Update on Peak Oil

vtsnowedin · Post by **vtsnowedin** » 13 Mar 2019, 12:24

Oh I did not miss the point. I only took a slight issue with it. All the EROEI argument is well worn and the present industry over all rate is somewhere above 6:1 depending on who's figures you believe which is good enough for quite sometime into the future.
Debt being another issue and not confined to the energy industry as I think government debt issued to cover non productive payments is of higher concern then oil depletion.
But if you confine it to oil industry debt if the probability of repayment falls to less then say 50-50 then no new loans will be offered to the industry which would put those companies with producing fields into complete control of prices which will then rise sufficiently for them to continue capX expenditures out of their own working cash flow which they will spend very wisely.

Post by **kenneal - lagger** » 13 Mar 2019, 14:45

For much of the period that we have been exploiting oil the EROEI has been approaching 100 not the six that VT quotes above. That is a huge difference and is the difference between the prosperity of the 50s when a woman could afford to stay at home and look after the kids and now when a woman can just about afford to take maternity leave before returning to the grindstone to pay off the mortgage.

Hall and Klittegard in Energy And The Wealth Of Nations say that the minimum EROEI that the economy can run on is five so we haven't got much time left before collapse occurs.

EROEI and Energy Cost of Energy are just two names for the same concept. The two separate terms just come from groups of academics slogging it out for bragging rights on the theory. Nett energy is another term for the same thing and many mainstream economists have no concept of the idea as I found out from a former economic adviser to the Labour Party at a conference of the Centre for The Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP). The gentleman couldn't understand that the almost unlimited energy of the sun hitting the earth couldn't all be used at no cost. He had no understanding of the amount of energy that had to be expended to capture the sun's energy! Economists!! No wonder we are in this mess.

vtsnowedin · Post by **vtsnowedin** » 13 Mar 2019, 16:55

kenneal - lagger wrote:For much of the period that we have been exploiting oil the EROEI has been approaching 100 not the six that VT quotes above. That is a huge difference and is the difference between the prosperity of the 50s when a woman could afford to stay at home and look after the kids and now when a woman can just about afford to take maternity leave before returning to the grindstone to pay off the mortgage....
.....

I think we have lost perspective about the lifestyle of the fifties and sixties as well as the economics of a stay at home wife. When you add up all the tasks she performed for the family and the cost to have them done by others they were providing a full half to the families well being. Think about hiring one person that is twenty four hour seven day a week, cook, house keeper, day and night child care provider, wet nurse, laundress, budgeter, shopper, nutritionist, nurse, gardener and perhaps even lawn mower, In rural areas there would also often be a chicken coop and a pig pen to look after except for butchering day.
Also the family was not paying the mortgage on a two car garage 2500 square foot McMansion along with the payments to two SUVs two cell phones and a satellite TV but instead had a 1200 three bedroom house on 1/10 acre with another just like it twenty feet on either side.
You would cry like a baby if forced to live as they did while they considered it a great improvement over what their parents endured during the depression and the wartime years.

Vortex2 · Post by **Vortex2** » 13 Mar 2019, 18:18

a 1200 three bedroom house on 1/10 acre with another just like it twenty feet on either side.

New UK houses are still like that - but smaller.

Post by **kenneal - lagger** » 14 Mar 2019, 15:30

Vortex2 wrote:
a 1200 three bedroom house on 1/10 acre with another just like it twenty feet on either side.
New UK houses are still like that - but smaller.

The UK ones are probably brick built or skinned so are a bit better sound insulated and a lot more fire proof.

Post by **kenneal - lagger** » 14 Mar 2019, 15:35

And don't forget the "go to work wife" is still probably doing all the housework as well as going to work. Now the kids are farmed out either to grandparents or to after school clubs or similar while the wife works. The travellator of life just keeps us running faster and faster while the Kleptocracy gets richer and richer. And they said that they banned slavery hundreds of years ago. The new slavemaster is the mortgage owner or banker who wields the whip!

stumuz1 · Post by **stumuz1** » 15 Mar 2019, 08:14

Don't know if this is the correct thread.

What do peeps think of the chancellor's statement that new homes should not use gas after 2025?

Feasible, scalable?

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... on-systems

Post by **clv101** » 15 Mar 2019, 08:36

Totally possible, the key, as always is insulation and air tightness. It's perfectly possible for only a few thousand pounds extra on a new build to significantly reduce heat requirements, down to a level where electric heating makes sense.

In fact it should have been done years ago with the Cameron government's zero-carbon homes policy but the housebuilders managed to squash it (and instead of building better houses chose to pay their CEO tens of millions in one case).

BritDownUnder · Post by **BritDownUnder** » 15 Mar 2019, 08:48

There is a tendency in Australia to build houses as big as possible on ever decreasing land parcel sizes so that about 3 feet from the side walls of the house the boundary is located. Sometimes a small token garden to hang washing or have a barbecue is left at the back. Something like in this picture at the top of this story.

Post by **adam2** » 15 Mar 2019, 10:42

stumuz1 wrote:Don't know if this is the correct thread.

What do peeps think of the chancellor's statement that new homes should not use gas after 2025?

Feasible, scalable?

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... on-systems

Already being discussed here
http://www.powerswitch.org.uk/forum/vie ... hp?t=27098
To which thread further comments should be added.

vtsnowedin · Post by **vtsnowedin** » 15 Mar 2019, 14:20

kenneal - lagger wrote:And don't forget the "go to work wife" is still probably doing all the housework as well as going to work. Now the kids are farmed out either to grandparents or to after school clubs or similar while the wife works. The travellator of life just keeps us running faster and faster while the Kleptocracy gets richer and richer. And they said that they banned slavery hundreds of years ago. The new slavemaster is the mortgage owner or banker who wields the whip!

I happen to know a young American professional couple expecting their first child.

. One set of grand parents is too far away and the other still fully employed so not available for daytime child care. Day care for an infant where they live will set them back about $15,000 a year and having a cleaning service come in to do most of the housework and laundry once a week will set them back another $8,000. Both doable with their better then median incomes. If they take it all out of her paycheck it amounts to more then a 25 percent pay cut. Not bad when you consider that when I was raising my family the cost of daycare and an extra commuting vehicle ate up all but $1.50 an hour of the wife's pay.

Post by **kenneal - lagger** » 15 Mar 2019, 15:28

Full time childcare would have taken up almost all of my graduate daughter's pay cheque so granny baby sat for two days a week for a while. Things are different in the UK because property prices are higher and this puts up the cost of everything.

vtsnowedin · Post by **vtsnowedin** » 15 Mar 2019, 16:01

kenneal - lagger wrote:Full time childcare would have taken up almost all of my graduate daughter's pay cheque so granny baby sat for two days a week for a while. Things are different in the UK because property prices are higher and this puts up the cost of everything.

What is the cost of a live in Nanny all taxes paid?

Post by **kenneal - lagger** » 15 Mar 2019, 16:26

vtsnowedin wrote:
kenneal - lagger wrote:Full time childcare would have taken up almost all of my graduate daughter's pay cheque so granny baby sat for two days a week for a while. Things are different in the UK because property prices are higher and this puts up the cost of everything.
What is the cost of a live in Nanny all taxes paid?

Depends whether she comes from Norland or Romania.

The starting salary for a Norland nanny is Â£26,000 a year, rising to around Â£30,000 a year. To compare, the Totally Childcare website puts the average salary for a nursery nurse in an ordinary setting at between Â£10,000 to Â£12,000 a year. (2013 prices)

vtsnowedin · Post by **vtsnowedin** » 15 Mar 2019, 16:51

You have a college for Nannies?