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The Energy Trap

How to save energy through both societal and individual actions.

Re: The Energy Trap

Unread postby Newfie » Fri 24 Dec 2021, 12:38:29

Pops,

You keep mentioning people leaving the cities. Is that a general thing or what?

Philadelphia is growing for the first time in decades. Housing prices are up, huge apartment blocks are being constructed throughout the area. When we first came back in July/August I thought it was local to my neighborhood because if massive expansion at the Penn Hospital. But now having been here a bit I see it is general to the Greater Philadelphia including South NJ.

California is going down, and maybe NY?

From my vantage it does not seem to be a general trend.

Not that I understand all the dynamics, I don’t. Part of our decision to sell now.
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Re: The Energy Trap

Unread postby AdamB » Fri 24 Dec 2021, 14:34:33

EnergyUnlimited wrote:At the moment it cost $ billions to bring a small sample of material from outside of Earth gravity well.


Thank goodness an entire species worth of resource depletion hasn't led us to need extraterrestrial resources yet.

EnergyUnlimited wrote:For all practical purposes system *is* closed.


Today. But there are no facts in the future.

EnergyLimited wrote:To believe otherwise is delusional.


I told peak oilers that it was delusional that peak oil happened in 2005. Many delusions are claimed.....just pick any religion you'd like...including peak oil....and then sit down and think on the reasonableness of declaring precursor events delusional just because they are expensive. More imagination for everyone!!

EnergyUnlimited wrote:And no, Elon Musk is not going to build mines on Moon, let alone Mars.


Never said he was going to. Only that, while we "practically" live in a closed system, "practically" needs quotes because we are most certainly NOT.

Once upon a time we sent out hardy men on donkeys to do our mineral surveys and exploration for us. My God, the price of a railroad to get that copper out of Kennecott, the horror! Impossible!

Nowadays we do it differently. But we're already doing the legwork, even if those with their eyes firmly fixed on their feet can't see it happening.
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Re: The Energy Trap

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Fri 24 Dec 2021, 15:58:42

EnergyUnlimited wrote:
AdamB wrote:As a practical concept the entire idea in a closed system makes perfect sense. In a closed system, use of a thing arrives, sometime, at an end. With mankind's robotic miners already sampling the resources available outside that closed system, there can be no reasonable assumption that the current closed system is all that is available, depletion wise.

At the moment it cost $ billions to bring a small sample of material from outside of Earth gravity well.
Energy price of climbing this well will keep it that way.
Energy price of slowing down brought things to prevent them burning upon descent will double check on it.
For all practical purposes system *is* closed.
To believe otherwise is delusional.
And no, Elon Musk is not going to build mines on Moon, let alone Mars.

I for one will not bet against Elon on anything . Of course a mine on the moon would not be for shipping product back to earth but to produce the fuel and other material needed to get to Mars without boosting it up from Earth's gravity well.
I suspect it will be done eventually but maybe not by Musk. And I also think it will prove to be not worth doing beyond the technical advancements created by the problem solving process needed to actually get there.
To think that they had a slide rule in the Apollo 13 capsule. :shock:
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Re: The Energy Trap

Unread postby theluckycountry » Fri 24 Dec 2021, 16:49:31

Newfie wrote:Pops,

You keep mentioning people leaving the cities. Is that a general thing or what?

Philadelphia is growing for the first time in decades. Housing prices are up,
Not that I understand all the dynamics, I don’t. Part of our decision to sell now.


Cities are fun places to live, until they are not. Then you are trapped, or at least all your capital is trapped. I wonder how many people retired in penury when they were driven out of those Detroit suburbs by the drug problems? Their homes essentially becoming worthless.

"It can't happen to me" must be one of the most concrete concepts in the human brain.
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Re: The Energy Trap

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Fri 24 Dec 2021, 18:06:55

I'm surprised the Philly is growing today with the crime statistics and the exodus south from blue state to Red. Can they be be bringing in enough border migrants to make up from the loss? Not likely.
Real estate price hikes are a Nationwide thing but rural and edge of suburb communities are the hottest spots from what I am seeing on the ground, but perhaps some optimistic people that see (or dream of) the inner cities solving their current problems in the not too distant future are placing bets on that and there must be enough of them to push prices up.
Happy for you that you could sell at a profit. It is nice to be done with the hassles that ownership bring.
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Re: The Energy Trap

Unread postby Newfie » Fri 24 Dec 2021, 19:46:08

Yup, goad to be out, or will be when we close on March 10.

But I have drug the thread off topic and need to desist.
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Re: The Energy Trap

Unread postby Outcast_Searcher » Fri 24 Dec 2021, 20:41:44

theluckycountry wrote:
Newfie wrote:Pops,

You keep mentioning people leaving the cities. Is that a general thing or what?

Philadelphia is growing for the first time in decades. Housing prices are up,
Not that I understand all the dynamics, I don’t. Part of our decision to sell now.


Cities are fun places to live, until they are not. Then you are trapped, or at least all your capital is trapped. I wonder how many people retired in penury when they were driven out of those Detroit suburbs by the drug problems? Their homes essentially becoming worthless.

"It can't happen to me" must be one of the most concrete concepts in the human brain.

We don't have to rely on just random conjecture or emotion for this. There is data. This is the internet.

For example:

https://graylinegroup.com/urbanization- ... -overview/
Given the track record of the perma-doomer blogs, I wouldn't bet a fast crash doomer's money on their predictions.
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Re: The Energy Trap

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Sat 25 Dec 2021, 09:52:04

Outcast_Searcher wrote:We don't have to rely on just random conjecture or emotion for this. There is data. This is the internet.

For example:

https://graylinegroup.com/urbanization- ... -overview/

That article does not mention Suburbs or where they drew the line between rural and urban. Of course a young Chinese person will leave his hand worked rice paddy and move to a city when the rice operation gets mechanized and puts him out of that work.
People in the US are not for the greater part leaving the cities and moving back to farmland to farm it. They are moving to suburban and rural houses (Or building new ones) and working remotely from those houses doing the urban job they had been doing in an office cubicle. They are also fleeing high tax states for cheaper ones shown by the census data that shifts congressional seats that way. The states that gained population and seats are Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Colorado and Montana,
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Re: The Energy Trap

Unread postby Pops » Sat 25 Dec 2021, 14:51:36

Newfie wrote:Pops,

You keep mentioning people leaving the cities. Is that a general thing or what?.

Not really, just a blip. But being a later day Luddite I take any little blip as a good sign.

Luddites had been skilled, home-based weavers. Their home-oriented lifestyle was made obsolete by factories of automated looms tended by interchangeable commuter drones. I keep hoping technology will advance full circle allowing people to make home more than just a place to sleep, shower and dress for work.

Then COVID-19 happened and many of these millennials found themselves working from home. Zillow found that nearly two million renters unable to afford homes in metro areas could now afford to buy farther out because they no longer had to commute to work.

As a result, many renters became homebuyers and home and rental prices diverged around the time the pandemic hit the United States.

https://www.census.gov/library/stories/ ... arket.html
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Re: The Energy Trap

Unread postby AdamB » Sat 25 Dec 2021, 15:42:13

Pops wrote: I keep hoping technology will advance full circle allowing people to make home more than just a place to sleep, shower and dress for work.


Do you consider telework to be a move in this direction?
Plant Thu 27 Jul 2023 "Personally I think the IEA is exactly right when they predict peak oil in the 2020s, especially because it matches my own predictions."

Plant Wed 11 Apr 2007 "I think Deffeyes might have nailed it, and we are just past the overall peak in oil production. (Thanksgiving 2005)"
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Re: The Energy Trap

Unread postby Doly » Sat 25 Dec 2021, 16:08:16

You keep mentioning people leaving the cities. Is that a general thing or what?


There is some good info on the subject here:

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2021 ... ans-moved/

In short, yes, there is some truth to people leaving the cities, but it isn't a really big thing. And from a transport perspective, people moving away from the centre of cities doesn't reduce the need for transport, unless they are moving away because now they are able to work mostly from home and they need to commute a lot less.
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Re: The Energy Trap

Unread postby mousepad » Sat 25 Dec 2021, 18:07:59

Pops wrote:
Newfie wrote:Pops,

You keep mentioning people leaving the cities. Is that a general thing or what?.

Not really, just a blip. But being a later day Luddite I take any little blip as a good sign.


NOOOOOOO. Please city slicks. Stay where you are. The country is a dangerous place. There are mice and rednecks and working man in dirty cloth. Nothing for you here in the country, city slicks. Stay in your liberal city paradise, slicks. Thank you.
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Re: The Energy Trap

Unread postby Pops » Sat 25 Dec 2021, 18:41:37

AdamB wrote:
Pops wrote: I keep hoping technology will advance full circle allowing people to make home more than just a place to sleep, shower and dress for work.


Do you consider telework to be a move in this direction?

I do graphic design and have been working from home since the mid '90s. Hardware and connections were a real challenge back then but today (and especially when StarLink gets live) those are no longer an issue. I've been riding this hobbyhorse for years.

Indulge me for a moment as I reminisce...
I was watching for years for Macs, Photoshop and Quark to get stable, that came together about 1994-ish. Logistics were hard at first because digital prepress (digital files output to film negative that created the plates for photolithography) was new outside the big city and big publications. Connections more than 12 feet from the telephone circuit were too slow to be useful — graphics files were relatively huge before streaming everything became common.

First I tried on dial up but generally had to ship a syquest removable drive to San Francisco to a service who made negatives for the printer. Then we got a local service bureau but still had to hand-carry removables or writable CDs. When FedExed came along it just meant my deadline got a week closer the the drop dead date, but everything was still last minute, just a week later, LOL.

Finally I was able to use the connection where you bound two dial up lines together and could email or direct dial small files. Then ADSL, then about 2003 I bugged out and used a microwave fixed wifi, then 3g, then 4g. Where I used to live, not way in the backwoods but pretty far out, they now have fiber right to the door!

So after the connection come storage then speed. My first mac (8100-80?) had $10,000 worth of RAM, 256 whole MB! I made a mobile out of those chips and still have them somewhere. Graphics are pretty CPU and GPU intensive but since maybe 2005 any good machine is fine.

All of which to say there were huge obstacles to overcome and I haven't even talked about the ice storm when I walked 2 miles to my neighbors house with a home-burned CD to use his connection!

But I love working from home and all the problems I guess were just part of the adventure. For the last 10 years anyway it's been a piece of cake infrastructure, software & hardware wise. There was a spate of homework in the oughts due to fuel price but management nipped that in the bud. Nowadays, after the lockdowns especially, the problem is not employees goofing off so much as management expecting them to be on 24/7.

If you live in the sticks you can certainly use as much or more fuel as taking the subway or even the avg. commute. Most arguments against transition however, come from the standpoint of how does the substitute measure up against the status quo. The status quo is living in the 'burbs and driving about 15k miles per year. Not only do we probably not drive that in 5 or maybe 10 years but our quality of life is vastly superior.

I don't think telecommutes are any more acceptable to the straw bosses now and there will be increasing pressure to get back to the office. But the proof of concept is now concrete. 15 or even 10 years ago an always-on connection to the office was perhaps troublesome and expensive, and certainly not having an overlord gave a chance for the parasitic drones to goof off. But corps have had record breaking profit for 2 years now, they're not going to credit telecommuters but at least they can't say they caused bankruptcy.
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Re: The Energy Trap

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Sat 25 Dec 2021, 18:56:55

Telecommuting is fine for those that work with and from a computer all the time but it is impossible to inspect a sewer pipe being installed without actually standing beside the trenchbox and observing what and how the crew is doing their job.
All this infrastructure work that was passed in the bipartisan bill will have to be done by people that actually go to the job site each day and do the physical work required.
The design work and the final audits and accounting can, and probably will, be done remotely but the day to day hands on field work has to have the workers and their bosses present on site.
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Re: The Energy Trap

Unread postby AdamB » Sat 25 Dec 2021, 21:37:40

vtsnowedin wrote:Telecommuting is fine for those that work with and from a computer all the time but it is impossible to inspect a sewer pipe being installed without actually standing beside the trenchbox and observing what and how the crew is doing their job.


Maybe professions that can do telework, will have a salary premium for those willing to do the work IRL? I know such a thing was exactly what happened for those working offshore in the GOM, compared to their office desk jockey equivalents. The pay difference was close to 2X, back in the day, just because of the working conditions and accompanying responsibilies. You screw up a 20,000' deep directional in the GOM and you are fired. Most pencil pushers can't make a mistake that large to get fired for.
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Re: The Energy Trap

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Sun 26 Dec 2021, 11:37:34

AdamB wrote:
Maybe professions that can do telework, will have a salary premium for those willing to do the work IRL? I know such a thing was exactly what happened for those working offshore in the GOM, compared to their office desk jockey equivalents. The pay difference was close to 2X, back in the day, just because of the working conditions and accompanying responsibilies. You screw up a 20,000' deep directional in the GOM and you are fired. Most pencil pushers can't make a mistake that large to get fired for.

Not quite 2X but the outside job always paid me more then the pencil pushers. For one they paid the IRS reimbursement rate on my vehicle for miles once I got into the right state which covered most of the cost if I chose my vehicles wisely. The office dweller had to get to and from work on his own dime.
Then there was overtime as you had to be on site every hour the contractors were working often 13 hours a summer's' day or night.
Another good thing about night work is that your boss will only show up at one end of the shift and not stay long and pretty much leave you to your own devices as long as good progress is being made. Working outside let me retire at half of the office workers pay at age 51.
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Re: The Energy Trap

Unread postby AdamB » Sun 26 Dec 2021, 11:54:58

vtsnowedin wrote:
AdamB wrote:
Maybe professions that can do telework, will have a salary premium for those willing to do the work IRL? I know such a thing was exactly what happened for those working offshore in the GOM, compared to their office desk jockey equivalents. The pay difference was close to 2X, back in the day, just because of the working conditions and accompanying responsibilies. You screw up a 20,000' deep directional in the GOM and you are fired. Most pencil pushers can't make a mistake that large to get fired for.

Not quite 2X but the outside job always paid me more then the pencil pushers.


I took a 60% pay cut to go from drilling horizontal wells to an office job supervising day to day operations. The oil and gas industry has never been shy about paying solid wages for the work done, and those of us who have spent winters in the swamps of Louisiana or at -40C drilling near Lesser Slave Lake really figure we deserve it. Months at a time away from home during this kind of work probably isn't "just working outside locally and home for dinner" stuff though.

Vtsnowedin wrote: Another good thing about night work is that your boss will only show up at one end of the shift and not stay long and pretty much leave you to your own devices as long as good progress is being made. Working outside let me retire at half of the office workers pay at age 51.


I'm not sure what my retirement would look like. Boredom? In either case, while currently eligible, I'm in no hurry to get there, unless my employer irritates me or cool questions to answer and problems to solve are all answered or solved.
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Re: The Energy Trap

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Sun 26 Dec 2021, 13:57:03

AdamB wrote:
I'm not sure what my retirement would look like. Boredom? In either case, while currently eligible, I'm in no hurry to get there, unless my employer irritates me or cool questions to answer and problems to solve are all answered or solved.

I worked most construction seasons as a consultant or project resident administrator when I wanted to for thirteen of the last fifteen years and for more money then the state ever paid me. Covid and my health have now eased me into full retirement and I've moved onto the stock market investing from my computer. And the management here still has a never ending' Honey Do' list in case I am careless enough to mention that I am bored.
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Re: The Energy Trap

Unread postby AdamB » Sun 26 Dec 2021, 22:47:40

vtsnowedin wrote: I worked most construction seasons as a consultant or project resident administrator when I wanted to for thirteen of the last fifteen years and for more money then the state ever paid me.


I trained up in industry early, and went contractor for the majors and anyone else paying for my expertise before I was 30. Then went back to the office, took the pay cut, and it required close to 15 years before I got back to those kind of salary levels I had previously. Sounds like the opposite path as yours. I was young and invincible back then, still had my hair, worked by the job, didn't need health care, didn't need vacation, I went anywhere paying top dollar for a month or three of my life, until that one day....it was January, in the far north, -40C outside, maybe an hour or two of sunlight a day...and I can remember after 2 weeks of drilling looking up at the derrick and saying, "shit...I am SO done with this...". 6 months later, I was warmer, had an office, making far less money, and riding motorcycles every day after work. Didn't even start on family and kids until in my 30's.

Covid and my health have now eased me into full retirement and I've moved onto the stock market investing from my computer. And the management here still has a never ending' Honey Do' list in case I am careless enough to mention that I am bored.


Yeah, I understand the health and Honey-Do list. I've got the latter to do this next weekend, and the former is beginning to get in the way of some old favorite hobbies.
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Re: The Energy Trap

Unread postby theluckycountry » Mon 27 Dec 2021, 05:21:19

Pops wrote:... But being a later day Luddite I take any little blip as a good sign.

Luddites had been skilled, home-based weavers. Their home-oriented lifestyle was made obsolete by factories of automated looms tended by interchangeable commuter drones. I keep hoping technology will advance full circle allowing people to make home more than just a place to sleep, shower and dress for work.


I think there is a little more to the story here, the history books portray them as rabidly anti-technology but the driving force was money, they saw their livelihoods go down the drain. I wonder if the revolt would have happened if the government then had a SS payments system in place? Of it they had have found decent jobs in the factories as foremen, expert overseers?

The same thing must have happened with the transition from steam to oil, millions of workers would have became redundant there. And then the switch from horses to cars as travel, especially in the cities. I guess the major difference in the latter examples is that most of those workers were not self-employed as the weavers were. I'm just glad I was born in the latter half 20th century, because all other times, past and future, look pretty grim pops.
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