Aloha Petroleum

We visited the Hawaiian Islands recently, specifically Maui.  As usual, I got interested in the natural history of the place, including human impacts.  Our resort was in a part of the island that's mostly a mesquite bosque, with mongooses scurrying back and forth.  The mongooses were too fast for me to photograph, but the mesquites, called Kiawe Trees, held still--

Mesquites, mongooses, and innumerable other plants and animals share something with petroleum; they're all imported.  Hawaii is famous as a living laboratory of biogeography.  The archipelago is so remote that living things only rarely reached the islands on their own.  Their descendants evolved into an array unique of species, like the Haleakala Silverswords and the Nēnēs.  When people, beginning with the Polynesian ancestors of the original Hawaiians, first arrived they brought new plants and animals, often wreaking havoc on the native ecology of the islands.  Europeans and Americans were fuzzy on what was useful.  The links above describe the spread of Kiawe trees, which were useful to people, and mongooses, which weren't.  The Polynesians who settled Hawaii, starting in 200-500 AD, had a pretty good idea what was useful.

Plug-in airplane, only $495,000

I was wrong.  I've been telling people it isn't practical to build an electric airplane.  Well not only is it practical, you can actually buy one right now.  Popular Science has an article on the Volta Volare GT4.  The GT4 uses an electric motor to spin its propeller.

(URL from the Pop Sci article)

The GT4 has a range of 300 miles on batteries alone.  It also has a supercharged gasoline engine that runs a generator to produce electricity.  Combined range is a 1000 miles, which seems to be decent for this class of aircraft.  Volta Volare's website says you can reserve one for $9900.  You will have come up with an additional $485,100 to actually purchase one.  This is almost enough to make me get a pilot's license, assuming I won the lottery.  I'd best go check my tickets...

Eurozone = Toast, Economists puzzled.

I listen a lot to NPR and BBB World Service.  Of course I hear over and over about the debt crisis in Greece, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, etc.  I keep hearing about hopes for fixing financial houses and "returning to growth".  With increasingly expensive petroleum, that seems unlikely.  Gail Tverberg's overview explains that as oil gets more expensive, debt burdens of governments are likely to increase.  In Europe, it seems it's reaching the level that will drive some countries into default, which will lead to the dismembering of the Euro as a common currency.  Chris Skrebowski explains that the advanced economies can't tolerate expensive oil and still grow.  He estimates U.S tolerance limit for a growing economy is $90/barrel.  He estimates China can tolerate at least $110/barrel.

In my last post, I talked about the stress that $100/barrel oil puts on our economy.  I also expressed my puzzlement over economists' apparent inability to perceive a link between expensive oil and a stressed economy.  In a recent guest article in The Oil Drum, ecological economist David Stern sheds light on my conundrum.  He explains that when energy, i.e. oil, became very cheap in the 20th Century, economists began using mathematical models that ignored energy because it was such a small cost.  For 60 years, economists have used those models and been trained to discount the role of energy in a developed economy.

This realization led me to realize that the most important piece of planning for a future of more expensive and scarcer hydrocarbon energy is the paradigm shift.  Average citizens and the experts who are interviewed for news and analysis need to think about the world differently.  Until that occurs, they can't think rationally about the rest.

Recessions and Paradigms

Long time, no post, I know.  I had other concerns.

Presumably you've noticed we might be on the verge of another recession?  Notice too that economists and financial folks want to cast the situation in terms they think they understand?  But perhaps there's another factor that should be considered.  In the Peak OIl Task Force's analysis in their 2010 report (http://peakoiltaskforce.net/) they claim that the data on the U.S. economy over time shows that when our energy (oil) costs hit 4% of U.S. GDP, a recession follows.  In other words, energy costs drag on the economy until a tipping point is reached and there's an adjustment.  Other people have other estimates of what percentage we must hit before triggering a recession ranging up to 6%.  James Hamilton, an economist at UC San Diego, details a long history of economic downturns following oil "price shocks".

Let's do a bit of back-of-the-envelope calculation.  We consume roughly 20,0000,000 barrels of oil per day.  In 2010 our GDP was over 14 trillion dollars.  In February, oil at the New York Mercantile Exchange (http://www.nyse.tv/crude-oil-price-history.htm) broke the $100/ barrel mark for the first time since the last recession, when it topped out at $147/barrel.  Prices recently dipped back under $100, but not by much.  Using the nice round number of 100, assuming our economy hasn't grown much since 2010 and assuming there are 365 days in a year, oil energy costs work out to about 5% of our GDP.

At the very least, $100/barrel oil has to be a significant drag on the economy as that turns into higher costs for fuels and the raw materials for plastics and petrochemicals (fertilizer, for example).  We been reading about the effects of $4 gas.  Some of you know that I expect the U.S. and other economies to go through a series of recessions as the world demand bumps maximum oil production capacity, prices soar, and recession follows. Economies shrink, demand drops, price falls.  This pattern continues until production from the big oil reserves really starts to drop, as opposed to the plateau it's on currently, forcing continuous uncontrolled shrinkage.  Alternatively, economists and governments get past denial and develop aggressive control mechanisms to support a more graceful and predictable decline phase for the oil age.

 The United States Congress went into gridlock over raising the debt ceiling, some more European nations are looking shaky, so we have some possible triggers.  So will our economies just stagnate, or will there be full scale recession?  Any bets on how many recession cycles it takes before the paradigm shift occurs and there's a reanalysis of economic history and theory based on energy costs?  It occurs to me this is like what happened in my core fields of science when I was in college in the 1970s.  Geologists admitted plate tectonics was real and there was a drastic reinterpretation of geologic and evolutionary history based on the new paradigm.

Care for a paradigm shift?

Fossil Fuels, Strange Arithmetic

I'm a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).  I've been disappointed by AAAS's silence on the issues of hydrocarbon decline.  In one of the email bulletins they send out, they had a link to a panel discussion on energy.  Here are the opening two paragraphs--

Fossil fuels provide about 80% of the world’s energy and, despite dire predictions since the early 20th century, supplies will not run out any time soon, according to speakers at a AAAS discussion on meeting global energy demand.
“Oil is good for 50 years at current consumption rates, [and] could be extended longer as you go to more difficult resources,” said Steven E. Koonin, under secretary for science at the U.S. Department of Energy. “Coal—there are hundreds of years.”

This is an extraordinarily ill-thought out set of statements.

Evolved to Run

Recently, I had occasion to read the best-seller Born to Run.  I decided I needed to read the book when an acquaintance began describing the contents.  He talked about events I was a part of, since I've run with the Raramuri (Tarahumara) Indians in the Leadville 100 mile run.  While the book was a mixed bag, it makes some good points that are relevant to our current situation and our future.

Shortly after I acquired the book, I learned Micah True, one of principal figures in the account, was scheduled to give a talk at a local running shop.  I attended and enjoyed the evening.  From what I heard, running has declined amongst the Raramuri as roads and vehicular transport has penetrated to their villages.  The Raramuri have a history of putting on races that pit village against village.  Top runners are higher-status members of society.  Yet even so, easier modes of transport stop the running.

Likewise for our society.  Despite all the evidence that high levels of activity and exercise have enormous physical and mental benefits, most people will take advantage of labor-saving devices and transport.  And even among the fit, most transport uses internal combustion vehicles, not feet or bicycles.

So I'm very curious to watch the reaction and evolution of behavior as it gets more and more expensive to use vehicles.  Since so many of us are in dug into a hole of poor fitness and excessive weight due to inactivity, digging out will be difficult.

Getting Nowhere and Missing the Train

We spend a lot of our time in U.S. National Parks.  In fact, just this morning I did a 5+ mile run in one a few minutes from my house.  Our vacations tend to center around trips to national parks.  I've lost count of the number of times I've been to the bottom of the Grand Canyon--

The junction of South Kaibab, N. Kaibab and Bright Angel trails.

I've been on all, many  times.

However, most of the big famous parks are literally in the middle of nowhere.  How do you get there?  It turns out that the existence of, and access to, at least some of the national parks is intimately linked to the interests of American railroad companies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.