163 comments on DrumBeat: November 17, 2007
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163 comments on DrumBeat: November 17, 2007
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Yes. I think a lot of peak oilers underestimated how unequal the demand destruction would be.
Even within the US...there have been chronic shortages of fuel in the midwest since spring, but the rest of the country is more or less unaffected, and there doesn't seem to be any real urgency to fix the problem.
Demand destruction is already having an impact on the poor. What happens when these folks can't afford to drive to work? What happens when they stop buying at Wal*Mart and start going to thrift stores?
Again. The assumption is that we will get
a soft parachute glide to the surface.
The place we "floated" from is the problem we're
leaving behind.
Too late.
The Vortex has "sucked up", is catching, the various countries
mentioned above, being "outbid" for energy.
TPTB just injected $47 billion into the system
Thursday. Where did the Fed get $47 billion?
Meanwhile, the US OECD consumer is/has been shielded from
the $95 crude for as long as possible.
The reason the pundits, consumers have been able to
say that high energy prices haven't impacted
us OECD folks yet.
That will no longer be the case going forward.
Elaine Supkis/Reuters:
" The Fed injected $47.25 billion in temporary reserves, its biggest combined daily infusion since September 19, 2001, to calm a rise in overnight interbank lending rates."
For the Fed want to KEEP THIS GOING. They want to have us run more war costs, spend more on the military AND spend like crazy on consumer goods and real estate! This can't go on for the simple reason, wars always cause inflation since they are run by governments and there are only two ways a government can run a war: looting or taxes! We are trying the looting and it doesn't even begin to cover the costs! And we cut taxes at the beginning of these wars. So the entire model is set to failure. While trying to steal the Ring of Power from the Saddam dwarf, all we ended up doing was create this Dragon, Fafner of China. Now the dragon wants to fry us."
ADHD like Memmel 8D
I suspect we may see an effect on the dollar exchange rate following the OPEC meeting, I don't think they are very happy with the current value.
Xeroid.
interesting that you say this:
Right now Venezuela and Iran are trying to force
the meeting to issue a statement on the Dollar.
The KSA is blocking it.
" NEW YORK, Nov 15 (Reuters) - The Federal Reserve on Thursday pumped its biggest temporary daily infusion into the U.S. banking system since just after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks as short-term lending rates rose on both sides of the Atlantic.
Even though some news about bank write-downs from riskier investments was not as dismal as some investors had feared, underlying strains pushed overnight lending rates up in both the United States and Europe.
"There was a bit more focus on the Fed operations today in context of the rise in Libor (London Interbank Offered Rates)," said Tony Crescenzi, chief bond market strategist at Miller, Tabak & Co. in New York."
Arkansaw of Samuel L Clemens
You can access all of the historical data about Federal Reserve daily Temporary Open Market Operations (TOMOs) online here. (Although one wag recently nicknamed them "POMOs" - Permanent Open Market Operations.) The historical data is accessible from that link. If you go back, roughly since the end of August this year, every single Thursday has been "injection day" for the Fed. Every Thursday has seen the creation of $20-$47 billion in new money, from thin air, thrown at Ben's bankster buddies to rescue their incompetent asses. If you go back further though you see how unusual this activity actually is. The further back you go, at least until around 2001, the weekly total of injections was tiny in comparison to what we see now. And worse, the daily injections for days other than Thursday are growing in size. From nearly nothing to a few billion to several billion to now, this autumn, many daily injections are more than $10 billion per day. Ben is printing money as fast as he dares in an effort to stem the deflationary tide that is running out on him. The question is whether he can continue to print at this rate (or even faster) as losses mount up and imaginary dollars leave the financial system or whether the world may just walk away from the dollar before he has a chance to hyperinflate it.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Dr. Albert Bartlett
Into the Grey Zone
My understanding is that these injections are attempts to keep interest rates down now that the economy is no longer growing and we have peak oil induced inflation. ( stagflation ) No one is willing to take risks without high returns. What these injections indicate is that the Fed has lost control of interest rates because they are going against the needs of the market. The Feds can only control to some extent the magnitude of the economy and then in general only when its growing. They cannot change the direction of the economy and they are actually as its becoming more obvious unable to control interest rates. We pretty much have no choice but to undergo a period of high interest rates so investors can recover all the capitol they have lost over the year.
The Fed in trying to stop this could well destroy itself.
TOMO's and POMO's are two completely different things.
POMO's are permanent and don't expire short term.
The last POMO was on 05032007
http://www.newyorkfed.org/markets/pomo/display/index.cfm
And the numbers you mention are wrong, they fail to consider TOMO expirations.
I just posted a link in response to someone else.
People are looking at the wrong numbers while howling for a bail out. Low interest rates just devalue the U$S. If the people whining for adjustable rate relief had any idea as far as what they are doing they would be looking at LIBOR rates that are overwhelmingly used for rate resets. People need to learn to read the papers they sign.
So far LIBOR has been going up while US rates have been going down.
That's unfair. I think the dragon just wants to lick us slowly until it gets to the soft chewy center.
Rollovers accounted for $40.5 billion of the $47.25 billion injected into the banking system. The FED consistently rolls $40-$45 billion weekly.
Wrong, they added 6.75B on thursday and removed 14B on friday.
http://www.gmtfo.com/reporeader/OMOps.aspx
There is also a link to the NYFed website at the bottom.
Not to say that we aren't going down like Wiley Coyote, but lots of radical political activists use incorrect data because they want to shift burden.
Wrong, $40-$45 billion is "sloshing".
Sure, but the liquidity added or withdrawn on any given day is the net.
I think we're already finding out.
But it will look like a normal recession, and probably most won't connect it to peak oil. They'll try to grow their way out of it, as usual.
There are already signs that this isn't going to be a good holiday season. Food pantries are running out of food, but have more clients than ever. Discounters like TJ Maxx and Overstock.com are flying high, because rafts of unsold merchandise allow them to offer better stuff for lower prices. Even JC Penney, a bright spot in retailing, issued a warning last week. Mall traffic is way down, and even the best products won't sell if customers aren't in the store.
And then there's heat. Every day, I come across stories about how the poor are struggling to pay for winter heating. Towns, cities, counties, and states are trying to increase heating aid to the poor.
My girlfriend is on the board of a local food pantry. They essentially serve the working poor around here, and to get food people need a referral from somewhere.
What she is seeing is that demand is way up - that started months ago. We speculated that some of it might be the crash in the housing market. Less need for the folks in the building trades and all that. But this is only a guess. Most of the clients are Hispanic - that's just the demographic of the working poor in this area.
They recently had a food drive where the Boy Scouts did the legwork of collecting the food, and for some reason donations were way down. They are still trying to get their heads around why this happened. Part of it is that some of the donations got diverted to a church - perhaps they are going to set up their own food pantry, but that doesn't explain all of it. Perhaps people who would donate are getting squeezed, and cutting back there as well.
Poor and working class are a lot more generous with in kind donations to food pantrys. Boy Scouts are a white, middle and upper class phenomenon and might not be as attentive to that type of project too. What part of the country do you live?Bob Ebersole
Arlington Virginia. Just across the river from Washington DC.
The articles I've read have blamed several factors, including increasing reluctance by supermarkets and restaurants to donate food. (Fear of lawsuits, and more efficient inventory control.) There's less food from the US government, because there's less surplus this year. But probably the biggest factor is that people are being squeezed. They aren't donating as much to churches, the United Way, and other charities that often donate to food banks. People who can't get enough gas to get to work or can't pay their mortgages can't donate as much. In May, postal workers ask people to put nonperishable foods by their mailboxes for local food pantries. They collected about half what they usually do.
I read somewhere that the poorer you are, the greater percentage of your income you donate to charity. Not sure exactly why. Part of it might be that if you're poor, any donation is a greater percentage of your income than for a rich person. Part of it might be that the poor are more likely to be sympathetic to those in need. And it might be cause and effect: generous people are more likely to be poor, because they keep giving their money away.
Whatever the cause, I suspect donations will drop as the poor and middle class are increasingly squeezed...and it won't be made up by the well off, no matter how well they are doing.
RichW
I volunteer at the local food bank. We are seeing the same story. The local "*way" won't donate due to a law suit some where in the chain. Two other regional chains won't donate for the same reason. There is also a reglious organization that has set out to dominate the local food program. They say that there should be only one food distribution point. The result is some of the local donors won't give to anyone because they don't want to be dragged into the bickering.
The demand is up also because of the housing situation and an increase in unemployed illegals that want to stay here with their familys instead of going back to Mexico when the jobs run out. With donations down and demand up the food bank is forced to rely more on purchases and government grants. That still doesn't make up for the lost donations though.
In our town, the community garden program and the local food bank are linked. In addition to the plots that people like me rent, about half of the land is dedicated to growing vegies for food bank clients. Local college and HS students provide volunteer labor to raise the food. This is an excellent program, and needs to be duplicated everywhere.
Food banks in desperate need
One family profiled in the story makes $7,500 a month, has a cow and goat for milk and chickens and ducks for eggs...and still has trouble making ends meet. Even with six kids, that's kind of hard to believe.
They are on crack.
Queen Creek is about 15 miles from here and just a little more affluent.
I can live like a king with monthly expenses of about $600.00
When you have people making $7500.00 a month taking from the food banks, then there is no wonder the homeless have to go without.
Yes, they need to cut out the cable TV, get rid of the iPhones etc cut the fat out of the budget.
they may well be paying 1/3 of their income in taxes, so you need to take that into account. May have bought their house right at the RE peak in 06 too.
But they need to do what they can.
Paying $15 for food that a "store would charge $30 for" is a scam. They pick the foods and you pay X for a basket, that sux. You can go to wal-mart etc and shopping carefully, picking the right foods and brands, come out further ahead than that.
$7500 a month is huge money, it's very hard to make that in the SF Bay Area, "physicians assistant" may mean emptying bedpans, I always knew shoveling sh!t in one form or another is better than hi-tech.
No, a "physician's assistant" is someone licensed to practice medicine under the supervision of an MD. It doesn't mean emptying bedpans. It's like being a doctor without the huge cost of an MD degree. Originally, it was a way to get medical care to rural areas, because there weren't enough doctors.
Many HMOs, including mine, allow you to choose a physician's assistant instead of a doctor as your primary care provider. Many people prefer physician's assistants, because they supposedly spend more time with patients than doctors.
Similar story in my area:
"After sending her two teenage children off to school, Mullen, of Milton, headed to the Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf in Burlington, where she hoped her holiday bird would be waiting. When she reached the food shelf, she was told she'd have to come back today to pick up her turkey. The food shelf had run out. ... because donations to the nonprofit have dropped substantially this holiday season."
The strange thing is, the woman featured ended up driving far enough, twice, to pick up her "free" turkey, that she spent as much on gasoline as a turkey would have cost at the local supermarket. (Assuming she drove a typical low-budget car for that purpose only, which I don't know she did.)
I think that many people take the gasoline expenses as a given (only grumble about the price), and don't connect them to their everyday driving choices. Thus that $7500/mo family may have many expenses that are invisible to them, e.g. cable TV and multiple cell phones... and of course 2+ cars that drive out every hour or so. And an electricity bill of hundreds a month.
I think the very poor do take gasoline into account. They have to. There was an article in the McPaper three years ago about it. The working poor were forced to change their shopping patterns, due to gas prices. No more Wal-Mart, because the cost of gas to get there was more than any savings. And they always considered distance, not just cost, when choosing a restaurant. Some were moving closer to their jobs.
Three or four years ago, Fortune ran an article warning that Wal-Mart was a company built around cheap energy prices, and might suffer if that changed. I think that's 100% true. I've pointed that out more than once, leading some to believe I have an irrational hatred of Wal-Mart. Nope. Wal-Mart is now the first to admit that high gas prices are killing them - more so than other companies, because of their structure and their customer demographics.
I do have an intense dislike for WalMart and all it represents, if they fail due to peak oil or another major disturbance, the party is on me.
We shop at Wally's but don't buy anything from China. Gotta be product of USA or Europe, but basically USA is what we look for. Yes, we're the ones inspecting the cans of blackeyed peas to see where they're from. (All either don't say or say product of USA.)
The local Wally's employs a lot of nice people, will hire old people, offers cheap eye exams and other medical treatment, and in general allows poor people to get things they may not get at all otherwise. Like enough dry milk to last the month or a pair of glasses.
Try explaining to the same poor people that they're poor because of unbridled capitalism ..... I don't even want to try.
Collapse may finally bring to the USA the kind of system, Autarky, that we need.
the cure for antrax is death
the cure for igc is collapse
and that is why peak oil is a hard sell
(igc = infinite growth capitalism, or infinite growth canabalism)
With the creeping corporatism of the past decades, you can't even rely on "Made in" statements anymore. Standards have been modified to such a great extent, at the insistence of multinational food processors, that a product can be simply wrapped in Canada and bear the Made in Canada stamp when the points of origination and processing are all otherwise offshore.
The solution is to ban labelling then. After all, in a free market society if people choose to spend extra on something (in this case milk) because it's got something in it they don't like (in this case bovine growth hormone), what is an industrial ag farmer to do and how best to fight back?
Pennsylvania Bars Hormone-Free Milk Labels
Rebuttal
http://www.unbossed.com/index.php?itemid=1842
This one is particularly choice.
http://www.agriculture.state.pa.us/agriculture/cwp/view.asp?a=390&q=142047
Ahem.
as long as they dont accept govt subsidies, but that would be a REAL free market system now wouldnt it.
Here's an interesting article from Ontario, Canada.
PIGS UNDER PRESSURE
And I thought that the strength of the Canadian dollar was bad news for us... apparently, its bad news all around.
The pigs however could be heard cheering the news :)
Not when it gets cheaper to slaughter them than feed them - as has happened in past depressions.
Now if it were me I'd turn the bastards loose in our abandoned subdivisions and other wastelands. Our offspring might need to hunt their offspring one day.
On further thought the pigs cheering soon turned into cries of terror.
I wouldn’t have given this much thought, but I had dinner with a Canadian Tuesday night. He said that his dad could not sell 75 calves in Edmonton recently. He said this was a first. There were no buyers because in Canada it costs too much to raise them for slaughter! Very strange. His dad had to truck the calves back home and will feed them at a projected loss.
I wonder how long the right-wing media refused to report the growing suffering of the population after the 1929 stock market crash. One year? Two years? Looking back we assume that everyone knew everything that we see in old movies. What's worse, back then we had a serious radical movement that worked hard to publicize this suffering so that people would see that their problems were not due to their individual failures but were systemic. Who's going to do that now?
Was it Milton Friedman's dream to lie our way through a depression without that nasty democracy ever getting involved?
[i]What happens when these folks can't afford to drive to work?[/i]
Depends how necessary and large scale the jobs are: if signficant, the companies will build cheap dormitories for workers on-site, and bus them into town on the weekends.
Otherwise they'll be unemployed and desperate. Some will gain employment as domestics where they don't have to drive anywhere, or if they do, the driving is subsidized by their employer. Maybe they'll be working in Dubai and Saudi Arabia like the masses from India, Pakistan, Indonesia and Phillipines. But I doubt most will be hired.
The formerly middle class and affluent will be buying from Walmart.
The hyper rich will continue to be buying from Neiman Marcus.
I think people will move to where the jobs are. If it means foreclosure, so be it. Or it may mean families divided. Even now, I know families where the father rents a motel room near his workplace while the rest of the family lives elsewhere.
There are a few people I know of at my workplace who do that. Their families are, on average, 4 or 5 hours away and they only go back on weekends. Considering the distances, I think that one trip home costs them the same as a regular commuter coming daily from the surrounding area - and I don't think they even live close enough not to do that too.
We've had incidents of slave camps in Houston already. Back in the '90s Taiwanese businessmen cut deals with the right people in mainland China, who lured in jobseekers, shipped them off to Texas, and then imprisoned them in an industrial park, kept in locked buildings at night and then working all day. Their Central American co-workers at the factory were able to piece the story together by sign language, and it got out to the alternative Houston Press. Very much like the Dubai-run slave labor scam on the US embassy in Baghdad.
Test runs?
Slave camps like that get discovered in the Los Angeles area periodically too.
What happens when these folks can't afford to drive to work?
There's always a lot of TOD discussionn as to what happens when... Here's the way it was in the past in my timber area of northern California.
A looong time ago, ~20's: Families lived in the lumber camp. The new arrivals lived in wall tents; husband, wife and kids. When you got enough seniority and if an old timer left, they'd get a company shack. I know many who lived there at that time. And, BTW, they all bought their stuff at the company store.
More recently, until the spotted owl pretty much shut down logging : The fellers and equipment operators would live in their own campers near the area that was being logged. They would be hauled out to the site in the company "crummy."
My point is that is wasn't unusual to live in less than hard surroundings. And, even now, it isn't that unusual for men to live out in the woods and only get home weekends. So, it wouldn't surprise me if some like this occured in the future.
Todd
One of my few shopping experiences will see rising prices.
Some of us never stopped going to thrift stores.
I got a pair of Wrangler "pro rodeo" copper-rivit pants for 50 cents today. Oh and an interesting book, for 10 cents. And an invite to T-giving dinner at a local church on Tuesday night for free.
We already got bay area inflation then.
Probably still got some time before the excess runs out though. Here's a rather humorous indictment of exuberance to rid ourselves of our excess trash:
(November 15)
Mall of America: Free electronics recycling
(Off to China. Better to pollute far away...)
***
(November 16)
Public has need to be freed of tech trash
I read the article on recycling it talks of the new digital standard as a factor, So now those of us without cable or digital tvs are going to need to either replace millions of tv sets at a cost of how much of our oil legacy or we will need Digital-to-Analog Converter Boxes. The Digital-to-Analog Converter Box is an alternative waste of energy.
From this recycling article comes this quote,
And combined with this quote from the DOE
at http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=dta.pr_dta
Of course the electronics industry will make a killing either way. As for me I will give up my Philco TV right after they pull my pre gps chip cell phone out of my cold cheap hands.
Or we could just shut the blasted things off and chuck them out. Good way to save some energy, that.
Yes and now. I remember some months ago where we heard stories about fuel being trucked to Chicago from Houston to correct an imbalance. I don't remember why it was that Chicago was running short in the first place, and yes it is horribly inefficient to truck fuel that far, but to some degree the imbalances can be corrected.
What concerns me is that if farmers start to have chronic fuel shortages, that it will lead to food shortages in the future. This is the sort of thing that could probably be corrected with a quick phone call from some high administration official however. Not that the shortages can be corrected, but food producing regions shouldn't be experiencing these types of shortages.
I have heard some say that biofuels (particularly biodiesel) might make sense if it were entirely used by farmers. Thus a farmer might have an oilseed crop in the regular rotation, and the theory is that they would be able to grow enough fuel to properly raise the rest of the crops. I don't know whether there is general agreement about this point here though. Perhaps there are counter-arguments that would mean that this idea won't work.
"I have heard some say that biofuels (particularly biodiesel) might make sense if it were entirely used by farmers. Thus a farmer might have an oilseed crop in the regular rotation, and the theory is that they would be able to grow enough fuel to properly raise the rest of the crops. I don't know whether there is general agreement about this point here though. Perhaps there are counter-arguments that would mean that this idea won't work."
Counter Arguement here.
See Pimentel Cornell for the exact numbers on why biofuels
are a non starter.
Any farmer being able to do what you suggested above
would be off grid by definition and not have any use
for any state.
Arkansaw of Samuel L Clemens
The EROEI is considerably different for biodiesel versus ethanol, mcgowanmc. While you could not conduct modern farm operations (green revolution farming) on biodiesel, Rudolph Diesel fully intended his engine to be used by farmers growing a biodiesel crop to assist with other farming activities. While you could not drive the massive farm vehicles of today with a biodiesel crop, you could certainly utilize a smaller tractor on a lower utilization schedule. Now the fact that this is possible doesn't mean it is necessarily economical. What I have not seen for biodiesel is any analysis of economies of scale - what size farm benefits from this versus simply reverting to draft animal power. Ethanol fully appears to be a non-starter but I have not seen any such analysis of biodiesel, particularly using biodiesel coupled with a move away from green revolution farming techniques. If you are aware of such an analysis please provide a URL. All of Pimentel's work that I have read seems to have been focused on ethanol and ethanol's issues.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Dr. Albert Bartlett
Into the Grey Zone
gz
I practice horticulture on three acres with only 25,000 sq.' in intensive growing beds. this year I used 18 gallons of diesel for my two wheel tractor. From all my research that's about 4 times the amount of fuel used in conventional farming. [no real good data to pull from there] but my yields are 8 times that of conventional. [again fuzzy numbers]
the other 2.5 acres are used as green manure crops. alfalfa mostly and am trying to establish a comfrey zone. I want to be able to show that dedicating one of those acres to a fuel crop would be economic, but I've looked into it and how much more time it would take out of my day. my conclusion is the price of off road diesel would have to be somewhere in the $20-$30 range for my to try it. and that is of course a different world.
p.s. I think the future for ethanol has to be the potato
Vodka!
Yeah, vodka makes bicyclists pedal extra hard, don't ask me how I know!
Ethanol Man.
OK. Agriculture IMHO is merely a time machine whn it comes
to manufacturing a fuel for an internal combustion engine.
I had two conversations this week end on our farm, relating
to this.
1-We had to put lime out to neutralize the acid in order to get a certain amt of cotton per acre.
2-We will have to buy ammonium nitrate at maybe $400
per ton to fertilize wheat.
Not our wheat, we're not growing any. But my Bro in Law's
a crop duster and he's fertilizing today for others.
He priced the ammonium.
Just two of many inputs, all from fossil fuel(nitrate can only be made from NatGas) needed to maintain production at current levels.
My point is that anything removed from the soil must be put back in order to get similar y/y results.
The "feedstock" for biodiesel has already been "spoken for".
There is no such thing as crop waste/residue on a farm.
Yes. Farms can generate the same kind of income on a smaller scale, but the $ will come from higher per unit prices.
Or adding value, but that will entail extra energy.
Again, we can be "off the grid". But no individuals/states
will benefit from it.
This URL will lead you to Pimentel's 2005 study including biofuel:
It Takes Energy to Make Energy
by Doug Pibel
http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=1475
"Tom, I reckon you've got to pack up and go down to Arkansaw- your aunt Sally wants you."-Tom Sawyer :)
We did some work on this on some threads a few months ago. It appears that it would require that approximately 5-10% of total crop acreage would have to be dedicated to oilseed production to fuel typical mechanized farm operations.
It probably would make sense for certain farmers in a locality to specialize in biodiesel production rather than every farmer doing it themselves.
But getting farmers to share the biodiesel when fuel is short and commodity prices are rising as a result, I think I would like to have my own supply.
See Pimentel Cornell for the exact numbers on why biofuels are a non starter.
Do you have links to back up the oil claim?
Oh, and please feel free to show how growing oilseeds is worse than a bunch of draft animals.
Any farmer being able to do what you suggested above would be off grid by definition and not have any use for any state.
Alas, The Soverign has a different vision.
From Wikipedia:
Biodiesel is a renewable fuel that can be manufactured from algae, vegetable oils, animal fats or recycled restaurant greases.
Everyone agree on this?
H/T yesmagazine:
http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=1475
"The biggest nay-sayers are David Pimentel and Tad W. Patzek. You can read their 2005 study in which they conclude that no biofuel has positive EROEI."
The 2005 Study is a PDF file:
NRRethanol.2005.pdf
Ethanol Production Using Corn, Switchgrass, and Wood;
Biodiesel Production Using Soybean and Sunflower
David Pimentel1,3 and Tad W. Patzek2
Received and accepted 30 January 2005
Energy outputs from ethanol produced using corn, switchgrass, and wood biomass were each
less than the respective fossil energy inputs.
The same was true for producing biodiesel using
soybeans and sunflower, however, the energy cost for producing soybean biodiesel was
only slightly negative compared with ethanol production.
Findings in terms of energy outputs
compared with the energy inputs were: • Ethanol production using corn grain required 29%
more fossil energy than the ethanol fuel produced. • Ethanol production using switchgrass
required 50% more fossil energy than the ethanol fuel produced. • Ethanol production using
wood biomass required 57% more fossil energy than the ethanol fuel produced. •
BIODIEL (my caps)
production using soybean required 27% more fossil energy than the biodiesel fuel produced
(Note, the energy yield from soy oil per hectare is far lower than the ethanol yield from corn).
•
Biodiesel production using sunflower required 118% more fossil energy than the biodiesel
fuel produced.
KEYWORDS: Energy, biomass, fuel, natural resources, ethanol, biodiesel.
"Oh, and please feel free to show how growing oilseeds is worse than a bunch of draft animals."
Are you addressing me here?
ADHD like Memmel :)
David Pimentel and Tad W. Patzek.
http://journeytoforever.org/ethanol_energy.html
covers a rebuttal of their work.
Pimptel's study - does it include feeding the seedcake to the critters on the farm - the ones who were going to be eating the oilseed anyway?
Hrmmmm. A study claiming less than 1:1 EROEI or greater than 3:1.
And while looking for an older reference to Russian sunflower oil production (Some work by Lenin as I remember talking about farm mechinization) (Oh, and considering the water useage of sunflowers they are a bad choice for all but swampland you might want to dry out):
http://bayesianheresy.blogspot.com/2007/11/rising-food-prices-should-we-...
Biodiesel production using sunflower required 118% more fossil energy than the biodiesel fuel produced.
Yet one CAN burn the veggie oil straight - no need for making it into biodiesel. One can also use solar energy for the heating part of making biodiesel - another FF input removed.
"Oh, and please feel free to show how growing oilseeds is worse than a bunch of draft animals."
Are you addressing me here?
Yea, because what are the alternatives if one is suddenly not going to have diesel farm equipment? Human power?
One thing to be said in favor of sunflowers as an oiseed crop is that they are particularly easy to grow on a small scale. As the typical mechanized farm would only need about 5% of its crop acreage dedicated to oilseed production -- IF the oil is produced and consumed right on the farm and no transport back and forth to a processing plant (right there is where a lot of Pimptel's analysis turns negative) -- on all but the largest farms we're only talking about a small field of a few acres or so. It is quite feasible for a handful of workers to hand-harvest a sunflower crop of a few acres with at most a couple of days of work. One can manually remove the seeds from the flower heads by scraping them across wire fence stretched over an open barrel. As someone else mentioned, one can rig up a solar roaster to pre-heat the seeds prior to pressing. Seed presses are relatively low tech things -- humans have been pressing oils from seeds for thousands of years -- and could be built on a home-brew basis. In spite of the fact that sunflowers are somewhat thirsty (but it is not at all true that they need to be grown on swampland, COME ON NOW!), they would be a feasible oilseed feedstock to grow and process on a small-scale, appropriate technology basis.
If the choice for a small farmer is between producing his own fuel in this manner, or having to give up all of his mechanization, I suspect that this wouldn't look like such a bad alternative.
Silver bullet it is not, though. At best, it is one possible alternative to add to the mix of options.
(I'm certain that now someone will chime in with a comment in favor of electric tractors - they always do. And I'll respond in advance:
Yes, solar-recharged electric tractors are another option, and have something to say in their favor. However, if you are a poor small farmer, and can no longer afford to buy diesel for your tractor, how likely is it that you are going to be able to buy the batteries, PV panels, and electric motors necessary? On the other hand, you already have everything you need (except the seed, which is cheap) to go out and plant a few acres of sunflower seed - by hand if you have to. While it is growing, you can scrounge up some scrap materials and build a home-brew solar roaster and seed press. Again, you can harvest the sunflowers by hand if you have to. And thus you can start producing your own oil yourself, in ONE SEASON. And this is why farm-produced oilseeds are likely to be the more immediate solution to petrodiesel shortages.)
I'd just as soon want to set up a still and
sell the home-brew for human consumption.
Easier and more $.
Which is what the Whiskey Rebellion was all about anyway.
Direct human consumption is the most energy efficient way
to go.
AAMOF, I think force will be required to keep this from happening.
Arkansaw of Samuel L Clemens
Errr, are you advocating breaking the law via tax evasion AND violation of the fuel distallation permit?
Where can I buy?
Sunflowers are relatively easy to grow and can produce a substantial yield without irrigation. The one drawback I can think of is the sunflower seeds you plant are hybrid, there are wild sunflowers, Maximillian Sunflower for example but the seedheads are small and the yield per acre would be slight. You will have to purchase hybrid sunflower seed every year or go to non-GMO soybeans or open pollinated corn, don't know if canola is OP, the goal being to keep the Monsanto's out of the picture.
Again IMHO, we're so close as to be agreeing with each other.
Anything less than 3:1 dooms the status quo.
Crude is what, 25:1 ?
""Oh, and please feel free to show how growing oilseeds is worse than a bunch of draft animals."
Are you addressing me here?
Yea, because what are the alternatives if one is suddenly not going to have diesel farm equipment? Human power?
See my Mule Breeding Program. Jokingly called the MBP
Solution.
And yes, I used the word "slaves".
I can make the case that we've never left slavery behind BTW. Minimum Wage and Non Farm Payrolls.
And non mechanized will be the least of our problems.
No fossil fuel fertilizers, glyphosates and GM seed
with no means to irrigate will leave us with 1/2 bale
per acre cotton, 65 bu corn, 20 bu beans, 15 bu wheat.
"Two hundred species a day we are losing. Two hundred. As Daniel Quinn says in the movie, “This is calamitous.”
But feral hogs are making a comeback. :)
Anything less than 3:1 dooms the status quo.
Biodiesel is rated at 3.2:1. And the status quo is still doomed - not due to oil but the funky money situation. (Funk as in not take a shower)
See my Mule Breeding Program. Jokingly called the MBP
Solution.
Lets see - feed draft animals seeds OR extract the oil from the seeds and feed the seedcake to animals to be used for feed.
Hrmmmm....
'Even within the US...there have been chronic shortages of fuel in the midwest since spring,'
Not to sound like a smart alec but its the midwest that is making ethonol, getting tax subsidies to make ethonol, causing food shortages because of ethonol production, etc. Perhaps the fuel shortage in the midwest is karma?...And, if ethonol is supposedly the end-all do-all, why is the midwest having fuel shortages? Before I hear a response like 'they are not producing the diesel necessary to transport the corn to ethonol refineries', I will respond in advance...Why was this problem not forseen and why didnt they produce biodiesel along with ethonol?
Imo, ethonol is a scam and if a certain midwest primary was not so important to wannabe presidents ethonol would still be a non starter. The Chinese continue to beat our brains out economically because we cannot think and plan beyond the next election cycle. Rant over :)
within the US...there have been chronic shortages of fuel in the midwest
How ever can this be? Isn't the midwest the very fount of corn? I thought we were going to supplant Saudi Arabia with ethanol production...
/ sarconal