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Below are the 21 most recent friends journal entries:

July 5th, 2008
05:34 am peakoil_prep [theheretic] [Link]	Life After The Private Car Article by UK columnist Mary Dejevsky from the UK Independent: "So We Can't Afford To Drive But Here's The Upside." New York City also reports reduced traffic due to high fuel costs. So, we win, right? Well, the comments below the first article contain one PO denier, and about 15-20 rational alternatives to the long rural commute. From the sound of things, the UK has been forced to adapt a little sooner than we have in the USA, though the adaptations also sound the same. I'm personally witnessing a lot of carpooling now that wasn't happening 4 months ago, and traffic IS less than before. Not a lot, but some. Eventually the San Jose Mercury News will publish some findings on that, if the Chronicle doesn't first. People are changing habits at a much lower price of gas than I'd calculated. Not everyone, but enough to get the ball rolling, socially. Is this enough? Probably not. Unless America can decide to operate on only 7 million barrels of oil per day, and never more than that, we're still going to suffer the consequences of Peak Oil. Can the UK cut back its use of oil to its Brent crude production? I don't think so. But good for them if they're really going to build passenger rail. They need it. Anything to keep them going to work and convinced the happy dreams of the 20th Century can go on forever. I strongly disagree with the Kunstlerian view that the Suburbs MUST become slums. Streetcars to high speed rail hubs and heavy rail going through the industrial districts can convert various ground level office parks into small industrial workshops (and I've worked in several of those personally), providing jobs to the locals rather than drag them into the existing run-down urban industrial districts. If you need new machinery to make Stuff(tm), then you can put that machinery anywhere with a roof, a power supply, and rail access. Why try and drag all these workers into the city slums of today when you can convert existing industrial spaces to work with the population? Call this Counter-Kunstlerian Hybrid Theory, Reconversion and Connection(tm). Less upset for the population and their charming schools and treelined streets. The First World can't afford to upset the apple cart and piss off the Middle Class. There lies the route to civil war, and that's not good for anybody. Far better to recognize the potential and bring the jobs to them. What about the urban poor and the rich? The rich displace the urban poor to the Exurbs and countryside, where they farm or die. The rich rebuild the urban neighborhoods in their own image of "charming" gentrification and make the cops push out the rest of the indigent poor. Cops win too since they get a boost to their wages, they don't get shot or stabbed anymore, and the work gets much easier and safer with a bunch of rich yahoos to ticket for speeding and parking. The urban industrial spaces will get decided by the marketplace. If they're worth more as condos, then the old buildings get ripped down and replaced. If they can be retasked to a critical industry, the market will make it happen. Nothing for a "centrally planned economy" socialist to get involved with. Real estate is built on profit, and that's a far more effective motivator. As for the distant rural real estate errors... well, the world needs farm labor, doesn't it? McMansions can house a whole extended family or be converted into boarding houses with the simple addition of locks on the doors and a paid cook to manage the kitchen. The formerly urban poor, those who survive the lack of drugs thanks to their lack of money to pay for it with, will have to do something or starve. And starving is certainly possible. I expect lots of home gardens will pop up. Lots of Neighborhood Watch and lynchings as well. If the Sheriff didn't feel the need to drive out and deal with the rash of burglaries, he can be left to deal with the "strange fruit" hanging on the old oak tree the next day. Company Towns are likely for various industries of scale that need many workers. Life could be good or very hard, depending on the industry. With globalism, hard is likely, but as the cost of shipping goes up a lot of counterintuitive consequences will result. How long before American Sneakers (shoes) are made in America because its cheaper than Vietnam or China? 10 years? 20? I wonder. Its weird that what I describe above hasn't seem to have hit civic planners yet. It seems really obvious to me. And a hell of a lot cheaper than flipping the suburbs into slums, so close to the gentrified rich. (Leave a comment)
July 3rd, 2008
03:32 pm peak_oil [mrflash818] [Link]	Consumer affairs article - June 29th What’s Really Fueling Those Sky-High Oil Prices Excerpts: Ask any number of experts about what’s causing the current run-up in oil prices, now around $140 a barrel, and you’re likely to get several different answers. .... Current Location: san gabriel, ca Current Music: none Tags: peak oil (4 comments \| Leave a comment)
July 2nd, 2008
06:20 pm peak_oil [peebeebaynut] [Link]	It's Rough Out There Click for a photo essay about a town in its death throes. also: High gas prices threaten to shut down rural towns By Judy Keen, USA TODAY July 2, 2008 FORKS OF SALMON, Calif. — The price of gas isn't an annoyance here. It's a calamity. Peggy Hanley uses a generator that burns a gallon of diesel fuel every hour —at about $5 a gallon— to power Forks General Store, the only place to buy groceries for miles around. There's no electric service, so Hanley, the owner, uses the generator to run eight refrigerators, nine freezers, lights and two ice machines for the store, which has been in a trailer since a fire destroyed the original building in 1994. There are no utilities and no public transportation in this unincorporated town of a couple hundred people along a narrow road that winds through the mountains 314 miles north of Sacramento. Many people here buy gas for their vehicles and gas or diesel for generators that power their homes. "I'm scared to death" of rising fuel prices, Hanley says. Are you afraid? You should be. Electricity shutoffs up 40% in hard times, intense heat by Ryan Randazzo The Arizona Republic Jun. 28, 2008 More Arizonans are paying their electricity bills late and having their power cut off, a problem that could worsen for families with the approach of summer's most intense heat - and highest bills. Nearly 56,000 households in Arizona Public Service Co. and Salt River Project territory fell far enough behind on their bills to be cut off from power from January to May, a 40 percent jump from a year earlier, according to the utilities. Most of the increase came from SRP territory, where the number of disconnects is up 64 percent for the year. APS hasn't cut as many people off but has seen double-digit increases in the number of those getting a final 24-hour notice and seeking payment extensions, officials said. Utility officials blame the trend on the bad economy. Yes, the economy, the bad, bad economy that is due to the machines that turn money into natural resources being down. Someone needs to reboot them and quickly too. (10 comments \| Leave a comment)
June 30th, 2008
10:46 pm peak_oil [peebeebaynut] [Link]	(6 comments \| Leave a comment)
07:50 am peak_oil [peebeebaynut] [Link]	13 Years Too Soon But the price of oil never rose as was predicted so... click me! ( Read more... ) (12 comments \| Leave a comment)
June 29th, 2008
10:46 am peak_oil [baron_waste] [Link]	Bloomberg: “Oil in Beverly Hills `Humming' Where Britney Shops” By Michael Janofsky and Samantha Zee June 27 (Bloomberg) -- Britney Spears, Jay Z, Adam Sandler and Plains Exploration and Production Co. have one thing in common. They've all been sighted at Beverly Center, an eight- level mall near Beverly Hills, where celebrities shop for clothes and the oil company pumps crude. The rising price of oil, which hit a record $142.99 a barrel today, has sent exploration companies scurrying to squeeze additional supplies from the fields underlying Los Angeles and its celebrity-rich neighbor. California, the fourth-biggest U.S. producer of crude, behind Louisiana, Texas and Alaska, has received 16 percent more notices from owners planning to rework old wells this year, while plans to drill new ones are up 23 percent from 12 months ago, according to state Department of Conservation data. ``In the Middle East you might have 300 barrels of oil per cubic acre, but in the Los Angeles Basin you might have 4,000 barrels per cubic acre,'' says Mike Edwards, vice president of Denver-based Venoco Inc., which has 24 active wells in the Beverly Hills area, including one alongside Beverly Hills High School. ``In terms of the land that produces oil, the basin is very rich.'' Beverly Center's kidney-bean shape was designed to accommodate drilling. It's one of two sites within blocks of Beverly Hills, a city of about 35,000 where Houston-based Plains, the fourth-biggest producer in California, is expanding. The 26-year-old mall houses 160 retailers, including Gucci, Louis Vuitton and Burberry. Pumping operations are hidden behind a wall between Macy's and Bloomingdale's. `Weird Things' ``This is one of those weird things about Los Angeles,'' says Jeff Brown, the mall's general manager. ``There are oil wells all over the place. Drive down the street, you see hotel, beautiful house, oil well. Here, I don't know if shoppers know there's one or not. They probably don't.'' http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20670001&refer=home&sid=a5fyvudrWEoo (Leave a comment)
June 28th, 2008
09:40 pm peak_oil [mrflash818] [Link]	The Oil Drum article - Countdown to $200 oil: $140 oil and speculation Countdown to $200 oil: $140 oil and speculation Excerpts: There are A LOT of good reasons why oil prices are going up. Let me show you just a few. ... Chinese growth China is enjoying staggering growth rates for car ownership. ... volumes available for export, and thus volumes available on the global oil market, are shrinking ... Production declines Beyond Russia, it is striking to note how many regions we have been relying on are experiencing absolute production declines. All mature fields have a natural decline rate, and whole provinces are seeing absolute declines in their production. ... In normal times, when demand varies, market equilibrium is reached by adjusting production to such demand, which is a relatively easy and cheap process. But when supply is constrained, as it is now, any brutal change in the market (whether on the demand side, for instance through a cold spell in winter requiring more heating, or a hot spell in summer requiring more AC, or on the supply side, for instance guerilla attacks in Nigeria, a refinery strike in Scotland, or a pipeline accident anywhere) will require market equilibrium to be reached by demand destruction, which is a lot harder and triggers much more substantial price movements: prices need to move high enough for some users of oil to renounce such use and "take their demand out of the market", whether by not doing what they wanted to, or by finding a substitute. In the US, people travelling less for vacations, or carpooling, have barely managed a couple percent demand destruction. ... Altogether, it appears that they are a number of factors explain oil price increases perfectly well, with no need to go into conspiracy theories or market manipulations. Current Location: san gabriel, california Current Mood: busy Current Music: none Tags: peak oil (3 comments \| Leave a comment)
07:42 am peak_oil [theheretic] [Link]	Greater Depression, and Reactive Culture Fails Again America, and modern industrial democracy, is a reactive culture. We wait for disaster to strike, then we talk about it, vote, and throw money at it until it goes away. That's what we've been doing since the deficit spending initiated by FDR in 1934, socialist that he was. Now we've reached the end of deficit spending, having exported our jobs, currency, and control of our economy overseas and become a great big lazy balloon floating over the glass recycling bin at the local dump. Gasoline, food, and other essentials are in a tight 18% inflationary spiral and the public is only just now starting to complain, to shift their behaviors. Carpooling is becoming more common and accepted. Smaller cars are replacing SUVs and large pickups for solo commuting needs. The trouble is, this is too little, too late. The disaster is already on us. Oil prices are $140/bbl. ( The Unfortunate reality of peak oil and the economy, continued behind cut. ) We still need to face facts that the Saudis have promised us $200 oil this year, and that's $6.30/gal. gasoline. Think about how you're going to operate your life on $6 gasoline. My commute is now 2 miles. I could WALK if I had to. How many people can do this? Not many. If you own a house, or are leasing one from a bank, you probably don't have the option to just move closer to work. If you take a job you hate or aren't suited for to have a short commute, your pay will decline and your job security too. Not a good move for most people. And businesses won't move to keep their employees until AFTER they stop showing up for work and they realize they have to close their doors. It only pays to be Proactive if you're smart enough to look ahead. The fact that you're here reading this means you're smart enough. But are your neighbors? Your coworkers? Your boss? Your congressional representative? Probably not. And we get to live with their mistakes and ignorance as a consequence. Current Mood: bitter Current Music: AOL Radio: Celtic station (15 comments \| Leave a comment)
07:55 am peak_oil [peebeebaynut] [Link]	(2 comments \| Leave a comment)
June 26th, 2008
09:48 pm peak_oil [peebeebaynut] [Link]	Intraday $140/bbl Another article which blames only a short-term phenomenon on the rising price of oil. Oil Surges Above $140 to Record as Libya Warns of Output Cut By Mark Shenk Bloomberg Jun 26, 2008 ...Libya may curb output... ...Crude oil for August delivery rose $5.09, or 3.8 percent, to $139.64 a barrel at 2:59 p.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange, a record settlement price. Futures touched $140.39 today, surpassing the previous intraday record of $139.89 reached on June 16. ... ...GM fell $1.38, or 11 percent... Meanwhile "Why are the planes sitting on the tarmac?" "1. It's summer and busy" - Why doesn't this happen every summer then? "2. More corporate jets than ever before" -- is this true? "3. Summer thunderstorms" -- Difficult to refute or prove. She left out so many other possibilities: 4. Airlines are reduced to skeleton crews that can't keep up. 5. Airlines want to fly fewer, more populated flights to save fuel. 6. Flying a bit slower reduces the demand for fuel. Not all of the delays are due to time on the ground. (5 comments \| Leave a comment)
08:11 am peak_oil [peebeebaynut] [Link]	Think of how much your carbon footprint is improved by this! Power Firms Cut Off Electricity As More Consumers Fail To Keep Up With Monthly Utility Bills June 24, 2008 7:58 a.m. EST Vittorio Hernandez - AHN News Writer More American families are falling behind in their electric and natural gas bills, resulting to a rise in utility cut offs. Compared to incidents of utility bill cut offs last year, there was a 15 percent rise in disconnections in several states, according to the National Energy Assistance Directors' Association. Now they don't have to worry if an EV is truly zero-emission or not. Utilities cut off more customers who are behind on their bills By Paul Davidson, USA TODAY ...An NEADA survey this month shows 8% of four-member households earning $33,500 to $55,500 have had their power turned off for non-payment. "It's hitting people in the suburbs with two cars and two kids," Wolfe says... (Leave a comment)
01:17 am peak_oil [beepbeep] [Link]	Drilling for oil offshore here in CA.. I was always told the oil here is sludge, but wanted to check for any new info on the stuff. Someone came to my blog and had some words for me on the subject, and I'm a victim of a lot of stolen mail right now and have no time to research... http://beepbeep.livejournal.com/912358.html (1 comment \| Leave a comment)
June 25th, 2008
08:32 pm peak_oil [peebeebaynut] [Link]	Era of cheap oil over - Reuters analysts (Leave a comment)
June 24th, 2008
12:33 pm peak_oil [peristaltor] [Link]	Here's a Thought: No Oil How do you run an entire country without oil? Sounds intriguing. We'll see what happens. (18 comments \| Leave a comment)
08:05 am peak_oil [baron_waste] [Link]	Coal Could Soon Be Used As Gasoline Alternative http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/?rn=4226712&cl=8484233&src=news http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karrick_process http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_liquefication The United States has 26% of Earth's known coal reserves. This is sufficient to last hundreds of years by the lowest estimates and accounts for 90% of U.S. energy reserves. Coal is, of course, a fossil fuel and as such is therefore subject to possible depletion within a few hundred years. In terms of energy obtained, coal peaked in 1998 and though production volumes have increased, the net energy has not, which could be explained by decreasing production of high quality coal, such as bituminous and anthracite. U.S. reserves are approximately 45% bituminous and anthracite. The energy value of all the world's known recoverable coal is 27 zettajoules, which is expected to last 164 years. (See "Coal") Of that, U.S. reserves alone comprise 7.02 zettajoules. The U.S. DOE estimates coal reserves at 1,081,279 million short tons (9.81 × 1014 kg), or about 4,786 billion (4.7 trillion) barrels of oil equivalent. The amount of coal burned during 2001 was calculated as 2.337 gigatonnes of oil equivalent, or about 46 million barrels (7,300,000 m³) of oil equivalent per day. Were consumption to continue at that rate, those reserves would last about 285 years. Production of synthetic fuels from U.S. coal assets represents an effective means towards decreasing U.S. reliance on imported oil, reducing trade deficits and providing more economical energy than current markets offer. (See "Princeton University: Increased Automobile Fuel Efficiency and Synthetic Fuels; Alternatives for Reducing Oil Imports" below) (17 comments \| Leave a comment)
06:08 am peak_oil [peebeebaynut] [Link]	From the "There's One Born Every Minute" File (1 comment \| Leave a comment)
June 23rd, 2008
05:14 pm zephomega [Link]	George Carlin died yesterday Massive heart attack at 71. “The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A Death! What's that, a bonus? I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you're too young, you get a gold watch, you go to work. You work forty years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do drugs, alcohol, you party, you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last nine months floating... ...and you finish off as an orgasm.” Carlin (Leave a comment)
06:26 am peak_oil [theheretic] [Link]	OPEC Chief: No Demand Increase, No Supply Increase Justified From the "Who's Your Dealer?" file: OPEC chief claims there has been a decline in demand so they don't NEED to pump more oil. At least we know that those amazing Saudi horse trainers have succeeded with teaching one of their mares to handstand in front of a microphone because its hard to explain what's coming out of his mouth otherwise. (3 comments \| Leave a comment)
June 22nd, 2008
11:40 pm peak_oil [observing_ego] [Link]	[thoughts?] (4 comments \| Leave a comment)
05:38 pm peak_oil [aegion] [Link]	Saudi Arabian statement amounts to admission of peak Saudi oil production Saudi Arabia's recent statement contains one key phrase: "if needed". "We will increase production if needed". Since it's obviously needed now, we can take this phrase to actually mean "We can't increase production and will continue to make up lies about how we don't need to so we don't have to admit that we can't". What I took away from this statement was an admission of peak Saudi Arabian oil production. With prices this high Saudi Arabia should be jumping to increase production to cash in and prevent demand destruction, instead we keep getting excuses about how no oil is needed and it's all due to speculation. "“In today’s environment, I am convinced that supply and demand balances and crude oil production levels are not the primary drivers of the current market situation,” al-Naimi said. Officials and energy executives from more than 35 countries thronged a large hall where he spoke. King Abdullah also said Saudi Arabia is not the culprit. The king cited several factors driving “the unjustified, swift rise in oil prices” including “speculators who play the market out of selfish interests,” plus higher consumption by developing countries and higher taxes in some countries." It doesn't matter what they think the reason is, if they truly had the capacity to increase production they would have done it by now. That's how you know they're making excuses. (8 comments \| Leave a comment)
09:14 am peak_oil [baron_waste] [Link]	Saudi Arabia Boosts Oil Production, Urges `Reasonable' Prices By Ayesha Daya and Glen Carey June 22 (Bloomberg) -- Saudi Arabia will increase its oil production by 200,000 barrels a day to 9.7 million next month and may pump more later this year if needed, Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi told producers and consumers in Jeddah today. Naimi's comments to government and business leaders came after crude oil rose to a record $139.89 in New York on June 16. Saudi King Abdullah said his country, the world's biggest oil exporter, seeks ``reasonable'' prices. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20670001&refer=home&sid=aayeVRg8.6JM Uh huh. (7 comments \| Leave a comment)

Countdown to $200 oil: $140 oil and speculation