This article in the Strib today reports on two U profs who warned that ethanol production would eventually affect the food supply. It came true, just much faster then was expected. In my field, natural resources, I have watched and wondered for years as I saw more of everything being used by us, and wondered, how long can this absurdity last? Those who do question such moronic tendencies as suburban development, or continually funding a transport system and culture where one person drives around in a four ton vehicle are viewed as some sort of evil naysayer worthy of witch burning, taking away the freedom of driving around in a large truck, spewing garbage, instilling pride in ignorance and all of this with a frigging Nascar sticker on the back. This is the attitude of someone who has never matured past the age of 16, arguably, and something I stopped understanding years ago. Here is the problem: Energy is a physical commodity, and if you have to expend more to get less, then the cost goes up. The U.S. peaked production long ago in 1970, and is not going to miraculously fall into a bunch of cheap, easy to refine light crude. It doesn't exist. No major fields have been found since the 1960's anywhere in the world, and the major fields are all post peak. All of them. The sands of Alberta require mining, steaming, solution, then refinement just to get it to us. The costs are twice what was predicted. I will neglect the hideous, ecosystem destroying mess they make. There are some fundamental problems in American society. For two generations now, people have become used to the idea of unlimited driving, unless you of course are very poor. We have built every system we have in transportation, housing and labor based on the idea that we can all drive wherever and whenever we want, that we can spin trucks around 24 hours day hauling plastic covered food goods 1500 miles apiece in unlimited quantities, and that this little Shangrila is going to last forever. It is embedded in our culture, where people, (mostly men)worship the sheer tonnage and inefficient horsepower of their particular vehicle, where a commute of 30 miles in 2 ton vehicles is considered normal, and weekends are spent blowing more fuel individually than an entire village in China has access to in one year, all unquestioningly and without the real price tag being paid. The question here is always: " How do we keep the cars going?", rather than, "how do we move people and goods efficiently and conveniently with the least energy?" It frightens many, because like a religious faith they cannot conceive of another way. It frightens engineers and planners because they know it would take 50 year to re-engineer this giant goat screw. It frightens economists, because they know the costs. So along came ethanol, nee alcohol, as the miracle cure. Farmers get more subsidy, and we do not owe the Arabs anything. There is a problem...it uses other resources also. Water. Soil. Energy. Carbohydrates, called food, which we have to convert. It is, in essence, casting away the last six inches of Midwest topsoil and entire aquifers so we can all drive 20 miles to work alone in a dodge magnum. Does anyone see the insanity in this? What was true for a half century is true no longer. The oil supplies this was built on are going and about to go forever, and everything to replace it with is more expensive, nastier, harder to refine, and there just isn't as much. There are no more Ghawar's. I do not expect this to change until we are squeezed even more, until fuel becomes such a chunk of people's income that they are forced to change, and an entire cultural shift takes place that sees a stock car race as a giant waste of resources..which it is. People have been sold a bill of goods...that we can live without communities, that we can drive endlessly around forever, and that we can have all the food we want shipped in from Chile..It is not real, never was, and it will not be here forever.

Credit to NPR, Melissa Bock for the picture...
I've been watching the local theaters hoping this drivel will not show up. After the climate change skeptic teenager on NPR ( which has now officially gone to crap), I suppose next we will have a bevy of stories about this garbage. Oh wonderful, I get to watch Ben Stein whine and lie for an hour. In honor of him being an economist, I declare too much opportunity cost for me to waste precious life moments listening to deluded people lie.

The picture is a methane geyser, and we see them here also. Whenever you see bubbling, especially in the swamps and bogs here, it is methane being released. I have heard there are enormous bubble releases that occur in the tailings ponds at the mines. It is a greenhouse gas, releasing more carbon than CO2. The technique used for such discoveries is called rational thought or evidence based thinking, rather than wishful delusion.

I suppose now all the global warming denialists will start screaming, but exactly what was this crap? This was April 8 on my walk to work. The snowbank is the middle of the street...too much to plow anywhere. I will not even add the last two days. I endured a five hour drive from St. Paul Thursday night rivaling the Dakar rally, with snow instead of dust. This is a cool pic though, I will admit: That was a monster.