As the world celebrates the Olympics . . .
Posted by Heading Out on February 11, 2006 - 1:16am
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: gas, italy, olympics, russia [list all tags]
Perhaps it is a little harsh to note, as the world begins to celebrate the Olympics, that gas supplies from Russia, through Ukraine to the host country, Italy, remain reduced.
And with that dour note to start what will be, I hope a happy weekend for you all, the floor is yours . . .
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2006/s2576.htm
My question is, how much warmer was it in January, than the average temps when the jetstream is in a similar position in January? And given that we have only 111 years of records, can such a sample exist? It would be nice to tease out the effects of the jetstream position from those of climate change.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/10/AR2006021001766.html?nav=rss_nation/ science
Second, a blast from the past regarding unusual hurricanes:
"Emanuel has another disagreement with government scientists. He thinks they've been too quick to dismiss the role of global warming in hurricanes.
NOAA puts all the blame on something called the multidecadal signal -- a historical pattern in which several decades of high hurricane activity are followed by several quiet decades."
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5031529
Sad, isn't it? I for one now question how political is this "jetstream" explanation for high temperatures?
If you are right the blogs dedicated to climate change will have to give the NOAA their own version of the McKelvey Award...
In the summer, the jetstream is usually to the north and we languish in a hot humid airmass with poor air quality. If the jetstream dips to the south during the summer, it carries low pressure systems over the great lakes and we get a cool, wet spell. During a typical winter, the jetstream is usually to the south and we sit in a cold, stable airmass with bright sunshine. If the jetstream moves north of its usual position (especially if it rises far north in the west, plunges in the centre and rises again in the east), then it typically brings Colorado lows charged with moisture from the GOM our way and we get an enormous dump of snow.
In recent years (with the notable exception of the winter of 2002/2003), the jetstream has been further north than usual for the time of year and the flow more zonal, which has meant more precipitation than usual for us (although more often as Alberta clippers than Colorado lows so the individual dumps of snow have been smaller), warmer temperatures and less sunshine (bad for my PV system). Those cloudy and wet conditions are more typical of spring and fall here when the jetsteam would normally be transitioning from its winter to summer position or the other way around.
The role of the jetstream in defining weather patterns is not in dispute, but the interesting thing to study would be the effect of global warming on the position and shape of the jetstream.
I was actually watching TV and caught a NOAA chief's response to the global warming question, post-Katrina. His flat surety that global warming was not involved was shocking. He did not take the more nuanced position that global warming's contribution was unproven, and would likely be one factor among many.
This is what I like about TOD. The Peak Oil question quickly gets emmeshed in discussion of politics and human behavior.
We are not shy to cast doubt on the "Stay the Course" guidance given to us by our esteemed leaders (the figures of "authority" within our herd mentality masses).
I personally have no idea how the NOAA chief you watched rose to his position of royal "authority" and power. Maybe it was based on merit and scientific ability, and then again, maybe not.
I highly doubt that "merit" was the basis of his authority. Politics is the more likely answer. In our "competitive" societies, it is the most ruthless, the most political and the ones willing to step on the dead bodies of those who trusted them; who rise to power.
You may think it an oddity --but it is not-- that in the corporation you work for, the boss and his henchmen are the sleaziest of Enron style exectuives who constantly cook the books, and constantly "reorganize" the organization just to keep everyone off balance, this even as the corporate ship is sinking. In fact they are grabbing all they can and preparing to bail out with their golden parachutes before the plebes figure out what happened. How often is it that the crooks who sank the boat stay on board? If you work for a corporate entity where the leaders are honest, hard working types, count yourself in the lucky minority.
It is no accident that in our "competitive" societies that the most ruthless kind of people rise to the top. And by the way, who sold you on the idea that "competition" and "free markets" is the way to go? (Hint: they did.)
P.S. Aren't the jock-elite Olympics just grand?
I am so thrilled to celebrate the "thrill" of their victory and the agony of our defeat.
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article344690.ece
No mention was made of how preparations or planning were impacted by warm weather or energy issues.
The camera panned the crowd and settled on Laura Bush more than once (sitting with Tony Blair's wife?) as though they were Holy People. When Iran's athletes came out, the comments were starkly political and alluded to awful comments made by Iranian leaders and such. Great for priming the pump for war.
I was actually more focused on reading at the time, but found the coverage to be very warped to fit the "climate change is not real" and "we must occupy the oilfields by force" warmongering that is in vogue in Washington DC.
Guess this puts a crimp in GM's Go Yellow plan...
http://www.columbustelegram.com/articles/2006/02/10/news/news1.txt
I have been trying to bring this to attention.
1-Leanan's article totally refutes the arguement that the
"Markets" will allocate and signal substitute
commodities.
2- Farmers have been hit 3 ways by Katrina/Rita-diesel is a $ higher than last year.
Nitrates are being rationed. Crop prices are the same.
The NO Port is still limited.
And Farmng is the only bizness where input is bought
retail and output is sold wholesale.
3-The US is in a knock down dragout fight with Europe to reduce farm subsidies.
4-Why plant?
Globalization is doing a lot of damage, I fear. For example, Mexico used to be self-sufficient in corn. Then NAFTA flooded the market with cheap U.S. corn, driving the farmers to the city to find work. Mexico now must import corn. The typical reaction to this is, "Farming is a terrible life. They're happier in the city." Maybe so, but it leaves them rather vulnerable if we decide to put that corn in our gas tanks instead on the open market.
I know of at least 8 people that are drafting a reply to Science magazine blasting last months pro-ethanol research piece. We need to move beyond the idea that corn-ethanol can replace gasoline - some crops may play a role but this one won't/can't.
Even if we assume Farrel et als. calculations that ethanol is 1.2:1 EROI as correct (which I do not - they leave out many inputs, such as tractors), that would mean we would need to create 6 units of ethanol from 5 units of fossil fuel input just to net out 1 'new' unit of energy to society. Extrapolating that to US fossil fuel use of 21 mbpd, we'd need to create 120 mpbd of ethanol using 100 mbpd of oil to net out 20mbpd. Clearly we could do this on a small scale, locally, when co-products are needed by local farmers. But large scale no way. And cellulosic (presently) is even worse.
The way political logic works is that the fat-cat agribusinesses buy (excuse me, rent) Senators and Members of the House of Representatives. For example, Senator Bob Dole, long before he became famous as a spokesman for Viagra, was known as the senator from Archer-Daniels-Midland. The system as it works is totally corrupt.
However, having said that, reflect on this: Would you rather have surpluse in most years, at considerable cost to tax payers and all sorts of inefficiency costs? Or would you rather have a loaf of bread spike to $8 every time the wheat harvest was bad? Corruption, chronic surpluses, and ineffiecient allocations of resources are not part of utopia, but they sure beat food riots.
But not before then.
Economic logic almost never rules.
Politics rules.
Aquifer under Desha County drying fast, study finds
Friday, Apr 9, 2004
The USGS study was done over several years at a cost of about $1 million. The study is different than previous ones because it developed numerous models of the entire region and determined different scenarios at various rates of water usage.
In December, the USGS released a study showing that sections of the aquifer under Arkansas, Lonoke and Prairie counties in the Grand Prairie region of East Arkansas could begin running dry in five years.
A third study, on the Sparta aquifer (the Sparta is in worse shape) which supplies water to South Arkansas, including Pine Bluff and El Dorado, is to be released in the next few weeks, said USGS spokesman Jim Peterson.
Eastern Arkansas is the #1 rice growing area in the US.
We're #4-5 in cotton and #8 in soybeans.
http://www.arkansasnews.com/archive/2004/04/09/News/176185.html
My point-These are GM-genetically modified crops, meaning they must have water, fertilizer, RoundUp(Monsanto), at just the right times in just the right amount.
You can spiral in any direction from Ag because Ag is the Foundation of Civilization. The fact is that the Ag Wealth has been shifted to the cities.
My point: Farmers are miners now. Ag is doing everything it can to keep Society going. Asking it to
also provide Energy is going to break it.
Pity we don't have much of a market for solid biofuels (other than wood pellets) yet.
I support stockpiles because I know that there have been times when volcanos, asteroid impacts, or wars have wiped out harvests. I would feel better with a year's stockpile of food in America. At least in terms of calories and vitamins.
We have a years worth or more of food in commercial storage already, (just look at a typical grain elevator along a rural road or in a port and consider how many people that would feed) if one excludes corn (maize to outside US). If one is willing to eat corn as a staple, we have several years worth in storage. And lean beef that has not been corn-feed could be slaughtered at a younger age.
Back in the mid 1970s, when the early mutterings of global warming were made, tentative predictions about its effects were that the US central plains would become drier and the Russian steppes warmer and wetter, suggesting that the wheat breadbasket of the world would switch from one to t'other. I'm not sure about the exact current state of such predictions but I'm pretty sure they still expect the US plains to become drier and less productive.
I understand that if we went vegetarian we could easily get by on half as much crops by not feeding grain to pigs and chickens, and that cows and sheep live on grass that is mostly rainfed.
We also have a reasonably large standing crop of deer and other wild animals since hunting went out of style in the last thirty years. It's not as much as our cattle/sheep production, but it would help.
I am also aware that there is a lot of irrigated land that will keep producing crops even if the rain fails due to climate change, at least for one more crop, and sometimes for years where they are producing fossil water like the Oglalla aquifer.
The average meat from a deer is about 65 lbs (source: my father) that equates to 435 million pounds of meat compared to over 27 billion from [beef http://www.ers.usda.gov/news/BSECoverage.htm].
Bottom line: venison is a silver BB.
The "$8 load of bread is a "straw man". The cost of wheat is currently a few pennies/loaf. If wheat became too expensive, potato bread, rye bread, etc, would gain in popularity.
* where we have had to pay too much for most of my life for the "privilege" of stable & high milk prices instead of prices that fluctuate between high & low, we just get "high")
We would be FAR better off just scrapping ALL farm subsidies (with the possible exception of the drought insurance program) and letting the market have it's way.
Take a good close look at the sugar industry in your state. Who is doing the work? Illegal Haitians with machetes--great workers, work harder than the plantation slaves ever did. Who is getting the money? You damn well know who. How does it work in Congress. You know that too.
My point is that economic logic has almost nothing to do with the way farm subsidies are set. And BTW, if the wheat crop is wiped out, say by drought, there is a good chance that corn and rye are not doing well either. Also, we grow hardly any rye in the U.S. And why? No subsidies for rye--plenty for corn, wheat, rice, cotton, sugar, soybeans, peanuts, etc. Farmers grow what is profitable to grow; they are not dumb. The best way to make money in farming is to suck at the government tit, and that is what the Fat Cats are doing.
If you want to fix the system, you will need a social movement comparable to the American Revolution, because the corruption is endemic and has been for a long time.
This what I love about our "free" markets.
We all have "freedom", it just happens to be freer for some than for others.
(Did Orwell use that line in Animal Farm, or was it just about "equality" and it being more equal for some than for others?)
Ag department warns farmers of likely drop in income
One from the U.K.:
UK fruit and vegetable producers are counting the costs of higher energy bills
It took some work, but I am pleased to announce that I have found a solution to the coming world-wide oil shortage! It turns out the solution is not any of these:
Basically I followed the advice of Sherlock Holmes: "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the answer."
So I eliminated the above "solutions" and there was just one left, and once I got it all by itself it turned out to be pretty obvious (or maybe that was just hindsight):
At least in the U.S. and Canada, there are large numbers of people who have chosen to live far from where they work, and so commute an hour or more each way to work. The key observation is that this is a preference, not a necessity. People choose this lifestyle for economic reasons: they can get a bigger house, with a bigger yard, for less money. Good for them; but, when the economics change and it no longer pays to choose such a lifestyle, they can instead settle fewer square feet, a smaller or non-existent yard, higher mortgage, no long summer trips, and all kinds of bad stuff like that, which, bad as it may be, won't kill you.
What's really missing from this whole discussion of peak oil is a frank acknowledgment that we (the U.S. and Canada, at least) have chosen an extremely profligate (and totally optional) lifestyle that simply wastes a huge amount of oil. We may like it; but we sure don't need it. And when reality takes away the option, for all the complaining and teeth gnashing and wailing and moaning that will be unleashed, it won't really matter. The complainers can complain to each other. No one else really needs to pay them any attention.
The biodiesel:land calculator shows rapeseed (canola?) as the best crop for Northern climes; yields for palm are about 9 times that of soy beans.
I find it interesting that the USA's two main biofuels crops have the lowest yields, ie soy beans and corn.