+Middle East = excuse to raise prices.

and soft landing. Yes we can.

gradual power down? (spits on ground)
soft landing? (spits on ground)

look, If you want to live anarcho-primitivistically, have at it. In an earlier thread, you listed how you thought people would "live" in such a culture. There is no way I'd put up with such a bleak life-style.

There's no need - other than strange aesthetic reasons - to live like that.

someone invents something comparable to oil. Either that will happen or we will frack and tar sand the planet into oblivion

1.) we can replace oil powered power plants with TRG's and solar thermal
2.) we can run vehicles via electricity, bio-diesel, pond-scum ethanol, and hydrogen
3.) we can replace the oil derived plastics with CO2 derived ehtylene, methane derived urethane, etc.

There's no need to devolve into a shabby low power existence.

If someone WANTS to live that way, that's up to them. Just don't try to tell me that's the ONLY way to live.

We can start up any and all of these... next week, if needed.

DIY! Till I Die!

being known as a Maker seems to have a certain cachet... at least in the towns that are within travel distance of a Maker Faire.

Also, I can teach somebody to build a cheap solar furnace in about two days (a week, if they're slow).

"...I will teach ten...those ten shall teach a hundred..."

you do know math of exponential growth!

I almost start to wish I lived in ecovill next to your town, really!

I'm not sure we have any ecovills around New Haven. We've got some housing coops, and a great set of farmer's markets.

The semi-legal and illegal scene is strictly amateur hour.

But, the city has good places to get food, books, and parts, and the occasional dance scene.

Not same as Do It Alone. "I grew this mean turnip, have a bite! And just remembered, come take a look at my whatever when you got a moment!". Or - "Oh I'm so cute and helpless (which guarantees that a hunky German alpine jaeger will show up in no time to fix my bike !". Both are examples of DIY of social species. Point is, the job gets done, which is the main point. "Boohoo why is Gov not doing anything..." does not get the job done, it's not cute, it's just depressing.

but all the expert analyses I've seen so far and considered sane and trustworthy point the way that power down is inevitable. In which case soft landing sounds preferable to sudden collapse.

Technofix may be possible in principle - or may not be, but no need to go into that discussion. Even if it was, it does not solve the problems of economy of scale of the transformation, not to mention other social problems.

I'm not here to tell anybody how to live. It's not my business to try to boss others. I can just share what I know both from practical experience and theory that there is at least one way that we can all live. It does not mean other ways could not be possible. The way I know has been tested and we know it works. You can't say yet same of some more technocratic solution you may suggest. Transformation movement? Good work from the little I know. Venus project? I remain skeptical, but thumbs up anyway and best of luck.

I'm not in this just about and for *me*. I may die tomorrow and fine, had a good life and couple nice kids. Please share your views and ideas, they deserve hearing and maybe you got something new I haven't yet seen debunked that deserves closer critical scrutiny. Emotional knee-jerk reactions don't help much.

Tama...

1.) people are already going for the technofix. (we've talked about this one: RTG's, Solar, Wind, Bio-diesel, etc)
2.) "other social problems?" Low tech = slavery.
3.) Madrid gets 30% of it's power from ONE solar furnace. How's that for scale?
4.) Tama, we DON'T know that "power-down" works. We know it DOESN'T work, for cities, culture, or diversity.

Look... We've talked about how to replace the energy creation/transportation thing earlier....
S1.) build local solar furnaces
S2.) build local pond scum oil plants
S3.) link up micro-grids into the national grid
S4.) use the existing rail structure to transport newly created oil
S5.) use RTG's as core power producers

You can live in a low tech tribe, if you want...
I'll be keeping the lights on in the cities.

from what I can tell.

But we seem to have misunderstanding of what we mean by low tech. What I mean by it is gadgets which can be highly genious and developed masterpieces of engineering creativity, but relatively easy to build and replicate from available materials in "garage factories", copy-free solutions that can spread easily and democratically without patent "rights" and other monopolistic problems (-> "social problems&quot . What I mean by high tech are highly complex and hierarchically centralized solutions (fission could be prototypical example) that in more holistic systemic analysis quickly start to show negative EROEI. Anti-solutions that in fact need to rob the remaining social and natural capital from low tech tribes to keep the robber tribe of financial capital running and holding power with their high tech army (talking about no-flow energy sinks!) powered up (-> "social problems&quot . Hope this clarifies and makes future discussions even more fruitful.

Windmills, solar furnaces etc. low tech solutions could and should be doable as we speak on much much greater scale. The problems are social, patent etc. monopolistic problems. In my country many people are building low tech solutions in homes and villages for local sustainable energy production and many many more would be willing, but one of main problems is the micro-grids you mention. If the political system was not controlled by big monopolistic corporations, people could invest more into local low tech energy production knowing that by being able to feed extra production into (inter)national grid they could get their investment back, and then help others to invest and make the transformation happen much faster.

But no. The fucking government is owned by monopolistic high tech corps that don't allow that, small local producers to feed (inter)national grid in any practically sane way. Because if they did, they couldn't keep on robbing from low tech tribes and communities and keep them in slavery. So the problem is, the fucking government is not helping any, it's just obstructing and keeps on doing that until we get rid of it or at least big money out of politics.

1.) the RTG's are a proven technology... going on 60 years.
2.) I don't much care about international grids... I tend to look at local problems. (This is probably another reason I'll never be a socialist...)
3.) In all of the states that I've contacted, getting a co-generation or Qualifying Facility permit is pretty easy: match the line voltage, phase, and sine-pattern, get the liability insurance, and you're good to go.

If you just want to set up local power, and completely shut out the power company... build units that make people self-sufficient, store the excess locally, and trade as needed. No power company kissing up needed.

In an earlier thread, you had described a VERY different situation.

- RTG - call me skeptic, but minor detail on the scale we are speaking.

- I live in Finland, our national grid is connected to national grids of neighbors, exchange happens according to demand-supply dynamics. I see no big problem there, or all the independent and self-sufficient local grids forming a global grid. Just like Internet. If you consider Internet socialist and never wanna have anything to do with socialism, you can look for some less socialist tech to stay out of contact...

There have been misunderstandings, earlier I've been talking more about food production and horticulture of which I have more experience than from your cup of tea.

hmmm... for the demand side dynamics...

1.) develop local power pools.
2.) use up some of the power to create bio-diesel
3.) build a few cheapo diesel generators
4.) when needed, fire up the generator (when the pool, or a facing pool, gets low)

I don't consider internet to be socialist. I consider it to be confused.

you are starting to sound like anarchist...

More like a cross between a freedom fighter, and an engineer.

and RTG can scale up pretty quickly.

--Being a list of givens:
300 curies/gram of Uranium (plutonium has more)
1 watt per curie
8% efficiency thermocouples (Yes, yes, yes. I know that's low... This unit is a slap-it-together-and-get-a-beer version)
--End list

that ought to provide about 24 watts/gram

a one kilogram mass of uranium (pelletized. Each pellet in its own tiny crucible/lead jacket) should provide 24 KiloWatts (24KW)

If a standard house runs on about 2-4 KW, then we've got power for 6 houses. (My wife and I use about 1KW, but we mostly just sit and read... Kinky, I know...)

A Metric Ton has 1 thousand kilos. So that would be 6000 houses. Wikipedia states that one site in Ohio has 13,000 tons.

6,000 X 13,000 = 78,000,000 houses. That's pretty much the USA residential power usage. Only using the stuff in Ohio.

Add in the stuff at Savannah River Project, and I could power the residential sections of Europe.

I guess I'll be the "Bearer of Light

Not ok with mine in my back yard, can't expect others to feel otherwise. Not to mention same problem as fossiles: not sustainable. Scale it up exponentially, you run out in no time. And awful mess left behind.

I was just talking about using the current radioactive waste. No new digging needed.

If we actually use the total in the USA, we have more than enough.

Those newly created batteries aren't going to wear out, any time soon. (New Batteries! Good for 20,000 years!)

As said, more your cup of tea. Good thing we come in many colours.

and just when I had finally settled on a nice shade of electric blue...

I guess we can all just go out and plunk down 30grrr on a new 'lectric car tomorrow.

Nooo problemo.

1.) folks have built DIY electric cars before... not much more complex than a golf cart
2.) hydrogen as fuel is pretty simple... Fuel from Water goes through the steps.


People, this isn't Rocket Science... I should know, as Rocketry is my hobby.

doing transitions of old combustion cars into electric. Good people-powered low tech solutions. And lot smarter than to destroy all existing combustion cars to build new electric cars.

that book I mentioned, Fuel From Water explains the steps needed to convert a car over to hydrogen. In my study, I've a few books on converting gas cars to electric. (I converted a moped... but it can't haul enough tools and parts to make it worthwhile. I gave it to the neighbor's kid.)

It's easy!!!!

1.) look up electrolysis or thermal cracking
2.) do some math, to figure out how much fuel you need
3.) Get thee to a hardware store...

Start building.

It's really sounding like you guys are LOOKING for a reason to go live low tech.

What's stopping you? Why should the rest of us have to live that way?

How?

US oil production peaked at 9.6 million barrels a day in 1970 and has been declining since. It's currently at about 6 million barrels a day of conventional crude oil plus about another three million barrels a day in "other liquids" which includes corn ethanol. Corn ethanol production requires significant energy inputs, and corn ethanol is not an energy source. The energy obtained from burning corn ethanol is only slightly more than that put in (the EROEI is 1.07). All of the new production of oil in recent years is in deepwater, shale, and tar sands. There's coal liquefaction, but estimates of coal reserves are based on current consumption rates for electrical generation, and not the much greater use of coal that would come if we were turning it into fuel. Start using that much more of it and 120 years' worth of coal becomes much less. And electric cars are hardly a solution since the demands placed on the power grid by replacing all existing gasoline and diesel vehicles with electrics would be tremendous; it'd result in much higher electricity demand, and most power plants are fuelled with coal and natural gas.

oil from pond scum...
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/algae-biodiesel.html

one time article
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Using_Pond_Scum_To_Fuel_Our_Future_999.html

says we can get 10,000 gallons of oil per acre/year

If we assume that our newly created oil producing ponds are only using 50% of the land they're on...

I get a line 2400 miles long (NYC to LA) and a mile wide...

That meets all current oil uses of the USA.

There's no need to live like savages, when the petroleum runs out.

enact a brief price control to prevent gouging.

Don't over-react to the media coverage of the embassy protests. These are groups of several hundred people in a very localized space. They will burn some stuff for a few days and them move on.

The real risk on oil prices is from the Fed's handling of the US Dollar. Almost all oil transactions are conducted in US Dollars. This week the Fed committed to what looks like a pretty big expansion in the supply of dollars. This may not have a huge inflationary impact inside the US because unemployment is still high, so it is hard to raise prices.

But the people using dollars to trade oil don't like an abrupt expansion in the supply of dollars. They will want to raise their per-barrel price to match the expansion of the dollar supply. That won't cause the barrel price to double, but it could cause upward pressure of 10% or so if this QE3 program continues more than a few months.

and copied again.

A solar furnace isn't much more than a bunch of mirrors, and a steam engine (Boy Mechanic, vol I)

A line a mile wide, stretching from NYC to LA, will cover ALL currently posted oil needs of the USA.

We have solutions.

Start putting them together, and then run the Oil Companies out of business.

These Muslim populations have a combination of crazy and fatigue. They can be explosive and do pop off from time to time.

The cameras naturally focus on the 100 people causing a scene versus the 30 million who aren't protesting. They blow up for a few days then they go away. It is hard to keep this kind of indignant outrage going, especially when practically nobody has even seen the stupid video in the first place.

The risk there is not really economic, in the sense of the unrest driving up the cost of oil. The risk is that this religious fanaticism that erupts from time to time can give cover to real terrorists whore are most certainly lurking in most of these Islamic countries. Terrorism continues to be a very real issue, obviously.

I'll blame my learning disability... (it's an easy target.)

Following on from Bluestreak's point - just about all useful commodities are currently priced in dollars. The owners of those commodities will also want to raise their per unit price to match the expansion of the dollar supply. Even worse, what if they decide that they would like price their commodities in some other currency rather than in dollars? That would not be pretty because then we would have to convert lower valued dollars to whatever currency is needed to buy the commodity in question.

were behind the video...

Just keep following the money.

making oil and all other commodities more attractive as "safe havens" you are correct.

Now throw in some good old fashioned Mid-East turmoil and you've got the makings of some record oil and gas prices.

I hope President Obama has some of those Jimmy Carter style sweaters around for the winter.

War with Iran = $$$ in their pockets.

First Isaac, and now the ME.

the Euro crisis and the economic slowdown in China have really suppressed oil prices.

The Arab spring, and more recently, the increasing sanctions against Iranian oil exports have had minimal effect on oil prices.

in euro prices.

And sounds like you are one of the few in this thread who knows what is going on.

The Kochroaches are behind it. I'm sure. They want to make it look as if Obama caused the spike in gas prices.

Anything there about corn and ethanol that could be a factor?

And we already know the Kochs and their Koch-whores were working damned hard to keep gas prices high since Obama took office.

Now they have another excuse to do another round of speculation to drive oil prices into the stratosphere.