[Doctor Doom]

Time for someone here to use the dreaded "C" word - Conservation.

If you accept the premise that we won't act to save ourselves until a crisis is upon us, then that means that in the first 5-10 years post-peak conservation is going to be the only option. I am talking about conservation both of energy and of food.

A lot of people seem to dismiss it but I think huge savings are possible. Consider these facts:

1. Europeans use half the oil per capita than Americans do, albeit with lower GDP per capita
2. Vehicles are capable of getting up to 60 mpg with current technology
3. American adults consume 3500 kcal of food / day, versus 2500 needed
4. Americans get a pretty large portion of their daily caloric intake from meat

Suppose we were to raise the average fuel economy in the US from the present 20 mpg to, say, 40 mpg, mostly by displacing 10 mpg SUVs with hybrids. Since 2/3 of our oil goes to vehicles, could that cut our overall oil use by, say, 25%?

Suppose we reduced meat intake (because the price is skyrocketing) and stopped overeating (because the price is skyrocketing, and because it's unhealthy), and stopped exporting as much food, could we live with a reduction in agricultural production by, say, 30%? Could we cut agricultural energy needs by 40% by a combination of the earlier 30% and moving to more sustainable practices?

Another way to conserve is cutting electricity use. Our current modus operandi is to use pretty inefficient technology for home lighting needs (incandesent bulbs). We also have a growing problem with so-called "standby" power, power used by appliances like TVs and stereos that consume some power to remain in a state whereby they can quickly be turned on by the remote. Finally, we have a lot of old, inefficient major appliances, most especially refrigerators because they are always running, still in use. How much could we save in these areas?

Remember the alternatives are (a) more war for oil, or (b) mad max here we come.

Thoughts? Should John Kerry roll out some of these initiatives if he's elected? Will he? What about Dubya if he's re-elected (and assuming a crisis occurs to force his head out of his ass)?

[Aaron]

http://www.peakoil.com/postt50.html

[Doctor Doom]

I'm personally very familiar with the phenomenon cited. I'm a programmer and I was once asked to see if I could improve a program that was costing a lot of money in CPU usage (this was a long time ago!). I found ways to improve the program by a factor of 1000 - what used to take hours would complete in seconds. Instead of saving all the money, they started running the program about 100 times as much (it was a simulation)! Well, they did save some money anyway, because the improvement was so great.

All those counter-examples about how efficiency doesn't reduce demand are all from situations where there was no shortage. But POT is all about shortage, right? And in shortage situations, especially over short time horizons like 5-10 years, you can reduce need. The examples from the 70s are well-taken. I would also cite WWII as an example of an emergency where Americans and Brits on the home front pulled together in a crisis and saved what they had to to beat Hitler. If gas were $7/gallon here like it is in Europe, you better believe average mpg would be going up and miles driven would be going down.

[Aaron]

While I agree in substance, that conservation does decrease use of energy for that activity, Jevon contends that this simply shifts the energy to other uses.

We are not talking of mandatory conservation through shortages, but voluntary (even if compulsory) conservation. Since it's hard to argue that improved efficiency has no economic impact, we are left to conclude that reducing the cost of transportation, for example, will stimulate economic growth, thus stimulating oil consumption.

Finally, unless conservation can bridge the gap from oil to alternatives, any savings now only extend the peak event some amount of time, during which our economy grows, precipitating an even larger cliff as oil production declines.

[MattSavinar]

The construction of a car consumes 14 percent of all the oil the car will consume in its lifetime

Attempting to replace SUV's with hybrids, for instance, could make the situation worse.

Matt

[Doctor Doom]

"Finally, unless conservation can bridge the gap from oil to alternatives, any savings now only extend the peak event some amount of time"

Yes that's the idea. Firstly, the peak may be more of a plateau. I've read some debunkers of POT, they make a good argument that the drop-off in production along a curve may have more to do with economics than geology. They are still ducking the fundamental issue that the finite resource is being exhausted, but anway, given sufficient motivation, we might be able to pump more of what's available at a faster rate. As many have pointed out, this would then lead to a steeper decline later, but it would buy some time. Conservation would also buy time.

Time is important; the collapse scenarios all assume that by the time the problem is recognized it's too late to act because there's not enough time to do things like build nukes or whatever. But a combination of the plateau effect and conservation could buy you 10 years before you hit the wall. And also we should factor in how a crappy economy would lower the population growth rate as people decided they couldn't afford as many kids.

The US was able to go from pure theory to working atom bombs in less than 4 years during WWII. So given a sufficient motivation we are capable of swift action.

My main worry is that the drop-off will be slow enough that people will still be arguing about the need for drastic action, and will be fooled by talk of chimeras that have become popular in recent years. I'm mainly thinking about environmentalists, who oppose virtually every measure we'd have to take to get through the crisis, especially expansion of nukes. They talk about conservation, and they are right about that. Then they talk about renewables, and they're right about that too. But the problem is they don't understand that we need conversvation and renewables *and* something else - they don't grasp the scale of the problem! The average member of the public doesn't have a clue, so he thinks it's a choice between nukes or conservation or renewables, so of course he goes for renewables because he's bought that nukes are bad and he doesn't want to conserve. Once he understands that it's really a choice between all of the above versus going back to the 18th century, then those environmentalists had better get out of the way of the angry mob. Except that by the time Joe Sixpack does understand that, it could be too late.

The absolute best thing that could happen would be for oil to go to $60-100 / barrel next year and wake people up to the issue. Then we start a conservation program and after a few years it becomes clear that this isn't going to go the distance because by then we've past the peak and everyone can see that production is going to continue to go down only now we've conserved as much as we can. We also started building renewables like wind because at those prices it's finally economical. And so again after a few years it becomes obvious that wind and solar and whatever isn't going to be enough to fix things, and people finally get it that we need to start using more coal and nukes despite the environmental concerns. Then (my preference) the environmentalists wake up to the fact that by switching to coal we accellerate a problem (global warming) that matter *right now* whereas with nukes we have an iffy problem that someone might care about centuries from now.

[Guest]

The construction of a car consumes 14 percent of all the oil the car will consume in its lifetime

Attempting to replace SUV's with hybrids, for instance, could make the situation worse.

Matt

If the hybrid gets 50 miles per gallon versus the 15 miles per gallon of the SUV, I think that is a net gain, even if construction consumer 14%.

Also, there is the natural replacement % each year that would happen anyway.

[Guest]

Another way to conserve is cutting electricity use. Our current modus operandi is to use pretty inefficient technology for home lighting needs (incandesent bulbs). We also have a growing problem with so-called "standby" power, power used by appliances like TVs and stereos that consume some power to remain in a state whereby they can quickly be turned on by the remote. Finally, we have a lot of old, inefficient major appliances, most especially refrigerators because they are always running, still in use. How much could we save in these areas?

Oil is only used for 2% of electricity production. Peak Oil is not likely to have much effect on the electric power grid.

[Guest]

We also started building renewables like wind because at those prices it's finally economical. And so again after a few years it becomes obvious that wind and solar and whatever isn't going to be enough to fix things, and people finally get it that we need to start using more coal and nukes despite the environmental concerns. Then (my preference) the environmentalists wake up to the fact that by switching to coal we accellerate a problem (global warming) that matter *right now* whereas with nukes we have an iffy problem that someone might care about centuries from now.

Wind, Coal, Nuclear are not replacements for Oil. Those are all energy sources for electric power grid energy.

Oil is primarily a transportation energy for tractors, jets, cars, etc.

Only 2% of electricity comes from Oil.

It is not easy to put a windmill on a car. They keep getting knocked over when going under stoplights.

I don't see nuclear cars having much of a future either. The auto insurance premiums would be killer. So would the radiation release from a fender bender.

[Doctor Doom]

"Peak Oil is not likely to have much effect on the electric power grid."

If that's true, then we're saved - as long as we have electricity, we have civilization! I think it's more complicated than that, though.

For one thing, we are using a lot of natural gas to generate electricity now. Gas has uses in transportation and as a feedstock to chemical processes. So as oil runs out, there will be greater pressure on gas, and hence some pressure on electricity.

For another thing, there will be pressue to increase electric power to make up for oil shortfalls elsewhere. The most obvious is for heating in the northeastern US, which still uses a lot of home heating oil. Less obvious would be as a source of energy for transportation, either directly (rail and some busses) or indirectly (through grossly inefficient production of synthetic fuels).

[Aaron]

Conservation would also buy time.

We are not talking of mandatory conservation through shortages, but voluntary (even if compulsory) conservation. Since it's hard to argue that improved efficiency has no economic impact, we are left to conclude that reducing the cost of transportation, for example, will stimulate economic growth, thus stimulating oil consumption.

[Doctor Doom]

Here's the idea though: you not only compel fuel economy, but you make sure the economic savings don't flow through to the masses, but are sucked back up through a gas tax. Or you skip the tax if the price of oil is high enough, since that will have the same effect. Well, except for the fact that instead of the gov getting the dough it goes to corrupt oil sheiks.

[frankFranchesca]

My whole life is based around it. I understand the arguments here about the potential negatives attached to conservation and agree with some points made, but do not agree with the overall conclusions of those arguing against the importance of conservation. The many positives to conservation outweigh the few possible negatives, in my opinion. It's a little disappointing to see against-conservation talk here when in my opinion we are rapidly running out of resources in many areas, not only in areas directly related to petroleum. At the very least, moderate to major conservation might bide us some time to find an easier way out of the mess me may soon find ourselves in, and to institute some changes in the way we approach life as humans so that we choose the prevention path more often than we choose the post-problem band-aid path. That conservation seems to have become a dirty word to some here seems like the up-is-down stuff coming out of the mouths of Bush and his goons; when I read that stuff here, I kinda feel like I've walked into Cheney's office.

Frankly, in some ways I don't care about "economic catastrophy"--there are way too many humans on this planet, in my opinion. Our economies should not be encouraged to be as big as they are primarily because they're based on largely unsustainable resources, principles, mechanisms, etc., primarily because they're based on raping this planet. If our economies ultimately crash for good in a huge way, I think that would lend weight to the premise that they had ultimately been unsustainable and unwise models. And if more of us have to starve, if more of us should starve in order to reduce our numbers, then that's what we should do and what I think will likely happen. I'm no humanist. I think my species has become a cancer on this planet and needs to be cut out in large part. I don't really want to be involved in doing that cutting out, but I also don't want to be involved in keeping the malignancy intact.

The wild birds in the woodland I own (the ones I and others don't directly feed and house) do not have economies, yet they manage to survive--albeit some tenuously, thanks in large part to our actions, in my opinion. But they usually take in their food directly from where its grown; they usually build their nests with their own beaks. They don't go to Wal Mart to buy birdseed or to Home Depot to buy twigs, so they can then eat and build later on in some place that they need a machine to fly to. They don't normally jump through ten hoops to do something that should only take jumping through one hoop. Granted, if their populations suddenly swelled for some reason and they didn't have some Wal Mart and Home Depot artificial life support, many might perish. But my point is: they don't seem to need an economy to survive as a species. As I've said: there are way too many of us humans. If we lowered our numbers and took measures to keep them a lot lower, I don't think we'd be having problems to the extent we have them now--not that we wouldn't have any, just maybe less problems, and less severe ones. If we lowered our numbers we wouldn't likely need oil-based economies to survive (if you call what we've been doing "surviving"). And what gall on our species that so many of us seem to believe this earth should support our overwhelming numbers no matter what economies we have or don't have.... Even some other species seem to control their own numbers. I think we humans are quite disgusting that we don't directly control our population-size nearly enough. And many individual humans don't seem to control their own breeding at all when, thankfully, in an industrialized world controlling our numbers is often as easy as using a condom at dangerous times of the month at least (yes, rubbers are one modern product I'm truly thankful for); but these inconsiderate people seem to think it's their "right" to pollute the planet with their genetic material. And not only that, but with every new kid they create, they will likely take away some resources from their kids who are already in existence; overpopulating becomes a selfish act toward even your own overpopulating offspring.

I guess if my life's work and opinions and approach are contrary to the "mainstream" here, I'm not long for hanging here. Oh well. I enjoyed reading a lot of the posts. And the discussions are very interesting, with a lot of great points made, so keep at it. But if most people aren't willing to change the basic ways they approach life and start caring more about what I think are the most important, the best, and most fun things, I don't have much hope for this planet. Eating, breathing, sleeping, pissing, shitting, and screwing (especially) are what I primarily care about. Anything not related to my functioning as an "animal who is alive" isn't likely very necessary to my life. I don't need toasters and hair dryers and Hollywood; they can be nice and fun, but they're not necessary. Apparently, my opinion doesn't seem a popular one among my species--at least among many members who live in the west.

Doom, I think it was you who responded with "completely impossible" to the 100% reduction I got in the President simulation. I considered most of my choices as being major conservation. Yet here you seem to be supporting serious conservation (I think). I'm a little confused....

Anyone ever go into Wal Mart? I think we've largely become a society of Plastic Bauble Lovers. Those plastic baubles are often made in factories using petroleum products. Some of those baubles may be useful as "appliances"; nearly all are not useful and are unneccesary to life, in my opinion. And even among the ones that are useful, there are numerous companies who make those useful baubles and many of those companies competing against each other do not sell all their useful baubles but will come out with new useful (and unuseful) bauble designs forcing some of the old versions into the landfills. Consumers will throw many of their purchased useful (and unuseful) baubles into landfills too, if not yesterday, then maybe today, or maybe tomorrow or maybe the next day. The thing is: most of those materials are not recoverable--or at least will likely not be recovered or recycled.

When I chose a 70% reduction in industrial energy sinks in the simulation, I was thinking of Wal Mart, of all those plastic baubles, of baubles of all kinds, of all this nonsense, this modern detritus that many people claim they can't live without but could likely live without and might even enjoy living without because it would free up more time and energy for more fun things like screwing. It would free up more time and energy for creating better people who could actually think more with their brains instead of relying on computers while their brains atrophy into mush, and who could actually do more with their bodies instead of relying on machines while they're bodies atrophy into fat. Do we really need a gazillion brands and models of hair brushes and hair dryers and toaster ovens and petrochemical-derived cosmetics and on and on and on? Do we really need all these things at all? Maybe my 70% (simulation choice) reduction in the amount of energy industry currently uses overall is unrealistic and unlikely to be put into practice--but is it "impossible" to put into practice, is it "impossible" it will occur? Is there such a thing as "impossible"? I don't care for absolutes. I try to look at the world situation like this: we can either choose to change our ways now or likely be forced to change them later; or both, I suppose--change some now, be forced to change some later; or maybe even never change them at all and never have to, which I think is very unlikely. There are likely a bunch of possibilities there. However, I'd rather be cautious and choose to change my ways now, be able to control the process some, then wait till later when the process might take complete control of me.


Fran

---

www.geocities.com/frankFranchesca

[MadScientist]

While I fully agree with aaron re: conservation, I do see the need for personal conservation.

So you are most flexible. The less you "need", the more adaptable you will be as cost of living off oil accelerates.

Like so many say re: alt fuels- As the cost of oil goes up, new things become economically attractive.


-> Like doing a little more of your work yourself TODAY. <-


maybe you dont really need to use your electric toothbrush, gas leaf blower, or <sigh> hummer TODAY.

maybe you can walk to the mailbox today or bike to the store TODAY.

Feeling really motivated? Run the bicycle pump awhile and fill up your water tank. Grind some grain. Chop some wood for the sauna

Hey thats like exercise....but wait! I need exercise!

[Aaron]

I think, in essence, we agree.

What I drew from Jevon was that unless we are advocating a paradigm shift in conservation; a sincere and meaningful reduction in energy use; then all we accomplish in the end, is stimulating economic growth, thus exacerbating the problem.

[Guest]

I think, in essence, we agree.

What I drew from Jevon was that unless we are advocating a paradigm shift in conservation; a sincere and meaningful reduction in energy use; then all we accomplish in the end, is stimulating economic growth, thus exacerbating the problem.

In the world of post-Peak Oil, where real supply of oil is in permanent decline, then that sort of forces the issue.

There is no spare oil stimulate growth with. Conservation of oil truly means saving oil/gasoline, finding more ways to use it efficiently, and finding alternatives.

The fact is, we will never run out of oil. The planet will move on to another energy source with plenty of oil worthless underground in Saudi Arabia. That was one of the points raised by the Saudis during Kyoto negotiations. Their main fear is that the world will develop alternatives and they will be left with all that oil being worthless underground.

[Whitecrab]

Yeah, but I don't think if "conservation" allows us to have fridges that run on less power but have a higher capital cost will cause people to buy more fridges!


The smart solution is do to calculations, and whenever you hit a "costs more oil to make a hybrid then you save junking the SUV," you pass a law giving automakers one year to stop designing vehicles that get under X mpg. So they finish up their current production runs, but have a barrier in place for all future models. If they don't like it, accuse them of being unpatriotic.

[Aaron]

In the world of post-Peak Oil, where real supply of oil is in permanent decline, then that sort of forces the issue.

agreed

Quote:
We are not talking of mandatory conservation through shortages, but voluntary (even if compulsory) conservation. Since it's hard to argue that improved efficiency has no economic impact, we are left to conclude that reducing the cost of transportation, for example, will stimulate economic growth, thus stimulating oil consumption.

[Guest]

The smart solution is do to calculations, and whenever you hit a "costs more oil to make a hybrid then you save junking the SUV," you pass a law giving automakers one year to stop designing vehicles that get under X mpg. So they finish up their current production runs, but have a barrier in place for all future models. If they don't like it, accuse them of being unpatriotic.

Passing a law is likely the worst way to handle the oil crisis. In an oil shortage there will be calls to "pass laws" so that oil prices are capped and everyone get's their "fair share".

What does that accomplish? Nothing. It causes lines for gasoline and limits of 5 gallons per customer.

The correct thing to do is to allow a pure market effect take place. Allow Oil to goto $150 per barrel and let the gas stations charge whatever the market will pay.

Rationing just kills us because it encourages us to keep using oil, however limited that future use will be. Just let the market be free and that will force the changes that need to happen.

[frankFranchesca]

Aaron, in the Death By Conservation thread, you posted this link

http://www.ncseonline.org/nle/crsreport ... EN=7028302

--Right in the first sentence of that article I see a huge problem:

“Intuitively it seems obvious to most observers that increasing energy efficiency will ultimately reduce demand for an energy resource such as electricity.”

--This does not seem “intuitively obvious” to me; it seems a pretty fallacious, incomplete and simplistic idea. Increasing energy efficiency may not reduce TOTAL energy (substitute electricity for the above case) demand if the TOTAL POPULATION increases. In other words, if efficiency is increased and the population increases also to an extent that destroys the energy savings from increased efficiency, that might increase the total energy sink. In that kind of scenario, an increase in demand could be explained by “the numbers game”: the more people there are consuming, the more energy will be consumed overall. However, more people overall being even more conservative in their behavior than before could actually use less energy in total, the same number of people overall being more conservative could use less energy in total, less people overall being more conservative could even use less energy in total. Likewise, more people overall being less conservative than before could consume more energy in total, the same number of people overall being less conservative could consume more energy in total, and less people overall being less conservative could consume more energy in total.

One way to possibly “prove” the efficiency-increases-consumption idea is “valid” would be to show that increased efficiency only and directly has increased the human population in the past, only and directly increases the human population today, and only and directly will increase the human population in future, which directly lead/leads/will lead to increased energy consumption. I think you need to show a causal relationship between all those events, and it would also be nice if you could prove the extent of any causal relationships—like X amount of an increase in efficiency translates into Y amount of an increase in population and Z amount of an increase in consumption—and what factors contribute to possibly changing those causal relationships' end-values. All of that would likely be very tough to “prove,” IMO, but if people are going to be so dogmatically Dick Cheney on this issue, I think they should try hard to prove their premises are “valid” (assuming there is such a thing as being “valid,” which may be a big assumption). Also, even if you could prove that two events had a causal relationship in the past, that doesn’t necessarily mean that same causal relationship will happen in future, nor does it necessarily mean that if it did happen in future, it would happen to the exact same extent. It could be that efficiency directly increased consumption in times-past; I think it’s possible it contributed to some short-term consumption increases. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean efficiency will directly increase consumption in times-future in the same way, or to the same extent, or even at all.

There is another issue too when trying to prove many scenarios/premises are “true” and/or “accurate”—I think this is inherent in the nature of making observations, making predictions and drawing conclusions: generally, in the known universe (seemingly to humans), when you take one path, you exclude all other paths. Let’s assume we’ve taken Path A. We don’t have two or more identical parallel universes we could use to test what would have happened if we had taken Paths B, C, D, etc., instead of Path A, because once we’ve taken Path A, we’ve changed the parameters in existence before we embarked on our path-taking journey. We likely can’t just then try Path B and look at those results and accurately say “this is what would have happened by taking Path B directly, so it’s better to take Path A”; we can’t likely accurately speculate on what would have happened if we had taken Path B first—had we done so, Path B’s results might have been better. We took Path A first, so now we’re stuck in a having-taken-Path A-influenced universe, so to speak. In observation what I think we should generally stick to illustrating with any kind of confidence is what we believe we've actually observed. Still, I’m going to break that rule because I think this idea is important: even if we could show that in the past increased energy efficiency only and directly lead to increased consumption, how could we prove without a lot of doubt attached that increased consumption wouldn’t have happened anyway for some other reason or that an even HIGHER increase in consumption wouldn’t have happened had we not increased efficiency? We probably couldn’t. Many people say arguments shouldn’t be approached in that manner, and often they shouldn’t as I’ve just described because the person arguing may be accused of using “fallacies.” However, that we can’t take many paths at the exact same time and look at the results of various paths shows that for accuracy’s sake we should probably avoid making dogmatic claims about i.e. seeming causal relationships between two events and about the exact nature of an assumed causal relationship between two events. Two seemingly linked events may both have happened anyway regardless of the presence of the other event.

In that same thread, Aaron, you posted a bar-graph with some numbers. Maybe I’m losing my mind here (I am going on two-hours of sleep in the past 48 hours right now), but the graph looks as if it’s saying that 2002 was less efficient and had more of a gasoline (energy) sink, and 1975 was more efficient and had less of a gasoline sink. I think (I think) you posted it to try to show that 1975 being so efficient set the stage for that later increase in gasoline consumption over the next 27 years—am I mistaken there? IMO, that graph doesn’t seem to include a number of things, several of them being: overall human population comparison between 1975 and 2002; a comparison/growth chart of the number of cars being used; a comparison/growth chart of car-pooling use, public transportation use, etc. that may have put more/less cars on the road (lifestyle changes in other words that may have occurred both before and after the efficiency increase and may have contributed to increased and decreased consumption before and after, though I guess you might argue that the increased efficiency caused more widespread travel, and not the other way around--I think it’s the chicken and the egg thing here as usual); and any new developments (scientific, political or otherwise) that allowed for more energy being available (seemingly) that were not caused by increased efficiency but led to a greater feeling of “I’m secure to consume/waste more.” I’ve seen different calculations from different individuals/groups with different results on the above, as is usually the case on an issue. But if you want to imply/claim (which seems to me to be at least part of your premise) that increasing efficiency (or conservation)* in specific ultimately increased overall gasoline use in the past, then I think you should show a direct correlation between increased efficiency and overall gasoline consumption that cannot easily be explained by any other change that might affect that total gasoline use. You haven’t really shown that. But then I doubt that anyone can, especially very accurately, because there are probably so many factors that would go into this....

Another quote from that page:

“The rebound effect (also referred to as the "take-back" or "snap-back") was first described in 1865 when Stanley Jevons observed that the introduction of the new efficient steam engine initially decreased coal consumption which led to a drop in the price of coal. This meant not only that more people could afford coal, but also that coal was now economically viable for new uses, which ultimately greatly increased coal consumption 2.”

--Did the increased engine efficiency directly increase consumption later on according to this? It sounds like the drop in price may have increased consumption directly later on and the increased efficiency may have indirectly decreased the price of coal. However, the above statement alone indicates something else to me: just because efficiency in producing/operating a product has increased doesn’t necessarily mean all the proper costs have been attributed to using that product and the stuff that may be powering it. Maybe costs for coal shouldn’t have declined so fast or at all just because the steam engine suddenly may have seemed more efficient (assuming the cost had dropped for that reason—see below). I think one lesson that could be learned if this proposed effect is indeed real is: just because you increase short-term efficiency, don’t go getting too excited and immediately start lowering prices. Maybe things other than efficiency should be a lot more important when determining price. When I say “seemed more efficient,” I primarily mean: how much predictive calculations were done on the future long-term real costs of coal being economically cheap but environmentally expensive? Dollar values attached to goods have notoriously been fallacious and foolhardy, IMO. Also, this part of that statement “the new efficient steam engine initially decreased coal consumption”--has it been “proven” that this and only this, or at least primarily this, directly initially led to a drop in the price of coal? Has that part of the statement been proven true? If it has been proven true, to what extent did it contribute to that drop in price--a large extent, a modest extent, a small extent? Isn’t it possible that other factors had a greater influence on a drop in the price of coal, like increased overall supply, for example? Though, really, I know little on the history of coal supplies. I’m just trying to point out in general that I don’t think the situation is likely as simple as Event A directly causing Event B. Maybe many things to varying degrees are responsible for Event B occurring. In many cases, that seems to be the way the Universe works....

*(Are “efficiency” and “conservation” one and the same, and are they causally linked or necessarily linked at all? They seem to be two separate ideas that usually serve different functions. Just because a fuel/machine is efficient doesn’t automatically mean it will be conserved or wasted in use: efficiency usually refers to inherent design and ultimate functioning capability; conservation usually refers to how the object created from the design is ultimately used by someone. I think switching back and forth between the two words can introduce confusion: a causal/synonymous link between them on this whole issue has been postulated, not proven, IMO. But maybe the denotations and connotations of both words vary depending on who’s doing the talking. It might be a good idea to set down definitions for the two as they’re normally used w.r.t. peak oil. If there are some set down here, point me to them please.)

Fran (Sorry for the super-long posts!)