Man with a Plan

Reverse Engineer posted his Energy Problem Solutions to the Doomstead Diner.  After having lost track of a wonderful article about growing algae for oil using carbon captured from a biomass-burning combined heat and power plant, I want to make sure I don't lose this:



Here is my plan for a sustainable Homo Sap society that is not down at H-G level.  I published it on OFW in the commentariat and it got about the same reception it would have received on NBL.

Energy Problem Solutions

I detailed in a prior post how to substitute distributed intermittent electric power for the current centralized on demand power grid for the public at large, as well as how to distribute out your factories and manufacturing in the places you can actually collect large amounts of renewable energy.  Such places are near large hydro facilities, near the ocean where you can capture steady Wave Action and Wind Power, in the Desert where you can capture reliable Solar Power and in geological hot spots like Iceland and Yellowstone where  Geothermal power can be captured in large quantities necessary for manufacturing.

However, these are not your only problems of course, the biggest one being transportation.

For this, you need to refurbish and upgrade the current rail systems.  Main long distance lines need to be electrified, with the power supplied all along the line through large solar and wind arrays.  Trains may not run continuously on these lines, they may have to wait for power to be supplied to the section of track they are on.  In the FSoA, these are only the main E-W and N-S rail lines.

Subsidiary lines which run off these routes can be run with Diesel-Electric Locomotives, utilizing biodiesel.  This brings goods within around a 300 mile radius to most locations in the FSoA.

Final transportation of goods is done with either animal power or small electrics which can be charged along the distribution route from wind and solar arrays.  Again, the transporter may have to wait a day or two to get enough power to continue with the journey to the final destination.

For Ocean Transport of goods between continents, we need to go back to smaller ships, primarily Sail.  However, there should be little need to move many goods between continents since all necessary items should be produced locally, such as food, clothing and shelter building materials.

The next area we are highly dependent on FF for is Agriculture, both for fertilizer and pesticides and for the machines necessary for large scale till farming of annuals.  We need to convert to growing mostly perennials on small plots of land cultivated through permaculture by individuals.  These biomes should be set up so there are competing insect predators to replace the pesticides.  Along with the permaculture biomes, we need to set up large scale hydroponics and aquaculture farms that are water and fertilizer conservative, and we need to recycle humanure into these facilities as fertilizer.

Most metals and other basic elements can be acquired scavenging from the debris left over from the Age of Oil.  What does need to still be mined can be done with electric heavy equipment periodically as power is available.  Large scale smelting of metal can be done with Solar Thermal plants, utilizing large fresnel lenses to concentrate heat.

Precursors for organic molecules we currently get from Oil can be grown and converted and polymerized as necessary, utililizing renewable electric production.

Now, will this syste support the current 7.2B people?  That is doubtful, but I do think it could support 700M.

The system will not be built from the top down, it has to build from the bottom up.  As the grand monetary system collapses, individual communities will need to set up their own systems for internal commerce.  Communities will need to be self-sufficient in food production for probably 50 years minimum before a larger food trading and distribution scheme could be worked out.

It Takes A Village...

Whether the Greeks realized it or not, they did not vote against austerity yesterday.  What they were really voting on was whether the terms of austerity would be dictated by outsiders.  The people in the village of Karataina, at least, knew what they were voting for: the austerity of self-reliance, something which they are prepared for.

Related articles

• Greeks Vote NO To EU-Imposed Austerity Paul Craig Roberts
• Analysts Predict Greek Referendum Will Not Resolve Crisis

I Owe You One...

Many people see the problems with an economy where money is created as debt.  Some think we should go back to a system where money is backed by precious metals.  A few like Daniel Suelo think we should get rid of money altogether and go to a gift economy.  Either transition would be difficult, however.  Jeff W. had an interesting suggestion on Of Two Minds that would act as a bridge: informal credit.  Put simply, it's when you say "I owe you one" and mean it.  More broadly, it's being in a community where favors are reciprocated.  While the mindset is quite different from the gift economy, all that is really required to switch over is to drop the mental accounting.

Related articles

• Meet the man who quit money
• Fiat Faith Faltering? Bitcoin Surges 12% Post-Greferendum Announcement

Tales of an Exiled Citizen #7: Buried Treasure

Beginning of story
Previous part

I was sad, of course, to see my saplings had been cut down that first night, but it was no surprise whatsoever once I knew that they had discovered the Shelter.  I was actually also relieved.  My worst fear had been that they had dug them up, or at least completely obliterated them.  But there was a tiny stump left revealing where they had been -- not enough to grow back from, mind you, but enough for what I needed them for that next day.

Someone watching me set to work might have thought I had actually expected and prepared for being exiled.  They would soon learn how unprepared I really was, but it would be quite a bit later before I let them know just how much it had caught me by surprise.  In my youthful arrogance, I believed I would never be caught.  But I was arrogant, not naive.  I was well aware of the danger of being found out, I just thought I would always be able to outsmart them.

One problem criminals have had since time immemorial is what to do with their ill-gotten gains.  In the Crazy Age they would actually wash their money to hide its origin.  In the City it wasn't so easy.  My Beans provided a method for other criminals to accumulate wealth in an easy to hide manner.  For me though it made little sense; I could pretty much always get more.  You can only spend so many Beans on "personal services" when you only have 7 Free Hours a week.  While I had figured out how to free up more time for myself, no one else could join me during the times I was supposed to be be working.  With the periodic but random health and cleanliness inspection of everyone's personal living space, it was difficult for anyone to accumulate any kind of luxury goods. So, for the most part I ended up getting practical stuff with my Beans, stuff that wouldn't draw any attention if someone happened to get an extra one.

I didn't just want some form of wealth other than Beans, however.  I couldn't afford to draw any attention to myself by getting the equipment necessary to process the Beans myself.  I had to start with basic tools and raw materials and build everything I needed myself.  It was really rough at first, when my tools were simple and my end product was crude.  It took a long time to get everything set up to run smoothly, with a lot of careful trading.  Like I said, I was not naive; I was aware of the possibility of getting caught, and I did not want to have to start from scratch again.

So, using the Bean tree seedlings as markers, I followed the example of the pirates and buried my treasure.

Part 8: A Hard Day's Work

Tales of an Exiled Citizen #5: A Life of Crime

Beginning of story
Previous Part

They had a saying in the Crazy Age: "Crime doesn't pay."  I realize most of you will just have to take my word for it.  Not many people know a lot about the Crazy Age, other than what has been passed down in whispers.  The main reason I do is because while most kids in the City would spend their Free Hour playing lazer tag or exploring the latest VR world, I would head to the Library.  That's what I truly miss about the City.  Thousands of books, lined up on shelves, filling an entire room.  I know, it probably boggles your mind.  And some of these books had hundreds of pages yet could still fit in your pocket.  Many of the old ones were locked up because the pages threatened to crumble at one touch.  I doubt I could have read them all in an entire lifetime.

Anyway, it was kind of ironic that they said that crime doesn't pay in the Crazy Age, because back then, it frequently did.  Indeed, towards the end, making money and committing crimes became almost synonymous.  They even were afraid to prosecute some of the biggest criminals for fear of collapsing the economy.

In the City, though, it is a completely different story.  They monitor everything you buy or sell, or even throw away -- and you are supposed to report every gift you give or receive.  If you throw something away that you are recorded as having bought and haven't reported as receiving as a gift, you are automatically suspected of a crime.  Similarly, if you bought an unusually large amount of something and didn't give it away, that was considered suspicious, too.

This seriously limited what kind of profit could be made from a criminal enterprise.  Anything durable would show up when it was put into the disposal units for recycling.  Anything too large would be hard to hide from the monitoring.  Anything that required a lot of raw materials to make would show up in the buying records.  About the only thing that was left was stuff like food and "personal services", neither of which could you really accumulate much of.

Until I found the Bean tree, that is.

Ultimately, the Beans were consumable, so they didn't show up in the disposal units.  However, their potency lasted for years, so they didn't spoil like food.  They were small enough and valuable enough that you could have a fortune in your pocket.  And since I got them from Outside, they didn't show up on any buying records.

In the end, that is what got me Exiled.  Being a drug dealer was bad, but for a brief while, I actually made crime profitable in the City.  That was my crime for which I got the ultimate punishment.

Part 6: In Morning

The Man With The (Peak-Oil Business) Plan

James M. Dakin has quite a blog, posting basically daily Monday through Friday.  Pedaling to Work was a particularly notable entry.  He has some great ideas for running a bicycle-based business to prepare for collapse.

Then They Mock You

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” Mahatma Gandhi
There Are Now Approximately 3 Million Preppers In The United States, Why Are They Hated So Much?

Priceless Nature

The beauty of nature is priceless.  And no amount of money can bring back an extinct species.  But the services that are provided for us by nature, we can estimate how much it would cost if we had to do them ourselves.  Larry Goulder and Tony Juniper talk with Climate One about how to do that.

Even Less to Love About Fracking

In case you didn't have enough to worry about, how about this one: your home insurance dropping your policy because your neighbor has a well? Grist reveals how Fracking Boom Could Lead To Housing Bust.

NWO Handbook

There isn't a conspiracy for global governance.  It's all out in the open.  Here's one of their handbooks:

Our Global Neighborhood : The Report of the Commission on Global Governance

How Solar Is Killing Fossil Fuels

Yes, you read that right:

The Price of Solar Power by Luis de Sousa on TheOilDrum.com

The critical paragraph in the entire article:

A perfect concurrency market with a marginal cost of zero is something totally outside the standard study and practice in economics. It is the reason why spot electricity prices collapse during sunny summer days or why during autumn storms there can even be negative prices. These are all symptoms of a market whose price will get closer and closer to zero the larger the number of renewable energy systems connected.

Of course, this is not profitable for electrical generation of any kind.

Wake up, people!

Just because there wasn't a cataclysm yesterday doesn't mean this isn't TEOTWAWKI.  The thing about "the end of the world as we know it" is that sometimes the changes accumulate slowly enough that we don't realize it.  Try to think back how your life was 13 years ago.  Imagine you had climbed into a bunker on December 31, 1999 and came out today.  Would this be a world you recognize at all?

If you don't see the apocalypse, maybe that's because you're one of the zombies....

How Obamacare Can Reduce Unemployment

Okay, follow closely.  Let's say you have some work that needs done that requires 120 person-hours a week.  Originally you might have hired 2 people to work 60 hours a week.  Then after overtime became an issue, you hired another person and cut everyone back to 40 hours a week.  Then came benefits for full time employees, so you went to 4 people working 30 hours a week.  Now with Obamacare, you would have to provide health insurance for people working 30 hours a week, so you go to 6 people working 20 hours a week.

Of course, this only works in jobs where there is a ready supply of new employees.  Those industries that can't hire readily just have to adjust to what they can afford, and those are the ones that publicly announce layoffs.  The hiring from Obamacare is more in low-skill service work, which goes relatively unnoticed.  Of course, there is no more money being paid to employees, so it's not really helping the economy, but it makes Obama look good.

So, the trend I expect to be reported over the coming months is a mild drop in the unemployment rate with a sharp increase in the underemployment rate, i.e., people who want to work full time but only have part time jobs.

Biofuel for $1.50 a gallon

This is what I'm talking about!

Cool Planet Energy Systems First Company to Develop Carbon Negative Fuel at Projected Cost of Less Than $1.50 Per Gallon

It is produced from woody plant materials, so it doesn't compete with food.  Biochar is a byproduct of the process, which can be used as a soil amendment.  That's what makes it carbon negative.

It has been tested on an unmodified car with a blend of 5% of the new fuel and 95% regular gasoline with no measurable differences.

And, by the way, no government subsidies are needed....

Why Shale Oil Works in the Short Run

Matt Badiali wrote a useful article, "Don't Believe This Shale Oil Argument... It'll Cost You", on The Growth Stock Wire.  Much of it is hyper-optimistic about the prospects of shale oil, but towards the middle there is a very useful analysis:

The Eagle Ford is one of the largest shale oil fields in the country. According to one company operating there, it costs $5.5 million to drill an oil well in the Eagle Ford.  

 

The wells have an estimated ultimate recovery of about 438,000 barrels of oil. Let's assume the company will get $85 per barrel (slightly below today's price) and that it costs $15 per barrel to move it. That means the company earns $70 per barrel in profit.

 

In short, the well pays for itself after 78,571 barrels... in about six months of production. After that, it becomes like an annuity. It's a risk-free profit. At $85 per barrel, it works out to a return of 4.6-to-1 on the money.

 Now, the numbers he doesn't crunch is that 78,000 is 18% of 438,000, so if production is linear the well would run dry in 33 months.  So yeah, shale oil is quite profitable, for now, but that doesn't say a lot for it's long term prospects.

Coming Soon: Gun Insurance

Eric Peters wrote a very interesting article on how they will incrementally make guns impossible to own for all but the richest among us: "Here's How It Will Be Done" (on his website).

A Different Path

They may be going up a different slope, but they have the spirit: "For Martha Stewart's New Fans, Tattoos Meet Applique" in the New York Times.

Counterfeits and Knockoffs

Dan on BladeReviews.com has an interesting rant on "YouTube’s Counterfeit Culture".  I think there is an important distinction between counterfeits, which claim to be a certain brand, and knockoffs, that only look and work like it.  If something is truly innovative in how it works or looks, the creator should protect it with a patent or a design patent.  If not, then cheap imitations are okay, as long as you know what you are getting.  Nonessential things you can afford to skimp on.  Stuff that you are relying on to survive, you want to know you have the best quality possible.

Inflation AND Deflation

People involved in the financial world are worried about deflation, people involved in the real world are worried about inflation.  Guess what?  They're both right.  The value of paper assets is way out of proportion to the value of real assets.  The way that gets correct is for paper assets to fall in price and/or the prices of real goods to rise.  The last couple times this happened the process ended when the price of gold was about equal to the price of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.  Since we're at around $1500 an ounce for gold and $12000 for the DJIA, we have a long way to go.

Radical Open Source

"TED Global: Radical Openness" by Marcin Jakubowski on OpenSourceEcology.org has some really different thinking.