3 feet in 50 years?!?

On 12/26/2016 12:56 PM, wrote:
On Monday, December 26, 2016 at 8:56:51 AM UTC-8, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 12/25/2016 1:24 PM, wrote:
On Sunday, December 25, 2016 at 2:20:26 AM UTC-8, Phil Lee wrote:

Most people know it already (at least in the form we know now), but
are equally aware that it will happen very slowly, not overnight.
Which works well for recycling the vehicles, as well as allowing
people to become accustomed to the change in circumstances by moving
to live nearer to where they work (or work to move nearer to their
workforce). public transport to be developed back to it's former
scale, and so on.

Phil, being where the sun doesn't shine perhaps you're unfamiliar with US culture but believe me - the motor vehicle will NOT go away no matter what they have to do. In the US distances are simply too far and loads being carried too large and the age and health of people not in a category to allow them to use either public transit or bicycles. Not that I don't think it a good idea.

Employers WILL NOT relocate closer to their workers - already in some businesses in San Francisco half of their workers are coming in from Sacramento and the numbers of available workers in Sacramento would easily make up for the loses.

Silicon Valley is situated in a very small area in San Jose, Sunnyvale and Mountain View. I live 30 miles away but the commute would be two hours in each direction. Most of their employees do not live anywhere NEAR Silicon Valley but you don't see them moving to the MUCH cheaper areas with vast amounts of open industrial buildings.

Relieving the traffic along these corridor would allow those laid off in San Francisco to find jobs closer to their own homes. Industrial growth could have a GIANT kick in the pants and start afresh but instead they remain fixed in areas that are so traffic bound that people spend as much time commuting as working.

If people are so stupid to put up with this they sure aren't going to get rid of cars as long as there is one single gallon of petrol available.

I've got to agree. And regarding the distance between workers and
employers: In the glory days of steel towns, textile mills and the
like, there was a great influx of poor immigrants willing to live in
homes within walking distance of work, and work for the same company for
decades.

But those mega-factories are largely gone, corporations are expected to
leave town whenever they can get a better deal elsewhere, and employees
are told they need to be agile and adaptable so they can change jobs
every five years. Oh, and pay for their own retirement and medical
insurance.

I was lucky in that I had stable employment. I chose my houses
specifically to be within bike distance of work. But I know very
intelligent engineers who have had to drive as much 60 miles to get to
work, after companies closed, or design offices were moved, etc. Given
the fact that America has been built without mass transit, I think motor
vehicles of one type or another are here to stay for the foreseeable future.

I have YET to see practical mass transit...

You certainly can't find much of it in the U.S.


--
- Frank Krygowski

On Monday, December 26, 2016 at 11:12:59 AM UTC-8, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 12/26/2016 12:56 PM, wrote:

I have YET to see practical mass transit...

You certainly can't find much of it in the U.S.

Frank, where do you live? Exactly what happens inside of your head where you will make absolute absurd statements like this as if public transportation CAN be practical without offering any instances?

On 12/26/2016 2:24 PM, wrote:
On Monday, December 26, 2016 at 11:12:59 AM UTC-8, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 12/26/2016 12:56 PM, wrote:

I have YET to see practical mass transit...

You certainly can't find much of it in the U.S.

Frank, where do you live? Exactly what happens inside of your head where you will make absolute absurd statements like this as if public transportation CAN be practical without offering any instances?

Tom, what are you smoking? How did you interpret my sentence as having
anything to do with whether mass transit can be practical??

I said you can't find much practical mass transit in the U.S. Want to
prove my statement was absurd? Then give lots of evidence of practical
mass transit in the U.S.

But somehow, I don't think that's part of your agenda. IOW, you're very
confused, at best.

Sheesh!


--
- Frank Krygowski

Per :
Exactly HOW many people do you believe are going to change to bicycles or public transit?

You realize that my little story is in support of your position, right?
--
Pete Cresswell

Per :
I have YET to see practical mass transit and I spent three years working for Bay Area Rapid Transit before becoming too bored with the work and decided that I would rather have exciting work than a great retirement.

I took the Paoli Local to work from Paoli PA to Philadelphia's Center
City for I-don't-know-how-many-years-but-it-was-a-lot.

Finally wound up in a van pool and discovered that getting to work
via motor vehicle instead of train was:

- Safer.

- A *lot* faster

- More comfortable

- Significantly cheaper

In short, everything that public transportation is touted to be.... -)
--
Pete Cresswell

On Monday, December 26, 2016 at 11:24:42 AM UTC-8, wrote:
On Monday, December 26, 2016 at 11:12:59 AM UTC-8, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 12/26/2016 12:56 PM, wrote:

I have YET to see practical mass transit...

You certainly can't find much of it in the U.S.

Frank, where do you live? Exactly what happens inside of your head where you will make absolute absurd statements like this as if public transportation CAN be practical without offering any instances?

Just to take my own advice: http://sfist.com/2016/10/03/report_b...p_70_perec.php

http://www.mercurynews.com/2016/10/0...is-a-surprise/

http://www.bart.gov/about/history/facts During commute hours which are now from 6 AM to 10 AM and 3 PM to 8 PM they run with 9 or 10 cars per train and more than standing room only.

The annual ridership of the various rapid transit systems in the US:

New York: 2.77 Trillion
Washington DC: 261 Million
Chicago: 241 Million
Boston: 135 Million
San Francisco: 135 Million

Beijin: 3.25 Trillion
Paris: 1.63 Trillion
Mexico City: 1.62 Trillion
London: 1.34 Trillion

Of all of the world's rapid transit systems the US is comparable to them ALL. The US BESIDES they gigantic passenger loads have 80% or MORE of their workers moved by private vehicles.

Why would it be that Frank would make comments indicating that somehow the US can't keep up with the rest of the world? Could it be that again he is incapable of actually looking anything up and his ENTIRE life is living with the ideas of his leftist teachers?

On Monday, December 26, 2016 at 11:42:32 AM UTC-8, (PeteCresswell) wrote:
Per :
I have YET to see practical mass transit and I spent three years working for Bay Area Rapid Transit before becoming too bored with the work and decided that I would rather have exciting work than a great retirement.

I took the Paoli Local to work from Paoli PA to Philadelphia's Center
City for I-don't-know-how-many-years-but-it-was-a-lot.

Finally wound up in a van pool and discovered that getting to work
via motor vehicle instead of train was:

- Safer.

- A *lot* faster

- More comfortable

- Significantly cheaper

In short, everything that public transportation is touted to be.... -)
--
Pete Cresswell

If there's anything more pleasant than standing neck to jowl with a bunch of people with runny noses and coughs I certainly can't think of it. People that are so fat that they ACTUALLY take up two seats. Though in regards to that I have noted that people do NOT complain about such people. And in commute hours there is usually at least one per train car.

On 12/26/2016 1:42 PM, (PeteCresswell) wrote:
Per :
I have YET to see practical mass transit and I spent three years working for Bay Area Rapid Transit before becoming too bored with the work and decided that I would rather have exciting work than a great retirement.

I took the Paoli Local to work from Paoli PA to Philadelphia's Center
City for I-don't-know-how-many-years-but-it-was-a-lot.

Finally wound up in a van pool and discovered that getting to work
via motor vehicle instead of train was:

- Safer.

- A *lot* faster

- More comfortable

- Significantly cheaper

In short, everything that public transportation is touted to be.... -)


Which reminds me that long ago, back when we had satire,
this was published:

http://www.theonion.com/article/repo...ublic-tra-1434

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

John B. considered Sun, 25 Dec 2016 18:31:33
+0700 the perfect time to write:

On Sun, 25 Dec 2016 10:20:22 +0000, Phil Lee
wrote:

Radey Shouman considered Sat, 24 Dec 2016
00:11:08 -0500 the perfect time to write:

Phil Lee writes:

Radey Shouman considered Thu, 22 Dec 2016
17:05:11 -0500 the perfect time to write:

Frank Krygowski writes:

On 12/22/2016 3:39 PM, Radey Shouman wrote:
Frank Krygowski writes:

On 12/22/2016 10:54 AM, Radey Shouman wrote:
jbeattie writes:

On Wednesday, December 21, 2016 at 10:29:46 AM UTC-8, Radey Shouman wrote:


But CO2 is not tobacco, there are no CO2 non-smokers, unless they live
deep in the jungle and shoot all strangers with poison arrows. The sad
fact is that CO2 regulations are probably good for Exxon's business,
trying to cut CO2 has led to an *increase* in natural gas use, for
peaking power plants, at the expense of coal, which is used for base
load. Coal is still needed, of course, to make steel for all those huge
offshore wind turbines. It's quite likely that they have led to a net
increase in total CO2 emmissions.

Very doubtful, at least in the U.S.

If you want to restrict your measurement to one country it's easy to
reduce CO2 -- Germany has no doubt reduced its emissions for electric
generation, but by putting a lot of the burden of power peaking on its
neighbors. But I thought it was *global* warming we were worried about.


First, the steel used for wind
turbines is a tiny portion of total steel production. Second, the
steel industry in the U.S. is mostly using mini-mills with electric
furnaces to re-melt scrap. Less than a third of U.S. made steel comes
from ore, and that industry uses only a tiny portion of the U.S. coal
production. Of course, like anything else electric, those electric
furnaces are ultimately powered more and more by natural gas.

Sure, much of the production of steel from ore has been offshored to
China, but it still requires large quantities of coal. Once again, the
*global* effect is what's alleged to be important.

You're right that the global total is what matters.

But to prove your contention that wind turbines are a net harm because
of their steel content, you'd have to look at the amount of steel
consumed by turbine construction every year. It's obviously a tiny
portion of the world's steel consumption. You'd also want to track
the method used to produce that steel, since different methods (scrap
remelt vs. ore) would put vastly different amounts of CO2 into the
air. And you'd have to compare those emissions with the CO2 savings
over the life of the turbine.

My guess is that the amount of steel used is quite small, that a lot
of it is made by relatively clean methods, and that the CO2 savings
easily outweigh the costs. But I'm willing to look at numbers, if you
have any.

From what I've read the EROEI (energy returned on energy invested) of
wind power is pretty good. But fossil fuels are still required to
produce the infrastructure. Steel without coal is only possible if all
steel is recycled, in other words, total steel use declines over time.

That's not unreasonable - look at all the vehicles fuelled by the
infernal combustion engine which will be available for recycling once
we stop pumping the fuel out of the ground!. Then there's all the
steel that is being replaced by plastic composites, never mind all
that which could be reclaimed from the huge infrastructure we have
built to cater to the private car.

Wait, private cars are going away? Does all of the climate action
cohort know this? I wonder what would happen to support on climate
action if that were widely noised.

Most people know it already (at least in the form we know now), but
are equally aware that it will happen very slowly, not overnight.
Which works well for recycling the vehicles, as well as allowing
people to become accustomed to the change in circumstances by moving
to live nearer to where they work (or work to move nearer to their
workforce). public transport to be developed back to it's former
scale, and so on.

Life without fossil fuels and current technology would certainly be
possible if people are willing to give enough of the industrial life style
up. I've grown accustomed to the industrial lifestyle, as have an awful
lot of people.

The most necessary bits will still be there, we'll just be using
different methods to power it.

Heck, how much steel is in a typical wellhead pump?

Not a huge amount, but it has to be multiplied by enough pumps to serve
a large demand. If an individual pump and it's power does not pay
energetically for the oil it produces, then eventually the real economy
goes broke running it, regardless of any artificial subsidies it might
accrue.

The capital cost will have been assimilated in the first year or two
of it's operation. From then on, each "nodding donkey" only needs to
produce a very small amount of oil to justify it's remaining in place.
It only needs to pump more fuel than it uses, plus a very small
surplus for covering any repairs and maintenance. But a nodding
donkey contains several tons of steel.

In actual practice the costs are somewhat higher :-)

Back when I was in the business, in Indonesia, the rule of thumb was
that a new well must be able to produce 1,000 bbl/day to be
economical, which covered the costs of piping, separation plants,
storage tanks, and all the other bits and pieces of a producing oil
field.

So the cost of building the infrastructure, not the cost of leaving it
there once it's in place.

Back in the day material and labor costs seemed to pretty well
parallel crude sales prices, i.e., when the price of crude went up so
did the price of valves, piping, vessels, etc., so it is possible that
the 1,000 bbl/day value may still apply today.

It varies depending on where it is.
It costs far more to get it out of a deep sea well than on dry land,
for an obvious example, so the field would have to have a higher yield
to be viable in such an hostile environment.

John B. writes:

On Sun, 25 Dec 2016 10:20:22 +0000, Phil Lee
wrote:

Radey Shouman considered Sat, 24 Dec 2016
00:11:08 -0500 the perfect time to write:

Phil Lee writes:

Radey Shouman considered Thu, 22 Dec 2016
17:05:11 -0500 the perfect time to write:

Frank Krygowski writes:

On 12/22/2016 3:39 PM, Radey Shouman wrote:
Frank Krygowski writes:

On 12/22/2016 10:54 AM, Radey Shouman wrote:
jbeattie writes:

On Wednesday, December 21, 2016 at 10:29:46 AM UTC-8, Radey Shouman wrote:


But CO2 is not tobacco, there are no CO2 non-smokers, unless they live
deep in the jungle and shoot all strangers with poison arrows. The sad
fact is that CO2 regulations are probably good for Exxon's business,
trying to cut CO2 has led to an *increase* in natural gas use, for
peaking power plants, at the expense of coal, which is used for base
load. Coal is still needed, of course, to make steel for all those huge
offshore wind turbines. It's quite likely that they have led to a net
increase in total CO2 emmissions.

Very doubtful, at least in the U.S.

If you want to restrict your measurement to one country it's easy to
reduce CO2 -- Germany has no doubt reduced its emissions for electric
generation, but by putting a lot of the burden of power peaking on its
neighbors. But I thought it was *global* warming we were worried about.


First, the steel used for wind
turbines is a tiny portion of total steel production. Second, the
steel industry in the U.S. is mostly using mini-mills with electric
furnaces to re-melt scrap. Less than a third of U.S. made steel comes
from ore, and that industry uses only a tiny portion of the U.S. coal
production. Of course, like anything else electric, those electric
furnaces are ultimately powered more and more by natural gas.

Sure, much of the production of steel from ore has been offshored to
China, but it still requires large quantities of coal. Once again, the
*global* effect is what's alleged to be important.

You're right that the global total is what matters.

But to prove your contention that wind turbines are a net harm because
of their steel content, you'd have to look at the amount of steel
consumed by turbine construction every year. It's obviously a tiny
portion of the world's steel consumption. You'd also want to track
the method used to produce that steel, since different methods (scrap
remelt vs. ore) would put vastly different amounts of CO2 into the
air. And you'd have to compare those emissions with the CO2 savings
over the life of the turbine.

My guess is that the amount of steel used is quite small, that a lot
of it is made by relatively clean methods, and that the CO2 savings
easily outweigh the costs. But I'm willing to look at numbers, if you
have any.

From what I've read the EROEI (energy returned on energy invested) of
wind power is pretty good. But fossil fuels are still required to
produce the infrastructure. Steel without coal is only possible if all
steel is recycled, in other words, total steel use declines over time.

That's not unreasonable - look at all the vehicles fuelled by the
infernal combustion engine which will be available for recycling once
we stop pumping the fuel out of the ground!. Then there's all the
steel that is being replaced by plastic composites, never mind all
that which could be reclaimed from the huge infrastructure we have
built to cater to the private car.

Wait, private cars are going away? Does all of the climate action
cohort know this? I wonder what would happen to support on climate
action if that were widely noised.

Most people know it already (at least in the form we know now), but
are equally aware that it will happen very slowly, not overnight.
Which works well for recycling the vehicles, as well as allowing
people to become accustomed to the change in circumstances by moving
to live nearer to where they work (or work to move nearer to their
workforce). public transport to be developed back to it's former
scale, and so on.

Life without fossil fuels and current technology would certainly be
possible if people are willing to give enough of the industrial life style
up. I've grown accustomed to the industrial lifestyle, as have an awful
lot of people.

The most necessary bits will still be there, we'll just be using
different methods to power it.

Heck, how much steel is in a typical wellhead pump?

Not a huge amount, but it has to be multiplied by enough pumps to serve
a large demand. If an individual pump and it's power does not pay
energetically for the oil it produces, then eventually the real economy
goes broke running it, regardless of any artificial subsidies it might
accrue.

The capital cost will have been assimilated in the first year or two
of it's operation. From then on, each "nodding donkey" only needs to
produce a very small amount of oil to justify it's remaining in place.
It only needs to pump more fuel than it uses, plus a very small
surplus for covering any repairs and maintenance. But a nodding
donkey contains several tons of steel.

In actual practice the costs are somewhat higher :-)

Back when I was in the business, in Indonesia, the rule of thumb was
that a new well must be able to produce 1,000 bbl/day to be
economical, which covered the costs of piping, separation plants,
storage tanks, and all the other bits and pieces of a producing oil
field.

Back in the day material and labor costs seemed to pretty well
parallel crude sales prices, i.e., when the price of crude went up so
did the price of valves, piping, vessels, etc., so it is possible that
the 1,000 bbl/day value may still apply today.

I have never been in the oil business, save for working in a refinery,
but I did live in the oil patch of eastern New Mexico. There were a
large number of "stripper wells" there, some of which produced only a
few bbl/day. Pumpjacks are built in various sizes accordingly, some are
little bigger than actual donkeys. In the town where I lived some of
them had street addresses.

On the topic of public complaining, you could smell crude almost
anywhere you went, but no one complained -- smelled just like money.

Material and labor costs did not follow crude prices well at all, which
meant that when prices were high there was a boom, and when they were
low a bust.

--