My Electrification of Transportation is aimed at #2.  I know that it is NOT a complete solution, but it is a big chunk of one.  Generally understandable (I think).

Coupling "bad news" with a way out should reduce the level of denial.  Again IMHO.

The air conditioning in my apartment has been broken for about a month now.  I live in South Texas, and the daily temperature is already approaching 100 degrees.  Right now, 10 PM, the thermostat in my house reads 93 degrees.  I have the ceiling fan on, and a door open for some heat exchange.  

Short of going out and buying 10 rotary fans, anyone have any suggestions for reducing temperatures, and thereby saving electricity when the A/C does get fixed, that are practical in an apartment?  As it is, I fear I could be putting a drain on water resources just by replenishing the sweat. =D

I think that you and I both see population the key problem as it makes all other sustainability issue more daunting.

I however do not believe that the absolute carrying capacity of the earth is much lower than [and might even be higher than] today if the goal is to jam in as many humans as possible. Quality of life is a much different question ... and the probablity of accidents escalates.

Logistics is a bitch. Our supply lines are too long and our options are narrowing.

Global warming? A good question, but one that is not IMO answered. All things being equal, the more greenhouse gasses the warmer average global temperatures will be. Have we reached some sort of a tipping point? I dunno. To the extent that we have choises, prudence would dictate that we avoid voluntatry participation in the great global greenhouse gas experiment ... but we have limitted options.

Notice that I did write "experiment." All things are not equal and nothing is static in terms of the factors that determine climates. There are major exogenous influences -- solar output is variable. There are both positive [self reinforcing] and negative [self imiting] feedback mechanisms impacting global temperatures.

Climates change. There have been pictures posted on this board showing a retreating glacier in South America over a time span that most of us can relate to. About 80 years IIRC. Very striking. How meaningful? IIRC ten thousand years ago the Matanuska [spelling] glacier covered what is now Anchorage. Is is now something like 80 miles from town.

The earth has been a lot warmer and a lot colder in the past and all we know for certain is that man caused changes in the level of green house gasses had nothing to do with those. If there are major man caused changes there will be winners and losers. Given a choice, would I but a ticket in this lottery -- hell no. I think that you and I can agree on that much.

Large biospheres & biodiversity. All for them. Population pressures and sprawl for the sake of sprawl are going to chop things up. Many on this board believe that exurbia and the miles strip malls that have popped up in the U.S. are doomed even without a rapidly declining population. If I live to see that I will not mourn their passing.

Regarding Zimbabawe, my brother spent a couple of years traveling through Africa in the 1970s. He regarded Rhodesia as it was referred to at the time with great hope. [Not so South Africa which he saw as very nasty political situation that was bound to get worse.] Based on his descriptions, in Zimbabwe, the whites were a tiny minority and were working to create a country that would be stable and prosperous through education and steady / slow change if only in sober recognition of demographics. Ian Smith might have been a racist, but he knew that the withdrawl of colonial power without a transition phase to majority rule would be a disaster. The West imposed an rigorous embargo and Zimbabwe ended up with Mugabe.

As to Haiti, add over population to a fabulous level of corruption. Outcomes so far have been much better on the other half of Hispanola in the Dominican Republic. Probably a cultural thing, I don't know. Maybe Don Sailorman, or some other resident economic sage of this board has some thoughts on what if anything can be done from outside. I don't so in that sense maybe I am a doomer.

I am like Matt Savinar-- haven't yet seen sufficient proof to become more optimistic in my outlook-- yet would be highly appreciative, and greatly relieved to see massive planetary efforts at Powerdown and ecosystem reform.  In short, still waiting to see if humans are smarter than yeast. Time will tell.

I think the obvious conclusion we can draw from peak oil, global warming, and possibly social security ... is that people as an aggregate do not trust mathematical models.

The can and do respond to environmental/economic changes that stare them in the face (70's and 80's fuel crisis), but I think it's apparent that they aren't going to change just because someone calculates that they should.  Those of us with a little more numeric background find that frustrating.  (Emotional pessimists just sign on to our cause because they are pessimists, not because they have a high degree of numeracy.)

So anyway, responses to peak oil and global warming will come when the problems are obvious.  That may be happening already, in both cases.  High gas prices and hurricanes, even if they do not have a 1:1 causality with peak oil or global warming to appear to have gotten the ball rolling.

We are starting to see policy response.  I think this start is late enough that we will see some economic problems, but not so late that we will see major social disruption, starvation, and dieoff.

... and I don't think anyone has a model that can prove the pessimistic cases.  The Hirsch report does project, model, that we will have troubles ... but I classify those as the moderate sort.

And don't worry about conservation. When the energy supply starts declining, everybody starts conserving, for sure. But why should they do that before it? Very large conservation would push the peak a little bit forward, but would not prevent it. For now efforts to increase energy efficiency will only increase energy consumption because of the energy-consuming investments they involve.

There is nothing much to do about the peak oil now. Tell other people? Why not, but they will know anyway when the peak comes. We cannot prevent the peak - it is impossible in the end. But shouldn't we do something? Yes, prepare politically and otherwise to cope the economical and social problems caused by an unprecedented development - sustained negative economic growth. They will not be any nice collapse  or many interesting dramatic events - the real challenge is just the sustained and long, slow slide downwards. Have fun.

As far as Hamas goes - they won in a fair election.  Democracy is messy - get over it.  

I promised myself I would never, ever get into the Israel/Palestine conflict in relation to the geo-politics of the Middle East and Peak Oil. But if we are really going to go for regime change in Iran, (and that is the policy of the current administration, or so it would appear), then it's hard to avoid discussing it. War and conflict in the area is relevant to the whole Peak Oil debate. A war in the Gulf could really upset the whole apple cart far sooner than the downside of Hubbert's Peak.

Trouble is, Israel/Palestine is such an incredibly emotive, complicated and sensitive issue. Years ago at college I had a girlfriend who was Jewish. I'd seen her fighting with her own brother over Israeli tactics in the West Bank territories and the refugee question. So we agreed not to discuss it, not ever, and we got on just fine most of the time.

If one criticises U.S. policies and actions in the Middle East far enough, one soon gets into the realm of critcising Israel. Criticising Israel is like entering a minefield, mostly counter-productive and the kiss of death to rational debate, especially, it would appear, in the United States. Does criticising Israel or the ideology of Zionism necessarilly mean that one is anti-semetic? I don't think so, not always. Though it's relatively easy to become tarred with the dirty brush of anti-semetism. So why go down that road? One chooses or is forced to impose self-cencorship on oneself and restraint. In my case that's probably a good thing in forums like this, as I often let my imagination just fly off on it's merry way regardless. It's one of the hazards of being a writer of fiction.

I'm a retiree and I'd vote if, and only if, it was the lesser of evils.  Most of the proposals I've seen are to simply stick on a whopping tax across the board and then try to somehow "rebate" via income tax or some such scheme.
This is why I believe all these types of proposals are dead at the starting line.

I think they are also dead because people are fed up with taxes regardless of whether they are retirees or not.

The question then is, how do you get demand destruction and changes in life style?  We know that lower income people will pay a far larger "share" than others if it is done via market price.  Do you establish a special tax based on the horsepower of a car and miles driven?  Do you have an added tax based upon the size of the house?  I really don't know.

Finally, there is the problem of the astonomical debt levels people are carrying.  Anything that results in higher out of pocket expenses could lead to a collapse of the housing bubble and reduced retail sales.

I believe absolutely nothing is going to happen until all of the various interest groups begin to speak with one voice.  And, we are no where near that.

We didn't have voodoo economics in the financial markets... like derivatives insuring bonds for folks who don't hold them. (this is one of those BGO's that will take me a while to get over)

We weren't willing to export our industrial base. Trade restrictions protected "strategic industries". A lot of industries were protected.  

We had an established minority class with no representation, education or political status... so imported labor was actively discouraged. Bad but true.

We were still investing in domestic infrastructure. This disperses power, capital and wealth. Military investment, where we are today, concentrates wealth and deleverages capital.  

Ah, the age-old question: quality or quantity?

It reminds me of what some Russian general said when confronted by an American general at some embassy diplomatic function during the height of the Cold War. They were comparing the relative strengths of their armaments, and the American general said something the effect, "While you have more tanks and more soldiers, ours is of better quality."  To which the Russian general just chuckled and said, "Yes my dear friend, but quantity has a quality all of its own."

When it comes to mass transit, I'm inclined to take the position of the Russian general: right now we need lots of modest little Toyota Scions, not a few luxurious Mercedes supercars. We can always build showcase rail service later.

The point I wanted to make is that these things don't spring up overnight.  It takes years of planning before you can even break ground, and then it takes billions of dollars.  Even once the stations are open, it can take years for high-density development to fill in near the stations.

On top of this, underground subway systems are obscenely expensive.

For longer distances, a subway type of system isn't quite as effective as it gets kind of slow with all of the numerous stops.  If you are going 40 miles or so, commuter rail makes more sense - the infrastructure costs are far lower as long as you can share rail with freight systems (and you can work out the scheduling and all that to keep everyone happy).  The local example of that is here:

http://www.vre.org/

My understanding is that the problems that they currently have are a shortage of rolling stock, and they have ongoing problems with scheduling.  You don't want a commuter train sidetracked for 20 minutes while a freight train goes through, for example.

Certainly, with carpooling, kiss and ride, and the fairly spotty bus service (apart from Fairfax City's former CUE circular routes), Metrorail is just an example of how completely interwoven the car is in a modern American mass transit. At least in terms of using Metrorail as an example of how ridership has been growing - a lot of that growth are people driving down 66, for example, before they hop a train, and not people walking to the station. I would be surprised if more than 5% (try 3%, actually) of the Vienna ridership used anything but a car to come and go. Sure, some are being driven by someone else, and the potential for carpooling certainly exists, but the fact remains, for most Vienna Metro riders, the car is the crucial element of Metrorail use. Let's not even get into how embarassing the bike racks were - let's just say that from I remember, the bike racks would be considered inadequate for a small town of 5000 in Germany, much less a major commuter hub. (Direct comparison between Vienna, ca. 2000, and where I live today.)

It is quite likely that in a true oil shock, Metrorail ridership from the Vienna station would not actually increase any significant amount, or would see a decline.

Obviously, Vienna Metro / Nothern Virginia is a special case, but I have noticed how it tends to be used as an example of Metrorail's success, and I think that is almost illusory. It certainly has not actually displaced anything but parking lots and a bit of exhaust for people living closer to DC. In this sense, it has simply allowed the commuter culture to extend further into what was formerly farmland, historic towns, and mountains.

I won't even get into how carefully Metrorail was designed to ensure that people without cars (is there a good term for urban poor that covers the unspoken assumptions but overriding truth of how to define 'urban poor'?) would not have access at all, or when it finally happened, the old neighborhoods would have been thoroughly gentrified, curing the 'problem' of those people using mass transit.

But you are absolutely right about Metro (rail and bus) being set up to ensure that the government could keep working. I actually grew up at the end of a truly functioning bus route (rare in the Northern Virginia suburbs at the time), which even had a 24 hour service ending at the nearest shopping center - and yes, the largest single block of reliable riders tended to be assigned to the Pentagon (ah, the old Pentagon bus station), and yes, watching uniformed officers get off the bus was simply part of how I grew up. Can you imagine mass transit riders in full uniform, every day? Your tax dollars at work - I even enjoyed swimming at the Pentagon's attached indoor pool, though apparently it no longer exists - partially, it seems, to increase the size of the parking lots. Somehow, I can't imagine many self-respecting American military officers taking a bus to work any more, like 30 years ago.

Metro is much more (and much less) than a true mass transit system, which you captured quite well. To use it as an example for a normal city is not as easy as it may seem.

But DC's light rail systems are probably worth looking at without that Metro overlay of Cold War/urban poor background. At least in terms of noting how old freight lines (like the one that used to incorporate the Crystal City freight yard, which was redeveloped years ago) can be easily used. But I would also recommend wondering at how important it is to sustain a commuter culture, which is pretty much all that DC's transit systems are geared to, in my experience and opinion.

Though there are good public transportation systems in America, check out something like Karlsruhe's dual power streetcars for broader ideas - they use the same rail guage as the German rail system, and switch power automatically from city system/rail system, so that a streetcar goes directly to city center and then back onto the national rail system. A very clever and cute trick - it expands the use of the rail system by adding convenience for riders without any change in infrastructure at all. Which is one reason this system has been steadily expanding for years, at minimal cost.

But in all fairness, using the KVV model would probably have one fatal flaw from an American perspective - KVV not only recognizes it will never make money, it proudly tells people that fact, while pointing out the other benefits people get - cleaner air, ease of travel without needing a car, no parking hassles when shopping, making life pleasant without a car for those who can't/don't drive, and so on - the free tickets for school children to grade 5 is another example. Notice - kids get used to just hopping a train or bus long before they can drive. Sort of like how they learn bicycle riding and traffic rules as 4th graders in school - Germany seems to have no problem ensuring that people can walk, ride bicycles, use the train, and drive, with all of these elements being kept in perspective, and all of them receiving adequate funding as part of a functioning society. Not that Germany is utopia, of course - the Mannheim demonstration project more than a decade ago of how a bus could use a street car station to save 30 seconds in a traffic jam might just have had something to do with the fact that Mercedes builds busses in Mannheim.

Have you had a look at what Melbourne has done?

The local authorities there have put loads of money over the years into local public transport. They have a very extensive tram network with a lightrail ring around the main CBD and lightrail links to the suburbs.  Plus standard rail connections to various parts of the state.  Buses "fill in the gaps".

We went there on holiday last year and we found the system very easy to use and it took us to all the places that we needed to go.  We very rarely used the buses as the Trams went everywhere.

The Trams are being updated all the time and there are lots of really flash new ones that are very low to the ground.

The local authorities there seem to be heading in the right direction.  One of the new parks that was built on an old piece of Dock land has been made as sustainable as possible with the lights over the paths operating off batteries charged with solar.

If you get a chance I would visit there just to check out their infrastructure.

I think American society was undergoing a number of changes throughout the 70s, some of which were at least partially successful (attitudes towards women and blacks, to name two concrete examples).

And growing up at that time, I did think America was undergoing concrete changes.

Being stupidly attached to my own memory of that time, I do believe that at least the potential for change was there.

I also believe it was utterly squandered, and in the real world sense of simply not doing the necessary work to handle the problems which will soon be impossible to obscure. And yes, the people and organizations that profited from that obscuring are currently the ones seeming to hold all the important levers in America today. But even then, at some point, people get sick of hearing the sizzle, and want their steak. Wonder what will happen when they realize the sizzle was the only thing being sold. Starving people aren't noted for moderation, we can also agree - regardless whether the starvation is real or of a more metaphorical variety.

Not living there anymore, it doesn't bother me much to realize after going through Morning in America, I'll get to watch the Twilight without feeling any responsibility at all.

But really, please don't believe America is somehow typical or normal. It is simple to imagine how America will crumble (it was real easy in 1985 - things have not improved, I am sure we can agree), but everyone else isn't really planning on following the American model to its logical conclusion.

Most people on this planet actually don't believe in Hollywood fairy tales, do know that the rich not only get richer, they don't care about anyone else, and quite honestly won't know the difference between an America living in an oil wonderland or the one which you seem to foresee.

Their life will be more or less filled with the same grinding labor - the big difference will be that through their stupidity and laziness, most Americans will get the chance to share that life (or die if they can't deal with it). This will be the end of the American Dream, not the end of life in America.

RR

Regarding the Berkley group, I am pretty sure that they quoted Wang. But my analysis is correct. The energy balance for gasoline is at worst 5/1.

RR

So, you're an expert? You better be, otherwise you shouldn't be telling me I don't have a right to my opinion.

You get more out of it than you put in. Really? How much more.

Political grudges? Where? You don't even know what my politics are. How could you possibly comment?

Weird conspiracy theories? Good. I almost never get accused of that. I should probably take that as a compliment.

So basically, your position would be that ethanol is the best thing since sliced bread and is an important part of a sustainable future. Did I at least get that right?

Again, that is simply not true. Argonne started that crap with their stupid GREET model. Everyone else quotes them. What is true is that if you have a barrel of oil, it will take some BTUs to get the gasoline out. That is how they defined efficiency for gasoline. In that way, it can never be 100%. They did not define ethanol in the same way. If I defined ethanol as a barrel of crude ethanol ready to be distilled, the efficiency would be about 35%.

On an apples to apples basis, the EROI of gasoline - starting with the crude in the ground - is about 5/1. Ethanol is at best about 1.3/1. That's why they need subsidies or mandates to compete.

RR

Let me dissect your points:

1. "It takes as much energy to produce it as you get out of it." No that is wrong. This graph from the Science paper I quoted shows that gasoline takes more energy to make than you get out of it. Ethanol is the opposite, you get more out than you put in.

Better take another shot at that one. If this were true, we never would have started using gasoline.

Brazil's fuel from sugar cane operation is so big it has driven up the world price of sugar dramatically

Great, so now you are telling me that the price of my week-old donut is going to go through the roof, so Keith here can continue to drive his V-8 Hemi to the Burger King drive-thru 12 times a week. Way to add insult to injury.