Thursday, September 28, 2006
Klare on Gas Prices

I have read Prof. Michael Klare’s book, Resource Wars, and found it to be a brilliant examination of exactly why we see the kinds of wars and conflicts today. If you haven’t read it, you can order it most anywhere.

The following article was written by Klare – it was emailed to me on a list to which I subscribe, so I am uncertain of its original sourcing. This article describes why we are seeing the low gasoline prices and the landscape of the immediate future of petroleum production. I agree with most of what is in the article. I disagree with his final point, “it will never get truly better until we develop an entirely new energy system based on petroleum alternatives and renewable fuels.” I don’t know what he means by “better”, so I am uncertain as to whether I can agree with that statement. but otherwise this is a smart and incisive article. enjoy.

What Do Falling Oil Prices Tell Us about War with Iran, the Elections, and Peak-Oil Theory

By Michael T. Klare

What the hell is going on here? Just six weeks ago, gasoline prices at the pump were hovering at the $3 per gallon mark; today, they’re inching down toward $2 — and some analysts predict even lower numbers before the November elections. The sharp drop in gas prices has been good news for consumers, who now have more money in their pockets to spend on food and other necessities — and for President Bush, who has witnessed a sudden lift in his approval ratings.

Is this the result of some hidden conspiracy between the White House and Big Oil to help the Republican cause in the elections, as some are already suggesting? How does a possible war with Iran fit into the gas-price equation? And what do falling gasoline prices tell us about “peak-oil” theory, which predicts that we have reached our energy limits on the planet?

Since gasoline prices began their sharp decline in mid-August, many pundits have attempted to account for the drop, but none have offered a completely convincing explanation, lending some plausibility to claims that the Bush administration and its long-term allies in the oil industry are manipulating prices behind the scenes. In my view, however, the most significant factor in the downturn in prices has simply been a sharp easing of the “fear factor” — the worry that crude oil prices would rise to $100 or more a barrel due to spreading war in the Middle East, a Bush administration strike at Iranian nuclear facilities, and possible Katrina-scale hurricanes blowing through the Gulf of Mexico, severely damaging offshore oil rigs.

As the summer commenced and oil prices began a steep upward climb, many industry analysts were predicting a late summer or early fall clash between the United States and Iran (roughly coinciding with a predicted intense hurricane season). This led oil merchants and refiners to fill their storage facilities to capacity with $70-80 per barrel oil. They expected to have a considerable backlog to sell at a substantial profit if supplies from the Middle East were cut off and/or storms wracked the Gulf of Mexico.

Then came the war in Lebanon. At first, the fighting seemed to confirm such predictions, only increasing fears of a region-wide conflict, possibly involving Iran. The price of crude oil approached record heights. In the early days of the war, the Bush administration tacitly seconded Israeli actions in Lebanon, which, it was widely assumed, would lay the groundwork for a similar campaign against military targets in Iran. But Hezbollah’s success in holding off the Israeli military combined with horrific television images of civilian casualties forced leaders in the United States and Europe to intercede and bring the fighting to a halt.

We may never know exactly what led the White House to shift course on Lebanon, but high oil prices — and expectations of worse to come — were surely a factor in administration calculations. When it became clear that the Israelis were facing far stiffer resistance than expected, and that the Iranians were capable of fomenting all manner of mischief (including, potentially, total havoc in the global oil market), wiser heads in the corporate wing of the Republican Party undoubtedly concluded that any further escalation or regionalization of the war would immediately push crude prices over $100 per barrel. Prices at the gas pump would then have been driven into the $4-5 per gallon range, virtually ensuring a Republican defeat in the mid-term elections. This was still early in the summer, of course, well before peak hurricane season; mix just one Katrina-strength storm in the Gulf of Mexico into this already unfolding nightmare scenario and the fate of the Republicans would have been sealed.

In any case, President Bush did allow Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to work with the Europeans to stop the Lebanon fighting and has since refrained from any overt talk about a possible assault on Iran. Careful never explicitly to rule out the military option when it comes to Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities, since June he has nonetheless steadfastly insisted that diplomacy must be given a chance to work. Meanwhile, we have made it most of the way through this year’s hurricane season without a single catastrophic storm hitting the U.S.

For all these reasons, immediate fears about a clash with Iran, a possible spreading of war to other oil regions in the Middle East, and Gulf of Mexico hurricanes have dissipated, and the price of crude has plummeted. On top of this, there appears to be a perceptible slowing of the world economy — precipitated, in part, by the rising prices of raw materials — leading to a drop in oil demand. The result? Retailers have abundant supplies of gasoline on hand and the laws of supply and demand dictate a decline in prices.

Finding Energy in Difficult Places

How long will this combination of factors prevail?

Best guess: The slowdown in global economic growth will continue for a time, further lowering prices at the pump. This is likely to help retailers in time for the Christmas shopping season, projected to be marginally better this year than last precisely because of those lower gas prices.

Once the election season is past, however, President Bush will have less incentive to muzzle his rhetoric on Iran and we may experience a sharp increase in Ahmadinejad- bashing. If no progress has been made by year’s end on the diplomatic front, expect an acceleration of the preparations for war already underway in the Persian Gulf area (similar to the military buildup witnessed in late 2002 and early 2003 prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq). This will naturally lead to an intensification of fears and a reversal of the downward spiral of gas prices, though from a level that, by then, may be well below $2 per gallon.

Now that we’ve come this far, does the recent drop in gasoline prices and the seemingly sudden abundance of petroleum reveal a flaw in the argument for this as a peak-oil moment? Peak-oil theory, which had been getting ever more attention until the price at the pump began to fall, contends that the amount of oil in the world is finite; that once we’ve used up about half of the original global supply, production will attain a maximum or “peak” level, after which daily output will fall, no matter how much more is spent on exploration and enhanced extraction technology.

Most industry analysts now agree that global oil output will eventually reach a peak level, but there is considerable debate as to exactly when that moment will arise. Recently, a growing number of specialists — many joined under the banner of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil — are claiming that we have already consumed approximately half the world’s original inheritance of 2 trillion barrels of conventional (i.e., liquid) petroleum, and so are at, or very near, the peak-oil moment and can expect an imminent contraction in supplies.

In the fall of 2005, as if in confirmation of this assessment, the CEO of Chevron, David O’Reilly, blanketed U.S. newspapers and magazines with an advertisement stating, “One thing is clear: the era of easy oil is over… Demand is soaring like never before… At the same time, many of the world’s oil and gas fields are maturing. And new energy discoveries are mainly occurring in places where resources are difficult to extract, physically, economically, and even politically. When growing demand meets tighter supplies, the result is more competition for the same resources.”

But this is not, of course, what we are now seeing. Petroleum supplies are more abundant than they were six months ago. There have even been some promising discoveries of new oil and gas fields in the Gulf of Mexico, while — modestly adding to global stockpiles — several foreign fields and pipelines have come on line in the last few months, including the $4 billion Baku-Tbilisi- Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline from the Caspian Sea to Turkey’s Mediterranean coast, which will bring new supplies to world markets. Does this indicate that peak-oil theory is headed for the dustbin of history or, at least, that the peak moment is still safely in our future?

As it happens, nothing in the current situation should lead us to conclude that peak-oil theory is wrong. Far from it. As suggested by Chevron’s O’Reilly, remaining energy supplies on the planet are mainly to be found “in places where resources are difficult to extract, physically, economically, and even politically.” This is exactly what we are seeing today.

For example, the much-heralded new discovery in the Gulf of Mexico, Chevron’s Jack No. 2 Well, lies beneath five miles of water and rock some 175 miles south of New Orleans in an area where, in recent years, hurricanes Ivan, Katrina, and Rita have attained their maximum strength and inflicted their greatest damage on offshore oil facilities. It is naive to assume that, however promising Jack No. 2 may seem in oil-industry publicity releases, it will not be exposed to Category 5 hurricanes in the years ahead, especially as global warming heats the Gulf and generates ever more potent storms. Obviously, Chevron would not be investing billions of dollars in costly technology to develop such a precarious energy resource if there were better opportunities on land or closer to shore — but so many of those easy-to-get- at places have now been exhausted, leaving the company little choice in the matter.

Or take the equally ballyhooed BTC pipeline, which shipped its first oil in July, with top U.S. officials in attendance. This conduit stretches 1,040 miles from Baku in Azerbaijan to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, passing no less than six active or potential war zones along the way: the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan; Chechnya and Dagestan in Russia; the Muslim separatist enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia; and the Kurdish regions of Turkey. Is this where anyone in their right mind would build a pipeline? Not unless you were desperate for oil, and safer locations had already been used up.

In fact, virtually all of the other new fields being developed or considered by U.S. and foreign energy firms — ANWR in Alaska, the jungles of Colombia, northern Siberia, Uganda, Chad, Sakhalin Island in Russia’s Far East — are located in areas that are hard to reach, environmentally sensitive, or just plain dangerous. Most of these fields will be developed, and they will yield additional supplies of oil, but the fact that we are being forced to rely on them suggests that the peak-oil moment has indeed arrived and that the general direction of the price of oil, despite period drops, will tend to be upwards as the cost of production in these out-of-the-way and dangerous places continues to climb.

Living on the Peak-Oil Plateau

Some peak-oil theorists have, however, done us all a disservice by suggesting, for rhetorical purposes, that the peak-oil moment is… well, a sharp peak. They paint a picture of a simple, steep, upward production slope leading to a pinnacle, followed by a similarly neat and steep decline. Perhaps looking back from 500 years hence, this moment will have that appearance on global oil production charts. But for those of us living now, the “peak” is more likely to feel like a plateau — lasting for perhaps a decade or more — in which global oil production will experience occasional ups and downs without rising substantially (as predicted by those who dismiss peak-oil theory), nor falling precipitously (as predicted by its most ardent proponents).

During this interim period, particular events — a hurricane, an outbreak of conflict in an oil region — will temporarily tighten supplies, raising gasoline prices, while the opening of a new field or pipeline, or simply (as now) the alleviation of immediate fears and a temporary boost in supplies will lower prices. Eventually, of course, we will reach the plateau’s end and the decline predicted by the theory will commence in earnest.

In the meantime, for better or worse, we live on that plateau today. If this year’s hurricane season ends with no major storms, and we get through the next few months without a major blowup in the Middle East, we are likely to start 2007 with lower gasoline prices than we’ve seen in a while. This is not, however, evidence of a major trend. Because global oil supplies are never likely to be truly abundant again, it would only take one major storm or one major crisis in the Middle East to push crude prices back up near or over $80 a barrel. This is the world we now inhabit, and it will never get truly better until we develop an entirely new energy system based on petroleum alternatives and renewable fuels.

Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts and the author of “Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America’s Growing Dependency on Imported Petroleum”, and “Resource Wars, The New Landscape of Global Conflict”.

Copyright 2006 Michael T. Klare

Saturday, July 29, 2006
Peak Oil at SF LAFCo

Such excitement!

A few days ago, the fine folks in the SF Energy Community

(Offnote: I am disabusing myself of the notion of Peak Oil. From what I can gather, it’s either upon us or will happen soon enough that the notion is absurd. It’s like “Modernism” or its stumpy halfwit encore, “PostModernism”. They are not the answers to the problem of contemporary history, and Peak Oil is not the correct understanding of the problem of contemporary civilisation. The problem is energy production and resource consumption combined with massive overpopulation and a rapacious political economy and attendant false consciousness. But – I digress. Suffice to say, Stuart Studebaker has had it up to his eyeballs with Peak Oil which now has become more of a gloomy subculture with pseudo-religious overtones – and that creeps me out. So, from here on, you may consider me an Energy Activist. Attach my name to peak oil, and expect to arrive home to a house with your garbage missing and the pets all pregnant. Or something really bad like that. I digress…)

were able to set up a meeting in front of the San Francisco Local Agency Formation Commission. This was held beforecity Supervisors Mirkarimi, McGoldrick, and government employees Schmeltzer and Sullivan. Mr Mirkarimi was Chair. First, there was a Media Advisory on the steps of City Hall.

I was starved, and went down the block to get a small sandwich, and arrived as the speeches were already in swing. first up at the podium was Mr Richard Heinberg. (Picture #1)

He gave a very nice verbal outline of the Obvious Situation, and was well recieved. I would estimate that there were at least 40 people standing and listening.

After Mr H, was was David Room who shared a few words as well. He was followed by Supervisor Mirkarimi, who was forceful in his views which seemed quite sympathetic with the audience at hand. He was followed by someone in a beige suit whose names escapes me.

(off note: if anyone can fill in the names I forget – and I forget often – please leave a comment and I’ll fix the post itself. I make no pretense to journalism – this is a blog of my bad attitudes and observations.)

Then we all filed into the meeting room. It quickly filled up to standing room only.

Another room was opened and a video feed was sent in and projected so people could at least see the proceedings. I sat up front so I could take pictures. The Supervisors McGoldrick, Mirkarimi and gov’t apparatchiks Schmeltzer and Sullivan filed in and took their seats.

After some pro forma agenda stuff regarding the minutes of the previous meeting and such like – all performed under Robot’s Rule’s of Order and other similar parliamentary hocus pocus – the first to present was Richard Heinberg.

It was a classic Heinberg tour de force of facts and figures that paint a very ugly picture for the 21st Century. If you’ve read Powerdown or The Party’s Over, you’re pretty much up on what he has to say. The benefit was that he had several pieces of recent data to support his ideas. Excellent presentation, in his classic low key demeanor.

The Next speaker was David Room.

David’s presentation was interesting but was about twice as long as it needed to be. I thought he had a number of good ideas, but didn’t seem to have any concrete proposals. The supervisors had to ask him to cut it short, so perhaps he would have gotten to more concrete policy suggestions and strategic proposals, but we didn’t get to find out.

The third person was a clear and articulate woman from the San Francisco Department of the Environment. (her name escapes me – anyone?)

Being the natural born clumsy doofball that I am, I accidentally stabbed myself in the hand with a ball point pen at that moment, and was in some pain and didn’t really get to concentrate on what she had to say. I do remember it was interesting when I wasn’t wincing in pain.

After she spoke, the citizens were allowed to come up and talk to the Supervisors. Most of the speeches were passionate and articulate. A few were off the point, but not absurdly so. One gentleman started railing on about how we don’t have a democracy, and seemed completely oblivious to the irony of his statement… But even he had good points about energy and politics. I even spoke – I said who I was and what I do, and that I knew politicians liked specific and useful ideas, so I chimed in with three.

1. Disallow the Registration of SUVs as private passenger vehicles in San Francisco.

2. Subsidise electric bikes.

3. The city should invest in a kind of polysilicate bank, and use these cheap rates of PV to develop its own electrical generation for City Government buildings and public housing. This would do two things – it would permit the City to get into the business of renewable electricity generation, and act as a first step int opublic ownership of city based wind and tide power generation. The localisation angle on this is obvious, as is the direct connection to Public Power, but leapfrogging the gooey disaster that is PG&E – rather than “get control” of PG&E, the city could get into renewable power generation directly, and bypass the whole mess – let PG&E die on the vine as the oil runs out…

Supervisor Mirkarimi was impressed and asked me to email him with my ideas – he’s a well known advocate of public power, so I am not surprised that he’d find my idea #3 to be interesting…

More people spoke, and with some more Parliamentary hocus pocus, the meeting was over. At that point I got to take a nice picture of Mr Heinberg.

At that point a bunch of us all wandered down to a vegetarian restaurant run by devotees of Sri Chimnoy. The food was very very good, and the conversation was great.

Mr Heinberg liked me bringing up electric bikes. He said that he thinks electric bikes were likely more efficient than regular bikes. Each calorie you burn pedaling represents 10x as many calories that you don’t get to expend, because it takes so much energy just to make food. From a total energy view, the electric bike is much more efficient. Personally, I’m not sure that’s all true, but I do find the idea rather exciting. I’d have to do some crazy Odum-like analysis to figure it out, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Heinberg is correct.

I made some points to the assembled dinner crowd that we need to get culture workers hip to and working to promote energy awareness – even if they are celebrities and make their living on the commodity culture, they are in positions of great value in our society, as people trust their culture heroes more than politicians. Celebrities sell soap and life insurance, cars and medication – why not energy awareness?

I pointed out Al Gore’s movie went ahead because of the entertainment industry, and that culture, as a lens AND mirror of society, will always be out ahead of the politicians. Whether its writers, filmmakers, musicians, actors, DJs – whatever – we need all hands on deck, and the biggest gains to be realised in the slackening of the depletion curve will come culturally.

After dinner, myself and two companions, Dennis and Chuck, wandered over to the Noc Noc club and hoisted a few foaming frosties to our health and did a post-mortem of the meeting. After much convivial and interesting conversation, I found my way to a bus and after a long walk up a hill, I went to bed.

Today, I sent some dead computer gear to be properly recycled, and then Beth, Elizabeth and I had lunch at Kan Zaman middle eastern restaurant. Then it was off to Amoeba, where I purchased some used CDs and then home to a yummy salad dinner.

Monday is my birthday. Yay.

Friday, July 21, 2006
Ford: they lost money because they build gas guzzling death monsters.

What I find amusing about Ford and all the other hapless American car makers is this:

Even with “hybrid technology” the stupid Ford Escape still only gets (on a good day) about 25 mpg. My neighbour’s Toyota Prius regularly gets twice that much, and often more.

When my wife and I bought our car, an Audi A4, back in 1997, we bought it as a highway cruiser, because she had to drive all the way to Santa Clara for work (She’s been telecommuting since 2000 – so thank Bog those days are gone) Once it was paid off in 2002, we figured – heck – we don’t drive that much anymore, and the car is in perfect condition. To this day it still gets 32 mpg on the highway, and 24 in the city. When we bought it, high test was about $1.50 a gallon. Now it is $3.50 a gallon. about 2.3 x as much, Which means our car’s mileage per dollar of gas is 42% of what it used to be.

So, our 32 mpg car, for the dollar spent, now gets 13.4 mpg per dollar.

This means that an SUV that once got 12 mpg is effectively getting 5 mpg per dollar. So – doubling your mileage from 12 to 24 is really only getting you back to 10 mpg, which is less than where you were…

That is the razor of PeakOil – “we’ve doubled the mileage on our SUVs” isn’t going to wash because the mileage they’re starting from is so absurdly low and isn’t keeping pace with the increase in expense.

America IS ready for hyper-efficient vehicles. I also believe that America IS ready to let go of the SUV. It will start with commuters and city dwellers, and eventually sink into the brains of the suburbanites who still labour under the illusion that they NEED an SUV to get their spawn to soccer practice, or that driving an SUV three blocks to the liquor store to get some beer and a pack of smokes is any more effective tan driving a Prius three blocks to the liquor store to get some beer and a pack of smokes.

Thursday, July 13, 2006
The Middle East Muddle

Obviously the most valuable thing in the Middle East is the Oil, and I think it is fair to say that we are now in the Age of Resource Wars (per Prof. Klare). So: the second largest exporter of oil is Iran, Saudi Arabia is #1. Most Saudi Oil goes through the narrow Straights of Hormuz, which is nearly surrounded by Iran. Iran’s Supreme Poobah Khamenei has said that if we fuck with Iran, they’ll close down the straights of Hormuz. which would effectively cut off about 60% of the world’s oil, striaght up.

That’s why the USA et al are so freaked – it’s like the Pusher Man saying “no dope for YOU mofo!” Keep an eye on the G8 meeting this weekend. Dollars for donuts, the diuscussion will NOT be:

America’s insane trade deficit
China’s insane trade surplus
china’s wildly undervalued currency
America’s insane budget deficit
The impending global oil peak

It will be Iran.

The neocons are desperate to keep the foot to the floor on American overconsumption of oil, and that foot will increasingly rest on the neck of Iran.

Note: The USA basically intimated “bad things” would happen on July 12 if Iran didn’t come to the table with something the USA considers worthwhile.

What happened on July 12?

Israel invaded Lebanon.

What does that do? It takes ALL THE HEAT AND LIGHT off of Iran. Iran is STILL the big target – if people keep their hats on and chill, Israel will eventually leave Lebanon and things there will be a mess, but a suitable distraction from the real target: Iran.

How? The Hezbollah are trained and supported by the Iranian Military, and (IIRC) specifically a weird bunch of Green Beret Types called Al Qud. So, what we have in Lebanon is a Proxy War between the USA and Iran:

USA -> Israel -> (LEBANON) <- Hezbollah <- Iran

Which JUST HAPPENED to erupt the very DAY when the USA was about to do something against Iran. The USA will continue to do that, but the war in Lebanon has sucked all the air out of the room, and now the G8 can sit and plan out “what is to be done with Iran” without the spotlight being “what is the G8 going to do with Iran”.

This is NOT to say that the invasion of Lebanon was timed, conspiracy theory is boring – as the evidence indicates that everyone’s shooting in the dark, however: it came at a VERY convenient time, and on a *very convenient day*.

So, my guess is this:

Israel’s invasion Lebanon is one of those fortuitous terrible events and will provide suitable cover for the major powers to convene and deal with notions of Iran while the rest of the planet freaks out over Lebanon. The Bush Junta will push for military force against Iran, or something that will lead to force. After their total fuck up in Iraq, they’re scraping the barrel on international support, but Iran has everyone (except Russia) by the short and curlies with one crucial ingredient: Oil.

Thus, it makes it easier to get the rest of the G8 (sans Russia) exercised over Iran. China’s not in the G8, and is not big on action against Iran, because a big chunk of Iranian oil goes to China, and while action against Iran would screw everyone up, it would mostly screw China.

I would figure the G8 would fracture along those lines. Russia has europe by the short hairs (natural gas) so the europeans can’t pull too far from orbit, but there is a lot of room for movement on side issues that appease the 900lb gorilla (USA), like IRAN.

Hence, Europe will tend to fall against Iran, Russia doesn’t care (oil at $100 a barrel works for them!) so China would be the most agrieved. Hence: Bush making nice nice with Putin lately so grinding the Chinese won’t seem so bad.

These aren’t the end times, by a long stretch, but for the first time in 80 years, we’re really looking down the throat of True Disaster. Which wouldn’t be so bad if True Disaster would bother brushing a little more often.

Monday, July 10, 2006
Late at Night

It’s very late – 1.30 AM, and I am here futzing with my computer and electronic gizmos. The light above me is a compact flourescent – not very bright, but it doesn’t have to be – my laptop’s monitor is plenty bright, and as the rest of the room is cluttered with the detritus of years of accumulation – dead computers, broken monitors, keyboards that use a legacy bus that stopped running years ago – there isn’t much else to look at.

I make electronic music, and I give it away, for free. I make art and I give it away, for free. Why? Because it’s the right thing to do. I give you my words, my ideas, here – for free. Free as in speech, free as in beer.

I’m up late every night because I snore. I have always snored. As I have aged, it has gotten worse, and sometimes my wife can barely sleep because of it. I’ve tried a number of remedies, and none work. So, I stay up until 2 or 3 in the morning, so she can get 4 or five hours of good solid sleep. I crawl to bed and within half an hour I’m out, and usually, she is so deeply asleep, that my snoring doesn’t wake her. At least, that is what I hope – it’s what I tell myself.

In the meantime, I have time to work with my machines – type blog posts, type email, do some web design. On my little G4 iBook. It’s slow, by today’s standards, but it works and it’s cute. I bought it used, for very little money, and it’s very good on electricity – a battery charge can last 3 or even 4 hours, as long as I’m not doing something insane like rendering video clips.

What is interesting about my music system here is that it actually uses a fraction of the amount of electricity it used 20 years ago to do so much less.

In 1986, I got a credit card and maxxed it out and bought a pile of gear. I bought a Korg DSS1 sampler, a Yamaha TX81z synthesizer, an Atari 1040ST computer and monitor, MidiSoft Studio MIDI recording software, Minstrel compsing software, a dot matrix printer, a keyboard stand, a Yamaha SPX90 processor, a MIDIverb reverb unit, a Yamaha mixer, a crown power amp, a Yamaha MIDI merger, and a pair of TOA speakers and stands. Several months later, I bought another sampler, a Sequential Circuits Prophet 2002 and a Yamaha DX11. I had quite a rig.

All that gear sucked down huge amounts of electricity.

Now, my entire electronic music system consists of my laptop, a USB powered Oxygen8 keyboard, two Firewire drives, an Edirol UR80 MIDI USB recording system, Ableton Live software, Propellorheads Reason software, Audacity audio editing software, a Mackie Mixer, and a pair of Event PS8 speakers.

I also have a USB powered WACOM tablet for graphics, but it’s usually not hooked up.

All that gear I had back in ‘86 is now just a small part of a drop down menu in Reason.

I often wonder about that – all that electricity to make music – where did it go? I was more productive back then, but I had more time back then – I wasn’t living with a daughter… I was able to get more done then. I have more ideas now, but less time to do them. And now I have compeeting interests with video and imaging. It seems endless…

But now I have these late evenings under the cool glow of the CF lamp, music quietly oozing from the speakers as iTunes spews my CD collection back at me in random fashion.

Sometimes I think iTunes is psychic. At random it pulled “All the Things We’ve Made” by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark up for my listening enjoyment.

The lyrics go:

To want this.
Of everything we’ve made.
The times it’s worked before.

Of all the things we’ve said.
They’ve always worked before today.

Will that be the theme song of the transition?

Tuesday, May 23, 2006
Latest posting…

I posted the following as a comment to another blog:

http://entropyproduction.blogspot.com/2006/05/peak-oil-taxonomy-doombat.html

Where Mr McLeod has fun at the expense of Doomers, calling them Doombats.

My response to his post follows.

I think it is appropriate that I should follow Mr. Mathews’s comments. I would like to add another category, or subcategory, actually. I see myself (generally) in the traditionalist camp, but I am more than anything a realist and agnostic on most issues of metaphysics. Doomers are not: they are True Believers.

What the Doomers do have on their side is a correspondence between their vision and linear prognostication, i.e., IF nothing is done to ameliorate the situation, THEN we’re all cooked.

Once you start introducing variables into the equation, such as the curmudgeonly nurtured technologies that you favour and then combine them with the social and cultural changes I tend to advocate, then the Doomer Argument fails to predict much of anything.

Mr Mathews (with whom I have been in a running argument for the past few years on the Energy Resources Yahoo List) is a dedicated Doomer. Still, a stopped watch is exactly correct at least once a day, and he can speak the truth, and I’ll quote him:

“All species, including the Homo sapiens, will ultimately suffer extinction.”

And right there is his prejudice laid out for all to see: all species must SUFFER extinction. What if there’s no suffering to extinction? What if we evolve ourselves into smarter, incredibly elegant, creatures with superior social and ethical instincts, and it is all handled (at first) by in vitro fertilisation and genetics, so we will literally give birth to homo futuris? How is that (outside of the specious detail of childbirth itself) a SUFFERING extinction in any sense of the word? Not that I expect such a technological solution to human extinction, but what it does show is how in one simple stroke, the Doombat attitudes of the likes of Mr Mathews are simply and completely blown away. And: such a genetic solution actually *could* happen.

Hence, defeating the Doomer Mythos is like dynamiting fish in a barrel – it’s too easy. I’ll quote myself from the Energy Resources List:

“(They) want to spread the end times gospel, like some ecological Jim Joneses. (They) want the drug of (Their) misery to prevail, (They so deeply desire) the addictive and explosive rush of horror one garners from gazing into the abyss to dominate the vision of others who are less inclined to gaze so deeply into the dark.

I too have spent many years looking into the abyss, probably longer than (most of these doomers) have, and I no longer see an abyss. The future is not a black hole. It is transformation. Not to something “better” – it doesn’t really work that way – just something more adapted to the environment that obtains. “

And to the Doomers themselves, I would pose the followling:

“Your moral and ethical charge (as a responsible human being) is to allieviate suffering wher eyou find it. If you find yourself drawn to the suffering itself, then go to the suffering. I urge you to sell your possessions and go to Darfur or Bangladesh or on a more local basis – New Orleans or East LA or Camden NJ. Work with suffering. Work with the horror, and find some meaning in your pampered whiny existence.”

Sometimes I get tired of battling Doombats, but the stakes are far too high. The struggle for a dignified survival for our species is becoming more attenuated with each passing year, and while this seemingly gives more credence to the Doombats, this attenuation will necessarily result in appropriate and reasonable decisions being made by caring and inventive people. We can do it, because we must, and with a combination of technologies (such as you would advocate) and shifts in social and cultural systems (that I would advocate) a reasonable and dignified future can be built.

I also keep a blog on this and related subjects here:

http://early-warning.blogspot. com

I’ll definitely link to yours – kindly reciprocate!

Friday, April 21, 2006
Karsner’s Speech

Assistant Secretary of Energy A. Karsner gave a speech that, in my humble estimation, shows just how lost the Bush Administration is – they’re talking out both sides of their mouths and have no credibility. This fellow was sent to talk to Powergen about renewable energy, something (with the exception of wind power) the Bush Admin has repeated cut funding for.

Arghh.

So, I respond to his speech point by point.

Keynote Address by Hon. Alexander Karsner, Asst. Secretary of Energy to Powergen Renewables

[snip quip and warm fuzzies]

It’s wonderful to be here with you in Las Vegas. My wife and I love Las Vegas, which is actually somewhat strange, because neither of us actually gamble, nor do we drink much. Still, it is unique in so many ways and uniquely American by birthright. Carved out of the waterless desert, it has evolved to become a neon, energy-intensive oasis tailored to leisure and whimsy and on-call, 24-7.

And it is one of the single least sustainable cities in the world. Las Vegas is a blight upon the planet.

(snip description of Death Valley and Las Vegas)

We are fortunate to have a very diverse group of friends who enjoy both environs. Yet, from time to time, we hear folks speak disdainfully of those who prefer the great outdoors to the urban nightlife or vice versa. Our view is that we cherish the very coexistence and diversity that this spectacular city and region represent–where some of the most creative works of man are married together with some of the grandest work of creation, because it is emblematic of Enjoying Life, thriving upon Liberty, and the opportunity to Pursue Happiness as one sees fit.

The problem is, Mr Karsner, the friends you know who enjoy the great outdoors and a night under the Milky Way aren’t squandering the resources of the greater southwest region. I do not see replicas of New York and Paris as spectacular or as one of the most creative works of man except in the most depraved way imaginable such a vision of
Las Vegas As Public Art makes the charlatanism of Jeff Koons look like the genius of Leonardo Da Vinci.

I have only held this post for a couple of weeks, and so mercifully, I am happy to report that I have yet to become a bureaucrat!

You can’t become what you already are.

Many of you know me and you know my background and my ambitions; it is similar to your own. My purpose today is to give voice to our mutual aspirations, to share some early perspective on the task ahead, and to explore how we might together make an impact on preserving for future generations those things we hold dearest; those things that are our birthright as Americans: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

Sorry – that’s not in the constitution. The Constitution lists Life, Liberty, and Property. I learned that in 8th grade Civics. The pursuit of happiness is in the Declaration of Independence, which is not a legally binding document.

Perhaps we take these things for granted, perhaps we do not reflect on them enough.

I think about them daily, and I find them under assault NOT from without, but from within by the Bush Administration itself.

But as I parse the magnitude of our challenge, I am motivated by these principles and the bigger picture.

We are a nation at war.

The war on terror is, by definition, bogus. It’s like a war on Daylight Strategic Bombing. Terror is a method of practicing
aggression. You can’t win a war on terror any more than you can win a war on kindergartners “hitting” each other, and, that said, the war on terror is one the Bush Administration has pretty much given up on prosecuting some time ago, Bush himself has said that he doesn’t put that much energy into trying to find and bring to justice Osama Bin Laden. So, your entire angle on “security” rings false and has no credibility.

We ARE at war, but it is in Iraq, and it was a war of choice – the Bush Administration, of which you are a part, LIED to everyone about the reasons for going to war, and then had the unmitigated temerity to bungle the whole job. Therefore, no quarter is granted to the Bush Administration for this. And for you, as a representative of this administration, to bleat “We’re at War”, is inadmissable, and doesn’t really carry any water any more. At all.

Our earth is warming.

Correct, for once. And that is a fact the Bush Administration has resisted coming around to facing FOR YEARS, wasting precious time. The Bush Administration continues to try to muzzle voices in the government who are trying to warn the public about this looming crisis. And it is also a fact that to end the human contribution to global warming, global agreements and co-ordination will be required, and it is precisely JUST SUCH agreements the Bush Junta has cheerfully ignored, defied, and circumvented since its installation by the Supreme Court in 2001. Again, the President and his circle of lackies, incompetents, cronies, and neocon fascists, have Zero Credibility in this regard, and you, as a representative of said Administration will have to do a LOT more than simply state the obvious to even hope to have a prayer of a chance of acquiring any credibility on the subject.

Carbon emissions and greenhouse gases are impacting air quality and the environment.

And AGAIN, the Bush Administration has continually resisted any legislation to up the mileage requirements on vehicles or reduce pollution at source. Again, you and the Administration you work for, have Zero Credibility.

America is addicted to oil.

And it is an addiction that the Bush Administration has continually exacerbated with idiotic regulations like subsidies for gas guzzling Hummers, and a continued antipathy toward extending and intensifying the CAFE standards.

And so, ironically, even as we find ourselves at the dawn of a new millennium, with numerous indicators of extraordinary economic growth,

Which is part of the problem, not the solution.

record low unemployment,

but with reduced income and wages for those Americans that are not part of the uppermost income brackets.

record home ownership,

combined with record debt and record low savings.

and record rates of productivity,

in a nation with no national health care, and with the least amount of vacation time in the industrialized world.

there remains a seething sense of anxiety in the land.

Geeee, I wonder WHY?

Personally, the unusually heightened sense of concern I felt when I watched those towers fall on that balmy day nearly five years ago has never fully gone away, and I see no sense in suppressing it now.

WTF does 9/11 have to do with any of this?

We are at war.

No, “We” are not. The Bush Administration invaded a comparatively defenceless dictatorship. This was a “war” of choice. The Bush Administration gave up hunting down Osama Bin Laden years ago, and he was the one who attacked us. There should have been a “war” against Al Qaeda, similar to the “war” against the Barbary Coast pirates. Instead, Bush et al invaded Afghanistan but failed to get bin Laden and then committed the USA to a bungled war in Iraq.

Fortunate though we are to live in a nation that can protect and insulate itself from the harshest realities of the battle,
it is not possible for me to grow up in a military family and not be constantly cognizant of our countrymen in harm’s way.

The Moroccan and Pakistani and Muslim people I have known from all parts of the world are amongst the kindest and most hospitable people on earth. They too dream of peace and happiness for their families. But they live daily in apprehension and fear from well-funded, militant, and ignorant fundamentalism that dwells like a cancer in their midst.

WHAT? The Pakistani people labour under a fake republic that is run by a network of strongmen propped up by the government and security apparatus of the United States of America. Pakistan is the nation most responsible for the distribution of nuclear technology to countries least interested in using it in a responsible manner. In fact, A. Khan, the man RESPONSIBLE for selling nuclear technology was PARDONED by the very strongmen that the Bush Administration is backing.

Morroco? Morocco is a de jure constitutional monarchy, with a popularly-elected parliament. The King of Morocco, with vast executive powers, can dissolve government and deploy the military at will, among other amusing responsibilities. Opposition political parties are legal and several have arisen in recent years, but are largely ineffective against the rule of an autocratic KING. Illiteracy sits at 50% and among women it is closer to 90%. I hardly see Morocco as some paragon of democratic virtue or enlightened culture.

No one lives with these realities daily nor understands them more intimately than the President of the United States.

I sincerely doubt George Bush could find Morocco on a MAP with both hands, a flashlight, and a page full of hints and brightly coloured circles in North Africa, much less understand the realities of life as an illiterate testosterone poisoned meatheaded thug. On second thought, maybe he could…

It is of course a great personal honor for me and my family that he chose to select a renewable energy developer for this post, but have no doubt – it is a tribute to this great community of risk-takers, doers and dreamers, of which I am proud to be a member.

DUDE: face facts – you are window-dressing. You’re a distraction – you’re the waving hand of the prestidigitator keeping the air occupied while the other hand of the administration continues its insane and criminal behaviour of imperialism and kleptocracy.

Both the President and Secretary Bodman recognize that we cannot afford to divorce science from commerce; innovation from entrepreneurship.

But he has proven time and time again that he IS willing to divorce science from public policy, education, and common sense if it wins him political points with the delusional morons that constitute his base as “the religious right”.

Neither carefully crafted mandates, regulatory inducements, nor research alone can deliver to us the goals for which the Department of Energy was originally established.

But carefully crafted mandates, regulatory inducements, AND research CAN deliver the following:

1. An automobile fleet that gets, AT A MINIMUM, 60 miles per gallon, with existing technology.
2. Vast subsidies for the adoption of solar panels on private homes and wind turbines on farms.
3. Decentralization of energy production (see #2)
4. Develop an American designed/based/manufactured sustainable energy industry
5. Deincentivise reproduction – i.e., make it expensive to have children
6. Develop IFR nuclear reactors to rid the planet of nuclear power and nuclear fuel while generating electricity.
7. Make it illegal to drive a gas guzzling tank as a private passenger vehicle – there is no excuse for the Hummer.
8. Subsidise the hyperinsulation of homes.
9. Incentivise local organic agriculture and permaculture.

The list of what carefully crafted mandates, regulatory inducements, and research can deliver is long and intense. This kind of “Government Can’t Work” Attitude is typical of the Bush Administration who have done their very best to prove their point that government can’t work, by making sure it doesn’t. The depressing madness and disaster that surrounded the response to Hurricane Katrina and the ongoing fiasco in Iraq are just two of the more obvious proofs of my point.

As the legacy of great American energy pioneers like Franklin and Edison and Einstein would dictate, “Necessity is the Mother of Invention.” Combining scientific inquiry with commercial creativity remains the most powerful force for transformational change available to address the substantial needs with which we are confronted.

Ummmm, Einstein did all his important work in Germany. Otherwise, the point is a Cliché, followed by a recognition of the obvious.

The brilliant people with whom I am privileged to work beside at the Department of Energy know these urgent needs inspire my rallying cry to unite folks inside Washington and around the country; inside America, and around the world.

More flag waving balderdash.

We must take our clean energy technologies and replicate, proliferate, and accelerate. There is no time to waste and no time for small thinking. We know where these train tracks are heading and we know the destination we must reach. The only question is the rate of speed we are moving and what will be the ultimate cost of the ticket?

No, the question is MONEY. Who’s getting it, and how much.

According to here:

http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=23074

The FY06 budget request for the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) energy efficiency and renewable energy (EE/RE) programs envisions reductions totaling nearly $50 million – an overall cut of roughly 4 percent. This includes a 6 percent cut in Distributed Energy programs ($60,416 to $56,629); an 8 percent cut in the Geothermal Energy program ($25,270 to $23,299); an 18 percent cut in the Biomass/Biofuels program ($88,099 to $72,164); and a 90 percent cut in the Hydropower program ($4,862 to $500).

In fact, the Bush budget proposes to phase out DOE’s hydropower program altogether and all support for the Advanced Hydropower Turbine, a joint program between DOE and the hydropower industry exploring fish-friendlier turbines, just at the time when full scale testing is about to begin at multiple locales.

Adding insult to injury for at least some of these programs, the cuts come on top of earlier reductions. The geothermal program, for example, had been funded at $28.4 million in FY03 and steadily reduced since then.

Less severely impacted is DOE’s solar R&D budget which faces a reduction of only 1.3 percent, from $85.07 million in FY 05 to $83.95 million in FY 06. The solar industry has sought to put a positive spin on its reduction calling the budget request “essentially status quo funding” while applauding a “promising new initiative to advance the development of crystalline silicon solar power.”

Overall, among DOE’s core renewable energy programs, only wind energy is proposed for an increase – 3.4 million (from $40.8 million to $44.2 million), a relatively large expansion of nearly 9 percent.

Which only goes to prove that in point of fact, the only renewable sector that saw improved funding was Wind, and this only serves to further demonstrate just how antipathic and hostile the Bush Junta is to Renewable Energy.

The way I see it, the people in this Hall are the locomotives of change and the role of government is to clear the way, get the rocks off the rails, and ensure maximum velocity. We have an obligation to steward both hardware AND policy.

And you’re NOT going to even be able to do THAT if you

A: continue to cut funding to renewable energy
B: spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year on a pointless war in Iraq
C: spend even more hundreds of billions of dollars propping up a global empire of military bases, CIA gulags, and client thug governments.
D: consistently and continuously reduce the tax burden of the wealthy.

Policy with predictability, transparency, longevity; policy conducive to capital formation that continuously cultivates market expansion of clean, green, domestic sources of power generation and fuels for transportation. All the while we must be relentless in attacking inefficiency and waste for its insidious and undermining impact on our national aspirations.

Inefficiency and WASTE? Coming from an administration that VOLUTARILY invaded Iraq and is now pissing away hundreds of billions of dollars on a nonsensical imperialist occupation? The Bush Administration is a complete disaster, and it has no credibility whatsoever. For the administration (and the Republican Party it runs) to prattle on about ineffiency and waste, all while building multimillion dollar bridges to nowhere and wasting billions of dollars a day on a foolish and horrible war in Iraq is the epitome of duplicitous double-dealing and hypocrisy.

We must do these things and more, at the fastest possible rate of market penetration, and government must be both realistic and relevant in it role. In short, we owe it to you, the leaders in the private markets, to update and redefine ourselves. We cannot perpetuate the delusion that government is leading the markets; nor should we distract ourselves with the unrealistic and ineffective ambitions of a command and control economy.

Government MUST lead the markets, because the markets are not structured to do the job. And while I am not a fan of Command/Control economy, during WW2 it DID propel the USA and the Soviet Unions into being the most powerful military nations ever seen. The USA abandoned direct command and control after WW2, and replaced it with a rapacious imperialist military/industrial complex, which was clearly such a vast improvement…

(snip rhetorical question)

It is our objective at the Department of Energy that we should increasingly become more agile, more attuned, more iterative and catalytic. In doing so, we can exert leadership that clearly seeks achievable goals, is unafraid to enter the fray, and continuously “moves the scrum” down the field.

Fine, then legalise and subsidise abortion everywhere for everyone. Subsidise birth control. Tax families with more than 2 children. Reduce or even ration consumption of energy and resources. Energy is’t “just Energy”. Energy consumption is part of the broader problem of overpopulation.

That is why I am proud to embrace Phase II, not merely as a milestone, but as a battle plan by which we can achieve great things together.

Again, not as long as the Bush Junta remains in power.

Maximizing energy efficiency and renewable energy IS the domestic epicenter in the War on Terror and it is imperative that we maximize the partnerships between the public and private sectors in new and creative ways with a sense of seriousness, national purpose and the urgency the situation merits.

Which means MONEY. Spending MONEY on the RIGHT STUFF. Spending money on an idiotic war in the middle east is spending money on the WRONG STUFF. Spending money on subsidizing rooftop solar panels and farm fields of wind turbines is spending money on the RIGHT STUFF.

The president and his cronies would rather line their pockets, and the pockets of their shareholders, by pissing away billions of borrowed dollars in Iraq. Your entire budget is a tiny fraction of what this war costs. In this world, importance is measured by dollars. Where the money goes is what is important. Your programs are not important to the Bush Administration. They do not feel you urgency, and never will.

(snip something not directed to me)

That is why last week, when I was in Detroit with the Secretary, he told the auto industry in no uncertain terms, “More needs to be done.” We need to have more flex fuel vehicles on the market of ALL vehicle types and classes and we need to have them available from all manufacturers who serve the US market. “We must continue to encourage the exponential expansion in the supply of ethanol available.”

Ethanol? WTF? How about 60 mpg diesel cars? How about an outright ban on private passenger vehicles over 4000lbs? Electric commuter vehicles? Expansion of telecommuting? Increased funding for public transport? Ethanol isn’t going to save us, or the car industry. Eliminating the need to drive is more important than what you drive, and what you drive is more important (for now) than what fuel it uses.

When the President of the United States personally visits a solar manufacturing facility to announce millions of dollars in increased funding aimed at changing “the way we power homes and lead our lives” you can be assured he understands you.

BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! See the quote above which shows that he actually has REDUCED funding for critical research, and has only increased funding for wind power. If it wasn’t for the Danes and the Germans shaming him, he probably would have cut that too… And the energy that is produced in our petroleum society is being wasted on a pointless cycle of consumption – it’s Cheney’s “non-negotiable” American Lifestyle ITSELF that’s destroying the planet. And no amount of handwaving is going to change that.

When the President personally takes interest in the development cycle of battery storage for plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles, he clearly seeks to inspire a bigger picture.

Then why does he CUT THE FUNDING for alternative energy research? HMMMM?

When President Bush declares that wind power could provide up to 20% of our national generation capacity, you can be certain his vision is both exciting and real.

We need it to do better than 20%. WAY better than 20%.

(snip blather and flag waving nonsense)

All this speech demonstrated is the delusional state of mind that inhabits the powers that be. NOTHING will get done in the USA until the Bush Junta is removed from office. Period.

We’re in a scary holding pattern. Much of the rest of the world is far ahead of us on all of these points – from localized farming to high technology wind power. The Bush Administration continues to fund military adventures over everything else, and if continued unabated, will only serve to bankrupt the US Treasury and scuttle the hopes and dreams of a nation.

Monday, April 03, 2006
Chevy Tahoe Commercial – Culture Jamming Opportunity

Those are cool, but why leave culture jamming to the professional agitators, when you can do it at the request of corporate giants?

Here’s One I Made
(LINK IS NOW BROKEN – 22 FEB 09)

that’s a quick example of what I am talking about.

It seems the witless dinosaurs running the show over at Chevy haven’t been able to come up with any good ideas to sell their gas guzzling Stupid Useless Vehicles. So they are enlisting the General Public to make ads for them. you can enter a contest. I have no idea what the prize is (probably one of those stupid Tahoes) but the fun part is this:

1. They supply a bunch of video clips and music
2. You can put any text you want over the images

When you’re done, remember to email yourself the link to the movie, as if you’re letting a friend know how cool your Tahoe Commercial Is. As If.

Then pass the link around (I put mine through tinyurl.com for the sake of clarity…)

They see it as advertising, but it’s an open invitation to massive criticism, IMHO.

Make your own here:
(LINK IS NOW BROKEN – 22 FEB 09)

Chevy puts a sign on its back saying “PLEASE KICK ME”

What a bunch of idiots.

Friday, March 17, 2006
$9 trillion in debt

The USA.gov just voted itself te ability to go to $9 trillion dollars in debt.

The factoid as to how much this debt is per capita is pretty awful, but I have also read that $9 trillion dollars would build 28 Eiffel Towers made of solid gold. That could be cool.

For what it’s worth I figured something out that’s kind of interesting – how long it will take to pay back the debt, assuming the USA.gov is somehow suddenly able to turn $1 million a day “profit”. Now, the simple fact is that the Gov’t has RARELY been able to “turn a profit”, ever, but I won’t go there… So, let’s just pretend the USA.gov can actually pull a million dollars a day and use it to pay the debt.

First we take 9 trillion and we divide it by the million dollars.

that gives us 9 million days to pay it.

Then we divide the 9 million days by 365.25 (roughly the number of days in a year) and we get how many years it will take to pay back $9 trillion dollars in debt at the rate of $1 million dollars a day:

24,640.657 years.

Yes, 24,640.657 years.

Bascially, right around the next glaciation.

It ain’t gettin paid back. Ever. I think we need to get that point out loud and clear:

Hello! China? Japan? South Korea? Great Britain? Hello? Guess what you guys: we’re going to stiff you. You’re not going to see a DIME of that money. Not now, not ever.

Sorry.

Tuesday, March 14, 2006
PO nihilism sux

Well, I was in SF for Spring Break with wife and child. We had a wonderful time – I miss them both so much. then I flew back to NJ this past Sunday to find my car inoperant. Which is something expected and prepared for with a jumper battery thing. Which worked. Then I put it in the trunk, and drove to work. That evening, the car didn’t start. The battery jumper thing didn’t have the spizzzz to crank the car, so I called AAA and got a jump. I am SICK of this nonsense, so I drove it to a repair shop, and Mr RepairMan will sort its electrical hash and I will no longer have to deal with this nonsense.

This evening I am having dinner with a fellow professor here at Urban University, so I have something pleasurable to look forward to. Gah.

Now, not to make my life more miserable, I am, as usual in constant battle with Peak Oil Nihilists. The odd thing is, frequently people complain that I’m too much of gloomer. I think people who believe that need to get out more often. That said, I do see the value in the nihilist argument, for if nothing is done to gracefully depopulate the planet of people to a sustainable level, nad if nothing is done to curb te production of greenhouse gases, the species will face a catastrophic die-off.

I do believe things are being done – not enough – but it’s a start. I think that we’re enough along the way that once we do understand ourselves to be in Peak, we won’t see people running around like a pack of idiots in panic. But some people seem to think that “once we peak, all hell breaks loose, run for the hills, etc.” And I am constantly finding myself at odds withh such people, as they share a similar mindset to a particular strand of American Apocalypticalism that rears up every few years. Not that ALL such notions of the Apocalyse are equally valid or invalid. The notion predicting that Jesus will come from the sky and judge the planet I find far less credible than the notion that we will all be incinerated in a nuclear war. The idea that the entire species will find itself in depraved daily battles over scraps of food the day after oil peaks I think is about as likely as Jesus coming down to judge the planet. This doesn’t mean that I believe we will NEVER be in such a state, I just find it extremely unlikely.

Sadly, a number of people disagree with me, and one such fellow savaged another person on one of my energy lists. I defended said person and the results follow:

Satellite space stations in geosynchronous orbits beamed electrical energy that tells me (X) in NE (Y) did write:

I have one question Fred, if you don’t believe in PO, why are you wasting your time in this group.

I am one of the last to give credence to “energy fairy” stories, but frankly your position is so wrong, it’s not even wrong, and I see it as a kind of 21st century millennialism.

First off, I don’t Believe In PO. Yep – you heard it here first. Stuart Studebaker Does Not Believe In Peak Oil. Why? Because I don’t believe in facts. I UNDERSTAND FACTS. Belief has nothing to do with it, and when someone tells me “You gotta believe” I know I’m being decieved.

And this is the crux of the matter, and it is a continual theme here on ROE2 and ER and a bunch of other places:

Does the point where oil production peaks *necessarily* mean the instantaneous collapse of civilisation? Some people hole up in the hills and say “Yep. We’re all gonna die.” I humbly submit that you are completely incorrect.

This does NOT mean that everything is going to be George Jetson Peachy Keen. Far From It, actually.

What it does mean is that I think it is ***extremely unlikely*** that come 2012 we will have teeming hoards of violent assholes roaming the countryside shooting families for a box of Cheerios.

If you think that is true, then, That’s Your Problem. Just get used to having me call you on it every time you pass it off as some kind of obvious truism, because -

a: it ain’t
b: it shouldn’t
c: it might, but ain’t likely

Should people prepare? Yeah, you betcha. But prepare for WHAT? Madmax idiot infantile masturbatory fantasies of instant hell, or a century long decline to 1850?

Personally, I see the long decline in the cards, and the only thing that would stop it is something like fusion or CFR or some other equally powerful collection of technologies, in which case, we’re looking at 1850 in 500 years or later.

To help create a long decline vs. the fast crash, is for people to continue Doing What We Are Doing : getting the word out, and helping sell and produce the sustainable society.

To mix some metaphors, you can’t beat thermodynamics, but you can move the goal post… It’s kind of like “Artificial Intelligence”. The obvious truth is: Machines can’t, won’t, and will never think. Period. But: we can dumb down the notion of what constitutes “thought” to the point where we think “Machines Can Think.” It’s like the “interactive website”. There is NOTHING interactive about it – it is simply a user accessing a logic tree. People are more interactive on antiquated “email lists” than any of us will ever be coaxing feeble data out of a Flash movie.

Same thing for the post-carbon society. Right now we (as a society) look at big McMansions and SUVs as the Ne Plus Ultra of comfort and utility. We come home, turn on all the incandescents in the house, crank the heat to 75, nuke some PeopleChow ™ and plop in front of a giant CRT to watch “entertainment”.

Well,

rather than promote a room for each pet, we could look to smaller homes and promote “cozy” and “home”. The car could be an LEV (Like a Twike) and the home would be close to work, so public transport or walking would be best. And that would be seen as “the Ne Plus Ultra” luxury. And those clunky old incandescents? Feh! I’ve got the swanky LEDs! And for mood lighting, nothing sexier than a candle or two. And the heat? If thhe house is hyper-insulated, heating becomes much less of a problem. And giant TV? What for? I have a projector – bigger image, less power. But what about “my shows”? Only for idiots. The Cool Thing is to be entertained by the stuff coming over the fibre optic cable, which is made of sand, not metal…

The above description is not “Real” – it’s more illustrational, so don’t take it as a straw man. What I am pointing at as Real is to USE the system to Better Ends. With conservatives (like Roscoe Bartlett, Matt Simmons, et al) on one side and the tree huggers and liberals (Like Udall and Gore et al) on the other, this is definitely a do-able deal. Not easy, but do-able. So rather than sit and snipe sourness upon the world, work together to save it…