Sea Realm Vault Podcast, episode number 323.
Friday, January 4th, 2019. The light of consciousness
shines on everyone, but not everyone gains access
to the vault. Hey, Serum Vault subscribers. Happy
New Year. I've got to keep this super short.
I'm having technical difficulties and my computer
is really not up to the big files that I need
it to be able to tackle in order to make podcasts.
So I just have to be very brief in my statements
here. What you have in this episode of the podcast
is a recording that I made on the first of the
year. with a blogger who listens to the Sea Realm
podcast or who had years ago. He'll explain his
connection to the realm. His name is Bob Brown.
He contacted me and basically he convinced me
that he would be somebody who would be worth
getting on Zoom to have a chat with, particularly
since he represents a set of concerns which I
know are still very important to a large percentage
of the Sea Realm audience and which are just...
Really old news to me. So I'm going to play a
couple segments from a YouTube video. This is
from a couple years back. Basically, I read out
a question about solar, the returns on solar,
and also the rapid advances in electric car technology.
This comes from Eric Boyd, who is probably the
single most technophilic and optimistic repeat
guest on the Sea Realm podcast. And basically
his whole point of view was handed back to him,
absolutely rejected by all the folks at the table.
But the answers to the question that I got from
Chris Martinson and Dmitry Orlov are the ones
that are still most interesting to me now in
hindsight a couple of years later. So I sent
that video to Bob, this week's guest, and he
watched it and we are going to comment on it.
So I'm not going to play that whole video in
this episode, but I am going to play the answers
from Dmitry Orlov and Chris Martinson. And actually,
in the video, they come in the reverse order
that you'll hear them here on this podcast. All
right, so first up, you'll hear from Chris Martinson,
and then my conversation with Bob Brown. And
then in the middle, I will also cut in Dmitry
Orlov's answer to the question of, yo, how can
you guys still be such peak oil conversions when
solar electricity and electric cars are coming
along so quickly? And fantasies often don't come
with numbers. So here's some numbers. Okay. Let's
hear it for the number man. I'm the number guy.
You're the number guy. Hit it. So if Elon Musk
manages to sell 500 ,000 cars a year, which is
up from about 80 ,000 this year, that number
of electric cars, as they're currently configured,
will consume 100 % of the world's mining source
of lithium. So I'm going to imagine China has
something to say about that, and Japan is going
to, and Germany and other countries will say,
but even if you did 500 ,000 cars growing exponentially,
don't forget that, 500 ,000 at a current run
rate of about 17 .5 million cars sold is about
3%. So for the United States to supplant just
3 % of the current sales volume will require
100 % of current lithium. And that's just one
bottleneck. That's just one. I got more, right?
Yeah. You're good. You're good. So fantasies,
as you're talking about, they don't comport with
reality. They don't stack up to the numbers.
And I wish these people would just get a crayon
and a napkin out and just go run through the
basic numbers. Because they just don't. All righty.
Well, it is New Year's Day. 2019, and I'm here
with tech and investment blogger. Is that a fair
way to say it? Yeah, a modest blogger, but a
high -tech person. I'm kind of an enabler behind
a lot of the things you see in the internet.
Like what? One of thousands of people. Well,
when you say you are an enabler, what do you
mean? Okay. But at my work, what we do is actually
make cooling systems for routers and servers
that form the backbone of the Internet. So they
use a lot of power, they generate a lot of heat,
and they need very advanced cooling systems to
keep the temperatures down and lower the temperature
on electronics, the better the reliability. We
make systems for that. So when you talk on your
cell phone, you use a computer over the Internet
and so forth, there's a good chance it's going
through a router or a server that I had some
little piece of. So you are definitely not a
– well, I can't say definitely. I don't know
you that well. Tell me about your attitude toward
technology. You're certainly knowledgeable about
it. What's your level of optimism, say, for the
ability of the human species to use its technical
know -how to get out of its current predicament?
I think there is some hope of using technology
to do it, but I think we have to drastically
scale down our energy usage in the future. Technology
can help do that, but I think we're tending not
to go in that direction. We're exploiting technology
to use more energy, and we just keep exponentially
increasing our energy usage rather than using
it to reduce it. So I think a lot of things are
going in the wrong direction, and people throw
out technology as a hope for the future, but
the way we use technology kind of has to be redirected.
Do you like to make the distinction between system
-dependent technology and useful standalone technologies
that a lot of appropriate technology people like
to make? I think there's a lot to the appropriate
technology scene. Simple, standalone technologies,
they're resilient, they're not dependent upon
a very complex web of interrelated technologies
that take a fair amount of complexity and energy
to use. So there's something to be said for that.
I think... We could more selectively in the future
use some of the very high -tech stuff that takes
a lot of complexity, but it would have to be
really looked at for and preserved. So it'd take
a little bit of a special effort that I don't
see us doing right now. When you first contacted
me via email, it seemed like the point of contact
thematically would be electric cars. Electric
cars. Let me say just a, I mean, long -time listeners
will know this, but the Sea Realm audience is
kind of a strange mix in that, you know, this
was one of the early podcasts. I started it in
2006, and most of the audience came in via one
of two vectors. There was a permanent link on
the homepage for the Psychedelic Salon podcast,
which played a lot of old Terrence McKenna. recordings
and things. And that podcast has a large audience.
So just a fraction of that audience clicking
on the permalink to the C -realm from the front
page of matrixmasters .com brought in a lot of
people who were interested in psychedelics. And
then some of the early guests that I had on the
program, like Jim Kunstler and Dmitry Orlov,
and then a couple of years later, John Michael
Greer, that brought in the peak oil crowd. And
it's kind of a strange mix of people who have,
you know, on to the sea realm and stayed with
it for years. So I'm guessing that you're more
of the peak oil crowd than the psychedelic salon
crowd. Yes, definitely. I kind of followed John
Michael Greer and James Howard Kunstler for a
bit. I came across your podcast actually in an
odd way. I think you appeared with the guy, Two
Beers with Steve podcast. Oh, yes. Years ago,
and I actually came across your podcast through
that. You were a guest on there, and then you
interviewed him. And I think his podcast is long
gone, but I started listening to you. Lost track
a little while ago, and then caught up with a
very old high school friend, actually. I hadn't
seen in 35 years. I was on a different podcast,
and he happened to listen to that. And then we
talked for a while, and he brought up your name
again. I got back listening about it a few years
ago. It's a small but very select audience that
listens to the Sea Realm podcast. Small by, you
know, podcast standards. If it was a church,
it would be a big church. It would be a big congregation.
Well, you definitely have a good, steady following.
Well, let's talk about electric cars for a minute.
I directed you to a video that I shot. I went
to an event where John Michael Greer, Dmitry
Orlov, James Howard Kunstler, Chris Martinson,
and somebody else who wasn't really a peak oil
person, but they were all gathered together in
one room in the makeshift green room waiting
to go up on stage at an event. And I read out
a letter. From somebody that I talk to from time
to time, maybe you'll recognize the name. His
name is Eric Boyd. He is Canadian. He was one
of the founders of a tech site, I think it's
StumbleUpon, which he then sold and made a nice
chunk of change. As I say, he's Canadian. Something
happened with his visa and he had to leave the
U .S., so he's no longer admitted within our
borders. Dangerous type that he is. The answers
that the people gave at that table, John Michael
Greer gave the standard religion of progress
answer, which, while worth knowing, wasn't really
specific to the question. So I kind of tuned
that out. Jim Kunstler's response also seemed
pretty familiar and boilerplate to me. But what
I wasn't expecting was Chris Martens' response.
And basically, he said in a rather sort of derogatory
way that the person asking the question didn't
understand the hard resource constraint imposed
by lithium supplies. And lithium, as far as I
know, is not a particularly rare. rare earth.
You know, it's not, as you've pointed out, neodymium
or some of the other more exotic things that
come from just a few places in the world. You
know, some of these places are conflict ridden
and China controls the supply of certain rare
earth minerals, but lithium is definitely not
one of them. So his answer is the one that is
stuck in my mind as being both seemingly just,
you know, simply wrong, but also needlessly combative,
you know, in the way that He criticized people
who like electric cars for not even being able
to take a crayon to a napkin and do simple math.
I thought, you know, whenever I hear statements
like that, my spider sense tingles. That alerts
me to a weak argument if somebody is pouring
on an extra helping of derision to go with their
answer. So I sent that video to you, and you
responded that you were fairly in agreement with
all of the responses given. I'd like to ask you
to expand on that. Okay, I mean, I generally
agree with John Michael Greer, and for the most
part, James Howard Kunstler's arguments. James
Howard Kunstler, I mean, some of his stuff about
suburban beauty and suburban sprawl, I don't
quite buy. I think I'm more into functional than,
you know, my house is kind of a rectangle. but
it functions and it's fairly energy efficient.
You know, I'm semi -rural suburban, but I think
that's probably a somewhat livable arrangement,
at least for the quite near future. And I think
there is something to the religion of progress
story too. Now, Chris Martinson, I mean, he does
look at these things very thoroughly. And let's...
To be clear, when we talk about a rare earth
element, it is actually something, I don't know
if you remember your high school chemistry. I
didn't take any high school chemistry. I was
a high school chemistry teacher at one point.
And if you look at a typical periodic table,
there's all these squares with the different
elements represented. Down the bottom, there
is a bunch of elements that way back when I was
in school, we had no clue. what they could be
used for, if they had any use. Those are the
rare earth elements. They're very, very heavy
atomically. You know, a lot of protons, a lot
of neutrons in them, a lot of electrons, you
know, in the hundreds. Those are called, they
just call them the rare earths. That's the name
they're given. They're not super, super rare.
They have to be mined. Mining, of course, is
energy intensive and actually ends up, you know,
the fuel that's used, of course, in mining is
diesel. So, you know, when you analyze any technology,
it seems you always get back to oil via diesel
fuel. But, yeah, rare earths are controlled mostly
in China and so forth right now. There's been
a few attempts to get mines going outside of
China, but every time that happens, what happens
is you get a demand drop, a little fluctuation
in economics, and the mine goes out of business,
as long as China can provide supply. Lithium
has nothing to do with rare earth elements. It's
semi -rare. A quick Google search told me it's
the 25th most common element in the earth's crust.
A couple of different ways of mining. Again,
mining is an energy -intensive, expensive business.
It usually takes a while to get going, so it's
difficult to ramp up supplies. So Chris Martinson
is probably right, at least in the very near
term, that you can't quickly increase the supplies
of lithium. I'm not sure if he is right in the
mid to long term. Five, ten years out, could
you make an effort to increase the supplies dramatically?
Maybe. And lithium isn't the only critical element
in the batteries. They're known as lithium batteries,
but I believe nickel is also the other element.
So you're also in mining constraints there. So
it is something that has to be... kept in mind.
And I think Chris's point, which maybe he overstates
it kind of derisively as you put it, but a lot
of people think of these elements as appearing
the way a lot of people think of their food is
something you get from the supermarket. It's
on a shelf. And they don't understand the whole
process behind getting that. So when you get
strawberries in January, they don't realize,
okay, those were grown in South America. They
were flown on a plane. They were delivered to
the store. They don't understand that whole process
behind it. There's a lot involved in doing that.
Mining, very, very intensive industry. They typically,
whatever they're mining, the element they're
trying to get out, they're usually digging up
tons to get. of earth to get grams of that element.
So an intensive digging process, isolating that
element, that's an intensive process. And then
the transportation process, the refining of the
raw material. So a lot goes into that and it
can't be quickly scaled up or ramped up easily,
even if it is available. And then with the markets
the way they are, you've got a lot of fluctuation
on it. So you bring a new mine on board, all
of a sudden you increase the supply. If the demand
doesn't match, you sometimes crash the price
and cause mines to go out of business or shut
in. So it's not as simple as people think that,
okay, if we want this stuff, we just go get it.
It's got to be planned years out, I think at
least five years in advance for most types of
mining that I'm aware of. So you can't just simply
have half percent of the cars be electric one
year and then ramp that up to 10 % easily the
next year. A lot of things have to be planned
for that to happen, and they all have to go well.
Well, I don't know the current state of... operations
there, but soon after I had posted that video
with all the gentlemen that I just mentioned,
Tesla Motors announced a contract that they had
signed to basically source all of the lithium
for their batteries from the state of Nevada,
which is where their manufacturing facility is.
So I don't know what the timeline was for getting
that up and running, but I didn't hear, and I
looked around for it, you know, any voices in
the industry saying this is unrealistic. And,
you know, there are people who who go over everything,
like his every utterance and every tweet, it's
gone over with a fine -tooth comb. And if Elon
Musk says something that is obviously stupid,
there's going to be a lot of people who are going
to jump on that. And I just didn't see anybody
jumping on the idea that there is lithium to
be had in Nevada. It seems like an odd place
to... you know, to zero in and say, here is the
problem, you know, the constraint, the supply
constraint on lithium. In the industry itself,
I just, you know, I've looked for it and I haven't
found that criticism anywhere. I only hear it
in these sort of esoteric peak oil circles. Yeah,
I had seen a little bit about the Nevada site
and certainly at this level of production, I
would imagine they could ramp things up. I mean,
they're not producing at this point a lot of
electric cars. The other thing, though, I mean,
in terms of electric cars being viable for the
future, you have to consider, you know, people
point at Tesla. And if you really look at Tesla,
what is that? It's a rich man's fifth car. You
know, one of these people have, you know, five
garages at their house, and that's his fifth
car. It's not a practical car for people like
you and me. No, but the major manufacturers,
the GMs and their peers of the world are also
ramping up electric car production, not at the
rich man's toy level, but at the level of actual
commuter devices that people will use, regular
people with regular lives. In fact, Tesla's –
as you say, the level of production at Tesla
is so low as to really be – rather irrelevant
in terms of how it impacts the automotive industry
and how it impacts people's lives and how it
impacts traffic patterns and energy usage and
things like that. But they are creating the prototypes
for the production cars of the future that the
big manufacturers will be producing in significant
quantities if things go the way the industry
says they're going. Yeah, potentially. I still
see you have other supply constraints, though,
and one of them is the electric grid itself.
You know, a typical home has, you know, maybe
100 amp service. And, you know, usually people
don't use near that much. But if you think how,
you know, our scale of cars, it has gone up so
much in terms of the horsepower on the car and
so forth. people typically driving SUVs. I haven't
blogged much on my blog, but one post I did put
up was about my first car, which was a 65 VW
Beetle. So that thing had 35 horsepower on it.
And I was trying to convey the scale of what
that was in terms of solar panels. If you go
look around and you see a solar panel on somebody's
roof. The typical solar panel you see is a 200
-watt solar panel. A horsepower is 745 watts.
So that means in full sun, four of those solar
panels generate one horsepower worth of energy.
Okay, so for my underpowered VW Beetle with the
35 -horsepower engine, you're talking four of
those panels times 35. That's a lot of solar
surface area dedicated to the power that's required
for a car. Now, you charge the car, if you figure,
okay, eventually we're going to have all solar
panels powering these electric cars, you have
an awful lot of area that has to be dedicated
to those cars. And our typical SUV is not 35
horsepower, but it's 350 horsepower. So you multiply
that amount again by 10, and you're seeing, I
mean, my yard is about three -quarters of an
acre. You're probably filling that with solar
panels. If they get full sun for an hour and
you use that to charge the battery on my electric
SUV, that allows my SUV to run that engine for
an hour. Of course, there's losses along the
way, but you can kind of think of it, the losses
are maybe in the 10 % area. So you can kind of
think of it as equivalent. Feeds the other, feeds
the other. But you don't get out more than you
put in. So we don't have an electric grid that's
set for that. And the other thing you have to
think of is that each time you charge your car,
you're charging it from an electric grid. Ultimately,
that electric grid is probably being powered
by coal. Or nuclear. Or nuclear. Okay. both of
which have, there's a lot of things to object
about that. And the electric grid is not that
efficient. You lose about 50 % typically of the
power that's generated as it travels through
the grid. Just resistive losses, you know, electricity
traveling over the wire, it heats up the wire
over long distances. So you're actually, if it's...
Being powered by coal, you're using twice the
amount of coal energy that you would be of oil
energy in a car. And I mentioned this other podcast
I was on about being in Switzerland in 2010 and
driving a natural gas -powered car. And that,
you know, the car ran well. It was a combination.
dual -fuel car. It had gasoline and natural gas.
It started up using the gasoline because gasoline
oil is the most energy -concentrated fuel you
have, so that's better for starting. And then
it would switch over to natural gas if you had
any. And yeah, the car ran perfectly fine, and
in Switzerland, they already had natural gas
gas stations. And the host mentioned, he said,
well, I think what we'll have is electric cars
and we'll produce our electricity by natural
gas. But the more indirectly you use any source
of energy, the more the losses are in between.
So when you're driving the car directly on natural
gas, you're getting the full efficiency of that
natural gas in the engine. If you create electricity
using natural gas, then transfer it over the
grid, you have a... a lot of losses, and then
you charge it into the battery. The battery heats
up as you charge it. That's some losses. It heats
up as you discharge it. There's some losses there.
So you actually use more energy to drive an electric
car than you do using the fossil fuel directly.
I think what we're discussing is a handful of
specific instances of the more general point
that fossil fuel energy is incredibly energy
dense. So much so that it's not friendly to the
human intuition, the difference in energy density
between the different sources of energy we imagine
we'll be using in the future. There really is
nothing that packs the energy into a confined
space like fossil fuels. Oh, that's definitely
true. And that's, I think the scale, I mean,
this is something Chris Martinson. harps on constantly
and maybe he overdoes it uh to the point where
you you shrug it off and ignore it but yes the
scale of certain things people just don't comprehend
and you know i certainly find that i'm an environmentalist
and a lot of environmentalists they're they're
lovely people but they don't have you know the
mathematical type brain that i have where i kind
of see these scale relationships more naturally
it just comes easier to me and so i'll see flaws
in the arguments that other people might not
seem obvious to them so yes oil oil is just tremendously
dense and until you you start thinking about
like powering my VW Beetle in terms of solar
panels and so forth, that you just can't always,
you can't comprehend the scale of the difference.
I think electric vehicles do make sense, but
probably on a much more limited scale. I mean,
we've gotten spoiled with driving, you know,
overpowered SUVs around this country. You know,
you look around the rest of the world, you go
into Europe and you see a lot more smaller, lighter
cars powered by all different kinds of fuel.
I know in Switzerland, they had in 2010, we had
the natural gas car. There were cars powered
by propane in addition to regular gasoline and
a lot of diesel. But in general, I mean, the
cars are smaller, lighter, much more energy efficient.
And, you know, Europeans use a lot less. energy
than Americans do, with actually, I think, as
good or, in the case of Switzerland, probably
a better standard of living. Yeah, and the standard
of living in the United States is much, there's
a whole industry, I think, you know, information
industry devoted to obscuring the fact, but our
standard of living is definitely falling, particularly,
you know, the middle class seems to be revealing
itself to have been a temporary phenomenon. Yes,
people people are definitely sliding down and
they're going from, you know, an upper middle
class sliding into middle class to lower middle
class gradually. And I don't know if they're
not acknowledging it. They're borrowing more
money to cover the difference is certainly one
thing that's happening. But we are definitely
sliding. Bit by bit, person by person, you know,
it's not a sudden collapse all at once, but at
the fringes it just keeps trickling down and
everything, higher taxes, are just nibbling at
it, the standard of living, and dragging it down
a little bit year by year. Do you know Kathy
McMahon, the peak shrink? No, I don't. I don't
know that she's really in the peak oil scene
anymore, largely because there really isn't much
of a peak oil scene anymore. But she used to
be one of the better known names. And she was
a I assume she still is a psychologist. But she
started she encountered peak oil, I think, from
one of her patients and people who were who had
anxiety about. Civilizational fragility from
a peak oil angle would often get pathologized
by mental health professionals who had no idea
about the realities of the energy situation.
And they would put labels on people and describe
their anxiety as some sort of pathology. And
Kathy McMahon was the person who was the peak
oil aware psychologist. So come to her and get
a more knowledgeable sort of response as you
articulate your concerns. And I think this is
her phrase, but I associate it with her. She
differentiates between a fast collapse and what
she calls the sucky collapse. And the sucky collapse
is sucky because it proceeds so slowly that we
can ignore it and deny it. Whereas if there were
to be a sudden collapse, like people were describing
in the peak oil scene back in 2006, 2007, when
I first encountered this material, well, that's
something that would require an immediate and
decisive response. And the sucky collapse that
proceeds slowly so that, you know, people, individuals,
as they collapse at different rates, they get
blamed for their own problems. You know, they
bear the responsibility for their own personal
collapse. Well, that doesn't marshal the same
sort of immediate and concentrated and coordinated
response that a fast collapse would. Oh, yes,
that that makes a lot of sense. I've never heard
of her, but but it it certainly is making sense.
what is happening around the country. And yes,
the political attitude seems to be to blame people
for the problems of the collapse that hit them.
Now, and to be fair, I think people should get
a fair amount of blame for some of their problems.
There should be a sense of personal responsibility
To an extent, but not everything is under people's
control. And there are things that are out of
people's control that are giving them problems,
too. So, yeah, I think that's that is a very
good way to put it. The sucky collapse. We were
just kind of it's hitting a person here and there,
you know, one in 10 or something like that. Their
standard of living will suddenly drop. So the
other nine. don't have it hasn't impacted them
uh you know we'll have some climate disaster
it will hit one part of the country that part
will be devastated but hey the rest of us we
don't really notice anything different so so
you you it's not hitting everybody all at once
and and i think that's you know it that's a uh
kind of long emergency that's long descent type
thing that a lot of people are talking about,
the peak oil scene. You know, it's strange to
even hear myself uttering the phrase the peak
oil scene. It was such a thing. Like back in
2011, I remember I went to the ASPO conference
in Washington, D .C., and it really seemed like
peak oil was about to break out into mainstream
consciousness. And then I guess, you know, hydro
fracturing and cheap oil and cheap gas basically
just Wash that away. It's really that whole scene.
I'll get the occasional email from the Post Carbon
Institute, and every now and again, once in a
blue moon, some indication that ASPO as an organization
still exists, but really that scene failed to
launch. Yes. I think we're very reactive, and
the thing that hits people the most is the economics.
Now, I'm a few years older than you. I'm 63.
I'm a mid -baby boomer. So I remember the 70s
very well. Just got my driver's license. Gasoline
was, in 1973, gasoline was 39 cents a gallon.
Okay. A year later, it had doubled. And there
were gasoline lines and so forth. People talking,
you know, waiting for an hour to get the gas
tank filled up and so forth. And then... We went
along, it kind of stabilized at double the price
for a while, and then the same thing happened
again late in the 70s. At that point, we got
religion as far as resource limitations as a
country. Everybody was very conscious. People
who were driving Cadillacs were driving Nissans
that got 40 miles per gallon. Very different
attitude amongst people. OK, as soon as the 80s
hit and, you know, we the North Sea oil drilling,
the Alaska oil drilling. The conservation measures
that have been taking people driving less resource
intensive cars and, you know, maybe insulating
their house a little better, turning down the
thermostat, all those things worked. OK, that
crashed the oil price. And the next thing you
know, all those things were forgotten and SUVs
became the common thing. All those little 40
mile a gallon cars disappeared and were replaced
by, you know, big trucks. I think the same thing
happened again the last time. OK, the oil price
went up. It panicked people. They reacted to
it. All of a sudden they took these people, peak
oil. people seriously. Then once the price got
crashed, I think it got crashed both by demand.
The markets are so dynamic that if the demand
is slightly less than the supply at any given
moment, the price just crashes. If the demand
is slightly more than the supply at a moment,
the price rockets. And everybody, of course,
speculates, jumps on that and exaggerates it
the way our investing economy is trying to everybody
get in the middle, make a few pennies off of
each swing and so forth. So we exaggerate that.
And I think when oil price hit $140 per barrel,
people got religion again about peak oil and
resource limitations. Once that crashed and the
price of gas went down, price of oil went down,
it got forgotten again. The other day in our
permaculture group, a woman commented about,
oh, yeah, the transition town movement. But I
haven't heard anything about that. And, of course,
transition towns was a response to peak oil.
You know, it just seemed to lose all those things,
lost all the momentum at that point and immediately
was discredited. And yet you have people claiming
peak oil is dead. You know, so we tend to economics
tends to dominate our actions in this country.
And, you know, what people. When it's hurt in
their pocketbook, people notice. When it's not,
they stop noticing. All right. Cars really don't
have anything to do with technology per se. They
have a lot to do with petroleum chemistry. If
you take a barrel of crude oil and you crack
it, about 50 % of it ends up as gasoline, and
a small fraction, maybe 10%, something like that,
ends up as asphalt. So you have to figure out
how to sell the gasoline and the asphalt. And
if you don't manage to do that, then the really
valuable parts of the oil barrel, which is jet
fuel, kerosene, diesel, the useful stuff, suddenly
the price goes up and the entire economic model
stops making any sort of sense at all. So cars
are not really about transportation. They're
about forcing people to buy gasoline. Electric
cars cut into that, and if electric cars become
popular enough, they will destroy enough of the
petroleum infrastructure that runs on diesel
and jet fuel that that part of the economy will
fail. And then the electric cars will not be
delivered because it requires diesel. And roads
won't get paved because that requires road tar.
And then what you'll have is solar cars driving
on dirt roads. Now, is that a viable future?
I don't think so. Those things are not really
all -terrain. I'm yet to see an all -terrain
vehicle that is solar. So what fraction of the
barrel of oil goes to make regular gasoline?
About 50%. 50%. Yeah. I'd like to go back to
that video that I've mentioned a couple times
now. And talk about Dmitry Orlov's response,
because of the various responses I got to that
question, for me, his was the most interesting.
His point was basically that when you take crude
oil and you refine it, you get different products.
So, you know, you get kerosene, you get jet fuel,
you get bunker fuel, you get diesel, as you've
mentioned, which is so necessary for so much
of our industrial processes and mining and manufacturing
and things like that. But then the largest fraction
of that is gasoline. And gasoline isn't really...
good for much other than, you know, moving cars
around. And for the economics of a fossil fuel
powered system to work, you know, your job and
my job and the job of everybody listening to
this is really just to burn gasoline. You know,
just to make it work economically, because we
absolutely need that jet fuel and that bunker
fuel and that kerosene and most especially that
diesel fuel. We don't really need the gasoline
so much, but unless we have a public, you know,
constantly in need of the gasoline, the economics
of fossil fuel sort of fall apart. Yeah, I find
that that interesting. I mean, what would happen
in that case is power plants would end up using
gasoline, I would think. Is gasoline a viable
fuel for generating electricity? I mean, are
there plants in existence that could, say, switch
over from natural gas to gasoline? I would think
that could be done. Certainly, as I said, I drove
a car that you switch back and forth between
natural gas and gasoline just as easily. It's
basically an engine. I would imagine that you
could make convertible multi -fuel. engines that
could power a generator. So we've switched from
coal to more natural gas and power plant generations
when the price of natural gas went down. And
we'll switch back and forth. It takes some time.
But new generation is going to use whatever the
cheapest fuel is available. I just don't see
that happening. I see us continuing to use gasoline
as long as it is available. I don't see the...
I don't see the long -term environmental advantages
of electric cars anyway. I think you end up using
just as much fuel as you do with gasoline. It
may just be a different mix that you get to select
from, but power has to be generated from something.
And the electric car, it doesn't generate its
own power. So, ultimately, it's going to be some
fossil fuel base and, you know, it might be gasoline
used in a different manner. Yeah, as a topic,
electric cars by themselves are not all that
interesting to me. Self -navigating cars or,
you know, hybrid systems where sometimes the
human is in control and sometimes the AI is behind,
you know, is the power behind the wheel. That,
to me, is more interesting. Largely, you know,
for the safety issues. We just sort of shrug
our shoulders and write off 30 ,000 deaths in
auto accidents every year. It's just the price
of doing business. So that's an area that is
much more interesting to me, is the whole self
-driving car topic. I mean, it doesn't do anything,
obviously, for the environment. If you're sitting
in a car and moving it around, you're using just
as much energy. The self -driving aspect would
add very little weight, and so it would make
very, very little difference. It certainly is
doable. Now, as a software engineer and somebody
who deals with software problems, self -driving
cars do make me pretty nervous. A software bug
could wipe out a lot of people, and occasionally
you hear reports of that with any of these problems
with a Prius, which is all software behind it.
problems with different electric cars. Of course,
they're all software -driven underneath. We don't
necessarily recognize that, but it's the type
of software that I write. I write embedded computer
software, and all these cars and self -driving
vehicles, they would be all controlled by embedded
computers, and most of even a standard gasoline
-powered car. It's a lot of embedded computers
within that car controlling everything. And they
do a wonderful job, but as you scale it up and
increase the complexity, the ability of the human
mind to anticipate every possible thing that
could happen is pretty tough. And that's got
to be programmed into those programs. It scares
me a little bit, occasionally dealing with buggy
software and so forth. I think even a lot of
what you see lately with some of these products
like you get from Microsoft, Excel, I think the
latest versions have gotten worse and worse in
just subtle ways than versions from 10 years
ago. More complexity gets built into them, but
things act a little bit more flaky in a lot of
cases. So I don't know if you've seen that too
in software you use. I've definitely seen that.
Well, the software I use is the same software
I've been using for a very long time. But I do
get irritated every time Adobe feels the need
to make Photoshop much more complicated. The
things that I needed to do are the exact same
things I needed it to do 10 years ago. But for
me, you say... cars controlled by software and
microprocessors makes you nervous, but cars controlled
by hominids with cell phones should make you
really, really nervous. It definitely does. It's
not a matter of comparing self -driving cars
to cars driven by angels. It's a matter of comparing
self -driving cars to cars driven by people who
are under a lot of stress and professionally
distracted. I remember... When I lived in New
York City, you know, I drove a pickup truck,
which sat up higher than most of the cars around
me, and I'd be sitting in traffic, and everybody,
every single driver in view had one hand on the
wheel and the other hand on a phone, and their
eyes were on their phone. You know, it seems
like, to me, the fact that... auto fatalities
haven't jumped by like a factor of five in the
past decade is really a testament to how sophisticated
our brains are and how much we can multitask.
But the science of multitasking is very clear.
We don't do it nearly as well as we think we
do. And I think that the current situation with
drivers so distracted and so invested in the
abstractions and the social. abstractions that
are just in the palm of their hand that I'm amazed
anybody can drive at all. Yeah, that is scary.
I guess, you know, for me, I'm not one who spent
a lot of time on my cell phone. So, you know,
I drive, I drive. And to me, to give up control
to software, to me, that's a little bit scary
software that somebody else wrote, because I
know the pitfalls and so forth. But Yes, I guess
I'd rather have a self -driving car coming down
my street than an 18 -year -old staring at their
cell phone. Or a 48 -year -old. You know, I live
in an apartment building which has a big parking
lot. And I'm walking across this parking lot
all the time because the other building is where
my gym is and it's where it's the TV station
where I do some work is. So I'm always walking
across this parking lot. And it is just a survival
skill that I have to look at every person who's
sitting behind the wheel of a car, whether it's
in motion or whether it's stationary, and see
where they're looking. Because so many people,
they come out of this hospital, which is the
other building in this complex. They get into
their car and... as they're putting the key in
the ignition, with the other hand, they're looking
at their phone, and they frequently, I mean regularly,
start the car, and they're in motion before they
look up at their surroundings. And I could easily
be, if I'm not watching to see where they're
going, I could get run over rather easily. And
it's always to do with the phone. And this brings
me around to a lament that I have about... the
direction of the Sea Realm Podcast in general.
You know, when it started, I was not interested
in peak oil. And it was interviewing, you know,
early interviews with Dmitry Orlov and Jim Consler
and Albert Bates that got me interested in that
topic. And then the Sea Realm Podcast largely
became the podcast completely devoted to energy
issues and the fragility of, you know, our energy
infrastructure and our way of life. And the same
year that I started this podcast, the iPhone.
premiered. And I think over the 13 years that
I've been podcasting, the iPhone, social media,
mobile computing in general has had a much larger
impact on daily life and on politics and on the
experience that people have, you know, of their
world than has energy constraints. You know,
energy constraints, you can certainly say, are
definitely important from a big picture perspective.
And, you know, long term, they are a bigger issue
probably than social media and mobile computing.
But over the last decade and change, I think
social media and mobile computing have had a
much bigger impact. And I wish that I had paid
more attention to that back at the start of this
podcast. Yeah. Definitely. There are times I
feel a little bit guilty about the work I do
because I do have a piece in supporting it. And
the impact of cell phones and that technology,
I don't know that it's done our society a lot
of good. I see a lot of negative aspects, what
you're talking about with people driving and
deaths from cell phones and just constantly being
distracted by them. You know, my kids are still
fairly young. I'm an older dad, so they're 18
and 22. You know, you see the impact on their
lives where they're not used to talking to people
face to face. They don't know how to do that.
It's like they'd rather sit next to somebody
and send them a text, which, you know, they're
more comfortable doing that. Nearly as into it
as a lot of people. But, you know, just those
basic communication skills. And, you know, you
see so many people walking around, you know,
they're hunched over their phone, staring at
it. And, you know, they'd walk into a wall before
they'd pull away from their phone. They're not
seeing the world around them. To be honest, a
lot of it. Is it adding value to people's lives?
I don't think so. You know, if you think of technology
leaps forward, you know, originally like the
TV, which amazes me that people came up with
this back when they did, were able to broadcast
video signals over airwaves and you could watch
from a distance or initial early radio. To me,
I am so impressed with the people who invented
those things. Being able to stream stuff over
your cell phone or watch your TV show over your
cell phone is not such a big advance when you
compare it to that. And certainly when you compare
a lot of this stuff to indoor plumbing in terms
of quality of life, they're not that big of an
advance. So, yeah, I don't know if it's not had
a positive thing and certain politically how
it's gotten people, they're able to tune out
voices and just tune into things that reinforce
what they think. I think it's created a divide
between people where they can't really talk to
anybody with any different ideas. When you are
online, you feel a disconnect from the person
you're talking to. It's not the same as talking
to somebody face -to -face. And I think people
just treat people much more rude. They wouldn't
talk to a person face -to -face the way they
would post comments online and so forth. So I
think it's become polarizing very much socially
and politically. So I think there's been a lot
of downsides to the to this whole Internet revolution.
Yeah, I don't know about you. I had this thought
the other day. I was thinking about, you know,
my youth and, you know, you know, if I there
were things that I could bring back to my youth
that my kids have now, what would I do? And,
you know, I watch my son. My son ran track in
the spring and they had a girls track team and
a boys track team. And when it came time for
the prom, there were a lot of couples of boys
and girls who ran track together. I said, you
know, the best thing I could bring back from
if I had to live my life over again would be
girls track. I wish I had that when I was in
high school, because back then they didn't have
those girls sports. But did I feel like I missed
out because I didn't have cell phones or things
like that? Not really. But some of the social
changes that I think have been positive, you
know, my youth was early enough that had women's
liberation. You know, racial problems were a
lot worse. Those things have definitely progressed.
But the technology, I don't know if it's made
us better. Well, I am the father of two teenage
boys, and my childhood was so much richer than
theirs because I was out in the world, you know,
the real physical world, usually on my bicycle
with friends. Roaming far from home and getting
into trouble and exploring and having some spectacular
wipeouts on my bike and sustaining serious injury.
I've been, as a kid, I went to the hospital,
the emergency room, fairly regularly with injuries.
And my kids never have. They are inside, on their
devices. Both of my kids have cell phones, although
only one of them has cell phone service, because
a smartphone is just a handy little pocket computer,
and there's Wi -Fi at school, so even without
a cell phone contract, it's a handy device. And
I know that the... The children of the rich and
powerful, even the Silicon Valley folks who made
their fortunes from this technology, they send
their kids to private schools with no screens,
with no information technology, learning from
books and from lectures and things. And my kids,
who are sort of the very low end of middle class,
if that, really they're sort of the children
of former middle class people who are now struggling
working class people. They have their phones
with them all the time at school, and the phones
and laptops and tablets are all allowed in the
public school. And that just seems strange to
me. I mean, if you could bring these things back
to when I was in school, you know, in high school
in the 80s, they certainly, you couldn't have
them, you know, in your hand in class. You would
have to, you know, if they were allowed at all,
they'd have to be in your locker. And it seems
like the schools, you know, the public schools
for the massive kids have just given up on that.
Like the screens are everywhere. The processors
are everywhere. But for the children of the elite,
you know, it seems the elite recognize how harmful
these technologies are, and they make sure that
their kids have a learning environment which
is free of these things. Yeah, that's definitely
true. You see all these posts about, you know,
the people who are the real high -level enablers
of all this technology. don't want their kids
constantly exposed to it uh and i think they
have very very valid reasons i just think the
schools feel they're over they're overwhelmed
and you know face it most of the teachers are
probably uh on their cell phones all the time
anyway so you know they don't they don't necessarily
recognize it so uh yeah i think they've just
kind of thrown up the flag and and given up any
hope of that but yeah there's a definitely a
benefit to not having uh your cell phone on you
all the time. Yes, indeed. So, yeah, I think
there's no contest. My life, my childhood was
so much better than that of my kids. And it is
the technology that makes the difference. And
the social expectations that go along with it,
I think we're much more fearful now than we were
when I was a kid, like, you know, in the 70s
and the 80s. I would be gone. You know, I would
be out of my mother's sight all day, all day.
She wouldn't know where I was. She couldn't call
me. I wasn't near a phone. You know, I was off
on my bike with friends. And then as long as
I made it back, you know, at dinnertime, it was
all good. And these days, you know, if your kids
are not immediately within sight, then you start
to wonder, you know, what dangers are they exposed
to? What do I need to be protecting them from?
And that has seeped into the expectations of
our culture in general so that parents who, you
know, raise their kids the way I was raised are
considered negligent. Yes, yes. You hear the
stories of the police coming because the kid's
playing on his front lawn by himself, and they
don't see a parent in sight and so forth. The
pendulum swung way too far that way. I had a
story. My dad one time, and I realized afterwards,
after a while, it was the best thing anybody
ever did for me. I was got in a rut of sitting
and watching TV every day after I'd come home
from school. And he got home from school about
the same time I did. One day he came over and
said, Bob, after the show, you're getting outside.
And I said, oh, no, I want to watch whatever
the next show was. I forget what it was. But
I mentioned a stream of shows that were coming
up. He said, no, Bob, you're going outside. And
he didn't say any more. When that show ended,
he came in. I hadn't shut the TV off. He went
over, shut the TV off. I protested. came over,
picked me up, carried me out the door, put me
outside, locked the door, and said, you're going
to spend time outside. Fortunately, my parents
were very good. They both stuck with what they
said, and they backed each other up. So I knew
I was never going to win that battle and watch
TV. So I made the best of it outside and ended
up having a good time and kind of got out of
my TV rut. But I realized that was one of the
best things he'd ever did for me. even though
I was screaming mad at the time. You know, there
are advantages to the way we grew up, being able
to, you know, golf on your bicycle, running around
and so forth. I mean, people were healthier.
Definitely, you know, trimmer. You know, there's
something to be said for keeping an eye on kids
and so forth, but the pendulum swung way too
far. You can't cocoon everybody and keep them
safe in front of the electronics things. It's
just different dangers that they're being exposed
to now through the electronics. You know, everything
we've said over the past 10, 15 minutes basically
has gone back to my point of the technologies
that have created all of these problems and also
which allow us to do things we couldn't have
done before. They really have had a much bigger
impact on... the character of life in the early
21st century then has constraints, supply constraints
of fossil fuels. And so, you know, this is why
I say I would much rather that, you know, if
I could go back in time and do it over again,
I would focus more on information technology
and particularly social media and mobile computing.
You know, people our age, 2011 doesn't seem like
very long ago, but I remember Back in 2011, you
know, that was the start of the Arab Spring and
then later that year, Occupy Wall Street. And
in the Arab Spring, the tech executives were
all crowing, saying, you know, this is what giving
everybody access to the Internet brings. It is
it's democracy. You know, democracy just springs
up unbidden. when you give people these tools.
And that's not how it's played out. You know,
and I think those comments are, they're sort
of an embarrassment now to that sector of industry
and that set of people that these tools do not
create democracy and that China, you know, the
remaining, or I would say even rising communist
superpower, communist possibly in name only,
but they're certainly authoritarian. Google,
with their do no evil motto, is more than happy
to work with China to make sure that China can
be our partner in creating the tools that we
use and implementing them in an authoritarian
friendly way. And I think these are all very
important topics that have enormous impact on
our lives. And I wish that I had been tuned into
it earlier. Yeah, I don't think it's too late
to talk more about that. I hear so many people
talk about, you know, the Internet technology
and, you know, a lot of them, you know, they're
big on Bitcoin, for instance, and saying, you
know, this is freeing people. We can have virtual
nations and so forth. What they seem to leave
out is that the Internet, basically people have
two or three ways of connecting to the Internet,
which can be easily controlled. So it provides
a central mass point of control that governments
can use, businesses can use to their advantage.
But independently, most of us don't have a way
to get on the Internet on our own. We're through
some ISP, maybe a cable provider, telephone provider,
cell phone provider. That's about it. Any of
those things can filter what. Any way they want.
They're businesses. There's nothing stopping
them from doing that. And any of them could shut
down your access, as you've recently found with
Facebook. I mean, they're a central controlling
power now. And, you know, it's not giving individuals
necessarily more power. Yes, we can talk about
things that might be somewhat subversive in small
quantities. you can be controlled. Yeah, I mean,
that seems to be really the primary use of the
technology these days is to control perception.
And, you know, that's not new, and it's certainly
not unique to social media. I mean, that's largely
been the role of television. And so it goes.
Well, we have just passed the one hour mark on
the recording, and I like to keep these files
not much longer than that. So let me just...
open it up to you to say what message would you
like to end on or what topic? Okay. I mean, I
think long -term, we still have to consider energy
constraints, scaling down. I'd like to see when
we talk about things like electric vehicles,
that we actually talk about, okay, more practical
electric vehicles, electrifying bicycles, electrified
scooters. small scale cars on electric cars on
the power of my old VW Beetle. If we scale down,
electrification of certain things becomes much
more possible. And I just think some old technologies,
really, people would laugh at those technologies,
but... putting more insulation in people's houses.
I mean, I've done that, and it makes such a huge
difference. The house is quieter inside, and
my bills are a lot lower for heat. No longer
need air conditioning in here in northwest Connecticut
for most. Once there's a few days, I could use
it, but most of the time, it keeps the house
much cooler in the summer. So working things
like that, I think, long term have a lot more
potential than people harping on electric cars
and so forth. I'd love to see people pick up
those type things more. And, of course, I'm very
into permaculture, learning about that, which
is totally out of my normal skill set. Learning
about that has a lot of benefits. Growing your
own quality food and so forth long term I think
is a good skill for people to develop. I'd love
to see people go more in that direction. Put
your cell phones down a little bit and experience
the world. What's the name of your blog? I have
a blog, investingwithnature .com. Pretty wimpy
blog. I don't blog much. I'm more hoping in a
few years when I retire that I'll blog a little
more often. And even if I make an occasional
blog between now and then, that it will have
built up a little bit of work. Do you have any
New Year's resolutions? Well, one was, and the
original reason I contacted you was to support...
People like yourself who are doing good work.
Make sure I do that in some manner. You know,
support James Howard Kunstler, John Michael Greer,
some of these people who I've listened to and
followed their work, read their books. And, you
know, I think they are saying some useful things
and they're certainly much better writers than
I am. So I enjoy their reading and just, you
know, support these. these people. That's been
my big New Year's resolution. All right. That's
a good one. All right. Bob, it has been a lot
of fun talking to you. Oh, a lot of fun here,
KMO. Thank you very much. Thank you. Take care.
Take care. Bye. That was Bob Brown. Check out
his blog. You can burn through it pretty quickly.
He's not kidding when he says he doesn't blog
often. I say this with no disrespect meant to
Chris Martinson, but I was riding with somebody
in a car a few months back, and they had on a
podcast from Peak Prosperity, which is Chris
Martinson's outfit. And really, it could have
come from 2008 or 2009. I mean, there was just
nothing there that struck me as particularly
interesting. If the conversation about peak oil
hasn't advanced any further than that in the
last, what, eight years? It's just not a conversation
that's worth keeping up with as far as I'm concerned.
And when I say to people who are interested in
peak oil that, look, mobile computing, social
media, and just ubiquitous connectivity has had
a much bigger impact on human consciousness and
social organization than has resource constraints
over the past decade and a half. They seem to
take me to be saying that this is a good thing,
that this is an uncomplicated boon to humanity.
And I'm not saying that at all. That's not what
makes it interesting. What makes it interesting
is all of these social knock -on effects, all
of these psychological, you know, all the psychological
collateral damage that takes place in the wake
of the implementation of these technologies on
a massive scale. Those were unanticipated even
just a few years ago, and now we are having enormous
difficulties navigating this new world that we
have created for ourselves. That is a very interesting
conversation to me. And poo -pooing the most
optimistic projections from technophiles, I guess
it still needs to be done, but I'm just not the
person to do it. It's just not anything that
can hold my attention. But, you know, there are
people for whom that is their bread and butter,
and they do not deviate from that formula. So
if it's what you want, there is no shortage of
supply of peak oil doom, even though the peak
oil scene generally is a ghost of its former
self. All right, well, I'm going to try to put
all this podcast into one file and get it uploaded
for you. And then I have some more commentary
that is specific to notes that I took on the
conversation while editing it down to the...
the length that you heard, but I don't have time
for it in this episode of the podcast. So I always
say this, but you know, it's always true. I'll
talk to you again soon.