DrumBeat: May 25, 2006
Posted by threadbot on May 25, 2006 - 9:30am
Now for some wise words from the readers of The Oil Drum...
[editor's note, by Yankee] Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma has a blog at the New York Times. Today's post is rather similar to Robert Rapier's ethanol post from yesterday in that it argues that corn-based ethanol is a waste of our time. He didn't mention, however, that at best corn-based ethanol could only make up 19% of the gasoline supply (so I left a link to Robert's post in the comments). Still, it's good that someone linked to the MSM is trying to debunk the corn-based E85 hysteria.
“Men argue; nature acts.”
—Voltaire
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I took your analysis a step further, in part as a response to GW and in part as a response to a likely decline in a major economic input.
Couple electrification with MUCH higher efficiency,
Diesel 18 wheelers take 8 times as much fuel as diesel railroads to move a ton-mile (gross #s from 2002).
An electric RR (with regenerative braking) uses about 1/3 the non-oil energy of a diesel RR.
Shifting half the freight ton-miles from 18 wheelers to electric RR in a decade seems like a workable goal. Growing RR freight by 9%-11% per year is doable. Russian rates of electrification of existing RRs are doable and probably twice as fast.
Electric Urban Rail creates it's own ridership over time. It alters the urban form away from sprawl with "natural" market forces. It's called TOD (Transit Orientated Development).
As with freight RRs, major savings directly. Perhaps 1/12th the energy (non-oil) to commute by Light Rail than by car/SUV. But double that savings with changes in urban development.
The electricity demands to cut US Oil concumption by 10% are likely less than 2% of our total electricity used. Small enough to be "created" by slightly better conservation or new wind turbines.
OTOH, plug in hybrids have no associated efficiency gains, other than a shift to smaller cars. Batteries lose energy when stored and add weight to move around.
Plug-in hybrids are a "half measure" and they should be, IMO, a minor supplement to a major thrust for electric RRs and MUCH more Urban Rail, Plug-in hybrids, because they are not a significant step up in efficiency, are less sustainable and this will lead to further problems in a generation.
We will soon be engaged in a race between the decling volumes of oil that we can afford and our demand for oil while maintaining a reasonable level (severe recession ?) of economic activity.
Gains of 24:1 are likely to be much more important than 3:2 and 2:1 gains.
People can hypothesize dozens or hundreds of CTL plants, but have trouble getting their heads around the concept of putting back double tracks which were torn up a few decades ago for a lower property tax single track.
AFAIK, there are shared triple tracks in Wyoming serving the coal fields. The US standard railroad ROW is 100' wide. One can do a lot in that space.
On a macro level, in 2002 railroads carried 27.8% of the ton-miles; highways 32.1%. If half of the highway ton-miles were switched from highway to rail in a decade; railroads would have to grow the "normal" growth in our economy + a compounded 4.7% to take half of the trucking ton-miles in ten years. My goals are, if anything, too modest !
The rail capacity problems of today are "bottlenecks". Most lines have excess capacity. And simply adding more tracks will help with that.
"Coal is clogging our railroads, they can barely handle the load".
I live close to what I have been told is the world's busiest railroad bridge. I have never seen a coal train on it. Lots of containers, tank cars, boxcars, grain cars, automobiles, piggy back truck trailers, lumber, steel, etc. but zero coal.
The railroad business is much more than hauling coal.
In addition he said we have a monopoly on the tracks that are coming out of most ALL ethanol plants. This was done roughly 3 years ago and our tracks are connected directly to many, many refineries. As he said, "you can't pipe ethanol." I didn't know if that was true, so I left it alone.
Lastly he said LNG is not an option, at least from a RR standpoint and he went on the knock it for what it was. He also said we've been moving heavy equipment up to Alaska in anticipation of a need. I wonder how soon we'll have that "need."
Well actually no. The problem is it doesn't tend to separate. Water and ethanol are mutually soluble in all mixtures. So the water is just taken up by the EtOH and goes merrily along with it. Hydrocarbons do not mix with water, which can be separated from the stream by a simple sump, a low place in the pipe, whatever. (I'm not intimate with pipeline technology but do have a bit of lab experience)
As for (2), all that wet ethanol tends to rust things. That, and even anhydrous ethanol is a polar solvent, which has more of a tendency to remove lubricants and coatings or soften them to where they no longer stay in place.
You have to make all your pipelines and equipment out of different materials than you do for hydrocarbons. Since it's kinda expensive to replace thousands of miles of pipe, they'll just truck it. There will be this interval of time while TPTB come to their senses, and they can truck the ethanol for that long. Or TPTB won't come to their senses, and the whole system will collapse. In which case they can also stop trucking the ethanol.
OTOH, I believe synthetic- or bio-diesel, can go through existing pipes without much trouble.
BTW, I would like to forward an eMail copy of my conference handout to you.
Please send me an eMail at Alan_Drake@Juno.com
http://ergosphere.blogspot.com/2005/07/super-cooled.html
He did some back of the envelope calculations down in the comments to see if the idea was even close to doable, and on paper it might be plausible. I don't recall offhand what the efficiency is of these things.
My point is that if such a thing were to work, you could effectively have an electrified railroad without the need to string overhead wires.
You would need the electric locomotives, of course. In actuality railroad locomotives are already electric - in theory you might even be able to adapt a diesel locomotive so that it can draw electricity from they fuel cell instead of from the diesel generator, but I don't know whether the actual designs they use could easily be adapted in this fashion - given that they weren't designed to be used in this fashion there might be other problems.
You would also need the fuel cell itself (presumably in a car of its own), and finally you would need the infrastructure to recharge the fuel cells with electricity.
DAMN IT !!
We do NOT have time for delays for something that MIGHT be better (but probably won't be) !
One can ride on electric trains from London to the Pacific Ocean ! TODAY !
It has been done, the problems are solved, we have a century of operating experience in every climate, it is "off the shelf" technology, it is affordable, it is VERY efficient, it is environmentally benign and it is about the quickest alternative that can be implemented !
The problem is that despite what any of us say here, nothing at all is happening in this area. Next week the situation will be exactly the same as it is today. A month from now it will almost certainly be the same. And there is a good chance that a year from now the situation will be unchanged.
We can say let's get to work, but until the railroads develop an interest in this, nothing is going to happen. State and local authorities might be able to do some things to incentivize the railroads. Federal authorities might in theory also incentivize them, but I just don't see that happening given who is in charge now. And despite all of this, it will still have to be the railroads that decide to change their way of doing things.
So what exactly should we be doing??
I don't know, bitching and moaning and getting frustrated, which is what I was doing - sorry to take it out on you.
Send me an eMail at Alan_Drake@Juno.com for a copy to send out as well if you like. (Anyone is welcome ! :-)
I am working for more streetcars here in New Orleans and developing some theories for their use and route planning. Plus more local recovery work whereever I can.
Pushing my agenda here, which I think will grow in influence over time.
I am pushing long odds, I know. But if I DON'T try, the odds are still longer.
I figure several thousand hours of my effort (+ money) will have a >1% and less than <5% chance to impact public policy in some positive way.
I accept that "cost" and odds.
Yeah, I know - I was there when you were handing all those things out at the meeting in DC. Long odds but worth the effort. In reality, I am just trying to think of ideas that can get things moving more quickly.
Is there any chance that Canadian railroads might be more amenable than the U.S. railroads to electrification?
Earlier this year, France made a commitment to electrify their yards and small branch lines.
If it's possible to construct such a high speed link (300 km/hr) in a crowded part of SE England constructing more traditional tracks (say 130 km/hr) in rural parts of US should present few problems given necessary political will. Details of CTRL here: http://www.lcrhq.co.uk/
I find it interesting how so many posters think that we will have mass migration and end of surburbia at the same time. Where are all the migrators going to live? In the burbs of sustainable areas (near Agriculture) I think. There is not going to be a 1 size fits all solution to this.
Portland streetcar (I took a course at Portland State University) has some very good ideas on quick cheap streetcar tracks. Not heavy enough for Light Rail.
From memory, $300/foot and three weeks per block.
I had dinner with an LTK consultant in Portland. He agreed that if the process was changed, they could cut years off the process of designing and getting OKs for a new light rail line. Costs down at least 30%.
Hand-in-hand with more funding for Urban Rail needs to come drastic reform of the process. We could learn much from the French in that regard.
Portland can get the Green Line (Light Rail) built within a couple of years, and then the line to Milwaukee (spelling) after that. Meanwhile the streetcars will go far south down river and both sides of the river. We will hopefully be in just the early stages of post-Peak Oil by then.
The line to Vancouver, with a new Columbia River bridge in all probability, is going to a problem.
What other Light Rail plans are on the conceptual drawing boards of Portland ?
In your opinion, as a resident, will these MAX & streetcar lines above, once completed, be "enough" with some buses ?
Texas had two years after PO before they saw more than a trivial decline.
For now, I am still promoting Urban Rail with my "Step #3" being more trolley buses.
I see ETBs as being the quick fix AFTER the crunch hits. Till then, I will talk more about the "better solution".
Quite frankly, the body politic is not willing to "buy into" a doomer, quick crash scenario. I think Urban Rail sells better than ETBs in todays world.
I think we defer only in strategy and timing details.
I can only hope that when the US finally gets serious about meaningful mitigation and conservation: that you will finally be recognized as the right man with the correct plan to get this all jumpstarted. I truly hope, for all our sakes, that you will soon get overloaded with consulting offers for RRs and mass-transit. =)
Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
I believe that everyone would classify the tar sands as unconventional. The very heavy oil in Venezuela seems to be in a twilight zone between conventional and
unconventional. The common connection between the two is that they are hugely capital and energy intensive, combined a low production rate relative to the capital cost.
The stuff is extremely high in gravity, 8 to 10 API, high in sulfur content, 3.5%, and high in metal content, vanadium and nickel. This all means that it would be extremely expensive to refine it into any kind of motor fuel, but it could be done.
http://tinyurl.com/du8wd
Right now the best and most economical use of the Orinoco bitumen is to use it for boiler fuel. They mine the stuff, mix it with water and dump it right into the boiler. Of course that dumps a lot of sulfur dioxide and heavy metals into the atmosphere, not to mention C02. But some countries simply don't care.
http://www.soberania.org/Articulos/articulo_1375.htm
Terrific link! Considering the present values of metals, you would think it would be cost effective, besides environmentally smart, to harvest these metallic elements instead of just spewing them into the atmosphere. Seems like a huge opportunity being bypassed by some enterprising chem. eng. outfits. Maybe it is attributable to the increasngly onerous business conditions that Chavez is creating inside Venezuela.
Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ Are Humans Smarter than YEast?
Why do we just throw away stuff that was wrung from the earth with such effort?
- The US uses the most oil per capita
- The US imports the most oil
- The US has had traditionally low gasoline prices, so the increase in crude prices affects the US consumer's outlay at a higher percentage.
- The US economic/transportation model relies more on low fuel prices than other developed countries.
Of course, the US has some unique advantages in dealing with PO:lifted earlier this year] on the finding of "lack of harm".
Perhaps it's more appropriate to describe the US economy as "The Ghawar of Economies."
http://www.energybulletin.net/16393.html
Published on 25 May 2006 by Museletter / EB. Archived on 25 May 2006.
Energy Geopolitics 2006
by Richard Heinberg
Excerpt:
The neocons' efforts have meanwhile squandered immense amounts of fiscal, political, and diplomatic capital. And these efforts have played out (not coincidentally) as global energy streams are drying up. America's power elites bet the farm on the neocons and lost. There can be no second chance. A recovery of America's former position of unquestioned dominance, enjoyed until only years ago, is simply not in the cards. The best that can be hoped for is a partial re-consolidation based on withdrawal and reconciliation abroad, and massive inflation at home. This is a reversal of truly historic proportions.
America's power elites bet the farm on the neocons
I disagree with that in the sense that the elites bet on themselves, not politicians. Bush has made two gigantic policy mistakes: his audacious deficit spending, and the Iraq war, both of which will cause much long term suffering. Beyond that, I don't think Gore / Kerry administrations would have fared much better. Gore can release a very relevant movie and produce a funny monologue for SNL about what could have been, but in reality, it wasn't going to happen: with Gore as president his hands would have been tied by the demands of the elites and the public as much as anyone else. The kinds of proactive solutions we wish for on theoildrum wouldn't have been any easier. I can't see president Gore saying after 9-11 "I'm going to put 1 trillion dollars over the next 10 years into alternative energy research and infrastructure in order to preserve national security and the future for coming generations." I wish I could.
I apologize in advance for mentioning things that are not supposed to be discussed on TOD, but I cannot let this remark go without comment. There is no possibility in any imaginary alternative timeline that Gore would have been president after 9/11. That is why Liberman was the VP candidate, he was plan B for the neocons. If Gore had been installed as putative figurehead president, he would have been scheduled to be in a meeting in the top of WTC1 when the plane hit.
I admire Heinberg's work a lot, but I think that, in saying the above, he is vastly underestimating both US military superiority, and its decisive longterm significance. And he is also underestimating the ruthlessness and barbarism of the US ruling elite - which is a bit surprising, given that he's a confirmed 9/11 conspiracy theorist.
It's true that in the short- to medium-term, the US will be hampered in exercising its military preponderance by the failure in the way the neo-cons have gone about things these past six years, and by the deep rifts this has produced within the ranks of the ruling elites themselves. In the long run, though, these rifts will get sorted out behind the scenes, the American populace will become more tolerant of elite ruthlessness than it is now on account of increasing economic desperation, as well as increasingly fascistic measures employed to stifle dissent. The US ruling elite will then be able to employ its military dominance in devastingly destructive ways so as to restore itself to a position of unquestioned global dominance. (by "in the long run," I am talking about a time-scale on the order of two decades or so.)
Get real. EVERY engine at Indy this year is a Honda. Who Are We Kidding?
Most modern mercenaries are either bodygaurds or snatch/steal/kill raiders very short missions. They don't invade they perform really dangerous missions for lots of money. Most soldiers in Iraq make less than an assistant manager at McDonalds (who probably gets laid more) and are not in it for the money.
Matt
F1, which personally I consider a higher form than American racing has a proposed engine modification to 1.6 liters. Think about how small that is.
There is no huge upswelling of popular grassroots support for global hegemony or resource wars here.
Will Americans fight to keep their shopping malls and SUVS and suburban sprawl? Maybe. Time will tell, I suppose.
But to be brutally honest, the US military is stretched awful thin presently. I see this fact daily.
In the past, I have argued that the eventual outcome in Iraq will involve the genocide of millions as a way of eliminating the insurgency and enabling the US to gain unrestricted access to the fossil fuel resources there. I find it interesting that no one has seriously challenged me yet on this claim. But I invite anyone who wishes to do so to do this, since I recognize that I might be wrong on this on at least two counts:
- The US ruling elite is in fact NOT sufficiently ruthless to have it in them to do this; and
- It would be a logistically infeasible endeavor anyhow. No matter how many tens of millions of people the US killed in Iraq, the task of militarily protecting the colossal infrastructure that constitutes Iraq's oil industry would always be vulnerable to devastatingly disruptive terrorist attacks.
I claim, however, that 1 and 2 are both false - and I invite you, ladies and gentlemen, to fire away at these claims.Fear yes, silency no.
> They could do this, so to speak, with one hand tied behind their back if they wished, and without fear of military reprisal by any of their rivals.
The economical and cultural reprisals could be quite damaging. What would it do for your self esteem to me buddies with Stalin? How would you handle a general unwillingness to trade with you?
You could even get subtle and damaging military reprisals in the form of "accidents" happening to shipments from people that are willing to trade with you.
> 1. The US ruling elite is in fact NOT sufficiently ruthless to have it in them to do this; and
My bet is on the US ruling elite individuals to be greedy enough to wish to retire in a world where they can travel freely and enjoy the globe. They will probably also want to leave a functioning society to their heirs.
#1 goes back to the will to do it. To squash the insurgency you need a Sith Lord or a Roman general. There is too much media out there to fight a genocidal battle. Our politicians want reelection for themselves and their party. It is terrible every time innocents are collateral damage on TV. An intentional wiping genocide is not possible because even if the leaders had the will the public and the men firing the weapons do not. Units like the SS take years to build and dehumanize, it takes small steps to become a monster. There are plenty of service men and women who would stop their peers from commiting attrocities.
#2 I think logistically we could pull it off. For all our criticism of WMD's of all flavors we have the most and the best just like Baskin Robins.
I don't believe our leaders are crazy, probably incompetent and mean but I trust in their sense of self-protection and their greed too. The entire idea is so idiotic that I don't even see the need to comment.
I did not recomend nuking anyone. Nukes would destroy any value the oil or other resources would have anyway. Phil said dispute his two points. I do not think we have leaders willing to be so ruthless. I do think the cold war has left us with such a wide variety of inventions that should have never been invented that should such a roman general take control, all four horseman would ride.
So I am not suggesting in any way we nuke Iraq or any other country.
"The entire idea is so idiotic that I don't even see the need to comment." you did comment.
"I think that the way he imagines it is to pull back everyone from Iraq and then nuke it." I was thinking more along the lines of genetically engineered viri, in combination with vaccination of ourselves and allies. Not a suggestion but a logistical possibility for the nation that spent enormously more on bioweapons than any other.
Regarding the genetiacally modified virus... I hope nobody has invented such yet, and hope that never will. Just hopes ain't enough I guess...
I am no expert on this, so I would be interested in having someone who is knowledgeable about these sorts of selectively destructive weapons systems comment on their potential to depopulate Iraq while leaving the oil infrastructure intact.
But the claim that we will do, or we intend to do it would require that totally insane people are collectively in charge now; I thing that needs much more proof than you provide.
Personally I don't see anything that even hints such a plan. And the plan is obviously the following:
- Go there
- Install pro-US govt
- Build permanent bases
- Fortify and leave the Iraqi govt to handle the insurgency.
- Intervene if things go bad or the govt is not obedient
It is inevitable that the resources of the insurgents will start to decline, and they will lose ground once US military presence is restricted within the bases. They will have to increasingly fight against iraqi people and kill civilians which will turn the whole population against them. Eventually they will lose ground, or at least that's what our startegists hope for.Nothing even resembling genocide is on the horizon.
Plus, the scenario you outline doesn't leave room for US corporations to access Iraq's oil reserves - something the US will desperately need at some point. What I envision, therefore, is a slow grind towards virtually complete annihilation of the Iraqi population taking place over the next 15-20 years. Meanwhile, the increasing imposition of fascism and the crushing of dissent here in the US will make the US populace impotent with regard to opposing the process. Also, there is a trememdous degree to which the ugliness and violence can be concealed from public view - as is the case in Iraq even now.
Societies do not tolerate anarchy. If ordinary people find some (even intimidatind for them) chance for living in peace, they will fight for it badly. Even the hate towards US is no stronger than that. Hope I'm not mistaken about this one...
Plus, the scenario you outline doesn't leave room for US corporations to access Iraq's oil reserves
Why? After things settle down a bit, Iraq will embrace the "democracy", which will be paired with "free market" and "private enterprise" - read the privatisation of the iraqi oil industry. Probably they will leave some parts to the locals so that they don't riot too much.
What I envision, therefore, is a slow grind towards virtually complete annihilation of the Iraqi population taking place over the next 15-20 years.
Even if we theoretically consider that possible, what will it help? Who will maintain the oil infrastructure? Who will guard it and the boundaries from the insurgents? How will US maintain its cooperation with the iraqi authorities and peace with its neighbors when they see what's happening? You are severely overestimating the US strength and its resources. How will 150 000 soldiers survive in the desert when 100 million around them rebel? It is a nutty idea and I wonder where you find the srtength to keep suppporting it.
The situation is quite different in Iraq: Several absolutely vital strategic purposes are at stake there, and I think it is safe to say that the US has no intention of leaving or relinquishing control there under any circumstances.
So basically what I see is an irresistible force (US military might) meeting an immovable wall (Iraqi resistance - why should this be any less tenacious and enduring than in Vietnam?). Only in this case, the wall can be moved by blowing up the entire structure (i.e., the Iraqi population).
As to whether it is logistically feasible for the US to secure the Iraqi oil fields at some stage, I am hoping that someone with some kind of insider experience or information on such matters can comment about that.
Here we supposedly don't fight any war. "Mission accomplished", remember? Nothing to allow us bombing of villages and cities without consequences. On the contrary - much worse - for every civilian we kill, there will be 10 Iraqis, Iranians, Afghans, Saudis, Syrians etc. etc. joining the resistance. Net tovarisht, our goal here is exactly the opposite: minimize civilian loss, so that our puppet government can bring some peace for the oil companies to operate. Insurgency is bad for business.
Iraq's constitution has some odd quirks - basically installing free market access to oil via Paul Bremmer's 100 Rules.
A couple of alternet articles have covered it in more or less detail if your are interested:
http://www.alternet.org/story/35846/
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/36463/
Even though the Iraqi state oil co maintains nominal control of Iraq's oil these 100 rules (the kind of regulations multinational corporations have wetdreams about) mean that US oil giants can get both Iraqi oil and oil contracts quite easily.
bados
I'm not an expert but from what I've seen the rules basically outlaw a lot of what any socialist democracy (or even capitalist republic) might choose to do with their oil revenues / resources.
As I understand the situation it is actually illegal for the Iraqi gov't to institute a windfall profits tax for instance. Corporate tax is 15% flat and fixed and written into the constitution. Illegal to favour local co's over foreign co's, etc.
So if you define 'free market' as 'open slather for multinationals to plunder at will' then yeah its a free market.
bados
Dont give them Ideas, they have black enough souls already...
This little demon has to be the most cost effective way to resolve the USA's problems, The 'non-negotiable way of life', Solves PO, Solves GW, Solves rivalry.
I have no doubt that such musings have occured. If they can occur here, then they can surely occur in the corridors of power.
Gaia may have other plans though. Viri tend to mutate.
The Russians still have ICBM's.
Jay Hanson, years ago, speculated [but never advocated] on the efficacy of a elite-induced Pandemic Powerdown. The threads, at Dieoff_Q&A archives and elsewhere, entail virtually endless discussion of the pros & cons of Russian, US, etc: massive funding of BSL 4 Biolabs, Robert Preston's books, bioweaponeers, Ken Alibek, weaponized GM ebola-smallpox...ad infinitum. A very mind-bending and horrific topic to Google--no wonder Jay had to withdraw to maintain his sanity.
Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
It is such an obscene topic I wondered if it would ever get aired, (well spotted OilRigMedic), Before I posted, I decided to go and walk the dog. I wondered If this should be reiterated.
I had not really bothered much with this particular area until I heard the 'non-negotiable way of life' speech.
OilRigMedic is wrong in one respect (you there medic?):
Forget the allies, they would be future rivals. The problem would be ensuring the survivors know nothing about it,one nation writes the history,and the winners have no potential rivals.
With no prior, my daughter worked this out on a long car journey. Icy cold logic seems to be her forte. She raised a few caveats:
- You cannot get caught (it would even tear the winners apart)
- Better still: appear as a (caring, but useless) savior.
- Gotta be quick (somebody might work out whats going on and prepare a final riposte)
- Secure dangerous facilities (like nukes with dead operators)
There will be some people reading this site that are completely repulsed by this turn of direction in this string. But I bet its already been wargamed in the corridors of power.Dorme Bien.
The Demon In The Freezer
How smallpox, a disease of officially eradicated twenty years ago,
became the biggest bioterrorist threat we now face.
http://cryptome.org/smallpox-wmd.htm
The potential of genetic engineering, cloning and DNA manipulation has such promise to be a good thing. Yet the evils that could be wrought with it are almost infinite. I can't remember where but some research facility designed a virus that only killed albino fruit flies. I'll find the reference will I work tonight but think abiout the implications. A virus that is gene specific could wipe out a select group. The above poster mentioned mutations and I agree, madness and genocide motivate someone to open pandoras box and the next thing you know my dog is king of the world.
"V for Vendetta" had one aspect of this...the government released the virus on themselves, then blamed terrorists. The world had sympathy for them. I don't think point 4 is predictable. Dying military commanders might launch just to see the fireworks, and if a whole nation is fairing much better cynical minds think alike.
"Forget the allies, they would be future rivals. The problem would be ensuring the survivors know nothing about it,one nation writes the history,and the winners have no potential rivals."
There will always be war and rumors of war. I don't remember if that is in the bible or a greek philosopher. Just about every evil imaginable has been wargamed and developed by the cold war superpowers. And now it sits in dark vaults aging like wine.
book of Revelations.
according to those who follow this piece of fiction written during roman times about 100 ce(common era) or so . it's part of the description of what the end-times will be like. though it better fits as a warning to Christians against being swayed by roman power.
Only the dead have seen the end of war- Plato
Oh, ya, buy the way those 15,000,000 are all going to die, but what the hell they are almost all black and poor right?
In response to this quote:
One need only consider the seiges of Fallujah, the razing of Tal Afar, etc. The bond between soldiers trumps outside moral prohibitions any one soldier brings to their unit.
And genocide wasn't carried out solely by the SS. It was with either the active or passive assistance of "normal" people -- be they German, Pole, Hungarian, Lithuanian, French, Ukranian. (You get the point so I don't need to cite further the popular support for Rwandan, Turkish, Congolese -- past and present -- genocides. The Belgian technocrat who coolly recorded the number of Congolese hands brought to him in baskets every day sat at the bureaucratic nexus of mass murder and never evinced a single moral qualm.) During all these genocides, including the Belgian genocide in the Congo, media of the day were accomplices, cheering the enlightenment or necessity or enlightened necessity of the slaughter perpetrated on an inscrutable and fearsome Other.
Unfortunately, history makes the strong argument genocide comes rather too easily to humans. America is no more exceptional in this regard than in any other, as our own history testifies. To think otherwise on either point is to profess ignorance of fact and, it follows, naivete as regards human capacities.
After all, the enemy (whomever they are) aren't human, are they?
Massacres and genocide do seem to come easily to humans. It is the beast within us. Are own Heart of Darkness, indeed.
The sinews of war, a limitless supply of money.
Cicero.
Which particular medium sized country do you have in mind?
Bear in mind:
a) Are not part of a newly forming regional bloc
b) They dont have mates who you owe money to
c) You can get by without their oil
d) Dont have mates who have oil (that you cannot get by without).
e) Dont have mates that will not continue to take your IOU's / trade in Euros.
However, I have often wondered if the PNAC plan is in fact to trade IOU's to keep the machine going long enough to gain sufficient superior military hardware to play 'stand and deliver!'.
Plan is a bit flawed though. Becoming a global pariah state
is a bit risky.
In sum, the only kind of reprisal even the Chinese could employ in the face of a US incineration of North Korea is of an economic variety - and it seems to me that they would think long and hard about that in the face of such a raw display of US power.
On the other hand, there is a school of thought that holds that the wide use of depleted uranium weapons could have a similar effect on a slow, long-term basis. The theory goes that the shells break into nanoparticles on impact, and these will cause long-term wasting of the population of affected areas. I doubt we really know the long-term effects of these weapons. But it's logical to assume that spreading low-level radioactive waste over vast areas can't be very healthy for people.
It's so easy to get ordinary people, and ordinary leaders to behave badly I think the more interesting question is why a few persons always behave well.
Of course, what goes round comes around. The Sunnis could get Sarin gas from various friends in the Arab world, or from China. Then again, would the US care, as long as the casualities were limited to the Middle East (and as long as it didn't interfere with oil production)?
Of course, even the best laid plans go awry. Once you cross the nerve gas Rubicon, all bets are off.
No argument here. Counting the toll from 12 years of sanctions (maybe 500,000 excess deaths, mainly children) and the tolls from DU, the razing of Fallujah, the death squads, the continuing air campaign, the US has probably already killed over a million Iraqis (90% of them non-combatants) since the end of the 1991 war. If you look at the massacre of Filipinos by the US a century ago and the millions killed by US elites in Indochina, genocide is a certainty.
From
"One of the most pernicious consequences of the invasion of Iraq is that in the United States it is now apparently accepted virtually without challenge that aggressive war is a legitimate tool of American foreign policy.
"I have seen nothing in the mainstream American media discussion of the pros and cons of a "preemptive" assault on Iran by the United States which deals with the possibility that this may be illegal or even morally wrong. So far this is simply not part of the debate."
Arguably, international dynamics being what they are, that was an unsustainable position. But the post 9/11 US foreign policy undermined their leadership position and accelerated the formation conterbalances to US influence. Now you see, all over the world, exactly what Heinberg describes. He's not saying that the US isn't dominant, he is just saying the US dominance no longer goes unchallenged.
It is being challenged everyday in Iraq, Iran, Venezuela, China, Russia... the list goes on and on. I find it implausible that the US will ever regain the position they held immediately post Cold War. They don't have the economy, the moral high ground, or the military intimidation to do that. And all of those things are required to remain "unquestionably" dominant.
Instead the US is entering an era of constant questioning. They lost the mantle of leadership when they deceived the UN. They lost their miltary intimidation by getting bled into ineffectivity in Iraq. And month by month the world sees their weaknesses and seeks to take advantage.
That doesn't mean the US is irrelavant, it just means the US has to deal with other countries more as peers then they had to do in the past. It's a very interesting transition for them. An example of this is how the US is trying to craft the Chapter 7 resolution against Iran at the UN. In the past China would have abstained and let the US do what it wanted. Now China is engaged in the world, and recognizes the need to act as a counterweight to US influence. If the US fails to get a chapter 7 resolution, it will be a very stark demonstration of their diminished role in the world.
With the US limitations in natural resources, how would they turn that around?
By a two generation long campaign of investments in efficiency and better infrastructure?
By creating a new americal ideal of thoughfull and highly refined consumption? Better and refined for me as an individual rather then bigger and quickly replaced. This also ought to create new industries for taylor made stuff that last your life instead of fluff.
You could create new meaning in your freedom ideals that are as old as your country. USA is partly from old fame the most desireable country to live in in the world. You could make that even more true and thus create political power from being the one country freedom loving people like above all other countries. It should also be a lot cheaper then any kind of runaway repression that some people seem to fear in this forum.
Better efficeincy is also good for maintaining a military power.
I see no physical impossibilities in this and you got a cultural capital that could be invested with a high return of happiness.
( I am so happy that I have kept some of my naivety! )
In all seriousness, there is a lot of discussion about how we can make the perfect system for public transprotation, but I see anything that delays implementation as a bad thing. As Alan points out, the gains are there to be had now - just do it.
But of course, I don't think we will. And that will be very telling - if we don't do the easy, obvious stuff, we really are screwed. There's just no excuse.
If we move (hypothetically) to an E85 system, does that mean car engines get bigger? I see GM's ads everywhere and the SUV sizes haven't changed, but the fuel potential is quite degraded.
And... given the fuel is 1/3 less powerful but the per/gallon retail expense is the same has anyone discussed the enormous increase in motoring costs that E85 will deliver? If I'm getting this.. what used to cost $3 to deliver 20 miles will now cost $4.50.
I recently did some driving calculations on this:
The Future of E85
My conclusion? If they mandate it, but pull the subsidy, it will cost $52 more for every thousand miles driven on E85 (depending of course on the fuel efficiency of the vehicle you are driving).
RR
The unsubsidized route: 1000 miles at $125 vs. 1000 miles at $73 is a 70% cost increase.
The subsidized route (assume price parity for simplicity) means 378 miles vs. 522. A 38% cost increase.
GM is wasting a lot of ad dollars promoting this foolishness.
One might even laugh if the consequences weren't so expensive.
It is my belief that all the US auto makers just convert the fuel lines and fuel injectors to handle E85; they don't optimize for ethanol like Saab have done.
And higher compression engines come with their own set of problems.
With the low compression engines in flex-fuel vehicles that must be designed to use both fuels, miles per gallon with E85 is always about 70-75% of the mileage with gasoline.
A hammer that only hammers works better than one that also tries to be a screwdriver, wrench, and measuring tape.
Also, automobiles engines do not have variable geometry.
Cut off the top cylinder part of a traditional sigle row engine from the crankcase. Connect the parts with a large hinge along one side and a jack along the other. Move the jack to increase the angel in the hinge for lower compression and vice versa.
I wish I had a picture of it. :-(
Otto cycle engines already have to deal with enough less-than-ideal conditions without the headache of trying to adaptively reconfigure the engine geometry to boot.
I think it is the other way around, the people who trim the control system would probably kill for another controllable degree of freedom.
In practice they may have run into other problems, but I suspect it was just not that useful for gasoline engines, which can adapt to different fuel grades by changing the timing. But if the goal is to make it run on a wider range of fuel types, the engineer could use this method to widen that range while trading off increased complexity and cost.
It's all a matter of understanding the various constraints, and optimizing for the desired outcome - within the limits of the available technology and materials. :)
From my memory as well, I think your numbers are correct. Using higher compression can close some of the efficiency gap. I am not sure how much. What would really help in the case of ethanol is if the ratio could be so high that you actually got better fuel efficiency with ethanol. This would be like improving the EROI of ethanol. But Saab's engine is the best one that exists to date, as far as I know.
RR
New dual fuel vehicles are quite a trick because the engine management and emissions systems have to be capable of dealing with both while remaining legal. From Road & Track online:
Of course a few consumers still do it anyway, but the conversion cost pretty well limits the market to vehicles, like taxis, which are driven enough to recover the cost.
I paid 21.44 cents per kWh for electricity in
April. This is from TXU Energy in Smith County,
Texas. Yikes!
I have tenants in a duplex here, 1000 sq.ft.
per unit, and they tell me if they pay less
than $200.00 per month (per unit) they are
lucky.
Of course Austin Energy opted out of deregulation. Perhaps paradoxically (perhaps not), their prices are generally lower than those in fully deregulated areas. I also buy wind power, which is not getting more expensive (costs more at first, but the per kwh price stays fixed over the 10 year contract since the fuel costs nothing).
an "average" price of 21.44 kWh. My meter only reads
total kWh used. What are they referring to as
"average price"? I have noticed some posters that have said they used high energy appliances during off peak
hours when the energy was cheaper. What difference
does it make when your meter only reads total
usage? Someone please enlighten me.
By the way, I say "approx" because it is complicated. For some reason by kWh get split into three different delivery rates, and three different generation rates. Plus taxes, fees, and even some bond issue that gets paid back on a kWh basis.
http://www.bestplaces.net/docs/studies/gasstudy.aspx
The places at the top of the list are generally not much of a surprise, though I might not have put Birmingham in second place. Heavy on the Florida cities, too:
1 Atlanta, Ga.
2 Birmingham, Ala.
3 Orlando, Fla.
4 Jacksonville, Fla.
5 Pensacola, Fla.
6 Raleigh-Durham, N.C.
7 Nashville, Tenn.
8 Los Angeles, Calif.
9 Cape Coral, Fla.
10 San Diego, Calif.
My little town (Pensacola) is sitting right up there with the big boys. I was stationed in SD, CA for most of 2003 / 2004 and have a hard time believing that folks on the Left Coast are in better shape than us in dinky ol' Escarosa counties. But then, Hurricane Ivan did put a real smack down on the I-10 bridges. That coupled with the influx of labor to fix the hurricane-related messes, and the continued migration into Santa Rosa county, has made congestion a bigger challenge than anything I've ever seen before here. And Davis Hwy is always, and still, a mess.
R^2...love all of the E85 posts. The phrase "Inconvenient Truth" sure bears repeating a lot these days.
Here are the top 10 things to feel good about with "Peak Oil"!!!
#10) Teenagers will no longer be riding those noisy "jet ski" personal watercraft around the lake (grab a paddle Junior!).
#9) The phrase "cut taxes and grow the economy" will be punishable by 3 to 5 years in the pen.
#8) It will cost too much to drive over to the drug dealers' neighborhoods from suburbia.
#7) "Condo flippers" will not (I repeat) will NOT be able to "Farm flip".
#6) GM will finally stop making Hummers (and Cadillac Escalades, and Tahoe XLTs, et cetera, et cetera). Get a clue GM!
#5) Professional hockey will disappear from the South.
#4) "McMansions" will be burned for firewood.
#3) "Butt wiggling" on MTV will no longer be a viable career option.
#2) Watching lawyers learning to plow a field is extremely entertaining.
#1) Less food means more skinny women!
Nooo!
On the other hand, fewer walruses would not be bad.
:-)
As a transplanted Yankee, that's a shame!
And the #1 sign that you will know that PO is near, is when...
[brrr....rrr.... *CRASH*]
A major health care provider (that also makes cars) offers to cap gasoline at an outrageously low price in certain markets so that people (please, anybody!) will take the SUV's off their hands.
Oh, wait...that already happened. Strike that. do over.
#11) The "Fine Living" channel will change to the "Farm Living" channel.
#12) Pottery nuts will finally have something better to do than making more pottery.
#13) Those N.Y. and L.A. folks will learn about the area now called "fly over".
#14) I will be glad to be related to my gun weilding cousins.
#15) Venison will appear on local restaurant menus and my landscape shrubbery will then be safe.
- "Peak Oil" hits the bigtime MSM -- Oprah!
- The public goes nuts! -- and starts buying solar gizmos!
...then after the crisis momentum is in place...- Bush/Blair's talks (occuring today) result in a pullout from Iraq (the U.S. military is the largest single consumer of oil in the U.S.? or World?)
- Iran agrees to drop enrichment for a free nuke plant.
- The U.S. housing starts drop to 1.5 million (pickup trucks go idle everywhere).
...So #3, #4, and #5 result temporarily in surplus oil...- Prices fall to the proverbial $40 per barrel.
- The public feels "rooked" again after having ordered loads of solar gizmos. "Big Oil is killing off renewables to save themselves, they control oil!" is the cry.
- Bill O'Reilly and others say "I told you so!" -- "and don't believe that global warming junk either!"
- "Peak Oil" becomes like "Cold Fusion" in the press.
- TSHTF
Could happen.I'd bet the last GM product out the door will be a Hummer.
As a side note, nice to see a fellow Georgian on here LevinK. All this time, and I had no idea....
And yes, the traffic here is one of the reasons I wouldn't regret too much if Suburbia decides to collapse some day as JHK keeps propheting :) Highly unlikely IMO, but who knows... On the other hand it delivers me some delight in seeing those endless lines of cars every morning and every evening, crippling up and down 85 (Friday is a special day here), while I get to work for about 30 minutes and have the chance to actually walk. But I suspect most people don't have much choice - and I consider myself lucky to have a train station near my workplace. It's a great choice for commuting, but probably some people dismiss it before even trying or for reasons I don't want to mention. But things can easily change - as I witnessed after Katrina, when I was hardly able to get on the train.
Phx didn't make the list because the Asphalt Wonderland is so big and spread out that the researchers couldn't afford the gasoline to study it. Sarcasm intended!
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than YEast?
I'm generally pretty down on ethanol from corn, but the system you described wherein the ethanol production unit is integrated with a feedlot in a clever symbiotic relationship makes the most sense of any of the bio-ethanol fuel schemes I've seen so far.
Feuling the plant with biogas from the digestion of feedlot waste is a nice touch and kills two birds with one stone. Using a less energy-intensive feedstock such as milo also makes sense.
I'd be very interested in seeing an analysis of the energy inputs and outputs for such a system.
However, playing devil's advocate, one might ask if the biogas produced from the feedlot could be put to a more effective use than fueling an ethanol plant, but that is another question.
Sounds like a plan. I believe things like ethanol and biogas will be useful niche commodities in a relocalized economy. It makes sense to take a load of spoiled grain, or other ag waste, and extract a little energy from it. Then return the micronutrients to the soil.
It makes little or no sense to raise pork for the entire continent in one location, and then have this disposal problem as your effluent stream exceeds the capacity of nearby land.
I was wondering, could there be an acceptable case for drilling in ANWR? What if the government allowed drilling in ANWR with the provision that all the oil extracted from ANWR would be used for building a sustainable infrastructure or for sustainable energy technologies? Or leave it for a rainy day reserve (critical needs). The problem is that if they leave ANWR undeveloped for the future, in 5-6 years the Trans-Alaskan pipeline will be shut down as the North Slope reaches depletion. It will then be more difficult and take more energy to use tankers to transport the oil to the lower 48.
Any opinions?
Later, use it for synthetic feedstocks (plastics) and to provide for critical transitional infrastructure.
The problem is that once the Trans-Alaska pipleine is shut down, it might be difficult to ship out the oil. I guess by then it will be so warm up there they could just build the factories to make plastic there...
If all drilling equipment were made from melted Hummers?
2006 21mln.bpd.
2026
- Conservation (driving/flying less) 5 mln.bpd
- Efficiency (smaller cars, mass transit) 4 mln.bpd.
- Electricity (elctr.rail, plug-ins) 1 mln.bpd.
- CNG 1 mln.bpd
- Tar sands 1 mln.bpd.
- CTL 1 mln.bpd.
- Ethanol 0.5 mln.bpd
- GTL 0.5 mln.bpd
- Biodiesel 0.5 mln.bpd
Total alternatives: 14.5 mln.bpd.Remaining for conventional oil: 6.5 mln.bpd.
It looks in my scenario I managed to compensate for a loss of 69% of our current oil consumption... hope I'm not being too optimistic.
Heavy trucks, in 20 years, could be cut down to the 400 K to 500 K range and locla commerical could be cut in half (TOD is easier to service).
+2070 K + 220 K + 300 K -450 K -150 K = 1,990,000 b/day savinsg over 2002. Round up toi 2 million b/day just from 2002 > 2006 growth
I probably overestimated the conservation gains - I assumed changing the urban pattern and a well developed mass transit to make up for it. But on second thought 20 years might be a too short timeframe for doing that. It might turn out that some or most of this conservation will be forceful (shortages).
His point seems to be that global warming is an air pollution problem, and is amenable to being resolved through market and technical fixes similarly to our smog and acid rain problems of recent decades, problems which were also overhyped by hysterical environmentalists.
It seems to me Easterbrook is missing a crucial difference. The particulates and pollutants that cause smog and acid rain are due to impurities and inefficiencies in the combustion process, no? So it is very feasible to devise improved technologies to minimize these harmful emissions, while keeping the benefits of the energy combustion.
But the carbon dioxide which is the principle culprit in global climate change is very different. It is the necessary, inevitable product of combustion of the hydrocarbons. The carbon starts trapped in the fossil fuel, and when you burn it, it will escape into the atmosphere (unless, of course, you go to great lengths to capture and sequester it, etc.)
I'm not an expert, obviously, so I'd apprecitate some more informed commentary on this. Am I on the right track, and is Easterbrook fundamentally off it?
One possible option of capturing CO2 is to use lime (CaO) in a reaction forming limestone:
CaO + CO2 -> CaCO3
The problem is that you are going to need some 12 kilograms of lime for each gallon of gasoline you burn, and the output of the reaction would be 22 kg of limestone! The other problem is that the lime itself is produced by the reverse process (by heating limestone), meaning that if you do not sequester the CO2 released in lime production you will be doing nothing (or less than nothing because of losses) in the end.
It strikes me that calcining limestone to make lime to absorb CO2 as limestone is much akin to digging a hole, filling it back up, then digging it again ..... on and on and on, as below:
(Limestone Calcination) CaCO3 -> CaO + CO2
(CO2 Absorption) CO2 + CaO -> CaCO3
Notice that the calcination of the limestone produces just as much CO2 as you can expect to absorb when you use the lime thus produced to absorb CO2 from a combustion source. Essentially, nothing is accomplished except wasting energy as you go around and around! I hope nobody is actually thinking of doing this.
Actually this was my conclusion too. But a possible route to go is to sequester the CO2 at the moment of lime production, which would be much easier because it can be done in vacuum on a large scale and CO2 can be isolated.
Nevertheless I don't see such process implemented for cars for example, because of the prodigious amounts of lime needed.
I could imagine though this being used as to effectively separate the CO2 output of a coal power plant; e.g. the heat from the boiler heats the limestone, the produced CO2 is being captured and sequestered, and the lime is being fed to the exhaust where it reacts with the CO2. Such process IMO would be much more effective than using algae and much less energy intensive as for example feeding pure oxygen to the burners.
But I don't understand how you would sequester the CO2 'at the moment of lime production'. Surely, you're not suggesting using the lime you just made to sequester the CO2 that was produced from the lime you just made. If so, then you have just made CaCO3 from the CaO and CO2 that you had gotten by calcining the CaCO3 in the first place.
I don't see how you can get around the fact that for every mole of CaO that you produce from CaCO3 you get a mole of CO2. Some the best you can do is to return the CO2 you just made back into CaCO3, and there is no CaO left over to sequester additional CO2 from some other combustion source.
Now, if you sequester the CO2 from the limestone calcination by some other means, then you might have some CaO left over. But if you do that, why not just use that other means of sequstrationf in the first place?
Maybe there's something I'm not getting here, but it still doesn't make any sense to me.
Yes, I was assuming "the other means" of course - more specifically pumping the CO2 underground or under sea.
Why not using those means at the first place? Because the output of a conventional coal fired plant is not pure CO2, but some 78% N, 17% CO2, the rest being oxygen, water vapor, SO2 etc. You can not sequester that mix unless you find a way to separate the CO2 and liquify it. This is the whole point, with the process I'm proposing, you can move the CO2 isolation in the process of calcination. Isolating pure CO2 from that process is piece of cake. And you do not need to physically move the coal power plant to a place with underground cavities - instead you will build the calcination plant in such place. Simple.
To take the things a step further - you can use a non-CO2 producing heat source (yeah nukes) to heat the limestone for lime production thus totally removing the carbon emissions in the process. You can make the things even simpler by simply exposing the lime to the air where it will take out the CO2 right from the atmosphere. I believe I read about similar process proposed somewhere, but where was that...
Ok, so your idea is to use CaO to absorb CO2 from stack gas and to then desorb it so that it can be pumped underground. (?)
Well, you've got to realize that it take lots of energy to move all that CO2 around, both physically and chemically. Then, the question is: Is it worth all the trouble? CO2 from stack gas is only a part of all the current global CO2 emissions. What about the CO2 from the burning of fuels for transportation and the CO2 from the burning of fossil fuel for home heating? How are you planning to sequester those?
I am highly doubtful.
So we are back to what I (now boringly) must repeat: calcining limestone (CaCO3) releases exactly as much CO2 as you will be able to capture if you use that CaO to absorb CO2 from a combustion source. Nothing is achieved.
Forgive me for being so dense, but I really fail to see any benefit whatsoever in any of this.
I perfectly realised your last statement and accepted it the very first time. I refer to the process as just another means to chemically separate CO2 from the air (or the smokestack gases, whatever).
According to paper here:
http://www.eere.energy.gov/industry/mining/pdfs/stone.pdf (page 10)
Calcination of one ton of limestone takes just 6120 BTU, or 1.8 kwth. Since one ton of limestone releases 440kg. of CO2, the calcination energy would be 4.1 kwth per ton of carbon dioxide. It will also take some energy to liquify and pump the CO2 underground, so I'll WAG the total energy consumption to 10 kwth/ton. Hell we can handle even 100 kwth/ton - just compare 100kwth ($5) to a carbon tax of 30$ per ton of CO2!
In theory we can capture all the CO2 the world releases in the atmosphere yearly (~7 bln.tonnes) by simply producing lime, capturing the CO2 and exposing the lime to the air, then over again. The energy needed (70 bln.kwth) is just 7% of the electricity produced by the US nuclear plants. How about that? I can't see any flow to the idea so far.
Well, since I just solved Global Warming, and Peak Oil seems to be quite solvable too; what are we going to spend time talking about next? :)
http://www.greenhouse.crc.org.au/impact/plantgrowth.cfm
This has even led some groups to claim that elevated C02 levels will be beneficial to the earth's ecosystem because of the enhanced plant growth:
http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/Index.jsp
I suspect that the claims are overly optimistic but, still, it might mitigate some damage due to rising C02 levels. However, this is bad for peak oil because it gives a (tenuous) argument that burning fossil fuels is "good" for the environment.
I have also pondered the same thing. While I have absolutely no scientific evidence to back it up, my hunch is that there will be both winners and losers in a future with higher atmospheric CO2 and higher temperatures. Who is going to be on the right and wrong side of that line is not always easy to predict, though I wouldn't advise buying any coastal property as a long-term investment for your grandchildren.
My other hunch is that the massive disruption to long-established agricultural patterns will do far more serious short-term damage to the human race than any theoretical benefits that might acrue by some areas having longer growing seasons and higher plant growth rates. An important dimension in agriculture is predictability, and our weather patterns appear to be getting more volatile and less predictable.
But carbon storage in living biomass is only temporary, anyway. Once the plant dies or drops its leaves, the carbon enters the soil, where some is converted back to CO2 in the process of decay.
More than twice as much carbon is held in the soil as in terrestrial vegetation or the atmosphere. The possibility that climate change is being reinforced by increased CO2 emissions from soil owing to rising temperature is a subject of debate. 26 years of data from the national soil inventory of England and Wales show that carbon is being lost from soils in these two countries at a mean rate of 0.6% per year. The total annual loss is about 13 million tonnes C, equivalent to about 8% of the total UK emissions of CO2 and as much as the entire reduction in UK emissions from 1990-2002 (12.7 million t/y).
Blah...Blah..
---and the beat goes on...
Electrical bidders cited costs of copper wire, fixtures, switchgear, fear of jobsite theft of copper and fear of copper scams. Groups are calling distributors claiming to be construction employees and trying to buy wire on contractor accounts. Electrical quotes are now only good for a receipt of an order on the day of the quotation.
Asphalt and PVC piping is also up sharply. Even non-petroleum material quotes now include fuel surcharges, or language to pass on increased fuel costs, and are limited to 30 days.
Dimensional lumber cost me 2/3rd more than it did this time last year.
I was listening to this fellow, I think he was on World Have Your Say, explaining his idea that birth rates are dangerously low. And I'm thinking, "This is a problem?" I understand that Russia, Japan and some Balkan countries have low birth rates, but he says even the US relies on immigration to keep our population growing.
It was just bizarre to read about population overshoot here, and then hear this guy urging us all to procreate like rabbits.
I saw that gasoline inventories rose due to imports, but nothing on crude inventories.