DrumBeat: June 11, 2006
Posted by threadbot on June 11, 2006 - 9:30am
Now for some wise words from the readers of The Oil Drum...
“So one may almost say that the theory of universal suffrage assumes that the Average Citizen is an active, instructed, intelligent ruler of his country. The facts contradict this assumption.”
—James Bryce (1909, 35)
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No, they say. We have 30 years to find an alternative. :-P
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/11/business/worldbusiness/11chinacoal.html
What got my attention: 400,000 Chinese per year die prematurely due to pollution caused by coal. And that's today: "Every week to 10 days, another coal-fired power plant opens somewhere in China that is big enough to serve all the households in Dallas or San Diego." Pollution from Chinese coal has reached the US West Coast. If this is what we're going to hang our hats on, get used to breathing with a mask when outside.
btw du is only depleted in the since that it can't be used to make nuclear bombs, it retains 90% of it's radioactivity also it's a toxin.
it's basically fallout without a bomb going off.
Fallout is dangerous because of the short lived, and hence HIGHLY radioactive fission products + irradiated soil in the area (if a ground level blast). From memory, Iodine 131 has a half life of a couple of weeks, and our bodies efficiently scavange for iodine and send it to the thyroid.
Strontium 90 has a half life of a year of so and the body treats it like calcium. And so forth.
DU is mainly U-238 with a half life of 3.5 B illion years. Not radioactive in any significant sense. Very small amounts of U-235 (half life 200+ million years) were not removed (i.e. depleted).
Uranium, like most heavy metals is toxic. Lead, cadmium, arsenic, and mercury are more toxic.
from an article describing both Afghanistanian and Iraqi contamination and DU tests:
"Two additional scientific study teams were sent to Afghanistan. The first arrived in June 2002, concentrating on the Jalalabad region. The second arrived four months later, broadening the study to include the capital Kabul, which has a population of nearly 3.5 million people. The city itself contains the highest recorded number of fixed targets during Operation Enduring Freedom. For the study's purposes, the vicinity of three major bomb sites were examined. It was predicted that signatures of depleted or enriched uranium would be found in the urine and soil samples taken during the research. The team was unprepared for the shock of its findings, which indicated in both Jalalabad and Kabul, DU was causing the high levels of illness. Tests taken from a number of Jalalabad subjects showed concentrations 400% to 2000% above that for normal populations, amounts which have not been recorded in civilian studies before.
Those in Kabul who were directly exposed to US-British precision bombing showed extreme signs of contamination, consistent with uranium exposure. These included pains in joints, back/kidney pain, muscle weakness, memory problems and confusion and disorientation. Those exposed to the bombing report symptoms of flu-type illnesses, bleeding, runny noses and blood-stained mucous. How many of these people will suffer a painful and early death from cancer? Even the study team itself complained of similar symptoms during their stay. Most of these symptoms last for days or months.
In August of 2002, UMRC [Uranium Medical Research Center] completed its preliminary analysis of the results from Nangarhar. Without exception, every person donating urine specimens tested positive for uranium contamination. The specific results indicated an astoundingly high level of contamination; concentrations were 100 to 400 times greater than those of the Gulf War Veterans tested in 1999. A researcher reported. "We took both soil and biological samples, and found considerable presence in urine samples of radioactivity; the heavy concentration astonished us. They were beyond our wildest imagination."
Zero to one.
The specific radioactivity of DU, with a half-life of 3.5 Billion years is incrediably low.
The radiation exposure from living at high altitudes (much higher cosmic ray radiation) and in granite areas (radon exposure) likely dwarf the radiation exposure from DU.
There ARE issues with heavy metal exposure. But if lead had been used instead, the effects would have been worse.
DU radioactivity is just a psuedo-science worry. And any institute that specializes in such a minimal (except for political purposes) issue, I question their results. But I will read the link if I have time.
http://www.rense.com/general69/soar.htm
Depleted Uranium - US Lung Cancer Rates Soar
From Karl W B Schwarz
kwbschwarz2@snet.net
3-9-6
So, what is the plan?
On the March 8, 2006 edition of the CNN American Morning program with Miles O'Brien and Soledad O'Brien, they made a startling announcement. On average there are 175,000 new cases of lung cancer each year in the United States. For just the months of January and February 2006 there are 172,000 confirmed, newly diagnosed cases of lung cancer. This is not just a little spike on the charts and much worse news is coming. That is already averaging this year about 6 times the normal incidence of new lung cancer cases in a year.
They tried to attribute it to second hand smoke, but second hand smoke and cigarettes are nothing compared to being exposed to Depleted Uranium ("DU") and particulates created by DU explosions. You can smoke for 30 years and not do the damage that DU can do to you in 30 days.
How long does it take to get lung cancer after being exposed to DU and nano-particulates? On average 2-5 years is the correct answer. We started bombing Afghanistan in October 2001 or four and a half years ago. We started bombing Iraq again in March 2003, or just shy of three years ago.
The effects of those bombing attacks were registered as far away as the UK according to the Aldermaston Report we and others released February 19, 2006. We do not know yet what was registered in the U.S. because the U.S. government is not saying and they definitely do not want you to know.
The link between DU exposure and lung cancer has been known for many years. The correlation between DU and lung cancer versus cigarettes and lung cancer is even stronger for DU.
What does that tell you?
And i doubt we can trust the UK Atomic Energy Authority which is just politically motivated and doing psuedo-science.
"How many additional deaths are we talking about? In the aftermath of the first Gulf War, the UK Atomic Energy Authority came up with estimates for the potential effects of the DU contamination left by the conflict. It calculated that "this could cause "500,000 potential deaths". This was "a theoretical figure", it stressed, that indicated "a significant problem"."
OTOH, Carbon 14 has a half life of about 5,730 years. One atom in every 573 "goes off" in a decade. Before atomic testing, 1 of every trillion organic carbon atoms was radioactive. Today, it is closer to 1.9 per trillion.
Let us suppose that you have a billion times more organic carbon in your body then DU. One DU atom weights almost 20 times carbon atoms (most are C12), you have 20 billion times more carbon atoms than DU atoms. So you have 25 DU atoms for every carbon 14 atom.
So DU MUST be worse than carbon 14 !
You forgot the specific radioactivity.
You will get 57,000 radioactive exposures from Carbon 14 for every one from DU. And Carbon 14 is, from memory, higher energy and MUCH more destructive radiation.
These #s and ratios are "off the top of my head" but close to reality.
Afghanis are generally spared the radiation risk of dental X-rays and get far less medical X-ray risk. OTOH, they get much higher cosmic ray and radon exposure (living in granite mountains, etc.)
DU is a toxic metal, but not excessively so (like mercury is). The radiation risk is just BS.
C-14 beta decays while DU is an alpha emitter. outside the body, beta is more penetrating, but in cellular structures i remember hearing that the larger helium nuclei could be more destructive to DNA and membranes. i'm not an expert on this, but maybe someone else could chime in.
if DU is really not much of a radiological threat in doses less than 1 gram, then it is likely the toxicity coupled with ultrafine particle size that is the cause of the diseases, cancers and birth defects. it's still a WMD and a war crime. i've worked with GaAs, and i wouldn't want to aerosolize it and then breathe it, snort it and eat it for lunch.
I am surprised that a REAL enviromental disaster, the near Doubling of organic C14 for many thousands of years passes unnoticed. After all, after 5740 years, the background C14 will STILL be be almost a half higher* than it should be IF we explode no more atomic bombs in the atmosphere. (Assuming no significant sequestration or dilution by burning C14 free fossil fuels or active volcanic emmissions).
Cancer is endemic in human beings. I truly doubt that uranium is severely carcingenic
. Any reports of clusters of cancer with DU use are likely coincidential.*An early and noteworthy study of lung cancer rates in 1950s era uranium miners (published late 1970s in Science from memory) showed that non-smoking miners had lung cancer rates roughly equal to 1 pack/day smokers that did not mine. But smoking miners had lung cancer rates almost 10 times (i.e. most of them) that of non-mining smokers. In the 1950s mining ventialtion was poor and radon exposure quite high, as well as uranium dust.
the energies are as follows:
alpha = 4.27 MeV (to Th-234) (half-life 4.5 Gyrs)
beta1 = 0.273 MeV (to Pa-234) (half-life 24 days)
beta2 = 2.20 MeV (to U-234) (half-life 7 hours)
C-14 beta decay = 0.016 MeV
thus, there is ~500 times more energy released per DU atom decaying vs. per atom C-14 decaying.
so, if 1mg of DU provides ~3000 times less events than background C-14, dividing by 500 we get ~ 6 times more radiative energy from C-14 than 1mg DU.
this is a sloppy calculation, as i am no nuclear physicist and am essentially doing high school/freshman college phsyics analysis. there are likely other subtleties i am unaware of. regardless, 1mg of DU provides a similar level of radiation to background C-14, to an order of magnitude.
this is substantial, and given the addition of alpha particles, ultra fine particle size and chemical toxicity, could render DU quite destructive to biological systems and internal organs.
At the request of the Dallas Morning News, I put together a counterargument to this article--with tremendous help from Bart Anderson, with the Energy Bulletin and Alan Drake (Alanfrombigeasy). The hard copy of the paper features the "30 Years" article on the left side of the front page of the editorial section, with our article on the right side. Unfortunately our rebuttal is not linked to the web. I've got a e-mail into the editor of the editorial page. To the paper's credit, they are doing what I asked them to do in my "Open letter to two Texas Newspapers." In any case, following is the text our article:
Has Oil Peaked? Yes: The world has used half its reserves and is headed for shortages, says Dallas geologist Jeffrey J. Brown
The Texas oil industry knows all about peak oil, because we've already gone through it.
In 1972, Texas was King of the Oil World. We had increased our oil production by 40 percent during the previous 10 years at relatively low prices. Texas producers were poised for surging production as oil prices exploded and increased tenfold by 1980. Texas underwent its biggest drilling boom in history. The number of producing wells jumped 14 percent by 1982. The industry consensus was that oil production would increase dramatically.
To general astonishment, Texas oil production fell instead, despite dramatically higher prices, frantic drilling and improving technology. By 1982, production had dropped to almost exactly what it had been in 1962, reversing the earlier 40 percent gain.
Not everyone was surprised, however. In 1956, M. King Hubbert, a native-born Texan oil geologist working for Shell Oil, got up before a meeting of the American Petroleum Institute in San Antonio and made a startling statement. He predicted that Texas and Lower 48 oil production would peak, and start irreversible declines, between 1965 and 1971. Dr. Hubbert also predicted that world oil production would peak and then decline within 50 years, by 2006.
Dr. Hubbert used complex mathematics to predict recoverable oil reserves, but his resulting model was quite simple: fields, regions and ultimately the world tend to peak, and enter irreversible declines when they have produced about half of their ultimate recoverable reserves. The underlying cause is that the largest reserves are found first because they are large and easy to find. The average size of discoveries shrinks over time, so one looks harder and harder for smaller and smaller fields, as has happened in Texas.
The Lower 48 peaked in 1970. Texas peaked in 1972. Alaskan oil production slowed the U.S. oil decline, but U.S. oil production never equaled its 1970 peak. Today, Prudhoe Bay, the largest American oil field, is now at about one-fifth of its peak production and declining rapidly.
Did we stop finding oil in Texas in 1973? No. However, it is impossible to replace old, very large oil fields, like the East Texas Field, with a collection of the much smaller fields such as we have been finding in Texas since 1972. Today, Lower 48 oil production is at about half of its 1970 output, and Texas oil production is at about one-fourth of its 1972 rate.
Dr. Kenneth Deffeyes, a former associate of Dr. Hubbert's, recently published a simplified method of predicting the total amount of oil that can be produced from a region. This method is commonly called "Hubbert Linearization," or HL. HL uses two known factors -- annual production and cumulative production to date -- to estimate the total recoverable reserves.
How reliable is the HL formula as a predictor? It shows us that the Lower 48 peaked when it was 52 percent depleted. Texas peak did not show up until our oil reserves were 57 percent depleted - but I suspect that can be explained by the Texas Railroad Commission's regulation of Texas oil production, which kept production equal to demand -- that is, below the maximum efficient rate of production.
Another example are the North Sea oil fields, where production has been falling steadily since peaking in 1999 at 52 percent of total recoverable reserves. North Sea oil production is now about one-fourth below its peak. The HL formula would have foreseen this - but the 10 major oil companies working the North Sea oil fields did not. Using the best engineers and technology available, they predicted just before what we now know was the peak in 1999 that North Sea production would peak around 2010. They were badly mistaken - but many of these same companies are now saying that world peak oil production is decades away.
The HL model says Saudi Arabia is 58% depleted and the world is 48% depleted. This is close to where Texas and the Lower 48 peaked and started irreversible declines in production. Based on the HL method and historical models, I believe that Saudi Arabia and the world are now on the verge of irreversible declines in conventional oil production.
Two legendary Texas billionaires, Boone Pickens and Richard Rainwater--who share a remarkable ability to profitably predict future trends--have looked at exactly the same regional and world data plots that I have looked at, and they have reached exactly the same conclusion that I have: that the world has used about half of its conventional crude oil reserves. Both Mr. Pickens and Mr. Rainwater have tried to warn us about the challenges that we will face as a result of declining conventional oil production.
What about unconventional sources of oil? The unconventional reserves are very large but can only be produced slowly because of high capital and energy costs per barrel of production. In recent years, new tar sands production has balanced declines in conventional Canadian oil production, with no net increase for exports.
There will be massive efforts with unconventional oil, such as Canadian tar sands and the tar and very heavy oil deposits in Venezuela. However, I predict that unconventional sources of oil will only slow--and not reverse--the decline in total world oil production because of the time and energy needed to expand production of these "oils."
Without question, we have to reduce greatly our energy consumption to account for this new reality. What can we do? I have seen two very sensible proposals.
The first is that we fund Social Security and Medicare with a tax on energy consumption, especially at the gas pump, offset by reducing or eliminating the highly regressive payroll taxes. Doing this would unleash enormous free market forces against profligate energy use.
The second proposal is that we electrify our freight railroads and encourage freight to go by rail instead of truck with any of a variety of economic incentives while building electric urban rail systems, such as DART, at a rate much faster much faster than today's pace.
Incidentally, both strategies will also find favor with those concerned about global warming.
Jeffrey J. Brown, an independent petroleum geologist in the Dallas area, can be reached at westexas@aol.com. Bart Anderson, with the Energy Bulletin, and consulting engineer Alan Drake both contributed to this article. Read more of their work at www.energybulletin.net.
It was a pleasure to be of assistance and work witn Jeffrey Brown !
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/points/stories/DN-brown_11edi.ART0.State.Edit ion1.900c598.html
This sounds like a good idea, but what if people conserve to the point that Social-Security and Medicare are underfunded? I suppose in starting out this would be filed away as a "we'll cross that bridge when/if we get to it." I can see this might be a problem with the scheme as time goes on and the Social-Security/Medicare financial obligations grow and energy usage shrinks.
Personally, with a multi trillion dollar debt and billions of dollars in deficits each year, I find it ludicrous that we are trying to make this revenue neutral. But I guess that's a discussion for another day. Also, it scares me a bit when people start messing with social security. Next, we will decide to divert those dollars somewhere else. And besides, don't we rob the social security fund each year anyway to fund the rest of the government.
If we are trying to be revenue neutral, we should compensate people with tax reductions and credits. And what about the unemployed or those who pay minimal taxes but have high energy costs.
I also think we should have tradeable carbon credits as a way to doubly reward the frugal. Save at the pump with a smaller car and make money by selling your excess credits. Even those who don't drive at all and live in small and/or efficient housing could benefit.
We need to give up all these credits that try to pick carbon winners and let the carbon market decide. Guess who will be the first to oppose carbon credits? The ethanol pushers, of course, as the true bogusness of their fuel of choice will be exposed. If it's not, so be it. At least we can decide throught the carbon market and not through debates in congress.
While solar PV is expensive (as opposed to solar thermal, which can make it without subsidies), it appears that it would not suffer under a carbon credit system which set significantly high goals as far as energy use reduction. Wind would also do fine. Biofuels? Maybe not.
FWIW, wide public acceptance of PO is a bad idea. As I stated many times, once the world acknowledges PO, Exporters will likely dramatically cut back on exports. This will be exceptional bad for the US. Obviously this is apparent to you from the article you submitted. I recommend avoid stoking MSM interest in PO. Please take a few minutes to think about the potential ramifications of your publications. I know that your not the only one doing it, but the more people that inform, the likelyhood of wide public acceptance increases.
Thanks
basically it is this. while we can afford to build more rail and electrify it now, how long do you honestly thing we would maintain it considering using your model less and less oil and natural gas every year?
Rail assets are quite long lived. The St. Charles Streetcar Line was about to renew the overhead wires for the first time since the late 1940. The new wire will be thicker (and hence last longer). I suggested added an ounce of silver per ton of copper (improves wear and strength). However, they decided against it since their would be only one source bidding that speciality mix.
If they had gone to the silver admixture, the new wire would have taken over a century to wear out. It may take that long anyway. (Old wire that lasted 60 years 2#0 , new is 4#0).
Rails last a while as well, as do concrete ties.
Some rails underneath coal trains and other VERY heavy use, can last only a dozen years. Most last much longer.
The system had been engineered for pure copper. This "alloy" I suggested has exactly the same resistance as pure Cu, AND the same capitance (less important with DC) but better mechancial properties (strength & wear) so it could have been a straight substitute.
Higher silver above one oz per ton is stronger and even better wear resistance, but higher electrical resistance.
BTW, the precise % is close to one oz/ton but mot exactly. I would have to look up notes for details.
Russian production is up year over year, but I suspect that it "up" in the same way that 1973 Texas oil production was up by 6.3% over 1971, as Texas started its (so far) irreversible decline.
Published on 3 May 2004 by Oil & Gas Journal. Archived on 3 May 2004.
A trip down memory lane: World oil production capacity model suggests output peak by 2006-07
by AM Samsam Bakhtiari
Excerpt:
Outlook
Wocap's predictions for a global oil production peak of about 81 million b/d in 2006 or 2007 lately have been reinforced by the clouded predicament for the world's two largest producers, Saudi Arabia and Russia.
Should non-OPEC champion Russia stumble, or OPEC pillar Saudi Arabia show signs of falling in step with Simmons's thesis, then Wocap's credibility would be further enhanced.
This reinforces what I have thought for years: people who develop these models need to track their predictions, analyze their mistakes, then go public with their mistakes and reanalysis. Otherwise there is no credibility. This is my biggest beef with Campbell - I've virtually stopped reading his stuff. He ignores the previous poor predictions, and carries on as if nothing happened, like the Jehovahs Witnesses predicting armageddon 4-5 times (I forget exactly) already this century, each time with absolute biblical certainty. Doesn't exactly build confidence going ahead.
This is partly why is don't reject RR's assertions of continued production growth. I just wish I could see a better analysis that includes a good discussion of depletion (which I understand is not available so we don't need to reopen that). To date, the peakers have been wrong and may or may not be this time.
BTW, the cornucopians are just as bad or worse so I'm not making a case for them.
In any case, based on the HL method Saudi Arabia and the world are now arriving at the same point at which Texas and the Lower 48 nosedived.
Yes but cornucopians keep ignoring that unconventional sources will always have a low production rate compare to conventional sources (see this last article from the Uppsala Hydrocarbon Depletion Study Group).
I like what you, westexas, stuart and others do on TOD because you state your assumptions, make your predictions, they make sense, and I expect that if things turn out differently the reasons would become part of an open, honest discussion, not swept under a rug.
WESTEXAS-
I hope I can ask this correctly. I guess my question is (setting demand related increases in price aside) Will solar panels always be expensive (in relationship to oil) because of the energy it takes to make them? I thinking of getting some installed and was curious.
Thanks Dave
IMO, based on what I have read, a better use of captial is probably a smaller, more energy efficient home. A group in the Dallas/Fort Worth area designed a 2,000 square foot home with a current construction cost of about $115 per square foot that uses about $55 per month in total energy costs. www.heathershome.info
The best idea is to arrange you life so that you have a minimal or no drive lifestyle.
I pretty much buy Westexas' HL models and am waiting to see if they pan out (looks that way so far). I just think Campbell, Deffayes and others have harmed the process not only through several wrong predictions but especially by the way they don't explicitly own up to and explain what went wrong.
And the charges here against Campbell are totally unfounded - I have read many times his admission of revisions to his models, and he points it out repeatedly when he does revise. You need to look at the back numbers of the ASPO newsletters!
As I mentioned recently, I've realized that I am often pressed to "make a prediction", as in "So what do YOU think is going to happen", usually accompanied by some sort of glare. If I even hint at something "predictive", that's all that will be remembered as ammunition when this "prediction" doesn't come to pass. It's just another excuse to avoid looking objectively at the real issues, which, I'm constantly told, "takes too much time". By people who play video games 5 hrs a day...
The scary part is what we due to address the problem. And whether or not we do a bunch of stupid and counterproductive things to address the problem. And how we define the problem.
If the problem is just defined as having world where oil becomes scarcer and more expensive, there are workarounds. But if the problem includes addressing oil shortages while attacking global warming, then we have a big problem. Biofuels will have little impact and may actually be counterproductive. Wind will help. Solar will help. Coal is killing us and will kill us.
China has already chosen the coal path. They are opening up a coal plant about every week. The U.S. is also increasing its coal capacity and will continue to do so without sequestration, gasification, or offsets.
I think we know how not to freeze in the dark without a lot of oil. We know how to build homes that use little or not energy for heating or cooling. We know how to cost effectively produce plenty of hot water with solar heating. We know how to run a transportation system without a helluva lot less oil than we use now.
We know all these things but we only do them in onesies and twosies. We have a few individuals who are effectively addressing their energy consumption on an individual basis. We debate and debate about the best approach, but we don't need the best approach. We need a set of approaches that are mandated now. We need to desperately institute a set of policies, incentives, and disincentives that stop inertia now. Education is part of it but how many people realize it makes sense now to solarize their home (at least water heating) but are doing nothing. In some cases there is still a financial issue because of up front costs. But what about those who can clearly afford to do something. It's inertia. How do we address inertia?
We don't like to use the club in this country. But it's time we brought out the clubs. For example, all new housing need a mandate that it be solarized, that it be built in a way that minimizes energy consumption. If that's considered too expensive, then selectively subsidize it.
We will spend anything to fight terrorism, real and perceived. The same principle should apply to the consumption of fossil fuels.
We have a crisis and the crisis is not peak oil; it is having too much fossil fuel, not too little.
Be careful what you ask for! The mandates that come out of Washington just might not be what you want!
Suppose "They" mandate that all registered Democrats have to drive small fuel efficient cars to save enough fuel so the registered Republicans can continue to drive their big SUVs? Take a real good look at some of the "mandates" that have come out of DC (generally unfunded <BG>)
The Government that governs best governs least!
Goes all the way back to the founders of the Country.
Unfortunately, the only way PO will be solved is thru the price/market mechanisms. A $1 rise in the price of oil will do more to solve the problem than any government action. It will be painful, but it will happen. One gallon and one person at a time.
Any comment about the future, however hedged with provisos, can be selectively quoted / misquoted and subsequently misunderstood. Often the media seem to take pleasure in fostering that, lol.
Making predictions has become a mug's game because of the way they are reported and distorted, and the apparent general lack of understanding that a prediction is only an educated guess about the future. I must be a mug 'cos I do quietly make public predictions, but semi-anonymously and I'm just another nut on the net: http://theslide.blogspot.com/
This last week a US bank / trading house revised its metals' average price predictions for 2006 - it increased its estimate for gold by 25% and for copper by 100%. I must admit that copper has surprised me too, but I am consistently better than these 'professional' organisations. The truth is: they mostly haven't understood that some fundamentals have changed and are still working off old, now inaccurate, models.
I rember very well thinking that when about the degree of courage displayed when Murphy Oil decided that Hibernia was a good investment when the break even was more twenty dollar oil. In the rear view mirror ... not much of controversy only the rear view mirror is not how the world works.
Robert Rapier has stated that the company he works for had intelligence which indicates that the peak is sometime in the future. I believe his view in the abstract. In the current reality ... "well maybe" ... "kinda sorta" ... "yes if" .. "we should be able to." If all of these views reflect the future then "yes " peak oil is out in the future ... maybe even a Cambridge Energy distance in the future.
Once again and for the record, I am not a doomer, in that I believe that a bit of market imposed pain and the vast opportunities for conservation and alternative engergy of almost all sorts [exept for corn based ethanol] can get us through provided governments don't get too involved and totally hose things up. In additional, although everything will not in all likelihood go well, everything is also not likely to go wrong.
They also need to give a confidence interval on their prediction! these predictions are built on very imprecise and uncertain data. Saying peak date= 2005 + / - 1 year at 81 + / - 5 mbpd would have avoid a lot of criticism.
Does a more lucrative situation lead to increased incidents of excrement ... well 'yes," but anytime your model is based on best case, the end result is doomed.{ :-)
Reason?
These guys like Ronald Bailey are libertarians!
Those choices might cover driving a Hummer or a Surburban, converting pristine land to human (ab)use, etc. They're crazy.And if we have any libertarians on the board, I mean to offend them. How can you go about dealing with peak oil and climate change when your philosophy is "I can do any god damn thing I please and nobody can tell me otherwise"?
I suppose you would agree with Dick "Dick" Cheney that the American lifestyle is non-negotiable. That is, the freedom to do any damn thing you please. How do you think we got into this mess to begin with? There is such a thing as community and doing what's best for it. In this age of globalization, we might regard the whole world as the community we live in. And doing what's best for it is not to have everybody running around doing any selfish thing they want to do.
Define the policital spectrum any way you like, but IMO the most objective range is between statists of all stripes and anarchists. Neither works for the average man. The choice is something like the social democrats [although I don't know that they have any philosophical limits] and something like the U.S. Constitution which as amended [but not as it has "lived and breathed"] severly limits central government, expressly lists certain rights of "the people" and leaves it to men to prevail over their local governments such as cities and states for everything else. Because the rules for the social democrats are not fixed, the end game can potentially be just as nasty as for Nazis of Communists ...
A belief that is false to fact, will fail economically in short order, whether that belief is held by Cheney or Ted Kennedy or any other irrational jackass. The only question is how much damage any particular bit of stupidity will do before its day is done. Stated another way, whether one goes into the ditch with Kennedy or Cheney the end result is still going into the ditch.
Dave, I have read and agreed with a lot of what you have written. You seem to believe that there are solutions or at least prospect.
Please do not confuse Cheney with market solutions, or God forbid small "l" libertarianism.
Busting heads will get you no where. I considered myself a libertarian, until I read Rothbard's "Libertarian Manifesto" It was at that point that I realized Libertarianism is a altruistic social order that simply won't work with the population levels in the world today. I also suspect that Brians "snark" back to your comment, was meant to tell you to cool down, your blood pressure is up again.
I would also suggest to any Libertarian that might be here, to read Murry's work. In doing so ask yourself; Will this really work in our society today?
Think the U.S. Constituion and the lawful means to amend it. The U.S. has enacted some truly ugly amendments [Prohibition of alcohol for example] but what was done was lawful. If the country [Senate and the States] believes the Federal Government needs to dink around with the energy market, at least it would be legal. If it discovers that it has made an error, [e.eg. Prohibition of alcohol] it can be repealed. Nothing happens fast, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. It is legal. Accordingly although I may not like it, it works for me.
Re: "they believe if they do something that doesn't have an effect on you or any one else it is O.K."
Almost everything you do has an effect on someone else whether you recognize it or not. It's some fantasy to believe otherwise.
Re: "your blood pressure is up again"
Guess so. But you (oldhermit) seem to agree with me. It is this libertarian attitude that has constributed substantially to the particularly American point of view that individual freedom is more important than the good of the society as a whole. There is a more realistic middle position that freedoms can be restrained by reasonable rules (sometimes, laws) that restrict freedom. That's why murder is illegal. See my remark above to dipchip that what we do usually affects others. Suppose you own an SUV that gets 12/mpg and you commute 100 miles (both ways) a day to work. Surely you can agree that this behavour affects others (carbon emmissions, gasoline usage, damage to road infrastructure, etc.).
TOD is partly about changing our behavour to save this planet and keep the economy stable as we switch to new energy sources. Sorry, but this not compatible with a strictly libertarian philosophy. And yes, I appreciate my individual freedoms but try not to abuse them to the detriment of others. Of course, that is not always possible.
best, Dave
Reduce the population of the USA from 300 million to 100 million and most of our lost freedoms could be restored - Under either a Democrat or a Republican as President.
Gee Whiz: I was under the impression that is exactly what Libertarians practiced.
So, there it is.
I am in no mood to fuck around with this topic. In a world in deep trouble, I refuse to debate the legitimacy of crazy people like Bailey who posts at reason.com. And furthermore, I posted Friday on serious questions about Qatar's North Field, supposedly the largest natural gas field. You didn't have much to say about that, did you?
This is The Oil Drum. We are serious people. Reality-based. Get real or get off.
In regard to the sins of Walmart, a corporation is a legal construct, an artificial human. What is you point?
BTW, the most radical libertarians have a solution to the "tragedy of the commons" in that they belive that there should be no such thing as a common holding.
Once again Dave, I am not trying to pick a fight. It just seems that you are on one tonight. Maybe I am also [too many Sam Adams perhaps?]
Please post the changes you would like to see to the U.S. Constituion that would enable the legal implementation of your preferred solution. Thanks. GJ
I have a proposed change to the Consitution. Combine the Treasury and Federal Reserve into a 4th branch of the government. This branch would be constitutionally bound to secure the long term financial condition of the country (i.e. accrual accounting). This 4th branch would be designed to balance the spending profligacy of the Prez and Congress.
She opposed immigration, yet was an immigrant herself.
She opposed infidelity, yet cheated on her husband.
She espoused individuality, yet believe that only those who follow her are individuals.
She opposed the control of individuals by organizations, yet lauded corporate power.
But then what else would do you expect from a obvious megalomaniac and wanna-be cult leader?
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard23.html
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/raimondo1.html
"Nathaniel! Bring me another gin and tonic!"
Sounds to me like they are trying to make a case for WWIII.
Yet on the other hand, those same companies need to privatize the remaining state-owned oil reserves because they've depleted their own oil fields and can't keep up with the demand.
In other words, Bailey implicitly admits that private ownership of oil supplies doesn't make them last forever. Privatizing the state-owned fields wouldn't solve the Peak Oil crisis, but only postpone it.
By the way, anarchists endorse communal (and usually direct democratic) management of shared resources to fight the tragedy of the commons.
Part of the reason that I am pesimistic about middle eastern supplies is that big private oil and big government oil companies probably aren't going to give a damn about the small opportunities that abound. When the elephants die, will those entities pursue the mice with vigor or merely try to milk dead elephants?
In May, there was this:
Fossil fuels consume big portion of food costs
Today, there's a followup of sorts:
Food, energy woes can change people's ideas of community
the '10 fossil calories/food calorie' is a number I've blithely tossed around unchecked - when describing our energy predicament to friends who care but don't have much information yet. Does anyone have an original source for this now familiar Statistic? I don't really doubt it's essentially true, but it would be responsible to back it up, and to be able to understand the assumptions that went into it.
Beyond that, and not just to nitpick, I have been thinking that it would possibly become very useful to start figuring out the EROEI's of different food products, including packaging. I'm almost convinced that one policy direction (to once again overburden the food-producers, and further drive up that Energy/Calorie ratio), would be to include that number on the packaging of foods, or otherwise get it out there to the public, maybe even include a tax on food items based on this number as part of the 'energy tax' proposal.. then again, that's probably 'double-taxing' in that case.. After all, that average energy cost has got to be very different for a bowl of local oats than it is for a box of prepackaged ring-dings, both in the energy required to produce, promote and package it, as well as the energy/nutrition that it offers to the consumer (which clearly would need to be measured in more than just 'pure' calories, if you believe in such a thing)
Bob Fiske
Iceberg Lettuce is mostly water. To eat enough Iceberg Lettuce to get your daily needs of Protein you have to eat 400 pounds of it. 400 pounds of Iceberg lettuce alone.
My diet you could eat all the Iceberg lettuce plain or with salt and pepper you wanted. I said, I promised if you stuck to this diet you would lose weight in 6 months or less.
Reality if you did this diet you would likely strave to death, problem solved. It was fiction.
I bet if you eat a lot of organically or home-grown foods you get less than 10 to 1 , oil to food ratios.
But I use refridgeration, I cook on NG, I eat red meat and fish, and fowls, I bake with packaged flour, not local water milled stuff. The list goes on and on. In the USA we do, but world wide in every family that is not that case.
Would be nice to know where it got started and who has actually done the study on the 100,000 food products(see note) we eat today.
@ Note: No clue how many food products there really are, likely no one else does either, but its big enough to make you think and small enough to make a good random sampling cross section really work for figuring up the fossil fuel calories to food calories ratio.
http://www.dieoff.com/page55.htm
Dale Allen Pfeiffer's excellent (and shorter, lol) "Eating Fossil fuels" (2004):
http://www.fromthewilderness.com./free/ww3/100303_eating_oil.html
Looks like the pretend negotiations should go on until the G8. That will give me time to get the vataion in. After that bring on the hurricanes and geo-political storms.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/06/10/MNGEPJBTKH1.DTL
The US keeps taking positions that no sane leader would agree to. Suspend enrichment (which Iran is legally entitled to under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty) before any talks about Iran suspending nuclear enrichment. In the meantime, the US refuses any security guarantees, meaning that even if Iran agrees to stop enrichment, the US will still invade if it feels like it. Such a deal!
Read all about it, courtesy of Reuters.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L07705320.htm
- Last year, world biofuel production surpassed 670,000 barrels per day, the equivalent of about 1 percent of the global transport fuel market - presumably that is gross production, no mention of EROI.
- The new report... is a comprehensive assessment of the opportunities and risks associated with the large-scale international development of biofuels - that's good if done right.
- Brazil is the world’s biofuel leader, with half of its sugar cane crop providing more than 40 percent of its non-diesel transport fuel - that doesn't jive with RR's numbers?
- Figures cited in the report reveal that biofuels could provide 37 percent of U.S. transport fuel within the next 25 years, and up to 75 percent if automobile fuel economy doubles - ditto, big time.
- It is essential that government incentives be used to minimize competition between food and fuel crops and to discourage expansion onto ecologically valuable lands - burn your cake and eat it too?
Their recommendations include:- Strengthen the Market. Biofuel policies should focus on market development, ...
- Speed the Transition to Next-Generation Technologies...
- Protect the Resource Base. Maintaining soil productivity, water quality, and myriad other ecosystem services is essential. National and international environmental sustainability principles and certification systems are important for protecting resources as well as maintaining public trust in the merits of biofuels.
- Facilitate Sustainable International Biofuel Trade. Continued rapid growth of biofuels will require the development of a true international market in these fuels, unimpeded by the trade restrictions in place today. Freer movement of biofuels around the world should be coupled with social and environmental standards and a credible system to certify compliance.
Sounds to me like the usual republican (I won't call it "conservative") call for voluntary, market-based hand-waving. I believe that will utterly fail in preventing the exploitation and destruction of third-world peoples and ecosystems for the feeding of SUVs in the first world.Note who starred at the conference:
The report’s findings were discussed today at a conference on Capitol Hill hosted by Worldwatch President Christopher Flavin ... Participants included ... the private sector, governments, international agencies, and nongovernmental organizations. Speakers at the opening session included ... Paul Wolfowitz; Thomas Dorr, Under Secretary at the U.S. Department of Agriculture; ... James Woolsey, ... former Director of CIA; John Podesta, President and CEO of the Center for American Progress; and representatives from DaimlerChrysler AG, Iogen Corporation, and CHOREN Industries...
What gives? Even Worldwatch has sold out?
Why not read the study first.
One thing I'd never seen before: "inclines." They're vertical, cable-driven railroads (funiculars). Pittsburgh once had as many as 15 of them. They were used to transport people from the river valley up to neighborhoods built at the tops of overlooking hills. Now there are two left, and they are used mostly as tourist attractions. People living on Mount Washington drive up these days. (Though I shudder to think what those roads must be like in winter. They are really, really steep.)
(Click for larger version.)
Where did you eat?
We ate at a small restaurant next to the incline lookout. It was actually pretty good, and not too expensive. I was expecting the food to be bad, because the view was so good. They're usually inversely proportional. ;-)
We considered eating at that restaurant that puts french fries in the sandwiches, and a couple of other well-known Pittsburgh lunch spots, but there was no parking.
But they are a decade or two away from being where they were in the 1980s and even further away from the 1930s.
However, I had to take a fairly long drive to the North Side to get printer cartridges -- why? Because there was no Office Max, Staples etc. within the city center between the two rivers (the Allegheny and the Monongahela which together form the Ohio. And the reason for that is there are no big malls in the city center. The malls require space for parking lots of cars and sufficient space doesn't exist in the city.
I will have to guess, but a 30 space parking lot and a "smaller than normal" store. No furniture sold there for example, except orders and delivered to store.
The restaurants need more parking at night, the store closes earlier than others at 6 or 6:30 PM I think, thereby freeing up parking.
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Nude_cyclists_race_around_world_to_0610.html
"It looks like he believes peak oil and peak energy are nearly this same."
Yes, that's an error many people make....
Roger Conner known to you as ThatsItImout
Wind turbine technology is not yet mature. Add 25 more years of development and even more energy can be extracted than current calcuations show with good EROEI.
Hot rock geothermal still has potential IMHO.
Hydroelectric still hae unexploited potential although the cream has been developed.
Perhaps low cost PV production will FINALLY be solved.
And solar thermal for both process and electricity has some potential (a reason for some people in Phoenix would be to support solar thermal process industries). Perhaps a good use for some of that ruined irrigated farm land that was "developed".
Biomass is in it's infancy, despite being our first energy source.
The transisition will not be easy, and may not be successful, but it is possible IMO.
Not to mention summer time solar hot water, which everybody should have. Easy and cheap.
Line focus vapor solar thermal cycles do well, and point focus could do better. A few days ago I was watching a little 100 watt stirling putting out 38% (electricity out/heat in) efficiency; and this is 60Hz-120 VAC power ready for use, not that effete DC stuff exuded by PV.
But keeping first things first, lets cut the population to 1/2- 1/5 by seeding the populace with super attractive sexually energetic robots, so that no union results in more of us. Not that? Ok, what else works? TV zombyizing? Unsprung bikes?
Signed,
Lonesome Nomore
Sorry just had to throw that in there.
Been married twice, no kids. Brother and his wife married 15 years, no kids. We are the only two children of our parents. This family did its part how about yours?
Overshoot and collapse is still the most likely scenario because our leaders are taking no intelligent actions to achieve a planned powerdown.
Even if we had more resources the model in "Limits to Growth" predicts it would only buy us another couple decades before pollution started shutting us down.
I might agree with Howe, that if you want to plot the long curves ("for the 100 years after 2050") you are going to see more than one kind of fossil energy deplete. That might make them "nearly" the same, for some meanings of "nearly" ;-)
I think oil and natural gas will see depletion before 2050, and depending on (a) inventions and (b) global warming, coal may see depletion around or after 2050.
I don't expect methane clathrates to be depleted in this timeframe ;-)
Comments TODers? This guy seems baffled by the whole situation. Seems he needs a good one on one conversation with Westexas.
For some time SA has claimed to have substantial additional production capacity, all of it heavy/sour, but "there are no buyers".
So, I am speculating that their light/sweet production has recently dropped by 300,000 bpd, and they added that much heavy/sour production in order to keep up the aggregate numbers. But, "there are no buyers", probably due to lack of refining capacity for those grades. They may have filled their available storage with oil they can't sell, and are now forced to cut the overall production.
If true, we might expect to see further production cuts as their production of light/sweet grades decline.
There were some high level meetings between Saudi Arabia and China last winter
http://www.pinr.com/report.php?ac=view_report&report_id=445&language_id=1
I wonder if the agreements included a chinese promise not to undermine Saudi Arabia's future income by exporting electric cars.
When I went to Saudi Arabia in 1980, my employer gave me several books to read in order that I might better understand the culture. One of these books was "The Arab Mind".
http://tinyurl.com/fdnya
This book, first published in 1973 is revised every few years and is still being sold by Amazon. To "lose face" is the most disastrous thing that can happen to a person of Middle East culture. And that is exactly what will happen to the Saudi's when it is finally revealed that their reserves are only a fraction of the 260 billion barrels they are reporting. They will do anything and everything in their power to delay the release of their actual reserve numbers. And when, for obvious reasons, they can deny them no more, they will blame everything on the former four oil companies that started ARAMCO. They will claim they were mislead and robbed by these oil companies.
Also, I am a little dubious about Iran holding oil off the market and storing it in tankers. A typical tanker holds about one million barrels of oil, (actual range is from about 600,000 barrels to about 1,500.000 barrels or 80,000 to 200,000 dwt's). There can be no more expensive way to store oil than aboard sea going tankers. If they were holding 300,000 barrels per day off the market they would have to rent a new tanker every three days just to store the oil, in a time when there is an extreme scarcity of tankers. Perhaps the author meant "tanks" instead of "tankers". At any rate I am dubious that they are storing that much oil anywhere. They are just as capable of closing the taps as the Saudi's are. Oil left in the ground in Iran would not be "lost" any more than oil left in the ground in Saudi Arabia would be lost. And that would be a whole lot cheaper than renting tankers. Storing the oil in tankers is just too absurd to be true.
The recipe for books like Patai's is simple. Claim that normal characteristics of human beings such as venality, ignorance, and bad work habits are actually defining features of the collective psychology of some group of foreigners. But Patai's book is worse than many others of its genre. It's full of semi-Freudian psychobabble and a crude version of the Whorf hypothesis--the Arabs are late for appointments because Arabic has a defective system of tenses. The ideological agenda of the book is painfully obivous--the Israeli Patai is concerned to explain why Arabs should be treated like children. My basic problem with the book however, is not that it is politically incorrect but that it is just plain incorrect.
Have you ever heard of wasta? Wasta is what gets you a job in Saudi Arabia if you are a Saudi. Wasta is what determins whether you pay a traffic ticket or not. Wasta determins whether you get promoted or not, ability or incompetence has absolutely nothing to do with it. Wasta is exactly why there are 5 million expats working in Saudi Arabia today and massive unemployment among the Saudis.
To claim that there are not dramatic differences in Arab culture and Western culture is nothing more than politically correct B.S.
In America, connections get you a job. At every job I've worked, the vast majority of hires are made by personal recommendation - not by interviews with strangers based on qualifications. Foreigners without green cards tend to get rougher treatment.
I know for a fact that if you're a politician's son, connections can protect you from a traffic ticket.
In many jobs promotions depend on connections. Do you think it's a coincidence that the CEO of Ford is a Mr. Ford?
So I don't buy this idea of an "Arab Mind." I think it's more accurate to say that countries like Saudi Arabia are too newly rich to have as much rule of law as America. I wouldn't attribute this to the racial or national "character" of the people who live there.
EVERYONE get's promoted on the basis of their wasta, NOT on their ability. Incompetent people are promoted and the competent never get promoted based on wasta.
No, a thousand times no, it is NOT that way in America or in Europe for that matter. The competent rise to the top and the incompetent settle in at the bottom. And that is why things work. Yes, there are exceptions in America where connections occasionally get you something. But in Saudi there are NO exceptions. You must have wasta or you get nowhere. And if you do have wasta you climb to the top even though you are a total incompetent.
If this were so, why are almost all CEOs white men? Why has every president in history been a white Christian man? Why are blacks and hispanics so likely to be poor in America?
Don't get me wrong - America is by far the least connections-oriented country. America enjoys a large middle class in which competence counts for more than anywhere else. But I wouldn't say that America is "mostly" competence-oriented. That would be dishonest.
This makes me wonder why more infor doesn't leak about what is really happening in Saudi Arabia with the oil fields if there are so many Americans and Brits in technical and management position over there ?
the competent do not always have the "gift off the gab", they can't always talk their way through a difficult situation. the competents will give you the "cold hard truth", right or wrong.
But the incompetent have no expertise per se, and normally have no morals either, yet they have connections, they manage to stay or advance from where they are. thus the incompetence people get promoted.
sad but true.
Expending energy on racism is not going to help anyone cope with peak oil.
Saudi Arabia is basically a Sunni nation. However the Eastern Province, where all the oil is located is primarily Shiite. (Sometimes spelled Sheite.) But the Sunnis run Aramco. Shiites have jobs but they never get promoted. If you are Shiite you do not have wasta in Saudi Arabia. Of course wasta comes in varying degrees and not all Sunnis have wasta. Incompetent people get promoted simply because they have wasta. They do not have to perform because they know they cannot be fired because of their wasta. Very good and competent people never get promoted because they have no wasta. They have no hope of ever making a better life for themselves and their family. Wasta is the purest form of racism in the world. What makes wasta so bad is that it is accepted as right and just in all Arab nations, just as we once accepted slavery as just and right.
People who deny the racism of wasta, of Saudi Arabia, of all Arab states, are simply ignorant and uniformed. They just love to point the crooked finger at people who write books on the subject and cry "racist, racist, racist". But I have lived there for five years. I have talked to those with wasta and to the pitiful and downtrodden who have no wasta. I know who the real racists are and it is not those who write books explaining the problem. Of course it is not the politically correct either. They simply blinded by their overwhelming desire to be politically correct on every problem that comes down the pike.
These issues matter in relationship to the oil problem because there is such a huge temptation either to ignore the reality of cultural differences or to find it convenient to demonize or infantalize the people of other countries. Understanding foreign cultures--or our own, for that matter--requires both empathy and objectivity. And you do have to take into account the political context of interactions between Arabs and non-Arabs, instead of assuming that every bit of behavior is the expression of some mysterious national esssence.
I lived with the Saudis for five years and I know the things, well most of the things, stated in the book are exactly correct. I found absolutely nothing racist about the book and I read it cover to cover. But then I do not notice a lot of things that the politically correct seem to always notice.
No, the Saudis do not have 260 billion barrels of reserves with another 200 billion barrels soon to be found. That is totally and completely absurd. But the point is most Saudis actually believe that stuff. They actually believe that they can increase production, by drilling more wells in the Persian Gulf and inland, that they can increase production to 12 million barrels per day by 2010.
Now suddenly their production starts to drop. It drops dramatically by 400,000 barrels per day in just two or three months. What DO you tell the world. You tell them anything in order to keep up the façade of invincible production ability. After all, their repetition rides on it. They are king of the hill as far as production goes. They will not give up that prestegous position without a fight.
Saudi Arabia has from 60 to 70 billion barrels of reserves and they are producing flat out and pulling about 9,100,000 barrels per day. Well, that is my opinion anyway. You can believe they have 260 billion barrels of proven reserves, with another 200 billion soon to be found, and that they are only "voluntarily" cutting back on production if you wish. But if so then there is a lot about the Arab mind that you do not realize.
Meanwhile. I expect that the government of Saudi Arabia, like the governemnt of Iran, the government of Israel, the government of the U.S. and, probably, the government of Utopia, doesn't like to lose face and lies a lot to prevent embarassment. What this has to do with being an Arab beats me. I must be one of them bemused liberals.
The concept that there are no difference in cultures is nothing but political correctness gone to seed. And such a silly theory can only be professed by someone who has not lived for several years in a land with an entirely different culture.
I did my homework before I ever went to Saudi Arabia. My employer required it. (First Dravoe Utilities then Aramco.) I got along just fine with the Saudis. I learned how to behave around them. I never offended them. I have been in their home and drank wine and sadiki with them. Yes, Saudis DO drank wine an sadiki. Sadiki is like vodka. It is brewed in a home still from pure sugar.
I would never stereotype Saudis because they are as different from each other as you and I are different. But every Saudi knows his place in their culture, and has no hope of ever escaping from that place if his status is on the low rung of the culture, if he has no wasta. And no matter how low his status, every woman in Saudi Arabia is even lower. They are the lowest of the low. And that is sad. But it is made even worse by people who deny such sexism, such racism, even exists.
And yes, there is no lengths a Saudi will not go to to avoid losing face. I understand this is a concept totally foreign to Westerners. That is why so many Westerners, like yourself, choose to deny the existance of this phenomena.
Saud is a family, not a nation or a culture, be my guest if you wish to insult them. Not friends of mine.
Thank you for understanding my motivation so much better than I do myself.
I'm sure Wasta is the cock of the walk over in SA, but I wonder how it compares to the sly effectiveness of 'WASPA'..
I don't have any intention of suggesting that there isn't a serious problem with racism over there, as the 'splinter in their eye', so to speak.. But I was watching PBS' NewsHour a couple months ago, and heard David Brooks talk about this "sense that the culture of the Arab world and the culture of Iraq is just not compatible with democracy." ..as an explanation for why the new government was stumbling, and the insurgency was still surging. Again, we forget the mote in our own eyes, in the form (in this case) of democracies we've actively undermined.. Iraq, Haiti, because we were ourselves incompatible with the will of the people, while propping up dictators and warlords who seemed to suit our immediate purposes, even if they cost us very dearly in the long run. (Osama, Mugabe, Pinochet, Taliban, Saddam)
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(My daughter just wanted to say her piece, too)
"Sometimes satan comes as a man of peace".. Waspa, it's gonna be big!
Democracies we've actively undermined! He, he, surely you jest. Not that they would not have been better off if we had just kept our troops at home, but calling these nations "democracies" is not just an insult to any democracy, it is an insult to any good dictionary.
Is there a dispute that Aristide won two elections by considerable margins?
What is more insulting to democracy? Arming and Funding dictators and paramilitaries who have turned reliably into terrorists, or allowing sometimes imperfectly elected governments to iron out their ruffles, while the world watches us and hopes that we manage iron out ours?
I'm so glad we don't have any hangups here about sex..
http://www.iranian.ws/iran_news/publish/article_15953.shtml
Is it just to save face? They aren't meeting their OPEC quota anyway
If there is no market for their very heavy crude, they could just mark the price down and sell it now. Am I wrong here also? Or they could just leave it in the ground and extract it later when there was a market. And I know I am correct here unless someone can explain why oil not extracted today would be lost tomorrow. The Saudis may be deceptive but they are not fools. They know oil not extracted today will still be available tomorrow. Why do the Iranians not understand this as well as the Saudis do? Why are they contracting tankers to act as storage drums?
"floating storage capacity" may just be the cover story.
BTW, a lot of what is in the strategic petroleum reserve is the just the sort of heavy nasty stuff that is least likely to find buyers during time of high refinery uliliation.
On last point: Thers is / was apparently a glut of Williston Basin and other heavy crudes from ND WY and Alberta. This glut [similar to what the Saudis are reporting] IIRC has recently resulted in in relatively low refined product prices in the parts of the Rocky Mountain and Upper Midwest Regions.
The BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2006
Here are my questions:
- What foods provide the largest nutritional bang for the smallest time investment buck? (It's not that I'm lazy, my thinking is that the less trouble per plant, the higher total yield possible as I can plant more)
- What is a minimalistic emergency survival diet that will fulfill my nutritional needs? In other words, what X crops must I grow to avoid malnutrition?
Has anyone else started growing their own food, bee keeping, raising fowl etc? Several in my family have recently started this in preparation for possible food scarcity, I wonder if it is a significant trend?Okra has value but it is unpleasant to harvest.
Georgia you can grow just about anything you want and get in about or really close to an all year growing season. To do this you have to use in-ground storage of several crops that will sweeten as they over-winter in the ground, and get dug before they go into thier second season.
What are you able to store? Depends on you and only you know this answer. But you have a fresh food that needs to be canned (cooked in jars, or pickled, or jellied) if you have large amounts of it. Do you have the needed tools and storage skills, or can you learn real fast. 20 jars of Tomatoes going bad on you can make your pasta really plain for a few months. But if all your Potatoes rot in storage you could strave.
I would seriously look into the Native plants that grow in your area and check them out before you bring in a lot of seed store varieties and depend on them to grow like the pictures on the package look like.
Winter Sorrel is a tiny common lawn weed. The best source of Vitamin C in the wild almost bar none. The Pilgrams were introduced to it. Looks like a tiny shamrock. Pale to medium green, its southern peak was about a month ago. What few are left out there now have likely no seed pods left. The plant in peak has small white flowers with Square Candle shaped vertical pods, a great burst of tart lemon in the whole plant stems and all.
As above, just knowing what grows wild can mean a lot more to you than what is just growing in your garden. Get as familar with the living giving plants and animals in your area as you can.
Good feild guides and good books on planting, storing and survival are a must. And never be afraid to ask us older green thumbs, ( or crazy SciFi authors ) for help.
Charles Owens Known to you as Dan Ur
SCOTT BURNS: THE AIRSTREAM CHRONICLES RED RIVER, N.M.
Excerpt:
There is little to take care of, and everything we need is at hand. Daily life has suddenly become simple. It's easy to wonder: Why do we let our normal lives become so complicated?
For the first - and probably only - time in our lives, we are living in a gated community. The Roadrunner RV Resort provides residents with a temporary gate card. And we are surrounded by beauty that is somewhere between priceless and very pricey.
We are also surrounded by easy community. Without ceremony or much attention to detail, we arrange to cook outdoors and share two dinners with neighbors across the creek.
Nearby, three couples from Fort Worth have arrived with eight children and all their assorted equipment - bicycles, ATVs and fishing rods. The kids, only yards from their parents, skip stones in the creek.
We can't remember how long it's been since we could arrange impromptu dinners with friends. Definitely years. Maybe decades.
Perhaps, we wonder, it isn't the speed of our lives that makes community so difficult. Maybe it's just the incredible bulk of our possessions and shelter.
On our morning walk, stunned by the beauty of the mountains and the clear blue sky, my wife and I nod as we experience a simultaneous revelation, a fundamental concept buried under decades of contrary advertising.
It is not necessary to own something to experience it. Some things are better experienced without thought to ownership.
In respose to the opinion piece offered in the xxxx from June 8th about oil companies I'd offer you this.
Of the three mentioned methods of lessening our dependence on oil, conservation is perhaps the only one with a proven ability to make significant inroads into recovery from our oil habit.
The other two ways; alternatives to oil and domestically drilling our way 'out' may offer scant relief. Time will certainly tell but our current energy
'experiment' with world oil reserves will probably require more effort from us than we may now imagine.
If rising oil prices are not soley based on the avarice and corruption of the foreign AND domestic controlling companies , but ALSO on GEOLOGY, we could be in for a very 'crude awakening.'
Most geologists will tell you that there is no creamy nougat core of the earth from which new oil is formed. Fossil fuels were laid down one time, over a long time, to be taken out but once. Many will also tell you most of the 'low hanging fruit' of light sweet crude oil, which our refineries so love, has already been picked.
Sure there is lots of oil left but the deposits are increasingly locked up in hard to get at areas, in energy intensive extraction media (such as oil sands), or in
'unfriendly' territories where the local population has the audacity to want to enjoy it's benefits (and value) as
much as we currently do.
Labeling foreign controllers of oil as 'crackpots' is not going to eliminate our dependence.
The truth is no one entity controls the world oil markets. Or do we throw out the laws of supply and demand just because we no longer control the supply?
If you don't buy the 'last man standing' solution then the techno-fixes and alternatives need to come off the shelves real soon. They will certainly not be enough
to feed our current appetite.
In this country we almost literally consume massive crude oil in everything we use and eat.
Apx. 85 million barrels of conventional &'unconventional' crude oil are consumed in the world
each day. (apx. 1000 barrels per second)(1 barrel = 42 U.S. gallons) We in the U.S. burn apx. 1/4th of world supply.
If total world production slips (for whatever reason) we may suffer greater impact than those who depend less.
A combination of good technical ideas, localized community organization and conservation will
probably help but a lot of smart people are saying that 'powerdown' is a state most of us will learn
to live in.
Seems to me we ought to try and make the best of it.
http://www.autoblog.com/2006/06/07/turbocharged-prius-being-planned/Extra feature on European Prius's
http://www.autoblog.com/2006/06/01/toyota-s-prius-in-europe-gets-a-button-we-don-t/Now, with the coming Lithium Ion battery pack - rumored to allow up to 9 miles on battery power alone - the EV button would be very useful.
Here's something from Indonesia that supports your thesis of an imminent decline in net exports.
As westexas has said many times, the first priority will always be indigenous consumption. Where is Japan going to get all its LNG after 2008? Where will the US get its LNG for all new these import terminals now on the drawing boards?
http://www.factsonfuel.org/
I guess we knew this was coming sooner or later.. I expect to see more article about higher food prices due to higher energy prices in the upcoming years..
I hate ethanol because it diverts us from what we have to do and offers us this solution that Americans are so fond of, that solution having very much to do with magic.
Kill this fuel in its crib, so to speak, before it takes over our entire corn crop.
I am quite sure farmers enjoy having a new big customer and perhaps even living on farming instead of elaborate subsidy systems.
I don't doubt that farmers just want an honest income for doing this essential work, but if it's based on a fantasy-fuel, then it's still only an illusion of 'Free-market Farming'.
I don't think the US corn ethanol subsidy is well conceived or primarily intended to be an energy policy. However, I don't see any reason why ethanol can't be a major part of future energy solutions.
I would like to see a five year phase out of subsidies and see if that gives the industry enough time and incentives to show whether it is viable.
Again, I am not at all sure corn could do this, but am sure sugar did.
http://i-r-squared.blogspot.com/2006/06/lessons-from-brazil.html
According to The CIA Factbook, oil consumption in Brazil in 2004 was 1.6 million barrels per day. That's 24.5 billion gallons of oil per year. That means ethanol contributed 16.3% on a volumetric basis to the total liquid energy pool. But since ethanol has a lower energy content, 4 billion gallons of ethanol is the energy equivalent of 2.8 billion gallons of gasoline. So, their ethanol production is equivalent to about 11% of their petroleum demand. That echoes what David Victor, the director of the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development at Stanford University, wrote here:
"In reality, ethanol is a minor player in Brazilian energy supply. It accounts for less than one-tenth of all the country's energy liquids."
http://www.offnews.info/verArticulo.php?contenidoID=4167
A few other relevant notes:
· It is about eight times as efficient making alcohol from the sugar in cane as from the starch in corn.
· Brazil has the climate and soils conducive to growing sugar cane. (We have the right combination of soils, climate, and latitude in only four states: Florida, Louisiana, Hawaii, and parts of Texas.)
· Brazil has vast tracts of inexpensive, undeveloped land at the tropical latitudes conducive to growing cane. When they need more land, all they have to do is clear more of the Amazon basin, while ignoring the affect of that on the environment.
· Brazil has a large supply of dirt-cheap, machete-swinging manual laborers. We don't have or want that in the U.S. Our farmers are understandably reluctant to wade into their cornfields swinging a machete.
Brazil is achieving energy independence not only through ethanol, but mainly by using their partially state owned oil company (Petrobras) to extract oil from their continental platform using cutting edge deep drilling technlogy.
In summary, they use ethanol AND their own oil. Ethanol adds to the formula but it is only a small part.
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTENERGY/Resources/336805-1137702984816/2135734-1142446048455/Br azilianPresentation.ppt#266,9,Slide 9
Using figures of 75,700 BTU/gallon for ethanol vrs 155,000 for gasoline (http://bioenergy.ornl.gov/papers/misc/energy_conv.html), you get a figure of 11.2% of vehicle fuel energy from ethanol.
I stand corrected regarding the percentage figures. As I am in pursuit of truth not a preconceived position, I am grateful for your help.
However, I don't see this as undermining the overall point that sugar derived alcohol is a hugely important step towards solving oil supply problems.
Note also that Brazil exports ethanol, so if use was changed to produced the 11.2% fuigure could be higher.
I am from the "Silver BB" school of thought, so I see a sustainable source of fuel that can offset at least 11% of vehicle fuel as one of the great successes we will need to have.
As I live in the tropical band that the presentation (slide 40 indicates) as appropriate for sugar, the corn case is less interesting for me. I was quite skeptical about corn in my original post.
I appreciate your open mind in the matter.
I do agree with you regarding Brazilian (and possibly others, in the future) exports of ethanol being a helpful step in the right direction, but am very concerned about this trend being, in essence, a mining of third world national agriculture for first world energy, and all that goes with it.
Other sugar products, such as sugar beets, would be more promising in northern latitudes than corn is, but then again we're back to the same old problem, arable cropland is finite and already valuable.
In the case of Brazil, the cane farmers are already in a conundrum regarding "sell it for ethanol" vs. "sell it for sugar". World sugar prices are up 98% in the last year alone, making sugar sales more profitable than ethanol.
http://www.apple-nc.org/community_plans.html
Kinsale, Ireland's is especially interesting. I did a fast scan. It looked good except there are a couple issues that areextremely important that I did not see that they addressed. They must have rational NPG and that is taboo in Ireland. Without NPG in a rational way
they will get it in the "Long Emergency" in ways that are much moreunpleasant.
Also, security must be addressed in a big way. They need a plan to deal with the starving mobs from other areas.
Longer term planning is needed.
Although we have may have not hit peak oil yet it seems
that Peak SUV is upon us. People are burning there SUV's.
A little bit of global warming in the end.
http://cnn.edmunds.com/advice/specialreports/articles/115584/article.html
A flood of late model used SUV's on the market would kill Detroit.
I wonder if there is any way to get this number.
I googled with no success but its got to be somewhere.
Also the price ranges.
Since McMansions and SUV's tend to go together I see disaster
looming for both industries.
It seems used sales are up 10%
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_25/c3888006_mz003.htm
Is SA pulsing production.
I'm wondering if the latest drop in production is actually a ploy to pulse output to retain some control of the market.
By cutting exports greater then capacity they can refill there storage tanks then "increase" production till they claim there is no market rinse lather and repeat.
If your primary concern is to hide peak production then this type of pulsing would probably keep the world guessing for some time probably a few years.
Now if we only knew how much is in storage.
Actually for Saudi Arabia well production is not so important since they have so much storage capacity what more important is tracking the status of that.
Lets guess they have 100 million barrels of storage and they
start the refill at say 50% of capacity this means 50 million barrels of oil. So guessing a 500,000 day of hidden production for refilling. You get 100 days to refill.
And probably less then 100 days of "new" production on each pulse as depletion sets in. This would match quite will for peak hurricane season in this case i.e September.
Add in the US spr and you can hide peak oil for a number of years.
http://maps.google.com/?ll=26.642357,50.157437&spn=0.020292,0.029182&t=k&om=1
Count the tanks of different sizes, use the Measure Tool, assume an aspect ratio of 4:1 diameter:height on the big tanks, 3:1 on medium and 2:1 on small, calculate the volume, add them up, there's the answer. You should also look at Abqaiq, Jubail (near Jeddah) and maybe Ras Khafji in Saudi Arabia.
The main buffer tanks have floating roofs (look for the internal shadows) so satellite surveillance would clearly show how storage varies from day to day. You should probably also look at suspiciously immobile tankships moored near offshore.
Now thats a intresting opportunity hook up a pattern recognition software to google maps and .....
Not something to do by hand or over the internet but if google allowed you to query with a pattern filter hmmm ?
Actually they could in general let people launch pattern bots to do data mining visual is just one of the harder ones.
Actually I think this will be a big thing in a few years data mining tech is well known the technology exists.
Geeze like google needs to make more money.
Might I suggest Geo-Media, or the older cousins of it MicroStation and MGE-Dynamo. They will be able to handle any size sat photo you can throw at them and give you several tools to place your photos over real world ground coordinates and fit them in place within a very low tolerance, off the real thing by an inch.
But knowing how full they are might be harder to guess.
That was an interesting snippet about SA's storage tanks outside their own territory - of course you could always monitor tankship movements to get an idea of what's happening there.
I was thinking more if the right people get asked the right questions. I suspect that this information may be available.
Also if this information was once readily available and then suddenly disappeared thats enough.
It was not really that important before since the use of the tanks was more for managing regional flow/buffering but if there using tanks now for strategic flows to replace the loss of capacity then it will show.
Beats the hell out of doing via brute force.
This graph shows the amount of crude-oil production that has changed every month since 2002.I am using the EIA's numbers from tables 11a/b/c which are for crude oil+lease condensate only.
The world is broken into 16 sections. The 15 top producers and "The Rest of the world"(all production by the 60 other countries that produce oil.) I took the smallest amount of oil produced by each country in this time period and subtracted an additional 100,000 barrels per day from this figure. I then used this as a baseline. So the numbers for each country are the amount of oil produced above this baseline.
Notice the 2 million barrel per day increase by "The Rest of the world." To put this in perspective, it is like having 2 Saudi Arabias each producing an additional 500,000 barrels per day every 2 years.
Notice the large increases by Russia over the last 4 years.
The biggest, longest lasting declines have only been experienced by Venezuela, Iraq, and The United States. The current situation in Nigeria may not be accurately reflected in these numbers. We will see how this develops.