DrumBeat: June 16, 2006
Posted by threadbot on June 16, 2006 - 9:35am
It's not just the mammoth SUVs that are suffering. The once-powerful midsize segment is also dwindling as gas prices rise and boomers age.
Environmentalists are not pleased.
Rural Kenyan women on vanguard of African 'solar revolution'
Elizabeth Leshom may not know it, but she is among a legion of African women at the vanguard of what many hope will be a "solar revolution" that could empower them and help save the environment.In Cape Cod, Massachussetts, a tidal power plant may join the proposed wind farms.The 25-year-old Kenyan is part of a rapidly growing programme across east and central Africa that aims to replace or at least reduce traditional wood-fired cooking with efficient energy from the sun.
France boosts purchase rates to spur renewable energy: they are increasing the rates they pay for electricity from renewable sources.
Meanwhile, China plans to fill cars with ethanol made from tapioca.
Britain's new power plants to avert energy crisis. One will burn natural gas, the other will burn trash. (Don't know where they're going to be getting the natural gas.)
BP plans $37 billion energy investment in US, in the deep water of the Gulf of Mexico, and in the Rocky Mountains.
Update [2006-6-16 11:0:8 by Leanan]: Here's a good reason to make your power plants floating ones: Thawing permafrost could unleash tons of carbon
Ancient roots and bones locked in long-frozen soil in Siberia are starting to thaw, and have the potential to unleash billions of tons of carbon and accelerate global warming, scientists said on Thursday.And Lester Brown has a plan for Meeting the challenge of Peak Oil. It's laid out in his book Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble. If you don't want to buy a hard copy, he is offering free digital downloads (PDF and HTML) here.
Update [2006-6-16 11:44:9 by Leanan]: Also from Lester Brown: World Grain Stocks Fall to 57 Days of Consumption: Grain Prices Starting to Rise
This year’s world grain harvest is projected to fall short of consumption by 61 million tons, marking the sixth time in the last seven years that production has failed to satisfy demand. As a result of these shortfalls, world carryover stocks at the end of this crop year are projected to drop to 57 days of consumption, the shortest buffer since the 56-day-low in 1972 that triggered a doubling of grain prices.
Update [2006-6-16 12:43:24 by Leanan]: Are our cities making us fat?
DENVER - It’ll take more than public service campaigns to solve the nation’s obesity problem, according to fitness experts who say neighborhoods must be designed so people can get around without their cars.Maybe we'd have more success spinning walkable neighborhoods as a health issue, rather than an energy conservation/environmental issue?
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The Norwegian blogspot
http://energikrise.blogspot.com/
Has in two recent posts with diagrams in English (based upon BP Statistical Review 2006) shown the developments in net (oil) exports for the years 1985 through 2005 and declines in oil production from countries that have seen declining trends in oil production through the last 5 years (2001 - 2005).
Though production during 2005 increased by 0,9-1,0 Mb/d, net exports increased with less than 0,4 Mb/d. As net imports by countries within OECD and China increased in 2005, this suggests that the other countries collectively must have decreased their imports due to price increases during 2005 (demand destruction). This has been illustrated with a supplementary diagram within the post.
Some of the oil producers and exporters have been increasing their consumption, explaining why growth in production has been stronger than growth in net exports.
The more recent post illustrates how production has been declining for the countries that have a documented decline through the last 5 years (2001 - 2005).
Could this give an idea of how global oil production declines when it starts?
Note that the recent 500,000 bpd decline in Saudi production, if it holds or get worse, would--all by itself--more than wipe out the entire gain in net oil exports last year.
Add to the equation the possibilties of increased consumption within some of the producers and exporters, and it would not be unlikely that net (oil) exports declined through 2006.
And regarding EROEI, it culd be fair to assume that oil recovered now takes a little more energy than last year.
This could intensify the bidding war for oil later this year.
Normally demand is weaker through May and June, and picks up through the 3.rd quarter.
Improved technology, high prices drive deepwater exploration
Gross display of power!
Another interesting tid-bit
-C.
And homes don't use that much power. A car can use enough power to supply dozens of homes.
Chris
For what it's worth I recently heard a 50 MW powerplant described as enough for 100,000 homes ... so they think 500 watts draw on average for a home?
... and the 40,000 homes above would represent 20 MW
(though I know it's silly to expect a standard "home")
with an 1800 sq.ft. basement. 100 deg. days
in the summer = 8 tons of central
air conditioning.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/15/AR2006061502062.html
Sadly the article doesn't talk about anything beyond a year out.
I have Johnathan Darley's book "High Noon for Natural Gas" sitting in my pile of books to be read..
I read on a financial website that the department of the interior claims there is enough natural gas located offshore to heat every home in America for 80 years.
All that's needed is an approval from the Government to drill and the natural gas crisis is over for the next 100 years or so.
Is this pure hyperbole and/or guesswork, or is there actual science behind this claim?
In other words, don't believe everything you read.
This is a 44% difference!!!
Go figure.
[grin]
Here is a fascinating article from last year. There are apparently a bunch of people out there who are convinced that the rate of innovation is slowing drastically.
This does not bode well for the techno-cornucopian position that we will be able to innovate our way out of the Peak Oil box - for instance by developing fusion reactors that fit in the trunk of an electric car or something.
This contrasts starkly with Ray Kurzweil's notion of an imminent "Technological Singularity", a spritual/technological notion that a transcendence of the human condition through technology is both possible and desirable. Needless to say, Kurzweil disagrees vehemently with Huebner's conclusions.
The linked article goes into this in some depth, touching on such disparate topics as capitalism, globalization, ethics and the nature of progress. I recommend it to anyone who is interested in the future of the human race.
And I am one of them. Indeed, that's how I came to peak oil. I always figured technology would save us. Until I started wondering why we weren't colonizing other planets, like those 1960s SF TV shows predicted.
I came to the conclusion that The End of Science was real. As for why...I think Tainter has the right explanation. The low-hanging fruit is plucked first. We're running out of low-hanging fruit.
We have discussed this before, more than once. Someone posted a nice link to a Business Week story about it, but it's on my other computer. And Discover magazine had an article about it a few months ago, too.
I've long been convinced that intelligent species exist, but only for very short periods of time cosmologically speaking. I now believe that those species probably exist near the peak of their technological capabilities for only an extremely short time, probably less than 500 years, depending mainly on their rate of reproduction (less fertile species exist longer).
The reason is twofold: first, we develop on spheres where stored resources are axiomatically finite, and secondly our techological development allows us to rapdly dominate all the resources of that sphere. This leads automatically to a situation of overshoot, where the easily available stored resources support exponential population growth, followed by a Malthusian collapse. The time required to enter that overshoot depends on three things - the availability of resources, the overall fertility of the species, and their ingenuity. A reduction an any of these factors leads to a broader curve (slower ascent and descent) without changing its fundamental shape.
I no longer see expansion into space as a saviour. the reason is that the growing ability to exploit local resources causes the population to start exploding well in advance of the development of pinnacle technologies like mass space flight. I also expect that the utilization of renewables would not play a major role in saving a species, because by the time the need to collect such diffuse energy was obvious it would be too late due to exponential population pressure and the depletion of the foundational stored energy sources.
I'm obviously guilty of massive anthropocentrism here, because my primary assumption is that intelligent species arise in conditions much like those we have here. Still, it seems like a reasonable first approximation.
Therefore, the existence of Fermi's Paradox proves that such an energy source does not exist.
The conclusion: Ultimately there is no way out of the finite-resource box.
Given the enormous energies that are just barely beyond our grasp, it is hard to believe that no civilization anywhere could manage to bridge that gap and produce a solar-powered interplanetary and then interstellar civilization.
One clarification: a "space travelling species" beaming out lots of electronic signals is still the same species after it returns to the dark ages, right? It's just that we're no longer detectable to other civilizations with advanced receivers.
What about Dilithium Crystals?
Actually, my main objection to manned space flight for research and exploration isn't that it costs too much, but that it takes too long. We spend extraordinary amounts of effort (effort=time and money) trying to make sure nobody gets killed. Launch a robot, and if it blows up on the pad nobody but the designers (and maybe the odd computerized kitchen blender) mourns.
The usual reasons given for going further into space than geosynchronous orbit have generally been resources, energy and human diaspora. All have been revealed as pipe dreams as we got past the gee-whiz stage of space flight. I used to be a Solar Power Satellite fan, but lately the idea of spending that kind of money to beam microwaves through the atmosphere has pretty much lost its appeal for me.
We do need lots of observation and communications satellites to keep an eye on our planet in crisis and to link those in remote places into the global village. Beyond that, we have ground-level problems aplenty to spend the money on. Manned space exploration isn't going to mitigate the impact of $100 oil on villages in Botswana, or even Indiana.
I recently read The Singularity is Near. While I disagree with a lot of what Kurzweil wrote, and he didn't even address the problem of future energy supplies, that book is mind-blowing. It gives you something to think about. Regardless of what happens with PO, there are certainly some interesting times ahead. But I have to wonder if someday Kurzweil won't wake up and think "Energy supplies....Should have thought more about that".
RR
RR
The only hope might be a big advance in fusion technology which allows cheap abundant energy, or some theoretical breakthrough in string theory (or some competing model) which gives us a much deeper physical insight and could lead to radical new technologies. At present, neither of these possibilities seem likely.
Someone joked once that we would soon reach a point where the rate at which library shelf space that is filled with scientific journals would soon exceed the speed of light.
This wouldn't violate the laws of relativity however as there would be no information being transmitted.
This could lead to new ways of gathering energy, much more efficient ways of using energy and enourmous cultural changes that could challange our old notions of what it is to be human and what life and death is. There is physical "room" for very intresting things, if we work on it.
If men get to choose which genes are preferred [and when], we may just dig ourselves out of this mess
I guess I would look at it this way. The affluent 1 billion are for the most part uninterested in developing things that are affordable and practical for the remaining 5 billion. There simply isn't any money in it, so instead they 'innovate' by developing new ipods and cellphones and all that rot.
Technologies that are practical for the 3rd world might be things like solar cookers that are easily made with materials that are available in the 3rd world. It would eliminate the need to collect firewood, and reduce pressures on deforestation. At least for a while - increasing human population would eventually overwhelm any ecosystem.
The evidence is pretty clear that as a society improves child mortality and becomes more prosperous and educated they slow there birthrate.
He got an education and received a Bachelor's in 1921. He had two children, but by the time my father and aunt became adults of breeding age in the late 1940's the world population had doubled to 2 billion. I reached breeding age in about 1970 when the world's population was about 4 billion. My one child is now 18 and, thank god, I'm not a grandfather yet, but by the time he has grown children the world will probably have 12 billion people, and our current 6 billion is destroying the world. Oh sh*t.But,to change as my family has done the world needs prosperity and education and quickly.
I know the moron above is a right-wing troll. But his evil b.s. needs to be called what it is, evil,stupid and simplistic. If we don't identify narcicsistic BS they think that its all right.
It's all a matter of priorities.
Basically, people who believe this do not have an accurate sense of time.
There were commercial plane flights about a decade after the Wright Brother first flew. Not so with spaceflight. Why? Because the problems are harder to solve.
Tainter takes a quantitative approach, as much as possible. He looks at the number of patents granted, for example:
He also considers the money companies spend on R&D vs. the payback on their investment, and the benefits of medicine.
Note that this does not literally mean the end of science. It's more like "peak science." Yes, there will always be more knowledge out there. But it will be more difficult to extract, and more difficult to turn into a useful form. If it weren't, it would have already been discovered.
How many joules does it cost to lift my body (and a suitable container) up out of the gravity well?
Why the heck would you assume that 'free energy' would show up to solve that?
(the per capita stuff proves nothing at all about total rate of innovation. in fact, it hide it. more engineers (a good thing) dilutes the per capita messurement.)
No. I am arguing that cost and energy are integral parts of technology.
Why? If discoveries are infinite and equally accessible, shouldn't more scientists and engineers mean more patents?
Not that costs for certain actions (spaceflight) remain high.
Not that "discoveries are infinite and equally accessible"
The article above refers to a study by James Huebner (more here), which divides the rate of innovation by the current U.S. population:
Now, I think he's done is make a sneaky semantic definition that "innovation" must be "per population."
I don't get that. Consider the mental experiment in which an island nation is composed of 100 scientists, each producing one innovation per year. Add another 100 scientists, you get another 200 innovations per year, but per Huebner you'd be "flat."
It's gets interesting if you add yet another 100 scientists (100 more innovations) and 300 gardeners (the place had been getting overgrown). Whoops, per Huebner the "innovation" just dropped by half (even though it went up in real terms).
... so I call B.S. on dividing by innovation. It only has any kind of interest if you aesthetic/moral goal is to get everyone in your population involved in innovation (no more lifeguards!!!!).
- True genius, which leads to dramatic discontinuous innovation, if freakishly rare. We don't often get a Copernicus, da Vinci, or Einstein. Looking at this on a per-capita basis won't show us much. But it only takes one innovation by a Sabin or Salk to start vaccinating the whole world.
- Dividing by population calculates the likelihood that any one person will innovate, but it obscures the total amount of innovation. With population essentially flat in the high-tech western countries (excluding immigration), and growing in education-deprived countries, it is pretty clear that you will train fewer scientists per capita worldwide, leading to fewer innovations per capita. Your country may vary.
- Innovation quality is hard to measure, but quantity is up. Total US patents granted have increased steadily:
1963 48,971 (18% foreign) to2004 181,302 (48% foreign)
source: http://www.uspto.gov/go/taf/us_stat.pdf
The big news in this regard is China. We talk a lot here about China's economic growth in terms of its impact on the energy situation, but I know in my field we are seeing an enormous emerging effect from Chinese research. More and more papers are appearing with fundamental breakthroughs from Chinese institutions.
For generations, a billion Chinese have been trapped in feudal conditions, living as primitive peasants one step from starvation. Now, at last, China's economy is improving, and one of the major effects of this is that millions of potentially brilliant researchers are being saved from lives of back-breaking labor and allowed to work up to their intellectual potential.
I believe we are going to see a tremendous burst of creativity and discovery as a quarter of the human race is finally allowed to bring its intellectual powers to bear on the problems we face. Millions of potential Chinese Einsteins and Newtons will finally be able to offer their gifts to the human race, just when we need them most.
We tend to fall into the trap here of thinking of people as just a cost, a drag, mouths to feed and needs to fill. What we forget is that, on average, people produce more than they consume. The riches we see around us are thanks to hundreds and thousands of years of people doing just that. As China steps up to the international plate it, too, will not be a net cost to humanity, but a net boon, perhaps the greatest we have ever seen.
Could be. It'll be interesting to see how the Culture(s) of China develop at this point.. I wonder how much innovation comes with new freedoms, or whether it grows with need, such as we seem to be heading into.. Is Necessity the Mother of Invention?
Diluting comes from the simpler root: to dilute.
There is no evidence that mental ability is a major selective trait. At the time they procreate, most 20-something humans are not yet using the the neocortical part of their brains for selection of an appropriate mate. It's more of a sniff test.
Just about every huan being "invents". It's no big deal. The issue is more so, what specifically do you invent?
On the other hand, Stephen Hawking has used Godel's incompleteness theorem to argue that physics will never be complete:
Gödel and the end of physics
While Hawking is right, in science as in the oil industry production rate is a crucial consideration. If we need two huge new scientific ideas a century to keep our civilization going, and we only get one, we're in a pickle. Developing a bunch of small technological improvements on existing concepts is like drilling more infill wells in a depleting field. We all know how much that helps.
Einstein published his first paper in 1905. It forty years later that the whole bomb thing capped the story.
... but forty years (BLINK!) it's all one thing to someone looking back at the great "moments" in physics.
You arent' making some claim that the same fields have to explode over and over again are you?
http://www.dorsey.com/files/Nanotechfig1.gif
Growth in 'nanotube' patents.
Now, if physics were to finally unify gravity and quantum theory, that would be a breakthough.
A lot of the nano stuff spans physics and chem, but as an old chem major I wouldn't say that "de-innovates" the inventions. Everything is based on something older.
Really, I think you retreat into a tautology. We can never invent the things we've already invented. We've got to move on.
BTW, have they stopped giving Nobel prizes in physics? That might convince me that it is done ;-)
http://www.epa.gov/cfo/images/iac_image016.gif
I'm reminded of an article that appeared in the LA Times. It was called Utopia lost. The author, Andrew Yarrow, bemoans America's loss of optimism:
Someone named Martha Voght wrote the following response:
Whether they know about peak oil or not, Americans intuitively understand that things are different now. We are not going to be staying in hotels on the moon or taking a flying car to work any time soon, as seemed so possible in the '50s.
I wouldn't want to confabulate economic factors with the fundimental question of whether innovtion is slowing.
And I don't it is possible to separate them. Economic factors are the reason innovation is slowing.
Tainter's The Collapse of Complex Societies is essentially an economic argument.
If a separate measure were not available he would not be able to do his comparisons of innovation relative to population or investment.
So, of course the are separable. Otherwise there would not be two axes on those graphs.
http://www.bio.org/speeches/pubs/er/images/patents_approvals2.jpg
http://www.themeat.org/rant/patentStats1963-2004.png
In absolute terms, they are going up.
to enter you need a multi-million to multi-billion dollar facility and stock it with people who spent about half a decade in school dedicated to a specific function of said lab.
so basically bio-tech further proves the theory rather then disproving it, otherwise someone like me could set up a bio-tech lab in his basement on 1,000 dollars or less.
ROI is actaully complicated because in a competitive market people will be overspending to get an innovation days ealier than their opponent, and nab the patent.
The final days of the human genome race provide a case in point:
http://www.researchmatters.harvard.edu/story.php?article_id=205
As Tainter put it, an increase in spending on R&D of 4.2% yields an improvement of only 2%. At that rate, even if every one of us becomes a scientist or engineer, we'll be losing ground.
People (like the good Dr. above) who total US industrial R&D costs are totalling the costs of such battles. The total of course does not represent the basic cost for the research. It could still have been done for less, by one company. The advantage of the race is that it presses the pace of course, and also that some other side-benefits might also be encountered sooner.
And this does happen in the real world. The "teams" racing for the human genome were one example. In a more trivial field, how many companies design portable mp3 players?
It's a great advantage of our system that we can do "lossy" research like this. We have the resources to over-fund some areas, and gain from the resulting "races." We are also fortunate that when the market does not provide an incentive, private foundations or governments may provide "X-prizes" to spur along such competitive effort.
If you ask me a tech race is better than a production subsidy, by far. Better to put up a $1B prize for a method to produce ethanol at some favorable EROEI/ROI than to drop much more than that to inefficient producers.
Point cases aren't going to prove the general. As bad as I think patents are as a general measure, they at least span many disciplines (including the trivial recreational ones that increasingly attract our attention ... there's a patent on the Super Soaker, right?)
Look at the years. The huge jump is in 1944-1945, just at the end of World War II. That's when all of the companies who had developed technologies used in the war effort were able to patent their creations as they were declassified from solely military use. The big leap and decline directly following that might be related to the development of commercial applications for military technology. (Hey! This microwave radar thing makes my lunch get hot! Wild!)
If you throw a rat into a tub of water, he will struggle and flail and do anything he can think of to get out of it. Humans are not that different -- you throw us into a situation where we know we are doomed, where we cannot deny it, when people are dropping bombs on our heads or our kids can't get food because the long haul trucks have stopped running...then we struggle. We flail. And we create, because that's what monkeys do. Grab sticks and start seeing what can be done.
Of course, it helps to have a unified front or target to go after. The US in particular hasn't seen anything as unifying as WWII since that happened. Or possibly even before; it was a rather singularly clear sort of conflict.
Unfortunately, as long as there is profit to be made on stringing along the oil dependent voters in the US, Big Energy is going to do their damndest to confuse the issue and make a unified effort to fix the problems we've gotten ourselves into all the more difficult. Which is why we, as the aware, have to do our damndest to get the signal through all of the noise that the Big Energy types are putting out. I honestly do think that we can win this fight, or at least go down with an effort to be proud of, if we can pull ourselves together long enough to raise our fists.
Just my opinion. I must be feeling feisty today.
Even cornucopian Marshall Brain (he does the "how it works" books) has lamented the lack of the "next big thing" that's kept the US economy growing. He says that through history, there have been huge advanced in technology that kept things going, the automobile in the teens and 20s, the new tech of WWII in the 40s, computers in the 60s and 70s and even 80s. He notes that "nanotech" and robotics have not become the Next Big Thing. Although the Internet certainly ranks up there with the car or radio as a society-changing technology.
Of course, being a cornucopian, his viewpoint is our society simply runs on new ideas. Somehow, God or someone rewards humans with endless energy as long as we keep on coming up with new ideas. I should note that this is essentially the bedrock American belief about this matter. Little American scientists and engineers etc., as they're growing up, are indoctrinated with the idea that we live better now than people did in Europe in the 1600s because of our more liberal and enlightened ideas. The whole (excellent) series Cosmos by Carl Sagan is an extremely eloquent, well-done, and entertaining look at history from this viewpoint.
I've been saying for a long time over on my site that the two technological areas that will have a huge impact on our energy situation are nanotech (as above) and genetic engineering (cheaper, more efficient biofuels processing). These are extremely high multiplier areas, where even a single, seemingly minor breakthrough can be scaled up to broad application and have a huge impact on world energy markets.
They're not the "holy cow!" level of advancement like General Relativity or DNA, obviously, but I wouldn't trade them for anything right about now.
http://www.uq.edu.au/news/?article=9843
Well, when you read the article it's kind of hard to see what they're so excited about. It's some kind of molecule that gives you greater control over emulsions, like mixtures of oil and water. I guess it is supposed to make water injection work better, but it's not clear how.Even if this is a case of a somewhat over-eager press release, it's clear that researchers are looking at energy problems in a new way. And with nanotech and biotech just coming out of the labs and into serious application, chances are we will in fact see significant enhancements in energy production. Whether they will really be revolutionary and disruptive remains to be seen, but the potential is certainly there.
Is this the idea that technology will deliver us painlessly through the transition to a post-fossil fueled world? Is it the belief that technology will just barely be able to keep modern industrialized civilization from crashing like the Hindenburg? Or is it somewhere in between?
My personal view is in the gray area between those extremes. Technology will clearly play a huge role in our energy future, and we won't see a collapse of modern civilization or even the end of the suburbs, but we're still in for a lot of human and economic pain for a couple of decades, at least.
What does that make me? A techno-opti-pessimist?
Just someone with a reasonable view. Some folks gleefully predict the collapse of western civilisation because they are chicken to look at their own mortality. The psychological term is projection. Some people whistle in the dark because they do not wish to examine their own behavior. And, some just sit at their computer keyboards and masturbate a lot.
But, in these word about Peak Oil sometimes a little wisdom and humor arises from the collective unconciousness of the Human Race. But, the truth is I'm 54 and will probably be dead in 30 years, and most everyone posting will be dead in 50 or 60 years.Continuing along about the same is the most probable course with lots of improvements and lots of shocks.
A guy like that needs to be reminded that:
- He is the free market
- He is the technology
- Necessity is now
Let "him" therefore bring on to us all these fusion reaction marvels and seamless electrical salvations that he promises. We have complete faith in him. But even our most glorious leader Ronald Raygun said, "Trust, but verify". Now is the time for verification. Bring it on.Strange I thought Lenin said that first and it was used by Dzerdjinski afterwards. Makes me fall into the temptation of looking for similarities between those guys...
Maybe that relates to some of the up-thread comments. Innovation does not equal dream fulfillment. It just means adding to the technological base overall.
First off, the "market" does not have a brain and therfore it does not choose to go one way or the other. Each businessman looks to optimize his return on dollars invested ($RO$I). If you had a tried-and-true way of making money versus a very risky possibility of making money, which way would you go?
Most innvoavtions are a result of government subsidy. Industry rushes in at the end, after it has been proven (tried-and-truthified) that a given innovation will make money.
While not directly energy-related, I find this piece of news well worth a read. It seems the most influential foreign policy analysts in America agree that the War On Terror is being lost and that the Bush administration has generally done a very bad job. Knowing how hard many Republicans tend to fight any suggestion of Bush being bad for the country, I'm really surprised even Republican analysts, including former Secretaries of State and National Security Advisors, acknowledge the current administration is not doing a good job.
OTOH, it's remarkable how few of these analysts consider energy-related issues THE top priority.
Personally, I am seeing the potential for a more centrist party to form as higher than anytime I can recall. The extremists in both main parties are dragging their parties further and further to the left and right respectively and there is a large centrist body that might reject them both. I think this is part of the Democrats current problem - Bush is so down in the polls that the Democrats should be soaring yet they are self-destructing instead (see the recent California governor's primary for an example).
When I talk to people they often are not up to speed on root issues but everyone I know thinks energy is an issue and that we need to do more about it. Often the kneejerk reaction of BOTH liberal and conservative is that it is the fault of the oil companies but if I start explaining why it's not then they both state that we need to do something else then. I think there is a willingness there to look at new ideas and neither party is willing to try that, instead staying firmly in the embrace of suburban/automotive failing culture. Likewise on Iraq - the Democrats come across as peaceniks who want to run from every fight whether that is their intention or not. Most people now question the war in Iraq but do not question the need to be aggressive in fighting terrorism generally. Just those two issues might be enough to launch a centrist third party. If you throw in the rapidly growing national debt and maybe the bad effects of globalization, such a party could get populist backing as well and take off.
A new party might destroy one of the other two and at the moment, I suspect it would be the Democrats (or Rethugs-lite as someone else called them).
The Whigs emerged and died relatively early on in US political history at a time when our political institutions were just getting into stride, sectional divides (e.g. slavery) were real issues that could sustain third parties, and the mass media hadn't been invented yet.
But who knows. Maybe the ferment on the left will lead to something chaning on the Democratic side.
Seems voting in US national elections is a feel good exercise.
Republican owned corporations make the voting machines. The machines use proprietary software to tabulate the vote - that is secret vote counts for public elections. See http://blackboxvoting.org/.
But, then again perhaps I'm seeing a lot of this through the the blinders of memory and desire. Fifty years ago or nation practiced apartheid, discounted women and the average educational standard was low. A hundred and fifty years ago our nation allowed men to beat and torture others in order to steal their labor and would not allow women to vote. Most people were illiterate by contemporary standards.
The internet has allowed all of us to publish to a national audience self-selected to a group that actually can do something. And the totalitarians can't hire enough spies to keep up with all of us. So, to quote Monty Python frm "the Holy Grail":
"Peasants! We're not Peasants! We're an Anarcho-Syndicalist Worker's collective!"
The moral being, don't take yourself too seriously. God knows, the universe is laughing behind your back.
Centurion:
What's this thing? "ROMANES EUNT DOMUS"? "People called Romanes they go the house?"
Brian:
It... it says "Romans go home".
Centurion:
No it doesn't. What's Latin for "Roman"?
Brian hesitates
Centurion:
Come on, come on!
Brian:
(uncertain) "ROMANUS".
Centurion:
Goes like?
Brian:
"-ANUS".
Centurion:
Vocative plural of "-ANUS" is?
Brian:
"-ANI".
Centurion:
(takes paintbrush from Brian and paints over) "RO-MA-NI". "EUNT"? What is "EUNT"?
Brian:
"Go".
Centurion:
Conjugate the verb "to go"!
Brian:
"IRE". "EO", "IS", "IT", "IMUS", "ITIS", "EUNT".
Centurion:
So "EUNT" is ...?
Brian:
Third person plural present indicative, "they go".
Centurion:
But "Romans, go home!" is an order, so you must use the ...?
He lifts Brian by his short hairs
Brian:
The ... imperative.
Centurion:
Which is?
Brian:
Um, oh, oh, "I", "I"!
Centurion:
How many Romans? (pulls harder)
Brian:
Plural, plural! "ITE".
Centurion strikes over "EUNT" and paints "ITE" on the wall
Centurion:
"I-TE". "DOMUS"? Nominative? "Go home", this is motion towards, isn't it, boy?
Brian:
(very anxious) Dative?
Centurion draws his sword and holds it to Brian's throat
Brian:
Ahh! No, ablative, ablative, sir. No, the, accusative, accusative, ah, DOMUM, sir.
Centurion:
Except that "DOMUS" takes the ...?
Brian:
... the locative, sir!
Centurion:
Which is?
Brian:
"DOMUM".
Centurion:
(satisfied) "DOMUM"...
He strikes out "DOMUS" and writes "DOMUM"
Centurian:
..."-MUM". Understand?
Brian:
Yes sir.
Centurion:
Now write it down a hundred times.
Brian:
Yes sir, thank you sir, hail Caesar, sir.
Centurion:
(saluting) Hail Caesar. If it's not done by sunrise, I'll cut your balls off.
Brian:
(very relieved) Oh thank you sir, thank you sir, hail Caesar and everything, sir!
... This calls for immediate Discussion!
The second scene shows how the establishment goons handle our criticism. They find some little flaw-say not being to pin down Hubbert's Peak Oil to a definite minute on which Tuesday of which month to completely ignore the message that the earth has a finite amount of fossil fuel and we need to prepare. And Brian is distracted from the real thread of his arguement(Romans go home) to worry about the grammar. And the slavish response to that kind of pedagogy remains universal. We are,in fact, conditioned and unfree. Oh sh*t, now I've done it, intellectualised something funny into a moral and political lesson! Maybe my faith in the blood of Brian will save me!
"to deal witha fuel shortage"
Why is there a fuel shortage? Hello, SA where's all that lovely oil nobody want's to buy? China would like some...
-C.
So, Venezuela says they could produce another 4 million barrels a day. But, they have no intentions of doing so.
RR
It would certainly take the cost pressure off of the budgets of Public Works Departments around the country. And shopping mall owners might not be postponing needed repairs to their parking lots.
They are certainly sitting on an enormous quantity of heavy oil, which makes you wonder what the U.S. might do as oil prices start to strain our economy to the breaking point. They have oil. We "need" oil. We might decide that we are in a similar position to Japan circa 1940.
RR
I was told by a native of Trindad that the roads department there just goes down to their asphalt lake and picks up (speciality equipment) goo from their asphalt lake and lays it on the roads after heating. It takes longer to dry & firm up than what he has seen here. but it makes quite servicable roads unprocessed.
So, IMHO, an extra 4 million barrels a day from Venezula today could not be used for much beyond road repairs.
Incidentally, speaking of Venezuela, several years ago I decided to try my hand at writing fiction. The premise for my story was an ice age triggered by an influx of cold water from the melting polar ice caps that disrupts the warm water ocean currents. Over the course of a few years, Canada, the northern U.S., and northern Europe all start to get colder, and ice begins to accumulate. At one time, where New York City stands today was under about a mile of ice. I believe it is only a matter of time before this situation occurs again.
I then fleshed out the ramifications. First, the northern U.S. would migrate south, causing the typical problems we see when a massive number of refugees migrate to a new location. Picture New York City displaced into the very conservative Bible Belt. The Alaskan and Canadian oil fields eventually disappear under the ice, cutting us off from very valuable oil supplies. As our oil supplies are constricted, we turn our eyes south, to Venezuela. We ultimately decide that we have no choice but to invade and take over their oil fields, or watch the U.S. regress to a pre-industrial living standard.
I eventually gave up the project for 2 reasons. First, as an engineer, I realized I can't write fiction. While Anne Rice can fill up 2 pages describing a room, I tend to be too concise. I once read a Michael Crichton book, and I rewrote the first chapter from memory. It took me about 10% of the space it took him. At that point, I realized I just can't stretch my writing enough to write a decent-sized book. The other thing that killed it was that the movie The Day After Tomorrow came out about a year after I started working on the book. The story line wasn't exactly the one I was developing, but it was close enough that I decided that the subject had been covered.
RR
Everytime I get a great Idea i find out that its a TV series or a movie and I just bid my time and shelf it.
Writting about the end of the world as we know it in and around Peak Oil has been a back burner project of mine.
Indeed, for those who think that the prospects of a global war over oil is the unrealistic fantasy of some nervous nellies, it might do well to refresh one's memory regarding what really triggered WW II in the Pacific.
Prior to onset of WW II Japan was almost totally dependent on oil imports from the US, which at the time was one of the worlds largest oil exporters. To intimidate Japan into halting its ongoing aggression in China, on August 1, 1941 FDR slapped a total oil embargo on Japan.
Both Japan and the US knew that Japan had roughly a six-month supply of oil left. As such, Japan felt it had no choice but to sieze the oil fields of the Netherlands East Indies (now Indonesia). A little over four months after FDR announced the oil embargo, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor as part of their strategy of neutralizing the US Pacific fleet while they consolidated and secured their advances on Indonesia and the rest of SE Asia.
While Japan rather dramatically committed the first overt act of war in the Pacific, arguably FDR actually made that war inevitable by placing an oil embargo on Japan. (Of course, we might very well have eventually gotten into a war with Japan over something else, but that is beside the point.)
So, we do have a very real predecent for a war being caused (at least in part) over access to oil.
I would bet good money that the Pentagon has all sorts of contingency plans for siezing the major oil fields in time of crisis.
Well, that oil embargo wouldn't have been imposed at all had Japan refrained from tear-assing around Asia, looking for the shit. The rape of Nanking didn't exactly go over well here.
Or one might also say that Japanese imperialism in Asia was beginning to interfere with American, British, French, and Dutch imperialism and therefore had to be stopped.
One might also ask: Would there have been a Pearl Harbor if FDR had not imposed the oil embargo on Japan? Maybe, maybe not. My own thinking is that sooner or later we were going to get into a war with Japan over one thing or another.
I do think there's a lot of truth to the accusation that FDR was trying to provoke the Japanese into firing the first shot so that he would have a justification for implementing his main goal: to enter the war against Hitler and thus save the ass of our 'ol chums, the Brits. FDR had to have known that embargoing oil would be the last straw for the Japanese.
The oil embargo wasn't the only provocation, and it appears that FDR was deliberately trying to make our relations with Japan worse rather than better.
And as far as the Rape of Nanking is concerned, the Japanese did not have a monopoly on committing atrocities in Asia. I suggest you look into what the US was doing to Filipinos during the Philippine Insurrection in the early 1900s, a little episode in our history that many Americans aren't even aware of.
Fair enough. I should have said they were trying to upset the imperial status quo.
Of course. All empires commit atrocities to control the periphery. Rome makes deserts and call them peace -- that's what empires do. There were, however, important degrees of difference between Japanese imperialism and Western imperialism. It might be described as the difference between being held prisoner by a man who is going to rape you versus someone who is going to rape and then kill you.
Chris
The rule of thumb is "when times get tough, find a scapegoat".
The demonization of this is extremely reminiscent of what happened in Mexico during the 1930's. According to the history I was taught at Mirabeau B. Lamar H.S. in Houston, Cardenas stole the oil wells of the long suffering US companies without compensation, the commie rat bastard. The history is a little different. After the revolution the oil companies "suspensed", or stopped paying for the oil that they were producing and Herbert Hoover sent the Marines in to Tampico. This was our third invasion of Mexico in a 90 year period. Cardenas "nationalised" the oil and the Mexican Constitution was amended to exclude foreign ownership of the oil industry, and Mexico was boycotted for thirty years by American and British oil companies.
Chavez's attitude might be colored a little by knowing this history, as well as seeing the Cuban embargo because the Mafia lost their whorehouses and casinos to the commie bastard. Or remembering the 2002 "coup" against him by the CIA/NSA.
This may be a stupid question but can someone explain to me why 2005 total world oil consumption is greater (82.5 Mbbl/d) than total world oil production (81.0 Mbbl/d) in the spreadsheet.
Is this an accounting error or a rounding error?
Quebec takes some action
Given that Canada's "Governor Harper" has backed away from a federal committment to Kyoto, it's good to see a province putting a stake in the ground.
They still wont talk about PO but the tax is certainly a good thing anyway. Charest made that comment about how much of that tax would be passed to consumers : "This is an opportunity for Oil companies to show that they are taking good steps in showing that they are doing their part for solving the Global Warming problem."
They did that plan because the Federal gov wouldnt reconize what was done previously and the fact that we produce most of our electricity with Hydro (95 - 98%)
The plan is broad and include incentive to build commuting rails and bus lines. I havent had the time to read the plan altough.
I will read it because I will use what's in it for making changes for my city.
My grand solution scheme is going fast here, I go see each and everyone I know in power to get done what need to be done.
A gardening course grow biointensive for poor families and low wage worker is being plan as evening or day courses. Fall will be used to prepare the soil, winter to prepare seeding flats and tools, sprouting will be done as required finishing with planting.
The Roberval city is helping us by offering a large agricultural land to implement the gardens. I will also negociate to make spaces available very close to poor living quarters.
I have teamed up with a group of volunteer that will make a garden in one of our touristic attraction (of wich I'm the President) so people could ask question and raise the debate.
I have met today with many highschool teachers (many were my teachers back then) and explaining 1 or 2 at a time to them the problem and how it could be raised in the classroom.
The environnmement and natural option will probably make a one course presentation.
The teacher of geopolitic (grade 8) will give me a course so I can make a conference on the geopolitic aspect of the problem. The teacher of physics (grade 8 and 9) will use the matierial I produced regarding the geological limitations aspect of the problem. The teacher of biology (grade 11) will use me for a course explaning the enviromment side of the equation and the effects on agricultural and feeding outputs.
The biology teacher (he was my science fair coach back then, so he knows how good I'm at doing that stuff) asked if a homework done raising questions of perceptions, impacts and what they plan to do about it, what can be done to reduce the oil comsumption.
The two teachers for environnement option will give me acces to their classes when next year student get older (they are starting the option)
I havent talked to the economy teacher but I know her I I plan to make a talk to her student (grade 11) regarding the economical aspect of oil.
For grade 1, 3 and 4 I plan to find a way to reach them one way or an other. Grade 12 here is given trough college courses. I was a college teacher 2 years ago and I plan to reach some student there too.
While writing this I just had a phone call with the supervisor of community and adult courses program in my city. I have a meeting with him next monday. He is already quite open for a biointenvise gardenning course. I told him just a few bits of my plan and he tought it was really good.
The Kyoto dollars will be used to make some reaserch for biodiesel production from algae, mainly reviewing what was already done.
A local currency is also taking shape, but at a slower pace. I plan to make a move toward it this summer while meeting with some leaders on this.
I was named VP of our county provincial liberal party, currently forming the government. I did my french report with my deputy and plan to ask him for a grant to develop light rails and biodiesel.
Anyway, things are taking shape at a fast pace around here. I dont have much time left to put up the website that will relate all the stuff I do on a day to day basis but I will make one this summer.
I was diagnosed with wrist problem 2 weeks ago and it's preventing me from doing too much computing.
Try using an ergonomic keyboard, and the problem just might go away. It helped me a lot.
I bought the MS natural keybord (both at home and at work. I'm waiting for my new desk at home and new adjustable keybord holder at work. I guess it will get better with time :)
Your posts are a shining example to us all! You are an example of a person who, instead of complaining just goes out and gets the job done! I wish you and your city great success in going forward! Keep up the good work and keep us posted on what you're doing!
http://www.pricecastle.com/catalog.php?product=3
At $30 it might not be to steep to give a shot.
The Dvorak layout was designed with purely mechanical typewriters in mind - typist fatigue was a very real problem. In addition, the mechanical linkages did not lend themselves to the more sophisticated coding available in an electronic keyboard system.
If it's high speed with normal text you're looking for, an ortho-chorded keyboard (Wikipedia example) is probably better.
Europe is in love with American Pay Packages!
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/16/business/businessspecial/16pay.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref= slogin
I think this may be due to better economic conditions that have followed Europe after 9/11. They are beginning to share a little more of the world wealth pie. They have enjoyed a nice appreciation of their currency while our's has been falling.
USA agrees to let Asia create currency.
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/3d2d5784-fc95-11da-9599-0000779e2340.html
I don't feel this will work as well as the European integration. There are little details in the article other than saying we are prepared for an Asian currency, but the Asians aren't really ready. Go figure.
Housing crash...redux.
http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/9371839/detail.html
I think it's clear the housing bubble is crashing. Wasn't San Diego one of the top 10 markets in terms of appreciation? In the face of losing home values, inflation still remains strong so how is the deflation in the housing sector going to spread throughout the econ?
There is a very good article on Page W1 of the Friday WSJ--lots of interesting numbers.
Virtually all of the trends are against the McMansion owners--higher heating & cooling costs; higher commuting costs; higher property taxes; higher interest rates; slowing economy and negative demographic factors (in 2010 there will be 50% more people aged 50-60 than in 2000--all trying to sell their large suburban homes at the same time).
As Jim Kunstler predicted, it looks we are in the early stages of a McMansion meltdown.
One of the best ways of illustrating this is, if iPod sales go down by 50%, a few thousand jobs at Apple may go. But, if house sales go down 50%, because houses are made and maintained here, there go a bunch of jobs for RE agents (another site calls them realt-whores lol!) carpenters, Home Depot employees, gardeners, decorators, painters, etc you name it. Of course houses are much more expensive than iPods, but a house represents a cluster of US workers. And, as those ARMs readjust, and people simply can't make the payments it takes to keep a house afloat, you get desperation selling. A bit of desperation selling and you end up with panic selling.
We might see grandma and grandpa with their own suite or even their own apartment, Mom and Dad closing in on retirement or already there and kids taking up residence in their own suite or apartment in the basement. In some cases, a single aunt or uncle might take up residence.
In many places, "suites" equipped with a fridge, microwave, toaster oven, hot plate and sink might fit under current zoning laws, so long as all residents are related by blood or marriage. At any rate, changing zoning to allow multiple generations of families to live together would probably be rather easy as costs tighten.
So I am an older child back in the roost. Been married twice and devorced twice, have raised a few step kids, and my parents are 70 (dad) and 76 (mom). At 70 he can out work me most days. I just can't see wasting all that knowledge he has in his head and hands. I told Trisha my second x-wive what I planned on doing and her still being my best friend, though they dislike her, she said go for it. So here I am, an Author, Gathering my works for some self published articles and gaining skills that I could not pay to learn. If it breaks in his house or car he can fix it. The tools he has I could never afford to even get half of them. There is a vast array of hand tools that do not require power to run them.
They are older and getting older everyday and my brother can't come here to take care of things if they get ill, but I can and that is what I doing. Besides the House is paid for and his debt level is low.
The only thing I'd like to buy in the future is some cheap land, I'll wait till the market crashes and see if I can get some cheap unloadable land from someone.
New report but we here at TOD new this already (I think)
Nigeria's crude oil exports fell to 1.8 million barrels a day in the first quarter of this year, down from an average of 2 million b/d in the last quarter 2005, the Central Bank of Nigeria has said in its report for the period.
-C.
Why hasn't more oil be found in the southern hemisphere? This is the only cause for optimism I've yet seen on the peak oil issue.
The first half of the article deals with geology. The last half tries to link the issue with the money system.
Maybe I've missed discussion of this issue.
Looming energy crisis requires new 'Manhattan Project': US scientists
The United States urgently needs an effort similar to the Manhattan Project or NASA's moon mission to confront a looming energy crisis, scientists said at a high-level energy conference here.
I'm not wearing any pants, news at 11!
-C.
from the article you posted
If (since) the SUV is on life support, maybe it's time for Detroit to revisit this option.
So what is it gonna take to get the 'Manhattan Project' underway?
I believe in the last 'Terminator' movie it is revealed that the T-man ran on a fuel cell.
That's "Who killed the electric car" :)
Heh, both projects consumed monstrous amounts of energy and yielded very little real benefit to humanity. Could someone please explain what these two monuments to massive resource misuse might contribute to dealing with resource decline?
Actually space travel and man living in space has given us better understandings of several human aliments and Space Medicine is a very big field of study. Bones and Calcium degenerate in free-fall or low gravity. This lead to new ways to give older human bones a way to be recharged and has led to several good improvements in the science around keeping people alive in adverse conditions.
The problem with space travel for humans is that you have to keep the humans alive a long time and space is a harsh environment and is very unforgiving.
The climbers that climb K2 and Everest and Other high mountains are exposed to environments that are just as harsh, and we still have them climbing though the death rate is very high.
IF China wanted to they could get a moon base before us and have a manned flight to Mars, if they pushed the death rate up to that of High Altitude climbers. Americans do not like watching the space guys die, so we have spent ooddles of time and money keeping them safe and still make things to the lowest bidder.
Looking in on the outside it all looks useless and throwing good money after bad, but that is just an impression not really the truth of the matter. There were a set of pamplets talking about all the things you use today that the Space Program made possible, I have some copies of them, but I have moved to many times to have them at my beck and call.
And note, my Brother works for a sub-contractor that works for NASA on the newest Crew Launch Vehicle. They are trying to make it as low cost reusable as possible and get as much bang for the buck as possible. He is though not as pessimistic as I am on the Peak Oil band wagon. And though I don't see us really getting to the Moon in any big way or to Mars, I am a Science Fiction Writer and I like to think we could, if we just were given a bit more time to fix things down here. It won't happen and I am sad that Star Trek is just more fiction, it would have been nice to see them things for real.
(I tried to googe-confirm this story, but the terms seem ungoogleable)
I know it's been frequently said that we desperately need an energy version of the Manhatten Project or the Apollo Project. The analogy is supposed to convey an all-out crash effort to get something major accomplished.
However, I have for some time felt that the analogy is seriously flawed.
First: Both the Manhatten and Apollo projects each had but a single narrowly defined goal, i.e., create a deliverable atomic bomb, and put a man on the Moon, respectively. Once each of those goals had been accomplished, both projects had essentially reached their climaxes. Follow-on nuclear weapons development and further lunar flights continued, but at a much less intense pace. On the other hand, getting ourselves out of this energy mess is far less of a single-goal endeavor and will require multiple efforts on a variety of technical, political, financial, and social fronts.
Second: Neither the Manhatten Project nor the Apollo Project had the slightest concern about efficiency or cost-effectiveness. It was: hang the cost and full speed ahead for both! On the other hand, getting ourselves out of this energy mess, by its very nature, must entail efforts to maximize efficiency and to maximize cost-effectiveness.
Third: While both the Manhatten and Apollo Projects entailed huge costs, they were essentially exercises in cutting-edge technology. On the other hand, getting ourselves out of this energy mess, is only partially dependent upon improved technology. Capital investment in infrastructure and major changes in the way society does things is at least as important as the technology.
So, I think that if one has to have an analogy, a more fitting one might be the Marshall Plan for rebuilding war-torn Europe. Or if you want to go out on a limb, perhaps the Russian Revolution or Maos' Great Leap Forward. I guess what I'm getting at is that what we are talking about here is not just some high-tech solutions but also major, and probably wrenching, changes in the very way we live and do business.
A good example of the kind of effort we will need is the US Interstate Highway System of the 50's. Or the TVA project for hydropower. Both those had clearly defined goals and that's the only kind of project that will rally political support. Oh, one other thing - somebody had better be able to get rich or get elected or remain elected because of it. So the time line to realizable benefits has to be with four years.
One thing we desperately need is a hybrid transportation system that allows small personal vehicles to hook up with a rail or monorail system for the longer hauls. It wouldn't be an easy task but it would be a marvel to use. Drive surface roads to the onramps and then relinquish control until one is dumped at an exit not more than five miles from your desired destination. I don't think it will happen because of the capital expense involved but it is an example of a vision that just might appeal to a public tired of pollution, traffic delays and high fuel costs. They would be able to remain in their small vehicle for the whole trip and, for most of it, they can do business over the phone or the internet since they wouldn't need to attend to driving. The major car manufacturers would be delighted to sell a slew of new cars and the cars could be conventional electric since they get recharged as they travel on the rail system.
This could be a positive image project. Just think how easy it would be to sell this to the residents of Seattle!
I read a British report on alternate fuels for aviation and was surprised to see that BTL via Fischer-Tropsch has a EROEI of at least 13:1 to as much as 53:1. The ratio depends mostly on how the feedstock is grown. They gave wind power to hydrogen a 200:1 EROEI. Looks more and more like ethanol has more to do with ADM and Cargill owned politicians than domestic fuel production.
Got a link for the report? I would love to have a look at it.
BTL probably does have a decent EROEI, but the capital costs are a killer. Just going from memory, I think it is 6 times the cost of a conventional refinery per barrel of daily production.
RR
Go to page 48.
This is one of those hyper important issues that needs a lot of discussion. I want to remind you that building highways consumes a great deal of oil. I want to remind you that land owners will be displaced. I want you to talk about what levels our ruling class will resort to in order to divide and polarize a nation.
It is NOT of "hyper importance", but a pipe dream by some Texans.
Of greater importance is that Texas bought the "Katy" railroad ROW in West Houston so that TxDoT could expand I-10 to (from memory) 20 lanes. TxDot refused to leave enough space for a future light rail line. They needed those extra two lanes !
You are the one doing all of the assuming. First you assume that I assume the NASCO road will be built. Your second assumption is based on a theory of yours that NASCO will not be built so then there is nothing to be concerned about.
The facts as stated in the news are different then the facts stated by AlanfromBigEasy. You claim that NASCO will not be built, that in fact is an assumption made by you. Actual facts are quite different since Canada, Mexico and the US have made all the necessary agreements to proceed. The fact that news and media are now reporting on NASCO gives weight to the intent.
The fact is that unless citizens stop NASCO's construction it is guaranteed that this road system will be built. If I am guilty of assuming that citizens would unite to prevent such a thing then so be it. Just so you know the NASCO/NAFTA situation is of HYPER IMPORTANCE. It will add to GW, it will consume and destroy even more resources.
PAX
State road budgets ?
Not in Texas, not in just about any state. Gas tax revenues down, demand for new roads up, cost and demand for road repairs up. They are in a serious crunch as the sprawl model runs against it's limits (see I-10 expsnsion in West Houston mentioned earlier).
Toll roads ?
This requires toll road bonds, either from the state or private financing. Even w/o PO, this road makes no sense. It cannot generate enough tolls with a free I-35 a few miles away. Not enough of a market.
And bond buyers are going to start questioning assumptions made in the bond prospectus. Bonds for the first half of a 4/6 lane bypass around Austin include the assumption of gas prices "not higher than $3/gallon". Bonds for the second half will be harder to sell, especially if sprawl commuters do not show up in the #'s projected and some truckers avoid the longer (but faster) toll road for the free, slower, IH-35 through central Austin.
Project described at www.sh130.com
And with SH130 half built, the need for a NASCO diminishes dramatically.
So not worth worrying about. It was and is economic nonsense, so the free market will keep it from being built.
1. big engineering and construction
2. Real Estate, because they are drooling at the prospect of new far suburbs of McMansions
3. The Auto Industry, who expects to sell more SUV's
4. The Finance Industry, who expects to sell all the bonds
5. The Trucking/Transportation Industry, who love new roads
6. the major oil companies who want to sell more gasoline
Goveror Rick "Good Hair" Perry wants to set this up as a "transportation corridor with pipelines, railroads and hike and bike trails as well as "privatise" the current Interstates with tolls and to hook up Houston with a corridor to San Antonio and Dallas.
Sorry, but the pie has already been cut up. Hope they left you a crumb or two...
$150,000 would cover the full market value of 90% of the homes in the Lower 9th Ward, and less than 10% in Lakeview. If they had any insurance at all, about 98% of the Lower 9th will get full market value and the rest close to it (except Fats Domino). Thos ewithout any insurance, will get a good % if not 100% of their fair market value.
Amazingly, there has been no outcry about skewering those with million dollar homes. "Why Not Pro rata ?" has not been the objection.
Even those with the maximum $250K federal flood insurance, full other coverage and getting the max $150K from the state and an $800K mortgage that end up with a ruined home and a mortgage due of $380K ($20K paid for wind damage) do not claim that the state was unfair. They realize the limited resources and do not wish to pocket monies from the poor.
In many ways I live in the worst physical & services (fire, medical, postal, etc.) situation in the US but inside the best society !
The Katy Freeway using the Katy RR ROW is another legacy of that fine American, Tom DeLay. He always opposed rail because he 1.owned a lot of real estate on highways2.railroads were against the interests of his car dealer and Major Oil Company contributors and 3. Railroads might bring Democrats into the unsullied suburbs of Ft. Bend County.I was sick when it happened,but Houston doesn't have a local paper, the Chronicle is a Hearst rag.Only big money alks very loud there.
I've directed the Editor of the Galveston County Daily News to ya'lls piece in the Dallas Morning News. He's a very thoughtful man and I'm hoping he will reprint it. We have a little light rail on the Island and they just extended the line from downtown through UTMB and up to the Seawall. The tourists love it, I just wish it were more frequent and rode right down the Seawall past the major Hotels then over to Moody Gardens and the new Schlitterbaum then loop back downtown. It would be very practical for our workers and convenient for tourists and conventioners. I'm hoping the new extension is a great success for Galveston. It's such a conservation no-brainer.
When the Supreme Court upholds the no-knock police search as they did yesterday it means that anything can happen now in the US.
Alan one day you will see things more clearly till then try to stop the war, stop NASCO and convince the Fed to switch to a barter system.
than a "Sigularity" with technology.
http://www.energybulletin.net/17261.html
Funny to see a Saab SUV, with a Saab-style model designation, the 9-7x, in the first place ... but man, the thing I said to myself was "poor guys" ... thinking of the salesmen.
Who comes to Saab for an SUV? People go there for funky european cars.
GM really loses two ways. They kill another brand, making it just another "badge," and at the same time, they bleed their other dealers by expanding the badges on an existing model (the Trailblazer).
How does GM count "sold" again?
I just see the brand acquisitions that GM (and Ford) did a few years ago as futile. They had plenty of (US) brands. They had (I'm sure) good designers. They just weren't giving those designers the lead. They were playing it safe with models they could rebrand for their different nameplates.
The article up at the top, on the midsize SUVs, talks about the same thing I saw at Saab ... I planned on mentioning it, but it has already shown up as TOD news.
Now, could GM use european designers to re-invigorate their US lines? That depends on what the word 'could' means.
I mean, they could have merged in a lot more Saab (or Opel) spirit already.
I think that GM and Ford still havn't quite completely gotten rid of their long-standing mentality that small cars have to be cheap crappy cars and that small cars mean small profits.
It doesn't appear that their current structure allows them to have any more than a certain number of small cars in their total production mix. Maybe when one or both declare bankruptcy and dump their pension obligations on the US taxpayer, they will be in a better position to compete in the small car market. So if that happens the real cost of a GM small car will be its actual sticker price plus the incremental tax burden need to cover the pension obligations. The consumer gets screwed again.
Furthermore, I don't think GM's problem is a lack of design and engineering talent. They have a wealth of highly talented people and a ton of technology on the shelf. What it comes down to is an uncanny tendency for GM's management to instinctively and consistently do the wrong thing.
We still have a spammer on some UK threads and elsewhere, can they be cleared out? Example: http://uk.theoildrum.com/story/2006/4/23/6050/44818#8
Tks.
China races to contain toxic coal tar spill with 51 makeshift dams.
Right on...so the real $hitty part about this graph is that in less than 9 years (i.e. 1997) we've doubled the debt that the preceding 84 years took to build. In other words the debt from 1913-1997 is the amount we added from 1998-present.
Now let's jump ahead a bit. This site uses the preceding 46 years worth of data for the M3 stats. This is the broadest measure of money and whether or not you agree is the widest net to determine how much fiat money is in the system. From this 46 years of data they project what it may look like for the next 75 years. Keep in mind we are talking M3 stats and some will knock it, but we should know better.
There's some interesting data on how the FED and the GOV prepares the budget. The fiscal year doesn't follow the calendar year, so Oct 1 is the new year for the gov. If the increase in debt for the first two days of fiscal 2006, had been posted on the last day of fiscal 2005, the deficit for 2005 would have swollen to 599 billion, making it the largest on-budget deficit in the history of the Republic. That's bad news so again, we get a massage of the numbers.
This is the first I've heard of this simple manipulation, but again it's cumulative so it will be measured eventually, but people tend to shrug off large numbers they can't wrap their heads around.
This website even goes on to try and put some numbers on the prescription benefit and thoroughly depresses you with the real cost, not the gov't numbers.
Are we as a society just so entertained by the side shows to not give a damn? I don't get it. When I talk to people I can see the glaze come over their eyes as I start to explain the cliff we're resting on. It seems the only people who stop to listen are religious types.
One gentleman I work with listened to me for half an hour and at the end he said, "you know my pastor has been preaching this for almost two years." He went on to show me all the ways he changed his life. He doesn't use his car except for intermediate trips that would take far too long by bus, but long enough to warm the engine up so to speak. He takes the light rail/bus interchanges to get to work and he doesn't take on debt. Granted he has 30+ yrs in the company, I think he's planned well.
http://www.energybulletin.net/17261.html
World Grain Stocks Fall to 57 Days of Consumption: Grain Prices Starting to Rise
Lester Brown, Earth Policy Institute
This year's world grain harvest is projected to fall short of consumption by 61 million tons, marking the sixth time in the last seven years that production has failed to satisfy demand.
published June 16, 2006.
Considering how many more calories Americans consume in a day than they need, nothing could be better for the U.S. than a doubling of grain prices.
Any sense about whether high oil prices are a major contributing cause for the decrease in production or does it have more to do with climate concerns?
The vast majority of our corn is fed to animals, a handy way of disposing of what used to be all that excess corn.
As a side note, one of the reasons so many Mexicans have had to give up corn farming is because of all the cheap, subsidized corn making its way south of the border. This also contributes to illegal immigration because of decreased employment in Mexico. Perhaps the higher prices resulting from this grain shortfall might help a few more Mexicans to make it in agriculture.
This will affect ethanol prices, thus making it harder to compete with gasoline, even with the subsidies for corn and directly to ethanol. Will the corn/ethanol lobby ask for even higher subsidies to make up the difference?
The thing is, ethanol is mandated now. So, they don't actually have to compete. That's the problem with mandates. So, let's say ethanol goes to $6.00 a gallon. Big deal. It's mandated. We will pay the price, regardless of what it is.
The only hope is to get the mandate rolled back. You are seeing what's happening in California right now with ethanol. It is bumping $4/gal. Nobody would pay market price for it if they had a choice, but mandates mean we don't have a choice.
RR
Wow, I was exaggerating for effect, but it seems this wasn't too much of an exaggeration. From today's OPIS report:
The ethanol market continued to be quoted in an incredible $5.00-$5.30 gal range for prompt June East Coast bbls.
Man, that is unreal.
RR
Of course, on the bright side, maybe the ethnanol industry will be inadvertently helping us cut back on oil.
Talk about the law of unintended consequences.
Again. What about all those happy faces in the GM commercials now. Will the American public wake up to this scam? Not likely.
I read somewhere that 7% of all energy consumption in America was used by the oil industry. This is a pretty general figure, but it indicates the the oil industry has a 7% burn rate to supply us with gasoline and deisel and natural gas. I assume it was based on a supply light sweet crude oil. I can't remember where that figure came from. I am wondering if anyone has more detail?
I'd like to know what percentage of energy is consumed by producing and refining light sweet crude oil into consumer products. What about sour oil? What about heavy oil? Tar sand? Thanks!
I have read that the overall average for crude extraction is 17/1, giving a total EROEI of 17/(1+1.7), or 6.3/1. In that case you are using around 1/6th of your energy in the production of your energy, or 15.9%. But, if you are just looking at the refining portion, the number is around 10%.
Heavy oil is going to be a bit worse than that, and tar sands even worse. I have seen tar sands estimates of 1.5/1 up to 4/1, but I think that is just for the extraction portion. You will still have the refining portion, meaning that from tar sands to gasoline is probably only around 2/1.
RR
I presume that means twice as much CO2 produced for every usable unit of end user energy?
RR
That's right - SUV sales are slumping in part because it's just TOO HARD for us boomers to drag our sorry asses in and out of 'em! It's a lot closer to midnight even than I had thought ...
includes a brief discussion of U.S. crops harmed by the ongiong drought in the Plains and Western Midwest. Apparently, winter wheat in several key states is in very poor shape, as are oats, sorghum and spring in some states. Drought in U.S. wheat-growing areas does not bode well for any increase in the number of days' worth of supply at the end of the season.
Anyone have information on any drought in Canada?
The hay crop probably will not be very good unless we get some more rain. A moisture laden, low level tropical storm or tropical disturbance making its way here would be welcomed.