SOL saves

Meanwhile, the oil approaches Florida.

Of course, no one could have predicted.

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“I said to the Republicans, join with me,” Obama said. “There’s been some good work done by John Kerry and Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham. Let’s go. Let’s not wait. Let’s show the American people that in the midst of this crisis, all of us are opening our eyes to what’s necessary to fulfill the promise to our children and our grandchildren.”

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Top Kill Fails!

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Offshore oil vs. offshore wind ... who wins?

How many offshore wind turbines could have been bought for the cost of 1 Deepwater Horizon? The answer is enlightening.

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the problem, ultimately, with driving headlong at a brick wall; you can stop by standing on the brake pedal, or you can stop by hitting the wall, but either way, you’re going to stop.

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It is time to go Beyond Petroleum.  Way beyond petroleum, all the way to solar.

Start the drums rolling.

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John Michael Greer has another of his well thought out posts up again at The Archdruid Report titled Economic Superstitions.

Economics is our modern superstition – well, one of them, at any rate, and one of the most popular among the political class of today’s industrial societies. Like any other superstition, it has a core of pragmatic wisdom to it, but that core has been overlaid with a great deal of somewhat questionable logic. My wife’s Welsh ancestors believed that the bowl of milk on the back stoop pleased the fairies, and that’s why the rats stayed away from the kitchen garden; the economists of the twentieth century believed that expanding the money supply pleased – well, the prosperity fairies, or something not too dissimilar – and that’s why depressions stayed away from the United States.

In both cases it’s arguable that something very different was going on. The gargantuan economic boom that made America the world’s largest economy had plenty of causes; the accident of political geography that kept its industrial hinterlands from becoming war zones, while most other industrial nations got the stuffing pounded out of them, had more than a little to do with the matter; but the crucial point, one too often neglected in studies of twentieth century history, was the simple fact that the United States at midcentury produced more petroleum than all the other countries on Earth put together. The oceans of black gold on which the US floated to victory in two world wars defined the economic reality of an epoch. As a result, most of what passed for economic policy in the last sixty years or so amounted to attempts to figure out how to make use of unparalleled abundance.

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John Michael Greer has an interesting post up about the economics of both husband and wife working for wages titled A Blindness to Systems. His  basic point is that the US could end the unemployment problem overnight just by having one of the partners in a nuclear family stop working for wages and begin working at home for the common good of the family. The Blindness to Systems aspect is that there are a lot of costs associated with that second income, but that these are often ignored in the decision process of whether or not that second partner should work for wages.

Some of the benefits to the family of one partner staying at home include better cared for children, fewer work and commute expenses,  less time wasted commuteing, better nutrition due to home cooking, possibility of a garden, and home constructed clothing, to name a few.

Some of the benefits to society would be less wasted resources, happier and healthier children, and higher average wages due to increased competition for available workers.

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In the US somewhere between 10% and 20% of the working age adults are out of work and there are no realistic prospects of this changing any time soon. Many other parts of the world have way higher unemployment rates.

How it works now

To the unemployed individual this is devastating. At first, for the lucky few, there is unemployment insurance providing some fraction of the person’s former wage. After unemployment insurance runs out there is some form of charity, either from the community of from the family.

The unemployed person has had a change of status and in most cases a sever change in the amount of available resources, but these unfortunates do not go away. Many have families dependent on them for support and these support needs continue whether or not the person is working. Someone has to pay the rent and supply the food and other necessities of life.

In times of near full employment the unemployment insurance system works relatively well. The newly unemployed gets enough to get by but not so much as to be too comfortable while finding a new job. Jobs are easy to find and the earnest applicant finds one quickly with only a small disruption to life.

In times like these unemployment insurance really does not work at all. For every available job there are hundreds of over qualified applicants. The government keeps extending the unemployment insurance period, but nothing changes to make finding employment more likely. The working resent those looking for work and those looking can clearly see that the system is not treating them fairly.

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The latest wingnut email. I am still researching this to find out what really happened, not that it would prove anything if it is exactly as quoted. Other than, I suppose, that there was a hot spell in 1922 also.

The Arctic  ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and  in some places the seals are finding the water too hot,  according to a report to the Commerce Department  yesterday from Consulit, at  Bergen ,  Norway . Reports  from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers all point  to a radical change in climate conditions and  hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone.  Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice  has been met as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes.  Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed the  gulf stream still very warm. Great masses of ice have  been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the  report continued, while at many points well known  glaciers have entirely disappeared. Very few  seals and no white fish are found in the eastern  Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts,  which have never before ventured so far north, are  being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds.  Within a few years it is predicted that due to the  ice melt the sea will rise and make most coastal  cities uninhabitable.

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