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Sunday, December 31, 2006

China chokes on a coal-fired boom

This is what our future will become if we don't somehow find a way to curtail our dependence on goods and services that owe their existence to high inputs of hydrocarbon energy.



A GREAT coal rush is under way across China on a scale not seen anywhere since the 19th century.

Its consequences have been detected half a world away in toxic clouds so big that they can seen from space, drifting across the Pacific to California laden with microscopic particles of chemicals that cause cancer and diseases of the heart and lung.

Nonetheless, the Chinese plan to build no fewer than 500 new coal-fired power stations, adding to some 2,000, most of them unmodernised, that spew smoke, carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere.

It is the political fallout of that decision that is likely to challenge the foundations on which Britain and other developed nations have built their climate change policy — even as there are signs that ordinary Chinese citizens are at last rebelling against lives spent in poisonous conditions.

Cloaked in swirling mists of soot particles and smoke, cities such as China’s “coal capital” of Datong are entering the coldest period of winter in which demand for power and heating produces the worst pollution.

It is often darkness at noon in Datong, just 160 miles west of Beijing, where vehicles drive in daytime with their headlights on to grope through the miasma.

One of the four filthiest towns in China, it stands at the heart of the nation’s coal belt in Shanxi province, a region that mines more coal every year than Britain, Russia and Germany combined.

Cancer rates are soaring, child health is a time bomb and the population, many of whom are heavy cigarette smokers, are paying the price for China’s breakneck rush to riches and industrialisation — an estimated 400,000 premature deaths nationwide because of pollution every year.


Oil is prohibitively expensive for China now, so they are using coal. Eventually oil will become prohibitively expensive in the United States as well. When, not if, that happens we will burn everything we can find to keep warm and to provide energy to produce what we want. The only way it could not happen is if we reduced our energy consumption at the same rate that our "clean" hydrocarbon energy depletes (including the increased contribution from renewable energy sources of course). Even that won't help the financially challenged who will not be able to ratchet up their energy expenditures at the drop of a hat. The costs are going to go up. That by itself will reduce consumption. But without an understood agreement by the consumer that there is going to be less for everyone, there will be no way to stop the burning of all of the wood and coal that can be had. As you can see in this article the situation is going to be grim long before the resultant pollutants from this wholesale burning factor into global warming.


[Link: China chokes on a coal-fired boom]

Friday, December 22, 2006

10 Principles of Post Peak Oil Planning

This is a really good presentation. Mr. Moerman is definitely talking about the real future here. His discussions about wasting food producing land on bio-diesel and transportation planning are splendid. In his introduction he talks about our faulty planning which is based on our false belief in the existence of ever increasing supplies of cheap oil. That is the false present that I have talked about here before.

We need to listen to these thinkers. The real future will belong to those who accept the real present. We are desperately in need of understanding and even more urgently in need of top level planners who will act on that knowledge.
[Primary Link: 10 Principles of Post Peak Oil Planning, pointer from Energy Bulletin]

Monday, December 18, 2006

100 Things You Can Do to Get Ready for Peak Oil

Most people haven't started thinking about the real future. That's mostly because they are still living in today's unreal present. You can't easily think about later unless you have a good grasp on now. The author of this article, however, may be planning for the real future.

If you are like me and you have been raised in a suburban, shopping mall, freeway to anywhere kind of world, your first read through this list will bring yesterday to your mind rather than tomorrow. It is true, much of the knowledge she is suggesting you acquire consists of skills that your grandfather and grandmother had to learn. But if you read carefully, and even between the lines, you will start to understand that these are not so much skills that she is asking us to learn but rather a new attitude. She is laying out a new way to view your world. And if we can accept that, we might be able to accept our new future as well.

I must be honest. I have not acquired that new attitude yet. I have not been able to modify my world nor the views of those I share it with. Intellectually, I believe I can understand the need but emotionally I have not accepted it yet. Maybe it is because I am as old as I am. Maybe it is because I am as comfortable as I am. Either way it is hard to blend my mind with my heart in this matter. I believe that I will know when I have achieved that goal however. It will be when this list seems essential and reasonable.

[Link: 100 Things You Can Do to Get Ready for Peak Oil]

Thursday, December 07, 2006

The post-abundance era

I like that term. I think the author of this article has hit upon the right name for what we are running in to. Post-abundance pretty much says it all. Abundance is a relative term. Post-abundance won't mean that anybody can't get what they want, just that maybe there won't be quite enough for everybody.
In an earlier post I wrote about the Olduvai Theory which is the idea that the world is facing a point of reduced per capita energy availablity. My point then was that this reduction does not mean we are going to be producing less energy only that we are going to be growing our energy supply more slowly than the population increases. I am almost certain that this is already beginning to happen since we have barely been keeping even for the last two or three decades. This subtle phenomenon will have the perverse effect of reduced abundance even though we are still producing at record rates. Post-abundance economics will of course result in a global zero-sum game since, by definition when anything is in limited supply, those who continue to increase their consumption will be withholding consumption from somebody else. Again, when the population is growing faster than the availability of goods, increased production does not mean increased abundance.
As the author of the article warns, there will be many pipers to pay as this plays out in the coming decades. Wars. International and intranational strife will be the order of the day. But eventually there will be a point of convergence when everyone will realize, that's all there is, there ain't no more. Then we will be in a new state of grace. All of us. We won't have any choice. I don't know how long it will take for us to work through to this new reality. I am an old man and may only see the opening moves. But some of you out there will see it through to the end game. This isn't something that we can pass off to "future generations." The new reality will then bare its other fang. Not only do we not have enough to keep our grand, technological miracle of a world going, there will be no more easily extracted resources to rebuild a new industrial age either. That really is all there is, there really ain't no more.
[Link: The post-abundance era]

Friday, December 01, 2006

Reid to change U.S. energy plan

One does hope, doesn't one? I bet that everyone that has come to believe in the reality of limited oil production saw the Democrats embrace energy independence in the run up to the elections last month and harbored a little bit of wishful thinking. I did. But I must admit I tempered it with a pretty fair amount of skepticism. Now the elections have passed, however, and here is a Democratic leader proclaiming an intent to pursue energy independence in January when the Democrats take control of the Congress. I even saw mention of the dreaded conservation gambit. I am, of course, still hesitant to believe. There are still a pair of scissors available to this sitting President and his nerves are hardwired into the inner workings of the oil industry. After all of this time of being convinced the U.S. would never face up to its irrational dependence on oil in the face of diminishing ability to produce it, though, I am finally daring to hope.
[UPI Link: Reid to change U.S. energy plan]