This is a bit corny - but following Yankee, what can I say?
Posted by Heading Out on April 20, 2006 - 11:14pm
(This is the Conference season for Academics and though I have to go out of town for family reasons this weekend, I will also be gone in a couple of weeks for the Peak Oil and the Environment Conf in Washington - which seems to be shaping up to have a very powerful agenda. )
([editor's note, by Yankee] I'd also like to take this opportunity to remind you of the upcoming conference in New York City, Local Solutions to the Energy Dilemma, April 27-29.)
Anyway enough of the excuses. The main part of the story is both a partial explanation of the interesting curve I posted on gas storage, and the immediate shortage that is closing gas stations - in a word MTBE
The National Association of Convenience Stores, whose 2,200 member stores account for 75 percent of U.S. gasoline sales, also said members had reported shortages at terminals around Wilmington, Delaware, and Philadelphia.The transition is a marker for the greater infusion of ethanol into gasoline, and in the immediate short-term this is going to be something that will give the general public a bit of a warm fuzzy, as well as making those farmer co-operatives that are getting into the business a rather short ROI (numbers I heard today from one of those "insider folks" were on the order of 13 months). Unfortunately down the road a couple of years it is still unlikely to make nearly as much difference as it is doing in Brazil.The shortages are not because refiners are not making enough gasoline, or because of a recent rupture on the key Plantation Pipeline that carries supplies from the Gulf Coast to the East Coast, industry officials said.
Rather, the oil industry is rapidly eliminating a gasoline additive called MTBE, banned in several states for polluting ground water, and replacing it with ethanol, a renewable fuel that can't be shipped by pipeline because it absorbs water.
"There's not a shortage of supply," said John Eichberger, a spokesman for the group. "It's a transitional issue."
There are a couple of reasons for this, one being the overwhelming size of the problem in gas shortage that is heading into the world future. The other is that, as China transitions to an industrial economy it's ability to provide food is likely to decline. Thus the ability of the US to meet some of this need from it's agricultural abundance may significantly help our domestic relations (to blur a point). However, as other countries are already finding, ethanol and food are alternate products from the same land. (Although, and this also gets neglected in many discussions, the side product of ethanol production is a brewers grain that is a good feed for livestock).
In the short-term there is an ability to meet an increased demand in the US
It is only in the out years that we will see the conflict develop as we also find that you can't have it both ways, despite:
high crude oil prices have made ethanol prices competitive as a replacement for gasoline. Other factors that have changed recently include improved ethanol processing yields (2.50 gallons of ethanol per bushel of corn in 1980, compared with 2.85 gallons per bushel today), strong increases in corn productivity with little or no increase in fertilizer use, and greater use of specific corn varieties that are tailored to ethanol use. The pipeline for technology and information is fuller today than ever, assuring that the industry will be even more efficient and competitive in the future.Hopefully the Conference will have some more optimistic news than this!
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Undulating plateaus is the better alternative.
If we're into humor depletion already, does that mean we didn't notice peak corn?
I don't believe in peak humor - I think there are billions of jokes still out there that remain to be discovered.
Not to quibble over a throw-away, but I'm just CERTAIN that the US has an ample supply of the Cruder Stuff, if only we could just bottle that fine goo and drive our cars on it..
One can argue that as we deplete the clean humor, that all will be left is the high-sulphur humor from whence fart jokes and South Park episodes are made.
Some types of jokes appear to be nearly completely depleted - knock-knock jokes and polack jokes for example.
What is the registration information & cost for the conference.
Is this a good forum to "push" my ideas ? Should I try to becoem a speaker next year (appears too laet this year.
Any thoughts ?
The Petrocollapse Conference
All Souls Unitarian Church
16th and Harvard Streets, NW, Washington D.C.
Columbia Heights Metro Station
May 6, 2006 9 am - 7 pm
http://www.petrocollapse.org/
Here's another story on the gas shortages:
Out of gas
So, this could be going on until June?
1. Ethanol instead of MTBE
2. Sulfur emmissions must be reduced to meet new regulations that are due this year.
3. Shortage of contractors who are incharge of installing, reconfigurations, and repairing.
Most of these work are one time events, so the refineries contract these workers and don't do it internally. Also, these refineries have to compete with the same contract pool as electric powerplants who are also going through spring cleaning and need lots of repairs and installation of new equipment.
http://www.opisnet.com/
They forecast ethanol shortages through mid-2007. I am glad I don't live in an area that requires reformulated gasoline.
RR
Since ethanol cannot be sent through pipelines and must be distributed by tanker rigs--Do you know if this has been incorporated into ERoEI calculations? This potentially could lower the ERoEI to unity [or worse]; another scientific 'nail in the coffin' to halt the advance of the biofuel industry.
Additionally, the required huge management logistics of adequately scheduling ethanol deliveries to JIT marry with regular gasoline deliveries is probably raising prices for gasoline as any time delays costs money.
Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
You are hitting on something that I have given a lot of thought to. The USDA studies have a contribution for transportation in the ERoEI calculations, but it is a very small number. They don't detail what their assumptions are. It is very hard to believe that those transportation numbers they cite (1588 BTUs per gallon of ethanol) account for ethanol being produced in the Midwest and shipped to the east or west coast. I think they are trying to compute an average transportation cost, but that doesn't really make sense from an ERoEI standpoint. That's saying something like "It's OK that the overall ERoEI for putting ethanol in the New York market is negative, since it all averages out." Tell that to the New Yorkers.
I have pointed out in some essays that they do something similar in calculating an average ERoEI for the 9 highest corn producing states. Yet within those 9 states, Nebraska, which must irrigate its corn, has a significantly higher energy input into the process. So, if they say the ERoEI is 1.3, that doesn't mean that it is 1.3 in every state. If California or Arizona uses such an optimistic ERoEI to justify building an ethanol plant, they are making a big mistake because their ERoEI won't be nearly that good (and could in fact be negative for specific states).
RR
It makes me wonder how much more we could get out of that land if it was planted in switchgrass or Miscanthus.
So you're right, the energy that goes into corn & ethanol production is certainly a variable.
I disagree with that all the way. Look at the rack prices of ethanol versus gasoline:
http://www.neo.state.ne.us/statshtml/66.html
Ethanol has never been cheaper than gasoline except for a few brief months when it was oversupplied.
Today's spot price of ethanol: $2.73.
Today's spot price of mid-grade gasoline: $2.17
Yet the gasoline has only 70% of the energy content. Yeah, that really looks competive. As I calculated in a recent blog entry on E85, without the subsidies it will cost over $50 more (compared to gasoline) to run E85 for every 1,000 miles of driving.
RR
Oops. Of course that should read "Yet the ethanol has only 70% of the energy content." Ethanol is priced competitively with gasoline when it is about 70% the price of gasoline. In that case, you are paying the same price for the BTUs.
RR
US tariffs on ethanol is insanely high, which prevents importation of this fuel.
Yes, it's often overlooked, but it's also misunderstood. Cows are ruminants and evolved to eat grass. The general guideline today is not to feed cows more than 3 lbs of DDGS (dried distillers grain and solubles from ethanol production) per day to avoid making them sick. If all US corn were used for ethanol production, it would be enough DDGS for 180 million cows, compared to the 80 million we have now. So at some point, it no longer is the bonus coproduct.
Second, this DDGS output as a byproduct of ethanol production provides, for some bizarre reason, an energy credit to ethanol in the USDA, Argonne, Farrell et al (Science) analyses of ethanol EROEI. This is falacious. It's the same as crediting the energy content of the jet kero, diesel, fuel oil, naphtha, asphalt, etc. in a refinery--all coproducts of gasoline production--back to gasoline in an refinery efficiency analysis. Properly, part of the energy consumption in an ethanol plant should be allocated to the DDGS, not the other way around.
How about 'Tiananmen Square'?
Where exactly in Asia? It would be great to have a TOD:East.
Do you know who Tank Man is? (was)? PBS' Frontline did a great piece on China very recently. Have you seen it? I have so many questions.
There are too many pigs in the states.
But, as we say, four legs good, two legs bad. Know what I mean?
When peak oil hits in earnest, I am not all that sure that the factory farming of animals for human consumption is going to survive. Both processes seem to the casual observer to be extremely energy intensive (not to mention environmentally unsound).
I'm no whacked out vegan, as I like the occasional pork loin or T-bone, but I think factory farms may up in the same boat as the big box stores when they can't get their product to market due to high fuel prices, among other things.
Subkommander Dred
How people can live downwind of pig farms I do not know. Give me a stinky oil refinery any time; those fumes have got to be way less toxic than the crap of 10,000 (?) pigs.
Maybe Muslims and Jews are onto something.
Their pigs (so said Smithsonian anyway) were also happy 'detritovores', if I can bastardize Totoniela's term, helping to aerate and compost the animal wastes. One of the main benefits of this process, so said the farmer, was that the animals rarely got the kinds of disease problems associated with huge, monocultural Agribusinesses. The various animals traditionally seen on farms seemed to have complementary metabolic defenses. Who'da thunk?
In contrast, Pollan mentioned visiting a so-called 'free-range' non-antibiotic, organic chicken warehouse, where the farmers were relieved that these Slum-hens didn't know about the little doors that led out to their little 'free-range' yards, since these defenseless clones were suceptible to more germs than ever, and they could cross-infect the whole population in their little Stadium.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5336252
Bob
Bob
You are quite right in that cow manure can and does make a good fertilizer. However... I can't help but think about the amount of growth hormones, pesticides, and in particular, antibiotics that the cows (and pigs) consume in their feed. The ABX problem is very worrisome from a public health standpoint, as I am seeing ever larger numbers of antibiotic resistant bugs showing up in my patients and within the community at large. As you know, evolution being what it is, the more a bug (microbe) is exposed to antiboitics, the more of a chance of a mutation of that bug into one that is resistant to ABX.
What is so incredible to me is that in this country the largest consumer of antibiotics is the livestock industry. The medications are passed through the cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys...whatever is being raised in the factory farm...into their waste and ulitmately into the environment (land, creeks, rivers, groundwater, maybe even aerosolized into the atmosphere). Not to mention the meat that we consume from these animals.
I'm not talking about farmer Brown and his free range, organic Black Angus cows. These places produce massive amounts of toxic shit, the various chemicals in which can and does find it's way into our food chain. With all of the energy inputs required to make this type of operation profitable, I have a hard time seeing them continue as a going concern within the next few years.
Subkommander Dred
Here in Denver, if the wind is right you can smell feedlots from 40-50 miles away... I wouldn't call what a feedlot cow produces benign!
maybe somebody around knows more about this.
Cow dung for the climate
by Navin Singh Khadka
A model biogas project is creating a win-win situation for rural Nepalese, the industrialised world and the atmosphere.
tp://www.energybulletin.net/9158.html
========Cows make fuel for biogas train
By Tim Franks
BBC Newsnight
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4373440.stm
=
==========In IFWMS, the anaerobically digested wastes from livestock are treated aerobically before the nutrients are delivered into the fishponds to fertilize the natural plankton that feed the fish without depleting oxygen, thereby increasing fish yield 3- to 4-fold, especially with the polyculture of many kinds of compatible fish feeding at different trophic levels as practiced in China, Thailand, Vietnam, India and Bangladesh. The fish produce their own wastes that are converted naturally into nutrients for crops growing both on the water surface and on dykes surrounding the ponds.
The most significant innovation of IFWMS is thus the two-stage method of treating wastes. Livestock waste contains very unstable organic matter that decomposes fast, consuming a lot of oxygen. So for any fish pond, the quantity of livestock wastes that can be added is limited, as any excess will deplete the oxygen and affect the fish population adversely, even killing them.
Chan is critical of "erratic proposals" of experts, both local and foreign, to spread livestock wastes on land to let them rot away and hope that the small amount of residual nutrients left after tremendous losses that damage the environment have taken place.
According to the US Environment Protection Agency, up to 70% of nitrous oxide, N2O, a powerful greenhouse gas with a global warming potential of 280 (i.e., 280 times that of carbon dioxide) comes from conventional agriculture [57]. Nitrous oxide is formed as an intermediate both in nitrification - oxidising ammonia (NH3) into nitrate (NO3-) - and denitrification, reducing nitrate ultimately back to nitrogen gas. Both processes are carried out by different species of soil bacteria. Animal MANURE could be responsible for nearly half of the N2O emission in agriculture in Europe, according to some estimates; the remainder coming from inorganic nitrate fertilizer [58]. Thus, anaerobic digestion not only prevents the loss of nutrients, it could also substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture in the form of both METHANE (harvested as biogas) and nitrous oxide (saved as nutrient).
Chan further dismisses the practice of composting nutrient-rich livestock wastes [59], for this ends up with a low-quality fertilizer that has lost ammonia, nitrite (NO) and nitrous oxide. Instead of mixing livestock wastes with household garbage in the compost, Chan recommends producing high-protein feeds such as earthworms from the garbage, and using worm castings and garbage residues as better soil conditioners.
To close the circle, which is very important for sustainable growth, livestock should be fed crops and processing residues, not wastes from restaurants and slaughterhouses. Earthworms, silkworms, fungi, insects and other organisms are also encouraged, as some of them are associated with producing high value goods such as silk and mushrooms.
http://www.energybulletin.net/7191.html
Rat
Love the handle, friend. How's Pearly?
Thnaks for asking.
Usually go by Rat, or Wharfie, or, sometimes, when I talk about restored honor in the White House, I go by Marcus Antonio Ratticus, for Shrub is an honorable man.
The future: 1.5 liter hybrid plug-ins, local vacations, minimalism and... edaname. : )
I hope we can still import some tamarind and fish sauce from Asia...I can't tolerate tofo unless it's in Thai food...
Getting back to the issue at hand, I imagine line-feeding a mixture including brewing wastes to livestock could be done with next to no smell issues or (more importantly) groundwater problems.
Since I'm soon going to be living with a couple hundred cows and calves on my property, this is an issue close to my heart.
here's another
http://www.eatwild.com/
We also feed them some silage, which is chopped corn, in the winter.
They only get tiny amounts of grain when they're being prepared for a show or a sale. Too much pure grain is deadly.
- keeping the ethanol as a mandatory oxygenate
- announcing a gradual phase-out of subsidies
- frying some distillers grains with onions.
We could have substitutes for everything.I was surprised to see that gas prices in Chicago are higher than they are in the california bay area.
What I cant figure out is why Bush and cronies haven't muscled the EPA into not requiring any gasoline additive whatsoever. They've figured out how to loosen other enviro laws so companies can get their way. For political expediency, dropping the oxygenate requirement for the sake of lower oil prices would probably do more for his ratings (how much is another story) than an endless series of speeches on staying course in Oilraq.
One thing for sure, the EIA does show quite a draw in the east.
Total Gasoline stocks
Location 2006 2005
US 202.5 211.6
East Coast 48.4 58.6
Reformulated Gasoline
Location 2006 2005
US 10.8 25.1
East Coast 5.6 14.9
All other regions saw slight declines or slight builds
Boris
London
The gas shortages are CNN's lead story now. They report police have had to be called in to control angry motorists.
There's talk about it on the radio, supposedly people being worried about Iran has raised prices by $15 a barrel, although Iran is no danger to anyone.
Other stories blame the switch to MTBE or away from MTBE, take your choice.
Other blame, well, the discussion kind of trails off, nothing definate said.
I think the scariest scenario is that it's just what it looks like, good old market forces. US'ians are being outbid. Maybe a sprinkle of good old warefare the same way be beat the Germans and the Japanese all those years ago, damage the inflow of oil wherever possible. That's low-level but it's happening and it shows no sign of stopping.
Same thing here, the guy in Iran is making your SUV fillup cost more, thus, war with Iran might be a good idea, right?
I'm up wayyy too late/early here. Fooling with um, wires.
truth is that there is far more AML (acute myeloid leukemia) from benzene exposure (gasoline has 2-5% benzene)than liver cancers from MTBE, but one can hardly argue that will not be god to get rid of those few liver cancers we get from MTBE.
Well, Tom Delay did !
He argued strongly for liability limitations on MTBE exposure cases, in order to preserve & protect our oil industry and their continued use of MTBE.
I tend to think you are correct as well. Witness the scramble of explanations coming from news outlets and government agencies (worldwide). It changes pretty much on an hourly basis. I truly don't think the US government will ever admit to Peak Oil. That is an admission of failure to the "American Dream" because that dream is built on unlimited growth and prosperity.
We, in the US, will have to rethink our dream and it will have to be a unified dream if we want to keep our country intact.
Scary, yet potentially exciting times lie ahead. We are being forced to be creative after years of complacency. We are going to be forced to deal with Natural Selection directly after years of avoiding it due to cheap energy.
These are truly watershed moments in history. Times of swift transitions and opportunities where none existed previously. They are only limited by dogma and inaction.
Are we witnessing the next step in human evolution? Perhaps. Those that survive this event will have certain characteristics that are passed onto their ancestors. Lets hope those characteristics are well-adapted for this future environmental change that is upon us.
Yeah. We're gonna evolve all the way to Afghanistan.
I'm not ready to do so, but I certainly agree that the news seems consistent with a December '05 peak. Everybody is talking now about MTBE and ethanol ... but when I use the charting tool at gasbuddy to compare the US national average and the Canadian national average, I see them going up together. That kind of points away from the MTBE thing.
While it "feels like peak" I think part of that might just be my human reaction to a new high in my local gas prices. We've never seen $3+, but here it is.
On the other hand, callin' the peak could be the right move ;-)
http://www.bcgasprices.com/retail_price_chart.aspx
Canadians, without MBTE (less than 2% of their fuel used MTBE back in 2000) are on the same curve we are.
I think the global suppply and demand is the main thing driving our prices, but the ethanol shortages and distribution problems are driving the gasoline shortages and outages on the east coast.
I think the shortages will be fixed before prices are.
Wasn't he the one who was predicting the return of $30 oil any day now? Maybe he's slowly inching toward the Cornucopian Cemetery. ;-)
BTW, we have a new record, thanks in part to the new contract. Oil hit a record high of $74.30 or thereabouts today.
From CNN:
Six cents from being "closer to $100 oil than $50 oil."
Oil breaks through record $75
"But several OPEC ministers have said there is little more the group can do to bring down high prices as it is already pumping at near full capacity."
We'll see how many more times they can include that word with a straight face.
No real system can operate at 100% of theoretical capacity. As you reach the limits, small perturbations can cascade into much larger disturbances. Ever been in a traffic jam and when you got to the choke point noticed that there was nothing there; no accidents, lane closures, or scantilly-clad female sailor-wannabe's looking for a virile sailing instructor? It was a near-full road condition and someone tapped their brake a smidge too hard. The tailgater behind tapped harder, the next harder still, and presto! a traffic jam.
t(rolling gas outtage) < t(PO)
From Jurrasic Park:
People are actually pawning their wedding rings to get gas money. o_O
When I was growing up, my dad explained to me the difference between purchasing what I need and purchasing what I want. Thus, I've been frugal with my money and make sure that if I lose my job or if gas goes over $10/gallon, etc. I will still be okay.
It would be nice if we could pick and choose who to be hit by this and who could be spared.
But there are a lot of people who simply do not have a lot of ways to cut extras out of their lives. And it's not because they are lazy or are irresponsible w/ borrowing, etc.
Consider, for example, home health aides, nurses, etc. My father was at home and in hospice care here in Houston. These folks have to travel all over this sprawled out city in their own vehicles, get little compensation for their travel, and many have to live quite far from the center of town in order to afford housing.
And that's just one example.
You bet there are a lot of us that can cut a lot of our wasteful habits (and will have to struggle w/ new "inconveniences"), who can be expected to change out our vehicles for those w/ much better mpg, etc. Or who have gotten ourselves into financial trouble due to irresponsibility, and we do deserve that lashing.
But don't so easily generalize.
Most all of us are surely going to hurt more and more as this stuff develops, but right now, many are really hurting already, and don't have a lot of options to accommodate what's happening, even in the short run.
It is easy to poke fun at people who drive SUVs. There is a guy at my office who drives a Hummer - the office is in Virginia, but he has Maryland tags, so I figure he is driving at least 30 miles one way to get to the office. Funny though - I haven't seen the thing lately. I wonder if there is some sort of problem :-).
The fundamental problem is that supply cannot keep up with demand. This is what is driving up prices, and getting increased supply appears to be unlikely. The most obvious solution is to reduce demand. What would you suggest that we do in order to reduce gasoline demand?
There was a woman at work complaining the other day. She said "I don't use that much". She drives 100 miles round trip every day - I don't know how you can classify that as "not much", but in her eyes it isn't much. She drives some sort of Japanese import - probably ~30mpg or so.
Rick
It is just like Kunstler said it would be: people will do anything before they will give up their cars. People pawning items for gas money to quickly burn it up in a large vehicle would be much better served if they took that money to buy a bicycle and/or a scooter to leverage the distance traveled/dollar invested.
Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Then again, I live in an affluent area where people throw out working televisions and whole living room sets instead of donating them to charity. I find this offensive.
There was a story over at www.biodieselnow.com about a guy who sold his Harley and bought a diesel motorcycle - something obscure (frame is a Dnepr, engine is a Hatz). He is running it on something like 50% petro and 50% vegetable oil - he has already lined up a restaurant that will give him used oil.
And he gets > 80mpg on this thing.
http://forums.biodieselnow.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=11891
You make an interesting point though. Vespa scooters aren't hard to come by, and could serve as good commuting vehicles for some folks.
When I was a kid, teenagers didn't automatically get their own car on graduation. Come to think of it, my college graduation present was a bicycle. My friends who did have cars had old beaters or hand-me-downs, and didn't drive a lot because these things got horrible mileage, and parents weren't about to bankroll them. Perhaps parents ought to get their kids a scooter instead of a car. Kind of limits the opportunities for back-seat nookie though.
We talk about bicycles - that's great for shorter distances. You will probably encounter more resistance getting people on these things though.
In some countries, pizza delivery is done by a guy on a scooter - they don't waste fuel driving a car around just to deliver pizza.
There is so much room for improvement. We just need to get people to think outside of the box.
(Honda still makes the Metropolitan, and 110 mpg Bajaj Chetaks can sometimes be found)
It's about hybrids and such.
Where's the promised "Market-provided solutions" now that it's TSHTF time? $74/bl and climbing to $75 on NYMEX. Wow.
gasoline at this time.
"The program, funded in part by Brazilian oil company Petrobras, cost us$15 million and will eventually be expanded across the country, if results are positive, in an attempt to bring down Costa Rica's oil costs, which jumped by 45% between 2004 and 2005.
However, in a short time, the program has not been welcomed well. Many drivers are complaining of poor performance and engine problems, from knocking to stalling.
here's the link: http://insidecostarica.com/dailynews/2006/april/20/nac01.htm
I was kind of thinking of going to the conference - I live in the DC area, so getting there won't be a problem. The downside for me is that I would have to take 2 days off of work and pay 250$ to register. And for this I get what? Many of these people I have heard speak before. I suppose what would be interesting is to see how many political types show up and take it all in.
I am still up in the air on this, but I am tempted to take a pass and let others report what is said.
"strong increases in corn productivity
with little or no increase in fertilizer..
"
Nope-
Corn acres expected to decline
Feb 10, 2006 8:38 AM
The 20-year long-term average price for natural gas had been about $2.10 per million British thermal units up until 2000. It takes about 33 million Btu to produce a ton of anhydrous ammonia, which is the base for other nitrogen products and is also a major input in phosphate products.
"Of course, this is putting U.S. farmers under a lot of financial stress. Prices for corn have been going down over the last two to three years while the cost of producing corn has been going up. The biggest factor in the higher costs is fertilizer. The per acre cost for fertilizer has just about doubled over the last few years. Fuel prices have also doubled over the last few years."
These factors will likely result in U.S. corn acres declining by 1.5 million to 2 million acres in 2006.
http://deltafarmpress.com/news/060210-corn-acreage/
James
Bob
Filmmaker
I agree with you and have comments.
Corn, biodiesel, and or cellulosic can not replace all current liquid fuels.
Second, without cheap and abundant fertilizer existing crop production (yields) can not be maintained. This feedbacks heavily to replacement of petroleum fuels.
However, from an energy and cost standpoint to farmers there may be a viable business case for having reduced yields but reducing even more the cost of inputs for farming. Farmers aren't making enough money not because they don't have high yields (they do) but because they don't make enough profit per acre of ground planted. That needs to change in the farmers favor.
I see a place for food and fuel production from agriculture but at a much reduced level from what is being planned today. This means reducing total consumption of liquid fuels and replacing some of that lower amount with renewables. Gradually replace more and more petroleum with renewables but always try to reduce total liquid fuels year on year.
Plan a sustainable system of agriculture, not the highest yields possible. Divert some of that production to energy needs, if that is required. Allow farmers and those involved to maintain their land and make a decent living without having to buy out their neighbors and farm twice the area every 5-10 years.
Oh and this is a societal problem as much as a farmer problem. I have been employed in just about every aspect of farming from seed businesses to growing the crop. There is not a simple solution and farmers are at the bottom of the pile with regards to influence no matter what anybody thinks about farm subsidies.
Fertilizer from coal could allow the soil destructive Industrial Farming model to continue.
Chemical Companies Look to Coal as an Oil Substitute
"With oil and natural gas prices showing no signs of plummeting, and with incentives to use coal built into the Energy Policy Act of 2005, it just might happen. And chemical companies, which use oil and gas as feedstocks -- industry jargon for raw materials -- are hoping it will happen soon."
to me from Grandad-
Farmers are in the only
bizness where you are buying inputs at
retail and selling produce
wholesale.
Richard Manning's Against the Grain that puts it well:
A farm scholar once asked an abribusiness executive when his corporation would simply take over the farms. The exec said that it would be dumb for the corporation to do so, in that it is not free to exploit its employees to the degree that farmers are willing to exploit themselves.
James
I'm curious: why are prices going down? Is demand dropping? Foreign competition?
Joseph
I've been wondering this since I listened to my Dad
complaining about them when I was 12 years
old.
Bottom line-The US Economy is fed and grown
on the profits that are systematicly removed
from the farmer.
The only time grain/fiber prices rally
is in spikes-usually drought in the US
or a major competitor(Ozzies, Canada)
or failing Empire (Russia to import
during the 70's.
Or War.
You have depression prices the rest of the time.
James
He got "Peak Oil" VERY quickly and was trying to articulate the concept of EROEI as a concern going forward when I used the phrase and he said "exactly". He asked almost immediately about the EROEI on corn ethanol and wondered if it even broke-even. He asked me about sugar corn ethanol since he knew less about it's cultivation.
Some interesting conversations as he recovers from knee replacement surgery and I help out.
http://www.yubanet.com/artman/publish/article_34507.shtml
As you may already know, Sweden was the first nation to publicly acknowledge peak oil and start making plans to mitigate its effects.
Will it work?
This part works.
Planning for tramlines is probably becomming more popular in large and medium size towns.
A fair ammount of municipialities run a large part of their busses on biogas or ethanol. Public transportation is fairly ok but we have too little population to make the most of it. A large percentage of public transportation is primarily motivated for schoolchildren and elderly people and then bonus used for random passangers.
There is a strong wave of urbanization combined with a counter wave to almost rural areas and suburb creation around the most successfull towns. It is extremely popular to have a few horses, this makes former farmning areas survive as potentially food producing areas.
Biogas production from various sources is probably soon booming, methyl esters will probably use all available rapeseed production area within a year or three, ethanol production is picking up and will use up all excess domestic cereal production within 2-3 years but there is still an excess of sugar beets.
Methane fueled wehicles might become popular, E85 wehicles are selling very well as are diesel wehicles.
This wont add up to replace the current diesel and gasolene use but there is a potential to produce significant ammounts of synthetic diesel, methanol, DME, and so on from black liquor from pulp plants. They have a fair ammount of capital, general process know how and there are some pilot projects being built. I think they will have to start investing soon since I expect paper to be in smaller demand in peak oil times since you now can avoid using it if times get tough. They have recently become less profitable and the cheaper grades of wood have started to become more expensive due to increased production of wood pelets, firewood and wood chips.
The use of heating oil will be insignificant within a few years, the first generation of replacements were resistive heating with cheap hydro and nuclear electricity and district heating, the current generation of replacement is mostly heat pumps, wood pellet burners and district heating.
Almost all garbage is now incinerated to get rid of it and to produce heat for district heating and some electricity.
We have even started to import some garbage as a mix of biofuel and once used fossil fuel. Ethanol production is colocated with district heating plants. With few exeptions all dense towns and cities have district heating. The new fad is to complement this with district cooling system that replaces individual electrical coolers with central absorbtion coolers run on summertime excess of heat from the district heating system. Other major district heating fuels are various biomass, coal and then oil for peak loads. Not much will happen here exept some more district heating, a lot more district cooling and the technology for combined heat and power production is advancing making smaller and smaller units economical for each year.
Massive investments are being done in mid life upgrading our 10 running nuclear powerplants and uprating them to replace the two closed buy stupid greens. Public opinion is changing and I expect that it will be acceptable to build new nuclear powerplants in about 5 years. This does not replace any more oil unless we get a lot of plug in hybrids but it is nice to export electricity and have power to run industries.
All wehicle producers are working with biofuels and hybrid drive lines for cars, trucks and heavy wehicles. We have a fairly large and innovative wehicle industry in Sweden, most of it is now foreign owned. Volvo cars(Ford), Saab cars(GM), Volvo trucks and heavy equipment, Scania Trucks, Hägglunds infantry fighting wehicles and various manufactureres of heavy equipment and forestry equipmet.
The current government initative to get rid of oil use to 2020 do not directly translate into good planning but it is doing a lot for making peak oil an issue. This year is an election year in Sweden. From my point of view it would be optimal for the worn out socalistis to make a lot of noise about peak oil and then be replaces by hard working liberals that can start rationalizing our way too large and inefficient state and get things done.
We have for some time and mostly other reasons then peak oil been doing the right things and can thus probably outbid manny other countries for oil and become a safe haven for energy intensive electricity using industries.
I guess oil will be insignificant for heating in 2009-2011, ground transportation in 2020-2030, dont know about air trave but aeroplanes better become more fuel efficient fast. A few Swedish harbours are big enough to accomondate future very large nuclear powered container ships and it is likely that one electrified double track thru Denmark to continental Europe will be two within about 20 years.
The situation is more or less the same in our nordic neighbours. Norway is richer in oil, gas and hydro power, Finland is better governed, Denmark has paid off their foreign debt, Iceland has electricity comming out of their ears. I think it is in the national character of all nordic peoples to solve problems in a logical and efficient way. We might even have a larger percentage of "engineer minded" people. Good when the world changes, bad when we toy with socialism. :(
I think it will work out ok for us.
I am trying to imagine low energy alternatives to much of what occurs today. As energy prices continue to climb, we will be forced to localize much of what we now take for granted. I guess this essay's timeframe is set 200 years in the future, and my basic assumption is that we have found nothing to adequately replace fossil fuels.
I forsee long distance vacations going by the wayside. A future non-detritus vacation will probably entail, for most of us anyways, of how far we are willing to pedal a bicycle and camp beside the road largely self-contained in supplies. No more jetting off to Hawaii or cruising the seven seas.
I would expect professional sports to collapse as people will not have the income to go to games, and the sports infrastructure of stadiums and traveling teams will not be affordable. Golf courses will be turned into vegetable gardens along with schoolyard playing fields as we desperately strive to grow sufficient food supplies. NASCAR, and other motor sports will have been seen as pointless mechanized hamster wheel racing, but cross-country running and bicycle racing will be very popular. Could local horse racing and betting become the King of sports again?
I think large concerts will be history too, but impromptu front porch acoustic concerts in your locale will be easy to find. I think future kids will be too busy to find time to just hangout at the mall, but one room schools and community gardens will be the place to meet other teenagers. The occasional local fairs will become the big events where much of these sports and meetings will take place.
I think fishing will continue to be popular, but no powered boats, sails or oars only, or fishing from the shore. Hunting and trapping will be localized too, but widespread local acclaim will go to the most proficient.
I think movie theaters and videogames will be postPeak toast, but good books will have a constantly increasing value as they will be almost energetically impossible to reproduce. I could see a community pooling funds to rent a copy of Shakespeare's works to learn and re-enact his plays.
The saddest part will be the eventual loss of computers as these will only be affordable to the super-rich. You can only cobble repairs for so long on these items. But the most worrisome change for future humans will probably be the lack of modern dentistry and medicine. I just cannot imagine a root canal or setting a broken leg without modern tools, painkillers, or anesthetics. Ouch!
Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Opiates have been around and in use for a very long time. Isopropyl (wood) alcohol kills bacteria, which, thankfully, we know cause disease and infection.
Both should still be rather readily available for centuries to come.
I have been trying to figure out which of the things we take for granted today will make any of these coming changes a move Forward, not just a slide back into the caves. (Not that you were heading us there with your writing.) There are developments in Culture, Science, Manufacturing, Agriculture, the Arts, etc.. that may have grown significantly BECAUSE we had the energy embodied in Oil, and could afford the time to do so.. That doesn't mean they're just going to fade to black as the Petroleum age dies.
We're not going to stop having Radios or the Transistors that guide them. We know how to combine materials, (including hydrocarbons, which aren't just going to vanish) to take flight, to store chemical energy, measure EM fields, to see in the dark, to detect a piece of metal in the ground, in your body, or flying in from the west.. Optics, Materials Sciences, Microbiology..
I'm just saying that while yes, I agree there will likely be many more bikes, they might not look like anything we can even imagine yet, and they will still ride alongside the hum of motorized transport, too. I don't think Shakespeare will ever go out of style, but not to forget that these people that follow us will also be writing, painting, coming up with new dances that would frighten and embarrass us. The next political and cultural systems will largely, and almost by definition be a reaction and a commentary on what we do today. And there will still be doomers, and there will still be Polyanna's (and some Polypropylene).. and then everyone else in between. Just less of them.
"Strive mightily, as Lawyers do in Law; but eat and drink as friends" Shakespeare
Bob
America has to consider seriously its lifestyle choices. Of course the same applies to the other developed nations but in average their energy consumption and CO2 emmisions er capita are in average 50% of that of the Good Ol' US of A.
we eat too much, we drive too much ( more than any other nation in the world) and in the most wasteful transport appliances (SUV's and 3 tons pick-ups), we use too much paper, plastic ( has anybody thought of how much energy is spent just on the wrapping/containers/boxes of the stuff we buy from mall), we do not recycle enough of these.
In the end we are among the fattest people on this planet, have the among highest incidence of diabetes in kids and we are WASTEFULL and inconsiderate of the natural resources in general...
a energy crisis, looming or not, should make all of us reconsider our lifestyle choices.
I'm not advocating aganst decent housing, golf courses, freedom of movement ( the sort we have from our cars) but just for getting to all these by more wise, sofisticated and nature friendly means.
"American Imitation ( http://web.syr.edu/~bmoriari/review1.html )
"The American Nation when it was first established showed a great imitation to the practices of the indigenous councils. The first American Government, the Articles of Confederation, was a closer match to the Iroquois method than to British Parliament. This document allowed for a loose union of 13 independent states, much like the Iroquois union of six independent Nations. All decisions made had to be unanimous, which though effective for the Natives, failed for the states.
The Articles also reflected the lack of judiciary that the Iroquois government possessed. There was little if any interstate accountability, much as there was little between the nations, as long as the Great Law was followed. No executive power existed within this system, either, much like that of the Iroquois."
"This admiration influenced the Founding Fathers greatly as they drafted the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson, in this piece, substituted "happiness" for "property" in the Locke-inspired trio of beliefs that he espoused. Johansen, in this book, points to his Iroquois experience as the catalyst to this change in wording, not any elitist motive. Jefferson was honestly motivated, he proposes, by the ideal that happiness was attainable through liberty and simplicity, such as that practiced by the American Indian."
But these were mere human beings, too. Current thinking about the people on Mesa Verde suggests that they had deforested their land and over farmed it, leaving heavy erosion, wildfires (not unlike today, up there), and a depleted water table. In a way, it was useful to hear this story the last time I was there, since it reminded me that these people weren't altogether different from us.
Air travel is a tougher nut, but we have a couple of options for that too:
Ocean cruises can be done via sail or use something like DCFC's burning charcoal. It'll all look different, but there seems to be no inherent reason why it can't be done.
(I love the image of tanker trucks cruising from terminal to terminal, burning precious fuel to find product that isn't there. That is so... 70's. Don't they have communications? Wireless internet? Even a pay phone?)
http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/energy/rp/6132.pdf
Another Uninformed Consumer Watchdog
I had entitled it "Another Clueless Consumer Watchdog", but I am trying to stay away from inflammatory language. :) It seems that he is just another guy who doesn't understand economics.
RR
Robert;
It is what it is. What is that old saying:
You can put lipstick on a pig, dress it up in a little black dress and heels, and call it a hot babe. But all you really have is a pig in drag.
Perhaps this is not the original quote, but nevertheless I liken it to something along the lines of:
You can put a lot of bling on a gas guzzler, trick it out with a leather interior and chrome wheels, and call it a great ride. But all you really have is a gas guzzler.
Subkommander Dred
Steinbeck 'East of Eden'
.. and they looked into the house, where the Pigs and the Men were making their deals, and they could no longer tell one from the other.
(Is that how it ends? I haven't read it in years..)
Ad Astra, per Alia Porci (to the stars, on the wings of a Pig)
Some Pig...
After reading your link: Since oil companies are international concerns, it would only make sense for them to spread the painful accounting cost of ethanol to as many people as possible. The legislated disparities between WA & CA fuels as explained in table #2 should probably result in a $0.35/gallon or more pricing difference between these states if strict geographical accounting is applied. So, in effect CA gasoline laws are screwing the WA car-owners. I would expect OR, if charted, would have a similar CA ethanol pricing effect.
The oil companies are probably 'rolling up' the increased CA cost/gallon into the WA, and other States prices to try and normalize prices as far as they legally can according to accounting rules. Otherwise the price distortion on either side of a States' boundary line can really screw up how far and where consumers will drive to save on gas purchases. Kinda like people crossing a stateline to buy a lottery ticket that they cannot purchase in-state. My two cents.
Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
this does not still seem very energy efficient. 9.3 gallons of dry corn (1 bushell) gotta have a lot more caloric value than 2.85 gallons of ethanol.
I wonder what's new with the making of ethanol from cellulose ( last I know is that a Canadian company started such a plant 1-2 years ago). one could harvest the whole corn plant ( and whatnot- every plant has cellulose in significant amounts)and convert a whole lot more of that bio-carbon into fuel.
I suspect that corn talk is a result of ADM, Monsanto, and Cargill exerting political influence. Had this exchange with a friend on another site...
Soybeans ~40 gal/acre
Corn ~60 gal/acre
Mustard ~140 gal/acre
Jatropha~160 gal/acre
PalmOil ~650 gal/acre
algae 10-20000 gal/acre
Do a google on GreenFuel Technologies Corp ..
They've got a continuous bioreactor going commercial ..
The 'algae' folks claim that all motor fuels and
heating oil can be replaced with the equivalent of
500,000 acres of closed-loop algae production ..
who knows .. Ford also looked at Mustard plants as
a source of biofuel back in the day ..
and my answer, re hemp...
Hemp is a viable source of woody biomass, no deforestation necessary. In fact, while an acre of trees is about 60% cellulose, and acre of hemp is nearly 75%. How much hemp is necessary to meet current US energy needs? Somewhere between 10 million and 90 million acres, depending on how efficient the production is. Every year, the US government pays farmers (in cash or "kind") to not farm what they call the "soil bank", which happens to be about 90 million acres of farmland. The math is pretty simple.
Hemp seed oil is very similar to petroleum diesel fuel, and produces full engine power with reduced carbon monoxide and 75% less soot and particulates. Hemp stalk (different than the part that can make paper and textiles) can be converted into 500 gallons of methanol/acre. US energy consumption is responsible for 80% of the world's air pollution. The use of hemp biomass fuel would be a globally responsible evolution.
http://mit.edu/thistle/www/v13/2/enviro.html
==================Hemp as Biomass for Energy
Tim Castleman
© Fuel and Fiber Company, 2001
----
Industrial hemp can be grown in most climates and on marginal soils. It requires little or no herbicide and no pesticide, and uses less water than cotton. Measurements at Ridgetown College indicate the crop needs 300-400 mm (10-13 in.) of rainfall equivalent. Yields will vary according to local conditions and will range from 1.5 to 6 bone dry tons of biomass per acre. California's rich croplands and growing environment are expected to increase yields by 20% over Canadian results, which will average at least 3.9 bone dry tons per acre.
Hemp seed oil for BioDiesel
Production of oil
Grown for oilseed, Canadian grower's yields average 1 tonne/hectare, or about 400 lbs. per acre. Cannabis seed contains about 28% oil (112 lbs.), or about 15 gallons per acre. Production costs using these figures would be about $35 per gallon. Some varieties are reported to yield as much as 38% oil, and a record 2,000 lbs. per acre was recorded in 1999. At that rate, 760 lbs.of oil per acre would result in about 100 gallons of oil, with production costs totaling about $5.20 gallon. Sales of the remaining stalk material at $72 per ton will provide another source of income. It is estimated that a crop grown for both seed and fiber will produce about 3 tons of stalk, which is selling for about $72 per ton, resulting in a $216 per acre credit. This will reduce the cost of the oil to about $3 per gallon. Further reductions will accrue as the agronomic knowledge base is enlarged, and economies of scale are realized, lowering production costs while improving yields.
This oil could be used as-is in modified diesel engines, or be converted to biodiesel using a relatively simple, automated process. Several systems are under development worldwide designed to produce biodiesel on a small scale, such as on farms using "homegrown" oil crops.
Production of Bio-Diesel
Basically methyl esters, or biodiesel, as it is commonly called, can be made from any oil or fat, including hemp seed oil. The reaction requires only oil, an alcohol (usually methanol) and a catalyst (usually sodium hydroxide [NaOH, or drain cleaner]). The reaction produces only biodiesel and a smaller amount of glycerol or glycerin.
The costs of materials needed for the reaction are the costs associated with production of hemp seed oil, the cost of methanol and the NaOH. In the instances where waste vegetable oil, or WVO, is used, the cost for oil is of course, free. Typically methanol costs about $2 per gallon and NaOH costs about $5 per 500g or about $0.01 per gram. For a typical 17-gallon batch of biodiesel, you would start with 14 gallons of hemp seed oil; add to that 15% by volume of alcohol (or 2.1 gallons) and about 500g of NaOH. The process takes about 2 hours to complete and requires about 2000 watts of energy. That works out to about 2kw/hr or about $0.10 of energy (assuming $0.05 per kw/hr). So the total cost per gallon of biodiesel is $? (oil) + 2.1 x $2 (methanol) + $5 (NaOH) + $0.10 (energy) / 14 gallons = $0.66 per gallon, plus the cost of the oil.
Hemp Cellulose for Ethanol
Another approach will involve conversion of cellulose to ethanol, which can be done in several ways including gasification, acid hydrolysis and a technology utilizing engineered enzymes to convert cellulose to glucose, which is then fermented to make alcohol. Still another approach using enzymes will convert cellulose directly to alcohol, which leads to substantial process cost savings.
Current costs associated with these conversion processes are about $1.37 per gallon of fuel produced, plus the cost of the feedstock. Of this $1.37, enzyme costs are about $0.50 per gallon; current research efforts are directed toward reduction of this amount to $0.05 per gallon. There is a Federal tax credit of $0.54 per gallon and a number of other various incentives available. Conversion rates range from a low of 25-30 gallons per ton of biomass to 100 gallons per ton using the latest technology.
In 1998 the total California gasoline demand was 14 billion gallons. When ethanol is used to replace MTBE as an oxygenate, this will create California demand in excess of 700 million gallons per year. MTBE is to be phased out of use by 2003 according to State law.
In this case we can consider biomass production from a much broader perspective. Sources of feedstock under consideration for these processes are:
We will address these in turn and show why a dedicated energy crop holds important potential for ethanol production in California, why hemp is a good candidate as a dedicated energy crop, and how it may represent the fastest track to meeting 34% of California's upcoming ethanol market demand of at least 580-750 million gallons per year.
http://www.fuelandfiber.com/Hemp4NRG/Hemp4NRG.htm
I'm still looking for BTU figures, and petrochemical and water inputs for the various biocrops. I'm also thinking about a weed called teasel, since I'm hacking down plants taller than me in the garden. Problem is, that it is a biennial.But, in Cal,you can walk on it for a year, and then it shoots up during late winter/ early spring, right when fields get planted. Maybe in the rows?
There is currently a hemp industry bill in the Calif. lege.
Problem I have pushing hemp is everybody says "But it will seed my crop." :-)
==============Algae appears to be the best.
http://www.energybulletin.net/2364.html
10-20,000 gals/ acre yields claimed
Rat
well, I know. as always special interest gets uncle's Sam money first.
I've been saying it since I've been here.
Conservation coupled with biofuels made from Dedicated Energy Crops i.e. HEMP is how we will mitigate the effects of PEAK OIL.
It would make more sense to burn corn in corn stoves to displace natural gas for heating fuel, then use the natural gas as CNG to run vehicles.
The people were clueless replying with the standard "We need to get off foreign oil and start producing oil here, we need to starting drilling in Alaska!". They just don't get it.
Last week I was in a station and the guy behind me at the cash register said something about how he couldn't wait for all these middle east problems to be over so we can get back to $1 /gal gasoline. I told him "good luck" its all up, up, and away from here to the very end.
The look of total fear was worrysome.
Highway Construction Forces Chicagoans Off Road
CHICAGO -- Ann Schue used to cherish the time she spent alone in her 2003 Ford Expedition during her 90-minute morning commute to her job at the University of Chicago. Nestled in heated leather seats, she planned her day while listening to the news.
Not anymore. Massive construction work on one of Chicago's main highways has forced her to trade the peace of her sport-utility vehicle for the clatter and crowds of a double-decker commuter train.
"This was a very, very big step for me," says Ms. Schue, 42 years old, who had never been on a train in her life before she recently started taking the Metra rail service. "I'm still very...," she says, choking up, then pausing to compose herself. "I miss my car."
Chicago is the rare Midwestern city with pervasive mass transit, including buses, elevated trains and regional commuter rail. But it's also typically Midwestern in that many residents so love their vehicles that they'd rather sit in traffic burning up $2.99-a-gallon gasoline than go near a bus stop or train platform.
Less-Than-Hopeful Pessimist today...
My sister lives in the city and when I come to visit I NEVER take a car or get picked up. If I fly to Midway I drag my suitcase to the orange line and ride to the loop, same thing with the blue line from O'Hare.
I can't tell you how many time I've sat back on the "L" with my headphones and a magazine while I pass mile after mile of congested highway traffic. Idiots.
Wow. I didn't know the Journal did those touching 'Hearts and Minds', Human interest pieces. I feel so, so violated!
There are some folks at my church that get this worked up over losing a REALLY beloved cat, but even then, I feel like I'm being a little 'tolerant'.
This feels like Journalism more appropriate for COPS or THE REAL WORLD..
Thing is, when I took the N/R in from Queens, or the F from Brooklyn, or the MetroNorth from Rye.. that's when I WAS able to either read, think about the day's plan, or maybe finish up an incomplete night's rest. When I drove myself, I arrived irritable, tense, often without having done my last bits of homework. But that's me.
They made sure to paint that Chicago train as a real slummy option, didn't they?
Welcome aboard, Honey!