Posted: Wed Jul 12, 2006 9:35 am Post subject: Re: Peak oil - coming in for the big win
I was thinking this morning, that America & the West, are like the fingernails of a person.
It's all a matter of perspective...
From the point of view of your fingernails, the best possible outcome is death. Only in death do the fingernails get the full resources available for growth. The rest of the body can protest, saying that without them, the fingernails too will perish.
But the fingernails know nothing about that.
They only know growth.
The hydrocarbon revolution was a great boon for the wealthy...
For almost everyone else, it's been a nightmare.
Same with all our supposed "innovations". Sure they are great... for the benefactors. But for the vast majority, our hydrocarbon wealth has not delivered the promised-land. Instead it has fostered the greatest poor/rich gap in human history.
Modern Petro-Agriculture has not decreased hunger... more starve than ever before.
Modern medicine has not decreased disease... more perish from treatable illness than ever.
Name any modern innovation, and you will quickly see the terrible impact it's had on humanity. Not because the innovation is bad itself, but because of the way we administer them.
Electric cars & resource wars...
I have met the enemy... & it's me. _________________ "When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." - Stephen F Roberts.
Posted: Wed Jul 12, 2006 9:48 am Post subject: Re: Peak oil - coming in for the big win
Jacksoncage wrote:
Peak oil may not be so hard to solve after all.
Quote:
1. Offer a giant tax incentive to the first car company to improve its fleet's MPG to a 100 mpg average. Offer considerable incentives to every other manufacturer who achieves the same feat.
Your scheme intrigues me, simple and enticing. Realistically though what would this feat as you call it do to the price of oil? Make it go up, or make it go down? Well I'm guessing that it would send the price down. What would this drop in price do to the way it is consumed? Well if the price of oil is way cheaper this would encourage even greater consumption because more people could afford it, wouldn't you say? Not just in the US but worldwide. Surely the manufacturer of such a product would want to export it, or they'd lose their edge. Make hay while the sun shines as they say. And what would a fall in price do to viability of many unconventional oil projects? With prices low many would be expected to fold. How much production which is presently unconventional in nature, and has come on-stream over the past few years only because of high oil prices would dissapear from annual volumes as a result?
Quote:
2. Research and develop electric cars - their implications as to power grids, their costs, their benefits, and how they can be brought to market.
Honestly, how much more research into electric cars would it take? They're not exactly a new discovery now are they? And over what timeframe - now be honest - would we expect the grand audit of all this infrastructure to be handed down? Once that's happened when could we expect to see the transition start to occur? How long would it take to retire the exisitng fleet and the entire petroleum-driven infrastrustructure? Who would raise the capital? The existing tax base, cash-strapped homeowners in the mortgage belt? Perhaps company tax rates could be increased to make up the shortfall? You know the Fortune 500 could make it their patriotic duty to contribute to this grand project. Seems reasonable to me, as reasonabe as your scheme, the country is at war after all.
Quote:
3. Sell these cars to citizens, shipping and delivery companies, offering simple, easy-to-understand payment plans for people who cannot yet afford them.
I think the car you have in mind might have to resemble a VW from the Nazi era to make them so affordable that even those who don't have medical insurance, or a living wage - you know the working poor, the people who actually do things that make the country run, could get behind the wheel of one.
Quote:
And peak oil is nullified. I have a feeling the electric car (or any other car that uses an oil-substitue) will be brought to market sometime before we start eating each other because gas is too pricey.
You talking about the market mechanism signalling it's time to switch to alternatives, arent you? But you're not familiar with the lag effects involved. Is that right? I have an alternative feeling about the price signal. Once oil is not too far past its peak we will have to "eat our cars" in order to simply eat instead. The price signal will come at exactly the point when the oil necessary to drive the petroleum-reliant infrastructure your scheme would rely upon to implement itself will became both scarcer, and more volatile in price. The market will not invest heavily in something that won't have an immediate pay-off, so they will delay and delay. Otherwise shareholders will get angry! So what will happen to your grand transformation when the economy necessary to support it is affected by the price shocks emanating from a permanently contracting supply?
Last edited by peripato on Wed Jul 12, 2006 9:59 am; edited 1 time in total
Posted: Wed Jul 12, 2006 9:55 am Post subject: Re: Peak oil - coming in for the big win
[quote="EnergyUnlimited"]If one talk about electric cars (which at least in theory could replace current version), he should ask from where necessary electricity will come.
It appears to be complete crap, that it will come from cheap overnight electricity, we have now.
When I first learned about PO (back in Dec/Jan) I immediately panicked and it was partly b/c I started with Kunstler's book. Though the book is informative, it certainly can create feelings of panic and hopelessness. The reason for this (in my opinion) is that if someone takes a look at how oil is entirely integrated into every facet of our lives (we live, eat, and drink oil) then the problem becomes overwhelming b/c we can't possibly find an alternative to everything that oil provides.
Going back to electricity. Even though electricity is largely generated by fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal), it does not have to stay that way. This system was created b/c of all the cheap fossil fuel we had. Alternatives need to be found (nuclear?).
If we get bogged down and say that oil is an essential and irreplaceable part of everything, then the situation is truly hopeless. However, if we realize that oil is primarily concentrated in certain areas, then we can take action to mitigate it's effects. In my opinion, transportation is the key. I don't propose that we have 200 million electric cars in the US alone. But what if, we had a fraction of those running on electric engines and we made smarter decisions about the rest -- most of it is truly wasted on trucking/transportation of goods in an truly inefficient manner (travelling 2hrs per day to get to work, etc).
Will there be problems even if we change our transportation infrastructure. Of course, but it will give us time and hopefully the ability to find better uses for the remaining oil and other fossil fuels.
Joined: Dec 16, 2004 Posts: 706 Location: Santa Monica, CA
Posted: Wed Jul 12, 2006 10:01 am Post subject: Re: Peak oil - coming in for the big win
chakra wrote:
The steps you describe might not save us completely, but in the very least it would buy us another 10 years at least.
I see. The idea is to have 10 years more of mass motoring. Sure we'll have an energy crash after the end of that period-- and sure we really don't need cars-- but the continued mis-investment in car dependent America will be fun-- more traffic jams at the expense of the future.
chakra wrote:
Even if all new vehicles purchased got 100 mpg starting in a few years, within 10 years it could reduce fuel consumption by many millions of barrels a day.
Machine energy efficiency and systemic energy efficiency are not the same and one doesn't necessarily promote the other.
We can flood the landscape with a mega-fleet of high MPG cars and the public will simply drive more the they would have otherwise, consuming all the efficiency while investing in more auto infrastructure and sprawl. This is the perfect case for Jevon's paradox where energy efficiency prevents systemic efficiency.
Or we can keep the existing fleet and dramatically reduce the amount of driving. Perhaps instead of having an average of one person per vehicle we can have 3. And perhaps instead of the average commuter traveling 15 miles one way to work the average can go to 7 miles. Under these conditions the adoption of high MPG cars would be slow or nonexistent but the energy efficiency in the system would improve greatly.
chakra wrote:
Not only that, these produced vehicles would also be purchased in all the other economies too, saving additional millions of barrels a day.
More confusion about efficiency and energy consumptive patterns. If there were the building of hundreds of million high MPG cars for the use of people around the world, then there would more oil consumed in transport
chakra wrote:
At least perhaps we could reduce our consumption at the rate of decline and ride this boat for more time.
One more blow of top for the auto species will definitely take society down with them.
Posted: Thu Jul 13, 2006 5:42 am Post subject: Re: Peak oil - coming in for the big win
You want to buy some time from Peak Oil? A stroke of the legislative pen, and a signature from the President will do it. Here's how:
Delegate a lane of the highways for bicycles, and impose strong enforcement of cars to yield to bicycles. Impose a 1 dollar gas tax, and use it to subsidize the sale of recumbent bicycles. It wouldn't be popular, but it would massively bring down gasoline use.
Recumbent bicycles are much more comfortable and efficient, and make longer commutes more possible. You can get on a recumbent and go 50 miles without thinking about it. The main thing is that you don't have a sore butt after an hour of pedaling, like you do with a conventional.
One of the main companies makes a recumbent now, I think it's Huffy or something, and they back it up. A lot of the boutique recumbents had a lot of problems. I have a Vision and it broke every time I took it out. but they are expensive. I know there's good bents out there, but they'll set you back about 2 grand. Of course a car will set you back a lot more.
And hell, a lot of us would tolerate the sore butt and the possible impotence for the money saving and weight loss of pedaling to work and back on a conventional bicycle. I know I would.
Posted: Thu Jul 13, 2006 7:16 am Post subject: Re: Peak oil - coming in for the big win
foodnotlawns wrote:
Recumbent bicycles are much more comfortable and efficient, and make longer commutes more possible. You can get on a recumbent and go 50 miles without thinking about it. The main thing is that you don't have a sore butt after an hour of pedaling, like you do with a conventional.
One of the main companies makes a recumbent now, I think it's Huffy or something, and they back it up. A lot of the boutique recumbents had a lot of problems. I have a Vision and it broke every time I took it out. but they are expensive. I know there's good bents out there, but they'll set you back about 2 grand. Of course a car will set you back a lot more.
.
[sup]
These are cheaper and maybe even more practical than recumbents
Joined: Sep 06, 2004 Posts: 5315 Location: Smalltown New Zealand
Posted: Thu Jul 13, 2006 3:41 pm Post subject: Re: Peak oil - coming in for the big win
Elan_Rasa wrote:
If we get bogged down and say that oil is an essential and irreplaceable part of everything, then the situation is truly hopeless.
Now you're getting it.
Don't forget to add that "The American way of life is non-negotiable". _________________ "Complex problems have simple, easy to understand, wrong answers." - Henry Louis Mencken
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