Everyone always says red wine is best served at room temperature.  I always thought that advice was a bit odd, because it actually tastes best slightly chilled.  Then I went to Europe, and realized that "room temperature" in Europe is "slightly chilled" in the U.S.

What I want to know is why British windows never have screens in them.  It's a lot more pleasant to leave your windows open if there are screens to keep the bugs out.

As for the Depression...that was really still the dawn of the Age of Oil.  Country folk could burn wood for heat.  City folk would walk along the railroad tracks and pick up coal that fell off the trains.

When the oil shock of 1973 hit (and I think there was a brief miners and / or dockers strike thrown in for good measure) there was a period of a month or two during the winter when we had planned rolling power cuts. The 3 day week was to minimise energy consumption by partially closing down industries and workplaces.

It was all quite romantic, no TV, candles, huddling together to keep warm, 'save water - bath with a friend', etc. Hence the noticeable spike in UK birth rates that followed 9 months later. :-)))

It would be a lot less pleasant without hot meals.

No central heating.

The curtains were of a thick material to keep the warmth in the rooms.  I can recall opening my bedroom curtains on many a winter morning to see ice on the INSIDE of the window.

Taking a bath in a tub of water that was hot but cooling all the time was interesting.  The move from the tub to the towel through the cold air of the bathroom was the most critical move.

I don't think we were the only ones.  The WSJ had a wonderful page one column several years ago about the joys of taking a bath in England in the winter.

Unfortunately the mines in the UK are closed and sealed and so it would be very difficult to return to those days, especially since the current estimate of reserves is not that great.

Is it reasonable to expect that we would have a worldwide approach to the energy problem?  I doubt that even the obvious basic steps will be taken in the US in time.  A globally coordinated approach is probably fantasy.  But look at it very long term - the American way of life is based on large quantities of cheap energy.  We grew large and powerful because we had an entire continent to exploit.  Having done that, we've now moved on to exploiting the rest of the world, but that requires even more energy.  If it cannot be maintained, then the energy use disparity will be reduced.  

just think of all those tea, coffee, chocolate, cocoa plantations..

they could all be growing food for local people, also people will no longer be coated in pesticides which disable 30 million people a year and kill 1 million (see pesticide action network for details).

most of the vegans I have been chatting with are genuinly excited about the "localisation" revolution that is about to take place.

Oh, I'm sure we'll have technology for a long time to come, but I don't think it will be sustainable indefinitely.  It will unwind, in the reverse order it was built.  People who can't afford food or heat are not going to buy computers or pay for Internet service.   The poor will be affected first, then the middle class, and the rich last.  Computers and the Internet will lose a lot of their value when there are fewer users.  Eventually, they will be a toy of the wealthy, and then they'll fade away.  By then, no one will miss them.

For example, manufacturing a square centimeter of silicon--containing enough transistors for dozens of complete 1990-era PC's--requires only half a kilowatt-hour.

I beg to differ! from Robert U. Ayres, Leslie W. Ayres & Benjamin Warr. IS THE US ECONOMY DEMATERIALIZING? MAIN INDICATORS AND DRIVERS. page 19.

The fabrication of computer chips is undoubtedly the most complex process in
industry. Consider a day's production in a representative modern plant (c. 1998).
The raw material input for this process consists of approximately 700 8-inch wafers
of ultra-pure silicon metal, with a total mass of 14.2 kg. Each wafer has a thickness
of 0.76 mm and a cubic volume of 8.55 cm3.
The fabrication process begins with cleaning, by means of an acid bath. The
next step is doping, by molecular diffusion. Typical dopants are silane,
dichlorosilane, phosphine, arsine, or diborane. This step is followed by surface
oxidation or epitaxy (using pure oxygen) and/or vapor deposition of a thin photoresist
film, either positive or negative. Next comes photolithography, which
`exposes' the film to light in a complex pattern representing the circuitry. This is
followed by an etching acid bath, which removes either the exposed (light sensitive)
or unexposed (insensitive) portion of the film, leaving the remainder. The
doping-epitaxy or film deposition--photolithography -- etching sequence may be
repeated many times, leaving successive layers of circuitry alternating with layers of
non-conducting oxides. Finally there is a metalization and passivation step before the
wafer is tested and cut into individual chips.
Acids (HF, HCL, HNO3 and H2SO4) and solvents are used at several stages in
the sequence. Bases (mainly ammonia and caustic soda) are used to control pH and
to neutralize acid wastes. Finally, very large amounts of neutral gases (mainly
nitrogen, but also some argon and helium) are used as vapor carriers, and even
larger amounts of purified water and air are used for a variety of purposes.
The process chemicals used in this plant, per day (not including air) are as
follows, in kg:

Gases (mostly nitrogen) 102 826
Dopants 2.15
Etchants (dry) 52.2
Acids & bases 5 372
Solvents & developers 3 274
Water (liquid) 3 648 000
Water (vapor) 81 600
Total 3 841 141
Total, excluding water 228 661

It is easy to verify that for each kilogram of silicon wafer input 161 kg of other
chemicals, not including air or water, are used and discarded. The yield of the
process is less than 100%, so, for each kilogram of usable silicon chips from the
process at least 200 kg of chemicals (dry weight) are consumed and discarded.
Now it is of some interest to consider exergies. The exergy embodied in pure
silicon metal is 30.43 mJ/kg, although the process of reduction from silica and
purification to electronic grade (99.9999% pure) is very energy intensive (about 234
mJ/kg). The exergy embodied in fabrication process input chemicals, however, is
approximately 788 mJ per kg of silicon processed, if water is not counted. (I should
acknowledge that I could not calculate the exergies of all of the organic chemicals
used, some of which are very obscure. It was necessary to make some
approximations, resulting in an overall uncertainty of the order of 10% or so.) If the
exergy of ultra-pure water is included, the total exergy embodied in the inputs is
much larger - 2100 mJ/kg, or roughly 70 times the exergy embodied in the silicon
itself. The surprise is that, because so much is required, ultra-pure water accounts
for almost two thirds of the exergy inputs to the process. (Seawater is an
environmental sink, with an exergy of zero, by definition, but pure fresh water has a
small but non-zero exergy.)
But that is not the whole story either. If, in the spirit of LCA, we also take
into account the exergy inputs to the processes of manufacturing the major bulk
chemicals. Again, I do not have manufacturing data for the solvents and photoresists,
so the totals above are significantly underestimated. Nevertheless, it is
interesting to note that utility energy (roughly equivalent to exergy) used indirectly in
manufacturing bulk chemicals amounts to at least a further 7000 mJ/kg, mostly
attributable to the energy (exergy) required to separate nitrogen from oxygen in air!
In short, the micro-electronic products that are commonly cited as examples
of dematerialization are really illustrations of quite a different and less favorable
trend, namely a sharply increasing ratio of process wastes to finished goods.

Put it this way. Suppose that, in addition to the energy used to process a cm^2 of silicon into a valuable computer, you also had to pay for all the energy that that cm^2 would gather in the next 50 years if it were a solar cell instead. That's about 1/30 watt X 8 hours X 365 X 20, or less than 5 kWh. If energy goes to $1 per kWh, the solar-cell value of that chunk of silicon can't be more than $5. A computer would let you get news from nearby towns (any robber bands heading your way?), track weather forecasts (when is the best time to harvest?), and stay in touch with family members you can't easily travel to visit.

Khebab, the fact that a cm^2 of solar cell gathers less than 5 kWh over its life (and since solar cells do repay their energy cost of manufacture) proves that silicon doesn't take much energy per square centimeter to process. Before you differ with my assertion, read my numbers and citations. I checked both a semiconductor roadmap and AMD's figures for energy used.

Energy cost per kg is a nearly-useless measure of energy cost per cm^2. Unless you find a recent source for energy per cm^2 that contradicts mine, I'll stand by my claims and figures.

People, there's something wrong if you have to argue with every piece of good news, no matter how carefully substantiated. Basic computers, a major component of modern civilization's infrastructure, and a potentially major contributor to many kinds of efficiency, will still be viable with $1/kWh or even $10/kWh energy.

Furthermore, it will be easy and fast to make computers power-efficient, as soon as peak oil hits: just downgrade the CPU's (or even just swap in slower clocks) and upgrade the software. People habitually replace their computers every few years; they won't even have to change their buying habits. Unless civilization collapses to the point that we lose technology altogether, computers will be remain affordable--personally, economically, and environmentally.

Chris

RE: "The Rainwater Prophecy"

I don't have the print version of the article...

What were his other 4 favorite oil blogs???