I like Westexas's quote:  "We have to kill consumption before consumption kills us".

Bob Shaw in Phx,Az  Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?

One other thing ocurred to me today, and I find it a delicious irony.  Richard Heinberg mentioned a CIA memo talking about Russian peak oil output, and wondered out loud whether or not the US tried to get Russia in an arms race to essentially bankrupt it, knowing that its energy resources would be running out.  Good thing we had the Saudis on our side I guess.

But I was thinking, now that Russia has passed SA as the world's leading producer (or at least they are neck and neck), that the situation may have been turned around completely.  Russia has lots of oil and gas, and doesn't use all that much (relatively speaking).  That gives it a lot of leverage.  The US, on the other hand, is looking increasingly vulnerable.

Has anyone noticed the proliferation of scooters and motorcycles? Some people own a car and a motorcycle, to use the latter in good weather to use less gas. A small minority go motorcycle-only becuse poverty outweighs foul weather deterrence.

One obvious symptom of PO down the road will be the proliferation of bicycles. Not yet, becuse of the traffic of cars being the deterrent. Right now, you have to be almost fearless to ride a bike in the street, no matter the actual statistics. As they proliferate however, bike use will require less of a daredevil mindset - aiding its proliferation.

The problems of bicycles are thus:

1. they are too fast for the sidewalk, making a hazard for pedestrians. Plus, many states outlaw the practice for that reason.

2. they are vunerable in traffic, as above.

So far, the traffic deterrent prevents bike use. But with gas in Chicago closing in on a buck a litre, time will tell when the switchover starts. Gas is $3.29/gallon now. When it hits $3.78/gallon, it'll reach the buck-a-litre milestone. Or is that kilometer-stone?

Would you like me to repeat them on this thread?

There are at least twenty good (and very short) ones, and it is hard to pick just one.

How about:

"Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all."

Why? Given oil is finite and once it is consumed it is gone oil was inevitably going to run out oneday. Given the rate at which we are consuming it was inevitably going to run out at some point in our lifetimes. Given our inertia to change we were unlikely to do anything about it until it stares us in the face. We could have run out all at once while at maximum consumtion. I figure that a 2-3% per annum gradual depletion with a strong likelyhood that we will still be getting some oil in fifty years from today is a great way for it to happen. It means we have a year to find alternates and effeciencies of only 2-3% each year. It could be a lot worse than that.

"I get good advice, if you will, from their people based upon how we're doing business and how we're operating. Over and above the just sort of normal - by-the-book - auditing arrangement." - Vice President Cheney, then chief executive of Halliburton, praising the Andersen audit company in a promotional video (1996)

--

I try not to daemonize people who think differently than I, because those are the only people I can learn from.  -  john gorka, musician

--

What we have here is a failure to communicate.  Some men just don't get it.  - Cool Hand Luke

--

"Everything you know is wrong" - Firesign Theater

--

If you were asked to name five leaders of impeccable integrity in the business community, you could not come up with them.  - Arthur Leavitt on Charlie Rose

--

"My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources,  solid sources. These are not assertions. What we are giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence." - Colin Powell, UN on Iraq, March 2003

cfm

--Meadows et al, Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update

"In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment."

Charles Darwin

http://wbln0018.worldbank.org/esmap/site.nsf/files/312-05+Biofuels+for_Web.pdf/$FILE/312-05+Biofuels +for_Web.pdf

I may post more on this later, but need time to digest it.

Another excellent study, which I posted before, from World Watch Institute and the German gov't (GTZ):

http://www.worldwatch.org/node/4078

The extended summary is over 100 pages. It also includes some country case studies. Free with registration.

Following the discussion/disagreement on the previous thread, I did want to note for RR's benefit, that several studies noted in the World Bank report above point to mileage of 25-30% less for E85 than regular gasoline.

My position remains: Ethanol is an inferior fuel from a consumer perspective because of BTU deficiency. In Brazil  ethanol needs to be priced at 30-35% less than gasoline (adjusted for content) to make up for this. However, ethanol does have advantages, when produced from sugar cane now, and maybe other technologies in the future. It is renewable up to a limit (10% of global vehicle fuel use?), has the potential for huge beneficial climate impacts, and can be done now. This is documented extensively in both studies.

The Dismal Theorem: "If the only ultimate check on the growth of population is misery, then the population will grow until it is miserable enough to stop its growth."

The Utterly Dismal Theorem: "Any technical improvement can only relieve misery for a while, for so long as misery is the only check on population, the [technical] improvement will enable population to grow, and will soon enable more people to live in misery than before. The final result of [technical] improvements, therefore, is to increase the equilibrium population which is to increase the total sum of human misery."

The Moderately Cheerful Form of the Dismal Theorem: "If something else, other than misery and starvation, can be found which will keep a prosperous population in check, the population does not have to grow until it is miserable and starves, and it can be stably prosperous."

Realistically, what are those "something else"s that would enable stable prosperity?  Efficiency is just a technical improvement (Jevon's Paradox).

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/7/17/212531/190

What a disgrace!

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilkins_Micawber

I think Bucky Fuller said that, but can't find an attribution. ...

Thomas Babbington Macauley

OZYMANDIAS of EGYPT

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said:--Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

BEIJING (Dow Jones)--The crude oil output of Daqing field, China's largest oil field in terms of production volume, fell 2% in the first half of the year compared with January-to-June 2005, but gas output rose 7%, according to a
report by China Oilnews Monday.
  Daqing's crude output dropped to 22.26 million metric tons, or equivalent to 901,469 barrels a day, said the paper.
  Crude output in the first half of 2005 reached 22.66 million tons, or 917,667 b/d, according to a People's Daily report in July last year.
  The field's gas output was at 1.32 billion cubic meters in the first half of this year, China Oilnews said, up 7% from 1.23 billion cubic meters in the
first half of 2005.
  Daqing Oilfield Corp., the operator of the field, is targeting to produce 43.09 million tons of crude oil, or 865,342 b/d, and 2.6 billion cubic meters
of gas this year.
  Daqing Oilfield Corp. is a unit of PetroChina Co. (PTR).
  In 2005, Daqing produced 44.95 million tons of crude, or 902,694 b/d, a 3% decline from 2004. But natural gas output rose 20% to 2.443 billion cubic
meters.
  PetroChina Co. (PTR), China's largest integrated oil firm by capacity, said Monday that its overall crude oil production in January-to-June rose 1.8% to
419.1 million barrels, or 2.32 million b/d, while its gas output rose a sharp 30.8% to 684.7 billion cubic feet, or 20.54 billion cubic meters.

"History will prove me right and you wrong - because I'm going to write that history." - Churchill

"When the world ends, can I have all your Stuff?" - Jack

-- Edward Abbey

"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." Dr. Albert Bartlett

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.

    Douglas Adams, "Last Chance to See"

The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.

    Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

:)

"Predictions are very hard to make, especially when they involve the future"

(Liberally taken from Yogi bear)

This second open thread at 63-comments+ shows that there is pent-up demand(is pent a word and did I spell it right?)

You guys went from 7,000 hits to 10,000 very quickly. I'm not sure why, and don't really care. I suspect it has something to do with price, but also notoriety. Regardless, the traffic is there. You need to deal with it.

When you guys first floated the idea of a daily open thread at a given time, I was sure that it would be a magnet for nutbags. I was wrong on that point. However I also raised the issue that the one thread at 9am favored people in certain times zones.

I notice a certain lull in the action between 4 and 9pm EST. I suggest a second daily open-thread somewhere in that time slot. I believe this would also relieve pressure on the 1st thread at exactly the right time if it were initiated around  5pm.

Just a suggestion. I'm happy either way. Or any other way for that matter.

"Some day this war is gonna end." - Kilgore

Bucky Fuller; Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth(Chapt 4); entire book on line ...

http://www.futurehi.net/docs/OperatingManual.html#4
 (The rest of that quote)
It takes approximately four and one third years for light to get to us from the next nearest energy supply ship star. That is the kind of space-distanced pattern we are flying. Our little Spaceship Earth is right now travelling at sixty thousand miles an hour around the around the sun and is also spinning axially, which, at the latitude of Washington, D. C., adds approximately one thousand miles per hour to our motion. Each minute we both spin at one hundred miles and zip in orbit at one thousand miles. That is a whole lot of spin and zip. When we launch our rocketed space capsules at fifteen thousand miles an hour, that additional acceleration speed we give the rocket to attain its own orbit around our speeding Spaceship Earth is only one-fourth greater than the speed of our big planetary spaceship.

Spaceship Earth was so extraordinarily well invented and designed that to our knowledge humans have been on board it for two million years not even knowing that they were on board a ship. And our spaceship is so superbly designed as to be able to keep life regenerating on board despite the phenomenon, entropy, by which all local physical systems lose energy. So we have to obtain our biological life-regenerating energy from another spaceship the sun.

Our sun is flying in company with us, within the vast reaches of the Galactic system, at just the right distance to give us enough radiation to keep us alive, yet not close enough to burn us up. And the whole scheme of Spaceship Earth and its live passengers is so superbly designed that the Van Allen belts, which we didn't even know we had until yesterday, filter the sun and other star radiation which as it impinges upon our spherical ramparts is so concentrated that if we went nakedly outside the Van Allen belts it would kill us. Our Spaceship Earth's designed infusion of that radiant energy of the stars is processed in such a way that you and I can carry on safely. You and I can go out and take a sunbath, but are unable to take in enough energy through our skins to keep alive. So part of the invention of the Spaceship Earth and its biological life-sustaining is that the vegetation on the land and the algae in the sea, employing photosynthesis, are designed to impound the life-regenerating energy for us to adequate amount."

I imagine at least one will be streaming this.
Rat

By: KVMR
Published: Jul 14, 2006 at 09:41

A unique, first-of-its-kind regional "Town Hall Meeting" will bring listeners of five northern California community radio stations -- including Nevada City's KVMR (89.5 FM) -- into a common dialogue on what the stations are calling the burgeoning "localization" movement when they simulcast together this Wednesday night (July 19) from 7 to 9 p.m.

"There have been many network radio broadcasts," says KVMR Program Director Steve Baker, "but there have been very few where five stations actually talk and listen to each other."

The Seven Rivers Radio Network received a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to bring together north coast stations in Mendocino County, Garberville, Arcata's Humboldt State University public radio affilatiate and an Indian reservation-based station in Hoopa for special election and public affairs programming. The network invited KVMR to participate to widen the geographic scope and dialogue for the project.

"We felt our broadcast area added at least five more major rivers," quips Baker, "but we're delighted to add to the dialogue however we can."

The topic at hand of Wednesday's broadcast will be the efforts of a number of northern California communities to become more self-reliant as global oil supplies decline relative to demand. This "peak oil" hypothesis has led to formation of "localization" groups in such places as Laytonville, Willits, Garberville and western Nevada County. Issues explored by these groups include expanding local food production, developing sustainable building material and improving energy sources not derived from petroleum. Guests at each participating radio station will describe activities going on in their communities.

"If we can pull off the challenge of technological wizardry that it is," says Baker, "it's what community radio was meant to be."

KVMR's contributors include activist Renette Senum from APPLE (Alliance for a Post Petroleum Local Economy) and organic farmer Daniel Macon, executive director of the Nevada County Land Trust. KVMR News Director Mike Thornton is coordinating the station's local participation.

An array of guests will be gauging the impact of the issues on their local economies, from professors and community organizers to a smalltown general store manager.

The Wednesday broadcast also features a dialogue among guests at the five stations and a call-in for listeners via KHSU in Arcata, 800/640-5911. Other participating stations include KZYX, Philo; KMUD, Garberville; and KIDE, Hoopa.

http://www.yubanet.com/artman/publish/article_38934.shtml

Daqing oil production down 2%

You know, what makes our economy grow is energy. And, Americans are used to going to the gas tank and when they put that hose in their tank and when I do it, I wanna get gas out of it. And when I turn the light switch on, I want the lights to go on. And, I don't want somebody to tell me I've gotta change my way of living to satisfy them. Because this is America, and this is something we've worked our way into, and the American people are entitled to it. And, if we're going to improve our standard of living, you have to consume more energy.
                                                                                Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa

"Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true."
                                  Francis Bacon

"Faced with the choice between changing one's mind, and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everybody gets busy on the proof."
                              John Kenneth Galbraith

The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any. -- Alice Walker

"The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised."
                                   George Will

"Corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.
                                  Abraham Lincoln

The future ain't what it used to be.         -Yogi Berra

A great deal of intelligence can be invested in
 ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.

Saul Bellow

Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. (American historian)

(Might not be PO-specific enough)

                           H.L. Mencken

Don't expect the scarcity of fossil fuels to drive us toward alternative energy sources anytime soon: we're getting smarter about finding and extracting oil.

The article can be found here
The Oil Frontier

"What does it matter to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?"

We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.
- Native American proverb

People aren't satisfied, only they don't seem to know why they're not. The only chance of satisfaction we can imagine is getting more of what we've got now. But it's what we've got now that makes everybody dissatisfied. So what will more of it do - make us more satisfied, or more dissatisfied?
- Anonymous British Pensioner (1978)

There is enough for everyone's need but not for everyone's greed, Gandhi said.

- Lord Kelvin

"The problems of today will not be solved by the same thinking that produced the problems in the first place." - Albert Einstein

I also like Matthew Simmons' "My worst case scenario is so bad that you don't want to go there."

"We, the generation that faces the next century, can add the solemn injunction ''If we don't do the impossible, we shall be faced with the unthinkable.''"

  (According to some, he's one to talk)

There's one I was looking for, but couldn't find; something about 'Deriving energy from burning fuels is like spending off your capital, instead of deriving interest'

  Again, of course, he's one to talk, considering the amount of capital he spent.. but much of it was Westinghouse's, not his own, at least.

"What you do not want others to do to you, do not do to others." -Confucius

"Do not do to others that which would anger you if others did it to you." - Socrates

"May I do to others as I would that they should do unto me." - Plato

"What you would avoid suffering yourself, seek not to impose on others." - Epictetus

"Do to others as you would have them do to you." - Jesus

"Do unto to others before they can do it to you." - business as usual

Bertrand Russell

Mark Twain, Letter to Orion Clemens, 6/1860

"Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded -- here and there, now and then -- are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as "bad luck."" -- Robert Heinlein

"Man is not a rational animal, he is a rationalizing animal." -- Robert Heinlein

"The capacity of the human mind for swallowing nonsense and spewing it forth in violent and repressive action has never yet been plumbed." -- Robert Heinlein

And just for Don Sailorman...

"Widows are far better than brides. They don't tell, they won't yell, they don't swell, they rarely smell, and they're grateful as hell." -- Robert Heinlein

"Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves."
- Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience (1847)

"The most noble, pure and true love of mankind is the love of oneself. I want to be free! I
hope to be happy! I want to appreciate all the beauties of the world. But my freedom is
secured only when all other people around me are free. I can only be happy when all
other people around me are happy. I can only be joyful when all the people I see and
meet look at the world with joy-filled eyes. And only then can I eat my fill with pure
enjoyment when I have the secure knowledge that other people, too, can eat their fill as I
do."
-Ret Marut

"when we think about co-operation. . . we tend to associate the concept with fuzzy-minded
idealism. . . This may result from confusing co-operation with altruism. . . Structural cooperation
defies the usual egoism/altruism dichotomy. It sets things up so that by helping
you I am helping myself at the same time. Even if my motive initially may have been
selfish, our fates now are linked. We sink or swim together. Co-operation is a shrewd and
highly successful strategy - a pragmatic choice that gets things done at work and at
school even more effectively than competition does."
- Alfie Kohn (No Contest: The Case Against Competition)

"Let us be thankful we have commerce. Buy more. Buy more now. Buy more and be happy."
- THX 1138

Robert Costanza

From http://www.paecon.net/ (there are more quotes about economy).

Thanks!

I have a larger version of that image.  The filename is opec_production_stack_feb06.jpg but searching for opec_production_stack_mar06.jpg etc. was not fruitful.