Tuesday, March 02, 2004

Without Oil

Just So You Know

Sooner or later we’re going to run out of cheap oil.  There’s plenty of disagreement about when that’s going to happen.  Ingenious humans will do clever battle with oil fields to pull more out; that pattern has already repeated.  Still...the US was the world’s premiere oil supplier until the 1950s, when the Hubbert Peak was reached.  Domestic oil production is significant, but has declined substantially.  The energy profit in the US has dwindled substantially.

Oil currently supplies around 85% of the world’s energy needs.  That’s far too high, and we need to be doing something about it.  The reason we need to start now is that if we do, we’ll be able to soften the blow when oil starts getting more expensive.  Estimates on when oil prices will increase substantially range from 2007 to about 2020, which provides us with a rough time frame.

Energy itself is not a problem.  Solar energy provides everything we could ever use; its most convenient manifestation is wind.  Hydroelectric power is also derived from sunlight (water becomes vapor, is carried by wind to mountains, flows down mountains). Gravity provides tidal forces, which can be used to generate rather incredible amounts of energy. 

The price of wind power has dropped dramatically in the last two decades; at the same time, the efficiency of the equipment has risen steadily.  We can now seriously consider wind as a legitimate alternative to other sources on a cost basis.  We’re not quite there yet, but with increases in oil price we won’t be that far off.  A generator/tower/battery system that can easily power an entire home (or ranch, for that matter) costs about $13,000 these days.  When compared to the cost of a house, this is a small cost.  On certain power grids, you can even sell excess power back to the utility grid...under those situations the grid acts as your storage device.  You push power back into the grid when you have too much.  The grid can shift this power to where it’s needed.  When you don’t have enough, you can pull.

Hydroelectric-capable watersheds in the US are largely exploited at this point, but are capable of delivering a pretty large amount of power.  We do pay a price in environmental terms for this, but maybe that price is acceptable.

Tidal forces are particularly power, yielding an energy profit of at least 15 to 1 (for each unit of energy expended to collect, you yield back 15).  Tidal is capital intensive, but incredibly clean and possesses almost unlimited capacity.

Since I’m Canadian, I’ll point out that Canada’s hydroelectric watershed is mostly untapped, and is capable of generating far more power than the population could ever use.  Likewise, we could turn most of the northern parts of our provinces into giant wind generating farms and nobody would notice.  The Bay of Fundy is the world’s premiere site for tidal generation; with tides in excess of 50 feet every six hours (due to the Bay’s length matching the resonant frequency of global tidal patterns) the amount of energy being generated by the bay on a continous basis could supply all energy we need on the continent, if we could collect and transmit it.  So Canada is good.  wink

The thing is, let’s say there’s effectively no oil.  We can create plenty of electricity, though.  Farms will need to convert their machinery to use electric engines.  In fact, just about everything is going to have to convert to be that way.  Suburban sprawl is going to be more of a necessity, because homeowners will want to have their own generators.  Each house might end up having two or three large generators, possibly generating around 10 kilowatts or more a day, feeding into a battery bank.  This overcapacity can be used to charge up the family vehicles; we can anticipate improvements in battery technology that will greatly extend the range of electric vehicles. 

We’ve seen market corrections at work over the past couple of years.  The market corrects very harshly.  Can we not use a little foresight here and soften this particular landing?  Can we not use our government to guide technology development and infrastructure development in the right direction?  If the economy must absorb the shock of increasing oil prices, we need to spread that shock out across the biggest stretch of time possible.

We also have a tremendous opportunity to become world leaders in all of these technologies.  The long view depends on it.


Posted by Ross on 03/02/04 at 03:21 PM
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Clear Channel, Middle East Broadcasting Center on Same Page

Entertainment

Occasionally coherent news site Al-Bawaba is reporting a “social and political crisis” over shooting an Arab version of the tacky reality show “Big Brother” in Bahrain.

Production was suspended after a “general outcry” over the show, meaning 1000 protestors hired by Islamist MPs made alot of noise about the show violating Islamic traditions.  Whatever that means- does the Koran specify a particular television show over another?  How would one watch TV in a properly Islamic manner?  Middle East Broadcasting Center (MBC), the channel producing and airing the show, made some mild protestation about the hubbub but readily caved. 

But if you read the whole piece, substituting “Clear Channel” for “MBC” and “Howard Stern” for “Big Brother”, you will probably be amused at first… then that icy knot forms in your gut and you realize that it’s really not as funny as it is terrifying.

So it seems the West and the Arab worlds are really not so far apart culturally.  Each world allows a tiny but angry religious right to decide what people can see and hear.


Posted by on 03/02/04 at 02:26 PM
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Monday, March 01, 2004

Suing your customers not such a good idea after all

Entertainment

From the New York Times:

The entertainment industry’s pursuit of tough new laws to protect copyrighted materials from online piracy is bad for business and for the economy, according to a report being released today by the Committee for Economic Development, a Washington policy group that has its roots in the business world.

While this may be unsurprising to some, it will certainly come as a shock to the RIAA, should they ever read the report.  The article continues:

Until recently, those who opposed strong copyright protections have been characterized by the entertainment industry as a leftist fringe with no respect for the value of intellectual property.

“The ideas of copy-left, or of a more liberal regime of copyright, are receiving wider and wider support,” said Debora L. Spar, a professor at Harvard Business School. “It’s no longer a wacky idea cloistered in the ivory tower; it’s become a more mainstream idea that we need a different kind of copyright regime to support the wide range of activities in cyberspace.”

...The group called for a two-year moratorium on changes to copyright laws and regulations to allow for more public debate. “Our first concern should be to ‘do no harm,’ “ the report said.

Sensible advice that.


Posted by Buckethead on 03/01/04 at 10:40 PM
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What goes around

Partisan Politics

This whole gay marriage thing reminds me of the original women’s suffrage debate all the way back in the 1850’s. (Yes, the 1850’s. Now, ask yourself why the 14th and 15th Amendments, passed after the Civil War, specify “male[s]” as citizens and voters.)

In particular, a great quote comes to mind. Judge Hurlbut of Massachusetts wrote to Susan B. Anthony in the early ‘50s on the question of why women couldn’t be allowed to vote: “[y]ou have the argument, but custom and prejudice are against you, and they are stronger than truth and logic.”


Posted by Johno on 03/01/04 at 09:40 PM
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Real Life Not Enough; Make-Believe Pisses Off Arabs, Too

Crazy Foreigners

Arab News, an English-language daily that covers the Arab world, discusses the new sandy action flick “Hidalgo”.  The movie is based around a hoss race across the desert, ca 1900, in which uber-stud Viggo Mortensen out-hosses the locals. 

Apparently the film has run afoul of culturally sensitive Arabs everywhere due to portrayals of Arab characters conforming to unspecified stereotypes.  Ibrahim Cooper, head of CAIR, said:

“Given the growing prejudice against Islam, Muslims and Arabs, we believe a film with this type of dialogue and imagery could have a negative impact on the lives of ordinary American Muslims and Arab-Americans”, and adds, “We sincerely hope that anti-Muslim and anti-Arab bigotry will not be added to historical inaccuracy in a film that is being marketed to families”.


Posted by on 03/01/04 at 05:51 PM
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Blatant Self Promotion

Filthy Lucre

As part of my cunning plan to become the next Donald Trump, I now have a townhouse to rent.  Anyone in the DC metro area who is looking for a place to live, I have for your consideration a three bedroom, two and a half bath townhouse.  It has a finished basement; washer and dyer, dishwasher, and new refrigerator; and a fenced-in brick patio.  It’s in Springfield, Virginia in the Newington Forest area, and is a nice brick faced townhouse located on a cul-de-sac.  It’s very convenient to the Metro, being right off the Fairfax County Parkway five minutes from Franconia Metro on the Blue Line.  All this for $1650 per month.  If you’re interested, send me an email at .


Posted by Buckethead on 03/01/04 at 03:58 AM
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