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THE Transition Phase Thread Pt. 2 (merged)

General discussions of the systemic, societal and civilisational effects of depletion.

Re: I"m part way through my transition to post peak life

Unread postby PrestonSturges » Thu 19 Aug 2010, 19:46:28

Expatriot wrote:
PrestonSturges wrote: I'm lily white going back to the 1700s, so it doesn't worry me, but don't make any assumptions about what side I'll be on.

I love it. You're lily white and you think that you'll have a choice. Let me know how that goes for you. :lol:
Judging by New Orleans, it was whites that went on a rampage in a grid down situation and started shooting black people randomly based on their elaborate fantasy scenarios. A number of them have plead guilty.
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Re: I"m part way through my transition to post peak life

Unread postby Expatriot » Thu 19 Aug 2010, 20:10:34

PrestonSturges wrote:
Expatriot wrote:
PrestonSturges wrote: I'm lily white going back to the 1700s, so it doesn't worry me, but don't make any assumptions about what side I'll be on.

I love it. You're lily white and you think that you'll have a choice. Let me know how that goes for you. :lol:
Judging by New Orleans, it was whites that went on a rampage in a grid down situation and started shooting black people randomly based on their elaborate fantasy scenarios. A number of them have plead guilty.


Oh believe me, I'm not taking sides. I'm merely pointing out that even Eminem isn't going to be welcome on the black side when the lines form.
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Re: I"m part way through my transition to post peak life

Unread postby Pretorian » Thu 19 Aug 2010, 20:48:45

PrestonSturges wrote:I'm lily white going back to the 1700s, so it doesn't worry me, but don't make any assumptions about what side I'll be on.


Who does.

"It is not constructive to hate those of other races, or even those of mixed races. But a separation must
be maintained for the survival of one’s own race. One must, however, hate with a pure and perfect
hatred those of one’s own race who commit treason against one’s own kind and against the nations of
one’s own kind. One must hate with perfect hatred all those People or practices which destroy one’s
People, one’s culture, or the racial exclusiveness of one’s territorial imperative."

David Lane


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""What we must fight for is to safeguard the existence and reproduction of our race and our people, the sustenance of our children and the purity of our blood, the freedom and independence of the fatherland, so that our people may mature for the fulfillment of the mission allotted it by the creator of the universe. Every thought and every idea, every doctrine and all knowledge, must serve this purpose. And everything must be examined from this point of view and used or rejected according to its utility.""
Adolf Hitler
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


I guess we have a lot of clean up to do. Again!
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Re: I"m part way through my transition to post peak life

Unread postby PrestonSturges » Thu 19 Aug 2010, 21:01:16

Expatriot wrote:
PrestonSturges wrote:
Expatriot wrote:
PrestonSturges wrote: I'm lily white going back to the 1700s, so it doesn't worry me, but don't make any assumptions about what side I'll be on.

I love it. You're lily white and you think that you'll have a choice. Let me know how that goes for you. :lol:
Judging by New Orleans, it was whites that went on a rampage in a grid down situation and started shooting black people randomly based on their elaborate fantasy scenarios. A number of them have plead guilty.

Oh believe me, I'm not taking sides. I'm merely pointing out that even Eminem isn't going to be welcome on the black side when the lines form.
Pure ad hom. Please stop.
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Re: I"m part way through my transition to post peak life

Unread postby PrestonSturges » Fri 20 Aug 2010, 00:59:26

Very well. I'm too busy to start my own thread, but when I do, the mockery will be ruthless.

Meanwhile, I'm thinking up ways to mark Glenn Becks next rally, possibly with a Confederate flag burning.
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Re: I"m part way through my transition to post peak life

Unread postby Ayoob » Sat 21 Aug 2010, 02:20:24

Just a little update from our little family.

We're starting to make Christmas presents this year for family and friends. It's pretty much all going to be homemade, home canned stuff. Chili, jellies and jams, maybe a beer bread recipe in a jar, etc. I'm learning how to make sweet tea wine this year so we might ship off a little of that.

If I get my dehydrator running this weekend, I might do bags of jerky for everyone, too. London Broil's $2 a pound this week.
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Will the Transition to Renewables Be Fast or Slow?

Unread postby Graeme » Wed 31 Aug 2011, 22:17:14

Will the Transition to Renewables Be Fast or Slow?

Yes, solar is a miniscule part of the energy budget, but history shows market shares can shift rapidly.


The first solar cells could only convert 4 percent to 11 percent of the sunlight that struck them into electricity -- and those early prototypes cost hundreds of dollars each.

Now, scientists have come up with solar cells that can convert more than 40 percent of the light that hits them into power and use the leftover power to heat water for your home. Solar modules in 1980 cost $21.80 a watt. Now, the cheapest solar modules cost less than 75 cents to make. By contrast, oil has risen from $11 a barrel to over $100 in that same period and even oil companies agree that new deposits are more expensive and more difficult to find than ever before.

Sun power is also relatively untapped. The world’s annual energy diet is equivalent to the amount of energy in three cubic miles of oil. Three cubic miles of oil would cover the island of Manhattan 450 feet deep in crude, or fill 9,000 sports arenas, says Malhotra.

The sunlight that strikes the earth every year contains as much energy as 22,000 cubic miles of oil. A tiny fraction of that light could provide more than enough energy for all the biofuel crops and solar panels we’d ever need.

Put it another way: if you could bottle the next hour of sunlight, you’d have enough energy for the entire globe for the next 14 months.


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Re: Will the Transition to Renewables Be Fast or Slow?

Unread postby prajeshbhat » Thu 01 Sep 2011, 01:05:22

I am all for solar power too. I tend to lean towards the Solar Thermal side of the spectrum. The transition to renewable power will be slow. But Photovoltaic solar panels are improving lives of poor people in several countries. Not so much in the developed world. The consumers there have overwhelmingly voted for cheap fossil fuels. One could follow the model that was tried and tested by SELCO solar company in India. It is a For-Profit Social Enterprise. Here is the founder explaining why solar is affordable for the poor and expensive for the rich.
http://techtv.mit.edu/videos/1702-harish-hande-energy-services-for-the-poor
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Re: Will the Transition to Renewables Be Fast or Slow?

Unread postby Pops » Thu 01 Sep 2011, 08:24:51

I too think solar is great but I'm not sure what the authors point is.

I doubt Westerners accustomed to no more involvement than paying the bill and flipping the switch will see much benefit in learning to operate their own power generation system until forced to by cost.

By the time they are forced to change because of cost, will they still have the wherewithal to pay?
The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves -- in their separate, and individual capacities.
-- Abraham Lincoln, Fragment on Government (July 1, 1854)
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Re: Will the Transition to Renewables Be Fast or Slow?

Unread postby Expatriot » Thu 01 Sep 2011, 09:01:47

The transition will never occur. So I'd guess I'd have to go with "slow." As in, "glacier slow."
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We’re half-assing the clean-energy transition

Unread postby Graeme » Sat 28 Apr 2012, 05:49:14

We’re half-assing the clean-energy transition

The International Energy Agency recently issued its annual progress report [PDF] on clean energy. Here’s the five-cent version:
The transition to a low-carbon energy sector is affordable and represents tremendous business opportunities, but investor confidence remains low due to policy frameworks that do not provide certainty and address key barriers to technology deployment. Private sector financing will only reach the levels required if governments create and maintain supportive business environments for low-carbon energy technologies. [my emphasis]

Progress is inadequate — relative to the goal of limiting global temperature rise to 2 degrees C — on virtually every low-carbon technology except onshore wind and solar (click for a larger version of this chart):


Image

What will it cost to turn this around and hit the 2 degrees C target? A good chunk in the short term and negative dollars in the long term:
Globally, the near-term additional investment cost of achieving these objectives would amount to USD 5 trillion by 2020, but USD 4 trillion will be saved through lower fossil fuel use over this period. The net costs over the next decade are therefore estimated at over USD 1 trillion. More impressively, by 2050, energy and emissions savings increase significantly as CO2 emissions peak, and begin to decline from 2015. In this timeframe, benefits of fuel savings are also expected to surpass additional investment requirements for decarbonising the energy sector. [my emphasis]

Here are the IEA’s big recommendations:

1.Level the playing field for clean energy technologies by pricing energy appropriately and addressing energy systems holistically (this latter is a particular challenge).

2.Unlock the potential of energy efficiency by tightening standards and enlisting the help of energy providers (utilities).

3.Accelerate energy innovation and public RD&D.


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Re: We’re half-assing the clean-energy transition

Unread postby Revi » Sun 29 Apr 2012, 19:06:33

We aren't even 1/4 assing it. The problem is that our companies aren't going to be able to make any kind of green technologies. The only one that still has a good slice of the market is GE and that's because they make huge wind turbines. Solar panels are gone. ESLR tanked and it looks like FSLR is going to tank as well. It's always some other country that leapfrogs over the old tech and creates a new way of doing things. The British had coal working for them until we discovered oil and took over the world. The next century will be about green technology, but it won't be us who builds it, and it won't be us who reaps the rewards either.
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Re: We’re half-assing the clean-energy transition

Unread postby Plantagenet » Sun 29 Apr 2012, 19:32:36

Revi wrote:It's always some other country that leapfrogs over the old tech and creates a new way of doing things. The British had coal working for them until we discovered oil and took over the world.


Now we've discovered horizontal drilling and frakking and huge reserves of natural gas.

Revi wrote:The next century will be about green technology, but it won't be us who builds it, and it won't be us who reaps the rewards either.


Hard to say. We're well ahead of the world in developing cheap, clean natural gas reserves thanks to our technological advances in horizontal drilling and frakking. AND we're already "reaping" rewards for this---the energy cost for natural gas for consumers and manufacturers in the US is now just a fraction of what it is in other countries.
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Re: We’re half-assing the clean-energy transition

Unread postby Plantagenet » Sun 29 Apr 2012, 20:22:16

pstarr wrote:There won't be an energy transition in the USA because we built out our auto-centric dispersed suburban nest 60 years ago. There is no going back. Other places in the world are more suited to an expensive-petroleum regime.


The US is already well along on transitioning from oil and coal to natural gas when it comes to power generation. When is the last time you heard of a utility building a coal-fired power plant in the USA----?. Now the transition to NG is starting in transportation. It will be interesting to see how far it goes.

pstarr wrote:Chinese workers for instance bike to work, live in a single room without exorbitant heating/cooling demands, and buy food in neighborhood markets grown right outside the city. We will never compete.


You don't know China. The days of Mao suits and millions of people riding identical bikes to work in cities in China are long gone----you just don't see many bikes anymore in Chinese cities---there are busy streets in modern cities filled with cars, motorcycles, taxis, buses---but the bicycles are virtually gone. :roll:
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Re: We’re half-assing the clean-energy transition

Unread postby Lore » Sun 29 Apr 2012, 20:32:54

Plantagenet wrote:You don't know China. The days of Mao suits and millions of people riding identical bikes to work in cities in China are long gone----you just don't see many bikes anymore in Chinese cities---there are busy streets in modern cities filled with cars, motorcycles, taxis, buses---but the bicycles are virtually gone. :roll:


Which is exactly why the planet and us are screwed. We infected them with capitalism, now we have to find the resources of four extra Earths just to satisfy the eventual demand.
The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.
... Theodore Roosevelt
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Re: We’re half-assing the clean-energy transition

Unread postby Graeme » Sun 29 Apr 2012, 21:14:38

The key point is stated in the first paragraph:

The transition to a low-carbon energy sector is affordable and represents tremendous business opportunities, but investor confidence remains low due to policy frameworks that do not provide certainty and address key barriers to technology deployment.


So our survival will depend on government policy that affects low-carbon energy investment.

The conclusion by the IEA is similar to that recently published by Deutsche Bank Climate Change Advisors:

The DB Climate Change Advisors has released its latest Global Climate Change Policy Tracker report [PDF], its fourth. The report has quite a bit of interesting info in it. Most important, from a global perspective, is that “the best case global outlook” based on potential current targets still leaves us is with “a 5.8Gt ‘gap’ compared to a 450ppm stabilization pathway.” And even 450ppm is way to high according to top climate scientists.


In an email from someone at DB, a couple of the key takeaway points they saw were:

China, Germany, Brazil and many of the Nordic countries have strong policy regimes in place to meet their mandates, whilst the rest of the EU and other emerging economies’ policy regimes remain mixed.

The US and Italy in particular remain challenged in meeting their clean energy mandates. However, in terms of emissions, an aggressive coal to gas switch can have a valuable effect in the US.

I primarily agree. However, in light of recent research on natural gas, I think more emphasis needs to be placed on growing out the US’ truly clean energy economy.

Overall, though, the message of this report is quite similar to the IEA’s recent annual report — yes, we’re moving forward, but we’re still moving way too slowly.
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Re: We’re half-assing the clean-energy transition

Unread postby Plantagenet » Sun 29 Apr 2012, 21:39:10

Graeme wrote:The US and Italy in particular remain challenged in meeting their clean energy mandates. However, in terms of emissions, an aggressive coal to gas switch can have a valuable effect in the US.


Yes. Thats my point exactly.

Switching the US from coal to NG isn't a complete solution, but its definitely a step in the right direction.

China also has a huge potential resource of NG. If they follow the US in the switch from coal to NG then we'll really be making progress. 8)
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Re: We’re half-assing the clean-energy transition

Unread postby Graeme » Sun 29 Apr 2012, 22:16:04

Yes but both reports state that moving to gas is not enough. Investment in other low-carbon energy initiatives will have to be adopted if we want our civilization to endure.
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