It was one of the dumbest "green" ideas ever proposed: Convert millions of acres of cropland into fields for growing ethanol from corn, then burn fossil fuels to harvest the ethanol, expending more energy to extract the fuel than you get from the fuel itself! Meanwhile, sit back and proclaim you've achieved a monumental green victory (President Bush, anyone?) all while unleashing a dangerous spike in global food prices that's causing a ripple effect of food shortages and rationing around the world....

A lot of fossil fuel goes into producing, packaging and shipping our breakfast

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/03/26/ING3PHRU681.DTL

Chad Heeter

Sunday, March 26, 2006

Please join me for breakfast. It's time to fuel up again.

On the table in my small Berkeley apartment this morning is a healthy-looking little meal -- a bowl of imported McCann's Irish oatmeal topped with Cascadian Farms organic frozen raspberries, and a cup of Peet's Fair Trade Blend coffee. Like most of us, I prepare my breakfast at home, and the ingredients for this one probably cost me about $1.25. (If I went to a cafe in downtown Berkeley, I'd probably have to add $6 more, plus tip, for the same.)

My breakfast fuels me up with about 400 calories, and it satisfies me. So for just over a buck and half and an hour spent reading the morning paper in my own kitchen, I'm energized for the next few hours. But before I put spoon to cereal, what if I consider this bowl of oatmeal porridge (to which I've just added a little butter, milk and a shake of salt) from a different perspective. Say, a Saudi Arabian one.

Then what you'd be likely to see -- what's really there, just hidden from our view (not to say our taste buds) -- is about 4 ounces (113g) of crude oil. Throw in those luscious red raspberries and that cup of java (an additional 3 ounces (85g) of crude), and don't forget those modest additions of butter, milk and salt (1 more ounce (28g)), and you've got a tiny bit of the Middle East right here in my kitchen.

Now, let's drill a little deeper into this breakfast. Just where does this tiny gusher of oil actually come from? (We'll let this oil represent all fossil fuels in my breakfast, including natural gas and coal.)

Nearly 20 percent of this oil went into growing my raspberries on Chilean farms many thousands of miles away, those oats in the fields of County Kildare, Ireland, and that specially raised coffee in Guatemala -- think tractors as well as petroleum-based fertilizers and pesticides.

The next 40 percent of my breakfast fossil-fuel equation is burned up between the fields and the grocery store in processing, packaging and shipping.

Take that box of McCann's oatmeal. On it is an inviting image of pure, healthy goodness: a bowl of porridge, topped by two peach slices. Scattered around the bowl are a handful of raw oats, what look to be four acorns and three fresh raspberries. Those raw oats are actually a reminder that the flakes require a few steps 'twixt field and box. In fact, a visit to McCann's Web site illustrates each step of cleaning, steaming, hulling, cutting and rolling that turns the raw oats into edible flakes. Those five essential steps require significant energy.

Next, my oat flakes go into a plastic bag (made from oil), which in turn is inserted into an energy-intensive, pressed wood-pulp, printed paper box. Only then does my breakfast leave Ireland and travel 5,000 fuel-gorging, carbon-dioxide-emitting miles by ship and truck to my grocery store in California.

To All,

Good morning.

I hope this finds you all well, well rested, in good spirit and enjoying a good and fruitful day.

I offer the following exchange in the spirit of being helpful since in my hopefully humble opinion we all need to change our wasteful ways before we end up destroying the Earth and eventually ourselves because of our selfish insanity.

Long live The Fighters (for God),

Percy

http://thewayhomeorfacethefire.info
http://jahtruth.net/plan.htm
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheCallToArms/message/17

 

Dear Anonymous ,

Good morning.

We hope that you and Friend of Anonymous are well, well-rested, in good spirit and will have a good and fruitful day.

I want to use yesterday’s yard sale as an exercise to teach you some important things about life.

Yesterday you managed to salvage 200 frns from the losses you had made over a number of years.

What I want you to do is to calculate approximately, so as not to make it unnecessarily difficult or time-consuming, what the original cost was of the items sold yesterday, roughly, including the petrol, tags, insurance and wear and tear and depreciation, etc. on the vehicle used to go looking for and purchasing them and add to it the hours/days/weeks of time involved in doing so.

I've just opened my new site Modern Energy Research Library - MERLib.org The site is still very young and under construction.

After running Mediawiki for a while on http://777001.com I decided to migrate to Drupal instead and came up with the new domain name

The current focus of attention is Victor_Schauberger and his insights into implosion technology and vortexes, the natural movement of water and air, and the concept of looking at, comprehending, and replicating the self-sustaining processes of nature.

Energy, Oxygen Consumption and Production

From "Coats & Schauberger - Living Energies - Viktor Schauberger's Brilliant Work With Natural Energy Explained", page 32

The amount of energy a human being requires for survival over one year is averagely 1,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh). According to Walter Schauberger's calculations a human being operates at the relatively insignificant energy level of an electric light bulb, namely 100 watts.1,000kWh is also the average amount of energy received from the Sun annually per square metre of ground surface. Theoretically, therefore, all a human being needs to do is to stand on its square metre and obtain its energy from the Sun. Were it able to transmute this energy directly, then its annual energy requirement would be satisfied. This amount of energy,however, is associated with the consumption of 260kg of molecular oxygen (O2) per year, which is equal to 29.659gr of oxygen per hour. These are the amounts of energy and oxygen required by a human being for the maintenance of bodily functions, reproduction, creativity and intelligent thought for a whole year.

The only possible outcome of the purely categorizing compart-mentality, thrust upon us at school, is the loss of our creativity. People are losing their individuality, their ability to see things as they really are and thereby their connection with Nature. They are fast approaching a state of equilibrium impossible in Nature, which must force them into a total economic collapse, for no stable system of equilibrium exists. Therefore the principles upon which our actions are founded are invalid, because they operate within parameters that do not exist.

Our work is the embodiment of our will. The spiritual manifestation of this work is its effect. When such work is done properly, it brings happiness, but when carried out incorrectly, it assuredly brings misery.

---

"They call me deranged. The hope is that they are right! It is of no greater or lesser import for yet another fool to wander this Earth. But if I am right and science is wrong, then may the Lord God have mercy on mankind!" ... ""How else should it be done then?", was always the immediate question. The answer is simple: "Exactly in the opposite way that it is done today!"" More quotes to follow...

by Morten Ovesen, the Malmö group.

 Viktor Schauberger around 40 years old.

  A brief biography could be like this:

Viktor Schauberger was an Austrian forester who was active during the first half of the 19:th century. He had a huge beard and a friendly laughter, this he combined with an uncompromising belief in himself and his ideas. He was obstinate in combination with a choleric temper. He was a good drawer and probably a skilled craftsman. Even if Viktor was not schooled the academic way he had a deep knowledge in biology, physics and chemistry. His sense and understanding on how water flows in the nature was exceptional. From his observations he formulated his new hydrodynamic basic theory. His friends and opponents described him as highly intelligent and with this intellectual sharpness he made a deep cut in his (and ours) physical paradigm.

http://www.energybulletin.net/5721.html

by Aric McBay

"We advocate for a transition to small, sustainable communities "

Megan Quinn is the Outreach Director of Community Service, Inc. Community Service is a non-profit organization founded in 1940 that has advocated for small, local communities as the most fulfilling, healthy way to live. It's latest program, The Community Solution, seeks to bring about the re-emergence of the small community and a more agrarian, low energy-use way of life, as the solution for "Peak Oil." http://i.am/jah/greeneco.htm

by Ran Prieur December 19, 2004

http://ranprieur.com/essays/saveearth.html
1. Abandon the world. The world is the enemy of the Earth. The "world as we know it" is a deadly parasite on the biosphere. Both cannot survive, nor can the world survive without the Earth. Do the logic: the world is doomed. If you stay on the parasite, you die with it. If you move to the Earth, and it survives in something like its recent form, you can survive with it.

Why Our Food is So Dependent on Oil
Contributed by Norman Church
Friday, 01 April 2005

also see the article titled "Eating Fossil Fuel"

"Concentrate on what cannot lie. The evidence..." -- Gil Grissom

INTRODUCTION

Eating Oil was the title of a book which was published in 1978 following the first oil crisis in 1973 (1). The aim of the book was to investigate the extent to which food supply in industrialised countries relied on fossil fuels. In the summer of 2000 the degree of dependence on oil in the UK food system was demonstrated once again when protestors blockaded oil refineries and fuel distribution depots. The fuel crises disrupted the distribution of food and industry leaders warned that their stores would be out of food within days. The lessons of 1973 have not been heeded.

March 16, 2005

http://deconsumption.typepad.com/deconsumption/

"When nothing happens for a long time, people begin to assume that nothing ever happens. But, sooner or later, something always happens."-- Steven Lagavulin

There's an aspect to the concept of "Peak Oil" which I don't believe is sufficiently grasped by people following the subject. It's the understanding that the most dangerous aspect we face is not really the state of the resource itself -- the actual "Peak" dates or depletion rates, or any of the physical realities of oil supply/demand -- but rather the reaction in the oil markets upon realization that the issue no longer even important.

By Adam Porter Tuesday 22 February 2005, 6:46 Makka Time, 3:46 GMT
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/80C89E7E-1DE9-42BC-920B-91E5850FB067.
htm

As oil prices remain above $45 a barrel, a major market mover has
cast a worrying future prediction.

Energy investment banker Matthew Simmons, of Simmons & Co International,
has been outspoken in his warnings about peak oil before. His new
statement is his strongest yet, "we may have already passed peak

Oil Extraction Stresses Earth, Contributing to Earthquakes and Tsunamis

Photo by jasonbondy



UPDATE
Indonesian Tsunami Probably Tripped by Exxon-Mobile Works
ACEH -- Exxon-Mobile has a 60 bscf/day facility near Aceh. In the span of 4 years it extracts more than one cubic mile of natural gas from the formations directly at what ended up being the epicenter of the Aceh earthquake. The gas field there has been producing for much longer than four years, and is one of the largest such facilities in the world.



By JAH

I have been asked, by one of my students, to write something about the Indonesian earthquake near Aceh and the tsunami it created, and its possible causes, and so have; now that sufficient time has passed for you all to see and hear all about it; decided to make some comments on it.

Obviously the first comment to make is that it is one of the prophesied signs of “The END Times” and that they (earthquakes) are becoming more wide-spread, more frequent and more severe as we get closer to “The END”. So you can expect them to get even more-so as we get ever closer to “The END”:-
http://i.am/jah/signs.htm

There has been speculation on the Internet that the earthquake near Aceh was caused by man, through sonic-surveying of the area looking for new oil-reserves, causing whales and dolphins to beach themselves because of the intense pain it causes them, and/or a nuclear device, or HAARP.

Whilst any or all of these causes is quite possible, there is also another more probable and simpler possibility that could very easily have caused this earthquake and many others around the world.

That other cause is the extraction of oil and gas from the immediate area around Aceh, and from around the world where other earthquakes occur.

World oil-production alone (not including natural-gas) is approximately 80 – 100 million barrels of oil per day. Yes, 80 - 100 million barrels per DAY. That is a tremendous volume of oil, too large to even visualise in your mind’s eye, and it is being extracted EVERY DAY. The world’s oil-fields are pressurised naturally by natural-gas within the oil, and you have all probably seen “oil-gushers” on films about oil-strikes, and how the oil shoots high into the air as it is forced out of the ground by the natural-gas-pressure in the under-ground oil-field.

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/100303_eating_oil_summary.html
by Dale Allen Pfeiffer

"What follows is most certainly the single most frightening article I have ever read and certainly the most alarming piece that FTW has ever published."

SUMMARY

October 3 , 2003, 1200 PDT, (FTW) -- Some months ago, concerned by a Paris statement made by Professor Kenneth Deffeyes of Princeton regarding his concern about the impact of Peak Oil and Gas on fertilizer production, I tasked FTW's Contributing Editor for Energy, Dale Allen Pfeiffer to start looking into what natural gas shortages would do to fertilizer production costs. His investigation led him to look at the totality of food production in the US. Because the US and Canada feed much of the world the answers have global implications.

What follows is most certainly the single most frightening article I have ever read and certainly the most alarming piece that FTW has ever published. Even as we have seen CNN, Britain's Independent and Jane's Defence Weekly acknowledge the reality of Peak Oil and Gas within the last week, acknowledging that world oil and gas reserves are as much as 80% less than predicted, we are also seeing how little real thinking has been devoted to the host of crises certain to follow; at least in terms of publicly accessible thinking.

This article is so serious in its implications that I have taken the unusual step of underlining 26 of its key findings. I did that with the intent that the reader treat each underlined passage as a separate and incredibly important fact. Each one of these facts should be read and digested separately to assimilate its importance. I found myself reading one fact and then getting up and walking away until I could come back and (un)comfortably read to the next.

All told, Dale Allen Pfeiffer's research and reporting confirms the worst of FTW's suspicions about the consequences of Peak Oil and it poses serious questions about what to do next. Not the least of these is why, in a presidential election year, none of the candidates has even acknowledged the problem. Thus far, it is clear that solutions for these questions, perhaps the most important ones facing mankind, will by necessity be found by private individuals and communities, independently of outside or governmental help. Whether the real search for answers comes now, or as the crisis becomes unavoidable, depends solely on us. It is also abundantly clear that fresh water, its acquisition and delivery, is a crisis that is upon us now as certainly as is Peak Oil and Gas.