211 comments on DrumBeat: March 30, 2007
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211 comments on DrumBeat: March 30, 2007
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Back in the 80's, people did abandon the large cars. It will happen if the price is high enough, and probably more importantly if people come to believe that higher prices are permanent.
My own little story is that I buy 15 gallons of diesel roughly once every 2-3 weeks or so. I am about to try joining the ranks of bicycle commuters, and I can telecommute from home - by the summer I might be able to cut driving to work to once a or twice a week or so. My own version of biofuels will be things like powerbar, hammergel, apples, bananas and nuts :-).
My girlfriend looked at me like I had two heads when I told her about the idea of bicycle commuting though. She asked me what route I was planning to take - I jokingly suggested that I would take Interstate-66, but she hadn't had her morning coffee yet, and she didn't realize that I was joking until a few seconds later. In reality there are pretty good bicycle trails that I can take to get to the office - a bit on the long side (18 miles one way), but nothing I cannot handle. And for that matter I can really use the exercise to work off the gut that I built up over the winter.
It happened in the '70s, but that was a sudden, sharp spike.
I wonder if the relatively slow rise we've experienced is letting people get used to higher prices. People complain, but they aren't cutting back any more. They're back to buying SUVs, not Priuses.
Like boiling a frog... do it slowly and they won't jump out of the pot.
Actually, a frog *will* jump.
Which is simply proof that frogs are smarter than humans.
A spike would certainly help. But folks in the '70s and early '80s had much more than that. There were recessions and inflation and unemployment and really expensive war and an impeached president -- a thick fog of economic gloom many years even when things were perking up. (GDP rose over the decade as a whole). It all built a mood for change.
Geez all we got are higher gas prices and some shakey mortgages. Foreigners seem willing to finance the war.
But give it time ....
ADDENDUM: Stronger counterculture back then, too.
Yeah and no. We are getting these seasonal spikes in gasoline costs, so every summer people talk about getting a hybrid or some such. It does bring to mind the story about boiling a frog though.
The thing that is different this summer is that the sub-prime mortgage thing has gone sour in an awful hurry. People will no longer be able to take out the home equity loan on their houses to buy a car. I suppose for a lot of people the type of car you drive is a sort of status symbol (that's what the automakers want). How else could one justify spending 50K$ on a vehicle of any sort, really.
I remember years ago I was listening to Click-N-Clack, and they had a story about someone they knew who was very wealthy with old money. They looked in the garage to see what they drove, and they had something ordinary - like a Dodge Dart or some such. The explanation was that any mechanic in the country could work on such a car.
Which means they'll be stuck with their gas-guzzlers, no matter how expensive gas is.
But at least it will be more comfortable if they have to live in their cars.
It did occur to me, when I was reading Deffeyes' book, that the volatility he predicted might lead to people becoming less responsive to price. People start assuming that prices will go back down, if only they wait. Few seem to notice that the lows keep getting higher.
Thinking about the possibilty of for instance a doubling of gas prices, and the potential effects that would have on their lives, is probably simply too much for many.
For millions, the financial squeeze of gas prices will make it ever harder to even get to work in the first place, and then they have to worry about their rising mortgage payments as well.
And then, as mentioned in this thread, there's sharp increases in food prices. Assuming that all these prices wil at some point start going down again may well be mostly a subconscious reaction.
Prayer and denial often feel much better than reality.
"...the financial squeeze of gas prices>>>"
I saw someone buying a $3.50 cup of coffee at a coffee shack while I filled up on $2.99 gallon midgrade. It's still too cheap. Unless you are lower income and payment straped.
I think we could have riots here in the US. I want to look as poor as possible, an old beater car that smells bad and some crappy looking clothes!
I don't see your logic.
Did you only buy one gallon. Did the coffee drinker buy 10 to twenty cups of coffee each day.
Cheap is relative to other options and long term pricing.
Do you need it to make money and function in society is another question.
I like ice cream. A local grocery has it for 5dollars a 1/2 gallon. Two miles roundtrip. I also need several other items. Sams sells the same ice cream for 3dollars a half gallon. I am buying two so thats a 4 dollar savings. The trip will require one gallon of gas for a 24 mile round trip for my vehicle. This savings more than allows for me to pay for the gas to drive my car. I will save more buy making he longer trip, because other items will also offer savings.
I have used more gasoline, but I have saved money.
thats a problem
Quid Clarius Astris
Ubi Bene ibi patria
"Cheap is relative to other options and long term pricing."
Cheap is relative to income, period. If I make $10,000 per year, then gas at X price is ten times more painful to me than if I made $100,000 per year.
For most people in the U.S., given their incomes, gas is still givaway cheap.
RC
Remember, we are only one cubic mile from freedom
Actually, it's more than ten times as painful, because in both cases your necessary, fixed costs (food, heating, etc.) are the same - so you have to subtract that first before comparing. If you need, say, 5000$, your disposable income is 95000 vs 5000 - 19 times as much.
if you make 10k or 100k you just have to find a way to live within your means. shoe leather(er.... i mean shoe vinyl) is waaaaaay cheaper than gasoline.
of course our federal government doesnt have a clue about living within it's means and maybe that is the source of the problem.
The point is that as the price of fuel rises then so rises the cost of everything else.
Pretty soon that CUBIC MILE doesn't mean much for we will all be digging groundhogs out of the banks for food and making shoeleather soup.
In case it's not known there are huge number of folks on FIXED INCOMES!!!!
As fuel(oil.energy.whatever)goes..so goes our economy. Its far far more than something to drive to work. Its life. Its "death on a stick". Your lifestyle means more than driving. Its electricity,food,medicine,fertilizer and ...........
Airdale-screw bicycles..I'm getting back to horses. Yeeehaaawwww
(or mules maybe....giddap Sal)they make such nice road apples..so handy you can even cook with em. Mules is where its at.
We are one cubic mile of muleflesh from freedom.
(sorry,couldn't help myself RC)
Perhaps. The other thing about those 50K$ cars is that people tend to lease them instead of purchasing them, so they can dump them back on the manufacturer.
Folks can get a Honda Civic for about 16K$. Not a hybrid, but it would get 30-40 mpg. Spend about 4-5K more, and you get a hybrid that in theory will get nearly 50mpg.
The hard part is going to be getting people to abandon the status symbol thing.
Dunno about you, but $16,000-$20,000 is not exactly chump change to me.
And it would be less so if I had a mortgage that was bleeding me dry, or a loan on a $50,000 SUV to pay off.
Buy a used Honda, then.
Everyone else will be doing the same. Remember the used Priuses going for more than new?
Those gas-guzzling SUVs won't be taken off the road. The price will drop until they sell.
Tstreet,
Listen up: when gas is high enough that people would want to do as you advise, probably in the $4.00 or $5.00 plus range here in the States, the economy will be tanking and people are simply not going to be able to afford new cars even used new cars.
I love this line of thinking which boils down to "the solution to the collapse of the car economy is for people to buy more cars. . . "
Come on Tstreet. If you're on a forum like this one you should be able to see the problem with such thinking. "I can't afford to drive to work. What shall I do? . . . ahh. . . I know . . . I'll buy a new car!!!" and/or "I just lost my job because the economy is tanking as gas goes to $5.00 a gallon . . . What shall I do? . . . Sweet Jesus I'll just buy a new car!!!"
The Prius is a status symbol. They just haven't passed out the book yet that shows people what the latest status symbols are. It's also a chick magnet. :) Actually, I just made that last part up but am trying to start a rumor for all those men trying to attract women with their Chevy Silverados.
We will never abandon the status symbol thing; we just need to change the symbols.
One realises that things in the US are in a serious FUBAR when fuel economies of 30-40mpg are considered good. We have a car that does some 35mpg. It's an old vehicle, reaching the end of its life, and that's the only reason we tolerate such high consumption. If we do buy a new one, never in our minds would we even consider getting a car that wouldn't do at least 45mpg!
I hope I didn't get my figures awfully wrong, though in a way I almost wish I did, since it would mean the US is not that seriously messed up. In Europe the most common metric for fuel economy is "liters per 100 km". Google tells me that 5l/100km (the target number) is about 47mpg. Am I missing something?
Yeah, gas is twice as expensive in Europe. Adjust for that and you've got 23.5 miles to the gallon. In other words, about the same level of financial pain per mile per gallon.
Yeah! When I got my Honda Insight, I started ribbing my wife about her 'gas hog' Subaru Justy (45mpg).
Here in France fuel is expensive, currently at €1.24/litre ($3.50/US gallon). But our cars seem to achieve far better mileage than those in the US, no doubt due to their smaller size. I get circa 45mpg in winter and 55mpg in summer in my Fiat Punto (the Citroen C1 diesel gets 80mpg). A friend gets 55mpg from his secondhand VW Golf diesel.
A car is just another machine and its utility is in going from A to B with its passengers. The Punto costs about US$11,000 new. I wouldn't buy an overly complex and expensive vehicle like a Prius, why would anyone (especially with their limited life and expensive to replace batteries)? The technology already exists to get better MPG from cars and its already mass produced, the only problem seems to be in the mind of people worrying about what's an acceptable vehicle to be seen driving (fashion victims).
Like most on here I believe we're at peak, but I also believe we have to face the future with what we've currently got in the way of useful technology (which excludes about 90% of available technology). I'm also alarmed, as a European, that people in the US seem to think we're going to go from our current situation to a "mad max" scenario overnight or we're going to fix the problem with new technological/political breakthroughs. The threats we will face more than likely will be more mundane, but just as dangerous if not more so.
For example, today people are less hardy than their forefathers, this is a constant complaint by the military, but it also indicates we are also too unfit to live as our forefathers did. The biggest medical complaint around here, amongst people moving to the countryside, is back problems (including me). A serious back injury can mean the end of self-sufficiency, how mundane is that?.
If civilisation as we know it is under threat from its own complexity (ie. dependence on oil, economy, etc), then presumably we have to remove the threat by simplifying and making it less complex (eg. less technology). Probably impossible at the nation state level and probably only achievable at the individual, family or community level acting in their own self-interest.
I look forward to Westexas's article on ELP.
The desire to revert society back to a 'simpler' or less interdependent social structure, while emotionally attractive, can only happen as a result of a catastrophe that destroys the existing social order.
Just like in biology, the inexorable direction of social order is increasing organization and interdependence. This is governed by the 2nd law of thermodynamics (yes, I do have a degree in Physics, and no, that statement is not backwards, despite the common understanding of entropy as "maximum disorder"...)
Note that in biology, evolution always results in a more complex, more organized creature than the ancestor species - never the reverse. Single-celled creatures -> multi-celled creatures -> worms & such -> fish & reptiles -> birds & mammals... The same is true for societies. A more highly organized society, where the individuals have fewer and fewer degrees of freedom, and are more and more interdependent, has higher entropy than a less organized, less interdependent society. (This is my extension of the work of Prigogine, and Brooks and Wiley in modelling entropy for hierarchical information structures). But you can't reduce entropy - so whatever form of "simpler" society we want to achieve must have an even higher entropy than our current society. That implies that there will be vastly fewer choices, and a commensurate loss in security, for individuals in the simpler society
The only way to reduce interdependence is to reduce our standard of living dramatically. Since the only way to do that is to make a lot of people and companies poor who are currently wealthy (by shrinking their markets), and to make each of dramatically less safe than we currently are, it can't happen 'voluntarily'.
Note that it is entirely possible for individuals to live less interdependent lives within the context of the larger interdependent society without losing most of the benefits of the larger social organization. This argument is discussing the transformation of society as a whole, rather than individuals and small communities, which would destroy our ability to sustain most of our modern health care, food production, IT, manufacturing, etc...
I haven't figured out exactly what this means for our world today. Obviously, a catastrophic, or cataleptic decline in society would increase the entropy of society as a whole - so they are certainly very real paths to a 'simpler' social organization. But I can't conceive of any way for society to voluntarily move to a simpler form without a catastrophe (or catalepsis)...
There seems to be some irony that if you truly desire a simpler and less interdependent world, you are asking for a war, or famine, or massive decline in the available energy supply... pain and suffering for billions, and a return to lives that are 'nasty, brutish, and short' within a few generations, at most.
Personally, I do hope that we can sustain our modern, global civilization, and that we can transition, however painfully, to alternative sources of energy. While I am contantly outraged by the behavior of our governments and military and monied elites, and I see clearly the pain and suffering and injustice in the world; I also see that we feed, clothe, educate, nurture, and gainfully employ more people today than ever in history. More people live free from repression, disease, and violence than have ever done so in all of history. This is an extraordinary achievement!!! And we are learning, or re-learning wisdom throughout the world, slowly, painfully accruing lessons on the impact of our now massive presence on the now fragile globe. We are polluting less, we are conserving more, and I believe we will reach equilibrium, if we survive long enough...
So I will fight to preserve what we have; I work to educate friends and family (and soon my town council) to start thinking about lives without petroleum & natural gas. I will support HEV, PHEV, and EV with my consumer dollars; I will install solar HW and electricity and brag about them insufferably to my friends & co-workers. Above all, I will keep a sense of perspective about life, balancing the good and the bad, seeing past fear, toward hope.
And of course, I'll keep reading TOD :-)
CW
Global peak: 2007 - 2010
Global decline rate, Post peak: 2%
Economic response: Severe global recession, ~5 years, then slow recovery
CW,
Awesome post.
I'm sypmathetic to many of the normative political agendas that are now advertising their agenda as a solution to this problem but at the same time I've grown a bit tired of their bullshit, as you explain:
What I find really ironic is there is now a subculture of people flying all around the country going to Peak Oil conferences telling us we need to live a simpler life?! Puh-lease.
sorry but hunter gather lifestyle was not 'nasty, brutish, and short'
it at the same time was not a paradise.
i do not know why people swing from those two extremes, but from what i can see from what all i have read.
it was a hard life, but you were better fed and suffered from less diseases then one can now. though at the same time you did not have people living into their infirm 80's. you had hard years but only when everything else is suffering.
you could get bad injury's but thats the same with farming.
quality vs quantity basically.
Security was orders of magnitude lower for hunter gatherers than it was for successive social organizations: Injury, famine from climate variability, predation (from other tribes and animals competing for the food/land/water resources) led to extremely short live expectancies. Education was non-existant other than for food production knowledge - literacy was not developed until societies were far more copmlex than the hunter-gatherer lifestyle could support.
Although it is a simple treatment, "Guns, Germs, and Steel" is an excellent description of the 'physics' of civilization, and the reasons why we can confidently say that we have progressed immensely since the days of hunter-gatherer societies.
CW
Global peak: 2007 - 2010
Global decline rate, Post peak: 2%
Economic response: Severe global recession, ~5 years, then slow recovery
The sources before civilization are very sparse. The sources of early civilization are not much more numerous, worse, they are biased as they were conceived by the top beneficiaries of civilization.
Injury:
People don't fall from stairs if they're civilized?
Famine:
That is a vulnerability of farmers, not hunter-gatherers. Nomads move when it becomes harder than they like to procure food. Farmers starve if their crop fails/granary burns/land floods/etc..
Predation:
At least wolves stop being hungry now and then. Cars are always ready to bite. Besides, it's not like the tribal wars have stopped, or have they?
Life expectancy:
Use their cultural bias (i.e. exclude everyone before 3 years - call it a late abortion) and you get a whole different picture.
Education:
Come on, every tribe had elaborate customs and a large oral culture.
Literacy:
Finally, a good point. They did lack a broader vision of time and space, and the ability to accumulate knowledge. Still - what's the difference with a large part of today's population?
To conclude, it's not so simple to make an unbiased comparison; let alone a judgement about what kind of life is preferable for a homo sapiens sapiens.
I can't believe you are seriously arguing for a return to cave-man levels of civilisation. Tell you what. How about you practice what you preach ... log off, sell your house and go move to the African bush. Just don't get killed by wild animals, other people or ebola.
It also makes me laugh that you consider passing down creation stories from parent to child as "education". If I were to pass down ancient knowledge to my children they'd probably be taken away by the CPS ... talking crap about the moon and the stars doesn't equal an education in anybodies books.
I am not arguing for a return to caveman levels of civilization. Just providing another viewpoint, namely that history is not a single trend leading from misery, vice and squalor to bliss, virtue and paradise (of which our society would than, coincidentally, happen to be the pinnacle).
The knowledge and culture passed down was adequate for their needs. They wouldn't need a driver's licence, or a degree in Law. As for walking the talk: civilization is taking up all real estate right now, so I don't have the choice at the moment. Neither does my viewpoint require it. Besides, if I were to do that, I would end up cold and starving. Just like a hunter-gatherer in a city today. Civilized skills are not useful as a hunter-gatherer, and vice versa. The concept of "progress" is defined by civilization - of course they are better at it than a tribe.
"I also see that we feed, clothe, educate, nurture, and gainfully employ more people today than ever in history. More people live free from repression, disease, and violence than have ever done so in all of history. This is an extraordinary achievement!!!" Posted by Hindmost
But all this is entirely dependent on abundent and ever growing supplies of cheap energy. (And other finite raw materials as well)
Antoinetta III
No, it's not. We fed, clothed, and gainfully employed many more people than ever before in history long before fossil fuels were discovered.
True. It is interesting though that the major acceleration in population growth that resulted from improved medical 'technology' (like penicillin, vaccines, and doctors learning to wash their hands before delivering babies...) occurred at almost the same time that we harnessed fuels for mechanical work (e.g steam engine).
Clearly, supporting the current (and future!) levels of population is almost literally inconceivable without fossil fuels...
CW
Global peak: 2007 - 2010
Global decline rate, Post peak: 2%
Economic response: Severe global recession, ~5 years, then slow recovery
That's not true. It is one of the most commonly held misconceptions about evolution though.
Evolution has no goal, no end point, no 'feelings' over what is or isn't a better organism. It is a process that ensures that an organism is best adapted to its enviroment, nothing more.
There are plenty of examples of organisms that have shed unessicary complexity to move into new niches or adapt to changing enviroments. Snakes, for example, shed the complexity of limbs to move into their neiche (and some of the most primitive snakes such as pythons still have the residual bone structures).
If the enviroments changes and complexity becomes mal-adaptive then evolution ensures that either that complexity is shed or the complex organism dies out. Which outcome is likely depends on many factors such as the reproductive rate of the organism in question, the nature of the change, the degree of the maladaption, the presence or absence of competing organisms and the rate of the change.
If you are going to subscribe to the super-organism theory of applying biological principles to larger groupings of organisms such as ant colonies or even human society that is fine. But there is nothing inherent in biology that says the direction of change must always be from less complex to more complex.
The only direction that the change must go is from less adapted to more adapted to a particular enviroment.
Excellent summary.
Reminds me of Darwin's quote, "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change."
Its so hard to articulate complex ideas in a blog format :-)
I agree that evolution has no goal or end point; I'll try to clarify my contention a bit. The Hierarchical Information theory outlined in "Evolution as Entropy" (Brooks & Wiley) as applied to biology states that the information contained in the genome of a given species & population is governed by the laws of entropy. This is more specific than a discussion of the morphological complexity of the species, and doesn't preclude apparent morphological simplification at speciation. Each speciation event results in a greater entropy in the genome than was present in the genome of the previous species. The higher entropy genome will have more complexity, but fewer of the possible combinations will be expressed in the descendant species. The # of 'excluded' combinations represents the entropy of the genome, and must increase at every speciation.
I don't have a ready description of how that works for the case that you highlighted - presumably the snake genome became more complex as it evolved from the ancestral species, even though specific features such as legs were no longer expressed.
Disclaimer: I am not a biologist, and I am liberally adapting a still-controversial model of information entropy to (loosely) apply it to social hierarchies. This is only a personal model of How The World Works, not a formal theory. This model fits my intuitive understanding of how social systems operate, but I have not explored the literature on this topic, and can't claim that this model is authoritative.
I don't subscribe to the super-organism metaphor (can it really be called a theory, if it doesn't have a causal model?), to the degree that I am familiar with it. I subscribe to the theory that the 2nd law of thermodynamics governs the the information embodied in hierarchical social systems, and the constraints that it imposes are analogous to those that apply to the hierarchical information embodied in the genomes of species. Thus the biological model of evolution can be used as a guiding metaphor for social systems to the degree that the physical information storage and transmission is comparable. Since there are significant differences in the way that information is stored and transmitted in these 2 types of systems, there are limits to the utility of the comparisons.
The inexorable trend toward increasing complexity and interdependence seems to be consistent with history as I understand it; except for catastrophic reductions in population, societies have always progressed from forms of low interdependence to higher interdependence, with commensurate reductions of individual freedoms. Obviously, this would be a tremendously complex contention to justify, with thousands of specific, fascinating cases to argue about. It would make a great Masters or Phd Thesis, I suspect. Someday...
CW
Global peak: 2007 - 2010
Global decline rate, Post peak: 2%
Economic response: Severe global recession, ~5 years, then slow recovery
"There seems to be some irony that if you truly desire a simpler and less interdependent world, you are asking for a war, or famine, or massive decline in the available energy supply... pain and suffering for billions, and a return to lives that are 'nasty, brutish, and short' within a few generations, at most."
More like within a few YEARS at most. Stuart and Fractional Flow have shown that horizontal drilling and water flooding leads to max production followed by collapse, not the 'long slow decline, forever' of Collin Campbell. The supergiants are set to collapse like a row of dominoes.
One of the biggest mistakes made on this board with forecasting is a focus on maximal cases, rather than the most probable outcomes; The assumptions that lead to nuclear war and total social collapse within a few months result from absolute worst case assumptions: everything has to go wrong at the same time, in the worst possible way for those forecasts to come true. This doesn't mean they are incorrect, but it does mean that they are very unlikely!!! They are more likely than I would like them to be, but they are nonetheless almost as unlikely as the forecasts that assume that everything will go right at exactly the same time. The reality will be between those two extremes, if you look at the scenarios based on actual likelihood.
Note that the data that FF and WT are working with to propose rapid collapse are very unreliable - a lot of good inferential logic, and some great detective work, but they are forced to make many assumptions by the lack of authoritative data.
The reason time matters so much in this type of analysis is that complex systems are very resiliant, and will react to adapt to any change in their environment. You can already see this adaptation happening today in response to the higher oil prices (if you look honestly), and the effort that society will focus on adapting will only increase as the stimulus grows stronger. The longer the collapse in oil supply takes, the better society will be able to adapt to it. Batteries and electric cars will becomre more popular, growers will find alternative sources for nitrogen for their fertilizers, people will conserve more energy as costs go up.
There will also be mal-adaptive responses, such as war, ever more aggressive exploitation of the remaining reserves, etc. Despite the confident predictions of holocaust here, these are also very difficult reactions to predict.
These adaptive forces are very powerful, and there are wide ranges of possible responses, with low confidence associated with any given response. This is the nature of complex system dynamics - prediction accuracy decays _very_ quickly as you move forward in time.
You may be too young to remember the Y2K scare, but the same type of focus on the extreme maximal forecasts was rampant: the computers would all fail, the russians would use that as an excuse to launch WW III. There were detailed analyses of the Russian troop and navy movements, and the rapid decline in the export of platinum and palladium in 1999 was taken as a clear sign that the invasion was imminent. People were stocking up on ammunition, sharing self-sufficiency lore, etc.
Yet, society did adapt, on a crash course of engineering that was truly remarkable. There was no collapse. Was collapse possible? Yes. But it was prevented by adaptation of society.
This crisis is bigger than Y2K by a long shot; the challenge is more fundamental, and the probability of a successful adaptation is much lower than it was in Y2K - I don't mean to compare the 2 crises, or imply that we are guaranteed to adapt to the oil peak; But it is very dangerous, and certainly unproductive, to assume the maximal failure scenario is inevitable.
Cataleptic decline is a very likely outcome (and I might argue has been underway for a decade or so already), and will take a generation or two, not a few years.
Again - rapid societal collapse is possible, but it is not yet likely, and it is certainly not inevitable
CW
Global peak: 2007 - 2010
Global decline rate, Post peak: 2%
Economic response: Severe global recession, ~5 years, then slow recovery
I'm alarmed that people on this forum (and others) are ignorant enough of current events that they say things like this.
Plot of Mad Max: A big nasty warlord named "Lord Humongous" leads a group of armoured vehicles round the desert killing people for their oil.
U.S. foreign policy: A big nasty warlord named "Dick Cheney" leads a group of armoured vehicles around the desert killing people for their oil.
"Mad Max" is not something that is going to happen "overnight" because it already happend "last night." Just because the slide to Mad Max hasn't happened in YOUR town doesn't mean it isn't happening around the world as we sit here and type.
See the following cities, all of which have collapsed from great modern cities down to some form of Mad Max type existence due to various aspects of the "long emergency":
Baghdad (due to Peak Oil war)
Detroit (due to Economic collapse)
New Orleans (due to Climate change)
Up next, imho:
Tehran
Mexico City
As the saying goes, "the future is here, it's just not widely distributed yet."
At any opportunity to press forward an agenda some will.
New Orleans was Climate Change you say..???.
New Orleans was a disaster from. (drumroll). Levees failing. The Hurricane you say is from "climate change". Hurricanes have been happening as long as history.
Have you read Greg Pallast's reports on the levees breaking. When it was reported to the WH. When it was first known. Go to Gregs web site and read that report. Talk about a cover up.
Climate change destroyed New Orleans. Nope, man did it, not the Hurricane. Not built to spec, poor construction, etc etc, and no maintenance, and more.
Heard of those reports about explosions by the residents at those levees. Yea just some nuts, why believe them, right.
Also something very unusual happened when Katrina approached New Orleans. Go watch the satellite imagery. It was headed dead for the city. Direct hit, and then it dropped in intensity. Hurricane two when it came ashore, not a 5 as the media misleads. The water surge got the Gulf, All the water piled up in the Gulf from the 5 force. It still rushed ashore. If the cane had been a 5 on top of that as it crossed land, then what you see would have been much worse.
See the satellite imagery that showed the Eye developing a Pentagon" of clouds spinning inside the eye when it was 5. There was the same effect in other fives earlier. Never seen before.
Then when it was almost to New Orleans. Katrina "jumped" to the east. I mean "jumped" because its so quick between images. bumped is another word some use.
This photo from NASA. http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/image-details.cfm?imageID=2552
Explain this with current physics model that you adhere too I expect.
The implications from this discovery will turn your world upside down if they are "real". Its almost an admission in a way, or its something else.
Chimp, every planet in the solar system is warming, including earth, pluto, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars. The Sun is active as hell, and Nasa just put out a press release saying that they were shocked to find how much more active the suns surface was than expected. They expect the worst Sun spot cycle on record. This photo can explain why. Note it is can. No one should claim victory, but lets see what happens. This photo says that Maxwell and ALL his equations would have been served if Heavyside had not hidden/distributed them. That the people that call Tesla a nut will have to eat crow.
http://www.halexandria.org/dward760.htm
Read this web page for more info.
Hyperphysics and hyperdimensional pyhsics may not be 'the woo woo world that "they" have tried to make it.
wonder why. I mean Nasa only held back this info from the public for how many years it seems. They took a similar photo either 15 or 25 years ago, I saw different statements.
This photo can lead, and I say CAN lead, to what people call "free energy".
Of course understanding what I do about the subject I will say this is also very possible. Man in his current state of "existence" will have at the least great difficulty
9in a very short breakdown in a very complicated subject) "control" this force when experimenting. Military minds in control for long, this would be a problem perhaps.
Of course any similarity between the timing of the release of this image, and all the hub bub about Peak Oil and a new energy source to calm the public, well just might be only a coincidence.
Eugene Malove says there is prove of this technology working in a primitive state. This should scare the hell out of you, because of who is developing it. Not that they will succeed, but of what will happen if they continue to build upon the crude models that they are using. Just my opinion. What the F do I know, huh.
Quid Clarius Astris
Ubi Bene ibi patria
Thanks for posting the Halexandria link. It's been a long time since this layman read anything mentioning scalar tech. It was my earlier reading of Tesla's R&D that led me to scalar electronics.
What you're saying is Dick Cheney will have access to not only an arsenal of hydrogen bombs but also zero-point bombs.
Great, I guess it won't be a very "long" long emergency if that is the case.
LOL!
CW
Global peak: 2007 - 2010
Global decline rate, Post peak: 2%
Economic response: Severe global recession, ~5 years, then slow recovery
If you are talking about anti-matter bombs, not in the realm of possibility. We cannot make anti-matter in sufficient quantity for even a single bomb.
It's not an antimatter reference. Zero point energy is well known to exist, and reconciling its existence with the observed properties of the universe is an open problem in physics. The zero-point bomb is a hypothetical device somehow capable of rapidly "extracting" large quantities of zero-point energy, presumably converting them to heat and thus exploding violently. Unfortunately for the putative device, the scale dependence of zero-point effects implies that really impressive energy densities would preclude the use of building blocks as large as atoms.
Mention of this supposed technology occurs in conjunction with mention of "scalar" effects. E.g. if two "vector" fields have the same magnitude and opposite direction, the result from superimposing them is not (as conventionally) a cancellation, but rather the generation of a "scalar" field of twice the intensity. Oddly, the large number of technological devices whose operation depends on field cancellation (common example: UTP ethernet cable) don't seem to suffer ill effects from "scalar" interactions.
The pentagonal flow pattern is intriguing - but not unprecidented: polygonal structures form (apparently) spontaneouly in various fluid systems. Such patterns are easily observed in hydraulic jumps (e.g. see this pdf). Convecting fluids show regular (classically hexagonal) patterns. Although the conditions are very different from the examples given, I would say it is not obvious that the pentagonal cloud structure is unnatural.
Hello djd,
Thanks for your post, and for the references.
Is there any chance you might write this out and put it in some context, so that I can better grasp what your points are? (In fact, a guest post on "zero point energy" from the point of view of physics/engineering might be something the editors would go for...)
I take it you are trying to clarify for us (and I welcome it), what is shown and evidenced by current physics (and engineering) and what is not? I'm with you for sentences one and two, and would welcome more explanation starting w. sentence three.
I think what I'm confused about begins w. paragraph two, where you talk about the "supposed technology", and then go on to give an example. So, from there on, I don't know if you're talking about the "supposed technology" or ...let's see...is the example you give true? Or not?
Anyway, some greater context would be greatly appreciated.
Yes, gas is expensive in Europe... and much more so than your converted price!
Sorry to correct your conversion, Monsr. Burgandy..
Euro 1.24/lt x 3.88 => 4.8113 Euros per US gal.
x 1.3277 => $6.38 per gall
Ah! mea culpa! Your quite right canbrit, I inverted the $/€ rate. Too much burgundy no doubt :)
Some spirited responses to my post, many of which I sympathise with. I have no doubt that we're heading towards a catabolic collapse caused by a complex intertwining of economic chaos, resource depletion, climate change, over population and corresponding geopolitical strife. I've already responded to those threats by selling up and moving to a place I believe (rightly or wrongly) will be less affected by the coming catastrophe (nowhere will be unaffected so its only a matter of degree).
However, I'm also sceptical about the commonly held scenarios that seem to becoming somewhat ingrained in peoples perceptions. Being on the ground and preparing, I need to know what kind of reality we will face in the future, so I can use my current resources (ie. money, health, etc.) effectively to prepare for the problems that will arise. How do we transition? Most likely we will use what we already have to make the transition, not something that doesn't yet exist or exists but offers no real solution now.
Probably the main future threat we face security wise will be from our own government/State. For example, it's more likely that food will be appropriated by the State to feed the cities rather than by marauding gangs of starving city folk.
Hi Burgundy,
Thanks.
re: "...commonly held scenarios that seem to becoming somewhat ingrained in peoples perceptions."
Scenarios are just that - scenarios. I'm interested in the degree to which people can effect change, and in what way. To rule out positive effect is to overlook much of history. How much? What scenarios can we examine, and how thoroughly? What scenarios are excluded by individual bias and/or lack of information?
re: "For example, it's more likely that food will be appropriated by the State to feed the cities rather than by marauding gangs of starving city folk."
This looks to me to be a scenario worth expanding for purposes of positive action. For example, www.ftpf.org.
Which means they'll be stuck with their gas-guzzlers, no matter how expensive gas is
Exactly. That is the flaw in the argument that we'll all gonna switch to PHEVs and be saved, or the calculations of the impact of new-model efficiency based on the historical rate of turnover of the car fleet.
My argument too. Most folks can't afford to buy a new vehicle if they can't sell their current one to someone. Who is going to want these monsters, except as homes?
Think that might be connected to this?
Although this is based in Canada, I have wondered what the ultimate point to the new car buying binge of the last five years. I figured the used cars HAD to be piling up somewhere. Everyone I know traded in their car in the last three years and got a new one.
Which is why you really need to rethink this comment from below.
Without the advertising, they'd be gone. What keeps them alive is the ability to sell lifestyle instead of actual product.
Which is what the entire US economy runs on. Fake reality furnished by fake money.
I stay away from TV where I can, but I have a strong hunch that Toyota and Honda spend way less on advertising than GM and Ford.
Yes, the vehicles are the status symbols. If someone were to judge me based upon my vehicles, which I'm sure plenty do, they would either take me as poor (which would not be accurate) or they would take me as not caring about status symbols (which would be correct.) A more correct judgement would be that I'm CHEAP when it comes to things that don't matter, such as the car that I drive and the coffee I drink. 1985 2-seater car with the passenger seat and all interior removed for decreased weight and increased utility. The thing looks like hell but it's not any less safe than it was the day it was purchased by its original owner back in '85. I bought it for $300, fixed it for $60, and it gets as good gas mileage as a Prius while having 287,000+ miles. As a sign I put on my car says, "My car cost less than you CAR PAYMENT."
Soon many more will be riding bicycles to work for small distances and scooters/motorcycles for longer distances as prices increase. :)
A problem with the $300-car strategy is that you may also need to keep the larger car for some purposes, and the insurance cost of a second car may out-weigh the fuel savings. Nevertheless, I've done that, kept two cars, one of which was very small and cheap, in part to set an example out on the road that one CAN get from point A to point B cheaply (and survive to tell the tale).
I want your mechanic who does anything for $60.
Or even the car that has a part for <$60.
I thought I was a cheapskate w/'91 Civic. What is your vehicle anyway? Most '80's production cars were not that good.
1985 Honda Civic CRX HF. My mechanic is me. :) The part needed was an alternator, which was $60 at the local alternator/starter rebuild shop. I turned in the original failed part as a core, and got the rebuilt one for $60.
It's rated at 57mpg hwy, but the best I've gotten out of it is 51mpg combined city/hwy driving. Recently I discovered that two of the 4 cylinders weren't firing due to faulty spark plugs, so maybe after I replace those, I'll be able to hit that 57mpg hwy mark.
In fact, if I hadn't resurrected the car, it would have been sent to the junkyard as a parts car due to it's appearance. It's a real joy to drive, however, as it handles very well. The only problem with it is no A/C, I seem to get harassed more often by the police, and I have no expectations of being able to pick up women while driving the thing. Haha.
CRX HF's are magical little cars. Honda did a couple of interesting tricks to squeeze the fuel mileage out of them and their displacement is a little less than the regular ones and the SI's. Good handling can not only compensate for low power, but decrease braking as well. The ability to carry momentum through turns means you don't have to brake into the turns, and thusly don't have to get on the gas again when exiting. This carrying of momentum through turns also severly agitates mustang owners, whose overweight cars are unable to pull away from a little car making half (to 1/3) the horsepower and twice the fuel economy ::devilish smile::
Indeed! Little 64hp beast, mine is. I originally was planning on taking out the current engine and putting in a 160hp B16 engine, but that was before the gas price spike, and I decided that I liked the car just the way it was. :)
I have a 1988 (second gen) CRX Si with the 1.6 liter 105hp engine, bought it for $1,800. I too had planned on some power upgrades...more specifically rebuilding the original block and supercharging it. But...peak oil, ya know. Not exactly the most prudent thing to do ;) It gets a good 37mpg in mixed usage with more than enough power to satisfy some occasional speed whims.
The interesting thing about forced induction is that you can usually get the power without the corresponding drop in fuel economy when you're cruising. Case in point, ENDYN's 1989 Civic Si (Tiny Link) which makes 487hp while getting 30mpg. I'd like to see someone make an 600-800cc twin cylinder with some serious induction boost, and good aerodynamics. My guess is that they can make a car that has better performance than an Insight while making the same or perhaps much better fuel mileage.
I've thought about getting an Insight, but dropping $10k-$15k (aka 1,250 gal - 1,875 gal of gas @ $8/gal) on a car that doesn't get radically different fuel economy just doesn't make sense to me. I'd be first in line for a Loremo though, if they can bring it to market in the $15k-$20k range.
487 hp while getting 30 mpg (of gasoline) is simply impossible - you'd be going faster than the speed of sound.
487 hp is 363 kW. That's 363 kJ/s, or 1310 MJ/h. The energy content of gasoline is 32 MJ/L, so assuming perfect conversion - which is impossible - a power of 363 kW requires 41 L/h (10.8 US gallons per hour). So, to get 30 mpg while producing 487 hp you'd have to be going 324 miles per hour. If, instead, the engine and drivetrain and tires etc. were 1/3 efficient - about the best you could hope for, especially at these speeds - you'd be burning 123 L/h (32.4 US gallons per hour), meaning 30 mpg would require about 1000 miles per hour.
I very much doubt this car can maintain that speed.
(Quick back-of-the-envelope sanity check: 200 hp aircraft engine at 75% - i.e. 150 hp - burns about 10 USgallons/h. That suggests slightly under 1/3 efficiency, which is about right. Typical speed of a single-engine aircraft with 200 hp is about 150 knots, or about 170 miles per hour -> 17 statute miles per US gallon. That's about right.)
Now, a maximum of 487 hp output from the engine for short periods of acceleration, while the car overall is still able to get 30 mpg - that is possible. My point here is that people easily confuse these issues. Power is power, whether you measure it in horsepower, kilowatts, or chemical potential of a certain amount of fuel per unit time. What you are really interested in is maximum torque for acceleration.
You'll notice in my original comment preceding the statement of power and fuel economy that I said:
Which, to me at least, is saying the same thing you just said.
It's not a racecar, as you can tell by the article, so it wouldn't be on the gas all the time getting in and out of turns. So as street vehicle, it only uses the power for quick bursts of acceleration, and then settles into a cruise.
My point was that supercharged engines are a different species. Whereas if you try to develop this kind of horsepower with displacement alone, you'll be somewhere around 6 Liter territory (the one in the civic is just less than 1.6 liters) and seeing fuel economy in the mid-teens. The large displacement engine carries the burden of its horsepower all the time, there's always the drag from the big pistons, valvetrain, compression, etc.
But a supercharged engine is able to use a small base displacement and for periods of time cram a lot of fuel and air into the cylinder for power, but when you back off the gas again, return to that small displacement economy again - without the extra drag burden. So theoretically, someone should be able to develop a small displacement motor with high boost that will allow high (enough) power for decent acceleration, but return very high fuel economy when it's not being rung out. My guess is that you could use a 600cc - 800cc twin cylinder engine in civics/echo/corolla and get the same performace, while drastically increasing fuel efficiency.
Hey OldHippie, if you have an older car (say about 86-87 or older) that doesn't have too many electronics on it, then I'll fix it for you for less than $60 per hour. You just have to get it here. :-)
I just bought a Huffy Alumina 8000(used) to ride to work.(I live less than 4 miles away). My car is a 1989 Dodge Aries Wagon. It's paid for. When I need to go farther or need to transport something I use that. No point in buying a new car now.(And, yes, I too could afford to buy any car that strikes my fancy, but why?)(Yes, I'm a penny pincher, I admit it. I just can't get myself to spend money I don't need to.)
A thing to remember about the whole “prices are high, but I drive an SUV” mindset, is that the poor are already hurting. Their suffering started several years back in the third world and is working its way to Americas poorer citizens. The shift in mindset just hasn't percolated up to the middle class yet.
What really made people change was not being able to get gas, or else waiting in LOOONG gas lines for a half hour or more. Price is one thing, risk of not getting it, or having to plan ahead to be able to get it really makes the difference.
I don't think it was the long lines that made people buy fuel efficient cars back in the late 70's/early 80's. The cruising range of a small car isn't typically any greater than in a large car. So you'd have to wait in line just as often with a small car, you'd just be buying less gas when you got to the front of the line.
Besides, from my memory the long lines were just a short term thing. A few weeks? A couple month tops? Most people did not buy a car over that time period.
The lines were not for too long a time, but the high prices and memories went further. I bought a 45 mpg diesel rabbit at the time - it would go over 400 miles between fillups. My current car is a 1991 civic and I get 41 - 44 mpg, depending on winter/summer and I drive for mileage. I regularly fill up after 425-450 miles. 20 gallons in an SUV won't come close.
Mostly, though, I think the impact was on mindset and sense of vulnerability, brought home by the lines. The social mores changed for a period to the attitude that smaller cars and efficiency were something to value and shoot for.
I've got a '97 Jetta TDI that I average around 50 mpg with. It gets around 700 miles to a tank if I drive it easy. I also happen to have a 250 gal tank of home heating oil (same exact fuel as diesel) in my basement that can be used in an emergency. So I figure I've got around 12,000 miles of spare travel range if the worst were to happen :)
I was in College during the Oil Crisis of the 70's. Where I lived and went to school was rural and very wealthy. I had a girlfriend who lived 50 miles away. I never experienced the gas lines or fuel shortages depicted from that time, so obviously some people got all the gas they wanted(my community) and some didn't(big cities and poorer areas). Honest to God, I burned gasoline like it was water during that time and can't remember once sitting in line for it.(although I was outraged when it went to .40 then .60 a gallon.)
I posted an addition to my blog relating to alternatives to oil and natural gas. In this installment, I answer questions like
Eventually, the plan is to put the various installments (probably fixed up somewhat) into a permanent educational website, aimed particularly at high schools and colleges. I am working with Kennesaw State University on this project.
Very nice and informative blog. Good introduction for those previously uninformed on the topic.
Just a couple of days ago we saw a $5 spike in oil on the false rumor that Iran fired a missle at a US ship. I think oil could spike easily if certain actions come about. For instance there is this interesting article:
http://en.rian.ru/world/20070330/62861432.html
I wish you luck with the commute. It will probably take about 75 minutes... though the net time (subtracting the car commute) will be a lot less. And I can also tell you that you will feel like a million dollars after about two months. So go for it.
Another thing you will discover is that your life-style sensibility will sharpen. As you ride, you will discover interesting places to live that you would NEVER come across via car. These places will have a good grocery and branch library close at hand. So... more options reveal themselves.
75 minutes sounds about right. If I also subtract time that I would have spent at the gym on the stationary bike, the time spent would be a wash, I think :-).
Initially what I need to do is go to the gym for about 2 weeks to build up a little endurance. I need to get some good panniers to put my work clothes, and I should be ready to go. Last summer, 40 mile rides weren't that big of a deal once I got into the swing of it. We have showers at the office (just picked up the key yesterday), so there is no problem there.
There isn't a great place to lock up the bike at the office. I can chain it to a tree outdoors, or I can just bring it into the office with me. No bike lockers that I have seen so far.
I also am viewed as some kind of alien for commuting by bike, and I only have six miles to travel. Apparently, that distance is unthinkable for the average Oklahoman. I do cheat a little - my office building lacks showers, so in the morning I take the bus (they have bike racks mounted on the front) and ride home in the evening. Total transportation cost per day: $1.00. Rainy days can be a little miserable but fenders help a lot.
Back in the late 80s I was working in Alexandria VA and living two miles away in Belle View. I biked to work and floated the idea of getting rid of my car altogether, getting a folding bike and riding the Metro to get around the city. My girlfriend looked at me in alarm and said, "You've gotta have a car!"
That's where my house is - I know the area well. Getting to work from that location by bicycle was pretty much impossible. Too many roads with poor shoulders and limited bike paths. I suppose I could have constructed a route, but it would be close to 40 miles each way. From my girlfriend's house the story is much better...
The other thing I notice as I look through the maps of the area is the problem of suburban development with all the cul-de-sacs. If things were laid out on a normal grid of some sort, you could ride on the side streets that have light traffic and not get run over. With all of the cul-de-sacs, you are kind of forced out onto those major roads whether you want to be there or not.
Gosh I hate those dead ends that turn a potential 1/2-mile walk into a 4-mile drive...
I guess one good outcome of the falling values of suburban homes will be that it will become more feasible (and acceptable) to demolish a few of the houses to create road (or at least bike path) connections between the cul-de-sacs.
In a lot of places the roads are already there, but they block autos to control traffic through the area. But in Arlington they just have a zillion creeks.
In the early 80s I had to commute from Four Corners to Bethesda MD. Snooping down the back roads I found a pedestrian bridge across a creek that was just wide enough for a bike or moped.
I recall a funny situation. If you biked south on the wide (East side) sidewalk of Washington Boulevard you would pick up the Mt Vernon bike path for an beautiful and low stress ride to Belle View and points south. But just as you crossed the city line, there was an entrance to a ritzy condo development to the East. I guess they didn't like having to wait for bikes, because they put up a gate, I think, requiring that cyclists get off and walk across their driveway (which at that point was really part of the public R.O.W.).
A ton of people used this path for biking, walking and running. Although the condo people were pretty snooty rich, a lot of the cyclists were snooty rich, too. There were a lot of official complaints, and ongoing coverage in the local rag.
Most people just swerved into the road to avoid the gate. I drove in one morning, and someone had set the gate on fire. I moved, so don't know how it was eventually resolved.