 | DrumBeat: August 28, 2006 | The Oil Drum | From the old to the newer, or a thought for Khurais and its companions |  |
DrumBeat: August 29, 2006
Posted by threadbot on August 29, 2006 - 9:11am
BP's Crude, Gasoline Trading Under Investigation
Aug. 29 (Bloomberg) -- BP Plc, Europe's second-largest oil company, is being investigated by U.S. authorities for possible manipulation of crude and gasoline markets, a further blow to a reputation that's already suffering from spills in Alaska.The crude oil inquiry is led by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates futures markets, and the Justice Department is probing its gasoline trades, BP spokesman Robert Wine in London said. BP is "cooperating fully," he said.
Gasoline demand rises slower in June
U.S. gasoline demand in June grew by just over 0.6 percent year-on-year, less than half the rate previously implied by weekly data, the U.S. government's monthly oil data showed on Monday.
Energy Bulletin has posted more reports from ASPO-5:
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Dennis Meadows - Peak Oil and Limits to Growth Jeremy Leggett Intertwines Peak Oil and Climate Change Skrebowski tells us there’s 1,500 days until the Peak, & closing thoughts on ASPO 5
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Head of Bolivian state oil company quits amid a corruption scandal. He was replaced by Evo Morales.
Suspected Pakistani rebels attack gas lines
QUETTA, Pakistan (Reuters) - Suspected rebels blew up a gas pipeline and electricity pylons in the gas-rich Pakistani province of Baluchistan as supporters of a rebel leader killed at the weekend prepared to hold prayers for him.Nationalist rebels have waged a low-key insurgency for autonomy and a greater share of profits from Baluchistan's resources for decades.
Iran to miss 2010 oil output target due to "lack of investment in ageing oil fields."
Pipeline explosion kills 5 in Iraq. Sounds like it may have been oil theft rather than terrorism.
Energy industry preparing for limits
When the head of the American Public Power Association spoke recently to electric utility operators in Minnesota, he had a straightforward message: Federal regulation of greenhouse gases is coming. Get ready for it."The issue is no longer whether there is a human contribution to global warming but the extent of that contribution," said Alan Richardson, president and chief executive of the group, whose members supply 15 percent of the nation's power.
[Update by Leanan on 08/29/06 at 10:39 AM EDT]
Betting billions on liquefied natural gas
Slacking crude reserves and rising demand are driving what some are calling one of the biggest investment trends in the world.
Contact
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
They need to pump harder and harder from their tired old fields to increase production.
This is the story all over the world. Seventy-five to eighty percent of all new production is coming from tired old fields. This will only steepen the slope of the decline curve a couple of years down the road. CEAR is pretending this is all new oil. They say current fields will decline by five percent, offset by new production. But at least 75 percent of this new production is from the same fields that they are saying will decline by five percent. Can they not see the error in this logic?
And that "serious work" would be...?
Serious digging?
But seriously, Bakhtiari says Iran has only a third of the reserves it offcially states, 35-45 vs 132.5 billion barrels. In that context, they have little time left at the wished-for 5 mbd.
Add to that the fact that they specifically talk about mature fields, and it's not a big surprise if they can't meet the target. In other words: a yearly decline of 10% or more is in the cards.
And serious worrying.
And would the rest of the world really, say, OK, build your nukes?
But don't forget, Bakhtiari doesn't necessarily do things by himself. For all we know, he may well have talked it over at home before going on his world tour. And spread the word in a diplomatic fashion.
Despite Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions which will gain them additional defense self-reliance, the move to nuclear for energy generation makes both self-reliant, and economic sense as it leaves the oil and gas up for sale to fund the building of a nuclear society.
I don't like the whole idea of them having nukes, but I can easily see why they would want them for both military and civilian uses.
If they are wise enough to see gas and oil as a soon to be dead end, then cash in while they can, and setup a nuclear society after the gas and oil industrial countries come crumbling down.
All and all, I have to give kudos to the Iranian "strategery" and long term positioning, at least from a detached admiring your opponent standpoint.
Not huge quantities, but they started production at Saghand this year, and have built a facility to produce 50 tonnes of uranium per year.
That's what makes the enrichment of uranium for civilian use so plausible. Why would they want to rely on imported fuel, with the associated risks of cut-off, when they could master the whole fuel cycle and be independent?
I also think that they are only an adversary because the US wants to pick a fight with them.
Also as you note but I would like to add emphasis to, that the current capping factor for Iranian Uranium(say that 5 times fast) production is their refining capacity. If they built additional mills, they could up their yearly volume from 50 tonnes if they desired it.
Iran has most if not all the pieces for a self sufficient nuclear society. Even with sanctions its going to be tough to stop them. It will require a military strike to end their nuclear aspirations.
Iran is holding some interesting cards right now, high risk, but potentially high reward also.
This president has pretty much locked in his policies and said that we isn't going to change course. So everything now shifts to '08, when we will be in the 3rd year of persistently high gas prices, perhaps $4-6 a gallon for gas. Assuming the Republicans have an ultra slim majority in both houses, they will have to start working with the Dems more closely.
It's not like they are really ignorant of the realities on the ground. And they will work with "environmentalists" when it suits them -- and the "environmentalists" in turn have shown a willingness to be co-opted.
Could you reduce your oil use by 1/2, 6 billion other folks in this world do or, about 11 out of 12. Not to mention all the electricity and NG we waste.
Concerning RR's post yesterday: I have commented on ethanol using the same numbers as RR, here at TOD before RR's first Comment at TOD. I am certainly happy he took up the subject of corn ethanol, because I found trying to explain the EROEI to some is like banging your head on a brick wall.
The US uses 9.6 million brls of gas/day and produces 300 thousand brls of ethanol/day or about 3% of the gas usage or 140 billion gallons of gas/year and 4.6 billion gallons of ethanol. 4.6 billion gal's of ethanol requires 1.7 billion bu's of corn or 17% of our current average annual corn crop. To achieve 10% gas replacement would require 58% of our current annual corn crop. Our current commercial production of cellular-ethanol is about zero and in 5 years may yet be zero. The production of corn ethanol is a boon-doogle and here is why. Dry corn or 10% moisture corn weighs 56 lbs/bu and a lbs of corn contains 7000 Btu's or 392,000 Btu's/bu high heat energy. A bu of corn can produce about 2.6 gallons of ethanol or 84K*2.6=218,000 Btu's. So by burning corn in a corn burner you can provide 174,000 more Btu's of energy to heat a home than the energy in 2.6 gallons of ethanol. That 174,000 Btu's is equal to the energy in 1.4 gallons of gas or diesel, so the 1.4 gallons of fuel oil saved could be used as transport diesel. Also the energy saved in the distribution and distillation process of ethanol is about equal to 30 % of the total energy in 2.6 gallons of ethanol. So that 65,000 Btu's of NG or coal saved could also be used to heat or produce electricity. So using a bushel of corn to produce ethanol wastes more energy than is contained in the ethanol. I also realize that Mead Nebr. is going to use cow dung to produce methane
for the distillation process, however that methane could be used for other purposes if no ethanol was being made.
Soy-bean diesel is also a boon-doogle. 1 bu of soybeans can produce about 1.8 gallons of soy oil and about 1.5 gallons of bio-diesel. Since soybeans are about $6.00/bu that is $4.00 dollars/gal before considering capital costs or process costs, before even considering EROEI.
I think we need to reframe our arguments in a more magical story form if we want them to be believed.
In other words, for those who do not truly understand "technology", the laws of thermodynamics, of physics, of chemistry and of other such specialized stuff; the world truly appears to work on "magic". Put the key in the car. Turn. It goes. Magic. Flip the computer on. Click on internet. It goes. Magic. Feel ill? Go to doctor. Swallow pill. All better. Magic. Feeling a loss of confidence? Flip the TV on. Click on talking heads. They say it's all good. Worries go away. Magic.
Here's a little to help with "magic", reality, quantum mechanics, consciousness:
http://www.ecauldron.com/quantummagick.php
http://www.mkzdk.org/quantummagick.html
...and the philosophers's stone:
http://www.mkzdk.org/philosopherstone.html
I think NeverLNG is on to something.
Look at the way Big Oil presents their "story" to the General Public (GP). They don't douse them with charts, graphs and equations. It's all about basic human emotions. A friendly face pops into view. "What's my carbon footprint? Ha Ha. What the heck is a carbon footprint?"
It gets your attention. It gets you thinking. It's the foot in the door.
Honestly, who throws a graph through the door?
If you think about it, most people make decisions based on largely emotional inputs (that's how they sell cars, deodorant, bottled water-- you name it) and only after the decision is final, do they (we, really -- I'm no different most of the time) use the rational faculty of the neo-cortex to JUSTIFY and RATIONALIZE the decision that has already been made from the gut.
I believe in rational thought -- but I am sure that for most people it amounts to just another belief system-- and that for most people, rational thinking and magical thinking are equivalent systems. You just take whatever works.
I am not sure how to do it, but I am working on a way to tell the story in a frame that appeals directly to the emotional side, gives options for correct choices, then allows for post-decision rationalization that will affirm and reinforce the correct decision.
We can't keep beating people over the head with "facts" -- successful salesmen never do this. And like it or not, we are selling an idea -- the idea that a better world is possible, and it is possible to get there by making better choices. And that the default position (continuing to accelerate against the wall) is simply chaos or endless predation.
I've been thinking a lot about what I believe is going to happen to our society, our way of life, and our species. I don't believe it can end well, and I don't believe it will take long. You may certainly feel differently.
What is your motivation to make everyone aware of these issues? Is it a desire to say to everyone "See, I told you this was going to happen?" Is it to allow others to prepare themselves for the changes ahead? Is it out of the belief that we can change course and save ourselves (preserve our way of life) if enough people get on board?
Is the motivation to advertise TOD rooted in the need for others to validate our beliefs, findings, and predictions so we can all feel like we're being reasonable in believing what we believe?
From my perspective, the belief that the today is as good as it can get has fundamentally changed my paradigm. I'm emotionally less invested in "someday" and firmly rooted in now.
I think before we spend energy on promoting TOD we should understand the goals of promoting TOD. Don't you think?
TAB
My purpose ?
To publicize the overlooked solutions from Electrified Rail. To get these "Silver BBs" as part of the policy mix of solutions.
I figured that there was a less than 5% chance that my individual efforts will actually result in a significant change in public policy. But the odds are lower if I do not try.
I am more or less stumbling around a slowly changing set of intresting overlapping issues and problems with peak oil absorbing more and more of the set and have this form of debate as one of my favorite ways of finding new insights and collect ideas and I happily mix that with proselyting. I am here since this seems to be the best public peak oil debate.
My agenda is to learn, have fun, spread ideas I find constructive, be usefull since I enjoy that, try to further things I am reasonably sure are constructive and try to tickle a small part of the world a little to see how it works. And be less lonely with these thoughts.
I have yet not found the right place to do usefull work, unfortunately I ponder issues more then search for work or more important people to work with or chew on any of these intresting problems.
And I got some doubts about the quality of my insights, that is probably good for bettering them but I am at a loss on how to realy check things. I mostly use a loose set of principles to sort things into reasonable and unreasonable. Peak oil affects one amazing large set of processes and stuff and the world is weird and very, very large.
It is a little scary to have overreaching thoughts about this stuff that seems too work reasonably well togeather. It fails my own test for what is reasonable...
I have absolutely no idea if my efforts will ammount to something and how likely that is.
Perhaps prominent train skeptics should be sent on sponsored train journeys across western Europe or Japan to see how it's done properly.
Last night in one of my classes a guy was bragging about how much he likes Chicago's "L." He was like it's so nice to just pay the small fee and sit back and relax while you get to where you need. I'm ready for rail too.
Bring a good book and a laptop, visit the bar/snack/observation car, talk with friends and other travelers.
From my perspective, any day riding Amtrak beats any day in the cube farm (guess where I am now).
Still, bike touring is my favorite way to travel, but the time is hard to find.
Well said.
Sales people know that the lizard brain makes the critical life/death and buy/don't-buy decisions.
As for TAB's question: Why bother advertising PO or TOD? My take on it is that I know I can't be self-suffcient. I cannot perform my own triple-bypass heart surgery on myself and I can't even make a pencil. So I need the rest of "them" (doctors, lawyers, pencil makers) to keep doing what they are doing best so that I can continue my semi-negotiable way of life.
In order for the rest of "them" (doctors, lawyers, pencil makers) to keep doing what they are doing best, they must be alerted to the PO problem (and yes, to the GW problem). We need to divert the main herd (the MSM herd) away from its madenning stampede towards the cliff. It is the only "rational" way to preserve our own semi-negotiable ways of life. --Well, at least that is what my lizard brain tells my neo-cortex and limbic brains. :-)
Yes :
I don't care what you're going to tell me intellectually. I don't care. Give me the reptilian. Why? Because the reptilian always wins.
But how do you sell powerdown to the lizard brain ?
We need to divert the main herd (the MSM herd) away from its madenning stampede towards the cliff.
What's your plan?
Emotionally sell against poor usage of energy and emotionally sell for good usage of energy. This is what they have done for smoking.
For example, I'm thinking of billboards on the highway that say in large letters:
(Emotionally Selling Away)
How many loved ones of yours were ripped away from you in a car accident?
More people died from cars in 2006 than the total amount that died from terrorism.
CARS: Are they worth it?
Invest in public transportation and keep your loved ones.
OR
Debt ripping your family apart?
Cars a big chunk? How much could you save if you dropped those cars?
CARS: Are they worth it?
Invest in public transportation.
etc. etc.
On the emotionally positive side to encourage good usage of energy:
Save money with Solar Energy. Because real men know how to keep it light.
I don't think I said we necessarily should advertise TOD. Only, that if we have a message to sell (and some people here seem to) that we should look toward successful sales people for guidance. And facts don't sell -- never have. Remember Tulipomania? You can sell anything with the right message -- for a while anyway.
On the other hand, I don't feel like I am in possession of a deep secret that I want to keep away from the MSM Herd so I can wind up surviving the next holocaust. I don't know what's going to happen, but since we as a species have overshot the carrying capacity of our environment, it can't be good. But keeping this secret won't help us. Maybe Cheney can in his bunker -- maybe he thinks he is the new Noah.
I'm interested in everything, personally. I prefer what I consider to be "facts" -- but sometimes that's pretty subjective. And I am interested in what makes people "believe" -- whether fact or fancy. Not that I can do anything with the information -- it's just interesting, and maybe it just passes the time.
Now that is funny:
... And it came to pass that the Higher Father spake onto Chey-Noah for He saw goodness in the right-sheetish man. "Bring thine daughter and her friend girl into the Bunker-Ark, two of everything. However, as for your sure-shot shotgun, leaveth that outside please, especially when the quail passeth by ..."
Our arguments need to be accessbile, but it's vital that we not sacrifice intellectual integrity. If we sacrafice intellectual integrity, then civilization is surely doomed as we compete with other, probably more skillful, witch doctors.
John P. Kotter (Harvard Business School) and Dan S. Cohen, in The Heart of Change: Real Life Stories of How People Change Their Organizations Harvard Business School Press (2002) writes, "People change what they do less becasue they are given analysis that shifts their thinking than because they are shown a truth that influences their feelings .
In watching the growing understanding of Global Warming over the last year, I think it was less because of Al Gore's excellent movie, An Inconvenient Truth , than because of last year's hurricane season, especially Katrina and Rita. I think Katrina was the tipping point, when we shifted in a few months from perhaps 2% of the population concerned about Global Warming to 60%.
I don't know the action that will create consciousness of Peak Oil. I surely don't want to hope for a "small" disaster that will lead the world to prevent the impending big disaster. Maybe a vivid picture of a winter without heating oil after a bloody attack on Iran and concomintant destruction of shipping from the Mideast. Or an unusually hot summer with frequent blackouts limiting air conditioning. Less compelling, I think. We can expect very savage attacks as (if?) we grow more effective.
Pretty words.
But then again, what is the "truth"?
How do you get "them" to pay attention long enough to see the one it?
Who controls the tell and show stage?
Is Peak Oil in December 2005 the truth?
In 2010?
Is Yergin the truth?
What exactly is "oil"? How will we know when "it" has peaked?
What if this year's US hurricane season fails to meet and excede last year's? Does that make Global Warming an untruth?
Is Islam the truth?
Is Jesus the truth?
Is Adam Smith the true truth?
Did WTC7 fall due to good vibrations?
Go ahead and pick if you must.
The world is a messy place.
There is no one true truth.
Many truths can exist at the same time.
"Truth" is a human fantasy. Mother Nature does not pay attention to human fantasies. She does what she does, irrespective of what we believe in or not. Mother Nature makes Dodo birds. Mother Nature makes human stooges. Then she wipes the slate clean. One way or another. Truth is not something that sets us free. It enslaves us.
- Planet Earth is a finite sphere.
- Planet Earth contains a finite set of "one-time consumables". Once they are consumed, they are gone forever. Overfishing and extinction of a fish species is an example.
- Human society is fragmented into a set of competing hierarchies. They clash into each other and compete over dwindling resources. The heirarchies are robotic in nature. They take on a life of their own separate from the people who populate the hierarchy (from elites down to worker bees).
- Hierarchical structures include intellectual control mechanisms. Religions and economic theories are such control mechanisms. These controls take on a life of their own and compete for survival in a Darwinian sense.
Failure to step back and see the controls means failure in having a chance to egg the hierarchies one way or another. They will march relentlessly toward destruction of each other and of the world.(It looked better in the Preview version ... that's the "truth")
If only we could find which tags to close, to fix the planet...
And <begin alt energy>?
Sorry if you read that as some sort of criticism (was not intended). I fully agree with the main message by Kotter, namely, people change behavior based on "feelings" (emotions) and not because of deep blue analysis (rational thinking).
The problem is that your average American does not get all emotional about science talk. Show him a nice graph or show her a detailed spreadsheet on field depletion and they are simply not going to get goose bumps.
No. Your fellow citizen is "moved" (emotionally) by deeply embedded beliefs in certain kinds of "magic". Think about the magic of money. (Are you salivating yet?) Think about the Power of Peer approval. (Are you at the top of your social circle? Are you Alpha among your male dog pals? Are you top dog to all the women?) Think about the joy of becoming a "success" in your community and being the envy of all your friends.
Carefully watch all the auto ads on TV. Are any of them selling to you with science, with technical spec sheets? No way, Ray. They are relying on the "magic" of their emotional appeals to get you to lean towards their version of a metal box on four wheels. Be cool. Buy our Box.
This is from TradeArabia.com:
The UAE's oil production hit a record high in May and Russia overtook Saudi Arabia as the world's top crude producer, according to a report.
The UAE's oil output hit 2.651-million bpd in May, keeping the country among the top 10 producers, according to figures released by the Riyadh-based Joint Oil Initiative Data.
Russia became the world's top producer, pumping 9.636-million bpd in May. Saudi Arabia's output stood at 8.93-million bpd, sharply lower than the 9.432-million bpd it produced in the same month last year, said the report.
"The UAE's crude output that comes largely from Abu Dhabi is currently around 2.6 to 2.7-million bpd and plans are on tap to raise it to 4-million bpd by 2010. In fact, we would see a gradual increase in the UAE's output in the next four years," an Abu Dhabi-based oil expert was quoted as saying by Gulf News.
Last week, Abdullah Nasser Al Suwaidi, Adnoc's deputy CEO and exploration and production director, said the company has increased production by 25 per cent over the last two years and is currently developing new fields in an effort to increase daily output from 2.8 million bpd to 4-million by 2010.
The US was the third largest producer last May, with its output standing at 5.092-million bpd.
It was followed by Iran (4.010-million), China (3.836-million), Mexico (3.337-million), the UAE (2.651-million) and Kuwait (2.579-million), the report added.
China's oil demand surged by nearly 700,000-bpd in a year to become the world's second-biggest crude consumer after the US, the report added.
It showed China's consumption reached 6.845-million bpd in May compared with 6.171-million bpd a year earlier.
A breakdown showed US demand grew to around 20.695-million bpd in May from 20.140-million bpd in the same month last year.
Japan's crude consumption climbed to nearly 5.226-million bpd from 4.677-million bpd in the same period, the report said.
Excluding Russia, which did not supply consumption figures, Germany ranked fourth among consumers, with demand growing to nearly 2.557-million bpd in May from about 2.494-million bpd a year earlier.
India was fifth with consumption at about 2.449-million bpd in May compared with 2.270-million bpd last May.
South Korea's fuel consumption rose to 2.107-million bpd from 2.046-million bpd while demand in Canada declined to 1.925-million bpd from 2.083-million bpd.
SA having troubles and Russia pumping more and more...
The consumption rose in all countries except Canada (in the report).
And like Simmons says, when SA is past peak, the world is past peak.
I'd be more comfortable with those 1500 days if the actual worldwide production figures started climbing instead of the slow decline we seem to be seeing. It would be great if worldwide production could reach over 90 by 2010, but I don't see it happening myself.
I think we're past "Deffeyes' Peak"... ;-)
But a lot of smart money is on 2010...
(Oh. Did I really say that? "I hope so"? Shoot me.)
Actually, if I wanted to hustle the guy, I would offer him enticing bets for 2010 which are labelled in dollars, and which I am sure to lose. And then clinch the major bet, in Swiss francs, which I am sure to win.
Then, in 2010, he realises each Swiss franc costs him $10 or more...
They can enlighten you here.
In comparing these various regions to each other, we need to try to determine whether they are talking about crude + condensate or total liquids.
Relative to December, according to the EIA, the top 10 exporter's crude + condensate production (top 10 based on EIA 2004 numbers) was down by 3% through May. I have estimated that this translates to a 10% plus annualized rate of decline in net oil exports from the top 10 net oil exporters.
I'll sell you my autographed, underlined, highlighted copy with copius margin notes for $100,000.
Or I'll tell you the story for the same price, over say... two days. But you don't get the book in that case.
When I bought it, it was $24.95. It's in paperback now. That's what they call deflation.
Maybe they can't. This theory, or the decline of their giants, would also explain this year's overall decline.
THe real question is how are the big consumers managing to increase their consumption?
I am sure that a 30 -50% reduction in gas use is possible without severely taxing our ability to cope.
- get smaller car, or use the smaller one of multiple cars already owned
- car pool
- combine trips
- turn car off rather than idling
- walk for the shorter trips (e.g. between several errands that are all within a smallish downtown)
- ride bicycle when/where feasible
- stay home (skip frivolous trips)
It's not just commuting. Judging by the traffic on my sparsely-settled road, I'd guess that each of my neighbors makes 3-4 car trips per day.All the rest I'm not going to argue against (I agree they should), but it doesn't negate the fact that Gasoline IS highly inelastic by every mathematical model b/c people do whatever they can to AVOID all your nice easy steps.
Saudi Arabia down 5.4% year on year in May. I believe the UAE actually can considerably increase their production, they are one of the few bright spots. Maybe not as much as they say, though.
OK, some economists out there tell me why demand is still going up with oil prices in the $70s most of this year. This is not the way they teach it.
But the other matter here, is were talking about peak "oil," not other energy sources. The idea that a significant global economic slowdown is not going to cut consumpution is both ahistorical and makes no sense.
But I agree with you that to think that a significant economic turndown globally is not going to cut consumption is both ahistorical and makes no sense.
For the record, from 1975 to 1978 (three years) passenger vehicle miles (pvm) in the US increased by 15.5%. Pvm then declined in 1979 and again in 1980, and then began to increase again. Pvm for 1983 were 6.8% over 1978. In the next five years, pvm increased by 23%.
A lot of factors were at play in this period including the substitution of more fuel efficient vehicles. But there is no doubt that recession had an impact. Whatever the elasticity of price, unemployment cuts transportation demand.
For those interested, heavy truck vehicle miles stagnated from 1979 to 1981 after increasing in '79 over '78. By 1983 heavy truck mileage was up 10% in 1983 over 1978.
Heavy trucks achieved their greatest increase in fuel efficiency with the wholesale adoption of diesel engines. I apologize for not having the time frame handy at the moment, but I believe this process was pretty well complete before 1980.
Looking at Canadian data heavy trucks have accounted for most of the increased demand for transportation energy since 1990. I suspect the numbers are similar in the U.S.
BigEasy Alan is on the right track (sorry) to promote rail, even if I'm afraid that a wholesale move to electrified rail is neither feasible nor likely.
Someone posted some kind of demand correlation (can't find IT) to the tune of for a 1% reduction in use it would require 15% increase in gas or somewhere in that area. Even if these numbers are wrong, the point is it takes LARGE increases to alter demand. When increases happen to the tune of a 500% increase in mere years, the current increases (46% in 2 yrs) look marginal relative to the past LEAPS. When we keep getting marginal increases it's like the frog boiling in water(even though I understand frogs don't do this).
There was a significant consumption decrease due to the biggest global economic slowdown since the 30s. This is the point, if the economy goes into recession in next couple months consumption fall will out pace depletion in short run and the price of oil will fall.
Who cut consumption? All the poor countries? What will we do when their use drops to 0?
http://english.people.com.cn/200608/29/eng20060829_297654.html
Anyone have an idea of the efficiency of burning rapeseed in a locomotive powered by a Stirling cycle engine? Wouldn't that beat converting the oilseeds to diesel and using a conventional Diesel-electric engine?
If creating heat is your goal, then why not simply use cellulose (wood, switchgrass or hemp)? The point of extracting the oil from the rapeseed is partly for ease of transportation and partly because of the inherent utility of diesel. It would certainly make sense to make use of the stalk and other leftovers after the oil from the seeds have been extracted, but why use a Stirling engine?
Steam-powered locomotives that run on cellulose instead of coal might be feasible, but why bother when you can convert the biomass to electricity in a stationary plant and feed the electricity to electric trains. I'm almost certain this would give better overall thermodynamic efficiency, I am certain it would be more practical.
Cellulose fired steam locomotives were common a century ago or more (logging trains) -- there is still one running from Durango to Silverton, CO (I think). But it burns an impressive amount of firewood, which requires some kind of transportation to get the wood to the fuel depots. Currently, trucks, of course, since this is just a tourist attraction.
Long-distance transportation with self-contained power systems looks a little bleak.
EVIDENCE, please!
I'm almost certain this would give better overall thermodynamic efficiency, I am certain it would be more practical.
This is certainly a "balanced" opinion, one true, one false!
Okay I admit I didn't really do the numbers on this one. My main argument is that a Stirling engine will have to run at max power all the time, which means a lot of energy is wasted when less than max power is needed.
I'm almost certain this would give better overall thermodynamic efficiency, I am certain it would be more practical.
NeverLNG argued that rapeseed has high heat-content because it contains oil.
NeverLNG wishes to utilize this in a train powered by a rapeseed-burning Stirling engine.
I claim that it's better to convert the seeds to diesel because diesel is easier to transport (it's concentrated energy) and utilize (it's liquid rather than solid).
In itself, a Stirling engine can have very high termodynamic efficiency (an ideal Stirling engine follows the Carnot cycle as closely as is practically possible with given materials). But you will notice Stirling engines aren't much in use anywhere. Certainly not for transportation purposes.
Wikipedia discusses this at some length. And seem to come to the conclusion that a hybrid electric system that allows the Stirling engine to run at constant load, might make it useful for propulsion.
Having now arrived at a hybrid electric train powered by a Stirling engine, why not go a step further and unload the Stirling engine in order to save some weight? Surely this would be more practical..
But would it be more efficient?:
Well, you save the weight of the engine and the fuel, which must count for something.
Presumably you can also build a larger and more efficient power plant.
A stationary plant is easier to cool, which means higher efficiency.
On the negative side there is transmission loss which means I'm only almost certain this would give better overall thermodynamic efficiency.
Which brings me back to an old much-repeated refrain- use rough biomass to power agriculture, and divert anything that can go into a diesel to road use.
And yet another oft-repeated querulous quibble- Would you folks please finally take note that the free-piston stirling has come of age, and can deliver good efficiency (35-40% heat in/electric out) and LAST A LONG TIME. And it's just iron, so we know how to make it at a sensible cost. In any size you want- home cogen to locomotive. And not to forget solar.
NASA will tell you how. Ask for space power.
Net energy per acre is what we would like to see on this website. Unfortunately, that figure is hard to come by.
With the rapeseed example in the article, if that 2% rise in oil content makes the rapeseed crop more susceptable to pests and diseases or requires additional fertilizer or labour inputs, then the "aggregate benefit" may be negative. In my experience, higher yielding varieties of crops (or livestock for that matter) almost always increase the expense of the other inputs. The higher yields often don't make up for the other expenses.
You've hit the nail directly on the head with a sledge hammer, MarkinCalgary.
Net energy per acre. This is the phrase that will sink the ethanol ship, with all due respect to the brilliant work of Robert Rapier.
This is why bio-energy crops like pelletized switchgrass, burned for space/water heating will replace corn/switchgrass/etc for liquid fuel production. The ethanol manufacturer will not be able to compete on price with the pellet/brick manufacturer for access to the energy crop.
Net energy per acre is also one of the two reasons why neither ethanol nor solid fuel manufacturer will be able to compete with the food distributor on price for access to the land's bounty. The other is that all people with income will buy food/water before any other commodity.
Crops for fueling the human economy will overwhelmingly be limited in democracies to marginal farmland (for which switchgrass is emminently suited over great swathes of North America).
I'd be very interested in your take on the Polyface Farm as described by Michael Pollan in the Omnivore's Dilemma.
I've not read The Omnivore's Dilemma, but I've read a great deal about Polyface Farm through Joel Salatin's books and articles. (Salatin is the patriarch at the Polyface family farm.) With the possible exception of his overuse (IMO) of tractor power, I have little to object to in Salatin's model. My motivations certainly seem to be in the same direction as his. Minimal inputs, let the animals do the work, and nurture the soil. I just don't share his fear of horses. (So, I'm comfortable using draft horses instead of a tractor. No, I'm not kidding.)
Salatin's books are entertaining to read if you have the right state of mind. He definitely seems a little (self-)righteous at times, but perhaps he has a right to be. Salatin's unfortunately titled "You Can Farm" is probably as good a place as any to start. Gene Logsdon is also an author in this area, perhaps a more respected one as well.
I have pictures of him driving drafthorses northeast of Edmonton circa 1930. We made limited use of a draft horse on our farm in BC until about 1960.
One advantage of horses and oxen is the usefulness of their waste stream. I think it would be interesting to see the impact on net energy per acre comparing animal power to tractor power, plotting several fuels for the tractor.
A major difference is timeliness. For an equivalent energy input, it might take five days to plough by horse what you could plough in one day with the tractor.
Similar ratios apply to horse-powered transport vs. biodiesel.
Once again, the spectre of inputs comes into play: Growing rapeseed is much more labour, equipment, and input intensive than maintaining the same land in pasture. (With virtually zero prior experience, I grew 135 acres of pasture this year and harvested it with cattle. I only invested about 8 hours of my time, $200 in electric fencing, and $150 for seed, into this venture.) One can use marginal land, that you wouldn't plant to rapeseed, as pasture. The tractor itself is a huge input and requires a great deal of input, as well as eventual replacement. Horses come with a built in replacement mechanism.
Of course, horses aren't input free. Working horses need grain, shoeing (arguably), and there are veterinary expenses. And there is the fact that animal power is slower and will therefore require more labour. From an energy stand-point, these costs are small.
It's a complex issue, and there is very little in the way of hard numbers to support either course. But I know many farmers that quit tractor farming and moved to low-energy methods (some using horses or oxen) and saw their profibility soar. I still find that suprising, but these folks are still farming. That's more than I can say about a heck of a lot of conventional farmers.
If you have info/web links, I'm interested, Mark.
I'm a city worker/rural dweller, but my neighbours who farm are still buying bigger and better tractors... I'd like to see that turn around one day! (out of choice rather than constraint if possible)
The last guy around who still used yoked oxen for ploughing retired about 15 years ago.
You can get some of that from the Swedish Commission on Oil Independence.
here
cfm in Gray, ME
I agree with most of your post as usual with some clarification about tradeoffs. Some comments for people to think on, that may change the energy balance per acre.
Fruiting structures, like seeds, are made when the plant has sufficient energy after growing to maturity. Or for perennials after storing enough energy to make the fruit crop.
Their are three ways to give plants more energy.
1)Improve photosynthetic efficiency.
2)Reduce respiration loss.
3)Combination of 1 & 2.
Photosyntheic efficiency is almost always improved if the plant has less stress when capturing sunlight. There are genetically controlled processes that can improve heat tolerance, drought tolerance, high pH tolerance, etc. All these allow the plant to fix more carbon per unit of sun energy. The efficiency of the entire coupling of light and dark reactions of photosynthesis is improved without requiring more inputs. The limiting step was the efficiency in converting light energy to chemical energy. Similar mechanisms work in reverse for not using stored energy in the dark period (respiration loss).
Over the growing season capturing more energy allows more of it to be allocated to secondary metabolites, like oil, without decreasing starch or protein content in the seed. The same plant can make more stored biomass all things being equal.
This drives yield improvement over time and biotechnology has speeded this selection mechanism up almost exponentially with selections and genetic rearrangements. A 2% increase is not a lot of oil increase and could be easily gained without hurting plant health or disease resistance.
Agreed. As someone who has to make decisions on topics related to these issues, what I'm looking for is data to this effect. Without actually doing my own trial runs, it's hard to get.
Just finished reading yesterday's Forbes piece on Shell. Why are the two big Europeans in the biggest trouble? Anything to do with painting themselves green? Or am I just missing the bad news on Exxon and Chevron?
And Iran misses targets by 500.000 bpd until 2010? Ouch.. Move over, Prudhoe.
I've fixed it. I think.
As for BP, it is hard to decide between malice and stupidity. They have certainly known about their corrosion problems for years and waited with repairs until that latest oil spill. Maybe at first they had no money to invest (during the low price period) and then as prices rose they chose to avoid downtime at any cost (for fear of low prices returning). Either that or the bastards just timed this maintenance to create artificial scarcity.
At lunch next to the hospital last Friday, I sat next to two University of Kentucky architecture professors plus four students. I got into the conversation (much about New Orleans) and I asked the question about current standards for durability.
A sore point it seems. Modern homes are designed to last at least 20 years before "major repairs" are required. No money is wasted on something that is 1) not required by code and 2) will last longer than 20 years.
Of cource, a modern home will not fall into a pile of debris in 2027. But problems with the roof, plumbing, OSB board, foundation, heating & a/c, etc. should start to crop up about then.
There are exceptions, but these are quite rare. Public buildings cost more ($165/ sq ft for a new school), but they last longer. "Specing" for durability is a dying art among architect students.
So suburbia is biodegradeable !
If only that were true, Alan. Good piece. Would we still be able to build a home for 100 years?
Makes me think of something I read years ago about the craziness of mortgages. The author, name forgotten, said that if a house costs $100.000 to build, and lasts 100 years, it should cost $1000 a year, or $83.33 a month, to live in. All else is usury, speculation etc.
It's just a simple matter of design, materials and craftmanship, so why not? On the other hand...
Design should be easy to fix. Many houses these days have gratuitus roof articulations and lack eve overhangs and other elements that made maintenance simpler and were self protecting. Materials in theory should be easy to fix, lthough it costs more up front to use plywood rather than particle board and stuff like old growth timber isn't really available. Craftmanship is probably the hardest to do anything about. There are some craftsman out there but I think they all work for those 'this old house-type shows' - just kidding i have a very old-school guy that does my stucco and plaster repair work, but he is so busy (cause there are so few like him) that it is hard to get him to come over.
I live in a 101 year old home with the original stucco (plus some patches) and the original galvanized steel/tin shingle roof. It's a simple 4-square with high ceilings and it works just fine. I don't see any reason it won't be around for another 100.
www.deltechomes.com
JC
This assumes it costs nothing to maintain. Not terribly likely. I'd wonder if a 100 year old house really does cost less over its lifetime than 5 20 year lasting houses. Keep in mind that it's probably less energy efficient, etc... And of course that you can "schedule" the construction of the new 20 year lasting house when materials are cheapest (perhaps year 18, perhaps year 24, whatever), but the heating losses of the 100 year old house strike every year, whatever the cost.
I just think that considering only the initial construction cost is a little misleading. Not sure how the numbers would turn out myself.
The construction of both can be timed with changes in materials and work prices but the 20 year house will have to do that four times more for all of the construction while the 100 year house only need maintainance.
Both houses can be well insulated but code can change over time.
I live in a low medium quality apartment in a an area with 2 and 3 floor houses where the windows were changed after 40 years, the new ones should last longer. The sewage pipes will be changed in about 10 years or perhaps internally relined for another 20 year of service or so and the bathroom renewed. The kitchen is starting to be worn out, also that were of low quality but that is no reason to tear down a house. The roofs will probably need retiling in 10-20 years. If these houses were build now they would get 10 cm more insulation, they will likely get that when the facade is worn out but that will take decades. New built houses would be more energy efficient but the capital loss from tearing down perfectly livable and maintainable houses can equal quite a lot of district heating. It would have been even better if they had been designed to be easy to maintain.
20 year life lenght, thats not a house thats a caravan withouth wheels.
Let me expand on this a bit. There is a building I go by often on my way to work. it was once an old brick monstrosity, but it is apparently steel reinforced concrete under all that, so the frame is (presumably) fairly solid. As time went on, newer buildings were more efficient. The tenants started using coputers, which used more electricity and required more airconditioning. The building had some ventilation problems due to its age, and a little bit of sick building syndrome. Beyond that, people like light, both on the street, and in the office, and absorbing it all with masonry is counterproductive.
There's also the fact that in the city, the facade of every building must be examined every 5 years (a law implemented since a falling brick due to crumbling mortar killed a passing pedestrian some years ago), and this is much cheaper with glass than with brick.
Add to this the fact that the building has no sprinklers, is not ADA ready, poor electrical system, crappy elevators, inefficient ventilation, well, you get the point.
The building is fairly tall (around 5 stories), soo they didn't tear it down, they just stripped off the facade, and replaced it entirely with glass curtain wall. Then they did the ventilation, added sprinklers, brought it into ADA compliance, redid the HVAC and electrical systems, and they're nearly done. Was that actually cheaper than tearing it down and starting from scratch? It must have been, as that's the choice they made, they did after all save the frame, and probably the floor plates, so they weren't starting from nothing. Of course this building is surrounded by 30+ floor towers, so it's probably not long for this world anyway, no matter what shape it is in.
This is kindof what I'm getting at. Most buildings probably meet their doom due to increasing density (in the city) making them too short for economic viability, or due to changing usage and traffic patterns (in the suburbs). Add to this hurricanes, fires, floods, earthquakes, and every other sort of mishap, and probably not that many buildings will actually make it to 100 regardless of the construction quality.
This is obviously not true of major skyscrapers, which is why they are built to last, but your average stick frame house lasts a really long time anyway, to build it to last forever would perhaps just be money wasted in many, if not most, cases.
In any case, I've never seen a house that had serious trouble after only 20 years, and I'm a little bit of a geek for buildings. And yes, I do live in the US. The 20 year thing seems to be a straw man, and the "houses should last 100 years" response also seems to be something of a straw man of its own. The reality seems to be somewhere in the middle, as it should be.
The debate here and on some other forums gives the impression that the US small house customers want mcmansions whose rooftops looks like a castle but dont mind if they fall thru the internal walls if they lean on them. :-)
Metal roof (say copper), durable plumbing & electrical, durable structure & windows, durable exterior (brick is easy solution, but cypress wood works as well).
The waste of resources, including energy, on bio-degradeable housing is a decision that will impact our future.
IMHO, we cannot afford another generation of disposable housing.
The reason was building insurance costs eventually trumped materials costs. He further stated that the reason there is still wood frame construction is that the builders and the long term owners are often different people. And the builders have a short term profit motive.
Certainly!
Not sure how the numbers would turn out myself.
So why writing rubbish?
You have an uncanny ability to spit out bullshit about ANY topic!
Cost of a 100 years house + cost of maintenance for 100 years.
versus,
5 TIMES (Cost of a 20 years house + cost of maintenance for 20 years).
20 years houses need maintenance too, don't they?
Would not they even happen to need MORE EXPENSIVE maintenance because they are rubbish?
Is the cost of a 100 years house close to 5 TIMES the cost of a 20 years house?
More likely between 2 and 3 times at most.
And the cost of a 200 years house is likely to be only slightly higher.
And you want to make up the difference by energy efficiency?
Why would a 100 years house built TODAY be much less energy efficient than a 20 years house built 50 years from now (as an average)?
You also want to make up the difference by "scheduling" the replacement construction?
What a PILE of bullshit!!!
How much are you paid for that lousy job?
I once knew a farmer who had the same axe for 50 years. He just had to replace the head once, and the shaft 5 times.
Maybe you know him?
The trade-off is that the higher buildings have far more people and can better support regular maintenance financially much easier. But the Brownstones really need less inputs to keep going. I think I'd put my money on an attached brownstone to retain it's value longer.
Scientists find new perils in global warming
So, removing ice off of the poles can definitely change the geology of a region, whether it causes an increase in earthquakes would be a pretty hard hypothesis to test.
It would be much easier to link global warming with super-jokulhlaups causing huge tsunamis. Recall my recent postings and consider how many billions of tons of sediment would be quickly washed offshore. This could eventually destabilize the undersea Continental Self setting off a huge landslide, thus a tsunami.
Scientists PDF suspect a massive subsea landslide is what happened at Unimak Island when the Scotch Cap Lighthouse was suddenly overwhelmed by a 105 ft tsunami. See this horrifying artist's impression and before and after photographs of the lighthouse.
This event also caused the tsunami in Hilo, Hawaii about five hours later. This is what led to the creation of the Tsunami Warning System.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
After reading Odum and Odum (Environmental Accounting, A Prosperous Way Down) it is easy to see that the economy is like a huge tank of water. The more water in the tank, the greater the wealth. Adding more water does raise the level of the tank (producing more oil, iron, cars). But the tank is leaking (cars rust, houses collapse, fuel is burned). Which means a society can raise the level of the tank by plugging leaks.
The 20 year houses may be cheaper to build now, but those houses are like planning to put leaks in the tank that will spring open in just 20 years.
I think that our society (the US) is so used to increasing wealth by adding more water to the tank that we have forgotten the efficiency side. You can even hear people argue that increasing efficiency is "bad for business" when the opposite must be true (for the above thermodynamic reasons).
As our energy sources stop growing or reverse into decline, efficiency improvements will be the ONLY way to grow the economy.
I think the Roman Empire might be a good example of a culture with a flat energy input that instead built to maximize the efficiency side to achieve growth. Some of those roads and buildings are still here 2000 years later. Buildings that last "forever" are almost like compounding interest.
You have articluated something I have "known" for a long time. One of my attractions to hydroelectric. Build it, get very low cost energy for half a millenia or so. Subways should have a similarly long payback.
We cannot increase our rate of extraction of resources much more; but we can do more with these resources.
A 300 year home does not cost that much more than a 20 year home (say 1/3rd more ?). It makes more economic sense to make energy efficiency investments into a long lived home.
The long term benefits of a 300 year home are self evident; especially if built in a sustainable location.
Or at least until the reservoir silts up and the next earthquake :-)
Modern dams are remarkably earthquake resistant. Earthfill becoems stronger over time (some in China have survived 2,000 years and multiple earthquakes).
BTW, India's ambitious plans are to build one or two dams on the headwaters of a river and then have a series of run-of-river projects below. The dams shift some of the water seasonally, and when released it goes through a series of dams. Much less environmental effect.
Should a city choose higher housing costs or open the highways and spread out? From close the leaks perspective, forcing investment in housing is the only rational city plan. Again, cheap housing costs just feel like your winning, but the over all wealth would be dropping.
I am just getting my head around these ideas of "tanks" and "flows" (finally understand what the ethanol people have been trying to say about living on "flows").
Just spotted this quote at the top of the page:
"Considering the many productive uses of petroleum, burning it for fuel is like burning a Picasso for heat."
Another viewpoint on quote is burning petroleum for fuel means that the petroleum runs "out of the tank" instantly. Better to use that petroleum to make carbon fiber windturbine blades and benefit from it for 30 years.
Swizerland is drilling a flat, straight electric railroad tunnel from Zurich to Milan. This will replace heavy trucks going OVER the Alps and flights for people from Zurich to Milan (and beyond). Freight in speciality cars will travel at 160 kph (100 mph) and 120 kph (75 mph) in convential freight cars at FAR less energy than grinding over the mountains in a diesel truck.
This will be a permanent enhancement for the Swiss, Germans & Italians.
A subway under Wilshire Blvd in Los Angeles would do much the same thing.
Paying interest means you have to pay back the principal PLUS the interest. The interest is the added water. The waste produced by the growth system is the water leaking out. Economic activity requires the use of energy. And that produces waste (2nd law). Waste is not an unfortunate addition, it's required by the growth system and can't be avoided.
Alternatively, you could say that a growth economy always requires more energy and resources than the natural system can (re-)generate. These extra resources are needed to pay the interest.
So Odum's water tank will not work in a growth system. He knew this very well. His Emergy theories are about as good as it gets. M. King Hubbert proposed similar ideas, as have others.
But they are addressing steady state economies, not growth economies. A transition to a steady state is unavoidable, but so is the struggle that the transition will impose.
Thanks for the link to the parable. It helps explain the reason why we are headed for major monitary problems with peak oil.
Once people become aware of peak oil and what it means for the future, long term loans will no longer make sense - people cannot be expected to pay back the interest plus pricipal over, say, 20 or 30 years in a declining economy. It seems like the whole monetary system may fall apart, rather early on. (In fact, the puncturing of the housing bubble may be a big step toward making the system fall apart.)
Unless a quick replacement for the monetary system is found, its failure could lead to many other problems early on, like people going hungry when food is still being produced, if there is no way to pay for the food.
This seems fairly nonsensical. The largest determining factor in interest rates is the hazard of the underlying investment, that wouldn't change, even in a zero growth economy. The second largest determining factor is the comparative ability of other investments to make similar returns. That might change in a zero growth economy, but the first factor would still be at work. You'd want more money than you lent out because you might not get any back at all!
I agree that the steady state transition will occur, but it's not clear that it will cause massive problems. Of course, with out of control governments debts it certainly would. With reasonable stewardship, I don't see that there's a substantial difference between an economy growing at 1%, and one growing at 0% if the population isn't growing. In either case, my wages will grow much faster, as people tend too have wage growth throughout their lives, and then die, the difference between (for instance) 5% growth and 4% growth in my personal wages doesn't seem like such a large one.
I strongly disagree.
There's a reason why usury was considered a grave sin in the steady-state economies of the ancient world.
If the "risk free" is 4%, then in any debt over 8% the majority is related to the hazard of the underlying investment.
What part of this is it that you have a problem with?
If you took off time from work to fix the leak you actually decreased the GDP. Alternatively if you applied the savings to reducing your debt, that also implies a decrease in the GDP. You're spending less money
What I am trying to say is that "conservation and longevity of resources and assets" runs counter to the principles of our growth economy. Not on an individual basis of course, but on a broader one. If you fix the leaks in your house, or you decide to sell your car and ride a bicycle, you will spend less and benefit.
If 25% of the population of your country does the same, within the context of a growth economy, that would likely be enough to choke it to death. Your reduced eenergy bill does not increase GDP, but that is exactly the problem: the system requires a growing GDP. It needs to grow to pay off the interest, let alone the principal. Our economy cannot survive negative growth.
The leaking water froim the bottom in Odum's tank is necessary to make way for the added water on top. You could fix the leaks, but since you still need to add water (interest), it will just "leak" from the top. There's only so much tank. Which makes it a good example of what is wrong with perpetual growth in a finite system.
I am not so sure that there "must" be leaks. I get the feeling that people choose to have leaks because those leaks benefit them. For instance, a car maker can benefit if all cars break down in 5 years and need to be replaced. Essentially that car maker can capture a greater share of the tanks energy, but at a cost to the whole economy.
If I understand correctly, this is really a "Tragedy of the Commons" kind of situation, where if everyone puts lots of sheep on the commons the grass is destroyed and everyone loses. But each person is only rewarded if they add extra sheep.
Governments seem to be the technology that we have developed to break tragedy of the commons type problems. The US has turned anti-government, creating vulnerability to this kind of issue. Perhaps this is why trying to increase efficiency has been politically unacceptable to the right, even though it leads to greater economic well being.
The reason for this is that all our money is issued as debt, our governments pay interest over all money issued.. Other than Odum and Hubbert's personal energy credits, which carry no interest, in our present system everything does. Those who control the economy, or the water and tha tank, will not allow the system to stop. They would lose all. They;d rather go to war, and will, and do.
The only way to stop growth is collapse.
That's pretty pessimistic, but that should at least be an opportunity to LEARN, such as to not restart growth after collapse after having PRESERVED some parts.
So explain how it can be stopped in a more optimistic way.
As for the restart, not to worry, we have Fred Hoyle for that one:
In a couple of hundred million years, the fossil fuels might replenish themselves allowing somebody another go at things.
Is "might"... and the metallic ores won't.
And the human genetic pool won't be there, the average lifespan of a specie on earth is 5 millions years.
This is also not true. Money issued by the central government is the exact opposite of debt. You are lending them value (the thing of value that they paid you money for), and they are giving you tokens that you can use. You are lending the government (society, whatever) "value" when you hold money, and they are not paying you any interest. The hazard is also not zero. If you burn your money, or lose it, then "they" don't owe you anything.
When foreigners don't buy our debt (which is happening now), we monetize it through carribean banks (FED in disguise) buying our bonds mysteriously. This is exactly the unusual ways to maintain economic health that Bernanke promised in a speech.
In addition the value of any dollar to a person is nothing more than the belief in the value. It's a self fulfilling prophecy that will continue until the masses realize it's paper and worth little more than the debt attached to it.
There are many existence proofs that this statement is false. Look at all the examples where societies had negative numbers for growth and did not collapse. Google "shrinking GDP" for ~965,000 results.
Cuba is a frequently cited example of a society that stopped economic growth but did not collapse, but there are many more.
"Governments have no control. We may have the illusion that we can vote out the growth system, but we can't."
Maybe you are just a congenital pessimist! Governments have plenty of control (maybe too much) and examples of humans changing their governments are too many to list (many with horrible results). Do you not believe that the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, the Cuban Revolution, the Vietnamese Revolution, the American Revolution occurred?
On a less apocalyptic note, plenty of European countries have voted for slower growth and more social equity and in my experience their choice has worked out pretty well for all concerned.
One thing is certain, that when social change has occurred it was instigated by people who believed in the possibility of change and not by do-nothing pessimists.
Let's jump to the future: There is only one family vehicle sold (all black by the way); a PHEV diesel with a beach seat to seat three with AWD and various attachable trailer components such as a flatbed for hauling things like firewood or produce and a forecart to use farm implements when plowing. It is owner maintainable. The engine uses replaceable sleves. Roller bearings are used throughout. It's expected life is 100 years with the exception of the batteries (old-fashioned lead-acid)which last 25 years.
So, how does such a vehicle impact society? First, the automotive industry as we know it shinks to almost zero. This includes not only manufacturing but all things allied with transportation.
Second, the fuel taxes goverments need to pay for stuff won't be there so goverment shrinks too.
Third, there will be lots and lots of people without work - forever. What do you do with them? My guess would be "work service" where all people would be required to spend, say 5 years, actually working after which they would go home and personally produce what they need such as food and clothing.
The list could go on but my point is that, while not truly stable-state, this society has the potential to survive over many generations. Hopefully, this will buy time for the society to mature and weigh what options are best.
It is much worse than that:
In order to produce the bulk of the fleet of such vehicles it should have GROWN very fast for a short period before falling to near zero for replacements purpose only.
How can this be managed?
Whose and what technology do you lock into for a century of production? I'm assuming here that durables would be designed so they could be upgraded, beyond repair, at some point in time.
Let me hint at what I mean from personal experience. I had a 1949 Ferguson TEA20 wheel tractor I only sold a few years ago and it ran fine. I had a nice 1957 Jeep 4x4 pickup that I traded for some fence work but it ran fine - it had a '63 Ford six engine. Lastly, a 1954 John Deer crawler that I sold a couple of years ago when a neighbor bought better equipment and it didn't make sense keeping it. All this stuff was close to or more than 50 yers old but it suited my needs. It could have been kept going for another 50 years with simple maintenance.
But, if everyone took this position on all their durables, and it was mandated that durables last for generations (whatever that means) growth ceases. No paradigm is ready for this.
This is just such a misunderstanding of society. There is no such thing as "not enough work to do". If there was nothing else to do, we could have people out there scrubbing our sidewalks with toothbrushes, there is absolutely no limit to the amount of useful work to be done in the world.
To the extent that a system allows people willing to work to not work, it is a broken system. Just because the current system allows this under some circumstances does not mean that it is a permanent fixture of all systems. It mostly works out because this sort of thing is (fairly) rare, only a few percent of society at a time. Even then, usually there are jobs, but they just have aweful pay. During the great depression, when this system had a serious breakdown, what happened? Well, the government started putting people to work, just as it should have. The problem was eventually fixed by a large task that made the government much less shy about getting work out of people, a war. It shouldn't take a war, it just takes resolve. Resolve that would have been served up soon enough anyway.
You can always overcome unemployment. The only problem that can be serious, is a reduction in GDP due to some other serious problem, be it turmoil, shortage, or even natural disaster. Unemployment is not so much a problem, as an opportunity, it means that we are providing all the goods and services you see in the economy, and still have X% of our productive man-hours left over to do someething else with.
Of course, neocons don't see it like that, and neither do the "It's my precious...." rank and file of covetous drones. So good resources (man-hours) are flushed down the toilet by declaring their existence bane rather than boon. It's a broken system, but you bet that an ant colony doesn't have unemployment, nor does a military regiment, or a frontier outpost, or a ship at sea, or space station, or almost any other non-capitalist societal structure. With minor modifications, capitalist structures wouldn't have it either. If it gets to be too much of a problem, the fixes will be implemented.
Haliburton labor camps.
Interesting!
Yeah, apparently that's how they fixed the great depression too. Why don't we learn that Haliburton was behind the Civilian Conservations Corps? Oh, that's right, because it wasn't. :-P
Like anything else, there's always a corrupt way to do things, and a reasonable way. Of course, with the current jokers, it would be Halliburton all the way, but nothing lasts forever. it may not even last past November, with a little luck.
The fuel taxes are go to highway building and maintenance, and they aren't enough to cover the actual cost.
So what would really happen is the roads and bridges would fall into disrepair. This would make driving and having a car less desirable, even for the wealthy. So less fuel would be consumed, and less money would be available for roads and bridges.
I could see the whole car culture/highway system going into a death spiral.
This is just WRONG. Go look at today's low-energy societies. I am familiar with Nepal, which uses less than one-hundredth the per capita energy of the US.
Everything we do with energy in the US becomes an employment opportunity for a human being. People (porters) haul cargo instead of trucks, but 100 porters replace 1 truck driver. Hand labor in a field replaces tractor labor, but 100 people with hoes are about equal to 1 tractor.
Even feudalism figured out how to use available labor (and much of Nepal is not far from feudalism) and capitalism in a low energy environment would do the same.
Although there are many features of capitalism which I dislike, capitalism continues to function through war, natural disaster. Even in the Gulag, prisoners buy and sell desired items.
If buildings in the South are to be long-lasting after peak oil, we may need to use materials like brick and concrete, rather than wood, to make them long lasting.
Alternatively, we may need to build very disposable buildings (mud and sticks), and rebuild them often.
the roman empire didn't have technology advancing as fast as we do. It is natural for a society with massive change occuring continuously on the scale of, roughly, 20 years or so to primarily build structures that will last through that time horizon without additional maintainance.
20 years may turn out to be too long for some of them. Do you really think all the McMansions built today will still be viable in 20 years? Time moves on, and until societal structure gets a little more stable, it would be foolhardy to build everything to last a century. The Empire State Building is something like 75 years old, and should last anohter 75 no problem. Of course they knew it wasn't going to be in a neighborhood that would become yesteryear's fad! Similarly the New York Times Tower will probably have a similar lifetime, and I imagine it's being built accordingly.
We don't see all the ramshackle structures the romans built because they aren't there anymore. It's survivor's bias. We only see what was great, and the Romans (also knowing that it was great) knew they wouldn't want to tear it down for awhile, so they built it to last.
I have been observing the futures market for quite some time and for the first time Dec 2010 trades above current month contract. That is a marked contraction in just a few days. When the forward month touched 78.50 dec 2010 was at 73.00. With the current month at 69.50 and dec 2010 trading above it, to me suggests the peakers have drawn first blood. Of the long dated futures 2010 is easily the highest traded. The difference has been shrinking for quite some time as pointed out by others. Now we have a slight premium.
How hard is it to invest a few thousand dollars on 2010 oil, at $70? Can any schmuck do it?
A much simpler way to invest directly in oil is to use an exchange traded commodity fund. You can buy into the fund through your normal stockbroker and it normally costs the same and has the same minimum trade size as a normal stock. The only problem I see with them is that they are not able to exactly track the oil price due to contango and backwardation in the market.
Has anyone bought into a ETC oil fund? Any useful experiences?
If you want to bet just on oil in 2010, and ignore the short term fluctuations, then you need to bet on the long-dated future.
It is not as hard to buy as you think. Easiest thing is to open a "universal" account at Interactive Brokers. You can do your normal stock and mutual fund investing with them---and also, if you are approved and you are careful, you can buy various commodity and financial futures.
The 2010 crude future would likely not fluctuate very much u ntil time passes (i.e. in 2010) so that it becomes the short-term future. The bid-ask spread will be substantially higher than the short-term liquid future, but if you are buying and holding it is not such a bad idea.
Taxation on regulated futures in USA: profit and loss is allocated as 60% long-term gains and 40% short term gains regardless of actual holding period.
Minimum you need to cough up would be 3500 to 8000 depending on when and what strike price you buy.
Get educated before getting into futures.It is very very risky.
DO not buy the oil fund symbol USO. It is a money losing proposition. As the futures for further out contracts are more expensive the fund is perpetually losing money as it sells cheaper near term contracts just before expiration and buys more expensive new contracts. That thing is a joke. When it started trading it was supposed to track a barrel of oil. It was $70 that day and so was oil. Today that POS is at 64 while oil is at 69.75.
It is a great shorting tool if are negative on short term price movements as this constant decrease in NAV works for you. I assume they will fix this somehow but so far it has been one sad money losing proposition. Best of luck.
Email me if you have any more questions.
http://futures.tradingcharts.com/marketquotes/index.php3?market=SI
http://futures.tradingcharts.com/marketquotes/index.php3?market=GC
http://www.cbot.com/cbot/pub/page/0,3181,1213,00.html
Oil is here
http://futures.tradingcharts.com/marketquotes/index.php3?market=CL
The previous time, it stayed that way for only a few days (or maybe even less).
A real sign of Peak Oil will be when long term futures are going up 5-10% per year, and dragging up near term prices with them. We are far from that situation yet.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/columnists/all/stories/082906dnbusdimartino.31b0350. html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/28/AR2006082801247.html
Now that's priceless.
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,645196910,00.html
It's all just about betting, right? I don't have to reveal my true feelings?
If gasoline moves quickly towards $2.50 and then maintains a steady pattern sub $3 - I have no doubt you will be proven right. Timeframe - until October 2008. That makes this a risky bet.
The real question is - Are you thrilled with your leadership(your - as in that which leads you)?
Men want children even less than women do, but it's men who are leading the backlash:
But studies suggest that penalizing the child-free with higher taxes doesn't work. The real reason for falling birthrates is that those who do have children are having fewer of them. Some countries are trying to raise birthrates by offering subsidies for the third or fourth child born to a family.
I must say, all this reminds me of Tainter's work. As collapse approaches, population levels off, maybe even declines. This is seen as a problem by the government, since they need workers, warriors, taxpayers, etc. So various incentives are offered to encourage childbearing, usually to no avail.
Population growth will be halted by the collapse, but not before. There's still nooks and crannies left, and forests to cut down, where a few more can fit. The fact that it doesn't happen in our street means little.
Anecdotes from my in-laws : in peasant families in the Ardèche, a dirt-poor mountainous region in France, batchelor uncles and maiden aunts abounded. They renounced marriage because they had no prospects : smallholdings were barely big enough to scratch a living for one family, too small to sub-divide. No prospects of raising enough money to buy land. The choices were celibacy or emigration.
Incentives for child-bearing : A few countries have made it work. In France and Finland (very similar demographics), it is clearly demonstrated that empowering women by giving them the possibility of having children AND having a career, is very effective in turning the birthrate around (women WANT to have children, if they can afford to). They are about the only western Euro nation with an above-replacement birthrate
(Ireland is a special case, they seem to have leapfrogged from third world status to hypermodernity with remarkable aplomb)
Yes, Diamond and others have covered this. There are a lot of ways to do it. Requiring land ownership before you can marry. Encouraging homosexuality and other forms of sex that do not result in children. Late marriage. Infanticide. Suicide. Polyandry.
But we've lost most of these, and I wonder how long it would take to re-establish them. Even the classic Western example - having at least one of your children become a nun or a priest - has fallen by the wayside (which is causing problems for the Church).
When the insane dictator of Paraguay started a war against Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay (1865-70) that led to the death (I hear) of 1/3 of the male population, the country was repopulated in two ways;
- the victorious occupying troops spawned many bastards
- the Catholic Church looked the other way at polygamy.
I predict that by 2100 there will be a large number of half-Chinese kids in North America. Not sure about Mormons.Allow men and women without children and at any adult age to be allowed to choose whether or not to be "snipped". I can't speak of other countries, but in the US, most doctors will not perform this operation unless the man or woman is certain they are done having children, and the current measure of this certainty seems to be that the patient already has at least 1 (usually more like 2 or more) children already and is at least over 30 years of age.
If an 18 or 21 year old wanted to go through with it and they did not have any children as yet, most doctors would turn them away.
The reasoning for this that I've been given from some doctor aquaintances I've talked with is that they fear first that some people would change their minds later (a claim I think is moot since especially for men, the surgery is usually reversible).
Secondly, that this would give people a false sense of security in having unprotected sex since one of the main consequences (babies) would be removed (again a claim I question, but does seem to have better reasoning behind it than the "change their mind" argument).
(I remember that after the tsunami parents having lost children had the surgery reversed, can't find the link now)
I don't think we can count on that level of medical care in the post-carbon age. Certainly not in the Third World where population is growing the fastest.
CNN had a story about the baby boom currently going on in New Orleans. The reason? People were bored, with nothing else to do. And there was no access to contraception.
If you look at birth rates, you'll also notice that there's a tendency for babies to be born during the summer months -following the long, dark, cold months of winter.
TV = population control?
Not a bad theory I guess, but one that will be tough to implement unless we get enough energy alternatives.
Vasectomies are fairly low tech/low risk surgeries, so I don't see an end to PO being an end to that medical procedure short of a complete and utter collapse. Where there are pockets of civilization, I expect there to be pockets of modern medicine as well.
Tubal Ligations are more serious, and more dangerous, and depending on the extent PO limits the availability or certain medical resources I could see this being more problematic. Again though, I think with a modicum of modern technology intact, these procedures might be feasible as well.
As for comparing India to the US or other Western countries, I think you are comparing apples and oranges. Women in India do not possess the same freedoms they do in the West, and the views of a career woman in India are very different than they are in the West as well. While there is a certain stigma even in the West to a woman not wanting children, it is nothing compared to the stigma a woman in India would have. Culturally and educationally, India I don't think is ready for the mindset of childlessness or small families especially since they are still primarily an agricultural/peasant society. Not to say that India might not rapidly adjust their culture or education in response to the population problem when TSHTF, but by then it may be too late to prevent a collapse.
Of course as someone pointed out, the problem of adopting a lower birthrate before TSHTF leads to those who do populate very well, pushing out those that decide not to. IE some of the problems Europe is beginning to experience with an ever growing and high birthrate Islamic subsection.
And of course, it's the number of fertile females that counts.
As for the fertile female being the part that counts, no that isn't entirely correct also, unless you are assuming polyandry as the social norm, which it isn't in most modern countries or even historically, most societies.
An enforcement of monogomous relationships, where the male has had a Vasectomy will produce the same desired result for a lower risk, than a polyandric(sp?) society where the females must go through Tubal Ligation.
Heck, even a polygimist society where the male has undergone a Vasectomy would be a safer and simpler method of achieving an active sexual society for a lower percentage health risk.
I know that the monogomy thing irks the free luvin' hippies and the polygimist thing irks the feminists/women's rights proponents, but factually, Vasectomies are safer and easier.
Of the two choices, I believe a monogomous setup would be more conducive to preserving the rights won by females than a polygimist setup whereby harems and concubines I think would resurge, and women would be little better than property again.
No, I am not assuming polyandry as the social norm.
But I am also not assuming that monogamy is the social norm. Because it isn't. It may be the ideal in our culture, but in practice...nope.
My sister did her dissertation on an 18th century alchemist/fortuneteller. She said the most common question his clients asked of him was, "When will s/he die?" - meaning their spouse. She says because of the high death rates of the time, the average marriage lasted 5 years, even though it was "till death do us part."
Why is AIDS Worse in Africa?
But to steer this back to population control, my point originally I think stands. Wider availablity of Vasectomies and Tubal Ligations combined with monogomous relationships would be a useful tool towards driving population levels down, a goal which when powerdown happens whether forcibly from depletion, or voluntarily will help to ease the effect of resource scarcity. Fewer people to fuel/heat/feed/mobilize is a direct method of conservation.
Frankly, I think abiotic oil is more likely.
If you want to keep trying frame my arguments as 100% or 0% solutions go ahead, but it does a disservice to your own arguments.
I'm not stating that 100% monogamy is an attainable goal. Never did, and never will. But a push for behaviorial change in this direction could curve the effects of a society with a less monogamous setup, namely STDs and unplanned pregnancies.
Instead of an average 10 sexual partners in the USA what would happen to Birthrates, and STDs if that average was lowered to say 5 or 3?
Further, by focusing on just monogamy, you miss the point of the full solution I was pointing to, Vasectomy of the male in a male/female monogomous relationship as a low cost/low risk silver BB in controlling population growth. The whole point of monogamy is to prevent the fertile female from getting pregnant while still being able to enjoy sexual activity. The moment she leaves the monogamous relationship for another male, she exposes herself to the risk of having a child, which is the whole thing we are trying to avoid.
It's the developing nations where population is growing fastest. The solution you propose has to work there, not here.
Problem I worry about for the US is at roughly 300million people, can the territory we inhabit support us without Oil, gas and the industry and farming techniques we've developed around it.
My initial reaction is probably, but I don't think we will have extra food capacity to help anyone else out. We will feed ourselves, and the nations that count on our exported food will starve.
Also if biofuels(specifically thinking Ethanol) are to be any portion of the Silver BBs to our energy problem, that means we need to cull population to free up land for fuel production instead of food production. Personally from what I've read, the algae in the desert idea sounds like a more efficient use of land and resources.
I think the US is toeing the population overshoot line real closely. Europe, China, India, Japan, Indonesia, sections of SE Asia, and portions of Africa are in for a hard ride, and probably collapse.
Australia, Canada, Russia(if they can ride out the storm from all the surrounding population centers), the US, and most of the Americas, North and South, I think have better odds going for them.
Anyhow its been fun, but I'm bailing from this thread.
kicks the dead horse one more time on the way out
http://www.prb.org/pdf06/06WorldDataSheet.pdf
I think you will find its another case of a housing bubble giving a positive gloss on the economy.
In the long run, countries will be better off with (say) half their current populations and a median age in the forties, but the transition is going to be tough.
The Baby Boomers are supporting my relatively luxurious old age with Social Security, Medicare, and a generous pension.
Who is going to support the retirement of the Baby Boomers, especially when peak oil chokes off real economic growth per capita? Note that we older folk vote, and in a democracy there is no way that the retired and soon-to-be retired will agree to a lower level of benefits than their parents got. And, at the same time, I think there is no way that people under, say forty-five, will agree to much higher levels of taxes that would be needed to meet the expectations of retiring Boomers.
The official line is that economic growth will solve the problem.
Yeah, right.
All these top-heavy institutions will fall by the wayside, just like the electricity grid. They exist by the grace of abundance. And guess what?
There will be insufficient resources to go around. Those old and infirm, less able to produce or acquire food and energy, more disease prone, in the wrong place at an unfortunate time - will have a significantly lower likelihood of survival (than now and than others then).
Energy is the real wealth and quite possibly the major determinant of population change. We don't seem to have found an adequate replacement (or alternative lifestyle that we would voluntarily choose) yet for the temporary fossil energy boom and the hour is getting late.
What is not at all clear is how the smaller pie will be divided. Will wealth disparities keep growing (neo-feudalism), or will a social upheaval result is a restructuring of the economy towards a more equitable system?
As long as the promise of "economic growth" keeps the common folks from rebelling, the current system buys time and the rich get richer yet. At some point people in the USA will notice that they're falling back despite all the promises. Many people in the rest of the world already noticed that. The Chinese "growth miracle" will pop and the wealth disparities there will spark mega-rage. Post-peak, even businessmen will eventually realize that there's no room left for "growth". What will happen then?
We in the USA can be poorer but happier, if we change priorities. For example, single-payer health care in other industrialized countries costs less (per capita) in total than the public expenditures portion alone of the US health care "system" and results in better health status of the general population. (I wish I kept that link, it was published in a staid US mainstream journal on health care systems.) Even Cuba has better public health outcomes than the USA.
Taxation of Social Security benefits isn't indexed to inflation, unlike most others in the tax code (one other thing that isn't: the AMT). So, the gutless politicians don't have to reduce the benefits, they just let the fullness of time do its work. Likewise, Medicare premiums are going to increase exponentially in the future, so more of your SS benefits will go towards your government health care. These things won't be nearly enough to cover the shortfall, but it should mitigate it somewhat.
That this could be done to avoid a financial disaster about 15-20 years into the future probably makes it more likely that we will implement good post peak oil plans if we get more then a series of ordinary oil crises as the one in the 70:s and absolutely have to do drastic things to handle the situation.
Um...yeah.
Even if every one of us ends up in a high-powered career, we wouldn't be able to do that. We probably won't even have the money to do two of those, much less all three. So, if it comes down to a choice -which do you think we're going to pick?
A delusional one. But you can v be optimistic about that too. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
When your entire society is faced with all these problems, and as you state the issues, you still do so in current energy rich terms, that society will change radically, it will have to.
But any which way you turn this, it ain't lookin' good for the boomers.
But when things get so bad that people can't feed themselves or their families, and their being taxed to death, generally their is a revolution.
Ok, quick reality check for you here. What percentage of the U.S. population has a B.A. degree?
But what I meant was, those of us in the college age category. Though this will be the most educated group of adults in human history, since over half of my generation are/will attend college, thanks to the relative affluence and liberal financial aid policies.
I really doubt are children will have it so well.
Tuition has gone up nearly 40% since I started (3 year plan). Every semester my mom takes out another loan to cover my difference in costs. This nightmare will finally end next year as I finish. She was forced to borrow $12K and I've got another $15K. This is absolutely insane.
Oh and financial aid let me see. I was 30 in my class of 400. I'm white and male. Parents make "too much." The only thing available was stanford loans and I did apply for several scholarships however since I chose to work in high school, that counted against me too. I'm not complaining(maybe a little), but I tend to find a lot of similar cases around campus and they are not all white and male. It's sad.
tate, I know how hard it is to get the money for college. I was the first person in my family to go. Most of them didn't even finish high school. The only reason I was able to go was Pell grants, Stafford Loans, and a whole lot of part time work. When my parents, aunts, and unlces were my age those programs weren't around.
So, yes, we do have 'liberal' financial aid policies. Much better than the historical precedent at any rate!
Compared to 1860 or 1930, yes, financial aid in the U.S. is "liberal." Compared to 1970 - no way.
When the boomers were in college, there was tons of financial aid. No more. Most students are forced to get loans, unless they are really poor.
When the boomers started families, mortgage and other housing programs increased. Now that they are aging, we can expect social security and Medicare to increase.
They've got numbers on their side.
Thanks for saying this. I have often thought that there is baby-boomer bashing and blaming on TOD, by "ourselves" mostly. The truth is, we are not the ones who started this industrial revolution, but we sure have funded a nice retirement for those generations ahead of us. In return, I fear that we will be in the most trouble of all--at a difficult age when TSHTF and SS and Medicare funding runs out. Those younger than us will be in a difficult, but better situation to adapt. Its really the perfect storm for boomers. I know there are many of us out there who give boomers a bad name, not all though, and in defense, we have been victims of the media, and advertising industries.
I'm a Boomer too.
But that is not fair.
Why pick on one subset of our Adam Smithian society? People in media and advertising are just "doing their thing" (to use a Boomer colloquialism) just like each practitioner in each zone of specialization is "grooving" in his or her own "professional" digs.
Our college professors never explained to us that everything is a lie. (Because if they did, we would have to take them out and shoot them.) So they kept preaching the wonderments of our prosperous economic system and how the Great Depression can never happen again and how "if we can go to the Moon, we can do anything".
Why pick on media and advertising? It's everybody. It's all of us. We were all suckers.
Everyone bought into that lie just like everyone bought into dot.com stocks just before the bottom fell out.
It works. I tried it, and the only junk mail I get now is from folks I all ready have business with. Which unfortunately is still quite a lot.
It does take 4-6 weeks to kick in though.
When I was a freshman in college, the costs were negligible ($42.50 per semester at UC, Berkeley for all the classes you wanted to take), jobs were very easy to find after college . . . and not least, I was just the right age for the Liberation of women and all the fun we had in the sixties:0
My pension is defined benefit and rather generous and quite secure--something that very few Boomers can look forward to.
I was brought up in the shadow of the Great Depression and World War Two and before television, and thus I learned to practice frugality and saving as great virtues.
To a large extent, your chances in life depend on when you were born (and other matters over which one has no control such as gender, social class, country of origin).
To some extent my "success" in life has been self-made, but to a much greater extent it depended on good genes and good luck.
This suggests to me that (some) men are beginning to lament their loss of control over women, and perhaps seeking to re-establish it. It makes me worry for my daughters, and even more for any daughters they might have.
From Tiptree's The Women Men Don't See:
I recently heard a talking head saying the same thing in explaining the rise of Islam, particualrly among younger men.
I'm convinced that living well in the future is going to entail a complete rethinking of our current living arrangements. How closely we live to one another (both literally and figuratively), how we divide up the necessary labors, and how we share resources, will to a great extent determine our quality of life. Alternate living arrangements have, of course, been tried, and at least with respect to the most recent American experiences (thinking of the communes of the sixties and seventies), pretty much been abandoned. Still, I think we have a pressing need to try to redefine our family and community relations and to figure out what we have to share that would benefit all concerned.
I harbor no illusions about the difficulties of redefining such relationships -- particularly amongst folks accustomed to the luxury of being able to afford their own (e.g. the typical American). But I think smaller families and fewer resources will force us to take some risks in this direction.
Leanan, that may be one of the real reasons, but there is an even `realer' one - it's that the West has become de facto Godless (except for Kansas). In the bad old days the vast majority of the populace believed that God (and Jesus in particular) gets really upset if you wear a condom, practice coitus interruptus or in any other way prevent Mother Nature from doing her thing and ensuring that women will have approximately four children every three years.
And people who did evil things like that could well end up in eternal fire, because when God gets hot and bothered that's what he tends to do: one stroke and you're out! Now that most people no longer believe in God (and certainly not in Hell), or believe that God is basically a decent chap and may sentence the birth-controllers to, say, a mere 3 billion years in Purgatory, which is just a fleeting instant when compared with eternity, they are likely, in medias res to wear French letters, insert Dutch caps, swallow birth control pills, have the Fallopian tubes sown up, and so forth.
And it came to pass that recreational sex trumped procreational sex, and the birthrate fell among the godless ones and they eventually wiped themselves out and were replaced by the true believers, who know that the world was created in six days ....
Fear of hell is the best incentive of all.
.
Then there are the Calvinists, predestination, election, etc. God has already decided who will be saved, and who won't. So it doesn't matter what you do, your fate is already decided.
If the purpose of religion is social control, one would think that predestination would undermine the whole shebang. But in practice, it didn't. Turns out, people didn't worry that much over what God thought. They were more concerned about what the neighbors thought. They behaved because they didn't want other people thinking they were not among the elect. IOW, it's not going to hell that's bad, it's everyone knowing about it that you want to avoid.
Never underestimate the power of peer pressure...
All depends on what you mean by 'plenty'. There's certainly more sin today -- harlots and fornicators being the rule rather than the exception. And the fact is that the religious on the whole do have more children than infidels - compare Ultra-Orthoox with liberal Jews, Arab Muslims with secular Arabs, for example. BTW, in Darwinian terms, religion always (eventually) wins. Evolution, so to speak, favours those who don't believe in it.
Off on a bit of a tangent -- here's a citation from Garrett Hardin that might be of general interest to TOD readers:
"You'll find the entire article here.
.
Not sure I buy that one.
As Barry Burg points out in Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition, we have a tendency to look at upper class Victorian mores, and draw a line back to Biblical times, assuming that moral sensibilities were the same all the way back (except maybe even more conservative).
It's not true. Sexual mores varied a lot over time. In some ways, they were even more permissive in the past.
Gratuitous affirmation :
Societies worse off 'when they have God on their side'
And the more religious are not the less prone to indulge in recreational sex :
Look away, Dildo Land The author of "Sex in the South" whoops it up at a sex-toy sales meeting in Arkansas.
I would wager that many of a wife encouraged their husband to visit the "Ladies". To get them off her... er... back.
Well hell, that goes without saying doesn't it? That is like saying; "The real reason most people don't live to be 100 is because most of them die before they reach that age." The statement is obviously true but totally without any meaningful information whatsoever.
The question is obviously; why are people having fewer children? The answer to that question depends on; what group of people are you talking about? If you are talking about the developed West, then there are several answers. There is the empowerment of women, higher education, the availability of birth control and so on. But if you are talking about the Sub-Sahara Africa, India, Bangladesh or anywhere else in the third world, then there is an entirely different answer. There is massive overcrowding in most of the third world. In Guatemala and many other places in Latin America children dumped on the streets at the age of four or five to fend for themselves. These children don't grow up to have many children themselves because they don't usually live that long.
In Africa many adults of childbearing age have AIDS. Most of the others suffer from malnutrition. Malnourished women are not as fertile and suffer miscarriages at a much higher rate. Basically the birth rate is dropping in the third world purely for Malthusian reasons.
In a vastly overcrowded world, it was bound to happen.
Ron Patterson
No.
Politicians want to penalize people who don't marry and have children, with the idea that they are the reason for falling birthrates.
In fact, historically speaking, the number of people who don't have kids at all is not high.
This matters if you want to increase the birthrate. It suggests that you're better off encouraging those who do have kids to have a few more, rather than trying to force those who don't have any to have some.
"A year before 9/11/2001 happened in the USA, a ‘terrifying incident’ of a different sort happened in Europe that changed how political leaders across the world would forever understand the essential role oil resources played in the ‘developed nations.’"
The take-home is best summarized by the first comment in that blog thread:
"Too many pundits engage in dry debates about “protocols” and “powering down” strategies that will guide the world into a “soft landing” after the depletion of cheap fossil fuels. The problem with this debate is there is too much focus on humanity’s ability to craft a “clever” solution. The real challenge of humanity’s dark side is utterly discounted. Fear, panic, anxiety, and covetousness will not take a holiday while the “clever” among us plan a better future. The paradox of peak oil will be the question of how we can craft creative solutions that will entail no small degree of sacrifice and cooperation while keeping the darker impulses of mass panic, rage, and greed at bay. I hope that the PO community will take a hard look at the “5th of September”. There are so many seperate historical threads in this story that are worth discussing in depth. First, it is important to note that this was a crisis that was provoked not by a lack of oil, but by an overabundance of frustration and rage. How many more times in the future will our rage and fear mutiply the impact of a difficult sitation? It is unfortunate that the American media buried this story."
It is clear that delivering fossil fuels to those who can afford it, is of utmost importance to the keepers of our culture. They have learned the painful lessons about what happens when the flow of oil stops. All of you in the Peak Oil community realize that it will stop, but before it does, it will become wildly expensive. The events of September 5th, 2000, tell us that we will be cut out of who will still have access to dwindling resources, and who will not. If we pay attention to the actions of our leaders, we will learn that they will protect the flow of oil first, our safety second, and our freedoms last.
This doesn't give me much hope that the US gov't is going to give up its war on the Middle East.
Also, how is it again that we're all not completely screwed?
TAB
I mean, you just have to believe, right? Believe hard enough and the world will "evolve" into something magically better, yeah? And besides, we have technology and that makes us even more special, doesn't it?
As for the US and wars in the Middle East, what's the line from that old song? "We've only just begun..."
On a more serious note, Chris Vernon's recent post over at TOD:UK on UK population is fascinating stuff, including the facts of how hard it was to sustain the UK during the blockades of WWI and WWII when population was closer to 40 million than today's 60+ million.
Thxs for this link. It provides evidence to buttress my beliefs in the fast-crash scenario, but I continue to work to prevent it.
I have posted this before, but the sad irony is the Cornucopians' Message brings the Peak sooner with a fast decline, and the Doomers' Message delays the Peak date and helps prevent precipitious collapse.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
In the US, most consumers realize that tax is only a small part of the problem.
It's comforting to know that at least some people are prepared.
Comment from "Nick" yesterday:
It may look "orderly" to you, sir, if you only look at the last few generations but if you look at those reindeer, the last few generations before the crash were slowing down in birth rate too. Remember a new generation of reindeer are born annually. For humans that's a 20+ year cycle. So the truth is that our population is flattening right at the top of this curve, just like other mammals do when they near the crash phase.
Further, your claim that this is orderly simply provokes howls of laughter when viewed in the larger historical context. Let's look at human population in the larger historical context, shall we?
Now take a good look at that and tell me how that absurd, almost vertical exponential growth curve differs from the reindeer or the yeast or any other species. And please refrain from pleas that we humans are different and thus special. We've already wrecked the biosphere and are just finishing the job. You can go right on believing that we're "special" and somehow immune to the coming population crash. Just let me know where you live so I can bury your remains if I happen to wander by after the dieoff. Heck, I'll even throw in a prayer to your favorite deity if you let me know which one.
As far as the entire world is concerned, the rate of population growth is slowing, but it is entirely because of Malthusian reasons. That is, in Africa and much of Asia, the population growth rate is falling because of an increase in death rates. The fertility rate is falling because people with diseases such as AIDS, and malnutrition related diseases. Malnurished women are just not as fertil as well fed women. Starving people simply have less kids.
Nick is simply wrong when he says:
Wrong! We are clearly already deep into overshoot and we are clearly seeing a decline in the growth rate because of it. We have been deep into overshoot for several decades now.
David Price wrote of the problem in 1995. We are way past the point of no return. We are clearly headed for the same destiney as the reindeer on St. Matthew Island.
Ron Patterson
Two hundred years if you ask me. Now here's something to make you feel real good: The World Population Clock
Political correctness is obviously not your forte [smiley]
Good stuff!
He started asking about over population so I busted out the HOCKEY stick graph and his faced turned white. He quickly looked at it and said we doubled everyone since I was born? I said yeh and then some. He bout $hit a brick. He quickly realized the error of all this and lamented that he was glad to be in one of the biggest countries with a mere 300M people.
Anyway we found this site and started watching the clock. There were so many babies born in the 30 secs we watched, he couldn't believe it at all. It was surreal to him that this could be happening.
He knows the entire US dominance will end and he fears he'll be alive to watch it. He believes exactly what I preach, that Rome was the greatest civilzation of its time and they died from within. I would wager it's no different only now it's called the USA.
Just to add to your father's distress, I suggest you simultaneously watch Chevron's Oil and Gas Consumption Clock at their 'Will You Join Us' website.
http://www.willyoujoinus.com/poll/results.aspx?ans=12
If it doesn't display right,
39% chose hydrogen being available in 10 yrs
27% chose 25 yrs
11% chose 50 yrs
23% (ME) chose never
Now, who are these people? J/K...
Yes, but he his just another troll with a (corporate?) agenda there is no point arguing with him.
In the meanwhile, as I said previously, grab a cold one, pull up a chair, and watch civilization kill itself. It's trying really hard and I'd hate to intervene and disappoint it.
I couldn't have said it better.
TAB
We are special, and I don't mean that in a "escape the consequences" type mentality.
Unlike other animals who are extremely tied to their niche humans, (along with rats, and roaches) have an amazing adaptability, and perhaps most importantly, a brain which can react to stimuli in manners other organisms can't.
I have no illusions that maintaining or increasing a 6 billion person population is feasible barring some major breakthrough(border on miracle). But I do think that unlike the yeast, deer, and other organisms who become trapped in a finite system, humans may have the capacity to avoid a collapse, and instead enter a "controlled" fall.
Certain social trends make me wonder if this is likely, but I think more than any other animal, the potential for a controlled fall is most prominent in the human species.
Chalk it up to false hope or denial if you want, but if we really are doomed to collapse on a grand doomers scale, then why bother having this site or having conversations on how to mitigate impacts. If the world ends tomorrow, get your SUV, beer, woman(substitute man where applicable) and party hardy while you can.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reprinted the article, titled Giant New Oil Refinery in India Shows Forces Roiling Industry:
Of particular interest, the article notes:
A copy of my recent email to the national Red Cross:
--------------
Hello Red Cross,
I am a forum member of TheOilDrum.com [TOD], and have studied Peakoil at Dieoff.com and EnergyBulletin.net for several years. I was interested in reading your official plans and policies of how you plan to respond to this fossil fuel depletion event that will continue to get worse every year.
You are encouraged by me to join TOD and post your plans there for discussion by our members. We have many experts that will propose suggestions to help improve your ability to save lives and reduce violence, besides saving your organization multi-millions of dollars.
I thank you in advance for your reply.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
------------------------
IF I get a reply, I will post it here on TOD.
Have they replied yet? I am interested to hear what they say.
I just got emailed back: the normal computer software reply thanking me for my submittal. My guess is their spam filter auto-deletes all incoming email unless it has the keywords: volunteer or donation, but we will see.
My biggest disappointment was my emailed suggestion to GOOGLE. Underneath the I'm Feeling Lucky button, I suggested they included an I'm Feeling Unlucky button that would always take the user to Dieoff.com.
My goal was to make Jay Hanson's Magnum Opus the #1 worldwide website in hits and visit time. But I guess Google's stock price is more important than optimizing the Dieoff Bottleneck. Such is life.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
totoneila, that's the funniest damned thing I've heard in a while.
If you really did that and got a reply could you share it?
If you didn't, DO IT NOW!
It was approx. 3 years ago when I first emailed this suggestion to GOOGLE--I am still waiting for an answer. Maybe if everyone at TOD emailed Google, someone might get an answer.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
The last global economic slow down instigated by the price of oil was the early 80s. From 1978 to 1983 US oil consumption fell by 17%, while global consumption from 1979 to 1983 fell by 10%. That would be drop in US of 3.4 mbd and global 8 mbd today.
If the economy tanks $70 a barrel, it's going to be important to say we can't just grow again. Oil has now put cap on our oil-century and our way out is going to be a new energy economy.
I'm saying that even if we try and cut consumption peak oil will mitigate the gains due to a permanent loss in supply, not temp like in the 70's. The price will move little if the demand is falling just as supply is falling.
Its something people concerned with peak oil should be concerned, because there's going to be a lot of questioning how to get out of it and there needs to be voices saying we need a new energy economy, we need to even decrease consumptin more, and thats going to be hard arguement in recession.
http://www.albawaba.com/en/countries/Egypt/202396
US vs. Iran: Is an attack inevitable?
Dr. Abbas Bakhtiar, Al Bawaba
Summary:
...The US is a declining empire and can no longer afford to play by the rules; not that it ever was inclined to do so. The talk of pre-emption was a clear sign of the fear that soon US would not be able to control the situation. It was decided to try to arrest the growth and ambition of all those countries that were going to challenge the US hegemony in the international system. But pre-emption is a last desperate attempt to stop the inevitable. The folly of believing that by pre-emption a great power can hold its place in the international system is clearly stated by the historian Paul Kennedy:
"So far as international system is concerned, wealth and power, or economic strength and military strength, are always relative and should be seen as such. Since they are relative, and since all societies are subject to the inexorable tendency to change, then international balances can never be still, and it is a folly of statesmanship to assume that they ever would be".
Stupid or not, this is exactly what the current US administration is trying to do. After examining all the possible scenarios of how to forestall the US' decline, it came up with one solution: control of oil fields. If the US could physically control the sources of world energy, it could practically determine the growth of the world economies and by extension their military powers that were to challenge it in the future. Of course, the US government could achieve a similar outcome by entering into an alliance with two major Middle Eastern countries Iran and Iraq, but this would require a rethink of its Israel strategy; something that a US president is not even allowed to contemplate.
So they tried to implement this grand strategy. The current US administration under the pretext of "war on terror" invaded Iraq and occupied it. Now we have to note that Iraq was chosen first because it was extremely weak. After 8 years of war with Iran, a devastating war with the US and its coalition in Kuwait and nearly 10 years of sanctions, Iraq was in no position to put-up any kind of resistance. On top of all these, the US government through its agents in UN team in Iraq had obtained blueprints of all military installations, and had even bought the general responsible for the defence of Baghdad.
It was envisaged that once Iraq was occupied and the population pacified, the US and UK forces would turn around and occupy the Iranian Southern oil region of Khuzestan. The area is relatively flat and is ideal for armour assault. Once the oil fields are occupied, it was thought, it would be only a matter of time for the regime in Tehran to collapse; paving the way for a puppet regime to be installed in Tehran.
Having bases in Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain, the US would control over 30% of the world's natural gas and over 61% of the world proven oil reserves. China, India, EU and others had to then pay tribute to the US to ensure their economic survival. If that was not enough, the US would create a sphere of influence in Iraq and Iran analogous to the old colonial system of economic exploitation. I know that you may find this difficult to accept; after all we can not believe that these sorts of things can happen today. But it does happen and what is more, people love to make it happen. To make my point clear, consider what this US administration had planned for Iraq...
(27 Aug 2006)
EB Comments: Long article. Dr. Abbas Bakhtiar lives in Norway. He is a consultant and a contributing writer for many online journals. He is also on the editorial board of CASMII. He's a former associate professor of Nordland University, Norway.
Pretty incendiary stuff, if true.
I have concluded that there are two types of Americans: (1) those who have realized that the Neocons' plans for the Middle East have failed and (2) those who will realize that the Neocons' plans for the Middle East have failed.
Every time I hear Bush talking about staying the course--otherwise all the American soldiers who have died will have died in vain--I think of Philip Caputo's book "Rumor of War," about his experience in Vietnam. Caputo started out as a gung-ho Marine Second Lieutenant. He gradually came to realize that the US was bogged down in a sometimes multiparty civil war (at one point, various factions of the South Vietnamese Army were at war with each other).
The most frequent criticism that Caputo received as he started questioning the war was that if the US pulled out, everyone who had died would have died in vain. I think that Caputo was there at about the halfway point, about 25,000 Americans dead, on the way to the final toll of 50,000 plus.
Retired three star general Newbold, who resigned in protest over the Iraq War (prior to the invasion), said that the military let itself be duped again by the civilian leadership--just like Vietnam.
I expect that a few Democrats and independents will successfully campaign on a "bring the troops home" platform in the next couple of elections, but no Democratic candidate for President will do so and be able to keep that promise.
I read the entire Bakhtiar article, and I think he is right on. (Unfortunately.)
It is hard to escape the validity of the premise that if the US wan't to remain the world's premier superpower, it will have to control most of the world's oil supply. If it wants to control most of the world's oil supply, it will have to control the Middle East. If it wants to control the Middle East, it will have to install compliant regimes in both Iraq and Iran. If it wants to install compliant regimes in both Iraq and Iran, it will have to i) continue the Iraqi occupation indefinitely, and ii) attack Iran. QED
I am now convinced that the Bush regime will not deviate one nanometer from this path.
Under this administration there is no way in the world that the US is going to withdraw from Iraq, even if the situation stabilizes rather than spins off into chaos, as it appears to be doing. The size and permanance of our bases in Iraq puts the lie to the notion that we are ever going to withdraw.
It is quite clear that the US relations with Iran is now far worse than when Bush came into office. Iran's new chuminess with both Russia and China, as expressed in various oil and gas deals, is an extended middle finger right in the face of the US. Furthermore, the current neocon ideology coupled with the strong influence of the Israeli lobby will make it all but impossible for any sort of accord with Iran.
The US is steadily building up a case for military action against Iran. It wants. It needs it. Israel wants it and needs it. All that is lacking is a pretext for war. And that can all too easily be supplied by a fabricated Tonkin Gulf type of incident or a conveniently timed major terrorist attack to be pinned on Iran.
Another conceivable scenario is for Israel to attack Iran 'all on its own', fully knowing that Iran will counter attack, and that the US would be waiting ready to defend Israel by attacking Iran.
The Bush regime has indeed painted itself into a dark corner. The only way for there to be peace is for the US to admit that it screwed up and cease its grand plan to militarily dominate the Middle East. I just don't see that happening as long as Bush is in office. These people do not have any Plan B. So, I think they are going to roll the dice and go for broke sometime before Bush leaves office.
As long as the US is committed to spending hundreds of billions of dollars on its Middle East campaign, there will never be anything more than lip service and nickles and dimes put toward alternative energy, mass transit, and the restructuring of our infrastructure to be more energy-efficient. More and more money is being sucked up by the US war machine.
I try not to be overcome by a sense of futility, but given our current situation, I find it difficult.
Iran has signed deals with China and Russia regarding oil and natural gas. There is no way those two countries will sit back and let us secure the world's remaining oil supplies. It would destroy them.
So, let's assume the U.S. attacks Iran. What could they do? Russia couldn't do much obviously. But China could play all its cards and dumb the U.S. dollar en masse, and ease all lending to the Treasury. It now holds nearly one trillion dollars (see the Newsweek article I posted below). Sure it would put the Chinese economy into a depression, but it would outright destroy the U.S. economy -and our war machine, thus ending our control of the ME.
Thoughts? Does anyone think this is plausible or not?
One variation on the dollar/debt situation is that BCR may plan to seize the fields and then renege on most foreign debt.
I have to agree. I really don't think people think about the whole oil import issue enough. The U.S. only produces 5.1 million barrels of oil and around 2 million in gas that is declining. I've read agriculture itself consumes 20% of our total oil consumption of 21 million barrels. If we no longer had access to imports we could barely feed, heat, and provide oil for military. Not just $200 a barrel oil. No oil.
Friendly countries are going down. Mexico is about to implode. North Sea and Norway are imploding. Canada is going down even with the tar sands. Brazil is about the only one increasing.
Our friend in the Middle East, Saudi, is going down. Iran is now becoming the power in the Middle East and we are the Great Satan to them. Saudis only are staying in power because we back them to prevent another Iranian-like revolution. Russia has no love for us--we broke them earlier. China is rising as an economic power. If we left the Middle East who do you think the Middle East will sell to? The U.S. or China? Wouldn't China just dump our treasuries, killing the dollar, allow their currency to appreciate and just buy oil from the Middle East using yuans, rubles, etc. Russia could also sell China oil and help provide food supplies.
I think the situation is pretty desparate. Effectively, the Middle East and Russia could simply cut off oil supplies to the U.S. as they see fit. We would like a little more grain please U.S. we'll send you some oil, etc.
If we withdraw militarily from the Middle East then our hugely oil-dependent economy (along with Europe) will be at the mercy of the Middle East, China, and Russia. And to return the favor we dealt them, we might become a land of alternative energy sweatshops to ensure they have energy once the oil runs out. Don't see us leaving the ME any time soon.
http://www.ybiofuels.org/bio_fuels/benefitsAgriPerf.html
How's that compare to the total? hmmm, Here's a better link:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/fuel_oil_and_kerosene_sales/current/p df/table13.pdf
I guess it depends on what you compare it to ... farm use is 10% of on-road diesel, and maybe 5% total Distillate Fuel Oil:
I don't doubt there are extreme scenarios that will be played out, and soon, this one seems unlikely
I must admit. I was at home during the first night (day here) of bombing. That was simply amazing at the capability of our military for that time. The whole shock and awe was spectacular until you realize what it really meant.
Not to sound too conspirationist but how do you know that the REAL plan is the ADVERTISED PLAN (from PNAC)?
May be it is less of a failure than one can think.
However there are serious hints that if they have a concealed plan they are perfectly able to botch it too.
The military are an odd lot, but when the job description is "blow things up and kill people" you tend to collect a certain type of person. They tend to be very optimistic. They know that "when the enemy is in range, so are you", yet they still run onto the battlefield with gusto, convinced of their own survival.
Then they encounter the reality of an Iraq or Vietnam. When we first invade everyone was giving each other high fives and making fun of we pessimists. Now you can't get them to look you in the eye.
It's safe to say it's different this time.
http://i6.tinypic.com/2602yx0.jpg
From Newsweek -Is China Too Rich?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14535192/site/newsweek/
From tstreet: Debt Gains Attention http://www.thestreet.com/_dm/markets/economics/10305903.html
And the presentation the latter refers to: http://www.gao.gov/cghome/d061078cg.pdf
I got these from LATOC.
Chad leader wants majority stake in oil output
Note that the "human rights" advocates are in bed with the Western governments, trying to keep the revenue out of African hands.
The EIA expects natural gas production in North America to be down 2.6% in 2010 compared with 2003. Sometime after that, as mentioned in the quoted text, production mysteriously increases. Despite a record number of drilling rigs, production continues its decline. Nobody talking about any of this seems to get it! The declining production is irreversable. Natural gas fields decline faster than oil fields. One year they're there and Poof! the next year they're gone. ExxonMobil is betting on LNG from Qatar -- no kidding! It's an excellent investment. They know what they're doing.
These reports like Leanan's FT link are coming to you from FantasyLand.
And, FT finally acknowledges what I have reported on before -- "Speculation is that Canada will export less natural gas as the country's firms use more of it to extract crude oil from its massive tar sands reserve in Alberta." Hey, thanks! You guys are all over it. Keep up the good work.
Natural Gas? What natural gas?
Yet investors are pouring Billions into LNG. Reminds me of the story above about all the 500 or so oil refinery projects. We're going to end up dumping all our resources into an already visible dead end, aren't we? If that is projected as profitable - and it probably is - then all it is doing is transferring the last dollars out of the consumers into the pockets of the fat cats while simultaniously leaving no ability to produce anything much. Bullets are going to be too expensive to shoot the dissidents.
Good link, Past and Future Roles of Women in America. Not only women, but all of us (or none of us) are going to have any rights at all unless we have economic rights. I've made that connection before - Susan Faludi's "Backlash" and "Stiffed" - but this was much more succinct.
The people who are destroying this planet have names and addresses. That is starting to imply to me a much more combative approach to Peak Oil and the resulting mess. Our economy itself is an instrument of death - I can't eat anything in the stores - not that I'm allowed to know what is IN the food. GDP goes up when I get sick. The bright spot of the last day is the Yes! Men in New Orleans. HUD does right in New Orleans.
cfm in Gray, ME
They say most LNG is under long term contract. Legalities aside there are reasons it may disappoint some customers. These include national governments ordering quotas of NG be retained for domestic use and energy security. For example there is talk of a 3,000km pipeline and a GTL plant at Gorgon gas field. I suspect in the near term many trucks will convert from diesel to CNG. I've heard of an unofficial LNG spot market whereby tanker ships change course in mid ocean to help out a buyer willing to pay extra. Then there's the terrorism and NIMBY factor of terminals close to cities. Finally there is uncertainty whether contracts can be renegotiated at favourable prices and quantities. All of this says don't depend on LNG long term.
The deal is the Asian nation's latest in Latin America to help meet its rising energy needs.
-C.
China has also helped Iran with the Tehran subway.
Iran builds it's own subway cars (with sanctions they want in-country capability; kind-of like nukes) to a Chinese design. The Chinese took some Iranians into their factory and helped in other technical ways.
Chinese civil engineers also helped in the design. Offical word is that they only did professionsl peer review of Iranian designs (I suspect they did more than that).
If I were China, I would have given the designs, peer review and all for free to our good Muslim friends.
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/08/lugar_blasts_in.html#more
Just an opinion. I get on at like 11 PM EST, and the Open Thread (Drumbeat) is already tapped out at 240 posts.
This is a 24/7 website. This is a 24/7 world.
I'd like a second Open Thread after 5pm. Check out Jerome's advice for how to blog. The one(auto)Open Thread has serious disadvantages.
Look at the serious slowdown that happens between 3pm and 7pm and then again between 1 am and 9 am. This setup limits half the spectrum.
This site is all about peak. Mitigating peak! C'mon now, let's git rid of that peak around Noontime.
The ultimate beneficiaries will be the "Specific" Topic-Threads that get posted at certain times and killed as a result.
So anyway, if I bring this up again in the next two months, just tell me to shut-up.
Sincerely,
TOD's biggest fan
If you want some good reading. Pick up the Rolling Stone with Christina Aguilera on the cover. Or see what they got for free on the internet.
I think it was SeaDragon turned me on to that.
Matt Taibbi has a piece on Pre-Fab prisons in Texas. Excellent. Totally one-sided. That's why I love Taibbi.
And article about Torture. Hope you've read the Gulag Archipelago.
The Gitmo just needs to close. Hello?