What do you think the future looks like?

sullen · #**141** 09/11/06, 03:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Citiot

And to think, I only came here because I wanted to know how to raise a chicken.

Well don't feed it oil.....

jnap31 · #**142** 09/12/06, 08:45 AM

Good post Mightybooboo I am with you.

turtlehead · #**143** 09/12/06, 09:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Trixie

So when you are talking of the fuel needed to produce solar equipment, it would seem that it might not need any more - or as much - as it does to produce energy the way we now do. There would be maintenance and I assume batteries need replace from time to time, but it doesn't seem like a monster that must constantly be fed by oil or coal as is our present method of producing power.

Oh, I'm definitely in agreement with you on that. What I was trying to say is that - just like the cost of producing oil is going up, so is the cost of producing solar. Solar is still a better long-term plan, IMO, because as you point out you don't have to continually feed the solar monster. Just replace components as they become inefffcient (batteries, panels) or wear out (cables, mounting racks).

I think that a lot of the high cost of solar is that it is "new" technology. A new VHS or DVD player cost a small fortune. Today you can pick them up for $100 or less.

Quote:

Yes, the big oil companies got a goodly chunk of taxpayer dollars to develop alternative energy. That sounds a bit like the fox and the henhouse. What exactly would be their incentive to get this going in a timely manner.

Well if I were in the "energy" business and I saw that I would not be able to offer my main product at an affordable price long-term, I'd look to diversify. If I thought solar or wind was going to be the energy of the future, I'd want to be the first on the block to make it available at a reasonable cost, in a reasonable size and weight, in an easy enough to install format for the average joe to be able to make use of it.

I don't see solar as competing with oil; I see it as a diversification in the energy business as oil becomes obsolete (really extinct).

mightybooboo · #**144** 09/12/06, 09:48 AM

The safest, best, largest, cleanest power source ever is right above you,its the sun.Use it.Its surprisingly low tech to harness.Mirrors and steam,instead of oil and steam,makes very CHEAP power,we have them doing it here,right up the road from me.

I assure any doubters they produce and work,are reliable and immune to political price increases in production costs,the sun shines at the same cost day in and day out regardless of the worlds follies.

It amazes me how blind we are as to whats right there shining in our faces daily.

The wind keeps blowing.......More power.

Transportation?

GM EV-1 electric car-160 mile range in 1999.Can race a Porsche!
We could have these,the tech IS there.

All thats lacking is the citizens to DEMAND them.

Peak oil? The sooner the better for us all.Unfortunately,not soon enough,Oil is KING for a long long time to come.

BooBoo

mightybooboo · #**145** 09/12/06, 10:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by turtlehead

Well if I were in the "energy" business and I saw that I would not be able to offer my main product at an affordable price long-term, I'd look to diversify. If I thought solar or wind was going to be the energy of the future, I'd want to be the first on the block to make it available at a reasonable cost, in a reasonable size and weight, in an easy enough to install format for the average joe to be able to make use of it.

I don't see solar as competing with oil; I see it as a diversification in the energy business as oil becomes obsolete (really extinct).

If I were an ENERGY CONGLOMERATE,with my fingers in mining,shipping,pipelines and production,I wouldnt risk that HUGE infrastructure investment and bring on cheap power that cant be squeezed left and right.

I would milk it for every penny and squeeze the consumer until they bled,its the American way doncha know of big business.
I would give the elite at the companies multimillion dollar salaries and line my pockets too,scratch my greedy back and I'll scratch yours.I would bribe every politician on the planet,and they do,get realistic about it.

They arent in it to be humanitarians,they are in it for selfish interests.

Yep,they fear wind and solar,its a threat to their highly profitable squeeze play.Energy is the biggest fortune on the planet,they arent going to upset the apple cart anytime soon.

Never forget the golden rule,He with the Gold,RULES.The Gold is OIL.
They own the politicians.
Since we cant beat the politician traitors(to a large degree),we have to do it at a higher cost on our own,setting up your own energy,and a lot can be done by Joe Sixpack.Passive and active solar can be done by us.

BooBoo

hillsidedigger · #**146** 09/22/06, 07:21 AM

Simply and only if major military catastrophes are avoided, I think, the best circumstance would be that the year 2106 will be more like the year 1906 than it will be like the year 2006.

Many fewer people, far less overall consumption and not to occur by choice or government edict but as a result of market and natural forces.

Cities will be nearly emptied, vast regions will have experienced complete die-offs of people. Electricity and air travel will be rare. Livestock will be far less numerous and wildlife will be seldom seen due to the desertification of many regions

all resulting from the 'overshoot far beyond any possibility of sustainability' in human numbers that is currently occurring. Everyday, we are digger ourselves into a deeper hole and lowering the number of people that the world will ultimately be able to sustain after the impending Great Crash.

A'sta at Hofstead · #**147** 09/22/06, 11:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FourDeuce

I've just started reading a very interesting book about what the future might end up looking like. It's called The Long Emergency, and it's written by James Howard Kunstler. His predictions for the future aren't very bright. He says that things are going to go downhill for us all, mostly because of our heavy dependence on fossil fuels. It's not just because of the oil running out, but before it runs out it'll get so expensive that it'll cause other things to get more expensive. Sound familiar?
He also predicted that the American lifestyle will have to change radically. Our system of living in suburbs and depending on shipping food and other merchandise thousands of miles will have to change because there won't be enough fossil fuel to do it(or because it will be too expensive to do it

). It's shaping up to be a good read, and I recognize many of the same things I(and many other people) have been saying for years in there.

Funny, when I read this title I thought of an excerpt that was forwarded to me of this very book from Rolling Stone, read this, seems like homesteader up north and some other areas will do OK

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/sto...long_emergency

an excerpt here

The circumstances of the Long Emergency will require us to downscale and re-scale virtually everything we do and how we do it, from the kind of communities we physically inhabit to the way we grow our food to the way we work and trade the products of our work. Our lives will become profoundly and intensely local. Daily life will be far less about mobility and much more about staying where you are. Anything organized on the large scale, whether it is government or a corporate business enterprise such as Wal-Mart, will wither as the cheap energy props that support bigness fall away. The turbulence of the Long Emergency will produce a lot of economic losers, and many of these will be members of an angry and aggrieved former middle class.

Food production is going to be an enormous problem in the Long Emergency. As industrial agriculture fails due to a scarcity of oil- and gas-based inputs, we will certainly have to grow more of our food closer to where we live, and do it on a smaller scale. The American economy of the mid-twenty-first century may actually center on agriculture, not information, not high tech, not "services" like real estate sales or hawking cheeseburgers to tourists. Farming. This is no doubt a startling, radical idea, and it raises extremely difficult questions about the reallocation of land and the nature of work. The relentless subdividing of land in the late twentieth century has destroyed the contiguity and integrity of the rural landscape in most places. The process of readjustment is apt to be disorderly and improvisational. Food production will necessarily be much more labor-intensive than it has been for decades. We can anticipate the re-formation of a native-born American farm-laboring class. It will be composed largely of the aforementioned economic losers who had to relinquish their grip on the American dream. These masses of disentitled people may enter into quasi-feudal social relations with those who own land in exchange for food and physical security. But their sense of grievance will remain fresh, and if mistreated they may simply seize that land.

The way that commerce is currently organized in America will not survive far into the Long Emergency. Wal-Mart's "warehouse on wheels" won't be such a bargain in a non-cheap-oil economy. The national chain stores' 12,000-mile manufacturing supply lines could easily be interrupted by military contests over oil and by internal conflict in the nations that have been supplying us with ultra-cheap manufactured goods, because they, too, will be struggling with similar issues of energy famine and all the disorders that go with it.

As these things occur, America will have to make other arrangements for the manufacture, distribution and sale of ordinary goods. They will probably be made on a "cottage industry" basis rather than the factory system we once had, since the scale of available energy will be much lower -- and we are not going to replay the twentieth century. Tens of thousands of the common products we enjoy today, from paints to pharmaceuticals, are made out of oil. They will become increasingly scarce or unavailable. The selling of things will have to be reorganized at the local scale. It will have to be based on moving merchandise shorter distances. It is almost certain to result in higher costs for the things we buy and far fewer choices.

DQ · #**148** 09/22/06, 01:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wind in Her Hair

Most people? MOST people???

Not from where I stand. Have you been to a major American city lately and looked at all the $$$ driving down our highways? The price people choose to pay for what they drive is staggering.

Now, I see alot of people making lousy choices about how to use their time, energy, minds, and resources - and THEN they whine and carry on about how little they have and how unfair life, God, fate, the Republicans etc has been to them.

Most of the people that I know of who whine and complain:

live in single family dwellings, have more than one automobile, have electricity, AND have a cell phone in addition to their land lines. They buy new clothing from the department stores, they eat out at least once a week, buy convenience foods, do NOT have a vegetable garden or raise their own meat, have satellite or cable TV as well as Internet, and they engage in some form of recreation that costs them money and then they whine when they realize that in order to continue their lifestyle choices - they have to warehouse their children in daycare centers and both parents have to work full time outside the home.

What I see are very very very FEW people living wisely, simply, and frugally. Many want to straddle the fence and try and live in both worlds.

THATS when they get into trouble.

Like farmwife, I am very concerned about the direction MOST people in this country are taking and the choices they are making that will not only affect them - but their children as well. Making wise decisions and sacrifices are NECESSARY - they are painful - but they are necessary.

The American Dream of "having it all" was always just that - a dream. We have within our power to have what MATTERS to us - but it comes at a cost.

The REAL question is whether the things we are spending our money on, our time, our energy - in essence our very LIVES - is worth what we pay for it.

never posted here before but I must agree!! people don't have less now, they just expect more. jobs go over seas because companies can't meet the unrealistic expectations of the workers here and still be in business, and you now how those evil big business's have to make a profit to keep giving people jobs.

i could go on and on about people not taking personal responsibility for their lives and having expectations that everything should be easy and nothing should ever go wrong and its always sombody elses fault.