Wolf Thoughts

Head in the clouds

2009-01-12T22:22:00.003Z

If any action shows how out of touch the Government is with the reality of peak oil, it is the decision to build a third runaway at Heathrow. This is despite the warning that we received in the summer of 2008 when oil temporarily rose and gave us a preview of what is to come. People cut back on flying as fuel prices rose and this is what will recur in a few years time.

Clearly this shows that the Government does not accept peak oil and belongs in the flat-earth group of economists. Despite the financial downturn, it clearly believes that, in a few years, things will carry on as before with ridiculous forecasts of growth in flights from 480,000 per year now to 720,000 by 2030. Actually this is not just ridiculous but impossible as John Busby has shown on his website: there is simply not enough oil in the world. That is on top of the fact that the runway will take at least ten years to build and probably a few more on top of that. By that time, oil production will undoubtedly be in decline and the soaring price will put paid to any chances of people flying more.

If this runway is ever built, (and it may be quietly put on hold in a few years as rising prices show the folly of the project), it will become another expensive white elephant like the infamous Millennium Dome. Still, it'll be somewhere to store all those unused airliners.

Violently opposed...

2008-12-09T10:06:00.007Z

Climate change and peak oil bear many similarities. Both began as minority ideas, passionately held by those who knew and believed, and little mentioned by the media (who usually classed both theory and supporters as batty, appealing to screwballs or conspiracy nuts).

Rather like oil discovery and production, the two theories have followed a similar path, separated by a number of years. Climate change began to be discussed on the media, first as an idea and then with more support until it was eventually became accepted by almost all scientists, politicians and the public. Peak oil is now at that stage where it is now being mentioned on the media, and scientists and politicians are beginning to discuss it. It has maybe five or ten years left before it reaches the stage that climate change is now at but that will depend on when the price of oil restarts its upward trend.

But one factor that is common to both theories is the 'denier'. (I know this term has negative associations but I shall use it for want of a better term.) I am not talking here about the scientist who studies the subject and comes up with well-supported arguments, nor those who agree with the theory but have doubts about the timescale. I am talking about the ill-informed layman who refuses point-blank to accept the idea.

While I consider myself to have a reasonable knowledge of peak oil, when it comes to climate change, I don't claim any expertise. I am not a climatologist or a geologist. My specialist knowledge ended with my geography 'O-Level'. So when most of the world's scientists say that the world is warming due to human activities, I am not in a position to gainsay them. If the debate was evenly split between scientists, it would be different, but when the Royal Society, World Meteorological Organisation, Federation of American Scientists, and so on (see Wikipedia) accept the premise, then it would be foolish of me with my single O Level to argue against them. Yet the number of (presumably) non-experts who write letters falling back on sunspots or even the fatuous "if you melt ice, it doesn't raise the water level" argument (with the assumption that climatologists had never thought of this) is staggering.

A similar thing occurs with peak oil. There are many people who dispute when the peak will occur or how steep the decline will be, and that is fine. There is still much uncertainty even among the experts. But those who flatly deny that oil production will peak at all strike me as obtuse. We know that oil is finite so, at some point, it must reach a high point and decline. We can all see the example of the US-48 where, despite decades of money, technology, expertise and political will, production has relentlessly declined. There seems to be a certain type of person who perversely decides to take up the opposing view of the majority, just to be different. But there's not much we can do about them - rather like Creationists or UFO-believers, no amount of evidence or persuasion can change their minds.

(The title, by the way, comes from a quote by Arthur Schopenhauer: "All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."

Together in Electric Dreams

2008-12-08T18:24:00.002Z

(Reply to a question on electric cars)

I have mixed feelings about electric cars. In theory we could maybe use them to replace oil but there are many problems.

A major problem is the difficulty in refuelling. If you are short of petrol, you can pop into a station, fill up and five minutes later you are off. With electric cars, at the moment, you would have to leave the car recharging for a few hours (at least). This is fine if you are travelling to the shops or work and you can leave the car plugged in there while you shop/work. But with any longer journey you are faced with problems. The only option would be to drop off a discharged battery or two at the service station and fit some fully charged ones. But this infrastructure would have to be fitted to stations all around the world. And can you imagine an old man or woman disconnecting a couple of lead batteries and humping them into the station? We would need to have some smaller, lighter batteries which can be easily removed and replaced. These batteries would have to be standardised to every electric car. The time, trouble and cost of preparing every car and garage is phenomenal.
There is also the problem of recharging your car at home. Fine if you have a garage where you can lock it away and plug it in, but in the UK, many people have to park their cars on the street. What happens then? We would either have to bring the batteries indoors to recharge every night or construct recharging posts all along the street. Again the trouble and cost seem unacceptable.
Then there is the time and cost of replacing millions (30 million in the UK alone) of ICE-powered vehicles with electric. Can the countries afford it? Can the people afford to replace their cars with brand new (probably expensive) ones?
Can we produce enough electricity for all these cars? Without oil and gas, we will need more electricity for heating and cooking so there is going to be a tremendous demand everywhere.

However, I do think that electricity has a place in future transportation. Personal vehicles may be acceptable in cities but the main use will be public transport with electric trains, trams and trolley buses. (This is where mainland Europe has an advantage over the UK and USA). Like many possible solutions, electrification needed to be started thirty years ago when we had the time, money and energy to do it. I think it's all too late now.

Back in the UK...SR

2008-06-12T08:19:00.001Z

When I was growing up in the 60s and 70s, if you talked about a country that kept its people under surveillance, was introducing identity cards with biometric details, imprisoned people without trial, arrested protesters for wearing a t-shirt, and illegally invaded other countries to steal their resources, there would be no doubt that we would be talking about one of the Communist bloc - the USSR, China or similar. Yesterday, with the Government winning (by bribery) a vote to remove part of Magna Carta, an essential freedom that we have had for nearly eight centuries, that description now applies to the United Kingdom.

It seems incredible that Great Britain, a country that once proudly displayed its democratic freedoms to much of the rest of the world, has now become a warning to that world of what might happen if you let your liberties go beneath the exaggerated threat of terrorism. There has only been one attack on Britain by Al-Qaeda or its supporters, but it has been far more successful than Bin Laden could have dreamed. Hitler, with all his mighty forces, could not achieve what one relatively-minor attack and an authoritarian government bent on control and elimination of opposition have done.

In reality, Britain has never been the shining example of democracy and freedom that its inhabitants have believed. We've never had an elected head of state, even in the Interregnum after Charles I's death and now, eight years into the 21st century, we still don't have one. Nor can we vote for the occupants of the second chamber, and our undemocratic electoral system means that many people effectively have no vote. And neither have our attitudes to other countries been much to be proud of. The Empire initially could be partly excused as something that every other strong country was doing (having no empire in the 16th and 17th centuries would have seriously restricted trade and freedom). But that Empire lasted long after it was considered necessary and more modern times brought equally bad interventions in other countries. A century before the recent oil-based invasion in 2003, Britain had occupied Iraq for its resources. Liberty has always been a relative term in British history.

But now we seem to be firmly heading down the road towards a police state. Maybe this is in preparation for the forthcoming disruption that will follow peak oil but it is hard to imagine British politicians having the far-sightedness for that. It is probably more to do with Lord Acton's famous quotation: "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely".

I will be leaving Britain to work abroad next month and I feel no loss at that departure. I no longer recognise the country that I grew up in. In the words of Thomas Paine:
"My country is the world and my religion is to do good"

Alternate fuels - the two problems

2008-06-03T12:48:00.001Z

(Reply to a question on hydrogen)

There are two problems for any fuel attempting to replace oil. One is the production of the fuel and new processes may provide some hope (although we are badly limited by time - we really need something up and running within the next decade).

The other problem though is implementing the fuel. In Britain, for instance, we have 33 million vehicles, virtually all using petrol or diesel. If we switch to another fuel, all of those vehicles will have to be adapted or replaced. Since the internal combustion engine cannot be adapted to hydrogen, that would mean eventually replacing every one of them. The cost (in money for the economy and people, and energy for society) would be prohibitive. And that is without considering the infrastructure needed to create and transfer the hydrogen/fuel cells.

Other fuels have their advantages and disadvantages. With biofuels, diesel engines could be easily adapted to use them and the infrastructure would need little work, although the problems of producing the biofuels create many problems for food and climate change.

Electricity has the advantage that we already have much of the infrastructure with power sockets in every house and garage. But few engines can use electricity so we would have to replace millions of engines.

In the end, I cannot see any feasible replacement for oil as transport. We will simply have to travel less and use public transport more. But hydrogen may have a good future as a "battery", storing the output from renewables for use at other times. It is still a good area to be working in but we must be reasonable with our expectations.

The Lure of Home

2008-05-19T07:45:00.000Z

A common fear amongst those studying the effects of peak oil is thought of mobs of people fleeing towns and cities and invading rural areas. In so many science fiction movies, we see motorways clogged with thousands of cars as people panic and run from impending danger. But the difference between these scenarios and peak oil is that they were fleeing from a known and immediate danger – a flood or a nuclear bomb – whereas peak oil is a slow and gradual breakdown with an unknown set of problems and an unknown timescale.

People are notoriously reluctant to move even when things are bad – consider the inhabitants of cities like London and Plymouth who stayed even when they were being bombed during the War, or the people of Naples or San Francisco who live in the shadow of a constant natural threat that will one day destroy them. People prefer the known to the unknown, familiar surroundings to the unfamiliar, friends to strangers, especially when the place they are fleeing to is alien or, in some cases, if they don’t even know where they are going.

There is also, especially in Britain, the infatuation with owning your own home. If you have spent 20 or 30 years to buy your house, and maybe spent thousand of pounds on improving it, you will be very reluctant to leave it without somewhere definite to go to. The house is recognisable and it’s yours. In a time of fear and uncertainty, the four walls and the garden are something to hold onto. It will almost certainly be the bulk of your assets. If you leave it, who knows what will happen to it, who will invade it.

I believe that the vast majority will stay put, hoping that ‘things will recover’ or ‘the government will sort things out’. If and when they do flee, it will probably be for places they know (relatives and friends) or areas relatively close to home. I can’t see thousands jumping in their cars and using whatever petrol they have left to head off into the country. And those that do will probably be the adventurous, motivated people who would be useful in a survival situation.

In a good location, a house is a blessing; in a bad location, it is a curse.

Write to Vote

2008-05-12T07:21:00.002Z

I have recently been reading “The Reason of Things” by A C Grayling, a collection of short philosophical essays and, on the whole I agree with what he says about most things. But there is one on which I take a completely opposite view and that is on voting. It is clear that he disapproves of those who do not vote as some of these quotes show:

“The reason that so many are neglectful of their democratic privileges is that they know no history…If they grasped these points, they would not be so cavalier and irresponsible about their democratic duties.”

“The required solution is that voting should be compulsory. One has to respect civil liberty arguments to the contrary, but the fact remains that citizenship imposes duties, many of them (such as paying taxes) already embodied in laws requiring observance on pain of sanction.”

“…Every refusal to vote is an act of self-disenfranchisement in which a citizen, betraying the endeavours of history, demotes himself in to a serf.”

I am fiercely against compulsory voting for several reasons:

First, it goes against the whole idea of democracy – the right to vote for whoever you want also carries the right not to vote. That surely is what freedom means. Forcing someone to vote when they don’t want to strikes me as the sort of thing authoritarian regimes do; that after all is how they get their 99% approval votes. In those systems, people are generally too afraid not to vote and it is only in a genuinely free country that a man or woman can refuse to plod down to the ballot box without getting a late night knock on the door.

Secondly, if people are forced to vote, many are likely simply to put a cross in whichever box comes to hand. Some might deliberately spoil the ballot paper or mark the “None of the above” box (if there is one), but many will no doubt see the walk to the polling station as an annoying imposition and just place their cross down anywhere. Do we really want people elected by chance or by their position on the voting paper? Surely it is better than only those who care or have an interest should vote?

There is also the problem that in Britain we have one of the least democratic democracies in the world. Our nominal head of state is unelected. Our real head of state (the prime minister) is unelected in that we don’t vote directly for him – he just happens to be the leader of the largest party. Our second chamber is unelected and most people effectively have no vote. What I mean by that is that, because we have a first-past-the-post system, in many constituencies, a vote has little meaning. If you live in a safe Labour seat, for instance, voting for Labour will make little difference as will voting for the opposition. And voting for a minor party, wherever you happen to live, is usually a waste of time. If our system used proportional representation, then every vote would have a meaning, no matter how safe the seat or minor the party.

If voter turnout is falling, then we should ask ourselves why, not look for ways to punish those who feel voting is irrelevant or a waste of time. If we could elect our leader, if we could elect the second house, if we had a fair voting system, then more people might consider voting worthwhile and not “a good walk wasted”.

But I would go further with my revision of our voting system: I would bring in a test before anybody was allowed to vote. If my doctor wanted to discuss an illness I had, I would hope that he would consult other qualified people and not just drag people of the street. If my car has a problem, I go to a mechanic, not a dustman or, indeed, a politician. So why do we let people vote who know nothing about politics?

We wouldn’t want to limit voting to just the rich, for instance, or a selected group of people. We have taken too long to progress from that state. But I do think that, before you vote, you should show a minimum amount of knowledge about who you are going to vote for. Nothing complicated, just a few simple questions such as “Name the leaders of the main parties” or “When did women get the vote?” If people did not know these things or couldn’t be bothered to find out, then it suggests they are unlikely to know the difference in the parties and know exactly why they are voting for one over another. The universal franchise would still exist – everybody would still be entitled to vote – but they would have to show some desire to take it seriously first.

The result would be that those who didn’t care about politics, or don’t have the capability to make an informed decision, would be free to ignore the polling booth on voting day. Those who did vote and consequently elected our government would have at least done some research on where to cast that vote. Who knows – making it something you earn rather than have automatically might attract more people to bother in the first place.

Reply to an email on emigration

2008-05-02T09:11:00.003Z

Question:
I just read some pages on your site. I find it very interesting, your comparison of how well different countries would cope. I know you didn't analyse it, but I live in South Africa and have tried to ask one or two other people how South Africa would fare compared to other countries and only had one reply so far - he said from a resources point of view we are quite well off (relatively) - we have quite a low population density overall, (although in a crises I imagine millions of refugees might come here, we already have about 5 million Zimbabweans living here, by some estimates, because of that country's economic collapse) - we do have massive coal reserves (I think we rank just behind Australia in terms of coal reserves, if I'm not mistaken) and are the only country with a coal-to-liquid fuel thing going as of yet, we have warm climate etc. On the negative side, if other countries' governments are not going to plan adequately then believe me, ours will be even worse. We have been cursed with incompetent and corrupt, but highly paid ministers, who, for example, saw 10 years ago that we would need a lot of new power plants to adequately supply the country will electricity by 2007. Despite warnings, they sat on their hands and handed out massive bonuses to incompetent managers of our country's electricity supply commission (who were put there because of political affiliations, to a large extent) who didn't do their jobs properly. So now we have regular electricity rationing and they are proposing hiking electricity prices by over 50% for two straight years in a row so that they can accumulate capital to build new power plants. My point is that if they foresaw a power crisis 10 years in advance and did nothing, they certainly are not going to be able to adapt smartly to any peak oil crisis. The other problem in SA is social - we have a serious crime problem, (and not just the kind of crime that results from our high income inequality, but violent organised crime, rape etc) by most countries' standards, and I might imagine looting and theft would escalate greatly. Racial tensions might rise as well. As South Africans we've become quite apathetic because government here is quite arrogant and never accepts responsibility for sorting out crime or even the electricity fiasco that has made itself felt in the last year. On the other hand, there are aspects of South African lifestyle that one can't enjoy elsewhere - bigger houses and spaces, fantastic and convenient weather, scenery, relatively cheap food (although the price of food is starting to go through the roof) - all things that are perks. We can produce all kinds of foods and fruit and don't need to import certain fruits like Europeans do, for example. Although much of the country is dry, the eastern and northern parts of the country receive decent amounts of rainfall, and we get a lot of water from Lesotho. As an aside, Zimbabwe used to be a major food producing country ("the breadbasket of Africa") until Robert Mugabe went berserk - now the country relies on food aid. But in your opinion, based on the research you have done, where would South Africa stand in regard to other countries? What do you think of our resource preparedness? Social preparedness? I ask this because a lot of my friends are discussing emigration - mostly my friends find Australia attractive, but would people be better off in Australia in five or ten years’ time? You live in the UK. How do you think the UK will fair overall? I'm curious because the UK has quite a dense population - would it be able to support all those people without cheap fertilisers and oil for tractors etc?

Answer:
On the whole, I agree pretty much with what you say. In resource terms, South Africa is very handily placed with both commercial resources (such as coal and, don't forget, gold which is the first choice during a recession) and the 'living' resources such as weather, food, etc. It really should be in an excellent situation now and well prepared to face the future.

The problem, as you have recognised, is government - the same reason why Zimbabwe is a mess when it should be the "breadbasket of Africa". I am not generally a supporter of empires, despite my nationality, but the British Empire did at least leave both South Africa and Zimbabwe in a good condition to face the future with a competent administrative structure and good transport links. The reason why both countries threw this away was due to corruption in their leaders, the apartheid regime and Mugabe. As Lord Acton said "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely".

The problem with deciding whether to stay put or emigrate is that the deciding factor with how a country will cope is the one factor we cannot predict - the type of government it will have and how they will react. Who would have thought that the apartheid regime would have brought forth Nelson Mandela? I also think back to when I was growing up in the 1970s and 1980s. The idea that the Soviet Union would disappear before the end of the century would have seemed ridiculous but Gorbachev appeared from nowhere and it happened.

Since we don't know what sort of governments will come along in the next few decades, it is hard to choose a country to move to. In Europe, at the moment, I would expect the Scandinavian countries to produce more sensible governments (it is helpful if you are on the outskirts of a continent and largely ignored by others) but it is not impossible to imagine Norway, with its carefully managed oil resources, becoming the target for a desperate country in the future. When times get bad, governments get bad.

I personally think the UK is going to be a bad place to be in the future. North Sea Oil is running out quickly and we are very densely populated so we are not well placed in the sense of resources. Our government (and the opposition party) seem to be moving so quickly to the authoritarian right that I suspect they will turn to violence and oppression as they try and cope with the future, rather like the USA. That is one reason why I am leaving the UK in July and I hope to live abroad permanently. Initially I will hope to live in the Czech Republic but, because of the uncertainties in the future, I want to get too fixed in my status. I want to be in a position to move if I see problems ahead.

So that sums up my advice to you. I don't think we can look at any country and say it is a safe haven for the future, either because its government may turn irrational or oppressive, or because it may be attacked for its resources, or invaded because of desperation by a neighbour. We can look at some countries such as the UK, USA and China and be pretty sure that they will not be good places to be, but it is not so easy who will be okay. Australia may seem okay now but they could face problems ahead: how will the country fare under global warming - will the desert areas expand? How will they cope with oil shortages since it is not that well endowed with fossil fuels? What will the overpopulated areas of Asia do if they see an apparently peaceful and under-populated country so near?

I don't think that South Africa is necessarily a bad place for the future. I don't know its politics well enough to see where the government is going, whether it can produce a far-sighted leader who will put it on the right path, but it is, at least, well-positioned resource-wise. A good leader in a poor country is not in a position to do much, however wise he may be. I would say keep your options open, be flexible in your own resources and be in a position to move if things turn bad.

Question:
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I hope our government somehow keeps its head on its shoulders in the years to come. Not that you need to know - but much of the political goodwill that was here after Mandela came to power has been squandered – it’s tragic how openly corrupt some of our politicians are and yet they are never held accountable. I'm led to believe that our ministers, in an oil crisis, would think "every man for himself, especially me" and abuse their power and connections for their own advantage and leave the country to suffer. Anyway, as an aside, I studied finance, but through a strange set of events starting teaching temporarily, and since I liked it and was not married, teaching has become a more permanent job for me for the past few years (I teach high school maths).
I've lately wanted to get back into my original career plans and have been furthering my degree to keep my qualifications current - I used to think one day I would work for a big investment bank or something of the sorts. Now I'm doubting whether that will be feasible.

Frankly, those kind of institutions suffer greatly in recessions, and, to be honest, I actually am at the point (after learning more about the world's monetary systems and other things) that most of the financial industry is almost parasitic to the rest of society - it produces very little of social value and yet a massive amount of wealth is diverted to large numbers of people who work in that sector.
If you were to advise broadening one's skills so as to be mobile and employable, or be able to feed oneself, what skills would you recommend acquiring? Which professions ought to do well? Would engineers be in demand in some way? As for more basic skills?
Just curious what your thoughts might be.

Answer:
Finance may yet be a useful trade in the future. With house prices collapsing (in the USA and UK, at least) and recession looming, many people will need advice on what to do with their money.

The occupations that will be useful are those that people can't do without, whatever the situation: doctors, dentists, car mechanics, farmers, police, army. Even sewage workers are essential. My present trade is a graphic designer which is not too useful in a recession - advertising is one area people will cut back on. One reason why I am moving into teaching which will always be around. Trades like carpentry and plumbing will be useful although people will often try and do these things themselves - electricians and gas fitters are better placed since DIY with these can be risky. Engineers, especially if you specialise in renewable energy, will be well placed.

You have to look at the situation as an ordinary person and think what would be useful. In the UK, for instance, dentistry is rapidly becoming private as NHS support is cut back. But people will always get toothache and, in the future, I can see people making a living here by travelling around doing private but cheap dentistry. I've read about yachtsmen who are doctors and dentists and travel the road, financing themselves by doing their work. People will keep their cars going rather than buy new ones and odd job mechanics will have a place.

Reply to an email on surviving

2008-05-01T11:40:00.005Z

Question:
Peak-oil problems have started ('it's happening'), so I'm thinking seriously to relocate. I work and live on an island now (Curaçao) in the Caribbean, but an island seems to me one of the worst places to be in a few years from now. Or maybe possible is an island with much less people (1000-2000) and own agriculture. Maybe even the best if there is a lot of ground water (and rain). What is your opinion regarding this ? Your recommend Russia or Brazil as the best. France (nuclear power) don't seem too bad, but what happens when no food is available in the (big) cities ? Hide and survive in the countryside for 6 weeks? Norway maybe, but same problem with food-availability I think.

Answer:
The problem with an island, especially a small one, is that, as newcomers arrive, or the society grows or splits, they cannot easily expand. The idea of a large group of people putting all their belongings into a ship and sailing off to a virgin island is unlikely. On the other hand, you are likely to get fewer outsiders arriving to settle once the costs of flying discourage overseas travel and a smallish island with a strong government is quite a self-contained environment (as with Cuba). The climate is generally better, food sources are more ample and it is easier to defend.

The page about “Which Country” is meant to make people think about suitability rather than be an absolute guide. Obviously you cannot class a whole country as good or bad for survival – a rich man in Bangladesh is going to be better off than a poor man in Norway, although Norway as a country will probably cope better than Bangladesh. France’s nuclear power I see as a potential disaster – 39% of its primary energy consumption comes from nuclear (79% of its electricity) and 36% from oil. We know that oil is going to decline and, if there are problems with uranium, it will find three quarters of its energy coming from two uncertain fuels. France has no native uranium so, if there is a big rush for nuclear in the future, it could find it difficult to procure enough. That is not a good situation to be in.

Survivability depends on your small scale situation. I would think the worst place to be would be a megalopolis like Mexico City, Rio or London. With millions of people and almost all food and energy having to be brought in, they are not attractive areas to be as things fall apart. The surrounding lands, both urban and rural, are also under threat from refugees from the cities.

A completely rural settlement is not necessarily that attractive either. A small village will have few amenities which means having to go to nearby towns for food and goods, and the small number of people is not good for security (in the sense of coping with normal problems as well as defending against intruders).

Probably the best grouping would be a larger village or a small town which has the infrastructure, amenities and population to cope while being small enough to retain a sense of community. Some sense of isolation, such as being far from major areas of population (eg. Cornwall) would be beneficial. People in cities would be envious of these areas but the long distances are likely to dissuade many.

Reply to an email on recessions

2008-05-01T08:31:00.002Z

Question:
I have been looking the BP figures. Am I right in assuming that the early eighties downturn in total production was due to economic recession? How would one know that a downturn now was not caused by similar factors? Another thing: When will the BP figures for 2007 be available? What is your sense of what is happening now with the economic down turn?

Answer:
The major drops in oil production in the 1970s and early 1980s were due to the OPEC embargo and the Iraq/Iran wars. This helped contribute to the economic recession which, as you say, reduced demand, thereby keeping production low.

It is true that recession now (and high oil prices) would reduce demand and we would expect this as a series of "hills" and "valleys" on the downslope of the Hubbert Curve. Economic theory would suggest that, as unemployment and inflation rose, demand for oil would drop, therefore decreasing the oil price and, as a result, production. Then people would start using the cheap oil resulting in higher oil prices and increased production.

But if we are really at the Hubbert plateau, then when the recession ends in a few years time, production might not be able to be increased. That will probably be the real proof that we are on the downslope. Production decreases now may be just due to recession. As with so much of the Hubbert Theory, we will not know it for sure until some time after the event.

The BP figures are usually published around June or July of the following year.

I'm not an economist but it seems that the present recession in the USA is due to many things, not just the price of oil (although that is contributing). There is the famous credit crunch which is due to excessive borrowing over the years. When anybody - person, company or country - borrows beyond its means, there will come a time when it has to face the consequences. The USA has had a massive debt for many years. Factors such as the massive military spending and the rise of China and India are all contributing.

My view is that, if the Hubbert Peak/Plateau was still decades away, then this recession would be like the ones of the past, eventually being succeeded by recovery. But this one is more complicated. I don't think China and India will be so affected by the recession so the demand for oil will not drop dramatically (unless a war creates a shortage such as a US attack on Iran). This means that, when the West reaches the point where it tries to climb out of recession, oil production will not be able to keep pace with increased demand and we may not be able to.

Other people with more economic knowledge than me think this recession could be worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s. I wouldn't disagree.

Enemy advances

2008-04-15T08:15:00.001Z

There are many things about the resource war in Iraq that I dislike but one in particular that has surfaced recently is the crowing about how the ‘surge’ has worked. The surge is just a fancy name for troop reinforcements and it is no surprise that such an increase has appeared to bring about an increase in peace and stability. But the surge is not over and we will not know whether it has succeeded until those reinforcements are removed.

Remember Mao’s thoughts on guerrilla warfare:

The enemy advances, we retreat;
the enemy camps, we harass;
the enemy tires, we attack;
the enemy retreats, we pursue

I imagine that the resistance forces in Iraq are biding their time, training and fortifying for the time when and if the US reinforcements leave. Only when that happens will we be able to say whether the surge has been a success or not.

Left-wing thinking

2007-01-02T09:04:00.001Z

An idea came to me recently, not an idea that I have ever heard before but something that got me thinking. I was watching a news report on the law and order and two interesting things – a fact and an opinion – came up. The fact was that Britain has more people in prison than almost anywhere else in Europe. The opinion was what we should do about the apparent growing crime rate. Most people’s views seemed to be that we should build more prisons.

The incongruity here should be clear. If prison worked, we should have less crime in Britain since we put more people in prison. If crime is growing, then prison isn’t the answer so we shouldn’t be thinking of that.

The idea that came to me was that, to be left-wing requires intelligence. Right-wing thinking is often, though not necessarily, a sign of lack of intelligence. The idea, for instance, that we should imprison more people, or for longer, is a *right-wing mind-set. It is the instinctive attitude, the one you take without taking the time to think about it. It is my instinctive view. When my car was broken into, my initial attitude was to get the perpetrators and lock them up for a long, long time. Stick them in the stocks, even. But when you calm down and take the time to think about things, your attitude often changes. Thinking about prison and crime, it seems clear that simply putting more people in prison isn’t going to work – more radical, less obvious solutions are needed. We need to be more left-wing in our thinking.

Similarly with capital punishment. The instinctive, right-wing view is that execution is the better preference – a deterrent and something which stops people re-offending. A bit of thought though (as well as statistics) shows that it isn't a deterrent. If it was, crime would have been almost non-existent in Victorian times when you could be hanged for stealing a loaf of bread, and the USA (which has capital punishment) would be far more peaceful than Europe (which has none). Crime is not that simple.

Religion is another area which often has right-wing views and you only have to look at fundamentalist, creationist thinking to see what a lack of intelligence can do. A greater proportion of scientists are atheists than in the general populace, and a scientist must be intelligent (although not necessarily wise). Religion, especially fundamentalist religion, clearly appeals to those who either don’t want to think for themselves or are unable to. The idea that everything in the Bible or Koran is literally true is clearly ludicrous to anybody with a smidgen of intellect as well as being impossible (since they contain contradictions). It’s the easy way out for the dim-witted – all your decisions are made by the priest or religion, and your morality is decided by someone else. That doesn’t mean that no intelligent person can be religious, of course, but I would imagine that few of them are fundamentalists. When dogma competes with intellect: the greater the latter, the more obvious the outcome.

As far as peak oil is concerned, the tendency among believers is to be both intelligent and left-wing. Some of the concepts in PO are not easy to understand without a little thought and, since the whole idea and answer revolves around great change, the idea of conservatism does not fit in very well with it. Right-wingers, I suspect, would be found amongst the economists and politicians.

(I realise that this could all be, of course, a bit of wishful thinking. Being rather left-wing myself, it would be nice to think that this showed how intelligent I was.)

*I use here the traditional position of left and right as synonyms for libertarian and authoritarian. An excellent website, http://www.politicalcompass.org, sees this dual view as simplistic and prefers a quadruple view using two axes, libertarian-authoritarian, and a left-right economic one. I shall use left-right in the traditional sense here.

Following the Wrong Road

2006-12-04T08:29:00.000Z

The latest idea from the government for cutting vehicle congestion and carbon emissions is road charging – taxing drivers on the roads and times that they are driving. Now peakers know better than anybody the necessity to cut down on unnecessary use of the internal combustion engine and I agree that something has to be done. But, in my opinion, this is the wrong route. A far more preferable choice seems to be that of petrol pricing, discouraging driving by increasing the taxes on petrol. Let’s compare the two.

Implementation
It may take up to ten years to get the road charging option in place. In the meantime, road use will keep increasing. By the time road charging is fully operational and having an effect (for it will take time for people to change their habits), it may be fifteen years or more. Fifteen years of mounting congestion.
Fuel pricing is already in effect to some extent and can be implemented almost immediately. We can start having an effect on driving habits from within a year.

Complexity
It is fairly obvious that the road charging option is going to be horrendously complicated. Every road vehicle has to have a GPS system installed to keep track of it. The Government may have to subsidise this as, if it is too expensive, people will avoid it somehow or have to abandon their cars. The latter choice may mean losing their job. A database will have to be set up with all of the major roads in the country so that the Government knows what to charge. Drivers will then have to be sent bills every month or so, unlike the road tax. Somebody will also have to be responsible for following up unpaid bills and dealing with the many disputes that will occur (“I wasn’t on that road, I was on another fifty meters away!”)
Fuel pricing, on the other hand, couldn’t be simpler. I don’t know the details but I assume that the garages or the oil companies presently pay the tax to the Government. Nothing more needs to change. The only extra that would be useful is if fuel meters were fitted on our dashboards like taxis to show you the cost of the petrol you are using. At the moment, you don’t think of the cost until you come to fill the tank up.

Evasion
We can be pretty certain that criminals – the sort of people who don’t pay tax or insurance at the moment – will not go along with the road charging system. So it is the responsible motorist who will pay again.
The fuel pricing system, on the other hand, is very difficult to evade. It isn’t very easy to buy petrol without paying the VAT or duty. You can’t get a spiv to pass you fifty liters of fuel from underneath his coat.
While of the subject of criminals, what happens if your car is stolen? Will you just pay up the charges that the thief has accrued or complain to the police?

Adjustments
One advantage of road charging is that it adjusts, to a certain extent, to different users. Those who live in the country will tend to pay less because the roads are less congested. Townies will pay more but they often have better access to public transport. The disadvantage is that those who need to use a car for work will have to pay the extra charge, often at a higher rate. The Government may have to bring in some sort of tax rebate to prevent those people losing their jobs.
Fuel pricing automatically adjusts for most users. If you have a gas-guzzler, you will automatically use more petrol and pay more tax. If you regularly speed or drive badly, you will use more petrol so pay more tax. One disadvantage of fuel pricing is that it doesn’t take into account rural dwellers or those who need to use their car for work. A system of rebates would need to be put into action; not a difficult action.

Effectiveness
Road charging does not discourage you from using a car, only from using it at certain times and places. So people who get in their car to pop down 100 meters to the shops will probably still do so. Many people will use rat runs to avoid high-charging roads, or leave motorways to go onto ‘A’ roads with the mess that that will entail. I can’t see many companies changing their hours of work to avoid the rush hours so many drivers will simply have to pay the extra costs.
Fuel pricing makes every journey more costly so, if you find your budget is being stretched, you would have to consider every time whether your journey is really necessary. It also encourages car sharing. Because motorway driving is more fuel efficient that other roads, it encourages people to stay on them and not use ‘A’ roads.

Other Uses
Road charging has one extra use that Governments will love – the ability to keep track of every vehicle. This has its good sides, of course, such as tracking stolen vehicles or helping the police find you if you have broken down (although it won’t help in tracking illegal vehicles without the GPS box). But the negative aspect of having every movement tracked is not one that those who revere our hard-won freedoms will like.

The reason, I suspect, why the Government is showing such an interest in road charging is that it gives the impression that they are doing something about congestion without actually doing anything. It will take many years for it to come into effect so, by the time anyone notices that nothing has been done, the present government will have been long gone. Fuel pricing, on the other hand, is very unpopular as has been shown in the past. To be really effective, the cost of petrol would have to be much higher than it is now and that would be political suicide. Like many things, such as nuclear power, the Government is going for the easy option rather than the effective one.

How to turn Britain into a democracy

2006-11-23T08:42:00.000Z

I don’t vote in elections any longer. I used to. For years, up until Tony Blair’s first victory, I voted regularly. General elections, local elections, European elections: I voted wherever I could. But I was younger then and more naïve. I believed that elections made a difference. I believed politicians. I believed Tony Blair. I was fooled for the last time.

But it isn’t a good thing for any country when people become disillusioned with politics. If voting is left to the minority who ‘always do it’, then the status quo will continue. The necessary changes for our future will no happen until it is too late.

Below are the things that I would do to re-energise politics in Britain, to make us into a true democracy. I can’t imagine many, if any, of them happening – the existing main parties prefer the present system because it is so undemocratic. While they are in opposition they may not be happy but they know that, at some time the wheel will turn around and they will be the party with the fraudulently massive majority.

First of all, many (maybe most) people in the country effectively have no vote. Yes, they can troop down to the polling station and drop their cards into the ballot boxes but, really, those cards may as well be blank. If you live in a ‘safe seat’, a constituency where the main MP is guaranteed to win, then your vote, whether it is for him or another, is wasted. If you live somewhere where there are two main parties, voting for anyone else is a waste. And if you want to vote for a minor party like the Greens or the BNP (hey, that’s freedom), unless you are very, very lucky, you may as well stay at home. Consequently I would bring in some form of PR (proportional representation). It doesn’t have to mean weak, indecisive governments: there are many different forms of PR. The advantages would be: representation for minor views; fewer extreme governments with massive majorities; and every vote becomes meaningful.

Secondly, I would make the second chamber (the House of Lords) completely elected. That is the principle of democracy after all. To prevent it just becoming a facsimile of the first chamber, I would remove the party system there so that people were elected as individuals. That way a single person could stand and different views would become more important.

Then, to prevent the Government fixing the election by choosing the most advantageous date, it would have fixed term, say four years like the USA. If that is unfortunate politically, well so be it. The Government makes the laws and decides the progress of its tenure. The second chamber would be elected halfway between the first chamber’s elections so that the two houses would be unlikely to end up with similar make-ups (which might happen if they were elected on the same day). After two years of the Government, if people were displeased by their performance, they could vote in a second chamber which would oppose them. If they were happy with the Government, they could elect a second chamber which would assist them.

Naturally I would get rid of the monarchy which has no place in a modern democracy. She could remain on as a symbolic figure if people wished, but the people must have the ability to throw out a leader that they do not like. And if, you say, the Queen has no power, then what is she doing there? We can’t get rid of the Prime Minister except by removing the Government so it’s take it or leave it at the moment. Accept the party’s leader as Prime Minister or vote for another party which you may not like. We need an elected president.

Elections every two years may seem extreme, especially when you see the low turnout at our present four to five year elections, but that low turnout is due to disillusionment. If people’s votes actually counted, we would be more inclined to vote so turnout would be higher. If we brought in Internet and postal voting, it would be easier anyway. We could always make it a five-year term if necessary.

And what of compulsory voting? No. Never. Over my dead body. First, it’s undemocratic – it goes against the principle of freedom to vote. The right to follow a religion must include the right not to follow a religion. The right to free speech also encompasses the right to silence. So the right to vote must have the right not to vote. (You may say you could always vote for ‘No preferred choice’. Well what’s the point of that? Should atheists have to march to a church on a Sunday just so that they turn around at the door and come home?) Secondly it disguises the apathy and disillusionment that exists. If people are not voting, then we should ask why, not try and mask it with forced votes. And third, voting should be left to those who want to vote. If you’re interested enough to make the effort to vote, you will have taken some time to decide who you want to vote for. If you are voting because you must, then you are probably just going to tick the first box you see. Do we want an extremist candidate elected just because he was first on the voting form? Everybody should have the right to vote, but voting should be confined to those who have an interest in doing so.

Why make it expensive to shut the stable door?

2006-11-20T08:38:00.000Z

Recently I had the misfortune to go to the dentist for a check-up and minor treatment. A few years back, dental treatment in Britain was subsidised by the NHS but it has now effectively become private. That means the costs to me of a check-up, clean-up and a couple of fillings came to over £200. The result now, naturally, is that I am disinclined to return in six months time for the standard check; I shall probably leave it to ten months or a year, and skip the clean-up at the time.

If you ignore the financial effects for the moment, this would seem to be a bad move. The longer I leave it between checks, the more likely that I will pick up some cavity or other problem in the interval. If dental treatment was free, or at least subsidised, I would be more disposed to have regular check-ups and catch the problems before a potential filling can grow into a potential extraction.

The situation is similar, though worse, with optical checks. As I have always worn spectacles, I am used to regular eye checks and know that they are far more useful than just finding out that you might need to wear glasses or need new ones. Optical checks can also find many diseases unrelated to eyesight. And yet a check will cost you around £25 or more.

Why is it that teeth and eye checks are not free, paid for by the NHS (admittedly through our taxes)? I can’t imagine that they are that expensive. All you are paying for is an hour or so of the dentist or optician’s time, not materials or treatment. It shouldn’t be that prohibitive for the Government. Cuba has one of the best health services in the world and a significant reason for that is that they concentrate on catching problems before they get too bad. If I was Prime Minister (perish the thought), one thing I would do is to bring in free dental, eye and general check-ups on a regular basis, maybe encouraging people to have them by making subsequent treatment cheaper. You would catch so many diseases and problems in advance, and save the NHS a great deal of money by nipping them in the bud. And yet recent governments have removed the subsidies on check-ups with the result that potential problems are not caught until they have become major problems with the resultant increased costs to the NHS. It’s madness. It’s so simple a step and yet no politician seems to have thought of it, or they have and they dismissed it. Maybe that’s why politicians are so reviled.

Beating our Saabs into Car-shares

2006-11-16T08:34:00.000Z

Recently there has been a running report on BBC News about the possibility of road charging – taxing people on the amount of driving they do in response to increased road congestion and carbon emissions. The intention of road charging, of course, is to get people to leave their cars and take to public transport – a laudable objective indeed. Not unnaturally, the people they followed complained that they couldn’t possibly give up their cars and vans; whatever other people did, they would have to stick to their tin boxes.

My first reaction was, equally naturally, to think “They would say that, wouldn’t they.” Nobody wants to give up their cars and my feeling was that these people were really saying “I could give it up but I’m too damn lazy and selfish to do so.”

But a little thought (always worth considering) changed my view. These people really would find it difficult to switch from private transport to public. One was a rep who drove around all day, meeting clients. Unless he happened to live in somewhere like London with a good transport infrastructure, how would a rep get to people who live many miles apart, even assuming he doesn’t have to carry much more than a briefcase?

Of course, there are plenty of examples of selfish car use such as the school run when the children actually live just a bike ride or bus ride away. I am guilty of making my own share of journeys where I could use alternative transport. But there are many cases where the car is not only the easiest choice but often the only.

On the BBC a few weeks back, there was a series about an ordinary woman becoming Prime Minister – “The Amazing Mrs Pritchard”. Being an ‘ordinary woman’, she came up with some radical ideas, one of which was a “Green Wednesday” when nobody, with a few exceptions, would be allowed to use their cars. All must use public transport. Apart from the fact that this measure was instigated in a week, I began to wonder just how feasible it would be.

The fact is really that we haven’t just become selfish and lazy (although there is a certain amount of that) but that our lifestyles have evolved to the new freedom of travel. The rep as we now know him did not exist a hundred years ago – he simply couldn’t have done the job. We created fast personal transport and that created the rep’s profession; the rep didn’t simply change to using that fast personal transport. In the past, companies would have kept all their jobs local so that customers and businesses could easily visit each other by foot or horseback. Longer dealings would have been left for rare, major transactions. It is the same with commuters. People would not have lived fifty miles from their workplace and commuted everyday because it would have been simply impossible. If you needed to travel a long distance for a job, you would have stayed for a week or more within easy commuting distance.

So I can see a real problem with the green desire to get people out of their cars through taxes and increased public transport. We have to do more than that; we have to change our whole society. Reps would either have to stick to local customers or change to non-physical interactions such as the Internet. Commuters would have to move closer to work or take out temporary lodgings nearby during the week. Apart from the cost of such actions, I suspect it will be very difficult to make such transformations in the short time left before peak oil hits.

Greetings

2006-11-15T09:08:00.000Z

Welcome to "Wolf Thoughts", my location for any musings on life, the universe and peak oil which are unsuitable for posting on "Wolf at the Door". This will generally be because they are too short, too vague or just unrelated to peak oil (sometimes I just have to write things down - it's cathartic.).