The Oil Drum | DrumBeat: August 14, 2006

227 comments on DrumBeat: August 14, 2006

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reno on August 14, 2006 - 9:17am

You'll excuse me if this has been covered but I've been away for a few days.

Scarcity, Mother of Invention

The bottom line is that the very process of developing alternative sources of energy to replace fossil fuels may yield benefits beyond our imagining. But if instead we fail to innovate, the consequences could be devastating.

Will innovation save us all??

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jokuhl on August 14, 2006 - 10:29am

".. may yield benefits beyond our imagining."

Or it may just barely save our butts, if we're lucky. That line sounds like the doorway to Cornucopia, or a barker outside a casino, take your pick. I don't subscribe to the NYT, (in either sense, oftentimes) so I didn't see any more of the article.

I have occasional moments of true brilliance, and I find they are sufficient to just dig me out of the troubles caused by my corresponding clumsiness. Hope it continues..

I don't think we have any choice but to innovate, do we? There's no guarantee that it will save any of us, much less all, but it's what we do if we want to 'get to the next level', or sometimes even to survive on this one.

I have heard 'Intelligence' described as the ability/flexibility to test new combinations/actions to solve a problem.. to use your senses and imagination to rise above routine and habit and devise a new solution. That's 'Innovation', right? I prefer this 'Glass-half full' definition to the opposite version about 'Insanity' being defined as 'Doing the Same thing again and again, and yet expecting to get different results'. Still, it doesn't hurt to look at both the BrightSide and the DarkSide to get a picture of where you don't want to go, and where you might find some new options.

Bob Fiske

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Dan Ur on August 14, 2006 - 11:46am

I have always liked a poem I wrote a few decades ago.

It basically says, "gulp gulp give me another one"

I don't worry about the half full or the half empty glass I just go and get another drink, we could dicuss the volume in the glass all day long. Just doing something is better than standing still. In my poem I got rid of the problem and moved on to something else.

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jokuhl on August 14, 2006 - 1:12pm

Thanks..

I have to remember to close my posts with my central idea, not some side-note, as that usually gets the response, and not the thought that I was trying to share.

I, too, am not that thrilled by a debate about 'the glass', or which part of its volume I focus on.. I was more happy that I'd noticed an opposite corrollary to the 'Insanity' truism within the 'intelligence' line. Ultimately, that comes to the same conclusion as yours, which says 'Next!'.. or 'Yes' to innovation. I do think it's important to be aware of the 'Light' and the 'Shadow' sides of an issue, too, as the whole
picture will inform your decision.

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Todd on August 14, 2006 - 11:58am

Bob,

What concerns me about "innovations" is that they are directed toward maintaining the status quo, i.e., a growth oriented, consumer society. I'm certainly not a Luddite (I put in my first PV and solar water systems over 20 years ago) but reducing consumption of consumer goods and significant energy conservation will likely do more than all the spiffy, technological stuff in the pipeline.

Further, it seems to me, that the additional complexity of new technologies will only create new problems that will then require additional solutions.

It is typically argued that these innovations will buy time to allow a transition to some new paradigm. I could be wrong but my gut feeling says it isn't going to happen.

Todd

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IFeelFree on August 14, 2006 - 12:36pm

Even if we were to develop some new miracle technology for generating cheap non-polluting energy (fusion?), we cannot continue unlimited growth. For one thing, population growth cannot continue unabated. (If nothing else, there's only a limited amount of carbon in the biosphere.) Technology and cheap energy could have allowed humans to enjoy a better quality of life for a very long (unlimited?) time. Instead we chose to expand our population and now we're running into resource limitations (energy, food, water, metals, etc.). I can't see how any technological innovation is going to overcome the consequences of an exponentially growing world population and the demand for natural resources that brings.

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jokuhl on August 14, 2006 - 1:27pm

Thanks, IFeelFree;

"I can't see how any technological innovation is going to overcome the consequences of an exponentially growing world population and the demand for natural resources that brings."

Maybe because you are assuming that 'innovation' presupposes that it's whole purpose is to continue and expand the status quo. Every time an 'Alternative Car' discussion comes up, someone jumps in with the accusation that this is meant to fully perpetuate the way our 'Car Culture' works today. It's not. It will be what it can be. But we will still use wheels, carts, cars and trucks of one sort or another, on one kind of roadway or another. Is that our car culture, or an evolved creature that has its roots in the 'Route 66' universe? (initially wrote "Route 666".. oooh! demonic!_)

I don't think the population will be able to keep growing, and the Chinese or those in China Grove will also be making different Auto choices tomorrow than they do today, just as their town councils will be pinching pennies on which Potholes they can afford to patch.. That doesn't mean we won't be innovating all over the place. I don't buy the false promises of these Oil Alternatives, either. I don't expect the innovations that will help us to be 'miracles'.. just smart. I think 'RibbonFilm' solar panels look like a smart innovation (Evergreen Solar), etc. Science and Invention aren't the enemy.. just the misapplication of them..

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IFeelFree on August 14, 2006 - 3:45pm

My question is that if population is unable to keep growing, how will it stop growing? Will fertility rates go down worldwide (as we pollute the environment and food becomes more scarce)? Will there be mass starvation? Mass die-offs from war? Or will governments institute birth limits similar to China (one child per couple)? Fertility rates have gone down in developed countries, not as much in developing countries. One problem is that in many parts of the world having children is seen as having more hands to do work and someone to take care of you in your old age. It will be tough to convince poor people that having, say, only 1 child would be in their best interests.

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GliderGuider on August 14, 2006 - 5:49pm

e) All of the above

There will be an increase in famine and disease deaths, wars will become more frequent, some countries will institute one-child policies, but many people will simply say "There is no way I'm bringing a baby into this $&!%storm." There will be massive pressure on holdout nations to liberalize abortion access and promote contraceptive use, but also increased resistance to that trend from religious radicals of all denominations. I suspect that starvation will drop fertility rates in poor nations fairly drastically, and pandemics like AIDS will punch holes in the reproductive segments of their populations.

Mother Nature is really good at multi-tasking.

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Mad Maxout on August 14, 2006 - 6:43pm

I already decided to not add kids to the fray. What we need is to encourage people who are poor (or comparatively poor) to not have kids. Those who can afford it the most should have them.

A poor person having a kid essentially dooms that kid to an ever-worsening 1970s energy crisis. College is no guarentee. What do you study? Religion actually in this case is promoting starvation and other suffering by opposing contraception and abortion.

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VW on August 14, 2006 - 9:03pm

Let me get this straight: only rich people should have kids? What kind of world are you living in?

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Liz on August 14, 2006 - 9:52pm

Indeed. The richer the family the more energy they consume.

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tate423 on August 15, 2006 - 10:59am

Funny when you say the rich should only have kids you get questioned, howeer in nature doesn't this go on all the time? The weak are weeded out and do not live. Those genes are lost and the superior ones remain. If you actually stop the think about it, why would a poor person WANT to have kids? It doesn't make sense when you can not afford to take care of them, but since this is an acedemic hyperbole I'll step down since it's not moral and all.

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IFeelFree on August 14, 2006 - 7:31pm

So Malthus was right after all? My hope is that fertility rates will continue to trend lower. They have fallen dramatically in developed countries over the past decade and now are below the replacement rate. (For example, I've read that here in California the population would have fallen in recent years if not for immigration.) The problem is that even though fertility rates in less developed countries have fallen considerably, they are still twice the rate of developed countries. On the other hand, if fertility rates fall too quickly we end up with demographic problems -- a relatively small number of younger people have to care for a large aging population. I'm afraid that starvation, wars, disease might be what keeps down the population in some less developed countries. Religions that preach against the use of birth control are doing a terrible disservice to the world. Religion is too stuck in the past anyway. We need spirituality, not religion.

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GliderGuider on August 14, 2006 - 7:38pm

The problem is that humanity is already in overshoot. Even if not another baby were to be born for the next 25 years, the outcome would be pretty much the same. The time to have stopped growing both our population and our consumption was probably 100 years ago.

For an ecologist's perspective on why this is so, and why we are well and truly in the box, read William Catton's 1982 book "Overshoot". It powerfully reoriented my thinking on this crisis.

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IFeelFree on August 14, 2006 - 8:21pm

Books have published for decades predicting imminent global disaster due to overpopulation. (According to the 1972 "Limits to Growth" we should already be witnessing the collapse of civilization.) What makes this time different is that there is increasing evidence that we are coming up against some hard limits with regard to natural resources. Obviously, population cannot continue growing forever. It's better not to be overly doom-and-gloom, but we need to take intelligent measures to limit population growth and reduce our usage of natural resources, so that we can at least reduce the suffering.

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oldhippie on August 14, 2006 - 8:46pm

Ummm, er, maybe in 1972 they were right?

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jjhman on August 14, 2006 - 11:28pm

I get really tired of people who obviously haven't read LIMITS TO GROWTH" making up quotes from it.

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GreyZone on August 15, 2006 - 1:38am

The politest response I can give you is that if you don't know what Limits to Growth actually said, then stop making up falsehoods and passing them off as your wisdom. If you read Limits to Growth and then the 30 year update to the same, you'd realize that we are almost dead on target for the Club of Rome's predictions.

P.S. The Limits to Growth gave modern society a lifespan of about 100 years starting from its own publication, so we're talking about a collapse near 2070, not one that was supposed to have happened already.

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jokuhl on August 14, 2006 - 8:45pm

Re: Population Control
Who knows?

All I can do is try to have my family with whatever awareness I can about population growth (or decline), survivability, etc. Nature will do the heavy lifting on this one. We can try to communicate our concerns with each other, ask our communities and societies to make smart choices, but always beware the rule of unintended consequences.

We put our trust in the universe and have had one child, and mostly due to our ages are happy to leave it there. There is a lot of indirect (and some direct) pressure to 'not do that to her', give her siblings, etc.. to which we're happy to gracefully decline them all.

What we can do is innovate, which means come up with new ways of doing things. It doesn't mean 'continued system growth', or 'go shopping'.. it means look at how things are, and make some choices about what is likely to be a smart direction. Once you've started that new way, you keep looking at it, and decide if you need to correct course, or even go the other way entirely. You have to be aware and limber (even at our ages), you probably have to dive in sometimes, and duck out at others.

Talk about 'DieOff' is boring to me. If the available-energy-times-population doesn't equal the world's 'carrying capacity', the numbers will have to go down. Whether that means horrible wars, or pop's don't recover after natural disasters, or infant mortality.. it's just fairly maudlin to get too immersed in that. I think it's fear talking, and 'Fear is the mind killer, the little death..', as Frank Herbert said..

When you're canoeing rapids, the advice I got was to watch the water's flow, the path you need to take.. NOT the rocks you are worried about running into, since that fearful attention, while in the holiest intention towards personal security, is the surest way to draw yourself INTO those pitfalls. Canoeing rapids is Constant Innovation, Course Corrections, Maneuvers, Interaction with a moving field..

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Liz on August 14, 2006 - 10:10pm

I like that imaage and totally agree that a positive focus is the best way to get through any crisis. From a personal standpoint, the difficulty I have with this one is that it's so nebulous and there are so many uncertainties that it's hard to figure out where to focus. This is especially so because I have a husband to convince, who acknowledges that there is a major problem but resists planning because, he says, anything might happen.

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jokuhl on August 16, 2006 - 6:49pm

It's extremely difficult. I agree.

It makes me a bit schitzo, trying to remember what I'm really shooting for. Rapids aren't exactly cut-and-dried, either, so I'll hold with the analogy. Things don't move just as you expect them to, and there are signs to read (or misread) about rocks beneath the surface, as well. Maybe there are a few paths down ahead, and you have to still pick one (ethanol?, nuclear?) What lies further down that route, however?

I believe in simplicity, even if it's rare that my combustible brain usually actually achieves it, I'm trying to get to that side of the proverbial- (and now pretty annoyingly pat) Stream. I believe we are tool makers, and not to shun our tools, but to be very clear about which ones are able to do the job, which ones are too dangerous or just too complicated to depend on completely..

When I told my wife that this $600- 130 watt panel was, yes, about two lightbulbs worth of power, and that, just when the sun shines, she did seem a little shocked. It's hard to appreciate that this trickle of power will keep coming in for a few decades in all likelihood, and quite possibly during a few times or increasing times when you won't be counting those watts against a utility price of .08/kilowatthour. During any extended outage, this power could save lives, keep a fridge and foodsupply going, and be invaluable. At other times, this can/will be offsetting what is likely to be a rising-cost and possibly less reliable distant source of power.

Anyway, trying to feed and bed a 3-year old, so my thoughts are not likely to keep a kayak together tonight.

Bob Fiske

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Kevembuangga on August 15, 2006 - 12:57am

the advice I got was to watch the water's flow, the path you need to take.

Excellent!
Where do you see "the path [we] need to take", please?

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jokuhl on August 16, 2006 - 6:26pm

I don't presume to make any critical choices for everyone else's boat, or paddle position, place up or down the river, whatever.. but the question is appropriate otherwise..

As far as the above was concerned, the 'Rocks' were the attentions on the dangers of 'DieOff' itself, of whatever Chaos threatens us if this indeed does 'Go Bad'.. ask someone in Baghdad, it may already be bad. I accept that there are Rocks and Dangers looming all about.

The 'Flow', then, is the actions I need to follow (and not get disheartened/distracted from doing) to establish/ envision what looks like a tenable life 'after the rapids'.. Food Security, Water Supply, Energy, Social Cohesion, Emergency Preparedness.. both for me, family and my closest (in this case) 60,000 or so neighbors... reduce wasteful expenditures in money, energy, materials, time-used..

-- As I was typing this, a solar panel arrived at my doorstep (no joke), which I bought from hard-won bucks from a lucky summer job. I kind of want a new camera for my business, to improve the jobs I can take.. in either case, it's one form of income or another. --

It's like that Eleanor Roosevelt quote from above.. 'It takes as much energy to plan as to dream'

I think many of the paths are pretty clear, but they are unspectacular, and anathema to our expectations of MiddleClass American Life (apologies to those not wearing such shoes).. Simplify, Cut Back, Rethink, Reconnect within your community, Stop the TV-babble (as much as possible), Diversify your dependencies and Produce more/Consume Less.

A lot of these 'feel wrong', but might still be right, you're just contradicting the norms, and by doing so are automatically 'judging' those neighbors you want to make sure you are connected to.. no saying there aren't a lot of conflicts and difficulties in reinventing/rediscovering what makes up 'the good life', what is essential, and what is fluff/addiction/distraction..

"Did you really think you could kill time and not injure eternity?" Thoreau

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mikeB on August 15, 2006 - 6:22am

the advice I got was to watch the water's flow, the path you need to take.. NOT the rocks you are worried about running into

Lovely image.

Unfortunately, whereas the "water's flow" and the "rocks" are perfectly visible to us in a river, the future is opaque.

Not visible. There is nothing to guide us but guesswork.

And contradictory claims by multiple "experts."

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jokuhl on August 14, 2006 - 1:52pm

Todd;
I may have already done this in the reply to Dan UR, but I'm trying to find the right way of saying this..

I guess it depends on what you are willing to call 'innovations'.. some get more complex, some resimplify.. the whole process to me seems to be a continual shifting out and back, at least as it happens when I am designing and implementing 'solutions'.. There have been passive solar homes throughout the ages, but as we started reigniting that idea in the 1970s, it was an innovation from the existing 'Line it up with the street and put windows everywhere' mode of architecture. I am playing with innovating the roofing and siding materials into a more modular, long-term system that can function in a few specialised ways, Ventilation/Evaporation, Photosynthesis, Heat Collection.. etc. It adds either complexity to your siding, or adds more functionality to your Heating/Cooling/Power system, depending on which side you're looking at.

There's stuff in the pipeline that isn't just more snazzy, plastic 'Sharper Image' gadgetry.. I mean, boy, do I cringe with Weltshmertz when I see all the solar panels that are being pumped out of the RealGoods catalog to live for 6-8weeks in these cheezy Path Lights.. Useless! .. but think of all the mercury batteries that will never be produced, since the solar desk-calculator has become a standard form? Shouldn't take much more silicon to make a simple, solar PDA.. ahh! There I go, getting all 'Taintered' with complexity.. Dang!

Respectfully,
Bob Fiske

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Todd on August 14, 2006 - 3:03pm

Bob,

I obviously don't disagree with implementing efficiency improvements. FWIW, I designed and built passive solar houses 25 years ago. There really isn't any trick to it. I designed our current house during that period. However, I could only get 30% of the winter heat from solar without going to an active system; and a large one at that since the mountains of northern California where I live can often go for 1-2 weeks with significant insolation.

The problem with household energy efficiency is the large installed base - just like transportation. There are two factors that probably preclude real upgrading of efficieny beyond CFL's: First, cost. People are in hock up to their ears and do't have to bucks to renvoate. Second, and ultimately, people have to see life differently. By this I mean that they have to move away from consumption (and having babies) and come to see that life can be satisfying and rewarding without stuff.

I'm old enough to have lived when there was no TV, AC and all the things people demand now as standard issue. People mostly stayed home and talked on the porch. I'm still pretty much like that. I went to my first movie in 20 years to see An Inconvient Truth. We don't get TV, although we do watch videos and dvd's. We provide much of our food and all of our water and heat (firewood).

Todd

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Seadragon on August 14, 2006 - 3:19pm

Glad you saw the movie, Todd. I've been meaning to ask if you could point me towards some sources of design/build passive solar houses. Thanks.

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Todd on August 14, 2006 - 4:05pm

Seadragon,

Let's start with the reality that I am out of date and there are newer books out there. But, still, even while newer materials are available, the design calcs are the same. With that caveat, here goes: The Passive Solar Energy Book (Expanded professional edition) by Edward Mazria, 1979, ISBN 0-87857-238-4. Not many pictures but provides data for heat loss/heat gain calculations. A good book. Design for a Limited Planet by Norma Skurka and Jon Naar, 1976, ISBN 0-345-27489-X. Little technical detail but lots of pictures on what others have done and a synopsis of the designs. Solar Houses by Louis Groop, 1978, ISBN 0-394-73543-9. Similar to the preceeding book. A Design and Construction Handbook for Energy-Saving Houses by Alex Wade, 1980, ISBN 0-87857-274-0. Lots of good information but doesn't provide you with the information you need to do heat gain/heat loss calculations.

One of the toughest things to deal with is thermal mass. None of these books really gets into it seriously and I can't find the one I'm thinking of. In any case, I hope this helps.

Todd

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Seadragon on August 14, 2006 - 4:07pm

Thanks so much. I'll look at those.

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Magnus Redin on August 14, 2006 - 4:25pm

What is tough with thermal mass? To calculate how much you need for a certain behaviour and how fast it will exchange heat energy with the rest of the house?

My first guess would be the more the merrier within the insulated climate shell as long as it is cheap. It will anyway be influenced by the furniture. Thick concrete floors and walls, brick and stone is good. Adding 5 or 10 cm to the ground slab and cast a load bearing internal wall that you are sure wont be moved in 15 cm concrete wont hurt anything.

If I ever build a house a lot of it will be made in thick concrete.

Using the mass for day-night cycle storage means that you will have a changing indoor temperature. And you can cut down on the heat input during daytime giving a need for good ways to keep excess sunlight out of your windows. But it is nice to have a house that wont freeze for days if whatever heating system you use quits when it is -10 C.

For active heat energy storage I would use a large water tank or two and input heat from one simple wood fired fireplace or larger boiler and perhaps a solar heater. It could also keep me with hot water for a week.

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Todd on August 14, 2006 - 5:13pm

Magnus,

What's hard about thermal mass is to get the right periodicity of heat loss and heat gain based upon insolation. More is usually not better but so is too little.

Although there are a lot of systems that use water as the heat sink, it's usually easier and cheaper to used a collector and forced air circulation with the heat stored in a rock bin under the house. I once did design a heat system using water circulated through a wood heater. I never built it because we sold the property. Frankly, I wasn't impressed with the actual amount of heat versus the firewood required.

For concrete construction, a good starting point is The Portland Cement Association's Guide to Concrete Homebuilding Systems by Pieter Vanderwerf and Keith Munsell, 1995, ISBN 0-07-067020-X. It's available as a remainder from places like Edward Hamilton Bookseller.

Todd

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Magnus Redin on August 14, 2006 - 5:23pm

The most important thing with passive structural heat storage for night and day cycles is probably to accept a temperature swing in your indoor air to get the heat energy into and out of the strucure. I made a dumb grammatical error about this in my original comment. :(

I mostly see it as a way to even out outdoor temperature swings lasting for several days of very hot or very cold weather.

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earldaily on August 14, 2006 - 6:15pm

when I designed my house I kicked around the idea of an insulated concrete floor with embedded radiant heating in it. then hooking it to my solar water heater.
didn't do it but it was a nice pipe dream

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Magnus Redin on August 14, 2006 - 6:54pm

A very well insulated concrete ground slab with embedded radiant heating with plain water in PEX tubes as a heat carrier is the most common way to heat new small houses in Sweden. It gives exellent comfort while being fairly cheap and works well with low temperature heat sources such as heat pumps or deeply cycling hot water tanks heating by a wood or pellet fired boiler. It is also very good for hooking up with a solar water heater but that is usually not worth the effort since you anyway need another heat source for the winter and additional fuel for that is usually cheaper then the capital cost for the solar heater.

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Dryki on August 14, 2006 - 10:14pm

Yes, I used to build homes and condos like that, with various combinations of mass, in floor radiant heating, solar systems driving it. There is no optimum mass given the variety of life styles as far as I can tell. What matters far and away the most is the design temperature for the inhabited space, the zoning and how well regulated you want the temperature. Surfaces, reflectivity. If you can put up with 55-60 and warmer during day - wear long underwear and close off half the house it's pretty easy. What I wish I'd done with my house - build it more like an onion, with the core better separated from the half-heated or closed off spaces. Human beings are very sensitive to radiant temperatures, so a warm surface in an otherwise cold room can be very effective.

cfm in Gray, ME

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BoatBob on August 14, 2006 - 6:43pm

Check out www.monolithicdome.com

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Todd on August 14, 2006 - 8:34pm

Boatbob,

I built a wood-framed 40' diameter dome (3/8ths dome) on a 3' riser wall (19'6" at the apex) in 1974. Here are a few problems with domes: There is a lot of unused volume if they are left even partly open which is really one of the main points of building a dome. Next, the only vertical walls are the ones that separate rooms. This makes it difficult to hang pictures, place bookcases, etc. Finally, it is difficult to get a decent R value even with sprayed on insulation. My house has an R-47 roof, R-20 walls and it's on an insulated slab. Plus, I'll tell you it gets old as hell dealing with an "out-of-plumb" structure with a lot of angles when we live in a plumb world of 4x8 plywood

I'd forget the dome and go with SIP (structural insulated panels)construction were I building again.

Todd.

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BoatBob on August 15, 2006 - 7:00am

Todd, It sounds like you built a geodesic dome? I've heard of lots of problems with them. The Monolithic Dome is air formed, sprayed with 4 inches of polyurathane foam, then the rebar and 4 inches of concrete. It is built from the inside so the concrete is inside the insulation envelope. Incrediable strenth and thermal qualities. David South who designs and builds these domes claims an effective r-value of 60! I've built two domes at work-shops in Italy, Texas. Very fast and inexpensive to build. I believe that in a resourse sparse future these domes will help in many ways. I've been looking for an area to relocate for a couple of years now. I intend to build a few of these domes sometime in the near future....Bob

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tate423 on August 15, 2006 - 12:56pm

I read somewhere that 2X4's aren't 2 by 4 anymore and instead like 1 3/4 by 3 3/4 or something. Anyone know what I'm talking about? Something to do with cutting corners, ahem, I meant costs.

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Leanan on August 15, 2006 - 1:23pm

2x4's have never actually been 2x4, that I know of. They are 1-1/2 x 3-1/2.

They are 2x4 when they are cut from the log, but shrink as they dry. Then they are planed to smooth them, which further reduces their size.

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AlanfromBigEasy on August 15, 2006 - 6:35pm

Many homes in New Orleans are built of dimensional lumber. Cypress was the early favorite, with "heart pine" following that.

Minor repairs can be problematic, with new lumber being undersized. And one needs to pre-drill holes before nailing in heart pine.

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fallout on August 16, 2006 - 8:32am

Alan has this correct, dimensional lumber from the "old days" was, indeed, larger than today's dimensional lumber, and almost always of superior quality (old growth and/or heart pine or hardwood...I've been in homes from the 1910's and 20's with oak framing).

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AlanfromBigEasy on August 14, 2006 - 5:40pm

There is an argument for minimal thermal mass as well.

Let the house heat/cool as much as it wants when unoccupied. Then minimal energy to heat/cool back to comfortable when one comes home, with smaller sized equipement.

Thermal mass seems to be a negative for New Orleans summers, as an example.

No night cooling; 80F (28 C?) at dawn and then up from there on a day when it does not rain.

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canbrit on August 14, 2006 - 6:52pm

Back in the 1980s I remember reading a research piece that stated the use of thermal mass was very climate specific.

I even remember seeing a map of USA showing best-practise on a regional basis...

I'll try & see if I can dig it out...

Meanwhile, in UK building regs now require concrete house slabs to be insulated.

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canbrit on August 14, 2006 - 7:34pm

Found it...

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oldhippie on August 14, 2006 - 9:03pm

All way too complex. No one wants to own a house with rock bins or any of that other stuff. It puts people off. Feels obsessive.
Insulate. Insulate as close to exterior as possible. Insulate as seamlessly as possible. Any structure that is doing big day/night temp swings is not insulated. When you are passively insulated the active components are less and less important, the energy inputs tiny.
Think cave. A well insulated structure behaves much like a cave.

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Substrate on August 15, 2006 - 2:02am

The best passive solar houses that I've seen use planter beds in the greenhouse for thermal mass (as well as a thick concrete slab). Generally makes the house smell spring fresh year round...a bit of an improvement over a cave, I'd say.

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Nagorak on August 15, 2006 - 3:09am

I think there's a bit more to a good design than just insulation. I agree that when the house is sealed up, it shouldn't fluctuate that much in temperature. But the reality is, when it's over 100 degrees outside, your inside temperature is going to go up. There recently was a heatwave in my area and the record indoor temperature was 88 degrees. That's pretty good, I think, when you're talking about temperatures well over 100 outside, but it's still pretty warm.

Once the sun goes down, insulation works backwards and keeps your house a roasting oven, even after temperatures have fallen off outside. Which is why I would say an equally important aspect is probably adequate ventillation. You need a way to get all of that heat out of the house once it's heated up, which means you need a few windows. Or at least an interior design that lets you channel the heat out one side, while pushing cool air in from the other.

In a colder climate the opposite might be a problem, although if one relies on artificial heating, which is obviously a necessity in cool climates, then maybe ventillation is not as important. In a hot climate, though, unless you are going to rely completely on the AC, night cooling is pretty important in my opinion.

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AlanfromBigEasy on August 15, 2006 - 8:28am

In colder, and perhaps warmer climates, I wonder about a "super-insulated room". A bedroom with attached bath, perhaps with a small stove (exterior combustion air). R = 100+, no exterior doors. A retreat in the coldest weather.

In a warmer climate, perhaps a very small window type a/c driven by PV panel (mine uses 600 watts). Rest of house could have tall ceilings, cross ventilation and ceiling fans.

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clifman on August 14, 2006 - 3:58pm

Go here to see how we retrofitted our home in NC to go from 56 kWh per day to 9 kWh per day. Significantly behavioral, but also systems/structural. Very doable for what many can afford. And - as we are attempting to influence with our example - doable for many more if utilities were properly incentivized. Note that the paybacks on my spreadsheet do not include tax rebates for solar space and water heating.

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Substrate on August 15, 2006 - 12:03am

1100 kWh/month is the average? yeow. We're less than half that here (asheville) and don't even try that hard. Of course we don't have the (now) normal trappings like AC and a dryer, but we do have electric hot water. I'll bet phantom loads are railing us though. The last time I was at a big box (home despot) I asked the guy if they had Kill-a-Watt meters and he looked at me like I had three heads. I've been looking in the local "stuff" paper here the iwanna (http://www.iwanna.com/) for solar systems, and they do show up ocassionally, but they also disspear fast. There was one just recently that had 5 panels for $1000 but it was gone before I had a chance to blink. Not entirely sure how well a system would work here anyway, though...kind of in-between ridges with a lot of trees and a poorly oriented house.

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jokuhl on August 14, 2006 - 9:05pm

I think about the massive amount of existing homes, and of the difficulties that working-class folks will have in breaking out of the pure furnace dependence. I am trying out some inexpensive designs for Solar Hot-air and Water to help take the edge off the Oil Bills, which will start either freezing, burning or starving people up here this winter if it's really a cold one.

In Coastal Maine, we're lucky to have a lot of Sun, so that PV electric and even solar heat should be well worthwhile in wintermonths, if done right. Heard about a greenhouser up here who did so well in Fall, Winter and Spring, that he let the gardens rest up in the summer, and took himself a vacation!

My family built a Passive Solar Saltbox house up in the White Mts in 1980, including a Finnish Fireplace (2hr burn kept the mass hot for 1-2days), and a 'cool tube', sort of a poor man's geothermal which allowed an earth temp-normaled air supply from underground to feed the house, all 12 months. Warm, 45 air in the winter, cool 45 air in the summer, always fresh with fair/moderate humidity.

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rwmcalister on August 14, 2006 - 10:19pm

Jokuhl--

How well did the house in the White Mountains work? I just moved to VT and am building a passive-solar timberframe saltbox and will have a masonry heater as the primary heat with a closed loop geothermal heat pump as a back-up so would be interested in hearing your perspective.

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jokuhl on August 16, 2006 - 7:01pm

The house was pretty successful, tho' we were out of it in too-few years, due to us kids growing up, and other paths moving us all away. Miss the house and the land terribly.

Liked the 'Cool Tube' a lot, as very simple, minimal downsides, as far as I know. (Look it up now, there's very little mention of it.. some reports of humidity build-up and mold in Humid, summer months.. ours was made from bottom-perfed 4" drain pipe, and sloped, so I don't think it was an issue.. but truly one to take care around, as this serves as the fresh-air supply. Another benefit as such, was that this would tend to keep the house from developing 'negative pressure', so any cracks/gaps would be less drawn to have icy or steamy indrafts. System does depend on generally very tight building, tho', so updrafts at the house peak pulled in the air through the cooltube.

email me and I'll tell you about other parts of the design, etc.. it'll be hard to backtrack here, if an afterthought hits me.
jetpig@earthlink.net

Bob

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GreyZone on August 14, 2006 - 12:05pm

This is part of the technology problem - innovation may solve the issue and it may not. We just don't know. Further, as our technology advances, it becomes increasingly complex and costly to do further research in an existing field. (This is part of the complexity problem Tainter discusses in his book on the collapse of societies.)

So betting on innovation is betting on a complete unknown. We might have a breakthrough but fusion researchers have been saying they've expected fusion to become viable for 50 years now. More recently some fusion researchers are admitting they are not sure if we will ever tame fusion, though I personally advocate continued research. We may learn to control fusion and we will surely learn something else - we're just never sure what else we will learn.

However, beyond technology there is another issue, larger than technology. That is resource depletion against a geometrically growing population base. This is a solvable problem if the world wants to solve it, yet so far there is no sign that the world cares to solve it, other than just slowing it down a little bit. If we don't get a handle on the population problem, then no probable technology can save us.

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IFeelFree on August 14, 2006 - 12:47pm

I'm very skeptical about fusion energy. The reward would be great but the technological problems are extreme. The limited progress that has been made over the past 50 years suggest that fusion power may never become practical. At what point do we give up and divert the vast sums that are being spent on fusion research into potentially more fruitful areas such as alternative energy research, battery research, public transportation, etc.? I agree completely with you statement about the population problem. Population growth is at the root of peak oil and natural resource depletion.

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Magnus Redin on August 14, 2006 - 2:23pm

At what point do we give up and divert the vast sums that are being spent on fusion research into potentially more fruitful areas such as alternative energy research, battery research, public transportation, etc.?

Hopefully never as long as the efforts continue to give new knowledge about plasma physics, new materials, etc. We should on a global level be able to afford a large number of such research projects. Its like astronomy, what use is a highly advanced global culture if we dont use it to add to our knowledge of the world?

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IFeelFree on August 14, 2006 - 4:10pm

I'm a physicist (have even worked in the nuclear field), so I'm sympathetic. We have learned a great deal about matter at extreme temperatures, developed lasers, magnetic confinement, etc., and I do favor high energy physics research as long as humans have the resources to do it. However, it's a question of emphasis. Should we continue to fund fusion energy research at current levels, increase funding, or divert some of the funding to other promising alternative energy fields? At this point, I'm in favor of either freezing funding levels for fusion research or diverting some of the money to solar/wind/battery/etc. research. If peak oil is real and imminent, is there really time to develop a nuclear fusion reactor, given that the problems have not been solved? Yes, we can learn from the research, but we can also learn a lot from research in other areas.

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GreyZone on August 14, 2006 - 5:01pm

Assuming we can keep a civilization, that's a legitimate question and should be reviewed periodically like any other decision. But just cutting it off entirely would be foolish because we just might make that breakthrough one day, and even if not, serendipity will likely yield other unexpected benefits.

I don't think any of us commenting here really disagree that the research should continue. The only question is at what level and honestly, we can't answer that because we don't know how wealthy or poor civilization will be if the oil situation becomes very problematic.

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PaulS on August 14, 2006 - 9:41pm

Vast sums? Hahahahahaha! LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!

A quick google tells us that the USA is spending on the order of $290 million a year on "fusion sciences". Big deal. That's less than a mile about of Los Angeles Red Line extension. "Mass transit" is so unaffordable we'll never have much of it. And there may be no need to care - it's now probably only a matter of time before some safety fascist bans "liquids" like toothpaste, and who knows what else, from transit systems. So you can say goodbye to the concept of riding transit home from the grocery store - or any other store except maybe the clothing store.

Now, as to that other "more fruitful" stuff, we can easily fund research into all of it, using only minor petty cash. (What we can't afford are huge premature implementation boondoggles such as that for corn ethanol. Those run into the tens of billions. But they have nothing to do with research, and everything to do with a weird combination of rampant corruption and mindless pastoral nostalgia.) The fusion spending is too utterly trivial to compete with anything at all. Indeed, the risible spending level may well have something to do with the lack of success, since fusion is not an easy problem.

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IFeelFree on August 15, 2006 - 4:00pm

Vast sums? Here's a quote from Wikipedia:

While fusion power is still in early stages of development, vast sums have been and continue to be invested in research. In the EU almost € 10 billion was spent on fusion research up to the end of the 90s, and the new ITER reactor alone is budgeted at €10 billion. It is estimated that up to the point of possible implementation of electricity generation by nuclear fusion, R&D will need further promotion totalling around € 60-80 billion over a period of 50 years or so (of which € 20-30 billion within the EU). In the current EU research programme (FP6), nuclear fusion research receives € 750 million (excluding ITER funding), compared with € 810 million for all non-nuclear energy research combined, putting research into fusion power well ahead of that of any single rivaling technology.

Unfortunately, despite optimism dating back to the 1950's about the wide-scale harnessing of fusion power, there are still significant barriers standing between current scientific understanding and technological capabilities and the practical realization of fusion as an energy source. Research, while making steady progress, has also continually thrown up new difficulties. Therefore it remains unclear that an economically viable fusion plant is even possible.

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fallout on August 16, 2006 - 8:34am

I recall a quote from my collage chemistry professor (and former Los Alamos nuclear labs researcher):
"Fusion is the power source of the future....and always will be."

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Leanan on August 16, 2006 - 10:04am

I've heard the same thing said of oil shale.

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crazypat on August 14, 2006 - 1:30pm

GreyZone wrote:
[T]here is another issue, larger than technology. That is resource depletion against a geometrically growing population base. This is a solvable problem if the world wants to solve it, yet so far there is no sign that the world cares to solve it.

I agree. This is the core problem, the one that absolutely must be addressed. Is it solvable? I'm not convinced. The only "humane" ways of stopping population growth is limiting family size to 2 children or less. Thus we must have birth control. Women must be empowered to control their own bodies. What are the signs of progress on this front? In developed nations, very good. Everywhere else, men continue to dominate women and have large families. The proven correlation is that family sizes decrease with women's education and access to clean water and sanitation. My position is that solving the problem of population growth is intimately bound up with solving the poverty problems in the "third world".

Is it possible to solve the poverty problems of the 3rd world? That is up for debate. One thing is for certain, solving those problems will require energy sources.

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tandersonbrown on August 14, 2006 - 2:25pm

Is population strictly a 3rd world issue? Or is population also an issue in developed western countries. Let's think of the US for example. I think population is a serious issue in certain locales, like Los Angeles. Without cheap energy, the carrying capacity of many US cities starts to look like a problem. How about the Midwest or Northwest, areas that are arguably well endowed with water, forests, arable land, etc? Without cheap energy, how will population numbers in these regions "settle out"? I'm not sure, especially when refugees from LA start coming north.

What do you think?

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Seadragon on August 14, 2006 - 3:24pm

I think the idea is that we in the US have the worst population problem on earth because each one of us uses so much energy...I believe Dr. Bartlett mentions that it's hypocritical for us to lecture other countries on their problems when we haven't solved ours. My view is that we should be both providing an example and exponentially increasing our contributions to solving the Third World's population problems, but alas, we are not.

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liferaft on August 14, 2006 - 11:37pm

"No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it."

Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955) Physicist & Nobel Laureate

Much of the "innovation" I see touted as replacing fossil fuel energy is aimed at maintaining the status quo. To solve our energy problems we must achieve a new level of consciousness regarding our creation and usage of energy. Simply replacing fuel sources without replacing consciousness is IMO a waste of both time and energy.

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227 comments on DrumBeat: August 14, 2006

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“This order [i.e. capitalism] is now bound to the technical and economic conditions of machine production which today determine the lives of all the individuals who are born into this mechanism, not only those directly concerned with the economic acquisition, with irresistible force. Perhaps it will so determine them until the last ton of fossilized coal is burnt.”

—Max Weber, 1905