Dark Humor, the Sierra Club and Peak Oil

Do members of the Sierra Club get a kick out of dark humor? In a recent appeal they apparently enjoyed putting the following oil facts juxtaposed with the Sierra's appeal for contributions. I mean, read especially these amazing facts from their list:

HANDOUTS TO AMERICANS VERSUS BIG OIL

$30 million...Amount the top 10 oil companies spent on lobbying in 2005.

$80 billion...in subsidies and tax loopholes to the oil and gas and other polluting energy industries in the energy law signed in 2005. (Taxpayers for Common Sense – www.taxpayer.net)

$7 billion...Amount oil companies would gain over the next five years by avoiding royalty payments for Gulf oil and gas drilling, thanks to an obscure provision in the 2005 energy bill. The costs could soar to $28 billion. (New York Times, March 28, 2006)

$100...Amount some in Congress proposed giving to Americans in the form of a tax rebate later this summer.

Then the Sierra Club leadership 'appeals' for donations to the Sierra Club wanting to raise a few what.. millions, maybe only a couple... and how do they justify this raid on member pockets? They, in their hubris and delusions, think they're going to inspire a reversal in political will. What a joke! Look at the facts, their own facts. Just counting those 10 companies, $30million rolled into political coffers, think how much more followed. Face it please. The govt is bought and paid for and WILL NEVER get any political will to turn their backs on big business.

Government will only do what business wants. THE ONLY WAY TO GET WHAT WE WANT IS TO MAKE ANYTHING ELSE FINANCIALLY UNPLEASANT FOR BIG BUSINESS WHILE AT THE SAME TIME CUTTING OUR FINANCIAL SUPPORT FOR GOVT SO THAT THEY CANNOT PROVIDE BIG BUSINESS WHAT WE DENY TO BIG BUSINESS.

It's a fact of life!

Anything less is an exercise in futility, a waste, a self-imposed defeat.

The oil picture is an opportunity, but only if we keep the facts of life clearly in focus. Predictions of Peak Oil are looking pretty impressive compared to the Real World Performance, even with the impacts of embargos and Gulf Wars.

The big business interests have every intention of running the last drop of oil into our veins in order to extract the continuing flow of our funds and avoid the intellectual work and risk of dealing with the unpleasantness ahead. Then they plan to turn around and make us scapegoats and slaves when the oil picture is undeniable and our alternative is a dieoff. They're already trying to make us take the weight, claiming the american public should control their appetites -- unsaid is that industry should continue to draw their piece which btw is roughly 50% to 100% more than what we directly use. And their waste is unbelievably huge.

Big business fully intends to go on wolfing down profits to the detriment of the private individual by playing this petroleum card til the wells are dry. If we let them, we will witness the extremes of that detriment, as if now is not bad enough. All the while chasing our tails on useless agendas like the Sierra's, if we don't grasp the reality of government's perfidy, and act on it.

Meanwhile China, India and the rest are growing faster than we are, especially in population. How are they going to stem their demand? Collision ahead.

Eisenhower warned us about being so dependent of foreign oil, Carter started trying to get us off. Then the oil barons, here and abroad, went into high gear and brought us... (drum roll) cheap oil for a few years so we'd be hooked again. The Saudi oil barons not only accomplished that one, they are responsible for bankrupting Russia. Oil was a major export for the Russians, look in any old atlas. The Saudi cheap oil, undercut the Russian market and Saudi Aramco held them in that hammerlock for six years til there were so many shortages in Russia that the government could no longer continue its operations. Hence Glasnost, all economics, all designed to deal with the big powers.

After recent history, do you think the government will rise to the challenge. Not a chance.

There is a way to piece together a replacement energy system within the next 8-12 years, all finessed by our power as consumers but... the full plan gets to be heavy reading and pretty math stuff so we'll do the executive overview here and you can read the rest at your leisure. I've got the data accumulated at a website, have been discussing this plan with the members of the alternate energy group here in Cinci and will be doing presentations on the concept, first one was last Sunday to a group at the Mockbee galleries. The most urgent part is our basic role as consumers.

The car companies in the US have been making FFVs (flexible fuel vehicles) that will run on gas (which is now 85% gas and 15% ethanol), or on e85 (which is 85% ethanol and 15% gas) or on blends of those, for the last 10 years, that's right 10 YEARS. These FFVs were designed to reduce pollution and the wizards in govt made some phony concessions to environmentalists to require that fleets reduce their collective pollution -- at least on paper -- by buying some of these cars. The Sierra Club's quotas are such a waste, an invitation to weasels. This 'brilliant' government strategy resulted in the FFVs being widely dispersed in fleets everywhere. Of course with this distribution, there was no real market for the e85 they were to run on -- no market anywhere. So although by now there are about 4-5 million of them, the e85 stations are so few that the FFVs run mostly on gas and their enviro impact is nil. A few of the agricultural-states have tried to push their own fleets into using e85 but it wasn't until this year that any of us could get one of these, except as a used car, strictly luck, nor have most people ever heard of e85.

We could have all been driving these FFVs since they're well understood technology and we could have simply driven away from this oil mess. Now comes the opening for consumers, now that these FFVs are "supposed" to be available to the public beginning in 2006, anyone not wanting to throw away their car budget should refuse to buy anything but a diesel or an FFV. (Chrysler announced their plan just last month but the dealers here weren't told and have no clue, only internet readers monitoring these events have paid any attention.) Unless we spread the word that PEOPLE HAVE THIS CHOICE, no one will know and the car companies will pocket your new car money without improving anyone's chances of getting through this mess unscathed.

We simultaneously need to get those already existing FFVs into a limited area so then the e85 conversion can begin. Illinois is offering incentives to stations to clean out one of their tanks and offer e85. That's basically all it would take to provide the infrastructure. In fact, if we get into a real fix, like another embargo, it would be really useful to have the e85 stations around everywhere as well even before we have lots of FFVs, but let's save that 'wiggle room' for discussion IF something dire happens. (Note Illinois govt is interested because of the benefit to business in their state)

Meanwhile, know any good mechanic who likes to travel to fleet auctions? Taking FFVs from states-with-no-real-e85-stations to states-with-a real-e85-market would probably get a better price. Any other suggestions? This is not a waste of our efforts.

Every FFV running on e85 cuts their contribution to big oil's immoral profits by 82%, AND IF we refuse to buy any new cars but FFVs BUT we continue to replace our vehicles at about 10% of them per year, within 6 years we will have cut our cars' oil consumption in half. In 12 years we're free of the monsters in oil -- at least when we're driving.

The other part of the equation is a process called TDP (thermal de-polymerization) which has the ability to convert most of our waste into oil, everything carbon-based can be converted (which means no help with nuclear waste so until someone wants that stuff in their backyard the nukes have to go but that's covered in another part of the strategy). Sewage yes, old tires yes, turkey guts and cow brains yes, plastics yes, etc. All produce oil. The key is to have a consistent stream of waste, so the optimal arrangement is to have a suitable size TDP facility adjacent to a dedicated source, like a factory or a mall or the sewage plant or a junkyard, etc.

The volumes required to replace foreign oil, however, would require 30,000 such facilities and cost $600 billion. Those are big numbers so let's put them in perspective with appropriate sources of site and funding. Assuming we aren't limiting ourselves to agricultural waste, since industrial waste is 5 times as great, this would mean about 300 some in Ohio, with maybe 7 inside the Cincinnati loop. Not too bad.

On the funding side, US corporations have $ 500 billion in retained profits -- after paying shareholders -- FROM LAST YEAR ALONE, which they have not committed to investing in their operation's growth or improvement because they 'detect' a 'lack confidence' in consumers. Maybe they remember how they downsized huge numbers of those potential consumers as former employees, then stole their pensions later, in between getting caught in major corruption scandals and still try to induce us to risk more of the equity in our home on more shoddy merchandise.

Anyway they are sitting on this huge stash. Almost what's needed in just one year's retained earnings! Nor are other year's profits that much less, with the lowest in the last 5 years being at least 70% of this year's. Rationally, the funds invested would save them from spikes in their oil expenses due to foreign meddling (like an embargo, or unstable supplies due to terrorist activities, or maybe just another Katrina), would likely marginally increase their earnings (from oil income minus operating costs, instead of waste removal expense) and generate positive PR, not to mention that it has to be done eventually.

We're going to have to push them to move, any way we can. Suggestions, consumer pressure, stockholder lures, whatever. If the car companies get the message that we're serious about our demand for FFVs, maybe investors will shift their money -- and corporations will be forced to dance to our tune that much sooner.

The third piece is to get our homes using as much solar heating as we can so we can get free of the need for oil (and soon natural gas) to shelter our families from the cold. To make solar work in the midwest (the original solar designs are more viable elsewhere, but the midwest has been only recently developing refinements of solar that are more practical here) requires well insulated homes, and thermal storage to get through the sometimes 10-11 winter days of very little sun. This push for solar is not just a nicety anymore.

Nor are conservation tactics like setting the thermostat lower in winter (and higher in summer) and making adjustments in lifestyle to fit. The key at lower temps is to enjoy the season's treats of well-designed warm clothing, warm drinks, infra-red task lighting, more baking, radiant heat under your feet, warm bathing areas, etc... The principle is that a small allocation of energy to personal warmth makes the large allocation of energy for space heating an unnecessary waste and hence an opportunity to save.

The main change in thermal storage is insulated berms. Houses in the midwest should have berms. It's simply regionally appropriate. And in those berms we can store summer's heat, using way fewer solar collectors once the berm is insulated and designed for the purpose. That design is called PAHS -- passive annual heat storage.

Cars and heat are our biggest vulnerabilities and as consumers they're in our grasp.

There are a few more wrinkles to our plan but those are the big pieces. How many more of the wrinkles we will need -- and how soon -- will depend on when oil production can't keep up with growth in demand, as well as on how well we manage to twist arms to get FFVs and begin building TDP facilities.

What we do know is that we have to get as many families as we can to start figuring their way along this path -- FFVs, e85, TDP, conservation, solar and berms -- so we can get free of petroleum-based oil.

Oh, and if you did want to read through the details of the full picture, the first presentation is currently developing at Bergerac.TV assembled by the reader with the spreadsheet.