DrumBeat: June 25, 2006
Posted by threadbot on June 25, 2006 - 9:15am
Topic: Miscellaneous
Chinese move in on world oil supplies:
The Chinese Government has been in talks with Saudi Arabia about producing oil and gas in the Desert Kingdom.The news, which emerged last week, is the latest evidence of an expansionary Chinese energy policy driven by Beijing's concerns over assuring future supplies of energy, and the ambitions of the country's three main oil and gas companies to become global players.
Greenland's Ice Sheet Is Slip-Sliding Away:
The massive glaciers are deteriorating twice as fast as they were five years ago. If the ice thaws entirely, sea level would rise 21 feet.Iran rattles its oily saber again: Iran repeats oil is potential weapon in atomic row. Samuel Bodman is not worried, saying the U.S. has healthy stockpiles.
The San Diego Union-Tribune says you should have your own personal energy policy. It quotes Matthew Simmons on food-miles:
Matthew R. Simmons is a Houston-based banker to the oil industry and an adviser to President Bush. So it's a shock to hear his Al Gore-like message of looming oil shortages and the need for creative conservation techniques.One of the most creative: chart your “food miles” and buy local produce, meats and dairy products.
This is a global issue. This summer, Simmons notes, 80 percent of the apples in British markets will come from New Zealand.
“That's 22,000 miles of travel,” he said.
But Americans, in particular, are accustomed to supermarkets stocked with Chilean nectarines, South African grapes, Mexican tomatoes, Australian wines. What one scholar calls “the journey from field to fork” consumes growing amounts of fuel – a 50 percent increase between 1977 and 1999.
Korea
How does this relate to Oil. I have no idea. I just found it extremely interesting. It relates to us.
Prediction: Ecuador wins, English fans riot, skilled German cops with tear gas neutralize threat. [hahaha...you can't be serious]
Question: Brazil or Germany? Who takes it?
On an oil related topic, my niece's husband is visiting Kern County from Texas. He works for an energy related company. He tells me about an experimental program in phases that uses steam to inject in depleted fields in Kern County in the hope that it will yield increased production. The program is in the early stages and is expected to take up to at least 5 years before real results are seen. I know little about the specifics, but it sounds like its quite labor and water intensive. Not sure where they will get all of the necesary water here in So Cal for all the steam??
I don't quite understand the bracket foxsports.com has. It moves England and Portugal to the quarters on July 1st on the opposite side of the bracket from which they started.Is this correct?
Could we see an all-Portugese Final? That would be grrrreat!
-pop
This has been the first World Cup I have really paid attention to. Every game is televised here, and when the Costa Rican team played, many schools and most businesses closed or didn't open till after the game. Those that didn't, brought in TVs. Pity they played so badly, though the loss to Germany was at least a good game.
Kind of nice to be able to take my mind off of peak oil, climate change, Iraq and other endless resource wars, the incompetent/corrupt government in the US, the looming US economic collapse, and all the other doomer stuff for a few weeks. It has been a refreshing vacation. Soccer will survive post peak. It's the people's game. All it takes to play is a ball and a field.
Johns in Costa Rica
Note to Discovery Channel - you guys used to be good, almost as good as PBS. Now you suck. The Gulf of Mexico series you did on Oil Rigs - Good Stuff. If you have problems coming up with ideas, try asking us here at TOD, there is no way we couldn't improve your ratings.
Otherwise it just looks like you are grasping in the dark for ghosts.
I would gladly exchange the millions in revenue you will earn from my input for a chance to meet Paris Hilton. I know you can arrange that. My sister wants to meet Nicki, too. We could do it all at the same time. And given the fact that I am extremely rich, the Hilton sisters will not be dissappointed by my grasp of the Greek shipping industry or my sense of humor.
I TIVO'd it. At least I hope I did. You comment "the Discovery Channel had other intentions" has me concerned. Did it show when it was supposed to? Because if it didn't, maybe I don't have it recorded.
I intend to watch it, and do a review on it. But I will be hiking all day today in the Rockies, so it will have to wait. :)
RR
And why did they say the automobile was an American invention?
So, it was a real disappointment. No discussion of the situation (an economy based on cheap oil, infinite growth, food supply dependent on agri-business). No discussion of the high stakes involved (overshoot populations). No pointed dire warnings of the eminent, short time frame to begin to address this problem with electrified light rail, conservation, massive deployment of solar (passive home heating, domestic hot water heating, photovoltaic).
I mean, think about it - if a person is convinced we're going back to the stone age or Amish at best, really, utterly, convinced, what would they do? Would I be sitting here typing on my 2 mos. old computer? I'd be working to get as close to the huntere gatherer lifestyle I could. Declare bankruptcy, walk away from it all, and live as close as possible to the land, get good at improvising/gathering/scrounging. The general theory calls for a big nasty die-off and there will be lots of scroungable stuff for the next couple of post-dieoff generations. Right now one has to be a millionaire to buy land, but one can work on how to live on it, as a gatherer nomad.
But there's that small sliver of chance that things won't go kerflooey all at once, the decline may in fact take generations or even hundreds of years, in which case bargaining with the monster seems to be the better path. Bargaining with the monster involves still having a car because the system's set up such that you almost need one to live at all, so at least you get a thriftier one. Bargaining with the monster means working hard to pay off your debts because short of total collapse, paying them off in an orderly way can sure beat being put in a work camp or army uniform. And bargaining with the monster means getting to continue the way we're used to, and maybe just maybe, some new lukewarm fusion technology or something will enable us to live in the way we're accustomed, with 120 channels and Hot Pockets, anything, anything, rather than have to walk everywhere and chop wood.
So, if we fear The End Of The World As We Know It, this blog is dedicated to Continuing The World As We Know It.
Right now, at this period in my life, I have a unique chance through education to exploit a comparitive advantage I have over the crowd of millions that will, on the remote chance of a soft landing, leave me in an above average resource position. I have issues about this greedy nature in myself, and whether it's a productive instinct, but I've chosen to sidestep that question. Faced with the alternative, die-off (50% chance, IMO) or powerdown (75%), I have to weigh the opportunity cost of foregoing preperation for these possibilities with foregoing my opportunity for future wealth (and, yes, I do see them as mututally exclusive.) I keep weighing this, and at this point, I find betting on my future wealth is the better possibility.
I suppose the reason I figure this is because in dieoff or powerdown, the skills that will be necessary to survive (food production, community building, hitting people's heads with rocks...) are relatively low skill, and people have been doing them for the length of human existence. So, I guess I just don't feel much preperation is needed for those cases, apart from preparing ones' self mentally.
Or am I completely off track?
We are not really that smart (depite our knowing about PO). and "they" are nowhere near as dumb as you might imagine. We are all just people, doing as best we can for the moment.
90% is an interesting figure, since that seems to have been the die-off rate among American Indians, Pacific Islanders, etc when Westerners came on the scene. It's not just a figure pulled out of a hat either, it shows up everywhere, for instance search "peak oil" on google video or youtube and you'll find an interesting movie about some of the lesser-visited Pacific islands and there are figures like, 6000 people used to live on this island, now there are 600.
Now we Westerners get to enjoy what we have imposed on others.
And yes, the other guy is NOT dumb. The American/Iraqi kill rate has been something like 50:1 in this latest war, but that's because we have all this neat hardware and gas etc to run it on. On an equal footing, if someone were to wave a magic wand and eliminate humvees and helicopters etc. they'd kick our asses. When we're ALL scrawny and hungry and canny from years of survival, who knows, after all we European-extraction types have been through as harsh a winnowing process over the centuries as anyone, and the ways we've treated each other through centuries of wars and famines etc make most indigineous groups look like lapdogs.
The other guy is definately not dumb though. Soldiers in Vietnam were amazed at the intelligence, resourcefulness, and creativity of the Vietnamese, whether it was in their farming technology, fish traps, or soldier traps. The Polynesians have cultures that emphasize being the brutal badass but their crafts show that the only reason these guys didn't come up with something like the Space Shuttle is they lacked the fuel etc lol.
If there's one major leap forward for us Western cannibals over the last 100 years, I'd have to say that 100 years ago we had utter contempt for anyone who wasn't a workaholic, pleasure-denying, type A person. We're the ones who justified genocide against the Indians because we saw them as lazy and hedonistic, and therefore "animals". This attitude is still prevelent, but now it's not absolute. There are a lot of us realizing our Westerna culture involves working perpetually harder for less, and killing the Earth in the process.
We spend hundreds of thousands of dollars per combat soldier per year. The cost of training, the cost of technology, the cost of support, the cost of salaries and benefits and pensions, it adds up.
We are taxing Americans out of having children. Think about how much a second child costs, even, let alone a first one.
That would mean we've killed less than 30 combatants since the war began and only three hundred civilians. I personally know a guy who has killed 6 combatants and has pictures. We killed more than three hundred civilians for sure in shock and awe. Our kill rate is WAY above 1.0. Yes we have had casualties but comared to Vietnam or Korea or any other war?
Or am I completely off track?"
Ummm.. I think you are off track
Case: Food production
Can you milk a cow? Raise a flock of chickens to slaughter weight? Kill, clean and butcher an animal? Manage a 4 field rotation scheme? Build a barn? know how to correctly store hay and grain? Help a goat give birth? Manage pest problem in a field of soybeans? Harness a team of draft horses or oxen, or repair a wonky tractor engine? Weld a broken disk harrow, or fix a leaking irrigation pump seal? Understand which type of soil is better suited to potatoes and which to cabbage?
Like I said, there was a point in time that 90% of the population knew how to do exactly what you described. Some not sucessfully, but each one of them had to learn it at some point in their lives. I think it will be easier to learn how to farm after powerdown than it will be to learn how to, say, combine chemicals into productive substances. Or, I could just be off track again.
The first para of your post is one of the most arrogant short statements I have ever read.
Time to start giving some respect to the skilled, accomplished hard-working people, your equals and then some, who make your pampered existence possible.
Go read one book on animal husbandry and then try to yoke a team of draft animals. Read a mechanics text and try to repair a tractor engine. What a laugh.
"At some point in their lives" is not where those skills are learned. It takes a lifetime. Just like doctoring or engineering. And doing those jobs while coping with disrespectful know-nothings.....You, Descolada, should always drive a new car, 'cause your mechanic ain't ever gonna work hard for you.
What do you think a Dr. does? Hmmm....yep mmmhmm. Interesting then steps out of the exam room and opens a reference book. When he comes back in he gives you a diagnosis. MUCH easier than farming. I love to garden but never want to depend on it for my livelihood. They work from 5 am to 9pm.
If that was the case, you wouldn't have people getting 4 year degrees in things like soil science and animal husbandry.
Best,
Matt
Growing food is not as easy as scattering seed, waiting a few weeks and munching on the produce. Weather, pests, diseases are unpredictable and make years of practical experience invaluable. You have a much better chance at 'learning' your 'highly skilled' and well paid job from a book than you do subsistence farming. The pressures are different, too: if your job doesn't go well you can probably get another, if you fail at your subsistence farming there is a fair chance you will starve to death.
If you can I'd suggest allocating a chunk of your time to experiencing a bit of plant growing, even if only in pots outside your window or in a small yard. Perhaps holidays working on organic farms? You can learn many things from books but there is much to learn that books can't really teach. Best you discover that sooner rather than later ;)
I have the experience to usually see something going awry almost immediately, only a small part of that skill could come from books. No doubt it is similar for animals, and just as many crops are different so will be animals.
Raised a 1/4 ot 1/2 acre garden in my childhood (rented ground usually), planted 400 azealas ($20 hole for a $5 bush was my father's motto), 100 camellias (grafted onto sasanqua, over 90% success rate).
I got turned off of gardening and came to like trees much better. I learned enough to know that I do not know enough about growing outside my childhood home in Alabama. And even then I was not so curious (mainly hoped for a smaller garden NEXT year since we gave so much away this year).
And my father knew what to buy from the store (too much trouble to raise, or not the right climate to raise quality with good yield. Potatoes for example).
So I would be desperate for the first couple of years trying to raise (and preserve) my own food till I got the hang of it.
if a person is convinced we're going back to the stone age or Amish at best, really, utterly, convinced, what would they do?
Yes, many of us (myself included)have one foot in the peak oil world and one in the current order. I keep coming back to this site not bc/ I'm unsure if PO is real but to try to figure out how bad will it really be and how soon. It's like a cancer patient who has a diagnosis but isn't sure yet of the prognosis nor how painful and toxic the treatment will be.
Wish I could say it so well!
Yeah, a foot in the Beast and a foot..... I dunno maybe in my mouth lol!
I spend a certain amount of time these days wondering how I can bring my own life nearer to the H.G. lifestyle. No, I can't go out and dig for nuts and berries, at least for a full occupation, yet, but what can I do? For instance, can I make a living without having to have a computer? That's a big step ahead I think, a huge step behind where behind is good! OK, so how can I do that? I could go around and wash windows for cash, that's one way. I could go out and wash windows and do sign painting for cash too - cash or checks really, the first step is to get rid of the computer the bank can come later. Can I sharpen knives? A guy locally built quite a biz doing that. Could I learn to be one of those quick-draw portraitists like you see at amusement parks and fairs? I was originally destined to become an artist, but in the US unlike Europe there is NO art training for the working class, and a strong Puritan dislike/distrust of artists - the same factors that scared me away from it then, attract me to it now. Could I buy a van, live in it, and go around selling wooden spoons and spatulas I make?
Of all the possibilities, I like the artist one best. I'm thinking of giving that one a go, honestly, when I get up the guts.
TOD is all about "bargaining". Most here have passed the denial phase, and it is just the next logical step.
Speaking of TV, did anyone see the "Tar Sands" segment on "60 Minutes" tonight (Sunday)? Is it a rerun? My work schedule up until only the last few weeks had me at work on Sunday night, so I didn't know if it had been aired previously or not....
Either way, it was a glowing piece on how the tar sand oil will save the day, but actually did hit on at least some of the environmental issues, and had some real film of the landscape disfigurement, and the stacks belting out the greenhouse gas.
T. Boone Pickens was on of course, and if people actually listened to what he said, it should have sent shivers up the spine of the average TV viewer...."If you took a tablet and wrote on it all the optimistic prospects of where new oil can be found....it would be a blank tablet."
At least Boone is making no pretense that tar sand will bring back cheap oil, saying as a statement of fact, "Those days are gone."
The truth is, if anyone wants one of the greatest "facts on the ground" in support that we may be at or near peak on conventional oil production, the desperation in the tar sands field are it. If there was conventional oil available out there somewhere, there is no way that anyone would touch this high risk, low return, very damaging scheme (no one, NO ONE, really tries to claim that Canada can make anything close to the Kyoto Accord GHG targets if they attempt to ramp up tar sand production, it simply defies all known physics to make such a claim.)
The equation seems to break down like this:
Will tar sand save us? No, not by themselves.
Will they buy us some time? They have to.
Wil it be damaging to the environment? Almost certainly. (T. Boone Pickens, despite his other shortcomings, is usually direct. To quote him..."There's no denying it, it's a mess up there right now..."
Wil we go after the tar sand oil? We have no choice.
The voices in the tar sand fields have the edge of fear in them.
Roger Conner known to you as ThatsItImout
Mr. Pickens, I need to throw you in a basket. It's gonna be the same one I tossed Soros into. Do you have a problem with that? OK, then fine. I'm glad we can agree.
I note that Friedman repeated the myth that Brazil is getting "almost 50%" of their motor fuel from gasoline. It is hard to kill a good myth.
I have a slide from the National Petroleum Agency of Brazil. The breakdown in 2005 (by volume) was:
Diesel - 53.9%
Gasoline - 26.2%
Anhydrous Ethanol - 8.7%
Hydrous Ethanol - 8.3%
The rest is natural gas. Note that by volume, only 17% of the vehicle fuel was from ethanol. But by BTU equivalent, it is about 10%.
My suspicion of where this myth originated is that they are comparing the ethanol to the amount of gasoline they use, ignoring the fact that over 50% of the vehicles are diesels.
RR
There were a couple funny lines that caught my ear, as if some of the throw-aways said more about what Tom thinks than the main text. But I don't think the main text was bad at all.
The hydrogen and ethanol alternatives were covered, but their drawbacks were at least given a fast mention.