DrumBeat: November 6, 2006
Posted by threadbot on November 6, 2006 - 9:20am
Twenty-nine of 43 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, they note, experienced some kind of civil war during the 1980’s or 1990’s. The causes of any war are of course incredibly complex — or are they? The economists discovered that one of the most reliable predictors of civil war is lack of rain. Using monthly rainfall data from many different African countries (most of which, significantly, are largely agricultural), they found that a shortage of rain in a given growing season led inevitably to a short-term economic decline and that short-term economic declines led all too easily to civil war. The causal effect of a drought, they argue, was frighteningly strong: “a 5-percentage-point negative growth shock” — a drop in the economy, that is — “increases the likelihood of civil war the following year by nearly one-half.”
Idea that forests are 'carbon sinks' going down drain
Forests can do little to improve the future climate or to lower the atmosphere's carbon levels. What they can do is make global warming worse.
'Seven out of 10 fear UK energy supplies are at risk'
Public concern over possible threats to their energy supply still outranks worries over climate change, despite the publication of the Stern review
Italy urges central EU energy authority
Italian president Romano Prodi has suggested there should be a central EU energy authority following energy blackouts over the weekend affecting millions of people in Germany, France, Spain and Italy.
Africa needs help to win clean energy investment
An Oil Rush in (Yes) Iraq: The Kurds may be sitting on buried treasure, and foreign firms want to do business
Oman investing $4b to raise output
China not to pursue oil resources monopoly in Africa
China will not pursue monopoly of oil resources in Africa, and will not exclude and affect the cooperation between Africa and other countries, said Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing on Sunday in Beijing.At a joint press conference held by Chinese, Ethiopian and Egyptian foreign ministers, Li Zhaoxing said "the criticism of China's energy policy in Africa is unreasonable."
Kuwait to Retain $26 Billion Oil Expansion Plan as Prices Fall: Oil prices "unlikely to fall below $40 a barrel ever again"
Hi-tech the key to boosting oil reserves, say experts
Officials and experts at an oil and gas conference in Abu Dhabi have said that advanced technology was essential in boosting oil reserves to meet increasing global demand."We will be soon facing a challenge of producing difficult oil. Easy oil is slipping away from our hands," Omani Oil and Gas Minister Mohammad bin Hamad al-Romhi told the Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition and Conference (ADIPEC 2006).
Russian bear could punch our lights out
With the clocks now back and the cold weather drawing in, our leaders' minds are turning to the possibility of an energy shortage this winter.
A new diamond in the rough: Pennsylvania starting first plant to turn coal waste into diesel fuel
Four-day week makes the grade in Idaho
The four-day week has its origins in the energy crisis of the 1970s, which drove up costs of heating and transportation, prompting some rural districts to cut one day of school.The concept has survived, mostly in small, rural districts. It is most popular in Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, Oregon, Arizona, Louisiana and Utah. Schools in Orofino, Idaho, also use a four-day week.
The numbers are in. PG& E owes us $17.89. If we lived in Seattle we would be getting a check for this amount, but here in California we are not reimbursed for power generated in excess of what we use. Technically speaking we did not generate all the power that we used from our solar panels alone. Net metering is how we managed to live within our energy budget. Because PG & E paid top price (31 cents) for the power we generated during peak hours (between noon and 6 p.m. from May to October) and sold it back to us for 8 cents at night, we only had to generate a portion of what we used.
Blighted by this blot on a spectacular landscape
The point will be put, no doubt, that wind power holds answers in the burgeoning energy crisis. Perhaps. Yes, we need alternatives to fossil fuels; no-one disputes that. Yes, there is an argument which holds that wherever wind turbines are put, they will be unsightly. There are even those who celebrate the construction as adding some kind of spurious interest to the vista.But there could not be a location in the land more inappropriate than the Braes of Doune. Those who proposed and approved it should be ashamed.
Waiting for Prius hybrid seen over
Shortage of popular gas-electric cars eases, but demand is cooling, report says.
OPEC chief: Another output cut may be needed
INCHON, South Korea - OPEC President Edmund Daukoru warned on Sunday that the cartel may have to cut oil production again next month because the market was still "soft".While many other OPEC members have also said a further reduction may be in order at its December meeting, Daukoru's comments are the latest to signal that the cartel may not be satisified until it sees prices once again above $60 a barrel.
UK 'failed to save gas reserves'
This episode of Panorama aired in the U.K. last night, and can now be viewed online.
Fears over Sakhalin-2 revealed in Shell emails
Shell was warned more than four years ago by one of its own senior officials that he had major reservations about safety issues inside the troubled Sakhalin-2 development in eastern Russia.Internal Shell emails sent to the then technical director of the Shell-led Sakhalin Energy company raise fears about the size of wells, drilling in an earthquake area, and an unforgiving schedule.
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Rat
In other, very cynical and imprecise words, does Halliburton scratch its own back with a back scratcher, or does it use a flunky as its first preference?
This administration does pretty much as it pleases, regardless of the laws or regulations - and even if they get caught, they just ignore the outrage, or simply change the laws to fit their interpretation - see torture or invading Iraq because Congress said invading Afghanistan would be an appropriate response to what happened in NYC and the Pentagon.
And please notice that the amount 'loaned' still has not been paid back - maybe because if the oil which was refined and sold at $3 dollars a gallon is never repaid as ever more 'emergencies' loom, the American taxpayer gets to pay twice for the privilege of what they bought to begin with? So to speak - and yes, this is pure cynicism speaking - after all, I believe ExxonMobil borrowed some SPR oil, but putting it back would have actually, maybe, caused their 10 billion profit last quarter to be less than completely record breaking - and you know what that means to Wall Street. (And yes, I do hold heirloom ExxonMobil stock, so of course, I am just thrilled at such corporate behavior. Thrilled. For example, that ExxonMobil didn't take about 4 billion of their quarterly profit to solidly fund employee retirement - pure capitalism at work, people, I'm a shareholder and I think the only contracts that matter are the ones that result in a check in my bank account, not the ones where anyone expects a check from me for their bank account.)
Interesting you mention retirement. I'm wondering how much of the record profits that companies are recording now is related to them basically robbing their own internal systems to record a profit at all cost. This basically means significant underfunding of all cost centers such as research employee training new product development etc. I know that historically the amount of money going into research at most companies has dropped significantly along with the introduction of pretty shady practices regarding retirement accounts and health benefits.
It seems that many American companies have become marketing firms. Now we still seem to have a robust technical economy for higher end products like equipment for microchip manufacturing lines test equipment airplanes and parts etc.
But I'm suspicious that the record profits of today's corporation are more based on short term investment strategies that make many companies susceptible to market downturns.
If anyone has links that can confirm or deny this I'd like to read them.
Mike
- Herman Daly
Can't wait to see what happens when younger generations finally realize there is no pension waiting for them when they get old, but that they are still supposed to fund the retirement of the previous generation.
Why is it that those who invest money in a business are supposed to share in its fruits, and those who invested their lives in it are not?
The bigger-picture reason why "retirement" as a concept is failing, is because we have a monetary system that requires "growth", and that's becoming impossible. That will mean a destruction of the value of "savings".
But the system did what it was designed to do: make the early "players" rich, at the expense of everybody else. When the game ends, it will be clearly seen as a pyramid scheme.
I'm more interested in what the requirements are, rather than the political machinations, not that I disagree with your analysis. How would loans be repaid if we had an honest administration? (Just regarding the SPR; don't want this to go all over the place).
I certainly admire your belief that the laws and regulations will be followed in a more perfect world.
But when finding the Thomas link again, I noticed the text 'Most laws passed by Congress are public laws.' Of course, in the last generation or two there have been non-public laws relating to things like national security, but I still find it surprising, recognizing the reality of today's America, that America also has secret laws - like much of the recent laws/regulations related to flying, tough interrogation, or anything related to energy policy which involves the Vice President. I find it especially interesting that someone subjected to tough interrogation is currently being forbiddent to talk about it to his lawyer or in an open court, since it is important for the government to preserve its methods from becoming public.
http://www.fe.doe.gov/programs/reserves/index.html
'In addition to national energy emergencies, crude oil has been withdrawn many times from the SPR sites for other reasons. Small quantities of oil are routinely pumped from the storage caverns in tests of the reserve's equipment. And in several instances, oil has been removed from the caverns under the legal authority to "exchange" SPR crude oil. This authority allows the SPR to negotiate exchanges where the SPR ultimately receives more oil than it released; in other words, the exchanges can be used to acquire additional oil for the SPR. The Hurricane Katrina loans, mentioned above, were conducted using the exchange authority.'
But even though your link includes the text 'The recently enacted Energy Policy Act of 2005 directs the Secretary of Energy to fill the SPR to its authorized one billion barrel capacity.' notice that replacing/filling the SPR was frozen by Bush after oil prices started to rise to new heights.
In other words, look at the oil going in, the oil going out, and never forget - words are cheap, but a barrel of oil will still cost you around $60. And remember - the drawdown of the SPR stocks was actually an increase, since it was an exchange which means more oil in the future.
I remain too cynical for my own good, except that it is just so difficult to just close my eyes to what is really going on in the U.S. Hey, how is that voting machine process running? You know, the one where apparently all the reported mistakes seem to benefit the Republicans? Just more proof of that liberal media bias, I guess.
Don't have the links avail at the moment - this was covered a few weeks ago. Easy to GOOGLE.
The Norwegian Pearl will again sail on the Ems, and again, E.on AG will shut down the transmission line. They had simulated the effects of the shutdown the last time, and are still not sure why there was a problem.
E.on AG admits that they shut down the line, but notes that the power outages started a half hour later, and though they are not trying to avoid responsibility for what they are responsible for, it still really couldn't have been their fault.
The German Federation of Wind Energy (Bundesverband Windenergie) notes that the amount of wind energy being fed into the system at the time was 30% of the maximum, and that the wind producers reacted correctly to the system shutdown, especially in eastern Germany.
The system was not heavily used at all on Saturday night.
A few sidenotes from earlier articles -
'Die Stromausfallzeiten seien seitdem von durchschnittlich 15 Minuten auf 23 Minuten im Jahr gestiegen. "Das ist nicht akzeptabel", kritisierte Kelber.' That is, in average, amount of time electricity is not available in Germany has gone from 15 to 23 minutes since the 1980s, which is unacceptable. (For American readers - per year, not per incident, at least according to my understanding of the German text - that is, what people in a place like the mid-Atlantic are used to for reliability is considered laughable here.)
The amount of investment in the German transmission network has declined approximately 40% since the 1980s.
Politically, it looks like the high rates the energy companies charge will no longer be so easily accepted as part of maintaining high reliability - after all, the power was out for an hour in some places. An entire hour, which is outrageous and insulting for those people who pay good money to have electricity available.
Now, who shouldn't it be acceptable to put 10 mln. people in the dark for 2 hours to let this ship pass?
Though I tend to be wary of any calls for a new agency at the EU level, it is possible that an EU wide view of the system could be useful at this point.
Why cellulosic ethanol will not save us
Thanks RR. (I think.)
Now I'm so confused I don't know how I'm going to vote on Prop 87 (if at all) tomorrow in California.
I was leaning towards Yes for the purpose of sending a message, but the closer one looks at all the special interests that have vested interests in not getting to the truth, the more one worries that our whole society is nothing but a bunch of special interests, all lying to each other just so that they can get theirs and screw everybody else.
As for Governor in California, Arnie is going to win hands down. So I think I'll vote Green --just to send a message of sorts.
What are you other Californians out there doing tomorrow? Voting? Not voting? Voting for 87? Against?
My thinking is that defeat of 87 now will dissuade better proposals from coming on ballot later.
Are humans more emotional (and less rational) than yeast?
Maybe we are.
Voted straight D, except for Senate; went green. Yes on 87. No on Iraq (county proposition)
democRAT
Hothgor (from yesterday's open thread):
In his book, Deffeyes was apparently using crude + condensate (C+C), with a Qt of 2,000 Gb. I think that Khebab came up with a Qt of about 2,250 for total liquids. It's possible that Deffeyes may have posted something about total liquids, but I haven't seen it.
When you do a HL plot, it is very important that you try to get the best cumulative data you can. If you want to compare apples to apples, you might want to work with the same data set that most people are using, rather than guessing at the prior cumulative data. I'm sure Khebab could send you his world total liquids data plot if you asked him. But I am a little puzzled as to why you should try to reinvent the wheel. I haven't seen anyone better at doing HL work than Khebab.
In any case, the crux of your argument is that the last three data points of world data have some kind of magical meaning. As I pointed out yesterday, Texas, the Lower 48 and KSA all showed the same kind of change in slope right before they started declining. And on Khebab's consistent vertical scale the "anomaly" doesn't really show up at all.
You are arguing that we have not peaked even as world C+C production trends down, as Deffeyes predicted, while the four current super giant fields are almost certainly all declining or crashing. I would also point out that, as I predicted (based on an analysis of Khebab's work), the world net export situation looks pretty bad as time goes forward.
For the sake of argument, let's ssume that you are correct that we have another 300 Gb of conventional total liquids. At our current rate of consumption of total fossil fuel and nuclear energy, we burn through the energy equivalent of 300 Gb of oil (which would take decades to produce) in about four years.
My response:
I have work and some house work to do today, so I will not be available to immediately respond until this evening. Hint: it will probably include my charts based on just C + C, and we will see how those numbers stack up yet again. For those of you who were wondering, the following was my rebuttal to westexas on this issue:
Alright westexas,
I had all day at work to think about this little gem of a response and how best to debunk your little rant on this issue once and for all. This took me a couple of hours because I'm not a graph whiz, but this is what I've come up with.
First, I downloaded the Total World Oil Supply for the last couple of years xml file from the EIA at http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/ipsr/t14.xls
Then, I downloaded the Total World Oil Supply from 1980-2004 xml also from the EIA at http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/tableg2.xls
Now I will admit that I was unable to find the EXACT figures of cumulative production from the pre-1980 years, but after studying several global charts and a little trial and error, I was able to come up with an approximate number of 560 Gb.
After plotting these figures in an excel chart, I came up with this:
Which approximates with the previous posted graph:
Now the entire crux of your argument is that Laherrere uses a different vertical axis then you do, and this 'distorts' the chart making the anomaly appear to be more important than it actually is. Because you quote the 20% vertical scale as appropriate, I chose to use your own figures to come up with this:
As you can see, the new vertical axis only 'compresses' the figures, actually making them harder to read. After some more tweaking, I included my own 4% axis:
Now at this point, we have 3 different views of the same chart. This shows how much easier and harder it is to view the same information using a different vertical scale. Now for the fun part:
I updated Laherrere's chart to include 2006 at the current posted 8 month average. The above chart is what I came up with. Note that it doesn't exactly match his previous chart. I can offer only 3 solutions for this:
First, he manipulated his own trend line to show the ultimate recovery to be far larger then it actually will. Second, my own figures are not exact enough to accurately produce a trend line in agreement with his own. Third, I included the 2006 figures, helping to paint a more accurate picture over all 'My figure was based on the current 8 month average, perhaps if its higher the trend line would extend'. Personally, I believe the third option is the most likely.
Now I know that you don't like using the 8% vertical axis, so I included the following based on your own 20% axis:
Notice how the ultimate trend line does not change! 'Please use your imagination and fill in the remaining blank part of the line' Finally, I 'zoomed in' to a 4% vertical axis:
Again, the trend line does not change at all! The ultimate recovery amount is approximately 2550 Gb. This is 300 Gb more then Deffeyes states!
But how does 300 Gb affect the peak of production? Its quite simple: 300 Gb / 2 = 150 Gb for the 50% point. 150 Gb / 30 Gb = 5 more years until the peak. Deffeyes stated that the peak was approximately on January of 2006, and these figures push this back to January of 2011, in VERY close agreement with the latest ASPO projection of 2010, and to Cry Wolfs own projection of 2012!
Again, I must also point out that these figures will be modified in the future as a lot of production is scheduled to come online next year and a few giant fields in 2008. How will this confound the issue? Rembrant could probably shed some more light on it. I suspect it will push the ultimate recovery rate out to a maximum of 2750 Gb. That figure will undoubtedly increase as we discovery more oil in the future.
In conclusion:
Your assertion that the vertical sale of a HL significantly changes the outcome is based on bogus knowledge: There is clearly NO DIFFERENCE when using a 20%, 8%, or 4% scale! Furthermore, the lower % vertical axis serves only to allow a viewer to 'drill down' and see fluctuations in the total production clearly. In fact, it actually helps the average viewer see the ultimate recovery figure more accurately using a SMALLER vertical scale.
Westexas, I do not want to hear from you again that my statements in regard to this are not based on actual fact. I have done my homework and debunked your entire argument using your own cherished HL plots. Furthermore, the global average for HL correctly showing production peaks at 50% thus far is mostly correct, as 95% of all fields peak within 48-52% of their ultimate recovery amount 'as per the same HL'. There is no reason whatsoever to suspect that the world production will not follow this trend, as it is simply based on the average of every fields production in its 'region'.
But I guess I'm just a paid troll and disinformation spreader!
(I posted a note on yesterday's thread, prior to today's post, that I was responding on today's thread.)
What we have is an HL total liquids plot that Khebab did--using the best production data he could find--showing somewhere around 2,250 Gb or so for Qt--very similar to Laherrere's middle case in the above graph. Note that the infamous three points that Laherrere used to justify the much higher Qt only show up on a vastly expanded vertical scale, and I as have noted this change in slope is common in regions just prior to peaking production.
While I'm sure that we all appreciate your contribution to the Hubbert Linearization debate, I would point out that you have been doing it now for apparently 24 hours or so--and based on guesstimated production numbers. Again, Instead of guessing at the production data, why don't you just get the actual data from Khebab?
I would just ask the long term readers the following question: whose HL analyis do you value more, Hothgor's or Khebab's?
One of you has been doing this work for 24 hours, using guesstimated data, while the other has a Masters Degree in Physics and a Ph.D. in signal processing, and has been working with this method for a period of some years at least, using the best data he could find.
I have a BS in Geophysics, and I largely quit doing HL work when I realized how extremely capable Khebab is.
I just came from a meeting where I went nose to nose with one of the premier New Urbanists (also good friend of Kunstler).
I called him on a basic fact in his analysis (people will not walk > 1/4 mile) and pointed out that they will up to a 1/2 mile in "good conditions" such as the French Quarter. He finally agreed with my point.
The neighborhood (some good decades long community activists that live in the FQ) tended to agree with me, that the length of Rampart Street ought not be made a "B" street, that should be Basin Street. Traffic and parking should be focused there
The point is that reputation and experience count but they should NOT be beyond challenge.
Best Hopes,
Alan
Commenters here can claim that US marines are going to invade Mexico, Halliburton is building death camps, or any of a number of other wild and off topic conspiracy theories with no evidence and expect gentle treatment. But dare to question Westexas or HL and you might as well be drawing cartioon of the other prophets.
Hothgor came on quite strong in the beginning and would have done well to refine his arguments before issuing strong challenges to several of the credible posters here. However, his recent posts on HL are based on what appears to be solid analysis. I think they should be dealt with in the same manner.
As I noted down the thread, we have someone--Hothgor--who has admitted that he is guesstimating the cumulative production number, who has been doing HL work for 24 hours, who is not showing us his entire work and who is contradicting work done by Khebab, Stuart Staniford and Deffeyes.
If this is what you define as "Exactly the kind of debate that is needed to get to the bottom of some of these issues," perhaps you should talk to PG about making Hothgor an official contributor.
Hothgor did a HL to get more oil than what Westexas/Khebab have figured.
To get this number he used data that included all liquids.
All liquids include non crude and therefore HL can't be applied (can't do a HL on ethanol).
This was pointed out to him here and here.
He (to date) has refused to adjust his numbers to reflect this. But continues to shout and yell that he has "debunked your entire argument using your own cherished HL plots."
While I agree that intelligent debate should be encourage on this board, Hothgor has proven himself incapable of it.
According to Khebab' post you can't do HL on All Liquids. This is the source of your error (as I understand the argument to be).
I stated it very clearly above.
You must have at least seem my post since you clicked reply to it.
Why did you ignore it?
Why was your reply a complete non sequtor?
This is very trollish behaviour Hothgor.
Please REREAD what I typed before jumping to conclusions. I was criticized by westexas and others for using an estimated figure of cumulative production prior to 1980 for my all liquids HL. I have been repeatedly asked to make a C+C HL, and I am trying to do so to appease the anger doomer swarm. However, in order to do this, I need the cumulative C+C production prior to 1980 so that I can avoid this same nagging problem for my C+C HL.
All I asked for in my above response was for someone to supply me with a cumulative C+C Gb figure prior to 1980 so that I can make the most accurate HL possible. DO YOU UNDERSTAND THIS?
Now feel free to put your foot in your mouth :)
I would suggest that you email Khebab and get his data as Westexas has suggested - I would just be interested in how similar your results would be in that case. I also think you both have good points. Total liquids delivered to end user really is the important issue here (essentially net liquid production after EROEI considerations), but it probably shouldn't be in the C&C HL graph.
What really amazes me is all the controversy and emotion when your dates are almost trivially close to what many others here think, and we all agree on the need for alternatives, and soon.
Hothgor, I told you so. I really did. I warned you time and time again about how your sourcing, methodology and tone are affecting you credibility.
Westexas wasn't holding a popularity contest, it was a credibility contest. I don't fault him in the least for doing so. He has showed extrodinary patience with you. He as addressed you points to a level of clarity I find quite stunning.
He did debate the facts. Then he left it up to the board at large to weigh the matter as we feel fit. The overwhelming consensus here is you are a troll. I agree.
You are (as far as I can tell) still a young man. I hope you have learned something from this. Otherwise you are just wasting your time the same as you have been wasting our time.
No one has ever lasted long on TOD that can't back up their arguments. Let Hothgor have a go at his. He will either be proven wrong or proven right. Either way we will be better off for it. After this last batch of graphs, he is looking pretty good.
The insult "troll" is the first resort of those that can't face up to a logical argument. It reflects poorly on you that you can't do more to counter Hotgor than this tired attack word. Why not try a chart or present some facts if you are so smart and sure of yourself.
Westexas,
it's not all liquids but the HL is based on the BP data which is Crude Oil + NGL so it does not include the "Other Liquids" category (refinery gains, oxygenates, etc.).
Westexas, Hothgor can't just use Khebab's data, he for his own issues has to get new numbers to fit the HL plots too, or however you would state getting the number and lines to match up, ( love math, but simple stuff, 2-1+1=9 LOL, We needed a laugh. ). Hothgor is going to hack at this till he has found numbers and graphs that show what he really wants them to show, IMHonestO that is that Peak Oil is almost bogus, he Does think that it will happen, just way long time from now.
I Trust You, and I trust Khebab. I have read the data, I have followed the charts, I have scratched my head a time or three, but I do understand numbers, I understand them better than I understand women, ( married twice, you should hopefully learn more).
The plea you made in another thread a few days ago, about having help in handling Hothgor's posts and thoughts on TOD, Is one reason I am writing this. The Other is Hothgor is really getting under my skin and when someone does that, well, I just have to laugh at myself and wonder why? Because he is annoying that's why, like a kid in class who keeps pestering the girl in front of him, you have told him time and again what he should do, how he can better get along with people so now you are annoyed with him. WE or at least some of us are Annoyed at Hothgor, but we are a civil Lot, we have deep inset rules that we don't like to cross. So no shooting in the public forums!
Humor is my defence against myself getting annoyed. Bear with me.
Reach a point and decide, I will not respond to him at this point in time. Simple, but DAMNED hard to force yourself to do sometimes.
Charles E. Owens Jr.
Author at Large, aka Dan Ur, stand up comic wanna be.
Where is OilCEO? We need to really make the movie he was talking about a while ago, He stuck up for you, even when I didn't. Kudo's OILCEO.
Kudo's The candy, where is it now? Sorry random thought, where are all those things we loved as someone else?
2010 and 2015 are going to be right in the middle of a bunch of jammed packed Concerts! Oil for Food!,, Food for the Poor Americans living in Iowa! Who of our greatest rockers are going to be alive? Man! Scotty is dead. Go read his bio off of Yahoo Movies, Scotty Rocked in real Life. My Dad rocks in real life.
2010 sees him pushing 74, I hope he is retired by then, but knowing him if he is awake we will be having fun doing something. My mom turns 80 then, Don't know if she will be around for me to point out the Oil Peak to, She'll understand better than most of us. She stopped Caring what the MSM said years ago. She Married the smartest man in the world, he made her first maternity dress by hand, in about 6 hours, she went to church that next morning and People Loved her dress, Praises for her dress, They asked where did you buy that dress?, My husband made it!. BAM! My Aunt Leona (known as Aunt Sis to family) did not even blink, as if of course he can make it, even if he had NEVER made a dress in his life. I don't know if had made a dress, I am sure he repaired men's clothes. WOW I just thought, I was THERE , darn where are the digital cameras when you want one?
I have stated before that we can get ourselves out of this mess, WE can, but for some strange reason I wonder at times.
We did a good job, you wanted to help, We tired to hang you. Hey status quo from my view NOT! but sadly partly true. I am going to learn everything I can learn from my aging elders, I know a lot of you already are or have done this. Only way off this cliff is down.. We can come down the easy way! It ends in Splat! ( soft very lightly muffled sound really, in fact you might not even hear it, the wind sound as the ropes sometimes hiss on the way down if you have any, or the small tinkles of glass as metal items bounce. ...)
Or we can come down the hard way! Working our back lines, re-routing around faces we don't want to slow us, being careful, the EASY way is just a Edge away. It is easier to Come down than to go up, But it is still work.
See you in another post Hothgor.
Charles E. Owens Jr.
We tired to kill you, you survived, stay a while, we need survivors.
My two cents:
I am not an statistical expert, but I believe the work of SS, Deffeyes, Simmons, Westexas and Khebab, Darwinian, and others is ESSENTIAL to offset the work of Yergin & CERA, and Michael Lynch. Recall my earlier posting:
---------------------------------------------
Cornucopian Message helps bring the Peakdate sooner and a faster decline, Doomer Message delays the Peakdate later and helps mitigate decline.
Shaw's Paradox-------------------------------------------------
Remember that 99.9% of humans are unaware of Peak Everything, and follow the Cornucopian mindset. Hothgor, IMO, your current work is improving, but it is not yet sufficient to change my mind in regards to the experts I listed above.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Apparently you didn't learn your lesson yet, so I will advise you to seriously direct your attention to reading my rebuttal to your vertical scale issue. I proved with 3 different scales that the scale doesn't matter to the trend line. Weather its 20%, 8%, or even 4%, the trend line all points to the same figure of about 2550 Gb. What Laherrere did was useful in that it allowed the casual user to view the ups and downs a little more clearly.
BTW: I wanted to dismiss a common misconception about Laherrere's graph in regards to the final 3 plots. Several people have mentioned that the 3000 Gb line is based solely on those final 3 points. So I decided to make another graph including just those 3 points, and a second graph showing those 3 points and the current years productions:
As you can see, when you use only the last 3 points in his graph, the ultimate recovery amount is infinite. Clearly, this is not possible, so his graph must be a trend line of all years from 1985-2005. But just for a point of reference:
Note what happens when you add the estimated 2006 figure. The trend line is now no longer infinite and has an end point. Now I will state for the record that I do not believe that our Qt will reflect this trend line, I just thought it would be interesting to show you all a comparison :)
Well, problem is Deffeyes is using Crude Oil + condensate, you are using All Liquids (Crude Oil + condensate + NGPL + Other liquids). Consequently, the URR difference is mainly due to the contribution of NGPL + refinery gains. Your comparison is irrelevant!
How long will it take for unconventional sources to become conventional!
When will PO antagonist finally fess up and start including these unconventional production figures into their own. It does matter if C+C declines at 4% per year, but unconventional oil from Alberta or Oil Shale in the USA or tar sands in Venezuela are increasing at double that rate. Likewise, it doesn't matter if C+C are declining if we replace our gas guzzling cars with ethanol burning ones 'Let me state for the record this will never happen :P' It all comes down to perception:
Total Liquids are what matter.
My personal opinion is that the HL technique should be applied on each fuel category in isolation. Each fuel category has it own life cycle, production constraints and growth rate. For instance, synthetic oil derived from tar sands will likely not follow a logistic curve but reached a long plateau after a strong initial growth.
This is pretty much a methodology issue.
I believe that the world C+C numbers reflect unconventional oil production, especially from Canada. I assume that the Orimulsion stuff, a mixture of bitumen and water, is counted in total liquids.
In any case, the EIA shows that C+C production from Canada and Venezuela are both down relative to 12/05, in the case of Canada by almost 8%. Even if you are correct, I would also point out that you are talking about 74 mbpd declining at 4% (or 3,000,000 bpd or so at first), versus at most two mbpd or so increasing at 8% (or 160,000 bpd at first).
In regard to oil shale, hope springs eternal I suppose.
In regard to the total liquids issue, which I believe can be more properly described as the total energy issue, I think that we do need to keep the total fossil fuel + nuclear energy consumption number in mind--the energy equivalent of about one Gb of oil every five days, or all of Prudhoe Bay's oil reserves in less than two months.
Your point of view, which I am sure that we all deeply appreciate, is that you seem to see no problem with maintaining and expanding a fossil fuel + nuclear energy consumption rate of the energy equivalent of one Prudhoe Bay every two months. Is this correct?
I try NOT to focus on liquid transportation fuel. I've shown that its VASTLY more efficient to have a fleet of EV/PEHV/CAT cars then it is to continue to convert oil into gasoline, or NG into ethanol, or coal into syngas/synfuel. When it comes down to it though, I do think that nuclear 'both uranium and thorium reactors' AND renewables such as solar, wind, hydro, geothermal and tidal can rise up to meet the challenge of providing our energy needs. Using FFs for power is just a needless waste.
They just are hopes.
EV/PEHV/CAT (what is CAT) can do nothing about trucking.
Look at energy densities in the page four of that DOE presentation. You may see that fuel density for a cubic feet of energy. It is about 1 million BTU for diesel, gasoline and bio diesel. It is only 16 thousand BTU for NiMH Batteries.
You can remotely think that 16 thousand is better than 1 million, but I still prefer to think the other way around.
You read the physical part of the problem. Good, you made one move, most people are not even knowing the problem, so you are considerably more advanced than most people are.
The main problem is an economic problem, resulting from an energy density problem. Nuclear, solar, wind, hydro, geothermal and tidal wave energy is just for producing electricity. While it may be useful, it will not prevent the liquid fuel crisis. Building new dense city dwelings with people flocking back and forth using electric light rail might cut it, but we wont go there.
All electricity producing technologies were built using available fossil fuels. Fossil fuels enter in the life and death of everything made today. Money, clothes, food, part of you and I is directly dependant on fossil fuel only to be made into existance and transported.
When you think about EV cars, go a little bit further and think about a EV truck, hauling mostly the batteries and a wee bit of stuff. Think of a giant excavator power by batteries. Think of a tree feller/buncher or any other tree big iron powered by batteries. Think of how weird will it look.
Go a little bit further and asume wind energy is efficient enough and truly renewable. Think a wee bit further and imagine a wind powered plane. Far out eh!
And for the record, a CAT is a Compressed Air Transportation vehicle, and I firmly believe that all freight should be transported via rail once its on land :)
That post you refer to is flawed on at least two counts:
1 gallon of gas equivalent assuming 12% efficiency = 4.365 kWh
4.365 kWh * 360,000,000 gallons a day average = 1571400000 kWh
1571400000 kWh = 1571.4 GWh
1571.4 GWh / 12 hour recharge duration = 130.95 GWh
Now this is before any efficiency improvements to any future hypothetical EV fleet, and this assumes that this EV fleet will have the same mpg efficiency that our current ICE fleet has. I will go out on a limb and assume at least a 30% improvement in the mpg efficiency for these EVs.
130.95 GWh / 1.3 = ~100 GWh
Now I would like you all to note that our current electrical generation is 400 GWh off peak, and is around 1000 GWh during peak. This is after efficiency loss to end user demands. Because these hypothetical EVs would most likely only be charged at night, their power consumption will not be a significant drain or stress on our current in place power grid.
Interestingly enough, I found a synergy technology in the form of V2G 'Vehicle 2 Grid' plug ins. Essentially, we would have to retrofit a good portion of our parking garages/lots to allow EVs to be plugged into the grid during on peak times. When a spike in electricity occurs, the V2G EVs would be signaled to pump power back into the grid. Now there is a lot of ambiguity in what figures to use here, so I will simply state that my assumption is that the peak demand occurs between 12:00pm and 5:00pm.
100 GWh * 12 = 1200 GWh
1200 GWh / 5 = 240 GWh
240 GWh / 2 = 120 GWh
The 120 GWh return to the system assumes that this V2G system will not drain more then half of the charge from these EVs. This essentially means we can take off of the market 120 GWh of NG fired power plants, effectively allowing us to further reduce our hydrocarbon consumption.
So lets review:
100 GWh new baseline power production
-120 GWh required NG production
Our new net balance of energy is:
500 GWh steady state power '400 + 100'
980 GWh peak power state. '1000 + 100 - 120'
As you can see, an all EV fleet utilizing V2G technology and some modification to our transportation network helps us reduce our dependency on hydrocarbons. Additionally, the load balancing possibilities of V2G works very well with alternative forms of energy production such as wind and solar.
Hope you found this interesting, cause I sure as hell do :)
Others disagree about future US concumer attitudes, but I think that "many" (majority. significant minority) EV owners will plug in and recharge as soon as they get home, thus adding to the "dinner" peak. This peak is a secondary peak at some times of the year, and is often the daily peak in shoulder seasons (spring/fall). Dinner may be the new peak ! So there will be an impact in peak and dispatch of units and GHG emmissions.
A 12 hour average recharge will affect all 24 hours. Night workers will recharge during the day, some will recharge at work (some will have to for range for their commutes). You are adding a 24 hour average 50 GWh load to the grid and saying it has no effect.
I have some disagreements with your methodology about how you came up with the 100 GWh for 12 hours of every day, but do not have time for a complete critique ATM (you ignored some of my earlier comments).
Vehicle to Grid has a major problem. The life span of most (AFAIK all) chemical batteries is limited by the # of cycles. People will be unwilling to shorten the life of their expensive battery just to help the utility company. The economics of battery life will likely kill V2G.
The "Battery of the Future" is not yet certain (not yet invented ?), so it is difficult to understand it's technical limitations. How much will it cost ? How much will V2G shorten it's life ? I dunno.
Alan
But most consumers are NOT rational. Many drive around in ridiculously overpowered and under-performing gas guzzlers. Furthermore, how many consumers actually refill their gas tanks at the end of the day? I would wager the number is far closer to 0% then it is to 100%. They will drive around in their cars until the bitter end, their white knuckled hands tightly grasping the steering wheel and riding the ups and downs of the hills in a vain attempt to squeeze every last drop of petrol out of their tanks. Only when that annoying warning noise chimes in about low fuel do they pull into the gas station and refill. Simply put, if all consumers were rational, no one would ever run out of gas :)
Now lets fast forward 20 years. The recent oil crunch around 2010 has finally opened peoples eyes into the vulnerable state they have so carelessly allowed themselves to be pulled into. Several 'inquisitions' were waged against prominent Oil executives by disillusioned congressmen demanding to know why they lied to us and why we weren't prepared for the end of cheap oil! One of the fortunate side effects of peak oil is that now most people drive much smaller, much more efficient EVs and CATs too and from work.
So now we take this same gas guzzling soccer mom from the early 2000's and place her into this hypothetical 2020. She realized how ridiciulous it was for her to be driving around in a car that got less then 15 mpg and has cashed in on a brand new EV that can go 300+ miles on a single charge. She drives too and from work, picks up her groceries, drops the kids off at soccer practice before returning home. She has a handful of groceries that she carries in, and she mysteriously ignores the electric plug in for her car as she enters. After all, while this same soccer mom has learned her lesson on efficiency, she is still the same irrational consumer that isn't 'filling' her car up at night.
In short, the future is going to necessitate that consumers modify their vehicle habits and adopt a far higher efficiency standard on their personal transportation. But people are still not going to plug in every night.
The totality of all consumers will have some EVs charging at every hour of the 24. Peak will be increased. How much cannot be predicted now.
BTW, several women I know never let the tanks get half empty. OTOH, I filled up my car the day before the hurricane season started and I may do so again today although it is not pressing. But this may be the nadir in diesel prices.
Your example of the future is one I fear. For energy has been shifted from oil to coal (for electricity) and per capita energy consumption stays high.
Alan
First, keeping ones tank completely filled. I wait until the tank is almost dry to refill for one reason: Fuel economy. I get better mileage with 150 less pounds in my car than with the extra weight. I keep a couple gas cans on hand to guard against the aforementioned supply disruptions. Also, It takes about 5-10 minutes to fill up, if I were to do that every time I drove home, I would be adding a serious amount of wasted time to my schedule every year, thus the car gets no fuel until it begs.
Second, the people forgetting to plug in their EVs. This one is ridiculous. If roomba can plug itself in automatically, you had better believe that a big ticket item like a car will be able to handle it. It would be pretty easy to have a website that broadcasts the current stress level of the grid. The charger would then weigh its need for power with the grids need for power. The customer would tell their car how long their commute is and the car would make sure that it is always charged in the morning to the minimum level without putting undue stress on the grid.
Also, about the battery lifetime, as I understand it, the lifetime of a deep cycle battery is not so much a function of the number of cycles as the depth of discharge of each cycle. Thus, a battery experiencing only 10% discharge would last for thousands of cycles while a battery that experiences 90% discharges might only last a couple hundred cycles. This might not apply to the newer types of batteries though, I am not a battery expert.
The new batteries coming out have been pretty impressive (i.e. A123 systems, Altair). They still need a lot of real world beating, but are definitely promising. These tests are done to 100% Depth of Discharge as well, which is even more impressive. A 9,000 cycle life battery, discharge and recharged once per day would theoretically last 24.7 years. Even Altair's site says they probably won't last that long because of other concerns (i.e. physically damaged somehow).
Regarding the 16K/1000K number. Li-ion has 2.5 the density of that, and the energy extracted in a car is about 3 times higher for electricity. And consider the energy density of the battery+motor and tank+enginge combination, and electric starts to look a lot better.
And while nobody can do anything about the density of petroleum fuel, batteries keep improving. As i pointed out above, the jump from Prius/EV1 technology to Tesla technology was more than a doubling in less than ten years.
They are not.
Compressed air either.
They are just not so efficient way to carry energy.
As stated by Alanfrombigeasy, it is much more efficient to use current to power light rail. Using EV or any other combination of standalone vehicle is just fantasy thinking.
Oh, and we need a complete rebuild of the entire living system, not just transportation. That include the banking system.
Wrong again.
Peak natural Gas is coupled with Peak Oil (NGL is a growing category of "oil production", NGL has a different mix of the mostly the same chemicals that are in condensate). Natural gas is co=produced from many oil wells. One can even make gasoline from NG if one has excess NG (no move to this because NG has better uses, even in Qatar).
Ethanol takes large amounts of natural gas to produce. Peak NG will likely bite sooner and perhaps harder than Peak Oil in North America.
Rob Peter to pay Paul comes to mind with ethanol. Once NG shortages hit the US and prices are $20+, corn ethanol will shrink significantly.
So ethanol should be ignored in a strategic POV, which is what we discuss here.
Alan
a) We have typically focused on peak OIL, and thusfar the modelling and extrapolation based on the original Texas and US peaking, seems to be a very good fit, and appears consistent with a total of 2250Gb.
b) Hothgor is trying to add an additional layer of complexity of top of this (in effect trying to define peak LIQUIDS). Even as a non-mathatician I can see the limitations and drawbacks of this approach; foremost of which is that the original peak OIL modelling is dependent ultimately on one major parameter - geology.
c) However peak LIQUIDs is dependent on a whole range of other parameters - in the case of ethanol such things as climate, land availability, govt intervention raise their heads, whereas in the case of oil sands factors such as water availability, availability of abundant cheap natural gas etc have significant inputs.
d) Because these other Liquids are so dependent on many more variables outside geology by trying to superimpose them on top of the geology based depletion model it would appear to be you MUST destabilise the accuracy/dependability of the original plot - in effect I dont see how you can meaningfully adapt an OIL based model to and ALL LIQUIDS model
So Hothgor I would say what you have attempted to do is interesting, but flawed.
Generally he relies upon rhetoric instead of data.
When he does do some analysis, his data sources are suspect.
Numerous people have questioned the accuracy of his work.
When his work is challenged he resorts to Ad Hominem attacks, changes the subject or does not respond.
Overall his purpose here seems to be nothing more than to goad people or provide disinformation.
So I still think he is either a paid troll, or a young 20 something, who though intelligent, needs to grow up.
I have been posting a lot on this subject because I value this site and hate to see the quality of it degraded by such people.
As it stands, not ONE person thus far has even suggested where my numbers are wrong: they only say that they ARE wrong.
My challenge for all of you this evening is to mathematically PROVE how I am wrong. If no one can do so, then I will have to consider my analysis to be within 2 standard deviations '95% probability' of being accurate.
Reading above from one of your earlier posts...
#1 - Please learn a little respect or piss off.
#2 - Learn to use "whether" instead of "weather".
And finally, I know it is a shot in the pants to recently get a degree, but it doesn't give you the right to masturbate on a blog.
And I'm sorry for the 'weather' and 'whether', that was a careless mistake with the spell checker :P
There ARE substitutes to oil. Some of them are dependent on some hydrocarbon input, others are not. It will take a basket of solutions to remedy this problem in the long term. And as I said before: I am not going to simply give up and harp doom and gloom. I want to DO something about it, and maybe convince a few others to do so too, who then convince others to do so and so on...
And who knows, maybe, just maybe that will be enough...
Thank You for being patient, in this post.
But, you also have been impatient in other posts, even if someone calls you a liar, a cheat, a wife beater, and you suck your thumb at night, Don't get mad, be patient, be calm. Others did not do it, so why should you do it you ask me! Cause it does not matter what the others do, it matters what you do. I am not always patient enough to post replies to people on here, I have failed a lot of times to think before I type. We all learn from our actions hopefully, sometimes it takes decades, sometimes seconds, but sometimes never.
Hopefully we will ALL learn from this week's Debates, Posts, Threads, Quips, Quotes, and Rants. I know I have. I judged you before I knew more about you, that is really totally unlike me and my worldview, but I did it anyway. Please Forgive me.
Whatever your answer to that last line is, so be it.
Take all the data piles that you need numbers for, and make a list of them, Post your list. I have read through and Westexas did offer you some data for something that you were looking for, But I don't know what part of the puzzle it was, ask him, or others, they can help you. I would, but I am running on nearly 4 hours sleep in 72 hours of living.
I think you should not be a gloomer, it don't help much. Being a Doomer helps you get motivated, if you don't dwell on the doom so much. I used to do a lot more high risk living than I do in general now, I have faced certain death, I was not gloomy about it. But I realize that Doom is walking down that road heading toward us, and I know the feeling, I have had it before. I am not in as much control of the ongoing movements as I am while doing Most of my Other High Risk stuff, I only control a small sphere of the whole wide world, and I barely influence much of the sphere just outside my personal space.
But I will do whatever I can to not meet Doom. Even though I know I'm going to meet him and he has a big stick and he is mad at EVERYONE.
Keep on working on the things you have, ask the questions, when the guys knock you down, get back up and start from where you left off.
Send me e.mail if you think anything I know or might know can help you, or if you want to FLAME my Butt into next week. Hey Dude I need something to torch me to the 10th, I got some serious hiking to do, and I still can't sleep with this head cold.
Party on Dudes!
Charles E. Owens Jr.
Author at Large, aka Dan Ur.
When you start adding in other liquids, you confuse the graph.
K.I.S.S.
Finally, I think a projection of total liquids could be useful, but you can't say "we have some corn ethanol here so we can just assume that there is 800 more Gb in SA."
One of the reasons for doing this is that, for example, you can't apply a (theoretical) ethanol/acgricultural technology breakthrough to the oil that is IN THE GROUND.
Please correct me if I'm wrong.
Exactly my point, you have to separate the sources or your conclusions will be biased!
Sure, I'm sure the world will be able to buy all the oil it wants at $200/bbl. The permanent depression from hugely increased energy costs should really cut consumption.
Hrothgar, you've never really answered the question of who is your paymaster. I'm curious-a major oil company that doesn't want its stockholders to find out that they are in the last stages of the cheap energy business? The Saudi's? The imperialist agencies of the US government that are trying to hide their schemes? Inquiring minds want to know.
What really amazes me about internet trolls is your arrogance and abusiveness. That means both you and Freddie. The Oil Drum has a fairly high level of discourse and the benefits of many fine contributors, yet you always sem to take disagreements to a personal attack level. I find this to be offensive and to show your lack of breeding, I'm sure your mothers would be ashamed if they were ladies.
But maybe thats whats driving some of you crazy: how can someone not involved in the oil industry possibly be able to analyze the data and come up with a working conclusion? Not only that, but my conclusions aren't quite as pessimistic as yours are. If I am a paid troll or disinformer, why is it that I consistantly state that I see the peak of oil in the 2010-2015 range? I'm not running around denying that a finite resource can't be exploited at increasing rates. I don't believe that the invisible hand will magically place more oil in the ground. And yet I'm constantly attacked because my opinions differ from yours.
I cant apologize for that, but I will continue to state my opinion.
But you know, there is an old saying: making assumptions about someone usually makes you look like an ass. :P
Khebab,
What do you show for pre-1980 cumulative world (BP) production?
My comments:
Khebab's Qt is 2,235 Gb, which is for crude + condensate + NGL's, which is quite similar to Stuart Staniford's estimate. This in turn is quite similar to Laherrere's middle case HL estimate, which is based on not weighting the last three point anomaly, which does not even really show up on Khebab's plot. And again, we saw larger inflections right before production started declining in Texas, the Lower 48 and KSA.
So, we have someone--Hothgor--who has admitted that he is guesstimating the cumulative production number, who has been doing HL work for 24 hours, who is not showing us his entire work and who is contradicting work done by Khebab, Stuart Staniford and Deffeyes.
I would hasten to add that Deffeyes predicted a world C+C decline and we are seeing a world C+C decline.
Now if you have a figure that is more accurate then 560 Gb, please, please, PLEASE let me know what it is, as I would LOVE to update my HL chart to reflect the more accurate number. If you DON'T have this figure, then I will have to speculate that you don't have the exact figures yourself.
I will also point out that in order for our production to fall into line with Laherreres middle case, and by default Stuart and Khebab's, current global production would have to be approximately 76 million bpd, not the 84+ million bpd it is. Thats a HUGE difference, AND it has been that way for the past FOUR YEARS. How long does production have to remain at that rate for you to seriously consider using that data? 5 years? 10 years? 15 years?
For the record, I think 4+ years of the same 'trend' speaks for itself. Additionally, I am volunteering my excel file up to ANYONE, and I mean ANYONE who would like to view it. Just give me your email address, and I will be HAPPY to send it to you.
But go ahead westexas. Keep on dismissing my work and opinion. Its what you do best.
A simple request.
Just get the complete BP world data base from Khebab, and then show us your complete HL plot.
I suggest showing all of the points that will fit within the 20% P/Q mark; this will allow us to compare your work to Khebab's, and you can show us how Khebab, Stuart Staniford and Kenneth Deffeyes have been so wrong on their Hubbert Linearization work.
I would remind everyone that Kenneth Deffeyes predicted, based on his HL plot, that the most likely peak for world C+C production was late 2005, and world C+C production is down since then.
I would also remind everyone that Matt Simmons last year started warning us about an imminent decline in Saudi oil production. Depending on what the Saudis are actually producing of late, their production in late 2006 will be down by between 600,000 bpd and 1,000,000 bpd from where it was when Matt's book was published.
These two gentlemen, with something like 90 years of experience between them, made some bold predictions/statements, and so far they have been right.
The best case for Ghawar is that the field is producing one barrel of water for every two barrels of oil, in a field that has already been redeveloped with horizontal wells. A more likely scenario is that the water cut is probably pushing 50%, where a rapidly thinning oil column is squeezed between a rising water leg and an expanding gas cap.
And I already proved to you multiple times: It doesn't matter WHAT the P/Q scale is. The results will be EXACTLY THE SAME.
Hothgor,
The "someone else's" numbers are BP's, hardly a fan of Peak Oil.
I am just asking you to meet the same standards as Khebab, Stuart Staniford and Kenneth Deffeyes. Just show us the complete HL plot. I suggested a 20% P/Q limit, so that we can easily compare it to Khebab's plot. But show as high a P/Q limit as you want, but I think that you should at least meet the same standards as everyone else. Just show us the complete plot, or at least all the points that will fit within the 20% P/Q limit.
Robert, still a fan of our new friend?
Khebab has four HL plots in this article: http://www.energybulletin.net/16459.html
I'm just asking for the same kind of plot from you, which is the same kind of plot that I have done, that Stuart has done and that Deffeyes has done.
Based on your vast experience, you are asserting that I'm wrong, that Khebab is wrong, that Stuart is wrong and the Deffeyes is wrong.
So, I am asking you to present the same kind of data that we have all presented.
I love a good debate, because I learn from them. I have learned a few things in this discussion about HL that I did not know. For that, I am glad this debate is taking place. If Hothgor is ultimately shown to be in error, then that just strengthens your argument. You will have survived the challenge from someone intent on proving you wrong. I am not cheering on one side or the other; I am just trying to learn a bit from the arguments.
I will say that I agree that HL is no good for total liquids. There is double-dipping that goes on in the total liquids calculation. For example, diesel fuel used to produce ethanol gets counted twice.
In the mean time, just show us the same kind of complete HL plot that Khebab and Stuart did. I'm sure that Khebab will be happy to point you to the BP (crude + condensate + NGL's) data. You can get his e-mail by clicking on his name. I'm sure that Khebab and Stuart would like to know why they are wrong.
I'm probably as guilty as anyone of posting off-the-wall shit on this board, but I don't think i've ever come close to wasting people's time to this degree!
All you've done today is post a half-dozen HL plots for All Liquids, something which teaches us nothing since neither Hubbert's Peak nor the HL method apply to all liquids. Several people have pointed this out to you. I would really like to know what RR and Oil CEO found that was so interesting and enlightening in your All Liquids HL plots. It's beyond me.
Now you're frantically claiming that you need pre-1980 C+C data so that you can post the "real" HL plot for C+C. Westexas has given you the link several times for Khebab's C+C HL plot. Here it is again:
http://www.energybulletin.net/16459.html
This plot was created by Khebab in May of 2006. It includes data through the year 2005. In other words, it is as up-to-date as one can get, and it was created by an expert in HL plots.
You know very little about HL plots. You have admited this yourself. You don't have the data that you need, so you are asking other people to provide it for you. Westexas has suggested that you ask Khebab for the data. I think this is a wonderful idea. As a matter of fact, while you're at it, you might as well have him do the HL plot for you too!
Oh, wait a minute, he already did it. Here's the link:
http://www.energybulletin.net/16459.html
(again)
I would like to present for the record the fact that this is the first mention of NGL by Hothgor not only today, but ever. This morning it was all about All Liquids. Hothgor went on and on about how, "Peak oil is a liquids crisis," and "Total liquids are what matter." Well, Khebab shut him up about that real fast. Then he started frantically searching for pre-1980 data to do a C+C HL plot, all the while admitting that he knew absolutely nothing about HL plots, yet fully expecting that once he got his hands on the data, which he incidentally had no idea where to find, his C+C HL plot would prove Khebab, Stuart Staniford, etc. entirely wrong. During this phase of frantic pleading for data, RR, Oil CEO, and Jack cheered him on eagerly. Just a few posts above this one, Westexas mentions for the first time that Khebab's HL plots are based on C+C+NGL's. Hothgor responds with his trademark smirk, "I thought we were just talking about C+C :P" At that point, I light into him, detailing the entire waste of time that he has subjected everyone to today, a day in which the only evidence of any kind he has presented has been six HL plots on Total Liquids (as we all know HL plots on Total Liquids have no meaning), and he now bizzarly responds, "Again, Khebab uses C+C + NGL. Im trying to make a HL using only C+C. Is that so hard to understand?" as if the whole discussion today has been about some difference between an HL plot on C+C and an HL plot on C+C+NGL's.
When I first came on here, I was accused of being a troll several times. I never took offense, since I had no idea what it meant. Hothgor's posts today have been enlightening. I'm learning something new here.
Westexas and co have called for a C+C HL
Khebab uses a C+C + NGL HL
Its very difficult to debate against someone when they are constantly changing the rules of the game. HL in general work for forecasting in the PO circles because they rely primarily on such ambiguity. And for the record, HL are EXTREMELY easy to produce. It took me all of 5 minutes to make a rudimentary one using randomly typed in data, and a further 15 minutes or so to apply this trial and error process to make an exact replica of widely circulated HLs using the EIA figures. If you would like a walk through on this process, I would be more then happy to accommodate you in a different post.
Now, since the EIAs data is vastly different then BPs data, on the order of about 4 million bpd in 2005, this explains why my own HL is so different. It should be noted that the EIA data did not include ethanol of any kind, but it did include unconventional oil production and refinery additions. So let me state that again:
NO RENEWABLES WERE USED IN MY HL!!!
Please let that sink into your closed-minded heads.
Since these additional sources ARE being used to meet demand, they must be included in any kind of HL. The PO community will have to come to terms with what this means to the peak oil 'NOT PEAK C+C' date and our future reaction to this. Now, because no one seems to have the data I was looking for on hand, and how convenient that is for westexas I might add, I was forced to go out and examine Laherreres data more intensely.
What I found there helped to explain a lot of the inconsistencies in his HL and my own when plotting for just the current production numbers. Laherrere notes that a global HLs based on C+C, C+C + NGL, All Liquids are woefully inaccurate as a predictive tool because "the oil peak will not correspond to the 50% Qt because of dissymmetry brought by multiple cycles of production." That is to say, production prior to the 60s was based on producing the maximum amount of oil from a field, while production afterwards was geared towards maximizing profits for shareholders.
I would like to note here that this was very very short sighted of the world in general as wise management of our existing reserves might have delayed the peak of production for decades.
Be that as it may, Laherrere is forcasting an ultimate unconventional + synoil 'ctl/ctg' + NGL to come in at aproximately 1 Tb, or even as much as 2 Tb. This explains why his own chart showed the HL extending beyond 3 Tb. Again, this does NOT include any ethanol whatsoever. And as Cry Wolf stated on the other drumbeat, this is why HL are a poor choice at predicting ultimate recovery amounts.
In short, what I have attempted to do was paint a much broader picture of our liquids crisis that we are about to face. You can of course agree or disagree with my data findings, but it's useful none-the-less. And now...
I dl'd your data from the source you said you used.
I saw this
I went to the definitions listed in the spreadsheet.
It lists Other liquids as
so your claim of
Is incorrect.
This was already pointed out but in interest of being fair, I thought I'd check on it myself.
I then looked at Laherrere's data Hothgor linked above.
In fact the graph title says "all liquids"
So the comment
is incorrect.
OilCEO, Jack, when can I start calling him a troll?
Good night.
Less writing tomorrow.
Hothgar is probably sleeping. He is going to get up tomorrow, read the various endorsements of his positions, maybe rest a day, maybe not - but he is going to be hell to deal with.
He's like the German Army, very willing to abandon weak, untenable positions in favor of strategic advantage. He doesn't cling to ground like others have. The British and French on the Western Front. The Americans in Korea and Vietnam. The Japanese the whole war.
Meanwhile you were up all night wearing yourself out, using your best material in yesterday's thread. The best you can do is repeat yourself.
Sorry, but it really can't be helped.
Is this a war?
Are we trying to defeat the doomers? Keep throwing crap against the wall until something sticks? Now we've gone 'em!
That seems to be what Hothgor seems to be doing. Started with EVs, moved into semiconductors, then he was an expert in battery technology, then road repair, next geology, then oil production. Now its HL.
He's on a mission to defeat dommerism by any means he can. He's made up his minds and will find any and all data he can use. He'll fudge numbers, claim editorials as "peer reviewed" or use lousy sources. I won't accuse him of lying about the ethanol. But give me a break it was one of the central complaints about his HL charts. Oops, he just forgot that.
What do you mean? Its 6pm. Oh wait, I forgot, you don't live in Japan :P
Yes, so I was wrong. I assumed you lived in the US. I don't know why. Stupid of me. I should have known better. But you gave yourself away. That was unnecessary. As it turns out Hothgar is a Vampire. So you'll have worse things to fear.
Hahaha. I'm very much enjoying this. Let's try to all keep this civil. Let's try to make fun of each other, if we have to, but never insult. We are all on the same team.
This is not an adversarial system.
Its not Hothgor takes the cornacopia side and Westexas takes the doomer side. They both lay into each other with all they have and the truth pops out someplace inbetween.
We should be working together to explore and understand the issues. Disagreement is a great way to learn but its not the only way.
I've been advising Hothgor again and again to be careful about his sources, methodology and tone. I've warned him it will hurt his credibility and it has.
If he's not a troll, then he sure uses a lot of trollish behavior. Just read this drumbeat's comments, it has cost him is credibility.
Many Kisses,
Iva Toguri
Never. I don't know if I have ever seen anyone on this site I would consider a troll. Hothgor certainly is not here just to cause trouble and disrupt the discussion.
There are several posters who drive me nuts with frequent posts about all sorts of ridiculous topics that I think have nothing to do with peak oil. But I don't see any point in constantly attacking them.
I agree that Hothgor was bit rough around the edges when he started posting. Since that time he has been sloppy with his evidence and made several unfortunate minor errors. I do think he needs to sharpen up if he wants to but heads with Westtexas, Khebab, Alan and/or RR. However whether he does or not isn't my business.
TOD has a huge tolerance for all sorts of idiocy as long as it is negative idiocy. My impression is that Hothgar is primarily a target of such rage because he is questioning the party line, not because of his other issues. Kevarabumunga or whatever, was 1000 times more rude than Hothgar at his worst.
I don't know if Hothgar is right or wrong. I wish he would sharpen his attack a bit. But his recent posts, particularly the HL charts have brought much needed debate to this issue. Regardles of claims to the contrary, Stuart and Westtexas didn't see things the exact same way.
None of us is perfect or has inherent credibility. We need to debate and discuss our thoughts. When I first posted on TOD, I was shocked at how much anger a dissenting opinion can stir up. I had thought be people wanted to find out the truth, not promote their preconceptions. I often think many of the doomers should start their own site where the only criteria for membership is you have to agree.
I am open to all arguments. I am 20% doomer, 80% optimist. I don't see eye to eye on may issues with Dave Cohen or Leanan, but I respect their opinions and would much rather debate with them than some idiot choir chirping "yes, you are so smart".
I have tried again and again to point out to him how his poor sourcing, inconsistencies (if you want to avoid the word lies), methodologies, and tone are affecting his credibility.
I linked to a couple above, but you can just seach my comment history if you want to see more examples. And not just by me, but other people have spoken to him about this as well.
If he's not a troll, then he sure acts like one. Look at SAT, he must have been pulling his hair out in frustration. Hothgor is all over the place, changing positions, disapeering, non sequitors etc. He even attacked Westexas personally for his vacation.
First he says including ethanol into a HL is good. Then he's on a desperate search to find non all liquid numbers. Then he claims he never used numbers that included ethanol. Then oops he forgot, he used ethanol numbers but they didn't really affect the results anyway.
He's an expert in everything. Off the top of my head he's weighed in on PVs, CATS (whatever they are), batteries, superconductors, asphalt, construction, geology, oil drilling, rig uterlization, now it HL. His only theme is anti doomerism. He keeps throwing this crap against the wall hoping desperatly something will stick. Finally beacuse of Westexas's kindness he's got a hit.
His work has been shoddy as hell. He fudges numbers, miscites sources, uses crappy sources, ignores evidence, invents evidence, uses anidotal evidnce etc etc
And now its all come back to bite him in the butt.
I welcome dissent on this board. Hothgor is just generating noise. If he isn't a troll, kindly illustrate the behavior it'll take to be a troll.
I will start with Deffeyes:
First, I downloaded the world C+C figures from the EIA at http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/table22.xls This gave me figures for total C+C from the world from the years 1980 to 2004. In order to include the data from 2005, I had to download http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/ipsr/t41c.xls and I copied the 2005 figure into the previous table for total world.
Next, I had to devise an estimate of total C+C production that would also satisfy the demand of Deffeyes for C+C production from 1985-2005 to max out at 2250 Gb. This figure ended up being 460 Gb for cumulative C+C from 1850-1984.
Plugging in all of this data yielded:
Notice how nicely my HL fits in with Deffeyes own data. The Qt is approximately 2251 Gb
Now I included the above 2 graphs to help demonstrate how future AND past production trends can influence Qt on a HL. My 2006 figure was based on a C+C output of 73,500,000 bpd C+C, which was slightly lower then last years 73,554,000 bpd C+C. As you can see, I am doing my best to be as transparent about my thought process as I can be.
I would like to note that from my 2002 graph to my 2006 graph, Qt increased by 229 Gb 'which is like adding another KSA' or a 4 year average of 57.25 Gb per year. If current production trends are continued as Rembrant has maintained, this trend is likely to continue until 2010 for an Qt of approximately 2544 Gb, or 293 Gb more then Deffeyes predicted. This figure does NOT include extraction increases on the downslope past 2012, and the likelihood of that NOT happening is remote at best.
Now on to Khebab's C+C + NGL. I went directly to his source data at BP This excel file allowed me to view C+C + NGL data for the entire world.
Now in order to devise an estimate of C+C + NGL that was in agreement with Khebabs 2235 Gb, I had to include cumulative production prior to 1965 of 157 Gb.
Plugging in all of this data yielded:
This is in good, although not perfect, agreement with Khebabs own HL charts found here. Khebab, if my cumulative figure is incorrect, or my years that YOU used are wrong, PLEASE let me know so that I can fix this! I did my best to count your 'dots', and I'm very tired :)
Now, I prefer to keep my charts consistent with what I have done in the past, so I continued to use Laherrere's 1985-2006 range. My graphs noting this are as follows:
In order to get my 2006 data, I had to guesstimate the C+C + NGL production for this year based on the average difference between BPs C+C + NGL figures and the EIAs C+C for the last couple of years. I came up with 80,000,000 bpd as opposed to last years 81,088,000 bpd.
Notice how different my HL are when using 1985-2005 as opposed to Khebabs 1983-2005: the change is a fairly significant 71 Gb. Furthermore, as I noted above, total increase from 2002 to 2006 is a whopping 200 Gb, or again another KSA country. Thats an annual increase of 50 Gb a year. As I noted above, extrapolating for Rembrants own 2012 trend expectation, we come up with an additional 300 Gb. This brings the total production rate up to 2646 Gb.
Now, an astute observer would note that this is a CLOSE figure to what I came up with using only C+C. The explanation? The most likely culprit is a statistical fluke, as my data is in close agreement with the 'litmus test' I was required to meet. Another possibility is that I underestimated this years C+C + NGL production rate. Yet another possibility is an imminent peak of world NG, so perhaps westexas is correct in regards to that after all :P Time will tell of course.
In conclusion, I hope that these charts will help to silence my critics in regards to my total liquids HL, as I have clearly demonstrated that I was able to successfully produce a HL based not only on Deffeye's C+C data, but Khebab's C+C + NGL data.
I also want to point out that in both cases, the final Qt GREW after including the last 4 years data, data that westexas has in the past dismissed as nothing more then an anomaly. This is a useful insight to combine with current HL models, and helps to accurately predict real world discoveries and ultimate extraction advances.
Seeing how I worked my way up from C+C to C+C + NGL, I think it is then only fair to also include my Total Liquids HL, which included C+C + NGL + Unconventional sources.
Obviously, the PO community cant champion the cause of only one HL chart 'C+C vs C+C + NGL', so I will state yet again that I believe it is time for the PO community to seriously use the total liquids HL in their own discussions. I realize that its now nearly 3 in the morning where I live, so I will save this response and use it again in tomorrows drumbeat where we can hopefully pick up the debate where we left off 'after the horde of angry troll-preachers showed up'.
Good Night!!
I believe you did a good job crunching the numbers. You have replicated all the HL results that have been published. I don't see major problems in your calculations.
I don't have much time to give a detail answer. Here is my problem:
1. you are putting too much confidence in the estimated URR derived from the HL technique. The error interval is fairly significant. You can find an error analysis performed by Stuart here and myself here. If you do a boostrapping analysis on the HL fit for CC+NGL, you get the following URR estimate distribution:
you can see that the 90% confidence interval is 1500-3500Gb! Consequently, fluctuations in the URR estimates of several 100's of Gb are not surprising. Conclusion: the HL technique is a very imprecise estimator
2. You said: I will state yet again that I believe it is time for the PO community to seriously use the total liquids HL in their own discussions. As gr1nn3r said yesterday, I quote: "we have some corn ethanol here so we can just assume that there is 800 more Gb in SA.". By mixing sources, your URR estimate will get higher but it will be impossible to form any conclusions on the oil depletion. Why not including the barrels of oil equivalent of the electricity used by eclectric vehicles? For sure, you will probably never observe any Peak Oil.
3. The logistic modeling is not appropriate for all the fuel sources. For instance if you use the HL on the Canadian Tar sands production assuming prior knowledge of the URR at 179 Gb, it gives me an unrealistic production profile peaking in 2050 at more than 9.7 mbpd! (The most optimistic forecast is giving 4.0 mbpd in 2020)
People have different opinions on "Straight Crude" vs. "All Liquids" and even variations of both. The best approach is to deal honestly with what they mean and to run your numbers an analysis for all cases.
I can do this, that's why I don't have a problem debating peak oil or expressing my views regarding how I really don't feel the differentiation is all that important.
A key word here is "substitution." You've seen my breakdown of the various components of "All Liquids" and what countries produce them. You've seen the percentages. 12-14% of all liquids are not crude. But when we talk about liquids we're talking about transportation fuel and what can be made into transportation fuel at what cost and at what final efficiency. What turns wheels and propellers and launches heavy objects through the air. Busses run on CNG. CNG is, well, not even NGL, or is it? But it is a substitute.
This is where talking exclusively about C+C in regards to peak-oil is ludicrous.
I'll tell you a dirty little secret, too. People that track these numbers who insist that C+C is what matters, do it primarily out of laziness. The C+C numbers are the only ones in the world that are released for free, two months old, for over thirty countries. They use what they can look at talk about in 2 minutes. People like me who do the work, know the deal, and can understand what the all liquids numbers are monthly - don't care.
No it's not. We didn't have to work that much to get the 1.0Tb+ of C+C. We got a high density energy fuel almost for free for more than a century. We gonna have to work our ass off this century to get the equivalent from other sources. Notice the word oil in theoildrum.com, otherwise we should have call it theallliquidsdrum.com.
I don't know exactly understand what do you mean by that. You can get monthly data for free for Other Liquids, NGPL and C+C for free on the EIA website.
The only one engaging him in a civil manner is Westexas. I would suggest to Hothgar that he ignore everybody else. Just deal with Khebab and Jeffrey. Stop responding to the insults and obvious bs that is being thrown your way out of anger. Let's face it, this website can be an overwhelming doomfest at times. Newcomers who express skepticism are immediately called every name in the book. There is a constant witch-hunt going on to expose those who might harbor some optimism that it's not a December 2005, fast-crash, die-off kind of world.
I echo everything Jack and RR said in regards to the situation. Hothgar lacks experience dealing with this forum. That's all. His greatest strength is that he deals with oil and energy and he is almost always on topic. If he came that far with HL in 24 hours, and he is willing to work with more data, and write about it as exhaustively as he has - then I think some people are going to have to reconsider the respect they afford him.
You can get my data on my EditGrid spreadsheet:
Oil Production
You pre-1080 is too high by nearly 100Gb!
Pre-1980 cumulative production:
Again, 84+ million bpd is for All Liquids, the logistic fit performed by Stuart and myself is for Crude Oil + NGL, the fit performed by Deffeyes is for Crude Oil + condensate. Check my post on Peak Oil Update where I compare forecasts with actual data.1979 442.7411 Gb
1980 465.7162 Gb
You may not be aware, but the standards of analysis here are quite high. Often it is better to wait, and ask, for missing data than publish a faulty analysis.
I was "run through the wringer" at first and now rarely get challenged to "prove it" because of a history of crediability. But it still happens.
I offered a collaberation on a key point, non-transportation oil use and how to reduce it. It is a major piece of the puzzle (1/3rd) and no serious TOD analysis to date.
You could make a valuable contribution in this area instead of replowing ground already well analysized.
If you are not interested, please tell me so.
Best Hopes,
Alan
The disagreements are largely the result of schedules, personal-energy, and time-paradigms.
I have no idea why nobody's responded to Alan above. But I'll venture a guess. 2 guesses. 1) they haven't seen it, for whatever reason. 2) They're intimidated(i.e. - anybody that would ask this shit must know what the fuck the are talking about). And Alan pretty much does. So there you go.
Alan, I saw your requests, I just am not quite sure what you are referring to on consumption.
Tell me. I'll print it. Otherwise, I'll make it. Tell me what you what to see. Tell me what you are thinking about. I'll produce it. I'll even put your name on it. My email is in my profile(I think, If not tell me, I gotta keep the zombies at bay).
A couple of months ago you published the breakdown of US non-tramsportation oil use. So much for home/commercial heating, chemical industry, other industrial use, asphalt, and so forth.
If you can find that breakdown again, I would appreciate it.
Thanks :-)
One needs to know where the oil (and NG) consumption is before figuring out a strategy to reduce it.
Solar domestic water heating is a no brainer. Ground source (geothermal) heat pumps are another where they can fit. Reduced plastic packaging is yet another. Each use has it's own strategy.
Sometimes it is hard to quantify the potential savings. I am still struggling with transportation bicycling (0.5% of commutes in 2000). Would more bike racks & lockers, bike paths, showers at work, publicity framing bike commuters as patriots, raise the % to 0.8%, 1% or 3% ?? 1% with $4 gasoline, 3% with $8 gasoline ?
(I did find that motorcycling increased by x3 after the 1973 oil embargo).
I do feel that any increase in bicycling will be more cost effective (and GW & health friendly) than more tar sands production. But quantify it ?
Best Hopes,
Alan
Sometimes common sense and gut feel are all one has.
A lot of good motorcycles were introduced around that time as well. Plus the image of the motorcycle rider had been evolving in the years prior (usually the introduction of the Honda 50cc 'step through' aka the "Nifty Fifty" is brought up as a turning point) turning the motorcycle from an outlaw machine into a fun form of transportation.
"Would more bike racks & lockers, bike paths, showers at work, publicity framing bike commuters as patriots, raise the % to 0.8%, 1% or 3% ?? 1% with $4 gasoline, 3% with $8 gasoline ?"
I don't know about anyone else, but if there were more of THESE and such I'd be a lot more tempted to ride. They'd have to be more reasonably priced as well. It hurts my sensibilities too much to think that with $5000 one can buy a glorified pedal trike, or a really nice used car. The car is a lot more technologically complex, can do a lot more, has a stereo, climate control, practically zero effort - or you can have a fairly primitive trike that's slow, dangerous due to other vehicles relative size, no climate control and you have to put effort into. Which would you logically choose? One of the nice things about bicycles is "getting out in the fresh air" but for a commute situation, or general transportation you really want some sort of weather protection. Plus bicycles don't tend to be all that comfortable, creating pain in the neck, shoulders, elbows, knees, and often the butt. Note: I'm not anti-bicycle or anything, but if you want to address some issues...those are some big ones there.
Three hairs on the tail of your bactrian logistic curve does not constitute a trend. And it's not a popularity contest.
Further, one can make the case that the world will never run out of oil; this is also a true statement. There will always be some small patch of grease in the bottom of the skillet. Probably not 300gb worth of it but a small patch.
For what it's worth, I'd say Deffeyes, Khebab, and westexas are almost certainly correct in that "conventional" petroleum passed the 1/2 Qt mark last December based on other graphs already clearly presented, prperly buttressed with citations and analysis on TOD. So OK, WTF, it -is- a popularity contest then. You are a troll. Thank you and goodbye.
Does 'total liquids' not always include biofuels?
Thanks
http://kunstler.com/Mags_Bruegmann.html
Practicalist; N. A 'Lazy Person', who feels compelled to do 'The Right Thing', but wants to enjoy his free time to the fullest of it's potential. They will find the fastest most morally satisfyingly esthetical way possible to do something. They will constantly seek faster more efficient ways to do even the most simplest of tasks. Yet find joy in the 'Seemingly Chaotic' world right outside their window, understanding that 'Chaos' is sometimes the best way to order some things.
Authors Note, all terms in (' single quote marks ') are if this is posted in a true internet setting hotlinks to other terms and/or linkages.
Posting note., Argh, I think I might have hit post or preview once to many times, this is as far as I know it the final copy. Sorry.
Charles E. Owens Jr.
Author at Large, aka Dan Ur
My engineer made a Drive he told me about it's in a Box.
more on that later.
A lot of peak oilers seem to think that Americans will flee south, to avoid northern winters. But could it be the opposite?
(Of course, these are the Freakonomics guys, who don't believe in peak oil.)
If they're right, Kunstler may have chosen the right peak oil paradise. New York is a climate change "winner":
"New York is a climate change "winner":"
???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
A lot of peak oilers seem to think that Americans will flee south, to avoid northern winters. But could it be the opposite?
Yeah, they'll flee South alright....about 3 and a half feet. In most of North America, that's how far it is to a climate of 56 to 58 degrees, or about the perfect spring/autumn temps that we all dream of. ABOUT 3 TO 4 FEET BELOW OUR FEET!!!!
ARE THE AMERICANS REALLY FVCKIN STUPID ENOUGH TO FALL FOR THIS "FLEE FROM THE TEMPETURE IDIOCY???
It's starting to get insulting, even to the intelligence of the normally tolerant.
Roger Conner known to you as ThatsItImout
Maybe they can put up a series of lenses and each community can order sun or shade on any given day.
Maybe they can heat the tar sands and shales etc instead of microwaving or building subterrainian hot plates.
Maybe have the DOE boil us up a lake - up-wind, every thursday, so we can have a nice spring rain on every other on sunday year round... (give them 50-50 chance of boiling the right lake at the right time on any given week... damn weather-channeling...)
Sapdom at it's finest.
The oil pessimist explained his reasons for believing the price of oil would rise. He said that by 2015 we would be consuming about 103 million barrels per day, an 18 million barrel increase from what we are consuming today. His words; "That would require two new Saudi Arabias between now and then. He did not question that this would happen, but simply believed it would drive prices to $100 a barrel.
However his figures were all wrong. Allowing for a current depletion rate of 5% of existing fields, and then adding the 18 million barrels to that, it would require about six new Saudi Arabias to meet demand.
Everyone always seems to forget the depletion rate when doing their prognostications.
Ron Patterson
Ron,
I noted the same thing when I saw the interview. The assumption is that we will always have 85 mbpd of total liquids production as a base level; the only question is how fast production increases.
Note that the $100 guy said that he was a "Conventional oil pessmist," but an "Alternative energy optimist." (I may not have the second part exactly right, but that was the meaning of his comment.) I would actually put him in the Primal Scream Cornucopian (PSC) camp. In essence, he thinks that we can maintain our suburban way of life; we will just use different energy sources.
The underestimated decline rate is my primary beef with the "Bottoms Up" or Mega Projects analysis. As I have said before, the East Texas Field, found in 1930, was showing rising production in the 10 years prior to the Texas peak. How would a Mega Projects analysis of Texas in 1972 handled the East Texas Field?
This isn't intended to disagree with your comment, BrianT, since by 2015, the dollar will no doubt be substantially weaker and commodities substantially higher.
And I am just guessing, but this stable situation is also in the longer term interest of the EU, since the U.S. can keep hobbling itself while still buying European goods, without having the EU to blame at all when the American debt load and ongoing deindustrialization finally leads to some 'unforeseen' result.
Of course the industrial nations are meshed at many levels, but the Chinese seem to be very interested in German technology and goods, which the Germans are happy enough to take dollars in exchange for now - since a flood of cheap Chinese goods is something the EU is as likely to permit as a flood of cheap Japanese (or Korean) cars, which is not at all. (Europeans believe in protectionism, since Europeans also believe their lifestyle is worth keeping - no Wal-marts here, thank you very much - as Wal-mart paid somewhere around 1 billion dollars to find out in Germany). But if both the Chinese and Europeans can agree to abuse someone else's currency at both ends, why not? They can recycle the dollars picking up fire sale farmland in a few years, for example, and since Americans seem to feel that working at dirt wages without any legal or union protection is the way to get ahead in the world, I'm sure that other people will be happy to take up the offer, while skimming off the profit to maintain themselves. And if America doesn't actually honor dollar obligations, well, so much for 'we're number 1.' (Actually Unocal taught the Chinese about how much trust they should place in the free market - lucky they were already Communists, so it wasn't exactly an eye-opening experience.)
Those people proud of how America's population has been growing should also note that a certain American also noted there is a sucker born every minute. Could explain the housing boom, or the recent uptick in truck sales, or faith in voting machines.
The Case For Dividing Iraq
From a medium/long term White House or Army view, what are the benefits of leaving? Why do we think they went there in the first place?
The perspective of soldiers and their families is different of course, but are they the US?
Consider also, that if the US is aware of the resource depletion issues which are beginning to show signs of themselves, then the US building a military presence in the Middle East is a pretty keen move.
Consider also that while traditional military thought dislikes fighting a war on too many fronts, it was the rather central location of Rome that lead the Roman's to conquer (the then known) world.
Being based right in the middle of all three super powers along with having a "fortress America" protected on both sides by vast oceans gives the best of both worlds. Not to mention having the world's largest subset of oil reserves within striking distance of your military, combined with additional large reserves in your own back yard(Venezuela/rest of South America/Canada/GOM) sets you up to be in the perfect position as a power broker(literally power) in this case.
At this point its purely conspiracy theory, but from an armchair general stand-point I'd say there are some really strong coincidinks.
Knock down a building or what. Why would they not hand the keys over to the new tenants? Everybody talks about the
US staying forever because we are building suport systems for the military. These systems have value for the Iraqi army too.
matt
What the US wants to do in Iraq os not the only comsideration.
What is possible to do matters also.
The US can only do anything it wants if the US is all-powerful.
US power is rapidly evaporatimg.
Bush has pushed an impossible policy by selling fantasies. Enough players have believed the fantasies that Bush's daydreams have had play in the real world.
This cannot be sustained and it will not.
Hothgar or Oily etc - maybe we are nearing Concensus of the Saps (aka consciousness of the Sap)? Maybe the Market Signal is a lagging indicator?
Also, it looks like the herd is prioritizing like good aminalz do:
Public concern over possible threats to their energy supply still outranks worries over climate change, despite the publication of the Stern review
Do you see any combination of energy sources capable of even maintaining status quo world wide? How about regionally if "we don't share nice" (and no one goes for their gun...)?
Global warming is a nice distracting worry - unless you have some clue on how it will directly affect you and what you can do to "stop it" or even prepare to cope for "it." Is/ When is your neighborhood going to get flooded or become a desert?
Given a choice between workshops, I think "making heat and eating" would be more popular than "how to calculate your methane-to-carbon dioxide emission ratio."
Peak Oil doesn't scare me. Peak energy does.
No problemo! The US and/or Israel will just have to add Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, and UAE to Iraq and Iran as countries that need attack and subsequent regime change.
As I doubt that countries like Tunisia or the UAE have either the technical capability or the patience to embark on uranium enrichment, the most likely means for them to acquire a nuclear capability is to buy it. And who might the most likely seller be, at least in the near future? My guess would be Pakistan .... a post-Musharef, Islamic republic Pakistan, that is. Though it may be folklore, some people think there might also be a few small nukes rolling around out there somewhere in the vastness of the former Soviet Union, just waiting to find a buyer from the Russian mafia.
So, if an 'Islamic bomb' is eventually inevitable, and if Israel intends that an Islamic bomb must be prevented at all cost (including via the use of nuclear weapons), then that says to me that a nuclear exchange in the Middle East is almost inevitable. I hope I'm wrong.
- sounds like the Israelis are realistic about the future of the regimes in Iraq, KSA, etc?
Black poplar ready for harvest in 40 years, Siberian larch in 90 years.
Alan
That is a strange conclusion. The study tells us that, contrary to prevailng belief and opinion, boreal forests, and any other old growth forests for that matter, are not carbon sinks. That's all. Moreover, since you will never plant anywhere near the number of trees that grow in these forests, it's not nothing.
I claim no special expertise in the various aspects of the terrestrial carbon cycle, but it comes as no surprise to me that an old growth forest is in more or less equilibrium with regard to the long-term transport of CO2 into and out of the atmosphere.
Maybe I'm missing something, but it would appear to me that a young forest would only act as a CO2 sink for the relatively short period of time that more tree mass is growing rather than dying and decaying. As the young forest becomes more and more mature, I would think it would start to get closer and closer to the near equilibrium of an old growth forest.
If so, than a purposely planted young forest would act more like a CO2 'capacitor' or shock absorber, in that it would only serve to delay and smooth out what appears to be a relentless increase in atmospheric CO2 and therefore would not be much of a permanent sink.
The thing I really don't have handle on is what fraction of the carbon in a tree might get returned to the soil without undergoing total decomposition to CO2. Some of it must, otherwise I would think there would be no coal and peat. (Unless conditions back then were radically different than they are today.)
Anyway, I'm sure there is much yet to learn about the carbon cycle.
Apart from the age profile of the forest there are several other factors that will make carbon uptake hard to predict. These factors include rainfall decline, acid rain, insect infestation, CO2 saturation, wildfire, changes to beneficial species ecology and human intervention such as tracks and burnoffs. I live close to some tall trees second only to the redwoods in height but the top few metres are all dying.
As I suspected, none of this stuff regarding the transport of carbon is as simple as one might at first be led to believe.
If there is any critical area of study, the study of where carbon comes and goes has got to be at the top of the list.
Simplistic or complex if everyone in the world planted a tree that lived once a year preferably one producing food we would be better off.
matt
Alan
you never replied to me on an art store
:(
Anyway around the 19th I'll be hanging out in NO with money to blow I want to buy oil paints and related stuff for my fiancee as well as a diamond ring between 3k and 5 k and is there a fine woodworking store in the area you know of?
matt
eMail me and I will give you my cell. Also remind me after Thursday and I will call around. Not sure what is still open.
My apologies,
Alan
In the first 6 months of 2006, every single American has borrowed $1700 from their own house ($511 billion for 300 million citizens).
Subtract the 1/3 that doesn't own, and it's $2550 per capita. Say there's 3 people per household, and every family increased their debt, just from home equity, by $7650. In 6 months.
Over the whole year, that's over $15.000 per family, $5000 for every man, woman and child who does not rent or live on the street.
Now if we presume that only 50% of all US homeowners (have to) resort to this land of milk and honey, that's $10.000 in one year per capita (including no. 300 million born recently), or $30.000 per family. What's the average family income? $40-50.000?
This does NOT include credit card debt increases.
And it increases fast, it just doubled, that 6 month figure is more than all of 2005, while home values are already down by 10%, and there's no doubt they'll fall much deeper.
You guys are starting to scare me.
I think this is relevant for those doomers out there that despair.
She is a resident Psychiatrist. Suicides are way up locally.
==========hello all in group-email-land.
for those of you with whom I havent spoken, which is most of you , since I have been pretty isolative lately, here is a quick update.
i am back in new orleans, living here, for about a month now. it is weird, difficult, yet interesting and fun. my job is keeping me on 24-36 hours schedules, so I am bound to a pager most of the time. when i'm not on call or at the hospital, i tend to be outta town either for pleasure, conferences or work elswhere (not in that order.) Patients are the same as I was seeing in central louisiana, mostly suicidal or chronically mentally ill. but we have no where to place the ones in the most dire of need, so i have EDs full of psych patients, and it is pretty vexing. some of us are still working at the department store ED, which is a cool idea, (it is the lord and taylor by the superdome) but we have no resources or equipment or meds there, so it feels like what i imagine y'all who have done "doctors without borders" worked with. wow. still the 3rd world. but in a
high end dept store in the US. Hmm. (Interesting--if you google Lord and Taylor Emergency Room, you get no images, and only a few articles from March thru August. )
new orleans is a mess. we are still having those 'new orleans days' where we realize nothing works,and cant get a post office box or cant find the place to get a power tool
fixed. but everyone is in the same boat, so we at least have camaraderie. Everyone is in the throws of renovation. Imagine if every one of your friends and patients and colleagues etc were all renovating. Interesting sociological experiment here. Most of my nearest and dearest are back or moving back by the end of the year.
house? i'm still couch surfing. hard with the dog but it is kind of working out. i bought a chest of drawers and extra dog bowls to keep in my car, so technically i am still
homeless. but i went by my house today and there is paint on the walls! now to get floors, trim, fixtures and a bathroom. the kitchen will be the spring project. there are 2 houses on my block that are fully inhabited. they say that the crime is up and down in the hood, and the last burglary was at my house a few months ago. (this is a good thing!) i hope to be living in the house in a month or two. in the meantime i will possibly rent a flat somewhere to be able to have some semblance of normalcy.
other parts of this town are functional. i just had dinner at a restaurant that was PACKED, but doesnt have a back wall. But people want it all to work.
i know i sound despondent as usual, but i am also very hopeful. i strongly encourage visits always and often! Come Dec 1 my schedule calms down and will be slightly more
predictable.
I have finally found a PO Box (was on the waiting list for a long while) here is my new mailing address;
=
===Perhaps you can understand why I sign most of my posts
Best Hopes,
Alan
BART is The San Francsico Bay Area Rapid Transit (like Metro or subway technology) This line heads south on the east side of the bay for 5.4 miles or 9 km.
Best Hopes,
Alan
======SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- Federal transit officials have cleared the way for BART to resume work on extending the rail system to Warm Springs, a critical segment on the way to connecting the East Bay with San Jose, the BART officials announced Wednesday.
The Federal Transit Administration approved the 5.4-mile, $678 million extension project's final environmental impact statement on Oct. 24, giving a green light to BART's efforts to acquire right-of-way and secure agreements to share costs with the city of Fremont and arrange to relocate utility lines.
"I'm really pleased," said BART board member Thomas Blalock, who represents Fremont, Newark, Union City and part of Hayward. "Everything's been on hold. We can't make any progress until the FTA says we've gone through all the hoops."
The project already has $195 million in Alameda County Measure B sales tax receipts, $169 million from Bay Area bridge tolls and $100 million from the state Traffic Congestion Relief Program. Another $69 million is expected to come from the State Transportation Improvement Program, leaving a $145 shortfall.
Area transportation officials hope that the $20 billion Proposition 1B transportation bond measure on Tuesday's ballot will fill that funding gap, and perhaps provide additional money to continue the line through San Jose to Santa Clara.
There are lingering doubts about the Warm Springs to Santa Clara BART segment, for which Santa Clara County has secured only $2 billion of an estimated $4.7 billion needed. In June, Santa Clara County voters rejected the Measure A sales tax that was expected to bridge that gap.
Officials acknowledge that the Alameda County portion won't be viable unless Santa Clara County can also secure funding and advance its project.
Blalock explained that one of the key pieces of real estate for the Warm Springs extension is a six-mile, 80-foot-wide right-of-way through Fremont that Santa Clara County bought from Union Pacific Railroad.
"Over 100,000 people are living south of the Fremont station. For some of these folks, it's a 15- to 25-minute drive to the station, and in a few minutes they can get to the freeway and fight it out," Blalock said, adding that extension could take many of those auto commuters off of the freeway.
The Warm Springs extension project includes an optional station in the Fremont neighborhood of Irvington, which will hinge on the city's ability to bankroll the project.
Opponents of the BART extension don't buy predictions that the line will serve a pressing need that can't be met cheaper by other means.
"By itself, the project doesn't make any sense from a ridership perspective," said Stuart Cohen, executive director of the Transportation and Land Use Coalition. "It really ends up on an industrial part of Fremont where the hills are very close to the Bay and the walking and bicycling environment is quite poor."
- Erik N. Nelson, The San Jose Mercury News
BART is The San Francsico Bay Area Rapid Transit (like Metro or subway technology) This line heads south on the east side of the bay for 5.4 miles or 9 km.
Best Hopes,
Alan
======SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- Federal transit officials have cleared the way for BART to resume work on extending the rail system to Warm Springs, a critical segment on the way to connecting the East Bay with San Jose, the BART officials announced Wednesday.
The Federal Transit Administration approved the 5.4-mile, $678 million extension project's final environmental impact statement on Oct. 24, giving a green light to BART's efforts to acquire right-of-way and secure agreements to share costs with the city of Fremont and arrange to relocate utility lines.
"I'm really pleased," said BART board member Thomas Blalock, who represents Fremont, Newark, Union City and part of Hayward. "Everything's been on hold. We can't make any progress until the FTA says we've gone through all the hoops."
The project already has $195 million in Alameda County Measure B sales tax receipts, $169 million from Bay Area bridge tolls and $100 million from the state Traffic Congestion Relief Program. Another $69 million is expected to come from the State Transportation Improvement Program, leaving a $145 shortfall.
Area transportation officials hope that the $20 billion Proposition 1B transportation bond measure on Tuesday's ballot will fill that funding gap, and perhaps provide additional money to continue the line through San Jose to Santa Clara.
There are lingering doubts about the Warm Springs to Santa Clara BART segment, for which Santa Clara County has secured only $2 billion of an estimated $4.7 billion needed. In June, Santa Clara County voters rejected the Measure A sales tax that was expected to bridge that gap.
Officials acknowledge that the Alameda County portion won't be viable unless Santa Clara County can also secure funding and advance its project.
Blalock explained that one of the key pieces of real estate for the Warm Springs extension is a six-mile, 80-foot-wide right-of-way through Fremont that Santa Clara County bought from Union Pacific Railroad.
"Over 100,000 people are living south of the Fremont station. For some of these folks, it's a 15- to 25-minute drive to the station, and in a few minutes they can get to the freeway and fight it out," Blalock said, adding that extension could take many of those auto commuters off of the freeway.
The Warm Springs extension project includes an optional station in the Fremont neighborhood of Irvington, which will hinge on the city's ability to bankroll the project.
Opponents of the BART extension don't buy predictions that the line will serve a pressing need that can't be met cheaper by other means.
"By itself, the project doesn't make any sense from a ridership perspective," said Stuart Cohen, executive director of the Transportation and Land Use Coalition. "It really ends up on an industrial part of Fremont where the hills are very close to the Bay and the walking and bicycling environment is quite poor." - Erik N.
Nelson, The San Jose Mercury News
I visited the bay area for the first time last year, and used BART to get from San Leandro (where I stayed) to San Francisco. Seeing what one has to deal with on the highways there, I cannot imagine traveling across the bay any other way if one must do so on a regular basis. I was very satisfied with the service; the ride was smooth and comfortable, and reasonably priced. Lets hope the system continues to expand as popular demand increases.
Erwin I
It is the limited FTA funding (only 50%, it was 90% for Interstate highways) that is holding projects like this up for years.
THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION AND REPUBLICAN CONGRESS HAVE BEEN EXERCISING BIRTH CONTROL ON URBAN RAIL
Note the quote that I put into bold print !
Again, let me post the projects "on the shelf".
The following list was composed by Lyndon Henry and the author from memory and likely overlooks some projects. The degree of engineering on file for each project varies significantly, and much of the information is dated. However, all of the projects noted below could start construction in one to three years if it was an urgent national priority. Just 90% federal funding (the same level of funding that built the Interstate Highway system) would get the vast majority of these plans built out quickly with many more additional initiatives.
A rough guess is that the projects below would cost roughly $125 billion to complete.
Albuquerque - Light Rail and Commuter Rail plans
Atlanta - Beltway Light Rail, Northern suburbs Light Rail extension, downtown streetcar
Austin - Two Light Rail Lines plus Commuter rail and downtown streetcars
Baltimore - East-West Light Rail Line, 4 mile extension to current subway
Birmingham AL - Streetcar lines Boston - All rail plans promised as environmental offset to "Big Dig" Buffalo - Planned extensions to current light rail subway
Charlotte - All plans currently scheduled
Chicago - Expansions to Metra, South Shore Line
Cincinnati -Light Rail plans voted down
Columbus OH - Light Rail and streetcar lines
Corpus Christi TX - Streetcar line
Dallas - All plans through 2015 and all 2015-2030 options (roughly 145 mile system)
Dayton OH - Streetcar plans
Denver - 117 miles of Light Rail and Commuter Rail (already locally funded)
El Paso - Downtown to Border Light Rail
Ft. Lauderdale - Light Rail and streetcar plans under active development
Honolulu - Line currently under development
Houston - All plans voted for, 65 new miles light rail 8 miles commuter
Indianapolis - Light Rail Line plans
Kansas City - Light Rail Line proposed
Las Vegas - Light Rail plans
Little Rock - Short extensions of existing streetcar line, Light Rail line
Los Angeles - Red Line "Subway to the Sea", Vermont Avenue subway, XX miles of Light Rail, electric trolley bus plan, electrify commuter rail
Louisville KY - Light Rail line plans
Madison WS - Streetcar and Commuter Rail plans
Memphis - At least two Light Lines in comprehensive plan
Miami - 103 miles of elevated Rapid Rail (subway type) + Miami Beach streetcar (already locally funded) 90% of the population would be within 3 miles of a station, half within 2 miles of a station
Minneapolis-St. Paul - Central Light Rail connector between the cities, Northstar commuter rail
Missoula MN - Commuter Rail
Nashville - Commuter Rail in process
New Orleans - Desire Streetcar Line, Riverfront Streetcar Line extensions
New York City - 2nd Avenue Subway, 3rd Tunnel under Hudson, Penn to Grand Central connection, Staten Island Light Rail, New Jersey Light Rail extension, commuter rail improvements
Norfolk - Light Rail Plans in progress
Ogden UT - Streetcar plans
Orange County CA - Center Line Light Rail plan voted down
Orlando - Light Rail plan voted down
Philadelphia - City Branch
Phoenix - 90 miles of Light Rail already approved Pittsburgh - Two Light Rail Lines north from current, under construction line Portland - Green Line (both routes, one funded, other "studied" for future), Streetcar both sides river
Raleigh-Durham NC - Streetcar plans
Sacramento - Additional Light Rail expansion
San Antonio - Light Rail plans voted down
St. Louis - All plans evaluated, perhaps 100 mile system
Salem OR - Streetcar plans Salt Lake City - 90 miles of Light Rail, streetcar and Commuter Rail (vote soon to accelerate)
San Diego - Light Rail spur to North, another to West
San Francisco - New TransBay tunnel, trolley line, BART extension, eBART, Marin-Sonoma commuter rail
San Jose - BART extension, several Light Rail extensions
Seattle - Proposed north extension
Spokane - Light Rail line planned
Tampa - 1992 and later plans
Toledo OH - Streetcar plans
Tuscon AZ - Streetcar plans
Washington DC - Tyson's Corner-Dulles extension, Purple Line, 40 miles of streetcar lines in DC, Columbia Pike Light Rail Winston-Salem NC - Streetcar plans
Lets hope that unfettered Republican control is nearing its inglorious end very soon, and we see more like-minded representatives in Congress which understand the pressing need for more and better rail service.
I have enjoyed having one of the best pro-rail advocates in Washington representing me for many years. Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) has always been at the forefront in campaigning for and providing the necessary funding for many rail projects, both here in New Jersey and elsewhere. He understands more than most why it is imperative we strive for better rail transportation. Unfortunately, he has been in the minority party in the Senate for quite some time. If the Democrats could take over the Senate, Frank could again be in a much better position to influence federal policy on rail transit funding and expansion. Too bad there are not more like him.
Erwin
Rail is just as dead in Democratic hands as it is in Republican hands.
History shows that any transit advances in federal funding have happened under Ds and cutbacks largely under Rs.
That said, I do NOT expect Nirvana next Wednesday. Just a less anti-crowd (and Rep Istook no longer Transportation Committee Chairman in the House).
Best Hopes,
Alan (an R from age 19 to age 52)
Rail can supplant significant parts of the TL sector (intercity, medium and long haul.) As liquid fuel supplies run down and track begins to appear on local streets following the inevitable failure of electrified individual transport experiments, then our progeny may begin to see the reappearance of rail delivered parcels. Hopefully there will be enough electricity to run the trains.
I was wondering if you have any information on the proposed commuter rail extension in southern NH. I am currently living and working in the southern NH, northern Mass area, and have been languishing over the lack of progress being made on the part of our state. I believe the issue is lack of funding, the state not wanting to front the money, or run the program. There was a good deal of excitement a couple years ago about the project moving forward, then since this January there has been only silence. I don't think this on the national radar, since it is not a new system, but I was wondering if you have any recommendations for obtaining more info about projects like this. If anybody else is from the region, I would appreciate any of your thoughts.
Boston's MBTA has a cordial relationship with Rhode Island and runs a commuter train down to Providence RI with some RI subsidy. Their commuter train stops short of the NH border although it could go further with minimal work.
I think that NH will be one of the very last states with any commuter or other pax rail. They will suffer because of it but it will take a revolution in attitudes.
Half a dozen years ago Scottsdale AZ came within one vote of prohibiting ANY consideration of rail in their long range plans as even an option in 30 years. Today they are debating a streetcar or light rail link to Phoenix, Tempe, etc.
So revolutions CAN happen !
Best Hopes,
Alan
Conservation Law Foundation is bringing a law suit against New Hampshire DOT. I would call it the New Hampshire highway road warriors Dept. Carroll Murray who is commissioner does not think rail will work. Also her husband is a honcho in the road building business. A type that if gas or die-sel fuel went to $20.00 per gallon he would get a bigger pickup and say yahoooooo to higher fuel prices.
Just about all the Republicans want to expand I-93 to the Mass border and shun completely rail.
The only grain of hope is that the first congressional district #1 in which Carol Shey Porter carries the election, and upsets Jeb Bradley, it will be very close. Also the second Congressional district is Paul Hodes , running against Charlie Bass who says he is in favor of rail but when it comes to funding, he is a rubber stamp of Bush. I'm a voter in the 1st district and it is dominated by right wing, who are only interested in overturning Roe VS Wade , And a federal amendment to the US constitution banning gay marriage. Those two are the only issues that most NH voters are interested in . They could care less how many soldiers per mile that fuel their largest SUV/Pick ups. They proudly display their ribbons in the back supporting the troops. That is the attitude that unfortunately prevails in the granite state.
Its a Live to Drive or Die State.
Also there is a web Site of www.nhrra.org which is the New Hampshire Railroad Revitalization. A group of people struggling to get the attention of the elected officials to revitalize rail
Paula Walach
The article focuses exclusively on CO2, but peat holds a lot of methane as well, about 10% (?!) of what it holds in CO2. Since methane is 20-60 times as harmful as CO2, do the math. It's like hacking into methane hydrates.
And that is where your misconception of Airships shines. The Walrus project was originally slated to deliver 1000 tons of payload to any destination in the world within 6 days. Can rail/shipping accomplish that?
Further the amount of infrastructure to support the Walrus style airship would be considerably less than the miles of track, rail stations, ports/docks, etc etc.
I'm not trying to dog rail, or water shipping, because I do believe they need to play critical roles. But they are not the end all be all of transportation, and may or may not be viable in all circumstances. Hence the flexibility efficiency, and speed of the Airship might be a BB in the grand scheme of things.
A Prime example of where an Airship would be more efficient than rail would be infrequent deliveries to remote areas. Some ares of the world may not have the traffic to make rail a viable solution. In the past, animal delivery was the only available solution, which is slow, uncertain, and potentially dangerous.
And Airship could fill in where Rail would not be viable.
I've been trying to find more data on this topic, and specifically the Walrus airship, but given its still in development, Boeing is pretty hush hush about the whole thing.
- but at what energy cost? I'd love to see some numbers. The military can afford it, er, coerce us to pay for it. Rail can deliver to most places that have rail in 6 days. I agree that airships may have some niche uses delivering to places that don't have road and rail access. Those places are sparsely populated (for good reasons) so these uses won't matter much for the big picture. The big picture is about moving coal and ores and grain, repeatedly, from where they are to where they are needed - static places, thus rail is usually viable - unless water transport (even more energy efficient) is feasable. And for those cargos speed is not an issue.
I admit, I'd love to get some hard facts. It would be great to compare the figures. All that can be done at the moment is to point to the objectives laid out in the Walrus program which call for a VTOL design of a large cargo hauling Airship which will be more fuel efficient than the current class of cargo haulers (namely the C-130).
The concern I have about the Walrus being cancelled is that given the money spent which allowed them to do some basic feasibility studies, and designs, in conjunction with the objectives cited meeting the military's need for such a ship, they never even got to a prototype version which was slated to haul 30 tons. Even if the 1000 Ton ship proved unfeasible, the funds should've been pushed to at least try the 30 ton version so we could collect real world data. Not to mention the 30 ton version would have applicable uses right now due to the fact that there are many military objectives that get scrapped because of the lack of long enough runways in third world nations
And before the argument of "we should only put efforts on Proven Concepts" gets played, keep in mind Airships are a proven concept in their basic form (in fact a proven concept that pre-dates Aerodynamic craft), and that many technological innovations that promoted Aerodynamic aircraft would also have direct application on Solid Shell Airships.
The point is vt, it was too early to make a yay or nay decision on the feasibility of Airships compared to rail/shipping because we lacked that data to make a comparison. The termination of this project (prematurely in my opinion) prevents us from getting that data. Luckily it looks like a commercial venture is interested in adopting the work which may allow us to see what potential really exists here.
In the end if it turns out Airships are more efficient, or even just slightly worse in efficiency of rail, then that is something important to consider. It might be that rail between cities wouldn't be required which means that is additional land we could save from development of rail/roads. Keep in mind, it wasn't too long ago, that an article on TOD pointing out that the criss-crossing mess of roads and rail we have in this country has dissected our forests and is hurting deep forest life even in areas where substantial(from human terms) of forest land usage exists.
I think the biggest use may actually be for transport of people and high value perishables. Also solar cells can be added to such ships reducing the energy run-time costs.
As far as being cost effective the zeppelins of old were cost effective vs shipping so there is no reason to expect the same will not hold this time. Plus of course advances in material science sense then will increase the cost effectiveness of such ships.
The nice thing about them is they require little infrastructure to operate and move at speeds comparable or better then rail. Considering the size of the ships microwaves could be used for power transmission without requiring a strong signal.
Thus a cost effective series solar wind powered microwave towers with pumped storage back up could power such craft if
along of course with on board solar panels.
Next despite our aversion from a false sense of history hydrogen could readily be used as a lifting gas. The way it burns in the case of a accident makes it less dangerous then a load of jet fuel. Certainly for cargo at the minimum hydrogen is a reasonable lifting gas. And of course since it can be used as fuel and can be generated from water it may be possible to actually run the craft heavier than air at lift off and use solar/microwave energy to go lighter than air over the cruise period and burn the excess hydrogen at the end to revert back to the heavy state.
As technology improves older ships like airplanes can be sold to the poorer countries.
Overall they are probably the cheapest fastest transport for a lot of the world outside of the densely populated cities.
Also you mention grain etc. These types of ships would be great for transporting grain from the interior of many countries to the first navigable waterway obviating the need for rail infrastructure just to handle seasonal harvests. Thus they act in a sense like a migratory rail road. I'm sure you can see that they could easily be more effective than building out rail capacity for moving harvest's to market.
I think if you added up the numbers the combination of airships and water is a winning combo for a lot of use cases. Continents like Africa would see a huge benefit from them by allowing semi durable agricultural products to reach market without the need for infrastructure. Rail of course still makes sense city too city and locally but why build it outside of these areas.
Also of course we need to reconsider building large cities away from navigable waterways in the first place but thats a different issue. I suspect a lot of our current cities that rely on rail/road/air for supply will not remain viable over the long run.
Connecting up the colonial legacy rail lines and electrifying them may be more cost effective and will likely last longer than blimps.
I do not mind medium scale R&D for this idea, but that is all it is, an idea with minimal research behind it. The actual operational issues (high winds, turbulence, mooring, etc.) are still to be discovered, as are the real costs.
Maybe it will work, probably not. And building short lived blimps instead of long lasting rail lines seems a poor strategic decision overall.
So restraint in planning,
Alan
Airships may be energy efficient or faster, I don't claim to know. I just know that this wasn't the actual impetus behind the Walrus program, whatever Boeing is saying now to salvage the contract no withstanding.
The overlapping technology is the Boeing Pelican, another competitor for the military brigade-deployment role, which is supposed to be capable of altitude flight, but sip fuel when using ground effect aerodynamics.
Neither of these is practical for heavy bulk shipments - I don't think you'll find anything that flies that is. I've proposed before a mixed-use Inductrack maglev that could do any bulk shipment (or passenger shipment) over any route in the US in 12-24 hours. Merely linking up and electrifying existing freight lines should be done first, of course, but replacing the conveniance of long-haul trucking IMO requires something that moves faster than 30 mph as the alzheimer's patient walks.
Links up chains of major cities ~250 miles apart. One up US East Coast, another East-West, Kansas City to Philadelphia via Chicago. SF to San Diego with spur to Phoenix-Tuscon. Texas triangle, etc.
Best Hopes,
Alan
But let's see the Chinese trump this:
Anyway, I'm just curious how his $12,000 investment will pay for itself by replacing a $320 annual energy bill. Did he get a loan at 2% interest rate? My own bill is about the same as his and the only way I could see a payoff for myself is in entertainment value.
The other thing that seems strange is why we're not seeing more large-scale solar installations. Why put up a few pannels on a small roof when you could pay one installation cost to get hundreds of pannels on the flat roof of a supermarket 1 mile down the street?
Even the large integrated oil companies lease rigs instead of building and operating them. And its truly not from lack of greed.
And as a point of information, operators don't tell gas pipelines how much gas they will sell, pipelines tell operators how much gas they will purchase. Oil and gas leases do not provide for shut-ins due to a low price, but wells can be shut in due to no purchaser.The lease would lapse and revert to the landowner. Therefore, Chesapeake is trying to put a brave face on their purchaser's lack of a market for gas. Also Chesapeake has a heck of a lot of debt, their lenders would not allow them to shut in gas wells. Something is fishy about their announcement.
I am a petroleum landman and have many years of experience with oil and gas leases since 1975. I have not examined Chesapeakes leases and contracts and am just telling TOD the usual language and terms of contracts.
The price of climate change Article....
Um it has happened most likely many times in the past, The climate looks stable, but it is a rolling (living breathing) Complicated system, Going all the time, never stopping and How else do you discribe it, CHAOS. But Order as well. WE just can't see the pattern, it does not mean there is not a pattern, just one we have have not obsevered in the limited amount of time and data we have studied. 100 more years, who knows, might have the cure for rain during pinics.
That being said, Today's 6.5 billion people are going to re-write our old ideas about how things work. including likely all that we know about the Climate as we Know it. Africa is the system showing the stress.
Bob Shaw's Foundation, vs. Asimov's foundation, vs. (unpublished author name goes here) foundation, vs. your Foundation ideas, all have a common thread. Foundation what controls the Foundation, Can you study the Chaos you see and understand it so that you can predict, or even change things. Heck I don't know. I just think a lot of the time about things and look out my window and notice it's rainy.
Africa is Africa and the USA is the USA, but given enough stress we could very well look like Africa does today. We have weathered the storms of the past, we are shaken and stirred but we are pretty much still us. But 6.5 billion new us's on the planet is not going to help anything.
The Forest may make Global warming worse, Uh Oh...
This quote hit me..
In the late 1990s, a Canadian and American team of forest scientists went into the woods in northern Manitoba to do something never been done before. They wanted to measure carbon going into and out of a living forest, to learn how effectively the forest was sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and storing it. That's called being a ``carbon sink.''
...
They thought it was a carbon sink gaining ground? and Oh so sad, not the Hype the TV said it was huh?
Duh!!! I figured that out a long time ago. Why didn't you?
The planet is a living and breathing organism. ( Stop that, Yes I am a Christian, but listen up first then E.Mail me if you disagree and want to talk Religion or Faith or what not ). The earth is a fully functioning living breathing organism that to the untrained eye Looks like Sheer Choas, but is it? We call it the web of life, How far into the earth's crust does this web of life go? How far up does it go? We have found life in caves using exo-thermo and geo-thermo and chemo-thermo sources of live so far from the sun, light has never reached there. The bottom of the oceans, deepest spots, Lifeless, till a volcanic vent opens up and bang, hours later life is teaming streaming and filling the water where at some points just inches away it would die instantly if it moved there.
Sheer Choas.. Or Living breathing fully functioning Organism filled with billions and trillions of other little sub-systems making the whole things work. Where is man. Right where we are. Step back, you want to respond, wait a second, think, send me an e.mail, or post but read on.
The Forest is all part of that system. It might be a forest for a long long time, but in the system that means nothing really, just that today this eon its a forest, tomorrow it could be an ocean, the system works slow and we don't know all of its pathways.
Forests move, change with time. Mature old growth forests ahve lots less by volume Carbon in them than younger 20 year to 50 year old clear cut forests. I can't give you chapter and verse of the concept I am talking about, I have read more things about forests than rock collecting, but I am interested in both of them. Its not the way my mind absorbs info. I wanted to grow up to be a Forest ranger... There Is ONE(1) Forest Ranger in all of Arkansas, I was told, and he had a masters degree in Forest mangement and I could clear cut fire lines, and give talks to schools about fires and make 14,500 a year.
Boy Was I mad....
Forest Ranger's were not what the TV shows were telling me, whew,, I was saved, Smokey the bear was cool, I want to meet him, I'll get to do nature hikes for breakfast and climb mountains....
The planet is having its guts turned out on to the ground and air above and people wonder why the system looks like it is not working????????
What is really bad is this is not a RANT,, IT's reality.
Got to love them when they find out the paradigm they have been using sucks big blue dirt molds.
Is English your first language?
It was like a stream of conciousness. More like a rant than not, I'd say.
djb
..... your DNA doesn't care if you go
to church on sunday, it only cares if
you get lucky on saturday night.....
http://uk.biz.yahoo.com//06112006/323/55-000-barrels-day-oil-cut-new-nigeria-unrest-official.html
I thought cannabalism wasn't a good strategy because when you consume a human, you consume the infections and diseases of that human.
For example, who wants nice juicy HIV flank steak?
Not saying its all pretty, but reality has shown us when desperate enough, humans are capable of some amazing, and from a civilized stand point, truly scary things.
I doubt permanent human agriculture will ever exist i.e. Soylent Green, but I could see temporary situations where cannibalism is employed by some people to stay alive until other food sources become available.
In the highlands of Papua New Guinea, kuru is a warning sign, which garnered attention when human BSE became an issue:
.
Having watched people die, in good hospitals in prosperous times, from HIV-AIDS, I will choose starvation.
HIV is something you could potentially live with, with only slightly reduced QoL(sex) for five or ten years - there's always nice, cold gunmetal at the end if you like that option. If you take the starvation, though... you don't get any choice. I think I'd rather go out with a different kind of bang though - if my immune system totally shut down, it's time to learn to kitesurf/basejump, and push the boundaries :)
All this is for nought, though, if you can just get yourself some flint and iron. Or even a sheet of aluminum foil to make solar-cooked human jerky.
How hot must it be cooked to kill the HIV?
Mexico Update
Bombs rattle Mexico in latest strifeThis report from the DailyTelegraph:
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Bombs exploded at Mexican political and financial targets today, rattling a country already nervous about unrest in a poor southern state and a deep political rift from an acrimonious election in July.
No one was injured in the blasts at Mexico's top electoral court, an opposition party's headquarters and a Canadian-owned bank in the capital.
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From Reuters: Mexico peso tumbles after explosions in capital.
From Stratfor:
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The leader of the People's Popular Assembly of Oaxaca (APPO), Flavio Sosa, announced in a radio interview Nov. 6 that his group is not responsible for three explosions that occurred at banks in Mexico City. Sosa said the APPO is a peaceful organization, and he cited hunger strikes and peaceful marches as the kind of tactics his group uses. He said the use of violence goes against what his group stands for.
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See my reply to TODer Squalish from late last night. Will SuperNafta and control of Pemex's oilfields be easier to implement if the Mexican economy collapses?
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
LOL!!! Thxs for responding. In all honesty, I am terribly sorry for the Mexican & Canadian People. The inevitable shrinking of Empire will try to be prevented by a new SuperNafta Manifest Destiny of the entire North American Continent all the way to Panama. According to the latest Hirsch update: the goal is to streamline detritus resource flows as much as possible across the entire land mass in response to Detritus Entropy.
According to this link:
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A coalition of five left-wing guerrilla groups from the conflict-torn state of Oaxaca has claimed responsibility for a series of bombs which exploded in the Mexican capital. The top electoral court, a bank and the former ruling party's headquarters in Mexico City were targeted. No-one was injured in the blasts, but the damage caused was unprecedented.
Security officials told reporters that the city was on full alert and emergency services had been put on standby. Protestors are demanding that federal police be withdrawn from the southern city of Oaxaca which has been rocked by riots since July.Striking teachers and left-wing activists are also demanding that Oaxaca's Governor Ulises Ruiz be sacked for alleged abuse of power. Government officials have urged Mr Ruiz to quit, but he has refused.
The guerilla statement pledged to continue what it termed "military actions" until Ruiz resigns.------------------------------
Well, that is very damn vague to me. I certainly hope that no covert US 'false flag' leftist group is behind this, but I have absolutely no proof. We should all feel sick & outraged if facts proving my speculation comes to light.
Meanwhile further South, the election triumph of Ortega in Nicaragua:
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With his apparent victory in Nicaragua's presidential election, Daniel Ortega overcame a high-profile push by U.S. officials to derail his campaign. "They did everything but threaten to invade," said Mark Weisbrot, a Latin America expert at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington.
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If I was Daniel Ortega-- I would never, ever get on a plane or helicopter-- much too risky, it is just too easy to covertly implant a software crash virus on a craft's fly-by-wire flight cpu.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
From the website, ViveLeCanada:
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The mainstream media still refuses to take the notion of a "North American Union" seriously, yet the leadership of Mexico, Canada and the U.S. are proceeding as if the framework is already a done deal; all that's left is to work out the details.We found this article on the El Universal [a Mexican website]. To our knowledge, this is the first time the existence of a plan to achieve a unified currency has ever been publicly acknowledged at the executive level. Calderon will meet with President Bush on November 9. It is expected that many of the same topics will be discussed, including the North American Union and a consolidated currency.
From El Universal: [Translation/summary] "Last week, the president-elect of Mexico, Felipe Calderon, met with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Among other things, they discussed the need to reinforce NAFTA. Other topics of discussion included the role of the Mexican military in maintaining security and the need for the two countries to strengthen commerce in such areas agricultural products and energy. The two leaders also discussed investment in the poorer zones of each country to reduce the need for mass migrations. They also shared a vision of the future for a North American Union that would include a consolidated currency. It is believed that a "solid and unified" currency is necessary to compete in the global economy...."
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Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
My problem is that Motives Matter(tm), and while I can partially respect a lame duck legacy-searcher, given the source this is unlikely to bring about anything other than bigger yachts for the top 1 income percentile of American businessmen (and Carlos Slim).
Is anyone willing to comment on the effect a unified currency + superNAFTA (only among North America though) would have on our systematic economic problems?
All good points! Unfortunately, I don't consider myself to be enough of an economist to know if longterm: whether the 'Amero' currency and SuperNafta will be enough to overcome the trans-national shrinkage in shared carry-capacity from a fast Peakoil decline. My gut-reaction is that political upheaval will outpace 'proposed' ameliorative efforts, but I could be wrong. But remember that the elite strategy of Divide & Conquer: setting us at each others' throats is an ancient time-proven technique to reduce headcount.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Tehran keen to share missile systems
http://www.gulfnews.com/region/Iran/10080385.html
And keeping track of my old friend, the USS Eisenhower...
Massive Deployment of Naval Power directed against Iran: Eisenhower Strike Group arrives in the "Arabian Gulf"
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20061103&articleId=3696
...that's a lot of hardware folks!!!
I don't know about you, but I don't see the DOW holding those gains after Tuesday. Might be a good opportunity for some people to turn a buck. I'm an oil bull...so let 'er ride.
Maybe I've been reading too much of:
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/
The market's assumption is that the Democratics will arrest the voracious spending and re-align the economy.
Is this a blip on the market?
P.S. Yes, the DEMOCRATS will reign in spending. :)
Now...I need to remember...is it "think before you vote" or "vote before you think"?
All those damn phone campaign calls has me so confused.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_11/010021.php
The robocalls seem criminal. I do hope they are prosecuted.
The Greatest Car Stunt Ever
PerformedAttemptedOur civilization is like the rocket car accelerating over a giant ramp to launch us airborne...we hope we can land on the other side but we will wind up crashed not too far from the ramp.
Leanan's keypost: The Price of Climate Change mentions how lack of adequate water and deforestation are the leading causes of a country having a Civil War or a Revolution.
From this Mexican website:
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Unfortunately, Mexico´s flora and fauna diversity has been subjected to unrestrained destruction for decades, with the result that thousands of species have disappeared and thousands more are threatened with extinction. Mexico holds the world record in deforestation, calculated in an annual loss of one million hectares. All of Mexico's aquifers are contaminated. All of the large cities have contaminated air and Yucatan is not an exception to these environmental problems.
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From this link on US-MEX shared border aquifers:
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The border region between the United States and Mexico has fostered its share of surface-water conflict, from the Colorado to the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo. It has also been a model for peaceful conflict resolution, notably the work of the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC), the supra-legal body established to manage shared water resources as a consequence of the 1944 US-Mexico Water Treaty. Yet the difficulties encountered in managing shared surface-water pale in comparison to trying to allocate groundwater resources-- each aquifer system is generally so poorly understood that years of study may be necessary before one even knows what the bargaining parameters are....
It is testimony to the complexity of international groundwater regimes that despite the presence of an active authority for cooperative management, and despite relatively warm political relations and few riparians, negotiations have continued since 1973 without resolution.
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The coastal geologic structures in Northwest Mexico are unfortunately ill-suited to acquifer pumping:
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Saltwater has intruded as far as 10 km from the coast of the Sea of Cortez into the local groundwater aquifer, which is heavily utilized for irrigation.---------------------------
The Sonoran desert, which gets very little rainfall to begin with, tends to form a 'caliche seal' which makes it difficult for surface water to recharge aquifers, but the underlying sedimentary layers that extend offshore are quite permeable to conducting saltwater inland.
From Wikipedia:
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Problems caliche cause
Caliche beds can cause many problems when trying to grow plants. First, an impermeable caliche layer prevents water from draining properly, which can keep the roots from getting enough oxygen. Salts can also build up in the soil due to the lack of drainage. Both of these situations are detrimental to plant growth. Second, the impermeable nature of caliche beds also prevents plant roots from going through the bed, which means the roots have a limited supply of nutrients, water, and space, so they cannot develop normally. Third, caliche beds can also cause the surrounding soil to be basic (have a high pH). The basic soil, along with calcium carbonate from the caliche, can prevent plants from getting enough nutrients, especially iron. An iron deficiency will cause the plant's youngest leaves to become yellow. Soil saturation above the caliche bed can make the condition worse.
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In Phx, the caliche can get so hard that it is almost like concrete. It is not unusual when excavating dirt to install a swimming pool that the backhoe cannot breakup this caliche with the action of a toothed bucket, but must install a pneumatic jackhammer instead to break up this soil formation.
This PDF link goes into interesting detail on Mexico City's increasing water problems. IMO, with all things considered: Mexico is going to loom very large on the American Radar as the world goes postPeak.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
I found an interesting link on bottled water consumption around the world. Americans, who generally have clean and safe potable tap water provided very cheaply, instead have been brainwashed into accepting the marketing hype from Madison Ave. The profits and generated waste is staggering.
Mexico, which has tremendous problems with pollution and inadequate tap-water supplies, has the OPPOSITE PROBLEM. They are highly reliant upon very expensive bottled water for health maintenance because their tapwater infrastructure is so weak nationwide. Montezuma's Revenge, or diarrhea, along with other water-borne infections, is always a strong parental concern.
From Earth Policy website:
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The global consumption of bottled water reached 154 billion liters (41 billion gallons) in 2004, up 57 percent from the 98 billion liters consumed five years earlier. Even in areas where tap water is safe to drink, demand for bottled water is increasing--producing unnecessary garbage and consuming vast quantities of energy.
Although in the industrial world bottled water is often no healthier than tap water, it can cost up to 10,000 times more. At as much as $2.50 per liter ($10 per gallon), bottled water costs more than gasoline.The United States is the world's leading consumer of bottled water, with Americans drinking 26 billion liters in 2004, or approximately one 8-ounce glass per person every day.
Mexico has the second highest consumption, at 18 billion liters.-------------------------------
From this link called Private Rivers:
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The IDB, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are the largest purveyors of water privatization worldwide. These international financial institutions primarily pitch their privatization plans through "Structural Adjustment" loans, where lender nations promise to reform sections of their economies as a condition for receiving loan money.
In World Bank vernacular, "hydro-sector reform " is a euphemism for the privatization and "structural adjustment" of laws governing water management and usage. Behind the charitable guise of providing water to the poor, the majority of the water projects are implementing changes that shift control of water management and propriety over water itself from democratic forums (like city councils and state legislatures) to corporate board rooms.
Another common reform is known as "cost recovery," whereby lender nations agree to operate national or municipal water companies at a profit. Until "cost recovery" was implemented, most national governments subsidized water delivery since access to water has been traditionally viewed as a right, not a privilege.
However, as structural adjustment forces governments to abandon the universal access doctrine, poor folks are stuck with higher water bills and forced to make excruciating trade-offs between water, food, medicine or school fees.------------------------------------------
If you thought NAWLINS being flooded was bad, check out this dire scenario for MEXICO CITY!!!
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Yet it is the Valley of Mexico where the most significant investments are needed. The valley covers 9,000 square kilometers, at the bottom of which is located the Federal District and part of the State of Mexico. The valley is completely closed in by the surrounding mountains, and has no natural drainage. The area was originally composed of several lakes, among which the Aztecs created a system of canals to release water from the valley. The Spanish, however, drained most of the lakes, leaving today's city managers with the burden of enormous flood risks and infrastructure needs.
Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) statistics demonstrate that the Valley of Mexico's aquifers are now over-exploited. While the aquifers are recharged with approximately 700 million cubic meters annually, nearly double that amount is extracted. Yet the valley still counts on them to obtain 66 percent of its water. The groundwater over-exploitation is the root of recent water shortages, as well as the cause of the city's sinking.
"The sinking of the city is a problem that we have been living with for a century," says the city's Water Chief Rodarte. "What we are doing to reduce the effects is to transfer wells to zones where they provoke minimal sinking - at the edges of the valley."
The Great Drainage Canal - one of the city's two large canals that artificially drain the city - now rises and falls distances of up to 10 meters (due to differential sinking). And in several areas where deep drainage pipes used to flow downhill, they are now inclined. The city has had to install pumps to push the water through the Great Canal, as well as move water through urban drainage networks.
That situation has left the Great Canal operating at 10 percent of its original capacity. But the fact that the city is sinking is not its only problem. Since the world's largest metropolitan zone can no longer get residual and rainwater out of the city, flooding risks are a paramount concern. The IDB says that if the Great Canal is not rehabilitated, it will be inoperable in just a few years, leaving the Central Collector to extract all of the city's water.
If the Central Collector were to fail, 210 square kilometers of the city would find itself under several meters of water, necessitating the evacuation of nearly 4 million people. Worse still, 90 percent of the subway system is located within the prospective flood zone.-------------------------------------------------
It will be fascinating to see if Mexico's Peakoil decline can generate sufficient funds to even maintain it's current poor water management, much less improve it. I am very doubtful.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Oman investing $4b to raise output
What does that look like using the HL method?
Is that supposed to be a good example of bottlebrush or horizonal drilling and their Depletion Rate problems?
From: me.
About: Major INFO overload, Keep it coming, I just jacked in an extra set of drives and am ready to rock and clock.
Thank You, Now to find the time to hunt down things. I have been Literally going through what Men are blaimed of doing when they cheat on their wives at this age, a Mid life Crisis. I have also Always lived on the edge, one Carabineer's twist away from falling to my death, but hey man what a cool ride to the deck that will be!! I never ever feared death, I feared a lot of other things, Lossing that Dream job, and what I thought and at times still think was The prefect Wife, I didn't fear death, I feared not having fun. I nearly died several times between 10 May 05 to Probably a month ago 06. I have several high rise disorders, I have mentioned a few in my earlier TOD posts.
So any kind of deeper understanding from GOD or through the Mysteries and Wisdom of God in giving me data from others that I do not know, could not know, or just plain am to lacking somewhere to know is helpful, or from others, or from myself, Or from living on the cliff edge with the sun setting and the wind chilling for the night, the rock ticking in the deep stones as the heat drifts off into my ledge's warm cocoon, Sound off The night voices of climb mates thinking those same thoughts saying goodnight please sleep tight and sung, or from the dreams of the night screams of chaos as the lines whip and pop and the ledges fall and men and women tell you the things you have dreaded hearing but only in the deepest fear holes of you mind.
Mid life needs found in an e.mail inbox.
Thank You.
Ps. The nightmare above has never happened to me or my close friends so far. But I know what they sound like just the same, people need to know the edge of the cliff is coming, and that you can die while standing on the ground and falling to it.
Charles E. Owens Jr.
The end is near.
I have high rise disorders as well. Some from the canyon effect. Ears, nose and throat. Vertigo. Bloody nose. Hoarseness from silently crying echo.
Mostly, my disorder is rising entropy.
peace
It is simply astounding what Mother Nature is capable of doing!
For those TODers that live in California, a good earthquake could set off a truly massive urban and suburban renewal plan by sweeping the terrain clean!!!
From this link:
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A large piece of rock worked loose from the steep north slope of the San Bernardino mountains and came rushing down the side of the mountain nearly in one piece, apparently riding on a cushion of air. Imagine an air hockey puck some five miles long and two miles wide, roughly fifty feet thick, moving about 270 miles per hour for eighty seconds!!!
From this link:
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The Blackhawk slide is 5 miles long, about 2 miles wide, and 30-100 feet thick. It was studied in detail by R. L. Shreve, who showed that the slide moved to it's resting place on a cushion of compressed air.
As the slide moved down the canyon (at about 170 mph), it passed over a resistant gneissic ridge that crosses the canyon, and was thus launched into the air-a geologic version of a flying carpet. Calculations indicate that sheet of moving breccia was probably as high as 400 feet above the canyon floor immediately after becoming airborne, but that it settled quickly, compressing the air trapped beneath to a frictionless blanket less than a meter thick. While airborne, the slide possibly attained velocities of 270 mph, and the entire distance from launching point to resting place were covered in about 80 seconds.A characteristic of such slides is the presence of large blocks that, although badly shattered, have fragments that retain their original orientation to one another-much like a jigsaw puzzle with pieces pulled slightly apart. This feature supports the view that carpet like sheets of rock can be moved almost intact on cushions of compressed air.
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For more info and photos on landslides, please see this USGS link. They happen more frequently than our feeble minds can recall.
Attn: TODer AMPOD-- I believe the USGS slide hazard map shows Santa Rosa in a prime slide area!
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?