Peak oil and free pizza!

300 years of fossil fuel addiction explained in just FIVE MINUTES!

International peak oil expert Nicole Foss in Madison Wednesday & Thursday

As some of you already know, Nicole Foss – the woman who did the “Century of Challenges” presentation in Madison last month – will be back in the Madison Tuesday afternoon thru Friday morning this week. So we have another great opportunity to meet with her! This came up at the last moment; I’ve taken on organizing her schedule; we want to make it work for as many of you as possible.

FIRST
We are hosting a pot-luck gathering with Nicole in the Village of Oregon on Thursday evening – and y’all are most welcome! Bring food if you can; skip it if you don’t have time – the important thing is conversation, not mastication.
Time: 6:30 PM, Thursday October 21
Place: Village Hall Community Room, 117 Spring Street, Oregon, WI
http://tinyurl.com/27qqk53

SECOND
I would appreciate any ideas and HELP you could offer. Especially with media contacts: WPR (please, let’s open that door!), WORT, Isthmus, Cap Times, State Journal, etc. Just give them a call – the more people they hear from, the better. If you get a “yes”, let me know so we can schedule a time: 608-444-6190

THIRD
Here is the schedule right now. If you want to organize a small gathering for any of the “open” times, let me know: 608-444-6190
Tue afternoon – arrive, maybe time for coffee or something
Tuesday @ 7:00 PM – “Fuels Paradise” presentation
Wednesday AM – open
Wednesday @ noon thru ~2:00 – Madison Peak Oil Group special meeting (222 South Hamilton Street)
Wednesday afternoon – open
Wednesday evening – small gathering – tentative
Thursday AM – open
Thursday @ ~1:00 PM – video shoot
Thursday afternoon ~3:00 thru ~6:00 PM – open
Thursday @ 6:30 – pot-luck in V Oregon
Fri AM – open

Will keep you posted.

Hans Noeldner, Facilitator
Madison Peak Oil Group
http://www.madisonpeakoil.org
hans_noeldner@charter.net
608-444-6190

International peak oil speaker, September 22

A CENTURY OF CHALLENGES:
Building Local Resilience in an Era of Economic Turmoil & Resource Depletion

Wednesday, September 22nd, 7:00 PM
Room 180 Science Hall, 550 N. Park St., Madison

Peak Oil and the implosion of high-leverage finance schemes around the world are converging into a “perfect storm” that may threaten prosperity and social cohesion. The consequences are frightening: “hallucinated wealth” is vanishing, real unemployment is rising, and social unrest is growing amid global tensions over energy resources, water and land. Families and communities should prepare for the challenging times ahead.

A Presentation By

Nicole M. Foss

(a.k.a. “Stoneleigh”)

Energy Industry Consultant and Financial Analyst at

http://www.theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/

Free and open to the public. Donations welcome.

Sponsored by: Energy Hub, UW Madison WISPIRG/Big Red Go Green,
Madison Peak Oil Group, and Transition Madison Area

Info: http://www.uwehub.org/ or contact Hans Noeldner, 608-444-6190, hans_noeldner@charter.net

The Oil Spill and You

From a commentary by Michael Vickerman:

Commentary
by Michael Vickerman, RENEW Wisconsin
July 12, 2010

About 100 people gathered in downtown Madison in early July to take part in “Hands Across the Sands,” an internationally organized protest against continued oil drilling in and along the world’s coastal waters. Against the backdrop of the weed-choked waters of Lake Monona, they joined hands for 15 minutes to express their fervent desire to see a cleaner, less destructive energy future emerge from the liquid melanoma spreading across the Gulf of Mexico.

No doubt the protestors would like to do more, much more, than simply engage in ritualized protest in front of a few camera crews. But we live in a society that is organized around the expectation of a limitless supply of nonrenewable hydrocarbons feeding concentrated energy into our economic bloodstream. Most of us have not bothered to comprehend the yawning gulf that lies between our best intentions and our abject dependence on the wealth-producing properties of petroleum. Nor how this addiction fills us with delusions of godlike mastery over our environment while blinding us to the reality that we humans have grossly overshot our planet’s carrying capacity.

For those who read and still remember the science fiction classic Dune, the “spice” on Arrakis remains the quintessential literary analogy to the reality of Earth’s oil. Like our oil, the spice held a special place in that world as the ultimate prize worth waging wars and plundering hostile environments for. . . .

Need I mention that once you begin to appreciate the finitude of the Earth’s endowment of petroleum, there’s nothing to stop you from taking immediate steps to curb your personal consumption of this irreplaceable fuel. Whatever you do to lessen your dependence on petroleum will turn out to be a much more satisfying and meaningful response to our energy predicament than any canned protest promoted through Facebook.

As for myself, I made two resolutions since the Macondo well erupted. The first is to go through this summer without activating the household air-conditioner. So far, so good, I can report. (Luckily, we were spared the triple-digit temperature swelterfest that gripped the East Coast last week). It wasn’t that long ago that life without air-conditioning was the norm rather than the exception. If we all resolved not to turn on air-conditioners, we could force the retirement of two to three coal-fired plants in this state.

The other change was to ratchet up my reliance on my bicycle and make it the default vehicle for all my local travels, irrespective of weather conditions. I have been a fair-weather bicycle commuter for many years, but after watching everyone on TV blame someone else for the catastrophe, I felt the need to push myself a little harder. My objective here is to regard my car as a luxury that one day I might do without.

Though the extra perspiration and the occasional dodging of raindrops may take some getting used to, you are going to sleep better at night. Trust me on this.

If the oil spill has prompted a similar response from you, feel free to describe them and send them to the moderator of our Peak Oil blog or post them in a response.

Dinosaur oil

One of serveral posters from WWF. Click on the picture to enlarge.

Rooftops are ill-suited for wind turbines

From a fact sheet published by Focus on Energy:

Rooftop wind turbines are one of the most talked about trends in renewable energy. City dwellers and suburbanites, inspired by the spread of large turbines and intrigued by the idea of producing their own energy, are today inquiring about rooftop wind systems in record numbers.

But just how viable are these systems? Can small rooftop wind turbines ever produce enough electricity to make the investment worthwhile? Find out the answers to these and other commonly asked questions below. . . .

Will a small rooftop turbine power my whole house?
No. Small turbines can only produce small quantities of electricity due to their small rotors.

Rooftops are ill-suited to harness the wind regardless of their location due to the trees and buildings surrounding a home. Rooftops in the city are particularly difficult places to harness the breeze. Not only are cities less windy than the countryside, but the air is turbulent because of trees and the variation in heights of buildings. Turbulence can wear out a turbine and reduce its life expectancy.

One analysis showed that a common type of rooftop turbine (being tested by Madison Gas Electric) "had generated about 45 kWh in about eight months (in a year about 65 kWh). The average single family WI home uses 10,000 kWh/year. Are you ready to live on 65 kWh/year?"

Keynote speakers set for Energy Fair, June 19-21

From details of the Energy Fair, sponsored by the Midwest Renewable Energy Association, in Custer, Wisconsin:

Friday, June 19 at 1 pm
Antonia Juhasz
Antonia Juhasz is an author and political activist. She was the author of The Bush Agenda: Invading the World One Economy at a Time in 2006, Alternatives to Economic Globalization for which she received the 2004 Project Censored award. In 2008, she published The Tyranny of Oil.

Saturday, June 20 at 1 pm
Alan Weisman
Alan Weisman spoke at the 10th Anniversary Energy Fair, and we’re happy to have him join us another ten years later to celebrate our progress and help us look forward to another 20 years.

Alan Weisman is an author and journalist whose reports from around the world have appeared in Harper's, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, Orion, Wilson Quarterly, Vanity Fair, Mother Jones, Discover, and more.

His most recent book, The World Without Us, (a staff favorite) is a bestseller, and was named the Best Nonfiction Book of 2007 by both Time Magazine and Entertainment Weekly.

Sunday, June 21 at 1 pm
Wendy Williams
Wendy Williams, an is the author of Cape Wind: Money, Celebrity, Class, Politics, and the Battle for Our Energy Future on Nantucket Sound. The Wall Street Journal called Cape Wind "a ripe subject, populated with the sort of people who would be among the first to count themselves as friends of the Earth but the last to accept an environmentally friendly energy source if it meant the slightest cloud on their ocean views."

Williams has written for many major publications, including Scientific American, The Christian Science Monitor, The Boston Globe, The Providence Journal and The Baltimore Sun. She has been journalist-in-residence at Duke University and at the Hasting Center. The author of several books, she lives on Cape Cod.

Oil & gas industry seeks energy dependence, ignores peak oil, and opposes climate protection plans

The oil and gas industry's energy policy: Drill, baby, drill! Import, baby, import!:

+ Increase, not decrease energy production by promoting all sources. [In other words, peak oil doesn't exist.]
+ Encourage energy efficiency as a core American principle.
+ Encourage investment in advanced technologies and long-term energy initiatives.
+ Allow market forces to allocate products and adjust to changing conditions.
+ Refrain from new taxes that make it more expensive to develop our domestic supplies.
+ Support the need to participate actively in global energy markets rather than isolate the U.S. [In other words, become more dependent on foreign sources.]

From print ad of the oil and gas industry:

Congress will soon consider massive new taxes and fees – which could easily exceed $400 billion – on America’s oil and natural gas industry, yet this level could produce devastating effects on our economy, all when America can least afford it.

These unprecedented taxes and fees would reduce investment in new energy supplies at a time when nearly two-thirds of Americans support developing our domestic oil and natural gas resources. That would mean less energy, and it would cost thousands of American jobs, actually reduce local, state and federal revenue, and further erode our energy security.

Learn more and tell Congress to oppose these proposals to impose $400 billion in tax hikes on America’s oil and natural gas companies. By using SocialCapital, you can voice your opinions to public officials and members of Congress about key energy issues via Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and more.

Palin's Folly

by Michael Vickerman, RENEW Wisconsin
October 7, 2008
What three things do Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, Mexico, Nigeria and Venezuela have in common? The first commonality is that they are among the top 10 leading exporters of petroleum worldwide, which is another way of saying that they are the biggest accumulators of foreign cash on the planet.

Commonality No. 2: Gasoline prices in those nations are lower than they are in the United States. The swollen river of revenues that flows into their national treasuries enables these governments to subsidize the price of motor fuel sold to their citizens. In Iran, the portion of federal revenues spent on maintaining price caps on gasoline approaches an astonishing 40%. . . .

Considering the finite nature of their chief exports, these nations would do well to reinvest their windfalls into domestically developable sources of wind and solar energy, to name two energy sources that do not have decline curves associated with them. However, that brings up Commonality No. 3, which is their shared aversion to all energy sources that have the capacity to displace oil and natural gas in some capacity. Renewable energy sources like wind and solar certainly figure prominently in that category.

It is nothing short of amazing to watch these nations squander their colossal fortunes on ephemeral social control measures that only hasten the drawdown of their most economically valuable resource. Subsidizing gasoline is simply a wealth distribution scheme that discounts the future for the present. Its legacy will be to leave billions of people without the capital to invest in building up a sustainable energy future.

Under more enlightened regimes, these nations would be plowing their retained earnings into technologies that harvest locally available self-replenishing energy sources to serve future citizens. They would make it a point of emulating Germany, a nation bereft of native oil and gas reserves but certainly not lacking in foresight and political will. Cloudy skies and weak winds notwithstanding, Germany is deploying considerable amounts of social and financial capital to retool its energy infrastructure so that it can take full advantage of its modest solar ration.

In contrast to Germany, there is not a single commercial wind turbine operating in Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Venezuela and Russia. While Mexico and Iran look like go-getters by comparison, their efforts to date amount to less than one-half of Wisconsin’s current wind generating capacity. Moreover, even at this late date, oil-exporting nations have invested only a piddling amount of their capital investments in solar energy.

To demonstrate the aversion that oil-exporting jurisdictions have towards renewable energy, consider the example of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. According to Michael T. Klare, who covers defense and foreign policy for The Nation, Alaska is a “classic petrostate,” featuring a political system that is “geared toward the maximization of oil ‘rents’--royalties and other income derived from energy firms--to the neglect of other economic activities.”

Among the economic activities neglected is renewable energy development. Like Russia, with which Alaska shares a “narrow maritime border,” Alaska does not have a single utility-scale wind turbine in operation, a rather remarkable statistic given its sprawling size and a wind resource that in certain locations can be accurately described as “screaming.” But as long oil revenues are sufficient to allow Alaska to dispense with a state income tax, renewable energy development will remain in a deep freeze.

In a recent article, Klare recounts a talk Palin gave at a February 2008 meeting of the National Governors Association, where she said that “the conventional resources we have can fill the gap between now and when new technologies become economically competitive and don’t require subsidies.”

When asked to elaborate on that point, Palin’s antipathy towards renewable energy was revealed. “I just don’t want things to get out of hand with incentives for renewables, particularly since they imply subsidies, while ignoring the fuels we already have on hand,” Palin said.

Had those words been uttered by the Secretary General of OPEC, they would have been forgotten in a matter of seconds. Coming from someone who could become the next vice president, however, is cause for consternation, in that she is clearly recommending a course of action that would invariably lead to greater dependency on oil.

Certainly, the Palin prescription would reverse the decline in oil revenues propping up Alaska’s state government. But the amount of petroleum that could be extracted in 2020 from Alaska and the Outer Continental Shelf is trifling compared with current U.S. imports of Mexican crude. Even if a mini-surge of petroleum materialized as a result of a McCain-Palin energy policy that put Alaska’s wishes above the best interests of the other 49 states, it wouldn’t even compensate for the declining yields from such aging oilfields as Cantarell or Prudhoe Bay, let alone achieve the chimerical goal of energy independence.

Like the other petrostates of the world, Alaska has no Plan B to fall back on when its endowment of fossil fuels is no longer sufficient to support a state government in the style to which it is accustomed. Let us hope and pray that the voters of the other 49 states see the “drill, baby, drill” mantra for the folly it is, and reject it out of hand in favor of an energy policy that stresses energy security through conservation and renewable energy development.

Sources and complete article here.

Outreach at the Williamson Street Fair

Michael Vickerman (left) and Jeff Riggert (middle) staffed
tables in mid-September at the Willy Street Fair in
Madison to educate people about the "Permanent Global
Peak Oil Crisis" and renewable energy. Riggert, president
of the Wisconsin chapter of the AESP, built the stand to
display the sign and peak oil poster.

RENEW Wisconsin's summer/fall newsletter online

RENEW Wisconsin's summer/fall edition of Wisconsin Renewable Quarterly is now online, including the following articles:

Peak Oil Spices Meeting with Cong. Baldwin
Countdown to Solar Tour
Solar H2O on Madison Fire Stations
Global Warming Task Force Report
Wisconsin’s Newest Wind Projects
PHEV+Wind=Clean Air
Small Wind Conference Wrap-up

Riggert talks peak oil at Farmers' Market

Jeff Riggert (center), an active member of the Madison Peak Oil Group and president of the Wisconsin chapter of the AESP, talks about peak oil with shoppers at the Farmers' Market on the Capitol Square.

Riggert has his home ready for the end of abundant, inexpensive petroleum. Energy efficiency practices cut his energy usage, and solar systems on his home's roof provide hot water and electricity.

The public can view Riggert's installations during the Solar Parade of Homes on Saturday, October 4.

Natural gas customers could face sticker shock

From an article by Richard Ryman in the Green Bay Press-Gazette:

Consumers could be in for a shock this winter if natural gas prices remain high through the summer.

"If it stays the way it is, people are going to be a little bit shocked by their heating bills," said Kerry Spees, spokesman for Wisconsin Public Service Corp. in Green Bay.

Natural gas prices traditionally are lower in the summer, and utilities take the opportunity to store it at those lower rates for winter use. This summer, rates have not fallen.

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, wellhead prices for natural gas climbed from $6.37 per thousand in November 2007 to $8.94 in April, the latest month for which figures are available. Natural gas was trading at around $13 on the Nymex futures market Monday.

Spees said utilities have been waiting for prices to fall to begin summer storage. If they all begin buying at the same time, it will keep demand, and prices, higher.

He said a series of fortuitous events this summer could mitigate higher prices later, including mild temperatures nationwide and no hurricanes that affect offshore production.

"That's a lot of ifs," he said.

Spees said this would be a good time for consumers to make home improvements to reduce winter costs, such as adding insulation and improving caulking and weather stripping.

Also, he said, conserving energy in the summer will help because it will reduce the need to use natural gas-fired peaking plants to generate electricity. Peaking plants often are required when air-conditioning use is high.