Mayor Bloomberg Proposes Pension Cuts for Future NYC Workers

"Pension costs will amount to about 12 percent of New York City’s $67.5 billion budget for the year beginning July 1, according to the spending plan. Annual costs, now about $7.5 billion, are expected to increase to about $9 billion by 2016, from $1.4 billion in 2002, the mayor has said.

“This would destroy the city employees,” Harry Nespoli, president of the 6,100-member Uniformed Sanitationmen’s Association, told the Associated Press. "

• Other news:

Shadow inventory to push foreclosures to new heights

China property bubble to pop this year, says analyst

Hungary's premier declares end to private pensions

Christie Says 'Sue Me' as Pensioners Challenge Cuts (New Jersey)

More cuts not enough to meet service demand, Saginaw County Vice Chairman Tim Novak says

European Real Estate Bonds Face Ratings Downgrades, Moody's Says

Emergency bill to fund Medicaid shortfall (Hawaii)

Alaska governor proposes $160M supplemental bill

US 'stormageddon' latest pain on city, state budgets

Houstonians could lose water if drainage fees aren't paid

Strapped States Look To Alcohol For Shot Of Cash

Taleb Advises ‘First’ Avoid Treasuries, Then Dollar

Public-sector pensions skyrocketing - report (Canada)

Oil Climbs on Egypt as Stocks Decline; Copper Reaches $10000

U.S. Faces Dollar Decline as China Becomes Importer
"China may post a trade deficit as early as this quarter as imports outpace sales abroad, the government said last month. The country’s reliance on trade to fuel economic growth close to 10 percent is now fading as its consumers grow wealthier, removing a key incentive for China to support the dollar. At the same time, the world’s largest economy estimates its budget deficit will swell to a record $1.5 trillion this year, as President Barack Obama channels stimulus to revive growth."

"'If we don’t move to address our deficit before China addresses its surplus then we are going to be facing some pretty significant external funding constraints,' Roach said. 'That would lead to a significant downward pressure on the dollar and/or higher long-term U.S. interest rates.'"

"China will curb its reliance on exports sooner than the U.S. can cut its budget and external deficits, removing a support from the dollar that will unsettle currency markets, Morgan Stanley’s Stephen Roach said."
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-03/roach-says-u-s-faces-dollar-dec...

It says there's a greater than 30% chance China will do this before the U.S. starts truly addressing the deficit. I say there's a greater than 90% chance...

Poet

Is this what you are talking about?  http://www.baltimoresun.com/features/sns-auto-oil-from-algae-makes-fuel,0,1419272.story

The short answer is no, it will have as much affect on peak oil as you have on raising ocean levels by spitting into it.

The longer answer is contained in this quote - "This means that algae could theoretically produce up to 10,000 gallons of oil per acre per year." That works out to be 238 barrels of oil per acre per year.  The US consumes about 20 million barrels of oil per day and worldwide consumption is about 85 million barrels of oil per day.  Do you have some land you want to donate?

@Bogdan

One company (ls9.com) is looking at making biodiesel from plant waste, such as sugar cane remnants.  I think the technology still needs a year to prove it is viable before ramping up production.  The question is, assuming it will work well, is it scable?  How big of a dent can it put into 20 mbpd of U.S. petroleum consumption.

A university in Germany is looking at doing the same kind of thing to produce bio-ethanol from plant waste.  It is in the research stage, so again we need viability and scalability without taking away from our food supply and without requiring a lot of energy and petrofertilizer inputs to grow the crops to begin with.

In short, I don't see a major impact, however it's worth pursuing as liquid fuels will always be in demand!

if that's the CO2 to oil article, i commented on that - bacteria are alive, and no info was given as to where they get the other components of DNA, ie, phosphorus & nitrogen...

Ironically, our power went off (read switched to battery power) for two hours yesterday (in bright sunshine), and the phone and internet went down for about six... and we're a thousand miles from all the excitement.

Danger remains as Yasi downgraded to tropical low

Cyclone Yasi has been downgraded to a tropical low but its effects are still being felt across vast areas of northern Queensland.

The former category five cyclone was downgraded from a category one system by the weather bureau about 10:30pm (AEST) as it travelled west across Queensland between Richmond and Mount Isa.

Almost 24 hours earlier, Yasi, packing winds of up to 285kph, ripped through buildings and smashed infrastructure and farms in coastal centres including Mission Beach, Tully and Cardwell.

Up to 180,000 households are without power and there are concerns about dwindling water supplies in Townsville and Magnetic Island.

But the danger is far from over, as flash floods pose a real threat to communities from Cairns to Innisfail after massive rainfalls on Thursday.

The weather bureau says Cairns received more than 260mm of rain since 9:00am Thursday and a similar big dumping was expected overnight.

Flooding has isolated Ingham and Giru and Charters Towers was expected to be cut off overnight.

Even with the system more than 900 kilometres inland, damaging wind gusts of more than 90kph are still possible as severe thunderstorms move with the system.

A flash flood warning has been issued for the north-west, Channel country and central-west.

Mount Isa is of the most concern as Yasi edges inland, with the tropical low expected to bring strong winds and rain to the city overnight.

Forecaster Gordon Banks says it is becoming gusty and the effects will still be felt by the morning. Mount Isa residents were told to stay indoors

"By tomorrow morning [Friday] it'll just be ex-Yasi, but still quite a dangerous system with the amount of rainfall that could be produced through the area, the north-west and central-west," he said.

A priest who has lived in Mount Isa for more than 20 years says he has never seen anything like Yasi.

Father Mick Lowcock says it is unusual the weather system has come all the way from the coast rather than from the Gulf of Carpentaria.

"Certainly very different from anything else we've ever had before," he said.

"Certainly because it has come from the east coast rather than the Gulf, that's the first thing you'd say and because it's linked with such a big system makes people a bit more wary this time."

This is what's left of Carwell, Nth QLD....

And that's if the algae were intensely farmed and harvested - with water irrigation, fertilizer, densely packed steel, glass, plastic piping, pumps for slurry and carbon dioxide circulation from a source such as a factory, etc. - on an area of land equal to 30 million acres, or about equal to 1/10th of all harvested cropland in the United States. High-oil-producing algae also would need to be carefully closed-system monocropped to prevent against viral infection or competition from bacteria and other algae species.

Is there enough steel, glass, and plastic piping and pumps to go around? How much would that cost? How much time would we have to scale up?

Some studies show algae oil would only be viable if oil cost several hundred dollars per barrel.

By contrast, lower intensity algae ponds only provide about 1,000 gallons per acre - in which case you'd need land equivalent to the entire harvested cropland of all of the United States (300 million acres). And lots and LOTS of water - evaporation sucks.

Poet

Oysters disappearing worldwide: study

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-02-oysters-gastronomes-globally.html

"A survey of oyster habitats around the world has found that the succulent mollusks are disappearing fast and 85% of their reefs have been lost due to disease and over-harvesting. Most of the remaining wild oysters in the world, or about 75 percent, can be found in five locations in North America, said the study published in BioScience, the journal of the American Institute of Biological Sciences."

The problem is that there is an absolute limit at least to things tied to solar energy on how much you can improve the technology.  The energy potential is limited to the amount of solar radiation (solar isolation) striking a given surface area.  This applies to PV, thermal solar solutions, and biological solutions like algae that are simply biological solar energy collectors. 

Math Lesson for Solar Energy Expectations

You can use PV watts (used to calculate PV output) to determine the solar isolation for your location.  If you set the settings to 2-axis tracking that will tell you the most you can collect if you aim directly at the sun.  This is probably not the case for things like algae tanks, for those you probably need to set the settings to fixed axis and 0 tilt.  You will find the answer under Solar Radiation on the results page.  It doesn't matter what the other settings for PV size or derate factor are set to as they don't figure into the solar radiation calculation.

Here in Albuquerque the upper limit (2 axis tracking) is 8.91 kWh/m2/day.  For a flat solution at 0 tilt (a flat surface) it's 5.59 kWh/m2/day. 

With these values you can calculate how many barrels of oil at 100% conversion you could get with any given surface area. (of course these are averages/day accounting for average cloud cover).

So if we look up the energy in a barrel of oil (BOE), we find it's 1.7 MWh  or 1,700 kWh (for better oil since energy content varies). With this we can then convert the solar isolation to BOE equivalent (we'll change it to years instead of days to get a better feel):

8.91 kWh/m2/day * 365 days / 1,700 kWh/BOE = 1.913 BOE/m2/year

1.913 BOE/m2/year * 4,047 m2/acre = 7,742 BOE/acre/year

So 7,741 barrels of oil/acre in a year is the best you can expect to do here in sunny Albuquerque.  That's at 100% conversion (never going to happen).  For example PV is about 15% efficient, thermal solar can reach about 50% in real life situations.  But this value gives you an upper limit, then you simply multiply it by your efficiency (collection and any transition process (ie. oil to bio-diesel)) to determine what you can expect to achieve.

So let's say you get 50% efficiency for the algae solution growing in a flat area, to replace the oil need in the US:

5.59 kWh/m2/day * 365 days / 1,700 kWh/BOE = 1.200 BOE/m2/year

1,200 BOE/m2/year * 4,047 m2/acre = 4,856 BOE/acre/year

20,000,000 b/day * 365 days/yr  / (4,856 BOE/acre * 50% efficiency)  = 3,006,589 acres (4,697 sq. miles - about the size of Connecticut)

That's a high efficiency rate and no extra room for things like roads, etc to work on the equipment.  So I would say you would have to at least double that and in a very very sunny area and is only replacing our use of oil.  So let's say we want to use a solar solution for all our energy needs.

The US uses about 29 PWh/year.  So at 50% efficiency, we need:

29,000,000,000,000 / (5.59 kWh/m2/day * 365 days * 50% * 4,047 m2/acre)  =  7,024,090 (10,975 sq. miles - about the size of Maryland, probably more like WV when you double the size for support areas).

While I was looking to put an equivalent work required, I found this article, which seems to validate the above calculations.  The interesting thing is the article says the area is about 1/2 the size of all roads in the US.  This gives us a good visual of the amount of work/resources/time it would take to build a solution.  How many years would it take to rebuild all roads (including all city streets) in the US?

But these are all theoretical calculations. We can look at a real world example,  the Ivanpah solar plant.  It's estimated to be about 238 MWh/acre-year.  At that efficiency (12%) and area, it would take 190,388 sq miles to meet the US energy demand.  That's larger than the state of California!

Sorry for the long-winded comment, but it's important for people to understand just how much energy we consume.  Whenever I hear someone suggest we can just put up more solar, algae or any of the energy du-jour solutions I cringe. 

This is what I had in mind:

http://www.fastcompany.com/1688921/joule-biotechnologies-patents-fuel-generating-bacteria

http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2010/09/14/joule-gets-biofuel-bacteria-patent/

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/science/earth/14fuel.html

"Joule imagines that its fuels could act as a large-scale fossil fuel replacement, selling for as low as $30 a barrel."

Bogdan.

It's "doable".  But will it be done?

Until I start hearing the MSM, the gov and business say things other than "Green shoots" or "It's improving, if slowly" or "There is no inflation" -- there's no way it will be done.  All effort is currently invested in propping up the way we've done things for the last 50-ish years.  

The time for our denial phase is over.  I reckon the time alloted for anger & bargaining is gone, too.  But we're nowhere near acceptance, much less action.  I think the goose is cooked.  

I'd be happy to be wrong.

Viva -- Sager

I don't believe we can do what we did during WWII.  There are several problems:

1. We didn't gear up overnight - we had a 100+ years of infrastructure build up that we could retool quickly.
2. Lack of energy - in WWII we had a internal supply of energy (domestic oil) , how would we get the energy to build the infrastructure?
3. We have dismantled much of our manufacturing infrastructure.  Before WWII we were the largest manufacturing country, now we are not.  We would have to rebuild the manufacturing infrastructure first.
4. Depleted natural resources.  We have depleted many of the natural resources we need to build the energy infrastructure.  Even if we still have resources available that we have not been willing to tap, we would have to rebuild and gear up all that infrastructure.

To build up the mining and manufacturing also takes lots of energy and we are back to lack of energy and would have to become even a larger consumer in the world.  I doubt other nations will let us use many more of their resources, depriving them of trying to do the same thing, and give them nothing in return so we can build our clean energy infrastructure.

While it is true that it's going to be painful and that it may very well be too late, it is more foolish to just resign ourselves to defeat, to not strive for this perhaps unreachable goal.

Part of what might make it possible is the grim fact that there will undoubtably be a massive die-off.  Couple this with the fact that our lowest hanging fruit is curbing inefficiencies, to just stop doing stupid things like using food stores to fuel hummers.  Our alternative energy hopes may not be enough, and there is nothing wrong with pointing out how far we have to go, but by god we cannot stop now.

I'm not resigning ourselves to defeat, but instead pointing out the mathematical certainty that solar can not replace our current energy consumption from oil.  I think it is just as dangerous to have people beliving that any solution based on solar energy will solve our problems.  Too many times I've heard "If we just build a giant solar array in AZ, our problems would be solved".  Those beliefs are just as troubling as those who don't believe peak oil is real or that we have enough natural gas to power us for 200 years. Believing these solutions will simply be avilable when oil runs out is delusional.  We need to spead awareness of how big the problem is and promote realistic expectations about what the various technologies can provide.

Energy is just one of our problems. I would have thought anyone looking at this blog would understand that, even if one of our problems, climate change, is given less emphasis than the other problems that confront us.

In terms of energy, only an infinite energy supply, harnessable at infinite rates could potentially overcome all of our problems (as with enough energy, just about any "miracle" can be performed). But we don't, and never will, have ininite energy so we need to stop looking at this or that energy technology in isolation. Our predicament spans a whole host of issues and the only reasonable approach is to transition to sustainable living arrangments and behaviours. Whilst renewable energy is certainly part of that approach, I don't think it's helpful to look at renewable energy as a way of powering what we have now, because what we have now is not sustainable. We need to look at everything we do and how we organise our societies. I suspect that a truly sustainable society (or as near as damn it) would use a tiny amount of energy, compared to what we use now, and that might easily be provided by local solutions, wherever we end up living.