DrumBeat: January 30, 2007
Posted by Leanan on January 30, 2007 - 9:43am
GE sees global oil, gas reserves lasting at least 100 years
Global hydrocarbon reserves will last at least 100 years, although they will become increasingly more difficult to access, GE Oil & Gas Chief Executive Claudi Santiago said Monday."Oil and gas reserves are out there," Santiago said at the GE Oil & Gas annual meeting, which runs until Tuesday. "The issue is that it is increasingly difficult" to extract.
Russia spent last year strenuously denying reports that it was participating in the creation of a cartel of gas suppliers to the EU. Now, however, the idea has received an unexpected boost from Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khameni, who called on Russia to create a "gas OPEC" at a recent meeting with Russian Security Council secretary Igor Ivanov. Although a cartel would be unprofitable for Gazprom, an energy union cum geopolitical alliance of Russia, Iran, and Algeria does appear to be in the works.
‘Experts’ say Iran’s nuclear-energy plans in chaos
A number of Western diplomats and technical experts close to the Iran’s nuclear-energy program have said it is archaic, prone to breakdown and lacks the materials for industrial-scale production. They said Iran's efforts to produce highly enriched uranium, the material used to make nuclear bombs, are in chaos and the country is still years from mastering the required technology.
Price of oil on the slippery slope
ONLY five months ago crude oil prices nudged $US80 a barrel amid predictions by informed observers - not apocalyptic ravers - that the commodity would reach the $US100 level.Since then, oil has tumbled 30 per cent and the contango on futures pricing has disappeared, which means investors aren't punting on a quick recovery.
How will we ever get a critical mass of awareness and willingness to change and prepare for a post-peak, post-meltdown, relocalized world when we are all indoctrinated from cradle to grave into supporting and being part of industrial growth culture?
The poor dupes were swimming in the oil they hated and didn't even know it.
Poor Martha Stewart will be seen as the goddess who failed. Well, she already has, really, having gone to prison and afterward retreated into her omnimedia fortress of corporate refuge (basically joining the enemy). As the middle class chokes and gets crushed under the weight of its unpayable debts and falling standards of living, Martha may be lucky to avoid getting eaten, along with a long list of other celebrity porkchops that an angry and grievance-filled public will turn on.
Jeremy Leggett: Take to the fields
The tipping point of global oil production will be accompanied by a dire energy shock, and we will have to redefine the concept of farming.
Nuclear agency: air defenses impractical
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission concluded Monday that it is impractical for nuclear power plant operators to try to stop terrorists from crashing an airliner into a reactor.
The Nuclear Revival - What's Old Is New Again
The State of the Union Address was a focus of curiosity last week as the President and his party traded opinions and barbs with his ascendant foes, the Democrats. But one thing that they could all agree on was the need to foster a new energy policy-one that is both clean and less dependent on our enemies.
Miners Celebrate Resolutions Encouraging Uranium Projects in Two Key New Mexico Counties
Commissioners in two key uranium-abundant New Mexico counties passed resolutions supporting and encouraging uranium mining in that state. Previously, many wondered if uranium would ever be mined in New Mexico again.
Debunking the Myths
About Nuclear Energy
As the U.S. Congress debates energy policy, EIR provides this summary review of the answers to frequently raised objections to the only feasible solution to the U.S. and worldwide power shortage, nuclear energy.
Project Green: This Ecofriendly House
Michele Gries-Haber, 41, a marketing executive in Austin, Texas, composts, recycles and drives a hybrid car. So when she got married last year and decided to enlarge her house—a 1926 Craftsman-style bungalow—it was a no-brainer that she and her husband, Michael Klug, would adopt an ecofriendly approach. There was just one problem. "We had no idea what that really meant," she says. "We thought we'd put up some solar panels."
Hopes are high for the United States to find ways to become less dependent on gasoline, and later this week U.S. legislators will be debating the prospect of biofuels supplementing or even replacing petroleum. That should be music to the ears of those in the alternative energy industries, but there is growing concern that too much is being expected of still relatively new resources too quickly.
Taiwan: Used cooking oil to be turned into biodiesel
The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) announced that starting from July each household will be required to recycle their waste cooking oil that will go into the production of biodiesel.
Bush '17 Biofuel Goals Technically Feasible-USDA Official
U.S. President George W. Bush's alternative fuel goals for the next 10 years are "technically feasible", according to U.S. Department of Agriculture's undersecretary for rural development, Thomas Dorr."I am confident that these goals can be met," Dorr said Monday in a speech at the Clean Fuel Finance Forum in London.
Idea fosters cost-efficient ethanol production
An engineer looks at refining a byproduct into methane, and using that gas to power the plant.
Energy tops Indo-Russian priority list
The array of agreements signed last week during Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to India indicates that while India might have warmed significantly to the United States over the past decade and dramatically since his last visit to the subcontinent, the India-Russia relationship hasn't cooled either.
Ghana, Nigeria agree energy supply deal
Nigeria has agreed to supply 80 megawatts of electricity to Ghana as part of a deal to help the country to address its current energy crisis.
China exerting more efforts to save energy and reduce emissions in 2007
China will make more efforts this year to save energy and reduce emission in every sector of the national economy, Zhu Hongren, an official with the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), said Monday.
Africa: Oil, Global Influence Driving Hu Jintao's Trip
China's energy-hungry economy and global influence are driving President Hu Jintao's 12-day tour of Africa which kicks off this week.It is Hu's second trip to Africa in less than a year.
UN chief seeks climate change summit
Plans for an emergency summit of world leaders to break the international impasse on cutting greenhouse gases are being discussed by Ban Ki-moon, United Nations secretary-general.
Russian Police Search Russneft Offices
The Russian Interior Ministry's Investigative Committee said in a statement that the searches had been conducted after a criminal investigation was opened against the country's seventh-biggest oil company for failure to pay taxes "on an especially huge scale."
Biodiesel: Asia's alternative fuel
ASIA'S big biodiesel producers are starting to secure their green investments by hedging against falling oil prices and rising feedstock costs, but the move may carry even bigger risks for infant players.
Saudi Arabia, which already has aggressively shaved its oil output in a battle to shore up prices, will reduce production by another 158,000 barrels per day beginning Thursday and more cuts are on the way, according to a media report.
Senators to Propose Gas Tax for Road Projects
A bipartisan group of senior state senators intends to offer legislation this week that would rely on a sales tax on gasoline to finance billions of dollars for road construction and maintenance, according to a draft of the plan, which will be presented as an alternative to a precarious compromise proposal for transportation funding.
Shell defies US pressure and signs £5bn Iranian gas deal
Shell has signed an important deal to help Iran develop a major gas field, ignoring growing pressure from George Bush to isolate the country for being part of what he alleges is an "axis of evil".
Fuel stocks run out in Indian state as tanker strike enters sixth day
A two-week window for compromise came as petrol pumps in the state capital Kolkata were almost dry and public transport was severely cut back, with only a quarter of public buses operating in the city of 12 million people.
Falling gasoline prices skid to a stop
The drop in U.S. retail gasoline prices skidded to a stop over the last week, the government said on Monday. President George W. Bush’s plans to expand the country’s emergency petroleum reserve drove crude oil costs higher.
How Much Did the Green Revolution Matter? or Can We Feed the World Without Industrial Agriculture?
While there have long been critiques of the Green Revolution, many, many people assume that without the work of Norman Borlaug and the other scientists who brought us new hybrids and who convinced much of the world to convert to nitrogen fertilizers and pesticides based on fossil fuels, we cannot feed the world. I am suspicious of this claim, and have been musing on it for some time. It is certainly true that grain yields rose dramatically during the Green Revolution, but how much does and did that actually matter?
Oil And Gas Companies Ready Drilling Projects For Newly Melted Arctic
The Arctic region contains a quarter of the world’s remaining oil reserves, experts estimate. It also contains massive natural gas fields in the Barents Sea, including Russia’s huge Shtokman field. “By 2040 or 2050, the Arctic Ocean will be navigable and that will mean significant developments very soon,” said ArcticNet research group head Martin Fortier.
Global Warming: The vicious circle: Key findings of the IPCC's fourth assessment report
Congress begins tackling climate issues
Two private advocacy groups say they have found evidence of political pressure on government climate scientists at seven federal agencies in efforts to downplay the threat of global warming. Their report was expected to be presented to a House committee Tuesday as the Democratic-controlled Congress steps up its examination of the Bush administration's climate policy.
“It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt
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Concerning Saudi Depletion/Decline Rates
I have been thinking about Saudi Arabia and their depletion and/or decline rate. In fact I have thought of little else for some time now. It occurred to me that there are two terms at use here. There is the term “depletion”, and then there is the term “decline”. These two terms are used almost interchangeably but in fact, they have two entirely different meanings. And I have been as guilty as anyone else in confusing these two terms and often using the term “depletion” when in fact I should have been using the term “decline”, or vise versa.
Depletion starts as soon as the first barrel from a reservoir is pumped and continues until the last well is capped. Depletion rate is always the annual extraction rate divided by the total remaining reserves. And since the exact remaining reserves are never known exactly, the depletion rate is always just a guess.
Decline rate is an entirely different thing and can be measured exactly, no guesswork involved. Decline rate is simply how much a country, company, field or well produced this year verses last year.
But I have not been the only one guilty of incorrectly using these two terms interchangeably. The Center for Strategic and International Studies makes the same error. On page 16 of this document:
http://www.csis.org/media/csis/events/061109_omsg_presentation1.pdf
CSIS makes the same error. That slide is titled Saudi Oil Field Depletion Rates They start off using the term depletion correctly. They tell us their estimation the Kingdom’s average state of depletion then they name three fields and give us their estimation of their state of depletion.
Then they switch gears and start using the term decline, and here they use that term correctly also. They tell us that the average decline rate of Saudi fields is 8%. However with an extensive drilling program the decline is mitigated to a number close to 2%. Okay so far so good. Then in the last sentence they completely screw everything up. I quote:
These depletion rates are well below industry averages, due to enhanced recovery technologies and successful “maintain potential” drilling operations.
Wrong! The figures 8% and 2% are not depletion rates, they are decline rates. In fact, here the two rates, depletion and decline, are going in opposite directions. That is, by decreasing the decline rate, they are increasing the depletion rate. If a field has a natural decline of 8% then it will be depleted by 50% in just over 8 years. If the natural rate is only 2%, it would take 34 years for 50% depletion to be reached.
If the natural decline rate is 8%, but you drill a lot more wells and suck the oil out a lot faster in order to decrease the decline rate to 2%, you will not increase the amount oil in the ground, you will only dramatically increase the depletion rate and set the field up for a catastrophic collapse, most likely within a decade of the initiation of such an extensive drilling program.
But what causes a field to decline by 8%? If the pressure in the field is kept constant, then the volume of liquids produced by each well will also remain constant. Saudi injects, as of a few years ago, about 7 million barrels of water per day into Ghawar. And presumably they remove about 7 million barrels per day of oil and water. The oil from the field will decline as the oil to water ratio declines.
Water is always injected on the periphery of a reservoir, and deeper than the oil well depth. Ideally water encroaches on the wells from two different directions, in from the periphery and up from the bottom. I say ideally because this is the best of all possible scenarios. Sometimes fractures cause the water to bypass the oil and go directly to the well. The wells near the periphery will always have a higher water to oil ratio than those nearer the center. If you can pull more oil from nearer the center of a reservoir you can actually decrease the water to oil ratio….for awhile. If you draw a graph of a field declining at 2% and another declining at 8%, they both will meet at zero. This means at some point, the field declining at only 2% must turn sharply downward in order to catch up. That is, of course, unless God decides to put more oil in the reservoir.
In any reservoir, there will always be some wells that produce better than others, that is more oil and less water. If you drill more wells in these “sweet spots” and pull more oil from these spots you can slow the decline in a field. But make no mistake, by decreasing the decline rate you are only increasing the depletion rate. Sooner or later far more wells on the periphery will water out and water will begin to encroach from the bottom. At that point, the 2% turns into 20% or better and the field goes into catastrophic decline.
This is what happened to Yibal. They began horizontal drilling in Yibal in 1990 and the production rate increased. In 1997 they produced 250,000 barrels per day. By 2001 that figure had dropped to 90,000 bp/d and in three more years it had dropped to half that, about 45,000 bp/d. At Yibal, the decline rate was completely stopped for awhile and they even increased production slightly before….before…..catastrophic collapse, dropping by more than 80% in seven years.
How close are Saudi’s fields to collapse? How long has the average 8% natural decline been held to an average of 2%? And remember a field usually doesn’t start to decline until it is past the 50% URR. And an 8% decline usually doesn’t come until well past the peak. But it really depends on how long ago Saudi started this extensive drilling program to hold the decline of their giant fields from a 5% to 12%, (average of 8%), decline rate to a 2% decline rate. We really do not know but it was likely in the mid to late 90s.
In 1976, Saudi’s four largest fields, Ghawar, Safaniya, Abqaiq and Berri produced 8,386,000 barrels per day. In 1994 that figure was 7,010,000 a drop of 16.4%. The output from Zuluf, Marjan and Au Sa’fah kept production of Saudi’s giants above 8 million barrels per day however.
…………..1976…..1994…% decline
Ghawar….5,353….5,000….6.59%
Safaniya…1,436……960…33.15%
Abqaiq…….831……650…21.78%
Berri……….766……400…47.78%
Total……..8,386….7,010…16.41%
As you can see, Ghawar declined the least of all.
There were no OPEC cuts in effect in 1994. At this point Middle East nations were producing flat out. Kuwait had completely recovered from the war but Iraq was producing only about half a million barrels per day, about one fifth its pre war production.
Simmons gleaned these figures from the SPE papers, (Society of Petroleum Engineers). Since 1996 Abqaiq has totally collapsed. Saudi is admitting that Abqaiq is 74% depleted however this figure is likely very conservative.
I am convinced that Saudi Arabia is on the very cusp of collapse. This morning on CNBC they announced that Saudi’s cuts will be over one million barrels per day. That is about twice their required share of OPEC promised cuts. Could it be that the collapse has already begun?
Ron Patterson
All very good points Ron, but it doesn't look like the market believes you. The article about Saudi Arabian production cuts lists a pretty large cutback in production, yet the price of oil hasn't budged; in fact, it has been dropping for some months now.
Keith, of course the market doesn't believe me. The market believes that Saudi Arabia has over 260 billion barrels of reserves. The market believes that the Middle East has over 700 billion barrels of reserves. But when people begin to realize that Saudi reserves are dramatically overestimated, they will realize the same is true for the rest of the Middle East. This will be the bomb that, when it explodes, will shake the world. Nothing will ever be the same again when this fact becomes common knowledge.
Ron Patterson
I'm curious whether "the market" knew in advance of the crashing of other major oil fields, like Cantarell, etc. - if not then the market doesn't know dick. I find it hilarious that humans are dumb enough to believe in the goodness of herd psychology (Popular Delusions and the Madness Of Crowds). The market is dumber than 3 ugly blondes blowing 4 blondes, and no amount of wishing upon a star will replace the one time gift of oil. And that's a good thing, because capitalism (resource rape and pillage) is destroying the fricken planet! Better to take the tough medicine now, then learn to live like we belong in an ecosystem instead of rampaging over it with four-wheel monster trucks. The sooner the endless growth virus dies, the better for the future (or should I say, the less dreadful the future will be).
Spot market is not a total market.
There is no point to buy a cheap oil if there is no storage for it.
Wake me up when/if KSA would be unable to ramp up the production in response to the increasing demand (significant price increase).
Were you awake thru aug, while price surged to 78 and sa steadily cut production, and stubbornly continued to cut up to nov, when opec provided a fig leaf for an apparently reluctant sa to enact more cuts?
You could have bought dec o06 futures for $20 on 2002. Shows how much the market anticipates the future. The only change has been that long dated futures are now above the spot price.
That happened first in the Summer of 2004.
Ron, I've just come from the cold and turned the computer on for the first time today. Oil is up three bucks. Maybe a few billionaires picked up your article sometime today.
Anyway, please accept my compliments for a well-written and informative posting. You've come a long way from your early days on energyresources, baby! Keep it up.
ToilForOil, thanks for the kind words. But I really don't think my early postings on Energyresources were all that bad.
Were they???? ;-)
Ron Patterson
West Texas Crude is $56.50 (up 13% from $50) as of the evening of 30 January.
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2220#comment-153441
Please read the above recap. This is the fifth time we've addressed this article since November. The last time was Saturday. Ron clearly does not understand the basic terms and therefore cannot interpret the presentations and press coverage. Today is using the term "rate" in a likewise mistaken manner. Please discount his interpretation completely. He knows nothing on this matter and his verbal diarrhea only compounds the confusion...
Remember Freddy. I'm the one who repeats things over and over!
But you know, historically speaking, he does seem to understand the part about 'Saudi Arabia' s reduction is nearly double the total cuts it agreed to make under two output accords hammered out at OPEC at meetings in October and December, The Journal said.'
Even more interestingly, while the Saudis keep talking about how they can increase production at any time (which may be true, of course), 'The latest cut means Saudi Arabia will have reduced production by about 1 million barrels per day in the past six months, The Journal said, citing an unnamed senior Saudi oil official.' which is interesting in the light of historically high prices last August. And yes, we can debate nominal price all you wish, but they were cutting production when prices were significantly higher, and they are cutting production now - as a matter of fact, the real world production cuts seem somehow unrelated to spot market prices, actually. Certainly, there could be a number of reasons for the Saudis to cut production - for example, to help prop up fellow OPEC member Iran's ailing economy. (And since we don't talk about history in terms of peak oil, we will just let that little Sunni/Shia split go without discussion.)
The major difference between today and last November is contained in the two quotes from the cited article - but as you have absolutely no desire to discuss even history in the making when discussing peak oil, feel free to save your time by not responding to me, but I think you will have a bit of a challenge contradicting that 'unnamed senior Saudi oil official.'
Good luck. We will all wait for your refutation of Saudi production figures, as it is clear that the Saudis have no knowledge or understanding of oil production.
And do note, I have not given a reason for Saudi Arabia's currently reduced production numbers (obviously, helping Iran was a joke) - I am merely noting that it is essentially beyond dispute. Also beyond dispute is that oil production peaks, and declines - and the way to recognize that decline is because less is produced. And yes, a swing producer follows different patterns, and yes, production can increase and decrease for reasons which have nothing to do with geological reality. However, no one has yet found a way to actually stop oil production from going into a geologically determined decline.
But as you do not seem to feel bound by any historical limits in discussing peak oil, please enjoy discussing how any oil producer, whether Romania or the U.S. or Norway can just increase production, since past performance is no guarantee of future performance. Should be entertaining.
Pat, Ron is well aware that the author was a KSA Security official; because we have discussed it before at TOD. We can forgive a Security Official for flubbing and confusing decline with depletion.
But i don't grant that immunity from shame to someone who daily "tries" to make authoratative statments. Since 2003 i have been correcting his bungling on a cornucopia of topics. When i last corrected him last month, i mentioned that there were about 4 dozen of his gems floating around in cyberland.
He is the self-appointed ambassador of die-off. He is the idiot that told us last week that the global population would be down to 2-billion "by perhaps 2017". He is the idiot that in 2003 declared that Peak Oil would be upon us by 2004. And 2005. And 2006. He is the idiot that said we would have the mother of all global economic Deprssions by Spring 2004.
And he never guesses. He is sure. And we can count on it.
And u want to believe this idiot knows that KSA has Peaked? The kid who filled Coca~Cola machines over there for five years? Fine. To each his own.
We're still trying to figure out whether JeffreyWT drove the honey wagon or the lunch truck. I'll get back to u on that one.
Seriously, one must understand that Demand Call varies as much as 3-mbd during a typical year. While OPEC has its published quota, it does allow some latitude to adjust for these Call guidelines from IEA and OPEC. The Call for Q1 is 86-mbd. The Demand Call for 2007Q4 is 87-mbd but will be as low as 84-mbd in the interim. There will be opportunity to within 12 months to see how the non-opec producers and KSA react. The Feb 1st quota restriction straddles one of those transitions.
As a final note, please remember that Aramco is not the only producer in KSA. When KSA or Saudi Aramco make statements, there can be as much as a 0.5mbd variance due to legacy producers and the neutral zone. When speaking of their own production or MSC, Aramco is often 0.5-mbd shy of the KSA figures.
And we continue in Watchful Waiting mode.
The personal insults are one of the problems in recent discussions - one which I am trying not to engage in, as far as possible.
The reduction quote does not seem to come from a security figure (though still possible - although you may be confusing different people, as several different Saudi sources have been making public pronouncements in this area in the last few months), but according to the article, an 'unnamed senior Saudi oil official.'
We all have our hobby horses, and to the extent you provide information to back your arguments, this expands the discussion.
As for Watchful Waiting mode, that is a well chosen phrase - and I try to be mindful of the difference between data, projections, and explanations. Generally, the current data (which has definite imprecisions) shows flat world oil production over a significant time, the projections from the last decade often seem silly when reviewed against current data, and as for the explanation why crude production is essentially flat, we will see. Though it is not a single source - the interaction between geology, above ground influences, from weather to politics, and general economic conditions all play a role.
I am very agnostic on many of the arguments here - what I find of paramount importance is what is going on now, though obviously, a dip in production for a week, a month, or a year is not clear proof of the end of the oil age - which won't happen for decades anyways. Nonetheless, the current fairly steep in percent terms decline in production from two major sources of exported oil is not something to be easily dismissed.
Thank you very much Ron for the post. I have often wondered how much well injection skews HL plotting and if it's effects could be measured and accounted for.
Decline/Crash
(Crude oil = crude + condensate)
I have some proposed definitions:
A crash results in at least a 50% drop in production in 10 years, i.e., an annual decline rate of at least 7% per year.
A decline results in less than a 50% drop in production in 10 years, i.e., an annual decline rate of less than 7%.
It looks like the best case for Saudi crude production in February is 8.5 mbpd. Some reports put it possibly below 8.0 in December. In any case, Saudi Arabia is showing--at least--an 8.7% annual decline rate (from 9/05 to 2/07). So at this rate, their production will drop by 50% in about 8 years.
David Shields predicts a 15% annual decline rate for Mexico (12/05 to 12/08), which suggests that production would drop by 50% in 5 years.
Note that in both cases, net oil exports will crash much faster than the overall production crash.
The UK, with a decline rate of 9.3% (year to year average), is crashing, and at this rate their production will drop by 50% in 8 years.
The overall North Sea would be classified as a decline, with a 5% annual decline rate, which would result in a 50% drop in 14 years.
A key point is the gross decline rate, which is the underlying decline rate of existing wellbores, versus the net decline rate, which is the net decline in production, after new wellbores, workovers, etc. (Simmons' definition)
Note that it took a ferocious drilling program to keep the Lower 48 net decline rate at 2% and to keep the North Sea net decline rate at 5%. It may be that the world is not drilling nearly fast enough to keep the net decline down to the Lower 48 range.
BTW, two very interesting comments in the above article: Saudi Arabia has cut twice what they agreed to cut and further cuts are expected. Do you get a sense that some portions of the MSM are beginning to get the tiniest inkling that perhaps the sheiks have no robes? It's still amazing that CNBC has not commented, as far as I know, on the Cantarell story--versus their breathless non-stop comments on the Jack #2 discovery.
Westexas,
Regarding Cantarell/Jack/CNBC you shouldn't be amazed. NBC is part of a huge conglomerate of corporations, and their success is dependant on the success of the economy. Doom and gloom reporting (however truthful) might scare the public into spending a little less and saving a little more. That's the last thing advertisers want.
Garth
A lot of people like to fall into the trap of seeing ignorance about something as deliberate deception. Maybe we just like to believe that other people are smarter than we are. In my personal experience that is not the case. They are usually a lot less smart or a lot more ignorant (which is not the same thing, by the way).
The simple truth is: NBC is making a whole lot more money by "reporting" about BS (Britney Spears) than about important stuff. They couldn't care less about getting to the bottom of the well because not one of their viewers is interested. They rather want to see fashion shots of silly girls with big hair. Or the police tape around the house where a murder-suicide took place. Makes them feel alive, I guess.
Infinite,
Actually, both you and Garth are correct. Having worked in the MSM, particularly for CBS, I can tell you that my editors have shot down stories I've worked up that, according to my editors, were "too negative" and could "adversely affect advertising revenue."
They will then go on to suggest I cover a popular story that your average person might find "interesting, unusual, or awesome. Go for the wow factor."
The media is controlled by big business and they are not stupid. They have hired the very best media strategists to work out the best, i.e. most profitable, method to satisfy their viewer's interests and their corporate interests.
Believe me, if the MSM discovered they could make money from tossing babies onto the tines of pitchforks, and still keep their viewers, they would do so in a heartbeat. The MSM is the enemy. Not because they desire to be the enemy, but because they, like all corporations, are programmed to maximize profits no matter the cost to the rest of the planet. They will create warm and fuzzy images and sounds that will make all sorts of life destroying practices seem the "right" thing to do. Think of the tropes they use every day to sell all manner of worthless crap: patriotism, sex, power, family values, and wealth. The power of propaganda lies in its ability to create powerful images that play upon our core sensibilities. It is very hard to resist these images, and most people find it very hard to resist secondary peer pressure from those who have bought into the MSM soma trance.
Once the crowd starts to turn, the media will race to get out in front and seem to be the leader. What it will do then is not lead the mob towards their original objective but will slowly and inexorably coopt and turn the mob towards a solution that is not in the planet's best interest but will be recast in the image of the crowd's original desire. In other words, instead of renewable energy or powerdown, you will see old technology dressed like an old, fat transvestite in new, shiny green clothes. We can see that with the rather Orwellian use of the term, "Clean Coal."
"adversely affect advertising revenue."
That is the whole point. The intellectial value of a story has nothing to do with its marketing value. That does not mean the people who market news are stupid - they just have a value system based on $$$ rather than much else.
And one also has to acknowledge that the viewers are reinforcing the system. So, in a sense, one could even say it is as much "the MSMs fault" as its the giraffe's fault that its neck is so long. It did not chose to be like that. Nature, by selecting for long neck animals, did. Viewers are selecting the kind of news they want, evolution in the market place does the rest. I hope I am not offending any religious readers by saying that? It might be more pleasant for them to belive that God made Fox News on the final day!
So the MSM is really just following what the majority wants. I know that there is a screaming minority right there who says "Sacrilege! How can you say people are so stupid?", to which I would say: "Go out on the street and ask people what was on the news last night. Aks them what they remember."
Every time bush say “clean coal” I just cringe. Only someone who doesn't understand science and technology would use that term. “Cleaner Coal” I could tolerate, but “Clean Coal” is Orwellian double speak. Someone needs to explain to him about conservation of energy and parasitic loss.
Nice analysis, Cherenkov. If you're talking about the broadcasting networks and big-circulation media, I agree completely.
I think it's important, though, to see that there are many rooms in the mansion that we call "the media."
You get the best info in specialist publications, like science or industry journals. Some business reporting is excellent. TOD would fall into the category, if it were commercial.
Next best is quality publications for the elite, like the NY Times, Wall Street Journal (the news side, not the editorials), LA Times, etc. I've noticed that reporting on energy has been getting much better in the last couple of years.
Local newspapers and media can be surprisingly good. They aren't subject to the same pressures that you've described (they have other sorts of pressures). The Cleveland Plain Dealer had a dynamite series on peak oil and energy starting in 2005. The Daily Astorian has had outstanding coverage on climate change. I think that local journalism will stage a comeback, as local communities become more important.
The wire services (Associated Press, Reuters) are professional but not very adventurous these days. On the other hand, they will surprise you. UPI, of all places, has had some surprisingly good pieces on energy
The last place I would expect to get good information is from the commercial broadcasting networks. I've even given up on PBS and NPR, except for an occasional "Frontline" piece. The pressures are just as Cherenkov has described. It's too bad too, because there are some talented professionals there, even at Fox. Too bad too, since broadcast journalism has the power to bring down governments, change policy overnight. Maybe that's why the reporters are so hog-tied.
Counter-cultural media are a mixed bag in terms of quality. Some are great, like TOD, and others are the dogs dinner. When the mainstream media are unresponsive, the c-c media is the only place to develop ideas and support.
So, bottom line, don't write off the media as if it were a monolithic body.
ggg, dont forget nbc is owned by ge and what is ge saying ? "enough oil for 100 yrs" (but only if the us buys lots of expensive weapons - made by ge)
Jeffrey WT, please don't help us with definitions. You and Patterson have shown that u know very little outside your small area of expertise. Most of the blathering by both of u here at TOD is the blind-leading-the-blind.
Do us all a favour, Jeffrey and get one of the Campbell or Laherrere compilations of HL. Everyone here knows that i luv HL but it serves only a limited purpose and u and khebab clearly have no idea what in the world that is. I suggest i think to was Colin's Essence book ('93?), where he shows over 50 HL's of different coutries and regions. Only 8 approach the predictive power that u and khebab say that they do. That's eight. 8 of 50 or more. A dart would do better. East texas included.
Ron and yourself know nothing of the ME technology. Have read none of the SPE documentation. I notice that many pundits here are too cheap to go to pay per view sites and flood us with anecdotal B.S. day in and day out.
Get a life. Please.
Most KSA drilling is at a density of one/100 sqmi. Lower 48 was at 1/sqmi at Peak. Your authorative statements are juvenile and disgusting and getting worse....
Most KSA drilling is at a density of one/100 sqmi
Freddy, what are you smoking? You might get that well density if you divided every well in the Kingdom by the area of the entire country, but I don't think that's what you meant in the context of a discussion about production. Please will you cite your sources? I've got access to SPE, so just the paper number will do.
Here's my source: Levorsen, Geology of petroleum, 2 ed. says that Abqaiq had 66 wells in an area of about 180 square miles as early as 1951. And I'm sure they've drilled a few more since. Abqaiq is basically a mini-Ghawar so presumably that will be similar. And those 80 or 100 or 120 or whatever rigs that everyone keeps talking about must be doing something, surely?
Lower 48 was at 1/sqmi at Peak.
More like 128 acres - or 64 or 32 in some areas. There are 640 acres in a square mile, BTW. You're welcome.
Good post, but it begs the question as to whether the ratio of ultimately recoverable reserves to total oil in place can be increased by any of the drilling technology. I'm not in the field, so I don't know the answer.
Ron - excellent post! I note that the Saudi cuts run opposite to prior stated intent to increase production, flood the market, and undercut the Iranian economy by so doing.
In a prior post you mentioned your experience of KSA. Can you comment on the relation between Shia and Sunni. This is not well covered in western media but I have the sense that Shia are very much 2nd class citizens with much reduced rights etc.
Cheers!
Shia and Sunni racial tensions have nothing to do with PO. We would be running out of the stuff at the same rate, even if every Shia brought his Sunni neighbor a gift basket every morning. It is of no importance to the oil fields in Mexico, Russia, Canada or the North Sea how soon the Middle East erupts in another round of genocide.
On the other hand...raising the EPA standard and the gas tax could make life a whole lot easier in the long run, independently of how the crap plays out over there.
IP:
I'm not so sure of this. If we trust stated reserves figures, the only countries that have huge undeveloped reserves are KSA, Iran and Iraq.
When those reserves are brought online, will likely have a big effect on the timing of the peak. There is no doubt that the politics of Iraq, Iran and KSA have a lot to do with this.
I would add that just a couple of weeks ago the head economist of the IEA told the US senate energy committee that those were the only countries that mattered.
I do not doubt that there are reserves (especially in Iraq). I do doubt that the impact will last very long. A couple of years, maybe? What does that buy us? Anyone who buys an SUV today will have to fuel it for 10-12 years, so the natural timescale for an "extension" before the geological peak happens would have to be a decade. Will we be able to fend the peak off for another decade? Highly doubtful.
Now, given what you know, would you honestly advise anyone who does not have more money in their pocket than they need to buy a large vehicle because KSA, Iran and Iraq have reserves? Or would you not be cautious and tell them that the party might just be over pretty soon and they might be forced to sell that vehicle for next to nothing and get a smaller one, after all?
Just curious. Personally, I like to be cautious, just in case those reserves never materialize.
One final thing... if Iraq goes south, not only will we not see any oil from there, but we will also have to stay inbetween KSA and Iran to make sure that the two don't get into a hot shooting war which will destroy large scale capacity coming from the region. Even if we can do that, the military cost will be way higher than our combined oil imports. For the US, oil from either country is a lose-lose-lose situation.
Oh, I'm definitely cautious like you. I have made no attempt to profit from peak oil, but -- on the other hand -- I most emphatically have hedged against a rise in oil prices.
ie. My reasoning is, if oil does soar, how can a big chunk of the pain be offset. And, yes, that includes saying, "NO" to an SUV and not living 50 miles from work. And, it does include saving more and generally building a buffer. And it includes buying some USO (and hoping that it falls). But it certainly doesn't include changing careers and moving into a teeny tiny house as per Westexas's suggestions.
The claimed reserves are so huge, that -- if they exist -- we really have nothing to worry about over the next couple of decades *if* a lid can be kept on that roiling stew called the middle east.
"*if* a lid can be kept on that roiling stew called the middle east."
And therein precisely lies the rub. If humanity as a whole were willing to deal with its global problems cooperatively, self-lessly, and truthfully, they would all likely be negotiable in the long run - without a dieoff, and maybe even with the possibility of affluent Westerners sustaining a relatively secure and comfortable lifestyle for decades to come.
But all the evidence points into the direction of a will to dominance, selfishness, and mendacity being the dominant modus operandi. And the "roiling stew called the middle east" is exactly where all of this will likely lead to an incredibly violent conflagration the soonest.
Hi Phil,
I posted this the other day, (just to cheer you up) - it was late, though, so...here it is, again:
http://www.combatantsforpeace.org/
We are a group of Israeli and Palestinian individuals who were actively involved in the cycle of violence in our area. The Israelis served as combat soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces and the Palestinians were involved in acts of violence in the name of Palestinian liberation.
These women have been organizizing for a bit longer: http://www.partnersforpeace.org/
I understand your reasoning and I wish you good luck with your hedge. Undoubtedly you understand that hedging agains PO is only possible for individuals, not for the world as a whole? If the world could hedge against it, it would be a free lunch, something that simply does not exist in this universe.
All I have heard about the geological peak so far points me to believe that the claimed reserves do not exist except on papers edited by buerocrats with little insight into what they are doing and that what little does exist will not hold the peak off for long.
We already know that the world can not economically stop the Middle East from exploding if it is dead set on that course. We couldn't stop WWI, WWII, heck, we can't even keep the Israelis and the Palestinians under control and those are both a small people. What makes us believe that we can stop Islam from self-destructing? You don't mess with a hundred million sexually frustrated young men who were promised a better life in heaven.
In all likelihood the reserves are not there, the Middle East is going to fester and our best bet is conservation. The last thing, by the way, is not that hard, once you get the concept. The problem is that a large fraction of 300 million Americans are living "The American Dream", thinking that they can escape their poor jobs and crime ridden neighborhoods by looking cute and singing crappy. Or that they can get "Lost" in some reality show/fantasy drama and not having to pay the credit card bills the next day. Until that mindset has been washed away by the events of the PO era, not much in US society will move towards the better.
I am still lucky to live in interesting times.
Why are you USAns unable to face reality? Why would KSA and Iran war with each other? Neither one represents a danger to the other. They have a common enemy - the axis of evil aka USA/GBR/Israel, and a common religion - Islam. Whereas the USA/GBR axis has put a new crusader state into the ME - Israel, which while not Christian has been made a proxy by the suggestion that Christianity is somehow derived from Judaism; it isn't.
My guess is that you want them to go head to head so you can steal their oil.
You really do need to do some reading about the Sunni/Shia split, or the fact that Arab and Persians see each other as very distinct (much like Japanese and Koreans, who do not share the same language, writing system, or history) or such recent history as can be read at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1987_massacre_of_Iranian_pilgrims
Whether the U.S., or anyone else, is using such tension is of course another question, but the recent history between various Sunnia Arab countries and Iran is anything but friendly - and yes, it just does happen to include a rough million casualties in a vicious war, which just so happens to have a certain relation to peak oil - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran-Iraq_War is a good resource, and has a section devoted to the tanker war.
For those who think Iran can't block the Straights of Hormuz, it may be instructive to read how they did it the last time, and how that blocking was ended - but keep in mind they have had 2 decades to work on improved methods, and likely the only reason they would attempt another tanker war is a conflict between Iran and the U.S. - the threat of which ended the tanker war then, after 546 sunk and damaged ships and ca. 430 dead sailors, but which today would be the likely reason for a new one (it is always astounding to realize just how badly Bush has played America's hand over the last 6 years). Generally, Iran merely needs to pose a credible threat for insurance rates to become so prohibitive that tanker traffic will be reduced very significantly - a shipowner might risk their oldest, smallest tanker which was ready for the breaker's yard in Pakistan or Bangladesh, but the latest and largest VLCCs aren't going to sail into the mines, planes, speedboats, Silkworms, etc.
New Account, thanks for the kind words.
In Saudi one cannot tell a Shia from a Sunni except for arount the anniversary of Hassan's death when many of the Shia wear black thobes. But you can usually tell in the workplace. The Shia have all the lower level jobs and the Sunni have all the higher level jobs and all the management jobs.
This is ironic since the Shia are in the majority in the Eastern Province, though they are very much in the minority in Saudi Arabia as a whole. But everything in Saudi is ruled by Wasta. If you have wasta that means you have a lot of influence in higher places. All promotion within Aramco is based on Wasta and never on experience or ability. The Shia never get promoted but the Sunni usually move up quite rapidly, based on how much wasta they have. Even among the Sunni, some have more wasta than others.
Ron Patterson
Thanks.
My query was in relation to PO. Most of the Gulf states have minority Shia populations and I am curious how they would respond were there to be an enlarged conflict that included "pre-emptive" attacks on Iran, or even an attempt to use military force to suppress or "pacify" the Shia areas in Iraq.
Cheers!
For all practical purposes, would you say that they can tell each other enough to pull knives and slit each other's throats? Usually, if employment is correlated to ethnic/religious minority status, the people involved can do selective killing just as well.
I am not saying it will necessarily happen, but the outlook, especially in Iraq, is not very good.
Again, I don't think this has anything to do with oil. The problem is historic and goes all the way back to the time of the Twelfth Imam and probably well before that.
Hi Infinite,
Well...the US hasn't helped much (historically) either, it seems.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/30/1515254
"Barry Lando, a former 60 Minutes producer, examines how the United States has meddled in Iraq dating back to the Eisenhower administration."
Wonder if the technology is the same extracting oil from a 10% cut as from a 90% one. If so, you get not only less oil as a field declines but also a (presumably) higher processing cost per barrel for that smaller amount, thus aggravating the decline. Just a thought.
By cut I mean water cut, if that was unclear.
Crude is rising almost 5% today. What's the reason according to Bloomberg's Breaking News: "Oil Tops $56 as Cold Weather, Economic Growth Boost U.S. Demand".
Not one single word mentioned about the 500'000 barrel shortfall in the 2nd biggest oilfield of the world, Canterell. Obviously this doesn't matter, a mere 500'000 barrel per day.
This is the typique pattern all over: if oil falls, the reason is to find in reduced DEMAND, if oil go north, the reason is to find surging DEMAND. Nobody of those super intelligent experts ever would only dare to ask themselves, wheter actually there could be SUPPLY problem out there.
I think we are also experiencing "The Return of the Hedge Funds"...they took a vacation during the recent elections and now that enough time has passed and they've lost enough $$$...they are back.
well nat gas went up by a bigger %, so maybe there is some basis for that statement. but on the day mexico's declining production was reported, the msm attributed that run up in crude price to bush's proposal to double the spr ( over 13 yrs)
Yes, the collapse has begun. SA has bet too much on the roulette table recently. Inoficially they do the contrary of what they state officially. This fish is going to stink even more.
Also: Why do we know, that the 2nd biggest oilfield (Canterell) is crashing, that Alaska is sinking, that North Sea is going south, that Chinas biggest oilfield (4th largest in the world) declines by 8%, BUT only the oilfields in the middle east can at least sustain production levels. How is that possible? Do the arabs have improved technologies, that we don't know?
Daqing production fell by 3.4% in 2006, not 8% (http://business.sohu.com/20070110/n247516997.shtml, Chinese only). Production totalled 43.41 million tonnes, down from 44.95 million tonnes in 2005. This maintains the decline rate of the last 4 years. Daqing is now shifting the production focus from oil to natural gas, which has jumped in output from 2 billion m3 in 2003 to 2.6 billion m3 in 2006, with a target of 11 billion m3 in 2020.
Now Bloomberg writes regarding the surging oil price: Cold weather is to blame. It sounds like: as soon as winter has gone, crude will decline again. And everybody is happy.
This paragraph:
conflates depletion rate with time for 50% depletion.
When depletion/decline rates increase, the time for x% depletion decreases; and vice versa.
Depletion and decline rates do NOT go in opposite directions.
Rates (amount/time) and periods (time for x% depletion) go in opposite directions.
Jimvj, don't be daft! With their "extensive drilling program" Saudi managed to decrease their decline rate from 8% to 2% average. That is a decrease in decline rate by any stretch of the imagination. However by doing that they were merely pulling the oil out much faster but adding no oil to the reservoir. The year to year depletion rate was therefore increased.
I suppose you thought that if they decreased their decline by pumping the oil out faster then their depletion rate must decrease also. Kindly explain that one!
Of course the decline rate must eventually catch up. It will catch up by going into a catastrophic collapse, which is exactly what I am predicting. But for a few years anyway, there is no reason why the decline rate cannot decrease while the depletion rate will just naturally increase.
If you are still having problems I will explain it again....tomorrow. Right now I am going to bed.
Ron Patterson
With you it gets to name calling very easily, doesn't it?
You cannot seriously claim that this sentence of yours:
makes any sense!!
Hi Ron and jimvj,
Thanks to both of you. I'd welcome a clear re-statement of the definitions, incorporating what Jim is saying. Some specific examples of each would be really nice. This would also be helpful to pass along to others.
Makes sense to me.
I think the confusion is that when you decrease the decline rate, you are actually increasing the production rate relative to what it would have otherwise been without the intervention. By increasing the rate of production, you increase the overall rate of depletion. A decline in PRODUCTION rate decreases the depletion rate, but a decline (or decrease) in the DECLINE rate (for example from a 10% rate of decline to a 5% rate of annual decline) means you have increased relative production, increasing depletion rate.
Hello Jimvj,
Perhaps I can offer an simple illustrative example of what Ron is talking about.
Imagine a very tall tube filled full of oil. No more can be added. As soon as you drill the first hole in the side of the tube, the pressure starts reducing and total volume of oil remaining starts decreasing; depletion has started, but you are getting a strong production stream. Now you can drill some more holes along the bottom and the length of the tube to increase production to a peak amount, but eventually as the pressure and volume drop: the uppermost holes stop producing as the oil falls below the opening; production decline has set in--let's say 10%.
You are not happy with the oil level falling below your previously drilled holes and as the level in the tube drops ever lower due to the constant depletion--more holes stop producing, and the remaining holes are producing ever less as the pressure drops. Your wish is to slow this constant 10% decrease to let's say 5%.
Your answer is to go into a drilling frenzy trying to punch more and more holes in the tube faster than the dropping level is bypassing them, thus reducing the rate of production decline, but increasing the rate of depletion because the remaining reservoir volume is always decreasing but the drainage surface area is constantly increasing relative to the ever-shrinking volume. Eventually, no matter what drilling techniques you try, no matter how many holes you have drilled: the pipe drains dry.
You can squeeze the water out of a fully soaked one quart sponge much faster than you can squeeze the water out of a one quart water bottle with a very narrow opening. Bottlebrush and Xmas tree horizontal wells, along with the other EOR measures, is the last step to turn an oilfield from a squeeze bottle into a maximum reservoir contact sponge to wring it out. The default condition for a sponge is empty and dry-- same for a fully played out oilfield.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Yes, sleep on it ron. a long time. u are just getting it more wrong each time u bring this up.
what the hell was your job for five years in saudi land? refilling the Coke machine??
Freddy:
You have some very interesting and insightful posts; however, this was not one of them. In fact, it did little but retroactively detract from the quality of your previous posts, and if anyone was cast in a bad light, it certainly wasn't Ron.
Vehement disagreement is understandable (I certainly disagree with Ron about many things), but every insult one sends just means fewer people will read one's next high-quality post. That is, I assume, a concern to everyone posting here.
did a polar bear shit in freddies corn flakes this morning ?
Regarding the article about the Saudi production cuts, here are a couple quotes from the original WSJ article (by Bhushan Bahree, who writes frequently about Saudi Arabia and OPEC).
Saudis to Pare Oil Output Again
It is interesting, to say the least, that they are making double the cuts they signed up for. Now why is that?
Oh, it's just yet another coincidence! They will be up to 12 million barrels a day in a couple years, really, don't bother looking behind the curtain. Abracadabra! All that injected sea water will turn to oil as we harness the stupidfying power of the feel-good vibrational energy inherent in technotopian thinking! Hey, you over there! Get your head back in the sand! ;)
Well, that does seem to put paid to the idea that the Saudis are flooding the market with oil in order to hurt Iran. (CNN ran that story again this morning, saying that Iran's budget was based on high prices for oil, while the Saudis' is based on a lower price. So a drop in price would hurt Iran more than Saudi Arabia.)
hmm... not sure about that, higher oil prices came as a blessing for Saudi Arabia state budget:
Saudi Arabia state annual budget (src: Saudi Arabia Monetary Agency)
Khebab - Studied that graph when you posted it earlier. Is ther enough data to chart the KSA oil price and volume required to ensure the KSA budget remains in the black?
It strikes me that there is a price per bbl below which they would not wish to go as it would result in deficit financing. This price, and the associated volume, gives a speculative figure for a KSA production floor. If production continued to drop past that floor then KSA would be engaged in building a deficit. Given the projected KSA population growth and the key role of the state in providing subsidy to all citizens, I find it difficult to see them being willing to run a deficit and would take this as evidence in support of a possible production collapse.
KSA ran a deficit for years and did what everybody else is doing: print money.
The US feels very smart in that, as the world reserve currency, the dollar is propped up by foreigners even if it's merely printed without any backing.
The common idea is that the dollars the US pays for oil and other products flow back into the Fed coffers when US securities are bought.. But that's not true.
What nobody seems to realize (the Fed does though) is that the central banks of Japan, China and KSA do exactly the same as the Fed: they buy US securities, assets and bonds with freshly printed money. The dollars they use for other things.
The money supply growth in the EU outdoes that in the US. Not easy!! The UK bought more US assets than any other country last year. The Royal Mint can be renamed the Royal Print.
In a system like this, you must realize that everyone can only continue if they print exponentially more money every year, because it's all issued as debt.
KSA spent more domestically, and on weapons, than they made in oil revenue, for years. 2005/6 were a bit better, but now that prices drop, they announced yesterday they will cut on domestic spending. It's a weird game to watch, and there's no happy ending possible.
Thanks for the link to the Times of Oman. Good to see that the front page news includes football as the lead-in item and coverage of karaoke web sites in San Francisco. Hate to think there may be something going on in the middle east. It is clear that there are big problems in Korea.
With regards the KSA budget, I agree its a weird game. Not sure how they keep the 50,000 princes happy, house, educate, feed and provide jobs for a rapidly increasing population with a declining revenue base.
Since I don't think they can get more repressive, my sense is that the inability of the state to provide the required social welfare will at some point result in increased social tension and upheaval. Not sure how this plays out but I'm looking for the ignition point.
P.S. Astonished that no one mentioned ethanol as a solution to the problems associated with developing the tar sands.
Cheers!
I don't think there has ever been a "princes" census in Saudi Arabia but the number I hear most often is 5,000 and that number is an exaggeration. 50,000 is indeed a bit over the top. However there are 5,000 members in the royal database. And not all of them are princes. Only the sons, grandsons and great-grandsons of Abd Al-Aziz ibn Saud, founder of modern Saudi Arabia are considered princes. And one of his sons is still King today.
This data base has biographial data on 5,000 members of the royal family. Of course only male members are counted and there are probably more than this but just too young to have their biographial data included in the database.
http://www.datarabia.com/welcome.do;jsessionid=B5EFC6C6E091B093B6BE70150...
Saud Family Tree:
http://www.datarabia.com/royals/familytree.do
Ron Patterson
Well.
When they all finally decamp to the South of France, Luxury Property Values will shoot up.
Though quite what use 5000+ Wahabii Princlings and their extended familiies will be is another question.
I suppose they could go whoring.
It used to be Cairo
Then it was London
Now it is Dubai
Somebody has to keep working girls busy.
They sit on a gold mine.
11,800 actually...
acct, butdget based on $43.
It doesn't put paid to the possibility that they would like to...
The Saudis are smart people. They can read. If they read the history books, they will find that NOT ONE attempt to destroy an enemy's economy was ever succesful but one. The single known example is the USSR and it went down mostly because of the failure of the Communist party rather than active economic pressure from the West. In any other case, Germany, Japan, North Korea, Cuba, Iraq (!), the main result of putting economic pressure on a country was simply that the attacked people dug their heels in and kept fighting/defying the measures and the intended goal of ending a war or getting rid of a political entity was not achieved.
Only the US, IMHO, can be stupid enough to believe that KSA will risk to destroy their own economy for a hopeless undertaking. And I already know why: because, if we were them, we would be stupid enough to try.
IP wrote:
if they read the history books, they will find that NOT ONE attempt to destroy an enemy's economy was ever succesful but one.
Right off the top of my head, I can think of another example. The American Civil War. The North eventually adopted a policy of economic strangulation of the South complete with scorch earth tactics.
The South's battlefield performance against a much more numerous and better equipped foe was stellar by any measure.
And remains a source of pride to this day.
NATO's fortunes in the Kosovo war improved dramatically once they began to bomb economic targets in Yugoslavia. Before that it looked like a stalemate.
I will not say anything about the American Civil War. You can't argue with someone's glorification of their less than glorious past. If you want to believe that the slave owners faught "valiantly", good for you. I prefer to believe that war, no matter what war, is a bad thing.
As for Kosovo: stopping a genocide is mostly a matter of political will to use military force, not one of economic sanctions. NATO could have isolated those people for ten years and the slaughter would have gone on forever, just like it did in Iraq (Remember how glorious Bush I handled that one and how we "profit" from that blunder even today?). It was the military supremacy that broke the back of the bands of killers. It was the threat that they, too, would die, if they did not surrender. Cold bloded killers are not brave people when you go for their own life, you know.
And now for the results: we are still there, trying to keep two people at arms length to stop them from killing each other, again.
I'm Canadian. No glorification of the Civil War intended.
My point is that push and shove -- using economic means -- is an integral part of confrontation between nations.
KSA would be nuts to take that off the table if they have the capability.
In all likelihood, they are building up spare capacity so that Iranian production moves can be countered if necessary.
"My point is that push and shove -- using economic means -- is an integral part of confrontation between nations."
No disagreement there. It's just not a method that pays off in the short term. It doesn't seem to pay off too well in the long term either. A hungry, desperate people do not shake hands with those who made them hungry and desperate.
"KSA would be nuts to take that off the table if they have the capability."
I don't think they have that capability. KSAs GDP is not that high. GDP was $286 billion. PPP per capita was $13,800, much of which probably is required to keep the royals happy and make bankers in Switzerland have hot flashes. But let's compare KSA to Switzerland for a moment: Swiss GDP is $386.8 billion and PPP is $33,600, way better than KSA. Would you think the Swiss will give people cheap loans and free secret accounts to ruin other tax shelter countries they compete with?
KSAs political and economic choices are very, very limited. And as far as I can tell, the best friend a country (and its leaders) can have is money. Money lets you do things and you are being respected for it. Therefor, the last thing you want is to earn less of it.
Like I said, I believe that KSAs royal family is acting rationally. They are not using their oil income to bankrupt Iran because their economic and political losses will be far, far higher than Iran's. Worst case they can lose their lives in the revolution...
Face it: in a game where less is more, you, the buyer, are screwed.
Another example would be WW1 Germany. Tsarist Russia, too. Another would be France during the Napoleanic Wars. Another would be Athens during the Peleponessian War.
WWI Germany... great example for a failed economic strategy. The policy of the allies to decapitate the country after the war and take enormous amounts of its infrastructure as reparations gave rise to Hitler and the Nazi party. They milked it endlessly to create hate. I am sure the French and the British were pretty unhappy during WWII for having humiliated the Germans twenty years earlier.
Can you elaborate on Tsarist Russia?
Napoleonic Wars? It took a military coalition of Prussia, Russia, Saxony, Sweden and the United Kingdom and in the end also Austria to win against the French... the French restricted European trade with the British as much as it happened the other way round, I believe. According to Wikipedia 900,000 French were up against a million of coalition forces. Not small change at that time and certainly not an indication to me that the war was one of economic dimensions as much as of military.
Tsarist Russia is very simple, the war simply emptied the treasury, and the increased taxes to finance the war helped lead to the Tsar's abdication, which set the stage for the return of Lenin and the October Revolution.
Something similar happened in the Napoleanic Wars where the Allies had greater financial resources than the French. This was actually the second truely global war, the first being what we in the USA call the French and Indian War. A very good book that details the recognition of the role of finance in the modern sense regarding war making and how it was developed by the Brits is "The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688-1783" by John Brewer.
That was, as you say, after the war. Economic strangulation during the war contributed substantially to the war effort.
It's not as large of a cause as in the Cold War, of course, but that's because the Cold War is unusual in that it was cold; previously, wars between great powers tended to turn into real wars where economic factors were only one aspect.
Come on, IP. One of the cornerstones of the US' Western-Hemispheric hegemony is, and has long been, the ability to strangle the economy of a non-compliant state. A few have survived but many more have fallen.
I did not say that economic strangling isn't on the menu. What I am saying is that it is stupid because it does not work. As for those countries which are supposed to have fallen to it, I would like to get a few examples, please, where it worked without the need for war and did not lead to unintended long term consequences. Any takers?
Now, I fully believe that we will see conflict in the Middle East. But it won't be decided on the oil markets. It will be bloody, long and exhausting.
Russia versus Belarus, just the other day.
Don't forget the line between war and diplomacy is mighty grey.
i.e. blockades are considered acts of war.
Would KSA seriously attempt to bring down the Iranian economy by the sole means of overproduction? No.
Can economic levers be used to huge effect in confrontations between states. Obviously.
True, Russia is strongarming them. I would definitely say that the conflict there is real. Or maybe just that Russia's hopes to build another set of buffers between it and the EU are. Not sure that is going to fly much, though, even if Belarus is feeling the crunch of the bear's friendly hug. In the long term the EU response to what is going on there can only be one thing: energy independence. And that is hardly in Russia's long term interest.
I wouldn't exactly call Russia's repertoire in dealing with its neighbors diplomatic. They are acting about as diplomatic as the US does when it feels its security is at stake. I don't doubt that Russia is prepared to let the tanks roll if it does not get what it wants. We shall see... NATO might have to defend that border, once again, after all.
"Would KSA seriously attempt to bring down the Iranian economy by the sole means of overproduction? No."
That is my whole point. And maybe that it might not be worth to KSA to poke Iran with a stick made of ten billion rolled up dollar bills. What do you get in return for such an expensive poking? A country even more set on supporting your own downfall? Worst case what they are going to get is war. God help us if the Iranians have nukes by that time.
Economic sanctions against south africa were one of the primary drivers forcing an end to apartheid.
IP asked, "As for those countries which are supposed to have fallen to it, I would like to get a few examples, please..."
These cases certainly incorporated an economic component in the plan to bring down the offending government:
Iran, 1953
Guatemala, 1954
Chile, 1970
Nicaragua, 1981
Without war or repercussions? There are always war and repercussions. War is often by proxy and the repercussions -- well...we'll deal with those tomorrow.
Iran 1953? Wow... that worked out pretty well... here we are in 2007 and the Iranians are still pissed!
Guatemala? That was a CIA orchestrated military coup, wasn't it?
Chile 1970 did't get the result we needed, so the US ordered the military coup of 1973 from which Chilean society still hasn't recovered. I bet they love us for it.
Nicaragua? Wait... wasn't that the country where we supported the anti-communist guerillas with payments for weapons we sold to Iran? Which is now selling oil to China...
Good thing we only sold Iran the small stuff and didn't send a nuke or two. Who knows what they would have used it for!
Just keep these coups coming, friends, we need fresh enemies for the 22nd century!
Confessions of an Economic Hitman
"In this shocking memoir, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins tells of his own inner journey from willing servant of empire to impassioned advocate for the rights of oppressed people. Covertly recruited by the United States National Security Agency and on the payroll of an international consulting firm, he traveled the world—to Indonesia, Panama, Ecuador, Colombia, Saudi Arabia, Iran and other strategically important countries. His job was to implement policies that promoted the interests of the U.S. corporatocracy (a coalition of government, banks, and corporations) while professing to alleviate poverty—policies that alienated many nations and ultimately led to September 11 and growing anti-Americanism."
http://www.economichitman.com/
The coup is just the beginning of the coupons!
I wholeheartedly agree.
The USA Screws up when fighting against Guerillas.
Vietnam
Iraq
They tend to scuff yer boots...
Also interesting is that they don't know what their exact production will be... if capacity were, say, 9Mb/d, and they wanted to cut to 8.5Mb/d, they can produce exactly that. OTOH, if production is declining out of their control, then they won't in fact know what next month's produciton will be.
Well then, a question needs to be asked:
Where is the oil coming from? Surely it is just a 'coincidence' that total OPEC production is declining at a rate that almost perfectly matches the increase in oil production from non OPEC countries, giving us a 'plateau' for the better part of a year now.
Yes, we need much tighter US & world inventories coupled with high and rising prices before we can really draw strong implications from KSA/OPEC cutbacks. Everything remains open to interpretation right now, although clearly things are changing. KSA was never known for extraordinary generosity in the past, shouldering more than its share of the burden for cutbacks, so the rules of the game have changed for some reason.
Hothgor, I don't know what's been happening in the last three months because the last EIA data was for October 2006. But up until October 2006 there has been no increase in non-OPEC production. It (non-OPEC) jumps up and down from month to month but has basically been on a plateau between 42,000,000 and 43,000,000 barrels per day since November of 2003. Though recently there has been a slight uptrend in the 12 month moving average. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita knocked non-OPEC production down in 2005 by an average of 300,000 barrels per day for the entire year.
But non-OPEC peaked, C+C, in May of 2005 at 43,104,000 and in October, 2006 non-OPEC production was 42,856,000 barrels per day or down 249,000 barrels per day below the peak.
Opec, C+C peaked in September 2005 at 31,586,000 bp/d and in October, the month before OPEC cuts went into affect, OPEC production was 30,640,000 bp/d, down 946,000 bp/d from the peak 13 months earlier.
Ron Patterson
Virginia; Fund Roads with Gas Taxes or Healthcare & Education $ ?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/29/AR200701...
Best Hopes for Gas Taxes to Pay for Roads & Streets & Healthcare & Education,
Alan
Alan,
Shifting funds from education goes very well with some anecdotal evidence about the state of education in US that I heard over the weekend. I was talking with a doctor friend of mine who has a sister teaching seventh grade science in another state (not TN). My doctor friend was concerned that this person could teach 'science' and wondered how many others there were like her. She is teaching her children that the impact that humans have on the environment is minuscule compared to the 'forces of nature'. She is basing this on a sermon that she heard in her church that was 'well researched'! Of course she took no undergraduate science courses and started out teaching English but later switched to teaching Science because it was easier to teach(meaning that the tests are easier to grade).
The amount of falsehoods taught in the public school system is amazing. There's a book - "Lies My Teacher Told Me" that is a half way decent read.
ggg71,
It's "the NUMBER of falshoods," not "amount."
Amount is related to things like liquids.
Guess your teacher lied to you on that one.
Teachers teach what administrators tell them to teach. I doubt that many people go into teaching science (or any other discipline) because it is easy to grade.
Herewith an autobiographical story to make the point of how teachers end up doing what they do:
At the college where I worked the accounting teacher retired, and the president told me that I was going to teach Principles of Accounting (five days a week, eight o'clock in the morning, all year long). I replied that I had had exactly one course in accounting and had scraped by in the bottom third of the class--i.e., that I did not feel competent to teach the subject. Response:
"Oh Don, you are a fine teacher. You'll have the instructor's manual with the answers, and all you have to do is keep one chapter ahead of the class. Besides, you can get the smartest students to help you out."
So that is what I did. Actually, I did all right, because I had already made every mistake that accounting students make and could empathize with them and diagnose why they made the mistakes they did. The bright students helped me to explain why things were done they way they were, and eventually I learned the subject.
(BTW, there is a happy ending here: After seven years of toiling in the accounting classroom I created a class in Environmental Economics and another one in Logic, and I persuaded the new dean of instruction to let me teach these and to find somebody else to do the debits and credits.)
Few things bother me more than the incompetence of science and math teachers at the middle and high school levels. Often it seems that the hockey coach is assigned to teach science to fill up his load. Our public schools are disaster areas.
It is impossible to teach real science in schools. The most fundamental principle of science is the questioning of belief. But this would, of course, lead to questioning belief in god, and that is not allowed.
Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner! Religion is a virus that inoculates against critical thinking, and (in the US and a high % of cultures) since science has this craaaaazy bias in favor of reality and not the fantasies of religion, most but not all religious people have a love/hate relationship with science. They love their SUVs and Television pablum, but hate the soul stealing scientists, who refuse to see the Virgin Mary in every thousandth tortilla!
I don't think questions relating to belief in God have much to do with teaching science--or with what goes on in public schools. The incompetence, the indifference, the budget constraints--none of this has much to do with belief in God or the questioning thereof.
Many of the greatest scientists, such as Isaac Newton, were devout Christians. Indeed, Newton was motivated primarily by a desire to find out the mind of God by studying physics, wherein (Newton was convinced) God's rules made the universe comprehensible to humans. Understand calculus and gravitation and light, and there you are . . . .
In closing, one further reference to God, this time by Mark Twain:
"For practice, God made an idiot. Then, He made a school board."
Maybe that was true in the 18th century, but deep religious belief among scientists is very rare today, especially in the biological fields. Richard Dawkins makes this point in his latest book “The God Delusion”.
"Scientific American" had an article a few years ago about religious faith among scientists today. Their results were quite different from those you refer to in the (highly biased, IMO) Dawkins book.
The findings in an article in Nature Magazine say otherwise.
http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/sci_relig.htm
Unfortunately, many scientists feed the notion that science is a belief system when they go on TV and say "Here's what we believe". I hear this all the time. This fosters the popular notion that a scientific theory is something somebody pulled out of their ass.
Science is a belief system.
Science cannot "prove" anything to be true. What science can do is demonstrate that certain propositions are not true. For example, if you undertake an investigation of all those cases where someone has proclaimed the intervention of "god," it is unlikley you will find supporting evidence for this claim. You end up disproving someone else's claim and showing that it is based on belief alone with no factual, evidentiary, basis.
Having done that you can then create a theory about the existence of "god." This theory is a set of beliefs and is subject to further review and investigation. It is possible that at some point in the future someone may find evidence to support the claim to "god." I believe this to be very unlikely but it cannot be wholly discounted. Key to understanding this process is that science tests all propositions to verify their validity and no proposition is ever exempt from such query.
The above description is based on what may be described as Popperian epistimology. There may be other possible epistemologies including those which describe all human knowledge, including "science" as a social construct which is more dependent on the bias and political structure of any human community and less to do with factual "reality."
The aquisition of knowledge does not confer power but rather results in a sense of awe and humility at how little we actually "know." And I suspect that this sense of awe and humility is what may engender religious sympathies on the part of professional scientists.
On the other hand, the quality of science education and understanding may also be called into question. In another thread there was a posted quote from an MIT professor who demonstated his clear misunderstanding of science.
No, I'm sorry, you are simply incorrect. Science is NOT a belief system. While individual scientists certainly harbor thoughts that could be labeled as "beliefs", including of course belief in god, the results of science are determined by purely objective criteria. Certainly scientists will defend their theories like their children, but they are forced to revise their positions as new information is recieved.
Oh, and science does "prove*" things to be "true". And science CANNOT prove things to be "untrue". God is the perfect example. Science cannot prove that god doesn't exist. Impossible. Just as it's impossible to prove that the Earth is NOT being visited by alien spacecraft. But in both cases, positive evidence is sorely lacking.
*One more point: "Proof" is a term from mathematics. No such concept exists in science. The key to a scientific determination is based on a preponderance of evidence. This means that science is always open to re-evaluating "cherished notions" based on new observations or measurements.
Sunspot, thanks for the great explination on "proof" verses "a preponderance of evidence". And I would just say exactly!
On not being able prove a negative, that is to disprove some of the crazy things religious people claim, Richard Dawkins put it this way. I am writing from memory so I may not get it exactly the way he put it but:
Suppose there is a religious cult proclaiming there is a teapot in orbit around Pluto. Now science may not be able to prove there is no teapot in orbit around Pluto, but that does not mean that the no teapot orbiting Pluto theory is on equal footing with the pro teapot theory.
Ron Patterson
Sunspot claims the following:
Sunspot then goes on to claim the following:
I suggest that this represents a contradiction and leave it to Sunspot to explain.
Sunspot also states the following:
I agree with this statement in its entirety and can find no conflict between this statement and my own prior statement to which Sunspot appears to be objecting.
Science is a system of beliefs, values, and norms for how to do science (scientific methods). It differs, however, from other belief systems: Science has built in mechanisms for discovering and correcting errors. To the best of my knowledge, science is unique among belief systems in this regard, though I'm sure there are theologians who would disagree with me on this key point.
Science is not a belief system. Science is a method. It is an instrument of knowledge acquisition based on logic. It is, if you want, a tool. Execution of proper science is no different than the forging of iron by a blacksmith. The man has learned how to take a raw material and make it into something useful. In the same way scientists learn how to take raw observations and put them together to a useful picture of how the world works. The process is fundamentally the same, albeit on a slightly higher intellectual level. Much of it can be mechanised and can be done by almost everyone. Some of it is pure artistry and very few ever get to that level. In all cases it is a purely human enterprise. The smith works as a human for humans. So does the scientist. They both create something useful and lasting with the purpose of enriching their fellow being's life. Neither creates anything unalterable. When the piece the smith makes does not fit the purpose, he reworks it. When scientists find that their explanation of old data fails for the new data, they rework the explanation. Science is an utterly laborous and often repetitive process. Just like forging.
Science does not create theories about god. You will not find one science book that contains one. The reason is very simple: god can not be measured. Until he/she/it can be converted by a measurement device into a series of numbers, science takes no interest in him/her/it.
I have to say that whatever you seem to believe you know about science is false. Maybe you got it from high school. Maybe you read it in some paperback. For sure as hell you did not get it from being a scientist.
Since I assume that you are also not a blacksmith, I will not ask you for advice about how to forge an iron fence, either. It would be an utter waste of time. Just like discussing science with you.
Agreed 100%.
You have the data, You make new theories to explain the data and/or predict new data, end of story.
(well, mathematics is different, it is more like a big playground where all other scientists find useful toys left over by mathematicians:)
You would do well to review the basics of a topic before you pronounce upon it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Feyerabend
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_constructionism
Herr Hitler accepted and followed your notion of a science of "methodological rules." I suspect Herr Bush also believes in such a science. I view the belief that "Science is a method." (your claim) as indicative of intellectual poverty.
Do I see a manifestation of Godwin law up there?:)
I invoke Quirk's Exception.
http://hnn.us/articles/1796.html
Where the data did not fit the method it was methodically made to fit. This was done in order to support a belief system which remained unchallenged until the full horror of its implications became clear.
Science has its problems and information can be twisted. However, it is eventually self-correcting as errors/falsehoods eventually become unsustainable, usually sooner rather than later under peer review. In contrast, a belief system doesn't necessarily have any mechanism for self-correction. With religion, value is often placed on unquestioned faith, meaning challenging the assumptions is forbidden from the system. The core of science is ultimately challenging assumptions with ongoing data, attempting to disprove.
Both have their problems.
Someone told me after a bad day "Church would be perfect, except that there are human beings involved." and I would say the same achilles heel strikes at science in it's quest for objectivity and free-flowing sceptical self-correction. People do develop biases and allegiences. Assumptions that were early achieved become truisms, unless someone comes around to check them with newer information. (For example, all Doctors were taught that Human Females have a fixed number of eggs, and as they age through their childbearing years, these begin to run out, and get old. This was treated as gospel for decades before someone checked and discovered that women apparently do grow more eggs throughout life. That is one we caught, but human eyes can have a hard time seeing what they are not expecting to see..)
There have been many excellent scientists who grew their studies within religious lives, and there still are. Most of the 'Superstition' Bashing in discussions like this are talking about a multi-pronged fundamentalist movement that has grown out of many modern religions and puts itself right on the Tracks in front of secular 'Reality-based' groups, trying to defend their traditions in the terms generated by the age of reason and science, which is incompatible with Religious truths, being at their heart metaphorical and emotional.
Sadly, I know too many people, both in the Science and the Religion camps who are so riled by this misplaced conflict, that they lose the opportunity to use any spiritual disciplines to understand their hearts and their emotions, the ancient truths about how humans are, and are then so embroiled that their ability to observe with real clarity of mind keeps them from operating as scientists either.
Read Karen Armstrong. "The Battle for God".. It's anthropology, not theology, and looks at the two languages of these separate human activities Science and Religion, as "Logos and Mythos", and how they have worked on each other to leave us these great, angry and embattled armies of fundamentalists.. outnumbering but cornered and threatened by a world that defies the 'Scientific Accuracy' of their texts.. which were never meant to be science in the first place.
Peakearl. I would say that those people in meaningful religious practise are constantly challenging assumptions and checking themselves against reality. It's hard to find them behind the squeaky wheels, but think of Dr. King, Father Daniel Berrigan, Gandhi, St. Francis or the Dalai Llama.. they had reconciled the Natural world and the Spiritual one.
Infinite. There are MANY scientists who have studied and defined God, either as a sociological, literary or psychological part of humanity, or as another component in their own lives that had to make sense in some kind of 'unified theory'. Not all scientists are dismissive of it or insist that it is simply a delusion.
"To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms - this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness."
( Albert Einstein - The Merging of Spirit and Science)
-And of course, Einstein's many comments about religion are very broad and complex.. he suffered no fools lightly, and had no interest in the Carrot/Stick Paternalism of these same disciplinarian cults that have turned spirituality back into the mere 'Devotionals of Graven Images'.. ('He who would prove a miracle to be a material truth is, in fact, merely a materialist' as it said in my copy of the Upanishads)
Bob Fiske
That's why I qualified my comment about value "often" placed on unquestioned faith, meaning not always or with all faiths or individuals. I still believe, however, that there is not as clear a mechanism in religion or spirituality to establish what is accurate or what to believe. Look at the role of gays in the Christian church - this could be argued for centuries more and there is no "observable" that can decide the issue in the way that finding new growing eggs within a woman can do. Things wind up being settled largely as a function of change in culture and values - such as condemnation of slavery and the rights of women to birth control (but not necessarily abortions). Either that or they are settled by the sword, repression, torture and witchhunts as has been done for millenia. There are far more wars over religion than science because people are arguing fundamental beliefs based on faith with religion, and one often cannot accept the other. You could prove to me that light is both wave and particle, but you can't prove to me that your god is real and your neighbor's is not.
It might be that many of the wars are being fought 'Over' religion and 'Under' science. 'Tween the Rock and the Hard place..
The acceptance of change (or evolution) is massive, and I think also reflects the differences of R and S in their time-frame. Our knowledge of the mechanics of nature has grown and our lifestyles shifted radically in the recent centuries, while the art of spirituality, which I'd argue is a reflection of our inner nature, cannot turn in such tight circles. I don't think that's a flaw.. I think our makeup is like the Ents, the treepeople in Lord of the Rings, slower, more ponderous and conservative, at least in an older sense (appropriately) of the word.
The sad truth is that most of religion is authority based, and not very spiritual.
Much of religion is based on our built-in trust in our parents, and a desire for a larger-than-life parent-figure. Much of it is based on trying to solve mortality, and find comfort in an after-life. Much of it comes from a desire to connect with a community which is held together by common beliefs.
None of this is terribly bad....except that it tends to interfere with critical thinking.
I would love to see a reclamation of the spiritual practices of religion - meditation, revery, emotional healing, and so on - with a scientific basis. I've been looking for this a bit, but haven't really found anything that looks very well advanced. Has anyone seen a good attempt at this?
Real spirituality is experiential. You might consider learning a meditation technique, or studying Buddhism. Also, consider reading some of the books of Eckhart Tolle, such as "The Power of Now". It's largely free of religious trappings. There is medical research being done on the physiological and psychological effects of spiritual techniques such as meditation, breathing exercises, yoga, prayer, etc. I'm sure a Google search would turn up plenty of information. I've practiced transcendental meditation since the early 70s, so I know a little bit about this. At one time, I even participated in some of the research.
Well yeah.
But your ability to accept the following truths depends on how deep you are into the God-is-an-indivisble-One business or whether you are able to accept the God-might-be a many paradigm and God might be closer than you think ideation. Certain religious practices, especially the ultra-MONO-theistic ones (i.e. Islam) would find this concept abhorent.
Think about this.
When you pray silently, who is "you" and who is listening to "you"?
God bless.
very nice bob, very nice.
This sounds more like the theme propounded by Thomas Kuhn in his much lauded (and maligned) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
As much as we would like to see Science as an abstract system, separate from and above human foibles, it will always be a product of these foibles in a major degree.
"As much as we would like to see Science as an abstract system, separate from and above human foibles, it will always be a product of these foibles in a major degree."
It is my impression that the whole point of the Science enterprise is to be fully aware of human foibles, and guard against them. You know - transparency regarding experimental technique, sharing of data, repeatability, etc. Yes, sometimes (and it's always temporary), an "establishment" voice can slow things down in a field of inquiry. But not for long.
That said, Science is very good at solving the "problems" that Science is good at :-) Do you know the one about the drunk looking for his keys under the streetlight?
The good scientists that I know are very clear on where the "authority" of their science ends, and where their speculations are just that - speculations. The fun part of Science is hanging out where you're making speculations that are amenable to some sort of test. Sometimes it's "yes!" and sometimes it's a smack in the face, and sometimes it's "outlook hazy, ask again later".
There's Science the verb (what scientists do) and Science the noun (the "product" of what scientists do). Two very different things, but not really.
"There's Science the verb (what scientists do) and Science the noun (the "product" of what scientists do). Two very different things, but not really."
I have never been able to keep the two apart. My science moments are when I have an insight about nature that I did not have before. The books on my shelf or in the library, the products of science, do not come to life until I start using them to solve a problem. "Science" (the noun) without a scientist, amateur or professional, is not worth mentioning.
And yes, science can be just as grand, foolish, nasty, puny or majestic as the humans who do it. It ranges from phenomenal insights into the nature of the universe to physicists peeing at other people's equipment (a foolish thing to do if the cabinet happens to be a high voltage magnet power supply). And that is also the fun of it.
And who is Mr. Feyerabend? He is a philosopher. He has not worked on a single experiment in his whole life. He is a man, as philosophers usually are, who talks about the work of the blacksmith but can't even lift the lightest of hammers, not to mention make a fence.
I did not say, by the way that science operates by a fixed method. It doesn't. Every scientist has their own ways of working. Science does operate, however, within a set of rules which are known to work. Just like the blacksmith will not put the hot iron into a bucket full of gasoline and set the shop on fire, there are things scientists will not do. We do, for one thing, never speculate about things that can not, in principle, be observed.
The unsurprising thing, by the way, is that Mr. Feyerabend does make a number of very interesting observations about science. But you haven't managed to point out a single one of them. You only read what fits into your ideas, not what the man has to say that actually makes sense.
But let me tell you where he goes wrong in the passage that you mention:
"Science is a highly elaborated set of conventions brought forth by one particular culture (our own) in the circumstances of one particular historical period"
This is where Feyerabend completely fails to understand what is at the core of science: nature. Science is not just a set of intellectual conventions. It is a set of tools that allow us to study NATURE and only nature. Without the actual observation of nature science is indeed just a convention. But by incorporating nature you arive at facts that can be checked and checked again and checked any number of times from different angles. By being a scientist you gain information about a UNIQUE subject. There is no nature but nature, my friend. You can not apply physics to nature and then to something else in comparison. Newtonian mechanics as a theory is unique in explaining the mechanics of slowly moving bodies, so is general relativity which explains the large scale geometry of space-time, so are quantum mechanics which tells us about the microscopic world and electromagnetics which is the most simple of all field theories that are actually fundamentally implemented by NATURE. No matter how many different theories you try to explain observable phenomena, there are only very few that fit really well (and by that I mean to one part in 10^9 or 10^12). And the FIT REALLY WELL part is where the results of science transcend the methodology of science.
Of course... in order to understand that, you need a full blown science education. You can't wing general relativity. You can either study it or you can leave it. To philosophize about it is foolish.
I am not sure where Hitler comes in? Did you know that Hitler believed in "German Physics"? That was physics which was NOT published by Jews but by Arians. It did not matter that at that time pretty much all of the important physics was published by Jews... and "German Physics" tried to explain the results of quantum mechanics by postulating the existence of a world of "ghosts"... as in, well, err... "ghosts". See e.g.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik
And as far as we can tell, George II believes mainly in creationism. That does not qualify as science either. So what is your point?
:-)
Much of what you say may be correct, but the following is just wrong...
Special relativity explains "the mechanics of slowly moving bodies" and does so more accurately than Newtonian mechanics. No scientific theory is unique in explaining natural phenomena. Quantum mechanics explains the "microscopic world" but so does quantum field theory. (Quantum field theory is not the same as standard quantum mechanics.) Classical electrodynamics explains electrical/magnetic phenomena, but less accurately then quantum electrodynamics. At best, science provides us our best approximation at explaining nature. Until, and unless, we come up with a final, unique "theory of everything" (whether string theory, or whatever), scientific knowledge is always subject to revision.
"No scientific theory is unique in explaining natural phenomena."
I concede that I should have been more careful in chosing my words.
Theories are not identical in what they predict. And moreover, they are not identical in what they are useful for. So you are really looking at (at least) two important criteria for a theory: application domain and difficulty.
To stick with your example: special relativity is a kinemtaic theory but it is close to useless for doing dynamics. Actually, it conceptually brakes down really badly if you try to define what an accelerated coordinate system is supposed to be. That, however, is a blast in Newtonian mechanics in Lagrange or Hamilton theory, which you need if you want to look at planetary movements, orbital calculations etc.. But special relativity per se does not have a framework which accomodates accelerated coordinate systems in any practical way. I guess Einstein gave up on that and moved on to general relativity after a couple of years of trying, if he tried at all (I would need to read up on how he got from SR to GR).
In that sense SR is not a great theory because it has a very narrow, albeit enormously deep, scope. Newtonian mechanics does really well for slowly moving bodies without explaining anything about gravitation (1/r potentials are external to the theory). General Realtivity, on the other hand, not only covers all macroscopic scenarios with gravity and moving bodies (slow, fast, it does not matter), it also provides a workable framework for post-Newtonian approximations.
Yes, indeed, you have a hierarchy, but the step from one to the other is enormous without giving you much in return for your money as long as your only concern is about solar system kind of scenarios.
As for non-identical theories on the same level, the pair that comes to mind is GR and Brans-Dicke theory or GR with spin, neither of which has returned any measurable advantage over GR, as far as I know. And naive formulations of either can probably be ruled out by now.
"Quantum mechanics explains the "microscopic world" but so does quantum field theory."
And yet, you will be hard pressed to find many people who calculate molecular energy levels ab-initio with quantum field theory. Basic QM, on the other hand, says nothing much about the vacuum. And inbetween most will chose perturbation methods rather than trying to fit a square peg (molecules) into a round hole (electroweak theory or even the standard model). Again, two theories, two vastly different levels of complexity and almost non-overlapping application domains.
"Classical electrodynamics explains electrical/magnetic phenomena, but less accurately then quantum electrodynamics."
But unlike QED, Maxwells equations make sense by themselves. The only way to make QED (halfway) self-consistent with the experiments that test it is to fit it into electroweak theory because the electron comes with this funny partner, the electron neutrino and when you create or destroy one, you often also create the other. Again nature makes the first lesson easy but the next step a lot harder!
"At best, science provides us our best approximation at explaining nature."
Which is all it will ever do. Even when you get to the level of TOE, there will be unanswered questions. They will probably even remaine unanswered by principle rather than by ignorance. That is going to be our Goedel moment.
It is impossible to understand or calculate the precession of the perihelion of Mercury without using special relativity. This is a problem in dynamics, no? Yes, you need Newtonian mechanics, but special relativity explains the phenomenon.
Special relativity is not only a great theory, but a revolutionary one. E = mc^2, and the unification of space and time. It doesn't get much better than that. I guess what you're saying is that it lacks the proper handling of an accelerating reference frame and gravitation, as in general relativity. Granted, general relativity is an even greater accomplishment.
All true. However, my point was that both theories, in principle, explain the same phenomena -- sub-atomic particle interactions. Neither theory is "unique". Also, in principle, both theories explain more complex phenomena, such as atoms, molecules, solid state matter, etc. Of course, quantum field theory is never used for these more complex states because the calculations would be too hard.
There will always be unanswered scientific questions due to ignorance, because new phenomena emerge from the complexity of physical systems. (Quantum mechanics was known and, in principle, superconductivity could be understood when it was discovered. However, it took a few years to actually understand how superconductivity works.) By definition, a "theory of everything" should be capable of explaining, in principle, any physical phenomena. Of course, humans will always have questions, at least relative to many other matters, because the world is not just physical nature. It has a subjective, psychic dimension.
My point is that if you accept the existence of infinite possibilities then you must also accept the existence of God:
1. There is (in the understanding) something than which there is no greater. (Premise)
2. (Hence) There is (in the understanding) a unique thing than which there is no greater. (From (1), assuming that the "greater-than" relation is connected.)
3. (Hence) There is (in the understanding) something which is the thing than which there is no greater. (From (2), by a theorem about descriptions.)
4. (Hence) There is (in the understanding) nothing which is greater than the thing than which there is no greater. (From (3), by another theorem about descriptions.)
5. If that thing than which there is no greater does not exist (in reality), then there is (in the understanding) something which is greater than that thing than which there is no greater. (Premise)
6. (Hence) That thing than which there is no greater exists (in reality). (From (4) and (5).)
7. (Hence) God exists.
I apologize for having distracted you from your iron bashing and your experiments with hot gasoline. I am agreed. To philosophize about it is foolish.
False.
Pick a real number between 0 and 1. There are infinite possibilities, but none of them are 2.
Not a premise one need accept. In general, "greater" is a very mis-used term; greater in what sense?
How does this follow? If the set you are considering is a pound of hammers and a pound of feathers, with the greater-than relation being weight, then (1) is true -- there exists something in the set for which nothing is greater -- but (2) is false.
Your counter argument is false. It depends on a priori numeric schema which has a predefined upper bound; by definition it can never equal 2. You are arguing from the basis of a tautology and I see no compelling reason to accept the validity of the tautology you have on offer.
To put this in other terms. You claim that there exists a wheel of cheese. You further claim that you can divide this wheel of cheese into an infinite number of slices but that the sum total of this infinite number of slices can never equal the infinite number of slices to be obtained from two wheels of cheese. Your argument rests on a claim of limited infinity which I view as a misunderstanding of any conventional understanding of infinity. I see no reason to further address this issue until you are able to provide some clarification of this point.
It may not have escaped you that the infinite slices argument may reflect a biblical story regarding loaves and fishes and the infinite distribution of those foods to some multitude. It may be your intent to support this story; I reject it.
Actually, it's pretty easy to prove that those two are equal (it's the standard diagonalization argument, since they're both countable, thanks to the finite size of cheese molecules and/or Planck Length).
So, no, I'm not claiming that.
What I am saying is that waving the "infinite possibilities" wand doesn't do nearly as much as you think it does.
Then I'm sorry modern math has left you behind. And by "modern", I mean "the last 2400 years".
My argument is also, and let's be clear on this, correct. There are an infinite number of numbers between 0 and 1 (for example, 1/(N+1) for all positive integers N), and none of them are the number 2.
By contrast, your argument displays a misunderstanding of quite how little "infinite" really tells us, which your attempted cheese analogy has also made clear.
Actually, the most recent interpretation of the "loaves and fishes" story I've heard is simply that Jesus started the generosity-ball rolling, and inspired people to contribute their personal stores of food to the communal amount. Personally, I think that's a more powerful interpretation than the "and Jesus magically made a bunch of food" one.
To many people, spirituality (as opposed to religion) is not a belief system either. It is a state of awareness arrived at by the repetitive application of spiritual methods (meditation, yoga, prayer, breathing exercises, etc.) It differs from science in that it does not lead to objective truth. That fact alone does not invalidate it. There are many subjective experiences, such as emotions, that the vast majority of people believe to contain a personal truth, even though they are not objectively verifiable. Yes, we can measure physiological changes produced by, say, falling in love, but that is not what we mean by the experience of love. Similarly, we can measure physiological changes produced by certain spiritual exercises, but that does not convey the significance of the experience to the individual. Too much time is wasted trying to prove/disprove the existence of God. There is no objective proof of God. That doesn't mean that God does not exist, or that individuals cannot have experiences which suggest the existence of a higher Being, just as the lack of objective proof of love, jealousy, joy, sadness, etc., does not mean that those experiences are a delusion. Humans experience both an inner subjective world, and an outer objective one. One does not negate the other. The full expression of what it means to be human contains both realms.
Not as the term is commonly used, no, and you yourself noted the key reason:
With a belief system, you believe you know the truth.
With science, you believe you might know the truth
That skepticism is key.
Alternatively, one could say that science is a belief system of methods -- i.e., the techniques for doing objective science will tend to lead us towards an understanding of the world -- whereas most belief systems are of facts -- e.g., the earth was created in 6 days, Zeus throws thunderbolts, Kali defeated the blood-spawning demon, etc.
Either way, the term "belief system" as it is commonly used is not an accurate description of scientific endeavour.
I am in full agreement with these statements. However it has to be noted that it very easy to pevert science and to fail to excercise an appropriate scepticism. This would approximate what Kuhn refers to as "normal science." My reading of some of the posts on this list is that this subtle demand for scepticism is not clearly understood and to my mind the outcome is a peverted understanding of science.
As for "science" and "method" there is much to debate here and I have no intention of making remarks which would ease the abilty of Infinite Possibilities to respond to my prior post. I am sure you will understand.
At the risk of creating further mis-understanding I would suggest that many of those belief systems that you would likely characterize as "religions" may also exhibit an understanding of the world which may be profound, complex, quite beautiful and of a level higher level then a conventional understanding of science. But we are moving from the realm of the ontological to the noetic and this is not the appropriate blog.
Don,
I think you are using a logical fallacy equating Newton, and other "Christian" scientists, with the issue of Christian's influence, and hence God's influence, in the classroom.
While you may be correct that public school woes are largely due to the inherent problems found in any large bureaucracy, the sad truth is that Christians are gaining inroads into the realm of public education. Fundamentalist Christians have been targeting school boards by getting themselves elected and thus comandeering policy making.
You should check out the Flying Spahghetti Monster: http://www.venganza.org/about/
All hail the Flying Spaghetti Monster!!!
I'm glad to see that Pastafarians are adequately represented on TOD.
I do not think the issue of religious belief is a big deal when it comes to explaining why our schools are so bad.
BTW, when my son was a junior and senior in high school he took honors and advanced placement chemistry and physics from a man who was the epitome of everything a fine science teacher should be--a bright man of very high energy who put at least seventy hours a week into his job. By far, he was the best teacher of science my son ever had--and the man happened to be a born-again devout Christian who never let his personal beliefs interfere with his teaching. Indeed, I think this man studied and taught science for the same reason Newton did: namely, to understand the mind of God.
Some science teachers I know are so ignorant, so lacking in dedication, so alcoholic, so dedicated to coaching their sport that anecdotes of their antics would be unbelievable.
Those of you who have children in middle and high school--start looking at what your kids are learning (or not learning). Find out how many ninth grade algebra students can do even the simplest factoring problems--and how many cannot.
I say again, with no fear of successful contradiction: Our public schools are disaster areas. The prospect of dealing with Peak Oil or Global Warming in any meaningful way is bleak--and in large part I think the reason for this bleak outlook goes directly back to our deplorable and deteriorating public education.
Don: Here is some thing I Posted on Edu. a year or so ago.
100 years ago as today 50% of the most intelligent people were women, however the number of well educated women were considerably smaller. Today the 90th percentile of women are no doubt judges, college professors, engineers, etc. 100 years ago the 90th percentile of women were grammar school teachers, and nurses. Today’s teachers and nurses are somewhere closer to the peak of the bell curve or at the 50th percentile of intelligence. 100 years ago the 90th percentile of women was distributed quite evenly though out the population as were men to a great extent. 90th percentile women often married 30th or 40th percentile men and vice versa. Therefore each city, village, or community had their fair share of leaders to make things function efficiently. Today the sharpest and brightest leave for college, marry equally sharp and bright folks, live in gated communities or areas of equally successful folks. The 30th and 40th percentiles are left to shift for themselves, and also live in areas of less successful folks. Now it requires the government to support the 10 and 20 percentile folks.
Of course this theory isn’t absolute, and is only somewhat accurate, however any one can consider this theory and expand on it.
Religion is an issue in U.S. education in a way other countries can't even comprehend.
Even the "blue" states are affected, because large states like Texas have great weight in textbook editing. If Texas won't buy a biology book that mentions the e-word, publishers probably won't print it...so no one can buy it.
Then there's the Bush administration's "abstinence-only" sex education policy. Abstinence-only has never worked. Even in the good old days, most people engaged in premarital sex. (I know in my own family tree, there are a lot of "premature" babies who remarkably survived with no need of special medical attention.) And now that people are reaching sexual maturity at ever-younger ages, and getting married at 27 or 37 instead of 17, it's even more ridiculous to teach abstinence until marriage as the only form of birth control and HIV prevention.
Leanan,
In my opinion, the bigger issue is: Why have sex education classes at all? Why have drivers ed classes? Why have drug education classes? Not only are these three categories of classes worthless (and in the case of drivers ed, worse than useless), but classes such as these gobble up time and funds and energy that could go into reading and writing and math and science.
The teaching of math has zippedity do da to do with the influence of religion on education. Yet our math education is worse than pathetic, it is a national disgrace.
Probably most posters on TOD were in the top 1% of their high-school classes. Big deal. The top 1% will learn even if you lock them into a dark closet all day long. The problem is with the other 99%--who cannot read well, cannot write beyond the fourth grade level, cannot do simple arithmetic, and who probably cannot name more than about four planets. The abysmal performance of American schools is a key national tragedy, and the influence of troublesome religious groups (while real) is very small potatoes in the whole picture.
From the perspective of a non-American attempting to come to an understanding of contemporaty America, the above begins to explain a great deal.
deleted oops!
Hi new,
I can only emphasize and underline your observation. And perhaps add: there is a tremendous range in quality of education. (Please don't ask me to qualify or quantify that!) So, some lucky kids are getting nurtured...the rest...
it's extremely sad. Jonothan Kozol (among others) has written on this. http://www.amazon.com/Shame-Nation-Restoration-Apartheid-Schooling/dp/14...
I'm going to have to disagree with you here. None of these classes are useless. For the smarter students, they might not be helpful, but experience with other drivers on the road has led me to the conclusion that most would benefit from learning the theory of how to merge and yield, how to get on the freeway without stopping, etc.
As for the sex ed, parents want to have these classes taught because they don't want to have to teach this to their children. Also, the parents might not know, for instance that antibiotics reduce the effectiveness of oral contraceptives, which could potentially be very important information.
The drug classes however, can probably be safely replaced with "If you didn't grow it, or react it yourself, don't take it!" also "Get your own freaking needle and stop borrowing them!" (If I had any power, I would make clean needles easily available, and condoms) D.A.R.E, I believe, does not contain these messages.
Come to think of it, establishing drop points where people can drop off byproducts from meth production without harassment would probably prevent a lot of pollution and explosions.
All a fantasy of course, as the political system prevents good decision making.
I don't think there are many intellectuals that share your view of what's "the most fundamental principle of science". "Science" does not consist of an homogeneous body of people.
What we refer to as science is about explaining the facts. It's about whether calculations and theoretical proposals can be applied to observations. And IMO, if the field in question is intrinically barred from experiments, then the information quality dwindle.
Paleontology is a good example. It's exiting but probably 90 per cent bs and it will never get below the 89 mark.
Read Carl Sagan's "The Demon-Haunted World". He says exactly what I'm saying, I assure you.
And you have the methodology of most science backwards. It starts with observation, and then the calculations and theories are developed to explain the observations. Sometimes it's the other way around, but not that often.
Regarding your point about certain fields being "barred from experimentation", I guess you throw out the whole science of astronomy. If we can't create a star in a laboratory we don't know anything about stars?? But of course you're talking about uncovering the natural history of the Earth. Sounds like it conflicts with some sort of religious belief. Sorry about that. But I really doubt that my great-great-great-great-great, etc., grandfather had a pet dinosaur!
Sagan was a so called freethinker. I don't feel it's appropriate to equate his personal thoughts of science should be to what science is.
Correct me if i'm wrong, but the book is not an peace of research on how scientists actually work. It's popular literature aimed to teach laymen how to avoid end up believing in Santa, isn't it? (haven't read the book)
Might be true. But personally i don't subscribe to the notion of a scientific method. But that being said, i strongly feel there it's useful to discuss how one achieve results and how to test them.
I can see the similarity and yes; the reliability of cosmological assertions is not the same as when dealing with phenomena which is subject to direct experiment. But of course, there are important differences between astronomy and paleontology, as i'm sure you know.
There are a many orders of magnitudes more data to work with in astronomy and there is also an exiting interaction between experimental particle physics and astronomy enabling one to for example test interpretations of observations being made. But I don't have much detailed knowledge about such interaction, so you're better off with google.
Some of your post is a straw man attack. I never said we can't know something about stars or else. My position is that some types of knowledge is more reliable than others. And please don't label me as a case as a religious with cognitive dissonance because i downgrade the reliability of paleontology.
Papirus, what is your gripe with paleontology? Is it that they say the world was not created in 2004 BC? Well, a lot of other sciences confirm that the earth is much older than that.
Or perhaps paleontology finds hominoids go back about 5 million years and did not start with Adam and Eve? Yea, that's probably it. Well, I think that the preponderance of evidence is pretty convincing in this area. But you can believe whatever you please. Most folks do you know.
Ron Patterson
The case is that self-proclaimed scientifical minds report very fuzzy information in a language inprinted with certainty. This mindset results in millions of kids believe that mankind know, while in reality we don't.
It also kills me to see people embrace poor science because they have a bias against religion.
I like having the uncertainies exposed. IMO that is an important element of a healthy culture. The simple science, physics, has the better culture.
Well, I noticed you failed to answer either of my questions. But paleontology does not claim to know, it simply proclaims what the preponderance of evidence supports.
Well, I think you are the one with the overwhelming bias here. You are not biased against physics or math, you are biased against paleontology because it disagrees with your religious convictions.
Right, you love physics because it does not disagree with your religious convictions and you hate paleontology because it does. And what uncertainies are you talking about? Are you talking about man and ape decending from a common ancestor? I suspect that is the one that grates against your convictions the most.
Papirus, there are only two options. There is "Humans were created in their present form by God" and then there is "evolution" or, "we evolved from the same early primates as did all other great apes".
But I understand your frustration Papirus, all my folks were fundamentalist Baptist. All my extended family, except my own immediate family of course, still believe the Adam and Eve story. They even believe the Noah's Ark story. So I tuly understand how superstition mold one's mind.
I wonder every day, why was I the only member of my parents nine children, and 50 or so first cousins, that found those absurd stories too hard to swallow. Why was I the only one to embrace science and reason instead of those ancient superstitions?
Ron Patterson
Ron,
I beg pardon for not answering your questions. They were interpreted as rhetorical statements and not as real questions.
No i don't believe the world was created six thousand years ago and i do not dislike paleontology. I do believe there where hominids five million years ago. I do believe in evolution, although i don't have a lot of confidence in the darwinistic model of evolution. I need to do more reading, but there is some of the arguments surrounding information theory that resonance with my mind.
Frankly, I don't know and I rather say i don't know then subscribe to poor science. You know, in discussions, most people just repetitively refer to a few intellectual sources. I'm often better off reading for example Dawkins than arguing with his followers - in most cases i won't hear anything non-Dawkinian. People believe too much in science.
But don't interpret me as the above is directed toward you Darwinian, it's not. You seem to me as a free spirit. I really enjoy your posts and learn a lot from you. You should be more selective about when to respond to some of the posters, for example Hothgor and Freddy. You would also benefit from turning down the volume when writing. Just look at the post i'm currently responding to; it's rude and you assume much and essentially refer to me as a superstitious caveman.
"The simple science, physics, has the better culture."
Quick question: what do you know about physics? And I don't mean what you have heard about physics. I mean: what physics have you DONE in your life?
For I can assure you... there is nothing simple about modern physics!
Quick observation: you sound very much like a creationist who needs to pick and chose among scientific disciplines to minimize his pain with some of them contradicting his self chosen literal dogma. The ones you pick on are the ones that hit closest to topics that are key to your beliefs while you are willing to leave those alone which you know little to nothing about and which are not explicitly targeted in typical creationist publications.
Yes, perhaps my post was somewhat unclear.
I refer to physics as "the simple science" as opposed to life sciences, not implying that it cognitive simple (it's not). In physics the systems are simpler, fewer parameters and rules. Although all science simplify reality by use of models, the ones used in physics are closer to reality than models in life sciences because physics deals with simpler systems that is more easily described by models. To put it another way; i don't know how to solve the schrødinger equation for a protein.
I'm sorry that you got the impression of me as "a creationist who needs to pick and chose among scientific disciplines to minimize his pain with some of them contradicting his self chosen literal dogma".
Quick questions:
I study physics (currently QM-II and solid state physics). The way i see it, my statements would have the same content if I studied literature or economics. I hope I'm not the one with any dogma tied around my neck. The most dogmatic and religious (in the worst sense) people i know, are without exceptions communists, libertarian or atheistic Darwinists.
I generally socialize with bright students of many different fields. My overall impression is that science is not as rational as most people seems to believe.
An example from geology; the theory of plate tectonics.
There is this professor, Storetvedt, which is a dissident. He does not believe in the current paradigm and he pretty much describe geology as a long series of ad-hoc theories. His colleagues tries to characterize him as a nutcase, but judging from what other professors has told me, he's (Storetvedt) definitely not anything close to being nuts, on the contrary he's described as very knowledgeable in lot of different fields, a true generalist which just happens to be professor in geology. Ok. Follow me on this. I don't have any deep insight into geology and i don't prioritize to get it. But for me, the very existence of (non-nutcase) dissents, is an argument - not evidence - that the field in question is not very well established and there probably is a lot of untrue information there which is presented as something close to a fact.
Thats geology. I share a house with medicine students, same kind of story could be told about some of the activities within medicine. Apparently even in physics bullshit sometimes goes through, google "Bogdanov Affair". Yes the scientific community correct itself (just as many other communities do), but while some bs get kicked out, something else gets approved.
So IMHO there alway seems to be quite a lot of bullshit science which the sheeps accept as true because their authorities say so. I adopt a more sceptical view.
Date of Creation: 9 AM October 23, 4004 BC
What time zone is this? Daylight savings?
This is not correct. In Germany they teach excellent science and they teach religion (you could either go to Catholic or Protestant classes, lately they added some for Muslims where necessary). The system works because what it being taught in those classes is under constant supervision by the states.
The fact that America can't deal with its own freedom does not mean it is impossible to have excellent schools. In my opinnion the election of school boards rather than the apointment of people with credentials is the main problem. Educating kids is a science. It is under constant development since the 19th century. In Europe, if you want to be an educator or influence educators, you have to learn the basics of that science. You can't just put up a few signs in the neighborhood and get people to vote for you.
Let's not push on public schools too hard. You ever wonder why there were no Catholic astronauts?
Seriously though, the scary thing is that under No Child Left Behind, schools are jumping through hoops to get teachers certified and stamped to make sure they're qualified but the OTHER big trend is...ta da...home schooling!
What kind of certification do you need to home school your kids? I'll bet its not a postgraduate degree plus 15 semester hours every 3 years in any subject area. You see, if the "unqualified" teacher in the public school is screwing up your kid's education, why not screw it up yourself?
There have been many Catholic astronauts. The first thing eaten on the surface of the moon was a communion wafer, by Apollo 11 astronaut Aldrin.
I have had more than a dozen home-schooled children in my college classes. In general, their knowledge and thinking abilities were considerably above the public school average. This is not to say that their educations were particularly good, but rather that the public schools are deplorable. Though firmly believing in God, most of them did well in logic and critical thinking classes; their reading abilities (probably mostly based on the Bible) were clearly better than the public school average.
Unless you have been on the front lines of education in the U.S., I doubt that you have much idea of just how bad things are in the public schools. Not only do our schools rate poorly compared to those in other countries, but quality is going even lower. I saw this in the difference in generations in the students I taught: Students who graduated high school in 1970 had poor writing skills and little ability to do even the most basic algebra. Their sons and daughters who graduated in the 1995-2000 years were much worse, with reading abilities down at the sixth grade level, writing maybe at fourth or fifth grade levels and little or no ability to do even sixth grade math problems.
Not surprising. Schools can't fix what has been broken in the families. If Mom and Dad don't spend time with their kids and deny them the necessary interaction in those first few years that decide how smart they will be for the rest of their lives, educators can, at best, pick up the pieces and try to make a halfway decent human being. They can't make quick thinking, well rounded individuals out of little morons.
But on top of that the teachers are among the worst imaginable. I bet that 50% of science teachers in this country can't give a proper definition of what science is, let alone have the ability to clearly differentiate it in their classes from religion. If you teach science by the "This is what you need to know to pass the test tomorrow" method, the kids will hardly get an impression that is markedly different from Sunday School. That, I have to say, is not the fault of Sunday School. It is the fault of the people who let people without at least a FOUR year science degree teach science.
What level of ignorance do you need to be a bigot? Michael Collins (Gemini and Apollo) is a Roman Catholic, and if I recall his bio correctly, was educated at Catholic schools.
Sorry Laurie. I was exaggerating to make a point. And wrong to boot. I merely meant to point out that this is not a public school problem. This is an education problem. If on the one hand, we say that teachers aren't qualified enough and need more rigorous testing then the solution is not saying that anyone with a GED can teach. Alternately, if home schooling is the answer, what does adding all the bureaucracy do?
As an uninteresting aside: I attended both Catholic and public schools. Neither of them mentioned the Buzz Aldrin communion story in class. Too bad. At least then I probably wouldn't have taken the bit from Michener's "Space" about the early astronauts being predominantly Protestant out of context.
It always amuses me to hear stories about the faith of those astronauts. I can tell you that they all "believed" much more in orbital mechanics than they believed in God. Well, actually, they KNEW that orbital mechanics was what would get them to the moon (or orbit) and back. They knew that no prayer in the world could do that for them. They all lived and breathed orbital mechanics. You could have woken them up in the middle of the night, given them the orbital elements of a spacecraft and ten minutes of time to make the right course correction manouver and they would have been able to do it and execute all the right moves to steer their spacecraft to the right point in the heavens so that they would have come back home alive.
This, gentlemen, was devotion. You can read the bible or the Qur'an all your life and not get nearly as familiar with it as those men were with the operating instructions for the Apollo capsule and the rules for orbital mechanics. Ask them. They will have a broad smile for you.
Very funny, Benzoil.
As the saying goes, "Don't pray in our school and I won't think in your church."
While I agree with you Cherenkov, I didn't mean to knock Catholicism (or religion) in general. I think in a relocalized Post-peak world, there are lots of advantages to being involved with a church. There is a pre-built geographically defined community who's stated purpose is to assist others. Also, to provide a compass in a crazy world. That's not just "nice", that's a competitive advantage. The price of admission is a bit high though.
Five days a week, Eight o'clock in the morning, all year long?
Accountancy?
How did you stay sane?
And I use sane in its loosest possible sense...
I make no claim to sanity.
Accounting is a spherically boring subject, i.e., boring no matter what angle you approach it from. Finding mistakes and auditing falsified tax returns can provide a few sparks of interest.
We need accountants, but they are a special breed of people--actually a pretty good breed: bright, generally honest, and they can get their columns to add up correctly. Just for fun, some time get your accountant started on the subject of lawyers . . . .
i did some teaching in industry courses, and the students may not have learned that much but the instructor sure did.
There are 1.1 million home-schooled children in the US. Can you imagine what sorts of things some of those kids are "learning?"
Yes, I can imagine. One of the most frightening things is the lack of socialization or interaction skills. Sometimes in my community a child who has been home schooled all of their life will participate in after school athletics or selected classes during high school. My kids told me they behave like something from another planet. One year I watched one try to stuggle along with the cross country team. It was truly pitiful.
hopefully something usefull
When my youngest was in seventh grade science, the science "teacher" refused to teach or acknowledge student references to evolution. The section in the text on evolution was ignored and skipped over. Complaints to the principal, also a born again, went nowhere except for vague assurances the matter would be taken care of. The school year ended. And this was, in my opinion, a mild example of that instructor trying to interject his religious beliefs into the classroom. The following year the instructor was reprimanded, but not on religious grounds. The complaint was for excessive touching of students.
Many teachers see science as a minefield. Something that is only likely to get them in trouble. The easiest way to cope with pressures for perfect correctness from every compasspoint is to remain silent.
I have spent my life trying to inject a healthy level of cyncism into my kids brains, especially where teachers and schools are concerned.
Written off from a very young age (its now called dyslexia) I formed a opinion of most teachers akin to loathing and contempt and slight regard.
There were one or two exceptions:
Exception Number 1
Eng Lit Teacher, Jnr Officer, One of the first into Belsen , as a war reporter.
He showed me how Shakespeare could not be surpassed.
Exception Number 2.
Physics Teacher, Seargent, Parachuted into Arnhem as an extremely fierce paratrooper.
Certainly, he was a vicious Physics Teacher
He shed light physical world.
The rest were just a bunch of post-war, psuedo-intellectual tossers.
The most fun one we got was a young Geography Teacher.
First time we met him , he insisted we call him by his first name.
His name was Kenneth.
He did not last a term.
WARNING WARNING --THE THREAD GOES TO CRAP HERE! WARNING WARNING
DON'T LISTEN TO HIM -- THE BEST IS YET TO COME! DON'T LISTEN...DON'T LISTEN
The same thing is going on in California. The Governor and the legislature placed a series of huge bond measures on the November ballot to (mostly) expand the state's highways; since the bond measures will be repaid from the state's general fund with no new revenue sources to offset them, we in essence decided to take money from healthcare and education to expand the roads. The measures did little to address the original problem, which is that the cost of maintaining the state's roads and highways is much greater than the gas tax brings in. Now the Legislative Analyst's office has recommended that gas taxes be raised to keep the roads in good repair – which is what we should have been done in the first place, rather than issue the bonds, which will just borrow a lot of money to build new roads we can't afford to keep up: Report proposes taxes to finance state’s road fixes (San Francisco Examiner).
A little snippet from january highlights by apache : www.apachecorp.com/Explore/Weekly_Energy_Perspective/Topic_Report/
China National Petroleum Corporation forecasts a drop in domestic production from 2006 to 2007 by 100,000 Bpd, which should increase imports.
I believe that someone noted that China is just now crossing their own 50% of Qt mark.
In 2005, the top eight oil producing countries were
1 Saudi Arabia
2 Russia
3 United States
4 Iran
5 China
6 Mexico
7 Norway
8 Venezuela
I wonder whether 2007 will see declining oil production in all eight. Does anyone see much chance for a significant increase in production in any of these countries in the near term - other than "orimultion" from Venezuela?
No. 1 is now russia, not sa. Russia did increase 06 vs. 05, may manage a bit more, or maybe not.
Very good point that all 8 are either declining or flat.
Concerning Ethanol and Globalization
I’ve been thinking about ethanol and how US production based on corn might impact food prices in places we export to.
It seems pretty obvious that exports will decrease and that prices will increase (further dampening demand).
Shouldn’t this cause areas that import our corn to shift to local production (given lack of supply or high prices)?
And if those areas were growing and exporting cash crops to the US then the supply of those crops for export should decrease (causing higher prices or lack of availability in the US)?
Wouldn’t this in effect represent a basic unraveling of “globalization”?
It seems pretty clear that the end of cheap energy will lead to the end of globalization and a focus on local resources.
Just looking for comments on the topic, figured the Drumbeat was the best place.
that's the way I see it.
for decades the us has destroyed foreign farmers with commodity grain. it seems they may get the chance to stand on their own feet. a good thing imo.
Yes,
Globalistion will grind to a halt.
The whole subject is worth a weighty tome in a heavy weight journal.
But 'yes' will do.
I think that the food/population situation will settle over the mid to long term. What is scarrier is the growth of the renewable energy crop picture. Slavery anyone? The Belgian Congo encore? How about the prison farms in the South of the US.
A different kind of warning beacon (from thehousingbubbleblog.com):
In my business and amongst my friends I see many signs that the housing industry is on the verge of a collapse. I work for an I&D company in the trade show business and for the past few months we have been seeing a greater number of construction carpenters looking for work in our field because they cannot find enough work outside. Many of my friends have left the real estate and mortgage business as the bottom has literally falling out of the market. An attorney I know who specializes in real estate closings has seen his business decline dramatically. However, you wouldn’t know there are problems reading the local Chicago newspapers. Who pays for their huge advertising sections in the Saturday and Sunday editions? What also puzzles me is that I still see new condominiums popping up in the Chicago Bridgeport neighborhood like mushrooms after a summer rain. They are having problems selling the units they already have and they are still building more. Some of the small builders are taking forever to finish their projects. Funding problems? And Chicago is not supposed to be a “bubble” market. Yikes.
The housing sector would not be in decline if builders would be properly regulated with zoning. While it is obvious to me that there is more money in McMansions than there is in flats, the truth is that the larger part of the population needs well designed and built-to-last apartments rather than suburban copycats.
IP your post exposes a problem in many cities. It is presently neither profitable to build nor to own rental property in a large urban area. I know, I sold an apartment building a little over a year ago partly because it was losing proposition. Rents barely cover the costs of investing and maintaining such property. When the taxation assessments go up because of all of these McMansions - you should see some of these monstrosities in Chicago - being constructed the landlords of older existing properties really get hammered. Many give up and sell to someone who will do a condo conversion. Municipalities treat landlords like pariahs and then wonder why the rental market is so unstable.
It isn't profitable for people of low income to rent one of those properties, either. So everyone in the current system loses, right? The landlords make little, the tenants lose a lot of their income and live in badly serviced buildings. At least that is what I see when I go to the city...
And it gets worse when the developers move in and convert low end neighborhoods into high end housing for the rich.
Would it be unfair to say that none of this will change unless a larger fraction of our GDP is shared among a larger number of people? This is a social issue. Cities thrive on people with a future living in them. At this point many US cities seem to be the dead end for those who are on minimum wage or close to it.
Chicago is very mixed. I'm in Rogers Park where there have been more starts in the past 6 months than sales in past 18. And many of the recent sales just turn into problems. And still they build. I'd guess that even if the boom of 2005 reappeared it would take 2 years to clear inventory of condos. At the current rate some would never be sold.
Ten blocks south it's a different world. Everything sells. Ten blocks north buyers still approach sellers as humble petitioners.
Micheal BOoby Lynch was just on CNBC predicting lower/declining oil prices until MAYBE the 3rd qtr. Implied investing in Oil Stocks was not for the faint of heart. His counter supposedly the bull case said the only reason we have had high prices was due to the limited supply of refined products. Meanwhile oil is up $1.19 to $55.25. I just laugh at CNBC even their bulls are typically full of downstream bull.
$400 billion in investment in 8 years?
Till today investment stands at $70-$80 billion, much of which has yet to be actually spent. $400 billion on top of that is a lotta mullah.
And if they already got that lined up, what do they need Chinese money for?
It might be good for Canada to wonder why China has decided to stay out of the oilsands. Maybe they read Deffeyes, who talks about the curious phenomenon that everytime oil shale looks good enough to try, the costs spiral out of control. Coincidence?
"How much oil in the oil sands" is the wrong question.
The key questions are:
1) How do we supply the required process heat?
1A) If NG then what is our assured source of supply?
2) How do we supply the required process water?
2A) How do we mitigate impacts on downstream populations?
2B) How do we justify our use of water resources against other claims (agriculture, urban areas etc).
1) Nat Gas now, later bitumen burning, nuclear reactors, etc.
2) Drain the rivers
2A) Screw em.
2B) In northern alberta? There are no other claims worth anything.
I assume that you're just ignorant. There are many communities downstream on the Atabasca river, and they are already complaining about occasional low water levels. And the pollution is horrendous. This government is run by USAn oil interests and should be removed from office now.
You're right, I am. I'm looking for references of any downstream communities that are worth even one tenth what the oil industry in alberta is worth. I'm very interested in being less ignorant on this topic.
The oil industry in Alberta is an ecological catastrophe which is worth much less than the revenues it generates merely by virtue of the mess which will scar that land for tens of thousands of years after the oil industry has ended (and humankind has gone extinct).
The oil industry's behavior in Alberta is criminal. Canada would do humankind a big favor by bringing an end to the oil sands industry forever.
But it won't because humankind's greed is a more powerful force than humankind's survival instincts. Nature will have to clean up this mess after humankind is gone.
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
You're selling something that I dont want. Try again. The whole 'man is nearly evil as he is stupid' rant ad nausium isnt any way to connect with me or most others.
Now if you could actually speak in numbers I care about, like mentioning dollar values lost to the oil industry, we might get somewhere. Heres your chance to just make crap up.
Hello Dezakin,
The things that you care about are not the things that I care about, Dezakin. You look at dollars and are mesmerized. I look at dollars and only see worthless paper and an ecological catastrophe which will imprint the land for thousands of years.
I do like that phrase, though:
Man is as evil as he is stupid.
Very true.
Ten thousand years of history support that assertion. The oil sands industry also supports it, too.
Man is Nature's problem. No need to worry, though, because Nature can solve her problems without our help. Of course, that does mean that humankind will go extinct. But at least we'll make lots of money along the path to extinction.
That's life in the Universe, you know, extremely harsh. Nature doesn't care whether Homo sapiens endures or goes extinct. Humans don't care too much, either, based upon the behavior of humankind on the Earth.
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
Maybe hard won communities have a right to exist, irrespective of the mineral potential of the land they happen to sit on?
We will see , in the fullness of time.
1) We don't.
1A) None.
2) We don't.
2A) We don't.
2B) We don't.
Are we really getting 2.5mbd from the tar, excuse me, OIL sands?? Last I heard it was barely over 1mbd.
Exactly right - barely over 1mbd from all the statistical sources.
That's what the next line says, 1.1 mbd, and I don't think anyone would doubt that, at least not upward.
No, Mr. Flaherty was flat-out lying in China.
Wonder how much they like that. Plus, 10 to 1 they know very well how much it is, and he just looked like a complete fool.
I guess the $400 billion investment is just as exaggerated.
No He was referring to Zimbabwe dollars probably
Oil is a liquid. Tar sands is a more accurate description.
from the Leanan's Links above:
I wonder how much bomb-grade uranium and plutonium Iran has amassed over the past couple decades via the black market (former soviet states, north korea, etc..).
I wonder if their current very public efforts by their very belligerent president might not be meant as bait.
I wonder if Curious George is playing army games exactly as they imagined and had hoped and "prayed" for over the past quarter century.
The fundamentalist christians and the fundamentalist shiites likely have some things in common besides their apocalyptic fantasies... during the last two elections both were likely praying Curious George to win.
TOD, the forum for all hateful delusions.
Their delusions are not necessarily "hateful" - they are "divinely inspired."
The fundamentalists of both persuasions that I personally know are not "hateful" at all. Both sides seem to see the "tribulation/apocalypse" as unavoidable and they look forward to the return of their messiahs.
BUT none of those I know in either group necessarily relishes the mechanisms of His arrival.
Who? The Flying Spaghetti Monster?
Or the Fifty Foot Rabbit?
Either way, the invisible sky being is apparently coming back to make us fix what he/she is apparently either too incompetent to make right in the first place, or simply not powerful enough to fix, or is too evil to do the right thing and either build it right in the first place or acknowledge he/she is fallible and aplogize to everyone concerned and fix the steaming, pile of screwy supernatural engineering.
Whats with the 50 foot rabbit?
I can handle the flying spaghetti monster.
Now you want me to deal with a completely NEW God?
No flying spaghetti monster or 50 foot rabbit (nor a disappearing but eternally smiling cheshire cat).
There is truly but One God...
http://www.skierpage.com/images/southparkgod.jpg
sendoilplease it is time for you to confess about that nuclear bomb you have been mastering for years in your backyard.
You say you don't have one? It is meaningless to deny it, because I know you do - you need to prove me you don't. I have hard evidence from my own top-secret inteligence agency. That same one that told me about your good friend Saddam. Anyway better start preparing to be bombed soon, cause whatever you say does not really matter.
Louisiana residents pull back from coast
Yeah, but they don't like to be under water...
The KSA cuts exports.
Bush speaks on the energy oil situation.
We are in Iraq and the Saudis don't want us to leave.
We are aware of PO but the public is not.
Mexico is crashing yet no concerns are noted.
CERA and others are optimistic.
So how about this for a hypothesis?
Bush is very well aware of what is happening yet he does not wish to cause panic and hysteria. The Saudis are very well aware of what is going to happen and do not wish to greatly disturb the USA and the adminstration.
Bush wants the word to get out slowly and deliberately.
Bush and the KSA agree to an agenda where they keep their mouths shut and hide the facts. We stay in Iraq. The populace slowly slowly start to get the drift and thereby do NOT panic. Major efforts in the government begin to push chess pieces around on board but try to get the attempt started to alternate energies and fuels.
It can't happen overnite so they push ethanol and biofuel so not only is progress made but people feel warm and fuzzy that something is happening that is being taken care of.
The MSM cooperates.
We the people need to be manipulated else we behave badly and take down the economy.
Of course this would mean that Bush et al are not as dumb as many here express he is but thats ok...Its part of the plan too.
So there will be development. There will be some alternative fuel. Farmers will be happy and make money. We with our grains and farm output will become more valuable than ever. Our citizenry will slowly adapt but with a great deal of suffering for those who used our energy unwisely. The rural areas will be more valuable as the burbs will be people just barely hanging on. Farmers Markets(The Cathedral vs The Bazaar--farmers markets are the bazaar) will flourish as they take up truck gardening or sell small plots to the town folk.
Much of our overburden of needless technology will disappear and we will return slowly to a more slower paced lifestyle. People will take walks,eat good simple food cooked at home, home schooling will return , and so forth and so on and you can think up the rest.
Oh yes,,the Grand Ole Opry will return because radio is the only communication medium that scales down well. Powered by solar that is as well.
airdale-- Some of us(very few) already live like this.the rest are somewhere between the devil and the deep blue sea.
IPs reply:
We can cover the earth with PV cells. Everyone is stupid. I am smart. Your not right. I am right. I went to school. Schools are not good. I went to school and I am smart. You are wrong. Everyone is wrong. Oil is good. Oil is bad. Let's go watch the sunrise...oh wrong troll. Lets go watch the cows fart. We can capture that you know. I went to school and I know. Ethanol is ok. Read my lips(fingers).
So, when are you running for the hills? I need to know so I can set my alarm clock and beat the zerg, I mean herd.
The rest of the story.
KSA gets(stays) rich, The USA survives. UK and EU hang on by kissing lots of Ruskie hiney. The rest fade to a gray screen and then OUT.
Works for me... except you neglected the part about growing tortillas in our Victory Gardens and moving the Capital out of Tidewater to higher ground.
Airdale,
you mentioned yesterday that you sent your nitrogen to the UK. what is the price? My last soil test which included nitrate-nitrogen and about 20 other parameters seemed spendy.
Doug
I sent it to UK..Univ of Ky..Seems the cost was close to a dollar per sample. They return the results via the network(FSA/AG/Extension) in abbut one week.
I am told that its very hard to test of nitrogen. They don't show it as well but otherwise the data is quite extensive. OM-organic matter,,etc
I do a 2.5 acre grid and take one sample about 50 paces out from the center in each direction and then one from the center. Mix all into one sample. I use a handheld GPS overlaid on a map of the fields and boundaries. The grid has a virtual stake in the center of each grid making it easy to walk or drive to.
I was going to order Second Sight , which is a eyewearable display like a HUD(heads up dislay) on a jet fighter. I could do 100 acres in a day just taking my time.
Don't know about what ur samples showed but what I showed the 'operator' and who also owned some of the farmland , was really strange. It had huge hotspots all over it. Come to find out they were mostly explanable. A spot where the fertilzer buggy always loaded.A spot where cattle had been fed. But it also showed spots where the nutrients were deficient yet strangely the yield in some of those spots were higher than where the nutrients showed high values.
Finally the guy threw his hands up and said it was nonsense , when he knew it wasn't but planting time had rolled around and he was not going to have time to play with toys.
I think though that over time he became a believer.
I sent all my data back to the UK ag dept but never heard any more from them on our sampling results.
Maybe more like $1.75 per sample. It might have gone up.
They also supplied the containers. This was to ensure their automation would work consistently. I always crumbled each sample and mixed the 5 parts together very well. I had a tool that makes it very handy to pull a sample down to the correct depth. A core tool sorta.
airdale
BTW one big thing coming is being able to use satellite images of your crops or aerial views to observe your crops and spot problem areas.
OK.
So we get to lick some Russki Butt.
What you gonna do , Yankee Doodle Dandy?
When the rest of the world decides to ditch the dollar and you run out of oil..
Learn to suck some cock: Your porno industry will show you the way forward.
That way you (might) survive...
FOX NEWS TERRORIST THREAT: THROBBING PUCE
Once upon a time you were the 'last , best hope for humanity'.
Ahhhh mudlogger,,,it was just TIC..(tongue in cheek)..jabberwocky.
I notice you ply the jabberwocky at times as well.
Get it? Humor. Lampoonry.
Do you think I am constantly serious about this shat? I would go mad.
Take a break. Sometimes sarcasm is taking a break.
airdale
P.S. Last best hope? My hope is to live to my allocated 70. I am close. I am really trying for 90.
I hold out no hope except what each can do for himself and once that one person survives he can help the others who have done so. If they don't kill him first. This is what is called SERIOUS. The last 4 lines.
"IPs reply:"
We don't have to cover the earth with solar cells. We could start with our roofs and see where that gets us... Ohhh... I see... it might just work and airdale the professional doomsayer is out of business! Man, wouldn't that suck!
:-)
"Everyone is stupid."
Indeed. On some level everyone is stupid. Please show me the man who is perfect and I will show you a smiling horse which can solve differential equations.
"I am smart."
About some things. Not about others. About this thing I am smart because I took the time to inform myself. Did you? Really????
"Your not right."
Indeed. About this thing you aren't. You seem to have a problem with someone telling you that. Lack of self-esteem, maybe? Or maybe you are just not so sure that you are not wrong, after all? Education could help...
"Schools are not good."
Any parent in the US who cares about their child can tell you that your schools are no good. I can talk for hours to parents I know about all the things they feel compelled to do to make sure their child gets a good education. I guess you either have no children, no friends with children, or you just don't care?
"Lets go watch the cows fart."
It will indeed show in the IR absorption spectrum of earth's atmosphere. Here is what you look for:
http://science.widener.edu/svb/ftir/intro_ir.html
"Read my lips(fingers)."
What is there to read? Desperation? A strong feeling that life has passed you by and you need to believe in a catastrophy of global scale to get even? You aren't the first one. People with that problem could open a dozen self help groups in the smallest of towns. Why don't you join one?
:-)
Too Funny, Airdale has you nailed and your response only confirms it.
IP: How about laying off the caffine and reduce your posts to one or two a day. We'll all feel much better. Who are you trying to convince? You think Airdale or anyone else is going to subscribe to your point of view, no matter how many posts you make? What the point. I am sure the majority of readers considers your posts as SPAM don't bother to read them. If you were truely smart, you won't bother trying to convince the world and use your time more wisely.
"Is better to not post and be thought a fool, then to whip out your keyboard and remove all doubt."
If you can't see the common thread in all of my responses, I can't help you. If you can not see the difference between what I wrote and what airdale wrote, you simply did not look hard enough. From where I stand the joke is on you.
"Who are you trying to convince?"
The ones who are actually listening to a rational argument rather than are looking for nothing but an outlet for their own fears. Those are not always the people I respond to. But I figure that the ones who have the ability to listen will listen.
"You think Airdale or anyone else is going to subscribe to your point of view, no matter how many posts you make?"
Of course not. Is that what you thought? Maybe you want to read some of my posts again and this time follow the argument rather than assume that it is just a response to the poster.
"I am sure the majority of readers considers your posts as SPAM don't bother to read them."
I can't help that. I am not here to teach you how to sort out spam.
"If you were truely smart, you won't bother trying to convince the world and use your time more wisely."
I do not remember claiming to be truly smart. I have met a few truly smart people in my life. They do not frequent the blogosphere. At least not the parts I have been to.
But I do want to point out that I hardly ever get a response when I make a halfway smart argument. This is especially true for those posts that contain back of the envelope calculations. Which, indeed, tells me that, while I am not smart, I do have an advantage over many in that I can often give numerical limits for my claims. Or it just happens that most people here do not really care about the validity of their claims and will avoid getting into a numerical argument that could actually prove them false.
How about you?
Please stop SPAMming my favorite website!
A few posts is fine. Dozens - NO.
Then what are you doing here?!? ;)
(Sadly, I'm only half-kidding.)
Unfortunately, that's a good point. All too often, one will see a claim that (when one runs the numbers) is patently false.
That's not really the problem, though; the problem is that only a relatively small number of people seem all that interested in actually checking those claims, or in discussing the results of those calculations. It seems as if those who claim to be most worried about humanity's future are the ones least interested in numerically examining what that future might be and how it might be improved.
Belief without evidence is faith, not knowledge. And, frankly, there're much better things for people to put their faith in than "we're doooooomed!"
Hello Airdale,
You would do yourself a big favor, Airdale, if you spent some time watching the sunrise and the sunset. You should also spend more time outside, too, because physical activities are better for your health than becoming so involved in discussions that it becomes emotional.
As for myself, I did watch the sunrise this morning. Then I went for a long walk along the sea wall in downtown St. Petersburg where I saw a flock of night herons and an egret having a tough time eating a baby puffer fish (it succeeded, too). Then I went to the museum where there is an excellent collection of glass on display.
The Universe is very large even if your mind is pretty small.
If you relaxed a bit you might become less paranoid and also less afraid. No one is out to get you.
Yesterday was a day much like today, except prettier (no clouds). I went inland and hiked in the forests of Hillsborough County. Got close to a hawk, saw five peacocks, and was surrounded by flowers. The world is beautiful. More beautiful and interesting than a computer screen. You should become acquainted with it.
I pay attention to the sunrise and the sunset every day. You should do the same. You might calm down a bit and become less angry and emotional. Time spent avoiding an argument is worth about a thousand times more than time spent involved in an argument.
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
Air travelers expected to double by 2025
Oh no, we ain't going down with no whimper. We seen that precipice and we likes it.
What do you mean you don't want a landing strip in your backyard? What's wrong with you?
Don't you know you're distorting market forces?
Not to mention those wacky Europeans, who have taken it into their heads that air travel is connected to global warming...
Well, not Blair, our hero and leader who wants his legacy to be that he turned his good friend George into a climate champion, and said a few days ago that less flying would be "too much of an inconvenience".
So you must be talking about Krauts and Frogs. Hey, we all know what kind of people they are.
PS there's a BBC documentary on YouTube called War Party (3 out of 5 stars, I'd say), about the neocons, and the obviously British reporter has people like Richard Perle and William Christol saying that deep down, Blair is really a neo-conservative. The Labor leader.
And GWB displayed his leadership by flying Air Force One (a 747) 90 miles to give a speech on renewable energy in Delaware.
But despite the connection we seem hell-bent on building more runways...
We assume that we will continue in much the same way.
Dont assume the Europeans are that bright.
We do a pretty good impression of 'very thick'
Back to earth, facts on the ground, today, nat gas up over 9%, propane contract up over 6%, despite global warming, somebody is noticing it's freakin' cold out there! :-)
RC
I wonder what the prices would be now if winter had started in November instead of mid-January. One of these years we're gonna find out!
It looks like the oil traders may have gotten around to finally reading the Weekend WSJ article on Cantarell.
May be.
Or maybe they stuck their heads out the door and noticed: It's freakin' cold out there! :-)
RC
WT, I think it's more validation of your arguements of KSA and its power as swing producer. Maybe both. It's amazing tho how KSA shifts the board.
From AP:
The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that Saudi Arabia has told its customers it will cut supply by a further 158,000 barrels a day, effective Feb. 1. "After these cuts, our oil production will have declined by about 1 million barrels a day since last summer," a senior official said, according to the newspaper.
"It seems a cartel has a right to change its mind," said Phil Flynn, an analyst at Alaron Trading Corp. in Chicago. "Yesterday, Saudi Arabia says it's happy with $50-a-barrel oil, then today there's a report on the Saudi's cut in production. It's a day of contradictions."
Doug, this is the cut that was announced at the last OPEC mtg. It was specifically scheduled for Feb 1st to avoid the late winter draw. The Q1 Demand Call was the largest in history. 86.2-mbd. And January was the heaviest month. Immediate implementation of that quota cut would have spiked the market and enhanced the demand destruction in play. Q2 is a soft period, 2mbd less Demand Call.
SA announced a few days ago that production would be around 1Mb/d less than last summer, around 8.5Mb/d. This is less than their new quota - now why would they voluntarily cut more than they agreed to? Maybe they have too many dollars, just as last spring there were no buyers for their oil.
"It looks like the oil traders may have gotten around to finally reading the Weekend WSJ article on Cantarell."
Yeah, it is about time! Only yesterday I was wondering why oil was so cheap ($54/barrel) when both Mexico and KSA are crashing.
By the way, where is Robert Rapier? Did he get embarrassed when he was "exposed" by dmathew1 as a lobbyist for Conoco-Philips (Note: My tongue is firmly planted in my cheek)?
By the way there are rumors that the 2009 Toyota Prius is going to be a plug-in hybrid. Does anyone know anything about it? I heard that it will give 94 mpg. Is it true? Is it worth waiting for a 2009 Prius or is it better to buy one now?
Robert is around. He just moved to Scotland for a new job (still in the oil business, so no, he has not repented of his wicked ways ;-). He's probably busy with that. I'm sure he'll check in once he's settled.
I doubt that Robert Rapier will be participating in American politics from Scotland. At least, I hope not. There's better things to do in Scotland than become enmeshed in American political squabbles. Probably better things to do than spend hours a day engaged in arguments on a blog, too.
It is too bad that people employed by the oil industry do not repent of their evil ways, because of all the people on the Earth they should. Look at this mess of planet that the oil industry has given us.
But money has a way of blinding people's eyes to everything except their own personal interests. A common weakness of humankind, and a tragic one too considering the consequences.
The oil industry might win a thousand battles but Nature will win the war. That much is certain.
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
I was once employed by the oil industry and I was not evil. None of my fellow employees were evil either. We were just ordinary people trying to make an ordinary living for ourselves and our families.
We were all born into this world and shaped by our heredity and environment. We are shoved this way and that way by fate. We never intended that what we do would harm the earth, yet because of our enormous numbers we do enormous damage to the planet upon which we live. But it is seriously wrong to blame anyone or any industry or organization for our problems. We are all victims of circumstance. We are who we are and where we are due to innumerable people and events that have driven us to and fro, every event changing forever every future event that would follow it. You move a pebble on the beach, you set up a new pattern and you change the whole world.
Ron Patterson
Hello Ron Patterson,
That's a remarkable philosophy you have there, Ron. I know, I know, those involved in an industry which is despoiling an entire planet would rather not accept any of the blame for such a horrendously evil act.
But at some point the oil industry had to notice that their little job was leaving an ecological disaster at every place in which it trampled the Earth. The oil industry also had to notice that it was leaving a humanitarian catastrophe in its wake.
Undoubtedly the oil men of Texas must have noticed at some point that the skies were getting smoggy. They had to notice that their work was making this world a terribly polluted place. They just didn't care about the consequences. They collected their millions and moved to a more beautiful place safe & secure from industrial activity. There were no oil wells or refineries in their backyard, you know, these people practiced NIMBY by moving to places too valuable to despoil. The impoverished people were left with the mess, and they were also often left to die from neglect, too.
So I can blame the oil industry for making a mess of this world. I can also blame the oil industry (as well as the other fossil fuel industries, and all industries) for humankind's fast approaching extinction. Whether through ignorance, stupidity or malice you people still bear responsibility for the apocalypse which is presently occurring.
I happen to enjoy moving pebbles at the beach. There is a distinct difference between my moving a pebble at the beach compared to (for example) what the oil industry has done to Nigeria. Moving a pebble is harmless, destroying the Niger delta is a crime against humanity.
But those who profit from crime seldom are penalized for their crime, especially when the crime is committed against the powerless and impoverished people of Africa. These vile people will count their millions while Nigerians are left to die. These oil millionaires will take vacations in pristine, luxurious locations while the Nigerians have no choice except to remain mired in the oil sewer.
The oil industry is not guiltless. It has blood all over its hands.
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
No less than the oil customers.
Dave, you're totally awash in it, too. If you're here because you see a problem, then talk WITH us when we're looking at where we should try things, what we might say to prepare/convince our families and neighbors. The computer you type on is as pure a smoking gun to your complicity for oil-use and the consumer lifestyle as anything that could be in your life.. if you only use it to tell everyone else that it's the oil co's that have the splinter in their eye, then it's already a moot point.
If you're hopeless, do it somewhere else, so we can keep working on some liferafts.. maybe one will be picking you up someday. If you want to learn and think and share some ideas, by all means do, but quit this Thor-with-the-thunderbolts crap. It's disingenuous, and it's wasting energy.
Bob
''It is too bad that people employed by the oil industry do not repent of their evil ways, because of all the people on the Earth they should. Look at this mess of planet that the oil industry has given us.''
You pointless little cock-sucker.
Your pointless, empty life exists because of geologists.
I smell the stench of a Genophobe.
You may be interested to know that a shed load of oil company people are the GREATEST ADVOCATES of planetory conservation.
We know what is at stake.
We have some reasonable knowledge of the 5 prior extinctions.
We got into this business because we spent our teenage lives looking around at the world in which we live.
From picking up Jurassic fossils on a family holiday to finding all the stuff by which the modern world exists, we have been doing it.
Making it all work for you.
You are a sanctimonious prick.
And if the editors want to ban me, so be it.
Hello Mudlogger,
You may be interested to know that a shed load of oil company people are the GREATEST ADVOCATES of planetory conservation.
Give glory to God! Those who are destroying the planet are actively trying to save the planet ... apparently only after they get finished destroying it!
I say: What you do, do quickly (John 13:27).
You people are in the business of driving humankind to extinction. Get the job done. Nature is ready to move on. Nature has waited for this day for ten thousand years. Nature is eager to get back to its business.
The primate has to go. By destroying the primate you are doing Nature a great favor. Get the job done.
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
Oh fook...
I say: What you do, do quickly (John 13:27).
I say unto thee: ''A bible basher''
Sums it all up.
SOOO... Sayeth the word our Dog:
Go cleave to a medionite, or an ammonite, or a belemnite, or a turdgidite, or a psammite, or a thermite...
or a parasite...
or a whaterevite...
Yeah! Surely thou shalt be enshrined as the biggest and most pointless fuck-wits of the last two millenia.
Amen.
At least I know where you come from
...now :-)
Hello Mudlogger,
Okay, Mudlogger, I must have quoted a book which you don't particularly like. Let's try another:
God has spoken to humankind with many voices but in the end the message is always the same: The human story has an end and it is a tragedy.
Science has the same sort of message for humankind, too. But you won't listen to science, either, will you?
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
Mudlogger,
Hey I sense your holding back! Don't hold back!
Go move some pebbles.(this is joking).
airdale..a proud puce
..what ever that is. Dick? Swancz? Shlong? Johnson?
dmathew1, I can't disagree with what you are saying here. I attribute our behaviour to evolution and our genes, ie. we are presently masters of the universe, but could not have won the evolutionary battle unless we had an inbred sense of ruthlessness. However, I can offer you some hope. Millenia ago, I have no doubt that humanity was much more savage than today - it needed that characteristic for survival. Gradually as civilizations developed, humans have selected against the cruel, the heartless, the ruthless, and I would argue that our gene pool is now a much kinder and gentler one than 20,000 years ago. Criminal behaviour is rewarded with a life behind bars (and death, in prior centuries, and to a lesser extent today), and thus perpetrators have less chance to pass on the DNA. So I think evolution is still having a significant effect even within our 'advanced' civilization. There will likely come a time again where a form of selection will take place, and those of us within the blogosphere concerned with the survival of the planet have an important role to play in setting the stage for that process. I can't say how it will play out, but I do expect that those of us who are aware of what is happening today will be the survivors. We need to keep the faith.
Hello GJ,
> we are presently masters of the universe, but could not have won the evolutionary battle unless we had an inbred sense of ruthlessness.
You are mistaken on two counts, GJ:
1. Humankind is not presently Masters of the Universe, master of the Earth, nor (for that matter) master of our own fate. God remains in control, and God has authorized Nature to reassert its dominion over the Earth. We shall see, soon enough, that Nature can eradicate humankind from the Earth. Whence the masters of the Universe, then?
2. Humankind has not won the evolutionary battle. Humankind's ten thousand years of dominance over the Earth don't amount to much compared to the species which have survived for millions of years upon the Earth. 10,000 years amounts to absolutely nothing from the standpoint of geologic time. A "victory" for 10,000 years is about as worthless as inheriting $1,000,000,000 one second before you die.
Keep that in mind: Homo sapiens are behaving very much like a plague on the Earth. Success as a plague is not exactly success -- if you catch my drift.
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
David Mathews, there ain't no god to help us bub, just science, you in the wrong blogosphere.
Hello GJ,
Your atheism is not my concern, GJ. You can believe whatever you wish.
The outcome is the same whether God exists or not. Homo sapiens will become extinct, leave only fossils in the sedimentary rocks, will be forgotten and essentially nonexistent because no one will know that Homo sapiens ever existed.
So, you see, the outlook for an atheist is still bleak: Nothingness and nonexistence and nonremembrance.
Homo sapiens are headed to extinction and the world will become a better place by our absence. That's the end of this story. A tragedy for humankind but an immense blessing for Nature.
That's the future. Accept or reject it according to your own wish. It is settled and non-negotiable, so you might as well accept it. But your opinions on this matter won't have any impact upon the outcome.
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
MOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooo!!
I wasted precious minutes of my life replying to the misanthropic ramblings of dmathews1 above and then realised I was giving him exactly what he wanted: namely the attention and respect that obviously eludes him in the real world. So I deleted my words and replaced them with a critique of Mr Mathews post that is just as apposite and typical of the derision he must receive whilst walking the streets of Florida holding a board proclaiming 'The End is Nigh!!'.
I'm not advocating that people should purposely post Mooo! after each of his posts....that would just be silly. But if you find that you've wasted time writing a message in reply to him, consider that you're giving undeserved respect to a nutcase and probably making his psychosis more acute. So just delete what you've written, type in Mooo! and you'll feel just as good.
MCrab ;)
Hello MCrab,
Eh ... MCrab ... I hate to burst your bubble, but I could care less for your attention and respect. Do you really believe that I care about the opinions of anonymous-nonexistent types?
Prior to your writing this post I didn't even know that you existed. Nor did I care.
Your replied to my post for your own benefit, not my own. Keep that in mind.
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
Moo and moo.
Mooooo!
I love these cows! God should transform all of these people to cows. They really would make better cows than primates. As primates, they are already behaving as passively as cows. Don't you know the fate of the cows? They keep on passively mooing even as they are sent to the slaughterhouse.
God bless these cows!
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
ummm...moo, moo...moo moo, mooo.
Hail to the moooo...
Do unto to the mooo...as the mooo would do unto your moooo....
Moooooo!
Google '2008 Prius' and get lotsa hits.
"Google '2008 Prius' and get lotsa hits."
Yeah I tried that and got lots of links to rumors and speculation.
I was wondering if someone has concrete information regarding the fuel efficiency of a 2008 or 2009 Prius.
Come on, someone from Toyota must be reading this blog. Can you not tell us anonymously what Toyota has in store for the Prius?
Hello TODers,
Zimbabwe, and other African countries are literally spiraling down the drain:
http://allafrica.com/stories/200701300538.html
Mexico better get moving implementing changes if they hope to outrace the Zimbabwe Syndrome. I emailed my posting in yesterday's Drumbeat to the Mexican Consulate--Hope it helps.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Dear Bob,
Thanks for your positive action.
From the movie Network.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCwwRJtTJfA
Here is the future!!!
YOU HAVE TO CHECK THIS OUT. I smiled for 27 consective minutes after viewing this.
http://aistigave.hit.bg/Logistics/
Amazing! I still can't believe this one:
rickshaw forklift ?
They say we will see Peak Oil in our rear view mirrors:
I had this emailed to me awhile ago. I forwarded it to many.
Incredible. THIS is human ingenuity.
The most ironic is the guy on a bike carrying a car body !!!
If That isn't a Post Peak Poster I don't know what is.
John
Hi,
Well...I thought we'd been over these before - weren't these photoshopped? (esp. the car). (or, are you joking?)
Meanwhile, when you were looking the other way.......
I'm confused, is this the Reichstag fire, or the Commissar Order?
Did Halliburton build any of those labor camps in New England yet?
Still not looking, are you?
Of course it was not a coincidence. The way to end this war is the make the fence-sitters available to fight in it... as opposed to re-upping the poor sods who are stuck in the Guard or the Army for the 4th or 5th time.
Personally, I think the folks who voted for GWB should volunteer, but that doesn't seem to be happening...
I posted a note yesterday by Bill McKenzie, a conservative editorial writer with the Dallas Morning News, who has lots of contacts in the White House. Bill was saying positive things about raising the gas tax and cutting the Payroll Tax. Today, he posted a portion of an e-mail I sent them regarding energy taxes. As I said, Times Are Changing, perhaps quite rapidly.
Might be a good scheme to replace part of payroll tax with fuel tax and fund SS with it. What happens if it works too well and we don't have enough revenue from declining fuel sales to fund SS?
Just define the fuel tax as the amount required for SS, so if fuel consumption goes down the tax goes up... the public is free to select between higher fuel taxes or lower SS benefits... but, seniors vote, and don't drive so much as the young'uns...
1.6% would fund it from its present 2044 "we're screwed date" to 2075. Each year congress waits compounding eats them alive and we approach the 2% threshold.
Hi Jeffrey,
Thanks and I'm wondering if you could elaborate on this, sometime? (write a short lead article?). Would this basically be a sales tax, then? Or, are you just thinking gasoline tax? (only? - no other "energy consumption" tax?) I think there were some contrary opinions, and I'd like to seem some more in-depth discussion, if possible. I know Simmons said ercently he was opposed to a gasoline tax, for example. I'd like to get TOD talking more about this (in the interests of positive "action plan").
I was going to post this in the Ethanol/Farm topic but it has seemed to have grown stale and not too many posting there so I am going to post it here.
I have gathered some 'off the cuff' numbers on farm crop fuel usage.
Its not precise but should be fairly close.The cost of fuel however is a correct number. $40,000.00
Farmer farms 2500 acres. Used $40,000.00 in fuel in 2006. This includes mostly all diesel but pickup trucks and small tractors used to run grain augers and such use regular gasoline.
The cost of diesel was somewhat about $2.50. More like $2.35 with no taxes. The gasoline is taxed and it was about the same price therefore.
This included everything..all on farm fuel costs for tractors and combines and ancillary vehicles which are necessary anyway.
Dividing 40,000 by 2.50 yields 16,000 gallons of fuel used.
Dividing that by acres yields 6.4 gallons per acre.
This was about 700 acres no-till and the rest was conventional. The no-till will use less fuel. Also note that this does not include spraying since that is contracted to ag chem outfits and so unless you own your own spray coupe you will not be adding in those gallons used. Also the hauling of the crops. Thats is usually hired out as well so not counted and that is highly variable since mileage to elevators makes a big difference.
Therefore a rough estimate is 6.4 gallons per acre. Includes tillage, seeding, fertilizer spreading since he does his own, scouting, and harvesting(combining).
If 80,000,000 acres of domestic corn is planted (not sure of number right now) then thats 512 million gallons for one years domestic corn crop.
I read that we use 300,000,000 gals of gas each day in the USA and that figure was from quite a few years ago. So in essence you might say that 2 days driving is a bit more than equal the amount of fuel to produce one years corn crop.
This does in no way consider infrastructure usage .say for tractor dealers, ag chem companies, and so forth. Its just the farmers part.
I would be interested in any data that refutes this to any degree or clarifies it further.
Can't comment on US agricultural fuel use but I thought the herbicide question was interesting. According to Canadian studies
http://www.csale.usask.ca/PDFDocuments/energyCoefficientsAg.pdf
sprayed glyphosate (Roundup family) uses more than 200 MJ/hectare or 80,000 btu per acre. I presume that's embodied energy + machine effort.
No-till is going to be all the rage until we get Peak Herbicide Resistance.
thank you airdale
Hello TODers,
Big Protest planned for the Zocalo to rally against food price increases:
http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/miami/23191.html
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans SMarter than Yeast?
Interesting Website
Energy Efficiency of Different Modes of Transportation
http://strickland.ca/efficiency.html
It doesn't deal with electric personal vehicles, or even plug-in hybrids, at all!
Otherwise an interesting start on an important analysis.
Did anyone catch this little gem?
Cheney smirking about W's statements on reducing dependence on foreign oi: http://youtube.com/watch?v=WK11e8_pmBU
Not to toot my own horn here, but I posted this comment on 1/24/07:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2202#comment-151611
Something was definitely amusing him at the time.
Hello TODers,
I forget who posted the fairly recent link about a donkey being worth $8,000 American bucks in Baghdad, but recall the iconic picture of a Mexican wearing a sombrero astride a donkey, and of course, Juan Valdez and his donkey as the hallmark of a good cup of Columbian coffee. If the US institutes policies so that Mexico economically crashes similar to Iraq--a small, sturdy Mexican donkey could be a true bargain at $8,000 too.
What will one donkeypower be worth in a Mexican postPeak future?
From TODer Airdale's post upthread:
-------------------------------------------
Farmer farms 2500 acres. Used $40,000.00 in fuel in 2006. This includes mostly all diesel but pickup trucks and small tractors used to run grain augers and such use regular gasoline.
The cost of diesel was somewhat about $2.50. More like $2.35 with no taxes. The gasoline is taxed and it was about the same price therefore.
This included everything..all on farm fuel costs for tractors and combines and ancillary vehicles which are necessary anyway.
Dividing 40,000 by 2.50 yields 16,000 gallons of fuel used.
Dividing that by acres yields 6.4 gallons per acre.
--------------------------------------------------------
I thank Airdale for these figures. The following is not scientific, but does provide food for thought.
So $40,000 in one time usage of fuel versus multiyear usage of 5 donkeys postPeak [$8,000/donkey x 5 = $40,000].
A barrel of crude = 25,000 manhours of work. 25,000 div. by 42 gals = 595 human hours/gal. Therefore, 6.4 gallons per acre x 595 human hours/gal = 3,808 human labor hours to farm one acre or roughly 73 hours per week year round of human labor. Basically, two humans intensely working 40 hrs/week/acre.
one horsepower = 745 watts, a healthy human can sustain about 0.1 horsepower or 75 watts.
1 gallon [U.S.] of automotive gasoline = 49 horsepower hour or 490 human hours [a healthy human can sustain about 0.1 horsepower or 75 watts]. Sorry, not sure why there is a discrepancy here in human output. Anyhow....
I am guessing a well-fed, small, healthy Mex. burro is roughly equal to 3 men in working power, or 225 watts, or 3 x 595 human hours/gal = 1785 human hours equiv/donkey/gal.
So if you cannot get fuel at any price: is it cheaper to try and hire 3 men for $8000 total for roughly the working lifetime of one burro [20 years?], or are you better off buying a burro for $8000?
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Summation Of The Mind Of A Cause, Snapshot January 30, 2007
A Cross Section Of A Sub Culture
(extracted from 275 posts, enough, one presumes, to give a nice cross section of the state of the argument and discussion inside the "Peak Oil" subculture. We will just read along, and see if we can get a clear picture of who these people are, how they think, and what truly concerns them)
“The poor dupes were swimming in the oil they hated and didn't even know it.”
“Poor Martha Stewart will be seen as the goddess who failed. Well, she already has, really, having gone to prison and afterward retreated into her omnimedia fortress of corporate refuge (basically joining the enemy). As the middle class chokes and gets crushed under the weight of its unpayable debts and falling standards of living, Martha may be lucky to avoid getting eaten, along with a long list of other celebrity porkchops that an angry and grievance-filled public will turn on.” quote Kunstler (of course)
“The market is dumber than 3 ugly blondes blowing 4 blondes, and no amount of wishing upon a star will replace the one time gift of oil. And that's a good thing, because capitalism (resource rape and pillage) is destroying the fricken planet! Better to take the tough medicine now, then learn to live like we belong in an ecosystem instead of rampaging over it with four-wheel monster trucks. The sooner the endless growth virus dies, the better for the future (or should I say, the less dreadful the future will be).”
“Believe me, if the MSM discovered they could make money from tossing babies onto the tines of pitchforks, and still keep their viewers, they would do so in a heartbeat. The MSM is the enemy.”
“Why are you USAns unable to face reality? Why would KSA and Iran war with each other? Neither one represents a danger to the other. They have a common enemy - the axis of evil aka USA/GBR/Israel, and a common religion - Islam”
“One of the cornerstones of the US' Western-Hemispheric hegemony is, and has long been, the ability to strangle the economy of a non-compliant state. A few have survived but many more have fallen.”
“No. 1 is now russia, not sa. Russia did increase 06 vs. 05, may manage a bit more, or maybe not.
(long, long interlude on explanations of the theory of science (!!)
Very good point that all 8 are either declining or flat.”
“No. 1 is now russia, not sa. Russia did increase 06 vs. 05, may manage a bit more, or maybe not." (wait, didn't you just say all 8 were declining or flat (??)
“ for decades the us has destroyed foreign farmers with commodity grain. it seems they may get the chance to stand on their own feet. a good thing imo.”
“‘A lot of the arson in the ’90s was attributed to people who could no longer afford their properties and were looking for a way out. We don’t want to return to that kind of situation.’
(gee, was that caused by “peak” back then too?)
“I do like that phrase, though:
Man is as evil as he is stupid”
And then the grand finale....
“''It is too bad that people employed by the oil industry do not repent of their evil ways, because of all the people on the Earth they should. Look at this mess of planet that the oil industry has given us.''
"You pointless little cock-sucker."
"Your pointless, empty life exists because of geologists."
I smell the stench of a Genophobe.” (a genophobe? EEEEKK!!!) :-O
“The primate has to go. By destroying the primate you are doing Nature a great favor. Get the job done.”
“David Mathews, there ain't no god to help us bub, just science, you in the wrong blogosphere.”
(Yepper’s that’s the problem, this blog has gotten ENTIRELY TOO SCIENTIFIC!)
On the 275th post, at 12:09AM, a long time poster, Bob Shaw closes with a complicated mathematical calculation involving the
economics of energy as it involves a Mexican burro, and closes with a deep philosophical question which for the time being, went unanswered:
“So if you cannot get fuel at any price: is it cheaper to try and hire 3 men for $8000 total for roughly the working lifetime of one burro [20 years?], or are you better off buying a burro for $8000?”
Followed by his always great philosophical inquiry, “Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?”
And we were afraid that the powers that be wouldn’t take this discussion seriously!
I may have to return to my old tag line, and really mean it....
ThatsItImout
Roger Conner Jr
Well, a little quiz on signatires:)
How many frequent flier miles are in a cubic mile of freedom? (though I prefer metric units:)
Smart Yeast in Phx,Az Is Bob Shy to be a Human? Surely You jest:)
The number of FF miles in a cubic mile of freedom would be the same as the number of FF kilometers in a cubic kilometer of freedom.
So there is one less problem that you have.
"How many frequent flier miles are in a cubic mile of freedom? (though I prefer metric units:)"
I dunno, but I can fly to Vegas tomorrow, and know that the booze and the hookers will end up costing me more than the Jet fuel....:-)
RC
Remember, only one cubic mile from freedom :-)
Roger - You cannot get this kind of content anywhere else for any price!!