Entangled States

Are you getting an iPad?

I've been offline most of this week at our annual presbyter retreat here in Arizona. As I pointed out to the bishop, if he has any doubts about my commitment to ministry, he need only look at my willingness to attend lectures on collegiality at the time when the Steve Jobs is announcing the latest technology toy. I was reduced to sitting in the back of the room and refreshing twitter feeds on my phone during the all too infrequent breaks.

Now that I'm back home and have had a chance to watch the keynote address and read up on the specs of the new device I'm thinking about what it will mean for personal computing and more interestingly to me, for technology in ministry.

Will I be getting one? Yes. The e-reader capability is the killer app as far as I'm concerned. I bought a Kindle the day it was released. I've been teased by a number of my friends who told me again and again why I was being silly. Then a few months later they bought their own. One friend (not a nay-sayer) has already worn out the buttons on her Kindle. If you're a reader, the idea of having a stack of books wherever you are is too awesome for words. I can read a novel in about a day. Two if I'm working. When I travel most of my luggage used to be taken up with books. Now I just toss in the Kindle and I'm good to go.

The iPad will function wonderfully as an e-reader. (I like the display on a Kindle, but I've never had any trouble reading on an LCD screen, so I'm not worried about the different screen on the iPad.) I should be able to read all my Kindle purchases on the iPad assuming the existing Amazon Kindle iPhone app makes it safely over to the iPad. Plus now I'll have Stanza, Reader and the iBook applications too.

But, in my mind, where the iPad really shines is that it will allow me to do a presentation directly from it - which means I won't have to lug a laptop with me when I'm speaking in a church or in a classroom. Just hook up the iPad to the projector, select the appropriate presentation and off we go. I've wanted something like this forever. I've gotten to the point where I could pretty much leave my laptop at home for most trips - now I'll be able to do that all the time. Thinking about this, my present laptop might well be the last laptop I buy. I'll move back to a desktop computer at home and the office and then use an iPad for travel.

What will this mean for ministry? Mac OS X uses PDF's as a native file format. Which means it becomes dead easy to share formatted files via electronic transmission and be assured that the copy looks the same as the original. This is critically important for sharing formatted material like liturgies or hymns.

Imagine what it might be like if this class of device becomes common. A parishioner with one might be able to come into the service, connect to the parish wireless, download the liturgy for the day plus the announcements by pressing one button on their tablet. Color in the bulletin? Done. Video in the sermon? Done. (No need for a giant screen or an overpowered projector.) Translation on the fly? Probably done - use Google's service. Annual Report? Done.

The biggest office expense at the Cathedral right now is the giant copy/printer press that we use to generate thousands of pages of liturgical handouts each week. Imagine being able to reduce that to a few hundred copies for people without tablets. All the rest of the congregation will be able to get what they need without having to use paper, or the power it takes to print a copy.

Just from a strict environmental view this is a win for churches. It's also a financial win (though it probably moves the cost of distribution from the congregation's budget to that of the parishioner). More interestingly it will allow us to do much more interesting things with the "bulletin" - like link directly to the congregation's calendar. Offer to auto add an event to a person's calendar. Refer them to websites for more information. Offer to provide them a copy of a special speaker's book for a very reduced cost... etc.

There's word that Apple received a patent early this week to create a solar powered tablet. Which would make this even more ubiquitous and environmentally friendly. Especially in the developing world. Look at how profoundly mobile phone technology is changing the way village life is lived in the developing world.

Now think about what would happen to have something like this (much cheaper of course) being made available and connected to the existing mobile network...

Oh yes. I'm getting one. I can't wait to see what we think of to do with it.

A Uranium Shortage?

There are many people concerned right now about the continued ability of oil reserves to keep up with demand. We've had a bit of a reprieve because of the global recession, but as the recession lessens around the world, demand for energy is increasing and oil prices are starting to rise again.

A number of countries, France and Japan in particular, have decided that they are going to try to lessen the impact of an oil supply shortage on their economies by building nuclear power plants. I believe that's part of the argument that Iran is using for the research it is carrying out for it's nuclear program. (Though why an oil rich country is worried about oil reserves is a question. Either the oil reserve issue is much worse than most think, or there's some other reason for their particular program...)

But there's a problem. We're running out of Uranium reserves:

"'Uranium mines provide us with 40,000 tons of uranium each year. Sounds like that ought to be enough for anyone, but it comes up about 25,000 tons short of what we consume yearly in our nuclear power plants. The difference is made up by stockpiles, reprocessed fuel and re-enriched uranium — which should be completely used up by 2013. And the problem with just opening more uranium mines is that nobody really knows where to go for the next big uranium lode. Dr. Michael Dittmar has been warning us for some time about the coming shortage (PDF) and has recently uploaded a four-part comprehensive report on the future of nuclear energy and how socioeconomic change is exacerbating the effect this coming shortage will have on our power consumption. Although not quite on par with zombie apocalypse, Dr. Dittmar's final conclusions paint a dire picture, stating that options like large-scale commercial fission breeder reactors are not an option by 2013 and 'no matter how far into the future we may look, nuclear fusion as an energy source is even less probable than large-scale breeder reactors, for the accumulated knowledge on this subject is already sufficient to say that commercial fusion power will never become a reality.''"

Read the original here, with links to the referenced documents.

Sigh.

There are a couple of suggestions in the comments in the linked article post that suggest that breeder reactors or thorium based reactors might be a way to get around the issue. But apparently we're not set up to re-enrich the plutonium byproduct of fission reactions in sufficient quantities right now. And thorium, while more abundant (4x) than uranium, and potentially cleaner, is still in its infancy as a nuclear fuel substitute.

So the upshot appears to be that nuclear power may not be the magic genie to solve the issues surrounding Peak Oil. Solar and wind power probably aren't either.

From everything I've been reading, it's going to take a combination of all three, plus some serious lifestyle changes and demographic shifts to get ourselves back to a sustainable energy economy.

Unless of course something disruptive comes along. Then it's an open question. But disruptive events can go either way, so I'm not sure whether we ought to be hoping for one, much less praying for one.

Peak Oil is back in the news. Ugh.

Well. This isn't good news at all. I'd been hoping that my inherent pessimistic attitude had wrongly convinced me that the world's oil supply was going to be getting significantly tighter. According to a report today, that's not the case.

The reason that the topic of Peak Oil hasn't been in the news of late isn't just the fact that the price of oil had dropped, or that gasoline wasn't as expensive as it was a couple of years ago. It's apparently because of a number of folks who decided that discretion was the better part of valor right now, because telling the truth would likely annoy the Americans.

And who knows what the Americans might do in response.

To whit, The Guardian, reporting on the decision of a group within the IEA to keep the news quiet:

"In particular [the secret keepers] question the prediction in the last World Economic Outlook, believed to be repeated again this year, that oil production can be raised from its current level of 83m barrels a day to 105m barrels. External critics have frequently argued that this cannot be substantiated by firm evidence and say the world has already passed its peak in oil production.

[...]'Many inside the organisation believe that maintaining oil supplies at even 90m to 95m barrels a day would be impossible but there are fears that panic could spread on the financial markets if the figures were brought down further. And the Americans fear the end of oil supremacy because it would threaten their power over access to oil resources,' he added.

A second senior IEA source, who has now left but was also unwilling to give his name, said a key rule at the organisation was that it was 'imperative not to anger the Americans' but the fact was that there was not as much oil in the world as had been admitted. 'We have [already] entered the 'peak oil' zone. I think that the situation is really bad,' he added."

Read the full article here.

I'm not terribly surprised by this news, but I'd hoped that the economic downturn was going to lesson the conflicts I expect to be caused as we run out of this important resource. If it's true, we're going to have to reinvent most of our economy.

And it's going to change church life significantly…

(Hat tip to Slashdot)

Overuse of natural resources 'caused Nazca collapse'

Back when I was in High School and the works of Eric Von Daniken were still new and popular, I was fascinated by the mysterious works of the Nazca people in Peru. Von Daniken claimed that the giant figures that the Nazca people carved into the plateaus of Peru were meant to be seen by alien spaceships. (A bit of a reach perhaps, but if you know Von Daniken's work, exactly what you'd expect.)

But what made the lines so much more mysterious was the fact that the people who had made them apparently disappeared without a trace soon after. If Von Daniken was to be believed, something I was willing to do as a sophomore in High School, perhaps the alien arks had been in fact summoned and the people of the Plains of Nazca returned to the stars.

Turns out the explanation is much less poetic. But ultimately more important to us today. According to a new study, a team of archeologists have found that the civilization that created the enormous figures on the plains died off because they over consumed the limited natural resources they depended on.

A report on the BBC site explains:

"Analysing plant remains [the archeological team] reveal how the destruction of forests containing the huarango tree crossed a tipping point, causing ecological collapse.

The team have published their findings in the journal of Latin American Antiquity.

'These were very special forests,' says Dr David Beresford-Jones from the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge, UK who led the team.

The huarango tree (Prosopis pallida) is a unique tree with many qualities and played a vital role in the habitat, protecting the fragile desert ecosystem, the scientists say."

Read the full article here.

Over logging these trees destroyed the environmental balance that the people depended on to be able to live in the hostile environment.

One wonders how much longer we have until we reach a similar tipping point in regions of the earth that are carrying far more than the normal capacity because of our use of high-energy storage resources like oil and coal. Or until our over logging of forests too drastically reduces the environments ability to sequester sufficient carbon dioxide that might cause a runaway greenhouse effect.

More information on this story here on one of the Discovery Magazine's blogs.

Major oil fields already in decline

The chief economist of the International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris is sounding the alarm that Peak Oil may be closer than people have been thinking:

"In an interview with The Independent, Dr Birol said that the public and many governments appeared to be oblivious to the fact that the oil on which modern civilisation depends is running out far faster than previously predicted and that global production is likely to peak in about 10 years – at least a decade earlier than most governments had estimated.

But the first detailed assessment of more than 800 oil fields in the world, covering three quarters of global reserves, has found that most of the biggest fields have already peaked and that the rate of decline in oil production is now running at nearly twice the pace as calculated just two years ago. On top of this, there is a problem of chronic under-investment by oil-producing countries, a feature that is set to result in an 'oil crunch' within the next five years which will jeopardise any hope of a recovery from the present global economic recession, he said.

In a stark warning to Britain and the other Western powers, Dr Birol said that the market power of the very few oil-producing countries that hold substantial reserves of oil – mostly in the Middle East – would increase rapidly as the oil crisis begins to grip after 2010."

Read the full article here.

At least this is the first admission I've seen that governments recognize that oil is running out. Even if they thought they had ten more years than IEA thinks.

Lessons from the Fall

(I'm working on a piece about General Convention but it's not ready to post yet. So in the meantime, here's something for y'all to chew on.)

The cause of the Roman Empire's collapse has been variously attributed. Gibbons thought that it had to do in part with the empire's adoption of Christianity. I just finished a book that argued it had to do with the fundamental need of the Roman economic model to constantly grow, meeting the relatively un-forrested steppes of Eastern Europe. That's two. There are many others. One of my favorites is that the Roman cavalry was slow to adopt the stirrup.

There's an essay posted on Peak Oil that argues that the collapse was a result of Roman Society reaching an unsustainable level of complexity. Once the peak had been reached, it took more and more effort to maintain the status-quo, which consumed greater and greater amounts of capital and quickly exhausted the necessary resources required for evolutionary change.

(It seems to me to be analogous to the effect to churches of drawing down endowment principle to balance short term budget deficits. It creates a positive-feedback cycle that quickly exhausts an organizations reserves.

NB: I'm worried, as are some friends of mine, that the Episcopal Church tends to do this in an attempt to be fair rather than in an disciplined attempt to respond strategically.)

From the article on The Oil Drum that discusses the reasons for the Roman Fall:

"So, our Druid had seen the future and was describing it to Emperor Aurelius. He had seen the solution of the problems of Empire: Middle Ages. It was where the Empire was going and where it could not avoid going. What the Druid was proposing was to go there in a controlled way. Ease the transition, don't fight it! If you know where you are going, you can travel in style and comfort. If you don't, well, it will be a rough ride.

We may imagine a hypothetical 'driven transition' in which the government of the Roman Empire at the time of Marcus Aurelius would have done exactly that: abandon the walls, reduce the number of legions and transform them into city militias, reduce bureaucracy and Imperial expenses, delocalize authority, reduce the strain on agriculture: reforest the land. The transition would not have been traumatic and would have involved a lower loss of complexity: books, skills, works of art and much more could have been saved and passed to future generations.

All that is, of course, pure fantasy. Even for a Roman Emperor, disbanding the legions couldn't be easy. After all, the name 'Emperor' comes from the Latin word 'imperator' that simply means 'commander'. The Roman Emperor was a military commander and the way to be Emperor was to please the legions that the Emperor commanded. A Roman Emperor who threatened to disband the legions wouldn't have been very popular and, most likely, he was to be a short lived Emperor. So, Emperors couldn't have done much even if they had understood system dynamics. In practice, they spent most of their time trying to reinforce the army by having as many legions as they could. Emperors, and the whole Roman world, fought as hard as they could to keep the status quo ante , to keep things as they had always been. After the 3rd century crisis, Emperor Diocletian resurrected the Empire transforming it into something that reminds us of the Soviet Union at the time of Breznev. An oppressive dictatorship that included a suffocating bureaucracy, heavy taxes for the citizens, and a heavy military apparatus. It was such a burden for the Empire that it destroyed it utterly in little more than a century."

Read the full article here.

I've been doing a lot of thinking over the past 10 years or so about how the Episcopal Church is seeing the future of some of our depopulating dioceses (especially in Appalachia and the increasingly de-industrialized midwest). We know where we're heading given the decrease in population in areas that used to be able to support a full-service congregation.

It would be better for us to try to live into the future now, so that we make a relatively painless transition. But instead we seem to be engaged in finger pointing and blame about the causes of the decline and that's leading us fritter away critical time and resources that will lead to a much more painful transition that is necessary.

What it's like in the former industrial heartland

James Kunstler writes a weekly column reporting on what he forsees as the western economy's coming collapse and the effect it will have on the United States.

This week, as the news of the collapse of General Motors is highlighted on the hour, he writes of a recent trip to western and northern New York state:

"You get into these far reaches of upstate New York and your senses report that you have entered something like an HP Lovecraft story, where the sun comes up twenty minutes late, and the magnetic poles are not where they're supposed to be, and the few remaining denizens of the towns all have eleven fingers.... Even though I've seen plenty of desolation like it in other parts of the country -- the back roads of Ohio, the Mississippi River towns of the upper Midwest, the morbid stretch of blue highway between Memphis and Little Rock -- I've never encountered a landscape so shattered by the mere ravages of economic fate.

The most striking feature is how all the things once so 'modern,' all the roadside business enterprises designed along 'space age' motifs -- the car dealerships with boomerang-shaped signs, the rocket-ship-style food huts, the schools that look like atomic power installations -- all teeter now in sublime decrepitude. The reversal of spirit from childlike exuberance of the 1960s to the senile sclerosis of today said everything about where America is at. Much of what existed before the space age is not even there anymore, bulldozed decades ago in our haste to erase pre-drive-in living, as if it branded us a lower life-form than, say, our arch-enemy, the Soviets.  I've wondered for many years what Modernism would be like when time finally passed it by, when it was no longer the sole thing it declared itself to be, up-to-date -- and there it was smeared all over the landscape like so much road kill."

Read the full article here.

Having lived and worked in parts of PA very much like northern New York, this description rings true to me. I was told years ago that PA, once the powerhouse of the Industrial revolution, is now the state with the highest number of people living in rural zip codes. In other words, it's becoming a farming state once again. (Which isn't a bad thing - the coast needs to eat, and PA has excellent farm land an easy short haul a way.)

I've been thinking about the effect this level of disruption is going to have on churches for a long while. I had hoped that it was going to be a truly pressing problem in a few more decades, but it appears that the future is now upon us.

There's a great deal of hope for the Church I think, but it's going to require people to think carefully about how to use the increasingly scarce resource of seminary trained clergy, and increase the role of the volunteer lay person in supporting the work of the community. Total Ministry is one model, and there's a great deal to learn from it.

But I'm not aware of many congregations that have managed to grow using that model - it feels to me more like a way of trying to forestall an inevitable collapse than it does a new model to evangelize the world.

I'm thinking it might be worth having a conversation here about different models that might be created to try to transition ministry from the old pastoral model to a newer model that uses all the resources at hand - big churches, program style churches, missions and cell groups to rejigger our parish ministry model.

Any interest?

Credit markets and Peak Oil

If you're not familiar with the Peak Oil models that are predicting a declining supply of energy for Western economies, there's a fantastic post over on The Oil Drum that not only explains the basics, but goes a step further than most presentations I've seen. In the long presentation (which is adapted from a series of powerpoint slides) the author not only show that Peak Oil is still an issue today despite declining crude prices, but is going to be exacerbated by the ongoing unwinding of the credit markets.

"Nearly all of the economic analyses we see today have as their basic premise a view that the current financial crisis is a temporary aberration. We will have a V or U shaped recovery, especially if enough stimulus is applied, and the economy will soon be back to Business as Usual. I believe this assumption is basically incorrect. The current financial crisis is a direct result of peak oil. There may be oscillations in the economic situation, but generally, we can't expect things to get much better. In fact, there is a very distinct possibility that things may get very much worse in the next few years."

Read the full presentation here. It's not good news. But it's probably better for us in the church to start preparing to respond to the crisis than it is for us to try to find voices that will contradict the predictions and thus ignore the issues. So far pretty much everything the doomsayer models have been predicting over the past few years is coming true...

Peak Oil has already happened

There's an important bit of news today, and it's not about the iPhone.

According to the folks over on the Oil Drum:

"World oil production peaked in 2008 at 81.73 million barrels/day (mbd) shown in the chart below. This oil definition includes crude oil, lease condensate, oil sands and natural gas plant liquids. If natural gas plant liquids are excluded, then the production peak remains in 2008 but at 73.79 mbd. However, if oil sands are also excluded then crude oil and lease condensate production peaked in 2005 at 72.75 mbd.

The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) and the International Energy Agency (IEA) should make official statements about declining world oil production to renew the focus on oil conservation and alternative energy sources."

Read the full article here.

There's a chart at the link above that shows a pretty convincing peak.

They do allow as there might be a second peak that will develop as the world's economy recovers, but that doesn't change the facts as they are presenting them.

So, now the big question for each of us is how we deal with the instability that has been predicted to follow the peak. (And will be exacerbated by the steepness of the slope down.)

Where will people be living?

David Brooks points to a new study from Pew:

"The Pew Research Center just finished a study about where Americans would like to live and what sort of lifestyle they would like to have. The first thing they found is that even in dark times, Americans are still looking over the next horizon. Nearly half of those surveyed said they would rather live in a different type of community from the one they are living in at present.

Second, Americans still want to move outward. City dwellers are least happy with where they live, and cities are one of the least popular places to live. Only 52 percent of urbanites rate their communities ‘excellent’ or ‘very good,’ compared with 68 percent of suburbanites and 71 percent of the people who live in rural America.

Cities remain attractive to the young. Forty-five percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 would like to live in New York City. But cities are profoundly unattractive to people with families and to the elderly. Only 14 percent of Americans 35 and older are interested in living in New York City. Only 8 percent of people over 65 are drawn to Los Angeles. We’ve all heard stories about retirees who move back into cities once their children are grown, but that is more anecdote than trend."

Read the full article here. (Thanks Bishop Kirk Smith for pointing me toward this article.)

The third point Brooks brings up is that people still have a desire to move to the Western states and cities (including Phoenix).

Brooks primarily focuses on the idea that city planners who are expecting an urban revival will probably be disappointed. But I'm not sure his argument that the suburbs will survive because lots of people don't want to live downtown will come true.

Let's assume at least for the moment that a coming energy crunch is going to be delayed by the global economic downturn - which will in turn lower the pressure on people to move out of energy costly suburban settings and into more efficient urban ones. Even with that, there's still the issue of home ownership collapsing and more people deciding to rent instead. (American homeownership was recently at an all time high due to governmental programs that encouraged it. But it's not clear that ownership is the best situation for as many people as now own. Unraveling that is going to push people into rental units.)

Additionally the study indicates that there is still a preference among a majority of Americans to live in the suburbs, but I'd be interested to see if the number of people who would prefer an urban setting is higher than the present number of people who live in an urban setting. The strong preference for the young to city living may indicate a cultural shift that is ongoing. (It may also represent the fact that it is the lower and lower middle urban class that are having families right now.)

I've been harping for years that the Episcopal Church needs to take these demographic shifts seriously. Maybe this study indicates we have a little more time than I thought, but I don't think it indicates that we should be abandoning plans to restart urban parishes in favor of planting new suburban ones.

And how interesting that young people are looking to live downtown. We're seeing that here at our Cathedral where we seeing large numbers of 20 and 30 year old parishioners and smaller numbers of baby-boomers and hero-generation people. What sorts of things does the Episcopal Church which is often found in urban settings need to change to speak to this change in our demographic?

Border issues and Peak Oil

Globalization drives global commodity prices downward. This causes localized economic disruption giving rise to mass migration as people move in search of work an sustenance.

Will rising oil prices (and all the associated economic quantities) short cicuit globalization quickly enough?

Would higher border tarrifs on commodities both decrease the rate of disruption as well allowing more time for the developed world to make the transition to renewable energy?

Wintertime in Phoenix

I woke up this morning and the bedroom was 70 degrees. So I climbed out of bed, wearing my warm sleep pants, turtleneck and thick socks and added a fleece vest, slippers and a warm robe. It’s good to be well fortified against the cold.

The odd thing is that I’m not exaggerating. Having lived here in Phoenix for three winters now, 70 degrees really does feel uncomfortably cold. Going outside in 50 degree weather requires a cap, jacket, scarf - and if I’m going to be outside for any length, gloves. I don’t think the temperatures are comfortable anymore unless they’re in the 90’s. My family is now the same way. My daughter who used to insist she was plenty warm when it was in the 30’s and she was just wearing a light jacket, is now complaining about how cold her room is and sleeping under a great pile of blankets.

People who’ve lived in Phoenix for a while tell me that this isn’t all that unusual. After about three years it’s common to hear people say that your blood “thins”. There’s truth to the fact that there’s a change, but it’s the other way around apparently. After a few years of living in the hottest city in the US, your blood actually thickens, not thins. But either way, it’s a real and very noticeable change. It’s obvious in town during these months who lives year-round in Phoenix, and who’s a winter visitor (snow bird). The Phoenicians are walking around in this 70 weather all wearing jackets. The visitors are all walking around wearing shorts. (It’s really quite striking when you walk down the street.)

What’s particularly striking to me is how this adaption happens automatically. It’s really just a matter of living here. You immerse yourself in this climate and in a few years what you perceive as hot or cold changes.

I’m thinking it’s like that in our ability to perceive the world around us as well. Here in America we’ve been living in period of our history where the culture around us has tacitly decided that the greatest common good is most efficiently found by the free market models of Adam Smith. The character Gordon Gecko coined the phrase “Greed is good” in a movie back in the eighties, and because we’ve lived so long in a culture that acts on the belief, we’ve come to think of the desire to acquire goods and power as not just normal but laudatory.

Mind you, there’s something to this idea. It turns out that when we model various different kinds of economic systems, the most equitable distribution of goods and resources happens if every agent involved acts in the most personally greedy way possible. The problem is that not everyone acts equally greedy, not everyone plays fair, and most distressingly, the equilibrium state can take generations to achieve. The latter seems to me to be the root cause of most of the pain people experience because we are living in a period when the true equilibrium is yet to be achieved. And since it’s not clear that we as a society are willing to live into the pain it will cause to allow the market forces the freedom they require to find their optimum function, it may be that the economic disparity and inefficiency we endure will be never ending.

I wonder if the present recession/depression is going to be the catalyst for changing our perception of what is normal and acceptable for our common economic life? I’m told that the Great Depression had that effect. The reason the “greatest generation” was the greatest generation was because they discovered the interconnectedness needed in society to navigate their way through that particular economic downturn. The seeds of our present greed were sowed in the time of great abundance in the 60’s and 70’s when it seemed that resources were limitless and upward economic trends would continue forever.

In the parable of the Talents and the parable of the Shrewd Steward Jesus seems to be telling us that we need learn to connect with the community and work cooperatively if we want to be able to survive and prosper. (See my sermons on these topics this past fall for the full explanation of why.)

Maybe it’s time we gave Our Lord’s counsel a try? The idea of everyone acting in their own self-interest doesn’t seem to have born the fruit we were promised.

So is Peak Oil still a problem?

Oil prices have fallen back to a level they were at nearly four years ago. They're about 1/3 the level they were at this summer.

So does this mean Peak Oil and the idea that we're running out of petroleum was just so much hype and hand-wringing?

Probably not. It's much like Global Warming. The fact that the Earth's average temperature is being seen to rise doesn't mean that every temperature on earth is automatically bumped up a couple of degrees with local highs a bit higher and local lows also a bit lower. Global warming drives global climate change. And global climate change is change - in some places things get much warmer, in other places things get colder. That's because the connection between global warming and local climate is not linear, it's non-linear. And non-linear relationships don't have easy solutions. They strongly tend to the chaotic, which means you are very limited in being able to predict the localized behavior in a global system.

The wild price swings in Peak Oil appear to be a sign that our Oil supply has stopped being "smooth" or laminar i.e. linear. It's become turbulent, chaotic or "non-linear". Or, in the language I prefer, the petroleum economy has become brittle. It can no longer smoothly respond to inputs - small perturbations in the chain create large responses.

There's an article up on the Oil Drum that points out the similarity between oil prices and queueing theory:

"One of my first dives into the Peak Oil world was with Kenneth Deffeyes' book Beyond Oil. In it, the Princeton Professor explains how resources' prices go through chaotic periods in face of scarce supply. Without knowing it, he derived an expression to explain movements like spot Natural Gas prices in the US after 2002, that was equivalent to Queueing Theory. This made immediate sense to me, after studying this theory in my formative years at the University.

Let me try to explain briefly what this theory is. Imagine a supermarket with a certain number of points-of-sale (POS), to which a certain number of costumers arrive per hour. Queueing Theory allows one to derive information like the average queue length at each POS and the average waiting time each costumer spends in the queue. This information is not only useful for supermarket managers but also in other fields like transport and tele-communications.

Queueing Theory shows also provides another important result: if the load on the system goes above a certain threshold, it becomes impossible to predict queue lengths or waiting times, and the system goes into chaos. Going back to the supermarket, imagine that for some reason the flow of costumers increases several-fold over its normal rhythm (e.g. Black Friday in the US). At first, lengthy queues form at each POS, waiting periods then go beyond costumers' patience, and they simply start quitting the queue and leaving the supermarket without shopping. The dissatisfaction is such that costumers quit entering the supermarket altogether and the manager is eventually forced to close down some POS. But this is Black Friday, the avalanche of costumers eventually returns and it starts all over again. During this chaotic period a random sample of queue length at any given POS can result in any possible number and becomes effectively impossible to predict."

Read the full article here.

A smooth and gradual drop in prices would have indicated that Peak Oil was still far in our future. But this rapid deflation of prices probably signifies something much more ominous.

I'm glad the new President and the new Vice-President like trains.

Lack of gasoline in the Southeastern US

Have you been following the news about the significant gasoline shortages that being seen in the southeastern states? They're due to Hurricanes Gustav and Ike and the damage to a major pipeline (and shutting down of refineries just north of Houston). The problem is being made worse because we were already at low supply levels going into the height of hurricane season.

Saw this story over on Yahoo this morning:

"This is how serious the Southeastern gas shortage has become: There's talk of calling off college football.

Not serious talk, of course. A petroleum executive's suggestion that No. 3 Georgia postpone its Saturday night game against No. 8 Alabama was quickly dismissed Friday by the Georgia governor's office as 'ridiculous.'

But the university's police chief did suggest fans who can't make a round trip to Sanford Stadium on a single tank stay home.

Weeks after Hurricane Ike shut down Gulf Coast refineries and dried up interstate pipelines, some panicked drivers are still waiting in long lines to top off their tanks at the few stations with fuel.

Many across the Southeast are keeping their cars in the garage this weekend, forced to cancel plans for fear they'll run out of gas."

Read the full article here.

I'm wondering if there's any similar effect on churchgoers, especially those who attend churches that aren't within walking distance?

I've been concerned for a while that there was going to be problem for churches that haven't been able to become a part of the neighborhood in which they are placed. (Which is a common situation for Episcopal Churches that frequently have large portions of their congregations driving back to the church they grew up in, or in which they raised their children.) The Roman Catholic diocese of Pittsburgh had to close a number of parishes in the 90's because of that problem. Lots of the parishes were ethnic parishes that were founded when the immigrants arrived at the turn of the century and settled into tight local communities. As the second and third generations dispersed, the parishes never managed to stop being ethic congregations and as such weren't able to fully welcome their new neighbors.

High gas costs, or more worryingly shortages, are going make this problem much worse in the short run.

$500 a bbl oil?

I suppose nobody wants to hear more bad news today. But this article was posted this morning on CNN's Money website:

"Indeed, Simmons isn't the obvious candidate to be the bearer of bad news about oil. He's spent his career working in the business, has lived in Houston for decades, and is such an industry insider that he helped edit the Bush campaign's comprehensive energy plan in the 2000 election - the document that was ultimately more or less rubber-stamped by Vice President Dick Cheney's infamous secret Energy Task Force. Over the past 35 years, his boutique investment bank, Simmons & Co., has helped finance and shape much of the country's existing oil-services business. With profits gushing, you might expect him to be celebrating.

Not to mention that the 65-year-old banker doesn't have the personality of a prophet of doom. He has a puckish wit, a relentlessly cheerful and enthusiastic demeanor, and the appearance of a rosy-cheeked cherub in a navy blazer. He routinely refers - in earnest - to his daily experiences as 'tremendous fun.' His closest business associates have a hard time recalling him ever showing anger. But when it comes to oil and gas, his message is downright scary."

Read the full article here.

As the post where I first noticed this article on Technocrat said:

"Summary? The Saudis are lying about their reserves and new discoveries will not be able to keep up with increasing demand from China and India."

The battle in Georgia

Oil Drum has an omnibus post with background information on the escalating conflict in Georgia.

"Georgia has asked for a cease-fire, but Russia continues its air raids. Bombing originally began in the breakaway province of South Ossetia. Russia is now demanding that Georgian forces disarm in another breakaway province, Abkhazia, or Russian troops will move in. This would be a major escalation of the war."

Read the full post here. There are a bunch of helpful links to reports about the situation and analysis of what's happening.

Oil Drum is following this because of the effects that this war is going to have on oil (and natural gas) shipments from the region. Russia is one of the largest exporters of both in Europe and Asia.

Episcope: "Energy efforts"

There's a list of stories in the news today about how Episcopal parishes are responding to the energy crunch:

"Chicago Tribune
Geothermal power tapping its potential; A New York seminary and 3 million households are discovering that it is a viable alternative as oil prices keep rising steeply Read it [here]

Worcester Telegram, MA
Churches looking for ways to ease heating Read it [here]

Salisbury Post - Salisbury, NC
Catawba's environmental stewardship conference makes impact on many Read it [here]

Boston Herald
Churches eye new solutions Read it [here]"

From here.

What's up with Oil prices?

After reaching historic high prices last month, oil prices have started to drift lower, falling more than $5/barrel one day last week.

What's causing the drop?

The Times has an article discussing the causes. The short answer is that the high prices earlier this year have caused significant changes in consumer consumption around the world - dropping use by more than 10%. Additionally Saudi Arabia has pledged and is acting to increase their production rate. So we have less demand, more supply and falling prices.

But, this is a sign that we're starting to manage the crisis better, not a sign that the crisis is over.

The article continues with a discussion about the long-term prospects for oil prices:

"Nevertheless, while the recent falls have been welcome, there is good reason to believe that oil prices are unlikely to fall to the levels consumers were comfortable with a few years ago.

The days of $30 or $40 for a barrel of oil are probably over. This is because the fundamental factors that have driven oil to such high levels remain in place, even against the background of a slowing global economy.

Booming demand for energy from developing countries is not going to abate soon. Meanwhile, constraints on global supply because of declining output outside the OPEC exporters' cartel, and a lack of investment in production and refining capacity are not problems that can be solved overnight.

Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world with the ability to significantly raise production quickly and most experts believe it is operating close to its current limit.

Some of the world's biggest oil companies, including Total and Chevron, have cast doubt over whether global production, which stands at around 85 million barrels per day, can ever exceed 100 million barrels, despite demand projections of as much as 130 million barrels per day within a few decades by the US Government.

It is worth remembering that oil at the current level of $118 per barrel, or even $100 or $80, is by historic standards extremely high.

Predicting where oil prices will head next is virtually impossible, but there is a compelling argument they will remain high for a sustained period."

Read the full article here.

All of which means that the pain we are going to feel is going to be 10% less painful. (Or something on that order at any rate.) This is good news in that it may offer us all a little more flexibility as we think through the steps needed to make a transition away from high consumption of expensive limited resources.

Oil prices driving people to wood stoves

Hey all - back again from a week in the woods around Flagstaff AZ. We didn't have any Internet access to speak of, and now that I'm back home, and the shakes have stopped, I'm just starting to get caught up again.

I saw this note about a transition to wood based heating as a response to the cost of oil heat this morning:

"People who have been used to heating with fuel oil are facing severe wallet shock, it has gotten to the point they just can't afford it and it looks to not get any better soon. Wood has been used forever, but older styled woodstoves are not an option for many. One solution that is appealing is the modern wood pellet furnace, that can be used with boilers and hot water or steam delivery around the house. Sales are booming, and one new company is investing in the whole heating stack, delivering and installing the pellet furnaces, along with having a fleet of trucks to deliver pellets."

Read the full article here.

There's a concern here. First, it's useful to remember that most of Pennsylvania was deforested in the last 1800's both to provide fuel prior to the switch to coal and to support agriculture. Most of the trees in the northeast are less than a hundred years old as a result and there's only a small patch of primeval forest left in the state. (Cook's forest if I recall correctly.) If we make a significant switch to wood stoves, given the significant population increase in the U.S., how long can we realistically expect the wood supply to last?

Secondly, wood has to be harvested and transported. I've not seen the calculation done, but I'm suspicious that wood stoves will end up using a large amount of oil to provide a btu - and that there won't be the big savings in oil consumption that people are hoping for. Especially if the movement to wood spreads.

On the other hand, as a transitional stop-gap measure, perhaps this is one of our best tools.

Our future is our past?

Just a quick thought on how rising energy prices are going to change the way we "do" parish life...

I saw an item in the news about how congregations which have been following the ministry model of being the full-service lifestyle center are finding new challenges now that their parishioners can't just pop by the church campus for a latte.

We're expecting things to change this fall at the Cathedral with the expectation that folks from around the Phoenix metro area are going to be financially challenged to just pop downtown to go to a mid-week meeting or lecture or concert... (Worship services continue as long as anyone is showing up.)

Our response is to start focusing all activities on Sunday. We'll use the model of doing whatever we can on Sunday so that the largest number of people will be able to participate directly.

It strikes me that one aspect of this new strategy is that we're becoming sabbatarians again. "Spend the Lord's Day in the Lord's House."

Which makes me think that we as a denomination know what to do in response to rising energy prices - it's to remember what we once did. We can find models for ministry in hard times by looking back to when we did ministry in hard times.

And we did pretty good ministry back then.

Maybe there's hope for us.