PowerSwitch

Major UK Peak Oil Study available to download: http://www.bristol.gov.uk/ccm/content/E ... -report.en

The report is OK but is pretty wishy washy on it's recommendations.

Flaws are:

* It assumes that the city council has control over businesses to make them more local. They do not.

* It assumes that the "solution" to people travelling to work is to make them travel less.

* It copies certain flaws from dieoff.org verbatim. For example: It takes 10 calories of fossil fuel to make one calory of food.

* It repeats the misleading quote from dieoff.org that "electricity is not an energy source, it's an energy carrier". Without realising that electricity carries energy from that large round energy source in the sky and that other large energy source that blows rain in your face on a monday morning.

* They fail to take into account that it's not distance travelled that's important when mitigating fuel shortages, it's fuel efficiency and thus a salad that travels 3000 miles but only uses 1/100th of a gallon per pound is more fuel efficient than a salad that travels 100 miles and uses 1/50th of a gallon.

* They repeated the flawed statement that our financial system depends on "growth" and that once "growth" becomes "impossible" post peak that the system will collapse.

* They assume that a centralised government is going to have money, which is illogical if it is assumed the economy is going to collapse due to "growth" being "impossible".


That said, some of the recommendations were not bad.
It's a good thing they don't have joined up thinking since if electricity was only an energy carrier and we're going to run out of the only viable source of energy "oil" then electrifying transport won't work.

Luckily, they haven't figured out the gap in their logic and are recommending electrification of rail links, light rail and tram lines as well as electrification of the taxi fleet.
All of which are great ideas.

They should go further:
Instead of trying to impose on the external world a bunch of poorly thought through ideas based on flawed assumptions from dieoff.org they should try to get their own house in order first.

1. They should replace the council lorry fleet with a fleet of electric lorries which are made in britain by modec or smith electric vehicles.
2. They should replace the council car fleet with a fleet of think city electric vehicles made in norway.
3. Buses should either be replaced by electric buses or replaced by trams
4. Ambulances and police cars should likewise be replaced by electric vehicles.
5. Recharging points for the council fleet of electric vehicles should be installed at all government buildings.
6. They should insulate to the extreme every school and council building in the city.
7. They should source electricity for the council buildings and public buildings from renewable sources

If all of these things are done, the government services will still be able to run and people will still be able to get to work.

Supermarkets and businesses etc will take care of themselves.

a salad that travels 3000 miles but only uses 1/100th of a gallon per pound is more fuel efficient than a salad that travels 100 miles and uses 1/50th of a gallon.

I've heard of the Flying Spaghetti Monster but why would a salad need to fly? Ours comes from the back garden.

It's easy to nit-pick but I thought it interesting that a Local Authority had its name on a document marked "Peak Oil".

biffvernon wrote:

a salad that travels 3000 miles but only uses 1/100th of a gallon per pound is more fuel efficient than a salad that travels 100 miles and uses 1/50th of a gallon.

I've heard of the Flying Spaghetti Monster but why would a salad need to fly? Ours comes from the back garden.

The flaw in your logic is: You have a back garden.

It's easy to nit-pick but I thought it interesting that a Local Authority had its name on a document marked "Peak Oil".

Well that's true. It's a start.
My point is though, since they have clearly gone to some effort to produce this report, they ought to have got it right.

It's not an F, more like a B but they could have done better.

My point is though, since they have clearly gone to some effort to produce this report, they ought to have got it right.

It doesn't matter.

Social progress is made through the AGGREGATE actions of many groups & individuals.

The end result of several hundred Peak Oil actions, policies, reports etc WILL move us in the right direction ... even if NONE of the reports etc are 100% accurate.

That's how life works.

I have found that about the only time where human endeavour MUST be right is in the field of safety critical software, such as that used to control nuclear reactors or aircraft systems. Such software costs a FORTUNE in time and money to develop.

Humans don't 'do' perfection ... we prefer averages, trends and iterations.

Yes, I think that's very true, Vortex. It's the easy nit-picking that leads to the divisions of Life of Brian ilk. Infighting between people who are really on the same side. We should be more ready to accept the 'about right'.

fifthcolumn wrote: * They repeated the flawed statement that our financial system depends on "growth" and that once "growth" becomes "impossible" post peak that the system will collapse.

Umm, sorry to go off topic here, but my understanding is that to service the debt we require growth. If we don't have growth, we won't service the debt - the interest. The financial system will thus fail. Which part of this is flawed?

snow hope wrote:Umm, sorry to go off topic here, but my understanding is that to service the debt we require growth. If we don't have growth, we won't service the debt - the interest. The financial system will thus fail. Which part of this is flawed?

Currently we need at least £60bn per year just to pay back debt interest, but I suspect that'll go up and up. Only today we learned that the Treasury will be backing up £270bn of dodgy RBS loans PLUS pour in up to £19bn of extra capital into that wretched bank.

Also - the entire credit system seems to rely on growth. Borrow now, pay back more later.

[quote="biffvernon"]

Quintus wrote:

snow hope wrote:Umm, sorry to go off topic here, but my understanding is that to service the debt we require growth. If we don't have growth, we won't service the debt - the interest. The financial system will thus fail. Which part of this is flawed?

Currently we need at least £60bn per year just to pay back debt interest, but I suspect that'll go up and up. Only today we learned that the Treasury will be backing up £270bn of dodgy RBS loans PLUS pour in up to £19bn of extra capital into that wretched bank.

Also - the entire credit system seems to rely on growth. Borrow now, pay back more later.

Maybe what fifth is saying is that its not necessarily economic growth that is needed to service the debt + interest, its money supply growth?

This obviously has other implications, but thinking about it, it sounds possible? (eg printing money in effect - but it will eventually lead to currency and inflation issues!)

RGR wrote:similar to either the Portland Plan, or the San Francisco plan, I forget which.

Portland. Did you get as far as the appendix, where the Portland Plan is reproduced? From this distance, Portland appears one of the nicer places in the USA. (The original in Dorset, England, is, of course, even nicer.)

Totally_Baffled wrote:Maybe what fifth is saying is that its not necessarily economic growth that is needed to service the debt + interest, its money supply growth?

However, if (most) money is created as debt/credit, then I don't think that increasing the money supply will deal with the debt,


Peter.

snow hope wrote:Umm, sorry to go off topic here, but my understanding is that to service the debt we require growth. If we don't have growth, we won't service the debt - the interest. The financial system will thus fail. Which part of this is flawed?

That the debt will be serviced.
Go and read some finanical hisotry.
You'll find that the debt getting serviced isn't a foregone conclusion.

Here's how it works:
The government says: Give me some cash. Here are some bits of paper saying I promise to pay you back your principal and a bit of interest. Do you want to buy some?

The market can say nay or yea.

If the market says nay the government can do other things. It can print. It can make a new offer, it can cut expenditure.

If the market says yea, the government can ultimately renege (convert the debt to zero coupon non-redeemable bonds) or else it can inflate or else it can renegotiate or else it can simply default.

History is chock full of ways how governments don't pay debts back. Likewise the private markets.

I've never understood why otherwise intelligent people who believe in peak oil don't understand that the markets are NOT predicated on growth. They're predicated on risk and reward. The risk is not ALWAYS rewarded and in fact, there are generally speaking more losers than winners.

It's a gigantic scam like Vegas. The house always wins. And the house is the big investment banks who make money whether you win or lose.

The whole argument that the finanical system is based on growth is bunkum.

The *only* part of the limits to growth thing that's accurate is the idea that you can't have infinite <i>resource usage</i> growth on a finite planet and even that tells you nothing without answering the question of "how much stuff is there" and "how much are we using"

But continue believing what you want.

Blue Peter wrote: However, if (most) money is created as debt/credit, then I don't think that increasing the money supply will deal with the debt,

Yes the debt will eventually become unmanageable.
So what happens then?
The rich pull their money OUT of the unstable currency and move it to a more stable currency (i.e. one with less debt or at least the ability to manage the debt).
The currency then collapses, the government and the private sector go broke.
Period of chaos.
New currency created. Interrim government forms.
Stuff is bought up cheap by the rich with their other currency horde and the debt is renegotiated in the new, cheaper currency.

THEN the whole cycle starts again.