So, for about the next three weeks I'll be very busy finishing up a compressed Biology class, so the posts are going to be few and far between. But I do intend to add some more functionality to the site (which requires much less time than fact checking my posts). So for the most part I'm just going to post some links to news I'm following.

For instance...

China could be facing their own economic beast from the post peak oil world, but their government price controls hide but do not solve the higher energy prices. This is similar to what I explained earlier how the “Gas Tax Holiday” is form of corporate welfare that hides actual market prices. In China this is a similar reaction that keeps pump prices low with money taken from the governments tax budget. This leads to monetary devaluation and market inflation.

also...

    So it seems that I've had more and more conversations with people while biking around northern VA that start out like this, “So your biking around to save gas money?”

    To which I usually answer something pretty consistent with, “No, not really. While it does save money by not using gas to get around, I haven't ditched my car, which is necessary to save a lot of money by bicycling. I bike mainly because it seems to be a better use of my body, has less of an impact on the environment than driving. And in the back of my mind I'm really very worried that a worst case 'peak oil' scenario would leave me unprepared to support my family if I didn't do this regularly.”

    So while reading the comments on one of the more creative online videos that talks about peak oil, I was struck by the preponderance of replies that seem to state absolutely magical beliefs in what science can do. Such as...

“There's enough oil under the north slope of alaska to supply the US for the next 200 years. Not only that, but old wells can be re-explored and often are found to have re-filled.” -deaglek

    Ok, so deaglek may not have even a simple grasp of mathematics but most people should be able to follow this simple number crunch. Here's the facts, the total proven crude oil reserves, in the ground, in the lower 48 states and Alaska are about 20 billion barrels of crude. The US consumes about 20 million barrels a day, multiply that by 365 days in a year, and you find that we consume about 7.3 billion barrels of crude a year. So, in less than 3 years we would consume all of the available oil in the US, that includes the Alaskan north slope.

    So not too long ago I made a commitment to do as much transportation as I possibly could by bicycle saving the cars only for when no other alternative would do. Today, all day, no other alternative would do. It's a little depressing and disheartening to burn through about 4 gallons of gas in one day after barely using the same amount of gas in the last two weeks. Sure, there was justification in the absolute need to get so much done today in so little time as to rule out the bicycle. And there is fact that I can't haul 3 other people around on my bike. But it's different now, last year I would have brushed off the inefficiency.

    But today, let me tell you, today as I drove my wife, daughter and cousin through the pouring rain I found my eyes riveted on the commuter bicyclists in the morning. I really wanted to be there in the pouring rain, like them, struggling successfully against the weather and the traffic. It was a deep and visceral need to be in that wet and hectic struggle. Something about me has embraced that challenge, and suddenly I think driving is something too coddled, too pampered, too convenient. While I've always thought driving was inefficient, and endorsing a strategically wrong national obsession, I never though of it as less human, but now I don't know.

    So occasionally I like to step back a bit and make sure my philosophy is in line with long term goals. Primarily among these goals is to insure that my daughter gets the chance to live in a world that offers much the same types of opportunities and experiences that I have enjoyed. Now this primary goal requires that you, the simple reader, understand that the opportunities and experiences in my life have not been particularly special. That I have not been born to a wealthy family that was able to provide for my every want. That I have no particular disadvantages, besides a moderate colorblindness, to impede the things I may strive for. And that I have not ever been outstandingly lucky, that I have not by chance achieved anything significant (I take my wonderful, smart, loving wife as the sole exception to this).

    That this primary goal can only be achieved through the active participation of the political system to which I was luckily born, here in the United States of America. I will not pander to those who subscribe to the wholesale disenfranchisement of the people by pointing out the minority of my individual position. I am but one person, my position may only represent that small fraction of the whole population, which may be difficult to express through a populist system.

    But I shall not lose hope that I can do everything in my own personal sphere of power to achieve my goals. And I can hope higher still, that if my goals are not evidently within the comprehension and empathy of wider audience, that my labors and my voice shall show the virtue and value of what I espouse.

Oh yeah, it's a really nice day out. I'm going to go ride my bike.

    I don't want this to be specifically, politically critical here, but this “Gas Tax Holiday” is an utter load of bullshit. So it is impossible for me to avoid going out and advising anyone and everyone against this “bread and circuses”, “corporate welfare” plan. Putting it simply, Hillary Clinton and John McCain somehow think it is OK not to collect roughly 20 cents worth of taxes on every gallon of refined petroleum. They say the savings would be passed on to the consumer.

    This is blatant misdirection.

    The only people who have anything to gain from this are the oil companies who will be able to sell more gasoline and diesel over the summer than normally without cutting their profit margins.

      Sometimes you have to have things thrown in your face and your open actions blocked before you will realize things have changed. Unfortunately , it would seem that in this country(US) that is the way the majority of the population changes their minds. So it is no real surprise that almost 30 years (October 17, 1973) after the first warning signs of the dangers of US dependence on foreign oil supplies. That the brutal edge of commodity curves are beginning to force people in the US to reconsider the basis of our modern economy. And that basis has never been our labor force, which has always been relatively small compared to some other countries; it has never really been our natural resources, which while still abundant are something we mostly consume for ourselves; it hasn't even been our educated workforce, which while average has always been second or worse to other educated workforces in the world. No, that basis has been the high availability of domestic cheap energy sources. It is that cheap and plentiful energy that let the US win two world wars, it is that cheap and plentiful energy that let the US become and industrial giant in the last century, and it is that cheap and plentiful energy that raised the American standard of living to average levels it has never been at before, ever.