Edge Collective

12

Oil, renewables, and all that.

To study ...

Regenerative economics.
Food system transformation.
Communication.
Coordination.

Agroecological projects.

Transition design https://transitiondesignseminarcmu.net/the-transition-design-framework/

Plan for generating sufficient food at the local scale.

Plan for food, water, shelter, fiber, comms.

This will look different for different places.

LoRa relay notes

Feather ESP32 S2 + LoRa chip test -- might even be able to use the old 'esp32 feather' co2 board, if there's a lora module on it, for testing ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DASH7

https://www.zariot.com/blog/the-problem-with-lora/

CO2 level in air travel:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8932639/
ASHRAE 2020 on airlines https://www.ashrae.org/file%20library/technical%20resources/covid-19/12-19_walkinshaw.pdf -- "airplanes do not have proper airflow."
ASHRAE 2022 on airlines (revised) https://www.ashrae.org/file%20library/technical%20resources/covid-19/original_revised_walkinshaw.pdf
https://www.iata.org/en/youandiata/travelers/health/low-risk-transmission/
https://news.mit.edu/2022/covid-19-odds-plane-0728
We don't know if people are getting COVID on planes https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/travel/covid-transmission-on-planes
https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/public-health/6-things-doctors-wish-patients-knew-about-flying-during-pandemic -- "airlines have proper airflow"

2023 Mar 24 -- Peak Oil, Renewables

Notes / info sources on peak oil which suggest that it's a 'near-term' possibility:

Alice Friedemann; e.g. https://energyskeptic.com/2022/failing-oil-and-gas-companies-a-sign-of-peak-oil/
Heinberg et al, 'Our Renewable Future'
Michaux et al, GTK reports for Finnish govt
V Smil, 'How the World Really Works'
Art Berman, via Nate Hagens
https://www.greenpeace.org/international/story/29458/peak-oil-decline-coronavirus-economy/
Steve Keen (shows correlation between GDP and oil consumption)

Punchlines (via GTK / Michaux, repeated by others):

massive, irreplaceable dependence of current form of economy on oil: transport (diesel), manufacturing (diesel, and high heat), food production (tractors and fertilizer, diesel and amonia via natural gas), materials (plastics, lubricants, asphalt), with no pragmatic, viable replacement in sight
Because of heavy coupling of economy with oil production, if oil availability starts to decline, economy starts downturn. This has been borne out in the past -- when the price of oil has increased, the economy has suffered.
Based on recent trends, 'peak oil' may have been in 2018. Note: when I look at graphs of this data, I'm not sure how to evaluate them -- there's a lot of noise. Also, seems as though it's quite a fuzzy, elastic turning point -- depends on how much money is available for oil companies to do extraction, on investments that have / haven't been made in the past in oil infrastructure.
There's some notion that the timescale of serious oil-related disruptions could be: within the next 10 to 15 years.

Note: need to take care here that we haven't found ourselves inside an echo chamber. E.g.: Heinberg, Friedemann, and the Greenpeace article all cite Michaux et al (though they also seem to have done independent research). Smil and Berman seem relatively independent.

What to do about it

If we believe the analysis, then what are the implications?

Some quick thoughts:

Networking and coordination are going to be vital. If the economy tanks deeply and supply chains falter, doesn't matter how much money has saved up, or even whether one has set oneself locally with food, water, shelter; there may be disruptions, and it'll be important to have friends, for both material and social sustenance.
What might that look like? Connecting throughout a bio-region, but also internationally. Migration might become an important aspect of life.
There may be intense scarcity around food, materials, fuel. It's hard to predict what that might imply. It's hard to imagine that it'll be possible to flourish on one's own, or even as a small community. Larger networks of cooperation are preferred.
Whatever might start to build those networks now, and build good will around them, seems useful.
The recognition of this upcoming possibility is perhaps not widespread because many folks have already accepted 'climate doom'. They believe that the world will continue to burn fossil fuels until the earth is so damaged that very few paths are viable.

So, what's different now, on this new picture?

Previous picture I had in my head: the world is going to be damaged by continued burning of fossil fuels. There's some possibility of shifting the economy to renewables, and perhaps we can trigger the political will to make this happen; or perhaps it'll be triggered by sufficient climate disaster. We're not going to run out of oil any time soon, so the corporations will keep on burning as long as they can, and insofar as they've captured the political system, we're locked in. Increasing overshoot and breakdown of earth's life support systems. Perhaps one way forward is to inspire a more sustainable approach from the bottom-up -- if people start organizing at the bioregional level to remove themselves from the fossil fuel economy, perhaps the system can be transformed despite political gridlock at the top. The solarpunk future can be nucleated first in various distributed locations, and then networked, and replace the larger unsustainable system.

New picture:

There is no viable replacement for the oil economy, in terms of food production, many key materials, transport. When oil is no longer viable to extract, transport of goods across ocean, land, air becomes severely restricted. Most of the various alternative fuels and energy sources for transport and manufacturing either won't scale, or depend on fossil fuels for their production. Biomass is the one viable alternative; but it can only replace a few of the energy uses (heat, some manufacturing), and is in limited supply for even doing that. If we were to turn to wood to heat homes, we only have a few years of supply for the current population; and that's not accounting for migration of people from less-viable climates.

Some brighter notes:

Much climate damage is already locked in; but we likely don't have sufficient viable oil reserves to trigger the worst climate futures projected by the IPCC.
Insofar as we've felt locked into a particular set of political arrangements, the forced transformations of society as a result of economic collapse might allow for different, better ones. If we view life through a 'capabilities' approach, and think that being a political actor in one's life is a fulfilling part of a human life well-lived, there will be lots of opportunities for people to more fully participate in the trajectory of their lives, in a material sense.
The ennui and meaningless that many seem to experience in industrialized economies is likely to be replaced by intense engagement with the mechanics of navigating an uncharted (and dangerous) future.
The future will be some complex arrangment of past and futuristic technologies, unevenly distributed. Knowledge of a wide array of topics will increase the likelihood of flourishing. Electronics, chemistry, materials science, horticulture, animal tracking, ecology, weather, sociology, language.
Key points (after reading some of Smil, 'How the World Really Works'):

Smil believes that we are (at least) decades away from transitioning from fossil fuels, because some of the key 'pillars of civilization' -- steel, plastic, amonia -- depend entirely on them, with no as-yet-viable renewable replacement.

I.e. we don't have a viable way of disentangling ourselves from fossil fuels, and providing food, water, heat (and most other things we expect to be part of life) to the population.

So Smil's picture is: we're not going to hit any of the suggested 'climate targets' we've set as a society -- they're just unrealstic.

The counter might be: ramp up innovation, electrify what we can. Smil suggests we might rely more on nuclear to produce more electricity. But even to that counter: the timeframe for inventing new things, making them commercial & viable, and deploying them, is at least decades long. Counter: war-time footing, focus all available societal energies on it.

So, open question for me still: is it actually possible, in any pragmatic way, for us to 'fully electrify' everything? If we leave open the possibility of new inventions?

I suppose one could look at e.g. the history of battery development. When talking about electric air travel, Smil makes mention of something like a 30X improvement in energy density over the last X years of battery development. He then says: it would require another 30X increase in energy density for international air travel to be viable via batteries. One could make a graph of these improvements over time, and make some assessment as to the plausibility of at 30X improvement.

Note: all of this is without accounting for the possibility of peak oil in the near term, which Smil seemingly rejects -- he states that we have at least another 50 years of oil production available. Even so: he doesn't seem to think that we can 'unwind' ourselves from fossil fuels within less than a few decades.

So the key questions that emerge for me are:

if cheap oil were to stop being produced in the next 10, 20 years, what would be the consequences?
of the 'pillars of civilization' (or more broadly, stuff required to produce food and water and etc for the population), how much of it is unlikely to be supported after a move away from fossil fuels?

Fossil fuels will go away at some point. There is some question as to how much of the current economy can be run without them. Michaux, Heinberg, and others are arguing that even if we were to able to replace all of fossil fuels with electricity-based processes, we don't have the minerals available to do this. Nuclear and hydrogen are wildcards here, but they seem to argue that they're not viable as energy production or energy transport (see Nate Hagens recent interview with hydrogen expert).
If fossil fuels are viable for another 50 years, then climate issues might bite harder first.

If fossil fuels go away in 10-ish years, then economic collapse issues might bit harder first.

Mar 25 2023

Lovely interview with Hine and Smaje about Hine's book 'At Work in the Ruins'.

Suggests that the hopeful work to be done now is to look at what each person can bring into the post-carbon world, what needs to be let go of. Very reminiscent of conversations with M. Beach about ham radio, and of Greer's 'Green Wizardry'. Whereas the latter tries to make a match between the appropriate technology movement and a low-carbon future, Hine's view is I think more complex, and 'realistic' -- we don't know what exactly will be relevant, so we need to take snapshots / record the stories of what modernity was like, in case some of it will be the seeds for what comes next. Also: we might need to take the 1000 yr view.

(References a BMJ article: https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/380/bmj.p342.full.pdf in which a physician wonders what from medicine might be brought into a post-carbon world. Really nice, because medicine is one of the key open questions, I've thought!)

So, the positive, massive work to be done: to digest what good things we know, what can be brought through the bottleneck, how to convey what couldn't come through the bottleneck so that it might inform those who rebuild later. What an incredible opportunity to organize pedagogy that would feel vibrant and relevant. One wonders how many of Illich's critiques of modernity would be redressed by such an approach, not due to hewing to a particular philosophy, but simply in virtue of the constraints.

Quite an agenda. It also gives content and direction to the 'Field School' ideas.

Hine's work (especially, the tone of the interview) really deals nicely with the issue of rhetorical stance, when it comes to engaging one's friends in all of these issues.

Another thought that occurs: this work of identifying aspects of modernity that we want to bring through the bottleneck is best done as early as possible, with access to internet and supply chain and material comfort.

2023 04 02

Summary arguments around the shape of the future:

DJ White and Nate Hagens, 'Bottleneck' book

A Friedemann

energyskeptic.com
Life after Fossil Fuels
When the Trucks Stop Running

Richard Heinberg

Our renewable Future
Two Arguments for Localism https://greattransition.org/gti-forum/global-local-heinberg

The Great Transition Initiative

https://greattransition.org/

Steve Genco

https://sjgenco.medium.com/ten-facts-humanity-must-face-if-it-wants-to-survive-on-a-livable-planet-5de93b2f4cde
[https://sjgenco.medium.com/where-we-are-and-how-we-got-here-3300a6d59489]

Looks like Genco does a great job in that piece putting together a summary.

Thomas Murphy

Energy and Ambitions on a Finite Planet https://escholarship.org/content/qt9js5291m/qt9js5291m.pdf?t=r7pnb9

Started a blog in 2011 --

Paul Chefurka

http://www.paulchefurka.ca/

Michaux

the two GS podcasts
the reports
the circular economy work

Smil

How the World Really Works

Art Berman

the GS podcasts

Smaje

Small Farm Future (book, blog)

At Work in the Ruins

Nate Hagens / The Great Simplification

Paul Raskin

Journey to Earthland https://www.greattransition.org/images/GTI_publications/Journey-to-Earthland.pdf

Kenneth Boulding

The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth http://arachnid.biosci.utexas.edu/courses/thoc/readings/boulding_spaceshipearth.pdf

Jeremy Leggett

https://jeremyleggett.net/tag/oil-peak/

David J Murphy, St Lawrence University

https://www.stlawu.edu/people/david-murphy-ph-d

Mike Joy

Gail Tverberg

https://ourfiniteworld.com/author/gailtheactuary/

Nicole Foss

https://www.businessinsider.com/author/nicole-foss

N Foss -- A Century of Challengens

(via "Local Future" conference, which included Joseph Tainter)

'the automatic earth . blogspot . com'

Local Future

https://www.youtube.com/@LocalFuture

Risks of Collapse -- panel with Tainter, Foss, Korowicz

Chris Smaje

A luddite look at the hydrogen economy

Next steps

Note that many of these are in the mode of analyses; need also to pull out suggested ways forward.

Boat club Camping club Food production club

Ham radio connections

Mapping

Minerals / smelting / blacksmithing / welding

Chemistry club

What are all of the processes in the proposed Michaux 'regional circular economy'

Study groups on these topics

Imagining doing these things in a low-energy future ... with 'found / scavenged materials' as a nice side-benefit

Connecting, contributing ...

How do we archive videos, materials, books

How do we connect over distances

Vaclav Smil on Peak Oil and Apocalyptic Thinking

https://spectrum.ieee.org/peak-oil-specimen-case-apocalypic-thinking

Supplies / Connectors / Antennas for LoRa

Is this edge-mount identical to Adafruit?

https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/amphenol-rf/132255-11/4948012?utm_adgroup=Connectors%20and%20Interconnects&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Shopping_Supplier_Amphenol%20RF_0115_Co-op&utm_term=&utm_content=Connectors%20and%20Interconnects&gclid=Cj0KCQjw8qmhBhClARIsANAtboenK3hmdFmaY71nGDLLVzJUg3-l-pN83QdLDH5QLBxJvUFOiRasX-MaAs0zEALw_wcB

LoRa antenna discontinued at Adafruit

edge mount SMA https://www.adafruit.com/product/1865

ant whip tilt 900 MHz rp-sma -- 1875-1002-nd on digikey

To get:

wire strippers
hot air gun
transistors for ultrasonic
lora antenna + connectors (rp-sma)
current monitor chip
feather batteries
prototyping wires
breadboards
ham radio setup for receiving

to design:

rp2040 co2 board
feather esp32s2 tft board
remote satellite / lora / 1-wire board
power supply / monitor

Mining and Metals before fossil fuels

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mining_and_metallurgy_in_medieval_Europe

Michaux's work on the Circular Economy / Resource-balanced Economy

https://tupa.gtk.fi/raportti/arkisto/3_2021.pdf

6 THE RESOURCE BALANCED ECONOMY The proposed restructure of the Circular Economy is a Resource Balanced Economy (RBE) with the harmonious integration of statistical entropy coupled with material flow analysis of each resource. A Resource Balanced Economy is that of a system where gross industrial output and gross domestic product, is mainly derived from natural resources, but is limited in scope and action by exergy thermodynamics. The objective metrics of this RBE converge around long term sustainability of all stakeholders. Systems network theory is proposed to be the mathematical foundation of the development this form of Resource Balanced Economy (Kossiakoff et al 2011 and Dennis et al 2009). The proposed Resource Balanced Economy is an evolution of the Resource Based Economy, with the integration of exergy as a limit derived decision tool. The original concept of the Resource Based Economy was popularized by the Venus Project (https://www.thevenusproject.com/), and its founder Jacque Fresco (Fresco 2018) in the year 2000. Since then it has been through several generations of development. Later, the Zeitgeist Movement (https://www.thezeitgeistmovement.com/) and its founder, Peter Joseph also popularized this concept.

Michaux's presentation on community resilience

"Developing a self-sufficient community to meet the challenges of sustainability":