Thursday open thread
Posted by Super G on May 4, 2006 - 10:05pm
Topic: Miscellaneous
Tags: peak oil [list all tags]
Some suggested reads: 1. First off, we received a heads up from someone at the Council on Foreign Relations on this piece of theirs on gas prices (and then we said "holy crap, we're on the CFR mailing list?!"); 2. Good piece from Tom Whipple at FCNP (hat tip: Energy Bulletin); 3. The Energy Wars over at Newsweek; 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. Please attend if you can, it's going to be a great conference. We know at least one TOD contibutor will be there, maybe two. [editor's note, by Prof. Goose] And, while you're there, say "hi" to Megan Quinn of Community Solution for me. She does great work...and she might be pretty close to the perfect woman. (but don't tell her I said that last part, please...)
... 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. Please attend if you can, it's going to be a great conference. We know at least one TOD contibutor will be there, maybe two. [editor's note, by Prof. Goose] And, while you're there, say "hi" to Megan Quinn of Community Solution for me. She does great work...and she might be pretty close to the perfect woman. (but don't tell her I said that last part, please...)
I'm curious about something...TOD has been showing graphs on a monthly basis illustrating the "bumpy plateau" that we've been in for the last 18 months or so, but the graphs only go back a few years. I'm curious to know if there have ever been periods in the past, say, quarter century where a similar phenomenon existed? In other words, is this plateau truly new, or has there ever been a similar plateau period in the past?
Thanks!
http://www.avbc.com/visit/boontling.html
P.L. No. 93-577, Section 5(a)(5) part of the Federal Nonnuclear Energy Research and Development Act of 1974
"The potential for production of net energy by the proposed technology at the stage of commercial application shall be analyzed and considered in evaluating proposals."
wondering if we should hire a lawyer and sue Archer Daniels Midland....(of course the details of how broad the definition were never clarified, to my knowledge)
To me: this is just more proof the topdogs in D.C. have known about Peakoil for years. After Pres. Carter's initial efforts, our elected officials have taken us in the wrong direction.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
In fact the predictions of the '70s have been quite realistic. The main error of the authors of "The Limits of Growth" was that they didn't understand the primary role of the energy resources, but treated all natural resources as equally potential constraints of growth. With energy it is possible to substitute one raw material with others and boost food production - but you cannot substitute energy itself. Byt the way, the Club of Rome has developed its World Model all the time, but running it crashes the simulated world just as before... (http://www.clubofrome.org/)
Now, if "everybody knew", why nothing was done? A lot was actually done. There was quite ambitious alternatives reasearch - so we know already a lot. That is why there is not as much interest on that reasearch now as some could expect. There was wide discussion about alternative fuels, but the results were just the same as now: nothing much to gain there.
The Club of Rome and Limits of Growth approach was later discredited by claiming that the expected catastrophe didn't happen. Well, they gave us about 30 years of good time before we would see the impacts of the global resource depletion. So here we are.
If you split the suburbs into three categories
- inner suburbs - on the east coast, many were built during the 50s, 60s and have evolved into satelite cities themselves. Many have (or had) rail systems linking them to the city. Ex. Towson MD, Vienna VA
- outer suburbs - newer suburbs that require lots of driving. Scads of 1 story strip malls etc.
- exurbs - suburbs of the suburbs, communities built far from everything, many of them tiny islands of mcmansions surrounded by farmland. (or farmable land)
It seems to me that the inner suburbs and the exurbs would fare best after peak oil. I suppose it will really come down to the rate of oil's decline. If we have a slow squeeze, the exurbs would be hurt more. With a sudden collapse I wonder whether people would have time to leave the exurbs.I suspect we will have a slow squeeze for a few years and then a sudden collapse.
I believe the exurbs (as I described them) will actually be a desirable place to start a new town. The McMansions can be converted to multi-use or multi-dwelling buildings. Use the streets for open air markets and the surrounding vacant land to grow food.
The economics of the situation very strongly favor keeping the 'burbs alive and adjusting our transportation capital and patterns to match. If the 'burbs "collapse", as Kunstler and many others keep saying, what exactly does that mean? People just walk away from their homes? If they sell, who would buy if things were that bad? About the only buyers I could imagine would be farmers, who wouldn't pay anything near what the current owners would want for the property.
Right now, a lot of people who live far from their jobs are hurting because of high gasoline costs. But they've barely begun to exploit the first-order conservation measures: Trading in (one of) their current vehicle(s) for something with much higher fuel efficiency, car pooling, reducing non-work driving, etc. They don't need a Prius--trading in an SUV or mid-size car for a Yaris or Fit would yield a big drop in monthly gasoline bills.
Those steps will make a huge difference, and will buy the people in the 'burbs several years, very likely enough to stretch until electric cars go mainstream, around 2010, possibly sooner, depending on gasoline prices. Once that happens, expect many people in the 'burbs to take the next step and adopt EV's in droves for their commuting cars, and the 'burbs are effectively saved.
If hydrogen fuel cells pan out down the road, fine. If not, people in the 'burbs, who very often have more than one car/household, can limp along for quite a long time using 150-to-200-mile/charge EV's (and that's a pretty conservative estimate on the range, given recent battery advances) for most driving and a gasoline car for those rare, long trips.
Frankly, I don't think that people like Kunstler realize just how far society in general will have to collapse before we see the widespread disappearance of 'burbs.
I believe that high inflation is the answer:
High inflation would do the following:
- Reduce government debt
- Reduce consumer debt
- Fix the housing bubble
- boost sales of US exports
- jumpstart domestic manufacturing (imports would be more expensive, exports would be in demand)
Maybe it is time to buy gold and silver.It won't reduce all consumer debt. Credit cards will just boost the interest rate. The only way you come out ahead is with fixed-rate debt.
Also, if we run electric light rail lines to these communities, they will remain viable to some extent. I would expect them to eveolve into actual towns if they are to survive.
The most dangerous words in financial booms are "This time it's different!". But the bust after the boom is always different. Compare 1900+, 1929+, 1966+, and 2001+. Each was different.
You should have gotten in to silver and gold last year - the price for each has almost doubled this year....and oil companies have also done really well...
I think this up cycle still has a long way to go.
One of the replies to this situation that is starting to occur here, though I am not sure at what scale, and does require you not being up to your neck in debt - i.e. some disposable income that you can maneuver with is:
Buying a third car. I spoke with a couple yesterday in which both used their vehicles for work (not just to commute). Hers was a good Toyota, his a Silverado. He needs his to make deliveries occasionally. That is the operative word - occasionally. So he is thinking of a Prius for his regular work car and call on the Silverado when he needs it (1 day a week?).
To haul your boat or trailer, you need the gas guzzler, so maybe we just up the number of vehicles at home.
Selling is not the only option. You can default on your mortgage and walk away from the home. It's an economically rational thing to do anytime the value of your home falls far below the mortgage amount. Lenders spend a great deal of effort figuring out exactly when, why, and how people "choose" to default.
The "suburban wipeout" theory posits that many defaults would occur simultaneously, flooding the markets with repossesed homes and further depressing prices, leading to still more rational defaults. With their paper equity lost, and their credit scores in the garbage, home "owners" would need to seek alternative living arrangements (renting) and would likely have far less spending power for things like riding lawn mowers, plasma tvs, H-3s, etc. Voila, demand destruction.
If I've lost my service job, or likly to, maxed out my credit cards, and staring down the barrel of Repo. on the house with no equity build up why not "strip" the asset I "own" for cash rather than just give it back to the bank "as is"?
Gut out the water pipes and electrical wires for the copper scrap, sell off the high end bath and lighting fixtures to a "dont ask dont tell" contractor for reuse, same with that high end kitchen stuff like the granite countertops and Stainless dishwasher and cooktop.
Next to go is that "floating floor" system thats wall to wall in the whole place (hardwood plywood strips) they can be removed without destroying them, and sold off.
At this point its pretty much a shell, but you'd never know from the outside...
Now I'm down to the "dive bar" and sell the front door keys to a local hood looking to site his pot "grow" house or crystal meth lab (make sure to leave the main breaker panel in place for him to hook up his sodium lights to he'll pay more that way).
It'll be at least 90 days post default untill "they" send someone around to actually check the house, maybe longer if you get the demand letters fwd'd to a mail "dead drop" and spin them a line of bullsh*t, by which time I'm long gone out of state.
Maybe drug guy has burned it down by then and the fire insurance may actually pay off the bank, "who cares", I'm broke...
We really don't know what "big bad" looks like, but this story goes on now below the radar of main stream media in small quantity, no reason to think it won't scale up" in my opinion.
When the bank finally found buyers, they had to renovate before they could even move in.
this "roving bands" stuff is maybe an exciting idea, but depends on a real production drop-off.
The post-carbon institute/Richard Heinberg vision of re-localization imo is the most realistic future. Either as a conscious choice or even as the end result of simply allowing greater pressure to force us into a shift.
I think there will be "refugees"--not unlike the people who lost so much in Louisiana and fled not realizing that they would never return--who will find that life just isn't working in the SW desert metroplexes. It won't happen overnight, just as Detroit didn't die overnight, but it is basically dead now.
Matt, DC
What does Kuntzler say about enclaves of the super rich?
Another point: EVs, like PVs, even if they pay off eventually, are a method of putting up a large investment up front, for savings years later. People who are in dire economic straits, struggling in an unsustainable exurb, or in a national or worldwide depression, will not be able to make such investments.
As for those people who think Prius batteries etc. will become cheap - not a chance. Powered pallet trucks are used worldwide for loading/unloading 2 ton pallets in warehousing. An old fashioned lead/acid battery for one of those suckers is £1000 - 2000
This is simply not true. Even in gas-guzzling US we can replace all our light vehicle fleet with only a moderate expansion of the electric grid.
US gasoline usage ~ 9.5 mln.bpd = 665 GW x 15% (gasoline-to wheels efficieny) ~ 100 GW net power
So, if electric cars are 70% efficient (including recharging losses etc.) we will need additionally 100 / 70% = 143 GW to power them.
Currently the US electricity grid has 700GW peak capacity and is providing 450GW on average yearround. We will need to expand it by only 32% to handle the electric cars. Sounds too far from impossible, IMO.
Regarding battery costs you are both assuming that they will stay the same after batteries become mass produced by millions and after every car producer in the world starts investing billions in researching and improving them.
But even if we take the 30-40% as a worst case, it will translate in 250-333 GW needed additionaly. By building some additional power plants and utilising the current grid (recharging the cars at night etc.) the task would be well within reach. And of course we will have to learn to conserve - not such a pain to do, or a thing that would force you out of your home.
I don't want to get started on Kunstler here, but I will say: Scroll down a bit in the clusterfuck archives to where he had to endure a day or so without electric power in his hometown.
I have the feeling that many of the neighborhoods in the burbs and exurbs that no longer have viable work within a close radius will have trouble staying viable. It is nice to talk about ripping up the concrete and roads to grow crops, and using 3 acre exurb estates, but I'd have to believe that the people who own them (the rich, the banks, etc.) would have something to say about it.
Does anyone know the historical presidence of the depression? Were families evicted from their homes? Did a higher population own their homes outright? I think that the economic impact of job losses will be more devistating than the personal pain of paying more for a gallon of gas.
(this isn't so much directed at you fleam, as the rest of the thread. I just had to fit it in somewhere.)
In Phoenix, there is a bias against "old homes" (apparently old starts somewhere between 20 and 30 years) because they are a problem to upkeep and they are "too small". The current standard of construction is quite low and will not "hold up".
My prediction is that once growth stalls in Phoenix, the rate of shrnkage in population will match the prior growth. The 20% of the labor force in construction will move away first. Retirees, with limited transportation needs (and Phoenix has almost zero heating needs) will move close to the VERY limited light rail lines. Existing homes will be rebuilt into multi-family housing. Vast stretches will be row after row of mainly abandoned homes with the odd hold-out here and there.
Who wants to live in a neighborhood with 1/3 of the homes empty ? 1/2 ? 2/3 ? 4/5 ?
Declining urban services will drive more away.
Yes, electric cars will appear, but older, poorly constructed homes in empty neighborhoods will appeal to few.
There is a "stampede" herd mentality in real estate. The herd has stampeded to Phoenix, they will stampede away just as quickly.