The Energy Thread

graph should probably be labeled better, e.g., "Declining Oil Discoveries vs. Increasing Oil Consumption"

I read the entire contents of dieoff.org ten years ago (it hasn't been updated), and many/most of JH's sources. Financially I'm 10x better off as a result. Emotionally, well I can sleep after a bottle.

ha! yeah, I sympathize with your last point. it's difficult to come to grips with it. But at least in much of the rest of the world, peak oil studies get a least a little bit of publicity. Der Spiegel highlighted the German military study and the Guardian has been consistently pretty good,relatively speaking.

But the WashPo and the NYT? I can't tell if it's an editorial decision to not mention peak oil if they're really that clueless. Either way, the resulting ignorance is catastrophic.

BTW, if you like to keep up to date daily on resource depletion issues, oildrum.com is the best moderated non-investment oriented forum.

Just for you, Z S, www.peakoilblues.com. I could real off another several dozen sites of interest. Kunstler's Clusterfuck Nation has at least been well written for the better part of the past decade.

appreciate it, but I've already got them all bookmarked (except for peakoilblues, which I'll check out now!). Energybulletin.net is my first stop, though.

(granted, since they publish just about anything that is even tangentially related to the issues of resource constraints, there's a lot of bad stuff on there, but plenty of good as well)

And for the grand picture (including discussions of the incompatibility of credit-based money with finite natural resources) I'd recommend everyone set down (with their favorite drink) to Chris Martenson's Crash Course. Nothing this decade has come as a suprise to a dieoff.org reader, it's just been a matter of timing and leverage.

I've only seen Ch. 18, which was excellent:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfAQktktGgQ

And of course, all of this was anticipated in 1972 by the Club of Rome. Avert your eyes.

http://rutledge.caltech.edu/ODcomments/LTGScenario1.jpg

Sanpaku that can't be right because all models have been discredited because weatherman sometimes get the weekend forecast all wrong. Also, token comment about Malthus and how he was completely wrong (even though it appears that he's still on track to be correct).

typos galore but I'm hitting the bottle so I can sleep tbh

interesting paper comparing projections of Limits to Growth to what actually happened, 1970-2000:

The analysis shows that 30 years of historical data compares favorably with key features of a business-as-usual scenario called the "standard run" scenario, which results in collapse of the global system midway through the 21st century. The data does not compare well with other scenarios involving comprehensive use of technology or stabilizing behaviour and policies.

http://gigaom.com/cleantech/solyndra-spells-disaster-for-doe-loan-guarantee-program/

Not good news at all, I had high hopes for Solyndra, I hope this isn't going to sour the climate for Loan Guarantees.

Z S or Ed do you guys have any recommendations for books on the early years of climate change science/research? ive been reading a little bit abt arctic & near arctic ecology & it touches on climate change obvs & was wondering if ppl doing field research in the far north were among the 1st to really visibly notice these things.

also Z S if youre still w/ the EPA much love hope it doesnt get to hard out there

a nice free resource is The Discovery of Global Warming

and within that, a nice summary is here:
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/summary.htm

thnx!

also have u read elizabeth kolbert's climate change book? 'field notes from a catastrophe'?

I have! it's excellent, and a quick read, too.

it's not all bad news in the CA solar industry

not really "energy" related, but i just reread neal stephenson's "zodiac" and it makes me want to ~take direct action~

also apparently we don't have a generic "environmentalism" thread, but i guess it'd just be a pretty miserable and bitter place

http://i51.tinypic.com/2q0kcgh.gif

this single image should be enough to prove to all future generations that Joe Bastardi, Accuweather’s chief long-range forecaster, is the dumbest man in North America. What kind of fool looks at that data and concludes that sea ice is on a rebound? What kind of fool puts him on television?

(btw, looking at sea ice trends by volume, a more useful metric, is incredibly depressing)

haha oh wow

wait, hold the phone, i just saw ANOTHER trend in that graph, hold on just a sec while I get my monitor writing pen thingy...

http://i51.tinypic.com/2mxh9wj.jpg

ladies and gentlemen...SCIENCE

not really "energy" related, but i just reread neal stephenson's "zodiac" and it makes me want to ~take direct action~

haven't read it, but I'm gonna throw it on my xmas wishlist

wait a second...look at that revised screencapture...a HOCKEY STICK shape for sea ice?

TAKE THAT GLOBAL WARMISTS

(sorry i'm depressed, politically alienated and drinking)

Don't worry, we're just at the indicated stage:

http://img813.imageshack.us/img813/2519/mcdiagram.gif

zodiac is a great book, but it kinda put me off lobsters for life, I can never make myself to eat tomalley ever again

On one hand, awesome. Benjamin Santer WAILS on Patrick Michaels here.

On the other, I'm almost certain that when Patrick Michaels gets on a roll at a cocktail party and spews off a bunch of his bullshit, almost everyone believes him, forgets all the misleading details he may bother to include, and only remembers "climate change...uncertainty...needs more research..." So mission accomplished for him, pretty much, regardless of how embarrassingly he gets humiliated in this clip, because the only people who will watch that clip are people that don't need to be convinced.

sigh

oops, forgot to include "the clip" (testimony starts about a minute in):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-a4R1bKGsN8

I think the fact that telling a lie can be done briefly while proving something is a lie takes much longer pretty much explains everything that is terrible in the world

The Obama administration is retreating on long-delayed environmental regulations — new rules governing smog and toxic emissions from industrial boilers — as it adjusts to a changed political dynamic in Washington with a more muscular Republican opposition.

Now, the agency says, it needs until July 2011 to further analyze scientific and health studies of the smog rules and until April 2012 on the boiler regulation. Mr. Obama, having just cut a painful deal with Republicans intended to stimulate the economy, can ill afford to be seen as simultaneously throttling the fragile recovery by imposing a sheaf of expensive new environmental regulations that critics say will cost jobs.

hmm...well yea, it is a tough political situation, so I guess that-

On Tuesday, EPA asked for a one-year delay on its new rules for soot and toxics pollution from industrial boilers and solid-waste incinerators. On Wednesday, it announced that it would be delaying its new smog rules (for the third time) until July, despite a court order to produce them by Dec. 31.

This is mystifying. By any rational cost-benefit analysis, these rules would be some of the most cost-effective in federal government history. Brad Plumer has an excellent state-of-play piece. As he notes, "EPA experts found that cutting toxic pollution could prevent 5,000 deaths and 36,000 asthma attacks each year. All told...the rule would have cost an estimated $2.9 billion each year while delivering between $17 billion and $41 billion in annual health benefits—not a bad deal.

Sorry to be the stereotypical leftleaning envirofascist here, but we're delaying a rulemaking on something that could save FIVE THOUSAND lives a year, because of political pressure. FUCK THAT. I'm so sick of this shit.

sorry, second quote is from David Roberts, here

Sorry to be the stereotypical leftleaning envirofascist here, but we're delaying a rulemaking on something that could save FIVE THOUSAND lives a year, because of political pressure. FUCK THAT. I'm so sick of this shit.

ive been doing a fair bit of background reading on pollution levels & various environmental changes over the past half century and the galling selfishness and sheer bad faith of the opposition here is just... honestly it just depresses and enrages me to where i cant do much with it.

Fox boss ordered staff to cast doubt on climate science

In the midst of global climate change talks last December, a top Fox News official sent an email questioning the "veracity of climate change data" and ordering the network's journalists to "refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question."

The directive, sent by Fox News Washington managing editor Bill Sammon, was issued less than 15 minutes after Fox correspondent Wendell Goler accurately reported on-air that the United Nations' World Meteorological Organization announced that 2000-2009 was "on track to be the warmest (decade) on record."

From: Sammon, Bill
To: 169 -SPECIAL REPORT; 036 -FOX.WHU; 054 -FNSunday; 030 -Root (FoxNews.Com); 050 -Senior Producers; 051 -Producers; 069 -Politics; 005 -Washington
Cc: Clemente, Michael; Stack, John; Wallace, Jay; Smith, Sean
Sent: Tue Dec 08 12:49:51 2009
Subject: Given the controversy over the veracity of climate change data...

...we should refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question. It is not our place as journalists to assert such notions as facts, especially as this debate intensifies.

sigh

Joe Romm OTM, I guess: "Well, okay, this would be a bombshell email coming from any other news organization in the world. So maybe the only bombshell is that Sammon was foolish enough to put this egregious Fox News policy into an email."

Out of the many depressing things in the world, one of the worst is that Fox News has been debunked/called out/embarrassed so so so so so many times, and yet so many people still watch and believe everything it spews out. I mean, I'm glad Media Matters is there documenting all of this and trying to correct things, but it just doesn't work. Yes, only several million people watch Fox, a small proportion of the United States population, but surely most of that relatively small audience of Fox True Believers goes forth into the world to spread the nonsense to people who don't follow the news at all and take them at their word. Straight from Industry/Frank Luntz to Fox/GOP to TOTAL FUCKING MORONS to people who don't follow the news. I love the idea of democracy but any hopes of an enlightened populace within the next 100 years is being torn to shreds

it'll happen. whether it will take utter cataclysm is another issue. thinking of irreversible global warming is a great way to terrify myself, but that's not the problem yet - the problem is a question of basic universal human empathy and the fact that tropical, undeveloped countries are getting this in the neck far worse than temperate, developed ones

I also strongly believe that in a few years' time, humanity will have the opportunity to choose the way of greed or the way of universality, and the fate of the planet rests on that decision - not just in a climatic sense but in a holistic sense

some pretty millennial thinking there bro

there's a revolution on and you're invited

revolution + on + on

hope that's true over there. In the U.S. the revolution generally looks a lot like this:

http://i56.tinypic.com/ng8pp5.jpg

http://i53.tinypic.com/viej9k.jpg

"The Facebook group 'STOP GLOBAL WARMING NOW' has over 150,000 likes? Great Scott. I need a minute to think. THINK. Let's see. OK. Cancel my 2:00, get me Wen Jiabao on the phone ASAP - TODAY WE STOP GLOBAL WARMING"

http://i53.tinypic.com/viej9k.jpg

"listen to me god DAMMIT! to HELL with industry! this facebook group has over 150,000 goddamn LIKES. That is a MANDATE."

sorry, i'm just joshing around. I like the idea of the president barking orders like Patton.

lol :-/

^

kinda lol, mostly despair

^my epitaph^

Anyway, my main (sorta) point is that it's going to take people on the streets to do anything, imo. There was a decent Harper's essay a few weeks ago that argued that as lol rong as the tea party was/is about everything, they're out there on the streets, making themselves known, creating a persistent presence, so props to them for that. There was no comparable presence on the left, not with that persistence.

And (this would be more debatable obviously, but imo) that necessity to have a physical presence on the streets runs counter to the digitilization of "today's youth" (god i'm starting to feel like an oldtimer). There are examples of social networking/etc being used to successfully advance political protest, but I don't see it happening in the United States (please prove me wrong someone?). In the last year of lol grad school I helped a professor work on a book that was focused on taking advantage of the social networking, and particularly the ease with which young people utilize it, for progressive issues. And the more I researched the issue, the more my gut was telling me NO NO NO NO NO. it's not going to work. not in time.

Anyway, I want to be wrong on all of this more than anything else in the world.

no i think you're right