DrumBeat: October 11, 2006
Posted by threadbot on October 11, 2006 - 9:17am
One More Reason Prices Are Falling
Floating oil factories allow tankers to load at sea, avoiding political instability and saving billionsNigeria is a rough place to do business. In the past year, rebels seeking a greater share of the country's energy wealth have bombed Royal Dutch Shell's pipelines and kidnapped its workers. The oil giant was forced to shut down half of its production there, most of which is situated in the Niger River Delta, a steamy swampland populated by farmers, fishermen, and angry militias.
Far out at sea, the situation is much safer. Since late last year, Shell has been extracting oil from its massive Bonga field, a $3.6 billion project located in 3,200 feet of water. The field now yields more than 200,000 barrels a day, thanks to a high-tech facility called a floating production, storage, and offloading vessel, or FPSO. It looks like an oil tanker and can hold up to 2 million barrels in its belly, but its primary purpose is to load up tankers out at sea, rather than piping the crude to an onshore terminal. The oil streaming in from Bonga and other deepwater sites like it helps explain why oil prices have settled down to under $60 from a July high of $78.
Eco-Kremlin: Russia targets energy giants
MOSCOW - Western firms developing Russia's rich oil and gas fields are facing sweeping allegations of environmental abuses. But critics say the charges are a thinly veiled Kremlin power play to renege on 1990s-era contracts now seen as unfavorable for Russia.
Oil up after OPEC confirms output cut
Oil prices rose Wednesday after the president of OPEC confirmed that the organization will cut global crude production by 1 million barrels a day to prop up the market."The cut itself is agreed," OPEC President Edmund Daukoru told reporters in Abuja, Nigeria, adding the cut would begin at the end of the month. He said members were "nearing consensus" on how to share out the cuts.
EIA: OPEC September Oil Output down 80,000 B/D At 27.64 Million B/D
Crude oil output from the 10 members in OPEC's quota system averaged 27.64 million barrels a day in September, 1.3% below the agreed output ceiling and 80,000 barrels a day lower from a month earlier, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said Tuesday.
Shell says 60 oil workers kidnapped in Niger Delta, flow station shut
Armed youths in Nigeria's restive Niger Delta seized a flow station run by oil company Shell and took 60 workers hostage, causing a production loss of some 12,000 barrels of oil per day, the company has said.
Canada's Harper says new clean air act coming
Indonesia cancels ExxonMobil's Natuna gas contract
Indonesia has terminated a contract with ExxonMobil Corp to drill a major offshore gas field in the Natuna Sea off the west coast of Borneo, in a move that may alarm foreign investors.ExxonMobil however said that the contract stood firm as it was extendable and they were still working to develop the field.
American Secret? India Becomes The Gasoline Gusher
Saudi to Halt Gasoline Imports with Low-Octane Fuel
Saudi Arabia, where high crude prices have caused oil demand to soar, may be able to temporarily stop importing over 500,000 barrels a month of gasoline when it starts selling a lower-octane grade at retail pumps from January.
Germany’s E.ON Ruhrgas Welcomes Gazprom’s Decision on Shtokman Development
German utility giant E.ON Ruhrgas AG said on Wednesday, Oct. 11, that it welcomes Gazprom’s decision to develop the vast Shtokman gas deposit on its own and to export the greater part of gas to Europe via the Nord Stream gas pipeline.
Bodman: U.S. will accept Venezuelan oil charity
U.S. Energy Secretary Sam Bodman on Tuesday said he would not turn down charitable donations of cheap heating fuels this winter, even if it comes from a Venezuelan leader who called President Bush "the devil."
Thirty years of research at the private and government level, here and abroad, have produced a range of new technologies that can help turn abundant energy sources — wind, biomass, solar, even water itself — into alternative fuels. These fuels, in turn, can help keep our cars running and our power plants humming, while reducing both our reliance on unstable Middle Eastern oil producers and our contributions to dangerous climate change.
Department of Energy Funds cyanobacteria sequencing project
The United States Department of Energy (DOE) has devoted $1.6 million to sequencing the DNA of six photosynthetic bacteria that Washington University in St. Louis biologists will examine for their potential as one of the next great sources of biofuel that can run our cars and warm our houses.
A traveller going to Paris and back on Eurostar generates 10 times less carbon dioxide than someone making the same journey by air.
Locked-in fuel oil price no bargain now
When James Schwartz signed a contract last summer locking in home heating oil for the winter at $2.79 a gallon, it seemed like a safe bet. Crude oil prices had surged and gasoline was above three bucks a gallon. Could $3 fuel oil be far behind?But crude has dropped nearly 25 percent from its mid-July peak of $78.40 a barrel. And other heating-oil customers in the Baltimore area are paying as little $2.12 a gallon to heat their homes — 24 percent less than Schwartz is paying.
As Oil Ebbs: The nation still needs a sane energy policy.
Rate hike will fuel PGW debate
The Philadelphia Gas Works is a slow-motion crisis that everyone sees coming - and no one seems capable of stopping.
Suspicion Surrounds Retreat In Gas Prices, Poll Finds
Three out of 10 Americans think the recent fall in gasoline prices is a result of domestic political factors, including White House and Republican Party efforts to influence the November elections. That's nearly as many as the 35 percent who attribute the recent price decline to market forces or supply and demand, according to the poll of 1,204 adults conducted from Thursday to Sunday.The survey also showed that suspicions about the steep drop in gasoline prices over the past two months aren't limited to the nation's liberal strongholds. Sixteen percent of people who identified themselves as conservative Republicans, 26 percent of white evangelical Protestants and 29 percent of Southern residents think the plunge in prices is linked to the coming election or other political reasons.
Bad weather shuts down Alaska pipeline
Oil production at Prudhoe Bay was cut to 10 percent of normal output after a power outage, and more weather related problems forced the trans-Alaska oil pipeline to temporarily go offline.The pipeline was down for about 10 hours Tuesday after flooding in Valdez likely knocked out fiber-optic communications at five valves on the pipeline.
Over just the last three years we've seen some staggering upward jerks in the fuel price. And it is common sense to believe that a finite resource, a limited resource that is becoming expensive, will become even more expensive in the future. In this scenario, an airline won't be able to feed elephantine aircraft massive quantities of fuel. Airlines will need to be smaller, and more flexible. Aircraft will have to be fuel efficient above all, and that implies excellent power-to-weight-to-cost ratios.
Price soars for scarce pellets
Dingmans Ferry, Pa. — Roxane Sanford just wants to turn the heat on in her home. But that's not as easy as it sounds for this pellet stove owner.Sanford has spent the past two months putting her name on waiting lists for pellet fuel — some lists are 500 names long — and calling chain stores from New Jersey to Scranton, Pa., only to be told they have no idea when the next shipment will arrive and to "call back tomorrow."
I went to see Tad Patzek give a seminar on the U.C. Berkeley campus yesterday titled "Agriculture, Biofuels and the Earth," because I wanted a firsthand look at one of the more controversial figures in the emerging world of biofuels. The Berkeley chemical engineering professor is the co-author (along with retired Cornell professor David Pimentel) of two studies that cast doubt on the energy efficiency of corn-based ethanol and other biofuels. The studies have been widely cited both by anti-biofuel right-wingers who want to stop subsidies of all forms of alternative energy, and by left-wing critics who believe that a rush to biofuels will result in the destruction of tropical rain forests, the proliferation of genetically modified monocultural crops across the planet, and assorted other ecological disasters. If you've got a problem with biofuels, Patzek and Pimentel have your back.
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I caught the interview also about 1/4 the way through....
Highlights from what I can remember.....
The hosts asked him if he is still a "peaker", and he said "yes"...
Asked him about his prediction on oil prices...
He said that we will see $70 before we see $50 again.
Still predicts $100 oil, but not for 2006.
The hosts kinda "ribbed" him about his last prediction; which was "we will see $80 before we see $60. He pointed out that we within dimes of the high of $80, but the hosts pointed out that close is not $80.
Then he talked about his investment in alternative energy.
He is big into Canadian oil sands, not hip to ethanol, even though he has some investment in it (only to hedge his bets).
I didn't catch to whole conversation as I was brushing my teeth, but he corrected the hosts in saying that what some people consider alternative energy is still hydrocarbons and must be pulled out of a hole in the ground. They are subject to the same limitations as oil. I think this was in reference to using Natural Gas as a transportation fuel.
That is all I can remember.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/av/
You would figure that he would know about peak-oil at least as well as I do. Hell, Leanan knows ten times as much about oil as ole T.Boone.
How much did T.Boone lose?
Does anybody know?
Were they suckers?
Who is the con. Who is conned?
Will he pull it off again?
Everybody loves the expression - "...got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you(or ya)." I have never understood this. I understand the story. I understand the concept. But I must be missing something. Because I don't really understand why the story is set in New York.
There is a much better story, that gets very little play. It demonstrates the same concept. Only better. And it is also true. A guy sold the Eiffel tower for scrap metal - twice. I'm pretty sure he cashed the second check.
Shawnott, the thing you are doing here with documentation is great. Keep it up. To whoever threw that Bloomberg link out down below or wherever it is with the warning that it'll last about two days, thanks for saving other peoples' man hours. Keep it up. There will be a big raise for you. In fact we are going to make this retroactive until the time you started with us. I have a theory...naw we'll save that for another time.
I caught this story about Detrit on NPR this morning. It makes me wonder if this is what the rest of the country will be experiencing soon. Oh, and guess what the only industry is that's booming? Foreclosures, or course.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6212418
I mean, I don't think any of us here hope or wish the 10 MPG SUV thing to go on forever. So if it doesn't, and a transition to market-friendly alternatives was not made, something has to give.
But to name this, after countless similar occurances through history, as a "snap-shot" of collapse ... well, see also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
I like these kinds of articles because they show in a tangible way how everyone can be affected in our economic food chain. Most people I know in my 3D World shrug off Peak Oil because they do not understand how it might affect them - other than the pump prices.
Here you can see how the cost of energy creeps into every corner of the economy (pizza delivery costs... yard care, etc).
If this is a localized result of that very adjustment which is so often denied, that may not be a bad thing.
On the other hand, if someone can show that there are no winners (nationally or even internationally) to balance the losers, then maybe we are in a broad downward movement.
I do think it is very bad, and is an indication that we should change our national policies ... but isn't that more a story of globalization and misapplied tax cuts?
The final frontier.
These are the voyages of the venture ship: Enterprise.
To boldly go where no business has gone before.
To seek our new sources of profit.
To suck out the last of what is worth sucking on.
And then ... to move on.
(Resistance is futile.)
I used to think Star Trek technology would save us. Heck, that's why I became an engineer. I wanted to be part of the solution. Instead, I ended up part of the problem. :-/
Kidding aside, after I wrote that, it dawned on me that the Cornucopians in our society are like Captain Kirk.
Sure the dylithium crystals are almost drained dry. But Scottie the ingenius engineer will pull another rabbit out of the hat and keep us going for at least one more episode.
Sure the oil wells are being drained dry, but our real world engineers will pull another Moore's Law miracle and double production figures yet again. They'll go the extra mile undersea. They'll trudge the extra step out into the tundra.
Even if the Cornucopians are right, you have to ask if their plan is wise? IS that what we should be doing? Squeezing the last drop out of her (Planet Earth) BEFORE we figure out how to get along without the dylithium energy?
What we have yet to figure out is that Star Trek had a good run, but in the end, after all it's "generations", it got cancelled.
Yup. They don't believe in the no-win scenario.
Two words: Kobayashi Maru
Book Description
A freak shuttlecraft accident -- and suddenly Captain Kirk and most of his senior officers find themselves adrift in space, with no hope of rescue, no hope of repairing their craft, or restoring communications -- with nothing, in short but time on their hands.
Time enough for each to tell the story of the Kobayashi Maru -- the Starfleet Academy test given to command cadets. Nominally a tactical exercise, the Kobayashi Maru is in fact a test of character revealed in the choices each man makes -- and does not make.
Discover now how Starfleet Cadets Kirk, Chekov, Scotty, and Sulu each faced the Kobayashi Maru...and became in turn Starfleet officers.
Download Description
As portrayed in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, all Starfleet Command cadets must take the "no-win" Kobayashi Maru rescue simulation. Trapped aboard a doomed shuttlecraft, the Enterprise officers reminisce about their individual performances on the Kobayashi Maru test . . . reminiscences that spark a last, desperate attempt at survival.
Alan
Think 3-dimensionally Scottie!
Give me all the impulse shopping power you got.
Aye aye Captain.
Today, any cadet who did what Kirk did, tampering with school computers, would be expelled.
The Kobayashi Maru was meant to teach cadets that sometimes, no matter what you do, you lose. Kirk cheated...and hence never learned that lesson.
BTW, it was actually the TOS movies (ST II, I think) that introduced the no-win scenario and the Kobayashi Maru.
I am at this very moment re-programming the laws of thermodynamics and geo-global climatology. Wish me luck.
Get back here Scottie, you haven't finished the last line of code! The gin bottle is yours AFTER you finish.
Star Trek is more about avoiding reality than anything else - and yes, what a metaphor for America.
So the winners get more and more, the losers less and less. Median income stagnant or down. If the winners played the game smart they would create prosperity for all.
But it's not about prosperity, it's not about creating wealth. It's about being a winner and giving the losers a hot poker in the ass.
In years past, "wealth" was measured by the number of acres of fertile land that a noble owned and the number of sheep, cattle and servants he had working that land for him and directing the profitable "fat of the land" to him in terms of goods, services and taxes.
During the industrial revolution, the definition changed somewhat from defining territory in terms of land and serfs to maket size and market share. This was more of a Demand-side oriented view of the world. You became "wealthier" as more of the world demanded your goods or services, as your sphere of influence as a seller enlarged.
Modern wealth (IMHO) has two intertwined aspects:
Neuro-hegemony over:
- Sources of money inflow, and
- Sources of quality service provision.
First, what do I mean by "neuro-hegemony"?In days of old (yes, when knights were bold), a nobleman exerted his hegemony mostly by physical force, by running a tight police state. That was a costly and resource intensive way of controlling an empire. Besides as you got older and weaker, some younger punk warlord can come in, beat you up and take over.
The church was a first vehicle for gaining control. Give onto Ceasar ... yeah, right. Who do you think actually came up with that line, Jesus or Ceasar?
But as control by the church began to slip, nobility realized there was a much subtler way to maintain control: Education. Get hold of the kids while they were young and program their brains with ideas that will fool them into serving you. Fool their parents into thinking that "education" is good for everybody. Fool them into fighting over each other so they can get into the "best" of schools and thereby become the "best" of people, the ivory towers of their society. Yeah right. (Oops sorry. Not supposed to say that. It's heresy you know.)
As a nobleperson, you want to fool as many people as possible into serving you. That means you have to "educate" a greater number of them to your way of how they should think. They should worship Adam Smith and the Invisible Hand. They should believe that working long hours and even weekends in the office, will get them to the promised land. Death by over work is an honorable way to go, and it serves as a good example for the other sheeple.
That is what "globilization" is really about: finding larger masses of population to service the masters. Of course, when you finish encircling the globe, that indeed is the final frontier. The race is on to see who finishes first.
There are two basic ways that the masses can serve you, the nobleperson: (1) sending you more money in the form of taxes or in the form of revenue from having bought some trinkets you "sell" to them; and (2) providing you with immediate and quality service the instant you want it. When you go to a restaurant, the waiter is there at the mere whip of a finger. More champagne sir? What can I get you? When you go to a hospital, you get the executive suite and the best of doctors fighting over each other to see who can service you first. That is wealth. That is power. That is neural hegemony.
As the smallest addendum, do not discount the sheer glee our modern nobles find in causing pain. It is fun to kick out your servants teeth and hear him thank you for it.
They don't just profit from their servants, they hate us.
You are loved.
Here is why.
The modern nobles love their assests.
They love their cattle.
They love their sheep.
And aye, even thou be a pain in the assets, they love you.
odo -I too think calling it catabolic collapse is overreaching a bit, but this is more than just a general historical decline; I think it is a foretelling of what's to come.
What is productive about Youtube? It's not a wealth-generating enterprise like the auto industry, in which you take raw materials like iron ore and oil and turn them into vehicles that do work. The U.S. continues to move away from real value-added industry towards infotainment/service industries. Who was it that said we Americans are just living off of each other's "discretionary" income?
Youtube is a way to share videos of people doing stuff (don't get me wrong, I enjoy it), and it is a front for ads telling us we need more worthless junk. These ads generate an income for not that many people in comparison to the auto industry.
Bottom line, the auto industry creates real wealth, while Youtube doesn't. And how is it anyway that the acquisition of Youtube by Google is a sign of economic hope? Isn't it just a monopolizing of the infotainment industry? It certainly doesn't offset the decline of the auto industry.
Tom Anderson-Brown
I think stegasourus are my favorite ;-).
Consider for at least a full minute: what happens when oil prices go up, and bandwidth prices go down?
So I guess anytime a data-sharing giant like google buys a niche online service like Youtube, we should all feel like our country's industrial health is A-OK.
Diminishing returns, in my opinion. The internet is great, but my argument remains that it doesn't replace the wealth generation of something like the auto industry.
And perhaps I am a dinosaur (pretty good for a 29 year-old). I'd rather see our population learning skills that contribute wealth to our society like welding, masonry, engineering, geology, medicine, agriculture. It probably says something about my experiences, but I believe these productive occupations are the foundation of a healthy economy, and that this foundation supports the bits and bytes of the internet. Would the internet, or computers, have been realized were it not for these industries? The reason the computer (or even math) was developed was to make these "hard" industries more efficient. But, like I said, we're experiencing diminishing returns. We're (well you're) now calling Youtube "Productive". I use Youtube for procrastinating.
Tom A-B
That is the symmetry I was striving for in the random question.
Now I am amused to see people demand of me that I prove youtube is typical, and may be generalized ... while totally not getting that we started with a similar point case, and broad generalizations.
It is a mess. Welcome to the mess. Some heavy oil-consuming industries will die. Some ethereal information companies will prosper.
I, the moderate, uncommitted to a single future, sure don't know how that will play out.
Odo,
They don't get it.
The fact of the matter is it may very well become a wealth generating enterprise. The business model of the internet is very much like TV. You generate content, which generates web page views, and you sell ads.
YouTube is the biggest in a new "user generated video content" type web portal. There are some questions about copyright. Google is going to try and find answers for them. If they can conquer the issues with their video fingerprinting technology and then combine that with their superior ad services, this is going to be a slam dunk.
This whole attitude that only welders, mechanics, and geologists produce things is such crap. Talk about a totally bogus Pat Larouche type argument. The internet is huge. It's an entirely new paradigm. And it is possible to make a lot of money on it. And just because you can't pick it up, doesn't make it any less real.
Money is not wealth.
This site is here because it's obvious that the energy surplus is fading fast. The levels of complexity in our society, of which YouTube is the latest added layer, will vanish accordingly, as will the invented prosperity that this delusional society leans on. You've been had!
Just below this post you will find this list:
Programmers,
Accountants,
Database Administrators,
Network Administrators,
Human Resources,
Technical Support,
Customer Service Reps,
Billing specialists,
Phone Operator,
Salesmen
See that? All about to disappear. See also Leanan's post about real skills (which equal real wealth).
In fact quite often those who did have the skills needed to produce physical wealth were often owned themselves by the nobles/administrators, or else were so dependent on their patrons that to go against the Administrators would mean death in one fashion or another.
In the end you could say the skills to Administrate and the companion skills such as policing, and combat trump skills of physical labor.
Your statement that all those IT jobs are about to disappear is built on the assumption that collapse has to be severe enough to return us to a society of equivilent technology to 200 years ago or worse. That is a pretty severe assumption and one that I think is wrong.
You've also taken that list of jobs out of context from the original point of the post, much as did Leanan in that I was not talking about a collapsed society, I was talking about a society still functioning but taking measures to slow or prevent collapse.
Granted if we tank, a lot of those positions will be needed in much smaller numbers. But first we have to tank, and we have not done so yet.
In the meantime the concept of Virtual Property, is one that is growing, and one that I think would be important to a community worried about resource degradation and consumption. If we spend our money (which essentially is a representation of our time spent working) consuming, or "owning" virtual property (a bunch of electrons arranged in some order) wouldn't that allow the consumption of physical resources to slow?
Instead of buying that jet ski which was produced using fiber glass, and steel and plastic and who knows how much energy to make those materials, I buy instead an equivilent dollars worth of videos, video games, or e-books, who is saving more resources? Or if I decide to watch the football game on my telivision instead of driving downtown or heck flying to the away games, who is saving more resources?
People will want "things". Its part of our nature. Riches, wealth, whatever you want to call it has been a part of every major civilization around the world. The difference in those civilizations, and the measure of wealth has been related to what it is they value(gold, food, land, women, soldiers) . Moving into a resource strained era, I could easily see Virtual Property becoming the new "wealth" for people. Instead of the big fancy car, or big house, it may be the one with the largest collection of MP3s. Or the one who has built a virtual empire in some game world. Or the one who has a blog with the most hits. I think any of those would be more desirable to a world trying to save physical resources, and if those are to exist you will need that list of jobs to be around.
I agree that Americans can never compete with poorer country's workers in gluing shoe bottoms together, answering questions on the phone, and and increasingly wide range of other tasks that tend towards the lower end of the value chain. I also agree that location matters less than ever.
However, there are plenty of well paid expats in China.
Americans (and Europeans, Japanese, etc) will have to cope with a scenario in which geography no longer protects low value activities. In part this is a tragedy for poor and underskilled Americans. In part it is justice for workers in poor countries.
I do think that Americans who are not able to develop skills that can't be displaced (masonry, plumbing) or which earn a high return on international markets, will suffer. It is an isolated problem for thiose individuals, although there are many of them.
Foreigners have flocked to US universities to gain access to the skill building resources in the US because they know they need them to compete. The challenge facing the US is to get these skills to a larger portion of the population.
The US as a country probably will have to cope with a lower absolute standard of living and certainly with a lower relative standard of living, but I don't see it as an injustice or the end of the world.
You can see why such a statement doesn't work well politically, though I think it would be hard to argue the facts - very poor people in places like China becoming less poor, while people in America who are well off (essentially, everyone in America by standards in places like Africa, India, China, etc.) become less well off.
What is left off the list is the environmental damage which comes with this exchange. I remember being told in the 1980/90s, that all the leather tanned for the West was done in South Korea (and at least for the motorcyle leather I looked at afterwards, it seemed true), since the metals used (chromium at the top) were simply not possible to deal with in terms of environmental rules. In other words, a lot of South Koreans got jobs, a lot of Westerners were spared trashing their rivers, and the South Koreans who will deal with such heavy metal pollution were not involved in this process at all.
Somehow, the deal seems less fair when put that way. China has a giant 'recycling' industry - nothing like melting PC components over an open fire as a way to improve your standard of living. Of course, nothing like destroying yourself by melting PC components over an open flame either, but at least the PC industry has met its obligations to be environmentally responsible. And I am pretty sure that some of the people involved in that business earn very good wages - though they live very far away from where the work is done. After all, such well paid people are educated enough and skilled enough to know what that sort of work does to a human being. But earning a wage is a human right, and it is nice to see such well paid administrators willing to give the poor such a step up out of the futility of living as a substinence farmer.
As I said, I actually pretty much agree with your points, but the picture is a touch broader than merely wages, or a few billion people getting a slightly larger slice of what the West takes for granted, like electricity, clean water, hospitals, schools.
There are costs involved which have nothing to do with the relative decline in America's standard of living.
I certainly agree that a large portion of moving economic activity to poorer countries is regulatory arbitrage. The environmental issue you discuss above is an indisputable case. Thailand had the same issue with tanneries and printing. Chemicals that couldn't be used in developed were used here, so the business moved here. Likewise, a huge portion of workers are subject to standards that workers in developing countries would not abide, either because laws protect them or because they have better options elsewhere.
And in the "better options" lies part of the crux of what makes the issue complex. Three Korean companies that manufacture bras for US companies shut down in Thailand last week. Korean textile companies are probably typical sweatshops where workers are treated at standards far below that of the West, or even Western companies in Thailand.
But rather than celebrate their "liberation" from slavelike conditions, the workers protested at the American Embassy to get their jobs back. This is because their next option is worse.
Most of the self-righteous commenters who claim that third world workers are slaves in sweatshops fail to realize (or admit) that they are there voluntarily. They made the choice because their next best option is worse. It could be prostitution, farm work which they regard as worse, or not being able to feed their children. A lot of people in developing countries do work that is a lot worse than being in a factory.
Call center workers or computer programmers appear to be a clearer case. They don't seem to work in conditions that are much worse than their American counterparts and the gain from relocation doesn't have much to do with environmental impact or worker rights. Speaking as an expat (I mean me in this case), I don't know where to put my loyalties. I feel sorry for the Americans who did nothing wrong and don't have a job. I feel good for the Indians who live in, let's face it, a desparately poor coyuntry and deserve to get out of poverty as much or more than we do.
We can leave the issue of why a large Thai company has hired me to sit with a bunch of Thais doing the same job as they are and paying all of us quite a lot of money for another day.
No, not impossible. Merely temporary.
Globalization has broken down the link between location and work, but it doesn't mean that people are all in a race to the bottom. It just realigns the values of skills.
Developing countries may have huge populations of capable people who can provide a lot of functions that the global economy values. But this also means their economies are growing and they have their own needs for other skills.
Why not?
As energy grows dearer, companies will be squeezed for more "productivity." More work done by fewer people for less money.
Like you, I am not saying it is good, just the way it will be.
Still, equating business administrators with nobility and landownership is real funny (but no more than that). I'd almost guess I can guess what your job is. Trying to save it? Only normal.
For most of our species' sedentary history, the vast majority of people who had land to work on and the skills to do the work were independent from nobility and other profiteers. Our history books may not find that noteworthy, but then again, those books are just a variant on stories about Brad Pitt.
Paris Hilton or Helen of Troy, same old, same old. Sequels to Greek mythology, which were sequels to.... The need of the human mind for religion.
The lives of "normal" people are not newsworthy, precisely because they are the vast majority.
Virtual Property is like an alcoholic who needs booze for breakfast to feel alive. It only has value in a Virtual Economy. Real enough for the addict, but a drain on the world around him.
If you don't understand that that wealth is not real, maybe it's easier to see that the food is not. You want money to buy food, but only as long as there is food, and those who have it are willing to trade it for paper. If you're hungry enough, even pieces of gold lose their value real quickly.
Can I have your Picasso since its not real wealth ?
Wealth means you own something people value.
Money is used to claim ownership of wealth.
It has nothing to do with atoms.
What do you own when you buy a house ?
The atoms or an electronic entry some where ?
Consider the case of a real AI according to you its worthless.
Moving to a society that considers virtual concepts as valuable can really help our environment by reducing the use of material items to denote wealth.
Boy you said it. See where this guy sold his "mummy collection" including various "parts" like feet and hands for @ $2 million. If you are looking for signs of the apocolypse this has to be toward the top of the list. What good are a bunch of dried up dead pople ( + "parts")? "Hey look at my dried up dead person", "OH WOW that is soo cool", "I paid $2 million for this", "You gotta be shitting me that is so cheap!" "Yeah you know Costco had them in big packages for 1/2 the price of Fred Meyer"
Money isn't wealth?!?! What kind of BS is that? Send me those pieces of paper then, and the keystrokes of your passwords... Oh you don't want to do that.. Surprise surprise.
And Salesmen are going to disappear?!?!?
What the hell are you smoking?!?!
Salesmen have been around for 1000's of years. Short of extinction, there will be salesmen.
Peak Oil is a slow roll over. A gradual decline. Further, peak oil does not mean there will no longer be energy. It may be scarcer, it may be more expensive, but it will still be produced.
Let me ask you this:
Are games of chance REAL? Dice? Cards? They've been around for a long time. What about pinball machines? Are they real? What about Massive Multiplayer Online Games? (IE World of Warcraft) Are they real?
They're all real!!
Can I find a used tool in a nearby location for sale on Cragslist.com? Absolutely!
Can I find information on growing a particular plant on Wikipedia? Yes. Can I investigate building my own greenhouse? Find out how to wire a new electrical outlet?
The internet is a QUANTUM LEAP FORWARD in terms of productivity, much like the telegraph, or satellites before it. Are they perhaps as energy efficient as they could be? Not even close. But more expensive energy will change that.
Maybe. Just maybe. Since you simply don't know, not a smart statement.
The internet produces nothing but electricity bills. It's nice and useful, but not wealth. Can it teach you how to grow food? No, you have to learn hands-on.
It can show you a picture of a plant, but not the thing itself.
The internet is a bundle of machines that are connected. The machines are made of very real natural resources. The internet is not. Without the hardware, the software is just a disk. You need hardware to read the code.
You hold on to the desire that a certain part of this society will last, and reason accordingly.
I distinguish what is real from what is not. And that is not decided by personal opinion.
If you think money is real, you should consider that it exponentially increases, it is "produced" by the trillions each year, while the amount of resources and energy available exponentially decreases.
Hence: money is disconnected from natural resources. And those are the things you need to drink, feed, dress, and find shelter.
The internet, cars, TV, money, etc are non-essential for life. However both are very real and both can be forms of wealth.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&defl=en&q=define:wealth&sa=X&oi=glossary_ definition&ct=title
The above is a link to google's definition page of wealth.
If you read through them, you will find that there are some differences in definition of what constitutes wealth. some take a harder approach like you and break that down to physical objects such as food, land, cars, and houses.
Other definitions mention things like talent, stocks, and money.
Money for the time being is broadly considered to be the measurement of wealth in this country.
But to say that just because its a piece of paper, or just some electrons doesn't mean it isn't wealth. If that is truly what you believe, I will be glad to accept all that un-wealthy paper you possess right now, and while you are at it, can I also have login information for any boards, email addresses, or other internet related "assets" you own?
I suppose a simpler question might be, is knowledge/access to knowledge a form of wealth? Is a book wealth? Is an instructional video wealth? Does the knowledge a master blacksmith imparts to an apprentice wealth?
In a way, that is what this debate revolves around. Good luck resolving it.
It does not imply that there is not an underlying reality, which is indeed real, we just can't access it until we become enlightened.
I live in Thailand, where Buddhism is only the second most convincing reason why everything we see around us is just a dream
I don't have any definitive proof, but if I have to guess between dream and reality, I'd have to pick what's behind door #1.
So a library isn't wealth?
One of the seven wonders of the ancient world was the library of Alexandria. KNOWLEDGE, although not tangible, is wealth.
What about the telephone?
If I'm cooking dinner, and I have a question about how to prepare something I can call my Mom. Or if I'm an astronomer, I can call another observatory and have them confirm what I'm seeing. Is there not value in that? How about making a reservation at a restaurant? Or arranging for delivery of supplies?
There is tremendous wealth to be found in communication and collaboration. The internet is a tool to facilitate both of these.
The internet is also used as a distributed computing tool. This is used for such various purposes as cancer research and SETI.
Wealth is not limited to "things". Computers and the internet maybe recent phenomenom, but what about philosophy?
I have worked as a data base arch. and system's designer for 25 years in large shops. The layers of abstraction of things running on top of other things thru networks... The complexity is astonishing.
Much of this wonderful modern times things like the internet and PC's for instance is incomprehensible to the vast mulitude that uses it.
What percentage of the populace do you think understands how the things they rely on work? In 1900 what percentage would that be? I think it would have been magnitudes larger.
You knew how a steam engine worked. Period.
The people I have worked with over the last 10 or so years have been outsourced almost entirely. HOWEVER !!! MUCH of what they designed and wrote(that everyone uses and depends on) is still running.
In a depression type scenario, I think you may see it resemble the people in the future in HG Wells Time Machine. Complex stuff, no one knowing how it was made or how it works.
Anyway, As Maslow would say, If you ain't got food, or shelter, the "Higher" things lose their value.
Hey, Can I fix your xxxx if you give me some food?
Nevermind
Accountants,
Database Administrators,
Network Administrators,
Human Resources,
Technical Support,
Customer Service Reps,
Billing specialists,
Phone Operator,
Salesmen
See that? All about to disappear.
Accountants and Salesmen will 'disappear'?
The programmers who write the code in the dedicated processoers will 'disappear'?
Got something to back such a claim up? Other than bluster?
I don't consider myself a doomer either, and yes, stegasaurus was my favorite dinosaur as well, but that doesn't mean that greater bandwidth will solve all of our problems or that Detroit's decline isn't a sign of things to come. Of course greater bandwidth is a silver bb, but at the same time things falling apart in Michigan could be a sign of things to come elsewhere.
BTW, Michigan is failing because of high oil prices, globalization, high healthcare costs, and high pension costs. IMHO, in that order. Are we the only state in the nation affected by these problems? Won't higher energy prices cause the same drain on household finances elsewhere that they are causing here?
odograph on Wednesday October 11, 2006 at 9:06 AM PST
If you start with the collapse of civilization, then you can say all kinds of things won't make a difference in the long run.
But as soon as you make collapse an open question, a LOT of the arguments here start to become unrooted.
Does that trigger a collapse of the US? I have no idea. However, I can't bring myself to blithely answer no. Does that trigger a collapse in the US auto industry, 80% of whose profits used to come from SUVs/light trucks? Could be, but my crystal ball says "Reply hazy, try again." Those companies provide over a million, high-paying, real-world jobs; they support another million or so retirees; their suppliers probably pay another million or two employees; etc. That's a lot of real-world money changing hands, as opposed to the free navel-gazing at youtube.
What will the loss of that north american auto industry money flow do to the SE Michigan economy, where I live? My crystal ball says "Outlook not so good." Since this "collapse" has already been happening for quite a while now, that's not too helpful. I'd ask to use your crystal ball, but it sounds a little too rosy.
From that position, I chat with people at either extreme who give me pat answers on fixed futures.
I do think that the true Cornucopians, like the true Doomers, are feeding outlook back in as input.
But how many "white collar" jobs that require no, or little physical presence could be done remotely, which in turn would cut down on commuting, and all the energy used in maintaining a commuting lifestyle.
Programmers,
Accountants,
Database Administrators,
Network Administrators,
Human Resources,
Technical Support,
Customer Service Reps,
Billing specialists,
Phone Operator,
Salesmen
and these are just the general categories of people in my current office which make up about 90% of my division of this company. Most of these positions could be accomplished with technology assistance from home. The cost in technology would increase expense, but when compared to a lower required floor space in this office building we rent plus all the costs in maintaining our environment,( cleaning crews, AC/heating, etc) I question just how much money would really be lost.
The main reason for not adopting this model in most IT corporations is that the proverbial "they" are still married to strong centralized control where they can keep an eye on everything, when in truth they really don't keep an eye on half the things they think they do. Its become almost an artform for employees to find ways around the security system at work to get to recreational sites like YouTube during work hours.
I can manage and analyze databases and our servers from home or from work(in fact I've been called on a few times to log in from home for emergencies). The only reason I come to work everyday to do my job here, is because the boss told me to. Why does he tell to? Cause I'm guessing his boss told him to as well.
Barbara, who occasionally posts here, has some fascinating stories about her grandparents' experiences in WWII Europe. The people who did best were the people who had the "physical" skills. The food rations were not enough to live on, so people either snuck out to the countryside on bicycles at night and bought food, or they bought it on the black market, at high prices. Farmers, carpenters, tailors, mechanics, etc., did all right, because people still needed their skills. The white collar office workers starved, because their skills were not needed.
I'm not talking about sudden collapse scenarios. I'm talking about averting/delaying collapse scenarios and removing waste(i.e. conservation) a step which will be required in a powerdown situation. Decentralizing office work would save energy in transportation, removing the need for as many office buildings thereby slowing urban growth, save energy on maintaining buildings (AC/heating, maintanence, etc) and I'm sure I'm just touching the tip of the iceberg.
A lot of people's jobs depend on the things you want to cut back on. Gas station attendants, highway maintenance workers, car salesmen, fuel truck drivers, fast food workers, tire manufacturers, etc. What's going to happen to them?
The ripples will eventually mean less need for database managers and network adminstrators.
The economic collapse could be quite sudden, especially given our debt levels.
But I'm not talking about situations in a collapsed state. I'm talking about situations in a pre-collapsed state where by the society in question is trying to post-pone and adapt to or prevent a collapse.
Decentralizing white collar jobs would be a way of accomplishing this. You are trying to argue with me from a paradigm I'm not even addressing nor care to address. My argument is based solely on a pre-collapse condition which is where the world finds itself at now.
Hope for the best, plan for the worst, and all that. The fact that we can't know the future is more reason to worry, not less.
I do think a dollar collapse is the thing we have to worry about the most. Eventually, our Chinese overlords are going to get nervous about our ability to pay back our debt. No one wants to see the U.S. economy collapse...but eventually, they're going to stop throwing good money after bad. And no one will want to be the last one out the door.
There will be a lot of needs to be met. What I question is our ability to pay people to meet those needs, in a world that has less and less energy but a larger and larger population each year.
Granted this is a pretty extreme example, but if agrarian society with no machines is where you think we are headed, then I don't think its impossible that issues thought "resolved" will resurface again such as slavery.
That's wasted energy for the other 14,000 future histories possible from this point. This makes my head reel, and makes me remember the slashdotters from yesterday.
They too are constraining their predictions by their notion of likely paths ... we don't know they are wrong ... we just know that our little value network here reinforces discussion along very different lines.
Yes, we crawled out of the Great Depression, and it didn't really take 25 years, rather about 15. But if your next major recession is only 10 years away, you may find yourself doing more backsliding than crawling out. Certainly we can adapt, but that adaptation may well be to decline, not just to temporary conditions. I'm not convinced that growth will be over forever, but there may be "considerable suffering", and just as everything on the way up of oil production was a transition, it may be all transition on the way down.
From a strictly economic point of view, you'd have to look for instance at what happened with the gold standard, and look through the conspiracy crap:
American Bankruptcy
Grocery deliverers.
Energy auditors.
Small car refurbishers.
.
.
Streetcar Conductors(*)
* - which comes full circle, because my great grandfather was a streetcar conductor in Vancouver, BC.
Wind turbine installers & maintenance. As NG prices go up, so do WTs :-)
More I am sure.
Best Hopes,
Alan
Or Soylent Green....
Undertakers cost money and use ICE powered hearses.
Just grave-diggers.
What happened in the 80's when computers started to replace secretaries?
They were retrained and put back into the workforce doing something that was still needed.
Car salesmen will become solar panel salesmen. Tire manufacturers will become wind turbine manufacturers.
Why exactly is fast food going away? And gas station attendants are already an all but extinct species. They were replaced by quickie mart employees, and those jobs will remain.
Stock market is down, apparently for fear that it's terrorism.
;->
October surprise? Weak!
But "government officials" say there's no reason to believe it's terrorism.
It probably is just an accident, but we can't afford anymore to just make that assumption and not pursue things immediately.
In Oregon you can't pump your own gas. An attendent has to do it for you.
On a recent vacation to Oregon, while getting our gas pumped by a rather hot looking attendent, my brother and I were debating about the feasibility of a Hooters variation of a Shell station. Say perhaps throw in a wet t-shirt carwash while we are at it.
(cackles evilly)
The economy was still expanding then. As long as the economy is growing, yes, that sort of substitution will occur. The "buggy whip" scenario.
But the end of cheap energy will mean the end of the ever-growing economy. The economy will start shrinking every year, instead of growing. There will be fewer jobs every year...but more people needing them.
There you clearly state it. The conclusion about a shrinking economy is used as justification for ... a shrinking economy?
I don't think that is a good loop.
Leanan did not say that. She assumed that "the end of cheap energy will mean the end of the ever-growing economy." I agree with that. But justifying that assumption was not attempted here. I know we won't convince you, odo, but many of us think that no matter how the clever chimps juggle the numbers (inflation vs. deflation, etc), when there will be less oil, there will be less "stuff" to go around. The average person (by definition) will therefore be poorer. Business models that rely on advertisements as the revenue source (Google, TV) will likely crash. Processes that rely on a large stream of waste (such as running VW microbusses on french-fry oil :-) will find that those waste streams slow to a trickle. (That applies to "cellulosic ethanol from ag/forestry waste products" too.)
That leaves open the question as to how the diminishing pie will be divided. There will be fewer jobs, unless in some way society will adapt to accept lower pay per job so there are jobs for more people. That could involve either lower-productivity full-time jobs or more part-time jobs. Alas our current culture (in the USA) pushes for productive full-time occupations, and those who fall out of that game are considered "losers" who have only themselves to blame. Some of them now live in Detroit.
In my opinion, the uncertainties are how strongly peak oil generalize to an energy crisis, and how strongly the presumed energy decline will impact the economy.
There is a whole other bar to be crossed to get from there to collapase ... unless of course you start there.
That leaves nuclear, wind, solar, tidal, geothermal, biomass, fusion. I think it's a real roll of the dice as to whether those are going to lead to more energy or just a decreased energy decline rate. That's one of the "known unknowns" in this whole process. Oil is most of our BTUs, so that's a lot of making up to do. (I'll find a pretty chart for this later, since the DOE website seems to be down at the moment.)
I think we can have some economic growth (not necessarily overall growth) in a declining energy environment, as long as the declines are mild, so that we can make up the difference with efficiency improvements. However, since our "trajectory" is toward more and more energy use, it's going to be quite a change in trajectory to continually work toward less energy use. Whether we can manage the transition well is another known unknown.
What's the hang-up?
Tom
I call it a loop when I see that commitment being fed in as an explanation for our present and near future.
If Detroit is going to take its lumps, learn its lessons, and move on .. then it isn't .. what was that phrase from up top?
"a snap-shot of the on-going 'catabolic collapse'"
However, I do see the "Greater Depression" scenario as probably the most optimistic outcome of peak oil's effect on the economy. At least in terms of how it will affect most of us personally. What it does to the environment is a whole different story.
In my opinion (as cheap as it is), a slow catabolic collapse of the good ol' USofA began with the first oil shocks in the 1970s. This essentially marked the time when world oil production increases slowed down considerably. We're three decades into the catabolic collapse. Probably have many more decades of deterioration to go. I suppose the events in the 1970s could possibly be considered T0 on Bakhtiari's four transitions, with T1 actually being the second.
-best,
It is unsatisfying to me to see each group declare themselves right, the other wrong, and to continue on with the same old original worldviews.
It gets to be more of a demonstration of how internet communities form around a fixed idea, than a demonstration of how ideas evolve.
I mean, show me 10 people who agree at TOD that we are all doomed, and I'll show you 10 people who have found each other.
So what do we get when we average the two (/. and TOD) views? Which one has more weight? Or are they equal? Or are they both wrong?
My feelings are that the energy limitations that many on TOD are expecting have a bit more weight. But, also, the more rosy view of technology-to-the-rescue may have enough pull to prevent a quick, catastrophic collapse. Global civilization, it seems to me, will slowly transform to a more energy-limited state. I think history bears this out--many civilizations that are now gone had a slow Shakespearian death over decades and even centuries.
Seems like a major (nuclear) war, and perhaps a global pandemic are the wildcards that could derail the catabolic collapse scenario and bring on a more rapid decline. Or, in the case of pandemic, it could conceivably allow the growth model to continue, once there's been adjustment to the initial shock of losing a significant portion of human beings. Vingean technological singularity is another wildcard, though I suspect it's a low-probability one. And such an event would completely alter the meaning of civilization. Indeed, civilization as we think of it might cease to exist at the point of singularity.
-best
Then I remembered something. It's an old one:
http://odograph.com/?p=105
I don't think the guys with the real technical chops come down on either extreme.
http://agonist.org/ian_welsh/20060623/the_great_long_suck
Come on Odo, join the circular anti-logic club!
Common themes found on The Oil Drum:
Usury (Interest) is Bad.
But the Feds lowering interest rates was criminal!
Suburban living is energy inefficient.
But large metropolitan areas are also energy inefficient.
The internet isn't REAL.
Yet here we are, a large global internet community, having rational(?) discussions on the impending energy crisis.
And the biggest:
We're at peak oil!
If we keep increasing our oil usage like this, in 100 years global warming is going to kill us all!
Actually I think their is nothing wrong with the strange responses on the various topics. It surprising how ingrained the growth economy is in all of us. Considering a world in which you may be technically savvy and inteligent but yet have no growth is a bit hard to imagine.
Actually I think we will grow but we will be smart enough at that point to keep the growth off the planet. The only thing we would need to realisticlly colonize space is a space elevator or other resonable way to access space. We could do it today if the world wanted. In this future world I think thats the only viable route to expand.
What this would do is slowly split the population into the growth oriented spacers and the stay behind natural stewards.
In a sense its cool becuase it give humanity a chance to try two different ways of living and I hope the nature stewards can have a positive influence on the space jocks so they don't destroy our solar system like we have our planet.
For now the transformation to a more sane balanced world is not something that many can comprehend but I think that we will have to go through this transition before we are ready to tackle taking our need for growth off planet.
If you think about it if we had been wise stewards of this planet we would have been in space and had colonies by now.
A bit of irony.
from Oct 06 Popular Science, by Rena Marie Pacella
Kind of puts PO into perspective, too, doesn't it?
I can see it now:
''Beautiful isnt she?
Just run your hand down the trim.
She's German you know.
Say fella, why dont we take her up onto the roof now?
Lets see how she looks and handles.''
I guess that begs the question: What is "wealth"? What is "real" value?
Insisting that prices are "wrong" is a mug's game.
If we are going to accept a term like "wealth", should we not also have something that is "anti-wealth"? (impovershment?)
What contributes to the impovershment of a society?
Maybe Adam Smith II can write a sequel entitled "The Impovershment of Nations and of the World"? What would he say?
Anyway, I'm not sure we know anymore what real wealth and real value are. In the purest sense, they're the tools and resources we need to survive.
For those living in the Pleistocene, wealth was measured by the resources in a given location, the tools one posessed, and the acquiantances at hand who could help track down food. The same could be said for our times, but the paradigm is different.
At any rate, we're reaching a point of diminishing returns, of which Youtube, and many other services I would consider infotainment, is an example.
I'm arguing that my country is deinvesting in industries that provide real value and investing in industries that provide infotainment services. It's a shame that a welder or a furniture maker can't make what a schmuck like me makes sitting in front of a keyboard all day. I must provide more value to our society blabbing on TOD than a welder who works his ass off making wind turbines.
Tom A-B
from China, but the point still reamins valid. Demand, in turn, is the result of millions of individual choices. If I'm buying something, I want to buy it as cheaply as possible. I've no incentive to pay extra. Until that situation changes America will be oversupplied with physical skills because foreigners will do it cheaper.
Either underlying economic conditions have to change - Peak Oil, the culture has to change, or government has to change in order to get out of this infotainment economy. Otherwise, it's just not rational to invest in skills that can be done much cheaper overseas.
Besides, I would rather see people watching videos than buying more cars.
Further, psychic income, as identified by Jerry Brown thirty something years ago is just if not more important than what people classify as real income. Ultimately, beyond basic physical needs, it is the psychic reward from a good or service, however intangible, that is important.
A lot of people here deal in information processing, creation, and sharing for a living. Are they all not producing "real" wealth. Keep your "real" wealth. I'll take a small percentage of Bill Gates' "unreal" wealth.
Something similar in my area happened, when the blue chip major employer had problems and was forced to lay off or transfer thousands of workers. The day the announcement was made, police asked gun shops to close...just in case. Real estate prices fell 50%, as people transferred out were forced to sell, and there were no buyers. Dozens of restaurants went out of business, since eating out is the first thing people cut back on. Many no-tell motels - the kind that rent rooms by the hour - also went belly-up, because they relied on office workers having affairs for their business.
But really, we need to transition anyway from an auto centric economy to an economy that focuses on moving people and object, when necessary, in the most efficient way. When that paradigm becomes reality, then those auto companies which cannot evolve to people and object moving will diappear.
An auto moving me across town for a meetingcreates value, but so do electrons that move my thoughts across the globe. I would argue that the value/energy proposition is much greater represented by the latter.
OH NO, NOT PIZZA DELIVERY AND YARD CARE!! THE TWO CORNERSTONES OF AN ADVANCED CULTURE!!
THE END TRULY IS NEAR!! :-O
Roger Conner known to you as ThatsItImout
Cars are still being sold. The problem is the type of car being sold has changed, and Ford and GM have not been agile enough to meet the changing market demands. They are relying on a paradigm, that has been made obsolete due to fuel cost concerns.
GM and Ford continue trying to push innefficient cars and as a result are losing market share. The share is being picked up by companies like Toyota who is set to become the second largest automaker in the world, supplanting Ford's long held title.
Add to this the added stress of years of stupid stupid deals with the Unions in which these companies pay a workforce that doesn't work, and its no wonder these guys can't hold up enough profit to support themselves.
Ford and GM are going to tank, and when they do, the best thing that could happen in my opinion is that the government lets them. If the government bails them out, they will not learn the lessons which need to be taught and America won't refine and streamline its auto-making business into an agile and mean industry like it used to be.
But to say this is catabolic collapse is over-reacting just a tad.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive#Production_statistics
In Millions
GM: 9040(M)
Toyota: 7100(M)
Ford: 6418(M)
VW: 5173(M)
DaimlerChrysler: 4319(M)
The US auto companies had a good game going with SUVs. As long as people were willing to shell out money for expensive trucks, the auto companies could make enough money to make good on their exorbitant agreements with the unions while slowly moving production off shore. The problem came when oil and gasoline prices quickly increased and killed off consumer desire for gas guzzling trucks. Isn't that an early version of the price increases we would expect from oil production peaking?
Collapse doesn't have to be a sudden, all-encompassing phenomenon, IMHO. Catabolic collapse in particular, is a slow, grinding process of decline (John Michael Greer's recent posts help to elucidate his original paper.) While I can't say that this is, or is not, a sign of things to come for the rest of the country, it is what I would expect to see as part of a decline process. It's like the current oil production numbers. It isn't necessarily oil peaking, but I would expect the first months after production peaking to look something like the present.
Wouldn't peak oil have the same effects on them, given they are in the same industry?
If anything the recent spike in oil prices and subsequent gasoline prices did was expose the rot GM and Ford are suffering for stupid mistakes and their inability to move with the market.
The downfall of GM and Ford is not so much high oil, in as much as it is lack of adaptability due to bad decisions. My question would be, if GM succeeded in moving forward with hybrid and fuel efficient vehicles to meet demand, would they be in the predicament they are in now? More over if they hadn't made some boneheaded moves with their Unions would they be suffering?
GM and Ford were in trouble even if oil stayed cheap. High oil has just hastened their demise. Meanwhile other companies are thriving because of the new paradigm shift they adopted.
You seem to have missed the point that the US auto industry was already moving production off-shore to deal with excessive wages and benefits in the US. This was the whole point of Delphi and Visteon. If prices hadn't spiked and killed off the SUV cash cow, the US manufacturers would have been much more successful at slowly shifting to lower-cost foreign workers. The foreign companies already had that advantage, without the baggage of the US healthcare and pension non-systems.
Are you aware that GM was working on hybrids in the 60s? They dropped them because there clearly wasn't a profitable market in the US at the time. You have a very low opinion of some very bright people who have done a surprisingly good job of maintaining profits in the face of a disfunctional US system. The US manufacturers have clearly been caught on the wrong foot with the quick rise in oil prices, and I do agree that they are in trouble, but this is very much an oil price, and therefore peak oil, story as well as one of globalization.
But even before oil spiked, these companies were in trouble due to bad management decisions and foreign auto-makers were making gains even then.
High oil costs simply broke GM and Ford sooner than if oil had remained low. With no changes in their business model they were going to be doomed period. High oil just caught them before they could make changes or hastened the result of sticking with their current business model.
I don't dispute that high oil is A cause for GM's and Ford's troubles, what I dispute is that this is somehow an early example of the beginning of a long catabolic collapse people keep talking about or perhaps more appropriately that it is too early to call this an example of the beginning of the catabolic end.
If GM and Ford rebound in 10 years and Detroit improves wouldn't that put the lie to this assessment of it being the beginning of a catabolic end?
My concern, though, is that the Detroit thing may be less about global catabolic collapse and more about globalization and energy inefficiency catching up with the U.S. way of life. Other countries can do it for less (less energy and less money), and we're on the losing end. Standards of living in industrialized and semi-industrialized countries look to be evening out. Our lifestyle paradigm is impermanent.
I understand that what I'm describing is doomerish, saying "OK, so the world may not collapse, but the US will", and you're probably rolling your eyes, depending on who you are, but damn. How can you people (HaHaHa, "you people") maintain your optimism? We're presumably reading the same articles, blogs, posts, etc, so why do I find it so hard to believe that everything will work out?
I have a feeling that part of the appeal of this site is that realists ("doomers") find it entertaining to read posts by cornucopians ("optimists"), and vice versa. It trips my trigger.
Tom A-B
IMO, one hard question with respect to globalization is, what's the trade-off between "I've got mine, tough luck to you poor countries" and "let's all share opportunities on a global scale."
I mean, a Doomer might quote Indian suicide statistics to confirm where we are heading. A Cornucopain might quote rising middle class incomes in India.
A harder question is how much we should give up, and how much we deserve.
The second questions I don't quite understand what you're getting at. Whose "we"?
Keep in mind their opportunity costs hidden in this. I took an International Marketing class all about globalization. To failing of the policy in practice is providing alternatives that are on par. You can find stories on both sides, where people got laid off but some found better work it turned out. Others never recovered and still some more stayed the same. I would be very curious as to the scientific distribution of the phenomenon.
Also gov't is suppose to provide all the necessary credits to get trained to do something else. You should be able to get trained to some degree for near free. Obviously we don't have that, so we do have a race to the bottom. IMHO globalization works great on paper, and even better for businesses. However the aggregate problems that are unaddressed are undermining the entire arrangement.
All the businesses who don't worry about who will continue to be able to buy their prodcuts are collectively eroding their consumer base. It's argued that on net the US hasn't lost any jobs from globalization, however I would be more interested in BLS "underutilized workers" aka engineers flipping burgers.
If that's generally true, of course a bicycle maker in the US is going to have the rug pulled out, whereas perhaps a slow change in trade barriers would allow more time for planning and adjustment.
Or am I being too simple about that? I don't actually know the nuts and bolts of the legal changes that allowed the manufacturing shift.
The second question is similar to what someone else said ... when we have a post-capitalist economy, directing companies toward social goals, and we suddenly open the door to competition from companies (and countries) without those same burdens, what happens?
I mean, in the case of environmental laws it is easiest to see. To what degree is Saudi-manufactured gasoline cheaper than US-manufactured gasoline simply because they do not have the same clean air restrictions?
Any CEO who didnt plan according to NAFTA should have been fired since they couldnt see the changes ahead. The barriers themselves are many times indirect like subsidies being argued over at the WTO over agriculture. I would assume that there is planning at Big Biz, but the smaller guys would lose out. Any company cognizant enough to realize the benefits of moving production overseas, while maintaing HQ in the states made a killign when this started.
The social costs we burden companies with does harm the competiveness of these businesses on the world scale. So far, we're not budging. In the history I think the period following post WWII through the early 70's will be considered the cream of the crop in terms of national prosperity shared by the most. And that's in spite of the new amendments added to the Constitution during this time.
The social issue actually boils down to externalized costs. If you factored in the costs borne to society by the cheaper, more harmful Saudi gas per unit, I would wager that the true cost per unit is actually higher in KSA. It would be hard to do this, but it works as an aggregate theory.
But there are alternate models which if adopted in the US could lead to a very comfortable way of life that is not as dissimlar from our current life as people think. What many avid doomers seem to dismiss out of hand are the strides being made in alternative energy fields, and the amount of efficiency to be gained from other innovations.
Case in point of something I brought up a few weeks back. Current air travel done by planes is certainly speedy, but horribly innefficient when you consider tons moved per fuel unit consumed.
Sacrifice some speed however and move to blimps, and all of sudden the ratio is looking a whole lot better. Consider even further that recent improvements in airship(terminology I've seen being used instead of blimp) design coupled with solar generation and we have a WAY different energy profile. And that net loss of speed? compared to the current 1 day trip, airships would take about 6 days for a trip halfway around the world.
Or consider railroads that AlanfromBigEasy is so fond of.
Or the concept of decentralizing office work.
And those are just conservation techniques. When you look at the other half, such as improving yields from Wind turbines, improvements in tidal power design, improvements in solar panel design and so forth, and you now have a technological recipe for success if we can get the two sides to meet in the middle.
A lot of people claim technology can't get us out of this one. I think that is a very narrow view point which excludes a range of possibilities. As someone pointed out to me, energy isn't really produced, and I responded with a correction of myself saying its harvested. Potentially the limit of our growth in energy usage is limited by how much energy is out there to be harvested. And in that vein the earth is pelted with how many terrawatts of power, the question now is how do we make a tool capable of harvesting it. Lack of energy is NOT the problem. Lack of ability to harvest energy besides fossil fuels is the problem.
Great point.
It just takes more energy to solve the problems?
But from a practical stand point there is a whole universe of energy and mass out there to be used. The trick is figuring out how to harvest it. The Earth is a finite sphere with a finite amount of mass and energy, agreed. But the focus that oil is the ONLY form of energy is a misplaced focus. There are other forms of energy around to be tapped, if we can figure out how to do so. Again I ask, how many terrawatts of power does the sun hit us with each day/week/year?
Can we capture all of that and direct its use? Probably not, but even if we could capture a fraction of it how would that change the game for people on this planet?
The trick is not to use the energy.
Roel,
Have you read Isacc Asimov's "The Last Question"?
http://infohost.nmt.edu/~mlindsey/asimov/question.htm
Cheers,
Garth
and Woody Allen has the last word:
and science fiction that is good takes the physical laws and breaks them in such a way to be believable.
you have been blinded by a story. a story that does nothing to solve our problems in the same way that eating the paper it was originally printed on helps to keep a person alive.
I don't think I've been blinded by anything. I never tried to represent the story as anything other then an amusing anecdote.
Roel pointed out that the second law of thermodynamics means that entropy is constantly increasing. And it is. (That's why it's a law) But fortunatly the earth is not exactly an isolated system. The Sun is constantly supplying the earth with energy.
We may not have a suitable technology to totally replace fossil fuels use with that energy yet (ever?), but the energy will be there, at least for another 4 or 5 billion years.
the crux is what Asimov doesn't address, but Daly does in the quote I sent yesterday: the waste produced when using energy, low to high entropy
we cannot survive in a high entropy environment, there is a limit, just take a look at rising temps today
nuclear fusion. like the sun, means not just unlimited energy, it also means unlimited waste, and you have to do something with that
in the case of the sun, there's heat regeneration, which keeps the planet's temperature constant
there's nothing we ourselves can do that matches that
just finding more energy to use makes the problems worse, not better
I don't want to disagree with you, and certainly there are numerous challenges facing the world as we race into the 21st century, but...
1. I think things are much better now then they were even 20 years ago. Most days this summer the Charles River here in Boston was considered safe to swim in. Recycling is much more prominent now then it was 20 years ago as well.
Certainly global warming is a concern, but if we're at or near peak oil, the ever increasing carbon waste cycle should be mitigated to some extent.
Please don't misinterpret me - I'm pro carbon neutral energy and I'm anti coal, but it's a big world and you can't change things overnight.
2. In the end, we're all dead anyways. :)
But delaying extinction as long as possible is a good thing !
Best Hopes,
alan
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&articleID=00037A5D-A938-150E-A93883414B7F0000& pageNumber=5&catID=2
Best Hopes that we delay this for millions of years !
Alan
We have the retreads:
- Nuclear
- "Clean" Coal
- Ugly Oil (Deep Sea, Tar Sands, Oil Shale, CTL, etc.)
And we have plenty of renewable candidates:- Solar(photovoltaic, solar thermal, biofuels, biomass, wind, hydroelectric, etc.)
- Geothermal
- Tidal
The problem is to come up with a winning combination which will replace the diminshing supply of cheap stuff and/or stave off climate catastrophy. Having a promising technology isn't enough. It has to scale (or they have to collectively scale) and the infrastructure has to be built.As noted in the Hirsh report, all this takes time that we don't really have anymore, and it's hard to see how we will get there smoothly when the problem becomes obvious to everyone.
Transport container on heavy truck > 20 BTUs diesel
Transport container on electric railroad > 1 BTU electricity
Transport commuter via private car > 20 BTUs gasoline
Transport commuter via electric rail > 4 BTUs electricity
Move commuter into TOD, where (s)he walks/bikes to grocery, etc. and takes electric rail to work > 1 BTU electricity
Took bus home (streetcar working next year ;-(
I have a bank 3 blocks away and others 5 & 7 blocks away. 5 places to buy food within 6 blocks.
Attended community meeting to "get back into the swing" on grants awards (Lt. Gov was there).
Home sweet disaster zone !
Best Hopes,
Alan
Have you read the Hirsch, Bezdek & Wendling report for the DoE ?
$5 TRILLION
or more (5 trill is just lower bound)
US national debt (minus that held by Federal Reserve & Social Security).
Trivial capital costs for intermodal transfer, added double tracks in a places and ~$2.5 million/mile for electrification.
Best Hopes,
Alan
Aerodynamic Inductrack maglev car shells 16ftx16ftx40ft with horizontal-rollout passenger pod / freight loading, combined with roughly 6000-8000 miles of track along major corridors, could haul thousands of people and ISO containers along major routes at 250-400mph. Extremely long trains partially devoted to freight and one quick-loading 5 minute stop per major metropolitan area (at the airport, with around 6-8 stops on each coast), and you could get from coast to coast in 12 hours of roomy, quiet comfort for a few kilowatts. As could your car or your prefab house along with you.
Inductrack is safe, it's speed-scalable (if a corridor is of interest, evacuated tubes can be constructed at great expense and you can take the ride at mach 10), and it doesn't require superconductors, cryogenics, or fully-powered tracks. I've came up with a plausible design for solid state switches so that mechanical wear is not a problem. Leaning can be accomplished naturally/passively by curving the surface when you depart from the requirements of 20 foot high doublestack 100 ton cars on 4' 8.5" wide standard guage tracks.
It could take a big chunk out of long-haul trucking as well as air travel, and provides the crucial high-speed intercity link that's very close to missing in discussions of mass transit. Right now, grade crossings, stops every 10 miles, 30mph freight trains, vibration/noise, and high priced, low capacity express services kind of kills traditional rail as compared to the conveniance of driving right now. A highspeed, low-stop maglev provides the hub for the conventional rail networks, the Metrs, the streetcars, and various other municipal systems (as well as regional/local trucking) to spoke.
If this were Carter's second term, I could support a short trial line AFTER all "we know this works" projects were funded and moving forward.
At this stage of the game, I am not willing to gamble on this and STRONGLY advise against it. TOO many unproven details (power consumption ?, Construction costs ? Controls ?)
I would like to see a "semi-high speed" (pax at max 110 mph, avg 100 mph and freight at max 100 mph, avg 90 mph) convential rail system built between major cities.
Best Hopes,
Alan
The neodymium magnets and (surprisingly simple) halbach arrays to make it possible were only invented in the '80's. As the other maglev techs already had test tracks at that time... The latest news releases I can find are from the full-scale-prototype-building phase, after two working scale models were built and operated as expected. Unlike active or superconducting units, there is a very high degree of accuracy to simulations apparently.
It just looks to me like an obviously better system, surpassing the major problems of the other two maglev techs. Levitation power increases with mass and decreases with speed - supposedly very little power is required compared to aerodynamic drag at high speeds. Track costs involves simple inductive bundles of wire, and some method of propulsion. Propulsion is anything you want to use - jet engines have been mentioned, but a pulsed field vs halbach or linear induction motor would be simpler and more energy efficient.
Look into it, Inductrack looks like a win-win that actually makes maglev economic.
In other news, Japan's superconducting maglevs have just successfully used liquid nitrogen cooled high-temp superconductors - a huge step up from liquid helium.
Claiming that yours is the best does not mean that it is prudent to consider building it in quantity and staking the future of our society on it.
The US is WAY behind the curve. Let the Japanese or Germans or French, who have some breathing room experiment with it.
We need the basics, something that will work predictably !
Alan
Cursive writing rapidly becoming passé
If you're planning to write down knowledge to save it for future generations, better block-print. Apparently, a lot of kids these days can't even read cursive.
I was in an elementary school (In Boston) earlier this year to meet with a few teachers and the principals. One of the things I asked was what grade were students being taught cursive. The answer was, they really aren't being taught it....
If it's not on the MCAS, schools aren't teaching it.
A related point I made some time ago is whether our paper will last very long. While good quality stuff may, a lot of the poorer quality paper definitely won't. I think this is a far more important issue when it comes to writing down knowledge for future generations or whatever. After all, nobody can read, say, ancient Greek without studying it for quite some time, but most of the extant Greek papyri have been studied by many scholars and we generally have a very good idea about their contents. If only we had more of those papyri!
And I very much doubt what someone else said about printing being faster than cursive. Certainly cursive is less tiring.
Chalk one up for another blow against the aesthetics of the everyday.
Most hostages in Nigeria oil raid freed
And what did it take to gain their release?
Give me a break.
Another reason for falling prices WSJ:
Boy there's so many contradictions in the global economy. There's an ocean of liquidity out there. Interesting about the insiders selling, I've seen a couple thing on that.
A little dated now, but opens with "Hiro Protagonist" pizza delivery man, who also claims to be the Worlds Greatest Swordsman.
If I remember correctly, the subtitle is, "Shut the fuck up. We love you."
Was it your son who's birthday is also November 15th?
I'm begining to think the CEO is past peak.
"Twin peaks of the Paris Basin, drilling, production and decline"
Score on the $57, SAT. But I think I got you beat. My one-day call on Monday was pretty sharp.
Cry Wolf - For $105/night, the Buckminster Hotel in Kenmore Square
is decent. Tiny Rooms for that price, but it works. Also the Howard Johnson's across the street (Commonwealth Avenue) should be decent as well. I've only actually stayed in the Buckminster. Both walking distance and you are also right Downtown. Or practically. It's actually Back Bay which is better at night.
Check Google Maps for other ideas close by. If you want to do some walking or be close-cab-ride distance. I'd recommend MIT/Kendall Square area but I can't think of any cheap hotels in the area off the top of my head.
Everybody - Start thinking of excuses for when oil hits $53. And Agric - Start thinking of a real good one for when it hits $48.
Now let's add in the 1,000,000 plus who died in the 90's from the "sanctions". I like nice round numbers, let's just say that, since 1991, the actions of the US gov't have led to the deaths of 2 million Iraqis.
At what point do we admit that this is genocide???
Turning Iraq into a "killing field" was always plan 1A if the Iraqis didn't willingly submit to having their country (and their oil) stolen from them.
The so-called "three-state solution," if implemented, will do nothing but accelerate the country's descent into complete chaos and increase the daily death toll.
The use of genocide to control the world's energy sources has been lurking beneath the radar since the oil embargo days in the 70s. Sadly, I suspect that a solid percentage of Americans would rather "wipe out the brown people" than contemplate any diminishment in their own bloated standard of living.
So, yes, this Iraq debacle is certainly an example of genocide, but much more killing is on the way.
500,000 troop participated in 1991's "Desert Storm". Around 100 were killed and 500 injured in combat. The rest returned home in relatively good shape.
Today over 275,000 of them are on full medical disability. Over 10,000 have died. Mostly young men. From the mysterious "Gulf War Syndrome". High rates of birth defects in their recent offspring. Independent tests show some have radioactive pee!
The military goes to great lengths to demonstrate that the use of DU doesn't increase the level of background radiation significantly. This is true. However, notice them saying "of course you shouldn't ingest or inhale these particles. We don't know what the possible results of that would be". If someone can tell me how to avoid ingesting or inhaling a radioactive particle I'd like to hear the strategy. I guess very brief visits is the best advice, right George? I'll bet he doesn't eat or drink anything that doesn't come off his own plane...
Great point. I actually have taken note of the DU situation. Truly tragic, and a war crime if there ever was one. The following article lays out the issue, and elaborates on some of the things you said:
U.S. military spreads radiation contamination against the Iraq population
I wonder of those responsible for this criminal policy will ever have to face the ICC?
Next chapter in the saga: Israel used US DU in Lebanon this summer.
The radiation exposure that ALL humans get from elevated Carbon 14 levels from above ground atomic tests (SU, US, France, UK, China) far exceed the levels in Iraq from DU.
We explored this is some detail on TOD early this year.
No case.
Alan
I've heard extremes on both sides and my general opinion with situations like this is assume something in the middle, and even that is not a good situation for those involved.
When I was at Caltech in the 1970s we used uranyl acetate (a uranium compound) as a reagent to "stain" DNA strands so we could photograph them with electron microscopy. This is something any competent molecular biologist knows, and not new information.
I read some of the early works (1970s/80s) on toxicology of uranium miners and there were some bad effects.
Most interesting was lung cancer rates. Non-smoking U miners from 1950s (poor ventialtions then) had rates of lung cancer = to 1 to 2 pack/day smokers, but smoking U miners had rates x8 or so of non-mining smokers. The delta was ascribed to radon exposure and that seemed reasonable (DU, being purified U, does not emit radon).
Acute uranium poisoning was quite rare and the toxicity of uranium appeared to be low.
OTOH, carbon 14 from above ground tests is part of DNA. I am not aware of preferentiual exclusion of C 14 vs C 13 or C12.
You used a specific compound that is not formed naturally. Is there any paper on uranium oxide or metallic uranium or a naturally occuring metabolic product of uranium that you can quote/link that shows that binds to DNA preferentially ?
No case.
Now whom should we believe:
Alan who would rather live in a shack with no plumbing, who believes that the rest of the nation should be trashed, so long as New Orleans, New York and San Francisco are saved
Or should one believe the many studies showing how DU when used BURNS (lead does not turn to Lead Oxide when it hits something) and the resulting DU is even detectable in the air in England. How DU is shown to be a mutigen (being a heavy metal).
Anyone who'd say "I want to live in a shack w/o plumbing" just to stay in one location shows an ability to disreguard data to support a POV. Even a willingness to harm others (untreated sewage) so long as thier worldview is supported.
Feel free to refute MicroHydro. Feel free to show the Uranium does no DNA damage. Feel free to show that there is no DU from its use in the air. You've made the claim of "no case". Prove it.
So you do not refute that:
DU is in the global air stream.
DU burns (unlike lead) when it hits a target. (thus you admit you claim that lead is just like DU is wrong)
DU is a mutigen.
You also do not refute that a desire to life in a shack without plumbing in a city is historically a plan to create water borne diease epidemics.
Kind of makes Bush's talk about mass graves and the evil of Saddam a bit hollow. But I guess all those dead people are free now, free at last.
Haven't we done enough damage? The question is, if your genocide is deemed to be mostly accidental and unforeseen because you don't have a clue and did not post war planning, are you still a war criminal. Is this sort of like vehicular homicide?
http://www.thelancet.com/
Method and Stats all there.
The Lancet is a very respectable journal and would not
publish this without considerable thought. They do give a minimum and maximum range
Who would I believe: Dubya or the Lancet?
Mmmm. tricky one...
A funny, yet sad look at suburbia and PO concerns from the comic pages:
http://www.schwinnbike.com/products/bikes_detail.php?id=889
A mainstream electric bike featuring:
Front Hub Schwinn Protanium Mini Motor with alloy shell
And with the leather saddle it looks like they are letting some traditionalists/trendspotters run ...
Anyway, here's my ride: Giant Lite
After putting 1100 miles on it in two summers, I can say it works well. The chain guard and internal rear-hub gearing make for a civilized experience (no more grease on pants, no danger of damaging the derailer by hitting it on something). The motor is in the crank area and works through the gearing, just like the pedals. It's not a "stealth" electric though. To make it even more geeky (and much more comfortable) I replaced the handlebar with a "cruiser" type bar, like they sell it in Europe, and unlike the straight one in the picture. Also added fenders.
The first two questions I always get asked: (1) is it electric, and (2) does it charge the batteries when using the brakes. (sigh)
And they don't strike me as a worldwide bike maker, unlike Shwinn,
However, the other project is a hydraulic hybrid bicycle. Some UM students are actually doing the work, with an engineer here as an adviser. They have it down at the moment to a unit contained in an ungainly looking front wheel, but this coming year they are supposed to shrink the unit to a wheel that could work on an ordinary bike. The control mechanisms have a long way to go, but this could be a valuable silver bb, especially for pedicabs and other heavy utility bikes.
I get this financial letter every day. Great contrarian veiw on the markets. This one is ALL about PEAK OIL. It's from yesterday to boot. Some of the excellent points...
Traffic may be going up as more readers of this daily letter check this out.
Sorry this is a long quote, but important for some of those here who may want a logic explanation for the increasing NYSE in spite of all the warning sirens going off...
http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/
point in the apogee of a steep sub orbital flight in which passengers
become momentarily weightless)."
or...like jumping off a cliff. It ain't the fall, ("wheee, I'm flying..."), it's that sudden stop...
I was talking to Danish attache in DC and he mentioned something he heard from Vestas (#2 wind turbine maker in world, Danish) and said that I could repeat.
China has decided to build 121 GW of renewable electricity ! 25 to 35 GW from wind. I have not had time to research their grid demands, but with announced nuclear plants, this should dramatically reduce coal use & GW ! Add some Russian NG.
"Coal is a transistional energy" supposedly from China.
Alan
Alan
Mandelbrot argues that minute-to-minute and day-to-day changes in prices are not independent (as assumed in CAPM, Modern Portfolio Thoeory, and Black-Sholes). Instead, there are various outside events that influence markets - for example, the announcement of the Jack 2 oil find, or the perceived level of oil supply, as determined by weekly US oil supply statistics. The impact of each of these events is such that there is long-term correlation of prices, leading to long-term bubbles and dips in prices.
Mandelbrot argues that if one looks at the actual distribution of day-to-day price changes for virtually any market, one finds that instead of following a normal distribution, the distribution is more what one would expect under chaos theory - that is, the distribution looks vaguely normal, but has much fatter "tails". The likelihood of a change of 3, 4, 5 or even 10 standard deviations in a given day is vastly higher than what would be expected if the distribution were normal.
Based on Mandelbrot's ideas, what we can expect is that markets will tend to follow along in one track for a while, then will make a statistically huge move, when some new event comes along to influence it - say, the discovery that there is really a shortage of US oil stocks. Thus we should not gain too much confidence because US stock market prices are where they are, or feel too concerned because oil prices are where they are - both likely to suddenly change by significant amounts, as external events influence them.
Some articles are truly informative:
We learn about the quality of Saudi oil, and the inability of its refineries to process that oil (the House of Saud has invested heavily in refineries for decades, but apparently not for the crude they produce these days):
About increasing domestic demand throughout the Middle East:
And about the state of the Saudi economy (stock market crash), as well as the pressure the royals feel from the domestic population. Keep them driving on the cheap:
The Saudi population went from 6 million in 1970 to about 27 million today (with 5.5 million non-natives). 40% of the population is younger than 15.
And the recipe for real success:
Between the ages of 25-40 there are almost twice as many men as women.
Question: what on earth did they do with their girls in the 1970's?
To top off the bright prospects of the country: unemployment is widely estimated at around 25%, while at the same time there are millions of foreign workers.
:-)
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/15704855.htm
Preach on.
P.S. Propellers are better than jets. Bring back the DC3.
A very poor design decision was to put on oversized wing on the A380-800 that was ideal for a future (never to be built) A380-900. Extra weight, extra drag on the -800.
Manufacturers claims are always suspect, but both the 787 series and 747-8I should get equal fuel burn/seat, in smaller packages.
The A380 is designed for hub to hub travel (JFK in NYC, London, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Dubai, Sydney, Frankfort, Paris is most of them).
If one wants to get from Dallas to Paris it is much more fuel (and time) efficient to fly directly in a 787 than take a 737 to JFK, transfer and then fly an A380-800 to Paris.
The A380 is a white elephant, built for nationalistic pride and with a poor business case. A for profit company (i.e. Boeing) would not have built it. EADS, with it's recent firing (after 99 days) of it's turnaround CEO, has shown that profits are not it's primary focus.
Best Hopes for Boeing dominance (we NEED the exports)
Alan
I did a financial case study on Boeings decision to build the 777 series. What I learned is basically this. When building a new frame assembly entirely you basically gamble the whole company. Financially this is just how it works out. You take on HUGE capital risks just planning it and execution becomes key. It seems as though EADS is faltering here. Boeing has executed their strategy well over the years considering they bought Mac Douglas here in STL barely a couple years before 9/11 happened and their commercial side fell flat as the defense side carried the company.
They're taking a large gamble though with their move to "Dell style" origination though and I hope they will pull it together as planned. We'll know much more next summer.
Boeing will go the way of Detroit, with the difference that they will have constructed, instead of confused, themselves straight out of existence.
Wonder what the brass there thinks of oil depletion.
Consider also that a subsidary of Boeing is working on improving Solar panel efficiency it would appear Boeing is branching out some as well.
And there are a bunch of other projects being worked on by Boeing involving a range of technologies and business niches. Boeing is a busy company, I think they will be around for awhile.
The airbus wings are simply magnificent. To watch the wings during landing is a great lesson in computer controlled electro-mechanics.
The 707 was developed with in house funds and no gov't money, something which Airbus has yet to do for a single a/c.
It was such an improvement (unlike the A380) that airports wanted jet service and adapted to it. LAX could care less if it gets A380 service.
Airbus wings are inferior to Boeing wings. Airbus ALWAYS has a lower cruise speed ! And higher fuel consumption (that is subject to a variety of factors and some debate).
True for A32x vs. 737NG, 777 vs. A340, 777NG vs. A340NG, 747-8 vs A380, 767/787 vs. A330.
The A380 wing cracked during test before the mandatory minimum load and had to be redesigned, part of the delay. Such magnificent engineering ! Of course there was the AB tail that fell off and the AB computer that overrode the pilot and crashed the plane.
DoD gave what new orders to Boeing after, say, 9/11 ? There was talk of a tanker order but it never materialized.
The "mother companies" of Airbus got more military contracts than Boeing before the Boeing-McD merger.
best Hopes for Boeing dominance,
Alan
The video will likely be on their site for two days and you can catch it here:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/av
A small aircraft has crashed into a high-rise residential building at 72nd Street and York in Manhattan, police said. Police are en route to the site, said to be at 525 E. 72nd Street. Flames and smoke could be seen pouring from the high rise apartment as fire engines raced to the scene.
Some reports say it was a helicopter, not a plane.
However, this was a small plane. It didn't have anywhere near the mass, velocity, or fuel a commercial jet would.
It won't collapse, believe me.
Rest In Peace
(BTW, his middle name is "Fulton" because he's a descendent of Robert Fulton, of steam engine fame.)
Just try to prove that's not true. Do you think AC wouldn't do it? How naive.
This is the fourth(scratch that, version 5, no apostrophes). Finally Ive got some good tunes playing.
I love both you guys. You are too smart to not have as a friend. The Chimpster doesnt post frequently enough to realistically annoy you. Watch his patterns. Hes just playing with you. He looks up to you. And he knows youre pissed at him. Youll be friends before you it.
But you know, at the same time, Ive got the better viddies.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/view/
The DARK SIDE
This will be the best 90 minutes of photos, documentation, and film you will see this week. This is superb. They only interview the experts and the insiders. You figure it out. Hollywood cant generate shit this good. Ive read all these books. To see these guys get sound bites is incredible. The writers of 24 get their ideas here. This is real. This is history. This is not fiction. This is Frontline. Its the best TV on TV. Ive been saying this for years.
Now I will never know why the Council on Foreign Relations is putting flouride in my water.
Stuart being alive? Or there being more to life? Or what did Leanan mean? More to life than the Oil Drum? I suppose one can read into that sentence anything one would want. Stuart is the Jim Morrison of Oil. He's like a living God. Think Dennis Hopper describing Kurtz. Leanan is one of the holders of the truth. But there are others.
Any more submissions for theories? Like I say. I won't tell anyone until we have a winner. I'm still thinking of a prize.
The Prime Minister of Timor has admitted he understands that oilcos (ConocoPhilips and Woodside) might not want to process onshore in a politically unstable country. On the other hand reborn neocons are telling him to spread the wealth
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/oil-curse-could-be-timors-blessing/2006/04/09/1144521205115.html
I can understand how peasants living in shanties would react to oil execs and politicians sipping cocktails in mansions. Let's hope it works out.
Meanwhile, in Las Vegas.....
I enjoyed this one.
Why do people use this phrase. How does he generate 10 times less? If he is on an airplane and generates 1 lb of carbon dioxide per mile, 10 times that is 10 lbs per mile and less would mean 1 minus 10 or negative 9 lbs per mile. What happened to fractions?
China Creates Strategic Oil Reserve, Starts Stocking Russian Oil
http://www.mosnews.com/money/2006/10/10/chinareserve.shtml
China has pumped at least 1 million barrels of Russian crude into its newly built strategic reserves, confirming that a long-anticipated stockbuild was underway the Reuters news agency reported on Tuesday quoting official Chinese media and sources.
Interesting that it is "Russian" crude.
Mexico update:
EnergyBulletin.net has an excellent article by Tom Standing on Pemex and it's Cantarell oilfield. It appears that more articles on Mexico will appear about once a week or so. The next study will be to develop a decline scenario for Cantarell to estimate how much oil might be lost to the world market and to the U.S. supply by 2010 and 2015.
------------------------------
"Tom Standing dug into the Mexico story and writes clearly about his findings. Key footnoted point: Mexico's energy ministry reported that Cantarell production is down 10.3% during the first six months of this year."
--------------------------------
In other Mexican news: 4 Tzotzil Indians die over another pothole dispute. In Oaxaca, fresh violence breaks out anew. Finally, the entire Tijuana police force is under investigation for drugs and corruption:
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While this investigation is unusual for Mexico, it is not unusual for the United States.
During the Prohibition era, the entire New York City police department was out on bail for a time during the Jimmy Walker administration, and the Chicago police were allegedly in the payroll of mobster Al Capone.
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Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
From MSNBC just a few minutes ago:
Japan imposes sanctions on NK, and NK responds with threats. Hope this does not get ugly, but I think China really needs to put the thumbscrews to NK to keep this from becoming military. Time will tell.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thumbscrew
From the Korean Times:
NK threatens to test again, but warns the next test may be an H-BOMB:
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A Korean-Japanese scholar who is considered North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's unofficial spokesman said yesterday that Pyongyang has a hydrogen bomb it would test as part of a series of actions mentioned in its statement against the United States.
Asked to provide evidence that the North has developed its own thermonuclear weapons, Kim replied, ``That's why we are going to test the bomb. A test will prove that we've got everything necessary just as we had with our nuclear weapons.
The North will regard the United Nations resolution imposing sanctions, whether financial or military, as a declaration of war, he said.
``If the Bush administration makes more provocations, both New York City and Tokyo will be blazed, Kim said. He added the North is targeting the United States but does not want to wage a war against the South as long as Seoul takes a neutral position.
``The destiny of the Korean Peninsula will be decided within a week, and South Korea should maintain its neutral stance, he said in a KBS radio interview. ``Seoul should request that Washington not mobilize U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) even if a war breaks out. The Ministry of Unification, however, downplayed Kim's remarks.
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I don't know what to make of this, hopefully none of this is true. Does anyone know how reliable the Korean Times is as a news source? Or are they just a tabloid rag?
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?