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Post by Jane in the centre of England on Sept 4, 2022 10:46:01 GMT
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Post by Sigurdur on Sept 4, 2022 12:27:13 GMT
Politics
In the US, Pedophile Joe canceled permits for a major oil pipeline.
Blackrock, which has a lot of money, won't invest in oil companies
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Post by Jane in the centre of England on Sept 4, 2022 13:04:33 GMT
Does that mean you think Gail Tverberg is essentially correct when she says "The real story is that we are already running short of oil, coal and natural gas because the direct and indirect costs of extraction are reaching a point where the selling price of food and other basic necessities needs to be unacceptably high to make the overall economic system work"? Or do you see other factors at play? I read plenty of conspiracy theories blaming the greedy profit-takers, but that doesn't stack up to me.
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Post by Sigurdur on Sept 4, 2022 13:16:59 GMT
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Post by Sigurdur on Sept 4, 2022 13:19:00 GMT
Does that mean you think Gail Tverberg is essentially correct when she says "The real story is that we are already running short of oil, coal and natural gas because the direct and indirect costs of extraction are reaching a point where the selling price of food and other basic necessities needs to be unacceptably high to make the overall economic system work"? Or do you see other factors at play? I read plenty of conspiracy theories blaming the greedy profit-takers, but that doesn't stack up to me. The cost of extraction hasn't risen dramatically. The government responses in the west have made it difficult to extract.
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Post by walnut on Sept 4, 2022 13:55:03 GMT
I favor the idea of some conservation, just not for the sake of fictitious climate change. There is a finite amount of oil and even gas in the ground, and we'd better use it carefully. Look at Europe. Even given whatever geopolitical reasons may be impacting, the fact remains that they have an energy crisis this winter. This will not be the last geopolitical crisis Europe faces. They already cannot economically supply their own needs.
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Post by missouriboy on Sept 4, 2022 17:53:03 GMT
The majority of homes in the urbanized areas of US Midwest are heated by natural gas. Since heat pumps were introduced, these have become widely used in combination with natural gas. The electric heat pump provides the heating and cooling load. Heating down to about freezing, which is then supplemented by the natural gas furnace. Before I was born, my parents house was heated by coal. My mother told me that one of the happiest days off her life was when most people in the neighborhood switched to natural gas. BECAUSE she could hang the clothes out to dry (no dryers back then) without them being covered in black soot from the coal burners. My mother was a practical woman.
If heat pumps (or their equivalent) can ever cheaply utilize ground source heat, the winter natural gas supplement could be cut back or eliminated. Current geothermal heating/cooling systems still seem to have a heat dispersal problem in the summer cooling mode. The bedrock heat transfer is slower than the waste heat feed. For new construction, passive solar heating designs work on properly oriented lots in the right climate. Passive storage is usually "mass" materials built into the design with channels for passive or active air flow which transfers solar energy into storage for later use. Saw many of these constructed in Flagstaff, AZ that worked very well. Takes a long time to replace a country's housing stock.
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Post by walnut on Sept 4, 2022 18:05:41 GMT
The majority of homes in the urbanized areas of US Midwest are heated by natural gas. Since heat pumps were introduced, these have become widely used in combination with natural gas. The electric heat pump provides the heating and cooling load. Heating down to about freezing, which is then supplemented by the natural gas furnace. Before I was born, my parents house was heated by coal. My mother told me that one of the happiest days off her life was when most people in the neighborhood switched to natural gas. BECAUSE she could hang the clothes out to dry (no dryers back then) without them being covered in black soot from the coal burners. My mother was a practical woman.
If heat pumps (or their equivalent) can ever cheaply utilize ground source heat, the winter natural gas supplement could be cut back or eliminated. Current geothermal heating/cooling systems still seem to have a heat dispersal problem in the summer cooling mode. The bedrock heat transfer is slower the waste heat feed.
Yes, I'm not longing to revisit Dickens London. But I know that we had better try to conserve fossil fuels, until we prove that we can make work and safely manage some type of fusion or fission.
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Post by missouriboy on Sept 4, 2022 18:18:18 GMT
The majority of homes in the urbanized areas of US Midwest are heated by natural gas. Since heat pumps were introduced, these have become widely used in combination with natural gas. The electric heat pump provides the heating and cooling load. Heating down to about freezing, which is then supplemented by the natural gas furnace. Before I was born, my parents house was heated by coal. My mother told me that one of the happiest days off her life was when most people in the neighborhood switched to natural gas. BECAUSE she could hang the clothes out to dry (no dryers back then) without them being covered in black soot from the coal burners. My mother was a practical woman.
If heat pumps (or their equivalent) can ever cheaply utilize ground source heat, the winter natural gas supplement could be cut back or eliminated. Current geothermal heating/cooling systems still seem to have a heat dispersal problem in the summer cooling mode. The bedrock heat transfer is slower the waste heat feed.
Yes, I'm not longing to revisit Dickens London. But I know that we had better try to conserve fossil fuels, until we prove that we can make work and safely manage some type of fusion or fission. There are reasons that our ancestors lived in caves, when they could find them. We now have the technology to construct more energy-efficient, modern caves. Could even run goats to keep the grass on the roof trimmed. I have seen some of these in operation, and they are pretty efficient if properly constructed. But it takes a long time to change over a country's housing stock. In Europe, some basic exteriors are hundreds of years old.
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Post by missouriboy on Sept 4, 2022 18:33:55 GMT
WE (US) are largely a wood-built civilization ... because we had lots of it ... and it was cheaper to construct. In Europe, the ancestors had used all the wood ... and the rest was owned by the nobility. We CAN build very efficient, modern caves ... but you need properly-oriented TOPOGRAPHY. Hard to build a cave in a swamp. I like my stick-built home on a concrete daylight basement. It is light and airey ... but it is an energy hog even with good insulation. Take the modern daylight basement design and move it down one story with lots of mass in the design. But that mass costs money.
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Post by walnut on Sept 4, 2022 18:54:58 GMT
WE (US) are largely a wood-built civilization ... because we had lots of it ... and it was cheaper to construct. In Europe, the ancestors had used all the wood ... and the rest was owned by the nobility. We CAN build very efficient, modern caves ... but you need properly-oriented TOPOGRAPHY. Hard to build a cave in a swamp. I like my stick-built home on a concrete daylight basement. It is light and airey ... but it is an energy hog even with good insulation. Take the modern daylight basement design and move it down one story with lots of mass in the design. But that mass costs money. I think I have mentioned that my uncle built a nice underground house near Marble, AR. The area has appropriate topography. After you get used to *no windows* in most of the house, it just feels like a house. A little cave-like. Not sure I'd like it. But very efficient.
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Post by missouriboy on Sept 4, 2022 18:57:38 GMT
Can't say whether there is consensus, but the cost of extraction would be partially controlled (more for some less for others) by electricity costs... which are more or less a function of whether we figure out that most "renewables" don't work for baseload production and nuclear does. If we start talking about the "overall economic system" we also need to have a serious conversation about what percentage of the population does useful (productive) work.
In one of Heinlein's books he commented that "wherever there is power and mass to manipulate, man can live". He was of course something of an optimist but he wasn't far off. Of course he wasn't enough of a fool to say "... man WILL live..." His comment about stupidity being a death sentence may have been meant for the individual but I think it is actually true of society overall.
My mother's half-brother served with General Patton's 3rd Army in WWII. He would rarely talk about his experiences. But I remember him once talking about their liberation of one of the concentration camps (I think it was Buchenwald). They captured many of the camp guards. He said that the American soldiers wanted to turn them over to the inmates for "the proper dispensing of justice". They were not happy that they were restrained from doing so. I think they may have had something in mind like that which happened at Dachau. "War is all Hell." (W.T. Sherman)
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Post by missouriboy on Sept 4, 2022 21:03:01 GMT
Natural Gas Prices by State
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Post by walnut on Sept 5, 2022 0:00:08 GMT
Natural Gas Prices by State
Is there a pattern?
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Post by missouriboy on Sept 5, 2022 0:15:57 GMT
Natural Gas Prices by State
Is there a pattern? Well Hawaii is way the hell out there. As for the other high States ... is it high taxes? Yet I notice Texas amongst them ... while OK is amongst the cheapest.
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