P.D. Allen's Blog, page 29
July 28, 2012
Escape ~ Murderer’s Sky
Rhonda looked around for help, noticing the street was now quiet and empty. Everyone must have run for cover at the first scent of trouble. If they could just make it to their grandparents’ house. The McCready home seemed miles away. Rhonda was beginning to doubt they would make it before the agents caught up with them. She would rather die than have Vincent Riker lay his hands on her again.
She could almost feel the pain of the lashings and the assault. Cruel memories played through her head of herself tied and gagged in a motel bed, lying on her stomach as Riker whipped her with a coat hanger and raped her anally. That sick motherfucker. There was no telling what he would do if he caught them now.
Murderer’s Sky; Book 1 of Under Shattered Skies ~ kindle ~ paperback
Working the Looms
Quantum Meditation #1589
July 27, 2012
Mass Grave ~ Murderer’s Sky
The three men forced themselves to walk to the edge of the ravine. Looking down, they saw a tangled pile of smoldering bodies and buzzards. Everything had a dark reddish hue from the angry sky. There may have been as many as a hundred buzzards down there, feasting themselves. Bob raised his rifle and fired a shot in the air. The three men backed away from the edge as a cloud of scavenger birds rose up, rioting in their effort to escape the sound of the gunshot.
Stepping back to the edge, they beheld the grisly sight. Men, women and children, all tangled together in a smoldering heap. Without separating them there was no way to tell how many bodies there were. Teller’s estimate of more than thirty had probably been on the cautious side. Elliot guessed there might be in the neighborhood of fifty bodies in the ravine. Buzzards and other scavengers had been busy, further complicating the problem of counting and identifying the bodies.
Murderer’s Sky; Book 1 of Under Shattered Skies ~ kindle ~ paperback
King Coal
King Coal
by PD Allen
The most important article in this entire series is Under Shattered Skies of Our Own Design
Murderer’s Sky; Book 1 of Under Shattered Skies ~ kindle ~ paperback
download this article as a pdf (black print on a white background)
The importance of oil is due to a number of factors. It is abundant. It is cheap to access and easy to produce. It holds a high concentration of energy. It is easy to transport. And it is versatile; lending itself to a wide number of uses.
Although it is abundant, we have already managed to use up the most easily accessed oil. The remaining reserves will be progressively more difficult to produce, will be progressively more expensive, will be of diminishing quality and will be produced in diminishing amounts. The natural instinct is to look for alternatives. And at first glance there appears to be a plethora of alternatives just waiting to be utilized. Upon closer examination, however, none of these alternatives has all of the factors going for it that oil has.
The alternative that we will likely depend on the most, for good or for bad is coal.
About Coal
Coal is abundant, cheap, easy to transport, and it is the primary fuel worldwide for generating electricity. Unfortunately, the highest grades of coal do not hold one tenth of the energy of an equal amount of oil. Moreover, coal is a very dirty energy source, producing more greenhouse gases than oil or natural gas, as well as acid rain, mercury pollution, smog and particulate buildup in the atmosphere. The estimates of worldwide coal resources are very high, but incorporate a lot of coal that will never be mined because it is of too low quality or contains too much sulfur and other pollutants. Also, these resource figures include coal seams that will never be produced because they are too small or too difficult to access.
The deeper the coal lies, and the harder it is to dig out, the more energy we must expend on extraction and the lower the net energy ratio of the coal. We use the energy of oil to mine coal, to process it, to ship it from the mine and to build the mining equipment. When we burn coal in a power plant, 65% of its energy is wasted as heat energy released to the atmosphere. This could certainly be improved, and should be.
Some people like to remind us that the Germans made liquid fuel from coal during World War II. What they fail to mention is that Germany was desperate, and many measures that are deemed uneconomical are to be condoned in a time of war. The South Africans improved on the German process while they were under sanctions, but even their operations operate at a net energy loss. One of the simplest hydrocarbons to be produced from a coal feedstock is Methanol, or Methyl Alcohol (CH3OH), which is produced at a 32 to 44% net energy loss. And the loss increases as the hydrocarbons become more complex. The generation of Methanol is also the first step in the production of free hydrogen; so this energy loss is true for hydrogen fuel cells as well, whether the feed stock is coal or natural gas. It will always require energy to generate liquid fuels from coal. It would be more economical to switch some of our oil and natural gas power plants to coal than it would be to generate fuel from coal.
Coal will be important as oil and natural gas slowly wanes. Already there are over 100 orders for new coal-powered generators. But we will have to be vigilant of the pollutants and greenhouse gases released by coal. We will have to be careful about the human costs of mining accidents and black lung disease. And we will have to consider how to transport coal from the mines to the power plants as the price of oil continues to rise.
Currently, coal is transported by truck to train loading facilities, where it is loaded into ore carriers and then shipped around the country. Both the trucks and the trains run on diesel. So the transport of coal is dependent upon petroleum and the cost of transport will rise accordingly. Due to atrophying of the railways in the US, railway transportation is already subject to bottlenecks. Without a major investment in railway infrastructure, and development of alternatives to diesel fuel, the shipment of coal will run into major problems as demand increases.
Diesel powered equipment is also used to mine the coal, from earth moving equipment to drills and water pumps. There are already major questions about the net energy of coal production in the US. So far, the USGS, the EIA, the US Minerals Management Service, and other such organizations whose job it is to assess our natural resources have avoided doing a net energy analysis of coal, preferring—instead—to publish their pie in the sky resource estimates. In the important 1991 book, Beyond Oil, J. Gever et al. did a partial net energy analysis for coal that showed coal to have peaked around 1950. More recently, Gregson Vaux has made a preliminary study applying a Hubbert-type production curve to US coal and arrived at a peak somewhere around 2032 to 2053.
Of this much, we can be certain: coal production will peak and decline over time. And once it begins to decline, it will eventually reach the point of zero net energy—when it requires as much energy to mine the coal as can be extracted from the coal. By the time it reaches that point, coal operations will have ended. While it is debatable whether U.S. coal production will peak so soon, we must recognize that coal is a nonrenewable energy source and it will not last forever.
Finally, let us not omit the environmental and health costs of coal mining. There are many reports about the health effects of coal mining; who has not heard of black lung? It is also well known that coal is the dirtiest fuel to burn, emitting more greenhouse gases than any other fuel source, along with particulates, sulfur and many other pollutants. During the Industrial Revolution of the 1800s, coal burning blanketed most industrial cities in a thick cloud of soot. Coal soot is a major cause of respiratory disease and acid rain. Modern smoke stack scrubbing technology helps to strip many pollutants out of the exhaust, but it is extremely cost prohibitive.
Most coal today is strip mined. This is a very destructive practice that ultimately leaves a vast crater on the landscape. Remediation of strip mining is expensive and the cost usually winds up falling on the tax payers. And in the end, remediation efforts never repair all of the damage to the land or even fully mitigate pollution effects from the tailing and slurry impoundments. Mountaintop removal takes strip mining to its ultimate end, where mountains are shoveled into surrounding valleys in order to give access to the coal within. Remediation is not possible; once a mountaintop has been removed it cannot be put back. Right now, there is a controversy surrounding industry intentions to destroy the tallest mountain in Kentucky, Black Mountain. Mountaintop removal practices are also edging closer to Knoxville Tennessee and the Smoky Mountains. Mountaintop removal has a severe impact on neighboring communities, with environmental damage and the noise and vibration of explosives being only two contributors. For more information, please visit Appalachian Voices (http://www.appvoices.org/mtr/default.asp).
The Inez, Kentucky Spill
Few people know that the greatest toxic spill in the US took place in the Appalachian Mountains of Eastern Kentucky, on October 11th, 2000. 250 million gallons of coal sludge (the Exxon Valdez spill involved only 11 million gallons of oil), turning 75 miles of rivers and streams an iridescent black. The spill erased the stream ecology throughout the watershed of the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy River, and eventually made its way out to the Ohio River.
The spill did not make big news because the oil company responsible (Martin County Coal Co., a subsidiary of the A.T. Massey Coal Co., which was itself owned by the Fluor Corporation at the time) quickly closed off all the roads leading into the area, isolating nearby residents in their effort to keep the spill secret. Martin County Coal Company blamed the impoundment failure on an “act of God.” However, an investigation of the spill showed that the protective barrier between the coal impoundment and an underlying mine shaft was much thinner than the company had led regulators to believe. Federal regulators tried to block the study (performed on March 21st, 2001 by Triad Engineering for the US Mine Safety and Health Administration-MSHA) from being released. In October, the report was leaked to the Charleston Gazette.
The US Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry reported that some samples of the coal slurry contained dangerous levels of copper, vanadium, manganese, barium, arsenic, and cobalt. Barium, vanadium and arsenic can cause toxic effects through skin contact. Residents of the area have reported red blotches on their skin, which children refer to as “sludge bumps.” The towns of Inez and Louisa in Kentucky, along with the town of Kermit in West Virginia, shut down their water intakes for a month, relying on water that was trucked in. Many private wells and springs are still not usable.
It is estimated that clean up costs for this spill will ultimately be as high as $60 million. Unfortunately, the company is refusing legal responsibility and thwarting the clean up. Martin County Coal now states that the clean up is complete and there is no longer anything to worry about. Unfortunately, this is only true along Coldwater Creek, where the most affluent residents live. Elsewhere, clean up crews have merely buried the sludge under a layer of soil or scraped stream banks clear of vegetation without doing anything to prevent erosion or to aid in plant regrowth. Many creeks and private yards have not been visited by clean up crews. Yet federal agencies charged with overseeing and regulating the coal industry and environmental hazards have gone out of their way to help cover up the incident and to declare that the spill has been remediated.
The cover up has been very successful. Word of the spill barely made it to the major media, and the effects on the environment and surrounding community have been glossed over. And not even a year later, on April 10th 2002, Martin County Coal’s parent company, Massey Energy, was responsible for another coal slurry spill in Eastern Kentucky. In this incident, an estimated 135,000 gallons were spilled from a broken pipe in Pike County, Kentucky. Cover up operations began immediately.
There are an estimated 1,000 slurry impoundments spread around the Appalachian Mountains, with the largest concentration in West Virginia and Kentucky. Despite a very bad history of impoundment failures, the regulation of these impoundments is extremely slack. Many hold several times their maximum amount of slurry. Most of these impoundments are situated at the heads of hollows. Some overlook towns and even schools. Of only 25 that MSHA recognize as high risk waste dams, review and repair has not been completed on more than half. Far too many of these impoundments are already being pushed beyond their limits. If we step up coal production to offset energy depletion, it will be at a terrible cost.
For the people of Appalachia who depend on the coal industry, I have to report that we are on the eve of a coal boom. But let us keep in mind that this boom will not last forever. The coal companies in Appalachia are powerful and greedy. It is up to us to demand a high level of worker and environmental safety. We must be on guard against mountaintop removal and slurry impoundment failures. And we must insure that more of the profits of coal mining are invested in the communities of Appalachia, where they are needed most.
Witching Season
Quantum Meditation #1588
July 26, 2012
Nightmare ~ Murderer’s Sky
In this excerpt, the young Albert Hayne has a nightmare that will affect the rest of his life.
In my dreams, I was playing the fiddle before a large audience. My father stormed in and snatched away my violin. I was naked and the audience was jeering at me. I ran from them, ran from my father, ran from the Church. As I ran, I could sense an evil presence watching over me.
This malevolence was so strong as to be palpable, and it seemed to intrude into my dreams from some powerful, foreign source. Though this evil loomed around me, I knew it was directed by some intelligence — directed with intent and strategy.
Murderer’s Sky; Book 1 of Under Shattered Skies ~ kindle ~ paperback
July 25, 2012
Constipated Goat ~ Murderer’s Sky
This excerpt introduces Monty Harte, an important figure from Albert Hayne’s past.
The storyteller was a tall, lean man with sandy, short-cropped hair and a short beard. His skin was dark and leathery like most farmers, from spending his days in the sun and the weather. His face was drawn out and lined with care, with a long — but not protrusive — nose, and brown eyes full of warmth and friendship. He was regaling his listeners with the story of a farmer who tried to treat a sick goat by giving it a laxative, resulting in a hilarious chase scene where the goat let fire at the farmer with a variety of indigestible hardware, a work glove, a rubber hose, and a wad of tire patching compound that plugged up the poor goat’s rectum on its way through, and then ballooned out with excrement until it exploded to the detriment of both goat and farmer.
Murderer’s Sky; Book 1 of Under Shattered Skies ~ kindle ~ paperback
The Collapse of Complex Systems
The Collapse of Complex Systems
by PD Allen
Murderer’s Sky; Book 1 of Under Shattered Skies ~ kindle ~ paperback
download this article as a pdf (black print on a white background)
(pdallen.com) We talk about energy depletion, global climate change, overpopulation and a host of other problems, but these are only symptoms of the true problems. In focusing upon these symptoms, we do not look at the larger problems and so are in no way prepared to begin seeking a solution. What is really happening is that a complex system is approaching a systemic breakdown due to flaws in fundamental conceptions. So long as we do not change our concepts of prosperity and economic growth, and so long as we do not take into account the true costs of environmental destruction and worker exploitation, the breakdown will proceed. In the meantime, we will simply be dealing with the symptoms instead of curing the disease.
It is in the nature of complex systems to grow and burgeon until fundamental flaws bring their downfall. Complex systems are rather susceptible to sudden, large scale change. They handle slow and subtle changes smoothly, but quick, large scale change does not leave a complex system an adequate opportunity to adapt. Complex systems are like heavily loaded diesel trucks on a downhill run: they require more braking distance than smaller vehicles. Sudden change tends to stress a complex system precisely where its fundamental flaws make it the weakest. Without adequate time to adapt to the change, the result is a systemic breakdown.
Systemic breakdowns tend to progress unpredicably. You can see my article about North Korea for a sample of this (Drawing from Experience, Part 1, Pfeiffer, Dale Allen; in The End of the Oil Age; Lulu Press, 2004; out of print), or Dmitri Orlov’s excellent material on the collapse of the USSR (Post-Soviet Lessons for a Post-American Century & Our Village, Orlov, Dmitri; in GRITS; Grassroots Ideias to Survive; Lulu Press, 2005; out of print). There is simply no way to anticipate a systemic breakdown. You can hazard guesses about some of the effects and prepare for those; but you can be sure that you will run into something unforeseen, and that the effects you did foresee will be complicated by other chains of effect beyond your ability to forecast.
Even if there was a true techno-fix for energy depletion, the chances are that it is already too late to implement it. The time for techno-fixes was back in the 1970s and 1980s. Now we are already at the hairpin curve at the bottom of the mountain, and the brakes on our diesel haven’t even been engaged yet. We had over thirty years to make the necessary transition. Instead, we went on a mad binge of consumption and accumulating wealth. So now we have to pay the fiddler.
Beyond this, even if there were a perfect techno-fix for energy depletion and time enough to implement the fix, this would not solve the fundamental problems of which energy depletion is just a symptom. If we solve the energy problem, then the more basic flaws that infest the complex system we call our civilization will simply fester up in some other way. And the longer we put off addressing the underlying fundamental flaws, the more serious the symptoms will be, the more difficult it will be to resolve the true problems, and the more disastrous will be the systemic crash.
Consider treating pneumonia as a cold. You might be able to clear up the cough and sinus condition temporarily, only to have the untreated infection claim the patient. The civilization we live in is simply a complex form of ecosystem. As such, it obeys all the laws of ecology. Increased energy availability will result in population growth, given there are no other immediate limits to environmental carrying capacity. Already, the world population is almost twice again more than the carrying capacity of the planet without hydrocarbons.
Should we find and implement the perfect techno-fix, population would continue to grow. The adoption of conspicuous consumption (otherwise known as the American lifestyle) by more and more people will result in graver problems. And the eventual population crash will be even worse.
And for those who say that a techno-fix would work if we also practiced conservation, I submit that it is impossible for our current socioeconomic system to conserve. For one thing, conservation could endanger the economic growth upon which this system is so dependant. And even if we did succeed in conserving energy in some ways, Jevon’s Paradox implies that total energy consumption will still increase (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_p...).
This is why scientists and engineers have been warning us for over a decade not to expect techno-fixes. Our problems are too complex, and they result from basic conceptual flaws that lie outside of the realm of science and technology. It is too late for techno-fixes. Even if it existed, a techno-fix would only be a temporary fix. And, in any case, our efforts would be much more effective if we were to address the fundamental problems instead.
In order to avoid systemic breakdown, we must change our concepts of prosperity and growth. We need to stop measuring our health in terms of dollars, or we need to incorporate true social and environmental costs into those dollars. We must forge a new socioeconomic system not based on conspicuous consumption and constant economic growth.
We need to begin restructuring our lifestyles, our households, our neighborhoods, and our communities. We need to adapt for self-sufficiency and sustainability. And while we are doing this, we need to evolve some new criteria for measuring prosperity, and a new respect for our environment and for each other. These are things that we can undertake at a grassroots level, and which will do the most good in the long run.
When we talk about peak oil, then we must either hope for a techno-fix or head for the hills armed for survival. But when we realize that peak oil is only a symptom of the true problem, then we also realize that neither techno-fixes nor personal escape will really solve our problems. So let us state once and for all: the problem is not peak oil or energy depletion, nor global climate change, nor overpopulation. The problem is the collapse of a complex system due to fundamental conceptual flaws.
When we have focused upon the real problem, then we can begin to contemplate a solution on the grassroots level, based on the development of a localized, sustainable socioeconomic system that makes the environment and community an integral part of the equation both on the social level and on the individual level. Then, and only then, can we begin to solve the problem.
Electromagnetics
Quantum Meditation #1586
