For a minute there I thought I had to get off my couch, when all the while the fact is we don't have to do anything much but keep things afloat for just a few decades more! In fact, we'd best shut up about PO, because if our offspring finds out we knew about it all along, they'll turn and wring our necks come 2036!
Regarding the amount the average American uses versus the amount you use:
Is the amount the average American uses take into account military/industrial use?
In other words, I as an individual may not use much. I don't drive too many places, don't buy too many consumer goods etc. . .
But if you tookk the total amount used by the US - the military, big business, etc. and divided it by 293 million Americans, the number would be much bigger.
Joined: May 17, 2004 Posts: 1969 Location: Democratic People's Republic of Washington
Posted: Sat May 29, 2004 4:19 am Post subject:
MattSavinar wrote:
Semler:
Regarding the amount the average American uses versus the amount you use:
Is the amount the average American uses take into account military/industrial use?
In other words, I as an individual may not use much. I don't drive too many places, don't buy too many consumer goods etc. . .
But if you took the total amount used by the US - the military, big business, etc. and divided it by 293 million Americans, the number would be much bigger.
Matt
Good point, I did not consider that use of oil. I also did not include trans-continental shipments, or aircraft usage either. I also did not include taxi services, or other public transportation methods. If these were to be factored into the national average, this would explain where the astronomically high fuel usage per capita comes in. _________________ Here Lies the United States Of America.
Posted: Sat May 29, 2004 3:45 pm Post subject: Re: ok
k_semler wrote:
Aaron wrote:
Alright I give...
More efficient use of energy does not strengthen our economy.
huh??
We were discussing if conservation helps build the economy... _________________ "When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." - Stephen F Roberts.
So what happens to all the businesses? Particularly small businesses that barely hold on - that can barely pain the loans they took out to start the business? If the Mom and Pop store on the corner experiences a 25-50 percent reduction in business, what happens?
They go bankrupt.
So the medicine will be very nasty tasting. We have to be willing to ask/demand a lot out of people to avoid a truly horrific crash.
It puts me in a wierd position. How do I ask somebody to support a program that, if successful, will result in them going bankrupt, losing their business, thier home, etc. . .?
Of course the alternative is worse - but try accepting that when your the one losing everything.
Joined: May 23, 2004 Posts: 276 Location: Melbourne, Australia
Posted: Sat May 29, 2004 10:25 pm Post subject:
MattSavinar wrote:
They go bankrupt.
So the medicine will be very nasty tasting. We have to be willing to ask/demand a lot out of people to avoid a truly horrific crash.
It puts me in a wierd position. How do I ask somebody to support a program that, if successful, will result in them going bankrupt, losing their business, thier home, etc. . .?
Of course the alternative is worse - but try accepting that when your the one losing everything.
Tis exactly why I feel that collective enlightenment is impossible, certainly not for people who have committed their lives to some other purpose (kids, mortgage, business, all those things you do from the 20s onwards).
So what's the solution?
Kill anybody over 30? They tried that in Logan's Run. Nope.
Let those who can't or won't learn die? Well, it'll probably happen either way
Burn ourselves out trying to re-educate people? Would be counterproductive to invest more effort than people like Matt already have (and quite well I might add) for folks who seem to be willing to accept it and read the rest of the site
Personally, I'd rather worry about those already like minded and those prepared to accept the info put out by people like Matt, and work on building something to help those who can and will help pull through what we believe will come. _________________ The purpose of human life revolves around an endless need to extract ever increasing amounts of carbon out of the ground and then release it into the atmosphere.
Joined: May 17, 2004 Posts: 1969 Location: Democratic People's Republic of Washington
Posted: Sat May 29, 2004 11:07 pm Post subject: Re: OK
Aaron wrote:
k_semler wrote:
Aaron wrote:
Alright I give...
More efficient use of energy does not strengthen our economy.
huh??
We were discussing if conservation helps build the economy...
Oh yeah. Well, then here is how I see conservation versus the economic system. The capitalist system is based on increasing your profit margin as much as possible through the free market by winning over customers from your competition, lowering production and distribution costs, and lowering your retail prices. As an individual, the capitalist system is based on "keeping up with the Joneses", and as such, more consumption is encouraged to help along the economy.
Since an ever increasing consumption rate is a necessity for the modern capitalist system that is currently employed, efforts to conservation are looked down upon. To conserve resources would neuter the very economic system which we hold dear. More conservation would mean that the demand for consumables would not keep growing, and would in fact decrease. Such a reduce in demand for products would result in an initial over supply of the consumables that would normally keep up with demand. As supply increases over demand, the prices for products would plummet, resulting in massive deflation.
Since most business establishments rely on a steady growing customer base to sell their products to, but would be faced with increased stock, with less demand, and lowering prices to try to attract customers which would result in deflation, the business owners would not be able to pay their bills to continue operations. As a result of local businesses closing, people would be forced to conserve even more as businesses everywhere are suffering from the same deflation effects. Initially only small businesses would be effected, but eventually the deflation and reducing demand would impact chain stores also. Since their customer base would no longer be as strong as it once was, layoffs would occur to compensate for lost profits. This would ease the burden of the reduction of demand only slightly, as no new customers are coming through the doors to your establishment, the deletion would eventually effect large chain stores such as Wal-Mart also, although it would take longer for the chain operations to go bust than a small localized shop would.
As a result of the massive store closures, and reduced demand, economic recession would begin to set in. If the situation were not changed very rapidly, the recession would grown into a depression similar to what happened in 1929, if not even worse. After the depression era was over, 33% of operating businesses were forced to close down forever. Only 66% of the nation's economic structure remained after this depression.
If everyone conserved to the best of their ability, the capitalist system would collapse on its self like a house of cards that has been built too high. This is most of the reason why society encourages an individual to use as much resources and buy as much consumables as humanly possible. Such wasteful behavior is necessary to the perpetuation of the modern economic system. If a new era of conservation were to take hold, it would lead directly to economic collapse. _________________ Here Lies the United States Of America.
Joined: May 24, 2004 Posts: 3428 Location: California, USA
Posted: Sun May 30, 2004 2:31 am Post subject:
So therefore, the economy doesn't care if it's selling "goods" or "bads", as long as the volume keeps increasing every year.
Selling more soda is good because that helps the soft drink industry grow. But adults and teenagers can only drink so much of the stuff, so you have to find another market, so you sell it to children in elementary schools. Selling it to children helps make them obese, and a predictable percentage of those will get diabetes. Now this is really good for the economy because obesity sells diet-aids of various kinds, and medical services. And diabetes sells more medical services, in fact a whole lifetime of increased medical expenditures per patient. So according to the logic of economics, obese children are a good thing.
Imagine the boost for the GNP if heroin and crack-cocaine were legalized.
Now take a look at "boom and bust." How many times have you heard the word "manic" used to describe a stock-market frenzy during boom times? And of course the words "crash" and "depression" for the opposite. In other words, a tacit admission that the economy performs like a person with bipolar disorder. Do you know anyone with bipolar disorder? Do you know what the suicide rate of bipolars is, compared to the normal population?
Or, if we were to describe the cycle in terms of consumption habits, what we've got is "binge" and "purge." In other words, bulemia.
So in essence, civilization has been made a slave to economic theories and practices which are isomorphic with life-threatening diseases. And the entire premise of endless growth is isomorphic with the behavior of cancer cells. And now we're about to go into something that looks like the terminal phase.
To anyone with science or engineering background, this is completely, irrefutably insane. We can all describe solutions that are fully feasible from an engineering point of view: massive expansion of nuclear, wind, solar, and other long-term viable energy sources; massive investment in new energy R&D; massive conversion of infrastructure to heightened efficiency. In fact it's altogether likely that such moves would stimulate an enormous amount of business activity.
But then we sigh and say it won't happen because the short-term interests govern and the short-term interests aren't motivated to do it because they won't make enough money short-term. By analogy, the taxi is about to drive over a cliff but the driver won't stop because he's too interested in keeping the meter running a little while longer.
I would suggest that there has to come a time when more rational interests govern. Now here the story gets very interesting.
As I was writing this, I vaguely recalled something called "Technocracy," which I remembered reading about some years ago. A quasi-political movement to bring scientific and engineering principles to bear on political and economic questions, but not in the sense of communism or some other kind of inhumane dystopia or Brave New World.
I just looked up Technocracy and it still exists, and who did I find right at the center of it but M. King Hubbert himself!
(Frankly their web page looks like poop, they could really use a make-over, but the content is really interesting. Some of the articles were scanned in and suffer badly as a result, i.e. incomplete sentences and fragments, but if you're willing to overlook the crappy production, there's some really interesting stuff there.)
Apparently Hubbert was one of the founders of the Technocracy organization!
And if you look through some of their documents, what you find is stuff about energy-based accounting replacing what they call the "price system," which is their phrase for the kind of insanity-driven economism that I've just been ranting about in this posting!
One of their key points has something to do with economics being quantified in terms of energy consumption rather than a price/commodity system. There's a lot more, and I've only looked through their site briefly while writing this posting.
But it seems to me that if Hubbert's predictions are on-target, then his (and his colleagues who founded Technocracy) prescriptions at least deserve a read. And they might address one of the thorniest problems we are facing right now: which is to develop a body of economic theory that will overcome the limitations of the current disease-like economics and get us through the coming transition.
If the economy is stimulated through conservation and efficiency it will consume more of everything as it grows. Including oil... _________________ "When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." - Stephen F Roberts.
wow, interesting read on hubbert's energy-money ideas. Would have worked 35 years ago maybe. A lot of things would have worked 35 years ago....but here we are in 2004 "up crap crik with no paddle". _________________ "The future power is manpower"
Joined: May 24, 2004 Posts: 3428 Location: California, USA
Posted: Fri Jun 11, 2004 8:46 pm Post subject:
Thirty-five years ago, people would have read that stuff and said, "it would have worked thirty-five years ago."
It is axiomatically true that for any given crisis situation, the longer one waits to choose and apply a solution, the fewer are the choices of solutions that remain.
There's no time like the present. And there's no good reason not to give it all we've got. Fear is no excuse. Despair is no excuse. Rationalized prophesies of doom are no excuse. If not us, who? If not now, when?
the US economy is
40% more energy efficient than in 1971, it also uses 25% more energy.
Quote:
Jevons had no answer to the paradox he raised. Britain could either rapidly use up its cheap source of fuel--the coal upon which its industrialization rested--or use it up more slowly. In the end, Jevons said they should use it up rapidly: "If we lavishly and boldly push forward in the creation of our riches, both material and intellectual, it is hard to over-estimate the pitch of beneficial influence to which we may attain in the present. But the maintenance of such a position is physically impossible. We have to make the momentous choice between brief but true greatness and longer continued mediocrity" (The Coal Question, 459460). Put in that way, the direction to be taken was clear: to pursue glory in the present and a drastically degraded position for future generations. Insofar as Jevons' paradox continues to apply to us today--that is, insofar as technology by itself (given the present framework of production) offers no way out of our environmental dilemmas, which generally increase with the scale of t he economy--we must either adopt Jevons' conclusion or pursue an alternative that Jevons never discussed and which doubtless never entered his mind: the transformation of the social relations of production in the direction of socialism, a society governed not by the search for profit but by peoples' genuine needs, and the requirements of socio-ecological sustainability.
http://www.peakoil.com/images/net_energy.jpg _________________ "When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." - Stephen F Roberts.
Praise HawkMan
Last edited by Aaron on Tue Aug 24, 2004 7:42 am; edited 3 times in total
bump _________________ "When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." - Stephen F Roberts.
Aaron, I have been researching the EROEI of various sources of info and it is tough to find anything reliable.
It seems far more common for scientific studies to use EPR (Energy Payback Ratio) when comparing various sources of energy.
EPR = ratio of energy produced compared to energy expended in construction and operation
Various studies put the EPR of various sources at the following.
wind farms generate between 17 and 39 times as much energy as is required for their construction and operation
coal plants generate on average 11
nuclear plants generate on average 16
Some really good wind areas have a EPR of over 80.
Yeah, I'm not really satisfied with the research I have seen in net energy either.
I suspect that the energy quality drastically affects the comparisons accuracy. Some of these optimistic assessments on ROI seem more like second guessing to me, than statistical correlation. And since many of the alternatives are being estimated based on info from the lab rather than commercial use history, I'm a skeptic.
I do think wind probably has a pretty high return rate. And obviously nuclear does as well. Exotics like PV and bio fuel seem less clear. More research needed I think.
But I have yet to see anything to make me optimistic when compared to oil & gas. It's the scale that bugs me the most I guess.The sort of social inertia we have going won't be easy to maintain without a cheap way to get terawatt of power. _________________ "When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." - Stephen F Roberts.
Are we seeing the evidence to support this idea today? _________________ "When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." - Stephen F Roberts.
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