[onlooker]

It is maddening Tanada because their were several options for a smooth transition and most of us here reluctantly are conceding that those opportunities for a smooth transition are gone.

[MonteQuest]

I agree with your first sentence, but there are viable regional RE substitutes like hydro both large scale and small scale.

Trouble is, most of those areas are in developing regions like Africa where 50% of primary energy comes from wood. Exploiting those areas with hydro or any other renewable will just displace biomass not FF. And it will create even more demand as 2/3 of the continent's inhabitants have no electricity and are breeding like crazy.

[onlooker]

Yes I think it is helpful to have a big picture outlook. Our solutions where they exist seem now to exacerbate some other factor or circumstance. That is because we are so far into overshoot in terms of population numbers and unrenewable resources as well as the entire layout and infrastructure of the world economy. In fact we are even stressing renewable resources in the manner we do things and because of high population numbers. All roads at this point seem to be leading to a "correction" die-off.

[onlooker]

Great reply on Hydro P, I also have read the same.

[Tanada]

Tanada, hydro is a mixed blessing. While it grants people comfort in the short term, it degrades local ecosystems, fisheries, agriculture and community. It is the first step in industrialization and consumerism and control by big government and big business. In the long run (decades, a century) the dam reservoir silts up.

Professor K. Mahmood of George Washington University in Washington, DC, "roughly estimated" for a 1987 World Bank study that around 50 cubic kilometres of sediment – nearly one per cent of global reservoir storage capacity – is trapped behind the world’s dams every year. In total, calculated Mahmood, by 1986 around 1,100 cubic kilometres of sediment had accumulated in the world’s reservoirs, consuming almost one–fifth of global storage capacity.

Long before then the streams above and the river below become degraded and fit only for industrial agriculture water supply. It is sad.

Yes onlooker we blew it and tragically much of that blowing occurred recently, only during my short time here at PO.com. 10 years ago the last great pointless suburban build-out was still underway in the US/Europe and China. We wasted valuable time and resources we will never see again on the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world, to quote Kunstler.

Propaganda. You would have to think that dredging and reservoir basal releases were impossible to accept that dams reservoirs silt up and become useless. Yup really, you have to use your brain and do something to prevent or remove the silt after it is deposited, gosh what a terrible high tech problem we face! Give me a break Pete, this is another one of those 'technical issues' created out of whole cloth by people who oppose hydroelectricity. Dredging technology has been around for all of recorded human history going back to the Ancient Sumerians and Egyptians. An Archimedes screw using well under 1 percent of the power produced or a silt diversion tunnel allowing a small quantity of base water to escape continuously prevents a dam from silting up. Regular dredging with a floating dredge like those used to keep shipping channels open also solves the silt issue if nobody though of it during construction.

[Keith_McClary]

I posted a paper on dredging in the Hydropower after peak oil thread.

[Revi]

I live in a state with a lot of hydropower, but it isn't going to be enough to power the rest of New England. We are going to have to..................Use..................Less...............Power!

[onlooker]

I live in a state with a lot of hydropower, but it isn't going to be enough to power the rest of New England. We are going to have to..................Use..................Less...............Power!

Are TPTB in your state actually really contemplating that Revi?

[ennui2]

I live in a state with a lot of hydropower, but it isn't going to be enough to power the rest of New England. We are going to have to..................Use..................Less...............Power!

Are TPTB in your state actually really contemplating that Revi?

If they did, how would they enforce it? The true PTB are voters, and they don't want to powerdown.

[onlooker]

True Ennui nothing gets done without critical mass.

[ennui2]

I know Revi is trying to start his transition movement again. I wish him luck with that. More constructive than shaking fists over TPTB on a worldsend.

[careinke]

I've been toying with the idea of installing a seasonal micro hydro system on our property. I have a lot of water management infrastructure I need to put in. Water management is my main goal this year.

[Revi]

I know Revi is trying to start his transition movement again. I wish him luck with that. More constructive than shaking fists over TPTB on a worldsend.

Yes, I am trying to get it going again. Our state is not very progressive, and is in no way prepared for what's coming. Still, it is what it is. At least we have a lot of renewables in our energy mix. Unfortunately we also have a high percentage of people who use heating oil. There really is no way out of the box we have put ourselves in, but one has to try to do something. Maine is a poor state, but that might be okay, since we will not drop from as high a perch when it all falls over. A lot of people already use almost entirely wood to heat their homes, and a lot of big institutions, like schools are using pellets instead of oil.

[ennui2]

Up in Maine people treat wood like it's an unlimited resource. We all know that wood is not sustainable if you burn it beyond the rate of replacement. The Northeast was deforested before the oil-age when the population here was a fraction of what it is now. It really goes fast when you lean on it for everything.

[MonteQuest]

Like a passing hurricane, this “eye of the storm” in gas and oil prices is setting us up for an even more painful energy crisis in the very near future. We must consider that, should oil prices and demand remain low for an extended period, new investment in oil production — not to mention renewables — will fall to such an extent that, with worldwide depletion of existing fields at 6.7 percent a year, there simply will not be enough new oil, or oil replacement energy, to power an economic recovery.

I wrote that 7 years ago almost to the date. Prices did remain low for a bit, but then quickly rose, allowing for the investment in shale oil. Modern renewables share of the market remains stuck in single digits even with massive investments. We now find ourselves in another "eye of the hurricane" moment with low oil prices threatening to shut-in oil production in many venues, while accelerating consumption.

How will the monkeys react this time? More debt on a massive scale seems required, yet we are at debt saturation with ROI at a low ebb tide. When you have drunk the water you use to prime the pump, you are fucked.

[MonteQuest]

Monte, Hamilton predicted price oscillation rather than single economic depression.

Well, that's true to a point. When that scarce resource is the prime mover of all resources, it becomes subject to Liebig's Law of the Minimum. Markets are driven by fear and greed. Monetary policy tries to find stability, thus prices oscillate until they can't. Law of diminishing returns.

What policy tool is left besides demand destruction (economic depression)? We drank the water to prime the pump.

[Outcast_Searcher]

What policy tool is left besides demand destruction (economic depression)? We drank the water to prime the pump.

It seems to me that SERIOUS conservation (not BS lip service or just gradually increasing fleet CAFE standards) would certainly be seriously helpful. But the US lacks the political will and apparently the ability to think long term.

And it should certainly be more economical to, say, take public transportation (if it were made widely available and reliable in terms of service hours and frequency) vs driving and maintaining one's own car. Also, clearly more economical to drive a highly efficient car (say a Prius instead of a giant truck or SUV) -- so it's not like affordability is a valid excuse.

We could even force the issue with high energy taxes (balanced with some kind of family tax credit) to STRONGLY incent people to conserve energy -- and let them figure out the efficiency via their own needs and the efficient private sector.

But no, someone in power might not be re-elected, so we couldn't possibly do something like that.

[Revi]

Up in Maine people treat wood like it's an unlimited resource. We all know that wood is not sustainable if you burn it beyond the rate of replacement. The Northeast was deforested before the oil-age when the population here was a fraction of what it is now. It really goes fast when you lean on it for everything.

I agree. We won't be able to run everything off of wood. It's being harvested at a rapid rate north of here, and I don't think it will solve our problems here in Maine, and we're the most forested state in the nation.