[Tanada]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MrBill', 'H')uman labor cannot compete with a tractor. It takes more calories to feed them. Whether you grow food to feed farm laborers or grow crops to be made into bio-fuels (either ethanol or bio-diesel) the tractor performs more work. At least for growing crops. Farm labor is best kept for intensive operations like picking fruit, harvesting a small garden or tending to livestock. Even if the marginal cost of labor is zero (and it is not as labor needs to be fed and housed even when it is producing no work) it cannot compete with the energy efficiency of a tractor. I cannot accept the argument that in response to fuel scarcity and high prices that we will choose to become less energy efficient. Food, Fuel and Fertilizer are the Holy Trinity. Like Oxygen, Fuel and Flame are to Fire. They are not independent of one another.

[CarlosFerreira]

Old and new ideas will be needed. Try this for a catastrophist take on the problem. It is mainly wrong, in my view, because of the final conclusions:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Archdruid fellow blogger', 'T')hat 1960s sewing machine – designed to allow for maintenance and repair, built of easily replaceable parts, and relatively easy to convert to foot pedal power if electricity becomes scarce – is likely to have a much longer working life in an age of decline than the computerized models filling showrooms today. In the same way, a great many trailing edge technologies – and the skills needed to use them, many of which can still be learned from living practitioners today – are worth preserving. The question, of course, is how many people will do that while the opportunity still exists.

[MrBill]

Tanada wrote:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'H')uman labor cannot compete with a Horse either Mr. Bill, the reason farmers world wide use livestock is simple. A properly harnessed horse will eat 5 times as many calories per day as a man, but it does 10 times as much work, a 100% improvement on your food invested. Even better a horse during the spring/summer/fall can be put out to forage for a couple hours before and after working and feed itself on meadows which are not being cropped. If you use field rotation they can also be grazing on the fallow field adding manure to the soil and reducing the time it takes for the land to recover.

[cube]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MrBill', '.')..
At the moment (not at some interval in the future) we (Canada and USA) spend approximately 43-percent of our discretionary income in restaurants and bars versus just 6-8 percent on basic food. That means that the food industry absorbs vastly more excess labor than agriculture. But it also means that as economic times get tougher, and energy prices increase, that consumers will cutback first in meals eaten out.

How the world spends its money
...

[Byron100]

MrBill wrote: $this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')e probably need 15-25% of our workforce to meet all our basic needs for food, fuel, shelter, etc. The rest out of necessity is either employed in services or in producing luxury products or discretionary spending. The economy expands to include labor. Most of us are simply not necessary to its running. So from a societal point of view it may be better than 75% of the workforce stop working and stop producing, while being supported by the 25% of those that actually produce what it is that we need. At least that would reduce the amount of waste and energy consumed by society as a whole.

[vtsnowedin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Byron100', 'S')o how to keep the jobless fed and housed? My idea would be implement Huey Long's minimum income plan...everyone gets a share of the nation's GDP whether they work or not. This keeps the food on the table, roof over heads and prevents the total breakdown of society. Those that do have jobs, as actual producers, will be able to keep a portion of what they earn, in addition to the minimum state income, so they'll enjoy a higher standard of living than those who do not have jobs. If those folks don't like the idea of the majority living off the fruits of their labors, then tough sh*t. Which would you rather have, a society like I've just described, or a new Dark Age with burnt-out cities and starving zombies?

Don't know about you guys, but I'm voting for the most sensible option.

[Snowrunner]

As an observation.

My place looks out over English Bay in Vancouver, BC. This is a "parking lot"L for ships who wait to get into the (inner) Vancouver Harbor and this time last year there were on average 7+ ships waiting to get in or out of the harbor.

For the last three months or so I see maybe 3 ships (on average) waiting, with the occasional "pileup" during long weekends.

[MrBill]

Is a container just a container?
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A') travelling home for an elephant, refrigeration units for Iraq, radar-proof storage for the army - just some of the things shipping containers become after travelling the world.
Stuart Jarvis of Pentalver shows us where they end up.

[CarlosFerreira]

Here's where there's pressure to cut is starting to mount: environmental taxes:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '�')��Gov. Palin needs to visit Southern California and understand that we are the tailpipe of the nation, ” said the bill’s author, California State Senator Alan Lowenthal. “By getting cheap goods from Asia to Alaska, we are subsidizing Alaskans with our health.”

Environmentalists also countered the letter swiftly, saying the bill was critical to reducing the number of pollution-related deaths in California.

[cube]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('CarlosFerreira', 'H')ere's where there's pressure to cut is starting to mount: environmental taxes:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '�')��Gov. Palin needs to visit Southern California and understand that we are the tailpipe of the nation, ” said the bill’s author, California State Senator Alan Lowenthal. “By getting cheap goods from Asia to Alaska, we are subsidizing Alaskans with our health.”

Environmentalists also countered the letter swiftly, saying the bill was critical to reducing the number of pollution-related deaths in California.

[CarlosFerreira]

@ cube,

Well put on both accounts.

I wonder how much of this cargo is transported by train or boat, and what percentage is hauled by truck?

[IslandCrow]

Bump: Latest BBC report on tracking a container around the world

It has the slightly misleading (not up to the normal standard that I would expect from BBC) title of: Why container ships may downsize, but it is a good summary of the problems of making larger and larger container ships. Some of the conclusions would sound familar to people here:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')here are only two ways for companies to respond to these risks.

One is to keep more inventory in their warehouses, at considerable cost, so they can fill customers' orders even if imports fail to show up as scheduled.

The other alternative is for companies to shrink their supply chains, so that more products are made close to where they will be sold rather than halfway around the world.

In both North America and Europe, there is some evidence that this is starting to occur.

[Tanada]

I originally posted this on another thread but after thinking about it I beleive it should be here too because of its potential impact on the cost of shipping via MV which are now the majority of the merchant fleet.

I was pointed to a subject I knew nothing about a couple of days ago, CWF aka Coal Water Fuel. You take coal of any grade and grind it as fine as flour or powdered sugar, then you mix it with water into an emulsion that resembles dirty motor oil in color and consistency. With only minor modification the resulting mixture can be burned in Diesel engines in place of regular diesel #2 fuel when the engine is a low speed design, and it can be used as a co-fuel in medium speed diesel engines where the beginning of the fuel injection is #2 diesel fuel to act as a pilot ignition source for the CWF. The low speed diesel application is for ocean going Motor Vessels and for peaking plant Diesel electric generator modules of 10 to 100 MWe. The medium speed diesel application studied was for locomotive engines. The reason Orimulsion come into this is simple, researchers in both the USSR and USA developed CWF as a liquid boiler fuel to supplement or replace heavy oil and a great deal of research and development was done for that application in the late 1970's and early 1980's. Orimulsion was invented by the Venezuelan oil industry as a competitor for CWF in large baseload electric powerplant boiler fuel applications. For political reasons Venezuela has been attempting to phase out Orimulsion production, mostly by letting contracts expire and not renewing them. In the late 1990's Orimulsion was being actively promoted and was gaining market share by displacing heavy oil aka Diesel #6 aka Bunker C as boiler fuel at electric powerplants in Europe, Canada and East Asia.

Because of the way the process for making CWF works the resulting fuel can have as little as 2% ash content after burning, which is a huge improvement over traditional coal combustion methods. This extremely low ash content has even allowed for successful testing of CWF for use in CCGT aka Combined Cycle Gas Turbine powerplants which currently usually run on Natural Gas with Diesel #1 as a backup in case of interruption in the Natural Gas supply. It turns out that after extensive testing using CWF in a low speed diesel for peaking power is almost exactly as thermally efficient as using Natural Gas in a CCGT used for baseload power production. The carbon emissions are still much greater for CWF but the fuel costs are much lower than using Natural Gas or regular Diesel fuel when used for electricity production. If Carbon Emissions are not a concern there is no reason CWF can not substitute for Diesel Fuel in heavy equipment used to mine coal and in the locomotive engines used to transport that coal, and in places with abundant water CWF can be transported via pipeline in the same manner as raw petroleum is today. Much like Orimulsion in the 1990's CWF can be used as boiler fuel in powerplants that today burn heavy oil, and with burner replacement it can be used in powerplants that today use pulverized Coal as boiler fuel. Making this conversions won't make Coal a clean fuel, however it will greatly reduce the ash left over from combustion. The process also can also be adjusted to reduce the Sulfur in the fuel substantially. Given that one of the test applications for this fuel is in CCGT powerplants and that several coal fired CCGT powerplants were recently being built to demonstrate "clean coal technology" under the Bush administration and given that CWF is much cheaper and more energy efficient that Coal gasification I have a hunch that unless serious carbon taxes are imposed CWF is about to make a big entry into the electric market. Also given the fact that it is substantially cheaper to produce than Diesel fuel I believe it is highly likely that international ship companies will adopt it as fuel for their low speed marine diesels, which will substantially cut the cost of international shipping. As far as I have been able to tell from my research the emissions from ship engines are the jurisdiction of the country the vessel is registered in, and somehow I doubt Liberia is going to care one way or the other how much CO2 ships bearing their flag emit.

For more information of the extensive testing of CWF and its similarities to Orimulsion please read CWF pdf.

[Tanada]

The first of the new Equinox class dry bulk freighters have arrived in Canada this week. These ships are the biggest size that can transit from the ocean through the locks into the Great Lakes, designed as Seawaymax vessels they are faster and more fuel efficient than the ships currently plying the lakes.

It looks as though the company that ordered them waited as long as they could before ordering in hopes that the Seaway expansion project would go forward, but now that it is clearly dead in the water they went forward with this new design.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzeJje0m5kc