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DrumBeat: July 23, 2007
Posted by Leanan on July 23, 2007 - 9:23am
Topic: Miscellaneous
Go anywhere in America, among any class of people — from the Nascar morons to the Ivy League — and one expectation is pretty universal: that technology will only bring us more wonders and miracles, and it will certainly save-the-day where our energy problems are concerned. This would seem natural for people living in an age when a simple cassette SONY Walkman is superceded by an 80-gigabyte iPod in one generation. But what if this assumption is off? What if peak technology occurs roughly in the same wave as peak energy?Of course, another nearly universal expectation is that we will go through an orderly transition between the end of the oil fiesta and whatever comes next — implying, naturally, that some new sovereign energy resource is out there in destiny's green room, getting prepped up, waiting to be sent on-stage. The confusion about this, induced by strenuous wishing, is such that most people expect the next energy resource to consist of technology itself.
Oil falls to $77, OPEC wary of high oil prices
Oil fell towards $77 a barrel on Monday after OPEC expressed concern over near record prices and said it was prepared to pump more crude if needed.OPEC President and United Arab Emirates Energy Minister Mohammed al-Hamli said on Sunday that oil's strength was a worry but the world economy was still growing in spite of it.
$100 Oil May Be Months Away, Not Years, Say CIBC, Goldman
The $100-a-barrel oil that Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said would prevail by 2009 may be only a few months away.Jeffrey Currie, a London-based commodity analyst at the world's biggest securities firm, says $95 crude is likely this year unless OPEC unexpectedly increases production, and declining inventories are raising the chances for $100 oil. Jeff Rubin at CIBC World Markets predicts $100 a barrel as soon as next year.
Cheap natural gas about to be piped away
Colorado consumers’ long romance with cheap natural gas is about to end, thanks to an interloper by the name of REX.REX, the energy industry’s nickname for the $4.5 billion Rockies Express pipeline, will take some Rocky Mountain natural gas away from Colorado and deliver it to eager customers in the Midwest and East.
Consumers could see heating bills increase as early as this winter.
Ecuador tries novel balance of oil and environment
Under pressure to preserve the environment while at the same time ease the poverty of his people, Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa has come up with an unusual solution.Correa wants wealthy nations to pay Ecuador $350 million a year in exchange for leaving an estimated 1 billion barrels of oil under the ground in the pristine Yasuni rainforest.
How Big Is The Oil Supply Problem?
How big of a problem is the oil supply situation? The latest report from the International Energy Agency warns that the world will face an oil crunch in five years. IEA said that supply was falling faster than expected in major producing areas while consumption is accelerating thanks to strong economic growth in emerging countries.To listen to some commentators, the world faces an impending economic cataclysm over what we are told is a major reduction in the available supply of oil. To others, the currently high oil price is a response not so much to actual supply as it is an inefficiency (whether contrived or accidental) in getting oil and its by-products to retail market channels. And yet another theory is that today’s high oil price is a hidden “tax” on consumers to help pay for a long-term war effort in the Middle East (with its obvious benefits to the oil oligopoly).
British National Party: Politicians fret over wrong crisis as Peak Oil looms
In a stunning reversal of its previous dogmatic ‘business as usual’ stance, the International Energy Agency has belatedly accepted the reality of Peak Oil, and the huge impact the phenomenon is going to have on the entire world.The crucial and potentially devastating nature of the point at which humanity has used half of the world’s oil reserves - with the remaining half being overwhelmingly lower in quality, in smaller and harder to reach fields, and in less stable parts of the world – has been a BNP theme for more than five years.
Aramco resumes operations after fire
State oil company Saudi Aramco announced on Monday that operations from a fire damaged pier at their export oil terminal had resumed.Four people died and a further 12 were injured as a result of the fire on Thursday at the world’s largest offshore oil export terminal.
"The Ras Tanura North Pier is back in operation, but the two berths affected by the fire are currently not in service," Aramco said in a statement.
Bangladesh Energy: Poor Policy, Wrong Strategy
The gas sector is more than half a century old yet it does not have a exploration plan, depletion strategy, competent reservoir engineering unit. There is no agreed and authentic reservoir assessment to tell with any degree of confidence the proven, probable and possible reserve of natural gas. Some theoretician based on sketchy and motivated information creates panic off and on and misguide poor attitude and corrupt political leadership. Some opportunist business syndicate avail this confused state and fish in muddy water. This clique systematically destroyed the capacity of Petrobangla and other Petrobangla companies. Bright competent professionals wiling to serve the sector with vision, commitment and innovations were not encouraged, regular recruitment of fresh young guns were stopped. There were favoritism and parochial preference for promotion training and prized posting. Evil syndicates involved in theft and pilferage were patronized and favored. Consequently huge brain drain of competent professionals made the sector hollow. BAPEX was crippled deliberately to make the exploration and drilling segment almost barren, no initiative was taken to grow and nourish mining professionals.
Michael J. Economides: PDVSA's 'Operational Emergency'
There is something really funny that happens all the time after countries go though oil nationalizations or re-nationalizations as Venezuela is re-discovering the hard way. The path is simple. Oil is declared the national treasure that the often hated foreigners, headed by the United States, want. Controlling that oil becomes a symbol of national emancipation and assertiveness.Then reality sinks in. Oil in the ground might as well be on the moon. It takes very complicated technology to extract it. Pemex, the tightest of all national companies, has discovered it a long time ago. On the Mexican side of the Gulf of Mexico with even better reservoirs, well depths and sophistication do not come close to the ones on the US side.
Energy Summit to be held in Manitowoc
The Myths of Energy Summit will be held 8 a.m. Aug. 15 at the Holiday Inn.The Energy Summit will discuss the future of energy usage and how to help reduce energy use and costs.
The keynote speaker will be U.S. Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md., who will discuss the topic of Peak Oil and what it means to our future energy needs.
Other topics will include Aldo Leopold Legacy Center Zero Energy Building presented by Tom Kubala of Kubala Washatko Architects; The State of Electricity in Wisconsin presented by Wisconsin Public Service's President Charles Schrock; Bio-Mass-Wisconsin's Diamond in the Rough presented by Judy Ziewacz, Office of Energy Independence; Energy Efficiency — The Real Money Savor presented by Stephen Heins, Orion Energy Systems vice president of corporate communications.
Cameco Problems Halt Uranium Price Decline
News announcing the facility's closure for two months ‘is expected to place significant upward pressure on the spot price,’ according to NMR editor Treva Klingbiel. She estimated a ‘minimum loss of 2,000 tU of UF6 production’ during the shutdown....Soil within the perimeter walls of the plant was reportedly contaminated with uranium and production-related chemicals. Cameco’s conversion facility is located about 60 miles east of Toronto near the Port Hope (Ontario) harbor. Cameco Fuel Services, at 1 Eldorado Place, is about one-quarter mile from the shores of Lake Ontario.
As candidate's look to Iowa, ethanol becomes top issue
As Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton climbed onto a makeshift stage at the Iowa State Fairgrounds and embraced motor fuel from corn as a key to America's future, she completed a turnabout from being an ethanol opponent, a position she held only two years ago....Political observers view her about-face as a political necessity, saying Iowa's first-in-the-nation's caucuses -- in which residents of the country's biggest corn-producing state vote their choice for presidential nominee -- makes it politically risky to avoid kneeling at the altar of ethanol-from-corn.
For decades, college kids have used stolen milk crates as the basic building blocks of coffee tables and dorm room shelves.Now, a new breed of crate rustler is cashing in by swiping thousands of the containers from loading docks and selling them to shady recyclers.
The containers are chopped into bits and shipped to booming factories in China to be made into a variety of products, from pipes to flower pots.
...The crates are made of petroleum-based plastic that has increased in value along with gasoline prices. The material now sells for 22 cents a pound, compared to 7 cents a pound in 2005, said Patty Moore, a recycling consultant in Sonoma.
Claude Mandil: Industry Can Substantially Save Energy And Reduce CO2 Emissions
Have you noticed odd changes in the behaviour of your friends and family, such as shunning car purchases in lieu of public transportation and taking action to move to a smaller residence? Probably not. Generally, rising incomes translate into demand for bigger homes and more powerful and larger cars. This poses a problem, since it produces direct emissions from consumer use as well as indirect CO2 emissions.
China June crude oil output up 2.5 pct yr-on-yr at 15.72 mln tons
China's June crude oil output rose 2.5 pct year-on-year to 15.72 mln tons, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said.China produced 5.06 mln tons of gasoline, 10.69 mln tons of diesel and 1.0 mln tons of kerosene in June, up 12.9 pct, 11.2 pct and 26 pct respectively, the NBS said.
North Dakota: Gas crunch not likely to end soon
The fuel situation remains tight in North Dakota and the crunch isn't likely to end any time soon.
Western Slope's study on oil shale delayed
The long-awaited tome of fine print outlining the breadth and depth of future commercial oil shale development and its effect on the Western Slope’s water, economy and environment is experiencing more delays.The Bureau of Land Management told state officials the draft commercial oil shale programmatic environmental impact statement, or PEIS, is slated for release Aug. 7, Assistant Colorado Department of Natural Resources Director Mike King said Monday.
But that date will be pushed back, BLM Washington spokeswoman Heather Feeney said.
Gov. Brian Schweitzer's Big Idea - to build plants to turn coal into liquid fuel, thus reducing dependence on foreign oil while taking advantage of our coal resources before they are made obsolete by cleaner energy sources - is taking a big beating these days.The concept, the subject of much recent congressional debate, has a couple of main problems. One is that the huge incentives involved are seen by many as a reckless boondoggle for the coal industry. The second is the fear that carbon dioxide pollution from the process may not be controllable either economically or practically.
New Zealand: Ready and waiting for the oil boom
The arrival of oil and gas prospectors in the deep south has raised hopes of an energy boom for the Mainland.
UK: Government is failing on energy saving
The Government has been threatened with legal action for its failure to promote energy saving in millions of homes as required by an Act passed in 2000.
Taiwan opts for coal-fired power plants
Power demand rose to a record in Taiwan last week, and the country said it would favor plans for coal-fired stations when it awarded permits to build new capacity next year because coal plants are cheaper to run and easier to supply than plants fueled by gas.
Spain Takes Steps to Curb Energy Consumption
Spanish ministers have approved a batch of urgent measures to curb energy consumption and slow the growth of greenhouse gas emissions, ministers said on Friday.The central government will set an example by reducing energy consumption in its own buildings, with a goal of saving at least 9 percent by 2012 and 20 percent by 2016.
New insights on the Soviet Union's collapse
Crude oil prices last week were flirting with a record high. It's great news – for the Russians.Low oil prices contributed to the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. In Russia today, high oil and natural gas prices are, to a large degree, the reason for an economic boom.
Welcome to Richistan, USA: The American Dream of riches for all is turning into a nightmare of inequality - but a backlash is brewing
It was the same in the late 19th century when the original Gilded Age of conspicuous wealth and deep poverty was spawned by railways and the industrial age. At the same time government has helped by doling out corporate tax breaks. In the Fifties the proportion of federal income from company taxes was 33 per cent, by 2003 it was just 7.4 percent. Some 82 of America's largest companies paid no tax at all in at least one of the first three years of the administration of President George W Bush.
Russia and US to Square Off Over Energy Reserves
Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President George W. Bush spent most of their time at the “lobster summit” at Kennebunkport, Maine, discussing how to prevent the growing tensions between their two countries from getting out of hand.
Q&A: ConocoPhillips' chief talks about meeting the demand
What's different now, as we are in 2007, is we don't see necessarily the cycles of the past. It could happen, but we see the demand for energy continues to increase with the population and the development of economies. Our question is: 'Where is all the energy going to be coming from?' It makes all the sense in the world to us to encourage conservation and more efficient use of energy because if we use less, that's the same thing as adding supply. And if we use less energy, it certainly helps with respect to climate change and greenhouse gas emissions.
David Strahan: Climate criminals
Mountaineers are a special class of climate criminal. We clearly have a particular moral duty to protect the icy landscapes we enjoy, and most of us like to think of ourselves as environmentally responsible. But the reality is rather different. When it comes to flying, just like the hordes heading off to the beaches of Magaluf, we remain in stubborn denial about the damage our emissions cause, and carry on regardless.In a recent three page article for The Independent entitled ‘The Melting Mountains’, Joe Simpson bemoaned the destruction of classic routes in the Alps from melting ice and massive rockfalls, without a single mention of his own airmiles, still less the helicopter fuel used to haul him off the Dru. At a meeting of the Alpine Club last summer, one speaker regaled us with stories from a lifetime of expeditions and slides showing evidence of glacial retreat, without once making the connection.
The crisis presented by global warming demands a response that is simple, comprehensive and effective. A tax on carbon consumption is the only response in sight that both discourages the production of emissions that cause global warming, and finances the rapid transition to a post-carbon economy.
Climate change fears reach even Formula One racing
Talking about climate change at a Formula One race might at first glance seem like praising celibacy in a brothel.The world's top motor sport competition is for many the epitome of gas-guzzling wastefulness with powerful engines burning nearly a liter of fossil fuel per kilometer while a vast entourage of people and machines jets to races round the world.
But green winds of change are blowing through one of the world's most popular sports, and a growing number of team bosses say they want to make Formula One a high-tech pioneer and leader in fighting climate change rather than a whipping post.
Floods force many to face climate change reality
"It would be wrong to deny the possible impact of climate change on flooding because if we (waited for more) statistical proof it may be too late," said Wolfgang Grabs at the World Meteorological Organisation of the United Nations.
How many of you have checked out the prospective YouTube videos for tonights "debate"? In among the rather (copious) marginal issue videos (e.g., "full disclosure" about Area 51) and the large block submitted via teacher's unions, there are some good ones about peak oil and alternative energy.
So... what is the probability that CNN will pick one of the PO/energy questions for airing? Anyone giving odds?
I posted a peak oil question!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oh0bt6TdVfk
www.baratunde.com
comedian, author, vigilante pundit
Concisely done, I hope it is picked. There was another one that was very clear about PO and well done. Plus, there were a couple of good ones on ethanol also.
I thought that the energy question videos were among the best executed out of the whole lot, and furthermore it is a topic that is actually policy-centric so candidates may find it answerable.
like yoda said, "there is another"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5-iKzACjqw
very well done
www.baratunde.com/blog
comedian, author, vigilante pundit
Unfortunately neither your video or the others on oil were selected by Mr. Cooper - or perhaps they didn't make through the first screening process at CNN for some reason. That's too bad; at least there was one direct question on nuclear power.
If any billionaires are in fact reading TOD, I suggest you call up Ted (or a friend that knows him) and Sergey&Larry (or a friend that knows them) and say that this question must be asked of the Democratic (oops, I mean, it's too late now--maybe for the Elephants?) candidates for President during this "historic" debate.
Of course, there are Doomers here who will reply why even try, it doesn't matter--there is no hope--which is ironic that they would actually care to chime in with a comment like that, you know? Reductio ad absurdum? But you see it around a lot. That's in part the spirit of the origin of the term, and incidentally, of the time. Sure, I like Schopenhauer too, but keep it to yourself. You know who you are... And the smart uber-Doomers don't drone on all day long, because they understand absurdity--they're smart. They keep to the facts and keep to themselves their bleak views of global thermonuclear war or whatever other doomer porn may satisfy their hearts' desire in the private confines of their own creatively pessimistic minds. The smart ones don't flog around "aghh screw everything", as I said, they stick to the facts, which are more than abundant (unlike something else we all know about...) There can never be enough Doomer Porn. =] I suggest slapping that on the masthead once these comment threads get to 1000 a day when oil is approaching $100... And we think we have it tough? When Drumbeat is 2000 comments a day in 2013 we will pray for the tranquil serenity of '07 comment threads. Question is: will Leanan be willing to do the Drumbeat for another six years?
Politics is a charade, but at least it could be a charade where for once they discuss the root of America: oil. And do it in scintillating in-depth sound bites (yes, an oxymoron, don't worry) trying to best each other for the reins of a republic (or empire depending on who you ask, or what you think) that is in disarray--a bloody foreign war/occupation, the military hemorrhaging young men and women, no end in sight--and all for what? Yes, oil. I hear the hecklers in the background now, as Billy Falafel O would say, shut up, we all know it's about oil. Yeah, yeah be quiet, of course we aren't stealing their oil, we're just "securing the region" with "full spectrum dominance"--check out the borders buddy. Look at your nearest world map. Go shake OPECs hand. Get back to me, I've gotta go golfing in Jackson Hole with Dick Cheney now...
Why even try? It doesn't matter.
There is no hope.
Hahah. Nice one. I usually don't respond with one-liners like this, but I'm tired and about to catch some shut-eye and I couldn't resist typing "Hahah" and then clicking "edit" to add this superfluous explanation in order to not feel guilty over merely typing the banal "Hahah" (which is far superior to the puerile "lol").
LOL
How dare you insult interweb speak!
"You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created."
Albert Einstein
You and I have exchanged private emails on this and other topics. I don't think there are many "doomers" who would tell you not to try but there are lots of us who would tell you not to get pissed off when they ignore you.
I wish you the best of luck in your crusade, mr f, so please be sure to keep me posted how it turns out. ;) You'll have to excuse me if I am not as enthusiastic for such activities as you are. I've run the political gauntlet numerous times before for other issues and am pretty aware of how it works.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Dr. Albert Bartlett
Into the Grey Zone
GreyZone,
Not so much a crusade, more like a pastime, like following baseball. I hear you on the political gauntlet ---> mincemeat clause... I don't mind being ignored, and I don't get pissed off when it happens either (at least not for very long!) I learn a lot reading here about the subjects at hand, and I enjoy blurting out whatever I think in response to TOD stimuli (that's what all this "blogging" is for, after all.)
Like I mentioned before, TOD is a fascinating microcosm of human nature. For that reason alone, if no other aside from the excellent statistical analysis and summaries--I believe it to be an invaluable resource.
Wow! 462 comments!!! Woohooo!!!!
I have had an epiphany.
We are all saved. Do not worry. Technobear, a very cuddly bear, will save everything!!
Wooohooo!!
Don't worry!!! Infinite World is POSSIBLE!!!!
Be HAPPY!!!!
There is enough for thousands of years!!! Don't forget ZERO POINT ENERGY!!!! See!!! We have plenty!!!!!
Gosh gee golly willickers!! I FEEL SO MUCH BETTER!!!
See, you gloomy woomy shoomy gosh bewillickering silly ole doomy doomers!! We are all just basking in the sweetness and light!!!
Oh, cornucopia, oh sweet nectar. Oh innumerate bliss of the unwashed masses. We need no scientific hoohaaaa!!! We can just throw ourselves down like children before the television, our chins on our hands, waiting to hear the absolute truth from the anointed ones who speak in quiet tones and tell us, "Look children, sweet technology!!!!!!"
Yes, I am convinced. It must have been your cogent arguments, your impressive intellect, perhaps your invariant application of rather smallish words grouped in what some call "childish attempts at satire" but which I call the SMARTEST DAMNED ARGUMENT EVER PUT FORTH!!
Yes, you, you my amazingly erudite friend, my brilliant child prodigy, my sweet, sweet stoker of the truth, stokin' stokin' ever stokin' that truth, purveyor of tasty cherries of knowledge (pronounced in honor of you, kah-nowledge), I finally bow to your ever potent, ever erect, ever pointed and superior ego.
Yes. I accept defeat.
Now. Where is my flying car?
We're backed up on the flying cars, but we're fully stocked on "ever potent, ever erect, ever pointed and superior ego[s]".
What scent would you like with that? I'm guessing nectar, but one never knows...
[Edit: Maybe because it is past my bedtime I forgot to mention that technobear will be out for the week sick. I hope you can understand that this is why the flying cars are giving us such immense problems. They simply don't want to fly without technobear...]
513 comments including this one.
What you didn't get the memo? July 23 is autobiography day here on TOD.
| The problem will solve itself.
| But not in a nice way.
Those memos are sneaky. I have doubts that anyone reads them at all (I've even seen some use them as dart targets.)
That reminds me, I have to finish The Life of Henry Brulard.
I'm not sure why the return to railroads that Kunstler advocates wouldn't be a form of "technology saving us" that he excoriates. I feel like some adjective is missing before what he calls "technology". Energy-intensive? But that just makes the argument tautological.
I think he means NEW technology. Technology that hasn't been discovered yet. Like oil that hasn't been produced yet, if technology hasn't been discovered yet, there's usually a good reason.
New as in unknown or new as in unimplemented?
I know a lot of people driving SUVs who are cognizant of the likelihood that gasoline prices will continue rising. However, they seem to think that they can simply get some 'technology' installed that will up their mileage and keep them breaking even. That or trade in for an SUV with the 'technology' already installed. I see very little critical thought in this area.
[sarcasm]
All you have to do is attach rare-earth magnets to the fuel line, it reconfigures the molecular structure of the fuel and gives it more energy.
[/sarcasm]
Sounds like a business plan to me! ;)
Remember to send the stuff fedex, so it's not mail fraud!Bob Ebersole
Actually there is a temporary way to keep it going. The 6 stroke diesel engine. part internal combustion part steam engine. very cleaver indeed...
http://www.autoweek.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060227/FREE/3022700...
Delusional, water injection has been around since at least WW2. I read your link. There were no diagrams but as far as I can tell Crower has done nothing that has not been done already. Of course, Crower used the usual disclaimer 'engine has not yet been run against load on a dyno.'
Using water injection on take off with a high performance radial engine will allow higher turbo boost pressures without the normally associated higher cylinder head temperatures. Water will also allow the engine to be run with more mag or distributor advance for more hp, and the water will allow higher compression ratios with lower grades of fuel because water is loathe to compress. The use of water injection was all but done away with by the end of WW2 because of the associated problems that water in the cylinders causes over time. I was on a flight crew in the Navy and we used the purple 115/145 octane aviation fuel without water injection to run our turbo charged 32 cylinder engines with power recovery turbines to power all the generators and alternators. I noticed that Crower said he wanted to switch from regular tap water to distilled water to prevent build up of (mostly calcium) in the engine. If he does that then he will be using some very corrosive stuff...distilled water. One reason the military got away from water injection was if an engine sits without running for a week with water residue in the cylinders then (depending on weather conditions and ambient air temps) the rings will stick in their grooves, the valves will stick in their guides, and the spark plugs will need changing because their electodes will rust...FUBAR. Sounds like Crower is bored and doesnt like to read about what has already been tried and discarded for good reason. Perhaps he should work on something to replace sleigh runners?
water injection has been around since at least WW2.
And its mentioned in the 1970's vitage 'how to extend your gas mileage' book(s) I have around here somewhere....
There are a number of serious problems with that concept engine, including:
It wouldn't be all that hard to separate the diesel and steam sections, even using the engine coolant (perhaps an oil of some sort) to heat a low-pressure boiler. But the gains would not be terribly impressive, and the difficulties of freezing and the like would make the engineering very difficult for the improvements you could eke out.
Maybe UTC's organic vapor turbine is a better model than steam.
This is a 6 stroke engine not a traditional water injected engine. In a water injected engine water is introduced along with the fuel for combustion thus moderating it's properties.
In the six stroke after the traditional exhaust stroke there is another injection stroke where water is introduced into the hot cylinder (with Crower by using the injectors that would have forced in the diesel).
This creates a steam expansion stroke which is followed by a steam exhaust stroke and then followed by the normal (fuel/air) intake stroke. Six strokes not four with the cam running at 1/3 engine speed instead of 1/2. (extra set of cam lobe ramps for the 2 add. cycles)
Crower has been grinding racing and mileage cams for years and so has the know how to do the engine and head mods. (He was nice enough to talk to me on the phone once when there was no body else to answer my cam question and that impressed me)
I have seen this arraingement touted before. I can't tell ,in theory, why it would not yield more heat energy based on nearly eliminating the loss from a conventional cooling system.
The 6-stroke engine will certainly convert more energy to work, but you have issues:
A better comparison is to a conventional bottoming-cycle steam engine (boiler heated by exhaust) or an organic vapor turbine. An OVT might be able to use the cooling jacket heat as well as the exhaust heat, and either could probably get more energy out than Crowther's system (which can only use the heat stored in the combustion chamber walls to make steam).
The high fuel price causing them to trade in their vehicle will be the same high fuel price that crushes their vehicle's resale value. They are in for a doulbe [unpleasant] surprise.
"I think he means NEW technology. Technology that hasn't been discovered yet . . ."
I'm not sure the distinction is really between new and old technology, although that model would work in most situations. I see two possible distinctions between types of technology that Kunstler refers to. One distinction is between technology that would require a lifestyle change, such as rail or bicycle, vs. technology that doesn't (continue to use cars but fueled by something else). The other distinction is between technology that obeys the laws of thermodynamics and "technology" that does not (which I think should actually be called "magic"). I don't mention the second one the be facetious, but because in the minds of alot of people, technology isn't bound by the laws of physics, mainly because they are only vaguely aware of these laws. It would be interesting to go around telling people that scientists are working on flying cars that will be powered by only a AAA battery and see how many people believe it would be possible.
Re: flying cars
Wait! Hang on there, fella'. Do you mean to tell me that flying cars running on AAA batteries are just a dream I had?
Excrement! I'm so disaaaaapoiiiiinted...
I gotta get me one of dem!
Yeee Haaaw!
Clarke's third law, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" may, it seems, have a corollary: "Any sufficiently foolish culture is unable to distinguish advanced technology from magic".
For to those who use but do not understand science and technology, technology is simply magic by another name. Peak oil is, at bottom, telling people the magic is going away.
They say every time a child stops believing, a fairy dies.
LOL :)
"You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created."
Albert Einstein
"if technology hasn't been discovered yet, there's usually a good reason"
That is actually the first non-sensical thing I've read from you. Or maybe, if it accurately represents Kunstler's idea, he should get the credit.
But if the whole issue is "technology got us into this mess...it causes more problems than it solves" etc. etc., then it really doesn't matter whether you're expecting new uninvented technology or vastly more widespread adoption of existing technology as a solution.
My personal take on it is that there is a difference between technology designed to solve a particular large-scale problem, rather than technology that's just evolved sporadically at the whim of the free market. The latter is rarely done with any sort of concern about the potential side-effects of widespread adoption, and is what has landed us in our current situation.
Technology didn't get us into this mess. Its the nature of humankind that did.
You can't blame the tool for a irresponsible operator.
Nor will technology get us out of this mess. Not with the same irresponsible operator at the controls.
Actually it's the laws of physics that got us into this mess. Anyone up for a debate about the logical impossibility of free will?
Not really. The law of physics in just what sets the limits of human consumption.
It's human nature that drives us to consume right to that limit.
Ah...so the laws of physics don't control human nature?
You lost me here. Why would the laws of physics control human nature?
Let me be more specific as you seem to have missed my point.
It is human nature to consume as much as possible. This is natural as it improves an individuals fitness, a tribes fitness, or a countries fitness etc. If I leave resources unutilized somebody else/another tribe/country can use these resources and surpass me/my country/tribe.
We use technology as a tool to utilize these resources. I can hunt more bison using a bow and arrow than I can with a sharp stick. Concentrated solar energy (oil) allows me to run a tractor and accomplish far more work than a horse and plow can. etc etc
But there are limits. We can't keep expanding the resources we use.
As far as I can tell you believe that tech will allow us to continue to utilize resources in a never ending exponential pattern. That somehow we are special and not subject to the same harsh reality that intercedes on every other population that "overshoots" its resourse base.
Even if we can transition off of fossil energy (very doubtful at this stage) we will only be able to expand until we reach some other fundamental limit. Only this time our population/resource demands are even greater and the height to fall even greater.
Think about the green revolution. We sure dodged a bullet on that one. We developed tech that allowed us to utilized even more resources and expand our population/resource demands to our current astronomical levels. But don't mistake past performance for future predictions. Even if aliens fly in and drop clean fusion in our laps and we solve the upcoming energy crisis our exponential pop/resouce demands will just keep doubling and doubling and doubling to we hit the next limit. There is no escaping the ramifications of exponential growth.
Tech can only help us utilize resources. But those resources have to be there in the first place. Maybe fusion or cheap solar would allow us a couple more doublings but that tech is too far away to make a difference at this point.
Edit: prehaps laws of physics is the wrong term to use. That term implies the fundamental limits of the universe which we are obviously far from ie we've yet to mine black holes for their energy.
Maybe somebody else can help me phrase this correctly.
What do you think humans are made of? Either our nature is controlled by the laws of physics or you believe in some sort of supernatural "vitalism" type theory...
Chaos theory and complexity are both subsets of the laws of physics, and allow for all types of emergent behavior (such as consciousness), as well as allow for many of the adaptive and self-organizing behavior of living things.
It is deterministic, yet unpredictable, and fascination of this process is enough to keep me watching and playing, even if my own "choice" and "free will", as most people understand the concepts, are illusions.
That's pretty much how I see it.
I also have a soft spot for Pinker's conclusion that our brains are physical incapable of truly comprehending what consciousness/free-will actually are - and if they were complex enough to understand them, then they wouldn't be able to understand how that additional complexity worked etc. etc.
Um...
1) Those "laws" are just theories; constructs of our minds. The ones we have at the moment work pretty darn well in most cases... but not all the time, of course. They aren't actually immutable laws of nature... we just like to think they are.
2) Logic is just a construct of the mind. Again, it is not a thing beyond us.
3) Oddly enough, anyone who actually believes in an omnipotent, omniscient God must logically concede no free will and therefore, presumably, no hell too...
Pick any one and start your debate ;-)
"You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created."
Albert Einstein
You know what I meant. Human nature is an artifact of evolution through natural selection, which is an artifact of the low-level forces that control the behaviour of energy and matter at the lowest levels.
So to say "human nature" is to blame for our current precidament is just as logical as to say the "laws of physics" are to blame. Proximate and ultimate causes, and all that.
NO, the technologists believe that after all their thousands upon thousands of mistakes, they will finally get it right and we will ALL have flying cars!!!
WOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Let's hope they get the FINAL SOLUTION before we are all dead!!
(Sarcasm brought to you by Sarcasm-R-Us)
Edit - as noted above, new technology, which just happens to solve the problem of powering itself.
This is one of Kunstler's most poorly expressed points, and in this sense weakest, though it is actually a fairly critical one.
Our machines run on energy, not on technology, a point which seems to confuse an awful lot of people. This faith in technology is beside the point, in Kunstler's view, since it is keeping the machinery running that is the problem of peak oil and decline, not technology per se.
The problem comes, as you point out, that it is possible to use or create technology that will function adequately within various energy constraints, an electrified railroad system being an excellent example.
But the lack of energy represented by world oil production falling 20 million barrels a day will not be made up by 'technology' - that we may be able to create fossil fueled machinery able to perform efficiently enough to compensate for that lack doesn't mean that we can then create machinery efficient enough to handle a 40 million barrel per day decline 10 or 20 years later - in other words, using technology to keep us running in place means we get nowhere in actually changing how we live. Which is Kunstler's main goal, regardless of whether the instrument of change is through peak oil or Y2k or the crumbling away of America's soul through the ugliness that surrounds us - in Kunstler's opinion, of course.
This fact is most likely the explanation of why the point is expressed so poorly - Kunstler wants change, and how it happens is less important. Any convincing argument is fine in his book(s) - including the idea that pirates will disrupt the flow of goods across the Pacific, thus starving Wal-mart of cheap goods, and forcing the Nascar morons (or whatever derogatory terms he uses) to return to the moral values of a better American past (and yes, he does tend to skip lightly over such fine American institutions as Jim Crow in his longing for those good old days).
"Which is Kunstler's main goal, regardless of whether the instrument of change is through peak oil or Y2k or the crumbling away of America's soul through the ugliness that surrounds us - in Kunstler's opinion, of course."
-- I think this is beyond dispute. The modern built-out environment is inherently alienating and dehumanizing if for no other reason than the level/type of sensory stimulation that is found there. To paraphrase K. in response to David Brooks:Just because people can exist in it and "Like it" doesn't make it good. I agree that K. wants to see this stuff go, any way possible, and I think this is a laudable goal.
Matt.
In otherwords, you have a better understanding of how people should live their lives, than themselves.
Congratulations, you just become a wannabe Autocratic dictator.
Now that we recognize that Freedoms in a power down scenario are a luxary and not a right, when do we get to move on to the more ugly decisions such as who do we pick to die and live? Since we can't support 6+ billion people on this planet, that means a culling must take place, and since you being the Autocratic genius you are, I would like to hear how you propose implementing a "Final Solution" to this glut of bodies we have.
Boy, this seems to be "technocornucopian backlash day" on TOD.
Someone sees that the status quo just might be untenable, and would like to see it change, and is therefore a wannabe Autocratic dictator.
"Since we can't support 6+ billion people on this planet,"
...true enough - we can't _sustainably_ support 6+ billion people on this planet...
" that means a culling must take place,"
Oh come off it. It simply means we need to back off and breed at less than replacement rate, one way or the other. The way things are going, it probably won't be voluntary and gentle. But it will be Mother Nature doing the culling - She doesn't really need our help.
And before you or some other technocornucopian claims that I'm advocating a terrible dieoff, or anticipating it with glee (yet another common bullshit rhetorical tactic of the technocornucopians)... I only see the possibility. I have just as much chance of dying off as anyone, and I'm not excited about the prospect.
"since you being the Autocratic genius you are..."
Boy, there has been a rash of really snotty blithering lately.
"...I would like to hear how you propose implementing a "Final Solution" to this glut of bodies we have."
Oh come on - that's enough. Just knock it off with this idiocy. But as long as we're all being snotty and sarcastic, I will say that you, sir, are acting like a demagoguing jerk. Are you willfully not understanding the points that folks are trying to make, or are you just dim-witted?
What is it with TOD today? If it's not Final Solutions, it's Holocaust Denial.
Hey guys, culling will take place! It is just that nature, anarchy and chaos will do the culling, not any dictator or anyone else for that matter.
Ron Patterson
Anarchy and chaos come in the form of dictators and others.
Dictators and similar armed strongmen are in many ways the opposite of anarchy and chaos. Many dictators come to and stay in power to end anarchy and chaos and replace it with oppression and order.
I would agree more with the statement that anarchy and chaos pave the way for dictatorship.
Anarchy, (from Greek: ἀναρχία anarchía, "without authority") refers to a human society without a government, or state. Three circumstances have been identified for this:
* societies where no state has ever existed;
* societies where an existing state has collapsed;
* societies, whether real or speculative, where the state has been consciously abolished.
Chaos (derived from the Greek Χάος, Chaos) typically refers to unpredictability, and is the antithetical concept of cosmos.
You will notice that [definitions from Wikipedia] that anarchy has no authority, and chaos has nothing to do with authority. This consistent mangling of the language creates problems in understanding.
Please learn the meaninig of word before you use them.
-
James Gervais
ImS--
Anarchy is the belief in order-- without external state control.
Anarchy is a big subject, and very misunderstood, and comes in many flavors--
from anarcho-individualism (Thoreau, Tolstoy), all the way to Syndicalism (which most deep contemporary political thinkers ( Chomsky and others) are exploring-
Anarchy is the Anthisis of Chaos, but the media propaganda of the State has convinced the sheeple that anarchy=chaos.
Anyway, negative views of anarchy are so imbedded in the popular story, that this will not convince anyone to do further reading--
We don't need to worry our pretty little heads about any ole "final solution." Miss MOTHER NATURE is husk, husk, husking her claws on a whetstone ready to do the heavy lifting.
You see, that old tired trope of the FINAL SOLUTION will simply be taken care of off stage, that is off the human stage. We will simply be the small time bit players, the spear carriers whom the "director" (Nature for those needing the Cliff Notes) bids fall in neat rows only to be carried off stage in the dark.
Yes, we do not need a dictator, a maniac, or a despot to do the dirty work of the technologist. No. All you need is the sweeping scythe of the Mistress of Unintended Consequences.
All you need it Hubris, of which the human race has no shortage.
I don't quite agree, but that is in part because it is possible to live better than most Americans seem to. For example, vacation time - free time is the very basis of freedom, which is an interesting commentary itself when contrasted to the fact that Americans seem to work 100 hours a year more than they did a generation ago in the 1970s.
Sometimes, I think Kunstler's hate of suburbia blinds him - not that his goal is not one worth pursuing, but if he approached it less fiercely, he would be less interesting, a paradox he is likely aware of, the way that any entertainer is aware of his audience. In a way, he needs to keep the outrage growing, which is where I have my problem with his basic approach - Geography of Nowhere is truly excellent work, but he seems to lose sight of the fact that a Victorian era city was equally a place worthy of disappearing - removing suburbia is not quite the same as offering an alternative. Sorry, 'small town living' doesn't do it for me as an answer, especially when my experience of small town USA comes from Virginia - and Kunstler's writing occasionally borders snugly on a certain nostalgia when 'they' knew their place in society. (Honestly - I think Kunstler reflects his age more than anything else - sort of like Ron Paul and gays - shame he can't get beyond it, though.)
ALSO, Kundstler is hinting at a deeper point, which though hard to prove, is likely true:
Progress in technology (and in the underlying science that supports it) is ITSELF reliant on cheap energy--specificially cheap oil--and will enter decline soon after oil does.
This IS IT: Look around you! Oil production peaked in 2005 (total fossil products in 2006) Technology will peak soon. After peak there will just be less and less of it coming out.
Why? The basic idea is not so hard: To have technology you must train people, feed them, give them time and laboratories to work in, all so that they can make and develop their discoveries. All of this takes money--ultimately--energy, and if the energy is not there it will stop happening.
That is why the time to start working on a soft landing for modern civilization was back in the 1970s, when there were still resources to put into the project. The American election of 1980 was the choice of Crash-and-Burn, which is the scenerio we are in now. The hard landing is sure. What we are arguing about in threads like this is the possibility of amelioration--damage limitation. Disaster per se will not be avoided.
Kundtsler harps on railroads because they can transport large masses for low inputs of energy, relative to any other mode of transportation besides water, which has geographical restrictions. Yes bicycles will do as well, but at the point that we are using bicycles for main freight traffic we will know that our civilization is already over.
The problem with new and unproven technologies is that it takes time to get the bugs out, and sometimes they simply fail outright. So to stake your survival on a technology that does not yet exist is to gamble wildly or desperately. The expected outcome of such a choice is failure and death.
Are there things that actually work? That are KNOWN to work? To the extent that we have a future at all, that is where we should put most of our attention.
"to stake your survival on a technology that does not yet exist is to gamble wildly or desperately"
The best phrase I saw on TOD in the last week, in a different (?) context: "desperate optimism".
Very well said.
Peak energy is peak technology. As we slide down the energy scale research will scale down as well.
The Limits of Human are defined by energy.
I wrote this, The Limits of Human, just over a year ago, discussing just this topic:
http://www.turpintime.com/ViewItem.aspx?ContentItem=632887503054221930
Jason
Are there things that "actually work"? Hellloooo? The rest of the developed world uses 1/2 the energy per capita of the average American. Mostly they ride trains and go easy on the air conditioning. It works! They are already preparing (in Europe especially) to cut their energy usage in half again.
The simple response to that is, "Okay, don't. Build frameworks which will work if the new technologies work out, but will still let us make do with today's."
Proven technologies include nuclear, wind turbines up to 5 megawatts, HVDC powerlines on the order of 1000 miles long, combined-cycle gas turbines up to 55% efficiency, carbon-foam lead-acid batteries, and more. SRI has a process to produce silicon for ~$14/kg (sodium reduction of Na2SiF6, proven in the 1980's), and the "string ribbon" continuous-casting process can turn it into silicon cells a mere 100 microns thick. Electric motorcycles are hitting the market. We can go a long, long way with these alone.
Proven technologies include...
You forgot electrifying our freight railroads
http://www.trains.com/ctr/objects/images/railroad_electrification_1970s.gif
And building lots of Urban Rail
http://www.lightrailnow.org/features/f_lrt_2007-04a.htm
And requiring German type levels of insulation and other energy efficiency in new construction.
You also forgot pumped storage.
Best Hopes,
Alan
BTW, Alan, I have to ask...what are your thoughts on the future of maglev, in the US and the world in general?
Watched a doco about it last night, seems an obvious replacement for cross-continental air and road freight and passegner routes.
Mag lev is too expensive and consumes too much electricity (at least the German version operating in Shanghai). Capital costs are a billion $ every few miles. Now way can we afford cross-country maglev ! China has mag lev for prestige, but not Japan, Germany or France.
I would like to see semi-High Speed Passenger (110 to 130 mph) Rail in the US mixed with 80 to 100 mph Express Freight rather than true HSR (but no freight) rail built in the EU & Japan.
Fly at 70 to 85 pax-mpg in next generation a/c for those that need speed.
Slower semi-HSR uses far less electricity than true HSR, and moving freight by rail instead of truck & air has major savings !
Bet
I understand they're aiming to be get the cost of the next project to under 25M USD/km, which is apparently cheaper than building airports and 8-lane highways...and the running costs are supposed to be considerably less too.
What do you mean by "too much electricity"? As in, it wouldn't be feasible to build enough generational capacity to support a network of maglev trains across the U.S.?
High Speed Rail, TGV. ICE, Shinkansen are supposed to use considerably less electricity and go almost as fast as mag lev.
the cost of the next project to under 25M USD/km
I take "Projected costs" for new "out-of-the box" technology with a pinch of salt and a shot of sarconol. Shanghai cost billions, between guideway (paid by the Chinese) and floating stock (paid by the Germans).
I have MANY better uses for funding that Mag Lev from NYC to Los Angeles. Lets spend $2 trillion on other non-oil transportation needs first and then we can talk about it.
http://www.lightrailnow.org/features/f_lrt_2007-04a.htm
Best Hopes for Reality Based Priorities,
Alan
Technology is the perfect example of a non-limited resource... the one thing that can save us when limited resources like oil decline.
What we will need of course is "appropriate" technology... plows and sails and things, but also many new things that the age of oil and its associated scientific projects have created and that we can adapt to a new lower energy reality.
Technology is IDEAS and INFORMATION and PEOPLE who are capable of using them to create objects and processes in the real world.
Peak oil may impact the process of technology development. It will certainly change the kinds of technologies that are relevant. But to imply that ideas and information and the ability to implement them are even remotely analogous to the decline in availability of energy resources is beyond silly.
I have no idea how we'll cope with peak oil but every scenario in which humanity is not completely annihilated involves the mastering of appropriate technology for the new post peak environment. Many of those technologies may well build in "high technology" that we've created in the oil age, such as genomics and materials sciences. That information can be stored and saved and used far into the future to develop the appropriate technologies for whatever world results from the decline of fossil fuels.
Peak technology is just an absurd idea.
Human beings are technology using animals... and ideas and knowledge can be difficult to destroy if appropriately distributed on storage systems and in human brains.
Technology won't peak.... it will adapt to whatever realities humans find themselves living in.
It takes energy for a brain to think a thought. Calories of energy, expended over time. First learning the old, then inventing the new. Those calories can be quantified and the total energy cost of ideas calculated. As energy peaks, so will the number of calories devoted to thinking. And thus the total amount of thinking. And thus, peak technology.
Peak technology is as absurd as addition.
It will not be the end of new ideas, but it will be a reduction in the volume of ideas.
A reasonable argument... but technology and information can be stored without caloric inputs on paper and by other means.
That means that the pace of development may slow, but we'll be living in a world with most of the 20th century science and technology knowledge still available for application in the new reality.... in the form of appropriate technology.
And therefore, also, in the volume of stupid ideas?
-
James Gervais
"And therefore, also, in the volume of stupid ideas?"
Hey! Did anyone here actually say Peak Technology is a bad thing?
You have found the silver lining. ;)
Perhaps in a nice version of the future all the people who watch TV today will be thinking and figuring things out in their free time. Perhaps instead of "did you see what that hot doctor on ER said" people will be saying "i've got this idea to enhance my wind mill, but what do you think?".
Open source software is becoming successful due to many people contributing a bit, maybe other aspects of technology development could work on similar principles. R+D might even be more democratic that way because no-one would contribute to a project they didn't like, and the information could be owned by everybody not one corporation
Technology is the practical application of science to industry, engineering and practical problems. Technology, culture, society and terms of trade are all intimately linked - right in the concept. There is nothing absurd about peak techology; it is the opposite that is questionable.
cfm in Gray, ME
this reminds me of the problem that many physicists including someone as smart as Einstein got into with the potential of a contracting universe... at the point it stopped expanding and started to collapse back in on itself for a while there was the nonsensical notion that time would start running backwards, when in reality there is nothing of the sort predicted by theory... entropy keeps marching onwards
same here... technology may indeed have grown so rapidly based on energy... but it will continue to go on in a low-energy environment... the collapse may lead to regression - which is why knowledge retention programs are essential... but once things stabilize the march forward will begin again at a pace consistent with available energy - it won't stop or go backwards per se
--
When no-one around you understands
start your own revolution
and cut out the middle man
which is why knowledge retention programs are essential...
Knowledge is not in the books, posted in this very thread yesterday.
Technology is "going backwards per se", TODAY!
New technologies can only be created to exploit the discovery of new energy sources.
How can it be otherwise?
Was the ICE invented BEFORE the modern discovery of oil?
This argument is ridiculous.
Well put, Oregon7. Hang on to these thoughts for a future Drumbeat, as I think the party is over and the lights are low on this one.
And just when you think it was all funny enough for one day, you figure out that in a thread that has at the very least a hundred comments about Kunstler and all his unspeakable deeds, Jim's own comment gets relegated to page 2. Which has an attendance of what, let's guess, 0.2% of the initial visitors?
You can't make these things up.
Kudo's, mate.
Something tells me that the fact that I see 426 comments now, at 10.23 PM, is trying to teach me stuff about stampeding herd behavior.
It's his pointy nose. (extended sarconal laugh)
Exactly.
The film runs backwards.
Why would coal not run out? It will.
Then what? The railroads crap out. Of course, there will be some real ding-a-lings touting ethanol powered locomotives or some such horsepucky.
What is the goal? Is it to actually try to live in balance with the solar budget or not? Those are the choices. There are no others.
CLANG CLANG CLANG went the trolley...until the electricity quit. Then we walked.
The railroads crap out. Of course, there will be some real ding-a-lings touting ethanol powered locomotives or some such horsepucky
Your comments are best described that way.
Hydroelectric, wind, solar, HV DC lines and pumped storage will be adequate to run any rail system that I can conceive of.
0.19% of today's USA electrical system runs the NYC subway system, DC, Chicago, Philly and every other heavy & light rail system in the country plus Amtrak's Northeast corridor.
BTW, I have been pushing electric rail, not ethanol rail.
And we will be bicycling, not walking, when going a couple of miles and there is not a tram going that way.
Alan
This is why Kunstler is a terrible spokesperson for peak oil. Peak technology is a completely ridiculous concept, like peak evolution, or peak "time".
I wish we could stop using this guy as a mouthpiece for peak oil. In such a serious situation, having a main proponent be from the lunatic fringe doesn't anyone any good.
I wonder how many people who listened to Jim's repeated warnings about the coming meltdown of suburbia, and moved out, consider him to be part of the "lunatic fringe?"
In effect, ExxonMobil, Saudi Aramco and Daniel Yergin, et al, have been encouraging Americans to continue buying debt financed SUV's and McMansions. I personally would consider this group--ExxonMobil, et al--to be the "lunatic fringe."
westexas, come on, you're more intellectually rigorous than to water down the point like that.
First of all, if we half get our act together, suburbia can in large part probably be saved with public transportation, telecommuting and electric technology. Second, just because someone occasionally has a good idea doesn't make his lunatic ideas any less completely non-credible.
I suggest you review this transcript of a joint interview with Matt Simmons & Jim Kunstler: http://www.energybulletin.net/19686.html
If you prefer to believe that "Sububia can in large part probably be saved," I wish you luck, but I would bet that Jim Kunstler's prescient warnings about the meltdown of suburbia continue to be proven correct.
There may actually be an advantage in the notion of lower density development, though the very low density of the "McMansions" is probably to be too low. Think of row houses or condos that are 2 or 3 stories high. That configuration would provide sufficient roof and wall area for solar systems which would provide most (if not all) the energy use within a typical household. On the other side of the puzzle, the very high density inner city development patterns, such as NYC or Hong Kong, are not likely to be easy to power with renewable energy systems located nearby. The problems of transport in suburbia is not unlike that of the energy supply to the high density inner cities. I think the high density cities are much more vulnerable to short term disruption than is the case for suburbia.
Almost every house in suburbia will need a new roof within the next 30 years. If all those roofs were covered with PV panels, the resulting production of electricity would be very great. Sanyo is making solar PV roof tiles, which would function as both roof covering and electric generation. In the U.S., the half-life of an automobile is about 8 years, thus, most of the automobile fleet will need replacement within about 15 years. There is a potential for a vast re-construction of the U.S., once the need to do so is proven to all concerned.
We need many more people like Matt Simmons & Jim Kunstler to do the convincing, since the politicians aren't going to stick their necks out or fall on their swords.
E. Swanson
It's difficult for me to understand how problems with overconsumption are solved by "vast re-construction."
nice
Maybe I should have used the words "retrofit", "redirect" or "in-fill construction. Those 4,000 ft^2 McMansions could be rebuilt as duplexes and triplexes. That's what's happened in some cities as the older areas went downhill.
E. Swanson
Black Dog, you said :
Since the sun shines only in clear skies and only for about half-the-day [and the solar panels are useful for only part of that] how can this possibly be true?
While PV or CPV using heating can provide electricity for some time periods, its variability makes it a chimera for normal household electrical supply.
-
James Gervais
its variability makes it a chimera for normal household electrical supply.
The 'norm' has been defined as 'flick a switch, get your power'. But the idea of power is to act as way to drive your tools, be they lights, fridges, machines to process your dirty clothing, pump your water.
PV just has you learn to exist within the context of a budget. Is it not 'the norm' to live within a budget?
Hi Eric,
Along the same lines, those of us who hang our clothes outside to dry appreciate the timing of this task is wholly dependent upon the cooperation of the weather. :)
Recently, I've been using the sun's rays to heat my laundry water with nothing more than a standard garden hose. An hour or so before I start my first load, I roll out the hose on the back patio. Even under less than ideal conditions, the water inside this hose can easily reach 40C or more. It takes my front loader approximately 45 minutes to do its thing, which, as it turns out, is plenty of time for the next batch of water to come up to temperature.
My fuel oil savings are admittedly modest (perhaps no more than 0.20 to 0.25 litres per load), but for roughly six months of the year I'll have the satisfaction of heating at least some of my water with the sun, at zero out-of-pocket expense no less (it appeals to the Scot in me).
Cheers,
Paul
"Prescient"? The only time he's been right is when he's jumped on bandwagons. As this "what bubble?" site laments: "By 2004, housing bubble discussions, as well as predictions of an imminent collapse in prices, were showing up throughout the media." No kudos to Kunstler.
In fact, let's look at a wide range of his predictions, such as those for 2005:
"2005 will be the year that the public gets panicky about the global energy predicament."
- Wrong. Witness the constant complaints here on TOD of the public "not getting it".
"The Iraq elections will be a fiasco. Few Iraqis will venture to go to the polls"
- Wrong. Voter turnout in the January election was 58%, which is higher than in any US election in the last 30 years. Voter turnout in the December election was 80%.
"US forces will withdraw from the Iraqi cities (and peacekeeping duties) to bases out in the desert"
- Wrong. 2005 saw aggressive (if not effective) action by the US's military in Iraq.
"China continues its policy of securing natural resource contracts (oil and metals) around the world."
- Right. Also a no-brainer.
"A slacking off in "consumer" spending in the US as Americans choke on credit payments will prompt China to search desperately for a group of new customers for manufactured goods. China will find some in Brazil but few elsewhere and ultimately won't be able to replace its shredding US customer base."
- Wrong. The Chinese economy has been growing at record rates, due in no small part to the lack of collapse in the US.
"China will orchestrate a movement among adjacent former Soviet republics to terminate American military base leases there."
- Mostly wrong. The US has been kicked out of one country (Uzbekistan), but no sign exists of a wider movement, much less a Chinese-orchestrated one.
"Speaking of the US economy (aka, the dual WalMart / Housing bubble), here's what I see: the fantastic apparatus of mortgage-and-credit creation wobbles as misfeasance in Fannie Mae combines with a falling dollar and loss of overseas customers for US debt to cause interest rates to rise substantially."
- Mostly right. Interest rates continued rising through much of 2005 - to nobody's surprise - as the Fed tried to head off inflation.
"A knockout punch comes in the form of up-ratcheting oil-and-gas prices, which thunder through the economy as price inflation. The housing bubble pops like a zeppelin and a giant sale of distressed properties begins, with house prices plummeting. (Prices on other things, especially food, shoot up.)"
- Wrong. Housing prices increased through the whole of 2005, and a common news story was how oil prices were not leading to price inflation.
"After a long cycle of dominance the Republicans begin to pay a price for their stupidity and greed."
- Right. And not a surprise to anyone.
"An economically hard-pressed public will become inflamed over White House efforts to go easy on illegal immigration.....what we are apt to see instead is the formation of several big movements on the lunatic fringe: hardcore isolationists, anti-immigrationists..."
- Wrong. The general public prefers a "softer" immigration reform approach (i.e., more like the White House's) than the one being pushed for by conservative lawmakers, and there has been no indication of substantial growth in the lunatic fringe.
"it is hard to imagine a rally in the face of $60 oil. I'm inclined to predict a gruesome journey down for the Dow Jones into the 4000 range by the end of the year."
- Wrong. His prediction was for the Dow to fall from 10,300 to ~4,500 in 6 months; in reality, it advanced to 10,950 at the end of the year.
Out of 10, 3 or 4 right (depending on how generous you are), three of which were common knowledge. In terms of accurately predicting hard things, his track record is almost perfect...ly wrong.
Part of the reason for this is he appears to be recycling his predictions from 1999, when the vehicle of collapse was going to be Y2K:
"Writing this in April of '99, I believe that we are in for a serious event. Systems will fail, crash, seize up, cease to function. Not all systems, maybe only a fraction, but enough, and enough interdependent systems to affect many other systems. Y2K is real. Y2K is going to rock our world."
Reading his old Y2K and new Peak Oil predictions, it simply seems as if he hates current consumer culture, and desperately wishes something would kill it. And so he keeps predicting that it will die, again and again, because he so very much wants it to.
Regardless of whether he's right or not that it's a terrible culture, that's a terrible basis for making accurate predictions. And it shows.
Perhaps the title of the 2004 DVD featuring Jim Kunstler on the impact of Peak Oil on suburbia was a little too subtle:
Kunstler is an excellent polemic author, and 'Geography to Nowhere' is an excellent introduction to understanding why America looks as it does today, with the passion of someone trying to find the source of a terrible disease.
But it isn't quite accurate to say he hates consumer culture - he hates American suburbia, in part as reflected through consumer culture. The distinction may be subtle, but it is real - he most certainly is not a Green.
I remember reading in the first two pages of The Long Emergency a crystal clear statement regarding this "concern". Either Pitt has never really read The Long Emergency, or he has, and he believes Kunstler is a liar. Clearly, it must be one. Take your pick.
Anyone who has actually read the book, and has their sensibility intact, will draw their own conclusions. Perhaps it is a worst case scenario, even though, again, it is stated in the very beginning of the book that the author is in the middle of the spectrum of "dieoff" and "techno-fix" crowd--leaning towards dieoff. So yeah, um, that means that the man's predictions aren't going to be pretty. Perhaps he feels comfortable being a Cassandra? The thing about Cassandra was, eventually she was right... And she knew it. I mean, someone that is a neo-Malthusian is going to end up making big predictions, and may well be wrong, like the rest have been... Lets note that all of these incorrect predictions have been going on since the 70s, and even earlier. In fact, they go all the way back to Malthus. Big Whoop. This has been during the period of upward slope on Hubbert's curve. Then again, I don't have to go into that, because we already know all about it. I will note we have not entered the downward slope yet.
Tilting at windmills indeed... I guess I'm guilty too. Sue me.
I use the same point about criticisms of crying wolf... people kinda miss one of the key results of the story... in the end there really was a wolf...
--
When no-one around you understands
start your own revolution
and cut out the middle man
JH Kunstler is no Cassandra. Cassandra tried to warn against avoidable fates (her curse was to be ignored). Kunstler is claiming that disaster is unavoidable, and there is no point in taking action to prevent the worst outcomes. Cassandra's warnings would have prevented disasters if she was believed; Kunstler's prophecies will be self-fulfilling if people believe them.
That is why I think Kunstler is no spokesman. He has no vision, nothing to suggest (aside from from the implied "Kill yourself now, beat the rush"). The students who compete in the Solar Decathlon have a vision, and it would run suburbia on the sun. My vision is to convert all our transport and fossil electric generation to biomass (if only to fill in the gaps in wind, etc). Kunstler has nothing besides his desire to see everything he hates fall down.
I am a "peaker", and I honestly think that the only way that TOD should refer to Kunstler is with the bold-face, 20-point disclaimer "This is how bad things could get if we wait too long to act."
Yup, and therein lies the point. But, I guess it is really hard for some happy-go-lucky folks to see.
As for the rest of what you wrote, just more ad hom stemming from whatever psychology you are equipped with (I wouldn't know since I don't know you and I'm not a shrink--although I'll venture into some possibilities in a second.) At least we're now getting somewhere... You viscerally don't like Kunstler, it seems, because he is too fatalistic in his "vision". You find a non-existent "vision", where you want a solar festival, wind-powered, sustainable biomass economy, etc. Ummm, look around? Fly around? Look down? Let me know about how your engineering buddies have been handling the way our society has been being "built" from the postwar period all the way smack up to today. Perhaps you should just stick to poetry? God knows, the world needs it.
And then it hits that the real exception you take is what role these "solutions" will play. JHK makes an argument, some say a very weak one, but one nonetheless, that all these "solutions" will play a role--but that we shouldn't childishly comfort ourselves with them since they aren't going to avert substantial amounts of pain (just combine the Hirsch Report with imminent PO and you don't need to be a doomsayer to see that there will be "problems".) To prepare for the "avoidable" we should have started mitigation back when the last round of doomsayers were being ridiculed in the seventies... Spreading a feel good "vision" only goes to perpetuate existing "reality". I think being realistic is the most admirable trait we should all strive for. People need, must, be honestly told that the future is not going to be easy. Sure, we can still be social and feel happy--but realism must take hold over fantasy (a tall order). Telling people everything is going to be "A-OK we've got it all under control over here" is in my view not a wise choice. Since it would only tend to demote the urgency with which we are going to need to attempt to mitigate the tides of a radically changing world in an alien economic environment--it seems that it may in fact be quite ill-advised. However, you, and others on this board endorse it... So, you must have a point, since I'm sure you are right that people don't want to hear about a doomerish future at all. To invoke the usual words used here at TOD: glazed eyes. Still, I reiterate, railing against someone because you don't like their "vision"--Pitt's cherry-picking and your haranguing really don't have much merit. I fear you guys are like the James Wood and Dale Peck of TOD, in this regard.
Wow, and you relegate all of a man, and his entire body of work, just like that! Sounds real sensible. Pro style. He's as bad as Falwell, just driven by one diabolical drive to see all that he hates DIE! All the more reason to take you seriously, right? Interestingly, your statement above probably indicates more about yourself than you would otherwise like to admit. (To spell it out for those who hate obliqueness, it seems that our good friend Engineer-Poet et al sure do "hate" something and want it to "fall down"...) Reflections wherever one looks.
Of course, you also misconstrue my Cassandra point, and contort it into a distortion of the meaning I intended it to have. You then just reiterate your same tired old point that Kunstler "wants everyone to kill themselves"... or if I didn't phrase it right that time how about he just wants everyone to have a self-fulfilling prophecy of doom so then the doom can happen! All of his books and every thought ever to occur in the man's head are just a cultish cover for this one strain of thought! That is just so disingenuous it really makes me hope that your engineering skills are better than your debating tactics--we will certainly need as much of the former as we can get for mitigation down Hubbert's descending slope. As to the latter, I'll leave that to the discretion of the few people still reading this sprawl-like (heh) thread.
Bait her up, cast her out, we'll see what I catch.
Thank you for proving that you don't know what "ad hominem" means (hint: a treatment on the claims and consequences, isn't).
Thank you for also admitting that you're just a troll. Say goodbye.
You say goodbye, I say Hello.
I'm not a troll. I have been reading this site for almost two years now. I am very interested in these issues. You may not like what I have to say, that is another matter. That does not make me a troll, it only indicates the faulty logic that is, it seems to be, your signature dish. Alas, your persistent ad homs only go to further my point. Let the comments speak for themselves... I never accused you of being a troll, just that you unreasonably flail around baseless wild accusations--and there you go proving my point again, calling me a name. Good job.
Allow me to quote you:
Trolling. If your position had any merit you'd just cite Kunstler to show me where I'm wrong. You haven't, probably because you can't.
Hello, Engineer-Poet.
I'll quote you instead, that's all that's needed.
Unfortunately, you provide no evidence--just persist in ad homs and baseless accusations that contradict the documentary record. I can't be responsible for your emotions, Engineer-Poet.
In your most recent pleasant note you write:
Don't you mean to say that if your position had any merit you'd cite some evidence? After all, you are the one making the wild unfounded claims--I am merely asking "are you right?" Others can determine what the resounding answer is to that question for themselves (not that anyone is even reading this anymore.)
Your first point, "taking no action"--I'm unaware this is his stated position (but what do I know, I'm just a "troll".)
You're second point (if it can even be considered such) the "no vision...Kill yourself now" line is just yet another of your own wild groundless accusations. If you feel so confident, you quote him--then we can probably argue semantics, but I am unaware he has ever advised anyone to commit suicide. If anything, this level of argumentation indicates a lot about your motives for continuing this farce. You care little about convincing anyone you are right--you are simply correct by fiat. I'm a "troll" and Kunstler wants genocide ASAP.
In continuation of this wonderfully perceptive thinking your third line is, of course, just a rehash of the first except it is more illuminating in its bluntness. You blithely state that your psychological position on this matter is, oddly, precisely the argument that you give for why you hate him--ie, he hates everything and wants it to fall down. You hate him, and want him to fall down. It seems you are comfortable in this vein of thinking. Take care and be well.
Or, alas, fire again.
Cherry pick all day long, Pitt.
Why don't you guys just link to the JHK wiki article over and over, or just go read the PO debunked archives? I guess that beating the horse is just too fun. Jesus, you'd think he was electrocuting kittens with the level of excitement you exhibit... Perhaps you lost some money in the markets like our dear friend BenjaminCole? At least you're in good company--intellectual giants like luisdias and the others to buttress your efforts of indignation. Whatever your rationale, keep up the debunking though Pitt, you do sometimes have something to add... Good work detective!
Here's to parsing, and cherry-picking takedowns! Yippee-Kiy-Yooo!
Hes not doing any more cherry picking than other people on this site are...
Yup. Argumentation is mostly cherry picking. Who has the best cherries? Time, and value judgments, will tell.
Who's cherries most accurately reflect the condition of the tree?
Wooptedo! I'm a giant!
A lilliputian giant of blathering dullness, that is.
Hbj: I think everyone can agree that suburban sprawl is more vulnerable to decreased oil supply (increased gasoline prices) than anything else (with the possible exception of the trucking industry). If suburban sprawl can be "saved" then everyone can relax, because the global economy won't even get its hair mussed. Time to buy some airline stock-LOL.
I'm coming to learn that there are a lot of people here who need to realize that the situation is a lot more complicated than "either-or".
Yes, as oil gets more expensive, surburbia becomes more problematic.
But yes, this is also a predictable problem that will not happen overnight, and if the debate can be elevated out of the intellectual gutter of posts like BrianT's, there may be some chance of mitigating at least some of the effects.
Translation:
You disagree with me, therefore your posts are in the intellectual gutter.
Wrong.
Disagreement is fine. I disagree with, but have complete respect for, the first part of BrianT's comment.
Statements like " If suburban sprawl can be "saved" then everyone can relax, because the global economy won't even get its hair mussed. Time to buy some airline stock-LOL." represent the intellectual gutter.
Get your mind out of the intellectual gutter, you're blocking my periscope!
Suburban sprawl is vulnerable as well to bird flu, absence of bees, melamine, you name it.
Thing is, we are far, far into overshoot, way past the point of diminishing returns to growth and well into the area of decreasing absolute returns on growth. Growth is killing us; shrinking is going to kill us. I'd really like to quantify that, help! [But how does one quantify the risks of bird flu due to swelling populations and congestion? What is the price of a hard limit?
We are fighting Gaia. I mention bird flu, because the increased numbers of birds and people make it more likely. Because our corporate and governmental systems make it more likely. The scale of our economy has swamped the ecosystems on which we depend.
cfm in Gray, ME
if we half get our act together, suburbia can in large part probably be saved with public transportation, telecommuting and electric technology
Some fraction of a reformed suburbia will likely survive with more than a "half our act together" effort. Much will not regardless.
One reason is the energy to support suburbia. More streetlights/capita (we could run quite a bit of rail off that possible conservation source, turning off the street lights in suburbia), plumbers, mail delivery, police, UPS delivery, etc. all require significantly more energy, i.e. oil, to service standard American suburbia than urban areas or new TOD (Transit Orientated Development). And much more pavement/person (and feet of water & sewer lines) to maintain in Suburbia.
In addition, suburban housing is generally quite poorly built and energy in-efficient (last Christmas in Phoenix a Real Estate article in local paper claimed market was STILL interested in "luxury extras" and no interest in higher energy effiency).
Suburbia was built on a herd mentality. People went to the hot areas outside town and bought the "in" floor plan, with minimal independent thought. (Remember avocado colored appliances ?) Once the herd starts leaving, in can turn into a stampede. Who will spend money on major repairs on an "investment" that is declining in value ? Especially if the neighbors aren't ?
Good public transportation cannot be cost effective in very low density areas.
IMVHO, Suburbia will decline because of
1) Direct energy costs (commuting, transportation to get essentials, HVAC)
2) Indirect energy costs (support infrastructure)
3) Needed repairs escalating in costs as market value declines
4) Herd mentality as empty homes appear and deteriorate over time nearby
Best Hopes for Urban Rail & TOD,
Alan
Alan
Avocado appliances! Do you prefer harvest gold?
I'm sure some suburbs will survive. The Clear Lake area near Houston has several huge employers very close-The Port of Houston and its refineries, the Barber's cut container port, and lest we forget, NASA.
But others will quickly deteriorate due to foreclosures and impossible commutes. The mortgage meltdown is the first domino in a domino effect that totally dooms the suburbs that have no real reason to exist.
In the Houston area we already had a real estate melt down that totally changed some suburbs in the 1984-1989 time frame. The houses are still there, but because the banks sold their houses inexpensively and the area demographics changed, the "neighborhoods" deteriorated permanently. My prediction is that the displaced inner city poor will be lured into those areas by cheap rents. In the Houston area I'm talking about Sugarland, Pearland, The Woodlands, Spring and Jersey Village.
Bob Ebersole
My prediction is that the displaced inner city poor will be lured into those areas by cheap rents
No doubt true. But there are simply not enough urban poor to keep Suburbia whole, even in altered form.
US population is roughly 25% Urban, 50% Suburban and 25% Rural. Add to this the 250% increase in average sq ft for new construction SFR (single family residence) since 1950.
I could see ten or a dozen Urban Poor moving into a 3,200 sq ft Clear Lake McMansion, splitting the utilities and car pooling to near by work and shopping. Since there is much more Suburbia than Urban Poor, they are unlikely to move to the more remote and isolated Woodlands.
Alan
Some foreclosed & vacant suburban houses will have their copper wiring and plumbing looted, rendering them all but worthless - they'll end up being sold to salvage operations to demolish for recycled building materials. A substantial amount of arson can be expected. Then there will be the squatters. . .
At some point when most of the houses in a suburban neighborhood are gone, the asphalt streets and driveways will be mined by people with pick axes and hand carts. Asphalt = America's tar sands.
The bottom line is that suburbia won't be kept whole. Large segments of the housing capacity in suburbia will simply be torn apart and taken away. It will be the few houses left that become the overcrowded slums.
Some foreclosed & vacant suburban houses will have their copper wiring and plumbing looted,
Already happens in building being built
Same thing is happening in the cities, pal.
Only first and moreso. And it ain't only confined to the interior.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,957494,00.html
So where are all of Alan's minions to live?
:-P
Either coat copper pipes in tar or use PVC pipes.
Alan
We've still got two mixing bowl sets from the late 70s, one in each color - so we're good to go regardless of which color of shag carpet we select!
;-)
A outer ring of poor slums is the common pattern in most of the world's cities -- certainly virtually all 3rd world cities.
Most suburban homes can house substantially more occupants than they presently do. One could easily imagine an extended family of a dozen or more immigrants (legal or illegal) plus a couple of renter friends all residing in a suburban house presently occupied by a 3-person family.
HEY!!! Watch it you guys!!! I've had both colors. 'Course I bought'em used. ;-)
Very interesting points.
Some things that might allow some suburbs to survive;
1) access to mass transit
2) closeness to or creation of a town center
3) farmer's markets and or community gardens
4) closeness to producing agriculture
I'm sure you all can come up with more. But I'm imagining that it won't work for all us suburbanites to either move into cities or out into the country, there are simply too many of us. Instead, I'm imagining that we will see the formation of thousands of compact small towns, some will already be municipalities, others will form around the intersection of two major roads where a minimal "commercial" infrastructure exists. I'm also imagining widely diverging success rates for these towns.
Quite a few "suburbs" and a great many "exurbs" were originally free-standing small towns located close to but only loosely associted with the nearby big city. Then the rail transport came, and then the roads, and then the farmers retired and sold out to developers and the farmland infilled with more housing developments.
Things will probably not unwind in a neat and symetrical mirror image. Nevertheless, those pieces of suburbia that were originally independent small towns probably have the best chance of continued survival, while the recent infill development is on the most uncertain ground.
I can tell you exactly what will allow suburbs to survive.
People want to live there.
==========
It is fun seeing all this pessimism concentrated in one place.
I am encouraged though. In the 1890s reputable scientist were predicting that if cities kept growing at the rate they saw then that the streets would be filled with horse manure and that there was no technology on the horizon that could prevent it. Also there would be a lack of fodder for the required horse power and civilization was sure to collapse.
How right they were.
Brilliant! Insightful! Why didn't I ever think of that?
Brilliant! Insightful! Why didn't I ever think of that?
Ignorance of history.
Combined with a desire to see it all end. What a combination!
People want to live there
So saith they MSM that controls the herd mentality.
A group of polls assembled by Laurance Aurbach show that about a third want to live in TOD today ! If that latent market demand was meet, the percentage would rise as the herd began to move there and the advantages became apparent.
The stragglers will get to live in neighborhoods full of neglected overgrown homes and very poor public services (schools, police, street repair. water & sewer service).
BTW, The post-WW II move to the suburbs was NOT meeting some massive latent demand, but the result of a series of gov't policies.
Early VA loans were available for new construction and very few older homes meet their "standards", In the 1950s, sidewalks were no longer required for VA loans and I have seen subdivisions where Phase I has sidewalks, Phase II did not.
Add gov't new highways and roads, integration (see white flight), gov't revenue splits so that older areas got bad schools and the then new suburbs good schools and on and on.
Just get gov't to reverse this bias (turn about is fair play) and people will NOT want to live in the suburbs.
Lets start by adding a "Peak Oil Risk" premium to gov't mortgages of 3/4% if a house is more than 5 miles from electrified mass transit, 1/2% if more than 2 miles and 1/4% if more than a half mile. Eminently justified (probably set too low).
Alan
I think you're missing something really important here Alan. A lot of suburban residential growth has occured because good, high paying jobs preceded them there. As rubber-tired distribution system displaced rail, light-industrial, bio-tech, and computer related businesses found that affordable office space, good freeway connections, and shorter commute times for their employees made locating in suburbs a no-brainer. At least in Puget Sound area you will find almost all of the dynamic new industries located either in suburban 'business parks' or on their own 'campuses'. The 'reverse commute' from homes in Seattle to jobs in suburbs has surpassed that of the traditional pattern on several major arterials.
Seattle has their first (they need more) Urban Rail line under construction, not yet open.
In an auto-centric society, suburban offices make sense.
I assume that Microsoft will survive post-Peak Oil and Boeing will shrink to just one plant with much reduced employment.
I strongly suspect that new job locations will have easy access to a Light Rail system (if Seattle builds a system), such as Portland will have when the Green Line is finished) and Microsoft will make efforts to bring Urban Rail to their campus.
The driving force will be to locate where it will be easy for workers to get to. Washington DC added a new station (New York Street) to an old line (Red) and IMMEDIATELY a half dozen office buildings started construction (including ATF HQ). As gasoline gets ever more expensive, access to Urban Rail will rise in importance.
New small Urban foci will probably evolve around steady employment (see Boeing & Microsoft). The old term was "company towns".
Best Hopes,
Alan
I wouldn't be so sure Microsoft would survive, at least in one piece - in general, monolithic slow-moving companies are at considerable risk in the rapidly changing world that declining oil supplies will almost surely generate.
Also, a considerable fraction of their income comes from shipping pre-installed OSes on new computers that are bought more or less as luxury items by the middle classes. A peak-oil triggered extended recession is sure to force a lot of people to cut back on purchases of anything that isn't truly essential.
OTOH, Boeing mightn't do so badly. There really are very few realistic replacements for long-haul overseas flights.
And of course Boeing has the military as a big customer, which won't be going away.
hbj (from up the thread):
http://www.energybulletin.net/19686.html
From the transcript of a joint interview with Matt Simmons & Jim Kunstler (I made some minor corrections to correctly identify Matt as a speaker):
Is there a point somewhere in that irrelevance?
Identify who has a better grasp of reality regarding the future of the 'burbs.
hbj (from up the thread):
To my mind JHK endeavors have been totally against the stream no matter where you drop him.
Try it yourself sometime.
"Peak technology is a completely ridiculous concept"
I may think Peak Technology does have some validity. Consider that Technological advancements tend to require increasing specialization and study in a given field. On the down slope of peak energy, I would not be surprised to see funding dry up. Consider that Cheap energy translates into more abundant free time which allows greater time for specialization. It becomes a question of whether a society will fund and support a small group of select academics and researchers to pursue higher level education and the search for the magic bullet.
I think I would agree that we are reaching a technological high water mark, even if the idea or wording is unpalatible.
EJ
Sure, if 'Technology' is I-Phones and other complicated products that are designed to both define and then fullfill a somewhat arbitrary 'need'. Even so much of the tech development in the food industry is aimed towards creating flavors and mouthfeels, concept foods (Wasn't Google PeanutButter and Jelly in One Jar advanced ENOUGH? Google that!), while nutritional disorders and addictions abound.
No, to fall prey to the old cliche', I would suggest that we're coming out of a period of relatively little 'need' (In the well-supplied industrial world), and so necessity has not been present enough to demand our brains to devise substantial, meaningful inventions, combinations and discoveries that would have to satisfy any survival requirements. It certainly seems that we may have some developing survival requirements heading in to disturb our TV-supported slumber, and so will soon have to get our thinkers going again, funded or not.
Bob Fiske
Hi Bob, totally agree. Let's hope for a wider return to ideals of quality, rather than the sub-mediocre trash that is produced by the majority today.
"You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created."
Albert Einstein
What if the magic bullet doesn't exist to be discovered? Yet again JHK sticks his neck out and challenges society on its assumptions. It's what you know for sure that ain't so .....
First you need a discoverable bullet; then you need to find and implement it in time, just like in the movies. Then the bullet has to solve more problems than it creates. Some bullet.
How many more combinations of materials and techniques are still possible and waiting to be discovered? Good question. Thanks Jim.
I think there is a consensus on The Oil Drum that no silver bullet exists. Where there is a lot of discussion is as to the effectiveness of a "many silver BBs" approach. For example, we could in a few decades go to a fleet of plug-in hybrid (or pure electric) cars. We know how to generate more electricity, and over thirty years or so we could build a lot of nuclear generating plants plus of course more wind and solar and tide and wave power.
Clearly, Alan Drake (whom I'm going to write in for president in 2008) sees his proposals as silver BBs.
Now some people say, "B.S., all those silver BBs won't help much." In my opinion they can and probably will help. I do not assert that technology will save us. Matt Savinar may turn out to be right; there is no way to know now, because the data are not there. I think we need to walk a fine line between the fallacy that the market (driving technological advances) will save us and the opposing fallacy that states that technological advances will diminish in number and importance.
The late great economist, Joseph Schumpeter, pointed out that technological advances tend to come in "swarms" separated by about sixty years. If Schumpeter is right, we're due for another swarm right about now.
In fact it's better than you says. On a purely "size of manufacturing base" level if you run the numbers, it's clearly possible to upgrade everyone in the US to hybrids whilst matching the rate of fuel decline up to about 8%. An 8% decline rate is at the high end of most credible estimates.
Now there are arguments to be made about whether we *will* actually do that, but the technology needed to halve our gasoline consumption in 9-13 years exists today: we don't need to invent anything, nor do we need to increase vehicle manufacturing rate above present levels. Simply retooling most of our vehicle factories to producing hybrids would allow us to survive incredibly high decline rates, and this is far from the limit of what we can actually achieve with new technologies that are currently being commercialized.
The OP was right, "peak technology" is a ludicrous idea, especially at the moment. Kunstler has already decided what he wants, now he's quite happy to make bizarre and illogical arguments to reach his desired conclusions.
Predictably, of course, you are a computer programmer. Oh, but look, now I just entered what "represent[s] the intellectual gutter." It's kind of comfortable in here. I may stay.
You slashdot geeks don't really understand how the world works because you're too smart at detailed oriented iterative functions (programming, whatever the hell hbj does, the rest of most of talented-yet-unrealistic slashdot, ad infinitum.) It doesn't surprise me that political ideologues can crop up to power with these types of psychologies at work. You so easily convince yourself. Real "power" is naturally cynical and self-interested. It taps into ideologues and uses them to faithfully spout their agendas. People do this to themselves. Those people are just completely retarded or ultra cynical (William Kristol, etc). Take your pick, it doesn't matter which. Which are you? Which are we? Does it matter?
Your assumptions do not take into account various economic factors that will be at work. In other words, you are in fact self-convinced pseudo-cornucopian techno-fixer ideologues. That has a nice ring to it :-D
We're deep in the gutter now, but we can still see the stars.
Where'd I put my iPhone?
My new motto:
"In the gutter, but free!"
;-)
No, obviously not, but then neither does Kunstler. He just assumes that his preferred outcome will happen and works backwards from there.
The point of those calculations is to show that it's physically possible to handle a 5% decline rate using only vehicle efficiency improvements. Obviously in a real 5% decline scenario there'll be a mix of solutions.
The rant about computer programmers sadly doesn't surprise me. You don't have any figures of your own, so you just attack the messenger. Get your own analyses which show why you are right, and then you'll be more impressive - not just to me but to the myriad people reading this discussion.
Really? I wasn't aware. I thought what happens here is that we discuss the present situation (which is quite dire, if you hadn't noticed) either in a free for all manner--the DrumBeats and general interest posts, or in a technical manner--the statistical posts (I like to stay out of these, and let the experts do their thing--aside from any ignorant questions I might have.) For the most part, I think I'm well educated enough in the sciences, and have studied math to the degree where statistically speaking it is clear there may be a rates-of-change-crunch ahead very soon which we are not prepared for.
I agree, we need to get better and stronger regulation on the auto industry ASAP. We need to reinvest in public transit, trains, electrification of transportation (especially for agriculture), and probably nuclear. Demand destruction will force us to conserve--we won't need ad campaigns for that or politicians waxing poetic for votes. On top of this, there are all the other silver BBs: solar, wind, thermal, biomass, and many others. But they will not kill the PO werewolf, IMHO. I agree with people that say PO will literally alter and radically change how many Americans live (more so than the growing gap and unfair economic divide has since, yes, the 1970s.)
As for getting my own analysis? I think I've got it, and I do not think it will be easy for the US economy, or the global economy, to weather imminent 5% declines (that is a mid-range projection you are using, btw). I'll just reference the last year's worth of TOD archives (and my gauche comments there within), and the cultural/political/geopolitical environment as the evidence for obstacles to implementing crash course mitigation easily if PO is within the decade and skews toward the upper range. As many like to mention here, Schlumberger estimates a scenario of 8%, which would be gruesome. On top of all this, if ELM develops any traction you can kiss those friendlier decline rates good-bye. (Let's not bring on the Doomers' Neocon wet dream of Iran, or other geopolitical pandemonium likely to crop up in the wake of global C+C energy decline.)
Aside from that I would state that we do not differ on numbers, only that I believe your belief that a 5% decline rate annually can be made up for forever by simply building millions of more cars is worse than naive, and probably dangerous... We differ because we see the present world unfolding in different ways, or we have contentious "projections" on the future. Note how that word has deep connotations to psychology, even if I'm not using it in that context.
If the debate on TOD isn't technical, it is usually psychological. Even when it is in fact technical, a lot of the time it is still just a lot of psychology ramming against itself--as many observe. Moreover, if it isn't psychological, than it is political, but then again, we all know what Aristotle said.
Of course, our identity positions in this argument necessitate this clichéd polarity that I say nothing works and you say everyone will be perfectly fine (which neither of us is really saying, I hope.) You assume your technical perch and squawk your math is divinely correct. I raggedly spin my owl vision at the bleakness of our prospects of going down Hubbert's curve, or shall I say cliff? Or perhaps undulating plateau? What is the social outcome with any of these "no-growth" scenarios? I'm not optimistic they are altogether going to make for an immediately better future, and I fear that is why it seems all political hope in this country has been lost over the last three decades (ie the "who cares?" mentality of the top). To drone on, the question of why we didn't start thirty years ago to prepare for a less energy-dependent/energy-intensive future is going to rear its ugly head soon, when people realize how fragile our complex systems may in fact be when deprived more and more energy every year, continually, into a population base created during over a century of ascending Hubbert's curve. I really do wish for middle-range depletion levels, an invigoration of political leadership, and a mitigation strategy that minimizes the amount of discord and hardship. As I like to say, time will tell, I hope you are right.
Hi Mike,
Your analysis sounds interesting. Could you please publish the details?
The Hirsch report looked at automobile efficiency as a mitigation wedge and it did not cover better than 2% decline rate.
Are you assuming a WWII style takeover of the auto industry that forces them to build only hybrids?
Jon Freise
Analyze Not Fantasize -D. Meadows
Uh-oh.
Be careful.
This guy sounds like an insider.
You don't need a WW2 style takeover to make the auto industry produce mostly hybrids (you don't really need 100% hybrid manufacture, because there'll be other factors at work like fleet re-arrangement or increased use of ride-sharing).
What you do need is economic incentive. Why would any auto-manufacturer still be producing 20mpg vehicles when their competitors are doing 40-50 and gas is very expensive?
The figures I referred to are about what is physically possible rather than economically possible, and can be calculated from various statistics available on the web, and correlated with Stuart Stanifords various analyses of vehicle efficiency. Google "auto efficiency wedge" to get his article.
Basically you want to simplify, to get a handle on orders of magnitude. Obviously the result won't be an accurate description of the future but it lets you get a feel for what is possible and what is not.
Start with an assumed decline rate - let's say 5%. With a 5% decline supply will halve in about 13 years. Let's simplify considerably and assume even distribution of resources, so for the US "all" that is needed is to halve US gasoline consumption (as most crude oil is used to make fuel) to keep prices either stable or rising slowly (they'll still rise in reality).
Current average fuel efficiency in the US is ~20mpg (rounded). Prius today gets between 40-60mpg depending on who you believe. Let's take 40 as it's the worst case, from a story on whether Prius' are all they're cracked up to be or not based on testimony from an annoyed customer. So in reality it's probably better than this (I don't have a Prius so can't say).
40 also has the nice property of being double 20. So we can simplify again - if we upgrade every vehicle in the fleet to a worst-case Prius or equivalent, then we can halve consumption. Of course you'd need to remove natural growth in VMT from that, but over the timespans we're talking about that isn't going to change the final conclusion so let's leave it for now.
How long would it take to replace every vehicle in the US with a 40mpg hybrid? We can see by comparing manufacturing rates. Currently if you count cars+light trucks from BTS stats, you get about 17 million vehicles sold per year in the US, about 8% of the total fleet of 225 million, which tallies with Stuarts own figures derived using a different mechanism. Let's simplify again and assume that vehicles sold == vehicles manufactured. This works out as being approximately a new vehicle built every 1.8 seconds.
To build 225 million new vehicles (we want to upgrade every single one to a prius or equivalent remember) in 13 years (the time taken for our supply to halve) works out as about 1.822 seconds - the same! So we can conclude we don't need any new manufacturing capacity to be able to do this, only retooling of existing capacity to build hybrid engines instead of pure-gas engines.
What other physical limits might we encounter. Two obvious ones are electricity and lithium supplies. EPRI has published a study which shows that the differential between daytime and nighttime production is so large that it'd be perfectly feasible to recharge hybrids from this at night. Now if you actually tried to *use* all that differential then some extra generation capacity would be needed to ensure pumped storage and friends are still supplied, but that's easily manageable.
Lithium Carbonate primarily comes from Bolivia and a few other South American countries. Making Bolivia the new Saudi Arabia doesn't sound great, but this analysis only looks at what is physically possible not politically wise. There are various calculations around how many hybrids could be produced if the entirety of these lithium deposits were used to produce hybrid LiIon batteries but they vary considerably. Even the worst case estimates however result in aroune 600 million hybrid cars - easily enough for the US vehicle fleet and probably also enough for Europes, but likely not enough for the entire world. Other estimates however imply the limit might be in the billions: more than enough. And of course it's highly unlikely that lithium based batteries will be in use forever, or that no more lithium deposits exist - it's one of the more common elements in the universe.
Now the guy who decided to insult my profession instead of doing maths above correctly points out that this ignores economic factors. Will people be able to afford buying hybrids which are today very expensive?
This is really hard to say. It depends on the strength of various economies, availability of credit, and the price of hybrids once mass manufacture and competition on a huge scale has brought down the price. It's worth noting though that the old vehicles will have some resale value - you can sell your old inefficient vehicle to somebody who needs a new car, cheap, but who doesn't drive much.
The other trick is that a 5% decline doesn't mean you can say anything about actual fuel prices. Unless industrialisation in China and India are brought to a halt, it seems very hard to predict what actual prices will be even given a decline, but you might be able to extrapolate that from the current run-up in prices given flat production.
Fortunately, we don't need to upgrade the entire vehicle fleet. There are no reasons why we cannot have wide-spread vehicle sharing during the initial ramp up (remember that a 3% decline gets progressively less nasty as the curve flattens out over time). The technology to do this effectively and on a large scale exists today.
So the basic conclusion I come to is that even if you assume several worst-case scenarios, it's physically possible to handle a 5% decline rate within the US with no new technology and no new manufacturing capacity whatsoever, simply through letting price signals tell auto manufactures to dump light trucks in favour of efficient hybrids.
Is a 5% decline rate likely? Hard to say. Depletion in existing fields seems to be meeting Andrew Goulds estimate of around 8%, but having a decline rate approach the decline rate of individual fields would be the absolute worst case scenario: it implies a complete inability to bring any new production online at all, which isn't correct. Between new fields and XTL we can probably bring quite a bit of new production capacity online. A more realistic decline rate seems to be around 3-5% per year, which is within societies proven ability to adapt (see Stuarts stories on what happened after the 70s/80s oil shocks for this).
EPRI has published a study which shows that the differential between daytime and nighttime production is so large that it'd be perfectly feasible to recharge hybrids from this at night
I think it would be very problematic to find the natural gas to continue operating existing natural gas power plants (we built very little but NG plants for a dozen years) a few hours/day (from memory average duty cycle is 23% for NG plants). Doubling generation from NG plants will run into a shortage of fuel,
Best Hopes for Urban Rail,
Alan
/me tips his hat at an excellent comment and agrees with the sentiment that adaption at less than 5% is probably do-able, but wonders if 'above ground factors', and an export crunch may influence the reduction in oil availability towards a quicker than 5% rate.
Hi Mike,
Thanks for the long response. Essentially, the whole US auto manufacturing industry must be retooled to produce 40 MPG vehicles to match a 5% decline rate. I agree.
I think the kinds of calculations that you have done help people understand what is meant by "needs a WWII level effort" or suffer the consequences.
It seems a shame that the Auto Industry is fighting tooth and nail to block legislation that would require 35 fleet MPG available for sale by 2020 when we really need the existing fleet converted to 40 MPG in the same time frame.
I will keep a link to this analysis. Do you have this written up somewhere that is likely to see updates?
I don't think you can compare upgrading some car factories to a WW2 style effort, the two just aren't in the same league. Hybrid manufacturing technology isn't especially complex, although like most auto manufacturing it takes a lot of time and skill to tune for the best results.
Yes it's a shame the auto industry is fighting legislation - on the other hand, as I said, I don't think you need any. Once decline actually starts economics should be more than enough.
No, I don't have it written up anywhere. Maybe I'll post it on my blog or something, or maybe it could make an article. I don't know.
Of course, you can still have an oversupply of guzzlers if the manufacturers do their usual trick of overproducing and then using discounts and cheap financing to move them. Then they are a liability for the next 10-15 years.
One way around that might be to tax the discounts and charge sales tax on the foregone interest. If the manufacturers are pushed to build to order instead of building up inventory of vehicles nobody wants and then dumping them, a large part of the problem will fix itself right there.
The technology to reduce oil consumption exists today.
It is a wonderful invention that was totally unexpected 50 years ago.
It is a fantastic device that allows people to travel at near the speed of light for about 10¢ an hour including vehicle.
Crazy talk you say?
It is called a modem. You are probably using one now.
"The end is nigh" sells better though. Just ask Earle Williams.
It is called a modem. You are probably using one now.
Yes, it is also very convenient to outsource value added IP jobs to cheap countries.
THAT is sure to reduce your consumption, zero budget, zero expenses...
EJ - me encanta tu "moniker". :)
I take your point. I think that co-opting the word "peak" to use with technology is a bad idea though, because "peak" oil really does have to do with an actual peak in supply, whereas the technology concept is really an issue of how much technological progress do we forego by having less energy.
Also,to take it a step further, technology is obviously not 100% corollated with energy. Highly related often, yes. But as someone else pointed out on this thread, technological achievement is as much about the brains of the innovators as about energy.
I'm an aerospace engineer and aerospace technology is an area that I have some expertise in. Aerospace technology has definitely peaked. We're now in a situation where we (the aerospace engineers) are forgetting more old technology than we are innovating new technology. Often times, when someone gets a bright new idea, all he has to do is spend a few hours in the library and he'll find a near identical idea published in "ACTA Astronautica" or some other obscure journal from the early 1960s. It's depressing to flip through some of the old NASA proposals that were published in the mid-1960s. Those old ideas printed on brittle, age yellowed paper are as bright and exciting as ever but were never implemented due to limited funding (collapse of the Apollo Program). Of course some areas of technology are advancing very rapidly, e.g. biotech. However many well funded technologies like microcomputers are starting to hit asymptotes due to physical limitations. Also some areas never got off the ground (controlled nuclear fusion) because they were too hard.
Peak technology is a real phenomena. I worry that Peak Oil coupled with Peak Technology could be a very nasty double whammy. First our society gets knocked into a long economic recession due to peak oil. After fifty years, there is a recovery as we convert over to energy alternatives. However trying to advance technologically beyond that point is hard because almost all of the research and development (R&D) resources were obliterated during the fifty year recession/depression. Trying to bootstrap technological R&D is then almost impossible because of the huge costs to get back to zero on a smaller economic base and the almost insurmountable argument that it's always cheaper to go to the library and lookup what people did a 100 years ago (we'll be stuck in the past). The ancient Romans fell into this very same trap when they couldn't advance beyond Hellenistic Greek technology.
I have 15 years in aerospace, and I agree. Could we build the Blackbird today, if we wanted to? My colleagues - some of whom did build it - say no.
USA recentle resurrected the antiballistic missile.
I dont know how well the Spartan and Sprint system worked in
the 70:s but it could be an intresting example of restaring production of a very extreme technological system.
I would not be especially worried if the microelectronics development levels out in a few years. We can spend generatons perfecting software and architectures to use the technology.
Magnus Redin said:
"I would not be especially worried if the microelectronics development levels out in a few years. We can spend generatons perfecting software and architectures to use the technology."
I agree. I suspect it is due to simple desperation that Intel and AMD are pushing these multi-core CPU chips with 64 bit capability. My machine at work supports 64 bits but I almost always boot it under a 32 bit operating system because there is almost nothing out there that uses 64 bits. Even when I compile my own source code to 64 bits the performance improvement is modest because the compiler's 64 bit capability is inadequate. Also, very little software out there is effective at running multi-threaded or parallel algorithms (DVD playing programs!?). It seems the modern CPU chips have greatly out paced the available software capability.
The new generation of machines today seem like quite a kludge. Computers with 2 CPUs with an operating system that requires 1 CPU of the 2 to run. A system that needs 2 GIG of RAM to run, 1 GIG being used by the operating system, Vista. Laptops with such large power consumption that they consider a run time of 2 hours to be good. Even worse, we are all being driven to purchase these systems as the older systems and software lose technical support. When a developing technology loses sight of efficiency it is probably peaking.
Spartan and Sprint used nuclear warheads. They were effective as ABMs but the Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) collateral damage made them almost useless. That's the main reaon why the US and the Soviet Union agreed to the ABM Treaty. Modern ABMs are non-nuclear. However destroying an ICBM-RV with a non-nuclear ABM is very hard and can be easily saturated with a mass attack. Putin's recent complaints about America's ABM development was for internal political consumption. Putin knows that the Russian ICBM capability could saturate any conceivable non-nuclear ABM system. However ABMs are a good idea if the intended defense is against a small number of Iranian or North Korean ICBMs.
The SR-71 Blackbird was developed in the late 1950s and first flew in 1962. It still holds the record for the fastest flying manned air-breathing aircraft (there are faster unmanned air breathing aircraft and the Space Shuttle is much faster). The SR-71 was extremely expensive to develop because of its revolutionary variable cycle engine, early stealth technology and extensive use of titanium in its structure (titanium is very expensive to machine).
I'm a rabid Blackbird fan but have to admit that there is no longer a real mission for Blackbirds. Satellites and low/high speed Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) have made the Blackbird obsolete. Rumor has it that there is a black program to develop scramjet powered UAVs. Such a UAV would cruise between Mach 6 and Mach 10 (scramjets do not perform well beyond Mach 10). The Blackbird's cruise Mach number was around 3.4 at about 110 thousand feet. For years people have talked about "Aurora" as a Blackbird replacment but that maybe nonsense or urban legend. I once heard a yarn that Aurora was real but discontinued because it was too expensive to fly.
I actually did a code fix of about a couple of lines for the Blackbird. Around 1987.
I got to do the job because the engineer it was assigned to was very busy and I knew 8080 code like the back of my hand.
BTW re: software. C code is ugly and very prone to pointer errors. It is a kludge designed by a committee of two. Context changes cause stack thrashes. Broken pointers cause "leaks".
There are better ways. (I like FORTH) but C had Bell labs and the rest is (bad) history. When we need to get more out of less silicon all the forgotten pathways of computer development will be rediscovered.
Also note that "object oriented" was developed in FORTH a decade before the C folks figured it out. Plus it was way more elegant than the C method.
M. Simmon said:
"I actually did a code fix of about a couple of lines for the Blackbird. Around 1987. I got to do the job because the engineer it was assigned to was very busy and I knew 8080 code like the back of my hand."
A zillion years ago in another life, I also wrote 8080 assembler code for a student project. Blackbirds were still flying in 1987 but I'm surprised they were using 8080s. It must have been for some embedded application, e.g. a electronic counter-measures module, etc. I suspect(?) the original engine countrol system was some sort of mechanical analog system (like the fluidic computer in an old fashioned automobile automatic transmission). The Blackbird was 1950s technology which still used vacuum tube electronics.
M. Simmon also said:
"C code is ugly and very prone to pointer errors. It is a kludge designed by a committee of two. Context changes cause stack thrashes. Broken pointers cause "leaks". There are better ways."
Sorry but I'm obligated to rise to C's defense.
C is a beautiful programming language. C has the perfect blend of power and simplicity (It's high level machine independent assembly language).
C's authors, Kernighan and Ritchie were computer programming geniuses (like most of the guys at Bell Labs working on Unix). Yes, very bad C can be written by incompetent programmers (C is not for amateurs). There are contests on the Internet for obfuscated C producing the most incomprehensible code. However well written C is highly readable. I should mention that an address pointer is your friend if used intelligently. I've written many large simulation codes in C. Something that I have discovered is if the C soure code is written such that the source code's logic and data structures are patterned after the physical process being simulated then the software starts "writing itself", i.e. I start the process as an innovator but eventually I find that I'm a participant with the code's own structure telling me how to proceed. I never experienced this in the years that wrote stuff in (shudder) Fortran or any other high level language. I'm convinced that this hidden power of C is one of the reasons why most large codes are still written in C.
Yes, +1 on C ;-)
Y'know, that's a hugely important point few realize.
Likewise, we couldn't launch a Saturn V today. We'd have to re-engineer a similar system from scratch.
Which could be done, and in some ways perhaps be improved upon. But the past knowledge investment into a huge and complex system which worked flawlessly is now irretrievable.
Since past achievements may still be convincingly emulated this would strike most people as a 'so what' deal.
But it reflects both Tainter's diminishing returns on investment in complexity and what I have previously described as complex specialized systems' acute vulnerability to discontinuities of any kind. This is as true of rainforest species as it is of aerospace programs.
Discontinuities are what will collapse this civilization, and I see it rarely discussed in these terms. Make yourself aware of everything which utterly relies on continuities and you'll have a good idea of what won't be around later....
I'm just saying...
"Discontinuities are what will collapse this civilization, and I see it rarely discussed in these terms. Make yourself aware of everything which utterly relies on continuities and you'll have a good idea of what won't be around later...."
Once we understand collapse WILL happen, this is the next level of discourse. HOW will it happen? Failure at vulnerable points followed by cascade failures.
Discontinuities are key. Thank you for bringing it up. This deserves its own thread.
I hope you will write it.
Collapse will look different in every location, depending on the luck of the draw. Some locations will have available resources and informed people to use them. Others will not. I like to think of the comparison of the isolated islanders living in the South Pacific region. They were/are almost stone age people, but suddenly WW2 happened and these secluded people were confronted with technology that they had never seen. They built facimile airplanes on mountain tops and prayed to them...the aircraft were gods to the natives. After tshtf some areas are going to revert to ancient practices and technologies, others will fair somewhat better.
How 'bout we talk Nate into writing it? I prefer keeping a low profile and being lazy this year. But I'd like to see it expanded upon, because it is one of the core realities many people don't 'get'.
Nate?
Article Mike Hearn needs to read:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/article575370.ece
If we look at food production, medicine, and transport times, you know all the stuff that really matters, then things have declining since about 1970. As an example, we may produce 2-to-3x as much food as in 1970 but only after pumping in 5-to-20x as much energy into food production.
Same thing for transport. There was a study done (google will turn it up) that explained it now takes longer, for example, to get from New York to Los Angeles than it did 30 years ago because technology has not solved so many problems that accompanied all the growth in the airline industry. Sure we have faster planes today but if you're the average Joe Six Pack you're not getting on your own private super jet.
I'd also say you would need to judge tech by what is available to the average person. Sure, a millionaire might have access to the latest super duper nano-tech thing a mah jigey to treat his illness but the rest of us are stuck with antibiotics, a circa 1945 technology. And since the bacteria are evolving faster than the anti-bacterial tech, you have to use way more to get the same effect.
Medical technology and knowledge has improved enourmously in 30 years.
The problem with resistant strains of bactera can be slowed down significantly by not being sloppy. Dont put antibiotics in cattlefeed, dont give a gram of antibiotics to people who have a cold, rotate the kinds used and dont give your best antibiotics for infections that probably are minor even if that sometimes hurts a patient. You essentially have to get form a right now optimization to a keep the population healthy over time optimization. On average everyboy wins even if it might hurt or even kill someone sometimes.
But now it might be too late.
Antibiotics.....
The thing is though medicine in the US is for profit. If you want antibiotics or narcotics and you ask your MD he'll write a script. If he doesn't you go get a new MD and his/her practice loses business. I had a patient on my vessel DEMAND I give him antibiotics for a runny nose. I explained why he did not need them and he went to the Company Man who questioned me intensly about my patient care. My medical director backs me up on stuff like that but americans have a Burger King culture about medicine.
I don't think antibiotics should ever be used without a culture and sensitivity unless it is an emergency like sepsis or meningitis.
matt
Oilrig medic,
I know this sounds cruel, but antibiotics and progress in sanitation and clean water are the major reason we have such an overpopulation problem. If we render the antibiotics ineffective through overuse, and the water supply dirty through collapse of our water and sewer systems, there will be a die-off for sure.
Bob Ebersole
I disagree, the countries with clean water that have access to antibiotics are not overpopulated. In areas where disease and famine kill regulary families are larger to buffer the death. If we bring the third world up to this standard, clean drinking water, childhood vaccinations and an antimalaria program....over a generation or so families will shrink to about two kids.
My opinion but I think some others on TOD have posted reliable links to this. Having two kids which recieve all the food and parenting and are able to attend school makes a more stable future than having ten that grow up in squalor fending for themselves.
matt
Bucky Fuller actually predicted this trend 70 years ago.
It takes people a long time to catch on.
10% never get the word.
I hope you have your resume ready. ;-)
Really how much of "Rocket Science" was available to Man before the advent of the "Oil Age"?
All of it? Correct!
So now you've presented a conundrum of sorts.
If the only thing preventing the Chinese from fully exploiting was metallurgical expertise then maybe we are not looking far enough into the past.
Terra Preta anyone?
Or maybe the http://www.theforgottentechnology.com/?
Yes, Kunstler wants change and PO can be seen as a way to obtain it. On the other hand, Kunstler is also pointing at the causes of PO as a crisis. If it wasn't for the way the industrialized world, and America in particular, depended on cheap oil, PO wouldn't be that big a deal.
From what I gather, Kunstler's objections to Suburbia and all predated his awareness of PO. This only makes his perspective that much more convincing because what he objects to is not only bad aesthetically, but economically as well.
So he may not be the best possible spokesperson because he doesn't sugar coat the issues. This makes people uncomfortable and they throw up defense mechanisms. But IMO it's more important to speak the truth so that people hear it than to try to spin it just right to make it more palatable.
-Don
Interesting. Nice points.
If cities are so much better why do people want to move to the suburbs?
See Cary Grant in "Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House". Human nature hasn't changed much in the 60 years since that movie was made.
Strongly disagree. While I'm not sure we are at peak tech, anymore than I'm sure that we're at peak oil, I do think there may be such a thing as peak technology. The End of Science, as Horgan terms it. Tainter gives the reason, and it's energy-related.
I don't know whether we are at peak technology, but there are some reasons to believe that we are not. Tainter, for example, seems to be unaware of the work of the great sociologist, William F. Ogburn. Ogburn's model for social change was in four steps:
1. Invention
2. Diffusion
3. Selective accumulation
4. Adaptation
Many of our current problems grow out of failure to adapt to a car-based culture; adaptation is always a problem when there are rapid changes in material culture.
However, Ogburn pointed out that as culture accumulates--as you get a bigger knowledge base--there become far more ways to combine different parts of a culture to get useful inventions. Say you've got a simple culture with 1,000 elements or traits: You can get some innovation but not much, because the number of combinations you can get out of 1,000 elements is relatively small. Now go to a culture with 10,000 traits: There are a heckuva lot more possible combinations, some of which may be useful. It is hard to count traits (depends to some extent on definition), but it would be hard to argue that the large number of elements of knowledge and material culture is not increasing now.
Thus as the base of knowledge grows (and it is definitely growing), the number of elements that can be combined into useful innovations (selective accumulation) increases too.
It is no accident that simple cultures tend to be very stable--even rigidly so. Complex and growing (in traits) cultures always have powerful forces for change in them, a chief one being inventions in material culture. Of course innovation can be destructive as well as constructive (consider weapons), but that is another issue.
All pretty much true, but it is a two-way street. Consider what happened, for example, when the library at Alexandria was burned. How many thousands of cultural elements were pruned away in that one moment?
The collapse of the ancient Greco-Roman civilization did not mean that humankind had yet experienced all-time, once-and-for-all "Peak Technology" -- but it was many centuries before we got back to that previous peak.
It is possible for cultures in decline to give up and forget things they previously knew. There are multiple examples of primative bands of island dwellers whose ancestors could obviously have only gotten there by boat, yet their descendants are clueless as to how to build a proper boat, let alone navigate it. We all know about the descendants of people like the ancient Maya, living amongst ruins of structures that they would now not have the first idea how to go about building.
Before we get too excited about "onward & upward", perhaps we would be wiser to be a little more concerned about just preserving what we have already achieved.
Very true. "Progress" seems like a one-way street to us, something that's "natural," "inevitable," etc., because that has been our experience. It's not. Knowledge can be lost.
Jared Diamond wrote about it, in an essay called Ten Thousand Years of Solitude.
Appropriate technology. After all, they only took short voyages and only in calm seas. Why would they need a better raft?
Technology, culture and society all intimately tied together and functioning at a similar level. Can't have a decentralized solar grid and 500' private yachts - let along the ghettos of the world.
cfm in Gray, ME
David Ehrenfeld too has written about this, in his appropriately named essay: Forgetting.
working link for posterity:
http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:4RcljOG-_vwJ:papergraders.com/Forge...
and it's energy-related.
Not only, it's complexity related too, the loss of knowledge as discussed in this thread stems more from the financial/social cost of retaining/rebuilding complex patterns than from the cost of bare energy used in doing so.
Kunstler is very valuable. He has a knack for wrapping a iron fist in velvet, making it possible for these ideas to be presented to misguided wealthy liberals.
Because maintaining a highly organized society with educational systems in place to support a population that can carry on understanding the work of earlier generations has nothing to do with energy inputs.... right?
Christ, it's a frightening moment when you realize that the scientists and doctors really aren't any wiser than the rest of us...
For some reason, this little snippet from http://thehousingbubbleblog.com/ caught my eye -
"It’s something Sand Springs Development President Dennis Cantwell sees every day.
‘Everybody I talk to is laying off somebody in (residential) construction and I think it’s resulting in a trickle-down effect,’ said Cantwell. ‘It’s not only construction; people no longer have the grass cut or pool cleaned, and they don’t need day care because they’re staying home with the kids now. It’s going to blow through the whole system. Some people aren’t even going out for dinner anymore.’"
'Some people aren't even going for dinner anymore'? As if this is a bad thing?
The same sense of personal incomprehension arises when Americans refer to life without credit, as if it is inconceivable to actually pay cash, and a punishment to live within your means.
Actually, there is a peak oil question hiding in this jarring little quote - does it seem as if American society, at least as presented in the mainstream, has become actively hostile to what was previously considered a good life?
We all know how it is for bicycle riders in the U.S., but the idea that only an economic crash could force people to eat dinner at home is absurd, a parody that would be outrageous if I presented it as a general statement.
Except that is what at least one person, responsible for Sand Springs, Florida 'development,' believes, after pointing out that people are now being forced to cut their own grass and clean their own pools. And possibly worse, in his eyes, 'they don’t need day care because they’re staying home with the kids now.'
Why do things I think desirable get associated with such negative connotations within the U.S.?
And if this is somehow constructed out of marketing, how can we change the focus so that eating a meal with family, after a day with your children, is seen as worthwhile?
Expat regarding..
"how can we change the focus so that eating a meal with family, after a day with your children, is seen as worthwhile?"
The focus will be changed for us,, soon enough. IMHO
hmmmm, dining service is the most common spread economy in all countries. If people stop eating in restaurants, you may believe it is "better", but in fact, it's creating unemplyment. Big time.
Look, mountaintop removal in West Virginia is also likely to be a fine source of employment and economic activity for a depressed area.
So what? There are other measures in life than merely money or jobs. For example, clean water comes to mind, which seems to be something in shorter supply after the mining operations move to the next area.
Don't worry. The "bad for the economy" line will always be used when people are unwilling to acknowledge that our current social/economic/political system could be improved upon immensely.
There will be many people fighting to keep the status quo...
"You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created."
Albert Einstein
does it seem as if American society, at least as presented in the mainstream, has become actively hostile to what was previously considered a good life?......
It may - I live in Socal and I do know that the job of the media people is to sell us drama/images based upon where we are at as a people. If the worm turns then the producers who are the first to respond and be successful will be the new gods of the moment. Just look at the movies of the 1930’s - gilded escapism (Fred Astaire) or somewhat maudlin drama about the prowess of the “little guy”
A new carney in the coal mine
In the real world, Mister Potter always wins.
Expat,
Certainly get the jest of what you are saying. But, at least in this article, they are referring to the economic impact of not eating out.
The economic impact of all of us changing our spending ways will be enormous.
Sure some of us jumped of this bandwagon a while ago, but the majority of Britney watching, Ipod carrying, Starbucks drinking CATTLE have not..and they are fueling this credit bubble with their un-ending appetite for more stuff.
But in the end, maybe you get the changes you want...those who make it through the next depression(?), will probably value bicycle riding and eating at home (from organic victory gardens)
Actually, I pretty much hate bicycle riding, and a lot of the social changes which are desirable in my view are unlikely in the U.S. at this point.
Actually, just the hope of returning to the principle of habeas corpus and punishing as criminals those who torture, violating their oath to uphold the Constitution, seem to be receding into the past in my more pessimistic moments.
Let's just say the future looks very, very ugly - and not in a die-off sense, which I don't quite believe in.
expat, this is one of the best expressions of the 'American Malaise' that I have read.
And.... those of us critical of US society, speaking for myself at least, do desire a better way and are not, as some complain, simply out to tear things down (see Asebius' rant on Jeff Vail down thread).
Yes, the comments were interesting - the Unabomber being connected to peak oil awareness was a connection a bit beyond me, as was his seeming definition of anarchists as bomb throwers.
I have no opinion of Vail and his seemingly suspicious associates, but these days, simply describing normal life in Germany sounds pretty extreme to a number of Americans. But then, describing what facts I glean from my reading of American sources about life in the U.S. sounds pretty extreme to a number of Germans.
Recognizing that his work is polemical, Moore's Sicko might give a good idea what I am talking about.
Expat, I live in Florida and we are stuck with a lot of ex-real estate people either in our state legislature or heavily lobbying our state legislature. In Florida, this mentality of (duh, people are not eating out anymore, duh) is common. The state has depended on continual growth for tax revenues for so long that now they dont have a clue about what to do when the construction slows to a crawl. Tourisim is the other big income generator for the state and that will is being pinched as gas continues to increase. The local paper, Daytona News Journal, reported that the recent NASCAR race was held in front of stands that were 3/4 full (or 1/4 empty if you prefer), that is a real stunner for a racing industry that has been used to continually raising ticket and concession prices for many years. Agriculture is the last 'big' industry in Florida and much of that has been destroyed for more suburbs. Once there were nothing but orange groves and ferneries from here to central Florida, now the land contains houses. Last month Florida was number two on the list of most repoed homes. Taxes are through the roof, insurance companies no longer want to insure houses in Florida, so the politicians down here are nearing panic mode. Today the News Journal ran a story about 'Number of Insured Mobile Homes Decreasing'...a quote from the story...'The year of construction is not a major concern. Anything that's a mobile home is considered debris.' and...'More than half of the states 100,000 mobile homes are no longer covered by insurance.' I have always known that to live in a mobile home is really asking for trouble but lots of people that retired and moved to Florida bought them because they were cheap. Now they are stuck with them. BTW, the Sunday paper ran an article stating that the two area boat manufacturers owned by Brunswick Corp (Boston Whaler and Sea Ray) are going to have major layoffs. It is not a pretty picture here and the real estate cum politicians are not competent legislators. I dont think they have a clue about what 'mitigating' (there is that word again) steps to take.
"Taxes are through the roof, ...."
Prediction: The trend for local governments to increase property, income and sales taxes will continue as growth stagnates. This will lead to tax revolts, especially when it comes to property taxes.
The tax revolts have already started...in the form of people moving out of the state. Last year was the first on record where more people moved out of Fl than into the state.
Thanks Leanan for doing a great job!
What you said.
The tax revolts have already started...in the form of people moving out of the state. Last year was the first on record where more people moved out of Fl than into the state.
Theft is never popular. When the thieves get too rapacious honest folks leave the area.
Politicians are under the mistaken impression that their job is to maximize the amount of theft.
It is why Twain called them "America's only native criminal class"
Mobile homes are to housing as paper clothing is to attire.
The Florida tourism office is missing an obvious pitch: "Hurry! See Florida now, while we're still above water!" I'll probably actually try to take a vaction there in the next few years for that very reason. (But NOT in hurricane season!)
IBM is a big employer in my area. When they went through that bad period and laid off thousands, the ripples hit restaurants (and no-tell motels) the hardest. It was unreal, how many closed.
The bad thing is that they can't afford to stay home with their kids.
It is seen as worthwhile. It's COOKING the dinner that is not seen as worthwhile. And cleaning up after.
The whole family goes out to dinner. Or they do "curbside takeway." (Call the restaurant on your cell, and they'll meet you at the curb with your order.)
There are also the hot new meal-assembling stores. You go there and put together a weeks' worth of meals, that you can put in the freezer. All the ingredients and recipes are prepared for you, so you don't have to do the cleanup or anything.
'The bad thing is that they can't afford to stay home with their kids.'
Which is an amazing comment about life in the U.S., isn't it? Either work, or have everything bought on debt repossessed or be evicted.
Strangely, Europeans find this sort of situation the proper area of government - from preventing predatory lending to ensuring full medical care during childhood to avoiding homelessness for families - and it actually seems to work.
Of course, Europeans still seem to feel that government occasionally needs to see a few hundred thousand citizens reminding those in power at whose sufferance they rule, but then, Europe has a really ugly past. Which just might explain its fairly civilized present.
It is rather fortunate that America was willing at great cost to civilize Europe.
However, The Euros have a problem. They can't sustain government promises by working 35 hours a week with 6 weeks of vacation.
Jean-François Revel:
“Strangely, it is always America that is described as degenerate and ‘fascist,’ while it is solely in Europe that actual dictatorships and totalitarian regimes spring up.”
Expat,
I think this article in yesterday's paper will be of interest to you - Fat: a middle-class issue
Essentially, it is all about how the British middle-classes, often, don't bring up their children properly. Both parents are too busy working - and eating out - to look after their kids and so the kids get fat.
Part of it is locational ethos. Here in WNC you have plenty of people who grow their own food, work on their own yards, enjoy the view from the front porch, cook their own meals, heat with firewood, and don't drive around like maniacs all day. Not everyone is into that type of natural, old-timey, back-to-the-land (or maybe back-to-the-woods or back-to-the-hills) lifestyle, of course, but those that are would not be considered to be oddball kooks by those that are living more mainstream lifestyles. Transport the same folks to SoCal or Miami and you bet they would be considered oddball kooks.
Kunstler is funny, Kunstler is entertainment. Kunstler is also Bullshit spread so thin and wide one has to duck tape our noses in its exposure.
But his rant about technology stagnancy and the now common thematic about how we stagnated "progress" for the past fifty years, is not beyond plausability. What strikes me as incredible is the amount of doom sheeps that group themselves to eat all this suckers grass tape.
These idiots claim that there has been no real innovation for the past years, contrasting to the heights that mankind reached in the begginings of industrial civilization. It's so friggin easy to debunk that I won't even google (probably a 19th century verb) anything for this:
1. There is nothing new under the sky.
The pretensiousness that "there's nothing new these days and we have become oh so numb, yesterday we used to be so intelligent" crap stuff comes from the ignorance that teaches them that the train was "invented" in such times, and so did the car, and every incredible machine that changed our lifestyle. What these morons fail to process is that these inventions were nothing more than adaptations of existing tools (chariots, etc) to new technologies and energy motors. Innovation is always about evolution, there is little revolution in History. And all these machines from the 19th century, like trains, are not at all like 19th century machines nowadays. We have TGV's and fast trams today. We have MagLevs. To say that a "Train" is 19th century tech is insane! A Train is not a Tech! A train is simply a Concept. An idea of mobility. Perhaps today not widely implemented. Perhaps tomorrow more implemented. It depends not of the number of the century but of contingencies.
2. There's an incredible evolution on the things under the sky.
These people like to point out how dependent of oil we "still" are, despite the number of years we have passed, thus we are stupid. And stagnant.
Not at all, I say. We simply didn't care much about that stuff. Or at least not enough to have changed it so far. The stuff we cared and were amazed at we developed quite fast: the computers, the internet, the blogging (yeah, the stuff that enabled Kunstler make that rant instantly available to us), the google, telecommunications, CGI, CAD, which makes construction and design so more easy, the iPhone... (okay, I'm stretching the point). We also developed PV panels quite fast, they are reaching parity prices these years but thirty years ago, their prices were almost only affordable by NASA. Nowadays it's competing with Coal. Wave Energy, Wind Energy, oh I could just go on. These ideas were not "innovative" in the sense that photovoltaic always existed in the form of plants, and wind turbines are very old. But we have developed them beyond its older numbers.
There's just so many things we've been working so hard to do, improve and develop that dismissing this as stupidity and stagnancy is pure and plain disrespect. Yeah, we may have not been in the right path for survival. We may have fucked up somewhere in the way to success. To say though that our innovation capacity has somehow "peaked" too is, I believe, trying to outsell too many "Peaks" to the informed world.
But thanks for the joke.
The point Kunstler makes, as I read it, is that technology and energy are not equivalent. The technology humans have developed has historically consumed energy. We have developed technologies that harvest energy, but we haven't developed any technologies that create energy.
He is arguing that we never will develop technologies that create energy and he contends that many people, from Nascar fans to MIT doctorates expect that technology will somehow replace the energy sources mined from the earth (oil, gas, coal, uranium). In essence, our energy source of the future is Technology! I believe many people actually believe this. I know many baby boomers who think this is what will happen.
I don't believe there is an incredible evolution on the things under the sky. I believe we are nearing the end of an anomoly known as the Industrial Revolution, made possible by our friends Oil, Gas, Coal, and Uranium.
Tom A-B
Deep down it always comes to this end. I wonder also if the wheel was an invention made possible by the wonder that oil is. Your problem is that the current dependency of oil is reaching your head as if it is some kind of god that enabled us the magic of our everyday lives. It is not but a piece of dark liquid. It was OUR use of it that enabled us to make the things we've made, not itself in itself.
And wohohooo. It was Technology that enabled us to USE oil. USE gas. USE coal. USE uranium. And it will be technology that will enable us to USE renewables. So what if people rightly think that is technology which enable them to have so much energy? It's not THAT wrong. So stop stupidifying people. The only thing they don't get it "right" is that the change is nowhere near the pace it should be if we are to get out of the oil train.
Hi Luis,
I believe the wheel was developed well ahead of the widespread use of fossil fuels, but I think your point is that we humans developed the wheel, not oil. I agree with you on that.
However, I do in fact think that oil is a god of sorts. I believe oil has enabled us to grow our population to 4-5 times what it would have been without fossil fuels. We will use some sort of technology to use "renewables", whether the technology is "new" (Photovoltaics) or "old" (manure).
There is a myth about technology, and it is laid out nicely in The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900. Many of the things we call "new" today are merely variants on old technology, repackaged and marketed as new.
Combine this idea with my contention that oil has allowed us to quadruple the carrying capacity of our planet. We don't have a choice as to whether or not we get off the oil train. It will happen. Pace of change will only have a bearing on how orderly the transition is.
By the way, I think we're all about equally as stupid or smart. I'm not out so stupidify anyone. We're all stuck in a tough, though fascinating spot.
Tom A-B
Why? You're trying to compare two alternative futures. If oil and gas had not been found, what's to say we would not simply be using electric cars and huge numbers of nuclear power plants now? I don't really understand this religious belief some have that oil is magical and if it did not exist, we'd never have been able to raise the population in the same way. I don't see much logical basis for that.
Two words: energy density.
A few more words: fossil-fuel derived fertilizers.
a few more words: global market vs local production
more words: war cost to secure energy sources
and even more: 80 % heat waste on ICE
Uranium has a far far higher energy density than any fossil fuel.
All fossil-fuel derived fertilizers can be made without oil (and don't even need that much of it to begin with).
For nitrogen fertilizer you need ammonia (NH3) you can get the nitrogen from the air and the hydrogen from gasifying biomass. It may not be cost effective now, but if natural gas becomes as scarce and expensive as predicted, it might be cost effective.
you can get the nitrogen from the air
Yes, yes, yes, this is what is done currently, it's called the Haber-Bosch process.
The oil is only a source of energy for the process and natural gas a source of methane (which can be replaced by cow's farts).
I expect we'll be doing the same thing with hydrogen generated from the water shift reaction from coal if natural gas gets too expensive...
Someday we might use nuclear or solar thermochemical hydrogen generation, but I cant see that being competitive for the next century. Fun to speculate about though.
Yeah, imagine running a nuclear power plant with circa 1925 or even circa 1875 technology.
What could possibly be wrong with this line of thinking?
What's real scary is when the Chimp makes a lot more sense then 75%+ of the posters. LOL.
in the land of heads in the sand, the one eyed man can kick a lot of ass.
Now that's an aphorism for the books - nice!
:-)
For some reason doc's whole barn ice maker that makes only a couple ice cubes comes to mind.
Dear Tom,
I'm glad you believe that. But my rant was against Kunstler, not you. And he doesn't believe that. Or if he does, he's an hypocrite.
Exactly. But that was my point. What you fail to realise is that there is NOT A SINGLE TECH that is blatantly and uniquely "new". It always evolved from something else. Many have even found out that an "invention" is ultimately a collection of things until then disconnected. Just that! So saying that there aren't new inventions, that's a tautologism. Not really saying something smart.
But this is not rigorous. You claim that we have quadrupled the carrying capacity. Yet, the only proof of that being true would be the doomsday that we don't want to encounter. More than that, people are always talking on how 6 billion people are gonna affect the planet. But you forget to point that only one billion of it is really putting an enormous pressure upon it. And that billion (western countries) is not growing in population, but rather the poor countries (the ones which aren't affecting the planet, mostly) are the ones growing. So, really, ten billion people are almost the same as six, in this scenario. Of course, I am not thinking about China. But China has solved the pop control problem. Thus, the situation is a little bit more complicated than that of saying "6 billion is too much".
Luis,
Good point about western countries. I'm not sure I have a counter argument.
Tom A-B
Although there is this:
Western countries provide food and aid to "developing" countries, allowing them to procreate more than would be sustainable without this food and aid. As oil becomes scarce western countries will not have a surplus to share and the carrying capacity in developing countries goes down.
Please comment.
Tom A-B
No. It's the other way around. Western countries suck the resources out of "undeveloping" countries. Terms of trade/technology vacuum low entropy from the periphery and deliver it to the core. Return is arms or a little food - where an economy before was better off, though not is a GDP sense. Mike Davis, Hornborg, Daly, et al. Think about it, where does the wealth of the west come from? Tankers bring it to us and we electronically credit dollars and mercenaries. Iraq, Nigeria, Sudan, SA. This whole sucking-of-entropy thing is what keeps the despised elite in power with our guns.
The western countries do NOT have a surplus. In many ways we are far more in overshoot than the slum dweller in Nairobi.
cfm in Gray, ME
BS.
For decades the American Midwest has been considered the "breadbasket of the world".
And we did it before we were a net importer of oil.
Well, I can't speak for Western countries in general, but Australia, even with the extreme drought conditions, produces far more food than it consumes. Pre-drought, we were exporting 80% of our wheat.
And of course the U.S. is still the world's largest single exporter of food.
Anyone got a list of western net food exporters? I'm guessing Canada must be on the list, maybe France and New Zealand?
Of course, it still may well be true that western nations as a group are a net importer from non-western nations.
But presumably western nations also export fertilizers, pesticides and farm equipment to non-western ones, which is almost certainly contributing to non-western population growth.
And it will be technology that will enable us to USE renewables.
Which renewables?
Will... can you name the technologies which "will"?
Did you notice that you were asked about NEW SOURCES of energy, not how technology "will" allow us to use them.
As you say: woo woo woo!
Are you being serious or just trolling around?
Check wikipedia, I'm not a dictionary to play around.
Are you being serious or just trolling around?
Are you really that retarded or are you trolling by pretending not to notice that I am talking of new sources of energy?
Not talking about "renewable" biofuels, refuted at length on TOD long before you came trolling.
Not talking about solar which, with current technologies, is unusable to the scale of fossil fuels, because of both expensive collection (PV & thermal) and regulation (storage).
Then, NAME new sources of energy and/or realistic technologies to use solar energy AT THE SAME SCALE we use fossil fuels!