[canuckinczech]

Ehh hold your horses here!

I'm living in Sweden and really we are not that great off.




In theory you could produce biofules from the trees but no effective process for this exists today what I know about and that is not from lack of trying.




Ninja edit:
The 93% MrMonkey talks about is probably including cars where it is quite a common too see ethanol and biogas driven variants on the streets. But I have so far never seen a single long distance truck powered by anything else but diesel.

cellulose...is now,

http://www.utexas.edu/news/2008/04/23/biofuel_microbe/

Again, sorry Larlin, the lack of light is a major concern, not just for the short growing seasons, but, for state of mind. Most of the Swedes I know take a step back, and openly admit that many Swedes have a very real and serious problems with depression.

Survival, has more to do with if you can keep your mind stable, than the size of your gun.

[Mesuge]

In terms of Brazilian prospects, recently the "planet earth" supercomputer model has shown that this place (large part of rain forest) is turning into desert in a few decades.. Basically the formely moving rain clouds now stay above the south atlantic ocean where it drops back into the ocean, land/rain forests not getting the water. Innitialy they thought the model was bogus but the real in situ data from 2005 onwards confirmed that. Just another "we are screwed" message but this one is one of the most serious, I'd say on the par with the looming himalaian watershed crises (melting glaciers), few bambillion people w. nukes will get water flowing only several months per year in a few decades..

So much for the "fight against global climate change" and peacefull survival of the homo ape in general..

PS Sweden = great country and people, but good luck with facing the hords of incomming economic/PO/climate change migrants. I think you should drop Nato and form with Norway and Finland some closer military union focused just on this prospect..

[larlin]

cellulose...is now,

http://www.utexas.edu/news/2008/04/23/biofuel_microbe/

Again, sorry Larlin, the lack of light is a major concern, not just for the short growing seasons, but, for state of mind. Most of the Swedes I know take a step back, and openly admit that many Swedes have a very real and serious problems with depression.

Nice to see haven't seen that before, but as they say in the article "there is a lot of work ahead before cyanobacteria can provide such fuel in the field.". So until I can see such a plant working in Sweden I will not count on biofuels from the forest to save the day. In a other place they are even more careful "if production can be scaled up.". But thanks for the link it is a interesting technology and the paper industry should be really interested as well.

About the light yeah people get depressed from time to time I'm not sure why this is and have no idea if it is connected to the light. But anyway people lived in this darkness in the Dark Ages, during the both World Wars(not nearly as hard in Sweden as in the rest of Europe but still lacking almost everything due to little or no trade) and so on. The whole population didn't go crazy or commit suicide during these times. From this I feel relatively sure that we will just be fine in this respect and I don't think that the light will be any factor. I can see why the darkness would seem like something that would make you go crazy. Remember that we have lived with this all our life it's not that bad.

Where in my posts did you see me writing about big guns as a solution to anything? In Sweden we got quite harsh gun laws only guns allowed are for hunting and for sports. I think this will be a good thing. And as I wrote above either we survive together as a country or most of us will die. In this the guns will really only be in the way. We got quite many hunting rifles in Sweden this could be a problem.

What really worries me is if people have get to used to all the modern "I wants". If they can't cope with the changes when they arrive but this is the same in every industrialized country.

About Brazil well if it's not turned into a desert due to global warming aren't the market forces about to do that anyway?

[Fredrik]

Yeah but then we are quite far from the almost business as usual case that I read into the OP.

Well, I assumed that by now, with the global economy collapsing and even IEA accepting oil decline, business as usual would be out of the question everywhere. Maybe I'm so used to doom predictions that even survival on a national level (continuation of society, escape from anarchy) seems like luxury.

As for the forests I'm uncertain how bad it would be with higher temperature. In the south of Sweden we got mixed forests and in the rest of the country it's pine and spruce. I think the pine and spruce should manage quite well in higher temperature. Fairly quickly will more other types of tree start to go further north. The big problem as I see it is if the rain increases or decreases a lot.

Agreed. I hope trees, plants and animals adapt but a very abrupt temperature rise (such as 6 degrees Celsius in a decade) may bring unexpected challenges, even if the outcome would be mostly positive for Scandinavia with a similar rise during a century or two.

Lastly I don't know what you mean with "welfare entitlement mindset". I guess you in some way are after the people that the current political majority is hunting because they are not working. Of course this is a problem but I believe the problem is lack of jobs and people with the wrong/to little education. If you are after welfare in a more wide meaning the I think you are dead wrong.

A few years ago, I read a story about a school in a Southern Swedish city (Malmo or Gothenburg), attended mostly by immigrant children, that had to close for a time as the teachers refused to go to work because of continuous harassment and crime. Too many pupils simply had absolutely no respect for teachers or their classmates. The reporter was interviewing a couple of immigrant youths who were hanging around on the streets, loud and obnoxious, listening to their brand new iPods, apparently paid with entitlements. The youths said the problem is that the society has no respect for them! I just hope that this attitude is not prevalent among large segments in Sweden.

I'm NOT claiming that immigrants or foreigners are a problem per se. The problem is the attitude "I deserve everything the state can give with no activity, effort or even respect for common rules on my part". This kind of thinking probably exists also among many natives, in your country as it does here.

If the crap hits the fan then either a country can survive as a nation and help each other or it will be total chaos and luck will determine more then anything else.

Again, I agree. Solidarity and common effort are a prerequisite for the survival of the society as a whole. Therefore all citizens must realize that they probably can no longer expect anything more than only the most basic necessities from the government. And even those necessities will be granted only to people who comply and participate in the hard work of transforming the infrastructure. All subcultures and lifestyles must conform to the new, frugal situation.

[larlin]

Stuff

I think we pretty much agree =)

The attitude I will get everything from the state is not uncommon in some parts. I also think this extends into I should be able to get almost everything with my money. I think the last is much more common and a much bigger problem.

About doom and gloom yeah on this site it is pretty much all you see but there is some things to keep in mind. Mostly of the really doomish people are in the USA where the problems may become a lot bigger then here. In mosts parts I also believe that a lot of people is a bit over the top. I do believe that some sort of central government will survive in Sweden and I can't see why at least state governments wouldn't survive in the USA. Basically I don't really believe in the whole riot situation of course this is quite dependent on how bad our leaders will act.

Maybe I have to high hopes in the human nature.

[Gorm]

In my town, Trollhattan ,50 000 inhabitants, all busses and garbagetrucks and most of the town-owned cars are fueld by bio-gas, made from peoples garbage in a plant locally.

The sewers doesnt need pumps.

Train capacity is expanding, 2 rails instead of one.

We have in Trollhattan quite a lot of hydropower

A lot of farmland and a lot of forests,

The city have for a long time had bicyklesroads that gets one everywere. They still expanding them.

No public building or any houses attaced to the towns heating-system ,fjarrvarme, uses any oil, and havent been for years.

The drawaback is that trollhattan has a large industrial base that mostly will be gone in a few years, the to major industries are SAAB, cars, GM owned, and VOLVO AERO, Air-plane engines,

But overall, well do ok, and I feel no need to get out of here

[DryGuy]

A little dose of reality for ya... Do you think everyone else that is slippin down the toilet will just let you sit in your little green eden? If your lucky you will be invaded and if your not lucky you will be nuked.

sorry buddy ...you just don't have the numbers to win.

[nocar]

My gut feeling is also that life in Sweden will be sort of OK, like 10-30 years ahead, even if we picture a situation where global oil production has been constantly decreasing for that period.

By life being sort of OK, I mean that nobody is starving and everyone is able to live in a warm place in winter (we have some homeless people today, so I do not mean exactly 'everyone', but not many more than today).

Recreation trips to Thailand and the Canaries may be out, and imported fruits and veggies in winter will be too expensive for most. Much more expensive meat too, so people may actually start eating livers and tongues from animals again. And cook hens that have ended their egg-laying lives, instead of bying chicken filets from Thailand. Since fewer people will have a job, and food will be expensive, people will learn to cook from scratch to save money. Porridge costs less than musli and cornflakes. Many people will grow some veggies in their home garden.

Gasoline will be expensive, so more people will bicycle to work and for errands. (You can transport lot of food on a bike and even more in a bike-trailers. Or car-pool. All rail systems (streetcars, subways, commuter trains, distance trains) will be full of passengers who will have to put up with delays. Hopefully the government will not put more money into Volvo and Saab and motorways, but instead support rail road building. Maybe we will see horses pulling carts on the roads, instead of cars pulling horse-trailers. I have read that we today have more horses than we did in the early 1900s, except of course today's horses are for sport and recreation. It still means that we have many people who can handle horses, and riding horses can be trained to pull a wagon. It will take a while until heavy horses have been bred to greater numbers. We have lots of sailboats and sailors too, and in some locations, across lakes or to/from islands, it might make sense to transport goods, for example wood, by sails. Hopefully, the system will allow unemployed people to earn a little bit of money on the side. Swedes might pick our own berries, not people from Poland or Asia.

Small local dairies will make a come-back.

Some expensive medical treatments may not be affordable, so the average life-span may decrease. Except obesity will disappear as a problem.

I think the situation is very comparable to WWII, where imports were cut off. Granted, in the 1940s, we were a lot closer to the age-old agricultural system, so that transition was easier. Today we have the advantage of a wider variety of technology, particularly in information, so it will be easy for people to get advice in new situations. More, and more easily available, scientific knowledge helps too.

Finance minister Borg is talking about the very hard times ahead, meaning less consumption in the next few years. I think we can live quite well without four-wheelers, new cars, new TV-sets and the latest kind of fashionable imported food. As long as people are not seriously hungry and cold, I do not think that things are terrible bad.

nocar

[Revi]

Here in Maine we are like the Sweden of the US. We have lots of forests, hydropower and seacoast. We are attatched to the rest of the US, however. I would love to live in a country where people were actually planning for a low energy future. Maybe when Obama gets in there...

In the meantime we have some great people here in this state. I think they do well in a crisis. We had a 2 week long power outage due to an ice storm and people stayed calm. They pitched in and helped out.

The rest of the US may not stay so calm, however.

[Starvid]

The Swedes have a simple message to the Americans: Bite the bullet and nationalize.


Officials in Washington are trying to figure out how to shore up American banks that once ruled the financial world but now seem to weaken by the day, despite receiving hundreds of billions of dollars in government aid.

With Sweden’s banks effectively bankrupt in the early 1990s, a center-right government pulled off a rapid recovery that led to taxpayers making money in the long run.

Former government officials in Sweden, many of whom come from the market-oriented end of the political spectrum, say the only way to solve the crisis in the United States is for the government to be prepared to temporarily take full ownership of the banks.

Sweden placed its banks with troubled assets into a so-called bad bank, where they could be held and then sold over time when market and economic conditions improved. In the meantime, it used taxpayer money to provide enough capital to allow banks to resume normal lending.

In the process, Sweden wiped out existing shareholders.

By contrast, the United States government, so far, has bailed out banks without receiving large equity stakes in return, said Bo Lundgren, Sweden’s minister of fiscal and financial affairs during the Swedish bank takeover.

“For me, that is a problem,” said Mr. Lundgren, who called himself more of a free marketer than some Republicans. “If you go in with capital, you should have full voting rights.”

[...]

If there is any criticism of how Sweden handled the bad bank, it is that it might have managed an even better return if Securum had sat on its assets longer.

Swedish law envisioned a 15-year life span for Securum when it was created in 1993. It closed four years later.

Linky.

[uNkNowN ElEmEnt]

You know once I got over my knee jerk reaction to the idea of government interfering in free market (yes I know, which they have to such a large extent it pathetic), I think this might jsut be the thing to do. It certainly makes more sense for the tax payer in the long run.

[mefistofeles]

My own personal opinion is that this is what will ultimately happen in the United States, the banks are too weak to survive without additional help.

However this is a tremendous waste of money because the banks will still burn through cash and homeowners/consumers will still bhe overburdened with their loans. The most direct way to solve this problem would be to be bail out the home owners directly by cutting a check to their mortgage companies, I call this the "direct approach".

This approach would probably work better than going around the problem because:

1. The owner homeowners are bailed out directly so it instantly reduces their debt burden and allows them to save/invest/consume more.

2. This bails out the banks because their underlying assets go from non performing to stable.

3. This bails out investors/insurance companies/pensions/foreign governments who are holding all these mortaged backed securities.

Of course bailing out the home owners has one big problem: all the borrowers who are paying their mortgages could "default" in order to get this subsidy.

Personally I think creditors need to acknowledge reality and take a major haircut on these loans.

[outcast]

No real surprises.

New nuclear power plants will play a part in Sweden's long-term energy future, after the coalition government scrapped old anti-nuclear policies.

'The climate issue is now in focus, and nuclear power will thus remain an important part of Swedish electricity production for the foreseeable future', said the policy document released today. This was part of what the government called a 'long-term, sustainable energy and climate policy' with the vision of an efficient and sustainable Sweden by 2050 with no net emissions of greenhouse gases.

[Fishman]

Does this mean th"Green Party" will now run TO nuclear? Wait a minute, does Gore own stock in uranium mines?

[Plantagenet]

Glad to see the anti-nuke foolishness is ended in Sweden.

[nocar]

Well, the current coalition government is made up of four parties, of which one 'the Center party' (which once was The Farmers' Party) used to be strongly against nuclear power. This party has now changed its mind. So now the government parties agree with one other that new nuclear reactors can be built when today's reactors have to be scrapped.

The opposition, consisting of the Social Democrats, the Left party (formerly communist) and the Green party, do not agree with the ruling coalition. According to polls, the opposition is now ahead in popularity. They might well become the rulers after next election.

[Colorado-Valley]

How do they mine the fuel for the plants and metal for their electric grid without using fossil energy?

Oops ...

[Tyler_JC]

How do they mine the fuel for the plants and metal for their electric grid without using fossil energy?

Oops ...

No one is going cold turkey on fossil fuels. The goal is to use LESS of them.

[Gorm]

The amount fossil fuels needed for mining is easily produced in Sweden using biofuels. And since Sweden has a lot of uranium, well, things could be worse. Dont solve everything, but, somethings.

[mattduke]

According to the minutes of the Riksbank’s July meeting, Mr Svensson dismissed the “zero interest rate mystique” that had “exaggerated the problems” associated with zero or sub-zero rates.

“There is nothing strange about negative interest rates,” he said.

And to think I thought nobody could top Ben's zero interest rate masterstroke of centralized banking.

Mervyn King, the Bank of England governor, has hinted he may follow the Swedish example as the danger of a so-called liquidity trap, where cash remains stuck in the banking system and does not filter out to the wider economy, is an increasing concern for the UK.

ft