Wednesday Open Thread
Posted by Yankee on May 3, 2006 - 7:12pm
What's cookin'?
Also, you might want to check out the latest piece from Outside Magazine on JHK here (which kindly mentions TOD).
And, let's not forget to remind TOD readers in the Washington DC corridor of the Sustainable Energy Forum 2006 on Peak Oil and the Environment to be held May 7-9 at Washington, DC's Marvin Center.
And, let's not forget to remind TOD readers in the Washington DC corridor of the Sustainable Energy Forum 2006 on Peak Oil and the Environment to be held May 7-9 at Washington, DC's Marvin Center.
“This order [i.e. capitalism] is now bound to the technical and economic conditions of machine production which today determine the lives of all the individuals who are born into this mechanism, not only those directly concerned with the economic acquisition, with irresistible force. Perhaps it will so determine them until the last ton of fossilized coal is burnt.”
—Max Weber, 1905
Contact
- Content: editors at theoildrum dot com
- Tech support: support at theoildrum dot com
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
This Environmental Audit from the House of Commons could be something to chew on (focus is obviously UK, but the picture in mature nuclear countries is similar):
What we really need to start talking about and researching is a good way to use less energy on a large scale. There just can't be a good solution if we keep burning through energy at the rate we are.
incidentally we have base load power renewables
The Severn barrage proposed in 1938 [I'll check the date when I'm back home] had 2 tidal pools for continuous power
and pumped energy storage. People have been finding excuses to refuse this, and other tidal stations for 60 years minimum.
The energy crisis is going to require many different technical efforts and social changes (including large reductions in energy use like you said) because there is no magic replacement for fossil fuels. To reject wind and solar on the basis that they aren't an on-demand energy source is a poor argument.
I remember reading that you need 8 MW of wind to replace 1 MW of coal/nuclear baseload because of the intermittency. At this ratio, to replace a single 1GW nuclear station you would need 3 or 4 thousand monster turbines at a cost of many tens of billions of pounds, not to mention vast quantities of steel and concrete, an army of installers and maintainers, and a legal team to shut down objections from angry country dwellers.
So much for sustainable, and thats just replacing a single power station!
"Vandalize the countryside". Yes, some people's aesthetics will be sacrificed, others will come to like them (particularly with time). Some Icelanders oppose planting trees, even though Iceland was covered with trees "from the sea to the mountains" before their ancestors cut them all down for sheep. They prefer their environmental stripmine. OTOH, the Dutch like and try to preserve their old windmills.
All in what you are used to !
A wind turbine can replace the energy used in it's manufacture in about a year or so, with 20+ more years to add to the economic surplus.
And I STRONGLY suspect that lawyers are a renewable and sustainable resource :-P
Newer wind energy converters now have up to 6 MW.
It makes a lot of sense to build wind parks offshore. First of all the wind is stronger there, it blows more steadily, and the wind energy convertes obviously don't vandalize the landscpae out there.
A lot of wind power has also been built next to highways and motorways recently.
The "limousine liberals" of Cape Cod island Massachusetts strongly support renewable neergy, except when a proposed offshore wind farm might clutter their view of the ocean.
Computer simulations show very small images out at the horizon.
Obviously, the sea has to be quite flat for this to work.
As always, there is NIMB attitude. Each small village demands underground cabling, but for a 380 kV line, that is exorbitantly expensive. As a result, it takes 10 years to build a new power line - the wind power is growing much faster.
The back of the envelope cost for Megawatt class Windmills is about $1 USD per Watt. (.54 GBP)
To replace a 1GW power station with Wind would cost roughly $8 Bn USD
Now I don't know if you've priced a new Nuclear Power plant lately, but a while back I Googled about to find out how much they cost. link
In other words, Wind costs 1/4 to 1/3 per watt of installed nameplate capacity.
Let's assume you are correct, and that the real ratio is 8:1 to handle the baseline load. That mans that you need to spend twice as much on windmills as you do on a Nuke Plant.
Of course, it takes 7 to 10 years to complete a Nuke plant, and there is NO electricity for those years, and the interest on the loans to build the thing just keeps rising. Then once you have completed it, you need to fuel it, and we have only found about 50 years of good EROEI uranium, (At present use rates) and as the purity of the remaining ore goes down, the amount of fossil fuels to mine and refine it goes up. THEN, at the plant end of life, you have to decommission it and store the waste for several times longer than recorded human civilization.
With a wind farm, you can begin electricity production as you add towers, and they economically pay for themselves in less than a year. There is no ongoing fuel cost, minimal downtime for maintenance, and when they wear out you can re-use the tower (Which is a significant portion of the cost) with a new generator and blades. If you want to decommission one, you show up with a crane and take it away to melt it down to make a new ones.
The notion of thousands of windmills somehow seems to creep people out, but compared to the scars on the planet caused by our use of fossil fuels I'd choose them in a heartbeat. Besides, maybe if we saw them every day we'd be more aware of our energy use.
Only the UK, Scandinavia and the Baltic countries are not part of the grid, but there are links as well from Denmark, Germany and Poland to Sweden.
The international links are not very strong now, but the EU is working on expanding them.
In the future, offshore wind parks in the North Sea, the Atlantic, the Baltic Sea, and Solar in Spain, Italy, southern France could provide a very reliable energy source for Europe.
to convert 'Frog mains' to UK mains
New report confirms UK has best wind in Europe
from the news item
"the chance of low wind speeds affecting 90% of the country only occur for one hour every five years, whilst the chance of wind turbines shutting down due to very high wind speeds only occurs in around one hour every 10 years. Other findings concluded that the wind conditions in the UK are significantly stronger than those in Denmark and Germany, making wind power a very real option and opportunity for the UK, as the country has 'the right kind of wind'."
Power storage in solar thermal generating systems is relatively simple: two tanks, a heat exchanger, and a pump.
"The proposed 15MWe Solar Tres plant in Spain will utilise a 16-hour molten-salt storage system to run on a 24-hour basis in the summertime."
Tanks size is limited only by economic factors. The tanks could be sized for more hours of storage.
More on molten salt here: Advantages of Using Molten Salt
In addition, solar thermal systems of this type can be used as a fuel-saving "booster" to existing steam-driven power stations by preheating the water before it enters the boiler: Stanwell Solar Thermal Power Project. Seems like this approach could be part of a transition strategy.
Similar systems could be used to supply or supplement process heat for manufacturing, reducing demand on fossil fuels.
Jeff Becker
Regarding the limits toward renewable energy, Ted Trainer has put up lots of research to analyse the current offer.
Note that personnaly I think that small scale wind turbines may be some kind of solution. Small scale wind turbines can be fixed using garage technology and can even be made by using scrapp copper, aluminium and steel.
I say scrap metal because I dont think we will be able to bring much solution before system collapse hapen because of the enormous inertia in the whole society. Scrap metal will be found in cars, houses, etc.
You have to think that when you will be implementing solution, the following wont be available : current systemic stability and working economy.
Wind and hydro turbines will be used for small scale application. See the hydro ones for grounding wheat or powering water pumps for daily consumption. Also some lightning may be available in some spot place but I doubt you will be able to find a led, fluorescent or event incandescent light bulb.
In fact I dont think no one really knows what is gona be available in the next decade or so. Heck, we almost cannot think clearly of what is gona be usefull.
Making a garden is a must but how do you preserve the food? I doa lot of home canning and one thing I can tell is that the snap lid has to be replaced each time you do a new can. That thingny has a rubber band on it. How are we gona be replacing those snap lid? What can be used in place of that? What were we using before glass and metal can?
Those are good questions.
Gaskets will be important for the forseeable future, the need to seal pipe joints, steam engine valve chests, water pumps, and canning jars will no doubt persist :-). They can be made from Latex rubber which is renewable, imported from the east on the sailing ships which may one day fill the seeways again. They can also be made here from bio-source plastic (maybe we will start with milkweed sap, or canola oil and start building up the hydrocarbon chains I have no idea, but it can be sorted out), bio-resin impregnated natural fibre, or even oil / NG based plastic, who cares if the eroei is <1 we are making a reuasable artifact of great value from it, not burning it.
"Green Plastics: An Intro. to the new science of Biodegradable Plastics" E.S. Stevens - Princeton U. Press, 2002
About half is on the chemistry of conventional polymers, thermosets and thermoplastics, and then segues into non-petrol based formulas and experiments (celophane, etc).. Great info.. gotta read it a couple more times to really get it..
Bob
Of course, now they tell you not to use those, because they aren't safe.
I wonder how practical canning will be in the long run. It takes a lot of energy, since everything has to be cooked and sterilized. Not to mention the cans, glass jars, seals, gaskets, and what have you.
Canning is a pretty recent invention; canned food was too expensive for ordinary folk to afford until mechanization made it cheaper and faster.
The pickling practiced by Asian cultures might be more practical, as long as salt is available.
For those who don't know, Carla died last year in her early 50's. She will be missed by many. She was truly one of the good people in the world.
Thanks and I will look for that book. Carla has a web site http://www.carlaemery.com/ with alot of stuff there. Her husband Don is carrying on with what she started and sent a hand written note thanking me for the order I placed. Don't see that much these days. And I think her 5 key lifestyle principles of Homesteading apply in the city or country.
An alternative is pumped storage with similar qualities, but not at a net energy gain. And the amount (total energy) stored in projects to date is fairly low, but this could be changed. High output for some hours is common.
I personally think that Wind,Solar and Hydro power are the best we'll ever have before we can figure out how to make fusion power happen. Although I fully support nuclear power I can only see it as a temporary solution unless we can make fission happen with something a lot more commonly available than Uranium. I think our Solar tech is a bit lacking but in some areas it can still beat the Wind.
Hydro power is indeed good for baseline energy production but Wind power is too erratic in nature. Wind power could be made to work properly if there was a way to store the power somehow. Flow batteries don't quite cut it imo and hydrogen technology isn't quite there yet as far as I know, but how about hydro power? I mean technically we could pump water up to some kind of large reservoirs and run the water down through hydro plants when we need the power. The question is that how horribly inefficient would that be? Pumping operations of that scale would probably cause some kind of erosion and if the water is salt water there could be a number of environmental problems perhaps but.. you have to start the line of thinking from somewhere.
If we could secure ourselves enough reliable electricity profuction we could always produce the various substances we absolutely need for various purposes. I am quite aware that the days of cheering for consumption are numbered and I think that this is a good thing, but I still think civilization does not have to fall but I sure won't be missing the modern form of capitalism.
Maintaining system stability is tricky stuff, and requires a certain amount of excess capacity. Of course, that's if the grid IS interconnected!
One of several pumped storage projects in operation today.
Effiency varies a bit depending upon equipment, but 15 MWh out for 19 MWh in would be a good #.
Sounds very much like SciFi and there are big issues ofcourse like where to get that water. I'm assuming here that running rivers of salt water would at the very least be bad for ground water. At least a project of this magnitude would give people some purpose.
Very interesting. How far could pumped storage be scaled down and make sense? Surely not to the household/neighborhood level? You engineering types might chime in... how many kwh are there in, say, 500 gallons of water....
specifically, if one used solar, wind, whatever, to fill a 500 gallon drum with water, then released the contents over a wheel, driving a generator, how much electricity could one produce?
The unanswered questions are how high the drop with 500 gallons and how long do you want power ?
Two farm ponds with, say, 50' (15 m) difference in elevation could store a fair amount of energy.
For a home, an attic (2 stories up) or concrete holding pond up a hillside with a below ground cistern might work well.
Does make me think, though, of all the kinetic energy that is represented in storm water runoff.
Micro-hydro...
Why don't we focus on vacuum thermos hot water tanks and such?
I visited the house of a retired fellow in WNC who had built an active/passive solar house (off grid). It was huge, I'd guess around 5000 sq. ft. open layout, small-ish greenhouse for passive solar, and partially built into a hill with good insulation. 3kW PV system with battery backup. He used 4 - 4X6 ft. flat panel colletors in the thermal system and had a 5000 gal tank (a discarded stainless steel milk vessel) in a super-well insulated room of it's own. He had a backup system (it was just a regular water heater) but said he never had to use it. It provided the heat for the house and the shower. He told me the tank would get up to 150 degree F. At the time he told me the equivalent energy that it held at that temperature but I've since forgotten, so I did some (literally back of an envelope) calculations.
5000 gallon tank
Assume 150*F to 80*F useable range (delta 70*F or ~39*C)
5000gal*(3.785Liter/1gal)(1000g/1L) 39degC * (4.185Joule/gram * degC) = 3089581950 Joules
3089581950 Joule (.00094978 BTU/Joule) = 2934423 BTU
Or... ~23.66 gallons of gasoline (based on BTU's) of storage if the tank is at 150 degrees F.
A crash program aimed at solar thermal heating would take a huge burden off of fossil supplies(since a lot of homes use natural gas, propane, or heating oil, some water heaters are propane or nat gas) and also the electrical grid (water heating, and some homes). I just tracked down some quick and dirty numbers... 43% of home energy cost is for Space Heating, and 16% for Water Heating. So that would represent a huge reduction in a home's fossil fuel usage.
The amoount of heat that collects in even the poorly insulated (insulated hell, it has holes in it!)sun-porch I'll be rebuilding this summer is quite impressive. If I can seal it and insulate it half decently, it will be an impressive heater this winter.
I've been looking into water storage tanks - there are some large plastic water tanks for agricultural use that might work well.
OK, you nitpickers, it's really 9.8 watts instead of 10, but we engineers don't need to mess with anything but pretty good estimates, right?
And, of course, you have to think about the pump/turbine/alternator efficiency, which at absolute best is maybe 90% and a lot less if very small (1kW)
I have a small pond 20 meters down from my house. And I have a great southern exposure nearby, so I am playing with the idea of a pumped storage system using a free cylinder stirling water pump that some people here are thinking of putting into production. As always, the concentrator is the $ problem. So that puts me right back at the biomass burner, which does look feasible. Around and around. Better start making some real decisions.
What percentage of requirements can be met, and how quickly the infrastructure can be put in place are the big questions.
Remember, tidal power is availabel for a few hours out of every 25 hours (The power peak rotates around the clock over the lunar month). So any peak # has to be multiplied by it's load factor, which is typically ~21% for US wind turbines and probably worse for tidal power.
A single nuclear plant could produce more than all the projects listed.
Where tidal power makes sense, go for it. But it is not even close to being a complete solution. Wind plus hydro (old + new) seem to be the best paths.
Yeah, but as you move up and down the coast, the time of high tide changes. If you install the things over a large enough area, it can average out, at least to a degree.
The 240MW tidal barrage at La Rance in France has been operating since 1966,and is producing 640 million kwh / year. That gives a load factor of around 30%.
A good use of the project, but it also distorts the load factor #s.
*Calculations provided by the Oxford Research Group indicate that an attack on the high level waste tanks at Sellafield would dwarf the scale of the Chernobyl accident and could result in over half a million fatal cancers
so.. no major problem then!
and another nugget:
**In the US, the much-vaunted facility at Yucca Mountain is unlikely to be able to deal even with all the waste from existing power stations, and the industry is now proposing an additional site at Skull Valley. Moreover, the scale of the problem worldwide in the event of a 'nuclear growth' scenario is daunting as the MIT concluded in 2003 that a new long-term disposal site of the size of Yucca Mountain would need to be built every 3 years.
*All this headache just to avoid renewable energy..
The mix of isotopes is different than natural soruces, but much of it is readily useable. Soem radioactive isotopes in the 5 year half life range need to be let to decay out before commercial use. Jewelry use would take even longer and such reclaimed metal may never be useable for jewelry.
The composition of spent fuel elements varies drastically with what kind of reactor it was in, what the mix was to begin with, and other stuff I'm only dimly (or un) aware of. My physics professor once said that a light water reactor can reqire refueling after burning as little as 7% of its Uranium, because fission products absorb neutrons and spoil the ability to control criticality in the core.
All of which means, it's a useful and almost necessary function to reprocess nuke-you-ler fuel to recover the unspent fissionables. Your mileage may vary for the fission products however, as it is a glorious mishmash of middle-weight isotopes dissolved in nitric acid and so radioactive you can't go near it. Yeah, some of it is no doubt Platinum. So what? In the USA, we just park the spent fuel at the bottom of ponds on the reactor sites, nobody can build a reprocessing plant.
Which reminds me of another ShrubCo-ism ... early in 2001, shortly after taking office, I noticed a little article in my paper telling about how Bush had canceled a program initiated by Clinton. It was to downblend the Plutonium 'pits' they had removed from decomissioned nuclear warheads, to make light water reactor fuel. Bush said the program would cost too much, why it would be 11 million dollars or something...
so thats the place that could kill 1/2 million in the quote above.
I would rather have petroleum lying around than plutonium..
'Harry Reid' is arguing that the US should be extracting fuel from rods and building a fuel burning device that is theoretically possible, whereas the UK parliamentary report is saying lets forget new nuclear because it's not worth the risk.
Personally I could accept nuclear, if those responsible could sort out the issues - but they won't.
Plus nuclear power presumes a fairly vast industrial and technological infrastructure, which requires itself a lot of energy. Plus all the problems with disposal of spent fuel and decomissioning will fall on a society that may not be able to cope.
EF Schumacher's time is coming -- small is beautiful, low tech is better than high tech whenever possible. The big and expensive high tech stuff should be done internationally.
Across USA, wave of anger building over gas prices
Some of the businesses affected are things I never thought of. Like amusement parks.
Car sales are being affected:
Gas price dents sales of guzzlers
But Ford thinks it's just temporary:
And for some consumers, gas prices mean nothing"
Hummer sales up 231%
The Philadelphia Inquirer has this summation of how energy prices are affecting industry:
Industries hit hard by hike in fuel prices
Farmers are definitely hurting:
Fuel, fertilizer prices expected to keep climbing
That last bit says it all, doesn't it?
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/05/sales_of_fullsi.html
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/05/us_hybrid_sales.html
(i think that hummer growth is influenced by the downsizing from h1, to h2, to h3. i joke that mu prius is an h6.)
It's only the beginning of the great transformation of the US economy--from an economy focused on meeting "wants" to an economy focused on meeting "needs."
Since the majority of Americans live off the discretionary income of other Americans, it's going to be a wrenching change. Just think of the amount of debt in the US that is supported by jobs on the dicretionary income side of the economy.
Run Forest Run--run as fast as you can from the discretionary side of the economy to the non-discretionary side of the economy.
And there you have it, folks. Either get into the energy biz, or work for the government.
GM Says Consumer Behavior Not Yet Hit by High Gas Prices
Business as usual at GM? In fairness, the article did mention that GM has ethanol vehicles and will introduce a hybrid vehicle this summer.
First, GM is secretly planning major product line changes, and all this "nothing to worry about" happy talk is just a ploy to keep investors and customers calm until those new products arrive.
Second, GM really is as dumb as a bag of rocks, and will continue in this delusional mode until they file for bankruptcy and a different management team takes over.
I honestly don't know which one I find harder to believe.
one other thing i've thought is that given the short-term need to sell suvs, they just trap themselves. they cannot be an "suv company" while building a snall car value network either within or outside the company.
as that gcc link shows, their "Percentage-point changes in cars as a percentage of total LDV sales" is falling, while ford and chrysler are managing to grow car share:
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/05/sales_of_fullsi.html
Secretly?
http://www.mrenergy.com/NewsDetail1691.cfm?Id=24,144
<snip>
A stockpile of coal is maintained at the plant site, which is used as backup in case of an interruption in rail deliveries. The stockpile, which normally contains about a 30-day supply, is now down to a level that would allow fewer than seven days of operation at full production.
If the stockpile reaches a level that would allow just five days of full operation, the project will be forced to curtail generation by 20 percent generation to minimize the possibility of reaching total coal exhaustion, which would shut down the entire project. A total plant shutdown may result in significant economic and reliability impacts to the region.
This is after they announced a new plant last Oct of 2005.
http://www.mrenergy.com/NewsDetail1691.cfm?ID=24,142
This on top of the low water for hydro could send rates up fast.
So people, and businesses, can decide they should just tough it out : not sell up and move to an apartment in town; not buy a smaller, more economical car; not invest in energy-saving equipment; not worry, be happy.
Are they really that stupid, or are they trying to fool us to avoid panic?
I wonder what happened. Did some big projects slip? Or are they trying to gradually acclimate us to an oil-scarce world?
When I read [U.S. Energy Secretary] Bodman's two-to-three-year comments, I wondered if it was a direct refutation of the 2005 CERA/Daniel Yergin prediction of a "large, unprecedented buildup of oil supply in the next few years." I looked it up. Here's what he said:
It's Not the End Of the Oil Age
IMO, the U.S. Administration's recent comments come about as close as you can get to a flat-out contradiction of the CERA position.
How long can people get away with repeating this tired line?
then everybody would get it.
Yeah. Perfect.
"Survivor: Washington, D.C." with your host, Tony Snow.
US Oil Industry Made $100 billion in Windfall Profits Since Late 90s
The irony for me was that it seems that if you increase your profits, this is a windfall. A major complaint was that the industry hadn't invested enough into infrastructure when profits were lower. Duh. They are also recommending that oil companies invest into expanding refineries. That's just pure genius. They must have been reading the earnings reports that came out last week to come up with that gem.
RR
That's a great idea for an essay. I may have to steal it.
RR
http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/energy/gasprices/
Another Uninformed Consumer Watchdog
Frankly, they need to buy a vowel.
RR
The Outside article was really well written. Westexas was prominently mentioned, too.
Jim gets a lot of grief for being harshly crictical of our suburban way of life, but if you really listen to what the man is saying, he is really in mourning for what the country was, for what it has become and for what it could have been.
BTW, I was qouted in the article as giving us two trillion barrels of reserves. I assume that I was talking about total liquids--conventional and nonconventional--or I was talking about total original recoverable crude + condensate.
It was really remarkable to hear Matt and Jim on a local radio interview that same day and at the symposium. These guys guys come from vastly different backgrounds--and they had never met until the symposium--but there were only shades of gray differences between them regarding Peak Oil. Matt did say that if we don't take concrete action to address Peak Oil, then "Jim Kunstler will have turned out to be an optimist."
One of the things that I insisted on at this event was an extended Q&A, which went on for about an hour. After the event, it was pretty interesting to listen to Matt Simmons, Boone Pickens and Herbert Hunt discuss the Oil Patch. I gave Boone my HL stuff at the symposium. His assistant called me the next morning and asked me to come by and brief his staff.
I have been trying like hell to get a transcript of the radio interview. If I can finally get one, I'll get it posted somewhere.
He lectured for over an hour and a half - then the Q&A lasted for another 2, at which point we had to cut it off because the security guards were only hired until 11pm. I heard he took a bunch of folks up to his hotel room where they talked until 3am. But he was alert and ready to go at 8am when we drove him back.
Oh, I can't wait to read Kunstler's fictitious vision of life in a post-oil world. (Seriously.) I wonder if his main character will live in Faux-Saratoga. Maybe it'll intertwine several characters who live in various parts of the country. I'd love to see a comparative story featuring denizens of cities, suburbs, small towns, and the American Southwest.
In the meantime, I want to read Omnivore's Dilemma.
(AK firefight sound effects on the optional audio channels,for the doomers)
I was just wondering whether there is anything happening with the data collection initiative regarding decline in the world's largest fields (realizing as I say this that everyone has busy lives, etc.).
Here's the link to the original "Top 20 in decline" post:
http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/4/18/2149/32950
Russian A-76 gasoline exports collapse
Publication Date: 24-FEB-06
Publication: Neft Trader Weekly
Description Russian A76 gasoline exports have dropped to around 80,000 mt in February, compared with 280,000 mt from previous months, as high flat prices in the domestic market
http://www.switch2hydrogen.com/
Or could it be true?
RR
http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=50361&page=3&pp=20
The executive summary is: Too good to be true.
RR
I expect the higher cost limit is more like to be the case, and with installation costs and the minimum solar panel (800W in full noon sun) the total cost is approximately $13,000 dollars. If this money were invested at 6% that would buy more than $2 of gas each day, 365days per year. Even with high cost of gas, $2 will take you a hell of a lot farther than 5 miles.
RR
What did they think would happen?
As Gas Prices Soar, the Marketplace Reacts
The article is about how high gasoline prices are starting to affect purchasing decisions. Here is an excerpt:
But when I went back to one of the Honda dealers this weekend, I found that the Civics had virtually vanished. You may be able to find one, the salesman said, but you'll pay sticker for it, or even a premium above the manufacturer's suggested retail price.
"I don't know what happened," he mused. "All winter long we're selling SUVs, and no one ever asks about the gas mileage. But this week practically everyone who came in here wanted to know, 'What gets the best mileage?' We've never had that happen before. I had nine Civics on the lot last week. I have one left, and I don't know if Honda can make them fast enough."
RR
And if WT and Stuart are right, then the first Cat4 to plow through the GOM should pretty much finish us off.
That gives us about... what, 8 weeks? 10? 12 at the most?
Then again does it matter?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4970904.stm
FYI: Bolton's speech concerning unilateral action against Iran in light of a deadlocked and ineffectual Security Council was apparently drafted months ago.
that seems silly to anyone who tracks the oil news, but there are a lot of people who work lots of hours, manage their families, and catch little real news for weeks at a time. those poor sobs caught the "news" that gas prices would "return to normal" after katrina ...
it's really sad (even if has been obvious to us here) that the market is expected to work, but the market requires informed buyers and sellers.
in the example above neither buyers or sellers seem too informed.
Downloads page: http://www.grinzo.com/energy/downloads.html
http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2006/walker.shtml
The Oil Production industry has given off the appearance of operating successfully throughout history: Invest in exploration. Drill here, drill there. Bring up more oil. Sell it at a price greater than costs. Declare a "profit". Declare "confidence" that we can keep going this way at least for the next decade or two. Repeat behavior. --Prelude to a catastrophe.
http://bloggingheads.tv/?id=85&cid=298
Bob's Cure for Oil Dependency
Not a terribly well thought out argument, but fun to watch the wheels turning.