[scrapemedic]

Well actually you are being facetious, but I can understand why. You are obviously used to a standard of living which is much more dependant on energy than I am.

I do dress down for heat and up for cold, I wash my clothes when there is a full load, open the window when its hot and close it when its cold. If I need to heat up more water during the day, its on a timer so I "don't forget" to turn it off again. My TV, Sky boxes and wireless turn off if I haven't changed anything for a while. Every plug socket has a switch so I don't have the excuse of leaving uneccessary things switched on becuase something else on that lead needs to be on. I don't leave lights on in rooms I don't occupy and don't have a series of mood lights, just one useful
light in the room. The TV stays off if I am concentrating on the computer, and I use one socket for charging up batteries on the phone or cameras, which means none are ever left in there for long. If one thing is being cooked in the oven, everything gets cooked in the oven, the same for my frying pan! Raw vegetables are lovely, especially carrots, runner beans and cauliflower, and strawberries take no cooking at all.

I plan car journeys to ensure that I only start the car from absolute cold once, if I have a number of small journeys to do.

I made a number of changes a few years ago and saved myself about a quarter of my electricity bill, without any noticable depreciation in my standard of living, I am not perfect, but yeah, it can be done if there is a will.

[John Mason]

It's an interesting one, folks, and perhaps as Dave alludes to it is all down to that old potato of 'needs' and 'wants'. Over recent years, having become aware of what Heinberg calls "Peak Everything", I've deliberately set out to find out just how tough things could be, and the results are quite heartening.

An obvious example is that of people who think they 'need' to be able to go round indoors, in the depths of winter, in T-shirt and shorts. They do not need to do this at all: they want to. Taking things further, easily enough in a house with one open fire and no central heating, this past few years I've slept with all upstairs windows open, only closing them on the rare winter nights that have forecast minima below -10C. And guess what? It's fine. Sometimes you might want a spare fleece handy, but that's really as bad as it gets and is incidentally no different to my schooldays, when frost on the insides of windows was relatively common. I have the fresh and clean West Wales air to inhale all night, but when I'm away and staying in houses or hotels, invariably centrally-heated, by the morning I have hay fever-like symptoms.

Hot water: I wash-up and body-wash once or twice weekly (the latter would maybe be discourteous to others in a hotter climate). The rest of the time it's simply a full boiled kettle as and when. I've not noted any trend in ill-health - I rarely pick up infections - as a consequence. But I'm not in an artificially hot environment, so maybe that's why.

Driving/flying: I don't fly and the need to do so would have to be pressing. I run a 40-50mpg jeep but have cut down my annual mileage from ca. 12k to ca. 6k. I've simply cut out frivolous usage: it stays where it is for days on end, but it's useful for photographic trips that are far away from public transport, or fishing forays in the dead of night. Otherwise I walk or cycle. Mostly I walk to the veg-garden, unless the materials I'm taking down there amount to more than I could carry, when I bunch them all together then drive. That's not often.

The bottom line is that most of the "needs" I've moved away from are simply "wants", and the best things you will ever experience often involve little energy usage because they are purely natural, and no bastard has figured out how to charge for them yet!!! Sure beats slaving away 40, 50 or 60 hours a week in order to service debts built up because you were conned into accumulating lots of shit that you never really needed in the first place - and I say that from bitter experience! Years ago, I was exactly there. It's been quite a liberation in many ways.

Having no TV perhaps helps as I'm not constantly bombarded with ads and have not been since I left home some 31 years ago, so the need to conform and follow trends dissipated, thankfully, a long time ago. The only downside is that everyone else thinks you're a bit eccentric, but I couldn't give a monkey's about that! I live a full life, and that's what matters to me.

Someone has taken this much further (head-vice recommended to some): meet the Moneyless Man!

Not my bag, but it is nevertheless an interesting read, and some worthwhile points are made.

Cheers - John

[scrapemedic]

John, I think we share two things in common. Age, meaning we had experience of living in a less technology dependant time, and having lived through the shortages in the seventies, when it was important to be mindful about what you were using.

[John Mason]

Liz, and perhaps attaching greater worth to things that for some have no apparent value?

Cheers - John

[ldavidcooke]

Hey Liz,

Other then switched outlets and a hot water timer there is not much difference.

Though on average with 6-7 warm months of temperatures in the 28-36C most days (-7 to 0Cs during winter evenings), we ended up adding a casement AC and during winter we run a small gas stove, to eliminate running the central HVAC.

Either runs on average 6 hours per day, for about 20 min/hr at 10 amp for the AC and 20k btu for the stove, which equates to roughly 300watt/hrs or 1.8 kw hrs/day or the 1/2 the entertainment system for the day, (it's a component system combination I assembled which provides tv/cpu-web/gaming/dvd/stereo).

All the lights are now CFL running at 13 watts for 60 watt equiv., up to one central living room unit, a 32 watt CFL providing reading light which has the equivalent output of a 125watt incandescent.

Overall, we average about 0.8 kw/hr/yr for everything or @$2.5 USD/day, down from roughly 1.25 kw/hr/day 3 years ago. We have what would be considered a modest 300m^2 home, which is about average for @ 35% of the population.

(Though most run with less cost cutting measures, so their demand runs about 1.5 times our current. The elimination of incandescents and moving to cheap linux tablets in place of desktops PCs were the only measures other then the HVAC alternative changes we actively took. Other then that we are replacing appliances with Energy Star rated ones as the older ones fail.)

For a quick comparison consider, Rural Communities /Apartments /Mobile Homes (about 35-40% of the population) their living area runs about 65% of 300m^2 with power requirements of twice ours. Where the US gets the most bad press is where most of the middle class (15-20% of the population) run about 200% our size at 3 times our energy demand. And the top 10% run an astronomical 400-500% our size and 5-6 times our usage and all for 2.4 people.

[scrapemedic]

Best comparison is how much it costs to run, mine about a week and a halfs wages for the year.

[ldavidcooke]

scrapemedic, on 10 April 2012 - 17:59, said:

Best comparison is how much it costs to run, mine about a week and a halfs wages for the year.

Hey Liz,

Okay lets try it, my current annual energy cost would be the equivalent of 7 to 8 work days of my total salary, if my disability stripend was it. Or about 2.5 work days at my former total salary compensation of my last full time job. (Considering I was near the max. Social Security deduction for only 5 of the final 10 years of my career...)

[Wiseacre]

John, whilst your chosen lifestyle suits your requirements from life, it is unlikely to do so for many other people. The reality is that most of the population worldwide has been seduced by the consumer ideal and nothing will change that bar a recession to end all recessions or another world war, neither of which is likely in the near term.The solution lies in new technology and engineering to reduce the power consumption of all our new toys to buy us a bit of time.....that is the modern equivalent of survival.


Back to the topic of the thread, I cannot imagine there will be large scale drilling for oil in the Med because no-one expects to find much there.....John can advise on the geological argument for this. But if we require more oil/energy, why not look for it wherever it is? To answer no to this question is just nimbyism on a large scale.

This post has been edited by Wiseacre: 10 April 2012 - 20:35

[scrapemedic]

ldavidcooke, on 10 April 2012 - 18:48, said:

Hey Liz,

Okay lets try it, my current annual energy cost would be the equivalent of 7 to 8 work days of my total salary, if my disability stripend was it. Or about 2.5 work days at my former total salary compensation of my last full time job. (Considering I was near the max. Social Security deduction for only 5 of the final 10 years of my career...)

Maybe thats the rub, maybe its too cheap! My energy bill above includes all my heating lighting cooking etc and if I added into that my fuel bills for my car that would still only be about three weeks max wages. I don't use my car hardly at all so I know I am a low user on that front and many people could easily use four times as much fuel as I do. Even so, isn't it strange that the one thing that is so expensive to the planet and the environment, is probably the cheapest thing on ours bills.

[scrapemedic]

Wiseacre, on 10 April 2012 - 20:34, said:

Back to the topic of the thread, I cannot imagine there will be large scale drilling for oil in the Med because no-one expects to find much there.....John can advise on the geological argument for this. But if we require more oil/energy, why not look for it wherever it is? To answer no to this question is just nimbyism on a large scale.

But as the price of fuel goes up, the more likely it is that oil companies will hunt for those sources that would have otherwise been considered unecconomical. Its not NIMBYism at all, its about whether an area could survive that kind of intrusion. Look at what happened in the gulf of mexico.

[Wiseacre]

I cannot argue with the first point Liz, but if you want to continue to drive your car (and ambulence) then the fuel has to come from somewhere. There will never be a large scale switch to electric or even hydrogen fuelled cars because the demand is just not there. As long as petrol is available, the internal combustion engine will be king. There is still money to be made from petrochemicals (and why not?) even in the more inaccessible or indeed expensive places on the planet......and despite the plethora of business crushing regulations we continue to invent.

[ldavidcooke]

Hey Simon,

Yet at the sametime everyone is decrying the availability of Oil we have a glut of Natural Gas. At 30% hydrogen it s both a lower carbon and a efficient hydrogen storage transition fuel. At 1/2 the btu and greater octane without adding methanol or ethanol it actually can be "burned" in a plastic engine at 1/4 the weight and twice the cylinders delivering high torque and horse power.

Again, the problem is not the supply, it is the availability and the supply of vehicles. As to alternative poweplants it is possible to create gas turbines that run at a continuious rate to drive a generator. Add in a hybrid capacity and you are already setup for hydrogen when it becomes available. The time to market could be as low as 36 months, providing the US EPA allows their use on the road..

Go the next step and remove direct combustion and simply go to a fuelcell reactor. It is clear that the alternative technology is available, as are the powerplants. It just requires the establishment of a distribution infrastructure, ooopps that already exists, pipelines are available to supply nearly every household within 100km of a metropolitan area. It only requires a terminal to be installed at the local fuel station...

Now if we can only convince the government owned auto manufactures to get on board, ooopps, that can't happen, the US EPA is not funded or staffed to evaluate and certify power plants in a timely manner... It really is not an economic issue, it is political, IMHO... Just imagine what would happen to all those investors who are Oil heavy, or how about the Fuel companies... It would be the 1990s all over again..., famine and feast..., the issue is they famined 8 years and have now feasted 24 years... (1975-1990 and 2004-2012)... Big tax money, right, they are given tax money, they are not a source... Sorry, I need to stop there before I go too far...

[John Mason]

Wiseacre, on 10 April 2012 - 20:34, said:

John, whilst your chosen lifestyle suits your requirements from life, it is unlikely to do so for many other people. The reality is that most of the population worldwide has been seduced by the consumer ideal and nothing will change that bar a recession to end all recessions or another world war, neither of which is likely in the near term.The solution lies in new technology and engineering to reduce the power consumption of all our new toys to buy us a bit of time.....that is the modern equivalent of survival.


Back to the topic of the thread, I cannot imagine there will be large scale drilling for oil in the Med because no-one expects to find much there.....John can advise on the geological argument for this. But if we require more oil/energy, why not look for it wherever it is? To answer no to this question is just nimbyism on a large scale.

There's possibly an onus on us to explain to them that rampant consumerism doesn't make people any happier in that case, Simon. We know that. The trouble is that if one makes such a point, one is immediately accused of telling everybody to go live in a cave, eat lentils and don stout hessian underwear. In the alternate self-contained right-wing media universe there are two choices: today's excess or that.

Modern civilisation has brought some brilliant things - sanitation and healthcare being up near the top I would suggest. But it has failed yet to shake off some myths that it continues to base parts of itself upon; the critical one is that we can have perpetual nonrenewable resource-based growth on a finite planet. This surely falls into the "so bad it's not even wrong" category of daft things. Where I would like to see us heading is into a world where we keep the sensible bits and ditch the stupid bits: this is where far more localised economics would play its part in terms of producing many things including most of our food, which would lower our energy usage and generate a lot of employment and build in a lot more community resilience to most external events than we have at present with our 'last-minute' and '9 meals from anarchy' culture that is really nothing to be at all proud of. Above all, a society where every mentally-capable individual understands the origin, true value and consequences of everything they consume.

Cheers - John

[Nigel Bolton]

Excellent reply John.

N.

[DG57]

Thank you for this debate, folks. I read some very interesting things.

[Wiseacre]

John, whilst I admire your idealism, if we all lived a frugal life our economy would collapse and along with it all the services that everyone has got used to using, i.e healthcare, pensions, welfare benefits, defence, the police etc. Whether we like it or not, we are essentially trapped in the search for economic growth to maintain what we have and we are currently struggling to do even that. What is needed is some optimism and good old fashioned graft along with a bold Government prepared to slash taxes and rebalance society so that the family is responsible for looking after the family and not the state. If we could achieve the latter, which would enable spending to be re-directed towards investment, we would go a long way towards achieving your aim of making us all much more self reliant. but of course this would be far too right wing for you to support.

David, as you say we have an excess of natural gas at present (hence its price fell below $2 per 1000 cubic feet on Nymex today), but the infrastructure required to supply homes in a country as large as America is too great to ensure a worthwhile return. Here in the UK the pipe network was installed by the Government many years ago and more houses get their heating from gas than electricity and oil combined, but we have the advantage (for this matter) of being small and densely populated. The same problem applies to installing an infrastructure for hydrogen or electric cars....the upfront cost is just to much to compete with the gasoline network already in place.....its yet again a question of being realistic.

[Wiseacre]

MorganeLanesle, It is pleasing that you have found the thread interesting but we have wandered away from your original theme. Do you have any further information on the location and scale of the drilling in the Med?

[John Mason]

Wiseacre, on 11 April 2012 - 18:24, said:

John, whilst I admire your idealism, if we all lived a frugal life our economy would collapse and along with it all the services that everyone has got used to using, i.e healthcare, pensions, welfare benefits, defence, the police etc. Whether we like it or not, we are essentially trapped in the search for economic growth to maintain what we have and we are currently struggling to do even that. What is needed is some optimism and good old fashioned graft along with a bold Government prepared to slash taxes and rebalance society so that the family is responsible for looking after the family and not the state. If we could achieve the latter, which would enable spending to be re-directed towards investment, we would go a long way towards achieving your aim of making us all much more self reliant. but of course this would be far too right wing for you to support.

Exactly, Simon. You too illustrate the deep flaws within the current model. My life is not frugal, it is simply not rampant consumerism. In a sense you illustrate my point about that-or-caves-and-lentils.

But there are a few more threads I would like to read so not going to get bogged-down in this one tonight. Talking about good old-fashioned graft I've been up since 0400, got a couple of jobs cleared out the way then went on an important photo-shoot 90 miles away starting at 0700 and got back twelve hours later. I don't mind hard work at all but boy am I tired now!

Cheers - John

[ldavidcooke]

Hey Simon,

Okay now you have confused me. There are sufficient Natural Gas supplies that are already in place, only two things are required to make the conversion; the first is a "tap", (and no not a kegger tap), the second is a vehicle.

(A conversion for a current vehicle is possible, a type 2 cng cylinder capable of carrying 12gge at 3600psi (roughly 126 cu feet/40m^3/1therm), is roughly £650, if you replace your current throttle body with a single CNG injector Eldebrock manifold/throtle body, (about £300, with regulator and plumbing about £450). The cost of conversion would run about £1250 in parts and £800 in labor. (You would want to have a Petrol/fuel pump bypass switch installed and your current petrol tank swapped out for a 20 liter mini tank. You would want to have your cng tank installed in the near empty petrol tank mount slot, and your ignition computer updated to advance the timing when running cng.))

This means that the last issue is how to convince folks to sell CNG along the Express/High-ways, Big Oil will not, it simply isn't as profitable as Gasoline. Maybe we can get volunteer businesses, IE: grocerers or pharmacies or restaurants or most any place you park a while, (multi-stage compression takes about 10min./cycle and roughly 6 cycles to reach 3000psi, (or @ 0.7 of the rated 3600 psi capacity for a type 2 gge tank at 22deg.C / 50%RH / 1010mb).

Yes, it's not that the infrastructure isn't there; but, how are you going to regulate it. Wildcat Philling Stations may be cropping up by the end of the month, by people like you or I. We could charge strangers for the use of our tap at $2.20 or @ £1.87 plus a 32% FED tax, for 4.4 liters or per 1 gallon gasoline equivalent and get a merchant card account at our friendly neighborhood bank. Then we simply pay our monthly Gas bill at the end of the month... (Matter of fact, I can have a tap installed by the time the conversion by my favorite mechanic is done...) Now what were you saying about infrastructure....