DrumBeat: August 31, 2006
Posted by threadbot on August 31, 2006 - 9:11am
Peak Oil Forecasters Win Converts on Wall Street to $200 Crude
Aug. 31 (Bloomberg) -- On a sweltering Tuesday in mid-July, in the fields outside Pisa, Italy, Willem Kadijk scribbles notes as a ragtag troupe of doomsayers predict the end of the Oil Age.With his shaved head, jeans and sandals, Kadijk, 48, blends into a crowd gathered under a white tent to hear of the coming calamity. The death of cheap, abundant crude, the forecasters warn, might unleash war and plunge the world into a second Great Depression.
That's not the prophecy of some apocalyptic cult. Kadijk, a hedge fund adviser, had flown from Amsterdam to attend a conference on a geologic theory known as peak oil.
Will the End of Oil Be the End Of Food?
American agriculture is fatally dependent on oil. A few forward-thinking farmers are trying to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels.
PODCAST: The Nuclear Option. Popular Mechanics on the pros and cons of going nuclear.
Tom Whipple on The Peak Oil Crisis: Labor Day 2006.
BP may resume pipeline production soon
Chad oil tax row 'not asset grab'
Western auto execs woo newly rich Russians
Booming economy fuels Muscovites’ taste for conspicuous consumption
Analysts: Venezuela move hurts profits
Cash-strapped Cambodia eyes black gold
US oil giant Chevron is poised to prove Cambodia is sitting on oil reserves worth $1 billion annually.
Absence of an ill wind blows some good
GLOBAL warming's failure so far to produce a repeat of last year's serial hurricane assault and battery of the oil-rich Gulf of Mexico is the swing factor in the suddenly soft price of oil.
Public has to make solid energy choices, Lugar says
U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar acknowledges that production represents only half of the energy crisis equation."We want our SUVs despite all the talk about the mileage isn't so great," the Indiana Republican said during an energy summit he co-sponsored with Purdue University Tuesday.
[Update by Leanan on 08/31/06 at 10:00 AM EDT]
Nigeria: Kerosene Scarcity - What the People Say
Pakistan’s oil demand to double in 10 years
China nomads on energy's cutting edge. Well, I guess this explains the silicon shortage:
One day last year, Sitkan and her husband were called to a meeting where 100 villagers waiting for a transmission line learned of an alternative to burning coal. After government subsidies, 500 yuan - a tenth of what Sitkan makes each year selling sheep's wool and meat - buys a photovoltaic solar unit that would provide enough electricity to power a small heater, a radio, a television, or a couple of light bulbs."Nearly everybody bought one," says Sitkan, a seminomadic shepherd who treks a well-traveled route each year with her family, 200 sheep, and a few cows.
BBC Radio 4 series - Driven By Oil. A four-part series about peak oil, starting Monday at 9am (UK time).
Contact
- Content: editors at theoildrum dot com
- Tech support: support at theoildrum dot com
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Why would anyone think that those elected by an unimformed populace be any smarter or more informed than those who elected him or her.
Ron Patterson
like peak oil?
conspiracy theory nitwits? are my wits nits? or is your brain on the shits?
I enjoy your posts on oil, I don't enjoy anyones post on conspiracy theories here on tod. It's not the right place. Just keep in mind you post ( a lot) on a site that's considered by most to be on the fringe. in the eyes of most you are a conspiracy theory nitwit. I don't think you are but I do think you should pull back and try for some new perspective.
The fact that posters do think it is appropriate to toss any wild paranoid plot into any thread sure does make it look like one though.
It is so small it doesn't exist. (yes, we have ours sects)
Through August 2006 - What Are Our Accomplishments!?
I think Jack and myself have settled ourselves on being extremely settled.
We duggs ourselves a pitt and we're gonna defend it. I got the big money on that. what's the big money on that? We ain't stupid. You can fly, butcha can't eat it!
You didn't on both accounts but that just highlights your ignorance on the subject. Bush couldn't blow up anything. His job is to cover-up who actually did it...
==AC
==AC
I know, I know. I lost my decoder ring a few months ago and I can't follow any of the good plots any more.
Please fill me in on the Council of Foriegn Relations one again. Just this once. My curiousity is killing me.
Buy a couple dozen boxes of Cracker Jacks and you'll find one inside. I've got three of them now so I know at least three times more than you.
I'm not going to tell you about the CFR if you lost your "ring". What's the point you couldn't decipher what I was saying anyway...
==AC
Whhat? Whaaaaa? Huh...Wha.Whaat? What are you fucking insane? Did I just hear that? Hello?
What else are you going to apologize for? Pol Pot? Boy George? You are a fucking nutcake. Don't ever try to apologize for my behavior again. I own my behavior. Not you. Control yourself.
Or as we say on TOD...Cheers.
That's what I mean that "they are not calling the shots". Bush and co, are nothing but representatives of these groups. As such they act as errand boys, but mostly as PR. As such their ability to follow an agenda of their own is very limited. It is akin to telling your employer that from now on you will do whatever you want to, instead of whatever is wanted from you and still wait for your next paycheck...
Obviously, I'm going to vote for number 4 because I put so much energy into wording it.
Is there not a possibility, --a 1% possibility?-- that GW Bush and Dick Cheney (and their neocon inner circle) actually are formulating US policy all by themselves because of the way they were "grewed up" by their parents? Is it not remotely possible that GW Bush truly beleives he is a superior being cause his "Daddy" taught him that special people don't go to Vietnam but instead "serve" by boozing it up in the National Guard? That the lesser persons are the ones that make "the ultimate sacrifice"? And if you were a young GW Bush, why would that world view not be an appealing one? Hell, it sure beats the alternatives.
Is it not remotely possible that the minions of the elite; your Yergins and your Cato Institute pundits for example, actually believe the nonsense they spout out because they were "educated" to think that way? They are not knowingly evil? They actually believe in that which they blather out?
Is not remotely possible that Peak Oil believers actually believe the nonsense they spout out because they were "educated" in physics, chemistry and scientific thought patterns? Or is it that Peak Oilers are part of a vast looney conspiracy?
Well how about it? Do you feel YOU are part of some vast conspiracy? Do you?
And if not, why should "they"?
Just think about it.
No need to rush to judgment.
Actually the propagated idea that those frontmen and women are the de facto the people in charge is a key part of the brainwashing machine and that's why I am resisting it so much. If things go really bad, Bush and his crew will be changed with some others, the public will finally get its scapegoat, while in the end nothing fundamentally will be changed.
==AC
~ H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) American Journalist, Editor, Essayist, Linguist, Lexicographer, and Critic Source: quoted in New York Times Magazine, 9 August 1964
It does NOT take a conspiracy to create all the nasty deeds we can witness or strongly suspect.
Just bunchs of individuals and groups with base motivations which act in loose tacit coordination while still competing between themselves can give the illusion of a SINGLE goal seeking "evil entity".
This is our "monkey brain" penchant for identifying agency behind seemingly purposeful events.
It is much easier to think about a single anthropomorphic "will" than to ponder the effects of interacting trends in a more intricate model but this introduce severe PARANOID distortions in the outcomes.
Actually this "distributed evil" is MUCH WORSE than a conspiracy because it cannot be rooted out.
Maybe there is a little more to it than "just a bunch of individuals".
Suppose you were a Professor of Economics at Yale. (Well maybe not this guy on the right because at least he admits that GW may be responsible for larger hurricanes although he leans against that notion. Click on his picture to read his pdf paper.)
And you are getting a pretty nice paycheck because after all it is "Yale" and most of the people who go to your school can afford to go there without worrying about the "price" of admission.
So what are you going to preach to them? You're going to preach what you think they want to hear (or more to the point what their Mumsy & Old Man want them to hear). They are happy with the Darwinian, Survival of the Economic Superiors Theory that you dish out to them and you are happy with the paycheck and perks. A very cozy relation. Year after year.
Then there are the few wanna-be-rich and talented Mr. Ripley's in your class. They are smart. They will never be super rich. Wrong blood you know. But they will grow up to be the Yergins and Cato Institute wizards of society. They will be the minions to the elites. They will soak up what you preach and dish it back to the elites later on in order to re-validate that which they learned at alma matta. Again, that is going to be a very cozy relation for all involved.
Next, you step down the rungs of society and look at some slob of an engineering professor at MIT. Who are his students and what is he going to teach them --assuming he wants tenure and his cozy niche in society?
So you see that there is a built-in compact in our eductional "institutions". It perpetuates the system. It's not "just" a bunch of accidentally random individuals. It's got history. It's got roots. It is a living and self-perpetuating bio system.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=arur.i7moHMs&refer=exclusive
You gotta love Kunstler. This has to be one of the most mainstream looks at what peak oil entails. I'm glad they pointed out the fallacy in believing the tar sands will save us.
Any predictions on oil prices today?
Well, something is causing gas prices to drop, so this might be it. The price per gallon in local stations has dropped as much as $.18 in the last month, or so.
This is what makes it so difficult to explain the seriousness of the situation to non-Peak Oil aware people. They look around, see lower gas prices, and assume that everything will eventually be ok and the happy free-motoring lifestyle that we all know and love will continue in perpetuity.
They don't have to do anything. The Invisible Hand can knock down prices all on its own with mere expectorations (err... expectations) regarding demand destruction.
"Price" is a human-generated noise signal. It need not have anything to do with physical reality. It is all about how we humans fool ourselves into believing one thing or another. And fools we certainly are.
Garage sales in the rich quarters.
Opportunity to live above my station at fleamarket prices...
Btw, early blight turned my potato field into a wasteland... lucky for us that we chose a resistant variety, so the nodules are mostly OK.
They state every position and opisition known in the debate. They come up with all the names that are something in the debate and state many of the effects.
They go on saying in which different organisation they are adressing the PO.
They only missed the Portland and San Francisco move. But otherwise, it is an excellent article.
I want to hear the response I get from friends, etc.
And is the esteemed NY Times next in line to chime on our PO times?
PO saturated minds want to know.
We bait with our breathes. :-)
...uh except that might cause a panic crash
Not all names are there, for example Robert Hersch. I don't agree with Hersch so much on his approach to mitigation (I'm more of a Kunstlerian) but I think Hersch brings a useful perspective in terms of viewing it as a risk mitigation problem. All this bickering over a date of the pick obscures the issue of what are the detrimental outcomes? The severity of the outcomes should determine for policy makers what level of effort should be placed on mitigation now. Unfortunately, the other dynamic is all this misplaced, blind faith in corn or switchgrass fuel.
Agree that this is one of the best peak oil articles I've come across in awhile.
The Cosmos one was very good, too, but Bloomberg probably has more cred, at least in the U.S.
But that is buried in the overlying message that while there might be a peak sometime in the future, the reader should not listen to peaksters, or doomers, as they are apparently not very nice people to be around, or something like that.
The best thing to do is be with Pickens and grab the opportunity. And that is a strange idea to take home: that the negatives are outweighed by the positives, and you therefore don't have to look too close at the nagatives. Everything is fine, as long as you can make money off it.
If you scare people spitless, they'll assume you're not just wrong, but a wrong nutcase, and they'll ignore anything you tell them, even when you're merely covering solid facts (like the history of world oil consumption).
You have to teach them in stages. Get them familiar with the facts, then give them time to internalize it (and be prepared to answer a lot of questions), and if they're still with you, start talking about consequences.
I have to laugh about this cause an argument over abiotic oil was one of the factors that led me to checking into Peak Oil.
I was watching the news one night when abiotic oil was brought up as a "solution" to running out of oil. At the time of this newscast I was not worried about immediate PO but I did think the whole notion just seemed a bit far fetched, given that there were examples of oil fields that are depleted for all practical purposes.
Throught that newscast, some conversations with friends and then later information I researched, I found about Peak Oil. It also has finally led me to a strategy on how to handle abiotic proponents.
Framed somewhat like this:
Ask the proponent to prove abiotic oil is real.
After they can/can't, hypothetically cede the argument that abiotic oil MIGHT be possible and immediately follow it up with a question on "at what rate does abiotic oil replenish our reserves in relation to how quickly we consume oil?".
If the answer is anything less than the current rate at which we consume oil then the system will eventually break itself. A constant increase in growth will lead to a break sooner, and the slower the rate of replenishment the sooner a break will occur also. A combination of both factors just speeds things up even more.
You could also ask why abiotic oil has not allowed the US to return to it former highs of oil production from earlier decades.
It's essentially like bailing water out of a ship in which you can move one gallon of water out for every two gallons coming in, only abiotic oil hypothesis works in reverse.
Long term, all bets are off of course.
Like I said at the NY conference: I"m one of the more prominent people in the "movement" and I can't afford to go to any of the conferences. That should you tell you something.
(Not that I can plead poverty but I can't see dropping $750-$1,500 plus lost opportunity costs for any 2 day conference unless I'm making over $100,000 with no other pre-existing financial obligations and the conference is going to have lots of young women.)
Money has value only because we all agree that it has value, and that agreement is balanced on the fact that the expected value is positive--there's more benefit going around than detriment, even if the benefit is disproportionately allocated. But when prices go up and hunger becomes commonplace, historically what we've seen over and over again is that people abandon money because it no longer works for them.
So, I guess I'm failing to see how money will be good for anything but kindling once Peak Oil really begins to take its toll....
Exactly. It's more like lack of demand (insufficient money). One solution would be a global basic income (say, $3.50/day/adult?).
If I want to buy a home there, we're talking another $350,000.
Solar PV system: $20,000
Small cache of food and essential supplies: $5,000
Used bike to ride over to Jason Bradford's house: $50.
I could go on but I hope you see the point. A person with no money can't really do much to prepare. Not saying they can't do anything, just saying not much.
Now Blackwater know where you live...
And if they are not sure, they can carpet bomb, until they are sure.
PAX AMERICANA
It's not really terrible, because in most cases the actions that will get you rich will also help society. Investing in technology to resurrect old oil fields is going to be very important in cushioning the peak. Likewise with other investments in alternative energy. Even simply buying oil futures helps by driving up the price of oil, thereby both encouraging conservation and also making alternatives more profitable.
The down side is you could be wrong, everyone here could be wrong, Peak Oil may not happen in the manner or time frame you envision, and your clever investments may be wiped out. That's called risk. You take the risk of being wrong, and you get the reward if you're right. It's how business works.
Like Ethanol?
Its not so simple as all ethanol being bad.
Is that also true of defense contractors and the like getting rich off of death and carnage in the Middle East? Or of the whole slew of well-known corporate fraudsters in recent years? Or of those making a killing for virtually nothing via Katrina contracts? Etc., etc., etc.
There is ample empirical evidence to disprove your free-market-capitalist a priori regarding the benefits to broader society of individuals getting rich.
In my best Michael Douglas voice: "GREED IS GOOD!"
yeah, like investing in Halliburton.
Sadly, with the current infinite growth paradigm, this 'getting rich' is true. I think Americans will be shocked going forward in time at how fast future wealth will rapidly consolidate into ever fewer elites.
TPTB are moving strongly ahead in preparing their required Earthmarines. Blackwater Security and Heckler & Koch recently announced a joint venture in comprehensive tactical training on Blackwater's 6,000 acre private military base. Don't forget: the first on the ground in Nawlins was privately hired armed men fully deputized to use lethal force.
There are internet rumors of US military Special Ops ready to go on a moments notice to protect PEMEX's infrastructure if conflict comes to a head in Mexico, but I think Pemex is more likely to hire Blackwater so that this info 'will fly below the MSM radar'. Blackwater has recently created another subsidiary that specializes in security of maritime infrastructure like shipping, ports, and offshore oil platforms.
The privatization of everything will continue its relentless course. Recall my posting from yesterday's threadbeat where the Red Cross is joining with Walmart [thxs AMPOD]: if you cannot afford res$$cue in your desperate time of need--Thank you for contacting the American Red Cross. We regret that we are unable to assist you.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Thxs for responding. Yes, they made big bucks and their mission objective was to prevent the looting of the mansions and the businesses of the rich that hired them, NOT going to the aid of the helpless. Such is life.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
I am not aware of any websites that consistently report the actions of private militias. Hell, even our Govt auditors cannot keep track of the billions being shoveled to these estimated hundreds of for-profit businesses. Please read this Aug 28th, '06 article entitled, "Mercenary Jackpot":
--------------------
While the WPPS program and the broader use of private security contractors is not new, it has escalated dramatically under the Bush Administration. According to the most recent Government Accountability Office report, some 48,000 private soldiers, working for 181 private military firms, are deployed in Iraq alone.
-------------------------
What I do is use various search engines and keywords like mercenary, private security, special ops, covert action, ....on and on. The MSM has a vested interest in not headlining their operations. WTSHTF: Rupert Murdoch, the Hearst family, Bill O'Reilly, et al, will be hiring these men to protect their survival farms and yacht-lifeboats.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
I thought about even having a special sub section on the daily news, "Halliburton and Blackwater"
http://www.blackwaterusa.com/targetsystems/
and this:
http://www.blackwaterusa.com/training/
Are you referring to the rumors you are ethusiastically spreading? Or are there others? Failure to link to a single website may provide the answer.
I ignore any statement preceded by "there are rumors that", "I read somewhere", or "analysts say".
Thxs for responding. Try this link:
http://www.countercurrents.org/lendman300806.htm
The pertinent info is about 3/4 of the way down in this article.
The verbatim quote can be found in this earlier posting of mine:
http://www.theoildrum.com/comments/2006/8/30/91153/3012/154#154
Just reporting what I find by googling around--many of my postings have a disclaimer whereby I state that I have no way to actually verify the info. But obviously, any websurfer knows that.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
"it's been rumored that a contingent of US Special Forces has been sent to help the Mexican military guard the country's oil fields in case of trouble."
I far prefer Angry Chimp's conspiracy theories. At least they have sone vague underlying believability beyond a circular link of unspecified rumors from unnamed sources.
C'mon Bob. You can do better than this. I at least think you are smarter than yeast.
Here's the authors bio:
I was born in 1934 in Boston, MA. Raised in a modest middle class family, attended public schools, received a BA from Harvard University in 1956 and an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of PA in 1960 following 2 years of obligatory military service in the US Army. Spent the next 6 years as a marketing research analyst for several large US corporations before becoming part of a new small family business in 1967, remaining there until retiring at the end of 1999.
Thanks Jack? "Complements" are far and few between, even if they are half hearted. I'm used to savage attacks for departing from cherished beliefs...
"Human beings never think for themselves; they find it too uncomfortable. For the most part, members of our species simply repeat what they are told--and become upset if they are exposed to any different view. The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity, and the characteristic result is religious warfare. Other animals fight for territory or food; but, uniquely in the animal kingdom, human beings fight for their 'beliefs.' The reason is that beliefs guide behavior, which has evolutionary importance among human beings. But at a time when our behavior may well lead us to extinction, I see no reason to assume we have any awareness at all. We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion."
~Michael Crichton, "The Lost World"
==AC
Believing what you are told, or what you hear, plays a big role in both reflexive acceptance or reflexive dismissal of theories that conflict with prior beliefs.
I think we should be equally rigorous in viewing evidence that supports our positions as those that question it. I personally think that posting the accusation that US special forces might be taking over Pemex based on a very loose linkage that ends up with the unattached rumor does conspiracy theories a huge disserve. In this regard you should be more upset than I am.
I do think it is true that many people, including myself, find some topics initially uncomfortable and react with instinctive dismissal. On the other hand, this example shows that others embrace these and are willing to accept any nutty theory just because someone might have said that someone else might have said it.
I know that some things that we initially think are preposterous, later become obvious. At that point, we probably deny that we ever denied them. The life of a conspiracy theorist must be quite frustrating. Peak oil is a good example - out of the nutcase and into Bloomberg, but do peak oilers get credit or mockery?
I only have this observation right now, no conclusion. I look forward to arguing with you over the next huge crime the TPTB must be conspiring to perpetrate on all of us sheeple. I'll also keep an open, if sceptical, mind. You never know, focus on evidence and not just motive (or lack of proof to the contrary), and I just might believe you one of these days.
I always try to focus on "evidence". What have we debated? Pearl Harbor? 9/11? Fluoride? The problem is what one considers evidence or facts. Almost no one can make judgment on such things without some preconditioned prejudice. For example if I were to say that finding a passport of one of the hijackers onboard the planes on 9/11 is a plant and proof of a cover up you might say there is 1 in a billion chance the passport could of made it out if the hijackers pocket. How can I refute that?
The searchers found several clues, he said, but would not elaborate. Last week, a passport belonging to one of the hijackers was found in the vicinity of Vesey Street, near the World Trade Center. "It was a significant piece of evidence for us," Mawn said.
http://edition.cnn.com/2001/US/09/17/inv.investigation.terrorism/index.html
New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik said Sunday a passport belonging to one of the hijackers was discovered a few days ago several blocks from the crash site by a passerby. Based on the new evidence, the FBI and police decided to widen the search area beyond the immediate crash site.
http://edition.cnn.com/2001/US/09/16/inv.investigation.terrorism/index.html
There is always a way out of an uncomfortable truth..
To most of us nothing is so invisible as an unpleasant truth. Though it is held before our eyes, pushed under our noses, rammed down our throats- we know it not.
~Eric Hoffer (1902 - 1983)
==AC
This isn't related to anything specific, but recently I noticed they were popping up a lot and couldn't make the connection.
I've got a book for you. The Looming Tower.
Thxs for responding again. I make no claims to being an ace investigative reporter--as mentioned before, just reporting what I find on the WWWeb [anybody can do it, but somehow: Leanan does it best =) ]--take out of it what you wish.
I gladly defer to the up and coming TODers of AlanfromBigEasy, AMPOD, TLS, AC, RR, SS, Westexas, Khebab, Leanan, Dave, Todd, et al [too many experts, IMO, to mention]. They have much more expertise, knowledge, and pure writing ability than me. I think most TODers will agree with me: we are getting a formidable 'critical mass' of talent here on TOD across a huge spectrum of careers, disciplines, and interests.
I am very proud of those TODers that have achieved national media recognition like RR & others. Go Team TOD!
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
I don't don't mean to pick on you, but I have really thought the Mexico stuff you have been posting has been huge tracts of irrelevant nonsense, unlike the TODers you note above.
It seems that there was an election in country with a tradition of relatively free elections. One party lost by a close margin and threw a hissy fit. They have garnered little public support outside of the radical element that they are tightly allied with. Then last week the election panel voted unanimously that there wasn't fraud. Yet you have posted on this just about every day at page length. The Pemex rumor is utterly ungrounded supposition by one old guy who doesn't provide any clue as to where he might have heard this rumor or why we should believe anything he has to say about Mexico. Has any of this contributed to our discussion of peak oil?
Again, apologies. I just wanted to get this off my chest.
As for you guys. I have a deep respect for Bob Shaw. He has always remained the ultimate host. I'm convinced he has perfected the ultimate defensive position.
As for the Chimpster. I'm pretty sure the only way we can defeat him is with a concerted, concentrated full-on assault. The reality is we probably want him on our side. He probably tells the best jokes.
C'mon chimpster, you got as much to gain from us as us from you. Let's cut a deal. Plus, you ain't never gonna win this conspiracy thing. Not with me over here. You know that. Now let's start moving towards the center. Rock on.
Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Al-Qaida, literally "the database", was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians. Inexplicably, and with disastrous consequences, it never appears to have occurred to Washington that once Russia was out of the way, Bin Laden's organisation would turn its attention to the west.
The danger now is that the west's current response to the terrorist threat compounds that original error. So long as the struggle against terrorism is conceived as a war that can be won by military means, it is doomed to fail. The more the west emphasises confrontation, the more it silences moderate voices in the Muslim world who want to speak up for cooperation. Success will only come from isolating the terrorists and denying them support, funds and recruits, which means focusing more on our common ground with the Muslim world than on what divides us.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,12780,1523838,00.html
Ya ya the "original Al-Queda".
==AC
No apology required, just expand or refute my info with your best info--that is what this forum is about.
I believe Mexico's nearly 2 million barrels/day of exports to the US should make us vitally concerned that the election standoff is peacefully resolved. I would argue that a prosperous Mexico and their continuing oil exports are more vital to our national security than Nigerian, Venezuelan, or even ME exports to our shores.
Your quote: "It seems that there was an election in country with a tradition of relatively free elections."
Sorry, I respectfully strongly disagree. Feel free to study Mexican history and one party ruling for 70 years. Revolutions, assassinations, election frauds, a computer crash in 1988--it has been tragically ugly for the Mexicans.
In my past postings: I tried to use a broad variety of sources, from BBC, to mexican websites like UNAM Physicist Luis Mochan's statistical vote analysis, Mexidata.com, mexican newspaper websites translated by Babelfish, to other US MSM sources. From CNN and Washington Post to the other side of the WWW like Narcosphere and Countercurrents. They are available in the TOD archives to prove my attempt at journalistic balance. Perhaps, you are using a selective bias in your recall-- That's OK--I have done it before myself.
You maybe correct in disputing the PEMEX-US troop rumor-- I find it politically implausible myself, but I wanted people to be aware of it. But you make a good point in that we need to get this author to provide more proof. I will try to email him for a response.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Thanks for your reply and patience with my disagreement. I noted that I didn't think Mexican democracy was perfect. Compared with developing countries Mexico's electoral system has been regarded as pretty good. I did see you use a variety of sources, however, the problem isn't selective memory. I just didn't read all 500 posts.
By the way, I don't just dispute the rumor about the US troops, I even dispute that there was a rumor. One guy with a blog says there was a rumor, but doesn't even say who is spreading it, or why he, sitting in retirement in Chicago heard it or should believe it. Starting an assertion with "there is a rumor going around" is the journalistic equivalent to saying "I am making this up"
I disagree that the election dispute should be resolved, only because I disagree that there is an election dispute. I think there is a sore loser who is trying to use non-democratic means to forcibly obtain powers he was denied by the vote. I think Mexicans broadly recognize this and if the election were to be held again, he would do worse. Fortunately that won't have to happen since the electorial commission unanimously found there was no fraud.
Now about the flouride in the water...
Yabbadabbado.
==AC
http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewItem/itemID/12978
http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewItem/itemID/12967
Plus Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_general_election,_2006
I withdraw from this discussion, which isn't in my area of expertise. I just wanted to show that listening exclusively to one side, gets you a one sided viewpoint. Surprise, surprise.
Don't sell yourself short! I think your posts are top-notch. They also have an understated and unique humor to them. The Red Cross post was one of the funniest things I've seen float through the po blogosphere in a longtime and I intend to highlight it over at LATOC.
And don't forget, your mobile preparedness vehicle idea. If you ever get it up and running I want to sell them on my site.
. However, in order to play with the big boys and have a positive effect on the world it is a necessity to have something to offer-and money is a good start in the oil patch.
I'm pretty sure that there is such a thing as too much money because most affluent people are afraid of losing their money. Its easy to become arrogant. And I am also sure that lacking basic necessities makes a person short-sighted and selfish. In our society money gives a person status, even if they are a fool-look at GWB or Steve Forbes.
What I see as the most productive use for the rest of my life is putting together some deals for redeveloping Texas oilfields, because we need oil for the transition. And I also see this as the best preparation for life after the peek. I'd much rather do this than hoard food and guns or other apocolyptic craziness. Its not very scientific, but I also believe that God wants us to love one another, to be kind and generous and "faithful stewards" of the Earth, so I try to live economicially and help my neighbors. And, the Buddah was right, desire is the basis of suffering.
The world will continue to allocate resources, including oil, to the highest bidder. imo, investments in us oil reserves are the most conservative way to prepare for high oil prices.
There are far too few critical questions. For instance, figure out, if I buy a tin of american corn in my supermarket, how much oil did it take to get that into my hands? Well, the oil price was probably at 50 - 60$ when it was made, and it costs me 3 NOK, or 0.50 USD. That puts some real bounds on how much oil was used to make it, and how much the price of a tin of corn will rise if the price of oil rises.
I've used that "bounds" idea also. FWIW, people sometimes throw around a single number like "it takes X oil Calories to grow and deliver 1 food Calorie." The problem is, when you multiply out for all the food now consumed, the oil number is irrational. The oil cost in a steak is higher than the market price for a steak. The total oil used to produce beef is higher than the total oil used for agriculrure, etc.
... bounds.
I wasn't suggesting a definitive analysis, just thinking that the price is a generous upper bound for the cost of the oil that went into making it. While there are things that work the other way, labour resources aren't free either, and there is tax... in short the real cost of the oil used to make is probably much lower. If an economist could correct or qualify this statement I would be grateful.
Bac! Bac! Bac! The sky is falling! The sky is falling!
Encana in shale gas? Bob, have you got some details on that?
You mean you weren't totally won over by the confident assurances that (to qoute):
???What I see is a carefully constructed article that is geared from the start towards one goal: telling the public that there are people who voice concerns, but there are equally those who dismiss those concerns. In the end, the one that was meant to be achieved, we are left with the idea that we just don't know. And there is no need to worry about things you don't know. Terrorism 1, Peak Oil 0.
That is how US media have covered, and still do at times, global warming. The result of that approach has been that countless Americans still think it's not a problem, or even a truth.
They ignore as long as they can, and when they feel that doesn't work any longer, the tactic of fabricating doubt is applied. And that works very well, they've had plenty of practice.
After the doubt has been established, and it's 50-50 at best, there is a subtle indication that among those that worry there are lunatics, some of whom utter words that would be bleeped out on TV, Kunstler's quote is not a random choice, the writer knew exactly what he was doing. And you don't want anything to do with people who say things like that. At the very least they must be godless.
And then it's no longer 50-50.
It's the same old same old:
Here are 5 experts who are concerned
Here are 5 who are unconcerned
Here are 2 folks who are REALLY concerend. One of them is a lawyer (me) and the other is a potty mouth (Kunstler.)
Average persons reads that and thinks, "mmm. . . interesting" and moves right along to crap their pants about some guy trying to carry toothpaste onto his commuter flight.
I guess I'm kinda happy that there's at least one person who can read
or whatever
and no, I'm not wrong about what I see in this article
and it bothers me to see what I see here on tod
praise for what runs counter to what the whole thing is about
it's too much like getting candy from a pedophile
or whatever
no intention to hurt or shock, it's not that
too many smart people (and there's tons here, and I appreciate the heebeegeebees out of y'all, I ain't worthy of licking the shoes of some of ya, and I know it )stop thinking and/or reading as soon as their pet peeve gets a mention in bleeping bloombergmountain
but the article does the exact opposite of what y'all here think it does
think back 10 years guys when you first got into warming, and wanted to tell the planet about it, the press looked just like this
and it killed the issue for a long time
yea the media know peak oil, and they have for a while
but they live off car ads
keeping up appearances is the only thing that makes sense from that point of view, you're being played
bla bla..... I digress
Now obviously I'm biased as I got my pic in the article but I still think the Rainwater article in Fortune was one of the few MSM articles that actually got some people off their asses. I know this because I STILL get email from people who say, "I read that fortune article about richard Rainwater and am now selling my home moving to the country, going solar, pulling my money out of the market, etc." I have never heard of anybody doing that as a result of any of the Peak Oil articles in the NY Times Magazine, WSJ, Bloomberg, Harpers, etc.
Why? Because in the Fortune article you had a freakin multi-billionaire friend of George W. Bush crapping his pants (figuritively speaking) about the issue. If reading that doesn't put the fear of God into you regarding Peak Oil, nothing will.
As far as what somebody said up top about the Bloomberg article being good because it doesn't scare people. WRONG. That was the whole freakin point. To keep people from getting scared doing anything rash like - (sweet jesus no!!!) - pull their money out of the market.
Why did the Fortune article work? Cause it scared the piss out of people. There is no way and I mean NO WAY you can come to understand these facts - even when presented in the most sober fashion possible - and not get scared.
So if the person you're telling doesn't freak out it means you didn't really communicate the reality situation. So you shouldn't be surprised when they don't understand the need to prepare themselves. And that's even if you believe in a more optimistic scenario akin to the Great Depression.
Best,
Matt
but it's still looking at a magician making all those young women at the conference disappear
and then you're left with what?
TreeHugger report with link to bill here. Way to go Arnold! You the GW Terminator man.
And the Yergin quote from the NY Times (above) about how E85 = I85. We're on a roll!
The aftertaste of this vintage is only slightly perturbing, and lasts a few minutes at most.
"You gotta love Kunstler"
No, you gotta' love him.
I gotta' ignore him.
Given that his only credentials consist of an absolutely virulent hatred of the United States, hatred of the American way of life right to the core of it's construction, and seeming rejection of any lifestyle or culture post 1200 A.D., I am not sure he has added a lot to the American discussion or acceptance of Peak Oil, except among a small band of Primitivist-deep green, deep peak anarchist dreamers, who see no hope of alternatives or mitagation simply because that risks committing the greatest of all possible evil sins, preserving anything remotely kin to a most Middle Ages culture.
Roger Conner known to you as ThatsItImout
"Smile when you say that, pardner"....:-)
Roger Conner known to you as ThatsItImout
Apuleius, he may have nostalgia for the 1890's manners, but I think he would have grave doubts about a culture that married to technology, after all they already were burning coal in steam engines and had gas lights! :-)
Roger Conner known to you as ThatsItImout
Drivers can expect more gridlock, report says
But some argue for public transportation:
The basic principle remains: give 'em a road to drive on, and they'll drive. The only thing that works is less roads, because only that leads to less congestion. While it may be, or just seem, counter-intuitive, how does a professor miss all the literature out there? Carefully selected reading?
All the numbers I have seen on alpine transit indicate re-routing of traffic, notably after the closures at Mont Blanc (France/italy truck traffic increased by the coastal route to compensate).
This is an important question :
There is debate in France about the necessity of a new Lyon/Turin rail link. We (greens) see a justification as a freight line (rail freight plus intermodal, truck on train). This is based on the presumption that it will diminish truck traffic in the alpine tunnels.
www.bahnonline.ch/phpkit/include.php?path=content/news.php&contentid=9039&PHPKITSID=3edec170 6ca6eebc7704ab77dbae4127
Possible explanations: 1.) transports were shipped by rail in containers
2.) transports were delayed
3.) Other suppliers were found, which did not have to cross the alps.
I spent some time searching in the French version of the bahnonline.ch site, until I realised that they just used Google translation ! (Gotthard-Autobahn = autoroute de base de dieu!) Typical Swiss German arrogance eh!
In general, individuals are much more easily discouraged than businesses, so this news is quite surprising.
There is a saying which most traffic engineers know and accept: widening roads and highways to reduce congestion is like loosening your belt to solve a weight problem.
Think about that one.
Well, then why don't we put permanent lane blocks in the freeways in LA?
That will help congestion right?
Or maybe not.
Blocking lanes to reduce congestion is like tightening your belt to lose weight.
"The phenomemon of induced traffic works in reverse as well. When New York's West Side Highway collapsed in 1973, an NYDOT study showed that 93 percent of the car trips lost did not reappear elsewhere; people simply stopped driving. A similar result accompanied the destruction of San Francisco's Embarcadero Freeway in the 1989 earthquake. Citizens voted to remove the freeway entirely despite the apocalyptic warnings of traffic engineers. Surprisingly, a recent British study found that downtown road removals tend to boost local economies, while new roads lead to higher urban unemployment. So much for road-building as a way to spur the economy."
This study found that 20 percent to 60 percent of driving trips disappeared rather than materializing elsewhere. Imagine that!
Bottom line: removing roads DECREASES congestion just as building more roads INCREASES congestion. This has been proven time and time again. Remove it and they will disappear.
There is a plan to build a new motorway in my area (Lyon to Saint Etienne). Obviously, it will be redundant by the time it's completed (2020 at the earliest, there is major engineering involved).
This, despite the fact that car numbers on the existing motorway between the two cities have declined (slightly) in recent months -- too early to say they have peaked, but I think it's safe to say that by the time petrol reaches 2 euros per litre (currently about 1.25) then the traffic peak will be behind us.
There is no chance humans will evolve past this, and it appears we are incapable of learning our way out too.
Peak Oil nipping at your nose..."
Rat
Fear not. The gods of Demand and Supply shall provide us with all that we need as long as we don't cut and run. Stay the course my fellow lemmings. You have nothing to fear but cheerlessness itself. Be steadfast and resolute in accomplishment of your missions. You shall surely pass over the edge safely and honorably to your just and ever lasting rewards. God speed. Score well.
Excellent cartoon! The elite predators [bears, wolves?] on the right side are having the 'time of the lives' watching the ignorant lemmings prematurely end their lifetimes!
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Found it here: http://www.stevecolgan.com/
As for the elites, the important thing is to "honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice for God and country". Where have we heard that recently? Jenna & sister just signed up for the Marines so they too can be one of the proud, the few, the hoodwinked. Yea right.
Yes, it will not even be any use to Ryanair who try to convince people that Saint Etienne is Lyon.
http://www.johnlocke.org/press_releases/2003092956.html
I guess Peak Oil news hasn't reached the University of North Carolina.
My proposal for the highway that goes by my small town is to make it narrower by expanding the shoulders for bicycle traffic. Ideally, I would like to see it depaved and turned into a dirt road. Those who can't handle that can move or choose not to visit this area. We have less services here than we had 50 years ago because the "convenience" of the wider highway has made it possible for people to drive their cars to other towns to do their shopping.
No further roads should be built or widened anywhere unless the purpose therein is to provide space for buses or other non automobile transit. Maintain or increase the misery factor in driving while at the same time providing alternatives for people. When I lived in Frankfurt, Germany, you had a choice, spend thirty minutes driving downtown and looking for a parking place or spend ten minutes getting downtown by subway. Those truly dedicated to the "freedom" of their automobiles had that choice. The rest of us, those who actually wanted to get some place quickly, cheaply, and safely, took the buses and the subways.
Jan also writes about peak oil issues, of course. Having been an oil insider for many years (he is the brother of energy analyst Trilby Lundberg), he firmly and absolutely believes peak oil is at hand. His polemics are, if anything, more dire than Kunstler.
http://www.baconsrebellion.com/Issues06/08-28/Bacon.php
This is good news (I know people will say when PO is in full, there won't be the resources)
and
I would have said "too much" on the asphalt rather than "enough" but still...
Well I guess things could have been worse than they are now - if you had to drive to go to the bathroom!
We have traffic of course but its the people trying to get here, or through here. Most of the people who live here just walk - after all that is the point of a town.
Oh yeah and you're a fool if you don't have a gun and keep it on you when common sense tells you to have it handy......
I've seen small towns, I've lived small towns, I really don't see how the "countryside" would be any better a place to live in the Collapse. Unless one wants to really hide out like Ishi did for years - even he eventually was captured, put on display in what was effectively a zoo, and died within a few years.
The town I call home has a population of less than 6000. I can cycle to work, year round in less than ten minutes. All the facilities are about a five minute ride from my home and this is true for everybody. I have never seen a traffic jam in a small town. I have seen a traffic jam between small towns and between cities and their satellite communities. Sharing the road with cars and trucks in a small town has been much less stressful for me than in the cities.
The self-sufficiency culture is also stronger in the small towns I've lived compared to the cities. Gardens and fruit trees abound and people actually use and preserve the harvest. We're also embedded in an agricultural area, so local produce and meat is easy to come by. Heck, I spent last evening converting a couple bushels of apples that my neighbour gave me into a year's supply of apple juice.
I've never felt like I needed a gun for protection. Not in a small town. Not in the downtown core of a major city. I like guns just fine (traditional flintlock long rifles being my favourites), and I wouldn't hesitate to use one to protect myself or my family. I've just never felt the need, not even a little.
I'm feeling luckier and luckier to be above the 49th parallel.
Mark (not really in Calgary anymore)
Sigh. Again, it's very hard for someone who hasn't spent a significant amount of time in the US to understand how hellish it is.
Studying PO, I've seen this sentence so often: "We use X barrels of oil for every barrel we find", the X ranging from 2 up to 9.
I think this X-figure is very important. So how many barrels of oil do we use for every barrel we find? At this moment?
This is just one number, my guess is it could range anywhere form 5 to 15 right now, depending on who's doing the counting.
BTW, you have a typical Dutch name, so I asume you are in Holland? I'm in Den Helder.
best,
lazy dutch!
In keeping with CR's philosophy, the article focuses mostly on ethanol's high cost, low mileage, and scarce availability.
Didn't find the article in the free area of the CR website, but they do have this rundown on fuel alternatives:
http://www.greenerchoices.org/...
So I go to have a light breakfast in town after reading RR's attempts at showing a misinformed reader the true energy return of the oil lifecycle versus the ethanol lifecycle. A well informed friend shows up, he works in the alternative energy field, has a radio show and somehow we start talking about biodiesel. He informs me that they get 3 to 4 to 1 energy return (lifecycle) for biodiesel and 7 to 8 to 1 if waste oil is used. I inform him that seems high because every hydrocarbon input is a loss of energy(fertilizer, water, machinery, refining(not much)), except for the solar absorbed by the biodiesel plants. I inform him that current return on ethanol is .25 approx., 1 btu in to get 1.25 out. I am informed these numbers I used are out of date, it's much higher.
There is alot of misinformation out there, IMHO. I asked where he got his numbers....a biodiesel book. Another aside was a conversation about reality. People didn't want to hear the true dimension of out future woes and I felt he was using rosy biodiesel numbers that will lead us to a deadend in terms of energy production, land management and food production.
What is the true return on the lifecycle of biodiesel?
I'm currently doing an initial research on biodiesel from algae. Oilgae is a good repository of many available ressources and technology.
The yield per acre is about 30 times the yield of any other field crops, that's the reason why I look forward into this.
There is two different options regarding the production of algae. One is to use raceway pond, developped by the NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory) up until 1996. The New Hampshire University has a group doing some research in this field.
The major difficulties has been producing algae in a cost efficient way. At the time it was 2 times the diesel cost. I wonder how much it has goes up in regards to increase in oil price.
What I try to seek is if the photobioreactor way could yield a fair amount of algae while being afforbable. In town, Roberval we have a long period of winter so I'm thinking of a greenhouse heated by annualized geo-solar technique
There is a company in the UK building the tubes needed to produce a steady amount of algae. It's called cellpharm tubular reactor
Here is a photo of what it looks like :
I have been asked by the general manager of our MRC (we could say county management organisation) if with 200 000$ I could manage to start a pilot projet for producing biodiesel from algae. That was 2 weeks ago. I already had contact with scientist from our provincial government and he led me to a doctor already doing great stuff regarding fibro cellulose ethanol. I on vacation this week so I will talk with him next week.
I hope that these links will provide you with some useful information.
I don't think given current technology, that a silver bullet to replace oil is going to be feasible. It will have to be silver BBs.
That said, Algae has the advantage over other crop types in that we can grow algae in areas unsuited for traditional crop types. The vast, uninhabited deserts make an ideal location for this type of production or possibly floating greenhouses built on similar technology as current rigs. Further Algae has the other advantage of not being a drain on arable lands. Attaining and providing nutrient rich water is as easy as moving it from the ocean in many cases or tapping into sewage. Can we afford to cover sections of the earth for our energy needs. I think yes, provided we choose the right types of sections.
Personally I kind of like the floating greenhouse rigs idea as the ocean water will be immediately available, the rigs can be built in areas of ocean where yearly sunlight has a high yield, and lastly, if the rigs were designed to take advantage of the wave/tidal action the ocean produces, the rigs could be self powered using tidal devices.
In the Designer Microbes section of the Plan B for Energy article, they quote J. Craig Venter, founder of Synthetic Genomics and the Vinod Khosla of microbial oil manufacture, saying
I just happen to have a picture right here.Overly optimistic?
Fly me to the moon, Craig!
Check it out.
Why not using solar directly?
No matter the "poor" efficiencies of PV or Stirling (from 15% to 40%) how does this compares to the whole intricate conversion chain for algae, corn, sugar cane, switchgrass & whatever else, PER SQUARE METER?
With the exercise of knowledge (soil science, plant breeding, appropriate selection and placement of cultivars) we are able to improve modestly on the gifts nature has spent deep time finetuning.
We can also profitably improve our own burning technologies and the institutional arrangements by which we exploit these gifts from nature. But it is laughable to think we can in a few decades develop superior systems to capture the daily income of solar energy than those nature offers.
Moreover, it is downright foolish to develop a dependence on systems, which require the availability of stored solar, for production and reproduction. Which is not to say that solar panels and wind machines and the like do not have a small role to play in some places.
Oh! Yeah?
Could you please give us the numbers of net energy collected PER ACRE for solar captors versus whatever biomass cultivation you see fit?
Plus, solar captors need only SURFACE not good agricultural land.
So for primary efficiency, PV or Stirling Dish win with efficiencies over 11%, and have lower end-to-end losses for final electric use. However biofuels are storable and more flexible for non-electric use. Initial resource costs are less with biofuels, but you need account for soil degradation from mineral and humus depletion and the opportunity cost of lost food production.
The net energy balance for the processes involved can, however, be problematic in that energy requirements for cellulose hydrolysis and distillation, must be lower than the energy in the output ethanol.
Although [methane] small-scale digesters are popularly used at both the farm and village levels, large-scale operations are still in need of considerable technical improvement and cost reduction, and thus require both microbial and engineering studies.
Photovoltaics are nice, and stirling even nicer, but we still need energy for storage.
Of course this point has to be solved but what is the COST of this versus jeopardizing FOOD PRODUCING land?
What is the expectable EROEI of biomass energy production?
We are still debating this it seems.
It is very difficult to argue on SEPARATE points without trying to model a sought for big picture (or preferably several).
Unfortunately nobody seems to have all of the skills, ressources and motivations for doing this.
P.S. I exclude coal and nuclear as VIABLE solutions, see my other posts.
It may be that PV Cells are better than algae at capting the sunlight (wich I doubt) but I can tell you that the price is ever increasing.
Where I come from, I live next to a huge hydro electric power station (well, actually a few hundred km) so PV cell dont even start to compare. Think of a PV cell as a small grain of sand and one hydro complex as a huge mountain.
Take a look :
Thats a 1 528 MW dam, we have over 34 000 MW of installed power to produce electricity. Of that number, only 600 MW is comming from coal/oil, 870 MW from gas and 675 from a CANDU nuclear reactor.
Do you think that in our place using solar power make sense?
What we need is not raw power, we need a liquid fuel. And the best liquid fuel for maintaining the rest of the infrastructure is biodiesel. The most productive form of life to produce biodiesel is algae.
Most of the installation will use solar energy for power, but no PV cells at all.
In a canyon by me, some want to build a dam that might produce 300+ MW, but would cost over 5 Billion to build. Is that a bargain? To say nothing of the fact that we have regular periods of dry years in California, when it is hot, dry, electrical demand is at its height, and there's little or no water behind the dams to produce electricity. The big crisis a few years ago had this as a major element. Even Washington state dams were dry, and you couldn't buy electicity from anywhere except at totally exhorbitant prices. Aluminum foundries in WA ran their generators and sold the electricity, shut down the plants, because the profit was so much better. The sun will always be there in a predictable manor (or else we're all dead anyway). Drought produce a catastrophic system-wide failure of hydro production lasting months or years, not days or weeks.
We have the most reliable electrical system in the world. Space heating is done mainly with electricity. We have not been touched by the last blackout (2 or 3 years ago).
Here is a picture of where are located the hydro systems.
and now a map of productive land in Canada
I just found this map and find it very cool :)
You can also see, if you zoom in on Quebec, there is a lake surounded by a green patch, if you zoom enough you will see the Roberval dot. The lake there is Lac Saint-Jean, it contains 31 Billon barrel of water. It's not the biggest lake in Quebec, but I live just in front of it.
Needless to say, peak water is a fantasy around here.
what I was trying to show is that many of the dam are built where almost no productive land is present, Even trees grow really dificultly. Quebec is a large province with lots of space.
P.S. A good friend was an exchange student in a town on Lac Saint-Jean in the late 1960's. She was studying French and loved it there.
Even I start to do some research on this for 2 reasons:
1st. If the project is picking up, I will use it to talk about peak oil in Quebec and Canada, in which almost no media is talking about in anyway.
2nd. I do not think it will replace oil in all it's application. Nothing will. But I do think that we could run some construction equipment and maybe some buses using that liquid fuel when the diesel wont be available.
I have no intent on running the civilisation, I have maybe some idea about running our small place. The construction equipment will be very usefull to build new living arrangement. Altough we are a small place (30 000 people in the county) we have lots of space and maybe we could welcome more. Building urban area that can foster people, workplace and food growing places is the ultimate goal.
The biodiesel here is only for getting that.
Also as for the energy needed, I have in tought annualized geo-solar because it need very less energy to heat in the winter and cool in the summer. I will also use bubble insulation for heating and cooling. This will help get the sunshine trough and keep the air warmer in winter and cooler in summer.
Altough we are facing shortage risk from diesel, we have in Quebec access to very large quantities of hydro electric power. We have only 1 or 2 coal plants I think and I dont think they run all the time. So producing biodiesel is also a way of keeping the maintenance machinery, equipment and trucks humming for maintenance of the power grid.
Also on a purely economical basis, we are deeply impacted here because of already high oil prices. Many sawmills are closing or on the verge of closing. The slumping of demand for structural wood from the US (resulting from the house slump) is lowering the price of wood.
So we are impacted both in the cost structure and in the revenue structure.
I have a friend owner of a oil distributor mainly for the forestry camp. They sell 45-50 million liter (~300 000 barrel) of diesel each year. For the whole region it amount to 200 million liter(1.2 million barrel) each year.
The impact on oil price if the whole region closes forestery would be not so high I think. But the local effect will be very hard and felt trough the economy. Because of this we will need to divert our work to producing energy (if it can be done) and building a new way of life.
I expect that it would take at least a big recession (maybe a depression) to get people on the new track. I dont think many people will do anything if that does not happen.
Something also impacting our economy is the slump in tourism we had this summer. Many went to the US where they offered dollar parity with the Canadian $ and the gas price refrained people in their spending.
Altough no one talks about a recession right now, I think that it will be reconized after the hunting season (hunting season is a big vacation season around here)
So I think (I'm doing more research on the subject to latter say I know) that biodiesel from algae might be part of the solution.
I will give 2 speaches at a conference in 3 week. Maybe you can attend if you understand french.
You will hear from it anyway.
I'm in Montreal as well.
.
A GM executive said a couple of weeks ago that the only thing limiting car sales in the Middle East was shipping constraints. We are reading similar stories about Venezuela. The WSJ had a front page story yesterday about the massive tar sands related boom in Calgary.
Net Oil Exports = Domestic Production - Domestic Consumption
Through May, 2006, production by the top 10 net oil exporters was declining at an annual rate of about 7% since December (EIA, crude + condensate), while their aggregate consumption is clearly growing rapidly, especially in the Middle East, where there are some strong demographic factors at work too.
I noticed that the Drudge Report had a headline this morning stating that the Pentagon (Rumsfeld?) predicted that Iran would have nukes within five years.
"E-85 is really I-85 -- it's about energy independence," said Daniel Yergin, chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, an energy consultancy.
Energy Independence
I-85. Yeah, but this could be a problem...
Intersection of I-85 and I-285
Yesterday I drove through the lower section of Delta County. It's usually dotted with a few corn fields, mostly alfalfa, beans and some wheat.
This year it's all corn fields!
Not that we have an ethanol plant around here, but I guess the farmers figured the price of corn would be going up, and so planted accordingly.
Last night my nine yr old son & I were driving home and I stopped off to top off. He eagerly asked to help pump. As he pumped, I watched him enjoy the moment with Dad and I sadly pondered the likelihood of him repeating this routine with this children.
What the hell are we thinking?
Protestors attempt to shut down power plant
... but wait! It's not a nuclear plant... it's a COAL plant!
Last winter, coal-fired power produced 50% of the electricity consumed in the UK.
Not totally silly, if a bit unrealistic.
Coal plants are a disaster. Coal is the low-hanging energy fruit that is much beloved by people who don't understand that installing infrastructure designed to last fify years and produce a billion or so tons of CO2 just aint good thinking when we're near/at/past any number of climatic tipping points.
There are at least ten more under construction in the US. I wish somebody was protesting them.
Actually, the MSM is beginning to recognise peak oil, and the ad hominem attacks and negative stereotyping show that peak oil is beginning to gain real acceptance with folks
Then they laugh at you
... then they fight you ...
Then you win.
In the words of the wise man. Whatsisname. er er Robbie Williams.
"and then you die"
There have always been people concerned with population growth, and broadly Malthusian problems, but it is the binding between those and oil which is new, growing, and obvious to any new visitor.
I do actually think we have a lot of environmental and population related problems on this planet, but I think they have a longer time horizon and are less immediate and specific a problem than peak oil.
Nope, what makes us nuts is not the doomers amongst us, but just the nature of peak oil. It wouldn't matter if we all believed converting to wind power would allow the happy motoring lifestyle to continue in perpetuity, we'd still be depicted as nuts. Jeans and sandal-wearing tree-huggers.
How does that play to new visitors? Are there any new visitors in the room? Anybody?
A lot of people starve to death already. Is it really so radical to think that more might, as petroleum gets scarcer and more expensive? And shouldn't we talk about it?
Awhile back, I was reading about a "successful" new program that was helping poor people in Africa. The solution? Teaching subsistance farmers to use chemical fertilizers and giving them hybrid seeds.
The question is at hand is whether die off in the US is going to break open following PO.
As for the U.S....I think we are overpopulated, but could adjust. The question is if we can keep the population from continuing to increase (in other than Malthusian ways, I mean). The current UN stats are predicting a 45% increase in the U.S. population by 2050, which would not be good news.
Diamond then draws an explicit parallel with unrest in the U.S., and our inability to secure our borders against illegal immigration:
North Korea has avoided food riots simply by shooting anyone who exhibits such behavior. In Africa people simply starve in silence because it has become a way of life...and death. But they also starve in silence because all those with food also have guns, and they shoot to kill. But in the Western World, we think we are entitled to the good life and when it starts to disappear we will fight like hell, taking our wrath out on anyone and everyone. We will blame everyone and riot and burn when they cannot return things to the way they were.
wait, hold it right there, that's my home town!!!
(Conor Cruise O'Brien, On the Eve of the Millenium, 1994)
Good post, along with Darwinian's post too. The Titantic's sinking metaphor is often used in postings. The additional caveat I would add is that the lifeboat survivors had a short row to the other steamships that belatedly arrived on-scene. In a postPeak world: the lifeboat survivors will be ALONE metaphorically speaking--an extremely long row to the safe haven of shore.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
If you manage to find this reply in the maze of 'parents' and their descendants: here's another author who uses the lifeboat metaphor: Petti Linkola, the Finnish ecofascist:
.Life after the oil crash?
Yes, it is even likely built in the genes.
Seems to remember of something like this, I have to recall the links.
By the way (in response to Leanan), except for immigration and emigration, all factors that affect population growth are Malthusian: He wrote about positive checks to population (those that increase the death rate) but also preventive checks to population growth, i.e. those that diminish the birth rate. In later editions of his book he became somewhat more optimistic on the possible effectiveness of preventive checks.
A hundred years ago it made sense for the U.S. to encourage immigration, but given the "ecological footprint" of U.S. residents it seems to me to be folly to allow further immigration--building up long-term major problems in return for short-term (and questionable) economic benefits. It may be selfish for me to say, "Let's slam the door shut!" but I'm thinking of my grandchildren's welfare; increase in the U.S. population does not seem likely to enhance their prospects.
I'd like to see an official statement on population policy for the U.S., including a statement of what our optimum population range should be and whether further population growth is desirable. The great philosophers Plato and Aristotle both thought population policy was a key political issue and of utmost importance to public welfare. In this respect (largely due to political correctness) I think we have regressed during the past twenty-four hundred years.
Some unsolicited advice to interested parties (which is worth what you are paying for it):
Rising unemployment is a key reason to adjust your lifestyle now so that you can live on 50% of your current income (I was forced to do it in 1986).
As I said before, it's kind of ruthless, but you need to be ready to volunteer for salary cuts and/or be willing to take a more challenging job for the same money. Reducing your expenses gives you much more flexibility.
We are quickly headed into a period of probably near-permanent labor surplus. You can't fight market forces. The faster that you adjust to the new realities, the better off you and your family will be.
"Personal saving -- DPI (Disposable Personal Income) less personal outlays -- was a negative $83.5 billion in July, compared with a negative $67.6 billion in June. Personal saving as a percentage of disposable personal income was a negative 0.9 percent in July, compared with a negative 0.7 percent in June. Negative personal saving reflects personal outlays that exceed disposable personal income. Saving from current income may be near zero or negative when outlays are financed by borrowing (including borrowing financed through credit cards or home equity loans), by selling investments or other assets, or by using savings from previous periods."
You're killin' me, man. My doomerocity coefficient was already high enough today, and I buy completely what you're saying.
<problem type="personal">
But how do I get CinCFam (Commander in Chief - Family) to believe the wisdom of that choice?
</problem>
BTW, would you have time to entertain an email from me at your aol account?
Ed
Ah yes, Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropis. The Fates.
On the other hand, reason tells us that market forces are guided by market rules as found in laws, regulations, precedents, conventions, customs, practices. In some cases, the Hell's Angels make the rules. In most, it is legitimate social institutions: broadly speakly, government.
Can market rules change? They have. Can they change again? Yes.
Markets existed long before capitalism, which is a particular system characterised by an intrinsic need for growth. Markets will exist post capitalism, even if attempts to suppress this deeply rooted social mechanism are again made, such as was the case in the failed Soviet model.
The key is to shape markets to serve the welfare of people, a welfare obviously tied to the health of the biosphere. Obvious at least to all but the most obtuse.
Markets organized on a capitalist model have found legitimacy in this system's ability to deliver on its promise of much for most. To deliver on this promise, capitalism needs to function, and to function it needs growth. The intelligence of our species has nourished this needed growth, but it is constructed from the continued expansion of the supply of energy and the continued improvement in the quality of the energy we exploit.
Now the quantity and the quality of energy are in decline. And our intelligence is not great enough to expand our leverage of this declining resource at a rate which outruns the decline.
Lovers of capitalism can perhaps say au revoir, in the hope that fusion, or some other miracle, will in some future time provide a foundation on which the system can be rebuilt. Will our progeny, given the choice, even want to do so?
For the moment the question is not whether the decline in the quantity and quality of available energy will lay waste to civilization, but whether the impending collapse of capitalism will do so?
That's up to you and me. The Fates are imaginary.
He's got unemployment at 12% if we figure back in the discouraged workers and various other marginal changes they've engineered into this number.
Of course Dieoff will eventually break out in the US: at some future tipping point precipitated by exponential positive feedback combined with systemic infrastructure collapse. What, How, When, Where is the difficult part to determine, but the WHY has been explained countless times by experts and laymen alike. Detritus Entropy is a cruel Master, Genetically-induced violence is a cruel Mistress.
Our best hope lies in cooperation & mitigation, real efforts at minimizing violence & population, and simplification & biosolar Powerup. Time will tell how effective we are at maximizing peaceful mortality vs. violent mortality--the choice is ours.
Currently, 0.7% of US population is actively engaged in agriculture and fishing [CIA Factbook. https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/us.html] The best way to mitigate postPeak violence is to figure out the optimal process for 60-75% of us to become fulltime permaculturists. The 1500 mile salad, the 6,000 mile banana, and the 10,000 mile Alaskan King Crab dinner are not long for this world.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Here ya go Tate.
Nothing But Flowers
By the Talking Heads
Here we stand
Like an Adam and an Eve
Waterfalls
The Garden of Eden
Two fools in love
So beautiful and strong
The birds in the trees
Are smiling upon them
From the age of the dinosaurs
Cars have run on gasoline
Where, where have they gone?
Now, it's nothing but flowers
There was a factory
Now there are mountains and rivers
you got it, you got it
We caught a rattlesnake
Now we got something for dinner
we got it, we got it
There was a shopping mall
Now it's all covered with flowers
you've got it, you've got it
If this is paradise
I wish I had a lawnmower
you've got it, you've got it
Years ago
I was an angry young man
I'd pretend
That I was a billboard
Standing tall
By the side of the road
I fell in love
With a beautiful highway
This used to be real estate
Now it's only fields and trees
Where, where is the town
Now, it's nothing but flowers
The highways and cars
Were sacrificed for agriculture
I thought that we'd start over
But I guess I was wrong
Once there were parking lots
Now it's a peaceful oasis
you got it, you got it
This was a Pizza Hut
Now it's all covered with daisies
you got it, you got it
I miss the honky tonks,
Dairy Queens, and 7-Elevens
you got it, you got it
And as things fell apart
Nobody paid much attention
you got it, you got it
I dream of cherry pies,
Candy bars, and chocolate chip cookies
you got it, you got it
We used to microwave
Now we just eat nuts and berries
you got it, you got it
This was a discount store,
Now it's turned into a cornfield
you got it, you got it
Don't leave me stranded here
I can't get used to this lifestyle
-----
Ya, You got it, You Got It.
I nominate this for the
"Post Peak Oil, Looking Back longingly" anthem.
I can't get used to this lifestyle...
JC
(Efforts to make the collapse of modern multisource multicultural industrial society look like collapses of single or simple historical peoples are weak at best. It often hinges, for instance, on pretending that we have a single global culture, and American
= Iranian =Japanese)Of course not but the CULTURAL differences don't mean much when compared to a COMMON reliance on fossil fuels and modern industry.
Nothing new there, been going on for 50 years. The only thing these people are good for, as long as they remain alive, is to make money off. No problem if they die, they breed like rabbits. Send them subsidized EU and US grains and fish and bankrupt their local economies.
We all carry the blame and the shame for that.
And don't let's start on GMO crops being forcefed left right and center these days.
What occupies me (even) more is the message that if we here want to see our future, we need only look at the warlord structured societies of western Africa (there's some articles on dieoff on the subject, for instance). I find it hard to shake that image.
http://www.theoildrum.com/comments/2006/7/21/9404/01279/82#82
It may be great fiction though.
So they point out the fact that the guy is wearing sandals, so that can explain what he is doing there, only to have to say just miliseconds later that he is a hedge fund investment type. DUH! Can we say bias in the media.
I get it all the time, Friends and Parents used to suggest I wear normal foot coverings, I want to rake their arms and say "Does that hurt?" but I don't. Sign me up now for the sandal patrol!
We will still be that "Out There Cult" to the MSM for decades to come, even when they are all biking to work because they can't get gas to drive. Just give them time, we will have a Disney theme park named after us too.
BTW, amidst all the Katrina stuff on NPR news, I heard someone bashing the NO urban rail proposal as the worst of any ideas he had heard about rebuilding N.O.
Also, on Democracy Now, we saw Greg Palast following the money trail in rebuilding N.O. He spoke to residents of an old rowhouse community that had been boarded up since the flood despite not being touched by floodwaters. They claimed that city fathers had designs on their land because it was close to the city center. You could see the city center from her house.
This is busy now, but it might work later:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/29/1416200
After the damage to my left leg from the blood clot, that leg and foot swell, the sandals I have can be easily adjusted to fit my feet. And I still have one pair left to go till I have to hunt for a new case of sandals, but this time I will have to have some that meet the needs of my feet which have changed. Lucky for me my sandals allowed that change too.
(BTW, I have a pair of ugly ass Ecco shoes --not sandals, policeman boots-- and those suckers last for years.)
Why would that be?
A lot of people might starve to death.
We all ready may be facing a grain shortage this year due to the droughts -in some places harvest are down by 30%. What happens if that gets worse, year by year?
http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/fuel_oil_and_kerosene_sales/current/p df/table13.pdf
(I'd imagine that agriculture could run on domestic production alone, for quite some years, if it had to.)
I'm not saying it will happen (I hope not), but the potential is there and I can't dismiss it out of hand.
The two key things to remember are that the "world's urban population" (as you mentioned) and especially "here in the U.S." (as you also mentioned):
- we are living an increasingly obese fast food and Starbucks lifestyle.
- oil production is not going to decline overnight.
Combine those two, and we have the opportunity to shift consumption over time. IMO there's no reason PO has to maintain McDonalds' drive-throughs.(Leanan's picture of African starvation is like a 2x4 between the eyes, but it isn't really what doomers are about. They are about it happening to "us" and and many are about it happening "soon.")
It seems like a lot of Americans would consider it the end times if things were so bad that McDonald's drive-throughs went away. I'm one of those 30 somethings who bikes everywhere, and it wouldn't bother me a bit.
For me, you can't start talking about doom until there is the prospect of widespread increase in mortality with no hope of relief on the horizon .
ie. life becomes increasingly and obviously dangerous with the expectation that it will remain so for the lifetime of all those alive at the time (even children).
There is similarity with the business view in that it involves the destruction of future expectations.
So I'm not a doomer because I think that the worse PO case in the US would be Great Depression-like conditions for a couple of decades with the prospect of a better future never lost.
I just got an email from my cell phone provider who want me to pay $2.99/day or $9.99/mo. to get navigation services over my phone. There's a case where the system has sunk costs and GDP goes up everytime some knucklehead signs up (did I just say that)?
A different (compassionate) argument should be made about those in less fortunate countries, but you have to be a doomer, IMO, to see them as a bellwether for the advanced nations.
(biking everywhere, with simple good food, might be utopia for me)
Yes, someone concerned about die-off in the industrialized countries probably understands that won't happen until the rest of the planet is dead. Not always, there were a few got inflamed tonight when I pointed out that our prosperity depends on our depriving - actively - much of the rest of the planet. Good progressive democrats (eg budding fascists).
cfm in Gray, ME
"eat the rich" is a good book.
Since when did this site get over run with Al-Qaeda-loving, America-hating freaks?
We are EATING ENERGY thanks to HABER & BOSCH Most influential persons of the 20th century (according to Nature, July 29 1999).
As the store of stored solar declines, we will return to current inputs only. And we will necessarily abandon monoculture. Rural areas will repopulate as the demand for labour expands. The dieoff scenario of mass starvation due to some imagined necessary falloff in food availability is born of ignorance of what makes soil, how plants thrive and the productive potential of the combination of soil, water, sun and skill.
It also reflects the dearth of creative thinking which grips doomsters as they spiral downward through the circles of their personal infernos.
To get an insight into a future dominant agricultural model, check out the account of the Polyface farm, as told by Michael Pollan in the Omnivore's Dilemma.
If starvation continues in the post peak period, it will be for the same reasons it exists pre-peak, which all relate to our systems of social relations, and not because hydrocarbons are required to maintain sufficient food production.
No need for "imagined necessary falloff in food availability", not only the previously available fertile land would be unable to sustain 6.5 billions humans but the ""productive potential of the combination of soil, water" has been SEVERELY DAMAGED by industrial agriculture, high yields are only there because of continuous perfusion of imported minerals, nitrogen and water at a HIGH energy cost.
There WILL BE mass starvation whenever energy availability drops.
It was actually sort of doomerish. I was pretty surprised about the frank nature of the program which, in my opinion, had much less than the usual helping of "C'mon America! We can do it!"
The host was talking with Al Gore about what the US and its citizens need to do to reverse the course of global warming <cue images of hybrids, flourescent lightbulbs, rivers, electric trains>. Then she said to him, "Even if we can make all of these changes here, what about China and India?" To which Al said, "Well, we need to lead the world by example."
Let's be serious. I'm not trying to be synical about my country, but how is this going to happen? I feel like we're up against a few too many challenges. Global Warming, Peak Oil, and Financial Meltdown.
I watched a wonderful Nova series with my son (4 1/2) on the arising of life on planet earth.
What was clear throughout this extraordinary history is how life adapted to abrupt environmental changes through evolving new, more complex designs and survival strategies.
The existing human structures - governments, businesses, civic and social instituions, at each scale and across diverse cultures and geographies - and distinct ecological communities - will each be challenged to adapt.
Evolution is not finished and all evolutionary changes are not necessarily structural - they may involve changes in conciousness itself. My own sense is that those who recognize our inherent interdepencency with one another and with the larger community of life will be more suited to survive and perhaps even thrive amidst local, regional and global changes.
Anyone ever read about this? I realize GW is a lot bigger deal, thus the #1 way we could destroy the world, but it's interesting.
My fiance was plucking her eyebrows and all she was hearing for like 10 minutes was this doomerish talk. She finally asked what the hell I'm watching. I told her and she was like holy crap. Then she went back to plucking. If this message doesn't go away in the news, people will be forced to deal with it. I liked how the climatologist is like, "Everyone in our community KNOWS GW is here. I don't understand how governments can attempt to deny this."
Anyone know what was the other ones were?
7 - gamma ray burst from collapsing star in the neighborhood
6 - black hole, also from collapsing star I believe
5 - supervolcanic eruption bringing on ice age
4 - asteroid, ditto
3 - nuclear war, probably by accident
2 - pandemic, possibly set off by bioterrorism
1 - global warming
Yes, I thought the show was great, aside from the fact they left out ecocollapse/peak resources. The whole thing was based on interviews with scientists, including Stephen Hawking who commented on most of the pieces, including GW at length. The GW portion, lengthier than than the others, presented the issue as the scientific consensus. There were brief, mocking shots of 3 deniers who were described as mavericks and funded by the oil and gas companies. Drought and famine were among the consequences along with the usual extreme weather and sea level rise.
My only quibble was that the timeframe was generally 100 years, maybe 50 years, while recent info shows things accelerating - but impact on our children and grandchildren was made clear. Despite all the science presented, the approach was somewhat sensationalistic - it had been advertised in an Armageddon context - but hopefully that drew in a lot of viewers.
I heard that very clearly, I'm sure many didn't even let it register because of the 100 year outlook. The problem with the 100 years is that less than 1% of the world will be alive at that time and the ones who will, don't understand this program b/c they are infants. It would have been better to look no more than say 75 years out (50 to be sure) to drive the message home. I plan on being here 50 years from now, so I would be much more interested.
This is a link posted a few days ago on TOD Global Warming Alarmists Aren't Upset Enough
The author talks about plants losing more water with the higher temperatures and drought conditions. He then says,
"Allow me to be the alarmist. At the current rate of rainfall, coupled with the current rate of transrespiration, North America will start losing major areas of vegetation in the next two years. Yes, two years. Anyone who knows the climatic history of the Sahara Desert or Spain or Italy can tell you that once you strip or lose the trees and grasses, you do not get the rainfall back."
Well done! It is important to refresh our memories because our brains have a built-in memory hole to erase bad news. Arizona's Ponderosa pine forests have been dying for years, in large quantities, due to climate shift, followed by infestations of the bark beetle. It is now projected to spread across the continent:
-------------------
West can't beat heat of global warming
Forests in interior British Columbia are changing color, turning from green to red as they get infected by the pine bark beetle, and then from red to gray once they are dead.
The minuscule beetles, the size of a grain of rice, are making visible global warming's impact on western North America. If you're a witness, it's an unsettling summer.
The beetles have killed lodgepole pine trees over an area the size of Iceland. They've moved east, infecting trees across the Continental Divide in Alberta.
"The danger is the beetles will cross over into jack pine habitat, and then head toward the East Coast," said James Agee, University of Washington forest ecology professor.
Or, in the words of retired U.S. Forest Service scientist Jesse Logan, "There is a continental-scale event waiting to happen."
-------------------
Don't you love tipping points reinforced by exponential feedback? =(
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
We think too small around here. If we are going to be doomers, lets be doomers with style.
To style I prefer PLAUSIBILITY.
On the other hand, we need to think about what happens after that. What if the example is not followed? China seems determined to develop their economy in such a way so that they too can enjoy the easy motoring lifestyle. They would resent any efforts on our part to deny them the American Dream that we have already experienced -- even if that will cause the destruction of China and much of the rest of the world.
One possible approach would be to restrict Chinese imports through a carbon tax or other means that would reflect the amount of carbon that China is spewing into the atmosphere. After all, one of the reasons that China's emissions are growing so fast is that we have transferred our good production and therefore emissions production to them. The possible problem with this approach, however, is that our ability to produce consumer and other goods has been pretty much destroyed.
But, of course, I am getting the cart somewhat before the horse. Since the U.S. is doing nothing to curb our emissions, the discussion is rather academic at this point.
Hang on for the ride folks. GW is going to cull the weak from the masses.
Time for Action: A Midnight Ride for Peak Oil
Co-Hosted by ASPO-USA and Boston University is going to be held Thursday, October 26 and Friday, October 27, 2006 (plus pre- and post-conference events) and will be held at Boston University, Boston.
I count about 22 confirmed impressive speakers starting with Matt Simmons. Samsam Bakhtiari is on the list but I wonder if he will be able to make it as it looks like there are going to be Iranian travel restrictions. I have heard Matt Simmons in person twice the first time at CSIS when he challenged ARAMCO before he wrote his book and I sure plan to get away from the registration desk where my wife and I will be helping out to hear him.
I will post more info here, full list of speakers etc. in the next several days.
I would suggest anyone wanting to go and needing to make hotel reservations do so as soon as possible. We made them last night and the first place was booked up. I am looking into public transportation and some other hotels as we may change and will post the info when I can.
To the powers that be here at TOD, is there anyway you could put the entire conference brochure on the site? Let me know we need publicity as been discussed here many times.
The link to the conference is here. http://www.aspousa.org/fall2006/index.cfm
You can get both the conference brochure and the ASPO USA leaflet there. Both are well worth a read even if you can't make it
The article mentions the U.S. Government Accountability Office is going to release a study on peak oil this coming November. Watch for it!
In spring of 2005 a colleague and I invited Dr. Deffeyes to our offices for a talk on peak oil. Most who attended (200+) had not heard of it at the time, and it was the most effective way I could think of to inform everyone (by inviting the good professor himself). Thanks to his riveting presentation, the issue reverberates to this day, esp. as gas prices continued their inexorable march upward. No one who attended will soon forget it.
During the talk, Dr. Deffeyes repeated his bold prediction that world oil production would peak on November 24, 2005 (since adjusted by several weeks). I personally won't mind if he is a few years off (my timetable is 2005 - 2010). I NEED for it to be 2010, so I can buy a little more time to prepare for all which is to come.
Erwin
Please send me any leads at Alan_Drake (at) Juno dott comm
Thanks,
Alan
Ya gotta love this quote. A 31 yo female farming an ACRE with a ROTOTILLER! Delivering produce 7 miles to 16+ customers on a BICYCLE! Thats what we've been calling a "lifeboat".
You go girl!
In a thread maybe a week ago, someone commented how there seemed only to be gray hairs in this "movement". I see that, but also a large group of very knowledgable 20-30 somethings on bicycles. Our paths don't mesh too often. That's why it is important to "go to other people's parties" and take it on yourself to find out what others are up to. If you are fortunate to have a community radio station, that is a good place to start.
Portland Maine has a Winter Cache Project, aiming at producing root vegetables and keeping the harvest going through the winter. There are so many people working on so many different aspects.... I don't refer to "Council of Elders" but to "Council of Elders and Youth". What's often missing in organizations like Winter Cache is a level of sufficient resources. For example, they will build root cellars, but need people with land on which to put them.
cfm in Gray, ME
Maybe the market knows that Russia and China will never allow sanctions? But what about the American neocon whacko factor? As in, bombing. Where's the fear... ahem, I mean, risk premium?
Exactamundo.
I think the twp biggest factors behind the recent price slide are
- the current lack of fear of hurricanes hitting the Gulf of Mexico and
- the increase in quantity of oil and gasoline in storage tanks. This second factor means that the quantity supplied is greater than the quantity demanded (i.e. purchased for consumption), and Econ 101 says that when quantity supplied is greater than quantity demanded, then price will tend to fall toward equilibrium.
I suspect that few people who influence oil prices worry much about Iran cutting oil exports or the possiblity that the U.S. will bomb Iran.However, the probability of war has clearly decreased recently. While it is true that iran has rejected the demand to stop enrichment, that has been their position all along. What has changed recently, and reduced the fear of conflict, is that the USA has cooled their rhetoric. You no longer hear about "all options" being on the table, or how the USA "won't accept" a nuclear Iran. The Bush administration realizes that they have no military option, and have changed their tone accordingly.
Ironically, one of the reasons the price of oil has dropped is because Hezbollah stood their ground in Southern Lebanon. After which the consensus formed that if the Israelis cannot hold land a few miles across their border wthen the USA could not hold enough of the Persian Gulf coastline to keep oil flowing through the Straight of Hormuz. Therefore, very few people believe the USA will be dumb enough to launch an attack so likely to end in failure.
Imagine this scenario (which is one the Pentagon has to prepare for): The day after Iran is bombed, they call for all foreign occupiers to leave the region. They point to the chaos in Iraq, the leveled neighborhoods of South Beirut, and their own fresh civilian dead as the consequence of foreign intervention. And to give their call for regional solidarity teeth, they vow no oil will leave the Persian Gulf until the American military withdraws.
Checkmate.
No. We will never be at a checkmate with anyone except another super power as long as we have nuclear weapons. Tactical nukes would end the 'problem' with Iran very quickly.
They might not be stupid enough to threaten it in public, but you can bet its on the table.
From Wiki:
It's not tactical when it's gonna be bigger than Hiroshima. Last night on that end of days program on ABC they mentioned our Nuclear arsenal in this country alone is so large we could wipe out 8Billion people with them. I highly doubt we're gonna send nukes into oil land. Not to mention saying another Super Power is the only country that can challenge us is a bit nieve. Iran is now cozy with Russia and China. They won't cave to us and I'll say Russia can still nuke us. We never did stand down from the cold war. I think we can agree it's a rather complicated clusterfuck.
There could well be in place a destruct mechanism for production and loading facilities that they would activate in just such a scenario. The reactions of other players in the region, are not predictable. What would China do? Russia? They have have the potential to detroy the dollar overnight by dumping One Trillion $ in US treasuries. The much disregarded Moslem public (to speak nothing of the Iranian public) would surely be enraged beyond description, and I can't imagine that oil would continue to flow from beneath their feet to the US unimpeded. Just look at Nigeria and Iraq.
Iran has a strong hand, no?
"Tactical" nukes would not solve anybody's problems. They surely would transform perception of the US into a vast parasite that the rest of the world must rid itself of at whatever sacrafice required.
And never, ever discount what a mad man will do.
Trying to nuance a mushroom cloud seems pretty silly, doesn't it?
Of course everybody on the planet knows this except for a few Right Wing hairballs in the US who have never even seen the ocean.
I don't think anybody calling the shots is mad. It's just the appearance of madness that is in reality a technique of intimidation.
Similarly for the appearances of stupidiy and incompetance. If true, there is is nothing we can do about it, right? But if "incompetance" is actually a red -herring for malevolence...
There is no way to prevent glow-in-the-dark- emirates or Gulf oil shutoff. We can kill Iranian command and control and all the imams and Revolutionary Guards will launch on their own authority.
Way upthread the claim was made that the chance of an imminent US war with Iran has gone down. Maybe. If so the personal power of the US President has tanked and the power of the US with it. With US Army mired in Iraq and the Israeli wing humbled nothing is left but threat of nukes. Only the fear that the crazies in Washington will go nuclear preserves the existing
world order
What if that fear is not real? Maybe there is something else that maintains the "world order". That, "crazy AmeriKa will do anything" is not much of a secret:
"Because of the value that comes from the ambiguity of what the US may do to an adversary if the acts we seek to deter are carried out, it hurts to portray ourselves as too fully rational and cool-headed. The fact that some elements may appear to be potentially 'out of control' can be beneficial to creating and reinforcing fears and doubts thin the minds of an adversary's decision makers. 'This essential sense of fear is the working force of deterrence. That the U.S. may become irrational and vindictive if its vital interests are attacked should be part of the national persona we project to all adversaries."
~Essentials of Post-Cold War Deterrence
==AC
No need to "transform", I guess for quite a large number the perception is already there.
A well deigned poll on this would be interesting.
So, whenever a sufficient minority of intelligent skilled people raise up among the working poor they claim for "justice" (as you are doing right here) a revolution or at least deep reform ensue which replaces the reigning elites by the new "honest and enlightened ones", after a while those indulge in the perks of power too and the cycle restarts.
A good example of this is the succession of dynastic powers in China, the failing dynasty loose the mandate of heaven to a new one which then lasts from a few dozen years to a few centuries.
This upper class is not always a "parasite" on the rest of society. One could have a symbiotic relation. In other words a mutually beneficial relation between the lower and upper crusts where each lifts the other up.
In fact, that is the usual argument of ardent capitalists, namely, that the manager class is responsible (all on its glorious own) for lifting society up from the abyss it otherwise would decend into and that is why CEO's "deserve" the exorbitant compensation packages that they negotiate for themselves (in a "free market").
The USA manages to direct to itself a greater portion of the oil "wealth" of the planet, to show itself off as an ostentaciously wealthy nation, and perhaps that is why it is despised in other parts of the world.
I wouldn't call the working poor "retards". Some people, for a varitey of reasons are able to manage themselves financially better than others. That doesn't mean the poor are "retards". It may mean that they are not crafty negotiators.
I hate to tell you this, but using "tactical" nukes probably would put the US on a collision course with two nuclear powers - China and Russia. A line in the sand has to be drawn at some point, and if the zealots in Washington cross it, then I can only assume that China and Russia, both of which have extensive business interests in Iran, will respond in kind. All China has to do is dump their dollars, and the value of the fiat currency will go into a free-fall.
Assuming that the US is the only strong actor on the world's stage is a critical tactical mistake. Using nukes wouldn't solve any problems, but will most assuredly create many, many more. I'm not even going to do into the damage that the nuclear fallout would cause in all of the neighboring ME countries. Using nukes on Iran would be an even bigger imbecility than the invasion of Iraq.
I wonder who is next on the hit-list, Iran , The UK (Britain is now biggest security threat to US) ??
"U.S. Ambassador to U.N. John Bolton says Security Council unanimity not needed before taking action against Iran..."
If the Neocons are beginning to realize that they have probably failed in Iraq, they may feel pressure to try to "win" in Iran.
I wonder if declining net oil exports are also forcing their hand. Look at the long term consequences of Mexico declining and of Venezuela shipping more and more of their oil to China.
But it would establish a precedent for future unilateral action, without some kind of resolution by the Security Council.
What if they believe that securing US access to and/or control of oil supplies is the absolute priority for the country, no matter what the cost?
I happen to believe that much of what underlies the Bushies' final decison to invade Iraq came out of Dick Cheney's secret energy task force meetings in early 2001. Yes, the neo-cons had set their sights on Iraq some years earlier; but what was presented in those meetings further encouraged them to go ahead and invade so we could control the flow of oil there. And remember, Cheney fought all the way to the USSC to keep the contents of those meetings hushed up.
In that context, I agree that Iran is next, and there is a furious debate on what to do about it. And nothing will be left off the table.
Erwin
Believe me, I'm not on the same political page with Simmons, But I think we need to use any opportunity to educate others, and the more prominent the better.
Simmons has discussed publicly his limited participation several times, but I don't have the links now.
What I believe:
The Powers That Rule are well aware of Peak Oil given that Cheney especially knows it intimately from the oil service end. Combine this with the fact that Iraq is the only region with major oil supplies which has not been prospected and produced with modern oil technology. (I think that was the subject of the famous secret energy meetings Cheney had with unnamed companies).
Now, combine these truths with a delusional Roman fantasy of heroic peace and prosperity through military imperialism and you end up with a real disaster. They have motive and are fooling themselves about the opportunity.
On the other side, they can see that Iraq's oil production is now much less than pre-war. Their plans of a friendly Iraqi government begging Western oil majors to drill in a happy pacified country is clearly not going to happen.
On the upside, it is evidence to all that invading Iran sure isn't going to assure adequate supply. The same hook won't work twice.
Ledeen took pains to paint himself as on outsider in Washington (he was openly critical of the Bush administration for failing to formulate a "coherent" Iran policy), but if others in the administration think as he does on these two points, the Bush administration may feel that it has no choice but to attack Iran and -- as I think Cirrincione put it in the companion interview -- "let the chips fall where they may."
uh, oh...
People keep on talking about how the Iraq situation has turned against them, but they may as well have wanted this all along. Creating mayhem in territories is a proven war tactic. It's not like the army will be chased out anytime soon.
What I find increasingly scary is that the US have dominance left in only one area, now that the economical (see: resources) one is evaporating fast: military. Combine that with the domestic impoverishment and what are you left with?
Too many things are too easily assumed to be true.
It's also a bit naive to point at the faces (Bush Dick Colon) you can see on TV. Power doesn't rhyme with visibility.
http://www.halliburton.com/esg/mfa/matureassets.htm#
I have a slight-to-moderate suspicion Cheney or somebody working for him monitors these boards. I'm really quite serious here.
==AC
"Hidden behind tall earthen berms and thick forest trees halfway between Washington and Baltimore is a dark and mysterious place, virtually unknown to the outside world. Nicknamed Crypto City, it is protected from outsiders by a labyrinth of barbed wire fences, massive boulders placed close together, motion detectors, hydraulic anti-truck devices, and thick cement barriers. Should a threat be detected, commandos dressed in black paramilitary uniforms, wearing special headgear and brandishing an assortment of weapons including Colt 9mm submachine guns stand guard. They are known as the "Men-in-Black." Telephoto surveillance cameras peer down, armed police patrol the boundaries, and bright yellow signs warn against taking any photographs or making so much as a note or a simple sketch, under the penalties of the Internal Security Act. What lies beyond is a city unlike any other place on earth, one that contains what is probably the largest body of secrets ever created. It is the home of America's ultrasecret National Security Agency, responsible for eavesdropping on the world and breaking virtually impossible foreign code and cipher systems."
Body of Secrets
Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency
James Bamford
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,15295,00.html
"A 1993 BBC documentary about NSA's Menwith Hill facility in England revealed that peace protestors had broken into the installation and stolen part of this glossary, known as "the Dictionary." The documentary alleged that Menwith Hill -- a sprawling installation covering 560 acres and employing more than 1,200 people -- was Echelon's nerve center.
Further evidence emerged last year, when British Telecom told a court that it provides high-bandwidth telecommunications into the Menwith Hill facility and from the facility to the United States, using a transatlantic fiber-optic network.
"I believe that these five intelligence agencies are working from a single plan," said Pike.
British investigative journalist Duncan Campbell was the first to report about Echelon in a 1988 article in The New Statesman. He believes that there is a very thin line between intelligence gathering and commercial espionage.
Pike, of the Federation of American Scientists, believes the intelligence agencies operate in a gray area of international law. For example, there is no law prohibiting the NSA from intercepting telecommunications and data traffic in the United Kingdom and no law prohibiting GCHQ from doing the same thing in the United States.
"The view by the NSA seems to be anything that can be intercepted is fair game," said Pike. "And it's very hard to find out what, if any, restraints can be employed."
They have been spying on us completely since the early 70's. You think Bush's "wire taps" are anything more than fodder for the reporters to keep your eyes off the prize? WAKE UP PEOPLE!! They pound you with so much shit you don't know what is up from down...
"One of the primary means of immobilizing the American people politically today is to hold them in a state of confusion in which anything can be believed and nothing can be known... nothing of significance, that is."
~ E. Martin Schotz, "History Will Not Absolve Us: Orwellian Control, Public Denial, and the Murder of President Kennedy"
==AC
Savinar into TheChimpster into Smekhovo back into The Chimpster.
Only thing better was ChinaCat into KnowYouRider.
August
Well if they had believed that, they would have viewed the situation as urgent enough that an attack resulting in the mass murder of US civilians would be most welcome. Only such an extreme "shock and awe" event could mobilize the US to take the offensive in the resource wars. Zbigniew Brzezinski said as much in his book "The Grand Chessboard" in 1997.
For geopolitical analysis it doesn't matter whether the doomers or the cornucopians are right (in theory) about geology and technology. What matters is what the power elite privately believe, and how will that shape their actions. So Jeffrey, you have asked the critical question. The answer is clear. The US power elite settled on a doomer consensus years ago. They also concluded that their own chances of retaining power whilst preparing for total war and dieoff were best served by sedating the populace with soothing cornucopian propaganda and racy tabloid news. Reporting on public doomers (already famous on the internet), while stereotyping them as sandal wearers is just part of the spin.
The Jon Benet story is exhausted. But how about that polygamist?
Here's a fairly radical thought.
What if the Pakistanis were not meant to find out about the planned airplane attacks that were 'thwarted' by British security.
The Brits (and the US) have already said that they knew something was 'going down', but just did not know when. But it was the Pakistani whistle-blowing (and arrest of a key player) that stopped evrything dead in it's tracks.
If the Pakistani authorities had not stumbled across the imminent plot, then today we would be in the aftermath of a horrific attack on the US.
That kind of attack can go a long way to spurring the kind of response that would include an attack on Iran. As well as raising the President's (and the Republicans) popularity to boot.
Westexas, I believe that to be true about Cheney and others.
However I don't believe Bush was "Briefed on the details" on it. I think they told him more the "Religious EndTimes Version" of it. LeftBehind and all that.
But yes, Lets try Extending your thoughts on the premise that Cheney believes Richard Duncan about the grid down by 2012.
And Really, Really believes we are in worldwide population overshoot?
Now, What policies would you enact?
What would you do if you think that there is a highly likely chance of food riots, starvation, and the other scenes described in today's article
Preparing for a Crash: Nuts and Bolts
http://www.energybulletin.net/19929.html
Hmm. Would you in the year 2000ish along with the energy task force, start the ball rolling on
Patriot act
Total Information Awareness(TIA)
Security and Prosperity Partnership Of North America (SPP)
GM Crops? (As Henry K. Said, He whole controls the food controls the world or something like that)
BTW, Read this one if you haven't.
Monsanto buys 'Terminator' seeds company
http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/engdahl/2006/0828.html
Yes indeed, Westexas, What IF Cheney et al REALLY REALLY Believed Richard Duncan, Jay Hanson and Jared Diamond???
What policies and actions do YOU think Cheney would would do if he thought we were on the edge?
JC
Very good article in the Guardian. Acceleration and exponentiality are crucial concepts in many systems. I've said it before, I'm puzzled by the fact that so many researchers continue to express surprise at the fact that things break down faster than their models predict. Need. New. Model.
And that makes me think of a post in this thread by Odograph who claims that "oil production is not going to decline overnight". While production may go down slowly, though there is no certainty there, you need to look beyond the status quo of the whole system, look for a new model.
Military forces all over the planet are gearing up and expanding in secret. Those who wish to hold on to power have no choice. The oil needs of armies are neverending. While they may now feel safe with a 1-year supply, they can't take a chance post-peak, and will want 10 years. And that is just peacetime needs. Once the battles start, they'll need a lot more, while the same battle may interrupt supply or even production. In a nutshell, the open oil market is very likely to shrink overnight, by a lot.
Industries will try the same as armies, and you can colour in the picture yourself. It's system breakdown, from an overlooked angle.
Global meltdown
These guys are promising 3 cm a year in a few years...
Looking "good" for me.
The hosts of this site need to invite people with different points of view to post their ideas (Mr. Khosla was good). The Oil Drum is becoming an echo chamber for the insane.
On reflection, don't you think your remark is a bit strong? Although the "whackos" factor is definitely a concern, this is "the internets" after all. What would have us do? Censorship? Edit people's posts? Have people fill out a psychological questionnaire? You will readily see the problem. It's not "normal" to tell people their world may soon change radically and not for the better. The bad news attracts all sorts of people.
Many think we are the whackos. I happen to think Khosla is blinded by greed, so I view him as having gone off the deep end. Yergin said today that "E-85 is really I-85 -- it's about energy independence." Would you consider that a rational statement? Doesn't it indicate that the speaker is out of touch with reality? There are various psychological diagnoses for this condition.
God I wish I could still be in denial, or better yet, blissfully ignorant about all this PO and GW stuff. Those were the "Happy Days".
It "could" happen that way for Peak Oil too. It could.
The hope, and conjecture, is that will many small adjustments, some starting 30 years ago (CAFE, ethanol programs), some starting now, some starting later, we'll have enough of an answer to sqeeze through.
Good phrase, wrong target. That'd be a good moniker for the MSM. Everything is OK, growth is good, more is better, trust us, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, eat, drink, party, sleepwalk through life...
It's our culture that's insane. TOD voices at least a touch of sanity.
There are many ways to apprehend reality but no single, shared definition of what constitutes reality. A young child, a mystic, a scientist, a fanatic of any form (religious or political) all perceive "reality" differently because there own inner mental, emotional, instinctual and spiritual state and level of maturity and understanding paints a unique landscape of the world.
Various communities reach a shared consensus of reality based on shared history, stories, and mental models of what is real, what is imagined (ie. not real but believed to be so) and an imaginal realm (the realm of possibilities prior to actualization).
In the TOD community we all have a degree of contact with "the real world" (otherwise we couldn't quite generate an e-mail), have beliefs and opinions that objectively may be classified as false or distorted, and have a rich mix of dreams, aspirations and possibilities that fuel us.
My own difficulty with the die off thread is being able to distinguish between what may be irrational fears from what may be possible or probable outcomes based on a reasonable understanding of current trajectories. My limited understanding of biology makes me believe that large increases in population do not just level off and I don't believe that we've somehow transcended the "laws" of ecology.
At the same time, I believe that how we perceive the world does change both us and the world. Focusing on "die off" as a probable outcome may increase its liklihood by disempowering people to address the challenges that we collectively face. Focussing on "my" survival rather than the survival of the larger community may increase the savageness of my response to resource scarcities whereas cultivating cooperative relationships might be a better survival strategy.
As Paul Simon once said: still crazy after all these years...
Well, 'looniness' is somewhat in the eye of the beholder, don't you think? If you agree with something someone has said, then it's not loony; but if you strongly disagree with what is said, then it's loony.
While TOD has it's share of people who have extreme views that drift into apocalyptic thinking and sometimes downright silliness, on balance I find most of the posts to be well-informed and well-thought out. There is also a high level of technical sophistication amongst a high percentage of the posters.
There is some truth to what you said about the posts getting more extreme as the thread gets longer and older. I suspect this is the result of some sort of feedback loop as arguments start to develop. Or maybe it's similar to what happens when small kids play together for too long: they start getting whiny and get into fights.
For me, I'll suffer the occassional 'loonie' comment in the interest of maintaining a free exchange of ideas. We don't need a 'looniness meister' to ensure the only correct ideas are expressed.
Well, without putting too fine a point on it, in my view apocalyptic thinking implies that one has given up.
Perhaps that is why it appears to be such a seductive idea to those US fundamentalist Christians of a neocon persuasion. Some of these people actually WANT things to fall apart, so that either the righteous will somehow be teleported to heaven, or that a new era will be established here on Earth. Either way, it's dillusional thinking, in my book.
I think we DO have a slim chance of pulling ourselves out of this energy hole. I am not optimistic, mind you, but I have not yet given up hope. We just have to keep focused and keep banging at the problem.
If my thoughts do occasionally drift into apocalyptic lines, it has to do with my fear that instead of spending hundreds of billions of dollars on alternative energy, the world will spend hundreds of billions of dollars on fighting protracted resource wars, in which everyone will lose. That's what worries me the most. And the current regime in the US appears to be headed in that exact direction.
But that does not mean that I am WITHOUT hope. The "Relig" part of my handle should indicate as much. The only hope humanity has - especially at this juncture - involves spectacular supernatural intervention of the sort that are indicated in the Scriptures.
This, too, is eminently rational and intellectually defensible, but I discovered long ago that, as a general matter, the universe of discourse that tends to prevail on TOD is not amenable to this avenue of hope - for reasons that I regard as quite irrational, since they are based on uninformed prejudice rather than knowledge.
NO religious stance is "eminently rational and intellectually defensible".
Not that I dismiss spirituality, it probably has a different meaning for me than for you, but in any case you should not mix up distincts REALMS, spirituality DOES NOT deal with "materialistic" concerns like oil availability.
A neutral "synthetic religion" which would fulfill the craving for "fairy tales" without having noxious side effects would be good enough, no need to look for more.
Just like methadone is to heroin junkies, though methadone is still crap, as any religion ersatz would be.
But the perfect is the enemy of the good.
BTW, this has been tried during the years of French revolution, presenting REASON as some sort of divinity.
This left us with scientism which reeks of "faith" overtones and does not really favor the advancement of real science (see Feyerabend.).
Given up WHAT?
I fell pretty "apocalyptic" yet I did not "gave up".
That is, I still intend to "get through", not specifically ME but a few things I value.
"The water may be lapping at our ankles, but I am not ready to head for the hills yet. I'm an optimist."
Finally! A solution for all that troubles us: Optimism
Global meltdown
Scientists fear that global warming will bring climatic turbulence, with changes coming in big jumps rather than gradually
http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,1860560,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=1
"Can we call a halt? Hansen says we have 10 years to turn things round and escape disaster. James Lovelock, author of the Gaia theory, which considers the Earth a self-regulated living being, reckons we are already past the point of no return. I don't buy that. For one thing, there is no single point of no return. We have probably passed some, but not others. The water may be lapping at our ankles, but I am not ready to head for the hills yet. I'm an optimist."
Fred Pearce is author of The Last Generation - How Nature Will Take Her Revenge for Climate Change, Eden Project
Just keep digging in to the facts in an attempt to disprove the loonies posting to TOD and you'll soon find that you can't refute them (us).
I don't like believing that we're headed for a crash, but none of my research has convinced me that things will end differently.
Sorry to ruin your day.
TAB
Thxs for this link on tipping points and exponential change! That was my basic thrust in my recent essays on super-jokulhlaups. The most worrisome to me is when the climate starts burping huge amount of methane from thawing permafrost and melting subsea clathrate deposits.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Next step, as I pointed out above, is incorporating in our vocabulary the economic and oil supply jokulhlaup.
It's all within known systems territory. The Monbiot quote that circulates at the top of the page indicates that our stable phase exists by the grace of abundant energy. Once that is gone, cats fighting in a sack.
In other words:
jokulhlaup
love it
Stewart Staniford noted a couple of months ago that even though Western Siberian permafrost is melting at an alarming rate, releasing gobs of methane, corresponding increases have not been measured in the atmosphere.
Maybe mother nature built in at least a partial safegaurd againt global warming that we haven't figured out yet.
I suspect that odograph is presuming that oil -- produced as it is in many places by many people -- will continue to be available in sufficient quantities as to ensure and encourage some level of stabilty(and I hope that's the case, too).
The two big unknowns here are:
- What is earth's endowment of oil and gas?
- How will humans react when they figure out that oil and gas supplies are dwindling?
???The recoverable endowment of oil seems to be most creditably estimated between 2 trillion barrels (Deffeyes) and 2.5 trillion (Campbell). More significant than the URR is the ultimate rate of extraction, of which informed opinion seems to be less agreed. But there is a large contingent (incl. Deffeyes, Simmons, Pickens) who argue that ~85mbls/day, the current rate, is the ultimate.
Again with respect to gas, not only pruduction, but delivery to markets are crucial issues. Since much (most?) unproduced gas is not located near infrastructure such as pipelines and LNG cryogenic/loading terminals, realistic time-lines for bringing this gas to market will not do any good. So the ultimate endowment of NG does not tell us much.
"How will humans react when they figure out that oil and gas supplies are dwindling?"
There will be manifest effects such as price increases and frank shortages that people will be reacting to before they "figure it out". :( Not doubt many will find someone to blame. We may collectively never figure it out. But events will unfold of their own accord.
human kindness overflowing
and I think it's going to rain today
My answer to that is that it is not, strictly speaking, "peak oil" anymore. In order to make the doom work we've got to layer in another driver ... and "look for a new model"
Oh yeah, the words "in secret" will play especially well when we try to explian that peak oil is not a fringe concern.
When Katrina hit it was full at 700 mbl.
Then 15mbl were drawn down, after which 5mbl were replaced, then GWB ordered refilling stopped.
So when the Prudoe Bay snafu happened, the SPR was at 690mbls.
GWB promised to draw from the SPR to make up Prudoe Bay shortfalls.
Have withdrawls begun yet? If not, why not; and if so, does the rate of withdrawl tell us anything?
What's the forecast for the completed withdrawl, 25mbl?
Basically the SPR is a non issue. It had a tiny effect after Katrina and Rita and no effect since.
Mammoth $200M wind farm proposed in Iowa
Editorial: The wind industry is growing rapidly
Where is the proposed site? I'm in Hawkes Bay.
I have to admit, though, that given a choice between 200 acres of indigenous tussock and societal collapse, I know which one I'd choose. Besides, the tussock will likely still be there, under the whizzing blades of the turbines. It's the picturesque view that will change.
I'd rather have views compromised by wind turbines than the same views compromised by the smog of emissions from Coal generation plants.
Nice to see a clear-headed appraisal like the 200 acres vs. societal collapse.
I got stopped on the street in NYC today by Greenpeace people looking to raise money, pretending to enlighten me with little scare soundbites. I had to bite my tongue not to tell them to shove their clipboards sideways up their derrieres. The environmental movement is a shambles, and has reached a point where it is actually more a hinderance than a help.
I've given money in the past, but these days, no way. They do things like fighting windfarms in view of the App Trail and off the coast of Cape Cod. And nuclear? Fight nuclear at all costs, even if it means de facto surrender on carbon emissions and energy strategy.
When faced with the aforementioned choice, they'd probably take the 200 acres. (That's only partly tongue in cheek -- it's pretty closely analogous to staunch and dogmatic opposition to nuclear energy, which realistically has to play a substantial role in any low-carbon post peak energy strategy.)
The Crunch is Coming August 24, 2006
I would like to respond to the article by Jack Bash titled Energy at $3 a gallon - What's Next? I am a former chemical engineer, and petroleum analyst. As a student I worked on hydrogen storage research.
First I agree the country is on the verge of a crisis of overwhelming proportions. We are near a point in geologic terms called peak oil. This is defined as the point where half of the world's recoverable conventional oil has been produced. Many geologists believe peak oil has occurred or will occur within the next 5 years. The event is important because once we pass peak, the production of conventional oil will start to decline. With world demand increasing each year it can mean only one thing - skyrocketing prices. The price of gasoline and fuel oil will go up until enough demand is decreased to meet supply. This process will be repeated each year as depletion continues. $3.00 gas will look like the good old days in the near future.
The Department of Energy Hirsch report warns us we have not begun to prepare for this event. According to the author a crash program to develop alternatives would take 20 years. It looks like we have run out of time to avoid economic disruption. In any event we still need to act. Roughly 70% of oil is used in transportation. This is our real Achilles heal. Yes hybrid car technology is a must and plug in hybrids are the next step.
Where I disagree with Mr Bash is in corn to ethanol. Corn to ethanol has an energy return (EROEI) of around 1.2 to 1.8 to 1 as published by the Department of Agriculture and some more optimistic researchers. (Pimentel's study, the only peer reviewed one, concludes it is less than 1 to 1) This means for every unit of energy we put in to produce ethanol we only get 1.2 units out. Compare this to producing gasoline where the EROEI is 6.1 to 1 (determined by Robert Rapier a refinery chemical engineer who also worked on cellulosic ethanol). Bottom line is we have to work very hard to wring energy out of corn and we don't get much more than we put in. Corn to ethanol plants would not be built without multi-billion dollar yearly government subsidies - investors would lose their shirts. There are also severe limits to what we can accomplish here. If we used our entire corn crop to produce ethanol we would substitute only 7 to 12% of our gasoline use. Ask yourself what we use for food then? Corn is not only eaten directly, it feeds cattle, poultry and has myriad of other uses. Almost all sweeteners are now corn based. There are very large negative externalities associated with corn. Growing corn strips topsoil more than any other crop. It has been called "mining topsoil". The fertilizer runoff has created a huge dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico greater than the size of the State of New Jersey. Groundwater has been polluted with nitrates.
As far as the other solutions Mr. Bash lists, I wouldn't hold my breath. They need a lot of research and have a long way to go. They would also require huge undertakings in new fabrication and infrastructure taking many years to build. Cost of materials in many cases is rising faster than the cost of energy. Just look at copper - up 176% over the last 2 years.
Hydrogen may be the ultimate solution but it still has far to go. Hydrogen is the smallest molecule. It leaks through almost any system designed to hold and transport it. It is also highly corrosive and requires very expensive materials. We haven't come up with a more cost effective way to store hydrogen than compressing it into a tank. Driving around in a car with an $8,000 hydrogen storage tank, holding the energy equivalent of 4 gallons of gasoline is not the answer. Also, as hydrogen is a carrier and not a source of energy itself, we would need many new nuclear plants to produce enough.
I do agree with Mr. Bash the country needs to put a lot more research into alternative energy, including hydrogen. According to the September issue of Scientific American, public funding for photovoltaic research peaked in the late 1970s around $300 million a year and is now less than $100 million a year. Wind has gone from $120 million to less than $40 million. We are spending $2 billion a month on the war in Iraq.
My advice: If you are building a house, build it small and energy efficient. If you are buying a car, make gas mileage your top priority. Move as close to your job as you can. Solar hot water heaters work and have a favorable payback. Plant a garden. Install a wood stove. Live more frugally. Above all get out of debt. Your cost of living is going to skyrocket."
You got those points out concisely, but fully, far as I can tell. The implications were clear, but not too 'Henny Penny' to keep people from being able to take it in.
I understand that the Hydrogen plan is also dependent on Platinum, which is not in huge supply.
Where is the Citizen based?
Want to send it to some national papers? (responding to relevant articles, I guess?)
Thanks!
Bob Fiske
Kudos to you for getting this published in the "Citizen". Your bio doesn't say where you live-- what city published your essay? Thxs, and it was a well-crafted answer, IMO.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Cool!--small towns at the forefront of Peakoil Outreach!!!
How is the secession movement going? Has Maine joined up with Vermont and New Hampshire to move secession forward?
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Secession is not a mainstream topic here in Colony of Maine - not in any serious sense - only the philosophers. Lots of wishful talk about joining Canada. But if the dissolution of FSU is any indication, then a downslide reorganization might well make a lot of sense. I could easily see moving to some sort of federation of states and provinces. Localization . There are a lot of people in Maine into localization. I think even the state of Maine is too big, and it will have to become more of a federation of counties. That's my current project, collating all sorts of policy papers around the topic of "Relocalizing Maine". Will probably take it to the level of creating a shadow cabinet; that gives us a talking head pundocracy, etc.... We're going to be pushing some legislation about studying food/energy/whatever self-sufficiency. Cheap stuff with educational value (whether we get the study or not).
State and community - that's the arena. Feds won't help; ask New Orleans.
cfm in Gray, Colony of Maine
Then watch those Maine philosophers-- Jesus, Confusious, Socrates, Plato, Mohammed, Jefferson, et al had a greater societal effect than any scientist or inventor-- nothing is more unstoppable than an idea whose time has come.
As far as Maine relocalization goes: I am really impressed with the work of the {PDF warning} Chebeague Island Secession. Seems like an excellent babystep to a larger regional secession movement later. How is this progressing?
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
I had to post this. FT seems to think we're gonna be just fine. Westtexas I read urbansurvival.com every morning and I also like how they point out the consumption part, yet they don't explain WHERE the cash came from.
I just talked to a buddy in LA, CA. He is beside himself over the concumption binge. He bought his house in 98 for like $350 and was scared. It's now appraised at over $1M. He took out $300K and renovated the entire inside of his house about 3 yrs back.
He still doesn't think he's got the other $400K, so he's waiting for that to evaporate. His house has nearly quadrupled in 7 yrs.
Here is the nearest I could get to the link:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/newshour/
and click on the "US energy crisis" link.
It had some fairly hard hitting questions, and asked specifically about peak oil, and got some rambling non-answers, but I think from this you can say that peak oil is definetly main stream
Stratfor just released a pretty good writeup, with good graphs and charts, called "Gulf of Mexico -- Beginning of the End"
-----------------
Development of the Gulf of Mexico will not stop -- indeed, we do not even expect it to slow for years -- but the industry appears to have reached a point of diminishing returns.
------------------
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Diesel fuel prices rising. Perhaps the ethanol plants should be converted to biodiesel to keep the truckers, tractors, trains, and irrigation pumps going--more important than a soccer mom's SUV:
----------------------
U.S. Federal Trade Commission monitors of gasoline and diesel fuel prices have detected sudden price increases for diesel during the last 2 weeks in the Mississippi River Valley from Arkansas to Minnesota and westward to the Dakotas.
Diesel prices in the US Heartland have climbed to a virtual tie with the West, which traditionally leads the U.S., as customers pay roughly 12 cents per gallon more than elsewhere in the Midwest, FTC said on Aug. 15.
The agency sourced the increases to the continuing conversion to ultralow-sulfur diesel (ULSD) fuel, unusually high demand due to greater irrigation pump use during drought conditions, and refinery production problems.
The region also is in the midst of an extensive drought, with conditions ranging from "exceptional" in central South Dakota to "severe" in the rest of the state and in Nebraska to abnormally dry, FTC said.
Large engines drive the big irrigation pumps and huge motor-driven sprinklers many farmers use. Just one of those engines can use 10 to 20 gallons per hour of diesel, or even more. "The drought in the Heartland has forced farmers to irrigate more, and it doesn't take long for thousands of farms pumping many hours per week to burn a lot more diesel than usual. This raises the consumption of diesel in a system already limited in its supply," FTC said.
In addition, an unidentified Kansas refinery closed in mid-July for maintenance, aggravating the diesel shortage in a region that has significantly fewer refineries and pipelines than elsewhere, FTC said. "It may be harder to alleviate a shortage in the Heartland than in parts of the country with more infrastructure." it said.
-----------------------------------------
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
http://tinyurl.com/nsyqt
It's too bad it takes a comedian to tell the "truth"...
==AC
Appropriate post for Labor Day Weekend--Bigtime Kudos! The 'owners' are counting on the 'consumers' to max their credit cards with back-to-school shopping for the next generation of wage-slaves.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
So it is a HUGE waste of time, even more so if you figure at some point that the content is not worthwhile.
I brought this point up a few days ago. Back then I was talking about 240 posts.
Now it's 380.
WTF. When does my point make sense? C'mon, Goose. At wot focking point does my point make sense? 490? Jack agreed with me.That should have been enough.
You are going to have to change the format at some point. Good Luck. Glad you took my advice and brought Leanan aboard. And Robert.
You have the full support of the Central Committee of the Luxembourg Peak Oil Awareness Association (ekshelly I'm the only member to date but so what?).
Ideal Format?
KISS - Keep It Simple, Stupid.
Messages to be entered unthreaded, in sequential order of posting only.
No trees, no threads!!
We should be using our brains to think about oil depletion and related topics, not to navigate through the maze!
Number messages so that commenters can refer back to the posting they are replying to.
It tends to force the discussion to move along, because the earlier posts are hidden as the thread gets longer. You can unhide them, but many don't bother.
Of course, Baseball Toaster tends to have a strong chronological element - the long threads are often "game threads," commentary on ongoing baseball games.
I understand that recent versions of scoop allow switching on-the-fly between threaded, nested (as you're seeing now) and flat views of an article's replies. So it seems that just a software upgrade can make EVERYONE happy?