Monday night open thread
Posted by Yankee on March 27, 2006 - 9:43pm
I can see there's some restlessness, so please dump it here.
“He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils, for time is the greatest innovator.”
—Francis Bacon, Essays
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We'll see as the future unfolds for the 2nd largest producer in the world.
I will note that the new plays are far more expensive to produce than the traditional Western Siberia source. As Kurt Vonnegut said in a book he wrote, so it goes.
New oil province?
But good news for the people of Sao Tome - assuming they get to share the wealth.
Another good reason to drive a smaller car: lessens your chance of falling through the street.
That's what happens when the bottom drops out of the economy. Potholes of that size are one of the key selling points for the Hummer class SUV. That looks to be about a 4 Hummer hole.
The value of kites is that the higher winds are more uniform and a lot stronger.
Regular old sails are easier for someone with a 3rd grade education to invent and use, but kites, if you have the knowhow and materials, scream.
In one of the most egregious examples of advertising deviousness, Bush campaign operatives took the video of Kerry windsurfing in Cape Cod, and reversed the image to make it look like he was going back and forth. Flip-flopping, get it?
You can see it in this animated gif where the frames are reregistered with each other, note the reverse text.
Flying kites is fun, but sailing ships is a serious business, and he who cannot reduce sail in a hurry may be heading pretty quick for Davy Jones Locker.
Seems like kite sailing is no less serious than regular sailing to me.
Yes.
I do not have a link as it was pre-web but there was a firm looking at panamax sized transatlantic freighters powered by wind.
The concept was taken through to prototype trials. I do not know the results of the trials but given the lack of further development the company must have had the wind taken out of its sails.
Key to the concept was the use of heavy instrumentation linked to servos that would trim and reef the sails. The marine environment is very unforgiving and my hunch is that the mechanism may have worked well in benign laboratory conditions but failed in real world conditions. The vessel was bermuda rigged with five or more masts.
During the same period as the above trial was being undertaken it was also common for offshore drilling rigs being mobilized between transatlantic locations to rig sails. With a fair wind this would add 2 to 3 knots to vessel speed and with dayrates of $150,000 and up, seconds count.
We'll seem pretty stupid for giving it away once higher energy prices and slower sailing speeds make sailing through the Strait of Magellon inpractical again.
</facetiousness>
http://www.skysails.info/
There may be other companies...
It appears that they are targetting Frieghters and Tankers in response to the price of oil.
(I have no association with the product)
As I've noted before, there are new ideas and good ideas, but there are few new good ideas, and I strongly suspect that sailing a commercial ship with a kite is not one of these few. Under ideal conditions, it would be fine to augment power with a kite (steady moderate winds well abaft the beam; I've done this on a small sailboat), but those conditions are not typical at sea.
You are not informing us. Share your knowledge. In a line squall, how long do YOU have to react? How frequent are they? If you are sailing along at 90 degrees to the wind (according to wiki this is "beam reaching") what will happen to a yacht? Do you not think that the kite could react by moving to its azimuthal position (ie mainly vertical lift) and if a certain strain level exceeded then for safety it could be released? Maybe those good German engineers are idiots? Attempting to live within the resource base of their own country without extending their energy leibenstraum... hmmm maybe some do adapt.
Please, less bluster more input/information.
I guess I better throw away that GPS... a solar flare might fry those satellites.
(although not a fixture here, I'm away for a week)
Maybe the kite idea will work; time will tell.
Here is what I have a problem with: There are tons of tried and proven designs out there that are robust and that have been proven for generations. Then somebody comes along with a brilliant idea . . . but is it so brilliant? People have been flying kites (mostly for fun) from boats for at least the last two thousand years. Occasionally, as an assist to other power sources, kites make sense, but IMO probably not as a primary power source.
How long do you have to respond to an unanticipated wind gust? That is a helluva good question, and I'll answer it by explaining how the question is handled on yachts that fly spinnaker on the Trans-Pacific yacht race from Calif. to Honolulu. There is a guy with an axe standing by the sheet that controls the spinnaker (a sail that has been around for about eighty years now and is well understood) whenever there is much wind. He watches the helmsman (who is steering and knows how the boat is handling). When the helmsman yells: "Cut!" the axe comes down, the sheet (which is a rope) is cut and the sail flies free, often being destroyed in the process. From the time the problem is recognized to getting out of trouble is about two seconds. Now I grant you, that is an extreme situation, because in racing sailboats you are always at the edge, and "safety last" is an unspoken rule, but as one who has a considerable experience with sails and with kites and some experience flying airplanes, my strong opinion is that the "failsafe" principle should be included in designs where lives depend on what happens when something breaks.
Maybe they have engineered on failsafe principles; it would be interesting to find out. But there are so many bad "new" ideas out there, such as the architecture underlying the NY Twin Towers or the graphite shielding on the Chernobyl reactor, that my tendency is to go with long-proven designs.
Late in the nineteenth century some robust and fairly efficient designs for multi-masted (four, five, maybe even six or seven masts) schooners sailed for many years, some with auxilliary power. We know that works. Why not go with proven technology, such as that one, or perhaps robust wind turbines charging big banks of batteries? We know those technologies and some others will work--all proven designs.
BTW, the hybrid car idea and prototypes have been around for at least fifty years; it was a huge problem for the Japanese companies to work out the bugs, and those things do not usually kill you (except maybe by electrocution) when they fail. With the benefit of hindsight, maybe a better idea would have been to forget about hybrid cars and focus instead on improving small diesel engines and their fuels, as in the case of Europe. Both diesels and biodiesel fuel have been around for about 125 years, which, IMO, is a big plus factor.
I've been wrong before, and I'd be delighted to be wrong about the limitations of kites for ship propulsion. That reminds me, March is kite-flying month, and I've yet to get one of my kites up . . .;-)
"Sir John Templeton: The Unsuccessful Innovations Have Disappeared
A man who has seen so much and still has his wits about him is a great treasure. If he is still solvent, that is even better. Somehow, he must have avoided the bad ideas, bad investments, and bad advice. Innovations are like genetic mutations. Most of them are mistakes. Most fail. Old people tend to reject new ideas, new styles, and new things. This is not simply because these dogs are too old to learn new tricks. What the oldsters know - from experience - is that the new tricks are probably not worth learning. What we have around us are only the innovations that succeeded. Companies, products, ideas, governments, clubs, styles - all that we see are the successful ones. The unsuccessful innovations - thousands and thousands of them - all disappeared."
IMO, the whole post is worth reading. Maybe I'm just another old fart who is out of touch...
BTW, how about that other out-of-touch guy I remember reading about many years ago...Graf Felix von Luckner?
If the U.S. is currently consuming just over 9 million barrels a day of gasoline, and we assume gasoline consumption "wants" to grow at around 1.5 to 2%, then in 20 years the U.S. economy would be expected to require around 11 million barrels a day. Here are the savings that we could realistically obtain without completely derailing the economy. To be more conservative I'll base them on the current 9.2 million barrels a day not the projected 11 million:
- Greater fuel efficiency. If average mpg could increase from 21 to 42, we could save 50% over 20 years. Considering there are already multiple cars on the market getting this sort of mileage, this does not seem unrealistic.
- The dreaded 55 mph speed limit is 15 to 20% more efficient for freeway driving than the current 65 mph. Of course most driving is not on the freeway, but let's suppose we can save an additional 5% of gas from a restriction. Our remaining 4.6 becomes 4.4 million barrels.
- Driving less. With gasoline being more expensive, people will vacation less and closer to home. More people will telecommute. Some may actually begin carpooling to work again, etc. Let's say people can decrease the driving distance per person by 10% over 20 years. Our remaining 4.4 becomes 4.
Thus our overall savings from these three basic measures over the course of 20 years is 5.2 million barrels a day. If we "want" to be at 11 million barrels a day and we subtract this 5.2, we get 5.8 million barrels a day or 56% of current 2006 consumption. Again, I wish we'd move toward walkable, sustainable communities, but I fear we'll find a way to maintain our automobile culture at any cost.Overall there is so much waste around that I can not stop wondering how people are biting the idea of a die-off... Die-off why? Because we will not be able to drive SUVs? If we only give up and/or substitute non-crucial things like cars and tweak all those places we waste energy, the remaining declining production will be enough for maybe half a century or so... After that if we have not found substitute yet, we are going to synthsize it or whatever. There will probably be hard times in the meantime but we will not be dead without our cars, right?
That would be a "no." If there's a dieoff, it will be due to agriculture, not a lack of SUVs.
I personally am not expecting a dieoff right away. At least, not in the U.S.
Some possible U.S. dieoff scenarios: Warfare. Famine. Pestilence. Note that they tend to go together. A disease that would not be a big deal to healthy population will be brutal to a population that is overcrowded, underfed, and stressed.
Let's calculate that. They say modern agriculture uses (a very generous) 10 cal of fossil fuels for each calorie of food produced. So a 2000 kcal daily diet per person (hope ppl in Somalia don't read that) would require 20 000 kcal per day which translates to 0.0013 barrels per day per person. Multiplying that by 6.5 billion souls would result in 8.5 mln.bpd. So the whole world can be fed by modern agriculture with less than the US gasoline consumption! And this is today without conservation efforts, without substitution, without localy grown food etc... How long will it take for us to plunge below the 8-9 mln.bpd mark? A lot - probably not before the end of the century.
Again - to give up your car, even to lose your job is a whole lot of different than to be starving or being dead. These are two different worlds and I suspect that only people that never faced either one of them can not recognize the defference.
Warfare
The only thing I really fear of in the coming decades. But given that we don't actually need that oil (to survive), the only reason left for war will be just one: greed. Trying to maintain the status quo and not paying the price of weaning off oil should read greed. And this is already a societal problem we'll have to face sooner or later, and that's why I'm partially glad that PO is coming. I think it is more of an opportunity then a threat to our survival as species.
But it's not, is it? What makes you think that will change?
Will agribusiness grow food to feed poor people? Or will they grow fuel so rich people can keep driving?
See, I'm not worried that we won't be able to drive SUVs. I'm worried that we will.
http://finnishheritagemuseum.org/news/puukaasu/index.html
You overestimate the rationality of a frightened animal.
I would love to think that we'll fight some resource wars and then suddenly realize the futility of it and live in peace forever, but that was promised at least three times in the previous century, and I haven't seen an everlasting peace yet.
Of course I fear there may be several more attempts for resource grabs. But the only country that has the potential to do it is USA, and we are headed to a certain bancrupcy anyway - IMO only one more war and we're out. This will have the side benefit of freeing some oil for building the alternatives by the rest of the world and we'll be forced to follow how much we don't want it.
And World War I was "the war to end all wars."
Like I said, the resource wars don't have to be between nations, they can be within them.
Given enough energy, we can solve those problems. As we have been doing.
Maybe a die back can be prevented. I'd like to think so. On the other hand, at best it's going to be what Wellington called "a damn close run thing."
Also, the loss of cheap oil means the loss of our insurance. We still have the same problems farmers have always had: drought, disease, pests, bad weather. Cheap oil allows us to fix many of these. We can build irrigation systems, spray pesticides,and if worse comes to worse, buy food on the global market and transport it where it's needed. The population will be increasing, the available oil will be decreasing, and the same old problems will still be there. Possibly exacerbated by climate change, warfare, and other inconveniences.
A die-back in my reading is where a declining quality of life leads to a lower fertility, a femine etc. leading to a gradually decreasing population. This is a more feasible scenario and is even a quite desirable one, some time later in this century. As an incurable dreamer I would suggest though, that this transition would be much more pleasant if we succeeded in providing (at least to some extent) a western quality of life to the 3rd world. Education and TVs are proven to be much more effective population regulators than femine.
Not necessarily. In 16th century Mexico, 20 million people (out of a population of 22 million) died of what was likely a hantavirus outbreak. Exacerbated by drought and by the stress placed on the population by the arrival of the Spaniards.
Subsidies shift to larger farms
One of the "small" farmers they interviewed blamed the rising costs of fuel and fertilizer.
Perhaps someone can find a link.
Today's Financial Times, p. 6, has an article on corruption in Cuba. Yawn, usual stuff, until: "'The top leadership appears squeaky clean, but below there is a chaos that has proved very hard to dent' a Havana-based foreign banker says." What!? Is this Granma? Has the FT gone commie, or what? Here we still have some institutions at lower levels that are not totally corrupted, but have a cess pool at the top -- just the opposite.
So here's my proposal: bring the top level of the Castro gov't here, and send the top level of ours there. But, we let Chavez and Carter monitor the elections, well, and make sure we them. Hm? What's in it for Cuba?
But the area of Florida has already been destroyed, paved over, drained, filled with trailercourts, stucco high rises, and expensive 100 story condos in the surf. Why the concern about goes on up in blackfly country? Ever been there? You wouldn't stay long.
I cannot get behind the WSJ paywall but it amazes me that with their red in tooth and claw, no holds barred capitalist ethos, they are raising these dainty concerns. Maybe the WSJ has gone commie too? Think its something to do with the newsprint?
"Welcome to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the American 21st Century. Please state your query."
"Compassionate Conservatism."
"No page with that title exists. You can create this article or request it.
"Well, that's strange... Capitalism."
"Hello. Welcome to a new Capitalism! A friendly, smiling capitalism who hands out suckers to little kids in the mall! A capitalism that understands the plight of labor and is willing to negotiate a settlement that will make everybody happy! Capitalism that understands that just because someone is poor and cannot afford healthcare it doesn't mean that they are lazy, immoral drug addicts (although the majority probably are.) It's the face of a lovingly nerdy Bill Gates giving away free computers to underprivilaged children in inner-city schools! (awww.. the children! They look so happy now!) It's the huge movie studios starting to give up and coming directors a shot at the big time without making them compromise their artistry! (I mean, wasn't Crash such a beautiful movie? And Brokeback Mountain inspired a dialogue in America!) We promote the development of third world countries by providing them with ample employment opportunities. (Some people call these sweatshops. That's a gross exaggeration! We installed AC into all of our manufacturing facilities last year, and now hardly anyone breaks a sweat while being whipped for moving from their worksite.)
So, be at rest, young one. Nothing bad can happen to you. Because of the all the good deeds we have been doing throughout the world, Americans are reveered, loved, and worshiped planetwide. You are safe and happy. No one can hurt you. You are free (to do as we say.) You are free (to do as we say.) You are gloriously free (to do as we say!)
Oh! And don't forget to be a good Christian and take your Jesus Pills tonight at 7. Remember that they symbolize the body of Christ, and through them the Holy Spirit will enter you and fill your spirit with the resounding glory of the Lord.
Good night, Descolada. And remember: We love you."
The screen flicked off.
"Wow, I feel so much better now. Like the world doesn't suck nearly as much as it actually does."
And he fell deeply asleep, soothed by the idea that somewhere out there, there were people protecting him from any pain he might ever suffer.
The End
I hope you guys realize that as a very brief and crude satire, it cuts both directions equally. Also, it is critical to read the "You are free.." part with the same voice that Bill Hicks used in his standup. That's essential. The entire thing crashes without doing that.
You write very well. I think college may be slowing down and interfering with your intellectual development. Why not drop out of school, go up to Fort McMurray or someplace and pay off your student loans with income from truck driving while you try to write your first fantastic mind-expanding science-fiction novel?
One of my students at the end of his sophomore year wanted to be a writer, came to me for advice, and I told him to quit school and travel. He went up to work on the Alaska pipeline and in one year made enough money to travel for the next four. He is now an English teacher, poet and songwriter. When I was twenty I decided civilization was about to collapse and emigrated to New Zealand, where I worked on the very worst idea I have ever had--a historical novel based on the life of the Roman emperor Galerius, in which I tried to make him a sympathetic protagonist. The idea was totally original and totally rotten, but at least I began writing novels with fatal flaws an early age, and after a few more failures got much better.
Peak Oil is a time of increasing uncertainty. There is no unique strategy that is best for dealing with it in our personal lives. However, IMO we should go with our strengths, and yours is in writing.
Good luck.
Don
P.S. See if your library has a copy of "Down and Out in Paris and London" by George Orwell.
I went commie long ago, recovered partially, and am now catching it again, except maybe a gentler, kinder version. Want the world to be here for my grandkids, that kind of mush. Think the unbridled pursuit of profit might interfere with that.
However, EIA data for refinery inputs of crude indicate that the gap between the quantities of refinery input in 2005 and 2006 has been widening for several weeks, with 2006 inputs being lower than 2005. Crude stocks, however, have been above 2004/2005 levels for almost a year. Do the EIA data suggest a small increase in unused refinery capacity? or are there other reasons for the increasing gap?
I can produce food, but not in a climate that is off the edge. Frost...wind.. rainfall.. how can you tell what we have in store for us? Each crop has it's needs.. if we have a totaly unstable climate.. how do we plan?
Because of fossil fuels, if I have a bad year, I can buy food. If we don't have that ability and the climate goes off the edge, what do we do? PO and the use of fossil fuels really just gave us the most unstable climate you can imagine.
I have a problem with bio-fuels etc..just for that reason.. corn ethanol, nobody seems to see the climate is changing in very dramtic ways.. the crop you grew last year.. may not survive at all 2 years from now.
I've been doing much the same thing for a slightly longer period.
You might be interested in the book Solviva by Anna Edley, 1998, ISBN 0-9662349-0-1. It's about her year-round, passive greenhouse on Martha's Vinyard - hardly an ideal place. FWIW, most of the winter heat for it came from animals. Lots of good ideas.
Which is not to say global warming is not happening, just that you can't prove it from glaciers.
Some of this is so obvious it shouldn't need to be pointed out.
The red line is the glacier-based temperature reconstruction. Sure looks like quite a bit of warming to me. Good discussion at RealClimate also.
We could choose not to desroy our environment. We could take control of our lives and our political systems and change the world for the better. We could stop global meltdown and we could amiliorate the worst effects of peak oil. None of these things are theoretically impossible, at least not compared with the myth that we can continue with business (more or less) as usual. Baring a real "Green Revolution" I don't think we'll alter our present course.
I don't want to malign anyone, but from the outside, looking at TOD we seem a strange, old bunch indeed. I asked someone to have a peek at TOD, as an experiment, she knows only a little PO. Her reaction was as follows. She thought many of the contributors were rather self-satisfied and almost narcissistic. Especially the ones that flash their academic credentials. She didn't worry about hurting my feelings, even though I had intimated that I thought TOD was one of the best sights on the whole web.
Old, curmudgeonly, puritanical, miseries, killjoys, Stalinists, gloomers and doomers, were just some of the words she used. O.K. she's only seventeen and not really into graphs, models and tables, at least not yet.
How unfair is she being? After all our self-congratulation on the recent birthday is this a reality check? I sholulf point out I don't agree with her. I just thought it was interesting to get her naive response to TOD. Maybe she will have to grow and learn more in order to appriciate the standard of debate and all the hard and necessary work people put into TOD. Maybe she represents most people who won't find out about Peak Oil until it's too late?
All I could think of saying to her, to console myself as much as her, was that I didn't belive we'd ever truly see oil run out. Way, way before that happened the society built upon cheap energy would start to crack, split and fissure - and something else would replace it. I'm not sure that really did the trick for her.
Was the seventeen-year-old your daughter? Aha! Maybe our kids like to show their independence by tuning out whatever we advise. I am blessed with four of the smartest, most decent, and lovable adult children in the galaxy, but will any of them take Peak Oil seriously? Well, to be fair, one is going to buy a hybrid, but on the other hand, when I gave him my copy of Jared Diamond's "Collapse" to read and mentioned that I thought it was the most important nonfiction book published during the past twenty years, what happens? He "looks" at it, and after some months returns the book, muttering "post hoc ergo propter hoc . . ." even though he did not dare to even whisper "fallacy," because he knew I would not let that one go by without vigorous discussion.
One thing I found when my kids took college classes from me (in logic, ethics, economics, sociology) is that BECAUSE they knew their Old Man so well they tended to be highly skeptical of anything I said--far more so than other students. Of course, I am proud to have raised them to be skeptical and to assume that everyone is pitching BS until proven otherwise. What I have found is that eventually they discover things for themselves and are amazed, absolutely astounded to discover that Dad has gotten smarter over the years, as they come to conclusions similar to mine.
Readiness is all.
Now with my granddaughters, I'm having better luck . . .;D
There's a reason we keep electing people who tell us we can continue with the "happy motoring" lifestyle, and not people who tell us the party's over.
Peak oil is booming, The Oil Drum is booming, and "attention" is focussed.
... but what kind of attention? What brings folks out for a Monday Night Open Thread?
I think we're seeing a skew. People who see Peak Oil as a real, but slow moving, concern ... might stop by now and then. Or they might hang out until they have a handle on things. But they'll move on. There isn't really a need to check in every day on a multi-decadal process.
On the other hand, those who feel an immediate concern for short term crisis might become more attached to the issue. Their attentiony siome focused. They change the nature of the site.
As for who visits, how often, and when those statistic can probably be parsed by an analysis of the regularity and frequency of partical ip addresses.
Very interesting take on how many TODers are peceived by people not very familiar with most of the things discussed on TOD.
I wouldn't doubt that some of our comments might come on as a little strong, particularly those TODers of a more apocalytic, back the Garden mindset. Some of us might seem a bit overly pedantic and anxious to show off our knowledge.
I myself probably come off as gloomy, opinionated, and curmudgeonly. There is a very good reason for that: I AM a gloomy, opinionated curmudgeon. :-)
Should be..... 'apocalyptic' ........
The immediate threat is to water supply in the dry season. Glacial meltwater is the only supply for many Andean communities at this time and is critical to the success of farming.
This is not just happening in Peru though. Every monitored glacier in the North Cascades, in Washington State, is retreating. The same thing is happening in Glacier National Park, where the largest glaciers have lost over a third of their size since 1850, and
I have another question which is not subject to the current issue, discussed in this
topic.
I'm currently writing a research paper overhere in Germany, focussing on
Peak Oil and Energy Ressources in general. In this paper, I would like to
come up with a study about the EROEI of different renewables, so far,
I don't have very much sources/information, dealing with it.
I would really appreciate, if somebody in this forum can help me out with
Information...
Thanks in advance.
Thomas
I may be able to help. I have done a great deal of research into Bio Diesel and might be able to point you in the right direction when it comes to renewable Bio Fuels. However, if your talking renewable electrical production such as Wind, Solar, and Hydro I don't think I have enough information to be of much help. Instead I would point you to some of the earlier discussions on this forum about alternative energy. Some the discussions in the past have gone into great detail about the EROEI for Wind, Solar, and to a lesser extent hydro.
Assuming you are talking about renewable Bio Fuels here is some very basic info about Bio Diesel and the energy that goes into it's production.
There are three ingredients to Bio Diesel: Lye, Methanol and Soybean Oil. The lye and methanol create your catalyst which works to separate the glycerin content from the soybean oil. Once the glycerin has been removed, the excess methanol and lye are then removed from the final Bio Diesel product. Since the energy cost of actual Bio Diesel production is very low, (15,000 gallons of heating oil to produce 5,000,000 gallons of Bio Diesel), most of the energy invested is in the production and transportation of the soybean oil and methanol.
To give you a reference point it takes 1.2 bushels of soybeans to create 1 gallon of soybean oil, which can then we converted into 1 gallon of Bio Diesel. So on the Soybean energy input you simply need to find how much energy is spent by your local farms to produce 1.2 bushels of soybeans.
Transportation only represents about 20% of the total energy investment. As the soybeans after being harvested need to be trucked or moved over rail to an extruding plant where the soybean meal (80% of mass) is separated from the soybean oil (20% of mass). Then the soybean oil is transported to a soybean oil distributor and then to the Bio Diesel production plant.
Some experts report that Bio Diesel on the whole, has a slightly negative EROEI and others report that it has a 300% positive EROEI. In my opinion these different numbers are both accurate, however based on different data. If the soybeans are transported, harvested, and produced inefficiently then Bio Diesel may very well have a negative EROEI. However, more and more Bio Diesel production plants are being strategically placed next to soybean oil extruding plants, so that the soybean oil produced can be directly pumped into the Bio Diesel facility for processing. There by drastically reducing the transportation energy input. In addition new techniques coming into production this year will also increase the amount of methanol recovered in the process, allowing producers, to reused the methanol to create more Bio Diesel. These are just a couple of the different strategies being employed to reduce the cost of production and energy input for Bio Diesel.
For more information I highly recommend the National Biodiesel Board's web site: http://www.biodiesel.org/
The web site has a great amount of information and can far better explain what goes into a gallon of Biodiesel then I can. They have a number of industry reports that detail all the latest updates in the field and industry.
I hope that helps with your research.
Prolific Researcher
If you're talking about making soap (which it sounds like you are), followed by esterification of the fatty acid with methanol, your ingredients are going to be consumed in the reaction. Some of the lye may be recovered from the process, but the methanol will be part of the fuel. Glycerin is a byproduct, perhaps it could figure into methanol production.
Just a guess, but I'd say some of your lye is going to become washing soda (from side reactions producing CO2) as part of the process and need another energy boost to become lye again.
Like Leanan, my main worry is not that the rich won't be able to drive their SUVs, it's that they will. With the concurrent degradation of arable land, not really much good news on the GHG front, and starvation for everyone who can't afford the boutique hydrocarbons so produced.
Bottom line is, I truly doubt the accuracy of your ERoEI calculations.Energy quality, and hence economic value, is much more relevant. Some forms of energy are more useful than others, because of factors like state (e.g. liquid, solid, gas), energy density and compatibility with existing infrastructure; any process which can profitably exploit a cheap lower quality energy source and convert to a higher grade will likely make economic sense, even if the EROEI is low.
For instance, batteries (both rechargeable and throw-away) have hopeless EROEI but are valuable because they are so compact and portable. Or coal-to-petrol or NG-to-petrol plants, in which the product is higher energy quality than the feedstock, but the EROEI is low. Given expensive enough petrol prices, they will be built. Hydrocracking plants have a low EROEI compared to simple fractionation distillation, but they have been built all over the place.
In the real world economics will dictate the outcomes for alt fuels, not EROEI.
Economics will work as long as the neo-classical capitalist system is intact. EROI is forward looking and the methodology will work in a system where energy, not currency is the item of scarcity
Considering economics is the study of allocating scarce resources according to supply and demand, it will certainly apply and already does.
And I disagree that economic models are flawed in the example you gave- it is more reflective of poor planning, mismanagement, and political failure. Would an EROEI analysis still have built gas turbines based on those same forecasts? As it is the most efficient form of power generation, and the fuel is very accessible, it is pretty likely.
So no, I think EROEI is an interesting, but not relevant concept.
I'd love to take a poll of the thousands and thousands of account managers working in NYC's financial district just to see how many of them are Peak Energy aware. I'm afraid the numbers would be much much lower than we hope.
The concept of EROI was developed in ecology to describe the important role energy plays in nature. All organisms must use energy to perform a number of life-sustaining tasks such as growth, reproduction, defense from predators etc. The most basic task of all is to use energy to obtain more energy from the environment. When energy is used to do useful work, energy is degraded from a useful, high quality state to a less useful low quality state. This means that all systems must continuously replace that energy they use, and to do so takes energy. This fundamental reality means that EROI is used to explain the foraging behavior of organisms, the distribution and abundance of organisms and the structure and functioning of ecosystems. It plays less of a role when money is involved, but is central to natural science
I agree with you only to the extent that the concept of Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI) does not tell the whole story regarding energy production and use.
However, it appears to me that the term EROEI has come into such common usage that it is sometimes applied in a manner for which it was never intended. It has also erroneously been used more or less interchangably with the term 'energy efficiency'. The two are not the same thing.
I maintain that the term EROEI should be applied only to the primary production of energy, and not to its downstream uses.
The ratio of barrels of oil made to come out of the ground to the barrels of oil consumed in causing that to happen IS a correct use of EROEI. The ratio of the BTU content in a gallon of ethanol from corn to the BTUs required to grow and produce that ethanol IS a correct use of EROEI. But trying to calculate the EROEI of producing say a flashlight battery is NOT a correct use of EROEI.
Why? Because in manufacturing a flashlight battery one is not actually producing energy in the same sense that one is producing energy when oil is extracted from the ground or a gallon of ethanol from corn is produced. A flashlight battery is merely a means of storing energy that has already been produced. One can legitimately talk about the 'energy efficiency' associated with the manufacture of a flashlight battery, but not its EROEI.
The way I view it, after the primary production of energy sources, such as oil coal, biofuels, etc., all of the downstream uses of energy from that point on have by definition a zero EROEI, simply because after the primary production of the energy a zero amount of energy is subsequently produced.
On the downstream side of energy production, one can talk about the efficiency of energy conversion (such as coal-to-electricity in a power plant), or the efficiency of energy use (such as in the amount energy wasted in the production of steel), but one cannot meaningfully talk about EROEI.
A term I haven't heard used for quite a while is 'form value', the premium placed on a given unit of energy due to its form. A BTU of electrical energy has a much higher form value than a BTU in the form of a lump of coal. Getting back to the flashlight example, a Watt-hour of energy in a convenient trasnportable flashlight battery has a much higher form value than the same Watt-hour of energy coming out of an electrical socket. The point is: so what? This has nothing whatsover to do with energy production.
However, as in the case of corn-to-ethanol, the ethanol is being touted as a substitute for fossil fuel. If it only has an EROEI of slightly greater than unity, than it is not really substituting much fossil fuel. As such, the ethanol-from-corn becomes less of an energy source and more of a downstream use of primary energy whose only benefit is its form value.
One should always be clear on the distinction between the term EROEI as applied to primary energy production and the term 'energy efficiency' as applied to downstream energy uses. The distinction is more than just semantics.
With energy becoming scarce the economic and common sense tell us that it is safe to assume that different forms of energy will start becoming more "fluid" - there will be found many ways to convert one form of energy to another. This would cause certain leveling off of energy prices as different sorts of energy become interchangable.
For example if we can convert coal to oil with 70% efficiency than the price of coal will tend to follow price of oil multiplied by 0.7 (on energy base). With different energies convergating EROEI turns into almost economic concept - if you have low EROEI (say 2) than you have to invest 1 unit of energy to receive 2 units of useful energy. But the wasted alternative use of that 1 unit invested would already be priced too high and the process will turn to have high variable costs (50% in case of EROEI = 2).
Convergation is already becoming obvious in the oil-NG pair (and hindering the tar sands production). The elephant in the room is actually coal, it is yet too cheap on a energy basis therefore it is subsidising (behind the scenes) other low-EROEI energy producing technologies like solar panels and wind mills. With coal becoming increasingly bottlenecked the true energy costs of those technologies will become apparent.
However, the question of which commodity follows the price of which is not straightforward, though it is a fascinating one.
Po > Pc / k + Pcap
where k is the coefficient of efficiency.
In theory again if we start producing oil from coal the price of oil will drop, because of the new supply and the price of coal will raise. Until they both level off at point where Po = Pc / k + Pcap.
Now in practice: the price of capital for coal conversion is so high and the physical possibility of bringing considerable amounts of synthetic oil to market is restricted. So it is safe to assume that at least in the near term it will not be able to bring the price of oil down... it is more likely the opposite to happen - the coal to be up. That's why I said that coal will follow oil not vice versa.
You might also want to post your question (you have to set-up a Yahoo account and then join the forum) at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/energyresources
There have been unending debates about ERORI for years there. The central issue being that no one can come up with an acceptable definition.
I assume you are familiar with the work of David Pimental at Cornell and Ted Padzak(sp) at UC Berkley. If not, google them.
Flat straight electric rail between Zurich & Milan for 40 million tonnes of freight vs. diesel truck over the Alps.
My guess, 40:1 reduction in energy use.
The Swiss should be willing to help you with this. They are very proud of it and it would be nice to know energy savings.
Existing infrastructure being built for 100 years, but renewal should be a very small fraction of original.
I noted that each TBM was using 5 MW (for over a dozen years, figure 30% active time).
Also, the Danish wind turbine manufacturers have published some EROEI for their largest turbines (Vestas I think, but could have been another). Look up Danish Wind Energy Assoc. (may have new name). I saw well done analysis somewhere ...
I think Karahnjukar has about a 1000:1 EROEI over it's 400 year lifetime.
I'd imagine, as with any combustion, there's likely to be a fraction that doesn't react and simply diffuses into the air.
The second between turning the knob on a stove and it sparking might release some. That really just depends on how fast NG dispurses into the air. If it isn't particularly fast, it would just ignite with the rest of it.
Of course, by not suspending my disbelief, that's a completely impossible scenario. The nerve gas would have to be in incredibly high concentration for it to do anything, and to have to diffuse it at that high of a level across the NG usage of an entire city would take so much nerve gas that it'd make our military envious. As for Saddam, fugitabodit.
Although it does make me rethink my silly game of letting some gas build up before igniting it, just to see a cool flame. Because.. ya know.. the risk of blowing up wasn't enough.
Thats the beauty of NG it does NOT have to be at a high concentration to affect people. Just a few parts per million cause symtoms. Higher levels or longer exposure (eight hours sleeping in a contaminated home) cause extreme symptoms. Remember the point is to demoralize the enemy and weaken their ability to fight not kill all of them thats what nukes are for.
Matt
VR 150 C
VX Unknown but gov incinerates to destroy.
DMMP 78 C
Tabun 68 C
Sarin 280F
This website (CDC) says sarin does not burn although I believe every thing not a noble gas is flamable given enough heat and O2.
http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/MHMI/mmg166.html
One thing to remember though it would be difficult to control the mix of nerve to propane gas. To much nerve and the flame would probably go out. Pilot lights and other current burns would then fill a home with agent. The gov uses furnaces with hot agent introduced into a flame and after burners with supplemental O2.
Another bad part of a gas attack on civilians is after the first few cases the media anounces the symptons (see tokyo nerve gas attack) and thousands of people convince themselves they have been exposed.
Buy duct tape and plastic LOL.
The all liquids graph clearly illustrates the decline rates for the maturing base of Norwegian oil fields.
By the way, Norway has only 64 oilfields. I have the picture with the production of the 64 oilfields differentiated, but IMO is not as clear.
I will do the same thing for UK when they post the production numbers for December 2005 (so I can include the whole year).
The Norwegian blogspot "Kveldssong for hydrokarbonar" posted recently an illustrated analysis with Hubberts method for Danish oil production.
Earlier this month an illustrated analysis with Hubbert's method for Norway was presented at the same blogspot together with actual data from NPD.
Link:
http://energikrise.blogspot.com/
Highlights;
Hubbert's Linearization for the years 1990 - 2003 estimated total recoverable reserves from Danish sector as 3,3 billion barrels compared to an estimate of 3,3 billion barrels by the Danish Energy Authority (DEA) as of January 1. 2005.
The production profile derived from the Hubbert method follows closely actual production as reported by DEA and DEA's forecast towards 2009.
Now it is time for some reality check...
The Orange Revolution is dead. Check the news...
João Carlos
Sorry the bad english, my native language is portuguese.
The romans never believed that the Empire was falling. Fool romans....
What surprised me is that the Russian half of the Ukraine only supported the Russian backed party by two thirds. They got one third of the vote, instead of the one half that would be expected if people voted ethnically.
Even when this government fullfilled it's usual role of waiting till the excitement was over and then shooting the wounded, like when they started forcing people to evacuate their houses AFTER the hurricane and floods, even then there were no cops getting shot.
So I expect that things will go along as quietly during the powerdown as they went after we lost New Orleans. Except that the next administration is going to be Democratic or Reform Republican and they will be very sure to do a better job of evacuation and rebuilding someplace else than this administration did. I mean a much better job.
-------
Ever hear of the "war in Iraq"?
Ever hear of the "war on terror", which just so happens to be a war "that will not end in our lifetimes" and that will take place in and around where most of the world's oil or oil transportation chokepoints are?
Best,
Matt
And there's Nigeria, Columbia, and a few other places.
We tend to discount the violence when it is not happening in "the Homeland."
Myopia, mediocrity, and the politcs of denial, distraction, and dope rule in the USA.
Stanislav Lem, one of the greatest science fiction writers of our time died yesterday in Poland. His books "Solaris", "Edem", "Star Diaries" were among the ones that formed my world view and my interests in science, philosophy and ethics in my youth.
Rest in peace.
P.S. I could not find a an English language version of the news; and I know that he is probably not known well in Western countries. George Clooney participated in the recent screen-play of "Solaris", though for those interested I would recomend the original version - "Solyaris" by Andrei Tarkovsky.
It's been a bad month for SF writers. Octavia Butlet, David Feintuch, Ronald Anthony Cross, John Morressy, and now Lem.
http://sfwa.org/news/2006/slem.htm
A bad month really. It is the generation of SF writers that grew up in the full of hope afterwar years that started leaving us.
Dr. Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota's Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy talks about the flu bug that could bring the world to its knees.
I was struck by this part:
Kind of the flip side of efficiency, I guess. No cushion.
Yea... until I read this.
Amongst the interesting quotes:
Yea, IANAD, but "cytokine storm" doesn't exactly sound fun, and I'm sure that's what would happen to me. So, now Bird Flu scares the shit out of me.
We discussed the cytokine storm at my hospital back when the rumors of H5N1 began circulating. This causes concommitant pneumonia and a condition called ARDS (adult respiratory distress syndrome) The capillary walls in your alveoli leak plasm into your lungs. To survive ARDS you need mechanical ventilation. The problem with bird flu is we don't have enough vents. The discussion was a triage system would be put into place an age limit and other factors like secondary disease process (HIV, Cancer, etc) would exclude you from vent eligibility. While harsh the point is to save the most people with the best possible quality of life.
Matt
So, on the age thing, would you be giving the vents to the young adults or excluding them? I wasn't sure there.
Tamiflu is another situation like that. It is an antiviral drug used for flu and we anticipeted using it for healthcare providers who show up to work. It is believed in a pandemic most nurses drs and medics etc might no show. These people have difficult jobs normally and might decide to take care of family first. Similar to fire dept and police status post Katrina.
Hantavirus was like that, too. People died of their own immune reactions, so it was mostly the young and healthy who died. The first known victim was a college track star. His girlfriend also died...but their baby survived. Meanwhile, an old man who suffered a heart attack after falling ill survived.
- Chlorinated water.
- Mosquito suppression.
- The need to stockpile food for longer periods and the possibility to get chemical pesticides/rat poison could cause diseases we only read about to return rapidly to US.
I don't subscribe to the mass die-off warnings but I do think public health will suffer. Get vaccines if you have access to them many are good for years.Few seem to be taking it seriously, though. The media is treating it like the "duct tape and plastic wrap" homeland security advice.
Chance favors the prepared mind.
Antivirals work on many different pathways, and to be honest I'd have to look them up to speak more accuratly. Some affect assemble of the virus, some affect DNA/RNA transcription I think there are more specialized ones that affect retoviri etc. Anyway I beleive from literature I have read and what close friends that are MD's have told me. In the end it was 30$ and I don't think it will hurt. Hand washing and avoiding places where sick people are is probably more effective (prevention vs treatment).
Hopefully I wasted 30$ and hummanity never endures this. But like hurricanes and the gulf coast its not if but when.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2005-12-21-bird-flu_x.htm
I'm just kind of surprised everyone is putting all their eggs in the Tamiflu basket, given that there's already resistance when so few people have been infected. Why not hedge your bets with other antivirals as well? Especially since they are worried about Tamiflu shortages. (Apparently, people in Europe are buying it like it's going out of style.)
I suspect that older patients will not get the ventilators for another reason; no one over forty has apparently died of H5N1 yet. There are only about 200,000 ventilators in the entire U.S. total. If there were power outages most hospitals would also probably exhaust their oxygen supplies fairly quickly, too.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/17/AR2005061701214.html
Guess that explains why it doesn't work any more.
Lots of pretty graphs. Like this one:
And this one:
What Happens Next?
* Fear of widening light-heavy spreads leads producers to focus on value-added products rather than crude production
* Significant investment in refinery capacity for heavy crude
* Integrated bitumen-to-product operations in Alberta
* Superior heavy oil upgraders in Venezuela
* Development of resource plays compensates for lack of material conventional prospects
* Expansion of inter-regional gas trade, LNG production and development of LNG spot market
* Innovative capture and use of CO2
I must admit to some puzzlement with Chew's first bullet. Value-added products rather than crude production. What the hell does that mean?
But I'm still up in the air as to what Chew really means here. And doing less investment in production itself is really what his comment seems to point to.
The world oil market is being manipulated in ways I don't fully understand.
A few nuggets:
"Another issue is in order to prolong a period of rising production and demand, you have to increasingly build up the amount of reserves. In other words, producing 85 million a barrels is equivalent to 30 billion barrels a year. We are not finding 30 billion barrels. We are finding perhaps maybe 10 billion barrels of new oil."
"Q: Why haven't they run up?
A: They are not growing. That's the No. 1 issue. The industry is really having a difficult time just holding its own, much less growing. The primary way they deliver value to shareholders is through dividends and share repurchases. The growth they can show is per-share growth. We are hard pressed to find companies that have much in the way of anticipated volume, meaning increased production over existing declines."
I hate subscription walls. Sigh. Anyway, if you can get a hold of a copy of the latest issue of Barron's, take a look.
http://www.morganstanley.com/GEFdata/digests/latest-digest.html
(but within hours, the next day's set of commentaries will appear, so you'll have to click on Archives and click on March 27 to get to Roach's piece).
"China, the Coming Rebalancing of the Chinese Economy." It's the lead piece in a batch of six.
Relevant quote:
"* Commodity markets. A reduction of investment growth is likely to temper China's impact on the demand side of many industrial commodity markets. In 2005, China accounted for around 25% of worldwide demand for aluminum and about 30-35% of global consumption in copper, iron, steel, and coal. As the pace of Chinese industrial activity slows in the years ahead, pressures on the demand side of industrial materials markets should ease -- underscoring the downside risks to commodity prices at just the time when most investors have concluded that there will be no stopping the upside of a "super commodity cycle." China's efforts at energy conservation -- a targeted 20% reduction in energy content per unit of GDP over the next five years -- could well amplify the downside impacts on prices of oil and refined products markets."
Whoa, big felluh. 20% reduction in energy content per unit of GDP over the next five years? Is this a reasonable target? Can anyone here think of historical examples where this was actually done?
IMHO, yes. Will they is another question.
Please note that growth is "slowing" from 9.9% in 2005 to 8.9% in 2006 (exactly the same absolute growth for both years, but on a larger base in 2006, something not noted by news analysts).
The Chinese economy is likely to be almost 50% larger in five years, using 80% of the energy per yuan of GNP = 20% more energy used in China in five years than today.
China is building a high speed electric rail line between Beijing & Shanghai, a truly breathtaking subway construction program.. Shanghai will surpass London and NYC for subways and Beijing will be in the same league. A dozen other Chinese cities will also be transformed.
Higher GNP -> higehr energy use, but it need not be close to 1:1 ratio. Ask the Swiss :-)
But anything is possible. Especially if there are others underlying causes of concern even a minor news may get amplified.
LOL! Consider me cracked up.
No, no oil discovered with the Eiffel Tower. (Though it was closed due to the unrest.) But refinery output was slightly reduced due to the strike.
That should be an iconic picture. I want to put it on a T-Shirt.
Great picture! I'm sure we'll be seeing more of it again. It is just as good as that now-famous picture of the skinny little Chinese fellow blocking a line of tanks at Tianamen Square. I just love that one!
The power of photographs should never be underestimated. The picture of the the Buddist monk burning himself, the picture of the napalmed naked young girl runnning; and the picture of of the girl leaning over a dead body at Kent State are one of the reasons that public opinion rose against the Vietnam War.
That is why the Bush regime has been extremely careful in keeping inflamatory picures out of the media. But it won't work. Sooner or later it is all going to come out.
These thing are like chaotic systems: everything seems to roll along quite nicely, and then suddenly it all falls apart. This will happen to the Bush regime. The only question is: what will be the colateral damage?
Joule, qualify that statement. This has been the most televised wars. An enormous amount of uncensored journalists have been embedded with our troops. An equally large number are on their own in Iraq. In Abu Graib, midlevel personel tried to suppress photos to cover their own ass, but media has been invited along for the ride.
By the way the photos in abu graib were taken by soldiers.
So most people know on this site I am defending soldiers, but this post is not to respark an Iraq debate. But please qualify that statement.
The vast majority of soldiers are perfectly fine people who have been put through an incredibly well designed industrial psychology experiment, and it's the men at the top that deserve all blame.
I would like to push this forward: There has not been any pictures or video footage out of the MSM similiar to the infamous video of the Marine executing people on the street from Vietnam. I would be very surprised if this hasn't happened in reality in Iraq. If there's so many reporters covering the war, where's the discrepancy?
Also, I apologize if by recommending something by Chomsky or Baudrillard I might offend someone. I know people who are enraged by the names.
What are you refering to here?
http://129.110.23.73:7000/37011/
I belive your reference to an execution on the streets of Saigon refers to an image of the Saigon Police Chief conducting a summary execution of an unknown Vietnamese citizen.
If you require evidence of US state sanctioned killing of US citizens please refer to Hersh, Chain of Command, pp 262, 263, Harper, NY, 2004.
Your statement that the Iraqi conflict is well covered by journalists is a canard. The journalists congregate within hotels in the Green Zone, or immediately agjacent to it and do not venture out due to fears for their own safety.
With regard to your reference to a "war" please give your evidence for such state of war as you believe exists. Your President declared the war over in 2003 and you should not be contradicting your president during times like these. Remember there is a war on!! The Iraqi nation is not engaged in any armed conflict with any other nation.
If you cite Choamsky then you want to read him. If you read him then you want to heed what he says. I am enraged that you would cite Choamsky and then proceed to utter unfounded, inflammatory statements.
And anyone who is enraged by an authors name is a book burning nazi. Dialogue will not work with someone who can't hear an idea.
But, my point that the government doesn't need to censor the media now because it's does a fine job of self-censorship still stands on the table.
And, I'm sorry, BOP, but I'm completely confused by what you said.
http://www.oilposter.org/
That is a most fact-filled and thought-provoking poster. I have just ordered 3, one for my cube, one for a presentation/poster session, and one to donate to the school down the street.
Click on "Fuelling Fortress America"
This is a 68 page report by a Canadian think tank that is seriously rethinking the US/Canadian energy relationship.
http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/3/10/16241/7139
http://www.socionomics.net/films/history/moreinfo.aspx
It's being released free over the net on Friday at the site linked to above.
http://www.socionomics.net/films/history/default.aspx
Sounds interesting:
http://dsc.discovery.com/tvlistings/series.jsp?series=25210&gid=0&channel=DSC
There's an episode on tonight.