243 comments on DrumBeat: December 23, 2007
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243 comments on DrumBeat: December 23, 2007
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Life after Peak Fossils
Don't you just love it when the economics educators flex their intellect by using big words like "energy"?
Prof. Clark (CV here) suggests that energy is energy and the only thing that matters is the price (here).
Solar energy cannot be stored for use during those long cloudy winter days. Oil can.
Here is a quote from Thomas Edison from 1910:
"Sunshine is spread out thin and so is electricity. Perhaps they are the same, Sunshine is a form of energy, and the winds and the tides are manifestations of energy.”
“Do we use them? Oh, no! We burn up wood and coal, as renters burn up the front fence for fuel. We live like squatters, not as if we owned the property.
“There must surely come a time when heat and power will be stored in unlimited quantities in every community, all gathered by natural forces. Electricity ought to be as cheap as oxygen...."
If we are clever enough, we can store and use solar effectively. Almost everything else on earth lives within a solar budget. Are we so unclever that we cannot?
We are certainly clever enough -- at least, individually and in small groups. The problem comes in the group dynamics of human behavior, when brilliant minds turn to mush.
I used to ponder, and wonder how the German people (I have a German heritage and a lot of German friends) could have been so stupid as to allow the rise of the National Socialists. Then we "elected" a modern version in the U.S. -- and the remarkable thing is that the contagion is spreading, even apparently on the European Continent where hardly two generations ago a vastly ruinous war (or suite of wars) nearly destroyed Western civilization.
Elias Canetti, a Nobel Prize winning author, investigated this in Crowds and Power. Now, finally, it makes sense to me. But the question in my mind has changed -- is it possible to develop a leadership that doesn't become tyrannical over time?
Let's flip it around:
Is it possible to develop a followship that does not fall for the mind bending tricks of a group of wanna-be tyrants?
Yes and no - we can create a group of people who can maintain a clarity of mind. But teaching other generations to have a core of values but be flexible considering a generations unique circumstances - thats very hard.
The Jeffersonian principle of an educated electorate falls apart when politicians appeal to emotions like fear. Even the brightest people fall victim to fear and can make some bad decisions as a result.
Well, it hasn't happened yet. But there is always that greatest narcotic of all -- hope.
It has nothing to do with being clever or not. All other species indeed lives within their solar budget, until their population gets too large. Then it must crash.
The big question is, are we beyond our carrying capactiy with our current population? The general feeling is we are way past that and the only way of our society to survive is to have a huge reduction, more than 50%, in population. Question is how do we get there?
We are so clever we have fabricated a fictitious method of accounting for our cleverness which we call "economics". We are so clever we have fooled ourselves into believing that the laws of our man-made "economics" trumps the laws of nature.
So yes. If we were less clever, we could devise systems for collecting and storing useful energy that originates as solar energy. But we are more clever than that. We paralyze ourselves with our cleverness into fretting over whether it will be "economical" to develop such solar based systems and to stop freebasing off the high EROI of Natured produced oil.
We were so clever that we created nuclear power and it was suppose to be so cheap we would not have to meter it. So much for that clever move.
Clark is rather Kunstlerian:
And, regarding solar energy, certainly there are places on Earth where hyro, wind, nuclear, etc. make more sense than solar, though for a non-trivial part of the US solar is likely the future.
We don't have to go back to living like this:
http://www.shorpy.com/node/2141
Though I do believe it won't be as simple or painless as Clark suggests.
For an academic economist, Clark seems not to bother with things such as math.
To convert the entire US from oil to solar electricity in six years? I don't think that building enough factories to produce that much PVs could be accomplished in six years. How many years would it take to even build the capital to build those factories?
Where do they get the energy to build all those PVs so quickly? How long for the siting and installation of those new PVs? How long to design and replace the auto fleet from fossil fuels to electric? We don't even have any practical electrical cars now. He doesn't consider the annual production of silicon for PVs, or how much production of rare earth elements per year that need to be in all those thin film solar cells.
Same for batteries. How much lithium can the world supply per year if we chose to go battery-operated cars?
And just who is going to finance this massive switch from fossil to solar, the government? The same government which thinks massive ethanol production is a good and practical thing? The same government which can't extricate itself from its $12 billion per month foreign adventures? The same government which is already running massive budget deficits? I could go on forever.
He claimed the US standard of living would only decline by 11% if we made this switch, but offers not a single figure to back up his ridiculous claim.
We can easily build enough solar to replace all the natural gas burned for power in America, because that gas is burned for air conditioning. That's what peaking power is.
We can't easily build enough solar to replace the natural gas burned for heat. That's needed at night. The sun does not shine at night. We can't easily build enough solar to replace the natural gas used to make plastics, either.
But if we don't build the solar for the easy natural gas replacement very soon, we will have to build the solar for the hard natural gas replacement as well.
Concentrating solar photovoltaic, fifty gigawatts a year, every year, until we don't need it any more.
Hi wk,
Thanks for this point. I noticed that the Sci Am article invited people to comment. I hope you do.
One thing that bothered me about the article was the FF growth assumptions.
And the time frame they use.
Another was - well, I'm almost afraid to say it. A region of concentrated solar panels seems rather vulnerable to me. More vulnerable in some ways that the current system. (Though perhaps not even a good comparison to make, as we know where it's headed.)
Yes, well, Ron and Airdale - and the most welcome SCT. (What can I add?)
Q: What about a program to put solar on existing rooftops? Or, are they saying this is not (or is even less) economically feasible.
Solar panels are about as concentrated as coal mines and nukes and gas. Gas power plants cover several acres, and also several thousand miles of natural gas transmission lines. Coal plants need only a few square miles of coal mine (coal can burn, but not easily) that also needs to be protected. Nuclear power plants only need a few square miles of setback to be reasonably safe from anyone that doesn't have a six inch howitzer along. It works out to about the same area for all power supplies.
Hi wk
Thanks, agreed. What I was referring to was the concentration of the source (panels) in one geographical area. W. FF, yes the NG, for eg, is concentrated but not really all in one place, and at present all the various FF sources are redundant in some ways. The thing, too, about solar, is it's all above ground (except for their storage proposal). Anyway...
Some people are so ignorant about storing solar energy. Storing heat is a very simple and cheap technology. A large tank of water can hold enough energy to keep a house warm through many cold winter nights. Higher temperature heat can be stored in an insulated pile of rocks for several months. Daytime PV could power a large freezer and use the generated ice to cool the building through those muggy summer nights.
You can make NG by gasifying biomass. You can heat homes using solar thermal energy. You can store renewable energy using pumped hydro at more than 70% efficiency. There are many ways of living more cleanly and sustainably, we just have to have the will to invest in them and make them happen.
"To convert the entire US from oil to solar electricity in six years? "
That's not what he said. He said the cost of conversion would cost 11% of our GDP, and that that could be paid for with 6 years of economic growth.
Here's what I've learned after four years of reading:
There is such a pile of contradictory information out there people will simply choose the view that is compatible with their temperament. And who can blame them?
This is true of "doomers" AND "cornucopians," and everything between. It is impossible for the lay person to have anywhere near the time and energy to verify or refute the various claims. In this way, I think, the peak oil awareness movement is a failure. Awareness of just exactly what?
It reminds me of the Jesus Seminar scholars' view of the "historical Jesus": "Beware of finding only the Jesus that is congenial to you."
The problem is, as the saying goes, the historical Jesus is not just unknown but probably also unknowable.
This is why I think the skeptics movement is so inhumane: They expect the public to have the time and capacity to be as richly informed as they are.
What does this lead to? General paralysis. There is nothing like a consensus and therefore no way to decide what to prepare for.
This leaves us all, once again, the playthings of history.
The only way to confirm or deny peak oil scenarios is when they do/don't come to pass.
The rest is bungling.
The realistic person seeks balance in all things.
Live w/in your means.
Right now, only Cuba (as a nation) is doing this.
And why the US is doomed to being a nation of slaves.
And it's no accident that the growth of people perfectly matches, w/ about a 15 year offset, the production of oil.
BTW-the Arctic goes ice free by 2012.
Meaning we're out of the Holocene.
Forgive me for pointing this out.
I have read a lot of references to Cuba on TOD as some sort of beacon and example for us all to follow. Cuba is in fact a tyranny where a tiny ruling class is living very comfortably indeed and the mass of humanity is just getting by, not unlike their ancestors.
Please do not assume that I am not suggesting that if they had a capitalist system things would be entirely different - there would still be a tiny ruling clique (a somewhat different one) and the masses would still be living in a not very dissimilar way.
I, too, recoil from the comparisons.
Cuba is a tiny place compared to a continent like North America. I can't even imagine the US going through a shock transition the way Cuba did.
Wasn't there a period where average body weights dropped by 20%?
Wait a minute... Maybe it wouldn't be so bad...
...but I jest.
Agreed. Cuba also was never fully self-sufficient in food. They had to import staples like beans and rice.
And they have a year-round growing season. They're about the size of Pennsylvania, with about the same population. Some US states are considerably more crowded (mostly in the northeast), and the sparsely-populated west has water issues Cuba does not.
Cuba also got some international aid. I think that's one thing many people overlook. Fossil fuels have provided a safety net that was unknown for most of human history. If your crops fail, you can buy food on the global market, and it will be speedily delivered via petroleum-powered transport. If you can't afford to buy it, international aid organizations will buy it for you.
Said aid organizations are already feeling the strain, as food and fuel prices rise. And what happens if there's no surplus food to buy?
IMO, this is what those "we'll all have permaculture gardens in our backyards" scenarios miss. Maybe there is enough land (assuming you can redistribute it) to support the entire population...under ideal conditions. But conditions won't be ideal. They never are. There will be fire, flood, untimely frosts, drought, disease, etc. Will we still have a grain surplus in case of crop failure? And will we be able to move it where it's needed?
People have always traded -- the Romans imported huge amounts of wheat, oil, wine -- and long before fossil fuel was used for transportation. Of course, they cut down all the forests in the process, and eventually drove technology to using fossil fuels. But no area can be fully self-sufficient if people are to live as human beings.
And of course, the "population" issue keeps coming up. As individuals, people don't live very long, even under the best of circumstances. Populations will quickly decrease to "carrying capacity" when conditions change. The current "carrying capacity" is obviously not sustainable over time, but a population crash will not be the end of civilization.
It may be silly to think that "permaculture in the back yard" will solve all problems -- but it is foolish to maintain that it can't be part of the solution.
People have always traded...but it wasn't sufficient to prevent famine and dieoff. Until fairly recently.
not even recently. And especially, not now!
I visited Cuba regularly in the mid 90s during the period when withdrawal of Soviet aid was biting hardest. I was hanging out with everyday Cubans, not inhabiting the tourist economy. Some things I remember were:
- Regular rolling electricity blackouts (usually two 4-hour stoppages per day) in Havana. Those big old 50s US fridges just stopped running - didn't really matter though, there was nothing in them to defrost.
- "No hay" was the first bit of Spanish that became familiar - no hay agua, no hay comida, no hay ropas, no hay electricidad, no hay NADA!
- The official peso/dollar exchange rate was 1:1. However, offers of 100:1 could easily be found. Note however, that there was basically nothing you could buy with pesos except for the ubiquitous "Populares" cigarettes
- Going into the coffee shop at the Habana Libre and finding they had no coffee... "Desculpeme Senor - It's all been exported for hard currency"
- Crowds of people sheltering from the sun under motorway bridges, waiting for a lift, most of them holding small plastic bottles of gasoline as inducements to passing drivers
- My girlfriend at the time (a Cuban doctor) explaining to me that patients in hospitals were being injected with water as a placebo, because there weren't any drugs
- the only pet dogs and cats to be seen were tiny and emaciated
My g/f eventually visited me in the UK, and the most abiding memory I have of her severe culture shock was when we took a trip to the Lake District. She was completely stunned by seeing fields full of sheep and no armed guards protecting them.
Regards Chris
I too visited Cuba but was not able to observe as acutely as you, and I was only there less than a week. Housewives standing in the middle of the street gossiping because there's no traffic to watch out for, skinny dogs, gov't officials with "elite" colored license plates on new european sedans trying to run you over in the street, the Castro Channel on TV, etc. I had a "minder" because I think they assumed I was CIA, my team mates got crammed into a tiny room in the Hotel Panamericanos, while I got a suite, basically like a 1-room apartment. I drank Hatueys and soaked off the labels, which I still have. I ate baked chicken in an outdoor cafe you normally had to be a great baseball star or something to go to - said great baseball star was pointed out to me at the next table by my minder lol.
Well! Cuba isn't blockaded by the whole world, just by the US and our lackey states. They also have a very fertile land, and most of the people are just unbelieveably poor. They get aid, and they get US dollars however they can - I know I spent a bunch!
Cuba is an example of how we'll end up living, we also need to look at examples before oil was used and even before coal was used in great quantity. The future is truly Amish.
Speaking of Amish ,
I have this reacurring dream of horses pulling gutted SUV bodies down the street .
Might not be so bad .... just no AC
You mean like this:
Giddyap!
And how about now -- ten years later, and some kind of equilibrium could conceivably have returned following the shock of withdrawal of Soviet aid? Same story?
Under American domination Cuba was far far
worse.
And no female doctors. No doctors at all for
ordinary people.
The only point of comparison that matters is to
pre 1959. Comparison to American standards is
meaningless.
Exactly. The history of the US meddling in Latin America has been to deny people American standards of life. Specifically unions that would fight for workplace standards and wages and governments that would fight for indigenous interests and not whore to US corporations. This was the story of Guatemala, Nicaragua, Chile, Brazil, and essentially every other state including Venezuela. The US exported death squad juntas to Latin America and never democracy. It is hardly surprising that there was and still is a leftist backlash against this dictatorial imposition. Now the neocon swine that rule America are busy trying to go back to the good old days of operation Condor and the bootlick media is busy paving the way with absurd propaganda such as Chavez is a "tyrant".
"The only point of comparison that matters is to
pre 1959. Comparison to American standards is
meaningless."
Wouldn't a comparison of Cuba in 1959 and currently with other countries over the same period be meaningful?
By most accounts Cuba has done quite well in terms of availability of health care. Other than that?
what the cubans have that we dont: basic health care for everyone.
what the us has is plastic surgury and transplants of every concievable organ for some and no health care for others.
There are some good things about Cuba, but people vote with their feet on quality of life. So far, I don't know of anyone getting on a boat in Florida and trying to escape to Cuba.
But our way of life is not sustainable.
Cuba's probably isn't, either, but they're hell of a lot closer.
Leanan you expressed it so perfectly, exactly what I am trying to say....
Yes, they are closer to sustainable. Much closer to us. They are still getting a lot of help from us and other countries. That help is probably what keeps the oligarchs in charge there.
But they are an intermediate step on the way to sustainability.
I just got back from a trip to Cuba a couple of days ago. As someone else mentioned, you see crowds of people waiting to get a lift along most roads. Apparently government vehicles are required to stop for anyone waiting by the road. I saw plenty of young single women flagging down passing vans and trucks, which was a bit of a culture shock.
I guess it's an efficient way to utilise a limited resource, and is a situation that we in the west may soon face. Made me wonder how we would handle it though. Somewhat differently I think.
So far, I don't know of anyone getting on a boat in Florida and trying to escape to Cuba.
Micheal Moore was unable to go there to film and had to sneak in.
As I remember the story - The US Government has laws stopping what you are saying you do not see.
http://havanajournal.com/business/entry/cubanewscom_despite_obstacles_us...
"FOOD SHIPMENTS UP 50% OVER A YEAR AGO
Politics or not, Cuba now ranks as the 16th-largest overseas buyer of U.S. corn, according to the Iowa Corn Promotion Board. In the past 12 months, Cuban purchasing agency Al-import has bought 11 million bushels of U.S. corn;"
http://www.wsicubaproject.org/cooperationchron07.cfm
""For the last decade, Iowa Corn and the Iowa Department of Agriculture have led a sustained effort to increase food and feed sales to Cuba," says Craig Floss, chief executive officer for ICGA and ICPB. "In the last marketing year, 95% of Cuba 's corn imports came from the US. That is real progress, given the legal restrictions on US-Cuba trade." Cuba's corn purchases this year could be nearly 40 million bushels"
http://www.cfr.org/publication/12089/venezuelas_oilbased_economy.html
"Commerce between Venezuela and Cuba will increase by 42 percent this year to about $1.7 billion, says Bloomberg news service. Venezuela is selling up to 100,000 barrels of oil per day to Cuba, discounted by as much as 40 percent."
Not quite cabaple of living within their means.
Human beings have choices. Most other species do not. That is the message of our religions, and the teaching of sites like TOD. It also corresponds with most of our personal experiences.
The burden of "choice" is the requirement to become informed. "The public" is not stupid. Some individuals are lazy, of course, but in the long run, we have to trust ourselves and our fellow human beings to make the correct choices -- otherwise, "democracy" has no meaning, and we might as well become as sheep or trees.
We are sheep. Sheeple. And I include myself in the flock.
We can't help it. The limbic parts of our brains force us to act as sheep.
Being part of a flock is not all as bad as it sounds. It has evolutionary advantages. This is why many fish still swim in schools, many birds fly as flocks and many a religious sapiens congregate in their churches.
As for free choice, I revert you to this older post:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3345#comment-275363
We are not sheep. I have raised sheep, and I know something about them. They never raise people.
Also, some fish swim in schools, but schooling fish can't exist as solitary creatures, and solitary fish don't associate.
People have a tremendous range of options, even if they aren't totally "free." We don't have to do a lot of the things we blame others for making us do.
I respectfully submit that there is a big difference between what people "can" do (e.g. have a tremendous range of options) and what they do do (and must do).
Yes, of course each of us can tune ourselves into the free online lectures given at some of the best universities in the land so as to become better educated and each of us can read TOD daily so as to be on top of the latest developments in the Peak Oil movement.
I'm not making fun of the sheeple here. I'm merely stating that this is the way our brains are hardwired. Human beings cannot in general survive as solitary creatures. We must be part of a tribe, part of a community. And in doing so, we must conform to the dictates of the community; not to that theoretically wide range of individual "options" you speak about.
The communities (or flocks if you will) that we belong to have an inertia of their own. They keep racing towards the cliff no matter how loud you or I as individuals might shout, Stop! Can't you see the precipice ahead of us?
Yes you have "free" speech. And yes you have "free" will (to the extent your limited brain allows you to see the horizon). But do realize that there are constraints. There are boundaries. Our realistic options do not go to infinity and beyond. We are stuck in the corral (cage) that Mother Nature and Evolution have put us in.
Hi step back,
I appreciate (and agree with) your balanced assessment (true to your name).
Just another tilt to the see-saw of the discussion,
re: ""We" flock into large buildings called churches to hear some leader tell us that the big man is our "shepherd"..."
Or, sometimes people go to church in order to think about how to become a better person. (Really, some people do this.)
Aniya,
You can think about how to become a better person all by your lonesome self. (That means shutting off your computer and not being tilted even by my off balanced online assessments. Just stare into the blank screen and "think" for yourself and by yourself how to be "better" --whatever that means.)
Just be truthful at least to yourself and admit that this is what you are doing. You are checking out how well dressed everyone else is. You are checking out how well connected some people are to other well connected people or not. You are checking out how others in your community look at you and value you. It's all about pecking order in the flock. It has very little to do with self introspection and meditation in solitude.
Hi step,
Goodness, are we arguing about being "good"? What have I started? :) And, excuse me, but I was talking about my understanding of why people go to church, it wasn't about me.
All of what you talk about above may be true for many people.
What I'm saying is that yes,
re: "It has very little to do with self introspection and meditation in solitude."
It's not about solitude.
It's about community.
For many people it's the main way to gain a sense of community.
And, for many people, and for many communities, there's a distinct element of helping each other, learning...and...
re: ""better" --whatever that means"
I was using the word "better" to talk about - not introspection, per se, not thinking all alone...but listening to other people's ideas and seeing if they apply.
Being open. Learning about compassion, communication, perhaps helping other people. That kind of thing.
It could be that different experiences exist. And different motives. That's all I was trying to say.
And that's why I come to TOD.
To learn from people who are smarter than me.
Happy New Year to one and all.
"Solar energy cannot be stored for use during those long cloudy winter days. Oil can."
Except in the form of wood, or even biodiesel. As someone who only uses solar energy to heat their home, even though it can be cloudy for four or five days in a row here in my neck or North Carolina, I take exception to this comment.
aren't they working on batteries for solar and for utilities?
Just because 'they' are working on something we need doesn't mean it is technically possible or possible at reasonable cost.
The just-in-time-adequate-technology fairy may come ... but no sign yet, so we'd better have a plan B (if there is one) ... just in case!
Yes they are ..
AEP is deploying them on their grid now ..
NAS batteries from this company ..
http://www.ngk.co.jp/english/products/power/nas/index.html
Triff ..
As always, it's a prototype, it isn't being deployed on the grid in any quantity now.
It and several other power storage options might become viable in the short timescale required, but at the moment, in the real world, they are generally not available and it is much too optimistic if you imply that they are.
Here's what AEP says ..
http://www.aeptechcentral.com/nasbattery.htm
Triff ..
ammonia can be used as an energy storage medium.
Ok - what is the 'smallest' machine that can make NH3?
(power input and cost)
you may find the answers in there:
http://www.energy.iastate.edu/Renewable/ammonia/ammonia/2007/SSAS_Oct200...
Ever see that picture with a family sitting on their front lawn surrounded by thousands of items like shoes, televisions, furniture, household appliances and just about everything you have in your house or use in your daily life? And the caption read:
All these things were made from oil!
Reckon there will be such a picture with the caption:
All these things were made from sunshine?
Ehhhh....I really don't think so. And that is what makes those columns such as "Life after Peak Oil" so horribly wrong. They do not address all the things that cannot be made from solar or wind energy. Oh, some would say, but we have biofuels for all those things.
Well no we don't. Most of those things cannot be made with ethanol or palm oil. And you sure as hell cannot make asphalt from palm oil. Also, just to power our fleet of trucks, automobiles, planes and ships would require several times the world's available arable land. And, there would be nothing left to grow food on.
But of course they could cut down all the wet and dry forest. And I am sure they would.
Ron Patterson
Every time I hear the pro ethanol crowd crow about Brazil and sugar cane I want to scream, "where the hell do you think they got that arable land from!" These people would cut down every tree on earth to continue the current madness. What is so Goddamn important about our current “culture” that we will destroy the planet to sustain it?
People's lives and the lives of their children. With oil going, going, gone, what happens to the people living now? Think they will just sit back and let the new culture kill them and their families? That's what's "goddamn" important.
JR, of course people see their lives as the most important thing in the world. And they see the lives of their children as far more important than the world that gives life to them. And by destroying the planet, they are destroying the very planet that sustains their life and the life of their children.
If we figure out a way to cut down every tree on earth to plant soybeans or palm oil trees, we can perhaps keep business as usual going until we reach a population of 10 billion people. But the die is already cast. We are already deep into overshoot. The world cannot support, for many more years, the current 6.5 billion people. But if we wait until the world is sterile other than the 10 billion people and their biofuel plants, the collapsing disaster will be much worse. Far more people will die and the world left for the few survivors will be desolate with the entire world’s great mega fauna gone, and most of the rest of the wild creatures.
The only thing that could possibly be worse than peak oil would be no peak oil.
Ron Patterson
Guess I should have added that I agree with your last statement specifically and your comments in general. I should have included that what I see happening is the population will not go down without a fight, which is why I see the coming crash as being rather nasty.
Nasty? Actually there is no adjective strong enough to accurately describe the situation as it is likely to unfold. Nasty is way too wimpy. Horrible would be better but that would still be too mild. They would have to invent another word.
How bad was it to be poor and hungry during the Irish potato famine? They had it really good by comparison. As bad as it was during that time, law and order was still present. All they had to worry about was where their next meal was coming from. They did not have to worry about becoming someone else’s meal.
But you are right, most people will not go down without a fight. And only the very strongest, and the very, very lucky will survive.
Ron Patterson
"Horrible would be better but that would still be too mild. They would have to invent another word."
Yea, that is what I was thinking, but did not want to come off as tooooo doom and gloom, but I fear you are all too correct.
Doubleplusnasty?
Times ref 231207 strikeplus Darwinian insoc.
Armageddon
End of Paradise (as in those in the future who look back on current times will consider our civilization in comparison to their own)
I am currently very fond of HEINOUS as a descriptive for the future we face.
hei·nous /ˈheɪnəs/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[hey-nuhs] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–
adjective hateful; odious; abominable
IMO it combines hyena, the most nasty of animals, a consumer of the lowest kind, and anus, the dirtiest part of the human anatomy, where we see the ultimate end result of consumption.
"Clusterfuck" really sums it up for me. And no, JH Kunstler did NOT invent that term...
SubKommander Dred
Hi Subkommander,
Thanks. I know JHK didn't invent the term - 'cause I looked it up.
It does convey the concept (if one understands it).
It also utterly fails to convey the concept to people who are stopped by the language use ("f-word").
And, last time I received put-downs for saying it, however, that's been perhaps a year, so I'll offer it again:
There are people from different cultures and upbringing for whom the use of profanity/obscenity does not convey meaning as intended.
It conveys only disrespect for the reader/listener.
This hinders communication - it doesn't help.
JR, for too many people in the United States present “culture” means traveling from the suburbs to an unfulfilling job, going home to watch American Idol or some other FOX show on their big screen television while slobbering down some junk food, traveling in the energy inefficient vehicle while talking on the cell phone to go to some mall while the kids play video games or listen to their ipod in the back, living in some overpriced condo in the city buying every newfangled gadget that fashion dictates….. Should I go on? The problem with our energy usage is that most of it is on useless “stuff” that will be only given up when you pry our dead hands off it. Look at the commercials on TV for services to pack your stuff in a container for long term storage. I know too many people who literally live like zombies who spend all of their free time staring at the tube and either shutting off the world entirely or buying the propaganda message lock stock and barrel. This is the main reason we need all of that energy - consumerism. And the irony is that to stop consuming will cause the system to collapse even faster as people lose their jobs supporting the system. Were on the back of a tiger, damned if we get off and damned if we stay on.
Man Bruce you sound just like me some time(quite a ways back when everyone was telling me to chill out)....yes just like me.
I love it!!!
Don't give up like I did. Tell it just exactly as you see.
Thats called * reality * and without visiting reality we are pretty much gomers for the future.
Guy moves from Chitown and now has some brass ones.
Chicago was once not too bad when I was going to school there back in the late 60's...some nice neighborhood bars/taverns, good places to eat, the Playboy Club....but now I digress.
The traffic was a bitch, cops were on the take. They beat the shit out of protesting Ahmurkans. They calmly overlooked due process. So it just went slowly to hell like the rest of the US.
But now? There is no one with the guts or care to really protest. They are now all sheeple.
But Bruce when springtime and planting season gets here we both will be too busy to bitch and whine on TOD. Bet?
airdale
PS. Google 'hickory nut milk' 'hickory nut syrup' and 'indians hickory nuts' and so forth and so on. Lots of great things about hickory nuts.
Man you haven't lived til you eat Hicker Nut Cake.
Airdale, thanks. I don’t have to wait for springtime to get busy. I’m in the process of cutting down about twenty honey locust trees to make posts for my vineyard and fruit groves. Got to do it now and cut them to size and put them in a warm place. I’ve been warned by neighbors that they can sprout on you after they are placed in the ground. That storm that blew in last night was a doozy - the rain was coming in sideways. I’m 54 and I remember when Chicago was a nice place to live. Great neighborhoods, great bars, live music, lakefront, and the food was fantastic. Now its much too crowded and everything costs too much. They closed down all the neighborhood bars, stole the fun and sold it back at a premium. Daley sucks. I started to hate the place after coming back from Minneapolis (great town, lousy food except for Kramarczuk's) I’ll search for the Hickory recipe - got a five gallon bucket full of nice nuts. My Carolina cracker really comes in handy, especially with the black walnuts.
The high winds and front moved though here before it got to you. Was 58 at sunset last night and now about 25.
Locusts. Hope you have plenty for they are a huge crop of nectar and pollen for honey bees. Without the locust blooms you don't make as much honey. And locust honey, if you pull a frame of it when its being filled, is very very good.
Hickory nuts are tough to crack. The indians pulverized them with a stump pounding device and then strained the milk out, perhaps had some way of getting out the nutmeat as well.
airdale
Speaking of hickory nuts-- I gathered up a large amount this fall and don't have a decent cracker. Any leads on great crackers?
Get a Carolina cracker.
http://www.carolinacracker.com/
Bruce, I agree with you. Yet partly don't. The people I know enjoy themselves and have fun with their money and time off. They enjoy their families and family time (like now). Though there are the zombies, not everyone is. Many people live fulfilling lives. I see that with my own extended families. Any time I bring up the subject of possible collpse due to oil depletion no one wants to hear about it. They want the good times to keep rolling. They want their kids to have good times and have families of their own and have good jobs. Any hint that could not happen is meeted with dismissal and denial.
And, I've been told to keep my yap shut on the subject this xmas gathering.
Most definitely damned if we get off and damned if we stay on.
You're somewhat confusing "lives" with "comfort" I think.
What is so Goddamn important about our current “culture” that we will destroy the planet to sustain it?
'WE' are not doing it. Big AgriBusiness and other multinational corporate interests are. Transnationals are beyond the laws of individual countries. Without a world authoritative body with the jurisdiction to stop them, the transnationals do whatever they damn well please. Most of these transnationals are NOT publicly owned. They are a power unto themselves.
While access to resources are controlled by price, with no power on earth with jurisdiction to change that, those with the wealth and power face no consequences(other than planetary suicide through runaway global warming). They will always have access to resources. It is the rest of us that will do without.
not without "our" permission, you might add.
All my friends eat Wheaties and shop at Costco. And they JUST LOVE the cheap stuff from China.
I, on the other hand, am pure. I only eat local -- when I can. Unfortunately, I can't find a made-in-USA laptop to type this crap on. However, I do buy my computers used.
Bruce, just out of curiosity have you ever actually been to Brazil? I'll be the first to admit sugarcane derived ethanol is no panacea. However your comment makes me wonder if you are basing it on real facts. Deforestation is a serious problem in Brazil but sugarcane production is not one of its major causes.
www.biofuelsnow.com
•Numbers of sugar cane in 2006
•Total harvest: 476 million tons (in stalks)
•Total sugar production: 30 million tons
•Total sugar consumption: 11.5 million tons
•Total sugar exports: 18.5 million tons
•Total ethanol production: 18 billion liters
•Total ethanol consumption: 14.4 billion liters
•Total ethanol exports: 3.1 billion liters
•Total sugar cane area: 6.2 million hectares (1.8% of arable land)
•Total area for ethanol only: 3.1 million hectares (0.9% of arable land)
•Total number of mills/distilleries at work: 380
Hi FMagyar,
re: "Deforestation is a serious problem in Brazil but sugarcane production is not one of its major causes."
What about the expansion of sugarcane production? What impact do you suppose that will have?
Is production currently stable or is it growing?
Aniya, sugarcane does not grow well in hot humid climates which is the kind of climate where most of the Brazilian forests grow. Is sugarcane production being expanded in Brazil? Sure. Is long term growth sustainable anywhere? No.
If you are interested in a brief overview of sugarcane production in Brazil, pros and cons I recommend this one:
http://www.biofuelsnow.com/Ethanol%20From%20Sugar%20Cane.pdf
BTW the lifestyles that we are accustomed to and take for granted in the western world, especially in the US are not sustainable either. Global ethanol production and its utilization as a transportation and agricultural fuel is but a very small drop in the big bucket of what we in the world are going to continue to need for a while to come. Even in the US we have done a very poor job of conserving our environment and forests. I think we in the western world should more carefully examine the motes in our own eyes before criticize the splinters in the eyes of others. Hopefully we can all get off our high horses and become a bit more humble. Now, tomorrow is Christmas so why don't we all get in our SUV's and drive down to the local mall and run up our credit cards buying a lot of things we probably don't need. Cheers!
But the 47" flat screen we bought ourselves this year was half price. It is a NICE picture.
Hi FM,
Thanks for the link.
re: "lifestyles that we are accustomed to and take for granted in the western world, especially in the US are not sustainable either."
Agreed; (I'm in the choir.)
re: "I think we in the western world should more carefully examine the motes in our own eyes before criticize the splinters in the eyes of others."
In the case of the discussion about sugar-cane growing in Brazil, my impression was this was in the context of sale for export. My assumption, also: unless stated otherwise, to speak in generalities about "Brazil growing sugarcane for ethanol" means actually *corporate agribusiness* growing sugarcane for ethanol. Which makes it a "both and" type of mote, really.
Not sure if this has been posted, but here's a related documentary on the costs (indigenous tribe displacement, AGW, loss of rainforest)of palm oil. Very good.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58IELHXCym0&feature=PlayList&p=65C5D0174F...
There have been great advances in making things from soybeans and corn, things I never would have thought possible a few years ago. Biodegradeable plastic plates and the such. I don't know if it will be possible to replace all the of the feedstocks that petroleum and nat. gas offer, but there are literally millions of potential renewable feedstocks from all the millions of different species out there (assuming we don't obliterate them all, which might be overly optimistic).
One of the main problems is that our identities have become wrapped up in what we consume. We'll never be happy if we have the attitude that it will take more stuff to make us happier. But so far as replacing the necessities, I have no doubt that the overwhelming diversity of the earth could provide the solutions to replace anything we NEED from fossil fuels, if we can muster up the wisdom to look there for it.
Can this be done with our current population? That's a big if. How many people will be unemployed, doing jobs now that provide us with the none essential things? Next time you are in the mall ask youself of all the stores there, is there any of these items that are "essential". Maybe none to you, but most definitely yes for those who rely on people buying these non-essentials which pays the wages so these workers can feed their families.
Yeah, there are so many bight-eyed stories about all the wonderful things we can do. But we are not, and when you scratch the surface you find that there are major issues to be dealt with, and that it will take a Herculean effort to accomplish it requiring a massive and coordinated investment.
Then you look around and see little attempt being made to do anything - apparently we're all just waiting around for the invisible hand to have at it, and then all the exiting new energy making technologies will magically appear. Then we'll have all the energy we can ever want, and all will be sweetness and light.
When I hear people talk about going from where we are now, to living totally on the real-time solar energy inputs with anything like our present lifestyle, I cannot help but think it naive. As always, it is not just what we could do, but what we will do.
We're also waiting around for that infamous rear view mirror to instruct us that we've past the peak. (Of what? "Oil?" "Liquids?" "Fossil Energy?") By which time we are certain to be sure of our fate.
Twilight you are exactly right. How's this analogy.
Reserves size is to Export Land Model
as
What We Could Do, but What We Will Do
(ELM = "What We Actually Get To Use")
I've been watching and "Spreading the Word" since 2001. I have seen it go from NO articles ANYWHERE (except Dieoff.com, FTW.com, ER yahoo group). Nothing in the Press.
Now I am Looking BACK on two years since Roscoe Bartlett did NUMEROUS presentations In CONGRESS !! Explaining EXACTLY what Peak Oil is. NOTHING !!
I look back two years on the same Roscoe Bartlett talking in a one on one with
RPresident BUSH for a half hour on Peak Oil !!What's been done? You are seeing the fruit of 2-3 years of ACTIVE Congressional action.
We had better take to heart what we learned with the govermental response to Kat-Rita/New Orleans. That is what you'd better expect as future help.
Let's watch the response to the drought in Atlanta which is a very slow motion Katrina to the body of the southeast.
Let's see if they don't get rain, what the combined response will be from our elected officials.
The Judgments will come Real Time.
The picture appears in Fate of Humanity Chapt. 1
Your claim about storing solar energy is just as off base as Clark's economics. Plants have routinely stored solar energy from summer months thru the winter to the next warm season and they've been doing that for millions of years. Of course, what you probably mean is that it is difficult to store solar electricity or thermal energy for long periods of time, which is closer to the truth.
Clark forgets that there are two sides to the energy equation, that of the producer and that of the consumer. Fossil fuels have enabled the consumer to use many sorts of devices which convert the FF energy into some desirable effect, which both creates jobs to make the devices and services associated with the distribution and maintenance of the devices. That includes the big industries, such as personal transportation by automobile and aircraft as well as the real estate industry which produced the low density suburban development patterns we see today. Clark implies that we can just substitute solar for FF's, while continuing all the other activities which blossomed as the use of cheap FF's expanded.
My perception of the situation is that both sides of the energy equation will need to change, once FF availability really starts to decline (or, similarly, the need to reduce CO2 emissions becomes accepted). Think of the situation in south Florida, as described HERE in today's NYT. The bubble in south Florida real estate has burst and the impacts are spreading thru the entire economy of the area. The growth in construction during the boom years resulted in economic activity in many other sectors of the local economy and when the bubble burst, the rest of the local economy is also undergoing a contraction. I think Clark's implication that switching energy sources will have a small effect on the overall economy misses the massive amount of connections the bind the economy together. Everything must change, especially people's perception of what is valuable and what their worth to society truly is.
E. Swanson
"Everything must change, especially people's perception of what is valuable and what their worth to society truly is."
Good post. people need to think about price. people say we won't have oil to do this and that. wrong. someone might not have oil because they can't afford it as opposed to there being no oil. sure lots of consumer goods are made from oil. the point is that consumer good, say a plastic children's toy, may go up 45% in price. because of oil. higher price means less consumption. those who can't afford goods won't have the oil made to produce that good.
Look at the housing market, people are living different lifestyles than they every would have if the housing market didn't force it. we will change and adapt. we pay very little in energy costs when you think about it.
our economy and lifestyles will adapt just like we've adapted to every recession, depression and hyperflationary event.
It's the price, stupid.
Solar energy cannot be stored for use during those long cloudy winter days. Oil can.
Errr, what do you think oil, coal, damed water, wind, wood ...., and plant oils are if not the expression of photons?