The Wonder of High Fuel Prices

Joel Stein at the Los Angeles Times describes the joy of $8 gas, and how life would be better if fuel prices were as high in the States as high as they are in Europe.

The media outlets never stop letting us know how Americans are writhing over the burdensome expense of fueling up their Chevy Tahoe for their 50+ mile, ass planted in a car seat for two hours commutes to work every day, how the poor woman on TV has to choose between heating her house and buying groceries as she sits in front of her Ford Explorer. They tell us of horrifying experiences of having to buy off-brand groceries and having to wear short sleeved shirts and open up windows to get some fresh air in lieu of high electricity expenses of keeping that central A.C. unit running the race against entropy.

On the surface, it is easy to feel frustrated by expensive fuel, but when you think further into the issue, this becomes a wonderfully GOOD thing for American society.

• Carpooling
• Massive increases in Public Transit ridership
• People getting their asses out of the car seat and onto bikes or foot, getting some exercise and all of the benefits that come along with that.
• Less money being spent on fast-food restaurants and drive-throughs - less caloric intake and all of the benefits that come along with that.
• New thinking about such things as telecommuting and 4-day work weeks
• Move towards more fuel-efficient vehicles.
• The financial incentive to move towards better sources of energy and better methods of operating society and using resources (which are already here and do not need to be "discovered" or "invented" ) is finally here.
• Less Air Pollution (due to less driving)
• Less Noise Pollution
• Less congestion and road rage
• Fewer traffic accidents
• Less CO₂ emissions and fossil fuel combustion
• "Reverse Globalization" bringing new life and jobs to the Rust Belt due to the expense of performing remarkably stupid moves such as shipping iron ore to China to be converted into steel and then shipping the steel back to be used.
• Smokers might have a financial incentive to quit; to stop spending dozens of dollars per week on smokes and put it toward gas instead.

I know that there are the comments such as "Well you don't have to commute to and from work each day" and "you don't have to support a family" and "you don't have to make these hard decisions between paying taxes, buying food, and buying gas!" There will be losers, and there will be winners. That's free-market capitalism at work. Love it or hate it, that's what is happening.. I do commute, by the way. To/from work in the summer ten miles round trip per day by bike or car, to/from home during school about once per month, 150 miles round trip.

Those people who cannot afford to fire up their 50 mile commute will find a home closer to their job, or a job closer to their home. Think of how much better that is for one's health - to not be sitting in a car for hours per day, and possibly walking or riding a bicycle, out getting fresh air and exercise.

It's the short-sighted "consumer" who lives in a 2000-square foot house fifty miles from where he works, driving a Ford Explorer, who expects the puppet-show government to "do something about the high price of gas" by feeding the addict with more crack (oil) while also keeping a war raging, spending almost as much money on its military as every other nation in the world combined. Anyone who fits that picture should start changing their lifestyle now, because it WILL change. Kick and scream as much as you please, the age of petroleum-fired, internal combustion-powered consumerism is reaching its twilight.

I don't have any sympathy at all for these people or the "American Way of Life" which we have allowed to balloon into a monstrous consumption machine, thirty-five years since the 1973 oil shocks. No presidential administration since Carter has had any type of energy plan, and the candidates running today don't seem to have anything better to offer - the same-old same-old - reducing the dependence on fossil fuels by drilling for more oil, cutting carbon emissions with Kentucky coal, and producing nuclear electricity whilst continuing to fight over what to do with the waste. Until recently the environmental movement promoting decreased consumption and efficiency was seen as a bunch of frightened wussies and laughed at. Who is laughing now?

For the socialism-phobes out there, the current situation has absolutely nothing to do with "commies" and socialism. It's pure CAPITALISM. The unregulated "speculators" that are constantly blamed for everything are part of the financial markets that drive the free-market system. Supply and demand is the free market at work. Regulate or fiddle with them, and you've just become more "commie"! Think about that before using the terms socialism and communism to describe anything and everything that you dislike.

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by RenEnergi in Thoughts      1 Comments     

Reaching the Threshold

It seems that we have reached the threshold in America where the price of gasoline has risen to the point where the general populace is beginning to become angry.

I know this when a woman on the nightly news is practically bawling about how she has had to start buying "off-brand" groceries because of the cost of fuel! I know the world of consumerism is beginning to collapse when that happens. Not a fast collapse, but small bits are beginning to crumble.

The thing that frightens me, however, is that most average citizens (or "consumers" as we are called, because it is our economic duty to consume) haven't a damn clue about the energy industry itself, the basic principles behind energy and thermodynamics, the "peak oil" phenomenon, ecology and biogeochemistry, and the limits of natural resource extraction. All of these play a major role in how we can operate our consumerism-driven society.

But how can I blame anyone, as we've been continuously told to "Shop Till Ya' Drop!" and consume like there's no tomorrow! It would seem that the Earth is an endless cornucopia of natural resources just waiting for us to extract, convert into most often useless "consumer goods", then deposit into the nearest solid waste landfill after six months of use.

The high oil and commodity prices we are seeing today are frustrating for many people, but at the same time they are exciting. We are finally arriving at the point where economics are beginning to run the energy and consumption issues through our minds.

The same wave of thought swept through the world in the 1970s, but this time, the human race is beginning to butt against physical limits, rather than the purely geopolitical ones which were at work in the '70s.

We should have been implementing energy-efficient practices and sustainable, locally-produced energy and lifestyles since 1973, but we has this rosy idea that economics and big industry would solve all of those problems without a hitch, and that as long as oil was cheap we wouldn't give a rat's ass about any of it. Well, here we are, fossil fuels are expensive (monetarily, socially, and environmentally) and only getting more expensive, and we have done little to reduce our gluttonous waste and consumption of energy and dependence upon fossil fuels. Now it's time to get to work, with no excuses!

I don't see a dark age ahead, I see a world which downsizes its economic engines, where goods and services are produced and provided on a close-to-home basis, people live together in actual communities rather than dead expanses of look-a-like houses, and energy is available for use from all types of renewable resources.

Transportation will likely be one of the first aspects of our lives to see change, due to its direct reliance on petroleum. I do see the automobile greatly losing significance, as internal combustion cars are incredibly inefficient machines. Electric cars will certainly be available, but their range is limited (charge is not "instant" ) and therefore their use will be relegated to commuter, short trip, and errand-running vehicles. If you want to visit your family members two states away, get a train ticket, go to your local rail terminal, and hop aboard a high-speed train pulled by an electric locomotive, with electricity supplied by renewable sources and stationary cogeneration plants. Airplanes may be available as well, but due to their requirement for liquid hydrocarbon fuels, they will likely be an expensive luxury rather than a practical everyday mode of transportation. Car rental services will likely be very prosperous, and they will have combustion vehicles available in the event that someone needs one.

I firmly feel that rail is the future of transportation. Water transport is likely to see a boost as well, as it is even more efficient than rail. I would not be surprised to see the development of vessels for carrying small (truck-sized) loads on rivers which we consider to be non-navigable today.

Change is coming. NO, not lower oil prices or reversion to SUV and shopaholic heaven, but to a more sustainable and enjoyable lifestyle which is not based upon the accumulation (and subsequent disposal) of material goods/wealth.

Some good articles I have read in the past few days...

• Stranded in Suburbia - NYT
• The Suburban Question - Open the Future
• Water: world crisis - Energy Bulletin
• To teens in the first decade of the 21^st century - Energy Bulletin

The Entropy Problem

The "energy crisis" and other energy-related problems, along with the battle over what energy sources we will use really has little to with energy, and a whole lot to do with entropy - the concept that energy becomes more and more dilute and unavailable for use over time, and that energy has "quality" (e.g. electricity and mechanical power are among the highest-quality forms of energy, while dilute light and heat are less usable and of lower quality.)

Entropy is the reason that "just-in-time" solar energy is "expensive" compared with super-concentrated fossil fuels that have been made and stored by natural processes over millions of years. It is the reason that people don't succeed in "sticking it to the man" by inductively coupling power lines to get free electricity or putting up antennas to harness the energy in radio waves.

The Sun sends 1.74 * 10¹⁷ watts to Earth on a continuous basis, which ends up being the equivalent of all of the world's conventional oil reserves, past and present, every 30 hours of so. But how much does solar currently contribute to our industrial energy system? It's all about availability. Now it is beginning to be a lot about greed as well.

We don't need more coal-fired power plants, we just need to use energy better by taking advantage of the billions of watts of waste heat thrown off by power plants. One of the most sad facts about our situation now is that we are fighting over what energy sources we will use to meet our future needs - coal vs. wind, etc. Many people in the world want to increase the combustion of coal, despite the whole greenhouse effect situation, and the fact that the waste heat thrown away at American coal-fired power plants is more energy (in pure energy terms, not considering entropy) than is used in all of Japan.

I estimate that it is about 4 PWh/year thrown away by American coal burners (that's four times ten to the power of 15 watt-hours) based on the fact that all U.S. electricity production is about 3 PWh/year and coal accounts for half of that, and coal-fired power plants are 30-40% efficient at converting heat into electrical energy.

So instead of burning all of this valuable gas in forced-air furnaces and converting all of that clean-burning methane into 72°F warm air, let's get some electrical energy out of it first, then use it to heat our homes, and shut down the coal burners!

Entropy is the problem, not energy. Rocky Mountain News.

GM Limping Toward Recovery with IC engine technology

Apparently General Motors is having a rough time in the North American market: GM Limps Toward Recovery

I think that, just maybe, if they wouldn't have helped to kill the electric car, they would not be in this situation. In order to survive long-term, a corporation must change its business model with the times. GM's business model of technological stagnation with the IC engine, and promotion of the idea of the automobile being a fashion-statement consumer commodity have led it to where it is today.

From the film "Who Killed The Electric Car?"

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"GM made a commitment to the Hummer, because they could see that the Hummer would make them money."

The engineers of vehicles have done a good job of making the engine more efficient at converting gasoline-derived heat into mechanical power, but those gains were used to make the cars bigger and more powerful rather than to increase the fuel efficiency.

One of the misunderstandings people have about electric vehicles is that they are not powerful enough to handle situations they may encounter while driving. For example, today it is snowing where I live...

"But electric cars aren't very good in the snow!"

Electric motors can output their full torque across their entire operating speed range. A combustion engine needs to be "revved" up to speed before it will begin to produce an appreciable amount of torque. There is not a problem with the motors being underpowered; an electric motor will provide adequate power for any weather situation. The motors in the EV1 ran up to 100,000 watts, which is the equivalent of 134 horsepower. That's 134 horsepower available as soon as the accelerator pedal is pushed to the floor.

What most of the electric cars ever made are not are 3-ton weights flying down the highway at a mile a minute. They can go a mile a minute, but they don't weigh 3 tons. The more the vehicle weighs, the more energy must be expended in doing its job of transporting passengers and related cargo from one point to another.