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U-Know! Forum » Mr Grufty Jim Sir !! |
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grufty jim 1978 posts |
Dec 08, 2001, 17:30
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i had the same objections as you when i first read the work of a certain Jay Hanson. it was his writing that first turned me on to this issue, and his site is a fine source of info: http://www.dieoff.org/ then i began to delve a little deeper and was shocked and disturbed by what i read. i believe that my initial objections were a result of my misunderstanding a complex issue. as with another thread on this site, i don't wish to put myself across as an "expert" (apart from anything else, i have a tendency to mistrust 'experts'). i've read a hell of a lot on the subject, but my conclusions are my own, and open to criticism and ridicule. to address your points... as for oil companies "being aware of the impending disaster"? on one level they are. but on another they're not. Petroconsultants released a report a few years back (it cost $32,000 per copy! - so had a fairly select market) that basically debunked the "economic" model of future oil production and announced gravely that world oil production would peak by 2010 at the latest (probably 5-6 years sooner). since then a few oil companies (Shell and BP most noticeably) have acknowledged this fact and made great fanfare about becoming 'diversified energy companies'. sadly despite the fanfare, this actually isn't happening on any scale beyond Public Relations. Kenneth Deffeyes in his book _Hubbert's Peak: The Impending World Oil Shortage_ points out that oil is just far more profitable than diversifying. what's more, thanks to supply and demand, it's going to get *more* profitable as the shortages start, not less. a shareholder-owned corporation in a capitalist economy simply can't justify knowingly spending a cent in a less profitable area. it's not a corporations function to consider the social / long-term effects of its policy; it is a corporations single defining purpose to maximise profit on investment. you're right when you say "overpopulation has little to do with wealth". but it does have everything to do with energy and resources. you state that overpopulation "quickly recedes once a country develops". true; but only on one level. a person in a 'developed country' ends up consuming many times more energy and resources than a person in a developing nation. that's kind of what we mean by "developed" sadly. also, the road to development is paved with cheap oil. the rest of the world just isn't going to develop (barring, say, fusion power - i don't utterly discount a science-fiction solution). we're the privileged few... but i suspect everyone here at U-Know is aware of that. you're wrong when you state "only a small percentage of the world is living at sustenance level". by definition, if they are living, they are at sustenance level. there are 6 billion of us at sustenance level or above. those physically dying of starvation are the only ones who aren't. sustenance level is bleak. however the only reason that so many can exist at any level at all is cheap oil. AA Bartlett once said that "Modern agriculture is the use of land to convert petroleum into food", and while that's pretty extreme, there's actually something to it. Take a look at http://www.dieoff.org/page171.htm and have a look at the section "Oil and World Agriculture". you don't have to agree with everything he says (e.g. on the subject of GM Foods) to realise that taking cheap fossil fuel out of the system does nasty things to world food production and distribution. if we'd started seriously conserving energy and investing in alternatives, maybe 30 years ago, then i wouldn't be the pessimist i am now. however, i fear the opportunity has been missed (by quite a margin). and i've yet to read anything that's come close to convincing me otherwise, sorry to say. we live in a civilisation that's as dependent on oil as the Easter Islanders were on wood. check out what happened to them after they cut down the last tree. don't make great reading, believe me.
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FourWinds 10943 posts |
Dec 10, 2001, 15:50
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The sorry tale of sustainable energy levels is neatly hidden behind a positive report about the resources of Scotland. They say that Scotland has something like 27% of Europes capacity potential for wind & sea power ... enough to keep double Scotlands need satisfied. So, 27% of Europes wind & sea power is enough to keep two Scotlands supplied ... So what does the rest of Europe do? And how about the rest of the world?
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grufty jim 1978 posts |
Dec 10, 2001, 15:56
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equally as interesting is the question of how one builds and maintains large wind farms without the use of fossil fuels... smelting iron and turning it into steel ain't done in a machine you can just "plug in".
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FourWinds 10943 posts |
Dec 10, 2001, 16:20
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The government would hide the cost of that from the books so there's no need to worry. You are right, can we use 'ecologically friendly' power if it is produced by machinery that itself caused pollution in it's manufacture.? Good point.
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grufty jim 1978 posts |
Dec 10, 2001, 16:34
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the generation of electricity by windmill does (in my opinion) have a serious practical application, and while i do actively campaign for the extension of large scale windfarms (if you can call writing to newspapers and politicians "active campaigning"), it's on the local level that it has its greatest advantages. there are two "essential" uses of electricity if one is to make an _easy_ transition to no-impact living; they are pumping water and refrigeration (which can be done far more efficiently than the mass-produced fridges that don't last more than a decade, and which is utterly necessary if you minimise the work put into providing one's own sustenance). wind power can be ideal for both of these. an efficient freezer will not need constant power, and a place like the West of Ireland or the Scottish Coast has enough wind to make the risk of spoilage minimal. as for water pumps (after refrigeration; the second priority), if you go off-grid and generate using the wind, then you just have to accept that your indoor plumbing won't work 24/7, but again - on the Irish / Scottish coasts this will be a minimal disruption. there's a wonderful map on the web somewhere (just spent 10 minutes failing to track it down, rather annoyingly) that shows global wind resources. areas on the planet are graded between 0 and 10 for their suitability for wind power, and the atlantic coastlines of ireland and scotland get a 9!
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grufty jim 1978 posts |
Dec 10, 2001, 16:51
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it's not just a case of "pollution"... and i'm sorry to say that the pollution problem is going to get a lot worse before too long (people will burn *anything* to stay warm after the fossil fuels are all used up)... rather the issue is that once you have accepted that fossil fuels are a finite resource; then nothing is truly sustainable unless you can manufacture and maintain it without fossil fuels. we can make lots of space-age steel windmills now (using coal to smelt the iron, oil and gas in abundance and petrol to get the thing into position), but when the fossil fuels are no longer available, do we decide just never to build any more... cos they'll never break or need replacing? relatively low-tech windmills built at a local level (using an absolute minimum of fossil fuels) could probably be maintained without more than the input of human-power.
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FourWinds 10943 posts |
Dec 10, 2001, 16:52
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Can you explain the meaning of "spoilage" in >> and a place like the West of Ireland or the >> Scottish Coast has enough wind to make the risk >> of spoilage minimal. please?
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FourWinds 10943 posts |
Dec 10, 2001, 16:54
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>> relatively low-tech windmills built at a local level >> (using an absolute minimum of fossil fuels) could >> probably be maintained without more than the >> input of human-power. So come up with plans for these and make yourself a small fortune! Or is that going against the principles too much?
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grufty jim 1978 posts |
Dec 10, 2001, 16:58
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in that context i was just talking about the food i the freezer. rather than adopt a four-season harvest strategy (perfectly possible in ireland with a greenhouse and some very serious planning... it's just a lot of work), decent refigeration should allow two harvests per year. the trouble is, if you power your freezer by windmill, then you could have fairly long spells of no power when the wind drops. efficient freezers (sunk into the ground and well insulated) will keep the food from spoiling for a while without power, but obviously not forever. the advantages of the irish / scottish coasts is that those periods of no-power are few and far between... hence a minimal risk of spoilage. to be honest, if/when i set up a wind-power system, i'd probably add an input option from a couple of those bikes that can be seen powering stage equipment at free-festies... so in the unlikely event of the coast of ireland receiving no wind at all for weeks at a time, the refrigeration could be kept ticking over by leg power!
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grufty jim 1978 posts |
Dec 10, 2001, 17:00
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they exist, FW. check out: http://www.bergey.com (just one of many suppliers).
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