[goodcompanion]

I don’t understand what these knives are being attached to. A forecart? Is a sicklebar mower one option and these knives a second one?

[goodcompanion]

Sorry I won’t be able to attend in person after all. However please count on me for the conference call.

[goodcompanion]

@Tim Harrigan 23763 wrote:

I have done some work with dry bean harvest. You may be able to adapt a bean knife cutter for peas. Not sure though, I have never mechanically harvested peas, just garden peas.

How is a bean cutter knife different?

[goodcompanion]

My uncle hails from the finger lakes region of New York State and has taken upon himself the life mission of disabusing the world in general of any idealized vision of the Amish, or Mennonites for that matter. Just about any human failing you can imagine….same as anyone else I suppose.

Still, I would bet that they are quite a bit better at working as a team for the common good than we are. Just by necessity, since other secular-world options are more-or-less cut off to them. Art through adversity.

[goodcompanion]

@bivol 23617 wrote:

yes, alt fuels are more expensive but thats not the point. the point is to be able to keep the basic system running, like public transport, in a much narrower scale than today ofcourse, until something comes along.

alt fuels can’t replace oil, but can enable us to operate the most important stuff. lots of private cars not included.

so, yes, there will be concern for survival rather than profit and competition.
but, we’ve all historically done it – and successfully – so, at least we know it can be done. even if shifting “back” won’t be pleasant.

The problem I have with these solutions is that they are usually suggested not as a patch-through solution during very difficult times ahead, but rather as a reason that everything will all be okay, and that our lifestyles will be sustainable after all, and as an excuse for inaction. They are also usually suggested as something that “they” will figure out. I understand that that’s not your meaning, bivol. But even you say, “until something comes along.” Isn’t it possible that nothing will come along unless individuals like you and me bring it along?

Personally I have very little faith that the alternative fuel approaches, which are increasingly controlled by large bureaucracies and corporations, will have any positive lasting impact on our culture. And their implementation has real capacity for destruction.

[goodcompanion]

@Carl Russell 23601 wrote:

Below is a letter from SFC and Charles Capaldi.

I think it requires a fair amount of thought. I tend to think we have a lot more wind in our sails than they do, and for us to redirect our effort may not be in our best interests. I however do think we should take advantage of their response and make a conversation out of it. It certainly would be good for us to help SFC advance their cause, but I think we already have a network that could be used to the benefit of SFC, and not necessarily duplicate efforts.

Anyway, I think it deserves more thought and discussion, Carl

My reading of the letter is that SFC wants to (one day) have regional chapters throughout the U.S. and Canadian provinces. If they succeed in doing so and we elect not to be part of that then it would be hard not to be two organizations with overlapping agendas. Of course this is a big if.

One of the big reasons for reforming DAPNet was to have professional administrative staff. Imagining into the future, the national SFC staff and the regional DAPNet staff would probably find themselves doing a lot of the same things. That is if they succeed.

I would favor continuing our current course and adopting a wait-and-see approach to SFC. The future advantages are theoretical but potentially significant, the present disadvantages seem fairly obvious.

Carl, I’d agree they don’t have their legs under them yet. But they have an ambitious agenda and perhaps greater resources to carry it out than we do. It’s too early to say where their mission will be in a few years’ time.

[goodcompanion]

@bivol 23559 wrote:

as for ERNOI, i know at least two processes (gasification and F-T process) that have proven to work in ENROI, as i understand it.
F-T process was used for decades in SAR, because of oil embargo against the apartheid regime, and it worked well enough, cars had fuel.
ofcourse it won’t be able to satisfy all the current demands from people, but then again, does it need to? in a serious fuel shortage that could be a part of the soultion.
i was never claiming we could maintain the satus quo with alternative fuels, just that they could be used for necessary purposes.

second solution, gasification (wood gas) was used for at least 5 years. i know, in terms of a long-term, global solution, it isn’t one. but it can at least cut some distance, somewhere, to some people.

if fuel prices go up, people will have to change their habits or find a way around then (individuals driving on w-g, for ex).

what worries me the most id the energy available for production of basic foodstuffs. if we have that, we have the time to figure the rest and blunt the edges to any potential change for the worse.

It’s all possible. The core problem is that the alternative fuels that are cost-effective in terms of energy are pretty hard on the land. The ones that are not hard on the land are not cost-effective.

In France during a 19th century coal shortage the nation’s forests were converted to charcoal in desperation, and still haven’t recovered. I kind of feel that if we get similarly desperate for fuel that good forestry and farming will get short shrift.

And important to note that none of these things would take place in the context of the global marketplace as we now know it. So the priorities of resource managers would probably shift from profit to survival. Whether this is better or worse for the planet as a whole is anybody’s guess.

[goodcompanion]

@bivol 23548 wrote:

back to oil:
it’s true speculation is a problem, but there is a question to how much the prices will grow. because i remember when the prices hit the all out maximum here, the were speculations that now addional oil reserves were tapable.

1. they mentioned canada, and their oil deposits in sand, which was previously too expensive to extract, but with rising costs, it’s becoming more and more interesting.

2. also, new oil reserves will be uncovered up north as the polar ice retreats.

3. then, there is a process called the Fischer-Tropsch process, used to turn coal (or wood) in (synthetic) fuel. and world still has more than enough coal.
this tech is extensively used to produce oil in SAR, where they have large coal deposits, and were banned from oil imports.

4. on UCL they’re experimenting on using switch-grass rather than maize for ethanol production.

5. one could also use bamboo for fuel. bamboo is fast growing, up to 30 meters in first year, and gives 12 tonns of biomass per hectare per year, compared to 2-3 tons of biomass/year wood gives.

so i think there is still both enough oil and ways to produce it in world, and we won’t physically be deprived of it. price of it is another thing.

it will be interesting to see how much will the governments of capable countries (aka the West) let the prices soar and choke the economies before they attempt to regulate them.

The basic problem with oil is not that it would run out. Rather it is the concept of EROEI, or energy returned over energy invested. Regardless of how much money is spent producing energy and bringing it to market, if the amount of energy used doing so is more than the energy used then it cannot be done. For this reason there can never be a corn ethanol industry that uses corn ethanol power at every stage of production. Such a system would produce a little less or a little more than nothing, depending on whose analysis you read. The only reason we have such a system at all is because it is subsidized by cheaper fossil fuels, and through political manuvering on the part of the corn lobby.

Portable fuels used to be simply extracted from pools of oil lying on the surface of the earth or from “gushers.” 100 years ago the EROEI in the oil industry was 100 to 1 or more, it was so easy to get at oil. But now (OldKat, please correct me if I’m wrong) the EROEI is 2:1, and dropping. It will continue to drop as the more readily-accessible sources of energy that remain are depleted.

Of the various biofuel and coal-derived liquid fuels you mentioned, none approach the EROEI of the remaining oil and natural gas deposits and for this reason the energy giants have relatively little interest in them, whatever their PR departments might say on their full-page ads. It is simply impossible for their economists to conceive of a world in which their production will ever be viable on the scale that would be required to satiate demand.

If production cannot keep abreast of rising demand, prices rise rapidly and economic growth is choked off. Right now worldwide production is keeping pace with demand through ceaseless exploration and exploitation of projects that are small in scale, energy-intensive to carry out, risky in terms of human life and the environment, costly, remotely located, and so on. The easy projects have already been done.

The biofuel crops in particular have the added disadvantage of rapidly depleting soil carbon. Here in Middlebury VT we have a biofuel project involving willow, analogous to bamboo. It can only be extracted for about 5 years before yields diminish and the crop needs to be replanted and fertilizer applied. The long term impact of extracting biomass year after year and returning nothing to the soil other than chemical fertilizer (assuming this remains available and affordable into the future) is seldom considered by proponents of biofuels, even in an august academic community like Middlebury.

But bear in mind that these ideas are conjured up not as an extension of centuries-old subsistence farming systems. Cropping switchgrass or bamboo and shipping every stalk off the farm each year is no more related to sustainable farming than clear-cutting is related to sustainable logging. But as costs rise and people search with increasing desperation for some way out of the bind, I’m sure we will see no end to the biofuel discussion any time soon.

[goodcompanion]

@jac 23529 wrote:

Marshall this is only my opinion but I think “globalisation” is the downfall of this whole world economy and a crappy idea. We keep being told of “ecomomics of scale”… Well what do we do when a global market place isnt big enough to be economic ?? All we do is move round the world seeking out cheap places to build the things we need and then moan when the country in question wants a bigger slice of the cake.. this has the effect of lowering our spending power so we move to some place else leaving empty factories again. Unfortunately we are running out of places to exploit. How crass is it to have a coffee giant exporting coffee to us in the west when half the country is starving because of the mono culture of coffee leaves no room for actuall food !!
John

Right on. “Running out of places (and energy sources) to exploit” is the critical problem and the guarantee that the game is nearly over, at least with rules as we now understand them.

Unless you believe that we are on the verge of colonizing some other star system, and subjecting it to our species’ inability to deal with limitations.

[goodcompanion]

Buy local trends do give a leg up to the handful of small producers out there trying to make a go of it. Myself included. Very grateful for this trend, don’t get me wrong.

But consider: My county, Addison County VT is the statewide leader in sales of locally produced foods within the county. Vermont also leads this trend nationally so I assume that this is about as good as it gets in terms of local foods as a percentage of the overall food sector.

Local foods here represent about 3 % of all food sales. I don’t believe this will rise very much unless local foods become cost-competitive with conventional foods. Now we’re back to the beginning of the thread. This isn’t likely to occur through local producers dropping their prices so the only alternative is for the conventional goods to become much more expensive. And this development would entail great disruption and hardship for much of the 97% who depend on cheap food through the conventional food system, as well as extreme pressure on an inadequate number of local producers who are not prepared to meet demand.

Bottom line, I don’t think market forces are going to relocalize production in the context of the economic system we’re all familiar with. More likely that system will break, and we’ll all be left with pieces of it from which to build something different.

[goodcompanion]

@jac 23462 wrote:

Way I see it is that this “modern” banking system just doesnt work. 2 world wars have kept it going but now its failed…. 3 times on a large scale. When are the idiots that run the show going to get it thru their thick skulls that we need to change the system !? I am curious as to why China cant call in a debt ? We were in debt to the US for WW2 untill very recently so why is the US debt to China any different ? If you owe money you owe money… simple.. or least it is to me:D…
John

The main way the US debt is different is that it’s ongoing and growing, not a one-time static debt like Britain’s war debt. A debt like Britain’s a country can come to grips with eventually. Instead the US debt is the general cost of the american government and lifestyle over a decades, for which we have borrowed and must continue to borrow money from the chinese and others. Even if we were to stop borrowing the cost of interest on the existing debt would still be a huge burden that we could only rid ourselves of by having our economy grow faster than the interest.

The big fear on the part of the lenders is that the borrowing is consistently growing faster than growth in GDP–this suggests that the U.S. may never grow fast enough to be able to get control of it. Yet they are stuck, stuck financing our wars and medicare, and they have to keep lending money and we have to keep taking it or the game is over and everyone loses. Right now we are all still locked into this on the mutual lie that this can go on forever, because no-one can imagine how to get out of the present situation.

[goodcompanion]

@bivol 23447 wrote:

question: US has a strong economy, but also has a growing trade debt to china. so, wouldn’t depreciation of dollar also be a means to make that debt smaller, domestic export easier, and lessen the price of work in US?

because at the moment, if china would re-draw all the credit money from US financial sector, US financial system would almost collapse! or, it would SURELY colapse, only i know that the dollar will then be “re-set”, that is, re-made, and tied to the gold standard again, to ensure its stability.
ofcourse, china’s demand like that would bring tense relations, and that would effectively mean that china would have all its foreign reserve value wiped out in a moment, which would mean war.

There is no way China can recall American debt, as you say.

A weakening dollar does make American exports more affordable overseas and Chinese imports less affordable here. American debt held by China would be in the form of U.S. treasury bonds and yes those would be worth less, compared to other currencies. But since any theoretical repayment of American debt held by China would be also in dollars the decline in value is neither here nor there. The Treasury can repay by printing more money and issuing more bonds, but to overdo this invites further decline of the dollar. The best way to shore up value of the dollar is to demonstrate that the U.S. economy is growing at least as fast as the debt, in real terms. Now it seems unlikely that the U.S. will see a return to such rates of economic growth, yet the payments the treasury must make just to service the interest on our debt are constantly rising. The only way to win when you’re deeply in debt is to grow faster than the next country in the game, and the U.S. is stuck and likely to remain so. This is a time-bomb situation, particularly when you factor in the potential effects of rising energy prices.

In general as I understand it a weakening dollar is a symptom of declining worldwide confidence in the future stability of the dollar and the ability of the U.S. treasury to eventually make good on its obligations. But a collapsing dollar would signal a total loss of faith in the ability of the U.S. Treasury to repay debt in dollars or any other kind of currency, much as the Roman Empire became unable to procure sufficient silver to mint enough coin to pay its army (the coins became smaller, made out of ever-more-inferior metals, and finally became worthless) This would entail the collapse in value of all American obligations, and since these obligations stabilize the entire worldwide financial system and the foreign reserves of most countries, this would basically be the end of the global economy as we know it, which would be no fun for us and no fun for China either.

Probably some kind of war would follow but how any country would be in any shape to finance it is hard to imagine. Nobody wants a collapse in the dollar to happen. China and the U.S. are locked into a kind of lover’s death embrace (or something), and are both committed to keep the game going as long as possible with hopes that rapid growth will save the day for the U.S. sooner or later. Wall Street seems pretty peppy about this prospect. How about you?

[goodcompanion]

@OldKat 23381 wrote:

I disagree with the concept that the markets are no longer driven by supply and demand, but rather by the speculation of supply and demand. There is simply no basis for this idea. The energy markets are an EXTREMELY efficient set of markets; there is virtually NOTHING of any significance that happens to the supply side or the demand side that isn’t factored into pricing almost immediately. Is this speculation? No, it is market intelligence pure and simple. At one time I worked on the trading floor of what was then the largest producer and marketer of natural gas in the country. I had a portolio of supply to manage, almost entirely in the GOM (Gulf of Mexico). I use to watch the markets chase natural gas prices up and down & got really interested in what kind of change in supply it took to generate a strong upward or downward price tic. I assumed that it would probably take a shortfall or an oversupply of something on the order of 15 to 20% to see prices move. After about 2 or 3 years of closely monitoring this situation I came up with another number. Guess what? It was closer to 2.5 to 3%. With that in mind, there is NO WAY every American driver could swear off gasoline without sharply impacted the price. Of course there is also NO WAY every American is going to forgo gasoline. The good news is that if we each reduced our fuel use by 10% or so we could dramatically impact crude prices, which would impact gasoline prices in turn. Why, because the US is such a large consumer of the stuff that a 10% reduction in use would translate into a sizeable reduction in the worldwide demand.

Interesting inside perspective. I remember when gas was pushing $4 the scapegoat was “speculation.” The media and the public found it easier to blame speculators and even gas station operators rather than face the fact that in this case market forces were doing exactly what they are supposed to. But in the face of popular anger, even Bush was supposedly considering measures to curb “speculation” in the oil sector! Seemed to me at the time that it was just too many buyers competing for a limited supply of product, no matter how I looked at it.

[goodcompanion]

Excellent news. Let me know if you need a website set up!

[goodcompanion]

Well, this is starting to read like a Peak Oil forum! Bundles of cheer, all of us….

But I would hope that there is a fundemental difference between this conversation and your basic “doomer” conversation: that however great the challenges, that animal power practitioners have something to do in these times for the betterment of the land and our fellow humans. For most people, most of the psychic shock in a crisis seems to come as , “This can’t be happening. What do I do now?”

I am grateful that I have something to do.

[Author]

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