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DrumBeat: December 11, 2006
Posted by threadbot on December 11, 2006 - 9:55am
Exxon has updated their report, The Outlook for Energy: A View to 2030 (PDF). Also, they are having a web cast on it tomorrow:
Please join Jaime Spellings, General Manager, Corporate Planning, Exxon Mobil Corporation, for a presentation and discussion of our recently updated outlook for energy through 2030. The event will be webcast on December 12 beginning at 10:00 am CST, 11:00 am EST and should last about one hour. Following the prepared remarks, the presenter will take questions from the audience and via the internet.
Shell may cede Sakhalin-2 control
MOSCOW, Russia - Royal Dutch Shell has offered to cede control of the $22 billion Sakhalin-2 project, Russia's biggest single foreign investment, to state gas monopoly Gazprom after months of government pressure, industry sources said.Such a deal would appear to mark a victory for the Kremlin, determined to wrest control over the "commanding heights" of the Russian economy, and a retreat by Shell.
Bush to Make Energy a 2007 Priority, Economic Aide Hubbard Says
President George W. Bush wants to make energy independence a domestic priority next year with an eye to gathering bipartisan support in the Democratic-controlled Congress, his chief economic adviser said.
Homeowner’s Insurance and Fire Extinguishers
Everybody is a shrink at heart, and we have seen it on the pages of Energy Bulletin lately. The powerdowners are working like sixty to figure out why we “doomers” are so damn stubborn and won’t sign up for their permaculture classes.
Britons Fume as U.K. Heat Bills Rise to Decade High
Nazrul Islam, who owns a liquor store in London's East End, says his natural-gas bill has climbed by a third during the past year. With temperatures poised to plunge, he can't contemplate cutting back on heat."I have two baby sons whom I have to keep warm," Islam, 30, said at his shop in Brick Lane. "I am really angry with British Gas." Islam's latest quarterly gas bill for the summer amounted to 140 pounds ($275), about the same amount he paid for during last year's winter heating season.
Australia: Oil companies 'thumbing nose at govt'
Queensland Nationals senator Barnaby Joyce has called on the federal government to mandate the uptake of biofuels as oil companies continue to fall well short of their targets.
The Iran oil bourse - a new direction?
U.K.: No new money for green energy
The government today launches the latest phase of its grant support system for renewable energy such as solar panels and wind turbines for public sector buildings such as schools - but there is no new money for the scheme in spite of the recent Stern Review.
Ghana: Crisis Action Solution Designs Solar Panels
A local non-profit making organisation based in Takoradi has successfully designed and produced solar panels as its contribution to solving the country’s energy crisis.The solar panels, which have a lifespan of 30 years, are targeted towards the provision of solar energy for those who are off the national grid, especially rural communities.
The organisation, Crisis Action Solution Organisation (CASOLS), has also trained 164 users on the maintenance of the panels to ensure that buyers derive the maximum benefit from them.
Renewables Growth Fuels Demand for Min-Metals
The U.S. and global renewable industry has grown to a degree where its demands for mineral and metal, as well as financial and human, resources is altering supply/demand conditions in a range of key commodities markets, from corn and soybeans to copper and steel. Recent shortages of high-grade silicon have commanded the attention of industry analysts, as well as existing producers and new market entrants, many of whom are now rolling out plans to expand capacity.
Trading coal for oil may prove profitable
Would it be possible, then, to have a total net loss of energy and still make a profit because you leveraged $90 oil against $12 coal?
Gulf states weigh nuclear program
MANAMA, Bahrain: The leaders of six Gulf countries announced Sunday that they intended jointly to develop nuclear energy capability, sparking new concerns of an impending nuclear race in the oil-rich Gulf just as the international community considers imposing sanctions against Iran for its nuclear development efforts.
Japan announces 82.6 billion yen loan to Iraq for energy projects
TOKYO: Japan's Foreign Ministry announced Monday it would provide a 82.64 billion yen (US$707.53 million; €532.94 million) loan for Iraq to repair and upgrade the country's energy industry.
Oil sinks below $62, Saudi deepens Jan supply curbs
Oil prices eased below $62 on Monday, extending last week's losses, as concern over brimming global fuel inventories offset a likely second supply cut by OPEC and news of deepening Saudi export curbs.
Nissan planning new fuel-cell vehicle
TOKYO - Nissan Motor Co. announced plans Monday to launch a next-generation fuel cell vehicle in the early 2010s in Japan and North America as part of its mid-term environmental strategy.
Australian PM asks industry experts to examine carbon trading scheme
SYDNEY - Australian Prime Minister John Howard asked a panel of industry experts to examine how to set up an international carbon emissions trading scheme to help address global warming.
Raymond J. Learsy: An Energy Agenda For a Newly Energized Congress (Part IV)- Need For Urgent Congressional Oversight of Oil/Gas Futures Trading
The consumption of fossil fuels given their impact on our environment is dangerous to our civilization, but perhaps no less so than the high price of oil. One of the reasons why prices have escalated exponentially over the past few years is the lack of government oversight and transparency in oil futures trading both domestically and overseas.
Kurt Cobb: Mavens, mavens everywhere...
As the long somnolent American public began to wake up in large numbers to the dangers of global warming in the past year, those in the peak oil movement looked on in amazement. The first reaction for many might have been, "It's about time!" The second reaction might have been, "What are we doing wrong? Peak oil should be right up there with global warming in the list of dangers that humanity faces."
Bumpy time for Meals on Wheels
Meals on Wheels, which has delivered food to the elderly and disabled since 1954, is experiencing shortages of volunteer drivers and about four of 10 programs have waiting lists of needy clients.The rapidly growing population of Americans age 85 and older is increasing the need for nutrition programs and high gasoline prices make it harder to recruit volunteers, says Peggy Ingraham of the Meals on Wheels Association of America.
Bio breakthroughs are promising much better ways to make ethanol.
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Homeowner's Insurance and Fire Extinguishers
I'm glad to hear somebody calling B.S. on the psychobabble of permacultists!
I suppose people in any group could be covering the basics (good diet, exercise, fiscal responsibility), but I suspect that the organic/permiculturists have an edge on that.
You don't arrange your life (with a large fraction on income and attention) to chase a fire-proof (or earthquake-proof) house.
Nowak's article has a good structure, and at first sight looks like a good defense ... but I think it falls down when he avoids the question of allocation of resources, and in particular opportunity costs.
I mean ... I could spend all my time and money to make my house earthquake safe ... but that is not exactly the same as a quick call to the insurance agent.
Someone has....and he'll share the wisdom.
http://www.thepeacock.com/Money/Why%20Buy%20any%20more%20TRASH.doc
I rent, but I still have insurance. Even when I was so poor I had trouble affording groceries, I had renter's insurance. A friend of mine lost everything in a housefire. It wasn't her fault; her landlord accidently set fire to the place while he was trying to make repairs. But she ended up not even able to go to work, because she didn't have any clothes. That was when I decided insurance was worth it. I've paid hundreds of dollars in renter's insurance, and never made a single claim, but, like the cliche goes, it's worth it for the peace of mind.
I'm sure the national average for homeowner's insurance is relatively low.
There are also folks who chose to take risks. Around here it's people who choose to live in the canyons (fire, flood).
That doesn't disprove the general rule.
At least in Ohio, if you there is a mortgage on your home, the lender requires proof of homeowner's insurance.
Around here (Ohio River Valley), the "risk takers" live in the flood plain. They often are forced to take this risk bc/ the flood plain is the cheapest place to put a trailer and they can't afford to rent a lot elsewhere. Theoretically, as flood waters come in, you could just pull your trailer to higher ground. In reality, most of these trailers cannot safely travel and the occupants do not have access to a vehicle to pull them anyway, especially on short notice. Many trailers were destroyed in recent floods (the worst being due to the remants of hurricanes Ivan and Frances that came all the way up to Ohio river valley roughly 10 days apart in 9/04). Local officials have been trying to close down trailer parks in the flood plain or force them to build up the lots but it's hard to enforce as there aren't many alternative locations on flat ground around here that are affordable.
Now, I sometimes ask how is it that they cannot afford a lot outside the flood plain if these trailers all seem to have satellite dishes and the occupants seem to be able to afford a pack or two of cigarettes a day- but that's just my cynical side.
http://www.iii.org/media/facts/statsbyissue/homeowners/
for highest renters and homeowners insurance.
(Texas). Looks like in most instances it is
double the majority of other states. To make
matters worse, we average $.16 kwh for electricity!
I have online banking accounts, and none of them offer the kind of interest you would need to cover the cost of my possessions if the place burned down. Heck, even investing in stocks during the dot-com boom, it would be hard to turn my insurance payments into the coverage I have.
There's a lot more to permaculture than appears on the surface. David Holmgren, one of the Australian co-originators of permaculture, has been writing about peak oil (which he calls "energy descent") for a number of years. A few months ago, Holmgren accompanied Richard Heinberg in a peak oil speaking tour of Australia.
This interview is good background: Peak Oil and Permaculture:
David Holmgren on Energy Descent.
As Holmgren explains in the interview, permaculture is partly based on the thinking of the late systems ecologist H. T. Odum. Odum is one of the lesser known "grandfathers of peak oil." His energy analyses (e.g. eMergy - enerygy acconting) have been very influential in many different fields. Odum's last work was devoted to planning for a post-peak world: The Prosperous Way Down (excerpts)
One thing that permaculture provides is a long-term historical perspective on energy use, and a method for thinking about solutions. The best example is Holmgren's latest book, Permaculture: Principles and Pathways beyond Sustainability I highly recommend the book.
- Bart
Energy Bulletin
Earlier this morning while getting ready for work, I was watching CNBC. The oil analyst they were talking to mentioned Aramco cutting oil exports to China and Asia in 07 by 8-9%. So I was trying to find that on CNBC's website. I found this:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/16143433
"State oil firm Saudi Aramco has told Japanese, South Korean and Taiwanese refiners that it will cut January crude supplies to 8 to 9 percent below their contracted annual volumes, deeper than the 4 to 5 percent curbs it imposed in December."
I'm guessing that is the same.
What I found strange though is this:
"However, Saudi Arabia, whose powerful minister Ali al-Naimi has also cited oversupply, appeared to send the strongest signals yet that a second cut was in the offing by telling major Asian refiners that it will reduce their supplies next month."
So the markets are oversupplied but they are cutting exports below someones contracted amount?
I will say that if Saudi put customers on allocation - which was what one story that I read said - that is a sign of a production problem. Allocation is a dirty word; customers don't like to be put on allocation.
Given the way international affairs are likely to go, he needs it.
Expect more ethanol subsidies.
would it be that easy in the oil world to not honor a contract?
It would make singing the contract a useless exercise; the buyer would surely like some level of certainty, that's why he signs the contract. Of course a farmer can have a bad harvest, and that can be written in, but he would still have to prove that, and make clear he's not just selling elsewhere for a better price.
So would KSA have to prove to its Asian customers that it CAN not deliver, for intsance by admitting that Ghawar is dying?
For instance, "if" a customer canceled a contract a penalty of x% would be paid.
Or "if" a supplier was late, it would cost them.
Surely non-fulfillment has happened before in the history of the oil world, and the oil contract-writers put in their "ifs."
For WesTexas and others,
Hypothetical oil exporting country's NOC produces 5mbd of which 4mbd are exported with the remaining 1mbd used domesticaly. The export is apportioned as 2mbd for bilateral longterm delivery contracts and 2mbd for the "free"--fungible--market. Enter China; it obtains a new longterm bilateral contract for 1.5mbd, thus reducing fungible amount by 1.5mbd. Although the amount being produced and exported remains unchanged, the "market" just lost 1.5mbd in supply.
As export capacity is reapportioned as more bilateral contracts are entered into, it appears that the real number to look at regarding exports is the fungible amount unemcumbered by bilateral contracts. Or said another way, what is the actual supply open to purchase in the "free" market, and how has that changed? It can't be the total amount exported as much of that was sold beforehand, not just-in-time.
Though Down under's comments in yesterday's DrumBeat are kind of interesting...
would it be that easy in the oil world to not honor a contract?
I haven't been able to verify the allocation story. I have been searching Google news and I can't find anything like that. It may have been a reporter being a bit liberal with the reporting. If anyone can find a story that says the Saudis put customers on allocation, please link to it.
You primarily put customers on allocation if you have concerns that you can't deliver the product. This is usually due to production problems. The only thing worse is to declare force majeure, and then you definitely have problems.
If it is a true allocation, there aren't that many possible explanations: 1). They are having production troubles (although I think I heard just heavy oil); 2). China is trying to fill their SPR, and Saudi can't fulfill obligations to them and to Asian refiners; 3). They are trying to drive prices up.
As I write this, OPEC oil prices are down this morning.
The links were posted yesterday on Drumbeat. This Bloomberg article actually uses the term "allocation".
And this Ruthers article says other nations will be given their "allocations" next week.
Ron Patterson
Saudi Arabia: 6 hours, 11 minutes ago
Saudi Arabia has told Asian refiners that they will receive less oil in January stoking speculation that Opec will announce a further oil output cut when it meets on Thursday, reported TradeArabia. At the weekend, Saudi Aramco told three Japanese lifters, two South Korean refiners and one Taiwanese buyer to expect about 8-9% less crude than stated in their contracts.
http://www.ameinfo.com/104963.html
Ron posted something below from an "insider." However, this person does not claim to be a Saudi insider. It is clear that they are looking at outside information to come to those conclusions. That's the problem. We are all looking at outside data, and the data aren't transparent.
Especially, especially...if those "in the know" have been told that by releasing this information could cause worldwide panic and mayhem...that is incentive enough NOT to spill the beans.
Also Robert, does this possible allocation give you reason to reconsider your current position of a near term peak? (I realize this is not part of what you wanted to cover with this article but I felt the question was pertinent based on your comments that allocation almost certainly means production problems.)
This paragraph, also from the Reuters article, seems to suggest that at least one Chinese refiner would like less crude then they contracted for:
"The Taiwanese refiner said all its grades were cut, while a source with a mainland Chinese refiner said it had been granted a request for 5-10 percent less crude than it contracted to buy."
How does it work the other way around wherein a purchaser no longer wants what they contracted to buy for lack of capacity / demand?
It's like George Bailey asking, "How much do you really need?"
And the nice lady saying she can get by on less when she knows he barely has that.
What is that exactly? How did you score that? We're curious? Your fellow female TODer's.
What is the demarcation line for an oil producer between allocation and force majeure? Does an oil importer have a say in this decision? Please forgive my ignorance on this topic please.
For example: if Taiwan is not happy with allocation amounts, can they urge KSA to declare force majeure and then buy all they can afford at spot market prices? This could really make the market volatile.
Are there historical examples to which we can refer? Say when the US went from net exporter to net importer?
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
RR probably has a more erudite explanation, but my understanding is that force majeure generally refers to an act of nature (e.g. hurricane, earthquake) that prevents fulfilling a contract. I doubt that declining oil production because of geological constraints could be shoe-horned into this, but who knows?
Thxs for responding. Oh Boy, could that make for an ugly international court case in the Hague-- importers sick and tired of ever-reducing allocation amounts suing for force majeure to be imposed based on geologic peak vs exporters reluctance to share critical oilfield data so they can keep their domestic market well supplied/subsidized, and/or hoarding.
Simmons's suggestion for full data transparency and ASPO's Energy Depletion Protocols seems like a quicker and easier path.
One other comment: if Bush, Putin, King Abdullah, Chavez, Calderon, and Ahmadinejad would read the OUTSTANDING discussion threads of WT's & RR's--what would they want to do going forward?
IMO, if worldwide mitigation doesn't get jumpstarted soon--by default, the Topdogs will be accepting, even working towards the fast-crash scenario. My two cents.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
You may be right. The more I learn about the Polonium Incident: the more I am inclined to believe that very, very high stakes poker is being played, and keeping one's cards hidden, bluffing, and dare I say it, cheating and/or conspiracy is just part of this ultimately
lethal'winner take all' game.Please read my '
radioactive' posts near the bottom of this thread.Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Several years ago the State of Texas Permanent School fund sod its gas to Reliant Energy to lock in prices of about $4.50/mcf, then production declines whacked their delivery. They were forced to buy spot market gas to satisfy their contracts. There has been no ivestigation, and all of the media except the Galveston Daily News have let those corrupt bastards slide. Its one of the reasons I now belong to the throw the rascals out party.
At any rate, thats an example of geological considerations not being force majure in natural gas contracts. And , buy the way, I'm a landman and this is in my area of professional expertise .
OPEC Likely to Stand Pat on Output
That was reiterated in today's WSJ in the "What's Ahead" section:
The WSJ appears to be alone among news source in predicting no output cuts.
Again: who is not telling the real story? Doesnt Japan AND S.K. AND Taiwan(!) need the oil in january OR cant KSA deliver? Hmm...
Where's a catchy comment from CEO when needed?
The report is A rough guide to Individual Carbon Trading. The reference to food in the Guardian article, which on first sight is a new issue, looks to be misleading.
Down Under wrote at 6:05 EST this morning:
And thanks to Ace for your great post, also very late yesterday. It reinforces everything I have been saying for the last several months.
Ace wrote:
Ron Patterson
Carrying on from Down Under's post on Santos. Today's Sydney Morning Herald has this on Santos and it pulling out of the US Oil & Gas Business.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/business/santos-withdraws-from-us/2006/12/11/1165685617143.html
Bush to Make Energy a 2007 Priority, Economic Aide Hubbard Says
President George W. Bush wants to make energy independence a domestic priority next year with an eye to gathering bipartisan support in the Democratic-controlled Congress, his chief economic adviser said.
LEts see:
Told the voters how getting more oil was just a matter of using his political capital to get the Saudi's to open up the spigot.
Used to drill dry holes when he was in the energy business
The whole 'we'll get a stable Middle East by playing "whack an Iraqi" policy'
Why do I fear for the 'domestic energy independence' market?
Cornhttp://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101030721-464406,00.html
Or this variant:
They point to 'waste' like the trimmings left on the forest floor from a logging operation and say 'if only that was used, there would be no energy problem.' When confronted they claim noting is wrong with Tech, its all a=political problem.
The most extreme version - take the output from the sun and claim 'no problem!'.
Other than the shooting, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/277471c2-8889-11db-b485-0000779e2340.html
Have I mentioned ELP this morning?
33 years after Texas peaked, the Texas State Geologist was still talking about the possibility of increasing Texas production back to its peak level.
It's a small step from
Anger (why is this happening to me?)
to
This is happening to me because of you, and I will make you pay for that
or
I don't know who did this (not me!), but someone has to pay for my discomfort and pain, so I'll find someone weaker than me and hurt them
Throw in some group, or mass, psychology, and you got yourself a real party.
This is really an interesting flaw in the cornucopians' reasoning, especially Lynch and Huber. In effect, they concede that some regions and some types of energy will peak and decline, but they (especially Huber) assert that our aggregate consumption of energy will effectively increase forever.
Maybe Iran is expecting a confrontation in which dollar denominated assets get frozen?
The Nemesis Report, written by an anonymous contributor to the ASPO newsletter of October 4004, from the heart of the oil industry returns with devastating insight. He/she reports that Saudi Arabia will peak in the last quarter of 2005. Saudi actually peaked in second and third quarter of 2005, producing 9,600,000 barrels per day for those two quarters.
An excerpt:
Well hell, anyone can be off by six months. Of course with 20-20 hindsight we now know the peak was in the spring and summer of 2005. Still this was some remarkable insight. But this person, according to ASPO works in the heart of the oil industry, (perhaps Saudi Arabia?), and apparently is in a better position to know than the rest of us.
Thanks to Down Under for pointing this article out to me.
Ron Patterson
Notice that your link says " October 4004". :-)
Shouldn't be too hard to look back 2000 years. :-)
Rick
PS - Oh for an edit button.
Or they may not be able to read, and into subsistence gardening.
It's amazing to me how many people--on a Peak Oil website of all places--are still in the Denial stage. The Denial/Anger among the population as a whole is going to be something to behold.
What is doubling amazing is why the simple assertion that Saudi Arabia and the world should show the same kind of production profiles as two very good analogues, Texas and the Lower 48, is viewed as some kind of extraordinarily claim--especially given the all but certain decline/crash of the four current super giants.
The inflation adjusted price for gasoline is still spitting distance from the 1967 price ($2.00 in 2006 dollars, as opposed to today's US average of $2.292).
(Nat. Geo. Dec. 2006)
I don't think I went thru an anger stage, it was more of a fear stage...
But for me, it seems likely that I'd have a technician out to fix a solar system more than once, in 20 years.
In Southern California, if the grid is down, you will have much worse issues to deal with than just lack of power. And you can probably survive without a heating system that relies in part on electric power (fans / pumps, etc). So I understand your point.
Where do you buy one? Can't. Have to make it yourself, just like me. Took about 35 years. But way better than golf or TV football.
Also 35 years to make it. What is the EROEI of that?
What did you make it from?
I would have eaten the same amount of oatmeal and deer regardless of what I was doing, so why not this? EROEI sounds like the noise somebody makes when they grab the wrong end of a hot poker.
Made it from blood, toil tears and sweat, as well as a very big dollop of simple stubborness sprinkled with a dash of stupidity. Same as any other gadget guy.
Concerning PV system reliability, I recently checked on a system that was sold by others- but made operational by myself- it has been operating for 11 years with no maintenance with the exception of adding water to batteries twice a year by unskilled farm workers. This includes one panel being struck and shattered by rocks from a bush-hog and also being blown out of the ground by Katrina which was still a Cat 2 when it blew through the area.
I often see PV systems still operational in the oilfield that are the original ARCO Solar and Solarex modules that are over twenty years old.
As numerous articles say time and time again, the first place to start is efficiency. Once you've rung out all of the inefficiency, then it's time to consider PV systems. This allows you to purchase a much smaller system and less expensive system.
Grid intertie is ideal if you don't need to be off-grid. It allows you to drop the storage all together, which is a huge expense and lets you put "green" power back into the grid at the time of day the grid demands it the most, and you probably demand it the least (since most people are at work during the day).
If you expect many small power disruptions and want steady power, a small battery setup might prove ideal. If you expect infrequent long power disruptions (snowstorms, etc) and otherwise steady, a diesel generator might be the way to go. If you expect many small power disruptions interspersed with infrequent longer disruptions, a combination of a small battery system plus a diesel generator would probably be the way to go.
The only component to fail on the system was the old square wave inverter, but this was only an optional component anyway so its loss was no big deal other than the cost involved.
Unfortunately there are not many 48 Volt inverters on the market to replace it, but it is not needed for pumping water. The two pumps are plumbed parallel and each can be isolated and removed for repair if needed.
Regarding conservation and solar, there used to be an old saying:
"Insulate before you Insolate!"
Odo,
I'm a believer in peak oil, but what seems to never be a topic around here is how CHEAP energy still is. If we really were heading down the backside, I would expect massive increases in the price of energy in inflation adjusted dollars. We haven't seen it yet.
It's gonna be ugly when it happens...and the third world is really going to bear the brunt of it.
Hush!
I will contact you by email and tell you who this person is
Ron Patterson
OSEI tiny link
Some have expressed frustration that we spend so much time over charts and graphs, and debating whether the peak was in December or May or three years hence. But that's what mavens do.
A lot of what makes a connector or salesman seems to be innate, so I don't think trying to change ourselves or this site is the way to go. The EROEI is likely to be poor on that strategy. ;-) No, I think we need to bring in people with different talents. If we really want to affect public policy, we need more Kunstlers and Savinars.
You're right, Leanan, we all have our basic personality structures. None of us will end up doing live comedy.
However, it is possible to stretch ourselves. Westexas is the champion here -- going on a talk show with the oil company sharks? Way to go, WT!
In general, the TOD contributors seem to be stretching themselves to get the message out. I've found WT, PG and all the others to be wonderful to work with.
There are relatively simple things that mavens (i.e., experts) can do to communicate more effectively.
I noticed, during my work as a technical writer, that engineers and scientists "get it" rather quickly. From their training, they are accustomed to the idea of learning new skills. I've given an engineer a book on clear writing, and seen their writing improve 500% in the course of a month.
To use Leanan's metaphor, the energy return (EROEI) is very high.
Examples:
And so forth.
Bart
Energy Bulletin
If a person believes that Peak Oil is a huge threat to the economic stability of the world and quite possibly our survival as a civilisation, then it really behooves her to get other people involved. I believe this. I'm of the opinion that individually our efforts matter little, but that collectively we can change the way the world works. In other words, its an effective self-replicating meme, to use Richard Dawkins term.
I've been involved for years with AA, another self-replicating meme, which has as its premise the core beleif that addiction kills, and that if we don't help others to see their problem and change their behaviour they will die. Evangelism in Christianity has the same premise, that a person will go to hell if he doesn't accept certain beliefs. Peak Oil's is of course that we will kill the planet if we don't change our energy consumption behaviour.
Most people don't think. At least 95% are not concerned beyond their next meal or sex act.Just not capable. Of the 5% that can thing, at least half will be unwilling to have their world view changed. But, thankfully, we are herd animals and tend to follow the lead bull.And the lead bull is the lead bull because he sees danger and leads the herd away from it, mostly in reaction to the other animals.
AA is a good example of the way ideas grow. One person shares with another their experience and hope and the other person responds. Its not by advertising or public relations, and the professionals have no better solution than to send a drunk to AA.
What we need is for every person who actually beleives this theory to introduce one person to the concept of peak oil today. If only 1 in 20 responds we will have a growth rate like AA's in the early days-exponential. So all you pointy-headed intellectuals, I mean mavens, get one friend or coworker to look at the site today.
That's something that shows the process working, in a messy and imperfect way. Mavens pushed those cars, just as they pushed front-loading washing machines, and ...
I guess the old saying from advertising is that a good message is a message that works. All other aesthetic concerns are just noise.
So I'd say there are things that work, and that energies could be doubled down on those messages - hybrids, efficient appliances, global warming ... all gaining traction.
Alan
Is that a net win?
Or can you demonstrate a loss?
Hey! I haven't yet had to push my Insight! ;0
The real machine to get is a Staber, what maven pimps for Whirpool?
http://www.staber.com/
Top load with the side-load action and water useage. 340 watts peak, 200 or less watts useage. One big pully drives the wash tank, and simple uunits.
Mmmmmmwashing sexy.
http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?fuseaction=clotheswash.display_products_html
The Sears Kenomre HE2 Plus was on sale this past weekend for $650. It is pretty close to the only Staber on that list, for about half the price.
The problem with the web though is that it is too easy to find unhappy owners. I couldn't convince myself before the sale ended that the HE2 Plus was a reliable model.
More on washers here, inc. xls format files:
http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=clotheswash.pr_clothes_washers
Stauber makes 4 machineds. 3 have coin slots. One does not. (implied commerical better than residential maintience and quality arguments)
The basket is stianless steel
The top loading side agatation ment no door seal. (Big win here. Addressed mother's comments)Mechanically simple (thus my father could fix)
Didn't have electronics that could speak German or Spanish - 4 (or is it 3?) knobs. Electrically simple.
If you'll forgive my bluntness...this is proof positive that we're a bunch of geeks that are ill-suited to be peak oil evangelists.
Pointing people to TOD is, IMO, a very poor strategy. This is a site for peak oil nerds. Ordinary peak oilers don't understand it, let alone random people off the street.
Similarly, PeakOil.com is more a site for people who already understand the problem. There's info for beginners there, but it's not exactly easy to find for someone just wandering in.
Wolf at the Door and LATOC are better, IMO. They are meant to convince newbies. The latter especially grabs people's attention. (I wish it were formatted better, though.)
I wish we had a good peak oil movie or DVD.
FWIW...my sister is a connector. I told her about peak oil. She Googled it herself, ended up at LATOC, and was convinced. But she's not sure what to do about it, other than stock up on survival gear. (She was already active in many environmental causes.)
That is really what you recognize around here, Leanan?
It's too late to bring in the salesmen, both for Peak Oil and for climate change. Who's going to buy disaster, what kind of purchase is that?
"I want you to buy this great product"
"What's it for?"
"It opens your eyes and keeps you up at night, thinking and worrying."
"Well, does it help me find a solution to my worries?"
"There is no solution."
"Then it has no value either, does it?"
Yes, it most certainly is. Many people put a lot of work into this site. Not just the "official" contributors and editors, but a lot of regular users who write blogs, maintain databases, post charts and graphs and articles that take hours of work, etc. They aren't being paid to do this. They are doing it because they are trying to help, in the way they know best: teaching and sharing information.
And war is usually a pessimal solution to peoples problems.
It cant be hopless to "sell" peak oil mitigation, it is at least better then war...
- the war on poverty
- the war on cancer
- the war on drugs
- the global war on terrorism
Those four were more or less official/government names, as I recall. Plus a few other silly names like 'whip inflation now,' which is not quite war, but pretty close, or the 'space race.'There were other wars against racism, pollution, etc. which were not as official.
We don't even want a list of the real wars America has been involved in where I knew people doing the fighting, but let's just say that that number is also higher than 4 - not every war was publicly announced as such - Central America, for example.
War sells very, very well in America. Long term planning, and living in a modest and responsible way? Good luck on selling that.
I think we Merry-Cans have already given it a bellicose name. We call it:
"The War of Independence from Energy, foreign and domestic" (and of Independence from other Phenomenon of Nature).
Amazing what one can do with the courage of a reptilian brain, isn't it?
Stranger things happen - like Bush denying he ever stayed the course' about saying 'stay the course.'
Isn't it headed in the right direction?
For those of us who allocation a portion of our time and energy on fixes to the current system(s), and do not put all our eggs in the survivalist basket, that looks like a strategy worth supporting.
Well, I'm not one of those asking that.
Disagree. Two words: "clean coal."
Also I believe that every country that has moved down the GW path has put a fee on coal-generated power, encouraging conservation.
I can see occupational safety and local strip mining damage as concerns. Are you concerned about it being too temporary as a resource?
If you think the infinite growth/happy motoring lifestyle can continue after the peak, only with electric cars and solar panels, then your agenda is probably quite similar to the mainstream global warming activists.
If, OTOH, you believe that on the downslope of peak oil, we will no longer be able to support infinite growth and ever-increasing technological complexity...you will not have much in common with the global warming folk.
If you feel that resource limits like water are going to be the basic problem, I can't argue with you: I'm not deeply informed on that.
But, I don't see how you can argue that PO is peak energy. I can see an argument for a heck of a transition problem (as discussed by Charley Maxwell, for instance), but I can't see peak energy. I just can't see how you can argue that wind and solar won't be sufficient for energy needs.
Why is that no previous civilization was able to reach our level of complexity? Are we just smarter than they were?
I don't buy it. I think peak oil is peak energy, because of the amount of work it takes to convert diffuse solar energy into a form we can use.
LOL. No, we are just at "the end of history."
Give it another 20 years and another group will be at the end of history, and wondering about their future.
IOW, all available power will be directed to renewables as the very highest priority. You may not be able to drive for lack of gas, but people will be installing windmills.
hmmm. Are you arguing that previous civilizations didn't reach this level of complexity because they were limited by solar energy, and that we've been only able to reach this level of complexity because of fossil fuels?
I would note that Europe was already more technologically sophisticated than any previous civilization before fossil fuels were used in any widespread way, and that in fact FF's were used because technology had reached the point where this was possible. Technology caused FF use. Of course FF then helped economic & techological growth in a virtuous cycle, but tech came first.
There is a quote from Isaac Newton that fits here. He was asked how he accomplished so much more than his predecessors. He replied "I see so much further because I stand on the shoulders of giants". IOW, unprecedented achievements came not from being smarter than our predecessors, but because of steady, incremental progress.
"peak oil is peak energy, because of the amount of work it takes to convert diffuse solar energy into a form we can use. "
hmmm. Well, let's look at diffuseness: on a sunny noontime we receive a kilowatt per square meter of sunlight, and in the US we receive an average of very roughly 4 kilowatt hours per day per meter. That doesn't seem diffuse to me. The average US residential roof area is roughly 200 sq meters: that's 800 kwhrs per day, and 24,000 per month. That's a lot: about 24 times as much the average household useage. At even 20% efficiency (a figure that's sure to rise) you get 4.8x household needs.
A 1.5 Megawatt wind turbine might gather 4,000,000 kwhrs per year, in about .25 acres of land. That's pretty concentrated. Don't forget, in the US there are about 500,000 oil wells to provide 40% of our oil needs. That many wind turbines could provide 50% of our electricity needs.
The raw materials we're talking about sunlight and wind. You should compare those not to gasoline, or even oil, but to oil bearing rock. How diffuse is the energy in oil bearing rock? How much work is it to gather the oil from the rock into the tanker, let alone refine and distribute it?
The output of PV or a turbine is electricity, and this output is created in a way that's much simpler than oil drilling, refining and distribution. Especially wind: wind turns the generator, and out comes electricity - simplicity itself. Compare that to mining coal, and shipping it to the power plant, and pulverizing it, and creating steam to turn the turbine. PV is more complex to manufacture of course, but in operation it's simplicity itself - light shines, out comes power.
Finally, the amount of work required to gather energy is, in the absence of hidden subsidies, it's market cost. The cost of wind, before any subsidies, ranges from $.04 to $.08, with an average around $.06: that's a little more expensive than coal or nuclear's direct costs, but it's certainly cheap enough to power civilization. IOW, If labor costs average about $20/hour in the US then a khr takes about 10.4 seconds of labor to generate and provide to the grid - that's not much.
Solar PV, of course, is more expensive. On the one hand that cost is plummeting. OTOH, it's cheap enough to run a civilization on right now: Japan is using PV with no subsidies at all.
Does that make sense to you?
Yes, that about sums it up.
And I would disagree.
Not quite. I certainly agree about the standing on the shoulders of giants bit, but progress hasn't really been steady and incremental. We certainly cannot depend on it to continue.
No. Not at all. You are talking in terms of an economic system that will not survive the end of the age of oil.
Let me put it this way. If aliens landed on Easter Island just before the last collapse, and gave everyone a solar panel, would it have saved them?
And I would disagree."
ummhmm. Could you elaborate? Sure the Industrial Revolution was propelled by coal, but perhaps the most important invention of the last 500 years was the printing press, which was developed around 1400. Things were developing technologically before coal was used, coal just sped things up enormously. Fossil fuels are enormously valuable, but they aren't magical or irreplaceable. Perhaps just as importantly, oil isn't the only FF: as we've been discussing, coal will be around much longer than oil, and provide a transition (should we choose to use it: I hope we don't, so much).
"We certainly cannot depend on it to continue."
I wasn't arguing that we did (though I think we can indeed count on it, at least to some degree). I was answering your question as to how we could be more successful than previous societies with renewables. We don't need any additional breakthroughs to use wind power: turbines are cheap enough already. Pumped storage is old and proven technology. Solar is already cheap enough to use, though it would be convenient if it got cheaper, as it is certain to do (e.g. through silicon getting cheaper when greater supplies arrive, and through economies of scale: capital expenses allocated to ever greater production quantities).
"You are talking in terms of an economic system that will not survive the end of the age of oil."
Buy why, specifically? I think I've addressed your concerns about cost and diluteness of renewables...so, why do you feel that way?
"If aliens landed on Easter Island just before the last collapse, and gave everyone a solar panel, would it have saved them? "
Im sure not, but that isn't what they needed: electricity wasn't the resource limit they were up against. If someone handed them tankers of gasoline, that wouldn't have helped either. Now, if someone had landed and planted a whole new set of vegetation that grew 10x faster than the old trees and replaced the products from the vanished trees, that would have helped...
IIRC, Easter Island had a sustainable economy, it's just that the islanders got a little nutty, and insisted on cutting down their trees, faster than they could grow, for seriously non-essential uses (statues). Now, as I understand it, Diamond's argument is that civilizations have choices when faced with economic or environmental challenges. For instance, the greenland settlers could have chosen to eat fish, and they would have been fine. Instead, they refused to try something new, and died out. That's somewhat comparable to GWB refusing to recognize GW, and resisting renewables and resorting to resource wars instead. OTOH, there's nothing inevitable about this irrationality, and as a society we could choose to go to renewables and be just fine, energywise, in the longrun.
The second time. The first time (that we know of), it was developed by the Minoans. They collapsed, though. The technology was lost, and the world did not see the printing press or flush toilets again for thousands of years.
No, you haven't, actually.
Because the current economic system is built on infinite growth. The idea that someone will pay more for the same house in the future.
To quote economist Kenneth Boulder, "Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist."
Well, IIRC the best theory is that they were hit by an enormous tidal wave, which event created the legend of the sinking of Atlantis. I understand collapse to imply a more or less internal process, rather than an external flattening (in this case, literally).
"Buy why, specifically? I think I've addressed your concerns about cost and diluteness of renewables...
No, you haven't, actually."
Again, could you elaborate? I did so. With such short answers we won't make any headway.
"why do you feel that way?
Because the current economic system is built on infinite growth. The idea that someone will pay more for the same house in the future."
OK, so you feel this way not because of peak oil, but because of a general objection to our economic system. IOW, if there was no PO problem, you would still feel this way. Yes?
Boulder is an interesting guy, and I can't see anything to disagree with in his writings. OTOH, I don't see any hint that he believed that "the current economic system is built on infinite growth". Take the example of Japan, which stagnated for 10 years recently with no growth at all. They felt a little frustrated, but they didn't collapse. Take the US automotive industry, whose sales figures peaked 30 years ago.
In fact the auto industry is instructive: they've redefined growth as improvement in quality, rather than quantity - the whole economy could do the same thing.
Growth doesn't necessarily mean growth in resource consumption. An economy can mature for hard goods, and grow in services, like medicine.
Nobody believes that resource consumption will grow forever - in effect that's a straw man (though I'm not suggesting insincerity on your part in suggesting it). It's a false problem, a bogeyman. Resource consumption, like population growth, follows an S curve, which has a growth phase and then levels out in maturity. The real question is whether developing economies can and should raise their resource consumption to the level of mature economies like the US, and in the case of FF's whether they should leapfrog to renewables.
Incorrect. Read Tainter, and be enlightened. :)
I really don't think there's much point. I've seen your posts. You've seen mine. We are on different planets.
Not really comparable. And if peak oil only lasted ten years, I wouldn't be at all worried.
No, they have not. They've expanded overseas to grow their markets.
But they are very closely linked, and there's a reason for this. The way to grow without increasing resource consumption is efficiency. But there's a hard physical limit on efficiency. You cannot continue to improve efficiency forever.
Gad, the last time I was in Crete and Santorini there wasn't enough archeological evidence from 1600 B.C. to be that sure of anything! Well, maybe there has been something new. When I get a chance I'll catch up...
"I really don't think there's much point. I've seen your posts. You've seen mine. We are on different planets."
Well, don't get discouraged. I'm very interested in your point of view, and you haven't really discussed in much detail what you think. From what you've said, though, I suspect we're not as far apart as you think.
I think you've communicated that you believe that we're going to hit limits to growth regardless of peak oil, and that our economy won't know how to handle that and will collapse under the strain of stagnation, if not decline.
Now, I suspect that your real objection to our current economy is what one might call it's soul-killing consumerism, and on that I would agree. I think of it through the prism of Maslow's hierarchy - I think a lot of people are stuck at the bottom level. OTOH, I don't think the cure for that is poverty - I think it's education, especially in what you might call self-help mental health stuff, like meditation, which can help people get beyond the fears etc that make them seem so low-functioning.
On the auto industry: I was thinking of Ford & GM. Sure, they're expanding overseas, but they're overall sales are not expanding. Heck, they'd be overjoyed to have their overall sales be flat.
"Growth doesn't necessarily mean growth in resource consumption.
But they are very closely linked, and there's a reason for this. The way to grow without increasing resource consumption is efficiency. But there's a hard physical limit on efficiency. You cannot continue to improve efficiency forever."
That's not related to what I'm talking about. You're talking about growth in tangible goods: cars, appliances, homes, etc. Growth in those things can (and will)level off, and the economy can still grow in services.
I think a lot of people have a hard time believing services are a "real" part of the economy. They really are. Furthermore, GDP in the US is now adjusted for quality and features, which means that the number of widgets could stay exactly the same, and if the quality or functionality is judged to have increased then GDP increases.
You are wrong. I am not a religious or spiritual person, and I don't a rat's patootie about my soul or anyone else's. I don't even believe in souls.
I believe Tainter is correct. Complexity has an energy cost. Further, I believe that it's a cost we will not be able to continue paying without cheap and abundant fossil fuels.
That is a ridiculous idea. We are not going to grow the economy by selling each other insurance. The base of the economy is natural resources, and we are going to be reminded of that in a painful and unpleasant manner.
Moreover, our way of life in maintained on the backs of a lot of poor people, many of them working in the hope that one day, they will be rich. It's a pyramid scheme, and it cannot continue.
Ah. Ok. BTW, I used soul metaphorically. I just meant quality of life issues that some people emphasize in their discussion of energy economics.
"Complexity has an energy cost. Further, I believe that it's a cost we will not be able to continue paying without cheap and abundant fossil fuels."
But why do you believe that? I've searched through peak oil literature and can't find any support for it. Deffeyes doesn't believe it. Goodstein and Simmons don't. Savinar does, but he'll be the first to admit that he's not an primary authority, and he doesn't present any evidence for it. Similarly, Heinberg and Kunstler don't give any detail about renewables, and dismiss them with a sentence or two. Hanson provides exhaustive detail about the value of solar, and then dismisses it in a single sentence in which he describes it as dilute, without any explanation or quantitative analysis.
Wind is cheap at $.06, and has a higher E-ROI than oil has had for many years. Why do you believe it's not as good as oil as an energy source?
"We are not going to grow the economy by selling each other insurance. The base of the economy is natural resources, and we are going to be reminded of that in a painful and unpleasant manner."
I've heard this idea from people before, but never seen a serious discussion or analysis of it. Certainly natural resources are a necessary base, but that doesn't mean they have to grow. As an example, farming at one time was 90% of economic activity. Now, less than 3% of americans work on a farm, and food and agricultural products in general are perhaps 20% of the economy. I can imagine farmers having the same reaction to the idea that these newfangled factories, making these ridiculous assembly line baubles, could ever be the majority of the economy. Have you seen this presented as a coherent theory, or as a school of economics? I'd be curious to research it further.
"Moreover, our way of life in maintained on the backs of a lot of poor people, many of them working in the hope that one day, they will be rich. It's a pyramid scheme, and it cannot continue. "
Well, they certainly help. Peope underestimate the value of illegal immigrants, for instance. OTOH, you shouldn't overestimate their contributions. I can think of counterexamples, like Japan and Switzerland, where there is a much smaller difference between rich and poor than in the US, and no immigration is allowed. It seems like a reversal of the Ayn Rand theory that all value in the economy comes from the rich, and just as unrealistic. Again, can you point me to a serious discussion of this theory?
I appreciate your discussion here. I just wanted to provide a link to a recent American Scientist article on Easter Island by Terry Hunt (http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/53200?fulltext=true&print=yes
), which was also re-posted on EnergyBulletin, http://www.energybulletin.net/21576.html.
To me, the article itself is worth a read. I was kind of surprised (if I remember correctly) at the TOD discussion on this. Personally, I was heartened by Hunt's openness and honesty. And his ability to take a fresh look - when data appeared to go against his beliefs.
"I did not expect when I first visited Rapa Nui, in May 2000, that I would end up questioning what I thought I knew about the island's past."
Unfortunately, anthropologists, like historians, are susceptible to biased interpretations of the past based on their theoretical beliefs. This seems particularly true of authors writing for a mass market. They present the evidence in a way that backs up their theory, but does not stand up to rigorous peer-review.
In particular, the case of Rapa Nui has been made into a poster child for ecological collapse, but closer analysis reveals this theory has significant flaws. We know that islands are particularly sensitive to invasive species. We also know that Rapa Nui collapsed around the time Europeans arrived. We also know that Europeans of the time ruthlessly exploited "native" resources. There are pretty compelling reasons to think that Rapa Nui was just another victim of European expansion.
I am sure there are lessons to be learnt from the past, but we need to make sure we properly understand what those lessons are. I am therefore wary of people who draw simplistic conclusions based on past events, and make unequivocal predictions about the future.
I hope that's true.
I watched End of Suburbia again some months ago (after a year's hiatus) and it hit me (from my current perspective) that it is really good. But then of course I'm a maven too...
Secondly, the occasional vulgarity makes you think twice about showing it to your grandmother or at a church function. I wish they'd bleeped Kunstler, when he said cluster*#@& and $#!+storm.
Thirdly...it interviews Ruppert and puts the name of his book on the screen repeatedly: Crossing the Rubicon: 9/11 and America's Descent into Fascism at the End of the Age of Oil. I don't want to start another debate over whether he's a visionary or a kook; either way, that title looks nutty to the average American. It makes it awfully easy for people to assume that peak oil is just more tinfoil-hattery.
I liked CNN's We Were Warned better. And even that fX Oilstorm movie. Though they were not without their flaws.
Regarding the bits of vulgarity, the DVD has two versions on it (two soundtracks?), one without those.
As for We Were Warned, I thought it was way too fictional / far in the future.
Speaking of the 'burbs, excerpts from my favorite all time Housing Bubble Blog article follows.
http://thehousingbubbleblog.com/
Of course, revolving credit cards are a fairly recent thing here - a decade or so ago, you couldn't get a credit card with a limit higher than the amount of money in the bank account which backed your 'credit' - no bank would be dumb enough to actually loan more money for pure consumption than they could be certain of recovering if you didn't pay the card bill at the end of the month.
And as a side note - you have to own a house for ten years before any profit made on its sale is tax deductible here, which to the best of my knowledge is still true. Germany seems to dislike speculation for some reason - maybe it distracts from actually working for a living?
Like I said. Leverage up because when the 'puters die its all over for the moneymongers, with the exception of a soft crash but with guys like Hertzbaby how can it go down slow?
Ohh..say.....he might have an arsenal in the crawl space and have planned it all out. Dug his spiderhole down there. Lots of MREs,plastic blowup dolls,firepower,etc.....that would work! What else could he have done with all that refinanced money?
In fact, my appearance is somewhat of an anomaly. Every other speaker is by a member of "the establishment": Matt Simmons, Roscoe Bartlett, David Goodstein, etc. No long haired hippies or sandal waearing proffesors if you get my drift.
How can I see it?
"I sat breathless through the final minutes of the documentary 'OilCrash', maybe the ultimate feel-bad apocalyptic film ever made and the one true knockout at SXSW this year."
Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com
Now if you other geeks would pause between biting the heads off live chickens and email or talk to someone...
Lack of preparation for the sheeples crowd, "pseudo preparations" for the Peak Oil aware but technologically/politically illiterates, the trolls in residence will have done a good job!
Who benefits?
Difficult question, the ones who will benefit may not be the ones who think they will...
http://www.theoildrum.com/uploads/226/latoc.jpg
I think the problem is that you have your page formatted for a specific text size. But your visitors may be using a different text size. In particular, people with very large screens and high-res video cards may have their text size set very large. Otherwise, the text looks like microfilm.
You might try looking at your site with different text sizes. With IE, go to Tools -> Internet Options -> Accessibility. Check "ignore font sizes."
Then see what your page looks like with different text sizes. (You can change your text size under View -> Text Size.)
It's these new-fangled style sheets! They provide greater control for the designer, but can lead to less flexibility for the user :(
I'm no expert on HTML tho, I'm just a dabbler ;)
By the way, I was wondering if there might not be a linkage between a propensity to be a maven, and the Meyers-Briggs INTP type that seems to be over-represented on TOD?
I CAN sell. I have "Awakened" many in the last 6 years
Still, it's only 1 in 20 or 1 in 30.
1 in more than 50 are actually doing anything about it.
But the ones that I did awake thank me.
There are reasons for it all. Maybe Not everyone is SUPPOSED to wake up to it.
Fare thee well
Peace
John
INTP here with maven-ish tendencies, though I'm more of a generalist than specialist. I wonder if someone can set up a TOD poll on the meyers-briggs. It would surely prove interesting.
Other polls I would like to see:
Gender split:
M/F
Income level:
0-10,000
10,001-17,000
17,001-23,000
23,001-33,000
33,001-50,000
50,001-100,000
100,000+
Residence:
City
Suburban
Exurban
Rural
Daily (round trip) automobile commute distance:
0 miles (ie, walk, bicycle, work from home...)
0-11 miles
12-20 miles
21-40 miles
41-60 miles
60+
I'm going to drop these poll suggestions in a fresher thread
How's the multi ethnic
apocalyeco-commune coming along?Compare it to GW. It wasn't media that did it, in this instance media followed. People were vaguely aware of the concept, like PO, but needed something real. Then came hot summers, warm winters, and early springs. People noticed this, and Katrina shoved it down their throats. Even while denying it, many are silently thinking otherwise.
With PO, the thing that will ultimately convince most is the price of oil. Something they have to deal with. Then the media will follow.
I see an interesting analogy in the species diversity arguements of 15 yrs ago. The media jumped on it prettty well for a scientific hypothesis. National Geo hit it months running, it was all over best sellers list, tv specials abounded. But it never hit a chord most could feel. And tho it was correct, it died a slow death in the field of attention.
That's why I believe it's good to get the word out as soon as possible and as far as possible. Even if someone doesn't "get it" right away, it may linger in the back of their mind until something triggers it. The response then will be harder and faster than if they had just heard it.
McCain/Guliani 52%
Clinton/Obama 46%
unless the "terror stoplight" goes to red, of course...
This is not going to go over well with "the base."
Give Ahmedinejad a private meeting with Cher and see if he doesn't come out a whipped puppy.
If the Repugs had such great success with a B actor and windy after-dinner speaker like Reagan, I say the Dems should go with a great actress.
Make it a tag team. Little Richard for VP. If you don't give in to the Pres she could sic Richard on you.
Politics is half entertainment anyway. Why not have some fun?
Subtitle " Why the Many are Smarter than the Few---"
A fun and fast read, and no worse than harmless- and maybe a lot better than that.
For railroads, the answer to copper theft and vandalism is to reduce their wayside equipment (signals, switch interlockings) as much as possible, in favor of onboard electronics. THis also helps with reducing maintenance travel and power usage.
The irony of this solution is that the overall signaling systems become more complicated (safety software), and what is worse, more reliant on specialists to support and maintain them. In some way railroads then become more fragile, since you can not operate a modern freight railroad without a whole seconday support infrastructure.
In the old days, all you needed to run a railroad was rolling stock and rail. Today, you need highly trained software engineers, and technicians with laptop computers to design and maintain the essential infrastructure on a daily basis.
I think railroads will not be the only industry that will have to refocus their capital aquisition programs away from the "reduce manpower and automate" that we have seen in the past in their quest for profitability.
I support Alan's quest for more electric rail service. I just think that it also needs to be coupled with "design for maintainability" in a post-peak environment, using lower-skilled maintenance people.
India seems to have copper thefts under control for their electrified system (main lines). Of course their manning levels exceed US standards by about x100.
Adding tracks & sidings & grade seperations & heavier weight rail, ballast and concrete ties are more permanent and more robust improvements than signaling, but I expect continued pressure for better signals. They are "cost effective".
BTW, read a bit about the Alaskan Railroad, single track Fairbanks to Anchorage. State owned, breakeven operation. They are replacing 90 to 115 lb rail, wooden ties and river gravel ballast with 145 lb rail, concrete ties and cracked granite ballast (this ballast "locks" in freeze/thaw conditions) as well as improving curve banking, more sidings.
Not sexy, but long term durable ! First they improved signals though.
I am NOT against better signals, but I like better roadbed (and electrification) more. Did you see my post about BNSF capital spending yesterday (I also mentioned grade seperated, dual track bridge in Kansas City to seperate N-S from E-W rail traffic that unplugged a bottle neck for several RRs).
Best hopes for better railroads,
Alan
All good under the current economy. If things degrade, some good (trackwork) with some bad (too complex signaling).
Using 1890's semaphore signals (easily retrofited IMHO) would reduce track capacity (by 1/2 ?) and speed, but the trackwork will keep things rolling. But in a degraded economy, will the extra capacity be needed ? Could Alaska ship in and out all that they need with 145# rail on concrete ties and semaphores ? Could they cobble together enough imported scrap track, local wood, river gravel, etc. for a second track over most of the length, giving more (slow speed) capacity despite degraded signals ?
The same is true elsewhere. IMVHO, a degraded economy that cannot support complex signals will also need less freight. Basically zero truck and half of today's rail ???
All guesswork, I know.
Perhaps the need to keep the railroads going will help preseve some complexity.
Best Hopes,
Alan
PS: Do you see improved track going in with improved signals ? What RR are you with, if you want to disclose ?
I am involved with the railroads' signaling communication systems as a contractor.
The whole issue of railroad command and control intrigues me greatly, since "design for post-peak" (once it it in vogue) will have different priorities than we have today. It is actually very hard to design electronic signaling systems that can match the old semaphore or paper permits in terms of robustness. (Of course, modern systems are more cost-effective and run trains more efficiently, in exchange for complexity).
An electricified railroad will also probably need extensive SCADA control of its substations, and hence will have similar issues with distributed control system complexity and grid reliability as we have for the signaling systems.
For today's systems, a 100% reliable grid is assumed (with localized battery backup. (say 8 to 24 hours). A widespread grid failure for more than 24 hours will normally severely disrupt train movements, since the dispatchers need to communicate with the train crews somehow in the absence of working signals. Once radio/cell towers run their batteries down, things pretty much stops. Today the railroads deploy emergency generators on a small scale (e.g. after a hurricane), but this will not work if it has to be done often and widely.
Francois.
I haven't seen this general point elaborated upon. It would be an important factor to consider as energy becomes more expensive and less dependable.
-Bart
I've been saying this for awhile. We should consider designing the way they design for Third World countries, where replacement parts, reliable power, expect technicians, etc. may not be available. The Ghana story I posted above is an example. They not only designed the solar panels to last 30 years in off-the-grid areas, they also trained 164 people to maintain them. You always see this with stories about technology from Africa: they mention how long the item is expected to last, and how it will be maintained.
It's something U.S. engineers often don't even consider. (The stories I could tell you about engineers who never consider how their product will be manufactured or maintained...)
Ahh, there are a few of us left. However, it is not a valued skill anymore. Rather, it is considered "grunt work" - a common ability to be farmed out to the lowest bidder in a "Low Cost Country". No, the thing of value in a company today is the "Intellectual Property" (in reality mostly sales, marketing, and financing strategies).
To design a product, you hire a consultant "expert" who has promised you anything he has to get the job, regardless of proficiency. He then does 50% of the work and dumps off a partly finished mess on what's left of the company's in-house design team. Usually such efforts are so pathetic - it's sad to see how ignorant some of these people are about what it takes to make a manufacturabile, reliable product. Funny how the skills that are cast off as "not a core competency" are the very things that they cannot begin to get right.
It's a paradox I hit as a contractor, building something that takes a lot of concentration and care, but if you are stuck with a fixed project budget, the more thought and patience you apply will apparently be 'devaluing' your work, not enhancing its worth. Especially true with factory labor, of course..
'Speed Chess' can bring out one kind of genius, but sometimes, it just takes more actual Labor to make it Better.
Apart from a few minor lapses, GWB does an excellent job!
This family was in Indiana, which wasn't bubbly. But the market turned sour just as they bought a new house. Now they can't sell their old one, even at less than what they paid for it four years ago.
Things are happening so fast that it is next-to-impossible for me to keep up! The Polonium hitjob fascinates, and scares me at the same time. Now come hints that it is a '
false flag' operationfrom a German scientist as reported by a Chinese news agency:--------------------------------
BERLIN, Dec. 11 (Xinhua) -- A German radiation expert doubted Monday that Russia was involved in the polonium-210 poisoning of former Russian spy Alexander Litvenenko.
Sebastian Pflugbeil, president of the German Society for Radiation Protection, told ARD national television that he would not rule out the possibility that the poisoners had deliberately strewn traces of the isotope in London and Hamburg to mislead people.
"If you keep polonium in a tightly shut vial, you can transport it without contamination and don't leave any dirty trail," he said, adding it was
too obvious to be credible."Either these killers were rank amateurs, or, and I think this is also plausible,
a trail has been deliberately created to cast suspicion in a certain direction," Pflugbeil said."What is remarkable here is the way it was done," he said, "Secret agents are normally trained to kill without leaving any evidence. But in this case, it's not just a trail.
They have practically bulldozed a superhighway all the way to Moscow. They wanted to make a spectacle of it."Pflugbeil, a physicist who has previously studied how East German secret agents abuse radioactive material, said that he knew of no case in which secret services had used polonium to kill an opponent.
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Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Interesting Guardian/UK editorial on conspiracy theories coming of age:
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Excerpts:
Thus politics in Russia, the one common denominator in the Litvinenko enigma, may have nothing to do with evolving democracy or our old friend market forces, but rather is a
murderous clash of oligarchies over wealth, like Machiavelli's Borgias, or a Hollywood Godfather IV view of events.It is true that the classic question by conspiracy theorists - cui bono, who stands to gain? - provides only speculation; it suggests "why", but does not show "how"...
...If conspiracy theorists are mad, one then has to ask why we wait with baited breath, as in an unfolding Greek tragedy, while the Metropolitan police investigate the possibility, hardening week by week, that unbelievably there was a
criminal conspiracy hatched inside No 10 [Downing Street].-------------------------
Yikes! TODers from Europe--what the heck is going on over there? Expat, Euan, Jerome, et al, what does the Euro-public believe: false flag or a true Russian hitjob?
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Germany's largest circulation paper had a huge picture and 6 words describing some crime against some media star this morning - normally, this is the sort of news that Bild Zeitung would scream out in a headline like 'RADIOACTIVE ATTACK FROM KREMLIN.' Instead, absolutely nothing for the casual observer to see about this on the entire front page.
What is more interesting, to me at least, is how little publicity this has been getting. The Western world (or at least that part which believes in a global war on terrorism) has been preparing for a dirty bomb attack for years, and now, what happens?
Nothing much - no security alerts, no radiation detectors going over every single thing arriving from Russia, no rounding up of 'suspicious' people named Ivan or Boris.
Even more striking, the fact that a number of peoples' movements are being tracked through various means (yes, cell phones records are very useful, though when such testimony is given, it is behind closed courtroom doors, and never really mentioned - this is an old game - the phone companies have no incentive in their customers knowing such things, and neither do various government agencies).
This is also confirmation to me that Russian energy is too important to disrupt over a dead person or two (yes, Thatcher and Reagan were actually correct), and that much of the global war on terrorism is itself a false flag operation.
Should we have some kinda vote or something?
It reads:
"Outlooks, projections, estimates, targets, and business plans in this presentation are forward-looking statements. Actual future results, including demand growth and supply mix; resource recoveries; project plans; finding costs; efficiency improvements; and the impact of technology could differ materially due to a number of factors. These include changes in long-term oil or gas prices or other market conditions affecting the oil and gas industries; reservoir performance; timely completion of development projects; war and other political or security disturbances; changes in law or government regulation; the outcome of commercial negotiations; the actions of competitors; unexpected technological developments; the occurrence and duration of economic recessions; unforeseen technical difficulties; and other factors discussed here and under the heading "Factors Affecting Future Results" on the Investor Information section of our website at www.exxonmobil.com."
But other than that, you can take the forecast to the bank.
Finally got home and dug out my old copy of "Energy Future" by Robert Stobaugh and Daniel Yergin. I thought you would be interested in the final paragraph from the second chapter titled "After the Peak: The Threat of Hostile Oil" And yes they are talking about peak oil production of the U.S.:
"Americans should not delude themselves into thinking there is some huge hidden reservoir of domestic oil that will free them from the heavy cost of imported oil. Of course measures should be taken to encourage domestic oil production. But the handwriting is clear. To the extent that any solution at all exists to the problem posed by the peaking of U.S. oil production and the high level of imports, it will be found in energy sources other than oil."
This is from the 1983 version. Apparently Daniel Yergin has known for quite some time about the reality of the concept of Peak Oil. Although the chapter was written by his associate Robert Stobaugh, the work was written as a collaboration. Perhaps it was the stand that he took in the early 80's that has tempered his view of following the price collapse of 1986.
Growing up in the Hungry 1970s, I never saw volunteerism. Anyone who volunteered to do something for free had either eaten well that day, in which case they kept quiet about it, or was a SUCKER, another type who did not survive. Looking out for No. 1 and those very closest to you was the order of the day: Sheer survival.
Those younger than I are used to an even more dog-eat-dog ethos.
I just can't see anyone under the age of 45 driving or volunteering for Fools, er, Meals On Wheels.
Someone repost this early on tomorrow's Drumbeat if I am sleeping too late.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-mexcolatax12dec12,0,5548785.story?coll=la-home-headlines
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MEXICO CITY -- Mexico is trying to make up for a projected shortfall in oil revenue by raising taxes on other quick-fix liquids: colas and carbonated drinks...
The nation's major oil field, Cantarell, is declining rapidly because of age. Production is down nearly 15% through the first 10 months of the year -- more than twice the rate of decline predicted by Pemex officials last year. The company's worst-case projections show production plummeting to about 520,000 barrels a day by the end of 2008 -- a nearly 70% freefall from October's average output of 1.65 million barrels a day.
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Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
TrendLines Dec 1st Update of the Peak Oil Depletion Scenarios included the Peak Date (2030), Peak Rate (115-mbd) & Plateau of this new ExxonMobil Outlook: http://trendlines.ca/economic.htm