DrumBeat: May 29, 2006
Posted by threadbot on May 29, 2006 - 8:58am
Now for some wise words from the readers of The Oil Drum...
“To be thrown upon one's own resources, is to be cast into the very lap of fortune; for our faculties then undergo a development and display an energy of which they were previously unsusceptible.”
—Benjamin Franklin
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Soon food could be correlated to the price of gasoline. I can just see poor people going hungry while rich people burn ethanol in their cars.
Grain stock levels are already at 20 year lows apparantly.
I think you are onto somthing. The morality of burning food as auto fuel must be addressed at some point. The U.S. is already unpopular and this will not help. I am surprised that no church groups (that I know of) have come out in protest. Surely feeding our cars corn so we can get to our homes is suburbia qualifies as gluttony.
Back in 1980 when the big nasty heatwave hit most of the US there was a study going on comparing Amaranth and Corn production. I read about it the next year in an issue of Organic Gardening. The corn hit with the heat wave and drought died or produced nothing much, The Amaranth in the field next door did just find, after all it is a plant that grows in the marginal lands, soils to poor to grow much of anything but "weeds". Well this weed just happens to be edible and has been used for 1,000's of years just like Corn, but by a differant group of Natives.
We just don't live lives that make whole foods and Whole grains and Meats an easy fix. We have to package things so that everyone will buy them in mass amounts and the Companies can make a bottom line profit.
In the future we will be more in the local markets, the local foods, and a whole lot less international shipping of foods, and a whole lot less massive pre-packed-nukable foods.
in the form of alegrias, blocks of amaranth seeds mixed with honey, raisins, peanuts, and other nuts. "Maybe I've seen those at the checkout of the local Supermercado. And now that I know the names, I might see if they have amaranto (amaranth) or pinole (amaranth flour).
It would be nice to bump my 9-grain bread up to 10 ;-)
Antoinetta III
Based on your TOD name, which I hope is directly related to your career background, perhaps you, and other TODers could comment on the following links. The first link talks about families doubling up back in the cheap energy days of 1983 and how NYC authorities tried to stop it. The second link, in '87 [still cheap energy days], the NYC authorites then shifted policy to encourage doubling up. The third link on today's current NYC housing situation then has a graph showing how homelessness has gotten even worse during the intervening years.
So, if rising energy costs forces even more urban detritovore migration and density/sq foot with families doubling or even tripling up to maintain mortgage/rent payments and/or future survival--How is this predicted to affect urban environmental and housing laws?
Will overloaded urban sewage sytems swamp various neighborhoods like in Zimbabwe now? Will cities like NYC be able to generate the funds and energy to enlarge their subterraneum support infrastructures, or will they pass laws to export the ever-increasing poor outside the city limits to maintain viable living standards inside the city-- a 'taking out the trash' program?
Consider if Insurance Cos' future energy, health, and fire safety evaluations make them refuse to insure living quarters above the seventh floor in NYC, just as they are now refusing hurricane & flood insurance now [recall my earlier posting]. This would force a people/sq. mile density limit in NYC, just as AZ is just now starting to barely grapple with the idea of limiting people based on future water supplies. Is there any enviro-legal-energy discussion of optimizing urban-enviro design within a postPeak 'safe window' of localized energy limitations?
For example: maybe NYC enviro-planners, after considering all possible postPeak ramifications could decide that one million people max is what is safely sustainable and 75% of all inputs will be demand/supply energetically limited to within a 200 mile radius to maintain optimum rural-urban exchange flows. From this conclusion, all enviro-housing-transit-water-sewage-ins-urban gardens-wealth distribution, and so on legislation is to induce this desired direction.
Planning for decline is so much better than letting Nature do it for us that I hope you get swamped with legal work as we go postPeak. For when lawyers cannot find work: that means that discussion and negotiation has ended, guns are next. Here are the related links I mentioned above:
1. 1983: 17,000 NYC families double up
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9907EFDB1738F932A15757C0A965948260
2. 1987: 35,000 families [maybe 100,000?] doubled up
PANEL ON THE HOMELESS URGES DOUBLING-UP IN APARTMENTS
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE4DD113FF936A15751C0A961948260
3.The number of homeless people sleeping each night in New York City shelters reached record levels this year. At the same time, the shortage of affordable housing has grown more acute over the past decade. [Please see graph in link below--BS]
http://www.coalitionforthehomeless.org/advocacy/basic_facts.html
Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
That is one of the keys to fitting half of our population into 20% of our housing stock. Living in a tent inside one's gutted home with running water and sewage as the only utilities is another, and in a trailer/RV is the third adaptation.
Thxs for responding. If you examine the charts in my last link under the clickable PDF link: "Charts Describing Affordable Housing in New York City (pdf)", it would appear normal economic forces [more land and housing going for the well-to-do], combined with city zoning and budgetary policies-- it is gradually forcing the 'wage-slave' poor out of NYC housing and onto the NYC streets, or making them migrate elsewhere.
Sound NYC, or any urban enclave postPeak policy should seek to replace the gradual, or precipitious loss, of fossil fuel 'energy slaves' with sufficient 'wage slaves' [like me =( ] to keep the top-heavy employment structure functioning as far as possible into the future as a 'resistive' force against entropic decline in shared carrying-capacity.
Aspen, Colorado is a good example of this local wealth consolidation carried to extremes. So many rich people live in Aspen that many workers that serve them must commute from outlying communities. During severe blizzards, the service levels drop off markedly because they cannot get into town to work. A severe blizzard of rising energy prices will have the same effect unless the wealthy make it energetically and time convenient for their wage-slaves to be nearby as energy declines. Therefore, a proactive NYC city council should reverse policy and be building lots of cheap, affordable housing to serve NYC's postPeak future as an international trading hub of commerce.
A good postPeak model might be to go way back in history to the time of the Pharoahs. Think of their unfortunate real slaves as their energy slaves, and their soldiers and Captains as their 'wage slaves'. The extent of the Pharoahs' 3Cs [command,control,communication] was extremely limited because with no-fossil fuels & modern tech to extend their reach: timely execution of orders required the dedication of huge amounts of necessarily nearby resources. King Tut could not just 'flick a switch' to instantly harness the directed energy of his slaves; it took a long time for the 'service' to spool up under the stinging whips from his wage slaves executing his orders.
As Yul Brenner [acting as Ramses in Ten Commandments] so often said, "so let it be written, so let it be done"-- He was expressing his desire that he hoped his orders could be efficiently hand-passed down the command chain to eventually bring about the desired effect. Compare chariot travel times vs jetplane vs email communication speeds. The simple task of summoning Moses to see Ramses might have taken days and dozens of troops fanning out to find him if his spies lost track of his wanders vs a simple cell-phone call to Charleton Heston today.
A billionaire today might be easily able to instantly flick a switch on a million 'energy slaves'-- ORACLE Chairman Ellison flogging the motors on his 483 ft yacht, the Rising Sun--and have 10,000 wage-slaves at his instant beck and call by phone or email. Detritus entropy will vastly change the future Pharoahs' 3Cs forcing close proximity to his slaves-- energetic, wage, or real.
Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Yes, long distance trade has been conducted since pre-history. Examples of flint tools being discovered far from the source rock, and marine shell-based ornamentation far from any ocean are simple examples. I've heard that Roman big-wigs employed runners to bring pack snow to them over many dozens of miles from the mountain peaks just so they could have a slushie (italian ice?).
But I would argue that pre-fossil fuel trade was limited to high value-density items and materials. I can imagine that good flint was valued quite highly in its day. The spice trade seems to be the prototypical material that was greatly valued and thus had a very high value per pound.
Grapes from Chile come to mind as an example of a material that has a very low value per pound. And trade in those grapes over the distances relevant to me (NW Florida) are only possible via the bounty of unbelievably low cost transportaion joules.
So long-distance trade will continue. No doubt about that. But the breakeven point ( value per pound seems a reasonable proxy) for what is worth transporting will undergo a dramatic shift.
Not sure how to weave this thought in, but I'm reminded of how the internet-ordered dog food business model never did quite tick over a few years back. Even with histrocially high advantages of effectively zero information cost (for conducting a given transaction) and really, really low transportation costs the value in puppy chow just doesn't quite support the costs. Bummer. I was planning to teach Ellie how to surf the web and order her own darn food. No more free loading. But there is the whole doesn't-have-an-opposable-thumb issue, so maybe it was best after all.
And if you make your own beer, ALWAYS use Champaigne bottles. They are made to sustain considerably higher pressure than the bottles commercial beer or soda pop comes in; the latter, towards the end of the fermentation process have a nasty tendency to become small bombs that can explode with the least disturbance.
Antoinetta III
Trade is not necessarily a "good" thing.
It could be a major reason for collapse.
Forgive me. I'm finally plodding my way through Jared Diamond's "Collapse" of Civilizations book.
One of the examples he brings up is the collapse of society on the tiny Polynesian islands of Picatirn and Henderson. These are not as well known examples of collapse as is the theorized collapse of Easter Island. Instead, the growth and collapse of these tiny Polynesian islands was due to their reliance on trade (a good thing?) for supporting their otherwise unsustainble life styles. When trade collapsed, they collapsed. Their society had "evolved" to a point where trade was a necessary part of basic survival.
The high priests of the Adam Smith religion prod us to believe that "Trade is Good", Globalization is Good (and Greed is Good).
We need to step back and question these axioms of Smithism every once in a while.
Is trade always good?
Suppose you were taking a daily dose of a life-saving drug. For years you were buying it at your local pharmacy. Then you found a distant warehouse pharmacy that sells it much cheaper. You switched. That's economic common sense pure and simple.
Not only did you switch to buying from the cheaper mega-warehouse, so did many other people in your neighborhood. Each of them understood that cheaper is better.
With the sudden drop in sales, your local pharmacy goes out of business. That is basic economics as well.
You know what comes next of course. The vital transportation link (the life line) between you and your distant pharamcy goes down. There is no local pharmacy to buy the life-saving drug from. Now you are hosed.
As you know, we in America are "addicted to oil". We get 60% of our vital drug from foreign locations. Still think trade is always good?
Step back and examine these things critically. Don't trust what "they" constantly preach at you.
Pharmacies stock (warehouse) supplies of drugs and fill out prescriptions. They are source points for the needed consumables.
You can make all sorts of economist arguments about alternate source points and substitute drugs and substitute modes of transportation. Sure.
All that misses the big picture. The picture is that of a stretched supply line that is more susceptible to breaking down because it is long and there are that many more points along the way where it is subject to failure.
Enough people here have already posted about the fragility of just-in-time warehousing and how dependent it is on sustainable transportation.
Trade has it advantages. But it also comes with dangers.
Just to put things in perspective, you are right that we can't go totally loco -- I mean local.
Not everyone has a coal mine in their back yard, or a forest, or other necessary resources. So trade will be necessary. But total globalization is no more the answer than total isolationism.
The only times self-sufficiency (whether on a national or individual level) is preferable to trade, is when entering a mutual dependency relationship is dangerous. And with people heading for the cliffs, like oil companies, that is the case... which is why I don't own a car, and have self-sufficiency as a hobby.
Whether we will see a powerdown or a more happy ending of the oil age, part of it comes from realising that we are all in this together, and that getting cynical about other people's prospects, be they the rich, or the suburbanites, or the world's poor, is simply a bad strategy.
Personally, I enjoy an armada of nuke-tipped ICBM's to support my independent and oil-powered style of living.
Wasn't it none other than Milton Friedman who proudly proclaimed that in our Adam Smith society, no one person even knows how to make a pencil --never mind something as complex as a precision calibered bullet?
That said, I don't view Adam Smith in black and white terms --as either 100% pure evil or 100% pure genius. Smith was both right and wrong at the same time. "Specialization" is the reason why our society has advanced so much. It can also be the reason for why our society goes into catastrophic collapse. No one is in charge of making sure that all the necessary pigeon holes of specialization are filled. Instead it is left to the whim of the consumer and the random evolution of markets.
Who, for example, is charged with the responsibility of monitoring and controlling Peak Oil, or Climate Change, or Peak Aquifer, or .... you get the picture: (Warning blogwhoring)
Yes, we are the sum of all our specializations and trades.
But we are also the sum of all our ignorances and miscommunications.
I think "localization" is one of those things, like "organic food" that works by being more often right, without being a sound scientific accounting. In either case one could add up the details, do the math, and figure out which is better, A or B. But it's easier to have a ready rule, something that can be applied quicly, without a lot of thought.
Certaiinly if you compare item A from a local source, and the same item A from a thousand miles furtheraway, the local A is likley to be more energy efficient. It gets more complicated in a mixed setting. I mean, in terms of food calories and energy inputs ... locally grown potatoes or a 25 pound bag of flour bulk shipped a thousand miles? You'd have to do the math.
Or you can get an "eat local" t-shirt and punt on the math.
Along the food and food/fuel threads, I flashed on how insane the US is. We have a multi-billion $ industry devoted to producing non-nutritive faux diet food on the one hand and on the other hand we are talking about putting corn into our gas tanks. How crazy is this?!
All the ethanol talk is just another way to convince everybody that "everything will be just fine, technology always finds a way". But the current deepening energy crisis is CAUSED by the technology we employ - that's why we need so much energy in the first place!! And fermenting our food supply to extract minute quantities of fuel, well, that ain't such a good idea, is it??
Local small-scale biodesiel is the only thing I see that makes any sense.
They have to cover their collective rearends because of a congressional mandate of getting MTBE replaced by Ethanol. It does not tell you anything about how much there is in any of the gasoline. In fact there could be ZERO % in there and the labels are still correct.
Restaurants could put biodiesel firm in fat city
By Ryan Tate
San Francisco Business Times
Updated: 5:00 p.m. PT May 28, 2006
Martin Wahl is a greasy businessman with a slimy operation -- and he's proud to say so.
Fueled by a new partnership with 150 of San Francisco's oil-rich restaurateurs, Wahl's Bay Area Biofuel Inc. pumps close to 12,000 gallons of biodiesel automobile fuel each month, up from virtually none six months ago.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13029243/
The near term problem that we have been discussing is what happens when we have to exchange our dollars for something else, in order to buy food and fuel. There is a very good article in this week's issue of Barron's on this topic ($8,000 Gold).
You are right, if it happens outside the Empire, it doesn't matter. As pointed out in the Cowes thread, oil's not going up, it's just going up in terms of rapidly devaluing USD.
But the average Amurrikan's head is still in the 1950s, Eisenhower's still in office, and we're the biggest and baddest thing on the planet.
His 'stopped watch' timed the lows in gold, which has almost tripled in the last few years. And I suppose the huge fall in the dollar vs. the Euro and Canadian Dollar is not a crash? Or does a rose by another name not smell as sweet?
It was I that said that the dollar has already crashed, but if you want to think the price of most metals and oil multiplying 3 to 5 times in 5 years does not reflect a crash in the value of the dollar for some of the most basic and necessary goods - then there is nothing I can do to convince you otherwise.
Would this also mean that the Yen, Euro and Yuan have also crashed? Any commodity that's value has multiplied by five against the dollar has multiplied by at least four against almost any other currency.
In Turk's case, if he's going to be a guru on only one market, he'd better get that market correct, at least. Timing, and everything.
Five bucks... for a paper...
Nah. The dollar's fine... ;-)
and another story
The current major food problems in the world have more to do with localized draught and incredibly crappy governmental policies than they have to do with our hitting any limit on food production.
And, interestingly, one of the main problems in the world food market is the glut of American corn, due to the massive subsidies we provide.
If we were using up more of our corn in ethanol, and, thus, either reducing our subsidies (since there would be less need, due to less surplus), or reducing our dumping on the world market, or both, we'd do the developing world a great good service.
The question ain't whether we got food; that we have out the wazoo. The question is whether this is the most efficient way to produce a crop that will then be turned into fuel.
And, while biodiesel is cool and all, the fact remains that it's not going to be the majority product any time soon, even with major governmental intervention. Too many petrol-powered vehicles on the road, and too few people who can afford to buy the diesels that exist.
(for those who say, "The used ones are affordable!" Yes, but: there's a limited number, and they're going fast. Meaning that the price for them is rising, and they're scarce, so most people of limited income are going to buy petrol-powered cars. QED.)
-- Thomas Wicker
Soil erosion, saltification, dependence on fossil-fuel-based fertilizers and energy, climate shifts. The food supply is in peril. Peak oil is here, Peak Food must follow.
My gut tells me this is all going to hit at 11:59 (water, oil, food, etc) And at 11:58 everyone will feel like horn-of-plenty.
http://www.fas.usda.gov/grain/circular/2006/05-06/graintoc.htm
http://www.fas.usda.gov/grain/circular/2006/05-06/graintoc.htm
And because of falling water tables in China, India and most of the rest of Asia, grain stocks are expected to keep falling in the future. China's grain harvest dropped 70 million tons from 1998 to 2003. This drop exceeds the entire grain production of Canada.
http://www.theglobalist.com/DBWeb/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=3827
A very good book on this subject is Lester Brown's "Outgrowing the Earth".
soy, corn and wheat prices still very low historically, though wheat perking up of late
Overall, China doesn't face any national shortage, Chinese officials and the U.N. say. After a healthy wheat harvest last year, grain officials say domestic supply is still more than adequate: according to Chinese customs statistics, wheat imports in the first quarter of 2006 were down 92% by volume from a year earlier.
Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114857802531563206.html
Longer-term, however, it looks like China may be facing grain shortages, according to the Wall Street Journal story.
I wonder how much energy currently devoted to growing food crops and raising animals for food could be saved if it were possible to eliminate overweight and obesity .I haven't done the math but with a population of 295,000,000 and 66% of adults being overweight or obese it could probably be a very significant savings.
There are some statistics here:
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/04news/americans.htm
Men between the ages of 40 and 49 were nearly 27 pounds heavier on average in 2002 compared with 1960.
Men between the ages of 50 and 59 were nearly 28 pounds heavier on average in 2002 compared with 1960.
Men between the ages of 60 and 74 were almost 33 pounds heavier on average in 2002 compared with 1960.
For women, the near opposite trend occurred:
Women aged 20-29 were nearly 29 pounds heavier on average in 2002 compared with 1960.
Women aged 40-49 were about 25 pounds heavier on average in 2002 compared with 1960.
Women aged 60-74 were about 17 pounds heavier on average in 2002 compared with 1960.
Children are also heavier in a way that is disproportionate to their increases in height.
It isn't that the rich are eating more, but they do eat better: more fruits and vegetables, which tend to be energy sparse but nutrient dense.
One barrel of oil has 5,800,000 BTUs. At about 16,800 BTUs per pound, Rendering animals can produce a decent amount of energy (though it would be more energy efficeint to skip the animal part and let the sun work directly on the grass). This equates to a 345 lb animal equalling a barrel of oil
Curiously, the entire human population of 6.5 billion could be rendered to get about 2 billion barrels, if we really run short.
High Fructose Corn Syrup, to be exact is the big obesity maker in the US. It is in everything that is processed for General consumtion. If you make your own meals from whole fresh plants and meats you do not add pounds of High Fructose Corn Syrup to everything you eat. But today if you drink more than 2 soda-pops a day you have consumed more sugar than you would have added to your foods for the same day.
We are not living healthy lives, in the 1960's most families ate at home, and only rarely ate at the local Burger joint. Now I know folks that rarely eat and home and all their meals are eaten out!!
We have more folks not doing nearly the amount of work in the normal day that we used to have. We have more stress in our lives, more angst and less family time. We are just riddled with things that make obesity an issue. Not to mention that more sugars in the diet sooner create more Diabetices and pre-diabetic people. Genetically we are passing this on to the next generations.
Look at the statistics for Japan, More obese children than ever before. Look at anywhere that fast food comes into play. Don't forget that most folks make fast food at home, the prepackaged, precooked and sized for easy nuker use and fast food from our busy day, and we are breeding and eating our way into the grave.
Yesterday I prepared 4 dishes for dinner. Olive Oil was in each of them. The only thing not fresh was the frozen Catfish, which I baked, not fired. Two dishes of Tomatoes, one with thin sliced Mozarella, and one in a Lemon pepper dressing home made. I had to make it all myself, and then I could limit fat, and sodium, and sugars, there were none added and very little starches.
Who cooked last night?
This is like saying giraffes have long necks because they stretch more every generation. My DNA does not know if I eat healthy or not. Most people reproduce long before they get to the age of adult onset diabetes.
I meant to imply that the genetic predispenstion is such that most everyone could get diabeties, if their diet was such that allowed the body to push them over to it. I am at risk, but so are half the people I know for adult onset. But they have better diets and work more of the extra calories, and eat little of the "corn Syrup laddened" foods. The ADA toute the facts of 35,000,000 americans are prone to getting adult onset Diabeties. Our diet is not the best as a whole, as some other nations. Sure A lot of the folks below and that do post to this sight know better than the general joe-six-pack, but we might still be considered PRONE to the aliment.
Didn't help my writing style and paragraph formulation any that I was cooking dinner and got up several times to check things.
There has been a lot of research lately, especially in the area of epigenetics that indicates quite a lot of environmental effect on one's genes.
http://www.rachel.org/library/getfile.cfm?ID=531
Eating unhealthy likely can affect one's offspring and possibly their offspring as well.
Interesting, but fructose is not chemically active with a methyl group to turn off an on various genes. Also so many phenotypes are polygenomal it is hard to determine what caused any particular expression. Definately interesting though....I'll read more on the subject.
matt
I am not sure if this proves your point, exactly, but I was very aware of all the fat/salt which this in part locally produced, seasonally appropriate meal had. And we generally eat together, even if the kids found the Bärlauch pretty much not to their taste.
And this meal wasn't a stretch or a luxury - it was quick and easy to cook, and didn't have any genetically modified elements, hormones in the meat, etc.
But then, I don't live in the U.S.
Much of what is written here is very America centric - and speaking broadly, it is just human to think what is normal around you is normal everywhere else.
'Eat local' for example - this is not a revolutionary new concept, it is actually still a significant part of how people choose to live in other places. And even if currently, most people drive a few kilometers to the fields to buy fresh strawberries, there is no problem with them using bicycles either - the paths are there, and the distances fairly short.
It is this problem of choosing which leaves me helpless - Americans, however defined, choose, however defined, to live the way they do, and there has never been any way I can see to change it.
And it is not my place to change them, either, I might add. It remains my faith that reality will end up doing that, even if people cling to their beliefs long past the point where they should be changed (for example, ca. 1980). It is simply I see little reason to be dragged along into a future which could have been different if the people around me had chosen to live differently.
I think too much about this point, in a way - anyone with a sense of either ancient or recent history is likely to. At some point, decisions are taken out of the hands of individuals - somewhat like the difference between swimming in a lake or the ocean, and swimming in a swollen flooding river. Whether the dam has burst yet in America is an interesting debate, but truly, no one can deny that the water it holds backs is rising steadily.
Not necessarily. My net worth when I left the USA was essentially zero. But I had a job lined up.
And saying people in the US choose to live the way they do pisses off both myself and many social critics who have studied the facts. There are some things we have control over, at least we're allowed to have control over, for now. Like, not allowing a TV into our homes, not drinking soda, not smoking, etc. But what if the FDA regulates "health/healthy" foods to the extent that you can't get anything natural any more? Don't laugh, it's exactly what they'd like to do, and they may just pull it off. What if it's decided under some State Of Emergency that the populace keep up to date with security announcements, hence mandatory TV ownership and viewership?
And then there are the things we don't have control over- the american populace didn't decide to put high fructose corn syrup instead of sugar in sodas, and into every other food possible. The American populace didn't decide to kill off the streecar systems or to flood the inner cities with the crime-prone and simultaneously build sprawl.
The American populace doesn't in general have Ralph Nader for a dad and Racheal Carson for a mom, it would be a great country if we did, but we don't. The average person has to make a lot of effort to get educated on this stuff and choose not to have a TV, not to eat twinkies and sodas which they've been brainwashed all their lives are wholesome and good, etc.
And the average American can't just up and leave for Europe or one hell of a lot of us would have already. Everything I've heard tells me the difference between Europe and the Empire is huge, and growing larger over time. It's an amazingly humane society over there, it's just unbelievable. I knew a gal who escaped from Texas, by marrying a European, nearly impossible, a miracle, but it happened. She was constantly amazed, she got health care when she was pregnant and just all kinds of kindnesses, big and small, from people there and from the government, strange as that sounds, that are inconcievable here. She was constantly amazed.
Except for a very few, a very lucky, wealthy, talented, young, and healthy few, we will not be able to leave The Empire so we're stuck with what we have here and can only change things slowly. Your sitting over there in the lap of luxury going "Nyah, nyah" sure is inspiring.
Your disdain for america is concerning. A TV is not the devil, like alcohol its abuse is. Too much reading can be bad if it takes away from exercise and socialization (put down your copy of 1984 and go have a beer) If you want to go overseas join the peace corps or the military or volunteer with habitat for humanity. Americans can leave anytime they want most countries you don't need a visa. I am not rich and I travel all over the place.
matt
Of course you get to hop all over!
I'm now not young enough to qualify for many immigration programs and don't have easily transportable skills. I may work on changing that (the skills not the age) and I'm starting to exercise regularly to try to get super fit again, which may help with the ability to move and do any kind of work if things get really bad here.
And yes, I agree, a TV is not the devil, but I just choose not to have one. Considering in the average home the TV's on all hours the inhabitants are awake, and socializing consists of the guest joining in staring at the damned thing along with the hosts, with no real conversation, it can be argued that TVs in the general sense are harmful to society, since healthy societies are those in which people talk to each other, and not just about How About Those Lakers.
And yes, I hate Amurrika, better report me right now! I criticize my country, therefore I hate it, oh well I hear Guantanamo's lovely this time of year. And you'll get a brownie point!
you are missing my point. Don't own a TV, eat healthy and raise 1-2 happy healthy children like yourself. So many educated people on this site have talked about leaving america. That would be a sad loss for all other americans. Persia has had the same problem for years the best and brightest have left leaving a society with much of the cream skimmed off. If you see problems in your country be patriotic and fix them. If your child fell ill would you abandon them? Travel and see the way the rest of the world does it and bring back some of the good here. And if things get really bad here they will be really bad everywhere. Family and friends will be needed, how long would you have overseas to build relationships to count on? In the end I hope you are happy wherever life takes you, but a positive attitude will help.
Matt
PS I've been traveling for 15 years, I've been doing this job for a few months. I volunteered/mission tripped several and went with the Army everywhere else. Check out habitat for humanity's website. If you want to see Latin America this is a great way. Several Universities in Brazil have 100% scholarships for Americans and really low cost of living 100-200$ a month covers all you need housing food is free on campus.
If the US Army will not fulfill it's 1928 mission, and given the attitude common in the rest of the country, if I cannot live in New Orleans, I will not live in the United States. The US has abandoned me, not the other way around.
Much of Anerica has become an alien culture repugnant to me. I spent two months in Phoenix helping my father recover from knee replacement surgery. I could not WAIT to exit that hell hole (great weather, but the rest ...) and come back to my disaster zone with caring neighbors & friends, great food & music, minimal health care (ambulances sometimes have to wait 20 minutes to be unloaded at the emergency room, 24 hour waits for walkins), minimal fire protection (two weeks ago another house 2 blocks away burned down), 2 day a week postal service, trash piled on the curbs, etc.
And I will abandon my efforts to help reduce US oil consumption and help plan an alternative. I can have a positive effect on any society I join.
"Much of Anerica has become an alien culture repugnant to me." Nominate this for best phrase of the day.
He gave the example of an adult child, taking care of himself, keeping a job, paying a mortgage & taxes. And then you have a bad auto accident.
There is still an expectation that your parents will be there for you, despite the fact that you are "Stand on our own two feet adult".
You wait and wait in the hospital for a week for your parents to show up. You make excuses for them. After a week they finally come and make all sorts of promises. You forget about the delay.
And then as the weeks and months go by, you slowly come to realize that the promises were hollow, that the spirit of willingness to help is missing, that a show will be made, but the checks will bounce.
He was in tears at the end.
Despite the damage to the city that I love, the slow realization that the US is no longer a "great and good" nation is even more distressing.
I have read of the national response to the Great Floods of 1927 (New Orleans alone was spared) and it is clear that was another nation, not the one I live in today.
And it's not just giving, it's watchdogging the government on rigged wars, energy bills, torture, questionable contractors, greenhouse science manipulations, domestic spying, ... , and yeah, we should probably still be watchdogging them on hurricane recovery ... and worry about another cycle bearing down.
That's why I wrote "But" in my post. As for the rest of your post, I think you're responding more to expat than to me. But since you started....
"...saying people in the US choose to live the way they do pisses off both myself..."
I think there are plenty of things about which individuals can make their own choices, and I think enough of them are making the wrong choices that there will be collective hell to pay at some point as a result. And they can't dodge the collective responsibility.
This doesn't just apply to the US. Here in Europe, there are plenty of people who are making the same bad choices. Eating plastic food, watching the local equivalent of American Idol, driving SUVs when they could take expat's tram.
There's plenty to like and not to like in both places. We come here to TOD to try to do something positive about some of the things we don't like, don't we?
Interesting to note that stone age humans probably had quite a bit higher calorie consumption than modern obese Americans. Part of their fitness came from a different dietary mix, but a good part also came from just burning it off.
Here's to a happy pedaling future, with a good Mediterranean diet (as you describe above)
(I agree that widespread corn sweetener use is bad. Hopefully we will correct that. At least the new labeling is reducing the transfats in foods.)
Just a thought. But I would like to see a study comparing the weights of people charter against the vehicles they drive. My anecdotal observations suggest there is a correlation.
There's another twist though - go into a dealership and try to buy a wagon, which is generally just the same as their sedan with a different rear end of the body. You can't unless you want to pay about 10k more. Try to buy a cute little minivan like the 1980s Windstar - again you can't, the vans now are all big luxury "starships" with drop-down TVs for the obnoxious kids to watch while Mom takes 'em to soccer practice. There's a definate effort by the automakers, at least the US ones, to steer buyers into getting an SUV.
There are exceptions though - the Toyota Matrix Wagon is a very functional vehicle, there's a Scion somewhat like it, and there's the Honda Element which is very very functional. Good for some kids and a dog.
There was a big "safety" push though saying basically, the bigger the safer. And this meant getting an SUV to the vast majority of people, not wanting to be seen in a big older Mercedes lol.
In fact I think there's been a general "Big Is Good" push in the US over at least the last decade, I have a theory it's taken root across the whole spectrum of life, and affects cars, houses, types of dogs people prefer to have, and of course people's own bodies.
Of course everything is big here. Just go sit in the parking lot of Sam's or Costco and watch the obese people arrive in their gargantuan vehicles, grab an oversized basket (or, better still, a 4x6 pushcart), and purchase huge amounts of fatty food. Our houses are big (and getting bigger), our children are big, our vehicles are big, our military and our imperial dreams are big, even our coffins are oversized to fit. This is one BIG society! Now, better...maybe not so much.
Dinner was a mixture of tomatoes, broccoli, olive oil, two eggs and seasoning with a glass of red wine. One of my standard bachelor quick dinners.
I prepare all of my meals except when I am traveling or socializing.
Breakfast is usually oranges, apples, berries, peaches or other seasonal fruit, ground flax, soy yogurt, and brazil nuts freshly shelled.
Lunch is usually 8-10 cups of raw vegetable salad usually based on romaine and other leaves with onions, tomatoes, other fruity vegetables, some cooked sweet potato cubes, and some legumes cooked from dried, with walnuts freshly shelled, olive oil, and red wine vinegar.
Dinner is usually something heartier, a cooked grain dish with legumes and other vegetables.
I feel that I have a very high quality diet, routinely exceeing the DRIs for all micronutrients (except B12 and D2, for which I supplement) and getting a very high dose of protective polyphenols and a wide variety of colors and flavors with a minimum number of kcals. Initially I used the pantry at http://www.nutritiondata.com to help select my meal choices but now I sort of have the good sources of each vitamin and mineral memorized.
I am not purely virtuous, however, sometiems I have a bit of prepared junk--most often the salty crispy fatty junk rather than the sweet fatty junk. Also I have occasionally a light domestic beer.
How much of this is genetic vs diet related I do not know.
Nobody says anything about this because they can't use it to prove modernity is doomed.
Thanks
The earliest baby boomers were already just as tall as Americans born in the mid-80s, forty years later.
But at the start of their adult lives, the latter weighed 15 pounds more (men) or 20 pounds more (women) than the boomers at the start of theirs!
Only the more recent stdies divide the population by ethnic group. Black people and white people are the same height in America, but Americans of Mexican descent are three inches shorter.
Black guys and white guys are also the same weight. But black women are 20 pounds heavier than white women.
Among the younger generation, blacks and whites are getting heavier from one birth cohort to the next at the same rapid rate, but people of Mexican descent much more slowly.
Middle-class blacks will have stats more similar to middle class whites, and working class whites will have stats similar to working class blacks. The only way they get this "blacks are like this and whites are like that" is that more blacks as a percentage of the number of blacks are working class and more whites are similarly middle class.
And this habit of putting everything in terms of race is harmful, it's part of the overall process of keeping people divided in terms of racial interest groups (which any outside observer is I'm sure impressed with the number in the US) instead of class interest groups (which basically don't exist in the US unless you count the elite running the place).
But empiricism beats theory on any issue.
My read on these statistics is that logistics are getting more efficient so larger inventories have become expensive and unnecessary. Just like in manufacturing.
Why should we be piling up grain in warehouses? Why is that an indicator of future prosperity?
Since the CRB has about 5+ pages of basic stats on each market, it would be hard to paint an overall picture. I have found the CRB yearbook very well worth its price.
Inventories? You may be right. It seems one way to look at grains now is
I don't know how many times the soybean, wheat, and corn markets have soared because of "conditions", only to crash back when the crops come in apparently just fine.
It would appear that one candidate for solving some peak oil problems is the GM food bonanza.
But even numbers mask some truths. For example, the above numbers look like we have less corn in stocks as a % of consumption. It could just as easily mean we are not eating as many cans of creamed corn but are eating more beef, which at the corn.
It also doesnt show how much soybeans, oats, rice, etc. So lower wheat and corn stocks to usage could imply more acreage (due to higher prices or weather reasons) were planted in other grains.
Tough to get a whole picture on things, but if you read Lester Brown, there will come a day sooner rather than later that the world cant feed itself. Im not an ag expert, but I am told that we (farmers) are approaching the theoretical yield per acre on many ag crops, and the continuing increase in efficiency due to pesticides, fertilizers, genetic engineering etc will start to have a negative slope
(sorry I didnt post any data)
And regarding ag stats or anything else, it's possible to find info on the net to back up anything. I just like to look at all the different sides of issues. So if I don't provide references, tough nuggies, do yer own research! Feel free to ignore my posts.
NO, the US will NOT become a net grain importer this year and you can find nothing on the net to back up that story. That story is so far from fact that it is not even funny.
To maintain one's credibility one should have references when making such broad and sweeping statements. What one CAN get on the Internet, with very little effort at all, are the FACTS. Here are the facts on US grain production and world grain production, as near as the USDA can estimate them.
http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/reports/waobr/wasde-bb/2006/wasde434r.txt
As you can see US exports of wheat this season are expected to be 900 million bushels and for corn exports are expected to total 2.15 billion bushels. And it is pretty much the same story for all other grains. (Those numbers seem awful large but that is what the USDA is saying.)
Barges and hopper railcars seem to be bringing grain downstream and either returning empty or with other products.
If we are importing grain, it is not coming in through the Port of New Orleans.
I still maintain I can post whatever the ** I want and if you don't like it, tough. Telling other people how they are supposed to think is getting very tiresome and the primary reason I don't get involved in these discussions very often. I read that the US will become a net grain exporter this year in an article from Energybulletin.net, which I'm sure we all regard as a good source of information. I have no interest at all in my "credibility". Your types can worry about that, that's just a pissing contest, not a discussion.
This just isn't worth my time, C-ya! Maybe I'll post again in another six months.
Actually the US has been a net grain exporter for as long as anyone has been keeping records of such. The US exports more grain than any other nation. In fact the US accounts for almost HALF the world's total grain exports.
http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/Out/Ote10_3.htm
When the US stops exporting grain the world will be in deep, deep trouble.
But then, from a certain point of view, not long after you became a net importer of oil/gas you could argue that the energy subsidy made you a net importer of food anyway, maybe?
After poking around in some data -- some interesting things seem to appear -- Japan = oil importer, food importer, Italy = oil importer, food importer (surprising!), Iran (oil exporter, food importer), etc.
Source: Economist World in Figures 2006
Obviously there is lots of data, the situation is complex, and the data is a little inexact, but "oil for food" seems like it's going to be more important in the future.
hang in there;
Why do you think that coal, wind and solar can't in the longrun replace fossil fuels? I posted this question a couple days ago, when someone else said something similar, and we went back and forth a couple times, without getting to a consensus, so I'll ask again.
I've looked at almost all of the peak oil books (Kunstler, Deffeyes, Goodstein, etc), and none of them convincingly discuss the usefulness (or lack thereof) of wind and solar. Kunstler clearly knows nothing about them - he just assumes they can't help because he wants things to collapse - wishful thinking. Deffeyes says right out that alternative energy is not his expertise. Simpson is just dealing with oil. Goodstein simply notes that a transition to alt energies would be a very big job, and that we should get started now. So does Hirsch.
So, why so pessimistic about the growth of alternative energy?
You mean nuclear, wind and solar, right?
Otherwise it becomes "why can't tomatoes replace ketchup".
The problem lies in the question itself.
- First, you should have qualified it as being liquid fuels and not just any ole' fossil fuel.
- Second, we don't have a longrun.
Fuel in liquid form is what is needed for powering our mobile vehicles. Kind of tough to load a bag full of coal into your gas tank and then split it into tiny particles for good combustion.Because we actually do not have a "long" run ahead of us anymore (we did in 1970), I'm afraid that by tomorrow morning you will have to single handidly build a 6o foot windmill in your back yard. The day after, repeat the same in your neighbor's backyard. Keep going at least for the whole year. So what have you built so far? Just 360 tiny windmills?
Don't say that somebody else should do it. There is nobody else. It's just us monkeys here, stuck with our hand in the coconut. :-)
However, if your definition of "useful" is the ability to completely replace oil in all its uses, and keep the "happy motoring" era alive, well, then, I suppose you would consider wind and solar "useless", as neither they alone or in combination with biodiesel or whatever, will ever come close to doing this, for several reasons.
Antoinetta III
Could you elaborate on this? Do you have a source? The AWEA says that wind could supply at least 300% of US electrical demand - see http://www.awea.org/faq/tutorial/wwt_potential.html.
I would think plug-in hybrids, and eventually electrics, could provide all transportation - in the long run. Why would you disagree?
"Wind energy could supply about 20% of the nation's electricity, according to Battelle Pacific Northwest Laboratory, a federal research lab."
Following this was a chart showing the potential levels of electricity that could be generated in a number of "high wind" states. However, all this was couched in highly tentative language; words like "theoretical" and "potential" were frequently used, leaving me with the distinct impression that these figures were quite optimistic, and unlikely to actually be realized.
And wind has been discussed here on the Oil Drum before and I don't recall anyone claiming that it could come near to replacing oil, indeed, the 20% figure is pretty much in line with what I read on the posts here.
Don't forget that the 20% figure is based on our current use of electricity; if you plan to add a fleet of electric/hybrid autos to the mix, the demand for juice would soar, and wind would only be able to supply a good deal less than the 20%.
Antoinetta III
3 MW and 5 MW wind turbines on the tallest possible towers can extract significantly more power from a given wind province than 660 kW and 1 MW wind turbines can. Wind velocity declines as one gets closer to the ground (friction) so "taller is better". The EROEI improves with size as well.
It has been years since I reviewed the data, but a WT on the tallest tower vs. the shortest can extract an extre 20% or so more power.
There are logistic issues as well. Taller and bigger requires bigger cranes for erection and major maintenance. The limits of rural roads and brudges vary. This can be a soluble problem. Just use a railroad to service wind turbines along the RR ROW is one, innovative crane/wind turbines designs is another.
I am not one to "count on" new technology, but wind turbines are quite immature and are still extremely open to innovation. And there has been very little demand for massive mobile cranes on rural roads until wind turbiens appeared. Installing bigger (and better) land based wind turbines is a problem waiting for a very clever mechanical engineer.
In my long term planning, I will "count on" the ability to install very large (10 MW ?) wind turbines "whereever needed".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_chimney
Less efficient, but no sideways forces so much more reliable/less vibration etc.
should run a treat near Phoenix from the way the place sounds
First, what is the maximum electrical generation possible from wind (I'm assuming in the U.S.), if all the good sites for wind turbines were used.
Second, what is the maximum electrical generation from wind that the national electrical grid can handle without excessive problems due the intermittency of wind?
The wind potential by state is intended to address the first question. It suggests that wind potential is roughly 300% of current electrical production.
The 20% figure is an answer to the second question, and is roughly based on the current state of the art in load balancing, wind prediction, demand management, etc. If total electrical consumption were to increase, that 20% figure would stay the same.
The key here is that if increased demand came from plug-in hybrids (PHEV), or pure electrical vehicles (EV), the % would increase (and probably faster than the rise in EV demand) because EV's provide storage that helps reduce the mismatch between intermittent wind production and general consumer demand - only very simple demand management would be required to have the EV's preferentially charge when electrical supply was high relative to demand. Thus, wind could supply all of the additional power needed by EV's.
Does that make sense?
And there might be other uses for surplus electrical power that was fairly common (combined electric & natural gas water heaters ?).
Wind is fairly seasonal. Winter peak, summer minimum in many areas, but spring max in other areas.
I still think that pumped storage (water first, then air) is a preferred choice with current living patterns.
That's not quite what I was analyzing.
Transmission system operators (TSO) are concerned with variance: the variance of generation, and of consumption. Both consumption, and various forms of generation have a certain natural pattern, and a certain amount of random variation: consumers are unpredictable, and every form of generation breaks down occasionally or is unavailable without warning, and needs periodic planned maintenance and down-time.
TSO's must change the behaviour of both consumers and generators to make them match precisely. They have many tools. Some are supply-side: allowing system voltage to vary (within limits), changing power-plant load levels, bringing on new plant, using storage of various sorts, etc. The US currently uses about storage which amounts to about 2.5% of system capacity, Europe uses about 10%.
Other tools are load-side: rates which encourage industrial users to consume at night, demand management programs which allow the TSO to turn off certain loads when demand is high, and so on.
Electric vehicles (PHEV and pure EV) provide storage, and additional demand management options. As such, they reduce consumption variance, and make life easier for TSO's. They don't have to use wind on a one-to-one basis in order to soak up variance, which compensates for additional variance from wind. In fact EV's are likely to reduce variance disproportionately to the load they add, so that every KW of EV demand would allow several KW's of additional wind power.
You're right to note that variance exists on several time scales, and seasonal is one of them. A recent study in the UK found that such variance was not a big problem (at least for the UK): in effect, you never went for a long time without wind blowing somewhere. OTOH, I would agree that wind above roughly 35% of system capacity will probably require storage solutions larger than PHEV's to deal with such things.
It's important to remember, though, that the discussion here is not whether we can replace all generation with wind, but whether wind can provide the energy needed for transportation. In fact, the roughly 2.4 trillion private vehicle miles driven annually in the US would require an increase in electrical production of only about 9% (2.4 trillion miles x 150 watt hours/mile divided by 24 hours and 365 days = 41 GW. 41 GW divided by 450 GW average electrical production = 9.1% increase). This wind can do easily.
Well over 1 million barrels a day saved for what amounts to the rounding error in calculating transmission and transforming losses. Pretty impressive !
North American natural gas is going into decline. The issue is not installing wind so that we can support a massive new load, we need wind to keep the lights on and preserve/supplant natural gas ASAP. This will be the reality for the next decade.
We can run much more Urban Rail with very minor conservation savings. We can run our railroads on electricity with a bit more than 1% of US electricity. Again doable with conservation on a larger scale.
I am ambivalent about EVs. They promise limited efficiency gains whilst Urban Rail and electrified rail promise dramatic gains in efficiency. An EV-centric solution will create another set fo problems within a generation.
The smallest US mainland grid, ERCOT (most of Texas) has a peak load of ~58 GW and average load of ~35 GW (from memory). If Texas had 25 GW of wind installed, load factor of 30%, the massive geographic spread and diversity shoudld prevent problems from arising. Installing supplemental switchable electric heaters into gas water heaters would give the same load balancing effect (actually more, water heaters do not unplug and drive off to work en masse). They would also save natural gas.
EVs are controlled by people who are not concerned about whatever issues the TSO has. I predict that they will plug them in when they get home and want them recharged ASAP.
In the more distant future, we will have to look at the circumstances and see where EVs would best fit in.
I wonder where your # of 0.15 kWh/mile cam from ? Is this the # for GEM EVs ? Are battery storage losses included ?
BTW: I have already read the IEEE article. I wonder about the need for an "electronic shock absorber" for anything larger than a small island grid. I have also read articles about wind intergration in New Zealand, ERCOT (Texas), and the EU.
I will report some of my thoughht on what a US renewable grid would look like.
Best Hopes,
Alan
"IEEE Spectrum is a pretty serious and respected source. They are running a very positive piece on the potential of wind energy in the US. The author is Karl Stahlkopf, senior vice president and chief technology officer at Hawaiian Electric Co., and he describes the lessons learned with wind power in Hawaii and how they might apply more broadly on the mainland:
""The potential of wind power to help meet America's growing demand for electricity is staggering: According to a definitive 1993 study by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, areas of strong winds cover about 6 percent of the mainland states and, if exploited, could supply more than current U.S. electricity consumption. Conversely, just 0.6 percent of the land of the contiguous 48 states would have to be developed with wind turbine farms to provide 15 percent of the nation's electricity requirements. Even then, less than 5 percent of the developed land would actually be occupied by wind turbines, associated electrical equipment, and access roads. In most cases, existing land uses, such as farming and ranching, could remain as they are now.
[...]
Yet one often hears questions related to wind power's intermittent nature; unavoidably, electricity is generated only when the wind blows. Can the power grid handle massive amounts of variable production? Can wind energy be delivered where it's needed when it's needed? Can wind energy harnessed at times of low demand be stored for high-demand periods? Can new storage technologies be devised so that wind energy would become, in effect, dispatchable? The answer to all of these questions is yes, and in some cases the answers are already in practice.""
for more: http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/may06/3544
I would think that if people brought out the data, counter argument data, etc, then we'd be able to get somewhere. Instead, we get anecdotal at best. (rant off, whew!)
It is probably the only H2 Hummer here in Hawkes Bay.
The price tag is NZ$85,000 which is currently about US$54,000.
I'll keep an eye on it to see how quickly (or even if) it sells.
"10% Reduction in US Oil Use in Ten to Twelve Years"
Please review and comment.
Thanks ! :-)
http://www.lightrailnow.org/features/f_lrt_2006-05a.htm
The energy crisis is starting NOW! That means that energy will become more expensive, then more difficult to get at all. It will require enormous amounts of energy to build a railway system. If we devoted a large percentage of our current energy resources to this project we'd have that much less available to keep everything else going in the meantime. We're already at the point where major construction projects are being postponed due to the higher energy costs. Cancelling some will be the next step.
And so we save 10% of our oil in the next 10 or 20 years. Well within that time the world oil supply is very likely to drop more than 10%. And, bottom line: we're not going to build a railway system in this country. It would be admitting that "The American Way Of Life" has been a mistake. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!!!
1.How do we generate the electricity? Wind and water and solar are the green answer, but Exxon will hold out for coal because they own half of the US coal reserves through Carter. The nuke crowd will want to construct more reactors, Shell and BP importing LNG will want to use their gas...another interminable debate with no solution.
We have subsidised the auto and oil industries since Eisenhower built the Interstate Highway system if not before. Why can't we let the railroads dually use the right of way and not tax them? Their arguement about high Ad Valorem taxes was specious. The railroads received their deeds to the rights of way for free for building the Railroads. It's tough luck that society expects them to pay taxes after 125 years.
3. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is 87 days of our import supply, so selling it only very temporarily releaves price pressure.
I beleive in rail as a partial solution. But is going to take all of the partial solutions to cut our energy useage. So, great work and thanks, Alan! I hope you convinced a few folks to start working on real, practical solutions.
Planned wind generation is 40% of overall new generation in 2006 and 45% in 2007 (adjusted for capacity factor), and this trend is likely to continue. Wind could easily handle all new generation in the US within 5-10 years.
These come from the Nuclear Energy Institute:
http://www.nei.org/documents/Energy%20Markets%20Report.pdf on page 7, and capacity factors are here http://www.nei.org/documents/U.S._Capacity_Factors_by_Fuel_Type.pdf
Total world "primary" energy consumption (after converting liquids and gasses to equivalent kwh) is approximately 1.1x10^14 kwh per year (400 Quad Btu). World consumption of the two most quickly depleting "fossil" fuels of interest here is about 40% oil and about 22.5% natural gas.
World consumption of natural gas is about 95.5 Tcf. U.S. consumption of natural gas is about 22.3 Tcf. About 23% of natural gas in the U.S. is used to generate electricity. The efficiency of using natural gas to generate electricity is between 33% and 50% (apparently with some advanced units getting 60%). So natural gas needs to be adjusted somehow for this loss (using the U.S. number as the world equivalent), the 22.5% of natural gas energy consumption (assuming 40% efficiency, 60% loss) reduces 22.5%-(22.5% x 0.23 x 0.60) to about 19.4%.
If we held the other stuff (coal, nuclear, hydro, and other) constant for 20 years, then we would have to replace 59.4% of 400 quad over 20 years -- or about 240 quad over 20 years -- or 12 quad per year. If we did this with stirling engines this would take 12 x 2.931 x 10^11 kwh divided by 54500 kwh (for each engine, using Boeing's numbers) which equals 64.5 million engines per year. And at $50000 each this would be $3.227 trillion per year for 20 years. Wowee! Obviously if the cost dropped to $20000 each (some projections), then we could scrape by on about $1.3 trillion per year. World economic output is about $59 trillion so this is almost 5.5% of world output invested in energy production for 20 consecutive years (2.2% on the lower number).
Summary:
3.52 x 10^12 demand / 54500 kwh supply per engine = 64.5 million engines
64.5 million engines per yr * $50,000 ea = $3.2T per year
We can also calculate how much money we are not spending on the missing fossil fuels (say, 5% each year). The first year for crude comes to 74 mbpd x 0.05 x $66 = 0.2442 billion per day or $89 billion per year about $0.089 trillion per year. Each year 5% more gets gone, so summing up the "savings" 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 + 9 + 10 + 11 + 12 + 13 + 14 + 15 + 16 + 17 + 18 + 19 + 20 = 210, or $0.089 trillion x 210 = $18.7 trillion not spent on crude (over 20 years). The first year for natural gas comes to 82 Tcf x 10^6 mcf/Tcf x 0.05 x $8/mcf = $32.8 billion per year, or $6.888 trillion not spent on natural gas (over 20 years). So we have on average about $1.28 trillion not spent of these two fuels that can be spent on investment into renewables.
So this reduces the problem from $3.227 trillion to about $1.947 trillion per year, which is 3.3% of global output. And of course, everything needs to run off electricity 20 years down the road.
Is it impossible for the world to spend 3.3% of output on energy investments (for 20 years or more)? How far off the mark will this number be?
Just for yucks, if we look at this as only an electricity problem, and restricted ourselves to the U.S., then starting with the average (electrical) energy consumption of a home in the U.S. (using NY state as a baseline) at 17.1 kwh per day (DOE/EERE). We can calculate:
17.1 kwh/day * 365 day/yr = 6242 kwh/yr (for one American house)
6242 kwh/yr * 120 million households (120*10^6 ballpark number) = 7.5*10^11 kwh/yr (for U.S.)
7.5*10^11 kwh/yr divided by 54500 kwh/yr for each Stirling Engine = 13.8 million Stirling Engines
13.8 million Stirling Engines at $50000 each = $688 billion
The U.S. economy is over $10 trillion so this would be 6.88% of our economy (for just one year).
Some conversion factors:
1 kilowatthour = 3.600 x 106 joules = 3,412 Btu
1 quad = 1015 Btu = 2.931 x 10^11 kilowatthours
First, you can't convert oil to KWH by using BTU's (at least in this context) without adjusting for the efficiency of heat engine based electrical generation. If, for instance, you'll replace a gasoline engine (ICE) with an electric motor, you have to take into account that the ICE is only about 25% efficient, and the electric motor is roughly 90% efficient. The bottom line is that you need only about 1/3 the KWH's in an electric world.
Second, you seem to be analyzing solar Stirling electrical generators, like those proposed for the CA desert. You said " 54500 kwh (for each engine, using Boeing's numbers)...And at $50000 each". That would mean that it would cost $50k to generate 54.5K Kwhr's, meaning a cost of $.90 per kwhr. I'm confident that's too high (especially given that it doesn't adjust for the timevalue of $, it just uses a lifetime figure) - it should be in the range of roughly 10% of that.
Finally, you assume that 100% of oil & gas will go away in 20 years. I don't think even the most pessimistic among us think that will happen: a Hubbert curve is roughly symmetric, meaning that if peak is right now, production 20 years from now should be the same as 20 years ago. That would suggest less than a 25% drop. A few people, like Simmons, feel that we're in for unexpected declines. OTOH, there is a big difference between a local and global peak: local peaks don't dictate price levels, so on a local level there is no feedback loop increasing prices, recovery rates and investment levels. I think that the most expert people here think that we'll have an undulating plateau for 5-15 years, then decline after that. I think they would agree that a reasonable guess at a worst case scenario is in the very rough range of a 25% drop in 20 years.
Given these errors I haven't tried to follow all of your calculations to identify any other errors, but I would guess that you could reduce your cost estimates by about 120 (3 x 10 x 4).
Re your first item. I like that. Electric motors are about 3 times more efficient. I like that a lot -- especially for best case scenarios.
Re your second item. The $50,000 number, I believe, was inital volumes of production. And the guy in the published paper (with the un-related error) suggested $20,000 -- which drops to 40% of my result (20/50). You like 10%. That's feels agressive, but I don't really know.
Re 5% drop for 20 years. This is an obvious simplification, but if Simmons is right about the horizontal "straws" sucking oil out at previously unimagined rates, then the downside could be zippy. Plus, linear is easy.
Finally, cost reducing by 120 would put "peak oil" squarely in the "fear of martian invasion" category. What were we thinking? Going from 5% of world output to less than 0.05% would truly solve the world's problems (goodbye OPEC). Even a 10x reduction is fat city.
Have you seen or read George Olah's book on Methanol? It basically says that if we have enough electricity then we can make liquid fuels.
"the downside could be zippy"
I believe Simmons is mainly talking about Saudi Arabia, which is about 10% of world production. If we lose half of that, that's only 5%. I believe his main argument is that SA production is likely to fall in the near term, while mainstream analysts assume large SA growth.
"cost reducing by 120 would put "peak oil" squarely in the "fear of martian invasion" category."
My feeling is that coping with PO is entirely a social problem. By that I mean that the technical & engineering problems could be solved easily if the US had the will to do so. Heck, if we as a country really wanted to, we could reduce our gasoline use by about 15% in a year, and 30% in 6-7 years. That would make all the difference in the world. We'd have to make some hard decisions, though, like raising gas taxes (which could be ameliorated by a matching income tax cut to low incomes), lowering speed limits, raising the automotive CAFE (which could be ameliorated by finding a way to subsidize domestic car sales, or domestic manufacturers - not that hard, maybe just pay for some of their health care costs). These things would accelerate PHEV's and EV's.
In the grand scheme of things this isn't that hard a problem - we just seem to be paralyzed as a country...
"downside could be zippy"
Some of this pessimism is driven by my reflections on the historical behaviour of politicians in crisis mode. Oil exporters are likely to clamp down on net exports due to "pressure" internally or outright overthrow (my view on SA).
I hope that the lack of net exports would drive the country into "man on the moon" mode without CAFE and taxes because these can be viewed as political tools -- I'm very negative on political tools (unintended consequences and all that).
Anyhow, what are the battery technologies for all the EV and PHEVs? I thought the batteries were too limited at this stage.
I think they'll desperately want to continue exports to fund social programs. I certainly think upheaval in SA is possible..but not real likely anytime soon, as long as they have the export money.
"I'm very negative on political tools"
I'm not sure what you mean. I would hope that we would use all the tools available to us as a country, and even conservative economists agree that gas taxes are a good idea. This is based on internalizing external costs - it's just good accounting.
"what are the battery technologies for all the EV and PHEVs?"
That's a critical part of the picture. The new nanotech Li-ion batteries are just now coming out - it's a bit slow because manufacturers are a bit conservative about new battery technologies. Normally adoption takes about 10 years: they're speeding things up quite a bit.
The new line of Dewalt 36-volt hand tools use them (M1 batteries from A123systems) - they're in Home Depot this weekend. They're more powerful than corded tools, and last 2-3 times longer than the battery tools that preceded them. They charge in 5 minutes: they're perfect for hybrids, and that's their next target market.
Toyota is planning to use similar batteries (there are a number of competing versions) in the next Prius, in 08. Up to 9 miles on battery (versus roughly 1.5 now), and 94 MPG (by japanese tests, which are somewhat looser than EPA). Supposed to be 99% efficient, versus NIMH which is 70% efficient for round trip charge & discharge, much faster charge & discharge to capture regenerative braking power, smaller, more power dense.
It may be plug-in, or the generation after that (roughly 2012).
What I mean is that certain countries (I thought Canada had already suggested this) would not export energy beyond what they thought they needed for themselves for the next, say, 40 years (i.e. "hoarding"). Well, if a country only has 40 years of supply then they could decide to not export anything.
"negative on political tools"
I think gas taxes are "tainted" politically because when prices are already going up, additional taxes could be seen as a punishment for certain consumers. Also, if "external costs" have anything to do with global warming, then issues are being mixed -- this could be seen as an "agenda" of leftist planners, etc.
Further, (going back one post) you said "raising gas taxes (which could be ameliorated by a matching income tax cut to low incomes". According to a study that I read in National Geographic the lowest 10% of earners in the U.S. make about $15B per year (in aggregate), but the government spends about $160B per year on programs to support that same group. So there could be no "cut to low incomes", they already don't earn even 10% of their cost of living.
"batteries"
I am very happy to hear about the battery technologies. There is hope.
On the other things: I think there is a little bit of sentiment in Canada about hoarding nat gas, but I think it's pretty small right now. It would be a big change for them to do so.
On political perceptions of gas taxes and CAFE: well, you're certainly right, that these things could get a bad image. Heck, they're not moving right now. But, I think the people who feel that way are making a mistake. GW (and all the other external costs-"criteria" pollution, congestion, security) is real, and a real cost. Gas taxes are certainly way too low to reflect the real costs of externalities...whether we can find a way to help people hurt by the transition may be the key.
" the lowest 10% of earners in the U.S. make about $15B per year (in aggregate)"
Seems kind've low. That's probably 20M people, so that would be about $750 per person per year. Even so, you could do a cash tax credit (you could even just mail it out, regardless of filing status), or reduce sales taxes, or reduce FICA. There are certainly ways to return the revenue from higher gas taxes to low income people.
Second, I think it would be more politically acceptable when the crunch starts to increase funding for the bus/train/whatever systems, rather than explicitly raise gas taxes. If we raise gas taxes, then people will try switching to diesel which puts pressure on those prices, and if we raise diesel taxes, then the still vital trucking industry will get hurt. I think it's better to ease trucking down and out via simple competition with rail. The tough part is how to make up for the tax income lost by lower consumption of gasoline and less ownership of private cars. I haven't figured that one out. I do think that once gasoline is a "luxury" item then taxes could be raised.
I believe that most of the lowest 10% of "earners" don't actually earn very much -- there is a lot of unemployment, etc. The article was about how to *really* figure out the best way to help the most disadvantaged. Since this group is basically being supported by the govt, it all comes down to how much money to give them and in what form. Should we have 15 govt programs or 3? "Tax" credits? Or something else. It just stuck in my head how this "working" poor really lived (i.e. like the book "Nickeled and Dimed").
In China .. the government controls prices. They recently raised prices again to levels which are closer to the international average.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-05/25/content_4596667.htm
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"Higher prices on oil products will encourage efficiency," said Zhang Guobao, vice-chairman of NDRC, at a seminar; while Niu Li, an economist with the State Information Centre, said they would bring domestic oil prices more in tune with the world market.
Lower domestic prices have resulted in losses for oil refiners and encouraged consumer wastage, he noted.
An NDRC statement said prices of processed oil in China are far below the international levels as the price of crude hovers around US$70 a barrel.
"The unreasonably low price was a key reason behind high resource consumption," an NDRC official said yesterday.
China's average resource consumption for per unit of GDP (gross domestic product) was 3.4 times the world average in 2004, statistics show.
Streets near gas stations were jammed on Tuesday night as car owners queued to grab the last chance to buy cheaper fuel.
Stable long-term oil supply predicted:
... and speaking of food production:
Beijing to abolish traditional plough farming in 3 years:
So, they claim that they can increase oil production, maybe hold it there for 15 years or so, and that at least one province will start implementing some conversation minded agricultural methods (better late than never I guess.)
...good on you, hillary!
Go Gore.
If I read this correctly the last paragraph might be a practical illustration of how westtexas' "declining export capacity theory" begins to work.
see page 28
http://www.simmonsco-intl.com/files/SFA%20Society%20of%20St.%20Louis.pdf
2002 36.9 mb/d
2003 37.0 mb/d
2004 37.1 mb/d
2005 36.6 mb/d
2006 37.2 mb/d
That is up .3 mb/d in four years and up only .1 mb/d in the last two years. That is NOT a fair amount, that is virtually no growth at all.
doing my best to contribute some facts about 'Tram-Trains,' as I just found out they were called, reading the KVV (Karlsruhe Verkehrsverbund) magazine.
These are trains which run on normal rail track, and when on the German national rail network use the 15,000 volt 16 2/3 hertz AC system, and when on the streetcar network then use the 750 volt DC system.
Developed under the supervision of Dieter Ludwig (a real supporter of rail/transit - the system grew from 80 kilometers to 500 kilometers under his supervision over 30 years), these tram-trains have been a huge hit, at least according to the article, and my personal experience, since I have been using them since 1996 or so. As the article says, these tram-trains changed him from being a 'missionary' approaching various local governments to becoming a refugee from the relentless requests to appear before them. Being plugged into the rail network is considered a major advantage for any community at this point.
Since 53% of the shoppers of the Karlsruhe Innenstadt (the 'core,' more or less) use rail/transit to visit/shop, shopkeepers in Karlsruhe are very big supporters of the rail system. (As Karlsruhe is very flat, bicycles are also a not trivial part of how people get around - as a guess, 5-10% of the shoppers use bicycles, especially in nice weather.) This means that public transit is by far the most commonly used way to go shopping. The merchants provide a very concrete self-interested group of streetcar supporters - after all, the wider the reach of the rail network, the broader their base of customers.
One of the most critical points in how Ludwig expanded the system is that the Karlsruhe system has used existing infrastructure. With a roughly stable population, the number of passengers has doubled over the last three decades.
Karlsruhe has just opened another route, and what I find interesting is that it is an area which in my opinion is quite American in style, built in the 1970s, it seems - true 'suburbs' where a car is necessary in a way unusual here - a friend has lived there for 6 months, and she remains shocked that there are no bakeries to walk to, no farmer's market, and nothing but houses for kilometers in all directions. Ludwig has been quite successful in turning back the seemingly endless assault of the automobile, and slowly, as the price of fuel rises, the value of his vision is becoming ever more clear - he has never been shy in proclaiming the value of streetcars improving the life of a city.
I may add, to show what a heretic Ludwig really is in terms of his career, he has always proudly proclaimed that the public good of a streetcar network vastly outweighs the inevitable cost of supporting a system which will never make a profit in business terms. Many people here are so backwards they not only aren't post-industrial, they still don't believe that cutting taxes and public services is the way to create an economic miracle - they still think economic miracles are based on hard work, engineering, and meeting the needs of the people buying your products (this might have something to do with German export success). Instead, a number of people in this region seem to be determined supporters of a public system which they consider an asset in their lives, and evidence of tax money very well spent - for example, all elementary students in Karlsruhe can get a Scool card to use the entire network for free. You just can't start teaching children too early about how to get out and about.
Their last update is May 17th and it's now the 29th. I hope they're not having problems keeping the site running. I find their news summary invaluable for peak oil related issues.
Anybody know what the story is?
BIG COAL by Jeff Goodell. Maybe others have posted -- if so, tough, read it twice.
I don't see how this is as much a crisis as an inconvenience. Especially for deepwater yes it is nicer to take a bird to the platform, but do they not have crewboats in the northsea? Surely if it is sufficient to transport groceries, mud, and tubulars, it is sufficient to transport personell.
Matt
It's an interesting shortage meme appearing all across the oil industry, not just of oil, but of everything needed to further expand access to oil.
But still looks like an investment decline over the next few years will resolve some of these issues:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2006/05/30/cnoil30.xml&menuId=242&sSh eet=/money/2006/05/30/ixcity.html
Again I would not be surprised to see (but would not condone) relaxation of environmental regulations to once again permit use of SBM's (single buoy moorings) to load oil directly into tankers offshore. Even if DTI were to permit such operations weather downtime is at least 25% in central N Sea; further north i.e. East Shetland basis or WOSI SBM's would be impossible due to prevailing swell.
It would not be surprising, however, to see the above revisited as we embark upon the energy descent - some of the more stringent health and safety rules together with planning constraints could be among the first casualties if (when) energy shortages appear.
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/05/29/global-warming-bogus/
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/05/28/comparing-gore-to-hitler/
But this is what the Los Angeles Times says today:
In December 2004, Gray predicted that the 2005 hurricane season would see 11 storms strong enough to earn names. As he watched the weather patterns grow increasingly violent, he steadily increased his predictions. By August, he had upped the forecast to 20. Twenty-eight were ultimately recorded for the season. This year, Gray is scaling back on forecasting.
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-gray30may30,1,4287740.story?ctrack=1&cse t=true
His orginal hurricane forecast tunred out to be terribly wrong - and even his late season revsision was far off. He possibly encouraged a lack of preparedness to the lethal 2005 hurricane season. Is that smart?
But most of all such a statement is utterly false in a historic perspective. Linking Al gore with the greens and greens with a anti-industrial movement, then Al Gore with fascism and its historic leader is nonsensical. Do I really have to recall that the nazi regime was totally pro-industry and pro-coporatist at an uprecedented level ?
It showes to me that even in scientific circles the cancer of bad rhetoric wracks its havoc. Such statements by a "renowned" meteorologist remind me of Axel Kahn, a renowned geneticist (well, renowned in France) who publicly discredites the local green movement by trying to show how they would be inspired by fascist theory of Gaia. Ethics and research should ALWAYS be lead by logic, documented arguments and counterarguments, careful weighing of evidence.