Dave's Brain

Apparently yesterday was the twentieth anniversary of when the first climate scientist raised the alarm about global warming.

 

He wrote a speech to mark the occassion.  http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/TwentyYearsLater_20080623.pdf

 

I think that a great picture to indicate the scope of the problem with one of it's scary ramifications is right here: http://cache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/iowa_06_17/iowa9.jpg

 

By the way, I've designed a climate change t-shirt and a peak oil t-shirt.  The climate change one relates to the aforementioned scientist's warning that we need to get CO2 down to 350 ppm.  The peak oil one is just a fun one (a little on the demented side) that speaks to the more apocoliptic view of our oil situation.

 

Been a lot of talk about food in the first half of 2008.  I'm seeing a disturbing trend building.

 

Step 1: Oil price goes through the roof.

Step 2a: People who use oil to heat their homes find it too expensive, so they switch to natural gas.

Step 2b: Tar sands development increases a lot and natural gas is a major component in the process to extract the oil from the tar sands.

Step 3: Due to above, natural gas prices increase and natural gas (non-renewable) is used up faster.

 

One of the ingredients in making nitrogen fertilizer is natural gas, so if the price of natural gas goes up, so does the price of fertilizer.  If natural gas becomes scarce, so does fertilizer.  The price will further be raised by the higher cost of transporting it everywhere.  I'm not sure what percentage of all fertilizer is the nitrogen fertilizer made from natural gas, but I think it's fairly large.

 

So, the point is, I think that food prices are just starting to go up. 

So oil went up 8% on Friday.  That's a lot, especially for a single day.  But how much has it been going up percentage-wise for the last few years.  I fiddled with a quick spreadsheet, going from Sept 2003 to June 2008.  Oil was trading at around $30 during Corbin's birth and today it's above $130, so I used those two numbers.

 

If you start with $30, and compound it monthly at 2.6% you will arrive at just under $130 in June of 2008.  If you just compound $30 annually from 2003 to 2008 you get a percentage of 34%.  Now obviously the oil prices don't follow a nice happy compound interest type path, but I just wanted to experiment with the numbers.

 

Now that we have the percentages, let's continue it forward.

 

For the monthly scenario, Oil hits $200 in November 2009.  It hits $500 four years later in November of 2012, and hits $1000 in February of 2015.  The annual calculation is similar.

 

One one hand, I doubt it would get that high as once it gets too high, the demand would drop off.  On the other hand, as soon as people realize that oil is a dwindling resource, countires are going to start hoarding.  Demand dropping off would likely be the result of a collapsing US economy.  Middle east nations are already showing signs of hoarding.  Saudia Arabia hasn't increased productions despite being asked multiple times by Bush and their king mentioned a month or so ago something about leaving some of their reserves in the ground for their grandchildren.

 

Compounding the percentages makes the rise exponential and who knows if that is the case, but with a rise of $10 in one day, it appears the fluctuations are getting much bigger.  The falling US dollar could be some of the cause of that.  Whatever the cause, the US is in for a rough ride the next few years if oil prices keep going the way they are.  I feel sorry for the next US president.

 

The price of oil rose $10.41 today.  Over ten dollars in just one day.  Some analysts are predicting it could hit $150 this summer, I think we'll be luck if it doesn't pass that by the end of June.  No doubt there will be a bit of a sell off next week... hope hope hope.

 

I wonder how high it will get before the US economy shuts down.

 

I think I'll fill up my tank today.

Just another article that indicates that we're probably all screwed.

 

 

I'm such an optimist aren't I?

 

Just think about the 'tens of degrees' comment.

Looks like my family is going to be receiving $400 from the government ($100 per person).  The government hopes that we will spend this money on products that will help in the war against climate change.

 

 

Let's see, will $400 make much of a dent in the 10K+ price tag to retrofit my house for geothermal heating and cooling?  Nope.

Will it make much of a dent in the cost of an electric motorcycle or car?  Nope.

Will it buy a bunch of CFLs?  Sure.

Will it do anything to help save the planet?  Doubtful.

 

Still, at least the BC government is going in the right direction, albeit at a snails pace compared to what is needed.

 

A particularly pessimistic climate change scientist wrote that most of what we're doing these days is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

 

I really do think we can beat this, but it's going to take more than $100 per person.  Geothermal heating and cooling is on my list of house upgrades as soon as we can afford it.  Obviously I don't expect the goverment to pay for it all... we're all going to be responsible for the financial cost of the transistion to non-fossil fuels.  I just wish the goverment would start slapping regulations on new construction, as well as saying "You all have X years to retrofit your homes.  After that we're shutting Teresan down."

Bonnie goes back to work tomorrow.  I'm going to be cutting my working hours to 1 1/2 days a week with the rest of the time taking care of the kids.  Tomorrow is my first day with Evan all day long and also driving Corbin to his various activities.  It's going to be quite a change.