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DrumBeat: July 21, 2006
Posted by threadbot on July 21, 2006 - 9:40am
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The August Harper's cover story is about peak oil. It's not available online, but from what people are saying, it's not bad. Written by Bryant Urstadt, it's called "Imagine There's No Oil: Scenes from a liberal apocalypse."
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Julian Darley wants A new kind of money
The decline in the availability of cheap energy is likely to be accompanied by an equally ominous possibility of world financial meltdown. That we are facing both of these threats now is not an accident: energy and financial stability are intimately linked. I believe the solutions for dealing with these twinned threats are equally linked. To build an environmentally sustainable, monetarily stable world, we need to create an economy in which locally produced energy provides the backing for local currencies.
Greenland opening Arctic sea to oil wells: Energy giants gather to discuss, Greenpeace calls idea 'insane.'
China oil production rises 2 percent
China to need more jumbo oil tankers over next five years
Drivers' love of the road grows costly
In St. Louis, the Governor sent the sent the National Guard to evacuate residents from their sweltering homes. With electricity down due to heavy storms, it was feared that people would die in the 100F temps.
In New York, thousands are without power due to mysterious grid failure.
Hyundai breakthrough in fuel cell technology
[Update by Leanan on 07/21/06 at 3:08 PM EDT]
Valero expects to lose 1.3 million barrels in lost-refining capacity
Valero Energy Corp. has shut down the company's fluid catalytic cracking unit at its St. Charles refinery in Louisiana for needed repairs.Valero spokeswoman Mary Rose Brown says the repairs should take 20 days to complete.
This will result in a loss of gasoline production of 65,000 barrels per day or 1.3 million barrels. Refinery officials do not expect a material impact to the 250,000-barrel-per-day facility's distillate production. Distillates include jet fuel and diesel.
Contact
- Content: editors at theoildrum dot com
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
http://www.energybulletin.net/18445.html
Of Oilsands and Caviar and Malthus (PDF)
http://www.sprott.com/pdf/marketsataglance/07-2006.pdf
Eric Sprott and Sasha Solunac, Sprott Asset Management
Summary:
...we were shocked two week ago when Shell Canada and Western Oil Sands announced that the price tag of their Athabasca oilsands expansion won't be $7.3 billion (Canadian dollars) as initially projected, but rather $11 billion - or 50% higher! If that's not inflation folks, then we don't know what is. This isn't the first, and we doubt it will be the last, cost increase that we'll hear about in the oilsands. Costs there are a continually moving upward target.
Announcements like this make it most obvious that the era of cheap oil is clearly over, especially when it costs so much for the world to get that incremental barrel of oil production, especially from heretofore unconventional sources. Remember that the oilsands were supposed to be the great saviour of the world's energy problems. It would appear that this purveyor of abundant energy is on its way to ignominity due to spiraling costs.
As unfortunate as that announcement was for oilsands producers, this article isn't about the oilsands. More interesting is what it implies for the cost of all things going forward. To wit, this article will be a general discussion on two inter-rated principles, or perhaps more accurately, two inter-related perils.
One is cost-push inflation, and the other is Malthusian theory. As we've already said, we found the oilsands announcement to be shocking - so much so that it effectively changed the landscape. Not only is it highly inflationary, but we fear that it is the kind of inflation that threatens to pervade absolutely everything. It is difficult to envision a scenario where the cost of energy soars without impacting the cost of all things, whether good or service. Just about everything we do comes from or relies on energy.
(July 2006)
From an investment firm that's peak oil conscious.
Investment Implications of Abrupt Climate Change
that the power outage in this area has affected a nearby refinery. Radio reports yesterdy were asking people not
to panic and "rush out to topoff there tanks".
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/metroeast/story/5931607E4094FF4B862571B10078B99D?O penDocument&highlight=2%2C%22refinery%22
Cheers,
RR
Since there are no pipelines from there to my STL side, I'm not too worried.
How about power outages caused by people stealing the oil from electrical transformers? This is really getting oil the most dangerous way possible!
------------
The company was forced to buy new transformers to replace those burnt down.
Once oil is drained from a transformer, it overheats, and if power is not switched off on time, the transformer explodes and cannot be repaired for future use.
The above mentioned losses only include replacement of transformers, but does not include the loss of revenue incurred by the Company for the inability to sell electricity units to consumers.
The loss does not also include many hours lost in tackling the theft. There are reports that 40 per cent of the power supplied to India's capital of New Delhi disappears through "transmission losses" meaning it is consumed without being paid for. It is stolen.
---------------------------
I predicted some time ago that detrito-terrorists will add positive feedback greatly to Tainterian collapse. The path to Olduvai Gorge gains more people everyday.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
If you are going to steal electricity, stealing an extra electrical meter is a pretty clever way to do it. I would imagine the Tanzanians use their regular meter for 3 weeks, then switch to the stolen unit for the week prior to when the utility company meter-reader arrives to determine the monthly billing. After he/she leaves, then switch back to the original unit for more free juice [this process only takes a few minutes to accomplish due to snap-in, snap-out design]. A unique theft tactic if you ask me!
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
There is a gizmo you can make that requires only 1 low power connection before the meter and 2 after it [ie any domestic wall socket]. It will subtract x kilowatts from the meter measurement, where x depends on the internal construction.
I met a guy who used to hire them out for a few weeks before meter readings..
At one time, I believe you could drive round gas meters with a vacumn cleaner after they were removed.
Then again, our water is unmetered, so just run a generator from the tap.
All ranked up there with treason, if you get caught.
So I got the thinking. Downtown there is a concert, Live on the Levee, it's going on as planned. That's going to drain the power, and its shutting down eads bridge, aptly renamed eats bridge for the concert. So transportation flow takes a hit for "economic gain." Its a contractual agreement that they go on with the restaurants. I wonder what kind of financial hardships that could arise from insurance being hit for a lot of cancelled events due to lack of "ingredients?" What do you think?
Not sure if I understand your question: "I wonder what kind of financial hardships that could arise from insurance being hit for a lot of cancelled events due to lack of "ingredients?"
My guess is a lot of future events will never get off the ground because people won't be able to afford to travel to them, much less spend money on the food and trinkets, excluding local neighborhood 'potluck' parties.
The ins cos. that refused to write hurricane and flood coverage along the East Coast are so far looking profitably vindicated [these cos. could care less if your uninsured property got flooded]. Tropical Storm Beryl could have spun up further into real bad news, and the season is still young.
Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
That's not it. The media is not really reporting anything. I just was a story on CNN, and they talked about the storm and all of the damage, but didn't mention the refinery. That is a very big refinery, and as spooky as the markets have been I would have assumed it would have gotten a mention.
You have to realize that sometimes I may have some information that has not been released to the public, and I could lose my job if I am the one who releases it. When news is released, I can comment on it.
Cheers,
RR
P.S. To "tate123" above: This refinery is a major supplier of fuel into STL.
Cheers,
RR
================Im in st.louis and my aunt is a manager at a local mobil gas station, and she said they are down to about 600 gallons of gas and they told her there wont be any more coming very soon. So I went and filled up all three of my cars / work vans.
To RR's comment above: I too, am puzzled as to why this is not getting more attention in MSM.
http://www.theindependent.com/stories/072106/new_diesel21.shtml
I would. In fact, I can offer a standing piece of advice. Any time a large refinery goes down in your area, fill up your tank IMMEDIATELY. A couple of things can happen when a big refinery goes down. It will remove a large amount of supply in the local area, and unless the refinery comes right back up, supplies can be drained. Prices will come up to stem demand, so the faster you react the better. If the refinery is down for more than a few days, supplies will start to come in from other areas, but you are going to pay a higher price. (That's one reason prices went up nationwide after Katrina; supplies were diverted to the gulf).
After Hurricane Katrina hit, I knew pretty quickly about the extent of the damage. I had direct knowledge of one refinery down there, had an early warning on the Mars platform, and knew that supply was going to be knocked out for a long time. I called my friends and family in Texas and Oklahoma right after the hurricane and advised them to fill up all of their vehicles and any gas cans they could scrounge up. Gas prices at the time were around $2.20 a gallon, but I warned that they could go up to $3.00 in just a few days. That is just what happened.
This is what I mean when I say sometimes I have information I can't share. I had an early warning on these things, but that warning came as a result of my employment. I can't share those pieces of information in a public forum. Assume that I issued a warning here at TOD about supplies in the wake of Katrina. I would have been guilty of helping cause a panic and a run on supplies. Even though that happened anyway, it's best for me that my company doesn't come back and ask why I had a hand in it.
Cheers,
RR
Since I need to fill up otherwise every 2.5 months or so, I can wait (I average 6 gallons/month).
The New Orleans Metro area refines perhaps 10 times what we use locally, with more refineries nearby. Any local reduction can be spread over a much larger area by reducing shipments out.
As Saudi depletion kicks in, I do not expect gas lines in Riyadh.
Just a coincidence. No time to get to library and a stash of 'must read' old paperbacks.
Me? I'm rereading Jim Bouton's "Ball Four" and laughing so hard that I just about fall out of the chair.
Also, I'm working on my knuckle ball again.
Got it yesterday via amazon among some other books, and read the first two chapters. Leeb was inspired by Diamonds "Collapse" & Tainters "Collapse of Complex Civilizations"
He reasoned that these two had all the data and the facts to support the position that most are not in. He then goes on to explain a little background on PO, enough to really scare you. I'll check back in to let you know how it is.
Late Graduation Present from a family friend of mine. I've only touched on the first few pages. Damned 50 hour work week.
(Usually I read only 1,500-2,000 w.p.m.)
But seriously, you reading speed is bionic. I once purchased a book on speed reading. it was a slow read!
It taught you how to move your eyes etc. Was a good book
if you needed to learn how to digest HUGE amounts of information quickly and efficienly eg for research.
However when i read novels for example, I (like most other people I am sure) start to see in picture and subconsciously forget tat i'm digesting words. So if my enjoyment is being 'inside' that book i would rather prolong that experience, especially if the book was good.
That is to say taking my time and reading slowly ADDS to the enjoyment; therefore, [for me] no benefit in speed reading is gained!. Interesting though. I digress! Peak Oil.
Marco
Last time I was tested on advanced economics journal papers, I got 99.7% comprehension at 2,500 words per minute.
My sister can also read very fast with excellent comprehension, and hence I suspect there is a genetic component. My father was a slow reader because he was always underlining and filling the margins with very tiny writing in both blue and red pencil. I think my mother could read very fast, but because she so enjoyed reading, she rarely did so.
-C.
-C.
I used to write and mostly revise self-defense manuals for certain organizations you have heard of. If you live in N.O., you need this knowledge. By the way, it is mostly about dividing your attention: Most effectiveness in combat is based on habits and mental/emotional focus plus training and nasty experiences that one survives.
As a civilian I strongly recommend that you not carry a gun. In the Big Easy, I'd carry a half-full-of-water champagne bottle in a brown paper bag every where I went. That is a far, far more effective deterrant than all the expensive crap that the phonie-balonies want to sell you at inflated prices.
If "Looking out for #1" survival post-Peak Oil was my highest priority, I would take a completely different course for living my life. I have mentally mapped precisely what needs to be done for the 5 to 7 years before TSHFT for myself and less precisely, for a longer period, for society.
I have chosen my path and it is not a path that minimizes risk for #1. My chosen path does maximize good food & music with friendship and social connections and a deep profound joy.
The coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave man but once.
I appreciate your courage. Speaking as one who is a lot older than you and has gotten bloody more than once, I do fear for your saftey. We cannot AFFORD to lose you.
Are they still producing Herbsaint in your city? If so, I'd like to send you a bottle. For drinking, that is.
I watch boring documentaries at 2x. Everybody sounds like the chipmunks but I'm done in half the time and don't miss any of the info.
Reminicences of a Nigerian novelist and playwright -- Nobel Prize for literature 1987.
Oil riches have destroyed Nigeria -- maybe the world will regain some version of sanity when the hydrocarbons are less abundant?
As Peakoil drives us to economize in every process, we can expect Americans to replicate this "justice" process to keep as many as possible on their best behavior.
We will not be able to afford to spend million$$$ like we did on Scott Peterson or O.J. Simpson. A rope and a tree, or the ever popular burning tire necklace will be the standard way to mete out justice in a postPeak world. African villagers are just ahead of the sanity curve because their hydrocarbons are less abundant.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Yep, this will be a sad postPeak development, but hopefully intense familiarity and cooperation with one's neighbors will make most behave in an honest fashion. That way a person will have nothing to fear because you will be seen as a vital member of the community.
Imagine when we are all reduced to pedaling or horseback--stealing someone's ride will be considered the equivalent of the thief imposing a death sentence upon his victim. Society will respond in kind when they catch the bastard.
Historically, lynch mobs are too drunk with anger and power to worry about the mental 'moral luxury' of falsely accusing somebody and then never getting the chance to take it all back. Life at the postPeak Thermo-Gene ragged edge has only survivors, and then those that get removed from the gene-pool.
Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
can't remember who wrote it because it's not in front of me right now...
it's about the quest to run community gardens / farms in suburban Boston
so far the story is quite inspirational
Now I'm starting the Natural Farming book, from the same author.
I tend to read more positive books to help me go trough nicely.
As for Music, right now it's Claude François, it's 60-70's french Pop music, kitch to boot and entertaining.
But I could say that I write more than I read :)
Just turn off the computer! it's a good day out!
If perkins weren't so full of shit, he ahve come clean 10 years ago. He says he had the book mostly written previously. But he waited until now to publish cause he knows there's a market for it now cause people are pissed.
don't get me wrong, I got nothing wrong with the guy making $$$. Some of it was very informative, most definitely worth the $25 I paid. But let's not paint the guy as some saint.
I did not read that book, just the interview you linked to and I got a strange feeling out of this.
I am wondering about a few things:
- Looking for John Perkins on Wikipedia you find that he is also the author of some weird books.
-
Psychonavigation: Techniques for Travel Beyond Time, ISBN 089281800X
- Shapeshifting: Shamanic Techniques for Global and Personal Transformation, ISBN 0892816635
- The World Is As You Dream It
- The Stress-Free Habit
- The Spirit of the Shuar
- Looking for Stoner-Webster on Google you find that all the pages are about Perkins book, I could not find ANY page about some Stoner-Webster company, truly secretive indeed.- If he has been bribed and threatened why did he not also got killed by the "jackals", a lowly hitman like him should not deserve more mercy than higher visibility public figures.
Though the whole of his thesis is certainly plausible and there is NO DOUBT that such things have been done and are still going on, CIA in Mossadegh's Iran, Halliburton and Bechtel plundering the third world (so obvious in Iraq now), etc... I think that Perkins explanations are deliberately warped toward the conspirational side, meant to confuse the issues with partial truths and probably significant omissions rather than meant to illuminate the subject matter.
This may be the reason that he has been "allowed" to publish.
So, either he still work (in subtler ways) for "the house" (of some sort) or he is a mythomaniac lunatic, or BOTH!
A couple things:
1. Yeah, the guy's previous writings prove him to be an eco-whacko. I agree.
I think he's one of these guys who would be selling tours of the rainforest while soliciting money for some "protect the rainforest" campaign not realizing the reason it's getting destroyed is cause he and others like hime are flying rich white people all over the globe to look at the rainforest.
I have not been "passing judgement" on the book but just the interview, didn't I say that?
Improve your practice of speed reading ;-)
Also, it looks that your opinion about John Perkins and his writings matches mine 98% or so.
Thanks for your support, sparing me $25 and the time to read it only to roughly confirm what can be known (more reliably) from other sources.
Although I found parts of the book quite informative, this was the ONLY time I almost through a book across a room.
At one point, don't remember where, I realized the books is a big scam even though it's a scam with some very informative tidbits in it. Here's why:
1. All the info is about companies and people no longer in existence. This throws the liberal do gooding reformers and crusaderers off the trial of the current criminals and hitmen.
The parts where he says:
A. they tried to bribe me and
B. the mainstream media won't interview me
. . . are designed/intended to buy credibility with above described liberal do-gooders. "See this must be true or they wouldn't have tried to bribe him!"
Now maybe the guy is still an agent. Or maybe the folks at the CIA/NSA/whoever are really, really smart and have done enough profiling that they figured this guy would make a good gatekeeper/tool and are using him as such.
(It's also possible everything is on the up and up, but if I let myself believe that I'd have a lot less to talk about.)
2. The guy made tons of $$$ lying and bullshiting through life. My belief is that a person's basic nature never changes although it may get turned up or down as time marches on. Me for instance, I have a big mouth. Will probably always be that way although not quite as loud at 28 as I was at 18. And at 38 I will probably not be quite as loud as I am currently at 28. "Once a loudmouth, always a loudmouth" algthough maybe not quite as loud as before.
So Perkins made tons of cash "working for the man" and screwing people over for about 30 years and now we are to believe he's done an 100% about face and is out to "expose the man" and fight for the good of the world?
Sure, it's possible. But once a bullshitter always a bullshitter.
Does not that tell you something?
:-D
I can't buy any of Perkins' current spiritual orientation, but this bood is a must-read - especially for anyone who feels that US foreign policy as implemented through the IMF and WB is intended to benefit the recipient nations.
http://sustainablelifestyles.ca/
I ususally don't dig doomer lit, but Solomon keeps it pretty light. His ideas are practical for some, but he won't have me changing my own techniques.
"Collapse" by Jared Diamond
"The Evolution of the Brain and Intelligence" by Harry Jerison
"The Big Burn" by Don Miller and Stan Cohen
"Wind Power" by Paul Gipe
Among others. I'm usually reading 5 to 10 books simultaneously, switching between them at frequent intervals. Guess I have a short attention span. :o)
I would also recommend:
"Conspiracy of Fools" (The Enron story) by Erlich???? (sorry forgot the author's name) -although we now know how it ends for Kenny Boy and Skilling, it is an insightful look into how the geniuses of accounting can cook the books to make dozens of money losing enterprises look like they are instead making money. I always feel safe when people do it "by the numbers".
-best
Tertzakian gives a frustratingly dismissive description of Hubbert and "Hubbert's disciples": "He was bang on in his Nostradamus-like prophecy, which is why his work attracts so much attention today." Not that Hubbert used advanced analysis for his day or that his methods are sound. Overall Tertzakian indicates we are about at a "breakpoint", when people will have to switch to other energy sources, such as oil sands, though he conveniently avoids discussing the natural gas and water problems associated with oil sands.
He made one really interesting point that hadn't occurred to me before: we are already at gas prices that basically correspond to the records set in the late 70s/early 80s. That helps to explain the sucking sound coming out of Detroit.
Ormerod's book follows his earlier "The Death of Economics." In Butterfly Economics, he points out that people are not simply rational automatons and that we tend to follow the examples of others. He starts out with an experiment done on ants in which they are given two identical food sources an equal distance from their mound but in opposite directions. The scientists expected the ants to eventually settle on one of the two food sources. Instead, they leaned toward one, then the other, then back again, in patterns similar to GDP graphs. He suggests that this is an important insight, since the GDP is based on the actions of millions and thousands of consumers and companies, influenced by and influencing each other, just as the ant colony is made up of hundreds of individuals, influenced by and influencing each other.
A very important point for our discussion is that a given person's proclivity to do something, or continue to do something, is influenced by what everybody else is doing. Further, changes in significant areas of the economy, such as willingness to switch from SUVs to more economic vehicles or from SOV commutes to transit or nonmotorized transportation, are often discontinuous functions. His examples are crime and inclination to marry.
His example graphs are like this:
You can think of the X axis in this case as gas prices, moving from lower at left to higher at right. The Y axis in this case can be thought of as willingness to use less gas. The graph itself could either be an average individual's willingness to use less gas vs. gas price or a societal willingness to use less gas. We in the US are on the lower part of the curve. As prices increase, people are only slowly more willing to use less gas, until we reach a certain point (Tertzakian might call this a breakpoint), at which attitudes suddenly change dramatically. Once that new attitude is ingrained, prices can fall considerably, and people will only slowly increase their fuel use, until another point at which the price is so low that behavior changes dramatically again.
I think of this as a useful description and explanation for the situation in the 70s/80s as well as today. At some point, fuel prices will break the family budget and people will suddenly make drastic changes. Until then they will muddle through as best they can, changing very little. Anglosprawling countries will likewise continue current transportation patterns until enough people are forced to change to less fuel intensity, and then the whole society will switch. There will always be people for whom gas is too cheap to worry about, but if the country is switching to rail, transit, and nonmotorized travel, the expressways will only be maintained for so long, and people may start to see solo driving in Hummers as an offensive ostentation of the rich.
IOW, herd behavior is observed in species homo sapien, huh?
And I originally thought they each had "free will" and engaged in rational decision making.
Another great book on the same subject is "The Spirit in the Gene" by Reg Morrison. Down Under it was recently published under the title "The Plague Animal".
And if you are interested in human behavior in the historical past, and the way we will likely behave when we return to our tribal ways after the collapse then read: "Constant Battles: Why we Fight" by Steven Leblanc.
A novel, reccommended by the Economist in their year end list. Well worth reading , and funny; written by Marina Lewycka.
Started and could not put down: Jeremy Leggetts' - Half Gone; Oil, Gas, Hot Air & the Gobal Energy Crisis. This I found quite optimistic & uplifting like there is hope.
Reading in Progress, The Templars & the Assassins - The Militia of Heaven by James Wasserman. I started this to get a handle on the Politics of Religion in the Middle East. It is easy to read (comparatively) but I'm only half way through.
Article talking about the massive rate increases to homes that consume higher proportions of energy. There's a great quote from a lady who doesn't get it...
Peak rates (noon-6PM weekdays)
0-130% of baseline - $0.29/kW
131-200% - $0.38
Off-Peak (all other times)
0-130% of baseline - $0.09
131-200% - $0.18
We get around the peak rates by switching to our PV system, usually around 10:30AM and back to the grid between 6-7:30PM.
At this time of year, the bulk of our grid usage is for irrigating our garden, orchard, grapes, berries and landscaping. Last month we used 791 kWH off peak (25.5kW/day) and 12kWH on peak. The bill was $84.
Todd
What is price for 200+% baseline ?
Because houses are cheaper inland ? Because it is hotter inland (see #1) ?
I do agree with her that "this is insane" but not quite in the same way that she meant it.
The obvious solution of draining their pool (which saves on scarce S. California water as well) would admit that their economic lifestyle is unsupportable.
I commend the CA PUC for focusing on the high energy users (I note that they adjust the basic consumption level by climate and have three classes of residential users; 0 to 129.9% of minimum; 130% to 199.9% of minimum and 200+% of minimum. First 130% under "old rates", 130 to 200% at higher rates and 200+% at highest rates. Clear message; get rid of those pools ! And any other massive electricity user (subZero refrigerators, massive a/c homes, etc.).
Landscaping is a new home & recently purchased home business. It requires lots of driving around (supplies, job sites, etc.) in a pickup. If Orange County sprawl slows down, and mortgage interest rates bite; her husband will need to find new employment. Word will soon get out that pools are "not good", and neither are over sized homes.
It would be interesting to see how long those on the bubble refuse to see reality.
If I were in his shoes; I would try and hook-up with a plumber and start pushing solar water heaters. Perhaps even try getting either a plumbing or elelctrical license. And sell that house ASAP !
In a more practical sense, since staying home is to be punished so severely, I suppose folks should just take untaxed and massively subsidized jet flights seasonally to wherever is livable. There are no increasing block rates on tourism. Come to think of it, we call retired folks who already do this "sunbirds".
The average new house/apartment in the US was less than 1,000 sq ft until recent decades (1970s ?). We managed to survive.
I have little sympathy for the "middle class existance" outlined in the article.
We have graduated pricing here for electricity, but I've only seen it once or twice (>1000 kwh I think), we do for water as well. Over 4k gallons a month almost doubles the rate, IIRC. The local news has stories once a year on people who use the most, usually >100k gallons a month. It's all public record if it's a public utility.
Oh wait, does the kids wading pool count? :-)
We have graduated pricing
Why not use this concept for
transportation fuels, too ??
Standardize state and federal taxes ..
Use five or six price zones with
weekly adjustments ..
Give every licensed driver with a registered
vehicle say 500 gallons at the base price ..
Increase prices by $1.00 per gallon in units
of 100 gallons above the 500 gallon base ..
Use the 'extra' tax dollars to fund alt energy
and PO/GW mitigation strategies ..
Triff ..
Some here at TOD could already get by on a 100 gallon pa ration and sell off excess to high bidders.
WestTexas will love the Iron Triangle concept of Yergin controlling the Peak oil debate in that paper.
Last October the Post gave a Yergin, a contributor of long standing, a full Op Ed piece in which to push the notion that peak oil is a false premise and that there will be oil for every conceivable want for the foreseeable future.
And since that paper guides Washington thinking it is hard for Federal Politicians to take Peak oil seriously.
Media outlets do matter.
http://www.ajc.com/business/content/business/stories/0721bizsaudi.html
Saudi Arabia's oil a huge question
By MICHAEL E. KANELL
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 07/21/06
Excerpt:
"Right now, I am not really sure how to read things beyond concluding that the Saudi statements do not make sense, do not fit the market situation and don't fit what they are doing," Hamilton said. "The evidence is going to dribble in."
As one of Ayn Rand's characters said (according to Don,quoting Aristotle), if something doesn't make sense to you, examine your premises, because you will find that one of them is wrong.
Revised premise: As predicted by Khebab's HL work, Saudi Arabia--just like the prior swing producer, Texas--has peaked.
Of course, today Rand would be labeled a cornucopian. Nevertheless, her description of what happens as the producers withdraw is a pretty good--and profoundly scary--prediction for what happens as our energy production rate declines. If memory serves, the lights go out in New York City as Galt, et al, fly away to Galt's Gulch.
She deeply feared and hated the forces of government and especially the corrupting forces of special interests such as those of U.S. Steel, which is identified by everything except name in the book.
She never said Reardon metal would save the world.
BTW, I read my father's copy when I was ten years old, was thrilled beyond words and promptly set out to invent Reardon metal on my own, using pennies, copper-coated steel BBs and tinfoil.
The fun we had, back when we could buy real chemistry sets. I had Chemcraft's Biggest and Best and most lethal set, and with it there wasn't much I could not do.
Nowadays it is impossible to buy a real chemistry set--even if you are an adult and certifiable sane person.
Grump.
However, as I said, I still think that the overall book is a great metaphor for Peak Oil, except that it is an "Energy Atlas" holding up the world. Anyone want to track down quote where (I think) Franciso was talking to Hank Rearden about Atlas holding the world on his shoulders--and not being able to hold up the load any longer?
Also, clearly, the potentialities of static electricity, even if we could tap them might be large but clearly they are not unlimited.
Rand was a clear thinker and had a bunch of adoring quantitative groupies (such as Alan Greenspan) hanging around her all the time. The quants read and critiqued draft after draft.
The one thing I think Rand really screwed up on in that book is that Hank Reardon and Oren Borel (or whatever the evil Steel guy's name was) are the same person. As Reardon succeeds, his innovative and entrepreneurial Reardon Metals company morphs into U.S. steel, and as Reardon gets old and fat and mentally constipated he morphs into Oren.
Or, if Rand did understand this important point, she did not want to think about it.
She is one of the most interesting philosophers of the twentieth centuries, and most Ph.D. philosphy profs hate her with purple passion because she actually got millions of people excited and interested in important ethical issues--something that not one professional philosopher in ten thousand can do.
Page 233, Ellis Wyatt, speaking to Dagny and Hank:
"Everybody's wondering what I'm doing with it. Oil shale. How many years ago was it that they gave up trying to get oil from shale, because it was too expensive? Well, wait till you see the process I've developed. It will be the cheapest oil ever to splash in their faces, and an unlimited supply of it, an untapped supply that will make the biggest oil pool look like a mud puddle."
From "Atlas Shrugged," Part Two, Chapter Five, "Account Overdrawn," by Ayn Rand:
"Winter had come early, in the last days of November. People said it was the hardest winter on record and that no one could be blamed for the unusual severity of the snowstorms. They did not care to remember that there had been a time when snowstorms did not sweep, unresisted, down unlighted roads and upon the rooofs of unheated houses, did not stop the movement of trains, did not leave a wake of corpses counted in the hundreds."
Within the context, I think it is pretty clear that Rand meant "UNLIMITED for at least a hundred years [or until my honey, Hank, comes up with something better]."
In the thirties nobody thought we would still be dependant on oil in the twenty-first century: The smart money among physicists was on nuclear, while the idealists mooned on about solar energy.
BTW, nuclear energy was one of the main preoccupations in ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION of the late thirties, including Heinlein's classic and now more relevant than ever, "Blowups Happen," which, if memory serves was written in 1938 and published in 1939. It has been very widely reprinted, and rightly so.
In 1942 the Fibbies came to John W. Campbell Jr.'s office in the Street and Smith building in New York, and they laid down the law:
"No more stories about atomic energy!"
Then Campbell said to the F.B.I. guys:
"But atomic energy is one of our main themes. If we quit publishing stories about atomic energy, then the enemy will be sure we're working on an atomic bomb--"
"Say those words again, and you go to jail."
"Uh, you'll have to put H.G. Wells in jail, then. He invented it more than thirty years ago and regarded it as the weapon to end war."
"GGRRrrraarrrrrrgggggggghhhhhhhhhhh. You want us to cut off your paper supplies?"
Now for the rest of the story: The governement did reduce the paper allocation, but instead of killing "Astounding Science Fiction," Street and Smith killed the best fantasy magazine of all time, the much lamented "Unknown Worlds."
Then the story got even stranger, but I'm going to have lunch and leave that part out.
It's a lead pipe cinch that you won't inspire the millions if you do actual philosophy. Philosophy has never played well to the cheap seats. You lose your audience as soon as you pay attention to the disagreeable complexities of serious ethical and epistemological problems. The public wants to "discover" that it has always been right, and it doesn't want to exert itself in the process. Objectivism is an intellectual potato chip.
Ayn Rand is full of crap.
The m.o. is just like innumerable stupid television series: inflict characters with 'undesirable' philosophical positions with nasty personal habits and criminal impulses.
It's not much different from Stalinist propaganda in a mirror.
Rand now has a few cults of her own. They vie against each other like parasites.
As a member of a fifth-generation small family farm where everybody worked very hard to grow food and to send seven kids through parochial school, I was really put off by her pretension that only a few brilliant industrialists made the world work and that everyone else is parasitic.
Oil shale cost me more than $7 billion in the early 1980s, most of it going as government subsidies to Exxon and Occidental, two of the brilliant industrialist companies. As soon as those subsidies dried up, so did the brfilliant industrialists. They were off to loot Latin America or whatever ...
They left behid a boom-bust cycle that ruined thousands of lives here on the Western Slope. All they wanted were government handouts, and then the great industrialists were gone with the wind.
As I noted in a earlier post, in the book, Ayn Rand said as things began to unwind, one could discern the truth by assuming the opposite of what the government and the media told you was happening.
Pretty much the same with me. I read all her books when I was in the 9th grade and was thrilled by them. Now her ideas seem destructively simplistic, almost ludicrous. I must've grown up...
Who was it who said something like: "Anyone who isn't a Marxist when they are 20 is a fool, as is anyone who is still a Marxist when they are 40?"
I just don't think that they are making up those numbers for their future production. In any case, we will know in a year or two.
Byron
The trillion dollar question is Ghawar, accounting for more than half of the Saudi's production, and Ghawar is light, sweet.
Cantarell, the second largest producing field in the world, is probably crashing, and it produces heavy, sour.
IMO, it is likely that the two largest producing fields in the world--one light, sweet the other heavy, sour--are both declining. We know that #3 and #4 are both declining.
IMO, the temporary surplus in heavy, sour, is probably just that, temporary. It just makes sense that light, sweet would peak before heavy, sour.
"...the Saudi statements do not make sense, do not fit the market situation and don't fit what they are doing..."
After reading this article and related TOD comments, I happened to delve into the EIA's 2006 Annual Energy Outlook. As many of you know, the EIA produced three world oil price forecasts - a reference case ($57 per barrel in 2030), a low price case ($34 per barrel in 2030), and a high price case ($90 per barrel in 2030).
What struck me in the EIA's publication is the following (page 33 for those of you who have a copy):
"Although OPEC produces less output in the high price case than in the reference case, its economic profits are also less, because resources are assumed to be tighter and exploration and production costs higher for conventional oil worlwide. In the absence of tighter resources and higher costs, an OPEC strategy that attempted to pursue the output path in the high price case would subject OPEC to the risk of losing market share to other producers, as well as to alternatives to oil."
So assuming that Saudi Arabia is behaving in an economically rational fashion, even the EIA's logic seemingly points towards "tighter resources and higher costs" (i.e. peak production?) for this key oil producing nation.
I will be on our local radio today, 5:30 p.m. PST at 920kvec.com streaming live on a call in program on the military activity in Syria, Israel, and Lebanon (and off the coast).
This major engagement has brought out the exceptional qualities of Israeli troops, but it must also be said the shortcomings developed in six years of warfare against an opposition of inferior fighting caliber, Palestinian terrorists. In their first ordeal by fire, Israeli special forces are displaying bravery, determination and self-sacrifice. This is especially marked in the performance of the Maglen Special Unit 551 and the Egoz paratroopers. The Israeli custom of officers and NCOs leading their men into battle has led to the high proportion of fallen sergeants.
In South Lebanon, soldiers in their twenties are fighting tough, highly-trained guerrilla fighters for the first time on unfamiliar terrain without air or tank cover. Choppers are not used for fear of anti-air missile ambushes and the tanks in rugged mountain terrain are at the mercy of densely-placed roadside bombs and heavy Hizballah Katyusha rocket and mortar fire. Two tanks have been blown up.
Ground troops are therefore taking the brunt of the fighting.
Some report to DEBKAfile that in close combat, they have heard officers shouting in Farsi. Just as in Jenin 2002, Israeli forces encountered Hizballah and al Qaeda fighters in support of Palestinians, now they are facing members of Iran's Revolutionary Guards who are aiding Hizballah in Lebanon.
The men come home with hair-raising accounts of storming the hundreds of bunkers and caves in which Hizballah fighters are lurking.
On Wednesday, July 19, Israeli soldiers fought their way into a tunnel in the Maroun es Ras area, blew it up killing the 10-15 fighters inside, and emerged to engage another group of Hizballah hiding in the dense foliage a few yards away. A hand-to-hand battle ensued in which the first two soldiers, 1st Sgt Yonatan Hadasi, 21, and 1st Sgt. Yotam Gilboa lost their lives. Israel's death toll would have been higher had not rescue and ambulance teams braved heavy fire to extricate the wounded.
Five years of tactics used against the rag-tag Palestinian terrorists - painstaking counter-measures, air strikes on empty buildings, succumbing to diplomatic pressure for restraint, have left the IDF ill-prepared to face tough Hizballah guerrilla methods of warfare. The Shiite terrorists are trained in Iranian Revolutionary Guards facilities and their commanders are graduates of their officers' schools.
When Maj.-Gen Benny Ganz, commander of ground forces, warned Thursday that the IDF faces a difficult period - "We shall need to upgrade our capabilities over time" - he was really warning the troops that the next ten days to two weeks of combat were potentially costly in lives before the armed forces develops new combat techniques and capabilities adjusted to meeting Iran's Revolutionary Guardsmen and their disciples.
For the IDF, the Maroun er Ras battle may acquire the epic significance of the Ammunition Hill battle for Jerusalem of the 1967 War. Hizballah and their Iranian sponsors will strive to make it Israel's Tora Bora, which gave al Qaeda the upper hand over the US army in Afghanistan. The IDF and its top command must not let this happen. A defeat against the hard-line, fanatical Hizballah and its hate-filled Iranian masters is something Israel cannot afford.
The worst (of major oil importing nations):
- Belarus .19
- Netherlands .22
- Belgium .31
- South Korea .43
- Sweden .48
- Greece .50
- Finland .51
- Portugal .57
- Spain .65
10.Japan .7411.Italy .79
12.France .80
13.Switzerland .84
14.Chile .84
15.Turkey .93
16.USA .94
CHINA 2.75
So, for the near term anyway it looks like the Netherlands, South Korea, Sweden, Greece,etc. are the canaries in the coal mine.
To take this further could you remove gov't spending from GDP to assertain the consumers ability to pay more, rather than our gov't?
I have wondered if rising GDP isn't just a function of having to pay more for the same things instead of the gov't headline which leads us to believe that people are buying more stuff leading to a growing economy.
I don't think it is very likely that we (the US) are going to be able to continue our "borrow from abroad and outbid the others" policy for a very long time.
I consider domestic elastcity of demand for oil (it varies significantly) and the ratio of exports to oil demand.
If a nation can export enough to afford the oil that it NEEDS (plus other essential imports), that nation will be OK.
The Dutch can cut their domestic demand for oil significantly (oil used in their massive refining complex will be passed on to the final product users) and export enough "other stuff" to buy what they need.
Remember that the oil exporters will be importing goods & services even more than today.
The US, despite our 5 million b/day production, is the "weak sister". We have a very low price elastcity of demand (short & medium term, unsure about 10 years plus) and a massive trade deficit. New Zealand may be a comparable, we shall see.
The figures I can find is that crude and oil product imports were 11.1% of the imports in jan-april 2006 and 5.4% of the exports. Total exports are higher then imports, if you only have the import volume you need to halve it.
But don't feel guilty or apologize! Thank YOU for making the effort!
(Worst to First)
- Belarus .20
- Belgium .55
- Netherlands .58
- South Korea .60
- Greece .62
- Portugal .66
- Spain .71
- Finland .74
- Japan .75
- Sweden .77
- Chile .84
- Switzerland .87
- France .97
- Italy 1.00
- Turkey 1.00
- USA 1.02
CHINA 3.07As Magnus mentioned, Sweden has a lot of oil exports (and imports).
Thats an interesting way of looking at it. I thought it would be good to do a forward looking analysis like this. See, the UK is not in there presumably because of the North Sea. If we look at the projections 10 years out what would it look like? A bit more work I know.
Regards.
Bummer. It's collective punishment, a friggin slaughter of civilians in the west bank, gaza, and lebanon, war crimes that will probably result in a few more UN resolutions that the Israelis will ignore.
As a civil libertarian, as a pacifist, as a humanitarian, as a non-religious agnostic, as an amateur student of history, it is obvious to me that if there is an axis of evil it is us and Israel.
I am damn glad to be an ex-pat.
If you believe that all troubles in the ME can all be traced back to Syria and Iran, then you have to believe that stability won't be established without toppling those regimes too. So, my question to those of you that seem to think that the destruction of Lebanon is the correct action, is "what comes next?" Once Lebanon is reduced to rubble, then what? How many Middle Eastern countries can Israel, the EU, and the US "police" at the same time?
Would the USA tolerate a drug cartel controlling Baja California, being independent of the Mexican govt., having it own army and sending missiles into Chula Vista? Do the math.
Good point. But according to Mike Ruppert, Catherine Fitts, and other writers: corruption is plenty profitable. The US CIA, in cahoots with special laundry bankers, and other topdogs in Mexico and elsewhere, have an excellent drug cartel down South, supported by a corrupt Mexican military, that regularly sends northward drug 'missiles' across the entire US.
Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
-The Mexican army has been accused of escorting drug shipment across the border
-Mexican gangs control at least one city on the border
-The Mexican government publishes guides on how to illegally cross into the USA
-Inumurable federal agents have been killed in the above listed activities on the US side of the border.
About the only thing missing is the rockets.
What a great name. Are you over 50? 60 would be more proper.
It is funny but that came up in the exchange with the host, almost verbatim. I said, "it was almost the same thing as we have now," (minus the missiles - unsaid but thought).
I guess it's just an oversight, but your post forgot to heap praise on those gallant Iraeli pilots flying American-supplied F-16s and dropping American-supplied laser-guided bombs on Lebanese civilians.
They should get some of the credit, too.
Hey, it's an ugly job whacking all these Arab untermenschen, but, hell, somebody's got to do it.
Keep up the good work!
Somehow, I suspect their weapons are coming from a country other than the U.S. And they are specifically trying to kill as many civilian women and children as they possibly can; most of the Israeli men of military age are probably in uniform and mobilized by now.
I've come to the point of being disinvolved emotionally with the Israeli-Arab conflict. There are so many 'right' points of view. A few provisional observations on the situation:
I remember the charge a year or two ago that there was a shipment of Iranian weapons sent to Palestine, but I never saw a complementary report about how many Shipments of US arms had been flowing into Israel at the same time.
The imbalance in deaths might have a correlation with the imbalance in US military support over any meaningful, diplomatic support. Sending more guns is the most backhanded form of Aid we could be offering, but the fearful (to the point of chronically traumatized) leaders in Washington and the Knesset are not able to see any other way out.
This has nothing to do with righteousness. More like biblical - the birthplace of humankind with ALL the baggage.
Peace, not anytime soon. But buying 5-10 years by getting rid of the most of 5-10,000 missiles that just kill. Yes, this is good.
I would argue that Jews do not want to kill, the vast number of Jews, Arabs because they are Arab. Islam-fanatics do want to kill Jews. To say the President of Iran is not anti-Semitic is patently absurd.
And yes it would be good if the Middle East (including Iran) was big at raising carrots, and had no oil.
From USA today:
Finally, it Seems, Iran Has Overplayed its Hand
Youssef Ibrahim, USA Today:
The attempt by Hezbollah and Hamas to drag the whole Arab world into their war with Israel in the past two weeks has drawn flak in the form of Arab public opinion that neither militant jihadist organizations anticipated.
Speaking in an unusually blunt tone, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and Bahrain openly rejected what they described as unilateral "adventurism," telling both groups that they are on their own vis-à-vis Israel. More important, indications are surfacing that a long-silent Arab majority has had enough of being hijacked by extremists in its midst.
In a meeting of its 22 foreign ministers Saturday in Cairo, the League of Arab States did not mince words. "Behavior undertaken by some groups in apparent safeguarding of Arab interests does in fact harm those interests, allowing Israel and other parties from outside the Arab world (read Iran) to wreak havoc with the security and safety of all Arab countries." READ MORE
The outburst has been long coming, building up ever since the 1979 Iranian Islamic revolution, which poured political militancy into the red-hot religious rivalries between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. Iran championed the oppressed Shiites as well as repressed revolutionaries in the Arab world. It also has lent a hand to jihadist Islamic fundamentalists, launching savage wars against their governments and societies in Egypt, Algeria, Saudi Arabia and Tunisia since the early 1980s:
- Algeria's slow-burning civil war against ferocious armed Islamic groups has claimed more than 110,000 civilian deaths since 1992.
- In Saudi Arabia, al-Qaeda terrorists have bombed civilian and oil facilities, killing Saudis and foreigners indiscriminately.
- In Egypt, these extremists have killed secular writers and government officials, burned churches and hounded the Christian minority of nearly 8 million.
Long before targeting the World Trade Center's towers and subways in London and Madrid, jihadists have been relentless in their march to Islamize the Arab world.The latest outburst in Gaza and Lebanon was particularly alarming to the Sunni Muslim public, as it so transparently bears the imprints of Iran and its Shiite mullahs. This is disconcerting because the Persian nemesis is historically viewed in the region as a neighbor with imperialist ambitions. In pushing its immediate proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas, to engage Israel now, Iran reached ever further to set the Arab world's agenda of war and peace by advancing its own agenda to confront the West, Israel included. To be sure, Syria acts as Iran's Sunni agent in the Arab world, supplying access to Iranian arms and material and feeding the cycle of violence. It is working hand-in-glove to accommodate Iran's regional strategy.
For centuries, Sunnis dominated the Muslim world. That began to change in 1979, when the Iranian Shiite mullahs' revolution led to an astonishing ascent of what King Abdullah of Jordan last year decried as a menacing "Shiite crescent" rising above the Sunni Muslim Arab world. Similar alarm was voiced by President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and indeed by Saudi Arabia, the mother of all Sunni regimes. In Iraq, the two sects are engaged in a bloody massacre of one another.
What frightens the Arabs is that Iran has an impressive network already in place to do its deeds. Even before the United States conveniently dispensed with Iraq -- which was the major bulwark against Persians -- Iran had planted seeds throughout the region. Hezbollah was formed in the 1980s as Iran's private militia in Lebanon. Shiites loyal to Iran were dispensed to Iraq. And assorted jihadists spread to Jordan, Egypt and Tunisia.
At first, the Iranian motive was self-defense of its young revolution, but by the 1990s its ambitions graduated to regional hegemony. The election last year of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president signaled Phase 2 of the Iranian march, further alarming normally placid Arab majorities who appear to be silent no more.
The collective resistance spoken by Arab presidents, emirs and kings at the highest levels is echoed below among ordinary people. In Lebanon, for instance, it is evident that the people in the streets are blaming Israel, of course, but also Hezbollah for today's crisis.
Ironically, Hamas and Hezbollah's provocation of Israel, coupled with the Jewish state's retaliation, might have opened a new chapter in the greater Middle East discourse -- but not the one these groups anticipated. Perhaps the time has come in which war for war's sake might not just bring condemnation from the world at large, but from the Arab world as well.
Youssef Ibrahim, a former Middle East correspondent for The New York Times and energy editor for The Wall Street Journal, is a freelance writer and political-risk consultant based in the United Arab Emirates and New York.
The growth of Fundamental Islamism in Iranian Politics has all too much to do with our using the 'Hammer' (be it Mossadegh, Osama or Saddam) to solve mideast problems, instead of international diplomacy, or some creative (ie, something OTHER than embargoes) use of business and trade. We have gotten blowback or 'backdraft' from our misguided devotion to 'toughness' as a cure-all, and there's little sign that the US is wising up.
Whether or not the Israeli people 'want' to kill arab civilians, the vicious circle of violence in this conflict shows the tragic efficiency of IDF weaponry and tactics to annihilate bystanders (or the 'captive audience'?) as multiple times more deadly than the similarly shortsighted approaches of the enemies of Israel.
The US must decide whether to change its past practise of pouring more gas on the fires, in the form of armaments that have clearly shown little ability to 'end this'...
I wonder if the exhausted survivors of World War I could even remember what they originally went to war over.
#1. The Garrett Hardin book I've mentioned four times before: VOYAGE OF THE SPACESHIP BEAGLE: NEW ETHICS FOR SURVIVAL
#2. George Orwell, HOMAGE TO CATALONIA
#3. George Orwell, ANIMAL FARM
#4. George Orwell, 1984
Callimg #3 and #4 non-fiction is exactly the sort of licence I like. OTOH #1 and #5 are just non-books. #2 makes my top ten
Scholars who worked WWI or Medieval took deep personal offense at her methods, it was nothing to do with fashions or minor foibles.
If you want to read a novel about the beginning of WWI I'd pick Der Zauberberg over The Guns of August.
To the query above "if eexhausted survivors (of WWI) could even remember what they went to war over" the best answer is in Maynard Keynes' pamphlet The Economic Consequences of The Peace. His sharpest comment was simply his departure from the Versailles peace conference. Maynard's correspondence with Virginia Woolf on the matter is also enlightening.
He wraps up the era quite nicely.
'The Guns of August' was an excellent book!
Though I read it many years ago, I was fascinated by her very detailed description of how this 'unpleasantness in the Balkans' inexorably grew and grew and took on more and more a life of its own until there was no way for anyone to stop it. Paradoxically, the same politicians and diplomats who made the conditions ripe for war frantically tried their best to stop it from starting once they realized things were getting out of hand. But it was too late.
One of the lessons of WW I is how dangerous alliances can be for both the stronger and the weaker parties.
Another is that what is desireable and possible politically and what is desireable and possible militarily are two very different and often conflicting things. I was amazed to learn that the German diplomats didn't fully realize that it was the established doctrine of the German army that war with Russia automatically meant war with France and vice versa. So when Russia mobilized its army against Germany, Germany attacked France to basically 'get it out of way' before she turned east to take on Russia, whose mobilization was huge but quite slow.
Another is that one should be careful about making threats, as sooner or later someone is going to call your bluff, and then you can't back down.
And yet another, if you make a lot of dangerous war toys, sooner or later they are going to be used.
One indication that no one learned much from WW I is that the ink was hardly dry on the Treaty of Versailles when the strongest remaining naval powers (Great Britain, US, and Japan) were already engaged in a game of naval one-upsmanship that was only partly curtailed the Washington Naval Treaty of 1921.
The parallels between July 1914 and July 2006 scare me.
It can be stopped this time (should the will to stop it be there).
This time around, the railway timetables are no where near as good.
They are ALL doing a very good job of killing each other.
But it's so much easier to be doing it from the comfort of the cockpit of your American F-16 flying at 10,000 feet than by getting up close and personal or by wearing a suicide belt. The latter is so much messier (for the perp, that is).
I predict that the destruction of Lebanon is going to backfire in a very bad way for both Israel and the US. And I think that both will be far less secure when (and if) this whole thing is over. Time, of course, will tell.
Little chance of a Canadian retalitory strike though.
Israeli Weapons > Mounties in canoes.
You also forgot to mention how every day in school those hate-filled Israeli children are taught to disrespect the flag and humanity of their neighbors. Here is proof:
OOps did I get the wrong picture?
Sorry, this one is of Iranian students.
But you get the picture.
I would have said that they were idiots, but that they were entitled to that expression. It's only if they act in violence that it upsets me. I'm into this "quaint" concept called the rule of law. It's fallen out of fashion lately.
It is so easy to stir up hatred among people, as most people do not spend all their time on guard. I believe most people can easily live in harmony with others, but it is so easy to come in and say, "they are different, and you are better - look what they do". Once you start looking at the actions of others through that filter, then everything seems sinister. Then the cycle of hatred is begun, and it grows and grows, each side feeding off the other. That has been my point.
Sorry. It appears you fail to see the whole picture.
I weep not for a burning cloth.
Look at the children, at their heads.
What is being programmed into their brains?
That is the question.
This is a factory for manufacturing WID's -- Weapons of Islamo-facist Destruction (aka suicide bombers)
I weep for these children --and their children --and all the victims of this perpetual hate mongering.
Is it more moral to kill civilians who are just trying to live their lives by dropping US made bombs from US made F16s than it is to do it by strapping bombs to willing people?
Can you tell by looking at the body of a dead baby if it was an "Islamo-facist" or a "Zionist pig"? Because this is what it's about - innocent people being slaughtered by angry men on both sides - people who thing that one more bomb or missile will make it right & justify all those that went before.
It's digusting, and I'm sick of it. Your steadfast belief that one side is right blinds you to the truth of the matter. I have no allegance or attachment to either side. I do not care if there is a state called Israel, or Palestine, or Lebanon. These are political entites that mean nothing to me. I only want the slaughter to stop, and it will not as long as people close their eyes, ignore it, rationalize it, justify it, explain it away. THERE IS NO EXCUSE!
Can you tell by looking at the body of a dead baby if it was an "Islamo-facist" or a "Zionist pig"? Because this is what it's about - innocent people being slaughtered by angry men on both sides
Of course the dead baby was innocent but what were the chances that he/she would have turned into either an "Islamo-facist" or a "Zionist pig" JUST DEPENDING on which side he/she was born?
As long as we don't thoroughly understand how this works and CURE THIS there is not much hope and weeping is useless.
Touche with the Israeli girls.
Minor point: Their's was not an organized school activity.
However, if you are truly ethno-neutral, why don't we see you waving the Amnesty International flag and decrying killings/violations the world round?
Is it just me that notices an amazing attention by some here to bash "Israel" above, and to the exclusion of all others?
If you truly "only want the slaughter to stop", how about the 16,000 Americans that get killed by drunken drivers every year?
In addition, I sure don't feel like picking a side as the pundits in control of the current spin on this one seem to demand of anyone who expresses an opinion. And if you don't pick a side they automatically assume you support their "enemy". A pox on all their houses.
I do support Amnesty International, but starting a thread about that would be quite off topic on TOD.
Is it just me that notices an amazing attention by some here to support "Israel" above, and to the exclusion of all others?
I am reacting to the constant propaganda, also from one point of view. I did not start up this thread, I am responding to one that began way back with a post on the military state of affairs, but with a clearly biased tone. The assumption was that anyone reading it would OF COURSE want Israel to prevail. Why? I cannot recall a thread that I started condemning Israel and defending her enemies - if you can find one I will look seriously at your accusations of bias.
You and others take it for granted that Israel is the victim, but not everyone shares that point of view. Of course it appears to you that everyone is biased against you, because you assume that yours is the balanced, centered view. But I see a partisan, way over on one side - and therefore everyone else appears the enemy to you.
If someone started a thread defending the actions of the US in Falluja, you can bet I'd want to respond to that too. I suppose it would be as much on topic as this, as it's occurring in the ME oil regions. But do you really think that I should start posting on drunken drivers? Wouldn't that be a bit OT?
I'm well aware that there are plenty of other wrongs going on all the time. People are dying all the time, often through injustice - but none of that excuses another.
More of my federal tax dollars go to support Isreal than go to build new Urban Rail in the US. None, AFAIK, go to Iran or Hezbollah.
Isreal is a de facto client state of the US. There is not a major moral difference whether the USAF ir IDF is killing Lebanese and Canadian civilians and destroying civilian infrastructure.
My solution would be simple. Announce before every Isreali election that if any currrent or former member of Likud gets a ministers post, then all US aid will stop until he or she leaves office.
I have not noted the same level of atrocities from Labor gov'ts, and the three Isrealis that I know who advocate genocide were all Likud members.
Isrealis are still free to elect Likud gov'ts, and they can still perform atrocities (but without a supporting US veto in the UN), but they can do so without my tax dollars and "moral" support.
It no doubt took great courage for the germans to terrorize the french countryside, knowing how much they were hated. Destroying Lebanon's infrastructure and terrorizing the civilian population is, in fact, reminiscent of Hitler vs. the french resistance - if a soldier is killed, kill at least ten nearby civilians. By the numbers - anybody want to guess how many israelis have been killed by palestinians, and how many palestinians have been killed by israelis? I seem to remember the israelis think the number must be at least 10:1 in their favor - wonder where they got that idea.
It is suggested that the only solution is to overturn syria and iran. Does anybody really think that this would make israel safe from the millions that hate them? The only hope for peace is to withdraw from the west bank of the Jordan, which just might, with time, bring a peaceful coexistance.
BTW - Israel was, indeed, attacked by arab countries many times, but never by the palestinians, whose lands were overrun first by the invading arabs and then by the israelis, who decided to stay. Egypt, being sovereign and having a standing army, was eventually able to negotiate for the return of the Sinai, but the palestinians, having neither, cannot do the same.
BTW the Germans description the resistance fighters was "terrorists".
It is difficult to know how strong the resistance really was since the French state "discourages" any histories of the occupation. Even english language histories are banned. In some places, for example the Alpes Maritimes, the resistance was strong enough to defeat the German army before the allies arrived. American troops entering my home town were indeed greeted with flowers on 24th August 1945 by a population who knew the Germans had already gone.
This conflict has been predicted by a few to be the beginning of some civilization-destabilizing thing. I even have heard talk show people talk about it. Catastrophism seems to have gotten into the mainstream. Probably will really be a cover for the oil depletion.
I'm looking for the opportunities for it to stop, and I don't see them. Israel has not achieved anything yet except truckloads of civilian corpses, and they cannot quit now without losing face at home and their reputaion as the toughest dudes on the block. So they will send in the ground troops, and it will be bloody, but not very effective I'll bet. There will be many opportunities for this to escalate and spread. I cannot see anyone backing down unless one side gains a clear upper hand.
My guess that we would be at war with Iran by the November US elections seems to be right on track - this isn't the way I thought it would start, but no matter.
So now all we need is a good hurricane - the waters are nice and warm, just got to get a little air rotation.
And to what extent was the U.S. privy in these plans even before the kidnappings?
The Israelis obviously believe this will enhance their security. But will it?
Oh, well, this shit will never end, certainly not in my life time unless the whole region just gets incinerated with a few nuclear bombs. Probably not good for oil production.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060720/sc_nm/energy_spain_plankton_dc;_ylt=AqMxmEdJw6VepP_XOmYw99ms0NUE ;_ylu=X3oDMTA3ODdxdHBhBHNlYwM5NjQ-
"Unlimited Oil..."
Is the US going bankrupt?
http://tinyurl.com/e66xv
Excerpt:
Not much coverage in mainstream media, though Bloomberg is carrying it...
It's a scare tactic.
However, he added that the value of the dollar those payments were made in could not be gauranteed.
ie. we will get our $3,000 a month SS check,, but a loaf of bread may cost $500.
Social Security and Medicare are promises to pay, conceptually similar to promissory notes. You can get into legalese all you want but this is how it was sold to the public. To fail to deliver that to the same public that paid for it amounts to a default on that promise... in other words, bankruptcy.
You can sugar coat it how you wish but millions of retirees without support will create a crisis that will very probably sink the dollar overseas, having the same ultimate impact as a formal declaration of bankruptcy. Given the above, why should I quibble with him calling this bankruptcy?
It appears to me the end result is the same
-the US government either defaults on its promises
or
-the US government pays the amount promised in dollars with little relative value
There is no free lunch.
I am very interested in the impact the declining value of the dollar will have when combined with the supply/ demand fundamentals of oil. I guess I got excited when I thought I had someone to talk to about it.
Too quick on the keyboard..
regards,
Not at all. And just like GM renegotiated it's retiree's health care costs recently, reducing them by 20%, the federal government can do the same. No one said GM went bankrupt when they renegotiated those costs...
"Social Security and Medicare are promises to pay, conceptually similar to promissory notes."
Well, it's also "conceptually similar" to my promise to pick up milk for my wife on my way home. "Legalisms" matter.
" millions of retirees without support will create a crisis that will very probably sink the dollar overseas, having the same ultimate impact as a formal declaration of bankruptcy. "
First, countries reduce social benefits all the time, and their trading partners barely notice, except to note that the country in question is probably now in better financial shape, and therefore more creditworthy.
Second, no one's talking about a sudden elimination of benefits. For SS, the worst thing that could happen is that in 35 years(!) benefit levels would drop by 30%. That's only if economic growth is much lower than in the last 15 years. Medicare might have to drop the new drug benefit, and raise fees (and maybe reduce coverage - I admit I don't know as much about Medicare as I'd like).
Social Security and Medicare are in trouble because people are living 3x longer after retirement than they did in 1935. The obvious solution is to gradually raise the retirement age, to maintain the ratio of workers to retirees and make people spend some of their additional years of life working - not a bad deal, really. Is this a reduction in benefits, or just a freeze in the growth of benefits?
I just finished a set for a local production of Gypsy, then got asked into a production of Lil Abner, and suspect that I never posted my montage of Not Now Darling from the Spring:
http://www.donalfagan.com/html/darling.html
There is an interesting thread about hybrids and EVs here:
http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/?p=1856
One comment struck me:
# Kevin:
July 20th, 2006 at 4:58 pm
Briefly, Kevin doesn't want to accept lesser convenience, range and mobility than what we have now with gas & diesel vehicles. Although some of us are already prepared (resigned) to cycling, moving closer to work and taking shorter trips, I think that will be the stumbling block for most people, assuming they still have a choice.
http://www.wired.com/news/wiredmag/0,71414-0.html?tw=rss.index
The Tesla Roadster is powered by 6,831 rechargeable lithium-ion batteries -- the same cells that run a laptop computer. Range: 250 miles. Fuel efficiency: 1 to 2 cents per mile. Top speed: more than 130 mph. The first cars will be built at a factory in England and are slated to hit the market next summer. And Tesla Motors, Eberhard's company, is already gearing up for a four-door battery-powered sedan.
Skip the top speed and the range and make it a practical, useful vehicle.
I think the personal cocoon mobility paradigm has to go if we are going to deal with oil and global warming issues. Yes, this is a personal preference. I have seen the future and it worked, when I lived in Germany 23 years ago. Yes, of course, they had cars, but at least you had real choices.
Car free cities need to be the future. Cars should be used like the Chinese used to eat meat--- just as a condiment, not a main course.
the only way your going to get a 10k electric car, and we are talking a car here not a erector set like vehicle is if you get it without the large amount of battery's
On average I rarely drive 20 miles a days.
I was IN this storm and I was thinking the whole time that it was no big deal. I mean there were surges, which are common really. I've got UPS backup on anything that needs it, so I woke up on time the next day to see the news reporting massive damage. Soemthing like 80MPH winds and little rain, just lots of strong winds.
Now all the damage that this little storm did is starting to resonate the peril that minor inconveniences cause. This small storm has stranded many and they are travelling everywhere to get anything. I'm ranting, but it seems a bit backwards that a small storm can stop so much.
We're very close to the edge and the wrong events could leave us incapable of responding to true suffering even here at home. What's worse, is that as the population climbs, as global warming worsens, as resources generally become tighter, the probability of such cascading events will simply grow.
Not even a thorough one, but just switch off your Electric Service at the main breaker for a night. No Furnace or water heater, no fridge, none of the cordless phones will work.. still have a princess phone around?
Something interesting to note, however, is seeing what IS still there, and how people interact, what you all find to do, once you've found the candles, the matches, etc..
I had this happen on a shortfilm shoot, where the cast/crew was all staying in a lakeside cabin and a storm took out the power. Everyone had been facing the walls and corners, watching videos, working at PC's, listening to BoomBoxes, etc. Power's out, and we all ended up together on the porch, facing in, and talking and singing. (I was the electrician on the shoot, and seeing the repair trucks working their way up the road, I snapped off the breakers and let the evening continue uninterrupted by electricity, until people were already brushing teeth and heading to bed, then I, playing God, or Hephaestus, snapped our magical power back on..)
But the point remains, when the lights go out, the water stops pouring from the spout, or you can't refill the car, you face some easily forgotten choices in what to do next.. and even if you've lived without before, you get acclimated to the access to power very quickly, and the change can still be a great shock.
Your notes gave me a wicked thought, though:
When the big powerdown arrives, how many families & other groups of people will break apart when they are then compelled to truly get to know each other...and discover that they really don't like the people they are with... ;o)
-best
In a temporary situation people will get together like that and make it a fun event. Though as the hours stretch to days and days to weeks, actual withdraw will hit and thats when there will be trouble.
But as power grids get stretched, rolling blackouts occur, not permanent outages.
There is a difference between between, "the powers out lets eat the neighbors" and "powers out again, who's got beer?"
Reoccurring power outages and intermittent gas shortages may well increase neighborhood cohesion as we spiral towards a power down.
Sadly, I think that our perspective on what 'human nature' is has also been heavily influenced by this period of 'Absolute Power', such that it flavors the predictions of what humans will and can do when that level of power downshifts on us..
"Now you begin to see just how close to the edge we really live, and how a series of cascading failures at the wrong time, a proverbial "perfect storm" of events, could lead to major problems. Many people don't "get it" until they've had it happen to them."
Well, if it don't happen in less than 5 years, the odds start turning against it ever happening on a widespread basis. By then, the world will be massively reorganizing against the old centralized electric grid system, and instead going to a decentralized, destandardized type of system that will be producing power in tens of thousands of places and dozens of ways at the same time, and able to just shift around systems problems, or kick in local and varied (including renewable) "spinning reserve and stabalization power production.
www.distributedenergy.com/de.html
(That's a great magazine by the way, and you can register for it for free!)
But why do people think these stability and sustainability isses will get worse and not better? It is purely a problem of philosophical blindness and hubris. Greyzone says...
"Up to that point they think there is some magical auto-organizing effect in modern civilization that automatically puts everything back to right no matter what happens."
Note the AUTOMATIC ASSUMPTION IN THAT SENTENCE: Our problems are caused by modernity, modernity so great it is even percieved as magic.
Again, allow me to give to you the most RADICAL assumption you will here, among all the radical assumptions you hear at TOD:
IF we will make the assumption, just for one minute, that our technology is not modern, is not the ZENITH of man's design and engineering skills, but instead is only an early step in the development of our science, which IS BARELY AT THE DEVELOPMENTAL STAGE OF A CHILD LEARNING TO WALK FOR THE FIRST TIME, and just consider that the weakness, the problem with our technology is NOT that it is so modern, or that it is so advanced, or that it is so hard to sustain and so complex because it is so advanced, BUT BECAUSE IT IS STILL SO PRIMITIIVE.
Using the technology we have as the standard by which technology should be judged? It is nothing more than a glorified fire pit and a stone hammer. Change out the wood, use oil. Change out the stone, use steel, BUT NO NEW PRINCIPLES SINCE THE BRONZE AGE!! YOU WOULD USE THIS BARBARIAN SCIENCE TO JUDGE ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY BY??
Roger Conner known to you as ThatsItImout
I agree that, may be, a more "modern technology" will solve some problems but I am afraid that we are running into a Marching Morons problem.
That is, the BULK of society is made of ignorant/uneducated/stupid people and that the few "enlightened" ones cannot bear the brunt of moving the whole "masses of asses" toward some salvation.
Given, also, that among the ressourcefull people a large minority (or is it a majority?) are looking for their own immediate selfish interests the prospects seems to me pretty grim :
End of rant
The "enlightened ones" should be smart enough to come up with a viral paradigm that use the mass network effects to its advantage rather than as a barrier.
No one said it was going to be easy, but there may be ways to make the Invisible Greedy Hand bend towards doing the right thing once in a while.
P.S. They are not "morons". They are human animals just like you and me.
They were programmed differently.
That's all.
It is not their "fault" they were programmed differently.
It is not our "merit" that we were programmed to see farther. We merely stand on the shoulders of giants --to quote Isaac Newton.
Yes, "merchandising", this has been discussed in this thread by Roger:
"but there is no way to market to a middle aged couple with college age kids and a bankroll that would choke a horse who becomes "peak aware" that HEY, MY BUTTS IN DANGER HERE, AND ALL I STAND FOR.....well, except to sell them books and tapes to tell them.....HEY, YOUR BUTTS IN DANGER HERE, AND ALL YOU STAND FOR!!"
They are not "morons". They are human animals just like you and me.
You must mean "morons" is not politically correct, I guess?
Or may be you never met any moron?
OK, let's not nitpick on this.
It is not their "fault" they were programmed differently.
Of course "it is not their fault", nor mine, nor yours, this not a matter of responsibility, they are not to be "judged".
Unfortunately they cannot be cured, you cannot negotiate, and they will kill you, and me, and themselves.
It is not our "merit" that we were programmed to see farther.
I do not claim any merit, I just want to save my ass (and any other willing to).
This is EXACTLY what TPTB have been doing all along history but it looks that faced with large global problems like PO & GW they are not going to be very successfull, even with respect to their own selfish goals.
after posting the question,
I realized the Smithian "Dream" (i.e. the American Dream) is exactly how "we" harness the powers of stupidity
Anyone wanna buy a lottery ticket?
Consider renewable technologies, ranked by their current economic viability.
Storage (dam) hydro - Location specific, dispatchable upon demand, somw seasonable & year to year variation, good spinning reserve
Run-of-River hydro - Location specific, you take the power when you get it (some schemes allow shifting power by minutes), hourly variations in power but these can often be predicted a day in advance
Geothermal - Location specific, Currently developed for 24 hour/day, steady base load. They could, with greater investment, be turned into dispatchable peak power for the grid
Landfill gas - Near urban centers, small MW, steady base load
Wind - Regional specific, somewhat seasonal (usually poor in summer), erratic, bigger & taller is better, low density, 90+% of new renewals coming on-line in the next decade, few limits of resource.
Biomass - Widespread possible, few specific economic locations today (mainly sawmills, sugar mills). Can be dispatched with increased fuel storage.
All above are economic today, Those below are not.
Solar Photovoltaic - Available almost everywhere, Limited hours & erratic, low density, requires either batteries or grid. Only renewable that favors distributed generation.
Solar Thermal - Desert SW only for electricity - some storage dispatch (for a few hours), low/medium density.
Tidal - Very location specific, on almost 24 hour cycle, useful only with grid.
Wave - Erratic. low density, long way to economic generation
I see a need for a "Super Grid" to ship regional wind surpluses around and to connect surplus wind with hydro (and perhaps air) pumped storage. I see little or no movement towards distributed power unless solar PV becomes economic. Even then, it will be the smaller trend. Batteries will remain expensive.
I think there are more options from Solar Heat than you suggested. For a much greater decentralization of current electrical demand, and for displacing heating fuels in the north, solar can supply a great deal towards heating, cooling, refrigeration, and hot water than it does today. Whether these comprise one or many technologies is up to anyone to choose, but there are a broad range of variations that we've hardly scratched the surface on, in terms of 'Soaking up some Rays'. I would like to see a modular roofing and outer wall system designed with overlapping tiles, where various groups handle different energy tasks for the home (business, etc), Respiration, Photosynthesis, Water Absorbtion, Cooling/Radiation etc. I think our roofs are one area where we are still not at all 'modern' or even 'current' in our thinking. Asphalt tiles? Bah!
Some Solar Cooling Links..
Kommt einige aus deutschland
http://www.eg-solar.de/english/products/solarrefrig.htm
SunDanzer, via Nasa
http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/spinoff2003/er_1.html
and from the French.. (first pix..)
http://www.limsi.fr/Individu/mpons/solaradsor.htm
and explain themselves..
http://www.limsi.fr/Individu/mpons/pricyc.htm
Even HiTech needn't be that hitech. We're still wowed by Gas Discharge Lighting (Compact Fluorescents, the new big thing, Mercury Lights, Neon..), which Tesla was playing with over a century ago!
Jokuhl,
On this issue, I'm with you.
Just had a roofing guy here explaining the options to my SO & I regarding re-roofing our aging buliding top.
As sunlight hits the conventional, asphalt roof tiling, it converts the thick hydrocarbon into a lighter and more volatile hydrocarbon which simply evaporates into the atmosphere. Our roofs are a source of global warming gases.
The reason you need to replace your asphalt tiled roof every 20-40 years is cause the sun has eaten its way through the original asphalt.
Solar water heating is a "no brainer" whereever practical (some retrofits may be difficult). And this can displace some electricity.
And sometimes solar space heating during winter is better than WT + pumped storage powered ground loop heat pumps, sometimes not. Sometimes a mix is best. Some times (New Orleans) air source heat pumps are best for heat.
I'm not sure a solar-powered Ammonia Evaporative Fridge is beat on energy inputs, but more than likely is worse on capital costs. My advocacy for that technology is to keep your food supply less vulnerable to grid failures, which WT, Pumped Storage and DC Grid doesn't address, although I like them as appropriate moves forward for the overall energy picture.
I would like to see as much self-sufficiency for individual homes and communities as possible, while not wanting this to direct us into an isolationist mentality. 'Good fences make good neighbors' (?)
Bob
What makes our technology "high"?
Are we smoking dope?
Technology is technology.
Nothing makes one tech "higher" than another.
True that mankind probably has many new technological frontiers to break into. We are neither at the peak or the valley of our technological capabilities --it's probably more like an undulating plateau where Dark Ages follow too much exuberant enlightenment.
Cheap Oil, alas, was one of our historical periods of overly exuberant enlightenment.
Heavy rain and thunder, wind NW 47 mph gusting 54.
Quite the severe thunderstorm moving through the city...
I spoke to some people at my motel about the storm and power outages. One lady told me that she drove an hour from her home to get the last motel room available where I
am staying. The motels that have power are booked solid through the weekend as people are waiting to get their power restored.
To mich to put into single post.
After working on levess & rebuilding wetlands (tradeoffs in time, location, annual costs, salinity) we did economic planning. I made Peak Oil pitch. 3 to 3 split among others at table. We had a 10 minute discussion, dispassionate and went with planning for "ever higher oil prices, rate of increase uncertain" on 7-0 vote.
Only improved road on our plan was to Port Fourchan (2 lane today, 1,800 heavy trucks/day, source of ~28% of US imported oil and main supply line to offshore oil platforms). Rest was commuter rail network.
Majority (3/4 ?) of other tables also went rail heavy.
Chief Adminstrative Officer of Houma Louisiana at my table asked me at break what his city could do. I promised eMail for more beyond smaller cars. Any workable ideas from TOD ?
He brought up good point on controlling small town sprawl. Using septic systems requires so many sq ft/single family residence. Extending local sewer system would improve density. He talked about zoning much more mixed use (head of Aquarium lives in old factory that has been converted into 260 apartments with ground floor retail in New Orleans). Good info exchange.
BTW, Houma will likely be in a permanent boom post-Peak as more & more money chases declining oil.
Could you provide us some information on how you 'got into' city planning like this? You're one of the people desperately trying to build lifeboats out of existing materials on the sinking ship SS Peak Oil. Understanding how you got to the point where you were talking to officials on a fairly regular basis might help others who want to do the same.
Had one early major success, a plan (to be announced ~45 days after Katrina) to build half of the Desire Streetcar Line as Public Works project (street was within a decade of needing to be rebuilt; rebuild it now and combine the two).
I believe in the "Power of a Good Idea". Create a concept that is so compelling that others can take it with them and spread it for you. That is what I am using TOD for.
I have become known as "the Streetcar Guy" and people with questions come to me.
After Katrina there has been a dramatic upsurge in public involvement in EVERY dimension of civic life. One example. Last Saturday, 80 working class black folks sat politely for 1.5 hours through a consultant presentation with minimal a/c in a flooded church with no water; then asked TOUGH questions for an hour. Voluntary clean-up krewes every Saturday. etc. etc.
Persistance & time & good ideas. Our high social capital here helps. I connect with one member of a group and others of their group are brought to me.
This happened several times at yesterday's planning session. I have 14 business cards (I scrawled notes on most of them) to input today with associated eMails.
I sign my eMails with
Best Hopes,
a positive note to end with.
I was never much of an 'activist' or person that thought I would be involved in civics or politics or that kind of stuff. But, I became interested in town planning, mostly from a sociological perspective and started reading and then as part of trying to learn more I started going to local public meetings just to observe. I started asking questions and making my opinions known at these meetings. If you do this, more than likely you will be identified as a 'community leader' or at least an active participant and will be appointed to advisory commissions and kept 'in the loop'. You start setting up one on ones with elected officials. They seem happy to hear opinions of their constituents at this level. The process of actually changing the course of things is indeed slow, as politicians are generally very conservative about change, particularly fundamental change but they do listen.
If you are really ambitious, you can start a group or lead an existing organizaion such as a neighborhood group or something. It's amazing how much weight a politician will put in what a group of a dozen people say, particularly if it actually makes sense!
Like many others on this site I have been trying to figure out what this years hurricane season is going to look like. Especially in the oil producing gulf of mexico region.
I've found several sites and links in the past with surface sea temperature (SST) maps, but they never really answered my question of how does this year look compared to last year.
Well, I finally found what I wanted. Not only does it have SST maps it also has Tropical Cyclone Heat Potential.
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/cyclone/data/fulllist.html
Here are the links that shows the Tropical Cyclone Heat Potential for yesterday.
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/dataphod1/work/HHP/NEW/2006201at.jpg
and for comparison the same day in 2005
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/dataphod1/work/HHP/NEW/2005201at.jpg
In general the energy available for hurricanes looks much less, EXCEPT in the Gulf of Mexico. If one forms in the gulf it should really chow down on all the heat energy.
Hmmm... One might expect then that the longer water temperatures remain in the favorable development range each year, the more hurricanes. On average.
-best
http://www.qctimes.net/articles/2006/07/21/news/state/doc44c07025b9fbe103871139.txt
"Rep. Kurt Granberg, D-Carlyle, who sponsored the legislation, estimated the project would create 1,500 new jobs. Power Holdings of Illinois LLC is building the gasification plant near Mount Vernon. The plant is expected to use 10,000 tons of coal daily. The company estimates the plant could provide 5 percent of the state's natural gas needs.
Construction on the plant will begin in 2007 and be finished in three years. The project is estimated to cost $1 billion."
I have just created a new group on Flickr for the data junkie like myself dedicated to charts and graphs about peak oil and oil production profiles:
Flickr: Oil Depletion
You will have to be a Flickr member (free registration) in order to see or post pictures.
"A Spanish company claimed on Thursday to have developed a method of breeding plankton and turning the marine plants into oil, providing a potentially inexhaustible source of clean fuel."
"Bio Fuel Systems has developed a process that converts energy, based on three elements: solar energy, photosynthesis and an electromagnetic field," it said in a press dossier."
Could someone explain to me what an electromagnetic field is and how this aids the process of turning plankton into oil?
I read the same news clip and was also puzzled by their mention of an 'electromagnetic field'.
The term 'electromagnetic field' is pretty general and can include anything having to do with the electromagnetic spectrum, from the field given off by an electrical transformer, an eletric magnet, microwaves, or even radio or TV signals.
Any scheme to harvest plankton from an aqueous medium has to involve one or more liquid-solid separation steps, such as settling, filtration, dewatering, etc. I suspect, and it's only a guess, is that they might be using some sort of electric charge to nullify the natural electrosatatic repulsion forces that cause small particles to remain in suspension.
As I said, it's just a guess, but that's about the only place I can conceive of an electromagnetic field coming into the picture.
Addendum:
Perhaps there's a step somewhere in the process whereby they break up the plankton into colloid particles (including the oily 'active ingredient') and then use electrophoresis to effect a separation from the liquid. Electrophoresis is the application of an electrical field to cause movement of colloidal particles.
Now I'm starting to get interesing.
Simple, really.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism
Joule,
(No ME politics in this reply, honest.)
Actually, electrophoresis is a biology lab process that all first year biochem majors learn about. Not very complicated.
A sample is placed at one end of viscous medium (a gel).
A voltage is applied across the gel cell, from one end to the other.
Many biological molecules have a polar preference, they drift towards a positive or negative voltage faster than others. (Molecule size and drag in the medium are another separation factor) So you can separate biological molecules according to the speed which they drift through the viscous gel (aka colloidal suspension medium).
When you see those DNA smear pictures in the movies or on TV detective shows (where they "match" the DNA), they are acutually showing you a gel separation strip --not necessarily electrophoretic, there are other kinds.
However...i was trying to figure out if there is a new process here, proprietary, innovative to the point where the conversion of algae can be counted on as an alternative fossil fuel within 5 to 10 years?
With all of the doom, why can't there be a little space for optimism?
Mexico, Ghwar, mob justice, starving to death, impoverishment via inflation, evolutionary psychology turning us into the killing machines we truly are!
If we are talking about the same old conversion processes disguised as the second coming of Jesus(lol) then we are going to run into the same old constraints, and bob in arizona will have a legitimate chance of being the SUN-KING!
Why do these Spanish academics think they have something new? Anybody have any insight into this press release or is this just more bull honky propaganda to get more funding?
Because it all boils down to EROEI of this process, can you get the number?
Yes, I am aware that electrophoresis is more of a lab-scale analytical tool rather than a large-scale liquid-solid separation process, but it was about the only thing I could think of that might involve an 'electromagnetic field' as stated in the news clip.
I did forget,though, that it involved using a gel rather than a free-flowing aqueous medium. So, maybe this thing involving an electromagnetic field is not electrophoresis after all, but something else.
I would think that if the objective is to remove plankton from an aqueous medium, then conventional liquid-solid separation processes would be applied, such as coagulation and settling followed by physical dewatering of the resultant sludge. How they then extract the oily material from the plankton 'concentrate' is where some proprietary technology might come in to the picture. I wouldn't be surprised if some heat is applied in some way to break down the plankton cellular structure to get at the oily material.
My gut feel tells me that whatever they are doing probably requires a not insignificant energy input, and I suspect that the actual EROEI is not all that impressive.
I'd still be interested in learning more about this process.
I agree.
Replicating plant oganisms of the plankton--algae size offer advantages that the conventional biomass (ie. corn, switch grass) do not, They can be circulated in an aquaeous medium, exposed to sunlight on a regulated basis and harvested more easily.
Cheers,
RR
======Im in st.louis and my aunt is a manager at a local mobil gas station, and she said they are down to about 600 gallons of gas and they told her there wont be any more coming very soon. So I went and filled up all three of my cars / work vans.
For example, one reference for optimal energy savings indicates that you should not have more than an 8 degree deferential between you're at home setting and your away setting. The logic is that more than an 8 degree swing uses more energy to catch up (cool or heat) when the programming turns from "away" to "home". Other documentation indicates that a 10 degree difference is OK. Does anyone have any thoughts, or can point to research that indicates the optimal temperature differential?
Also, does anyone know of references or research to heating/cooling temperature levels that are optimal for conserving energy use, while maintaining some level of comfort?
For reference I'm using the following temperature settings (in degrees) for my Northeast Ohio house:
Heating
At Home: 68
Away: 60
Cooling:
At Home: 75
Away: 83
I'm just tinkering to see if I can get some more efficiency out of my climate control system.
One thing that I have figured out is it is very easy to cool the house off in the morning, before the outside air heats up. Once upon a time, I kept the setting indoors at 79-80 most of the time in the summer. When the AC did kick on, it just ran and ran and ran and couldn't catch up. Now, I will chill the house to around 72 early in the morning. It doesn't take long at all for that to happen at that time of day, and then I will let the inside temperature come up during the day. The result is that I get a quick cooling in the morning that benefits me the rest of the day.
Hope that helps.
Cheers,
RR
P.S. When I am gone, I turn it completely off.
So your AC is more efficient running in cooler air. Or, if you can afford it, an AC that has a liquid cooled condenser using either ground source or body of water source to dissapate the heat energy will be the most efficient. Saving can be very significant.
I set my thermostat at 76 when I get up in the morning and down to 70 about an hour before going to bed. My house is masonary so I cool it down at night when the AC is most efficient and then let it slowly gain heat during the day. Even on hot days the AC seldom kicks on before 3 PM and mostly doesn't kick on until I turn down the thermostat at night.
This also helps to eliminate running my AC during the Peak Energy hours of the day.
Also, my AC is located on the East side of my house so it always in the shade when it is running. Anything you can do to keep the sun from shining directly on the unit will cut your energy consumption. If you have a "window" unit, get an awning to keep the sun off the AC unit.
The materials your house is constructed from, the level of insulation and the rate of air exchange (how air tight the house is) will all effect what your best mode of operation is. Of course, your individual comfort zone will also have to factor into the equation.
Another one of those things you can't really give a fixed answer to.
How much difference between the 'home' and 'away' numbers is economical probably depends on how long you'll be gone. If it's 8 hours or more, I would think you could easily go to 10 or more degrees.
Think of an extreme case.. should you not adjust your thermostat when you are away for a week because you will have to use extra energy for a short time when you get back? Of course not.
The one exception might be a dual stage heat pump where the inefficient heating coil turns on with a large temperature differential. In that case it might be better to keep a steady temperature unless you are not going to be home for a few days.
I use three AC temperature settings: Not home (daytime), at home (evening), and nightime (a few degrees lower than "at home"). The last setting is used to cut the humidity at bedtime - when running the AC should be more efficient.
First time poster, 5-6 month lurker. Thanks to all of you for the great education and entertainment I'm getting here at TOD. I'm impressed with the level of expertise and the clear dialogue for we non-engineers. You would probably classify me as a "Pragmatic Doomer with Cornicopian fantasies."
Current books: Better Off-Flipping the Switch on Technology, by Eric Brende. The author is not anti-tech, more seeing what the optimum level of tech might be. Well written - kinda Thoreau like. Good read.
Endgame-The Problem of Civilization, by Derrick Jensen. Some real interesting thoughts on the unsustainability of civilization at any level. Way too much complaining and repetetion. So-so read.
My position / opinion on PO: It seems WestTexas' "declining exports model" due to peaking in the majority of big producing fields (light sweet first) will be/is the biggest short term factor, forgoing big geopolitical and nature caused events. IMO the latter two items have a decent chance of happening/escalating and impacting exports in the short run, as well. I also tend to agree with RR's take on the timing of global PO. I guess we'll all know at some point.
Thanks again, and keep up the great work!
Brad
Where do you sail?
Thanks for the inquiry. I currently sail mostly off the coast of San Diego...where I live on my boat.
I'm fortunate to have found a way to live on the water, in a great climate on a very reasonable budget. Although, the more I learn about PO and the possible extreme consequences, the more I'm tempted to begin looking at places with a lot smaller population.
I'll stay here for now, but if the SHTF w/ out too much warning, I can always cast off and turn left or right (South or North)...As you're aware, with a sailboat, once clear of the slip, no petrol is required.
Best,
Brad
Brad
I ain't gonna' spend long on this....
If we assume energy consumption can be reduced by passing "a law or two or three" it's not gonna happen, and if we assume that this is a transition that can be made by hurling a trillion bucks a year at it, it ain't gonna' happen....trying to make the structural changes needed, the technical advances needed, and train and organize the technical, managerial and logistical line staff that is called for cannot be done from the top down like some Brussels Euro beauracracy...it will have to be fast, lean, flexible, sales and result and goal directed....something a COMMAND structure system is not. As the man said in the movie, SHOW ME THE MONEY, and then we we will deal with this little problem....
This, by the way, is why "peak oil" is almost impossible to sell to businesspeople (and whatever else they may, almost ALL Americans are business people): They can't figure out why the BIGGEST CHANGE in modern history presents not one damm way to make a thin dime! Helll, even the smallest demographic change can be sliced, diced, quantified, qualified, commoditized, and merchendized! But not the BIGGEST OF THE BIG, Peak Oil!
The bidness' class can find a way to merchandise to 9 year old girls developing vanity, to 12 year old boys sense of adventure, and to a 16 year old teens angst and budding independence, but there is no way to market to a middle aged couple with college age kids and a bankroll that would choke a horse who becomes "peak aware" that HEY, MY BUTTS IN DANGER HERE, AND ALL I STAND FOR.....well, except to sell them books and tapes to tell them.....HEY, YOUR BUTTS IN DANGER HERE, AND ALL YOU STAND FOR!!
These are professional class liberal arts types, you'd think they wouldn't have to be told that more a dozen times by Kunstler and Darley and Deffeyes and Heinberg more than, oh, a few hundred times, before they would say, o.k., fine, let's organized, let's set priorities, let's run some pilot projects and begin to structure cogent responses, do some meaningful presentations and DO LUNCH, we maybe can work a DEAL.....
C'mon, let's get some merchendising in this catastrophe, it's the only way your gong to get it to pay it for itself, and don't look to uncie Sam for that trillion a year.....why should they pay for the ticket to your show....you've already decided their act sucks anyway...if your going to be a critic you can't expect free front row seats....this baby is going to have to be spun off and go corporate and commercial, there ain't gonna' be no socialized peak oil..., privatize this and let's see some venture entrepreneurial spirit post peak!
If you can't make it big and make the family proud of you on the biggest trainwreck in industrial technical history, you a dammed embarrassment to your baby boomer daddies, that's for sure!
opps, spent too long on it already....
Roger Conner known to you as ThatsItImout
I'm starting to like you. That's not natural. Let'smake a deal. You post your ten favorite works of fiction, I'll join your tribe. C'mon. Even trade.
Post your directions to join your sight - right here, right now - to prove you are are at least considering my proposition. Otherwise, I'll leave you alone. That's my modus operandi.
CB
As you have probably already realized, I am the one person you don't want to ask for critical reviews....I take the advice of the humble James Joyce,
"I ask nothing from my readers except that they devote their lives to the study of my work." By the way, I wouldn't hang my neck out and say I will join your tribe until after you have read the list....what if I insisted that any member of my tribe read only books about Hannibal Lecter, and study the philosophical value of his way of life, and oh, by the way, each year, we have an annuel dinner....at a special place of my choosing....after all it is my tribe....
as it turns out, that's not the case.....read um' and weep....
http://www.theoildrum.com/comments/2006/7/16/92623/0023/192#192
(by the way, notice there's a challenge in there, you ain't no underachiever are you?)
------
on the other subject, go to
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Energy_supply_alternatives/
e-mail at southern_comfort75@yahoo.com
to request an invite, I need a valid e-mail to send the invite to (Yahoo's rule, not mine....:-)
Roger Conner known to you as ThatsItImout
I'm a night worker, don't get in till about 1:30AM....then come over here to listen to the cheerful chatter and unwind....:-)
Roger Conner known to you as ThatsItImout
My apologies. I must not have seen that. I knew I asked you the question a few days ago. But thought you didn't answer. The only reason I asked you in particular in the first place is because I know you always provide detailed explanation. Thanks again.
I'll be posting your suggestions soon. And you can always edit them. Just let me know. But you've got to wait. Sailorman is at the head of the queue. And Don gets express priority. In fact, nobody moves in front of Don. I ammend that. You can bribe me.
I have a feeling this group is going to become very close, very soon. There are few of us. We all know each other. It is only so long before we trust each other more then the rest of the world.
Whaddaya say about that, Bob Shaw? Jack will control all the Kerosene in Thailand, we'll know where to go, and we'll make a deal he can't refuse. He will also know how to play us. Why? Cuz he wrote the book. I love Don Sailorman's books. Soon to be available online.
I object to this part of the title. This Apocalypse is open to people of all political persuasions.
Bumper sticker seen a while back:
WHEN THE RAPTURE COMES
CAN I HAVE YOUR CAR?
''when the rapture comes and your pink ass floats away, can I have your new volvo? - just leave the keys in the ignition.
Or something like that
The Rapture will take away all the bass boats and big diesel pick ups, leaving lots of oil for the powerdown conversion to Ecotopia.
Liberals must pray for the Rapture to come soon!
my girlfriend and i planned to meet this evening for dinner at a friend's house in southborough, ma - due west of boston. she started from the north fork of long island ... i'm driving from albany, ny.
her plan was to take the ferry from orient point to new london, ct., hop onto an amtrak train from new london to boston's south station and, finally, catch the commuter rail to southborough, where we were to rendezvous.
the ferry trip went fine, but she arrived at the new london RR station to find amtrak more than 1 hour behind schedule. that throws a major wrench into the cog. needless to say, the ripple effect of this major delay means dinner is out the window.
sure, it's quite a few hops - but the plan didn't feel overly ambitious. it appears, however, that it was just that.
this type of experience is such a barrier to getting people to switch the way they travel. it's just no fun to wait around the better part of a day at stations. i'm not psyched about paying $3/gallon, but i'd much rather drive than get abused by amtrak and the system as it exists today
These are all things WRONG that the church teaches:
- God is a trinity
- bad people burn in hell
- good people are rewarded with heaven
- the soul is immortal
- the earth is only 6,000 years old
- dinasours didnt exist
- universe was created in 6 literal days
- rapture is not going to happen
all wrong i say, and they all contradict the bible.Btw, if Christians and the rest of us followed Christ's principles, we would be much better off.