California To Introduce Peak Electric Rates

Thanks to Knowledge Problem for this Los Angeles Times story about California introducing peak electric rates for large industrial customers.

The California Public Utilities Commission directed the state's three investor-owned utilities, including Edison International's Southern California Edison Co., to install special meters and draw up "critical peak pricing" tariffs that would make electricity more expensive at times of heavy use. The higher rates could spur some commercial users to shut operations on the 15 or so days when the state might be faced with blackouts.

The pricing plan, along with beefed-up energy efficiency and conservation programs also approved by the commission Thursday, could be crucial in avoiding a crisis in Southern California this year. The recently released state Energy Action Plan predicted that the Southland could run short of power in August and September if temperatures are exceptionally high.

The new pricing plan is aimed at about 25,000 large users consuming 200 kilowatts of power at peak periods. Such large users range from office buildings and big retailers that use about 200 kilowatts to steel and cement plants that need more than 500 kilowatts when operating at full tilt, said Marcel Hawiger, an attorney with the Utility Reform Network, a San Francisco-based ratepayers advocate.

Large manufacturing plants and big-box retailers opposed the program because it's difficult for them to quickly reduce operations. Some fear that the rates, which are voluntary, could become mandatory.

This San Diego Union-Tribune article has more on this. Thanks to offseason increases in electricity usage, CalISO -- the entity legally responsible for the state's power grid -- estimates that the state is now 1,700 MW short in a "1-in-10 heat wave" event. That is, if the state should suffer from a heat wave of the sort that occurs one of every ten years, there would be guaranteed brownouts or blackouts.

One big impediment to all this: the federal government has reserved for itself the right to set pricing, so the state can't actually implement the program without federal approval. Shades of 1971, when the feds set the price for oil, too...

Converting Cars To Hybrids With Off-The-Shelf Parts

Researchers at UC Davis have been converting cars with conventional engines to hybrids using off-the-shelf parts, according to USA Today. The article discusses hybrids in general, noting an objection I've had to purely electric cars that they're only as clean as the power plant that generated the watts to charge it.

But the main interest for me -- and what the peakoil.com story writeup focused on -- was the activities of UC Davis researcher Professor Andrew Frank, who's been busy converting a Ford Explorer to a hybrid.

With engineering students at the University of California at Davis, Professor Frank has spent more than a decade turning production vehicles into plug-in hybrids using off-the-shelf parts. "We just built a high-performance plug-in hybrid Ford Explorer," he says. "It's 325 horsepower — 200 of that horsepower is electric and 125 is gasoline. This car goes like a rocket, but still gets double the fuel economy of a regular hybrid. And for the first 50 miles it is all electric — zero emissions."

That's enough for many drivers to complete their daily commute. Compared with conventional cars, the annual fuel consumption of the modified cars "is only about 10%, because you're using gas so infrequently," he says. "Our studies show [that] the average person would only go to the gas station six times a year compared with maybe 35 times a year."

Built on a stock Explorer platform, the hybrid retains all its original interior space. There is also more space in the engine compartment because the vehicle lacks moving parts like a fan belt, generator, water pump, and even a transmission. Because it has fewer than one-fifth the number of moving parts of a conventional SUV, the hybrid's weight, even with a heavier battery, stays the same. Assembly is simpler and reliability, better. In production, it might cost $40,000 or less, he says.

A quick look at the UC Davis website describing their activities (the second item down) mentions Team Fate. Funded in part by Challenge X, a government-industry consortium consisting of the Department of Energy, General Motors, and others, its object is to "provide engineering schools an opportunity to participate in hands-on research and development with leading-edge automotive propulsion, fuels, materials, and emissions-control technologies." With seventeen teams nationwide, the big surprise is that MIT, traditionally a school with deep links to the automotive industry, isn't one of them. Good stuff, although as the Peak Oil blog points out, Jevons paradox predicts even more strenuous demand for oil should fuel economy suddenly increase. But, it's a good first step.

The Myth of Energy Independence

In the October 11, 2004 issue of The New Yorker, this article from John Cassidy on the failure of "energy independence". He talks briefly about peak oil as one of many reasons the U.S. isn't likely to kick its habit of foreign fuel dependence any time soon. "No prominent politician will say it publicly, but from an energy perspective an extended period of higher fuel prices might well be just what the country needs." Indeed.

Tempting Godwin: The Primitivist Green SS

Via peakoil.com, an anarchist criticism of the primitivism pervading many observers of peak oil, by Andrew Flood. While we disagree on a number of points (particularly in the notion that anarchism can ever be viable), his arguments resonate most where he brings to the fore the millenialist Green ideas that primitivism will eventually become necessary. Conceding the idea that mass die-offs would be necessary were civilization to end -- the carrying capacity of land varies depending on the technology used; farming supports more people than hunter-gatherer lifestyles (and, by implication, industrial civilization supports far, far more):

The earth's population today is around 6000 million. A return to a 'primitive' earth therefore requires that some 5900 million people disappear. Something has to happen to 98% of the world's population in order for the 100 million survivors to have even the slightest hope of a sustainable primitive utopia.

But going backwards implies something has to change, and that something is the size of the population. Flood writes

My expectation is that just about everyone when confronted with this requirement of mass death will conclude that 'primitivism' offers nothing to fight for. ... Most primitivists run away from the requirement for mass death in one of two ways. The more cuddly ones decide that primitivism is not a program for a different way of running the world. Rather it exists as a critique of civilization and not an alternative to it. This is fair enough and there is a value in re-examining the basic assumptions of civilization. ... Other primitivists however take the Cassandra path, telling us they are merely prophets of an inevitable doom. They don't desire the death of 5,900 million they just point out it cannot be prevented. This is worth examing in some detail precisely because it is so disempowering. What after all is the use of fighting for a fair society today if tomorrow or the day after 98% of us are going to die and everything we have built crumble to dust?

Which is to say, sizeable numbers of the readership of peakoil.com, at least, judging by my experiences there. I would disagree with him, though, on the idea that people don't want 5.9 billion to die: consider the typically amoral discussions going on wherever peak oil is mentioned.

The most convincing form the 'end of civilisation' panic takes is the idea of a looming resource crisis that will make life as we know it impossible. And the best resource to focus on for those who wish to make this argument is oil. Everything we produce, including food, is dependant on massive energy inputs and 40% of the worlds energy use is generated from oil.

The primitivist version of this argument goes something like this, 'everyone knows that in X number of year the oil will run out, this will mean civilization will grind to a halt, and this will mean lots of people will die. So we might as well embrace the inevitable'. The oil running out argument is the primitivist equivalent of the orthodox Marxist 'final economic crisis that results in the overthrow of capitalism'. And, just like the orthodox Marxists, primitivists always argue this final crisis is always just around the corner.

When looked at in any detail this argument evaporates and it becomes clear that neither capitalism nor civilization face a final crisis because of the oil running out. This is not because oil supplies are inexhaustible, indeed we may be reaching the peak of oil production today in 1994. But far from being the end of capitalism or civilization this is an opportunity for profit and restructuring.

Again, this is where I part company with Flood's arguments; muttering on about class-based societies and such like flies in the face of American social reality, where huge majorities, no matter how wealthy, think of themselves as merely middle class. Well: he is Irish, or at least, resides there; perhaps he is ignorant of such matters. But essentially, I believe he's right -- hence the name of the blog -- on the lone issue of resilience. We didn't domesticate dogs, cattle, geese, chickens, rice, corn, and wheat just to starve to death.

For the record, I extend the following offer to the Green millenialists: come out shooting, now, the better to get the killing over with early, so we know who you are. But I do not think my offer will be accepted; comfortable behind keyboard and monitor, they cower and gloat, smug in their doomsaying, certain the lines tail off to the right side of the graph, the rest of humanity clueless and powerless. They know that, were they to take me up, they would be shot down dead as any other sociopaths. Well: we punish all sorts of crimes around here, those of both omission and commission. Those unwilling to lift a finger to prevent the deaths of 5.9 billion, please note your future place in the hall of infamy is assured, along with the likes of Göhring, Stalin, and Mao.

Turning Iraq Hawks Into Green Doves

Robert Bryce in Slate explains how neoconservatives in think tanks like Project for the New American Century have suddenly started turning green: for the simple reason that a dollar spent on Saudi oil is a dollar that might be sent to theocrats who want to spread anti-Western hate.

James Woolsey, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency and staunch backer of the Iraq war, now drives a 58-miles-per-gallon Toyota Prius and has two more hybrid vehicles on order. Frank Gaffney, the president of the Center for Security Policy and another neocon who championed the war, has been speaking regularly in Washington about fuel efficiency and plant-based bio-fuels.

...For Woolsey and Gaffney, the fact that energy efficiency and conservation might help the environment is an unintended side benefit. They want to weaken the Saudis, the Iranians, and the Syrians while also strengthening the Israelis. Whether these ends are achieved with M-16s or hybrid automobiles doesn't seem to matter to them.

Among the environmentalists, there seems to be the idea that the pencil line on the Malthusian graph can only head down. It isn't so, and stories like this one explain why.

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Addendum: That the neocons -- who essentially believed in the infinite pliability of the world to American military force -- may be coming around to the idea that the world isn't so constructed, or at least, to the idea that some alternatives are better, is also a positive.

Good Fortune

Several good articles in Fortune:

• First, this lead-in article.
• Second, an overview of new green energy technology. ("Advances in nanotechnology and electronic controls are driving down the costs of alternative energy even as prices of fossil fuels climb.")
• This review of thin-film solar companies.
• One "gee why didn't I think of that" company: IdleAir, who have a system that provides heat or air conditioning, phone lines, and other amenities to truckers who would otherwise idle their engines. Truckers get a quiet night's sleep knowing their neighbors engines will be turned off, too. That alone will save million of gallons of diesel annually, even more as the franchise is extended.
• An update on thermal depolymerization: Changing World Technologies is now cranking out 400 bbl/day at its Carthage, MO plant. The only problem is, the price of the raw materials ($80/ton, enough to make two barrels of crude) is now going up above the sale price of the finished product ($40/bbl). The economics of this are dependent on tax breaks, which aren't forthcoming because Congress narrowly defined a tax break for generating biodiesel. Future plants are expected in Europe, where tax law is broader and offal disposal laws stricter (animals can't be fed animal offal).
• Finally, how the rose bud Sioux are using wind energy to improve their fortunes.

In Which Peggy Noonan Figures It Out

Peggy Noonan, speechwriter for Reagan, has finally had enough, realizing, as the rest of us did years ago, that Bush has messianic dreams but not, really, the political, economic, or, finally, military means to carry them out:

The administration's approach to history is at odds with what has been described by a communications adviser to the president as the "reality-based community." A dumb phrase, but not a dumb thought: He meant that the administration sees history as dynamic and changeable, not static and impervious to redirection or improvement. That is the Bush administration way, and it happens to be realistic: History is dynamic and changeable. On the other hand, some things are constant, such as human imperfection, injustice, misery and bad government.

This world is not heaven.

The president's speech seemed rather heavenish. It was a God-drenched speech. This president, who has been accused of giving too much attention to religious imagery and religious thought, has not let the criticism enter him. God was invoked relentlessly. "The Author of Liberty." "God moves and chooses as He wills. We have confidence because freedom is the permanent hope of mankind ... the longing of the soul."

It seemed a document produced by a White House on a mission. The United States, the speech said, has put the world on notice: Good governments that are just to their people are our friends, and those that are not are, essentially, not. We know the way: democracy. The president told every nondemocratic government in the world to shape up. "Success in our relations [with other governments] will require the decent treatment of their own people."

The speech did not deal with specifics--9/11, terrorism, particular alliances, Iraq. It was, instead, assertively abstract.

"We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands." "Across the generations we have proclaimed the imperative of self government. . . . Now it is the urgent requirement of our nation's security, and the calling of our time." "It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in the world."

Ending tyranny in the world? Well that's an ambition, and if you're going to have an ambition it might as well be a big one. But this declaration, which is not wrong by any means, seemed to me to land somewhere between dreamy and disturbing. Tyranny is a very bad thing and quite wicked, but one doesn't expect we're going to eradicate it any time soon. Again, this is not heaven, it's earth.

There were moments of eloquence: "America will not pretend that jailed dissidents prefer their chains, or that women welcome humiliation and servitude, or that any human being aspires to live at the mercy of bullies." "We do not accept the existence of permanent tyranny because we do not accept the possibility of permanent slavery." And, to the young people of our country, "You have seen that life is fragile, and evil is real, and courage triumphs." They have, since 9/11, seen exactly that.

And yet such promising moments were followed by this, the ending of the speech. "Renewed in our strength--tested, but not weary--we are ready for the greatest achievements in the history of freedom."

This is--how else to put it?--over the top. It is the kind of sentence that makes you wonder if this White House did not, in the preparation period, have a case of what I have called in the past "mission inebriation." A sense that there are few legitimate boundaries to the desires born in the goodness of their good hearts.

One wonders if they shouldn't ease up, calm down, breathe deep, get more securely grounded. The most moving speeches summon us to the cause of what is actually possible. Perfection in the life of man on earth is not.

We can't kick the collective asses of all the countries we don't like; Iran, for instance. As it is, we can barely contain the madness of a country we've "conquered". Neocons, who believe in no limits to the government's ability to pefect men -- a flaw shared by those running the French Revolution -- liken Bush to Reagan, but fail to recognize the fundamental differences between communism and Islamic fundamentalism. Islam, which has never comprehended the western idea of separation of church and state, is a far more difficult thing to kill off. Neoconservatism, then, is neither new nor conservative in the sense it mostly appears in the history of the United States, against whose largely libertarian founding and history it is an anathema. It is, instead, a product of the Jacobins and their intellectual descendants, Presidents Wilson, Roosevelt II, and Johnson.

The Dubious Hockey Stick

Thanks to Slashdot for this MIT Technology Review article about the flawed mathematics behind global warming. The conventional wisdom about global warming is that human activities creating atmospheric CO₂ are rapidly ramping up average temperatures. This is based on work by University of Massachusetts geoscientist Michael Mann and colleagues. Two Canadian researchers, Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, have found what they think is a fundamental flaw in that: by applying a Monte Carlo simulation to the data, it turned out that any data fed in to the model would tend to create a hockey stick shape! McIntyre and McKitrick tried to get their research published in Nature, but it was ultimately rejected; instead, they self-published on their own website.

In some fairness to Mann, that same Slashdot article posts a link to a story rebutting McIntyre and McKitrick's work. He points out an egregious error in an earlier work in a different paper (part of the code used for the modeling incorrectly uses radians rather than degrees, which the raw data is in), but even so, I remain skeptical. As with a lot of environmentalists, there's an itch to throw ad hominems around, which John Quiggan, the author of this piece, scratches in public. Given the apparent difficulty with which McIntyre and McKitrick had in publishing their article, one wonders what the full story, as told by Nature, would be. Moreover, in a note dated January 7, 2005, they write

It is now conceded, for instance, that MBH98 used a decentering procedure that elevated the role of a small group of hockey stick-shaped proxies from the low-order PC#4, right up into the dominant PC#1. This raises a host of important questions about the robustness of the MBH98 results, and one unimportant question. Mann's posting focuses on the unimportant one and hammers at it with furious energy. Our papers will raise and address the important questions, as well as the unimportant one.

Orange You Glad We Have Plastic?

Via peakoil.com, this BBC article about researchers at Cornell University using a catalyst to turn CO₂ and the substance limonene -- found in orange peel -- to create a kind of plastic, similar to polystyrene.

Another Good Energy Blog

Thanks to James for passing on a link to the blog Energy Outlook. You can be sure it'll be on my sidebar in a jiffy.

Another Approach To Fusion: PLASMAK

The lure of infinite power has drawn a number of researchers to the field of plasma physics, and with them, it seems as many approaches as individuals. Reading an old Slashdot article about levitated dipole fusion research led to this website discussing PLASMAK fusion research. PLASMAK is an offshoot of research on ball lightning; the idea is that the plasma provides its own stability, creating its own confinement by means of a rotating torus not unlike a smoke ring. Judging by the age of some of the articles, it looks like nothing significant has arisen in this area for a couple years now.

Paintable Solar Cells

University of Toronto researchers have developed paintable solar cells. The cells use the infrared part of the spectrum, a frequency range hitherto unexploited by (update: plastic) solar cells. This is a significant advance, because it could allow up to 30% conversion of sunlight into electricity, versus 6% of current generations of plastic solar cells.

New Engine Promises More Efficient Gas Liquefaction

Maybe not quite so new, but I picked this one up in the peakoil.com forums: a Lawrence Livermore Labs webpage describing a more efficient acoustic Stirling cycle engine that can make liquefaction of natural gas economical. A more complete description can be found in this PDF document; a 2002 Praxair press release announcing a Department of Commerce grant (why are they getting Federal money if this is such a great idea?) can be found here. If they're on schedule, a working system should be coming online this year.

According to the PDF above, this technology could be used to generate electricity in residential cogeneration. Hmm...

Sonofusion Researcher Winning Over Critics

In the January 22 issue, New Scientist published an article (subscription required) about sonofusion, or as its proponents now seem to prefer it be called, Acoustic Inertial Confinement Fusion (AICF). Widespread skepticism of Rusi Taleyarkhan's earlier claims seem to be melting in the face of his second paper, which used a much more methodical study of the reaction. In particular,

Instead of looking for fusion neutrons shortly after firing the initial burst, the group monitored their arrival continuously throughout the experiment. The results show that the initial burst used to seed the bubbles gradually dies down. Then, after a short time, a couple of peaks appear. These peaks, claims Taleyarkhan, are the bursts of neutrons generated in fusion reactions. "It's pretty solid evidence," says Michel Laberge, a physicist at General Fusion, a start-up in Vancouver, Canada, who also works on fusion research.

But the real beauty of the work is the control experiment that Taleyarkhan used to validate the results. He changed the timing of the initial neutron pulse, firing it when the pressure in the liquid was at its highest. Under high pressure, a bubble cannot form and so fusion cannot take place. Sure enough, the peaks that Taleyarkhan says are proof of fusion do not appear and so cannot be caused by neutrons from the initial burst. "It's very compelling data," says [UCLA researcher and Naranjo's thesis advisor Seth] Putterman.

While skeptics still abound, the new work is winning over many of his critics. DARPA plans on sponsoring a series of experiments with Taleyarkhan and some of his critics to end the debate one way or another. Things are looking up for him: another group at Purdue "led by Lefteri Tsoukalas has recreated the experiment" and will present his results in France in October.

The Millennialists Discover Sex

peakoil.com, even though it's principally useful for the daily stream of "we're all gonna die" stories, has come to realize, I think, that death on its own isn't likely to sell. Hence, the acquisition of the 'bot Peak Oil Jane, who seems to be about as much fun as the old Eliza psychotherapist bot. To be true to form, they should have put up a John Brown sort; but all he ever did was get himself killed. Besides, sex sells, and nobody's cause was ever hurt by putting a pretty girl on the soapbox. That they need to do so lays bare the distasteful nature of the message they're selling: you, and you, and you will all have to accept much less, and maybe, die.

Will Supercapacitors Solve Hybrids' Energy Storage Woes?

A Korean firm wants its supercapacitors to be an integral part of the automotive industry, according to the IEEE Spectrum. Unlike conventional batteries, capacitors can be charged and discharged hundreds of thousands of times, and recharge almost instantly. For now, the price is too high ($9,500/kWh) and energy densities (opposed to power densities) aren't high enough, but the devices are expected to make a splash starting in about two years.

The Greens' Moral Conundrum

One of the more tiresome bongos whacked by the Greens is that we need to reintegrate ourselves into nature. This means, depending on who's doing the talking, that we should relocalize -- i.e., give up on industrial civilization and get in touch with our inner Amish. That the Amish are enthusiastic users of modern technology will come as something of a disappointment to the near-survivalist cultists that pervade the Peak Oil movement.

But for the Greens, Peak Oil is something of a means to an end, a plausible boogieman that can -- will, they hope -- ultimately goad others into pursuing those ends. In this view, man must return to his status as a citizen, and not ruler, of the earth. An interesting review from the Acton Institute of the book, A Declaration of the Rights of Land, makes the inherent ridiculousness of this demand transparent. In rebuttal, Marc D. Guerra writes

There is, however, something fundamentally incoherent about Leopold’s position. On the one hand, he accepts Darwinian theory as a basic fact. What is more, he thinks the odyssey of evolution is ongoing, since the "biotic enterprise … never stops." Darwinian theory shows that human beings do not occupy a privileged place in the natural world. The human animal is himself part of nature. It makes no sense, therefore, for human beings to view nature as something extrinsic, something that is there simply to be used. On the other hand, Leopold claims human beings have a responsibility to act unlike any other natural being. People should act reasonably with other living beings. They should "live and let live." By some kind of twisted logic, Leopold both claims that man is king of the beasts and that, as king, he has a moral obligation to rule benevolently.

What Leopold fails to realize is that one must look outside of Darwinian theory for the kind of moral ethic he wishes to establish. One cannot lower human beings to the level of all other living beings–as, say, animal rights advocates do–and simultaneously argue that they have a moral obligation to treat other living beings ethically. Leopold’s argument for the "renaturalization" of human beings, in the end, would make them the most unnatural products of evolution. Ecology’s admirable effort to reintegrate human beings into nature and to make them aware of their obligation to dumb nature, in other words, requires one to admit that as rational animals, human beings differ from other natural beings almost in kind.

Yes, we're special. That specialness requires we act like it -- that is, we should act as though we were better than mere animals. The reverse idea -- that we are mere beasts, and will act accordingly has its advocates. It is these whom I oppose, those who lust for a return to the Dark Ages, a Book of Revelation as retold by the Greens. It is these who believe we are in for a future armed to the teeth and fighting for each morsel on every table. For that reason -- for the fates of billions of souls -- we must find new energy sources. Else, we face the "long night of barbarism... unbroken even by a star of hope" Churchill foresaw when another terror faced mankind.

Talking To Myself: New Blogs

Since I haven't put a counter on this blog or done anything to promote it, I have no idea if anybody's reading my drivel. But -- I will add a couple links here presently to the sidebar. Here's a couple good blogs I encountered today:

• The Ergosphere, a no-nonsense, tech-head look at alternative energy sources. I really get sick and tired reading the Book of Revelations as retold by the Greens, and this is a good antidote.
• Alternative Energy Blog -- more of the same, but a little more journalistically inclined.
• Knowledge Problem -- a synthesis of economics, tech, and a bunch of potpourri; here's a great sample entitled, "Waste Is Efficient?"

This is the kind of stuff we need to see more of.

More Atomic Energy News

I've never been a big fan of France the collective, though I have worked with some very nice French folk over the years. One of my former employers, in fact, was a French concern, and to the extent they left us alone, it was a very pleasant place to work indeed. But I digress. I link today to this story indicating the French are pressing on with more nuclear research and power plant designs, bucking the prevailing anti-nuclear headwinds so prominent elsewhere in Europe. Well: good for them, I say. Somebody needs to do it, and Germany, which has ill-advisedly fallen into the clutches of a red-green plan to decommission its nuclear powerplants, finds itself importing electricity from France -- who generates 80% of its power from the atom. So Green claims that Germany is turning toward renewable is largely based on a sham.

Meantime, if you're a German wondering where the lights went, you're likely not alone. Even with heavy subsidy, renewables have their limits, and when the wind stops blowing, something has to take up the slack. That something, apparently, is coal, and now there's talk of restoring coal mining in the Ruhr Valley and firing up coal-burning power plants, an unintended consequence the Greens surely haven't given adequate thought to.

But: back to France. France has the distinction -- dubious though it unfortunately is -- of hosting the largest breeder reactor in the world, the Superphénix. The point of such reactors is to create more fuel -- various isotopes of plutonium, mainly. Doing so would vastly prolong our ability to generate electricity by nuclear means. But, plagued by delays, mishaps, high operating costs, and environmental litigation (which no doubt contributed to the high operational costs), the Superphénix was shut down in 1997.

The U.S. long ago banned reprocessed nuclear fuel, which essentially killed breeder reactor programs in the U.S. Prior to the September 11th attacks, President Bush came out in favor of reprocessing nuclear fuel. The Japanese have built a reprocessing plant at Rokkashomura, Aomori Prefecture, which they hope to have online by 2006.

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Despite the troubles in nuclear fission, work proceeds, albeit slowly, in the realm of fusion. First, MIT and Columbia University have started work and reported initial results from a new reactor called the Levitated Dipole Experiment, or LDX for short. A lengthier summary is available at Wired, the relevant parts being

After many years of developing theories and calculations and culling $10 million from the Department of Energy, the LDX was turned on in August. In the first round of experiments, the device generated magnetic pressure that was 14 times greater than the plasma pressure. The plasma pressure isn't high enough to produce fusion energy, but if the scientists could figure out a way to bring the plasma pressure and the magnetic pressure closer together, fusion could be the next step, [Columbia professor Michael] Mauel said.

They won't actually create fusion energy in the experiments because the plasma won't be dense enough, Mauel said. Rather, scientists are trying to learn more about the workings of plasma in magnetospheres, and depending on those results, fusion could be the next step.

If researchers' theories hold up, in about 30 years plasma might be a viable source for creating fusion energy, Mauel said -- despite a running joke in the business that the goal has always been 30 years away.

Thirty! Good grief. I sometimes wonder if these guys are on the same page as the rest of us.

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One kind of fusion I didn't discuss in my earlier fusion roundup is sonocavitation fusion, more popularly known as bubble fusion. The idea is that sonic waves in a fluid can create collapsing bubbles with sufficient energy to create localized fusion reactions. Rusi P. Taleyarkhan published early work in Science claiming he found fusion from a solution of deuterated acetone. This met with a great deal of skepticism, when subsequent work at Oak Ridge National Laboratories refuted the claims, saying the neutrons released were consistent with conincidence. In 2004, Taleyarkhan ran another series of experiments using better detection equipment, and claimed again to have detected fusion under more stringent conditions.

Yet the scientific doubt doesn't seem to be stopping the discoverers -- whether that's what they should be called or not -- of this phenominon. They have founded a new company to exploit the energy they get from this -- whatever that might be. Already, other companies -- Impulse Devices, in particular -- are selling commercial sonofusion reactors -- only $250,000 each! What a deal! Now if we could only get the thing to work...

Update: a much, much fuller history of sonofusion can be found here.

Lew Rockwell Piece

Because the economists and geologists aren't getting along nicely, it's unlikely this Charles H. Featherstone piece at LewRockwell.com will see the light of day anywhere on any of the Peak Oil boards, but it's worth a read. At least he shows signs of understanding what's going on, and in my opinion, that's the biggest first step. The Peak Oil doomsayers invariably believe demand will stay constant, while the economists keep telling us oil is a commodity that will magically appear when needed. Neither is right; we need a meeting of the minds.

The Failure Of The Historicists

Thanks to Matt Welch for passing along this George Will column, the relevant part being

... many small historians believe their function is to deny large men any laurels. [Historian David Hackett] Fischer sternly reprimands such historians who have ``served us ill'':

``In the late twentieth century, too many scholars tried to make the American past into a record of crime and folly. Too many writers have told us we are captives of our darker selves and helpless victims of our history. It isn't so, and never was.''

One reason Americans have made so much history is that they have never believed in History. One of the unfortunate intellectual developments of the 19th century, principally in Europe, was the transformation of history into a proper noun. It denoted a vast impersonal force with its own unfolding logic, governed by iron laws of social development. Marxism was the most consequential doctrine of historical inevitability, but there were others.

Such theories, which are varieties of ``historicism,'' induce fatalism by diminishing mankind's sense of agency. The theories mock the idea of great persons, and the belief that the free choices of small groups could knock History out of its preordained grooves.

Such ideas have largely lost their ability to seize the imaginations of people other than intellectuals, who often are the last to learn things. Still, it is exhilarating to be reminded by historians like Fischer just how radically wrong the historicists were, and are.

Which is to say, if the economists refuse to listen when the geologists tell them oil is becoming scarcer and we have no alternatives lined up, neither do the doomsayers listen to the economists when the latter say that alternatives are possible. Millions, billions, even, don't have to die.