Petrol rise should be an incentive to join us!

downfader

davmaggs wrote:

Actually I kind of agree with some of the comments. There is a tendancy for certain types to love recessions or other problems as it will finally be the time that we all go back to some golden age. They seem to forget the the working man will be the one to suffer.

The combustion engine is one of the greatest inventions in the world. It's given freedom (not just travel, but from physical toil) to millions. No-one will give up that unless something drastic happens, or something equal or better replaces it.

Also this idea that oil is about to run out is absolute nonsense. Ever since the 70s oil, uranium, gold or whatever is predicted to run out. Then someone finds more or better still invents a way to get a better amount from the same resources (oil wells leave 2/3 underground). At the moment there are huge amounts of oil, but mostly owned by state firms too incompetent to get at it.

Well I class myself as working class and probably always will. I dont see any need to suffer because of fuel. Indeed it should be an incentive to liberate. I think we have to remember that it was the bicycle that originally got the working class out and about, it even became linked with a lot of socialist movements and this scared the establishment.

It took a VERY long time before the motor was really used in any form by the working classes. Motorvehicles were seen as class elevators due to their sheer expense. And they're still seen that way even today and this is some years on.

As for the oil. Its there in small pockets, but it costs a fair amount to test drill and then rigging only just covers the costs. You end up taking materials that had once been locked deep in the earth and release them into the atmopshere. We should not be wary of the CO2 levels but also the other pollutants from the refining, manufacture of plastics and oil based products and so on that end up in the air, water and soil.

I think the oil companies themselves have contributed to the fear tbh. A select few men of money have realised that their income is now shrinking. Their business is growing ever more expensive to operate and people are slowly turning against them. There is an oil rush on much like the original spectators but with little prospect and a fair amount of desperation.

The golden age as you put it? Clean air, quiet streets, kids playing outside, less crime... I want to see us return to it, yes. It was golden for a reason.

Porgy

lost_in_thought wrote:

So I drove. And countless others outside cities will do the same because they have no other viable option. What I find galling is that the focus of these discussions (not on this forum but in general) seems to be on city drivers and how they could use other transport (which they definitely could) and ignores country folk who actually need their cars/vans/4x4s.

But surely if the city folk who don;t need to drive were willing to give up their cars - or forced to - then it would be so much less imperative to penalise people living in the country.

Ultimately we need better subsidised transport in the sticks - like there used to be when I was a kid but better - or even way back pre Beeching on the railways.

It needs to be sustainable environmentally - but probably would need to be subsidised. I noticed that the bus I took in Suffolk and one of the ferries was being subsidised by the local community and council in order to keep a vital link running.

And we need to get away from the economic model we have at the moment which forces everything to centralised to the detriment of local communities and allows huge multinationals to drive village shops out of business.

If anyone engages properly with Green politics they'd find it's a lot more complex than merely banning cars and going "good" as the oil runs out.

roger_merriman

lost_in_thought wrote:

Well, I love to bicycle, and in London it's the only way to get around.

However, out in the country it's harder. For example, today, I drove to near Norwich and back to collect something. Something big. Something I couldn't fit on the bike.

There was no public transport option, sure, a train goes from a station 14 miles away to a station 22 miles from where I need to be, and yes, I could cycle those distances, but see above about how I couldn't fit the thing on the bike. There are almost no buses round by 'ere.

So I drove. And countless others outside cities will do the same because they have no other viable option. What I find galling is that the focus of these discussions (not on this forum but in general) seems to be on city drivers and how they could use other transport (which they definitely could) and ignores country folk who actually need their cars/vans/4x4s.

*climbs back off soapbox*

yup what LIT said we don't all live within the M25, even if I do now.

Porgy

nwallace wrote:

Porgy wrote:

However, we now live in Corporate post capitalist and post Democratic world, and I suspect that unless the "working man" wakes up from his sleepwalk - we're all going to go down the toilet together.
.

Going down the toilet would be returning en-mass to crofting.

Something Greenies seem to think is viable.

Until a combine harvester can be built that runs on the power of the moon, the internal combustion engine is the most efficient way of feeding the developed world.

Well they'll be F*cked when the oil runs out then won't they?
Or we cold begin to think about alternatives now.

I believe you're misrepresenting the latest thinking on Green agriculture though - I've read about very sophisticated models for green agriculture that cannot remotely be compared to crofting and yet still gives control back to devloping nations to enable them to produce the crops they need and not the crops we in the west want to buy from them cheaply.

tjwood

Not sure about saving money by not driving. I used to drive to work 10 miles each way, every day. I drive a fairly modern relatively efficient compact diesel car so I guess the fuel for that journey cost only £2 or £2.50 a day.

When I drive (still do about once a week so I can do a big supermarket shop on the way home and take home all the bike bits I've ordered online and had delivered to work ;-)) I made my own sandwiches. When I cycle I can't be bothered to make and carry lunch, and am much hungrier during the day, so I buy a canteen lunch which easily uses up any £2.50 saving.

Still, it's a lot more fun than driving, even with torrential rain on the way home yesterday and an evil headwind this morning. And I can eat chips for lunch four times a week if I want without getting fat (try not to do that too much though!)

lost_in_thought

Porgy wrote:

lost_in_thought wrote:

So I drove. And countless others outside cities will do the same because they have no other viable option. What I find galling is that the focus of these discussions (not on this forum but in general) seems to be on city drivers and how they could use other transport (which they definitely could) and ignores country folk who actually need their cars/vans/4x4s.

But surely if the city folk who don;t need to drive were willing to give up their cars - or forced to - then it would be so much less imperative to penalise people living in the country.

Ultimately we need better subsidised transport in the sticks - like there used to be when I was a kid but better - or even way back pre Beeching on the railways.

Cool, I'm down with that. But how? How do you stop city folk driving without also coming down like a ton of bricks on the country folk?

And yes, you're right, better public transport is needed.

nwallace

Porgy wrote:

Well they'll be F*cked when the oil runs out then won't they?
Or we cold begin to think about alternatives now.

I believe you're misrepresenting the latest thinking on Green agriculture though

Is agriculture as it is now is f*cked when the mineral oil runs out?
But then it's all diesel based so they can run on by-products of what they grow and the by products of the processing of the stuff they grow when it is converted into food, and the by products of preparing the food created out of the stuff they grow.

And mass automotive transport has for a while been looking at alternatives.

Present to me the latest thinking on Green agruculture and public mobilisation.

Last I heard it was all walking everywhere, not gonig any further than 10 footsteps away from your front door and growing your own, and that was a few weeks back.

I accept that some greenies are sensible moderates, with the right balance of things in mind. But the ones that get public air time do seem to be wanting us to return to crofting.

Am currently reading a book which is titled "Black Diamonds and the Blue Brazil" though it covers much more than Coal and Cowdenbeath FC.
In the early 60's Cowdenbeat Town council, 40% Communist, 60% Socialist rejected a load of applications for the building of garages because only the Rich drove cars. The reality was the roads in Cowdenbeath by then were pretty much a car park.

Porgy

nwallace wrote:

Present to me the latest thinking on Green agruculture and public mobilisation.
.

Google is your friend

suzyb

There are a lot of subsidised bus routes around here and it's really the only way the companies can afford to keep the buses running. The services are often vital to people but there just isn't enough of those people to keep them going without help.

Porgy

nwallace wrote:

[But the ones that get public air time do seem to be wanting us to return to crofting..

I'm not sure that's entirely true - but I tend to stay away from the more commercial bits of the media.

When you have the situation where most of the media is corporately owned, and that the corporations - which also rely on corporate advertising - which have controlling shares in most of the media do not want either socialists or Greens to be positively represented - then it should come as no surprise that its the silly wooly middle class lunatic fringe that gets most of the publicity. Check out Chomsky.

Porgy

nwallace wrote:

And mass automotive transport has for a while been looking at alternatives.
.

see Who Killed the electric car?
http://www.whokilledtheelectriccar.com/

I saw this a couple of years ago and it definitely explores why it is a problem to allow the private sector carte blanche to come up with solutions - they only roll them out of they are of benefit to the company - and often its not - what they are more likely to do is tie up all the best researchers in the field - take over independent companies in the field - take out patents on new technology and then shelf it so that it is not available.

Porgy

nwallace wrote:

Last I heard it was all walking everywhere, not gonig any further than 10 footsteps away from your front door and growing your own, and that was a few weeks back.
.

who said that then?

My take on that would be that essential services should be decentralised so they are within walking distance so you reduce car reliance which would havemany knock on effects - increasing jobs reducing the bad effects of poverty etc. - the French are much better at this than we are and they have a viable society, some would say superior to ours...the 10 footsteps sounds like something you've made up.....and as for growing your own - a lot of people (including me) would like to grow their own but have nowhere to do it - so its part of the solution - but that doesn't mean it would ever be compulsory.

I'm still not sure you;re representing this very fairly.

nwallace

The population density in France is considerably lower than in the UK.

Of course the 10 footsteps was made up, it's exaggeration.

davmaggs

Porgy I think that perhaps you are getting a bit hysterical. Take a moment (I know your blood is boiling even reading this) to actually read all the words in the posts. Accusing being of being blind because they don't have your world view, isn't helpful.

Humans don't change because it is the right thing to do (assuming we agree with your analysis). They only change because access to a resource becomes too expensive, something replaces it or obsolence. Even then, the resources don't usually just end, the price just rises forcing change.

As for throwing about terms like "keeping up with the science" when someone calls you out on a falsehood like oil running out. The Green movement tends to say that we are approaching peak oil. That means we're only halfway through, not the end is nigh. Even that fails to take into account new methods of extraction. North sea fields that should have closed in the 90s are still going, and in WW2 the germans coverted coal into oil and the UK is sitting on billions of tonnes of coal.

The oil price is influenced heavily by the fact that dictatorships and bad governments are sitting on huge amounts of the stuff and manage it so badly (look at Hugo Chavas for a start), and pricing isn't as simply as hanging logic on a simple statement like "oil is running out". It is getting harder to obtain, and companies have to spent serious cash to do it, but that isn't the same as saying that it's about to end.

So if you are relying on oil suddenly being switched off to change behaviour then that's wishful thinking. There's more than enough carbon for us to carry on polluting for decades.

Finally; I fail to see how you seem to dislike cities, which are the most efficient way to live and then you want to decentralise, but not use resources to ship people/stuff around. Seems like a contradiction.

emdeef

As for throwing about terms like "keeping up with the science" when someone calls you out on a falsehood like oil running out. The Green movement tends to say that we are approaching peak oil. That means we're only halfway through, not the end is nigh. Even that fails to take into account new methods of extraction. North sea fields that should have closed in the 90s are still going, and in WW2 the germans coverted coal into oil and the UK is sitting on billions of tonnes of coal.

Davmaggs we've been "running out" of oil since we started producing it in the 19th century. Peaking is about maximum production rate. After about half the oil in say the North Sea has been produced the rate of production declines as the stuff becomes harder to get out of the ground. And yes maybe half is still in the ground, but it comes out with increasing difficulty. UK production peaked in 1999 and UK oil is now being produced at half this rate, and production continues to fall at 7% per year on average. UK net imports are now increasing rapidly. See here:

https://www.og.dti.gov.uk/information/b ... ctions.pdf

What new methods of extraction were you thinking about? How scalable are they? Yes you can boost production using secondary and tertiary recovery methods, but it is temporary and marginal - it tends to, at best, slow pruduction decline rates. The Mexicans restored the rate of production from their giant Cantarell field by horizontal drilling and nitrogen injection. It worked for a few years. They are now paying the price as production is crashing at about 15% per year.

Have you any facts to back up any of your assertions? We are not discovering large amounts of new oil to replace what we are using. For the last 30 years the world has being using more than is being discovered. We now use about 4 times as much each year as new discoveries. We have not discovered a large new oil province since the North Sea in the sixties.

The problem for the World is what is going to happen when total production starts to decline just at the time when millions of Indians and Chinese want to start driving cars. It is flat at the moment, has been for 4 years, and shows no sign of beginning to increase again.

As for unconventional oil, coal to liquids etc., they have problems of scalability. They are dirty, energy intensive processes. The South Africans produce a third of their oil from coal but it is an expensive and very environmentally damaging process which would not exist at all were it not for the sanctions during the apartheid era.

davmaggs

Before I'm asked to reference my figures, I ask where your stats are coming from?

actually you could argue about the definition of "running out". Obviously there is a finite amount of stuff in the earth (so I'm not saying it will last forever), but the numbers usually referred to as running out today's known reserves. In the 50s northsea wasn't on that list, neither were large numbers of other places so the doomsayers of that era have kept on waiting. But once price/politics/technology got to the right point, more were found.

Also if you read my previous points I'm not saying that converting coal or other carbon is clean or good or the ideal, but that it can be done as you proven by the S.A mention. And I wasn't saying that the stuff won't run out. My point for Porgy was that it is nowhere near as imminent as made out. We'll all be dead by then

A shorter and easy way to explain this, plus the tendency for people to believe doom-sayers, even when they are debunked in their own lifetimes. Worth a read because it also covers off points about substitution.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon-Ehrlich_wager

emdeef

Well, see this, figs 4 and 5 show world oil discoveries versus production. Fig 12 shows Cantarell production:

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5395?nocomments

He gives Cantarell decline as 30% per year.

UK production is shown in the link I posted in my previous posting.

The trouble with the hugely optimistic futurologists like Julian Simon and Hermann Kahn is that they were only ever going to be wrong once. They said in the seventies that we were going to go on getting richer more or less forever. This always seemed crackers to me as the world is finite and at some point limits of one sort or another will be reached. The fact that we cannot predict when or how does not alter this.

It looks pretty likely to me that there is going to be a widening gap between oil production and demand within a decade, never mind further into the future, as production declines from existing fields are not being made up by new production.

The trouble is that expensive sources of oil are never going to make much economic sense - noone is actually investing in new coal to liquids plant, it only makes sense when the oil price rises, and when it does it causes a recession which lowers demand and thus the oil price.

You can call this doomsaying if you like. It looks more like reality to me. I think it would be a good idea for governments to acknowledge that there may be a problem and plan for it - I can't see it happening though - bad news does not win elections.

emdeef

And how about M King Hubbert? In 1956 he predicted - based on his analysis of US oil field production - that US oil production would peak between the late sixties and early seventies. He was dismissed as a doomsayer. To quote from Wikipedia:

"At first his prediction received much criticism, for the most part because many other predictions of oil capacity had been made over the preceding half century, but these had been based purely on reserve and production data rather than past discovery trends, and had proven false. Hubbert became famous when this prediction proved correct in 1970."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._King_Hubbert

davmaggs

looks like we're down to a two-man thread )

I think that you might be being harsh on Simon. It was interesting the Ehler won awards for doom predictions (mass famine in the 70s) that were completely wrong. Every couple of decades since Malthus doom is proclaimed (of course each prediction says that now is time that they are finally right).

To return to a cycling point. My postings weren't intended to support oil, it is more to say that people don't change because it is right. It's more like shifts because they absolutely have to, or something new comes along that destroys an old model of doing things. If anything oil will rise in price over time, at the same time batteries improve or alloy weight improvements means more efficient engines. So combustion may slowly fade as electric picks up. (grid problems aside).

Whatever it is we cyclists won't get empty roads (if they were empty the masses wouldn't pay for them).

tebbit

I will vote for Porgy massive railway rebuilding will keep me in work in the UK, back home with my wife and Bob my elderly lurcher.

that person wot rides a b

Roastie wrote:

cjw wrote:

Have you read the comment below the article though;

Well Steve had it almost right. Raising taxes in time of recession is never a good idea. The only solution is tax relief (cutting taxes) and reducing government spending since most of the spending is for administrative purposes and not beneficial to outcome. Second point, is beware of anyone who wants to resort to walking or riding bicycles or horses or whatever....the is regressive and does not advance civilisation. True advancement will come from stimulus to private sector growth such tax cuts to business and industry to spur development and growth thereby creating jobs and more income. The way forward does not include ideas that send us back to the 19th century.

Proof that our population contains idiots.

a very stupid idiot. let me spell it out to this guy. IT. IS. A. RECESSION. WE. HAVE. TO. SPEND. OUR WAY. OUT.

we have no choice, i'm sorry.

cjw

that person wot rides a b wrote:

Roastie wrote:

cjw wrote:

Have you read the comment below the article though;

Well Steve had it almost right. Raising taxes in time of recession is never a good idea. The only solution is tax relief (cutting taxes) and reducing government spending since most of the spending is for administrative purposes and not beneficial to outcome. Second point, is beware of anyone who wants to resort to walking or riding bicycles or horses or whatever....the is regressive and does not advance civilisation. True advancement will come from stimulus to private sector growth such tax cuts to business and industry to spur development and growth thereby creating jobs and more income. The way forward does not include ideas that send us back to the 19th century.

Proof that our population contains idiots.

a very stupid idiot. let me spell it out to this guy. IT. IS. A. RECESSION. WE. HAVE. TO. SPEND. OUR WAY. OUT.

we have no choice, i'm sorry.

Really. Opinions of economists are very divided on this.

Here is a quote of one individual from 1996

"I tell you we have learnt from past mistakes.... Just as you cannot spend your way out of recession, you cannot, in a global economy, simply spend your way through a recovery either.... losing control of public spending doesn’t help the poor".

Gordon Brown in his 1996 conference speech just before he became Chancellor,

gabriel959

that person wot rides a b wrote:

Roastie wrote:

cjw wrote:

Have you read the comment below the article though;

Well Steve had it almost right. Raising taxes in time of recession is never a good idea. The only solution is tax relief (cutting taxes) and reducing government spending since most of the spending is for administrative purposes and not beneficial to outcome. Second point, is beware of anyone who wants to resort to walking or riding bicycles or horses or whatever....the is regressive and does not advance civilisation. True advancement will come from stimulus to private sector growth such tax cuts to business and industry to spur development and growth thereby creating jobs and more income. The way forward does not include ideas that send us back to the 19th century.

Proof that our population contains idiots.

a very stupid idiot. let me spell it out to this guy. IT. IS. A. RECESSION. WE. HAVE. TO. SPEND. OUR WAY. OUT.

we have no choice, i'm sorry.

Yes, there are other choices - anyway this is not a recession, and probably won't be able to spend our way out.

http://thefundamentalview.blogspot.com/ ... lt_03.html

cjw

Ummmmm.... agree with your point, but it is recession. The widely accepted definition of a recession - two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth - was met in January.

Porgy

davmaggs wrote:

I know your blood is boiling even reading this.

:roll:

t'inernet is a funny place - i prefer to debate these things in the pub where we can all see each other - and less likely to say bizarre stuff like this.

Never mind - carry on everyone. 8)

nwallace

Electric cars will be no use when the National Grid can't supply enough electricity to the UK.

Unfortunately with National Grid having taken over the Hydro Electric and Scottish Power grids, Longannet having burnt off just about every bit of burnable coal pit waste, the Hydro schemes not able to sustain peak demand at present and Torness and Hunterstone almost life expired, there will be no laughing about it up here either.

Living in an area with <5m/s average wind speed, limited solar power opportunities and no convenient burn for micro-hydro, I'm stuck with grid power.

Hopefully electricity rationing will be used to so that we don't all suffer the same as the idiots who insist on having a 15 year supply of 100W light bulbs.

Oh and
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8233504.stm

jimmypippa

davmaggs wrote:

As for throwing about terms like "keeping up with the science" when someone calls you out on a falsehood like oil running out. The Green movement tends to say that we are approaching peak oil. That means we're only halfway through, not the end is nigh. Even that fails to take into account new methods of extraction. North sea fields that should have closed in the 90s are still going, and in WW2 the germans coverted coal into oil and the UK is sitting on billions of tonnes of coal.

You do know that consumption has been growing roughly exponentially? It took roughly a centur to use 50% of the oil, it would take a lot less to use the remaining bit.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hubbert_world_2004.png

Porgy

Also the remaining bit is going to be the hardest to extract for either political or geological reasons, and besides we have to ask ouselves whether oil is more valuable left where it is - once it's used up it's effectively gone forever - and up till now its been a very useful resource beyond just burning it for energy.

Oil prices are high now - just imagine what they'll be like in 10, 20 or 30 years time. I'll be surpirsed if our economy ever gets back to what we used to think was normal - wouldn;t it be sensible to fast-track alternative energy technology now?