water Temperature Limit Be Upgraded to 95 Degrees - "Why not? All the fish are dead anyway"
Well . . . that is one way to deal with climate change.
Just change your rules to allow more abuse of nature. Who cares about those people that like to fish in the river anyways?
Not mentioned is the fact that cooling water throughput will have to be incresed to compensate for higher temperature water input.
Other 'nuke' news ...
Ratepayers would help Utah go nuclear
Sen. Wyden touring Hanford nuclear reservation
They could introduce tropical reef sharks.
"The other Millstone unit, which reaches deeper into the sound, remained open."
I am really surprised they simply did not lengthen the other unit's pipe to access deeper, colder water. That was a common solution not long ago, where a discharge pipe was buried under the stream bed, lengthened so it entered a stream after a tributary did. Or the flow of receiving water for mixing was recorded during spring high flow. From hence the slogan "Dilution is the solution to pollution."
New from NASA ... The Nuclear Reactor in Your Basement
“Several labs have blown up studying LENR and windows have melted,” according to Dennis Bushnell..."
So,where and when did these alleged events occur? And was it because of LENR effects or smoking around explosive vapors?
I thought this a dead horse that had been thoroughly flogged at this point; am I wrong in thinking that?
I'm so tired of these "possibly, maybe, if we can..., I saw it on Star Trek, so it must be true" articles.
Sorry, ranting.
“Several labs have blown up studying LENR and windows have melted,” according to Dennis Bushnell..."
So,where and when did these alleged events occur?
The where/when is something I'd like to know also.
I thought this a dead horse that had been thoroughly flogged at this point; am I wrong in thinking that?
What exactly is the "dead horse" you are speaking of?
Not that I fully buy into the LENR thing [and I'm definitly not a fan of E-CAT] but you asked, so ...
Unexplained Explosion During an Electrolysis Experiment in an Open Cell Mass Flow Calorimeter
Cold Fusion, the Defense Intelligence Agency report
I think there is some science here that we don't understand and it is worth pursuing. The research is cheap relatively speaking compared to the $20-30 billion spent on high energy physics experiments.
Unexplained explosion. C'mon. It was a hydrogen explosion. Perhaps someone didn't record things right and they made much more hydrogen than they thought.
I means was is the alternative supposed to be . . . it was a fusion explosion? Gimme a break.
I was referring to the E-CAT, cold fusion, LENR claims et al.
Pimping of, seemingly at best, very discrete effects that show no signs of scaling up to anything vaguely useful, as being "game changers".
If it's genuine research, why does it usually seem to have an element of blue smoke and mirrors?
More alchemy than science it seems to me.
I was curious about that too. It appears Bushnell is the source. HERE's a LINK to a PDF of the slides from one of his presentations from Sept 2011. In it, he says:
I suppose he is referring to the situations linked to by Seraph above. However, I think he is also promoting the idea in his later writing, as he seems to think LENR will solve all mankind's energy and climate problems. Then again, who knows what DARPA has been doing???
E. Swanson
Dutch Roof Fire Warning for 650,000 Solar Panels
Well that is a shame. And with the company bankrupt, I guess no returns.
True. But sounds like someone is going to make some money inspecting and fixing them. It shouldn't be a difficult sell as most people probably don't want their roofs to catch fire
Jurassic Records Warn of Risk to Marine Life from Global Warming
I don't think you can generalise the findings in one location to the whole globe.
In a few million years paleontologists studying North Africa will find a dead zone in the layer corresponding to the Sahara Desert. In no way does it mean the whole earth is dead.
The study involved analysis of marine sediments not desert. Over a period of a million years you would expect some fish to show up in that oceanic dead zone
Eating less meat would benefit the nutrient cycle
I'd just like to point out that cow manure is very high in nitrogen, and the majority of it goes straight back onto the pasture and the nutrients are cycled, hardly inefficient at all when you consider that food nutrients, once consumed by the average consumer are mixed with fresh drinking water, then sterilised with chemicals and pumped out to sea. Never to be used again.
This guy needs to get a brain, recycling humane manure would do orders of magnitude more for the already destroyed nutrient cycle then skimping on a bit of meat.
Improved-Yield Dandelions Prepped for Tire Production (w/Video - How to make Rubber from Dandelions)
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/511800/rubber/289656/The-rise-...
A "poor" rubber substitute can be made from Booze.
It's off to work we go
The Foodopoly: Too Big to Eat
I had a hard time swallowing this article, but it appears true. No need to register to SuperMarket News.
http://www.mwpvl.com/html/grocery_distribution_network.html
The Dollar Store sells more "food" in the US than Wholefoods, A and P, Albertson's, Pricechopper, you name it.
Watch the weasel words fly ...
Elizabeth Warren Embarrasses Hapless Bank Regulators At First Hearing (VIDEO)
... more fun than shooting fish in a barrel
When you see what Warren did (not) do to deal with / prevent / minimize the financial mess her questions and comments take on a different meaning.
rgds
WeekendPeak
Have a link?
Come on, WeekendPeak, she was only elected this past November! How was she supposed to deal with/prevent/minimize the financial mess? Your comment seems like more of a reflex action than anything else.
Warren, being bright, progressive, and female makes quit a bit of society uneasy.
They can't often help it, as it presses some buttons that makes them squirm a bit, and possibly threatened.
Some links:
http://lonelyconservative.com/2012/08/elizabeth-warren-tax-return-hypocr...
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/296227/elizabeth-warrens-wall-str...
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/danieldoherty/2012/01/13/serial_hypocrite_e...
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/harvard_populist_NF5...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVoAXQCJVcA
http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/092512-627038-warren-like-soulm...
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2012/06/02/harsh-foreclosure-critic-eliz...
I hope I'm wrong but I've seen so many tough and sometimes inspirational people see come, talk and effectively disappear that I have little hope.
Can you think of any person who has run/had any meaningful position who did not vow to go after whatever wrong doing was going on at the time?
Too many people (yes, corporations are people too! /sarc) have too much to lose by any meaningful reform/regulation so although it may be emotionally satisfying to see her make asses of regulators (with the implicit message that the future will be meaningfully different from the past) the TBTF train keeps on rolling, and we're getting close to statues of limitations kicking in.
But hey, she may be bumping ad rates a bit whenever she's on TV....
Rgds
WP
You can't win a race without raising a ton of money and being somewhat corrupted. Our choices as voters is to pick the less dangerous corrupt nominee. :-/
That's probably true. Politicians probably have a certain amount of self-selection in their group. You have to have a certain set of characteristics to (want to) be one.
I hope she can make things better, but the odds are not in her favor.
Rgds
WP
The Woman Who Knew Too Much
Millions of Americans hoped President Obama would nominate Elizabeth Warren to head the consumer financial watchdog agency she had created. Instead, she was pushed aside. As Warren kicks off her run for Scott Brown’s Senate seat in Massachusetts, Suzanna Andrews charts the Harvard professor’s emergence as a champion of the beleaguered middle class, and her fight against a powerful alliance of bankers, lobbyists, and politicians.
The always fun to watch...
Elizabeth Warren to Geithner It's called accountability! (video)
I'm sure they would of preferred the rich dumb white guy.
Sure.. there's always 'Trust, but Verify' ..
But just remember, we're trying to ALL clamber out of a mud pit that we're drowning in. It's hardly a surprise to point to someone and say, 'You're not so hifalutin', you've got mud on YOU, too!'
Watch this clip from 'Capitalism, a Love Story' .. where she tells Michael Moore, among other things, "I teach contract law at Harvard University, and I can't understand my own credit card agreement!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2kfAr2h5NE
As I said to somebody about Al Gore selling his network to 'Oil Money' when he let AlJazeera buy it up, I said.. 'Is there any money that ISN'T Oil Money?' .. Is there any money that is not also both besmirched and drycleaned and blow-dried through Wall Street? She's in the system, but is also confronting the system.. what more could you expect?
Government Not to Blame for Coal Industry Ills
Yeah, it was pretty clear that extremely low natural gas prices are what caused coal's problems. But those low natural gas prices are unlikely to last such that coal will persist.
S – I’ve mentioned the White Stallion coal-fired plant in coastal Texas that recently got the go ahead when they received their Clean Air permit from the current administration’s EPA. They would have shipped coal from Illinois to the plant for the next 30+ years. Just got an update: construction plans have been indefinitely suspended. WS’s public explanation was local opposition and regulatory difficulties. Which I can tell you from firsthand experience (remember I’m developing a NG directly under the plant site) their story is 100% BS. They steamrolled over the locals as if they didn’t exist. And WS had already cut the deal with the Lower Colorado River Authority with regards to their fresh water requirements. I don’t know if they hit any other regulatory snags but I’ve heard nothing about such problems. Or any problems until this press release. I have little doubt that the lower NG prices eventually knocked the legs out from underneath their economics.
Apparently having a friend from the Land of Lincoln in the White House wasn't enough to overcome cheap NG. Gotta be some very unhappy folks in Chicago.
Rock,
Great news!
Now please go forth and find and produce some local NG for Texas electricity generation!
Better than coal.
If you have any spare time and energy, lobby your friends and lawmakers to incentive energy efficiency, and more wind and solar power...even better.
See here, this Houston suburb is taking steps to lessen car use:
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/texas-city-charge-car-accident...
Heads-up driving through that area...I wonder what that policy will do for local car insurance rates?
Very interesting. The link reports a city on the edge of Houston will start charging a first responder fee to anyone causing an auto accident. Up to $2,000. Not sure if it would impact ins. rates since such fees probably couldn’t be claimed. But we’ll have to see what impact it has on the next election cycle. Maybe not much since most folks don’t think they’ll ever be in an accident let alone be at fault. But Texans tend to be rather passionate about their right to drive so we’ll see. Houston recently turned off all of its stop light runner cameras. But this could be the beginning of a trend where other govts see a chance to raise revenue from various very small constituencies that have no voting power over them. Why not charge folks a fee for the fire dept showing up at their blazing home? Why not a fee for an ambulance showing up to deal with your spouse with a heart attack? Situations where most folks don’t think they’ll ever be in so they won’t get to upset. Especially when they think about such new income streams offsetting potential tax hikes on them.
The fire department has been charging a service fee here for more than a decade. People who know, do not bother to call them anymore.
Interesting article about energy efficiency using tarpaper - but what's more interesting is the truth concerning the tar sands and our sickening dependence on fossil fuels.
http://www.ebnonline.com/author.asp?section_id=2085&doc_id=259113&