Alternative Energy For Do-It-Yourselfers

For Do-It-Yourselfers, this is a starting page:

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/tutorial_sites.php

For instance,

http://www.instructables.com/ is one choice, enter "solar" in the search box and you get a huge number of choices, and they are filterable!

Happy Hunting!
Happy Renewable New Year!
Sustain_ability
http://transitions.stumbleupon.com

George Carlin knows, do you?

This is a little off topic to peak oil and the language ("f" word) may offend some of you but George knows what's going on. The way in which I relate this to peak oil is to relate our consumption to dwindling finite resources such as oil. 'Nuff said?

Peak Oil Passnotes: On the Cusp

For full article, click here.

Brief quote, i.e. a primer on economics:

Whether the peak is at the current figure of 85 million barrels per day or can sneak up to 95 million barrels per day over the next decade is neither here nor there. In historical terms we are on the cusp. What is slightly worrying at the moment is how that cusp is taking shape.

In normal times a recession dampens oil demand. But at the moment we see many people in financial difficulty, we see a credit crisis, and we also see doggedly high inflation. But instead of weakening oil prices those prices have stayed firm. After oil breached $99 per barrel in the last month, it fell back to $86 per barrel, and many like us thought it would drop further due to impending signs of economic weakness. It did not.

In plain speaking, this is getting worrying. A recession is bad enough, but a recession with high inflation starts to create stagflation. If oil stays at, or around, the prices it achieved in 2007 then we could be in for some serious troubles. Remember that oil prices do not knock through into economies straight away, the impact is delayed, maybe as much as 18 months in some cases. For example in the European Union food prices have boosted inflation to 4.1% - those food prices have been boosted by energy, by oil.

As an example, the credit crisis has not suddenly exploded over one night, one speech or one erroneous political statement. There was no single factor that blasted it into the public consciousness. Instead we had the slow drip effect. Some people had been warning for years that printing extra money to stave off recession - by creating false liquidity - was merely postponing the hurt. It may even end up making that hurt worse.."

My Most Recent Local Activism Attempt--Reviving the Interurban

When thinking of ways to improve and sustain my community in the event of higher energy prices (which anyone reading this blog would most likely agree is a given), I wrote the article below in an attempt to create dialogue within the community and to spark ideas. There was a nice response to my article in the Sunday newspaper but it hasn't been published online yet. I will include it in another blog entry when it comes up.

I would've worded some things differently in hindsight but the issue was a burning one in my mind at the time so I just typed it out and hit send after a few revisions only. I guess my writing habits have worsened with the advent of discussion boards where one tends to "freewrite" whatever is in mind at the time of writing! Oh well...I threw it out there anyway!

Read original article here.

— Someone with experience recently told me that it takes about 50 years for an idea to be accepted by a community and become a reality. For example, the Hoosier Heartland idea was birthed in 1960. So I am beginning now. My idea involves transportation of the public kind — local mass transit.
Many years ago, in the early 1900s, I believe, there was local public transit here and elsewhere known as the “interurban.” It was an electrified light passenger rail car that traveled to and from surrounding points such as Kokomo, Peru, and Royal Center, etc. The interurban eventually lost out to the automobile. I would like to see it return and service the people all points along the ways of Winamac, Royal Center, Peru, Monticello, Delphi, Flora, Lafayette, Rochester and Kokomo.
Why? Because energy is not likely to be any cheaper in the future than it is today. The most recent credible reference to evidence my claim would be Nov. 19th’s front page of the Wall Street Journal and the most recent outlook report from the EIA. Some would argue that alternatives such as ethanol and biodiesel will take the place of oil in transportation. However, it’s not generally understood that any alternative will cost as much or more than oil. Even if we quit using foreign oil, we will still pay a price for any alternatives or domestic oil. At some point, it will take more energy to extract any oil, requiring two or more barrels of oil to produce one barrel of oil. This is based on “energy returned on energy invested.” When it costs more to get that oil out of the ground, refine it and transport it, the cost will be so high no matter where it comes from that the average person won’t be able to afford it and demand destruction will develop. Hence, the price will not be able to be logically lowered due to decreased demand because it will cost more to produce that one barrel of oil no matter what. There is also the potential of supply not being able to keep up with demand. Either way, the future price is going nowhere but up.
So, what advantages would an interurban passenger rail have for our area? I have three initial answers: College students, drunk drivers and low wage homeowners who don’t work in their hometowns.
Presently, this region is blessed with many schools of higher education including Ivy Tech, Indiana University and Purdue among others. Speaking from personal experience, many adult learners who attend these schools to improve their future have a difficult time providing their own reliable transportation. An interurban rail line would help them do this without worrying about a reliable vehicle and the cost of gas during their quest for a higher education. An interurban would also accommodate those younger students who live on campus to come and go to this area if they have no transportation of their own.
Also, many people who love the nightlife and like to come into town or drive out of town often need to have a designated driver. Sometimes it doesn’t happen. Those who decide to drive back while drinking pose a great risk to themselves and others as some do.
An interurban would allow enjoyment of food and commerce around the region that might otherwise be passed over and could reduce the risk to our well-being via drunk drivers on the road.
Most importantly, I think of low-income wage earners working outside of their counties. Not only is there a personal cost of transportation but also a cost of the viability of each county. If the cost of transportation doesn’t decrease (which I believe it won’t), these populations of people will end up moving closer to their employers and any home ownership they may now have in said county may bring a decrease in tax revenues from property taxes to local income taxes if they decide it’s not cost effective for them to remain here and travel every day. In simpler terms, our tax base could decrease. An interurban could allow this group to remain in the area, keeping revenues in place.
I’ve no knowledge of what must be done to make this idea a reality. I’ve nothing to help with the cost of the project, although I believe a regional/community investment such as this would pay for itself in time by keeping people here as well as alleviating hardship on the local subcultures mentioned above.
All I have are ideas. This would not only require the efforts of our local leaders, but they would have to work in conjunction with the other leaders in the surrounding communities also potentially serviced. It could be a joint regional effort. Too costly? What about interurban buses?
In 50 years, it might be more costly when people can’t afford to travel to their workplace or attend school for lack of cheap transportation. Hopefully, some of the leaders of the community are reading this and will understand my call for an “interurban revival.” Who will follow my cue?
Gwen Ashby is a resident of Logansport.

This clip is pathetic...

I must be a genius. This video, if real, is absolutely a pathetic commentary on the common person in the U.S. No wonder we're freakin' doomed. What has happened to America?

Peak Oil on NPR: The Diane Rehm Show

This week, The Diane Rehm Show features peak oil. Click to listen here.

TIME....and TIME again!

Click here for full article "After the Oil Crisis, a Food Crisis?" This a second oil-related article I've found from TIME this week.

"Is the world headed for a food crisis? India, Mexico and Yemen have seen food riots this year. Argentines boycotted tomatoes during the country's recent presidential elections when the vegetable became more expensive than meat; and in Italy, shoppers organized a one-day boycott of pasta to protest rising prices. In late October, the Russian government, hoping to ease tensions ahead of parliamentary elections early next year, announced a price freeze for milk, bread and other foods through the end of January.

What's the cause for these shortages and price hikes? Expensive oil, for the most part."...

"...On the demand side, one of the key issues is biofuels. Biofuels, made from food crops such as corn, sugar cane, and palm oil, are seen as easing the world's dependence on gasoline or diesel. But when crude oil is expensive, as it is now, these alternative energy sources can also be sold at market-competitive prices, rising steeply in relation to petroleum.

With one-quarter of the U.S. corn harvest in 2007 diverted towards biofuel production, the attendant rise in cereal prices has already had an impact on the cost and availability of food. Critics worry that the gold rush toward biofuels is taking away food from the hungry. Jean Ziegler, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on The Right to Food, recently described it as a "crime against humanity" to convert food crops to fuel, calling for a five-year moratorium on biofuel production."

The Bloomington Alternative: Peaking out on oil

Full article featuring Bloomington, IN, city councilman here.

I'm planning on contacting this person to possibly help me create a dialogue with my community leaders regarding resource depletion, it's impact on our community, and how we're going to mitigate the impact fewer resources will have on us locally.

Peak Possibilities -- TIME

Read full article here.

....That's alarming enough in itself. Even the optimists think we have less than three decades to go? But at industry conferences this fall, the word from producers was far gloomier. The chief executives of ConocoPhillips and French oil giant Total both declared that they can't see oil production ever topping 100 million bbl. a day. The head of the oil importers' club that is the International Energy Agency warned that "new capacity additions will not keep up with declines at current fields and the projected increase in demand."....

....It's not that the world is running out of oil. There are massive reserves available in Canadian tar sands, Colorado shale, Venezuelan heavy oil and other unconventional deposits. The problem is that most of this oil is hard to extract and even harder to refine, and it isn't likely to account for a significant share of global production anytime soon. Almost everybody agrees that the pumping of conventionally sourced oil outside the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) has already peaked or will peak soon, a reality that even discoveries like the recent 8 billion-bbl. find off the coast of Brazil can't alter because production from so many existing fields is declining.....

Oil on Google Video Here

Peak Oil Discussed on the Wall Street Journal's front page

Excerpt:

A growing number of oil-industry chieftains are endorsing an idea long deemed fringe: The world is approaching a practical limit to the number of barrels of crude oil that can be pumped every day.

Some predict that, despite the world's fast-growing thirst for oil, producers could hit that ceiling as soon as 2012. This rough limit -- which two senior industry officials recently pegged at about 100 million barrels a day -- is well short of global demand projections over the next few decades. Current production is about 85 million barrels a day.

The world certainly won't run out of oil any time soon. And plenty of energy experts expect sky-high prices to hasten the development of alternative fuels and improve energy efficiency. But evidence is mounting that crude-oil production may plateau before those innovations arrive on a large scale. That could set the stage for a period marked by energy shortages, high prices and bare-knuckled competition for fuel.

The current debate represents a significant twist on an older, often-derided notion known as the peak-oil theory. Traditional peak-oil theorists, many of whom are industry outsiders or retired geologists, have argued that global oil production will soon peak and enter an irreversible decline because nearly half the available oil in the world has been pumped. They've been proved wrong so often that their theory has become debased.

The whole article can be read
here.

Money As Debt

I promise peak oil is included 31 minutes into this animation on money. Please share with all.

Back to the land - part 1

This is Part 1 in a 4 part series that was shown on BBC Wales. If you go to YouTube you can probably view the rest of the parts if you're interested. The same situation depicted in the documentary can be applied in the U.S., too.

Found a New Blog: Living Plastic Free in 2007

Click here for blog.

Oil Apocalypse on History Channel's Mega Disasters Tuesday

Just an FYI alert for all you peak oilers. The History Channel has included "Oil Apocalypse" in the field of Mega Disasters. It will air this Tuesday evening, November 13th at 11pm & Wednesday, November 14th at 3am (eastern time?). In the preview, Richard Heinberg was being interviewed. Check the History Channel for times in your area.

I also heard that during a prime-time football game today, T.Boone Pickens was discussing peak oil in between! How odd!

David Korten - The Great Turning

Hubbert Peak Oil.

I'm copying an entire essay taken from [http://ergobalance.blogspot.com/2007/10/hubbert-peak-oil.html] by Chris Rhodes. If he objects, I will remove it.
Sustain_ability


In 1956 a paper was published which will be of greater significance to the future of humankind than those reporting on the structure of DNA or the Theory of Relativity. Its title was "Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels", and it was written and presented by M. King Hubbert at an oil-industry conference in Houston, Texas, while he was in the employ of the Shell Development Company. At first Hubbert was not taken seriously in his conclusions that the peak in oil production would follow the peak in oil discovery by about forty years, and so the best year for US oil output would be around 1965 - 1970, roughly 40 years after the most successful year of oil finds, in 1930. He was right, and thenceforth US home oil production has fallen to the extent that the nation now imports two thirds of all the oil it uses, a colossal 20 million or so barrels a day, or one quarter of the world's requirement of oil.

In days before computers, Hubbert would have drawn the graph by hand (probably with the aid of a flexy-curve, or simply freehand as I used to find best, before PC's were available routinely, and mathematical analysis packages such as the Origin programme, which is installed on this machine). The Hubbert peak is based on a logistic function, which is a restricted exponential, and the first derivative of it corresponds to a peak. The derivative of this (i.e. the second derivative of the logistic function) gives an inflexion, where the point at which the curve crosses the baseline corresponds to the peak maximum. The logistic function includes the familiar S-shaped curves that relate to the growth of bacteria and to enzyme kinetics such as those of Michaelis and Menton.

The Hubbert curve (peak) may be defined as:

Q(t) = Q(max)/(1 + ae^bt),

where Q(max) is the total recoverable amount of crude oil in the ground to start off with, Q(t) is the cumulative production (i.e. how much oil has been pulled out of the ground to date) and a and b are constants. Accordingly, the year of maximum production (peak oil) is given by:

t(max) = (1/b)ln(1/a),

and for the world altogether, with a peak discovery year of 1965, this appears as 2005. There is much speculation and analysis that oil production has already peaked, and it is my suggestion that enhanced recovery methods alone have maintained the present output of oil, much of it from the giant fields in the Middle East. It is obvious that the resource is concentrated in only a few particular regions of the Earth, vide supra, and also Russia, South America and Indonesia. Countries such as Iraq and Iran may become swing-producers, i.e. that produce more oil than they use, and I have read opinions to the effect that the Iraq war if not started in the interests of obtaining oil for the West, might become a worthy swing-producer, thus averting economic starvation at least for a few years. Iraq has about 140 billion barrels of oil, and Iran about the same, and so at a level consumption of 30 billion barrels a year for the world in total, we might get almost 10 years worth of supply from there. It is significant that Western companies such as BP and ExxonMobil have been granted 30 year contracts to exploit the Iraqi oil.

Not everybody agrees with the Hubbert analysis and some argue that we will be able to access around four times as much oil as there is present under the Earth in the form of crude-oil, by which they mean the Canadian tar-sands, oil shale, oil made from coal or from gas, biomass and so on. However, this does Hubbert a considerable disservice because he was talking explicitly about cheap oil, and it is this that will inexorably run out, most likely during the next 5 - 10 years. Hence there is no consolation to be found in any putative 3.7 trillion barrels of oil figure, because bringing that into reality will be extremely expensive both financially (to take an economist's standpoint) and more precisely in terms of the energy and other resources such as water that are mandatory in those actions necessary to do so.

We are not about to run out of oil. We will be able to produce hydrocarbons (oil) for decades to come, but not at the cheap prices we are used to. I am working on a rough figure of assuming that everything (and I mean everything - food, clothes, and all else) will cost about twice what it does now in that 5 - 10 year period. That would correspond to a $200 barrel. This will be uncomfortable especially for those who already bear considerable debts, particularly in the UK, which is the most indebted nation in Europe. We also drink more than anyone else apparently, and have a greater incidence of sexually transmitted diseases, which makes me think that the era of the "stiff upper lip" has rather passed for the English. Many of these problems may well be "cured" by a huge hiking-up of general costs in terms of booze, travel and the overused "plastic friend" - the credit card which often proves less than amicable.

Another feature of Britain is that we have "lost" most of our manufacturing industry, and so we buy cheap imports from e.g. China and therefore fuel the economic enterprise of that nation. Without imports to the West of washing machines, TV's and so on, the Chinese economy will grind onto the hard shoulder, and our own economy, based as it is around the "service sector" will crash too meaning that less service-businesses will survive if people have less cash in their pockets to buy their services, and an according loss of jobs in that industry.

The mathematics of Hubbert's theory is very interesting but as I have pointed out before, there were only so many squares on that sheet of graph paper in reflection that there is only so much cheap oil that can be drawn up from the Earth, [i.e. Q(max) in the above equation], hence no matter what values we chose for the constants (a) and (b) or whether we use a Gaussian or Lorenzian distribution or some other mathematical device, the future of humanity will unfold, in ways that will be only evident to later history, upon a world devoid of cheap oil, and to kid ourselves otherwise is an act of addicted denial. We need to plan a society based on localised communities and less dependent on apparently limitless cheap transport, and cheap products made from oil.


(1) http://www.energybulletin.net/print.php?id=13650
(2) http://www.answers.com/topic/hubbert-curve?linktext+Hubbert%20
(3) "The Hubbert Curve: Its strengths and weaknesses" By, J.H.Laherrere: http://dieoff.org/page191.ht,m
(4) "Hubbert's Peak - the mathematics behind it", By Luis de Sousa: http://wolf.readinglitho.co.uk/hubbertmaths
(5) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubbert_peak_theory

New World Order, Forged in the Gulf

Click here for the full and LONG story by Andrew G. Marshall

(If the page comes up blank or without the article, click on the sidebar "Middleast" and look for the title and author. It was wayyy too long to copy here. It took me almost 2 hours off and on to read and absorb all of it. Of course, I'm slow that way.)

Is anybody ready for a short review of American geopolitical history to the present? You'll find it in this article. I think we often need a reminder. I did. The article puts many pieces of the puzzle together concerning American geopolitics over at least the last 30 years or so.

The author implies how and why different governmental figures implemented the things America and Britain has done and what role certain think tanks, politicos, multinationals, and individuals play(ed) in the scheme of geopolitical events that have occurred and are occurring.

I would roughly guess that 95% of the populace doesn't even have the attention span to want to find any of this out or to remember it. Even if they did, they would not give it much afterthought. Personally, being the kind of deep thinker I am, I feel kind of powerless myself but I simply don't have the kind of heart to drop it just because I can't do anything about it. I hate to be melodramatic but it just makes me hurt inside for all the poor innocent souls out there who have to endure the brunt of a worldwide geopolitical game run by a huge bunch of untouchables. One day it could be me. I wish I could convince those in control that we, the human race, are all no more important than the jellyfish, including them. Not that we aren't important to each other on an individual basis or that human life isn't precious. To the contrary! Everything is precious! However, none of us last forever, just as with the jellyfish.

Here's a few things I learned or subconsciously re-recalled from the article. Did you know our government helped form the Taliban and covertly supported reviving and kindling Islamic fundamentalism so that they would resist any attempts of control from the USSR? We funded and supplied them with ammunition to fight the Soviets in the Afghan-Russia war? Did you know that in WWI the Brits more or less appointed the Sauds as the Royal family for Saudi Arabia? The Saudis are Sunni and Iran are Shia. They've hated each other for at least a century. There was a dispute between Iraq and Kuwait over whose oil was near their border next to each other. Kuwait was using their oil, Saddam had lots of debt owed to a lot of multinationals and could not produce enough of their own oil to pay off the debts. When he asked the U.N. and the U.S. Sec. of State Baker if he could invade, they said they had no opinion. He invaded, we attacked. The Kuwaitis never alerted their military about the possible invasion! Afghanistan was the key location (in between) for extending a planned pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan. OBL is a member of the Saudi Royal family. 911 was perpetuated by Saudi Islamic fundamentalist extremists. The neocons and the big oil multinationals (U.S., Europeans, Arabs) disagree on how to control the Iraqi oil at this point--privatize and split it up or state oil-run OPEC member? That Brezienzki (sp?) was the left's Henry Kissinger. Brezienzki wanted to monopolize the Mideast and Asia covertly, the neocons and big oil believe things are best won by brute military might. Oh, there's much more in that article. I'm just not remembering it all right now.

The sad part about all of this is that I bet no children within our educational system have ever been taught any of this nor ever will. If so, there might be some more informed people in our populace today who would understand what is happening. No longer is it taught how to think but mostly what to think by process of not presenting the whole picture. Heck, some people might even side with the law of competition and fully agree with these actions of worldwide imperialism (which is contrary to my conclusions). I would be okay with that. I just wish we were told the truth. The WHOLE truth and not just little soundbytes of news snippets from the oligarchy called the mass media. What we ought to have is an informed electorate who votes in elections on foreign, economic, social, environmental, etc., policies from the various think tanks! All the candidates have been are representatives of certain policies designed by these think tanks!

Oh, I'll get off my soapbox now. There was a really awesome saying I liked off one the blogs called Blue Girl, Red State and it says: "America is founded on four boxes: 1) The Soap Box, 2) The Ballot Box, 3) The Jury Box, and 4) The Ammo Box...in that order. LOL

CNN International: "World at peak oil output"

This is a re-hash on another article I linked to (and it seems everyone else in the peak oil blogosphere as well) only it adds a contrary view to the German-based Energy WatchGroup study's claims. See below:

LONDON, England (CNN) -- The world has reached the point of maximum oil output and production levels will halve by 2030 -- a situation that will eventually lead to war and disaster, a report claims.

The German-based Energy Watch Group released a report Tuesday saying the world's oil production peaked in 2006 and from now on will drop by around 3 percent a year. It says that by as early as 2030, the global availability of oil will be half of what it was at its peak.

"It's a very serious result," said Hans-Josef Fell, a German lawmaker from the environmentalist Green Party who commissioned the report. "I fear the world will come into a big economic crisis in the coming years."

The report warns that coal, uranium, and other key fossil fuels are also in declining supply. It predicts the fall in fossil fuel production will bring with it the threat of war, humanitarian disaster, and general social unrest.

But Leo Drollas, who leads oil and gas market analysis and forecasting at the Center for Global Energy Studies in London, said there are plenty of supplies and no looming crisis. He said the report sounds like "scaremongering."

Drollas says production could still slow one day, but only because new reserves will be considered too difficult or expensive to extract.

"Oil could be left in the ground and we could move on to another fuel in the future, not because we're running out of oil but because, economically speaking, it is not worth extracting the oil," Drollas said.
advertisement

The debate comes as oil prices have hovered at record level. Wednesday morning, NYMEX crude was listed at $84.96 a barrel; oil prices topped $90 a barrel last week.

Analysts do agree, however, that oil prices could continue to rise, especially if there is further instability in the Middle East.

I also have another geopolitical analysis article to post next regarding a different but deeper perspective on the oil situation. I've come to the conclusion that if oil has peaked or not--is indifferent to me at this point. It will sooner or later no matter what. I'm beginning to realize that I would prefer to live lower on the totem pole, in peace and with a sound conscience than to contribute the the greedy geopolitical interventions of any country, any elite, any government, blindly well-intentioned or not. One thing I definitely hate about this world is the law of competition. Ugh. All I can say is keep reading until it hurts. You often are reminded that on the macro scale of things in this world, there is just no gaining control of some things like cooperation. You can influence and win over many to your worldview but it will NEVER include everybody.

Rocket Stove Assembly/Cooking Demonstration Video

For mp4 video click here.

This is a very good and inspiring demonstration on how to make and use a rocket stove. The video also demonstrates how to use a purchased, cheap solar cooker. I haven't made one myself but I will keep this with plans to try one out. If I can't have my outdoor brick oven yet, I will try this in the meantime!

Steep decline in oil production brings risk of war and unrest, new study says

Story from the UK's Guardian, click here.

Snippet:

World oil production has already peaked and will fall by half as soon as 2030, according to a report which also warns that extreme shortages of fossil fuels will lead to wars and social breakdown.

The German-based Energy Watch Group will release its study in London today saying that global oil production peaked in 2006 - much earlier than most experts had expected. The report, which predicts that production will now fall by 7% a year, comes after oil prices set new records almost every day last week, on Friday hitting more than $90 (£44) a barrel.

Corn ethanol requirements passed by senators??

Someone on one of my lists just posted this link of a chart presented by Matthew Simmons on corn ethanol requirements recently passed by the senate. Oh boy , this puts "eminent domain" in a whole new light....this means I might have to move to Michigan or Ohio!

A nice Peak Oil article from Grand Forks, ND

Click here for full story.

Snippet:

In your Homecoming speech this month, you said that the “peak oil” era is coming to an end, which sounds ominous. Can you tell us what you mean?
The best way is a quote from Cambridge engineer researcher associate Dan Yergin. “It took us 125 years to use the first trillion barrels of oil, and we'll use the next trillion in 30.”

That defines in my mind the issue we're facing, but there is a huge debate going on between basically two schools of thought. One is the Cambridge Energy Research Association's thought, which is that we have plenty of oil in the world, and we are good at developing technology. In spite of the fact that energy information agencies are forecasting we will be using another 30 million plus barrels a day of oil in the world between now and 2030, and technology will find a way to do that. That's one school of thought.

Another school of thought says we are at the maximum point of producability, and so it's decline from here on down. That's the “peak oil” theory.

If you look at production in North America or any of these mature basins, or even production from the Williston Basin, you'll see a demonstration what “peak oil” looks like. When you deal with a finite resource, you can develop it, produce it and keep increasing it up to a point. Then, once you go past the mid-way point, you're into decline.

Age of Scarcity Industrialism by John Michael Greer

Click for full article here.

In this article, Greer applies Kubler-Ross' stages of grief, death & dying to the greater American society's attitude towards the awareness of a slow decline of petroleum energy in the past 25-30 years. My only comment is that as an individual, one doesn't always flow successively from one stage to the next. Remember, sometimes these stages occur simultaneously or can fluctuate into one and out of another and back again. The five stages include denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally, acceptance. At what stage would you say we are as a country at this moment?

Radio New Zealand quotes Association for Study of Peak Oil's Bruce Robinson

Click here for short news story.

business.iafrica.com: "Oil at $87 a barrel is cheap"

Click here for full story.

Snippet:
..."According to US government forecasts, world petroleum liquids consumption is expected to increases from 83 million barrels per day in 2004 to 118 million barrels per day in 2030.

That's an increase of almost 30 percent and there are not enough new oil reserves to meet this demand.

"The price of oil has to increase otherwise it would be betraying the laws of economics," said White.

"I bet that in 10 year's time after the Asian population has boomed and gentrified and peak oil has hit home hard, you will have to agree with me that oil at $87 a barrel was cheap, cheap, cheap," he said. ..."

I was wondering why Myanmar (Burma) was of such importance...

in the U.S. news lately. Please don't misunderstand me, Myanmar is just as important as anyplace else but the U.S. media doesn't pick up news on places like this unless there is some interest in it for them!

Myanmar's "Saffron Revolution": The Geopolitics Behind the Movement

If the article doesn't show up, click on Southeast & Asia and look for the title dated October 15, 2007.

$88/barrel of oil and nobody's blinking

Click here for yahoo comments on $88/barrel oil

Why is it that the price of a barrel of oil has hit an all time high and the physical world is not even blinking an eye? Is it because gas prices aren't that high yet? It's still only $2.71 at my benchmark gas station. I guess everyone's has become accustomed to the higher prices and are glad that it isn't $3.50/gallon yet.

In other news today, I've heard that 2/3 of the working population is saving next to nothing for retirement and that the majority is planning on spending more this year on Christmas than last year!? To add to that, food prices are outrageous. Maybe people don't buy food or cook anymore, so they aren't aware. Maybe they all eat out all the time.

Well, I just thought I'd bring it to anyone's attention who runs across this blog. I just thought I'd let whoever know that 7 years ago a barrel of oil was around $20/barrel and now it's made it to about $12 within the $100/barrel of oil mark.

An Experiment in Back Yard Sustainability

I'm working on things like this in my own backyard.

Peak Oil: Alternatives, Renewables & Impacts

Click for full .pdf written by Clifford J. Wirth, Ph.D. here.

Abstract

"This paper examines scientific and government studies in order to provide reliable conclusions about Peak Oil and its future impacts. Independent studies indicate that global oil production peaked in 2006 (or will peak within a few years) and will decline until all recoverable oil is depleted within several decades. Because global oil demand is increasing, declining production will soon generate high energy prices, inflation, unemployment, and irreversible economic depression. Alternative sources of energy will replace only a small fraction of declining oil production. Because oil under girds the world economy, oil depletion will result in global economic collapse and population decline. As oil exporting nations experience both declining oil production and increased domestic oil consumption, they will reduce oil exports to the U.S. Because the U.S. is highly dependent on imported oil for transportation, food production, industry, and residential heating, the nation will experience the impacts of declining oil supplies sooner and more severely than much of the world. North American natural gas production has peaked, importation of natural gas is limited, and the U.S. faces shortages of natural gas within a few years. These shortages threaten residential heating supplies, industrial production, electric power generation, and fertilizer production. Because U.S. coal production peaked in 2002 (in terms of energy provided by coal), the U.S. will experience significantly higher coal and electric prices in future years as coal production declines. The U.S. government is unprepared for the multiple consequences of Peak Oil, Peak Natural Gas, and Peak Coal. Multiple crises will cripple the nation in a gridlock of ever-worsening problems. Within a few decades, the U.S. will lack car, truck, air, and rail transportation, as well as mechanized farming, adequate food and water supplies, electric power, sanitation, home heating, hospital care, and government services."

CNN Money headline: 'The end of oil'

Click here for full article.

It's always nice to see the mainstream acknowledging the subject of peak oil.

After Oil Supplies Dry Up, What's Plan B?

Click here for full article.

Excerpt:

At this point, you might be asking yourself: When oil becomes scarce, how will I get food? That's a very good question. Here are a few more: Will my garbage get picked up? How will my water district purify and deliver water and treat sewage without petrochemicals? What if I need an ambulance? What if my home is one of the 7.7 million that rely on oil for heating? Which of my medications are made out of petrochemicals? How will I get to work? Will I even have a job anymore?

But don't just ask yourself. Ask your elected officials, your public utility district and your grocer. Ask the U.S. Postal Service, Federal Express and American Airlines. Ask GM. If you have one, ask your financial adviser or stockbroker which companies will still be in business after peak oil hits. Odds are, he or she will give you a blank stare.....

....But cities cannot solve the peak oil problem on their own. They don't have the revenue needed to build light-rail networks and wind farms or to store massive grain reserves. During a recession, they will be in no position to guarantee income supports for millions of laid-off workers. But the more they do now, while they still have a revenue stream, the better off their residents will be.

If the peak oil doomsday scenarios are to be averted, it will require coordinated action at every level of government, by every sector of the economy and by every community and citizen in the nation. We are heading into a political era in which the need to come together to invent and support life-sustaining social and economic systems will trump all else.

Some tout alternative energy technologies as the silver bullet that will save us from a peak oil crisis. But there is a broad consensus among energy analysts that it will be decades before such alternatives are available for wide-scale implementation. Moreover, some of the alternatives with the strongest political backing, including ethanol and liquefied coal, may cause even more severe global warming than petroleum has.

The United States needs to slam the brakes on fossil fuel consumption. As if arresting climate change weren't enough of a reason for immediate and strong conservation measures, the end of oil may just force upon Americans a reality we have ignored for far too long: We cannot go on like this, pedal to the metal, asleep at the wheel.

Greensumption

Green algae to the rescue

Green algae to the rescue

Isaac Berzin, a rocket scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is using algae to clean up power-plant exhaust, saving greenhouse gas emissions and satisfying energy needs.

The idea occurred to him three years ago, although it is not exactly new (see below). He bolted onto the exhaust stacks of a 20 MW power plant rows of clear tubes with green algae soup inside. The algae grew happily, gobbling up 40 percent of the carbon dioxide for photosynthesis, and as a bonus, 86 percent of the nitrous oxide as well, resulting in a much cleaner exhaust.

The algae is harvested daily and its oil extracted to make biodiesel for transport use, leaving a green dry flake that can be further processed to ethanol, also a transport fuel (but see “Ethanol from cellulose biomass not sustainable nor environmentally benign”, this series).

GreenFuel, the company set up by Berzin in Cambridge Mass., has already attracted £11 million in venture capital funding and is conducting a field trial at 1 000 MW plant owned by a major southwestern power company. GreenFuel expects two to seven more such demo projects, scaling up to a full production system by 2009.

One key to success is to select an alga with a high oil density – about 50 percent by weight. Algae are prolific and can produce 15 000 gallons of biodiesel per acre, compared to just 60 gallons from soybean. Berzin estimates that a 1 000 MW power plant using his system could produce more than 40 million gallons of biodiesel and 50 million gallons of ethanol a year. But that would require a 2 000 acre farm near the power plant.

Greenfuel is not alone in racing to make oil out of algae. Greenshift Corporation, an incubator company based in Mount Arlington New Jersey, licensed a CO2-scrubbing screen-like filter developed by David Bayless, researcher at Ohio University. A prototype is capable of handling 140 cubic metres of flue gas per minute, an amount equivalent to the exhaust from 50 cars or a 3-megawatt power plant.

The US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) had a research project from1978 to1996 on creating renewable transportation fuel with algae making use of waste CO2 from coal fired power plants. The project, led by NREL scientist John Sheehan, was funded at $25.05 m over the 20-year period, compared to the total spending under the Biofuels Program over the same period of $459 m. It resulted in a collection of 300 species of green algae and diatoms, now housed in the University of Hawaii and still available to researchers. Although some technical and economic problems remained to be solved, it was estimated that just 15 000 square miles (or 3.8 m ha) of desert (the Sonoran desert in California and Arizona is more than 8 times that size) could grow enough algae to replace nearly all of the nation’s current diesel requirements, and algae use far less water than traditional oilseed crops.

Researchers also suggested using algae to clean up Salton Sea in Southern California, into which more than 10 000 tons of nitrogen and phosphate fertilizers are discharged annually. The idea was to use some 1 000 ha of pond system to grow algae such as Spirulina with the sea water, harvest the algae biomass and convert that into fuels, while the residual sludge could be recycled to agriculture for its fertilizer value. An estimate suggests that such a process could mitigate several hundred thousand tons of CO2 emissions at below $10/ton CO2 equivalent.

But it is perhaps the algae’s potential for carbon-capture that makes them most attractive, and it is as yet almost untapped.

Catching up to party on the edge

Greetings. If anybody is left still checking back on me to see if I've posted anything new, I apologize for the lack of activity. This year has not been good for the family. My father-in-law passed away June 25th after a prolonged illness that began in March which required much attention. My grandfather who will be 99 September 9th has also been ill requiring still more of my attention up to this date. I am now guardian of his person. Also, Wednesday, I assisted my daughter in returning to college.

All of this is in between the full-time job. So, I've virtually attained no goals for myself this summer like I had planned. I have a garden but it is nothing like I had wanted or had planned. I'll be lucky to get much produce at all because I was so late in planting everything out. I've only managed to make it to the Farmer's Market once this summer because of my work hours and then also because of having to take care of or do things for others during the times the market was open. So, in other words, I haven't even been able to practice food preservation methods. But things are winding down a little now, and I am beginning to have time to catch up.

I have been able to track the stock markets these past 2 weeks. Yikes. I managed to switch over some funds and minimize my losses this week by switching 33% to a money market in my 403b. (It's not like I have tons of investments making tons of money, okay? I'm just practicing for when I'm rich! lol) In the 403b, one cannot withdraw what has been put into it unless it's needed for education expenses or extreme hardship circumstances. So, I just put as little in it as possible--despite it's growth in the last 3 years. I studied my prospectus, found the most peak oil-friendly fund offered (utilities & communications) which isn't saying much, and deposited 33% into it the past few years since learning about peak oil. It has rewarded me in small measures. It has been the highest yielding performance fund and only this week did it drop some...but not as badly as the rest. I also had about $700 sitting in some fund I don't contribute to anymore and just moved it over to my fixed, too. I had forgotten about it. No sense in having it sucked up when the markets yo-yo around like this!

Overall, I agree with many of the experts that it's not looking good long term. I'm not putting much "stock" in my funds (pun intended!). The most important advice I can give someone new to peak oil who is reading this post is to invest in the things you would need to live in a lower energy world. Any investments having to do with this fiat money system is probably futile. First think "get out of debt", and then secondly think "barter & trade"!

Although I'm still behind on reading my peak oil discussion board emails, I've had time to read some. Among them, I've found a few good websites that people have referred to on the discussion lists. The first link can be found on live journal by clickinghere. There are many different additional links found there as well. For those of you who like to mix your liberal politics with peak oil, click here.

Finally, I stumbled onto another live journal blogger who has written a little synopsis that I can relate to very much. Here it is, and it's title is called "Partying on the edge of the twilight zone".

Catching up. Partying on the edge. It's so difficult to try to have one foot in one world and the other in another.

Dongtan Eco-city for 500,000

Dongtan in Wikipedia, click here.

Quote:
Dongtan is planned to open, with accommodation for 50,000, by the time the Expo 2010 opens in Shanghai. By 2040, the city is slated to be one-third the size of Manhattan with a total eventual population of 500,000.

Dongtan was presented at the United Nations World Urban Forum by China as an example of an eco-city, and is the first of up to four such cities to be designed and built in China by Arup, a global design and engineering company. The cities are planned to be ecologically friendly, with zero-greenhouse-emission transit and complete self-sufficiency in water and energy, together with the use of zero energy building principles. However, the planned ecological footprint for each citizen in Dongtan is currently 2.2 hectares[1], higher than the 1.9 hectares that is theoretically sustainable on a global scale.

Dongtan proposes to have only green transport movements along its coastline. People will arrive at the coast and leave their cars behind, traveling along the shore as pedestrians, cyclists or on sustainable public transport vehicles.

Steven Finnegan, a British Environmental architect is working on the project.

Why is Urban Agriculture important?

http://www.ruaf.org/node/513
Why is Urban Agriculture important?

The rapid urbanization that is taking place goes together with a rapid increase in urban poverty and urban food insecurity. By 2020 the developing countries of Africa, Asia, and Latin America will be home to some 75% of all urban dwellers, and to eight of the anticipated nine mega-cities with populations in excess of 20 million. It is expected that by 2020, 85% of the poor in Latin America, and about 40-45% of the poor in Africa and Asia will be concentrated in towns and cities.
Most cities in developing countries have great difficulties to cope with this development and are unable to create sufficient formal employment opportunities for the poor. They also have increasing problems with the disposal of urban wastes and waste water and maintaining air and river water quality.

Urban agriculture provides a complementary strategy to reduce urban poverty and food insecurity and enhance urban environmental management. Urban agriculture plays an important role in enhancing urban food security since the costs of supplying and distributing food to urban areas based on rural production and imports continue to increase, and do not satisfy the demand, especially of the poorer sectors of the population. Next to food security, urban agriculture contributes to local economic development, poverty alleviation and social inclusion of the urban poor and women in particular, as well as to the greening of the city and the productive reuse of urban wastes (see below for further explanations and examples).
RUAF Resource Centres on Urban Agriculture and Food Security

Global warming's impact already costs plenty;

CEO Economic Update: Global warming's impact already costs plenty;
from the page: "The mathematical model looked at the future cost of oil, its related chemical and rubber end products, metals, and the cost of electricity. In short, it was a comprehensive look at how the world might change if Kyoto was enacted, and doing so would be expensive. So expensive, API concluded solutions should be left to future and richer generations.

Ten years later, per capita GDP has grown by $6,000, so we are certainly richer. But more importantly, the other side of the argument is becoming clearer: The cost of doing nothing has an attachable dollar cost.

Back when the simulations were being drawn up, the cost of doing nothing was unclear. Today, with hundreds of destroyed building, and tens of thousands dead, it's time to weigh the cost of doing something against the cost of doing nothing.

Chart: No matter the measurement, warming is on the rise."

http://pbp.typepad.com/economy/2007/06/global_warmings.html

My Most Recent Gardening Pictures

Check out my most recent pictures on my other blog by clicking here.

www.LastGasStation.Com Weekly Workbench.1

Anybody who incorporates an old high school "memorial" song by the likes of Van Halen has to be cool. ....and the message is golden. You rock Robert Run! Continue on....or should I say "rock on"?

Yahoo: New Age Town in New England Embraces Dollar Alternative

Worried about a dollar crash in the future? With the dollar at significant lows and China financing our nation's debt load, more and more are advocating for creation of a local currency within their communities. More importantly, a local currency might also support more local business. With a more localized economy, I understand that local people who would use this would be more buffered in the event of a currency crash and there would also already be a local system set up in that case. See the story from Yahoo here.

Yahoo Finance: The Railroad Industry-Warren Buffet's Latest Big Bet

Click here for full article.

So where could the value that Buffett so clearly sees be coming from? Two things spring immediately to mind:

1. The coverage maps of the three railroads are somewhat complimentary - BNI and UNP operating in different portions of the west, NSC operating in the east. A merger could create efficiencies that increase the value of the combined companies that do not currently exist.
2. With the passing of "Peak Oil" and higher gas prices, railroads will increase in value as they are the most efficient method to move cargo across the country.

Regardless of what Buffett sees in the railroads, this is the most significant "loading up" we've seen from them in quite some time. It's been years, almost decades, since they made their initial stakes in American Express, Coca-Cola, Gillette (since bought by PG), and Wells Fargo, and you may have missed that boat. However, right now it seems that railroads are his next great investment and those who knew about that initial Form 4 filing have entered on the ground floor with him.

Business Week article: From Peak Oil to Dark Age?

Click here for article from Business Week.

Hello, hello!? Anybody out there? Will the masses please stand at attention!? Please wake up and change our ways! It takes more than a few thousand people!

The Last Gas Station blog

Click here for the blog.

Energy Without Oil

I'm dreamin' again....

An Invitation from Greg Peterson and the Urban Farm

Hi all,

Many of you know me from my work either as a graduate student in Environmental Planning at ASU or from my work at the Urban Farm in Phoenix. Well I have recently launched a new venture which includes an extensive webportal and television show called Smart Spaces: Inside & Out.

Each week we publish a new article on just how we can live a greener lifestyle. The article includes an Innovative Idea that is designed to spark your thinking in this area. I have included below this weeks Innovative Idea. I would like to invite you to subscribe (it's free) to our weekly tip here.

Again I want to thank you all for your awesome continued support of the work that I do. I feel blessed each day that I get to follow my heart and will continue to do it for a very long time.

Greg Peterson

June 11, 2007 Innovative Idea

This weeks article is the forward from a really great tool that helps you figure out the size of your ecological footprint. Our ecological footprint reflects as the impact of our everyday choices on the natural environment and believe it or not the cumulative effect of the choices that we make every day can make a difference.

"Anyone who knows me knows that for more than 25 years I've been preaching that at a small percentage of [us] changing the way [we] shop and the way we live can be a powerful force for good in the environment, says Joel Makower, Editor of The Green Consumer Letter.

EarthScore provides a cool scoring system designed to help us measure our personal impact with the idea that by understanding our individual habits and lifestyles, over time, we can identify where we can truly make a difference. Please read our article of the week for more information on the topic at Smart Spaces TV.


We look forward to your comments, interactions and feedback.

Greg Peterson
Editor
SmartSpacesTV.com
Greg@SmartSpacesTV.com

PS. Got a great tip you want to share? Visit Smart Spaces TV connect and share it.

Wikipedia Wally Rippel

Click here for Wiki site.

Wally E. Rippel is an engineer at Tesla Motors, and a long-time developer and advocate of battery electric vehicles.

Wally has a prominent role, labeled as himself, "Research Engineer, AeroVironment," in the 2006 documentary movie Who killed the electric car?, including two brief scenes in the official trailer [1].

In 1968, as an undergraduate student, he built the Caltech electric car (a converted 1958 VW microbus) and won the Great Transcontinental Electric Car Race against MIT [2] [3].

In the 1970s and 1980s, Rippel worked for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on electric vehicle battery research, among other things.

Around 1990, Rippel joined AeroVironment and helped to design the GM Impact, later named the EV1; he had worked on the induction motor for the car before joining AeroVironment [4]. In 2003, he was one of the participants in the mock funeral for the EV1 as GM prepared to collect the last few for crushing [5].

Rippel left AeroVironment in 2006 and joined Tesla Motors where he continues his life long work on the battery electric car.

Greening The Desert

Click here for link....repairing trashed, salt-laden, drought-stricken soils

Two Blogs Plus This One Promote Refocus

I am glad to report two more blog sites that promote a refocus:
Ergobalance
by Chris Rhodes, see his profile here.

and my list of 117 selected sites here.

Thanks to peaknik for her patience.

Sustain

ASPO: 2007 Houston World Oil Conference

Wish I could go. It looks like it will be exciting. For more exciting peak oil news go to ASPO-USA's site here

2007 Houston World Oil Conference

We are pleased to announce that ASPO-USA will hold its 2007 World Oil Conference, October 17-20, at the Hilton Americas in downtown Houston, Texas. We have an exciting roster of confirmed participants including legendary Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens, Houston Mayor Bill White(former U.S. Deputy Secretary of Energy), Bob Hirsch (co-author of the groundbreaking Hirsch-Bezdek Report to DOE), Peter Tertzakian (author of “A Thousand Barrels a Second"), Matthew Simmons, (author of "Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock"), Henry Groppe of Groppe, Long & Littell, Charles Maxwell of Weeden & Co., David Hughes of the Canadian Geological Survey, Chairman Elizabeth Ames Jones of the Texas Railroad Commission, Professor Peter Bishop of the University of Houston, and many others. We are awaiting RSVPs from other high-profile speakers including Former President Bill Clinton.


Honorary Co-chairmen of the Conference are Houstonians Matt Simmons of Simmons & Company International, and Art Smith of John S. Herold, Inc.

ASPO Week in Houston will consist of four days of energy discussion as well as field trips to a drilling site and to Refinery Row on the Houston Ship Channel, the heart of our nation's refining and petrochemical industries.

Nothing could be more fitting than Houston - "The Energy Capital of the World" - hosting international oil & gas experts to address the energy challenges of the 21st Century. We are proud to announce that the ASPO-USA World Oil Conference will be jointly Co-sponsored by the City of Houston and the University of Houston.

Our 2006 World Oil Conference was co-sponsored by BostonUniversity's Center for Energy & Environmental Studies, and our 2005 conference was co-sponsored by the City of Denver and the University of Colorado Graduate School of Public Affairs. Both meetings were widely acclaimed by Peak Oil scientists, attendees, and media outlets from across the country and around the world.

Peak Oil experts don’t claim that we will run out of oil, but that we will run out of cheap oil, as production decreases and demand increases. They point to below-ground evidence and above-ground factors: the continued depletion of major oil fields worldwide drives resource nationalism, a volatile geopolitical climate, and rising oil & gas prices.

The deniers of Peak Oil say that technology, new discoveries, and unconventional oil will save us. If the deniers are wrong, we are in deep trouble; if the Peak Oil experts are wrong, we will have conserved and mitigated ahead of schedule. ASPO-USA says the latter prudent and conservative approach is the path we must take as a nation.

Professor Peter Bishop of the University of Houston's Future Studies Program will conduct a conference session to explore scenarios of Peak Oil impacts on the City of Houston, the intelligent responses to mitigate these impacts, and the needed steps going forward to preserve the city's position as "Energy Capital of the World."

The Houston Conference agenda will feature technical sessions on Reserves and Production; Substitute Fuels; Peak Oil & Climate Change; Peak Oil Reports from the GAO, National Petroleum Council, and AAPG; a Natural Gas/LNG Update; a Net Energy Update; Mitigation Scenarios; Smart Policy Initiatives (local, state & national); and Smart Money & Investment in the Age of Peak Oil.

Registration will open on or about June 1st. For more information on agenda details, speakers and activities as they become available, as well as a review of past Conferences, please see the links above and our website at www.aspousa.org.

We look forward to seeing you in Houston,

ASPO-USA Co-founders,
Steve Andrews, Jim Baldauf, Randy Udall, Dick Lawrence

For further information please contact:

Rick Block, 856-845-0579

You Know You're a Peak Oil Doomer When.....

...you are seriously considering dandelion greens as a side for your
supper because you can't stand the fact that the plastic wrapped
lettuce in your supermarket has traveled over 2,000 miles and the
local Farmer's Market hasn't opened up for business yet.

...you observe cicadas for the propective protein they might deliver
to your body in a fast crash scenario.

...you start using your dishwater to water the container plants on
the deck.

...you travel long distances only out of necessity, observe the
suburban sprawl development and visualize the chaos that will ensue
in those neighborhoods for lack of transportation, electricity, heat,
and water.

...it's a windy day and you contemplate whether or not a wind turbine
would be feasible in the area, and you wonder why nobody has any
erected yet.

...you're on a trip, you're spending the night in a hotel, and you're
the only one in the group to notice that they've switched to CFLs in
all of their lighting.

...you hope and pray for consistent temperatures between 60-80
degrees Farenheight throughout the year so that you don't have to use
any heating or cooling of which you haven't had the ability to
convince the rest of the family to switch to alternative forms of
energy such as wind, solar, or geothermal yet.

...you're in a supermarket shopping and you will only buy items grown
and produced within your state or within 200 miles at the most.

...you go to garage sales and collect every hand tool you can find
(and you're a female).

...you go to a mall with your friends or family, and you're upset and
depressed that there isn't a locally-owned store with locally-made
items in sight.

...you happen to have a trip calculator on your vehicle, so you
obsess over the mileage by constantly looking at the instant
miles/gallon at different speeds.

...you are upset that you can't ride your bicycle to work and back in
order to cut your oil consumption because it's not safe for a female
to ride through dark trails at 1:30 in the morning.

...you wonder if the river birch tree in your front yard is useful
for something besides shade.

...you can't understand why nobody else in the family is as
enthusastic as you are about solar cooking or using baking soda as a
toothpaste (or another of it's many uses).

...you're depressed because bubble wrap is losing its popularity as a
filler in packages because you could use it as insulation on your
windows for the winter.

...you scoff at your neighbors selection of inedible landscaping plants.

...you seriously consider building an in-floor vent system to provide
cold winter air to your refrigerator so you can eliminate another 500
watt hours per day of electric power consumption.

...when you have friends over during the winter they ask when you're
going to get the heater fixed.

...you consider a 200 square foot garden 'practice'.

...you consider "Cookin' with Home Storage" one of your most valuable
cookbooks

...you've ever ordered from Walton Foods.

...you have more than 20 pounds of honey, but no bees.

...people who see your pantry ask if you are preparing for the Tribulation.

...you choose stone wheels with a lifetime guarantee for your grain
mill, then buy two extra sets, just in case.

...you choose a half-ton 5hp stationary diesel engine from 1940 over the
brand new 15kw natural gas powered backup generator because the newer
model is too 'high tech'.

...you see a large Coi pond and immediately wonder how many calories per
year it would produce.

...you have livestock in your garage

...you skip right over "energy efficient" and research "hand-powered" .

...you wonder about the grazing potential of abandoned cornfields.

...you take your compass out to stake out a new outbuilding, to make
sure it's facing true south.

...you consider investing in draft harnesses - for your neighbor's horse.

...you suggest to your parents that they use your old toys in their
attic/basement as holiday gifts for your kids.

...you put a thermometer in your car on a sunny day, to see if it gets
hot enough for cooking.

...you buy antiques on eBay, and actually use them

...you can use words like Ghawar and Cantarell in conversation.

...you see animal traps in the store and think "potential food source!"

...you become more interested in vermiculture instead of vermicelli.

...the dandelions and chickweed in your lawn are healthier-looking than
the grass.

...you seriously consider turning your swimming pool into a fish pond.

...you wonder if the pet donkey you've had for 10 years can be trained to
pack :)

...you read about a massive leap in some energy technology and chuckle
to yourself "Go ahead SUCKERS - see how far it gets ya..."

...you walk past a playground and burst into tears, knowing in your
heart all those sweet little kids playing in the grass and swings and
monkey bars will all grow up and die of starvation and disease in a
dusty desert transit camp somewhere in Eastern Oregon.

...you consider a rapid and miserable global die-off an indisputable
and inevitable fact, rather than a horrible and unwanted contingency.

...you keep a "bug out bag" in your closet freshly stocked with bare
survival materials, imagining that you could actually survive in the
wilderness without help from other humans, as if any wilderness
actually existed within a walkable distance of your domicile, and as if
other people won't have the same idea in such circumstances and be
vastly better armed than yourself.

...you think survival is living big.

...you get busted for burglary for stealing oil from MickeyD's to power
your camoflaged diesel Rabbit pickup.

...you sell the diesel Rabbit pick up, figuring it'll only attract
attention from the roving hordes, anyway.

...you spit at people who drive SUVs, and when they complain, tell them
they're "lucky it wasn't a FREAKIN' BULLET YOU GAS GUZZLING MORON!!!"

...you engage ideas of the glass half full or half empty, when in point
of fact,the glass is simply too big.


Okay...these are a few liners we on the RunningOnEmpty3 discussion group have come up with! I've been invited to post some content on Groovy Green's website but I wasn't sure if this would be appropriate enough since the website focuses more on Green living than on peak oil. Just because one is "green", per se, or environmentally aware, doesn't always mean the same people are aware of peak oil, although they are closely interlinked when looking at the bigger picture.

Overall, I thought it would be fun to poke fun at ourselves (peak oil believers) with a little humor concerning a sometimes very serious subject. Those on ROE3 did a superb job of adding to this conglomeration of one liners! I'm sure we have all had some unorthodox thoughts transpire by and through our transcendance of learning more about resource depletion. If Groovy will take it, I might transfer it over there. Anybody have any other experiences with which they could provide additional funnies? I'm sure many could relate some strange thoughts they've had concerning the need to power down for the betterment of mankind!

CNN Money: $80 a barrel oil for this year--investor T. Boone Pickens

Another prediction, click here. Anyone else also hear that Warren Buffet is pouring his investments into the railroad system? Hmmm...what does he know that we don't?

The Nation: The Establishment Rethinks Globalization

Important article to spread and give to congress people, click here. After reading this, compare to Wendell Berry's "The Idea of a Local Economy" essay if you can get a hold of it. He has some great and promising ideas.

PBS's NOVA alert: Saved by the Sun

Look for times it will be aired in your area this week.

Africa: Next US Oil War Venue

From Black Star News (New York) here.

Think globally, eat locally

Click here for guest column article in Seattle Post Intelligencer.

World Without Oil

Click here for website.

CNBC Addendum: Oil Supply Shock

Here's is a video version of CNBC's coverage of the peak oil issue after the GAO report.

CNBC Acknowledges Peak Oil is a Huge Problem

I believe and hope that this GOA report will bring some credibility to the peak oil problem so that more people will stand up and take notice and act. I've been busy personally but I'm very sure the GOA report on peak oil and excerpts of it are floating around the blogworld like crazy by now. I particularly liked this article from CNBC:

As crude oil prices surge on rising political tensions with Iran, a new government report released Thursday said that the U.S. is unprepared to face an oil supply crisis and urged U.S. policymakers to develop a strategy in order to reduce potential risks related to an oil shock.

The report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office concluded that the U.S. has no plans in place to address "peak oil," the future point in history of maximum oil production, which would be followed by irreversible declines in oil fields around the world.

"While the consequences of a peak would be felt globally, the United States, as the largest consumer of oil and one of the nations most heavily dependent on oil for transportation, may be particularly vulnerable," the GAO report said.

An expert told CNBC on Thursday that peak oil is the "the single biggest issue to threaten sustainable society" in the United States.

The rest of the story is here

1976 Hubbert Clip

In honor of M King Hubbert....the YouTube Video. More on this site www.mkinghubbert.com

Are there too many peak oil blogs?

I haven't blogged a personally-derived post in awhile. I don't know. There are just so many peak oil blogs and websites in cyberspace now that mine is probably just a blip on the radar. Anything I might want to say has probably been said. The multitude of information out in books and on the web about peak oil is so vast that it is almost impossible for me to keep up. It wasn't this way when I first started!

I've also been having trouble keeping up with all of the little tools one can use to gain readership. I tried to add Feedburner last week and now I don't know if my Atom works or not. I don't quite understand diggit and all of the other little icons I see on other blogs. I've joined them but it has been hard for me to figure out how they work.

I noted once how some like my blog because it remains almost totally related to peak oil but sometimes there are so many sustainable-related issues that surround peak oil but aren't directly related to peak oil that I don't know whether to blog about them or not. Since peak oil isn't such a new thing to me anymore, it's hard to stay on topic. Everything is just a given for me now. I've been into reading books like "Ishmael" by Daniel Quinn and essays by Wendell Berry. I've joined some Foraging lists and a cooking group that encourages eating local, in-season foods as much as possible. I'm preparing my third garden this year. I'm excited about that and I'm sure you'll be seeing pictures again as they so inspire me. I also have plans to have a rabbit for composting needs. I'm still wishing for a water filter, a worm bin, a decent bicycle, and for more people to understand why I'm doing what I am.

I just got through watching some very gruesome things about our human history's past on the History Channel about the Dark Ages. I always knew there have been periods of time in human history that were particularly barbaric. The devil is in the details, and that's what has been touching me of late. Life after cheap abundant energy may not be so different than in times past. There seem to be no periods of human civilization that weren't barbaric unless the time period was one of resourceful prosperity. And that prosperity is/was many times attained through barbaric means! It makes me feel as if I've (we've) been living in some anomaly (is this the right word?). I am ever so thankful in this time that as a female I am educated, I have the freedoms I so cherish, and the peaceful surroundings with which to attain these things in. I am truly blessed which makes me feel guilty to a degree because I know others haven't had these opportunities. My descendants may not, either. I hope so much that as we slide down the cliff of energy decline that we don't revert back to our barbaric past. I'm afraid that history will repeat itself, though, as much as I wish it weren't so.

There are many, many positive things I can foresee coming out of a decline of civilization but I can also see some horrific things that could develop if we're not careful as a species.

Helpful Post Peak Oil Book: The Post Petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook

Click here for Raise the Hammer's article by Ryan McGreal

I've ordered WAYYY too many books recently to justify buying this right away but this one will be at the top of my list of energy "depletive" living books to buy in the near future. Hat tip to Pat on ROE3!

Groovy Green: Groovy Indiana!

Wow! I wasn't aware that a factory near where I live is environmentally responsible. Groovy Green has taken a tour of the Subaru car manufacturing plant in Lafayette, Indiana, highlighting its ecologically responsible behaviors.

Steve Balogh! You didn't tell me you were going to be near me on this trip to the Subaru-Isuzu plant in Lafayette! I would've loved to have met you! Maybe we could've eaten salmonella-tainted peanut butter together! lol

Click here for full article

'No easy way out' by Thomas P.M. Barnett

I found this article tonight written by a military strategist who awestruck me in a presentation I saw on C-Span a year or two ago. Not that I agreed with him about the U.S. military strategy planned for the Mideast and for globalism (imperialism as some say-including me) but this article clearly indicates he does not understand the issues surrounding peak oil. I'm disappointed in his views on peak oil. The comments after the article are interesting. Please feel free to add to their comments!

Click here for article.

Matt Simmons (Bloomberg): Peak Oil Now, Oil Perhaps to $300

Tried to post this last week but Google wouldn't accept my new Blogger Beta status. This is too important not to post, especially for people who aren't as peak oil aware.

Recommended Cookbooks

World Community Cookbooks

Some of these cookbooks might be useful in your slide down the peak oil banister. These have been recommended to me by some other peak oil aware preppers.

"Crude Impact" to be Shown on Link TV

Click for link here.

I haven't seen this film and probably won't unless it pops up online somewhere. My area never shows controversial out-of-the-mainstream movies, and my cable company doesn't offer Link TV. However, I was made aware of its debut on this network and want to spread the word.

David and Sarah's Passive Solar Energy Off Grid Home - 2nd Edition

This is the second edition incorporating additional footage. David and Sarah built a passive solar home in Upstate NY in 2002. Fifty percent of the heat the home needs is generated from the sun. Supplemental heat is obtained by burning 1 cord of wood over the entire heating season. All the needed electricity is produced by a 1 Kilowatt onsite solar electric system and a 1 Kilowatt windmill coupled with a battery bank to store power for when it is needed. This home is one of hundreds that open their doors every year for the Green Buildings Open House the first saturday in Ocotober. For more information about GBOH, browse to http://www.nesea.org/buildings/openhouse

The Oil Factor in Somalia

Click here for an old article from the LA Times according to the .pdf

Another related article here.

U.S. to Raise Royalty Rates for Oil and Gas Leases in the Gulf

Hot off the NYT press tonight!

Geoffrey Lean: Oil. The fast-vanishing drug the world can't yet live without.

Click here for Lean's article in The Independent. This is an excellent article which uses Dick Cheney's past words to explain the where we are today. Written from a UK perspective.

Open Thread: Peak Oil Prep Priorities. What are Yours and Why?

I thought I'd search for a little more interaction with some of you in order to gauge what people are doing where they are in order to prepare for any slide down the PO banister.....fast or slow decline views welcomed.

I also have a good link for you preppers that was submitted on ROE2. Click here.