Antoinetta III

Yes, long distance trade has been conducted since pre-history.  Examples of flint tools being discovered far from the source rock, and marine shell-based ornamentation far from any ocean are simple examples.  I've heard that Roman big-wigs employed runners to bring pack snow to them over many dozens of miles from the mountain peaks just so they could have a slushie (italian ice?).

But I would argue that pre-fossil fuel trade was limited to high value-density items and materials.  I can imagine that good flint was valued quite highly in its day.  The spice trade seems to be the prototypical material that was greatly valued and thus had a very high value per pound.

Grapes from Chile come to mind as an example of a material that has a very low value per pound.  And trade in those grapes over the distances relevant to me (NW Florida) are only possible via the bounty of unbelievably low cost transportaion joules.

So long-distance trade will continue.  No doubt about that.  But the breakeven point ( value per pound seems a reasonable proxy) for what is worth transporting will undergo a dramatic shift.

Not sure how to weave this thought in, but I'm reminded of how the internet-ordered dog food business model never did quite tick over a few years back.  Even with histrocially high advantages of effectively zero information cost (for conducting a given transaction) and really, really low transportation costs the value in puppy chow just doesn't quite support the costs.  Bummer.  I was planning to teach Ellie how to surf the web and order her own darn food.  No more free loading.  But there is the whole doesn't-have-an-opposable-thumb issue, so maybe it was best after all.

The Phoenicians were trading across the Mediterranian before 1000 BCE.  Trade is a good thing.

Trade is not necessarily a "good" thing.
It could be a major reason for collapse.

Forgive me. I'm finally plodding my way through Jared Diamond's "Collapse" of Civilizations book.

One of the examples he brings up is the collapse of society on the tiny Polynesian islands of Picatirn and Henderson. These are not as well known examples of collapse as is the theorized collapse of Easter Island. Instead, the growth and collapse of these tiny Polynesian islands was due to their reliance on trade (a good thing?) for supporting their otherwise unsustainble life styles. When trade collapsed, they collapsed. Their society had "evolved" to a point where trade was a necessary part of basic survival.

The high priests of the Adam Smith religion prod us to believe that "Trade is Good", Globalization is Good (and Greed is Good).

We need to step back and question these axioms of Smithism every once in a while.

Is trade always good?

Suppose you were taking a daily dose of a life-saving drug. For years you were buying it at your local pharmacy. Then you found a distant warehouse pharmacy that sells it much cheaper. You switched. That's economic common sense pure and simple.

Not only did you switch to buying from the cheaper mega-warehouse, so did many other people in your neighborhood. Each of them understood that cheaper is better.

With the sudden drop in sales, your local pharmacy goes out of business. That is basic economics as well.

You know what comes next of course. The vital transportation link (the life line) between you and your distant pharamcy goes down. There is no local pharmacy to buy the life-saving drug from. Now you are hosed.

As you know, we in America are "addicted to oil". We get 60% of our vital drug from foreign locations. Still think trade is always good?

Step back and examine these things critically. Don't trust what "they" constantly preach at you.

The only times self-sufficiency (whether on a national or individual level) is preferable to trade, is when entering a mutual dependency relationship is dangerous. And with people heading for the cliffs, like oil companies, that is the case... which is why I don't own a car, and have self-sufficiency as a hobby.

Am I the only one suspicious of "localization" and "re-localization"?

I think "localization" is one of those things, like "organic food" that works by being more often right, without being a sound scientific accounting.  In either case one could add up the details, do the math, and figure out which is better, A or B.  But it's easier to have a ready rule, something that can be applied quicly, without a lot of thought.

Certaiinly if you compare item A from a local source, and the same item A from a thousand miles furtheraway, the local A is likley to be more energy efficient.  It gets more complicated in a mixed setting.  I mean, in terms of food calories and energy inputs ... locally grown potatoes or a 25 pound bag of flour bulk shipped a thousand miles?  You'd have to do the math.

Or you can get an "eat local" t-shirt and punt on the math.

You are right, if it happens outside the Empire, it doesn't matter. As pointed out in the Cowes thread, oil's not going up, it's just going up in terms of rapidly devaluing USD.

But the average Amurrikan's head is still in the 1950s, Eisenhower's still in office, and we're the biggest and baddest thing on the planet.

Turk: So, truth be told, it's not that gold is going higher -- it's that the dollar is going lower.

Mackay: huge fall...crash

soy, corn and wheat prices still very low historically, though wheat perking up of late

Overall, China doesn't face any national shortage, Chinese officials and the U.N. say. After a healthy wheat harvest last year, grain officials say domestic supply is still more than adequate: according to Chinese customs statistics, wheat imports in the first quarter of 2006 were down 92% by volume from a year earlier.

Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114857802531563206.html

Longer-term, however, it looks like China may be facing grain shortages, according to the Wall Street Journal story.

Curiously, the entire human population of 6.5 billion could be rendered to get about 2 billion barrels, if we really run short.

High Fructose Corn Syrup, to be exact is the big obesity maker in the US.  It is in everything that is processed for General consumtion.  If you make your own meals from whole fresh plants and meats you do not add pounds of High Fructose Corn Syrup to everything you eat.  But today if you drink more than 2 soda-pops a day you have consumed more sugar than you would have added to your foods for the same day.

We are not living healthy lives, in the 1960's most families ate at home, and only rarely ate at the local Burger joint.  Now I know folks that rarely eat and home and all their meals are eaten out!!  

We have more folks not doing nearly the amount of work in the normal day that we used to have.  We have more stress in our lives, more angst and less family time. We are just riddled with things that make obesity an issue.  Not to mention that more sugars in the diet sooner create more Diabetices and pre-diabetic people.  Genetically we are passing this on to the next generations.  

Look at the statistics for Japan,  More obese children than ever before.  Look at anywhere that fast food comes into play.  Don't forget that most folks make fast food at home, the prepackaged, precooked and sized for easy nuker use and fast food from our busy day, and we are breeding and eating our way into the grave.

Yesterday I prepared 4 dishes for dinner. Olive Oil was in each of them.  The only thing not fresh was the frozen Catfish, which I baked, not fired.  Two dishes of Tomatoes, one with thin sliced Mozarella, and one in a Lemon pepper dressing home made.  I had to make it all myself, and then I could limit fat, and sodium, and sugars, there were none added and very little starches.  

Who cooked last night?  

I would think that if people brought out the data, counter argument data, etc, then we'd be able to get somewhere. Instead, we get anecdotal at best. (rant off, whew!)

First,  you can't convert oil to KWH by using BTU's (at least in this context) without adjusting for the efficiency of heat engine based electrical generation.  If, for instance, you'll replace a gasoline engine (ICE) with an electric motor, you have to take into account that the ICE is only about 25% efficient, and the electric motor is roughly 90% efficient.  The bottom line is that you need only about 1/3 the KWH's in an electric world.

Second, you seem to be analyzing solar Stirling electrical generators, like those proposed for the CA desert.  You said " 54500 kwh (for each engine, using Boeing's numbers)...And at $50000 each".  That would mean that it would cost $50k to generate 54.5K Kwhr's, meaning a cost of $.90 per kwhr.  I'm confident that's too high (especially given that it doesn't adjust for the timevalue of $, it just uses a lifetime figure) - it should be in the range of roughly 10% of that.

Finally, you assume that 100% of oil & gas will go away in 20 years.  I don't think even the most pessimistic among us think that will happen: a Hubbert curve is roughly symmetric, meaning that if peak is right now, production 20 years from now should be the same as 20 years ago.  That would suggest less than a 25% drop.  A few people, like Simmons, feel that we're in for unexpected declines.  OTOH,  there is a big difference between a local and global peak: local peaks don't dictate price levels, so on a local level there is no feedback loop increasing prices, recovery rates and investment levels.   I think that the most expert people here think that we'll have an undulating plateau for 5-15 years, then decline after that.   I think they would agree that a reasonable guess at a worst case scenario is in the very rough range of a 25% drop in 20 years.

Given these errors I haven't tried to follow all of your calculations to identify any other errors, but I would guess that you could reduce your cost estimates by about 120 (3 x 10 x 4).