The World of Layonara
The Layonara Community => General Discussion => Topic started by: Erik K on May 22, 2008, 06:32:55 pm
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Ive been thinking about the price of gass lately and got to wondering if the hike in gass prices is such a bad thing. Not that Im a fan of big oil, in any form, but there seem to be some positives aspects to it. Higher prices tend to be pushing a lot of people to drive less, at least around where I live. There are a lot more bicyclers and walkers, lately. Some really fantastic innovations in vehicles, like the apterra (300 mpg set for production lateer this year) and the hybrids that finally seem to have taken hold. The upshot would seem to be more excercise, less pollution and subsequently less dependance of forign oil. So, here is the question, is this such a bad thing?
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Heh... complicated question.
I agree with the points that you make, and some economists have said that the US needed a recession, which the gas prices are a part of. My SO believes very strongly that there is an impending energy crisis which will force us to make a lot of positive changes....
That said, part of the problem is that gas prices hit those at the bottom of the economic scale the hardest. Those folk who can afford to buy a hybrid car aren't as likely to be really hurt by higher gas prices as the ones who are working low wage jobs; I know bus fares are going up where I live, which is not good for people without their own vehicles. The oil companies are making record profits, the airline execs aren't having financial problems themselves, even while their companies are crashing around them... The higher cost of fossil fuels forces energy companies to rely more on garbage incineration (which may or may not be a bad thing), but those factories are almost always built in low-income areas, and dump pollutants there... (edit: and yes, of course food will become more expensive for everyone, but that increase will affect less affluent people more, because for them food constitutes a much larger proportion of their income)
(I know I'm oversimplifying here, but...)
So yeah, it's complicated, I don't really think you can say "it's a bad thing" or "it's a good thing" without a lot of qualifications.
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It has effected a lot of people. From small bussiness owner to large bussiness. Yes even the big ones. I get to drive a company car becouse of how much travleing I do. Now gas is $4.25 for the cheep stuff. I fill up 3 time a week at an average of $80.00 a fill up. (Mind you it is more then just myself in the car most of the time.) That is $240.00 a week time that 6 times (For are other 6 cars in the fleet) $1440.00. Now that is some money to be putting out. My boss is already talking about down sizing becouse he can not afford everything with the costing going up. He of course will pass the cost on to the companys we supply. We does it end?
Soon it will hurt everyone. Jobs will be down sized? Food goes up? Gas goes up? Utilitys go up? Public Transite goes up? We made are beds and we have to lay in them. We can get started now and do little things to help out. I have started changing my old fashion light bulbs to more engery saving light bulbs. I take bus more. And I am sure there is more I can do. Will it be enough for us all to change are ways, who knows? Are we to late? All we can do is try.
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Essentially what happened can be best explained by Steve Jackson's card game, Illuminati: New World Order. Once every turn, OPEC rolls 2d6 and uses the total as its power score. The Cult of Cthulu rolled 12 this round, and moved all the world's governments into place to act as subsidaries of said organization. They then neutralized all Green and Peaceful aligned cards using the Military Industrial Complex New World Order card, unearthed the Crystal Skull and Spear of Destiny artifacts for added power, and decided to declare war on all the other illuminatis at once. Shangrila and the Bavarians both scratched their heads in unison and the Discordian Society went on strike.
Soon the game will be won, the top cultmaster will grow bored, and he will reshuffle the cards into the deck, and 4 more new power-players will begin the game anew. Same thing happened back when they had a quarrel in management and the Holy Roman Empire split between 2 emperors.
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I love you, Lonnarin.
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I recommend buying a foreign car (european, asian) instead of a US made car with a V8-engine that chucks down a gallon per mile (or so). That saves you a lot of money. My Volvo uses around 7 litres per 100km (someone do the math, I'm too morning drowsy).
(Yeah I know I exaggerated with the gallon per mile) ;)
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Heh, a Civic from the ninties'll get amazing mileage.
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In Holland we're currently paying around 1.6 euros per liter, or 6.15 euros per gallon, or $9.65 per gallon....
Anyway, one of the things I do now, is turn off the airconditioning in the car 15 minutes before I arrive at home or work, because your car will remain cool for that period. And then at home there's the energy saving lightbulbs, don't leave TVs, monitors etc on standby but turn them off, etc.
Saves a bit, but all bits help :-)
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Petrol here is about £1.10 a litre at the moment, which roughly works out to $2.20 a litre - that pricey to you guys?
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And here in Quebec we complain for our 1.32 a litre hehe
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While I'll agree that energy conserving vehicles are a good thing - as are innovations towards alternate fuels and energy, and increased use of public transit - it's not just car-owners/users who are going to feel the increase in gas prices. With increased fuel prices, the price of manufacture and shipping of goods - and here I'm specifically thinking of food - are also going to go up, perhaps slowly at first, but with increasing speed.
As well, while it's easier for people who live in major urban centers to use public transit, North America wasn't built in the same way that a lot of European countries were. Instead of being compact, both the US and Canada are built broadly across miles of urban wilderness. While the affluent can probably afford to live in the city, again, the lower half of the schism stands to pay a lot more because they have to commute.
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Being that lower half, I support LightlyFrosted's statement.
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i finally had to pay over 4.00 a gallon.... i commute a fair distance each day and even though i have a car with great gas mileage, the price is getting a bit much to handle. *sighs* im just greatful i dont have to get bent over at the pump the way those who have to pay for diesel do.... $5 ish bucks a gallon!!
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The price of 95 octane gasoline was something around 1,525 euros here in Finland, the last I checked :)
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Two solutions come to mind...
1) stagger the work day into 3 seperate shifts so the entire populace doesn't have to hop on the road during "rush hour". There is no reason, with our globalist market economy and the invention of the lightbulb that mankind cannot work at any given hour of the night. By forcing production and shipping based industries like factories and truck drivers and maintanance crews to work at varying shifts, traffic will reduce by 2/3s. Have a 6-2 shift, then a 2-10 shift and a 10-6 shift, or some other variation and division. The end result will be less traffic, which means less gas being used/demanded, more gas in the supply and a lower cost of gas per gallon. As I nightowl, I am already fully adjusted to this system.
2) Solar panels are made of silicon and glass, mostly. Both come from sand. Why not then, dig the surface of the desert, and then erect solar panels across the entirety for our energy needs? Sure its expensive to start, but once you got the project rolling, set up sand digging construction sites, hired the technicians and contractors, etc... you'd find that there's nothing cheaper than digging sand in a desert, turning it into solar panels, and then sticking up those panels over the same desert where they came from. It's all just sand and labor, and we have PLENTY of that available given our current unemployment rate, sheer number of migrant workers and vast deserts of barren sand. We certainly aren't farming or living there anyway.
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I say we all stop working and that would save everyone a hell of a lot of money on petrol, and the environment from a lot of emissions :P - If only.
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I vouch for a Hunter&Gatherer type of culture to take place globally!
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Two solutions come to mind...
1) stagger the work day into 3 seperate shifts so the entire populace doesn't have to hop on the road during "rush hour". There is no reason, with our globalist market economy and the invention of the lightbulb that mankind cannot work at any given hour of the night. By forcing production and shipping based industries like factories and truck drivers and maintanance crews to work at varying shifts, traffic will reduce by 2/3s. Have a 6-2 shift, then a 2-10 shift and a 10-6 shift, or some other variation and division. The end result will be less traffic, which means less gas being used/demanded, more gas in the supply and a lower cost of gas per gallon. As I nightowl, I am already fully adjusted to this system.
Why not go one step further? Reduce the work-week by one day. Part of the ridiculous consumption rate of North America is the fact that in order to maintain employees working eight hours/day five days/week, you have to have people consuming everything they produce. And in order to do that, you have to have people earning enough money in their 40-hour-a-week jobs to do the consumption. It's cyclical. Produce less, and individuals not only have more leisure time, but you increase the productivity of the average worker during that time. France knows it (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1093/is_1_42/ai_53697784/pg_5), Kellog knew it (http://eh.net/bookreviews/library/0115) - so why isn't progress being made in that direction? Take commuters off the roads one more day a week, and you not only reduce consumption, but increase general health.
2) Solar panels are made of silicon and glass, mostly. Both come from sand. Why not then, dig the surface of the desert, and then erect solar panels across the entirety for our energy needs? Sure its expensive to start, but once you got the project rolling, set up sand digging construction sites, hired the technicians and contractors, etc... you'd find that there's nothing cheaper than digging sand in a desert, turning it into solar panels, and then sticking up those panels over the same desert where they came from. It's all just sand and labor, and we have PLENTY of that available given our current unemployment rate, sheer number of migrant workers and vast deserts of barren sand. We certainly aren't farming or living there anyway.
The limiting factor here would be the semiconducting material used as the substrate for a photovoltaic (PV) panel. The best thin-film solar cells (now approaching $1/watt production costs) use gallium (http://periodic.lanl.gov/elements/31.html), selenium (http://periodic.lanl.gov/elements/34.html), and indium (http://periodic.lanl.gov/elements/49.html) - where if a significant labour force were set to create PV panels, supplies of these elements would quickly become the bottleneck.
If, instead, you choose to use silica crystal PV (the more common kind until very recently - if you've got panels on your roof, they're most likely this kind, and hobbyist cells are usually this sort) the problem lies in EROI - it takes two years (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cell#Silicon_processing) to earn back the energy needed to process silica sand into a silicon wafer suitable for PV.
This is not to say that production of both types ought not to be ramped up, and PV installed on every convenient surface - but not in the desert! PV's huge advantage is that it can, generally, be installed anywhere there's sun. At the costs that companies like NanoSolar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanosolar) are producing the things, put them on top of every building in every reasonably sunny city in the world! The shorter a distance power has to travel, the less energy is lost (http://www.answers.com/topic/line-drop?cat=technology). So put the panels where they'll do the most good - right near the places where their power can be used! :)
In the desert, meanwhile, there's a far better way to use all that silica, that doesn't involve expensive (both in terms of energy and capital) purification processes - turn it into glass for mirrors. Concentrated Solar Power (http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/04/14/solar_electric_thermal/) (CSP) for solar thermal generation is tested, proven, scalable technology that we could start building right now. The southern States, for example, would be a gold mine. It's an old technique - concentrate the sunlight from an area on a point. Archimedes, apocryphally, used it (http://www.math.nyu.edu/~crorres/Archimedes/Mirrors/Tzetzes.html), kids use it (http://www.energyquest.ca.gov/projects/solardogs.html), and it doesn't require clean rooms to build. More importantly, it can actually replace fossil fuel plants, because it doesn't need the sun to shine all the time.
With PV, power is generated as long as sunlight falls on the panel. Which is great - during the summer, air-conditioners switch on when the sun rises. What better way to mitigate peak load on a system than to have generation that ramps up as utility does? But people don't go to sleep when the sun goes down anymore - we need electricity that stays on. With CSP (either parabolic trough (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parabolic_trough), power tower (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_tower), or fresnel arrays (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_thermal_energy#Fresnel_reflectors)), a liquid is heated and its heat is tapped to make steam/heat gas and run turbines. (Basically, it's the same as a fossil fuel plant, but you don't have to burn anything to get your heat.) But with a slight twist, we can keep generating power even when the sun is down - heat storage! With a large reservoir of the liquid (water, liquid salt, mineral oil) stored underground, heat can be retained sixteen hours for every eight hours in the sun, and the turbines can keep spinning. This can replace fossil fuel plants wholesale.
Why, then, aren't CSP plants being built anywhere there's an expanse of ground and sunlight? Largely, cost. While the operating costs of a CSP are substantially lower than any other sort of centralized power plant (no fuel, no waste management), the initial outlay is somewhat higher per watt of generating capacity. Over time, CSPs are far cheaper - but most power companies are concerned with immediate profitability (except for the highly-subsidized nuclear industry). But if the public started demanding renewables, that and the rising cost of fossil fuel might very well tip the balance.
An area ninety-two miles square (8464 sq. miles or 21 921 sq. km) would provide all the power the US consumes (for everything, transport, electricity, heating, etc.) from solar energy alone. It would be a massive effort, and cost somewhere in the range of three trillion dollars to complete. But with an annual outflow of more than six hundred billion dollars spent on oil each year... it doesn't actually sound that bad. ;)
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ok, heres a radical idea, why not put a windfall profit tax on the oil companies ( the people that gave you line, were selling less and making more, but not ripping anyone off )and use it for lower incomes to offset rising prices. Kinda an odd idea coming from a fellow that votes conservative. :)
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As good as it sounds to hear a conservative making a plea for welfare, I can't help but feel that such an arrangement would result in symptomatic relief only. The thing that's most straining the budgets of lower-income families and individuals is, as stated, rising gas prices. By placing a windfall tax on the oil companies, you generate income, but if you then give that income to those of lower income, it will get spent on gas... and the funds make their way back to the oil companies. You've temporarily eased the plight of those in a lower income bracket, but in so doing you've accelerated consumption and hastened the further rise of oil prices (as oil supplies near depletion). So not only would that be symptomatic only, but temporary, and at the cost of making the eventual problem far worse.
The better approach, as I see it, would be to enact the windfall tax, and use that to subsidize the construction of renewable energy plants. (Or fourth-generation nuclear - I'm not picky.) This would simultaneously offset rising energy prices by bringing fuel-less energy online, raise employment, and lower oil prices (by diminishing demand).
Better still, the government ought to go into building power plants wholesale - a government owned organization, like PetroCanada used to be. Plow any realized profits into the construction of further plants and infrastructure. (HVDC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission#HVDC), anyone?) Once you have a handle on power generation for the nation, simply destroy any additional profits made, as an active act of deflation. The government has printed money for decades; this would be a means of diminishing the money supply, and thereby revaluing the dollar. By adding value to the economy without returning the money received for said value (energy), the value of the dollars remaining in the economy would rise. And all for a fraction of the national budget. :)
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Darkstorm, I like the ideas, ever consider moving to the States and running for congress??
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I don't have the CHA score to be a career politician, I'm afraid. Also, don't you have to be a naturalized US citizen to run for Congress?
Oh, and in consideration, I'd qualify my above statement - I'd be fine with a limited "food stamps"-esque program to help the lower-income families, in an attempt to keep the money from going to gasoline. It probably would go there regardless, but some effort in that respect would have to be made to satisfy the moral imperative.
The other problem, of course, is that while intelligent people (of which most of Layonara's player population is comprised) would recognize the sense in programs like the one I outlined above, a surprisingly large fraction of the voting public is okay with such programs as long as:
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- it costs them nothing, and
- they don't have to do anything or change their lifestyle
Which just isn't a practical reality at this point in time. *sighs* But write your congressperson with thoughts like these, by all means - I've written my MP along similar lines. If enough of us do it, we can climb out of the hole we've dug before it's too far above our heads. :)
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The problem is that the collapse is imminent. Besides, the plans will take more than four years to implement.
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The problem is that the collapse is imminent. Besides, the plans will take more than four years to implement.
And so... what, we give up? Wait for the end to come, sitting complacent in the knowledge that we can't do anything to stop it? What good does that do? If you have a plan of action that could be implemented faster, by all means, be forthcoming - but being a fatalist has never profited anyone.
If you're referring to presidential, congressional, or (insert local government adjective of choice) terms of office - well, the key is to get enough inertia behind a project. If you can get it to the point where it would be more trouble to stop than it would be to finish, it behooves whichever government takes the place of the former one to continue on the path. CSP plants as described above take no more than three years from groundbreaking to operational status - comparable (or faster) than conventional coal-fired plants, and much faster than suggested (but as-yet theoretical) "carbon capture" coal plants. (And let's not even get into nuclear construction time.)
Infrastructure projects also add jobs (LOTS of jobs) to the economy, and there are few governments of any stripe who will willingly sacrifice jobs just to undo what the previous government has done.
If you're referring to "time until society collapses, oil vanishes, and we all die" - I must respectfully disagree. There will be hardships in the future, both immediate and more far-reaching. Oil prices don't look to be going down anytime soon, and demand is likely to rise a bit further before the first evidence of demand destruction is seen. But if any organization in a nation has access to resources that the average citizen does not, it's the government. The means to implement such a plan will stay well within the abilities of the government for several decades, at the most pessimistic. However, I would agree that for best effect, plans such as these should be put into action as soon as possible, and on the widest possible basis. But "we're doomed" is not a constructive comment.
There are lots of approaches that could be enacted immediately: the cessation of oil company subsidies, the termination of the "once-through" nuclear fuel policy, tougher milage standards (something approaching Europe's performance, say), federal subsidies for personal-level renewables and conservationist policies, and so on, and so forth. The plan I outlined above is just a more sweeping (and more final) solution to the problem.
As a closing note, I'd like to again stress that if you see fit to criticize, offer either an explanation or an alternative suggestion, lest you find yourself fitting the Irish poet Brendan Behan's description of critics too neatly:
“Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how it's done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves.”
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I'm no critic; I'm all for trying to improve the economy. I'm only stating facts, which may or may not need supporting facts--Specifically within the Unites States wherein the majority of the citizens would rather wait, as "We aren't effected (yet)."
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On a brighter note. Polar ice has melted significantly enough to open up new oil reserves.
Aeon
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On another bright note, I saw a news article on PBS as part of the News Hour with Jim Lehrer today about an alternative way of producing fuel from algee that yields a fuel that is extremely similar to the currently used fossil-fuel oil. Interesting facts about this developing technology is that it would likely cost half as much to produce as drilling for oil currently costs, it's renewable, and exhaust emissions when the fuel is burned emit an almost equal ammount of CO2 as what is drawn from the air as the algee-fuel is being grown. Meaning the emmisions from the new algee fuel would not impact the environment negatively (or at least not as badly as current fossil-fuel does). The developers of this new fuel already even have vehicles running off it.
The same news article also talked about the solar-thermal energy plants as described in posts above, and currently some of those are being built in Nevada for a power company based in California. If I remember accurately those new facilities should be online and producing power by 2010 from what the news article mentioned.
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The oil companies have been vomiting money all over themselves for decades as they gorge on the blood of the modern motorist.
Anyone ever watch Future Car on the science channel? That fact that it is possible to run a car on water is still blowing my mind to this day.