Oil and Population

[Mr. Fox]

http://www.resilience.org/stories/2014- ... simplicity

Excellent piece from the Druid on the process of collapse of complexity in society, and how voluntary simplicity can very quickly become involuntary drudgery.

Thanks, Ralph - interesting read.

I just wanted to point out that Tainter had a couple of other 'fundamental points' (which JMG almost repeats):

No complex society has ever 'voluntarily' de-complexified, as;

To do so requires even more energy.

[Potemkin Villager]

My car has been in the garage for week, firstly because a broken sensor failed to alert me to essential maintenance needed to prevent failure, and now because the replacement sensor is giving unreliable readings. This repair alone has more than offset the cost savings I have made over the least 3 years by buying a relatively high tech efficient vehicle .

Sincere commiserations Ralph.

Would you care to share with us what the "essential maintenance to prevent failure" was? Surely even high tech modern vehicles still have oil level dip sticks?

From the general tone of your postings on this thread things seem to be getting on top of you. I would seriously advise you to try and chill out a bit. If I was in such a mood, and could afford it, I would be on the first flight out for a few weeks in the sun preferably miles away from any internet connection.

Personally I have been avoiding getting too involved in this site any more as it is becoming increasingly unhealthy and dominated by a small number of rather boring bullies who have to be right about everything.

[PS_RalphW]

OK tale of car woe.

Modern diesels have diesel particulate filters as part of the exhaust system. These are catalytic converters which use a ceramic surface to burn off smoke particles in the hot exhaust gases. Good idea, if they work.

Unfortunately they only work when the engine is running at a steady 2000 rpm and above, otherwise the exhaust is not hot enough. Soot builds up in the filter. This then has to burnt off by deliberately running the car hot, again at a steady 2000 rpm or above, on a long journey. This happens automatically when needed , controlled by the engine control unit. But it doesn't tell you it needs to do this , it just waits until you go on a long journey.

Except we don't do many long journeys, and when we do I drive at 60mph, which equates to 1900 rpm, and again the exhaust is not hot enough, especially as the car has long gear ratios to keep rpm low.

So, when then the engine warning light comes on, intermittently, over a period, I persuade better half to take the car to the official service garage to get it checked. They do tests, reset the warning flag, and the light goes out. Charge us £80 and tell us to come back if it does it again.

Of course it does it again, first intermittently, then all the time. Then the auto stop/start function cuts out, then the car starts losing power intermittently as the turbo cuts out. Then I have to make an emergency 300 mile drive. Then I persuade the better half to take the car to garage again.

DPF is now trashed. Replacement only option. Also fit new sensor, which immediately reports a problem with the new DPF. The car has been in the garage over a week now, as they try to work out what to do next, and the bill keeps rising.

The cheap option that many people have been selecting is simply not replace the DPF, but that was recently made an automatic MOT fail. (as well as being bad for road pollution).

The bottom line is that small diesel engines do not make good urban cars.
Electric is much, much better.

[biffvernon]

Unfortunately they only work when the engine is running at a steady 2000 rpm and above, otherwise the exhaust is not hot enough.

That's a bit worrying. My car is a diesel Citroen C3. I very rarely and only momentarily have the engine running at 2000 rpm. Is there really such a correlation between engine speed and temperature? I had imagined that it was just a matter of time so most of my trips, which are over 10 miles (that's the nearest town), allow plenty of time to get hot enough.

[PS_RalphW]

A quick google found this

http://c4owners.org/plugins/faq/faq.php?0.cat.10.44

most newish diesels have them.

It looks like the Citroen uses a fuel additive to increase the exhaust gas temperature to make the catalyst work better, even at lower speeds.

I haven't found much in the way of complaints about citroen DPFs. Plenty about Skodas.

Efficiency comes at the cost of complexity. Skodas are cheap to buy but maybe cut one or two corners too many, resulting in more problems when people try to match the official mpg figures by adapting their driving style.

[Little John]

http://www.resilience.org/stories/2014- ... simplicity

Excellent piece from the Druid on the process of collapse of complexity in society, and how voluntary simplicity can very quickly become involuntary drudgery.

A neo-techno-peasant lifestyle is a as much of product of cheap energy as any modern lifestyle, and cutting wood by hand because you can't afford to repair the chainsaw is a game for the young and fit.

Cutting wood by hand to keep warm when you have an arthritic hip and kids scream for attention can take the shine off the illusion.

Whilst only mentioned in passing and whilst it is east enough to agree with the broader points made about complexity per-se, the author erroneously conflates the problems of complexity with state managed allocation of healthcare since such state management of healthcare (or, indeed, any kind of state management) may or may not be complex. In other words, he gives me the impression, behind his usual wall of verbiage, that he actually has a problem with the state......Any state. Beneath all of the back-to-nature greenery, how very archetypically American.

[Mr. Fox]

I'm not sure you really get what Greer/Tainter mean by 'complexity', Steve.

It's not quite the same as that used by Dana Meadows et al regarding 'complex systems'.

The term 'intermediation' used by Greer is a good one (perhaps an attempt to avoid such confusion).

In Tainter's view, a measure of the complexity of a given society could be gauged by counting the number of 'occupation codes' that you have to choose from when purchasing car insurance.

[Little John]

I'm not sure you really get what Greer/Tainter mean by 'complexity', Steve.

It's not quite the same as that used by Dana Meadows et al regarding 'complex systems'.

The term 'intermediation' used by Greer is a good one (perhaps an attempt to avoid such confusion).

In Tainter's view, a measure of the complexity of a given society could be gauged by counting the number of 'occupation codes' that you have to choose from when purchasing car insurance.

I do get it. I've read a number of pieces by Greer and, broadly speaking, he not only dismisses state organised structures such as social security systems and healthcare systems as being unsustainable (which, in terms of their current scope and level of complexity, I bound to agree with), he also goes so far as to suggest that their very existence as social structures is an inherent and fundamental part of the problem (which I most certainly do not agree with). That is to say, he has indicated in a number of articles I have read that he considers these social structures to be the unhealthy expression of a manifest dependency culture suckling on the teat of hydrocarbon-driven prosperity.

On the contrary, however, their existence is not the problem. It is a response to and and amelioration of another problem that pre-dates the hydrocarbon age and is as old as human civilisation itself. Namely, the relative poverty arising from an iniquitous allocation of that prosperity. To the extent that such poverty and wealth disparities persist and increase with the long descent that is now clearly in its early stages as evidenced by the political and social unrest raging around the world, these social structures are going to be needed more than ever, not less, albeit in a much cruder form to be sure. Without them you get Somalia. With them you get Cuba. I know which of these two worlds I want me and my descendants to live in.

Irrespective of the green-tinted, Celtic-esque wash and irrespective of whether or not Greer is prepared to acknowledge it to either himself or to others, his is a vision born of American socio-economic history no more or less than that of the Ayn-Randian neo-cons. Though, I am bound to speculate that the aspergers from which he suffers may also be playing at least some small part in his singular lack of empathy or understanding for the plight of the millions of poor living in his nation and how those social structures previously mentioned are all that is holding their difficult lives together. All of which is why I find his recent blog postings on his concerns about the rise of fascism in his country in the coming years so ironic. He clearly does not recognise the connection between his desire to see the end of these social structures and the risk of the very fascism such a demise will inevitably precipitate. Or, at least, will precipitate given the pre-existing and underlying every-man-for-himself culture of which he is fundamentally no less a proponent than those who he no doubt sees as batting for the other side.

[Potemkin Villager]

OK tale of car woe.

They do tests, reset the warning flag, and the light goes out. Charge us £80 and tell us to come back if it does it again.

Of course it does it again, first intermittently, then all the time. Then the auto stop/start function cuts out, then the car starts losing power intermittently as the turbo cuts out. Then I have to make an emergency 300 mile drive. Then I persuade the better half to take the car to garage again.

DPF is now trashed. Replacement only option. Also fit new sensor, which immediately reports a problem with the new DPF. The car has been in the garage over a week now, as they try to work out what to do next, and the bill keeps rising.

The cheap option that many people have been selecting is simply not replace the DPF, but that was recently made an automatic MOT fail. (as well as being bad for road pollution).
.

What a nightmare! I wonder if you have been unlucky enough to have bought a real lemon or this is just par for the course? It is because of this sort of thing, as well as the throwing away money depreciation issue, that I have never bought a new modern car when able to afford it.

Even our current 15 year old 1.25 petrol banger was a tad too modern for my liking with some sensor issues but has been running reasonably reliably until recently. One of the things it failed the last test on was emissions and now, no longer able to afford to buy our way out of trouble, we have been driving it illegally for a nearly a year until now able to cobble together £ 700 to move on to a ten year old banger.

This "new" car, I fear, will be even more "sophisticated" and develop even harder to diagnose ailmets than it's predecessor. However after ten years these may have worked their way out and even if it all goes tits up I will only be £700 down rather than £17,000 down....

[Little John]

I've been using ten year old or older Astra estates for the last ten years of so. They usually cost around 700 quid and last for about 4 years at a time. During my ownership of one, I can usually keep total repair costs below a thousand quid including standard replacement items such as tyres, brake shoes etc. When I'm finished with one, it goes off to the scrap yard where I get around 150 quid scrap value. So, excluding tax, insurance and fuel the cost of one of these cars per year to me is around 387 quid.

Given that these cars I own have the carbon footprint associated with their production and eventual recycling spread over two or more owners over a period of 15 or so years and, given their low cost to me to keep on the road, I reckon that not only are people like Potemkin Villager and me the thriftiest drivers on this board, we are probably also the greenest.

[Mr. Fox]

Isn't being the 'greenest driver' rather like being the 'cuddliest rapist'?

[Little John]

Isn't being the 'greenest driver' rather like being the 'cuddliest rapist'?

Yes because being a "greener" driver simply diminishes the damage, but does not stop it.

No, because a rapist has a choice whereas, for all practical purposes, an average person wishing to function in any meaningful way in a modern Western industrial society, insofar as driving is concerned, has little choice.

[vtsnowedin]

I've been using ten year old or older Astra estates for the last ten years of so. They usually cost around 700 quid and last for about 4 years at a time. During my ownership of one, I can usually keep total repair costs below a thousand quid including standard replacement items such as tyres, brake shoes etc. When I'm finished with one, it goes off to the scrap yard where I get around 150 quid scrap value. So, excluding tax, insurance and fuel the cost of one of these cars per year to me is around 387 quid.

What does that work out to in cost per mile driven?

[Little John]

I've been using ten year old or older Astra estates for the last ten years of so. They usually cost around 700 quid and last for about 4 years at a time. During my ownership of one, I can usually keep total repair costs below a thousand quid including standard replacement items such as tyres, brake shoes etc. When I'm finished with one, it goes off to the scrap yard where I get around 150 quid scrap value. So, excluding tax, insurance and fuel the cost of one of these cars per year to me is around 387 quid.

What does that work out to in cost per mile driven?

Well, I do an average of about 10,000 miles per year as I have to travel a bit with my work. On the basis of fuel costs alone, that comes to 3.87 pence per mile.

I guess I should add up all of my costs of capital, insurance, road tax and fuel. The fuel consumption is about 35mpg and petrol costs about 7 quid a gallon. I can't member the exact cost of tax, but I think it might be about 200 quid per year. Insurance is 300 quid per year. If I calculate them all up (including the up front and rolling capital costs) that comes to 2887 quid per year, the majority of which is obviously the cost of fuel

So total cost per mile is approximately 29 pence.

[vtsnowedin]

I've been using ten year old or older Astra estates for the last ten years of so. They usually cost around 700 quid and last for about 4 years at a time. During my ownership of one, I can usually keep total repair costs below a thousand quid including standard replacement items such as tyres, brake shoes etc. When I'm finished with one, it goes off to the scrap yard where I get around 150 quid scrap value. So, excluding tax, insurance and fuel the cost of one of these cars per year to me is around 387 quid.

What does that work out to in cost per mile driven?

Well, I do an average of about 10,000 miles per year as I have to travel a bit with my work. On the basis of fuel costs alone, that comes to 3.87 pence per mile.

I guess I should add up all of my costs of capital, insurance, road tax and fuel. The fuel consumption is about 35mpg and petrol costs about 7 quid a gallon. I can't member the exact cost of tax, but I think it might be about 200 quid per year. Insurance is 300 quid per year. If I calculate them all up (including the up front and rolling capital costs) that comes to 2887 quid per year, the majority of which is obviously the cost of fuel

So total cost per mile is approximately 29 pence.

Not bad at todays prices. Best rig I ever owned costwise was a 2WD chevy pickup I bought new in 1993. I drove it 270,00 miles for a final all cost considered price of 11 cents US$ per mile but gas was only $1.20/ gallon back then.